Travelling along the pleasant path of life, on the reverse side of the hill, the downward course how graphic is the French of it for the later and “smaller half” of our allotted span: sur le retour, there is a tendency to dwell more upon memories and proportionately less on ambitions. The prospect now ahead, placid and mellowed as it may be, naturally dwindles to narrower margins. Its interest is more of the immediate order; deals mostly with hopes and doings of the coming season. And, the circle of recollection widening, things distant in the past appeal with proportionate insistency to the mind’s eye. “DREAMING BACKWARDS” I believe this is the case with all thinking creatures says Loki’s Grandpa—who has fallen into a reminiscent mood. With one whose lazy and musing propensities, whose delight in day-dreams has proved his paramount weakness, the habit of “dreaming backwards” and hunting for old impressions has become as haunting, in these years of the sixth decade, as was, in salad days, the “dreaming forward” and the straining for a sight of things still below the horizon. For instance: in a life which has always been one of constant book-companionship, the printed passages which most delight me are those which, having been first read in another age and re-discovered in this one, bring back a pulse of some long forgotten impression. The impression may be one that sober and critical memory does not record as having been so particularly enthralling at the time—yet it now comes back with a subtle fragrance all its own. The long darkness of winter provides the richest reading view of garden Now, as one who knows practically nought of the gardener’s “Arte and Mysterie,” my interest in the matter is of the irresponsible kind. I look forward, of course, and keenly, to the satisfying display, first of our sappy, turgid fragrant Hyacinth beds in the Dutch Garden somehow, the Dutch Garden seems to belong more particularly to my own side of the Villino—to be a precinct Only on two occasions have I volunteered a suggestion with regard to planting—and both are related to early, very early, reminiscences. Creepers of all sorts we have in profusion. Ivy, of course, and Jessamine and Honeysuckle, and the gorgeous, if short-lived, Virginia-Ampilopsis its name, I believe. But there is one thing, I pointed out, I must have also, and that is the blue clustering, the incomparably fragrant Glycine of my early childhood’s days. Wisteria is its proper English name. Odoriferous bushes, again, we have, of every description. Ribes, Cassia, Gummy Cistus, what not?—lurk in ambuscade at the turning of paths to waylay you with their gush of essence, not to speak of the Azaleas in their banks; but all these perfumes, in their subtleness, belong to the middle years. No memories of the complete freshness of time cleave to them such as belong to the simple Sweet Briar. So, now, the two rooted creatures of the Villino, which may be said to exist there more specially for the behoof of Loki’s Grandpa, are the Briar bushes at the end of the Lily Walk and by the SchÖne Aussicht, and the still tender but promising Wisteria climbers in the re-entering and most sheltered corner of his study walls. FLOWER LOVES OF CHILDHOOD And it is for those young hopeful Wisterias that on this frosty night I feel a concern. Last year we had a score or so of purple clusters; we look to a goodly increase during the coming Renouveau.—You perceive the old, obsolete French word for Spring comes back of itself! The anticipation of the near future, within the shrinking vista of coming pleasures, elicits as usual a return to the widening past. In this case the past that is recalled is that of a childhood spent in France. GLYCINE! Therein, during nearly a whole year, for reasons of delicate health, resided a certain very small English boy—French enough in those tender years. In this delectable old place, so full of good-smelling things in their seasons: hay, and grain, and fruit, and at all times the health-restoring cow, the house was in the spring-time covered with Glycine. And with the adorable Glycine the small boy, who loved flowers as much as milk and fruits and beasts, fell forthwith in love. How that coquettish Jappy plant came originally to find a footing in so rustic a corner as Mesnil-le-Roy is more than I can account for. Your French peasant is not, as a rule, addicted to the delights of flower raising; and, in those distant days, Wisteria was still something of a rarity anywhere. But there it was, already in the sturdiest strength of its age, embracing the old walls, forcing its fibrous wood into every cranny of the greystone, framing every window, striving up the chimney stacks—and filling the air with honey sweetness. It must With the English boy, then barely four, it was a first love. He feasted on it with his every sense. From morning till eve he would be sucking the base of some blue corolla plucked from its calyx, for the sake of that intense sweetness to which the thing owes its Gallic name of Glycine; he would, whenever he could, run round and rejoice his eyes with the delicacies of pale green and purple, drink in the scent, and listen hypnotized to the never-ceasing buzz of honey-seekers in the sunshine. And, in the morning, his first thought, as he crept out of his small truckle-bed, was to go and plunge his hands into the dew that glittered upon these Glycine branches nodding in from every side at the mansarde window. Like all first loves it was, as you see, violent. Well do I remember how, for months after he was removed back into the Paris house, the small boy would ply his mother with the yearning question, infantilely incorrect but vernacular: “Quand que nous retournerons aux Glycines, Maman?” always to receive the non-committal but consoling: “TantÔt ... tantÔt.” This “tantÔt” is the wonderful “by-and-by” which never comes to be! And like all first loves this one was utterly forgotten in later years—to reappear, however, in the sere and yellow of age. For years a many, a purple Wisteria spreading about the eaves of a south-country house, was to me only a purple Wisteria. It was a creeper, and it was nothing more. It was not a “Glycine” until I had a creepered wall of my own. Then it surged before imagination’s eye with Now, therefore, at Villino Loki, nothing will serve but a Glycine to creep along those walls which are more especially my own; to embrace my south windows and nod in at the casement. And the suave-breathed Eastern beauty, first brought over to the West and god-fathered by Professor Wister, will privily remain Glycine for me; although I may draw the indulgent visitor’s attention to her under the better-known name of Wisteria Sinensis.—I have, by the way, an ever-ready pretext; for I learn from “The Language of Flowers” that the special significance of this blossom is “Welcome, fair stranger!” I mean to have a profusion of it, for old sake’s sake. Besides, is it not meet that Loki should not be deprived, during his villeggiatura, of the company of some Chinese living thing? |