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Beeches, on the other hand, have a kind of fairy glory about them that does not seem to belong to our land. We drove through a beech forest the other day; the road went up zigzagging to the top of a steep hill, and one looked down upon the Beech glades, all golden green in a fierce sunburst between two showers. And they were still dripping with the rain. It was wonderful, but not English, distinctively English, like that Oak wood. It was a MÄrchen-Wald. Siegfried might have strode through it, blowing his horn: youth incarnate, leaping out of Mime’s cave to conquer the world. On the inspiration of such a haunt was the Wald-Musick conceived.

MAY AND SEPTEMBER MOODS

If we had a dwelling for every different mood, a log-house at the top of that Beech ravine would suit us very well in a sunny month of May. Between the great smooth boles of the trees we would want to peep out at the flat wide land, with the rich far woods below, misty in the sunshine; and the distant moors as with the bloom of the grape upon them. We would not want flowers; nothing but that heavenly green of the young leaves against the blue; and the whispering and the swaying of the boughs to cradle our souls; and the thrushes and blackbirds to sing the dawn in and the twilight out! How holy and innocent and loving would one’s mind become after a week in that log hut—a week alone, or with one’s best beloved!

landscape with clouds

After we came out from that Beech wood we took a wrong turning, and landed ourselves far out on the downs instead of back to our moors. Now, for another mood—say, a warm, still, serene September mood—why not a small stone house in a high hollow of those downs, miles removed from any other human habitation? Just a stone house dumped in the hollow—pale grey, so as not to offend the eye in that stretch of bleached vastness, with a group of Thorns at the back and nothing else, not even a path; only a long way off, the vision of a white ribbon of road, looping and twisting, running to the sea. No flowers but the little wild, stiff, aromatic things that push up through the short turf. Overhead, one or two quite round, white clouds, sailing along the blue, caught by some high current that hardly touches us below—the kind of cloud that you see in an old German print. And all about, as far as the gaze can encompass, nothing but the dip and rise, the scoop and billow of the downs; and the hollows, blue on that wonderful sun-steeped, warm, yet bleached expanse. And the shadows of the clouds, running along across it; and perhaps a lark’s song, somewhere not too close, beaten back to earth from an unseen height of joy; and far, far away, the tinkle of a sheep-bell! Would not one’s soul expand with the grand silence and the glorious wide spaces? One would not want to hear or behold the sea, only to taste the salt of it in every breath. Now does it not seem that up there, sitting outside that stone house, you would touch the prehistoric past? Or, rather, that the great eternity, the never-dying essences of things, would sink into your little passing bit of humanity? Your soul would mirror all infinity.—A place to turn Buddhist in!

A TUSCAN VILLINO
house on hill

There was a pink Villino on the unusual side of Rome. You looked in upon it through high gates into a tangle of garden, where everything seemed to riot. It had an odd, incongruous tower from which you could surely have a vast prospect of the plains of the Campagna and the Alban mountains beyond. There was an archway in one side of it through which one certainly drove into some inner courtyard of delight. That little habitation you might covet with a covetousness that gave you a pain in your heart. We did.

And outside Florence, too, there was another small house. It had been once a farm. A certain great lady had her spring quarters there, liking the contrast, we suppose, between that and the old Scotch castle where Fate had planted her. We drove to tea with her there early May it was through the hot, wind-swept, noisy Florentine streets. It was just the time of year when the Iris was flooding the land with its penetrating and yet not sickly sweetness. There never was any scent so perfect. And the small pink roses were flinging themselves over the tops of tall garden walls, as if the prodigal Italian springtide had been at its full and left a foam of bloom behind it. Up, up the mountain road, between uncompromising walls and out into the freer country—and there was the farmhouse! Its garden has left an odd blurred impression on our minds: vaguely—a path bordered by lush grass and gay with Apple trees—there was a storm brewing, and all was black overhead; under the weird sky the delicate blossoms took a curious vividness like minute paintings.

One had to go across a red-brick kitchen to get to the stairs that led to the two long, quaint, cool rooms, in the farther of which the hostess sat.

LANDSCAPE ECSTASY

She had kept the charm of simplicity there. Plain white walls and rather empty spaces, with bits of Italian black oak, and a painting or two; a vase of lilac, a dim missal warmth of colour in the Persian carpets that lay on the bricks—that was the picture. A very pleasant impression those rooms made, with the old great lady in her high-backed chair, clad in flowing black satin and with a white lace that framed a face as fresh as the apple blossom without. The storm broke as we sat there. She was nervous, and so were some of her visitors; therefore she had the wooden shutters closed. Perhaps she was not really frightened, for she was as sturdy a Scotchwoman as ever we beheld, and her bright blue eye was stern in spite of her affability. Perhaps she only compassionated the nerves of her guests. Be it as it may, we sat an hour while the thunder rolled bars of sound over our heads and the wind whistled and the rain hissed and roared down the valley, and the lightning kept a perpetual play between the chinks of the shutters. And though Loki’s Grandma generally gibbers during a thunderstorm, she never enjoyed an hour more, so delightful was her hostess and so fascinating the sense of isolation and strangeness, being thus shut away amid the fury of the elements in a little Italian farmhouse! And when the tempest was grumbling itself off in the distance, the shutters were all thrown back and the doors on the square wooden balcony opened. The air rushed in, vivifying, full of the scent of the earth and charged with ozone and perfumes. We went out on the dripping balcony, and never, oh! never can any of us forget the vision! For below the casa the land dropped away, and it was all vineyards; and they rose and dipped and rose again, a sight no one has ever beheld out of Italy. And beyond were the mountains; and the whole wide valley was filled with mist and all of it was stained rose and crimson from the sunset.

You may not believe it, you who read it, but it is a fact that the valley was carmine up to the balcony, indescribably shot with the fires of the West—a steaming cauldron of glory! That is the kind of vision one carries gratefully to one’s grave.

For a long time we vowed that our old age would see us, like the Scotch Dowager, steeping our being in the joys of Spring in a farmhouse outside Florence.—But now we don’t know. Villino Loki has laid hold of us; it is our real home, the rest are but dreams.

The Master of the House saw this morning a tiny Golden-crested Wren fluttering from stem to stem of the tall Darwin Tulips to pick at the Forget-me-nots below; and every time it pecked it twittered with joy, so light a thing that it scarcely swayed the slender stalks—a fairy vision.

path through garden to house

The Hemicycle, where the grass must be allowed to grow lush, because of the bulbs, until the leaves “ripen off,” is none the less attractive on that account. There are eight little square beds, each containing a weeping standard—“Dorothy Perkins” or “Stella”—thickly planted below with Forget-me-nots and Bybloemen Tulips. Between the beds there is a large red pot also filled with Forget-me-nots and Bybloemen. The Tulips have a kind of wild grace, coming out of the long grass; and Myosotis, darling little creature, accommodates herself in every surrounding. There is a pretty, stemmed fountain, or rather bird-bath; in its centre, where, in a basin shaped like a spreading lotus flower, a sturdy putto astride a dolphin blows soundless blasts. This half-circle of vivid beauty, with the young green grass, the swaying Tulips, the blue of the Forget-me-nots against the moor is good to look upon.

Beyond the Hemicycle, the Azalea Glade runs down now in lines of orange-rose and creamy-salmon, bordered too with Forget-me-nots. Up against it the cool silver of a great Service-tree comes just where it makes a perfect background; and beyond that again the rivulets of blue in the Reserve Garden lie deep below.

TRANSIENT COLOUR GLORIES

This is the hour of our garden’s glory. No Delphinium muster, no spreading garlands of Roses, can equal the exquisite freshness, the fulness of life of this May world. With the Brooms, white and yellow; with the pink foam of the Floribunda trees, the incomparable gold and green of the Beech and Birch, one wants to put one’s arms round the little place and kiss it.

“So much work, so long and great a travail of nature,” said a friend to us to-day; “ever since November, preparing for this wonderful revelation of bloom ... and all for so short a span! All this beauty scarce reaches its climax but it is already on the wane!”

Perhaps it is to give us an idea of the permanence of what “eye hath not seen” beyond, that its glories are described in terms of jewels; and yet so perversely is one made that it is the very fragility that endears here below—a sense of the fleeting moment that gives ecstasy its finest edge. No, this limited humanity of ours cannot conceive the infinitude. It is only with those perceptions which transcend the senses that one gets a gleam, a hint, a possibility of once understanding. The restless mind of man for ever demands and creates change, but the soul aspires to immutability.


SUMMER

SUMMER


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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