Laughing Truths/Nature
"Versailles", "Le Nôtre", "Mannerism", "Symmetry", "Architectonic", "French Regularity", "Topiary Work"—how often have I had to listen to these names and phrases! No amount of repetition, however, produces conviction. Who, indeed, would deny that Le Nôtre has carried his art to the very top, indeed to such a toppling top that it fell over into tastelessness. It was the crowning error of the French Renaissance that it conceived the inner rules in an external way and ultimately became Chinese. Do we not, however, push the reaction against Le Nôtre to an extreme, when we cultivate a deliberate disorder in our gardens? Is a garden just a slice of nature in the rough with a fence round it? No; it is a selection of the plants that give especial pleasure to men, because their blossoms, or their fragrance, or some other property has an especial charm. Am I then to grow these plants in an absolutely higgledy-piggledy state of confusion, or should I not do better to arrange them in such a way that they set each other off and produce a pleasant and harmonious picture? Should I not, in a word, lay out a "formal" garden?
"Formal!" Can you mention any beautiful thing on earth that is not formal or regular? Take, e.g., the most beautiful woman you know. Has she not two legs, one (it is to be hoped) exactly as long as the other? And two arms, attached to opposite shoulders, neither of them growing out from the middle of her neck? And two eyes, the left precisely the same size as the right? Is it beautiful when the two eyes look different ways? No, it is more beautiful when they do not squint but have the correct parallel vision. Or take dancing. Is it better when a couple waltzes in regular one, two, three time, or when they hop about in cheerful disregard of the rhythm? Or in music, is it the regular or accidental interval that pleases the ear? Or poetry. Do not the thirty thousand lines of an epic run so regularly that each verse is measured to a hair just like its neighbour? Would it be more beautiful if one verse had thirteen feet, another two, and a third four-and-twenty? And Nature, who is always being cited as a contrast to regularity, is she not herself regular? The crystal? The diamond? The snow-flake? And even the leaf and the flower? Can you show me a flower that is not regular? Man is the only being that at times prefers the irregular. E.g. when he has had to swallow too many foot-rules; when, in the spirit of fanatical opposition, he throws the child out of the bath along with the dirty water; when, century after century, he unthinkingly repeats a thought, which in its day had some justification for its reaction value, but has now become wholly untenable as an æsthetic principle.
We have not the last word. We must not imagine that posterity will carry on the joke to all eternity, only to do the opposite of what Le Nôtre did. Perhaps they will prefer the opposite of our style of gardening—viz. the opposite of artificial disorder.
"Symmetry." The absolute symmetry of the French garden was an error of taste; the abandonment of all symmetry in laying out our gardens is, perhaps, a greater error. Take a gate, an entrance, a path. Every unprejudiced person will admit that he feels satisfied in seeing, to the right and left of the entrance, a tree of the same pattern, i.e. of the same height and colour, whereas he will have a sense of dissatisfaction if he meets only one tree, or two of dissimilar kind and height. In the same way everyone prefers a formal, symmetrical avenue or alley to one that is uneven and out of trim. This is not Le Nôtre, it is we ourselves, it is Everyman. Must then the ghost of Le Nôtre condemn to everlasting silence our natural æsthetic predispositions? The need of every healthy eye for symmetry and proportion? This symmetry, be it understood, may be veiled, interrupted, or even apparently abandoned; but it must be there.
In the style of the "French Garden" or the "English Garden". Why do we always forget the chief style, that of the "Italian Garden"? This was the style of the real Renaissance, which surely is not open to the accusation of want of taste.
The Italian Renaissance practises the first law of horticulture, the law which later became discredited through Le Nôtre's excessive use of it. This law is that the garden and the house must form a complete whole, in which the function of the garden is to raise the house into pre-eminence. The Italians had perceived that a bad or planless garden depreciates the house, injures its æsthetic impression, and (in fact) vulgarises it, whereas a carefully laid out garden lends it dignity. For this reason they entrusted the laying out of the garden to the architect who had designed the house, so as to ensure harmony. And in so doing they acted sensibly, much more sensibly than we do, whose English wildernesses and deer-parks serve no higher problem than that of concealing the mansion.
Just look, for example, at one of the architectonic gardens in front of the palaces of Genoa, where flights of steps, with palms and orange-trees at the corners, ascend from the garden, while at the top of the steps stands the house. If that is tasteless, I crave much more of this sort of tastelessness. When one adds a garden to a house, laid out, quite casually, on purely botanical, instead of on architectonic principles, the result is that the house stands on its site like a box of bricks that has been borne thither by chance. It seems to be there without any necessity and without any relation to its environment. Whereas, if the designing of the house and garden were done in unison, the house would seem to grow majestically out of the soil.
But we do not really need to go as far as Genoa. Let us just look around us. If, e.g., we plant a Wellingtonia on each side of a house, the house becomes much more plausible; it makes a much firmer æsthetic impression on us than if no such trees were there or if it stood in a group of trees.
And now we reach our thesis that the coniferous trees are indispensable because of their architectonic quality. When his artistic inspiration tells the architect that the garden, in order to preserve the unity of the picture, needs a dark tone at any particular spot, he will find that he cannot produce the desired tone as well with twenty deciduous trees as he can with a single evergreen shrub. When an evergreen bush stands anywhere, it really stands. It is as if it were executed in marble, so firm, so placid, so effective is it. The impression it makes is closely wedded to the aspect of the house. Conifers work architectonically, like columns and pillars. They do so not alone through their form, but also through their colour and the shadows they cast. Proportion and perspective are important elements in a garden, and conifers are the only trees that show, quite definitely and perspicuously, a middle, a top, and a bottom, a front and a back.
Again, conifers are quite irreplaceable as a background for flowers. Those who use ordinary shrubs, as an effective dark foil to their roses, are striking a false note. They may plant one bush after another as thick as they like, they will never achieve a compact dark background, but only a dismal and unattractive gloom. On the other hand, a single yew, or cypress, or arbor vitæ, or even a yellow thuya, sets off the roses at once in their full brilliancy. Flower-gardens without the foil of evergreens, even if they be veritable Edens, work like a restless medley of colours without firm drawing. They give an impression of the haphazard, superficial, provisional, rustic. They are quite all right for foresters' cottages, shooting-boxes, boarding-houses, parsonages, chalets, and the home of the well-to-do peasant. But a garden of civic or country house dignity cannot be achieved in this way. If, however, you first provide your garden with a firm framework of conifers, you will obtain immeasurably more luminosity with half the number of flowers.
Further, what colour does a stone building require as a foil? Evidently, one as dark as possible. Therefore the cypress is the most valuable of all garden-trees. If there are no cypresses, then some other conifer. Observe (e.g.) how a yew-tree, with its deep-black shadows, at once gives dignity and importance to a stone house.
Further, you want a hedge that will give you the feeling that you are at home, and not at a neighbour's, or in the street, or in the open world. Try it; the hedge will never content you, it will never shut you off wholly, unless it be coniferous, such as yew or arbor vitæ. And I say this in spite of the fact that I have never been able to endure arbor vitæ.
Further: after you have begun to mix deciduous trees and the nobler conifers, you will notice with amazement that every change of a foliage tree for a conifer seems to lend your garden new dignity. You may not at first be willing to believe this, but you cannot help it. Your eye will, sooner or later, force you to admit it.
Further: when we gradually learn to see and judge more exactly, we shall discover a fault of character in the foliage trees of the garden, which becomes more detestable the longer we know it. Their leaves are deceptive. They come in May, they go in October. "Are they, for that, any the less beautiful between May and October"? That depends on who looks at them. Is gold-leaf, are paste diamonds, is a well-printed imitation carpet less beautiful because they are not genuine? You see the question is not so easy to answer. The child, the novice, the uneducated man accepts the imitation just as readily as the original, if it is equally fair to the senses. On the other hand there are men who despise imitations, no matter how beautiful to the senses they are; there are even some who execrate and detest them. And this is just the case of deciduous trees in a garden. This temporary glistening, that, coward-like, leaves me in the lurch for half the year and thrusts broomsticks in my face during the whole winter, becomes steadily more distasteful to me, just like gold-foil and artificial pearls and cotton-velvet.
Do conifers produce a sombre effect? That depends on the climate and on the kinds of conifer. In the bright sunshine of the south, no conifer is sombre; in the gloomy north, every one of them is. In Southern Germany the cypress and the silver fir are noble apparitions, the spruce is a pyramidal gloom. It is quite incomprehensible to me how anyone can bear to turn his home into a sort of wild beast's lair by embedding it in sullen spruce-trees. It looks as if the owner had set himself to laying out a zoological garden for owls, ravens, and bears. He has provided himself in summer with a permanent winter. I always feel inclined to put on fur-gloves when I see such "Tannhäuser" (i.e. fir-houses).[1] The "Venus", however, is generally either non-existent or invisible.
All over Central Europe occur celebrated and much admired "Cedars of Lebanon", which at the very first glance, even from a distance, reveal themselves as really Atlas Cedars. One of these is the old cedar in the grounds of the Kursaal at Interlaken.
The difference between the Atlas Cedar and the Cedar of Lebanon is, however, so enormous and so obvious that the confusion would be quite inexplicable did it not arise from another point of view than that of the physical eye.
The preconceived idea once more vitiates the actual sight, so that, in fact, we see with the mind and not with the eye. In this case we gaze through the veil of Hebrew poetry. It is the celebration of the Cedar of Lebanon in the Bible class that rings in our ears, so that nine out of ten persons, when they hear the word "cedar", instinctively add the title "Lebanon", led away by the familiar sound-association. They think—if they exercise thought at all in the matter—that the cognisance or "national certificate" of the Lebanon is a sort of cedar noblesse, just as the Emmental is known for its cheese and the Canton Schwyz for its cattle. Thus, when they say "Cedar of Lebanon", they mean to emphasise the genuineness of the tree; and thus arises the consequential fallacy of calling every unmistakably genuine cedar a cedar of Lebanon.
It is easy to see, without express assurance, that confusion lies hid in such ideas. Indeed, is it not already confusion to wish to taste poetry and botany in the same cup? To call every cedar a cedar of Lebanon is just as far from definiteness as it would be to call all fine grapes "Grapes of Eshcol", every rose a "rose of Damascus", or every lily a "lily of the field". The Hebrews celebrated the cedar of Lebanon because they knew no other; the rose of Damascus, because the tea-rose was not introduced from the Far East until the nineteenth century of our era; and the grapes of Eshcol because they were still unacquainted with Rüdesheimer.
When you enter a park, take my advice and leave your Hebrew poetry with the gate-keeper, with a small tip. You can reclaim it when you come out, if you really set so much store by it. But for the period during which we are gazing at actual, concrete, present trees, I recommend in preference a little knowledge of botany, which has, among other virtues, the advantage of distinguishing one kind of tree from another and giving to each its proper name.
The gardener's vocabulary certainly recognises a cedar of Lebanon, just as it recognises a rose of Damascus, but only as one variety among others, not as a title of honour. Just as it includes, not only the damask-rose, but the tea-rose, the moss-rose, and many others, so it includes not only the cedar of Lebanon but also the Atlas and Himalaya cedars. The fact that the name of each of these cedars is borrowed from its original habitat does not imply that we must always procure our Atlas, Lebanon, or Himalaya cedars from black, brown, or yellow market-gardeners, carefully packed on camels, with their roots intact, and shipped from the coast in vessels sailing to Genoa or some other European port. I should like to see the mutilated rubbish that would reach us in that event! On the contrary, all the different varieties of cedar have long been acclimatised throughout the world, and are grown, partly from seeds and partly from saplings, in England and Spain, Germany and Italy, quite as freely as beeches and hazels. Just as with our roses, which we do not need to order afresh every time from China or Damascus. If we had to, roses would be a costly luxury indeed! The sentimentality that moans over the slow but sure dying out of the cedar in the Lebanon district has, like every other sentimentality, a very guileless and insignificant basis. Its tears are infantile. If every cedar in Lebanon disappeared to-morrow, down to the very last root, how would that affect us? Not a whit more than if the horse-chestnut became extinct in Irkutsk. We are not the Four Major Prophets; we do not aspire to sing for the Chief Musician upon Gittith,[2] we do not want to charter ships from the wharves of Ophir!
The immense and obvious difference between an Atlas cedar and a Lebanon cedar is æsthetic, not botanical. It does not consist in the number, form, and length of its needles or even on their grouping; it depends on the general mode of growth, on the direction and proportion of the boughs, and on the appearance of the tree-tops. Each of the two varieties has its own aim and its own form; and the characteristic struggle becomes more evident in each case with increase of age. Really youthful examples of the Atlas and Lebanon cedars, in which the struggle for differentiation has not had time to develop, cannot (as I am assured by a venerable authority on cedars) be distinguished from each other. In half-grown trees the distinction is more evident at a distance than close by, because the leaves are still similar, though the general effect has changed. When you are quite near the tree, it is easy to make a mistake, but this is impossible if you are some way off. Full-grown trees are easily distinguishable, at any distance.
Of all cedars the Atlas Cedar has the straightest stem. It towers in the air like the mast of a mighty ship, tapering rapidly towards the top. The boughs project in successive tiers or stages, at a considerable interval from each other, the gaps thus formed allowing the light to penetrate to its heart and reveal clearly the bare white bole. Between the main branches occur only small bushy growths. The branches spread neither horizontally nor parallel to each other; they push in curious independence almost directly upwards. The symmetry of the growth, in spite of the arbitrary trend of the boughs, is achieved by the clawlike bend of their outer ends. I return to the image of a ship. It is as if the mast were enveloped by all kinds of tackle, running both across and aloft, but with all the transverse yards curving downwards at their ends. This curvature, however, is not pliant, but bold and definite. The short spines of the twigs are not bushy, but form knobs and tufts, between which the light-coloured stems are conspicuous. The skeleton or framework of the tree is invariably more noticeable than the foliage. The leaves shade the ribs rather than cover them. This produces an unusually sharp outline, a true silhouette. As, however, the bristly tufts of leaves throw heavy shadows on the white limbs of the tree, the sudden change of light and shadow affords a most inviting subject for the pen or pencil of the artist. In its own natural appearance the tree already forms a drawing in pencil or Chinese ink.
The Atlas, to speak strictly, has no definite top. It lifts to heaven a mass of slanting, thin, crooked scaffolding, skeleton-like wings, and hooks. And we are forced again to search for analogies: masts with yards, or the talons of a vulture, or fluttering ravens, or a scaffold and gallows. Always something demonic or malicious. In a word, a carrion crow perched on a gibbet.
In its youth—and the youth of a cedar lasts long—the Cedar of Lebanon is at a disadvantage, compared with the Atlas cedar; but this gradually disappears and in full maturity the Lebanon variety makes by far the more striking impression on our senses. An old cedar of Lebanon is so overpowering in its effect, so gigantically portentous, that no mortal can pass it without notice. He has to pause in amazement to try to take in the marvel. Think, for example, of the cedars at Verona!
A youthful Lebanon cedar, from ten to twenty feet in height, has little to say to us. It simply looks like an exceptionally bushy fir-tree. There is as yet no trace of a definite top. The characteristic curving of the branches is not yet noticeable, because they are so close to each other and so thickly covered with foliage that the eye cannot follow the outlines of the framework. The pine needles of a young cedar of Lebanon are so profuse that the eye cannot penetrate it and so gets no idea of what is inside. Thus the rich leafage, which is eventually the chief glory of the tree, works at first to its disadvantage. Also the drapery-like effect, which the Atlas cedar lacks, does not develop in the Lebanon cedar until an advanced age, when the lower, almost vertical, limbs fork and bend towards the ground. It is only the exquisite balsam-fragrance, which it exhales from the first more bountifully than the Atlas cedar, that reminds us of the noble nature of the sapling. In other respects, as already noted, it looks like a condensed, richly-leaved fir-tree.
But how different it is in age! This is not a bird-of-prey, it is a lion. It is not arms, wings, or claws that its boughs simulate, but broad and massy paws, as if they aimed to cover and dominate as much as possible of the ground below. Just above the earth the wide overhang crawls to an amazing distance. We seem to see it grow and extend its grasp; we estimate, with a pleasing shudder, the ultimate goal of its fabulous expanse. Stretches of twenty feet in every direction, measured from the trunk, are not uncommon, showing a total spread of about forty feet.[3] Then we have the top of the tree. Is not that a real lion's mane! Nothing pointed, nothing thin; never. On the contrary, a flat skull, a menacing head, a surging swell of locks and curls. The whole tree is a shaggy, sombre, portentous giant; a black lion, humped like a camel.
He who plants a cedar of Lebanon must have patience and self-denial. He must be able to feel with the hearts of his great-grandchildren. But what wonder is there in this? Is it not, after all, our own heart, illumined by youth and bathed in hope? Of course, I should not begin with quite tiny shoots. I should choose saplings ten feet high, so that I should save about six years of my time. Ample space must be given to them, for they are monarchs whose robes are very voluminous.
Cedrus Deodara is its botanical name. Under this name come numerous varieties, such as the Deodara argentea (silver deodara), Deodara viridis (green), Deodara robusta (the adjective referring to the great length of its needles), and the Deodara glauca (blue). These differentiating names are in so far misleading, as the differences are in fact by no means so great as the epithets would indicate. Indeed, in the course of the tree's evolution they tend to disappear or become almost indistinguishable. One part of a tree often looks bluish, another greenish; the general colour-effect is ambiguous. Fully-grown deodaras are almost as like as two peas; one has to look very sharply to recognise the original differences. It would be nearer the truth to say of the Himalaya cedar that it has a sharply defined and constant framework, coupled with very uncertain colouring. No single example is exactly of the same hue as its neighbour. In early youth the colours run riot and offer fascinating contrasts. Silvery, bluish, and grass-green trees grow side by side. You would never take them for the same plant. The green Himalaya cedar is, however, now rare, and is seldom an object of commerce. Among several dozen specimens of deodara stocked by one of the leading market-gardeners of Italy I did not find a single green one. The basic colour of the Himalaya cedar, to which it always returns after excursions in the direction of green or silver, is a light bluish-green or (perhaps more exactly) greenish-blue. The young needles make their first bow in a light-green dress, turning later decidedly blue and ending as greenish-blue. The colour is always light, much lighter and more nebulous than in other cedars. Thus the outline of the tree seems soft and (as it were) veiled.
This light-bluish coloration is, therefore, the distinguishing mark of the Himalaya cedar. The next peculiar feature is the length of the needles, which in the ordinary varieties are twice as long as those of the Lebanon and Atlas cedars, while in the Deodara robusta they are nearly as long as those of the pine-tree. They also intertwine with each other at their extremities like a pair of pincers. As, moreover, the needles do not stand erect, but lie or hang, the general appearance of the deodara may be easily conceived. It is of a soft and pensile character, differing from that of other cedars just as Angora cats differ from the ordinary variety, or as the Strobus excelsa or King Pine (also a native of the Himalayas) differs from the common pine. Obviously the long-hairedness and pendant type of the Himalaya cedar contribute to the perfection of its spread. This is attained at an early age, as even quite youthful specimens shade the whole of the ground round the trunk. Every part of the tree is pensile. The boughs slope like a roof, and quite regularly, towards the ground, without any diminution of the bold hook or curve that distinguishes all cedars. The tree-top bends sharply downward, from youth to age, just as is the case with most of our northern cypresses. It is so thin and slender, that it seems as if the first storm must break it off. In age the boughs, which branch freely in all directions, become more sharply curved; the original gentle regularity of the slope gives way to a more menacing swing. Eventually the appearance of a large deodara is very like that of a cedar of Lebanon, with the exception of its top. For this assumes a unique and adventurous form. We do not find the gallows and vulture-talons of the Atlas cedar, or the lion's head of the cedar of Lebanon. In their place we have the head and beak of an eagle. It is as crooked and as sharply bent as a sickle.
The Himalaya cedar is at present more popular than any other. This popularity depends partly on the fact that it is more easily transplanted than the others and hence involves fewer failures. Besides this, however, it has the æsthetic advantages of forming (even at an early age) a splendid sweep or spread of foliage and of adding softness and luxuriance to the innate dignity of all cedars. A successful deodara, even if it is only from six to ten years old, generally passes as the most beautiful tree in the garden. And especially if it is a Deodara robusta, hanging its head till it nearly touches the ground.
Those who want to learn how to distinguish one cedar from another will find the best opportunity in the Giardini Pubblici of Milan. Here stand huge examples of every variety. There are many blue Atlas cedars at Geneva. In Ouchy there is a sensational Robusta.[4]
"It gars me grue."[5]
Perhaps you have a small garden and go one day to a nurseryman to select some nice little plant. Your eye falls on a wonderful bush of the most superb green colour, shining like a well-kept lawn, full and slender and rounded as a half-grown angel. The whole shrub is a picture of jubilant delight, that would lend your garden-plot a unique touch of liquid colour—a tone of, what shall I say? Ah, you are colour-blind. That's a pity, as otherwise I should have said a tone of celestial green. Well, let us say dream-green or soap-bubble-green. In short, this is your ideal, this strikes you as just the thing, this is what you want. What's the name of this shrub? Cupressus viridis stricta. "What does it cost? So-and-so much." "Good; fetch it along to-morrow and plant it in my garden." But a doubtful expression creeps over the face of the nurseryman, and he scratches himself behind the ear. "Plant it in your garden? A Stricta viridis? A Viridis stricta in a garden? Generally most people usually consider that as more suitable for a cemetery."
I go walking one Sunday with an acquaintance, chatting about this and that. All at once my companion becomes distrait, sniffs, and looks uneasily round. "It makes me shudder." What makes him shudder? I look in vain for (say) a dead mouse. It is a beech hedge that makes my neighbour's nose wrinkle.
A lady is admiring a park. Suddenly she puts up warding hands before her face. "Pah! That looks like a churchyard." This time it was an innocent pyramidal yew that made her flesh creep.
What, then, makes your flesh creep? Is there anything that doesn't make it creep? We shall make a short list of the plants that cause goose-flesh—without any claim to completeness, simply those that occur to me at the moment.
The following are "gruesome" plants:—All the Thuyas and Trees of Life (Arbor Vitæ), which alone account for more than half of our ornamental shrubs; then the juniper, the yew, boxwood, the holly, the aucuba (Japanese laurel), the laurel, evergreens, the euonymus, cryptomeria (Japanese cedar), and cypresses. To these may be added the cycas and most other palms, and white roses, lilies, and jasmine. Everything is gruesome that has fragrance but no blossom, or has white blossoms, or has evergreen or shiny leaves, or furnishes convenient decoration for wreaths and crosses, or that is at once unfamiliar and beautiful. This is an imposing index, which condemns nearly all the finer decorative plants. What, at long last, remains over? The first principle is that nothing that can be chopped up for soup or be sold in the market at a profit is gruesome. So the vegetable garden must be the most cheerful of all!
And we must not think that this feeling of horror ends with the interjections and has no farther consequences. Any gardener will tell you that the distrust of so-called churchyard shrubs leads to actual refusal to use them, and really attains the proportions of a violent superstition. Certain shrubs remain unsaleable on the nurseryman's hands, unless he has the chance of disposing of them for a cemetery. And quite often we meet persons who cherish a real horror for cypresses or yews. "Not for worlds would I haye one of them in my garden."
Now I am quite able to enter into the feelings of those who metamorphose the allegorical meaning of evergreen shrubs in this way. I can appreciate the unpleasant association of ideas in the mind of those who connect a certain plant or a certain odour mainly or exclusively with necrological experiences. Subsidiary details do recall the main event, funeral wreaths and cemetery trees suggest death. For surely we are agreed that the funereal connotation of a plant has no direct cause in its own natural properties, such as its colour or smell, but is imported into it from the outside, simply through our mental associations. Or do you deny this? If so, I can easily prove you are wrong. Does the smell of musk suggest death? On the contrary, it makes us think of the demi-monde and of rendezvous. If you ask an Indian traveller, however, he will at once acknowledge that the scent of musk makes him feel the knife at his throat. Thus, clearly, it is not the sensation of this particular odour that decides our reaction, but simply the mental pictures connected with it. So the slight emotional shock we receive when the sight or smell of a particular plant reminds us of its use at funerals is quite explicable and intelligible—and even, in a naïve and childlike way, intelligent. Everyone in his own way has more or fewer of such unwelcome reminders; only they differ in different cases. My flesh, e.g., creeps when I sense a dentist, or see a surgeon, or read of a brilliantly successful operation. The mistake begins when this naïve impression is allowed to rule our conduct, instead of being corrected by the intelligent afterthought that the accompanying details are really quite innocent of the sad event. It is foolish to refuse to have a yew or cypress in our garden, or (what is much the same thing) for a healthy man to take headlong flight at the sight of a surgeon. The thing then becomes simply foolish. For is it not foolish to do without the handsomest decorative plants in our gardens because we (very properly) plant them on our graves? Why do we plant them in graveyards? In order that the graves may present a picture of blooming life instead of one of inconsolable grief. And yet we act as if the same plants that make for life in the cemetery must elsewhere reek of death? And so, from fear of this suggestion, our gardens must be laid out in a bleak, frosty, and morose style? That seems to me gruesome, if you like!
Nothing is more likely to effect a complete cure of this funereal prejudice against certain shrubs than a journey from Northern to Southern Europe. This would teach us that every plant at the northernmost limit of its natural habitat is predestined to churchyard cultivations. In other words, every place uses the garden-plants of its southern neighbour for graveyard decoration. Or (to put it the other way round) we find that, when we have moved one stage towards the south, the gardens are full of our cemetery shrubs. The beech still worries the Alsatian, but does not worry the Switzer; the arbor vitæ makes the Bernese shiver, but has no such effect on the Luçernois; the Luçernois, in turn, dislikes the yew, which has no terror for the Ticinese; in Ticino, and to some extent in Lombardy, the cypress is looked at askance, while in Tuscany it is a welcome guest. So it would be juster and more intelligent, when we see such evergreens in a garden, to say "that warms me up" or "that smacks of the south" rather than "it makes my flesh creep". If our churchyard sensations in this connection, if our superstitious prejudices had the slightest basis or reason, Genoa and Florence would long ago have become waste places, Como and Lugano would bear the lugubrious impress of cities of the dead. Do they make such an impression? If not, why not? Because our eerie associations of ideas at once give way to mote cheerful ones as soon as they get the chance—i.e. as soon as we see masses of our churchyard shrubs in every pleasure-garden. What, then, is our prescription for getting rid of this eeriness attaching to our noble evergreens? To plant them in our gardens. Fresh associations of ideas, new symbols, new memory pictures will be formed, which will outweigh the old ones until they tip the beam. Why does not the beech affect us as it affects our northern neighbours? Because its fragrance makes us think first of cottage-gardens and open-air restaurants. Why does not the rose affect us grimly, seeing it so often flourishes in churchyards? Because we have it in our gardens, because we often encounter it in our ball-rooms. Why do we not shudder at sight of a Registrar, although a visit to him is necessary at every death? Because he also celebrates marriages and registers out births.
The man who defies prejudice and plants a graveyard shrub in his garden, such as the yew (Fastigiata) or (if the climate allows) a cypress, is really doing a public service, inasmuch as he encourages his neighbours and frees an outlawed but beautiful plant of its load of guilt. This does not require any particular sacrifice, only a little common sense. For it is by no means so dangerous as one imagines. It is quite possible that the planter may die within the year. But do not the planters of lettuces and chives die also, even though no suggestion of mortality cleaves to these humble vegetables?
Let us assume that a native of Western Europe, with the eyes of an artist or at least of a nature-lover, travels north to 60° N. lat. or to an even higher latitude, about the beginning of February, when severe cold and (as a rule) continuous sunshine prevail in these regions; and suppose him carefully to note the details of the winter scene before him.
The first thing to strike him, as compared with his recollections of home, will be the paleness and uniformity of the colouring. In the brightest sunshine the sky does not look blue, but whitish, as if veiled in a mist; it is often difficult to determine whether the atmosphere is clear or clouded. Below, the surface of the earth is uninterruptedly white, glazed by the sun, but not painted. There is not a spot of brown loam or yellow path, no standing corn, no dried leaf, no bubbling spring, no flowing river. The very woods have no colouring, but are merely patches of darkness. A bunch of weeds by the roadside would be as grateful as an oasis. Besides the colour, our observer would instinctively feel that something else was lacking, though at first he might not be able to formulate it; as soon, however, as he realises what it is, he knows that it alone is enough to spoil the landscape for him. In the northern winter there are no strong shadows, and, above all, no sharply defined shadows. Even in the brighter sunshine men wander about like Peter Schlemihl, their bodies making merely a light-grey, scarcely noticeable, indistinctly outlined mark on the snow. The same uniform dazzle surrounds each object. My observations in this matter have been scientifically confirmed and explained by an eminent physicist. The dispersed light (I quote his explanation literally) in high latitudes attains a relatively high degree of importance as compared with the direct rays of the sun. Every lover of nature will easily conceive how much a landscape will lose from an absence of well-marked shadows.
In the meantime, have we to do here really with landscapes at all? Even that might be contested for a great part of the North, especially for the Sarmatian plain. Without committing ourselves to a discussion of the difficult conception of a landscape in the æsthetic meaning of the word, we may at least agree that grouping and harmony are the essential and basic conditions of a "landscape". It is only in exceptional cases that we can apply the word to perfectly flat stretches, especially when the demarcation between field and wood is not clearly defined. We should find the exceptions most readily in summer, when colours and odours divide and unite, and the changing canopy above seems to enter into sympathetic relations with the levels and undulations of the earth. Even the poetry of winter solitude and melancholy cries out for the presence of some warmer motif, such as we find at every step in winter landscapes of the South, whereas in the North it is a rare exception.—Finally, the drawing of the details leaves something to be wished. Our winter woods, apart altogether from the glory of their colouring, furnish us with a wealth of striking variations in the mere form of their bare branches. The majestic pines and firs, the slender poplars, the mighty boles of the oaks and beeches, and the endless varieties of fruit-trees all combine to make a winter paradise for those who come to us from the farther North. In the truly hyperborean regions there are only two constantly recurring trees, the mournful birch and the scraggy stone-pine. The white stem of the birch, and the universal pallor of the environment, naturally do not produce the pleasing sense of contrast they evoke among the darker trees of our parks. The poverty-stricken character of the stone-pine is sufficiently indicated by the northern maxim that pine-woods give no shade. Scottish firs, most often found on sandy soil near human habitations, form grateful oases, and a leafless apple-tree affects us almost like an ornamental foliage plant.
And with all this let us compare the snow-scenes of Central Europe, especially in mountain districts. However deep the snow may lie, the brown, yellow, and black tones of the cultivated patches on the slopes of the hills and mountains afford a bright relief; green crops push up here and there; the woods of beech and oak are clad in wonderful russet; an azure sky looks down on us from above; the springs and rivers run blue; and more sluggish waters, converted into temporary bridges for hours or days, assume an infinity of strange forms, of which the suddenly frozen waterfall, with its pinnacles and stalactites, is perhaps the most attractive. The noonday sun, strong even in the grimmest winter, paints the landscape with silver and gold, and washes the shadows with velvety black. Even after the severest nights, it is still strong enough to melt the upper layers of snow and to sweep down the crystal dust from the stately limes and beeches, like a rain of blossoms. Sometimes heavier and more substantial falls descend suddenly from all the branches at once, taking our breath away by their chilly delight and diamond-like brilliancy. Added to this are the majestic background of the Alps and the classic profile of the nearer hills, made more imposing by their mantle of snow.
No real Northerner, not even a Norwegian, has any idea of the wealth of beauties revealed by a snow-landscape in the Swiss or Austrian foothills of the Alps. He who dreams of spending a winter in the North should therefore do so as speedily as possible, in order that he may learn the inexhaustible æsthetic joys of our own winter. Though, of course, it is always possible that he may find in the North something that does not really exist there, but has been imported by his faith—a trick that is neither difficult nor unusual. The æsthetic pleasure of a winter landscape is decidedly, in my opinion, at its highest on the southern edge of the snow, amid the inhabited parts of the Alps.
- ↑ The play upon words here refers to Tanne, the German name for fir-tree.
- ↑ See Psalms viii, lxxxi, and lxxxiv.
- ↑ In his Forest Scenery William Gilpin mentions a cedar with a horizontal expanse of 96 feet.
- ↑ In England there are exceptionally fine cedars at Woburn Abbey, Warwick Castle, Syon House, and many other places.
- ↑ This Scots phrase is, perhaps, the best equivalent for Spitteler's dialectic heading: "es tödelet". The English version might be "it is ghastly" or "it makes my flesh creep".