ENGLAND'S GARDEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 26

ENGLAND'S GARDEN

MATURE AND LITERA-

TURE

A COUNTRY IDEAL

PERSISTENCE IN POETRY

for the "Evening Post" by C» : , A.M.) ;j'When an English novelist wants a rtst, or perhaps when he needs money novel-writing, contrary to generat belitf, is often not very profitable ~he writes a book about a garden. Or so'lt would seem, judging by the numBef'of books of the "My-Garden" type that are published. Of course, every novelist of repute lives in the country for 'at least part of the year. As you may see from time to time in the illustrated papers, he picks out a lovely old cottage or farm house, and gets himself photographed .in homespuns, surrounded by dogs. It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that there is to be held shortly a garden competition- among novelists. Mr. Beverley Michols, Dr. Cronin (of "Hatter's CSs'tle" and "Citadel" fame), Gilbert Frankau, Sir Hugh Walpole, A. E. W. Mason, Francis Brett Young, Agatha Christie, Clemence Dane, Lady Eleanor Smith, and Rebecca West are to collaborate with landscape artists ia, .designing gardens. It would add to the" interest of this exhibition if the authors peopled: their gardens with some of -their characters. Hercule Egirot, for example, might walk up and down and murmur encouragement tojhis "little grey cells." The Belgian 3etective, one imagines, would not be quite at home in a' garden. Hanaud ■ox: "The Villa Rose" and "The House dt, the Arrow" would talk to him over trie fence, and the imperious voice of Nellie Melba might be heard saying f£jtt Beverley Nichols was only a and you should see her garden in Australia. ~£ BEAUTY AND UGLINESS. persons of the baser sort may rnjirrmir that the uses of advertisement aj:e sweet, but in displaying their interest in gardens these English writers are keeping-up an ancient tradition. IjSglish literature is' steeped both in gardens and the beauty of the countryside. It is remarkable how the love (JfSlandscape and flowers has persisted i££ England all through the industrial er&. The age of steam dotted England Tg|th hideous patches—towns without pjJan, in which workers huddled together in mean streets and the air was pSluted with smoke and the countryside with slag-heaps. But that was because the industrial system involved a rJSrolution and caught England unpre515:ed. Opportunity was seized as it cjjne; labour was exploited.without conscience; and aesthetics were shouldered out of the way. The tie Biiween the English and their gardens afitd their countryside is a much older tfchig, rooted in the soil, and it has lfijed on and flourished by the side of Items and blast furnaces. We see it i»*- English literature from the Elizabethans to the present day. Shakesseare, having made a competence in Condon, returns to cultivate his garden i££ Stratford. His poetry is suffused v/jjh love of gardens and country landscape. Of all his lines that we remember well none is lovelier than his ■flower pictures:

It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's a»wound, And maidens call It Love-in-Idleness.

Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March, with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, . Or Cytberea's breath; '

The "rather primrose" and "twisted eglantine" passages of Milton are better known, than his organ music of "Paradise Lost." Bacon, so different from Shakespeare in temperament and genius, says that a garden is the purest of human pleasures- and the greatest refreshment of tlie spirit of man. When the ; era had reached full blast in the-.'-nineteenth century poets were still much- occupied with these subjects. Tennyson, the most popular pcet of the age,'is primarily a lord of landscape; you might.read quite Slot of him and not think of a town. Browning, is. much more at home in towns, bujijie is remembered by nothing more .than by his song of'the English spring, "Oh., to be in England now that April's there." Macaulay was ' a ;true townsman, but he achieved his most poignant lines in the lament of one who saw. his native land as; a rural landscape:.

HeVfd on lavernia Scargill's whispering trees, And pined by Arno for my lovelier Tees.

Matthew Arnold's philosophy is not fresher than his garden picture:

Ton quick despairer, whither wilt thou go? Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, Soon will tho musk carnations break and swell. Soon 'rill we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet-'WiUlam. with, its homely cottage smell, And slocks in fragrant blow; Itose3 that down the alleys shine afar, And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, And groups under the dreaming gardentrees, And the full moon, and tho whita evening star.

rßudyard Kipling may cast his net over the Empire and sing of its power and pride, but nothing of his touches us. __ more closely than his "Buy my sSiglish posies! Kent and Surrey may," or the lovely curves of his Sussex landscape:

~Clean of officious fence and hedge. Half wild and wholly tame, Ihe wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge, As when the Romans came. .What sign of those that fought and died' ' At shift of sword and sword? The barrow and the camp abides '"The sunlight and the sward. A. E. Housman wanted a setting for his lyrics of beauty and death he" went to Shropshire. Here is the beginning of the poem in which he describes life as a "long fools-errand to the grave": T§d'J chestnut casts his flambeaus, and' the flowers Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away, The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers. Pass mo tho can, lad; there's an end of May. And so it goes on. Poet after poet still finds his inspiration in the countryside. A PARK-LIKE LAND. Many factors have contributed to this relationship between town and country—geographical, geological, economic, political, and social. While the towns multiplied their factories the country gentlemen continued govern';- England, and developed and preserved that park-like quality in the landscape which astonishes and deliglits colonials and foreigners. English e.gjfl'culture paid a price for this ordered Sbeauty. Karel Kapek, the famous author, says of the English countryside,' that it is not for v/cffk,.but for show. "It is as green as."a park and as immaculate as parading." He adds what his uncle, a Czech farmer, would say- to the waste of so - roach first-class land as pasture, A

more penetrating analysis of the Englishman's attitude towards the countryside is developed in that very wise book "England, the Unknown Isle," by the Austrian Cohen-Portheim. Love of the country is by no means confined to writers; it runs through society. The Frenchman's or German's "country" is a territory intersected by straight roads, cultivated for" crops, .and inhabited by peasants. There the townsman is a stranger. In England the "country" is an arcadia, a vast park, "disfigured here and there by blots in the shape of urban and industrial areas," a work of art created by the inspiration of definite ideals. "For it is only where he finds himself in contact with Nature that the Englishman produces great architecture like his cathedrals, country houses, and monasteries; the idea of the town as a work of art is alien to him; he has, in sharp contrast to the Latin, no affection for it, and never ceases to regard it as something forced upon him, an unpleasant necessity from which he seeks to escape." "The country is one great garden to dwell in which is

every Englishman's dream." Consciously or unconsciously the Englishman takes the life of the country gentleman as his model. . . . "Love of the country is the most fundamental thing about the English, and can alone make their character and their history intelligible."

ENGLAND'S POETRY,

You can, of course, pick holes in 'these generalisations. St. Paul's Cathedral, for example, is in the heart of London, but it is great architecture. There are many Englishmen and Englishwomen who would be bored stiff by life in the country. Yet one feels that the -analysis is correct in the main. What he says is especially true of the upper and middle classes. Their ties with the country are strong and lasting, and " these profoundly affect national character and culture. "Nearly all English poetry," says CohenPortheim, "is connected with Nature and scenery. The country is England's poetry, the town her prose, which is just' the reverse of the position in Latin countries." Which, no doubt, is one of the many reasons why other nations find it impossible to understand the English. ,