PICNICS

Southland Times, Issue 20979, 11 January 1930, Page 11

PICNICS

FROM ENGLISH LITERATURE INTERESTING EXTRACTS. After a whole week of picnicking up on the lonely mountain moors amongst the ling and heather; down beside the sea and in the woodlands bordering our sylvan stream; a week of open-air life in sunshine and shower, of flower-loving, bird-watching, day-dreaming, of setting out early and driving homeward only when the lengthening shadows fall violet upon the golden rocks: I have been meditating upon picnics and thinking what an agreeable topic for an essay the picnic party as described in English literature might be, if only one could suggest, too, in writing it, some little of that sweetness which, summer ended, one finds stored up in thought as the after-taste of one’s own happy country expeditions, (writes G.T. in the Christian Science Monitor) Oh memory! shield me from the world’s poor strife,

ejaculated Coleride once when, resting with his friend Hazlitt on a lovely autumn day beside a roadside well in Somersetshire, they both fell to recalling the wonderful walks they had taken along the brown heaths and rocky headlands of the Bristol Channel. Picnics were just coming into fashion in Coleridge’s day; along with the love of rocks, ruins, solitary wildernesses and reverie, they were a legacy from the wonderful eighteenth century. Coleridge and Hazlitt were upon a journey on this particular occasion, one going seaward, the other returning to his home in distant Shropshire; but at. that epoch, as indeed always in the remote -past, every journey undertaken by those whose pockets were not overweighted with gold was necessarily a picnic too. So that when the travellers sat by the cool well talking of poetry, of the feel of the air, of the shining trunks and slender branches of the birch trees, of the tones of the clouds and the flight of the swallows, they were in true picnic mood; that is, full of the joy of being alive and able to make an excursion into the beautiful world. I suppose that next to the Wordsworths (from whom our travellers had just reluctantly parted), these friends with their love of walking, devotion to nature and wonderful width of thought, must have done more than any other of the romantic authors to popularize expeditions to the woodlands and parties to lake or riverside. We see the whole movement reflected in Peacock’s novels, where walks amidst the hills, boating parties and excursions to visit notable scenes play an important part.

Of course, since very early days, as we know from both paintings and historical memoirs, meals were often served out in the woods. Carl Van Loo, for example, a I’ rench painter whose work is to be seen in the Louvre, left a charming representation of an elegant company about to partake of a meal set out upon a damask tablecloth on the green grass at the entrance to a forest; but this picnic was not to be a happy one for all the denizens of that sweet, rural world, since it was but a halt in a hunting expedition and might, if anyone present were endowed with a little sympathy for bird and beast, have been far from an ideal occasion. Meals carried out to a distant harvest field, too, for reapers and gleaners to eat, lying under honeysuckle hedges or at the feet of ancient shady oaks, where they enjoyed welcome shade and rest, must often have served as delightful picnics not only to the harvesters but to the farmers’ children.

One.must own that, compared with truv workaday ones, our modern picnics are somewhat artificial things; but they play a useful part in introducing victims of overcivilization to many phases of the country, scene. For how, save by picnicking, can the town child learn the value of a great rock’s shadow, or come to appreciate the well of pure water bubbling from the earth, or realize the world from the point of view of the fox, the rabbit, or the squirrel. Picnics, of course, belong to the poetry of living, and, like poetry, are chiefly for delight.

When America began picnicking I cannot say: but we know that in Germany such a pleasure was possible in 1748; since Lord Chesterfield, writing to his son, who was visiting Berlin in that year, remarked, “I like the description of your picnic.” Very soon afterward the entertainment must have invaded aristocratic society in England, for Richard Graves, the author of “The Spiritual Quixote,” gives a delightful description of what has now fallen quite out of fashion —a music party in the woods. Master Wildgoose, the hero of that curious romance, travelling with his servant towards Yorkshire, plunges rather sudenly into the famous country of the High Peak and coming to a well-known viewpoint, the travellers are perplexed to find their way. Before them was “a precipice” of an astonishing height from which was a stupendous view into a deep valley; the hill rising on the opposite side, covered with woods near half a mile perpendicularly. The River Dove ran winding at the bottom, amidst pyramidical rocks that rose detached from the hill, with shrubs growing from their tops, and the roots hanging down in a grotesque manner. In some places they meet and intercept the view; in others they open and discover rocks beyond rocks, in long perspective up the valley in a most beautiful profusion.” That is the scene. To the traveller’s amazement, when in the midst of this lone rocky region, they hear enchanting music, and upon approaching the edge of the precipice are still more perplexed to hear (seemingly about halfway down the slope) an angelic voice accompanied by two flutes,' singing a song from'the Masque of Comus:

On every hill, in every grove, Along the margin of each stream. The musicians being still hidden from them, Master Wildgoose marvels at the occurrence and repeats aloud Shakespeare's lines: “I thought that all things had been savage here,” and then they find a sheep track descending into the steep valley bottom and discover halfway down, a picnic party with books, music and lunch!

Richard Graves’ description gives an impression of a very happy party. Jane Austen, on the contrary, in Emma, presents us with a fine day, horses and carriages to ride in, or as she puts it, “all the outward circumstances of arrangement, accommodation and punctuality,” but alas, a tedious, unpleasant party, where everyone is at a loss to find “rational entertainment,” and Miss Emma owns to being “very dull.” One might, of course, have expected as much at a picnic arranged by “Jane,” who never seems to have taken much pleasure in country sights and sounds and would certainly not have considered such occupations as watching cloud shadows or following a distant sheep-dog’s manoeuvreing with his flock as “rational entertainment.” • Charles Reade does better and in Christie Johnstone gives a sketch of two rival picnic parties out on a little Island near Newhaven in Scotland: one rather dull, with footmen, musicians and silver; the other—a fisher girl’s wedding party—very happy and gay, with singing and dancing and telling of tales.

There are not many picnic parties in poetry, probably because poetry “utters

somewhat above a mortal mouth.” Tennyson, who must himself have picnicked dozens of times on the wild ocean strand not many miles from his boyhood’s home, though he often approaches the theme, gives us one picture only, and that in Audley Hall; not a good poem. Clough comes nearer to perfection and in Ills Bothie seems full of happy reminiscence of Highland meals up amidst the heather or down beside some lovely stream where Over a ledge of granite Into a granite baison the amber torrent descended. . . . Beautiful there for the colour derived from the green rocks under, Beautiful most of all where beads of foam

uprising Mingle their clouds of -white, with the delicate hue of the stillness . . . Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendant birch boughs.

One more Victorian picnic must be recalled; described by Charles Kingsley as having been spent by the characters in Two Years Ago upon the lovely slopes of Snowdon, above Nant Gwynant, with its lakes and mossy woodlands. Since the coming of the automobile, picnicking has gone on merrily and with ever widening ranges and more than doubled its appeal. Maybe twentieth century novels when read in the future will reflect this and give many pictures of the outdoor party. And soon we shall have flyring picnics to far-away spots across seas and little countries and, on our way, looking down from above, we shall see “the great round wonderful world with the wonderful waters round it curled.” I wonder what Coleridge with his devotion to “the courts of the Sun” and his ambition to write a Hymn to Air and a Hymn to Water would have said about such an expedition as this.