VTHE LURE OF AN OLD TUSCAN GARDENA delightful French writer says "to grow old in a garden in sight of softly undulating hills, beneath a sky variable as the human soul, is very sweet, very consoling, very easy. One becomes more of a child and for the first time a philosopher. Poetry and wisdom on every hand permeate the close of life, just as the oblique rays of the setting sun penetrate into the heart of the densest foliage, which is impervious to the vertical beams of noonday." This charming writer touches the spot; experience, tenderness, and sympathy flow from mellowed lips well rounding to the autumn of life. Old age does reflect more discerningly than impatient youth, and in a garden, too, surrounded by a heavenly host of flowers whose blossom is as laughter and whose perfume is a song. Romance sketches wonderful pictures with such a beatific background to inspire it, and imagination wanders into a carnival of dreams. How many pleasant thoughts and noble thoughts have been brought to birth in a garden which afterward grew into brave deeds and gentle lives contributing generously to enrich the sum of human happiness!I sit under an ilex-tree in an old Tuscan garden which in course of many generations has belonged to many owners. A haunting beauty fills the ancient place, which one can feel, but cannot understand. A friendly atmosphere that pervades old gardens saturates the solitude. It is more than atmosphere, it is influence--a caressing influence almost human that holds us up and tantalizes. Vague ancestral memories of old families flash upon the mind; for more than four hundred years men and women have walked and talked and thought in this Tuscan garden of mine, and tended its flowers and enjoyed its tranquillity. Children have played in it, often going to bed tired and happy after romping in it the livelong day, and so generation after generation mankind repeats itself in the life-story of the old garden on a Tuscan hillside. The spirit of the past haunts it in shadow and in sunshine, because wherever men have been they leave a little of themselves behind in ghostly exhalations.When one is in a contemplative humour a garden is full of object-lessons interesting to study. By dint of watching leaf replace leaf, insects come into life and die, blossoms change into fruit, fruit ripen and fall, the swallows come with the daffodils and depart when the hunter's moon frightens them away--by watching these things methodically and silently accomplishing their allotted tasks, I have come to think about myself with brave resolution and resigned conformity to natural laws. I grieve less over myself when I regard the change which is universal; the setting sun and the dying summer help me also to decline gently. Life is a splendid heritage to hold in fee, but we quit and deliver up possession when our lease expires. The light must be kept burning if our own little taper flickers into darkness.A young girl visited us in Florence one spring-time. She lived in the garden among the flowers, caressed them, talked to them, and gathered them by the handful, the armful, the basketful. She decorated the rooms with flowers, filled glass bowls and bronze vases with flowers, and her art touched its zenith in glorifying the dinner-table every evening with the choicest of them all. She chatted, smiled, and sang whilst doing it, for she dearly loved the flowers that she fondled.We took her to the Uffizi to see the world-renowned Old Masters there; but she yawned in front of masterpieces of art, and her eyes wandered round searching the smart costumes of the ladies in the room. We took her to Rome and showed her the sights of the Eternal City, but Bond Street and Regent Street interested her more than St. Peter's and the Coliseum. We visited the Forum with its ruined temples and triumphal arches, and trod the Via Sacra; but the place was only an old stoneyard to her, devoid of interest, so we left her to herself, and she wandered over the Forum on other pleasure bent, and we found her afterwards picking violets amongst the ruins.When at home again a friend asked how she enjoyed her visit to Rome, and had she seen the Forum? In blank despair she appealed to me to help her out of it. "Yes," I replied, "you saw the Forum; that is where you picked the violets." The Forum to her was deadly dull and forgotten even by name, but a bunch of wild violets lived vividly in her memory as the crown and flower of her heart's desire, more excellent than all the ruins of Rome.Dulness comes to us in uncongenial company and occupation. You may be surrounded by objects of interest and beauty which amuse other people, but if these worthy objects do not fit your taste, for you they contain no element of delight, and you are bored utterly with them whoever may sing their praise. It is a question of temperament. The heart is not dull if the head istriste. Every eye makes its own beauty and every heart forms its own kinships. Put me in front of a post-impressionist picture and dulness covers me like a funeral pall. The beauties of the glowing picture composed of significant form and bunkum are lost on me completely. Here is something tremendously original that makes demands on my intelligence that I cannot meet. I am mentally bankrupt in front of this maddening art.Looking at a post-impressionist picture, you see only shapes and forms tangled together within the limited area of a gilt frame; you see relations and quantities of colour splashed on canvas meaning anything you choose to label it, but in the likeness of nothing God made or man ever saw. It distorts nature and scoffs at portraiture. "Creating a work of art," trumpets the evangelist of post-impressionism, "is so tremendous a business that it leaves no leisure for catching a likeness." "You look at a landscape, and you are not to see it as fields and cottages; instead you are to see it as lines and colours." Yet up against this lucid statement I observe no reason why the portrait of a man should be drawn like a peculiarly shaped market-garden divided into plots for growing vegetables. Nor can I explain why the picture of a village street should look like a fortnight's wash suspended in a cherry orchard, and the policeman standing in front of the village inn at the corner should look like a laundry-maid hanging out the clothes. It requires uncommon genius to work the illusion successfully, and to start an indolent British public frivolling with the captivating puzzle. But it leaves me cold and passionless, for I am slow of understanding these things. They say an impressionist picture of top-note character is a painfully exciting object for the spectator to worship. To do it justice, he must squirm in front of it, for it is a picture that creates a thunderstorm of rhapsody, a deluge of delight, a roaring cataract of æsthetic emotion in the soul of the man who understands its cryptic language. The artist who limned the picture suffers agonies whilst working up significant form, being pricked with pins and needles of excitement, and is continually dancing on the hot-plate of rapture. The spectator's duty when viewing a work of art is to come into touch with the mind of the artist. To do this no wonder the spectator has a bad time when digesting a whole gallery of post-impressionist pictures.Their religion is as bewildering as their art. For their moral vision is out of kilter, as their eyesight is out of focus. The aforesaid evangelist of the cult says: "I doubt whether the good artist bothers much more about the future than about the past. Why should artists bother about the fate of humanity? If art does not justify itself, æsthetic rapture does.... Rapture suffices. The artist has no more call to look forward than the lover in the arms of his mistress. There are moments in life that are ends to which the whole history of humanity would not be an extravagant means; of such are the moments of æsthetic ecstasy."We return to the garden, for the lure of a garden relaxes not. The joy of it entangles you in its toils. Each successive season of the year unfolds new developments which lead you on to the next season. So you are handed on from one month to another throughout the gardener's calendar by endless enticements which keep the interest gently simmering. The procession of gay flowers that promenade the sheltered borders and disport themselves with flagrant pride on open beds during spring and summer days, tricked in rainbow colours, dazzle the eye with splendour, win the heart's endearment, and pay in noblest coin full recompense for the chill, dull toil given in grey winter hours.A lady friend who lived to a ripe old age said to me jocosely, "To be a good gardener you need a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, for you are bending and stooping all day long in the garden." Only by constant labour spent on the good brown earth can you become candidate for possession of this useful garden requisite, a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, or the neatest imitation offered on the market. In the garden you get in touch with Nature, breathe fresh air, cultivate a contented mind, and never stagnate in idleness or degenerate into ennui. Your body, inured to all weathers, escapes many little ills of the flesh, and gradually you harden into an iron constitution, which is the nearest earthly substitute to a wooden back hung on iron hinges.You never need remain indoors to smoke or sew or yawn because there is nothing doing in the garden: you can weed there the livelong day in the open. This lowly service offers immediate reward; it begets a healthy appetite at meal-times, and develops a night's sound sleep, which is some pleasure no millionaire can buy with his millions. Weeding puzzles my blind gardener Emilio.I have two brothers gardeners, Enrico and Emilio. Enrico has sight only of one eye, Emilio is blind both eyes. The two brothers work together in brotherly love, and have only one working eye between them, yet it is wonderful how much good work the one eye accomplishes per day. Emilio sees with his hands. It is weeding that puzzles him most. He never pulls a flower instead of a weed--he feels the difference between them. It is the weeds that elude his fingers as he works along the border that grieve him. Weeding is a fascinating occupation to me. Nice people won't profane their hands grubbing in common garden soil, but, being a groundling myself, I enjoy the fun of coming into contact with my native element. Clean, sweet, caressing earth, it is the last flowery coverlet all of us will sleep under; why shun thy friendly touch to-day? There is always an abundant crop of weeds to practise on in an Italian garden, and your fingers itch to uproot them to the very last offender. I suppose it is the ruthlessness and slaughter of the deed, the close handgrip on the enemy, that compels you on; and when the skirmish is over, surveying the ground cleared of the foe and the heaps of the slain withering at your feet gives a pleasurable thrill of excitement in the hour of victory. You exult, for there is something done, and well done, to show for your backache.The gardener's lure is irresistible. The devotee walks in flowerland of his own creation. In dreary winter hours he dreams splendid dreams of himself surrounded by summer harmonies, summer fragrance, and summer flowers, for which he has planned and planted and patiently tended along the covering months of winter and spring. The hour of full realization approaches when the roses mass their rival glories and spread their coloured raptures in the garden that he loves. This puts the crown on the brow of summer. This is the gardener's festival of the year. He invites his horticultural cronies to tea on the lawn, and they all talk rose jargon together. He takes them on a tour of inspection round the garden, and they congratulate the founder of the feast of flowers. They are happy as a band of Sunday-school children spending the afternoon out. They sit on the lawn under the spreading ilex-tree, which casts ample shadow for their comfort, and the summer sunshine lays ardent on the green-sward around them. It is a genial gathering, but the man who understands not roses would be speechless in their midst and not a little bored. Conversation cools off, the evening shadows lengthen, and in an interlude of silence there is a sort of whispering stillness in the warm evening air, as if the flowers and grass and trees are all saying kind words to one another, for having done their best to please. The lure of the garden is never so poignant as at this great moment, for your heart is brimming of sweet content, and you say to yourself: "Can it be true? Can anything in the world be more beautiful?"There is another lure that lays hands on a man like grappling-irons tackling a Spanish galleon laden with treasure, with a grip which cannot be shaken off: I mean the writer's lure. I am fond of reading. The enticements of a good book are hard to resist, especially if you have no inclination to resist, but tumble a ready victim to the writer's charm.What is the writer's lure? How does it cast its spell? You can talk round the subject by metaphor and symbol and figure of speech, but cannot solve it like a problem in Euclid and add Q.E.D. at the end. The writer's lure is the vividest way of saying things. It is a bolt shot from the mind that hits the penman's mark. The writer's lure fixes you even as a beautiful sympathetic picture holds you up by its witchery of art. In the picture warmth of colour, grace of line, melting tints, dreamy distance, and an added mystic charm brooding over all, voice lovingly your taste in art, and, like a haunted man, you carry the landscape about with you all day long. It intrudes on your mind midst pressing business affairs; the sunlight sleeping on the hills creates a pleasant interlude of thought when engrossed in life's little worries. Turner's "Crossing the Brook" in the Tate Gallery is a picture that bewitches me when I see it. It stimulates my imagination and sets my thoughts sailing over the country carried on the breezes which blow across the Turner landscape.A book haunts you in the selfsame way as a picture. You read a book, and it stirs your emotions and captivates your fancy, and for a time it possesses you like a living spirit. The writer's lure holds you in its grip. The book soaks into you. A sentence here and there leaps to memory during odd moments of the day; the rhythm of the language ripples musically as a chime of bells, and you repeat the sentence to yourself again and again. The aptness of an image is lifelike, and a vision floats across your mind; the happy turn of a sentence sticks. The fresh, clear-cut thought shot out boldly from the writer's brain conveys a new idea; you recall the touch of humour resembling a patch of warm sunshine twinkling on the landscape, and your lips curve into a smile. There are passages of tenderness also that you treasure, because they find your heart like shafts of love feathered with joy. All these things in the book come back to you vividly, and whisper their fond message over again.One cannot explain the writer's lure. You may name it, but you cannot catch it in the reviewer's trap of criticism. It is illusive as the angel who visited Manoah and his wife, wrought wondrously, and vanished leaving no trace. It is a secret of pencraft which defies definitions and eludes analysis, yet it is the vital element in composition. It is not a question of conforming to correct standards of good writing by which literary excellence is judged, the writer being blessed or cursed by the censors according to the measure of his allegiance to their literary creed. Some writers violate every literary canon set up to guide their pen in the way of righteousness, but they are alive with literary fire; the vital element is fecund within them, and they riot in the power of it. There are no rules in art that great writers have not shown us how to break with advantage. You cannot resolve the writer's lure into its component parts as you can a potato. Like electricity, it defies analysis, but, like the electric current, you feel it in your bones.Blind Emilio does not work by rules taught in popular garden manuals; he gathers inspiration for his craft direct from the heavens. He is an oracle of occult information and prevision almost uncanny, concerning things in the garden and out of it. However, he is a cheerful soul and a born optimist, so we consult him often and rely on his wisdom, because, like honey, its flavour is pleasant to the taste.The moon is the guiding providence regulating some of Emilio's important duties. He observes the phases of the moon with the reverence of an astrologer of legendary days. He awaits the waning moon in February to prune the rose-trees. A potent mystic virtue dwells in a waning moon according to his garden lore, which is old as his pagan ancestors. If you prune rose-trees in a waxing moon the new growths will be long, weak shoots, and the crop of roses in the summer poor, puny things. Prune in the waning moon and the new growths will be short, sturdy rods bearing large flowers, and an abundance of them. Garden seed must be sown under the auspices of the waning moon if you want your flower-beds in the summer-time to be renowned for beauty, to make your friends envious of your success and yourself just swaggeringly happy.What applies to roses and seed applies equally to pruning vines and grafting fruit-trees. Bulbs and potatoes may be planted any time. They move in the spring when Nature signals whether they are in the ground or out of it. They are outside the ritual of the moon.We had a heavy crop of diospyros last autumn, drawn from four trees in the kitchen-garden. These fruits are fat, round, rosy fellows, plump as overgrown tomatoes. The flesh of the ripe diospyros is Nature's jam, soft and mushy, delicious in flavour, and eaten politely with a spoon. Our neighbour who hails from Cincinnati grew a crop of small, sickly-looking fruit. "Ah!" said Emilio, "now that you see the difference in the two crops, you must believe me. Their diospyros were gathered in the growing moon, and they shrivel and lose colour and flavour; ours were gathered in the waning moon, and keep beautiful and sound to the end of the season." There is good luck under the waning moon. Another explanation of the difference in the crops has merit, which Emilio considers treason to the honourable tradition of his fathers. Our fruit was grown in the kitchen-garden on manured soil; our American neighbour's trees stand on a rocky bank in the wild garden which is never dressed with manure. The blessing of the moon falls on the crop that is best nourished in the days of its youth.In the garden is an avenue of lime-trees about one hundred and sixty feet long. In the summer it forms a deliciously shady walk; in rainy weather it is a clean and pleasant promenade, for it has a paved pathway in it. The north end of the avenue terminates in a large semicircular stone seat mounted on a stone base one step higher than the pathway. The seat has no florid decorative carving on it to arouse hostility or provoke criticism. It is just a plain seat of simple Roman type, roomy and comfortable to sit on. Behind the seat curves a semicircle of thirteen cypress-trees screening the north winds. Again, behind the cypress-trees is an interesting old stone wall about twenty feet high, forming the boundary of the garden. Above the wall, rising in gentle slope, is the south shoulder of the hill, on the hill-top sits Fiesole, the famous Etruscan city of history and legend. The slope is covered with olives and vines, forming a mantle grey and green with its leafy fringe dropping on our garden wall.This great retaining wall is old as the villa which was purchased by Domenico Mori in 1475. The history of the house earlier than this date is lost in the mist of antiquity. The ancient wall is a feature in the garden, for on two sides it towers like a cliff, forming a charming background to the scene. It has weathered beautifully with the ages, and is an immense stretch of canvas for the display of masses of colour. In places it is bleached silvery-grey, and elsewhere the tinted lichen mottle it with saffron and orange and brown, and every delectable shade and tone which Time, the great decorator, with loving hand, imparts to old stone. It looks warm and gay and friendly, and grows a rock-garden of its own, for wild flowers bloom in its cracks and crannies and red valerian flames upon its heights, side by side with golden broom. Ivy clothes it in parts, and most mysteriously so, for years back the plants were cut off their roots, and the ivy now exists only on nourishment drawn from the wall, and it exists vigorously on the meagre diet the wall supplies. When the sunshine pours down upon its hoary time-worn face, the old wall is transfigured into a thing of triple splendour, for its colours glow and blaze with spiritual fervour imparting that artistic touch of nature which is the happy gift of garden plaisance.Deeply set in the wall is the ruin of a small shrine. Once upon a time this shrine was the home of the Madonna, but now no Madonna occupies the niche. Some pious ancestor of the house implored gracious protection of the Mother of Jesus on behalf of his vines and olives, fruits and flowers, and he set up her Ladyship's sheltered image in the little vaulted temple on the wall as guardian of the crops, hoping that fat harvest would follow his devotion to Our Lady of Plenty. The vacant shrine is desolate and crumbling and mossy now, and so is the sentimental faith of those ancient days. It was a hallowed sentiment in its way, this worship of the Madonna. Men lived up to it, and felt happy in their prayers to the Lady of Heaven. Nowadays men win good harvests on more scientific lines. They put trust in deep ploughing and artificial manure rather than in prayers and oblations to the Mother of God.The personal intervention of the Deity in the affairs of men strikes a homely note in the world's domestic management, and brings the Heavenly Father in close touch with His earthly family; but the dear God's blessing is level-handed, and favours His children, bad or good, who work the hardest, and add intelligence to their toil.VITHE LURE OF THE MONTELUPO PLATEMy friend Federico wandering through Tuscany on one of those delightful excursions that he loves, passing from town to town and village to village picking up "old things"en route, called at a dealer's shop in Bagni di Lucca. In the miscellaneous collection of antiquities there offered for sale he found nothing to please him. To console him in the hour of disappointment, the little dealer, named Grosso, said: "I know of a beautiful Montelupo plate that will take your fancy. Come with me; it is away up the hills, a pleasant ride for us. Give me a few francs for my trouble, and you can buy the plate." So they took a vettura and rode up the mountains in quest of the Montelupo plate. After an hour's delightful drive they stopped at a contadino's cottage on the roadside, and there, boldly on view to the passer-by and stuck on the weather-beaten front of the cottage over the doorway, was the Montelupo plate, the very heart's desire of the two adventurers. It was a brave plate, round as the sun and about thirteen inches in diameter. In the centre of it, painted in flaming colours, trotted a soldier on horseback with drawn sword in hand, but no painted foeman visible into which to bury the thirsty blade. The interior of the plate surrounding the warrior was a mass of rich deep orange ground; the colour much esteemed by collectors of this rural pottery. The contadinos in Tuscany once owned numerous specimens of these rustic dishes, which were used daily by them in their homes as common household crockery. They were nothing thought of in those far-off days of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were made for the peasants' service, and if a plate was broken another was bought for half a franc in the next market town. The day came when the supply stopped and the plates could not be replaced. Some other novelty in kitchenware had the run of the market, and nobody wanted Montelupo plates.Fashion set in about twenty years ago to collect this crude, curious, neglected pottery, so grotesque and humorous in design and coarse in workmanship, but when reposing against the wall of a well-lit room certainly showy and decorative for all time. They carry amusing and picturesque subjects, comical or satirical in treatment. Not very artistic, but cleverly and freely drawn with a few bold lines to catch the peasant's sense of humour, which was easily tickled. The plates revel in brightness and colour. Colour holds the eye and courts our admiration, and fancy prices rule the market.The rarest plates to find are those burlesquing the Churchman. The soldier, the farmer, and the serving-maid took the joke kindly, but the plates in which the monk was caricatured offended the Church dignitaries, and these specimens were bought up mysteriously, quickly destroyed, and now cannot be found.When the fashion set in, wandering dealers and touring collectors made haste to buy. They spread themselves over the country; knocked at cottage doors in out-of-the-way places in Tuscany, begged a glass of milk, admired the plates on the kitchen dresser, and offered to buy at a few francs apiece. The contadino soon found he had something good, and the price rose to ten francs each. Still the plates were admired by tired travellers resting in out-of-the-way cottages drinking a glass of milk. The price rose incontinently to twenty, thirty, fifty francs, until the peasants discovered a gold-mine in their old kitchen crockery, and now their stock is sold out. To-day the plates are found only in the hands of dealers, and good specimens command prices anywhere between a hundred and two hundred and fifty francs each.The owner of the Montelupo plate over the cottage door asked sixty francs for his family treasure. My friend borrowed a ladder, that he might have it down to examine. "No," said the owner; "you must buy it where it is, and pay for it first." Federico's fancy was caught with the pretty toy; he submitted to the hard terms, and paid the sixty francs. Little Grosso now mounted the ladder to bring down the plate. "I can't move it; it is cemented into the wall," he called to the new comer, standing below. So he borrowed a hammer and chisel, and ran nimbly up the ladder again and began chipping round the plate.Immediately the whole village was on the spot, standing round, excited, chattering, watching the job. A noisy man, the cock of the village, slung himself forward and shouted strenuously. He demanded to know what they were doing: "That plate has been there for over a hundred years. It is a very important piece, and is worth much money. It is of great value. Who has bought it? What have you paid for it?""I have bought it," said my friend; "I have given sixty francs for it, and as you think it so valuable, I will sell it to you for sixty francs. Will you have it at the price I gave for it?"Federico has a lovable disposition. He takes life placidly. He takes taxes placidly, he takes bad trade placidly, he takes the war placidly, he takes a human tornado placidly. The noisy man exploded--shouted louder and louder, and scattered his arms about in the air, gesticulating like the sails of a windmill racing in a stiff breeze, but he did not buy the village treasure. Grosso on the ladder kept on chipping round the plate, the crowd watching him critically.Presently he called out, "Signore, the plate is in two pieces!" My friend said to the noisy man: "Do you want to buy the plate? It is in two pieces--you can have it for fifty francs." He did not take on, but continued talking, gesticulating, and exciting the onlookers. Grosso continued chipping round the plate. He called out again, "Signore, the plate is even in three pieces." So my friend said to the village bully, "You can have the plate for thirty francs." But he did not buy at the price. Grosso resumed his work, hacking round the plate. He called out again, "Signore, the plate is in many pieces!" So Federico shouted to the troublesome man: "Now is your chance; you can have the plate for twenty francs. I paid sixty for it; will you give me twenty?"The man folded himself up and slunk off; the crowd also melted away, and Grosso went on chipping, and put fragment after fragment of the plate in his pocket as he released them from their cement setting. He came down the ladder with the broken plate in his pocket in ten pieces. They rode home to Bagni di Lucca, feeling a bit miserable on the journey. At Bagni di Lucca my friend comforted Grosso with a good dinner in the restaurant and gave him seven francs for his trouble. "And what about the plate?" said Grosso, when my friend bid him good-bye. "You keep it, Grosso. I don't want it." "No," said Grosso; "the plate is yours. You have treated me well and given me seven francs. I am more than satisfied." "Keep it," was the reply; and away Federico went home, just a little disappointed with the result of his expedition up the mountains. The lure of the Montelupo dish had proved a failure.Next year he visited Bagni di Lucca in quest of antiques, and called upon Grosso the dealer. On entering the shop he saw the Montelupo plate hanging against the wall, looking gay as ever without visible crack or cleavage on it. The dealer had cunningly dove-tailed the plate together, and it looked faultless to the eye. "It is yours," said Grosso; "I have kept it for you. Customers wanted to buy it. I knew you would come again to see me." After much persuasion and a consideration, Federico took the plate home and hung it in his studio amongst a collection of treasured antiques which he has gathered round him there and are the joy of his heart. It was much admired, and the romance of its history, often related, was as often listened to with amusement and laughter.One day a Florentine dealer visited the studio and fell in love with the Montelupo plate, and bought it for ninety francs.VIITHE LURE OF PLUCKIt happened in Rome; in our apartment on the Piazza di Spagna. We had a visit from a Countess. She was heralded by her visiting-card, on which blazed a coronet--an awe-inspiring visiting-card, imposing enough to reduce to the ground the most blatant democrat. What did the unknown Countess want? we asked each other with palpitating hearts. Had she come to invite us to visit her ancestral castle in the Sabine Hills? Was she a messenger from the Queen of Italy summoning us to an audience in the Quirinal Palace? What did this high-toned lady want? My wife faced the music alone. She entered the room, and saw a shabbily dressed old lady rambling about amongst the furniture."Ah!" exclaimed the Countess; "please excuse me the liberty of admiring your old Italian furniture; it is very fine indeed. I am so fond of it. I used to have my rooms full of it, but we sold it all to dealers. They gave us a good price for it. We are reduced in circumstances now, and I have called to ask if you would buy some jam from me. I make it myself, and have good clients among the English and American residents. I charge 3.50 lire for a jar, and allow 50 centimes for the empty jar if returned when I call again."She produced some glass jars of jam and honey from a basket she carried under her cloak. Refined-looking jars; artistically labelled jars, assuring the purchaser that the jam within was made under perfect hygienic conditions. The wording of the labels was printed in accurate English; but the Countess could not speak English, not a broken sentence of it could she utter. The conversation was carried on in French. We bought a jar of jam and a jar of honey, and are looking hopefully for the return of the 50 centimes on the empty jars when next she calls on business intent.It is no hedgerow jam, no common cottage mixture of blackberry and apple she offered us, but highly aristocratic peach jam from choicest fruits grown in coroneted orchards. And the honey she offered was superior honey; not the produce of old-fashioned garden flowers and wild heather from the hills--anybody breeds that plebeian honey. Her bees were classic to the core, lived in the garden of Hesperides, and fed only on orange-blossoms and acacia. No honey had an aroma equal to hers.Dear, good old soul! There was lots of fine metal in her character; she was a piece of rare old silver plate with hall-mark clearly impressed on it, but in somewhat battered and bruised condition. She had been roughly handled in the hard-hammering world. She had lost everything but manners and breeding. She could sell jam with the grace and dignity of a Queen bestowing royal favours on a subject. She was striving to maintain herself honourably in the sight of all men, and she would die in the last ditch rather than beg. Her pluck lured her on to the winning-post.There are sensitive people who, when hard-hit by Fortune, mope like moulting fowls and creep into dark corners of the earth; they do not strut in the market-place and shout loud-throated their woes to the crowd; they lower their flag and surrender themselves to fate. Their vanity supports their poverty, and their poverty breaks their heart. Really, these people are victims of false shame. False shame deludes their common sense. It discolours their imagination, enfeebles their will-power, and drives them on to the rocks to feed with the goats. Their misfortune assumes an exaggerated character in their own minds. They fancy that the world stares coldly on them in their adversity and whispers contemptuously against them behind their backs, and they collapse in the frigid atmosphere with which they surround themselves.Their vanity betrays them into surmising unwholesome things. They fidget about themselves in their supersensitiveness. They adore public opinion, and fancy themselves filling a large place in its consideration, and they dread the smiting lash of its hostile criticism. The truth is humiliating but very refreshing to our morbid disposition, and the truth is that people are not thinking much about us, however conspicuously we imagine ourselves to be painted in the picture. We are only one of a crowd of common people, nor even the most interesting figure in it. It is unwise to esteem ourselves to be of immeasurably more consequence than we really are. The busy world at best gives us only a passing thought. Dr. Johnson bluntly said: "No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. The utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle and be forgotten." If a man thinks no more seriously of his own misfortunes than his neighbour thinks of them, his troubles will be lightly borne.However, the world is much more good-natured than the man of morbid temper gives it credit for. Penetrate through its cold reserve, and you often find within a warm, sympathetic heart. The good English heart is oft-times hedged by achevaux de friseof English hauteur hard to break through, but get within the lines and you receive a cordial welcome.Our sturdy Countess was not afflicted with false shame. She had pride, but not vanity. Vanity is a coquette and says, "What do you think of me?" and tremblingly awaits your verdict. Pride says, "I am as good as you are, and I don't care a damn." It is not every decadent Countess who sells jam to keep her end up in this see-saw world. It requires grit and a rare brand of pride uncommon in the quality to rise to the occasion. There is a vain pride that welters into nothingness in the dismal hour of failure, and starves tragically like a rat in a trap rather than help itself or accept help from others. There is another pride--robust, full-blooded pride--that spurns the conventionalities of caste, takes off its coat and fights misfortune face to face resolutely for its daily bread, and wins through. This is where our heroic Countess steps in splendour.Why immolate oneself on the altar of family pride? A false goddess sits enshrined there on a false throne. Why live on the reputation a forefather won in the Middle Ages? That reputation is now spent capital; it is worthless scrip on the social market to-day. Build another reputation for yourself, clean and sweet and new. If ill luck drops you in the ditch, to maintain inviolate the family honour you must get up and with ungloved hands work your way out of it like a man. Sell jam.Perhaps you hate wearing a brand-new reputation. It sets on you like a misfitting coat. You are an heir of the glorious past, and exult on the length in your ancient lineage. Remember also you are a trustee of the splendid future; the shining days to come demand your thoughtful consideration. Do rare credit to your sacred trust. It is better to transmit honour to your descendants than to borrow fame from your ancestors. It is better to be lovingly remembered than nobly born. That grim old ancestor of yours who built the family fortune out of nothing and grimly fought every inch of the way up to renown single-handed would despise you for a poltroon lying derelict in the ditch of despair. If the family fall throws you to the ground, are you going to lie there indefinitely and rot like offal? Sell jam.An Italian nobleman went to America to repair his fallen fortunes. He refused to soil his hands in trade; his old family title was the magic key he carried to open the treasure-chests of the New World. So he arrived in America armed with a despatch-box full of introductions to money magnates there. He called upon a banker in New York, and presented a letter of introduction. The banker asked him what he knew about business. "Nothing," replied the nobleman; "I am a cavalry officer." "Sorry I cannot help you," said the banker; "the circus left our town yesterday." The nobleman was floored. Enraged at the magnate's laconic insolence, he destroyed all letters of introduction contained in his despatch-box and tackled the world on his own. He folded up his family pedigree, laid it in lavender, went into the market and sold jam. In the market-place a long head is a better weapon to fight with than a long pedigree. He worked out his own salvation, and returned home and lived contentedly amongst the orange-groves and sunshine of Southern Italy.VIIITHE LURE OF OLD FURNITUREEight old Chippendale chairs and two settees sold recently at Christie's for 5,600 guineas, and report says quickly after the auctioneer's hammer dismissed the lot they changed hands again at £1,000 profit to the buyer. There must be great charm in old furniture when people scramble for it regardless of cost. I suppose money is dull stuff to own heaps of unless you can exchange it for things that give the heart a passing thrill of pleasure (the great sport is in the making it); and the more money you make, the more it takes you to work up the thrill. A millionaire's smile is an expensive hobby to cultivate. Gathering a bunch of wild primroses in the sunny April woods gladdens the heart of a child amazingly, and he dreams the pleasure over again in his sleep. It costs over 5,000 guineas to tingle the feelings of a rich man. The child's outlay is more economical, but it fetches as much enjoyment.Wherein lies the secret charm of old furniture? I love it myself, and for that reason ask the question for the pleasure given in answering it. I am only a trifler in antiques, possessing a few pieces of exquisite old oak of the seventeenth-century period; also several pieces of walnut furniture which are old Italian. The Italian pieces lie fallow in a villa just outside the barriéra St. Domenico, Florence, where we live with them half the year round. Beautiful old walnut furniture counts much more in its own homeland, while the alien oak of England, which we love here, is cold and expressionless in the rooms of an Italian villa on the sunny slopes of Fiesole. It loses its aura in a strange land.Old furniture with a time-worn glossy face on it is interesting because it is made by the hands of man; and the man used his brain in making it, as well as his hands; surely man's delight is in man's work. A piece of old furniture reflects the mind of its maker in every detail of its construction, and that is a very fascinating feature to me; for we are told on high authority that "hand-work possesses character, almost personality," and we believe the high authority with all our heart.Modern furniture has no personality, and so it transmits no message; it is machine-made, and I hold no kinship with machinery to cherish warm feeling in its favour; but handcraft ever commands our respect, and when well done wins our widest admiration.Machine-made work carries a lie on the face of it; it imitates handwork. The machine simulates a trouble that has not been taken. It produces beautifully designed and ornamented imitations of ancient handcraft at trifling cost. Who cares for beauty produced by formula? Beauty is the flowering of noble labour linked to useful purpose. Cheapness and showiness are the flaring advertisements of the mechanical cabinet-maker to-day, and he hits with precision the public taste.Give me to admire something a man has laboured lovingly and honestly to produce, not what a machine vomits out standard pattern; something a man has put the power of his brain into as well as the dexterity of his hand. William Morris quaintly remarks: "If you have anything to say, you may as well put it into a chair or a table." The cabinet-maker speaks to us with his tools in a language of his own invention. The cabinet-maker has helped to make English homes comfortable to live in, and for so doing we owe him a debt of gratitude. His tools are not the sword and the cannon, but the plane, the chisel, and the swift-moving saw. His art is not destructive to life, piling on misery to man's many woes, but he enriches life manifold by adding comfort and luxury to the widening circle of human happiness. His rewards are not stars and garters and hereditary honours conferred by princes for brave deeds done on the field of battle, but just the recompense that the master of the tools' true play appreciates; the simple pleasure of good work well and truly done sent forth to take honourable place in the stately homes of England, knowing that by such fine hand-craft he will speak from his grave to people unborn; and he even cherishes the inspiring hope that those who are possessors of his treasured work done in oak and walnut and sweet satinwood will, in the hereafterward, in the quietude of their sequestered homes, surrounded by familiar furniture of high lineage, bestow on the workman a passing measure of praise; for these worthy craftsmen put the best of their lives into the labour of their hands.Old furniture is delightful in your home because it is old. Age has an alchemy of its own that ennobles the work of man. A brand-new house is deadly unromantic, even if it is a dream of architectural excellence. Its appearance is garish and crude. New stones and raw bricks are ugly in the days of their youth, but age transforms the place, be it manor-house or thatched cottage, until enchantment haunts the fabric. I dearly love the grace of antiquity that mellows the venerable homesteads of England and blends the intermingling lustre of tradition with the roll of their lengthening years.Age likewise has a mellowing influence on furniture. Obliteration of exactitude of form is essential charm in it as it is in a man or woman. You resent the loudness of a newly made rich man. His manners smell strongly of varnish just put on; his vanity and self-importance are unsavoury morsels to swallow without salt. He is a terror to his polite neighbours and a stranger to himself. Wait and see; he will tone down as the mills of life grind off the sharp angles and smooth him into a decent fellow.Good taste resents primness and self-assertiveness in new furniture; its raw outlines and sharp angles offend the eye. When these stubborn features are subdued by centuries of wear and tear and the wondrous old-time bloom of rich deep colour glorifies the ripened oak with softness and transparency of tone, that quality so delightful to sight and touch which distinguishes genuine antique furniture, then sentimental feeling waxes strong and renders the work attractive to us.Vague and visionary thoughts of past owners flit across the mind, and kindle emotions in the presence of an ancient piece of furniture of good repute. It idealizes in our minds, and becomes beautiful to us. It is a call of the past. It is an unwritten chapter in some old family history, and we want to handle the key of the legend locked up in it. There may be tragedy or comedy, or a mixture of both, recorded in the family log-book, and the stately old carved-oak court cupboard dozing in the banqueting-hall, generation after generation, saw it all through from beginning to end, but it whispers away no family secrets to inquisitive people. An evil day broke the family fortunes. The venerable court cupboard vacated its place of honour which it occupied for centuries in the Yorkshire manor-house, and has taken up quarters with us in our Sussex home. It is no longer mere chattel; there is human interest in it.I wonder if it takes kindly to its new home? Land, they say, sometimes resents change of owners, especially passing from a family who had held lordship of the soil for generations. When the old squire dies, the last of his line, the land grieves. It seems to know that it is going to be sold and broken up, and it loses heart. It goes rotten like apples. A patch goes wrong here and a patch goes wrong there, and the rottenness spreads and runs together. It takes the land long to get used to a new master.Has our old oak court cupboard sensitive feelings like the ancestral acres? Or is it silently and sullenly indifferent to all the changes of fortune that befall it?I have an oak armchair with a unique story to tell. The back of it is one large panel carved with heavy flora and foliated decoration; on the cross-rail below the panel is carved in bold raised letters:
V
THE LURE OF AN OLD TUSCAN GARDEN
A delightful French writer says "to grow old in a garden in sight of softly undulating hills, beneath a sky variable as the human soul, is very sweet, very consoling, very easy. One becomes more of a child and for the first time a philosopher. Poetry and wisdom on every hand permeate the close of life, just as the oblique rays of the setting sun penetrate into the heart of the densest foliage, which is impervious to the vertical beams of noonday." This charming writer touches the spot; experience, tenderness, and sympathy flow from mellowed lips well rounding to the autumn of life. Old age does reflect more discerningly than impatient youth, and in a garden, too, surrounded by a heavenly host of flowers whose blossom is as laughter and whose perfume is a song. Romance sketches wonderful pictures with such a beatific background to inspire it, and imagination wanders into a carnival of dreams. How many pleasant thoughts and noble thoughts have been brought to birth in a garden which afterward grew into brave deeds and gentle lives contributing generously to enrich the sum of human happiness!
I sit under an ilex-tree in an old Tuscan garden which in course of many generations has belonged to many owners. A haunting beauty fills the ancient place, which one can feel, but cannot understand. A friendly atmosphere that pervades old gardens saturates the solitude. It is more than atmosphere, it is influence--a caressing influence almost human that holds us up and tantalizes. Vague ancestral memories of old families flash upon the mind; for more than four hundred years men and women have walked and talked and thought in this Tuscan garden of mine, and tended its flowers and enjoyed its tranquillity. Children have played in it, often going to bed tired and happy after romping in it the livelong day, and so generation after generation mankind repeats itself in the life-story of the old garden on a Tuscan hillside. The spirit of the past haunts it in shadow and in sunshine, because wherever men have been they leave a little of themselves behind in ghostly exhalations.
When one is in a contemplative humour a garden is full of object-lessons interesting to study. By dint of watching leaf replace leaf, insects come into life and die, blossoms change into fruit, fruit ripen and fall, the swallows come with the daffodils and depart when the hunter's moon frightens them away--by watching these things methodically and silently accomplishing their allotted tasks, I have come to think about myself with brave resolution and resigned conformity to natural laws. I grieve less over myself when I regard the change which is universal; the setting sun and the dying summer help me also to decline gently. Life is a splendid heritage to hold in fee, but we quit and deliver up possession when our lease expires. The light must be kept burning if our own little taper flickers into darkness.
A young girl visited us in Florence one spring-time. She lived in the garden among the flowers, caressed them, talked to them, and gathered them by the handful, the armful, the basketful. She decorated the rooms with flowers, filled glass bowls and bronze vases with flowers, and her art touched its zenith in glorifying the dinner-table every evening with the choicest of them all. She chatted, smiled, and sang whilst doing it, for she dearly loved the flowers that she fondled.
We took her to the Uffizi to see the world-renowned Old Masters there; but she yawned in front of masterpieces of art, and her eyes wandered round searching the smart costumes of the ladies in the room. We took her to Rome and showed her the sights of the Eternal City, but Bond Street and Regent Street interested her more than St. Peter's and the Coliseum. We visited the Forum with its ruined temples and triumphal arches, and trod the Via Sacra; but the place was only an old stoneyard to her, devoid of interest, so we left her to herself, and she wandered over the Forum on other pleasure bent, and we found her afterwards picking violets amongst the ruins.
When at home again a friend asked how she enjoyed her visit to Rome, and had she seen the Forum? In blank despair she appealed to me to help her out of it. "Yes," I replied, "you saw the Forum; that is where you picked the violets." The Forum to her was deadly dull and forgotten even by name, but a bunch of wild violets lived vividly in her memory as the crown and flower of her heart's desire, more excellent than all the ruins of Rome.
Dulness comes to us in uncongenial company and occupation. You may be surrounded by objects of interest and beauty which amuse other people, but if these worthy objects do not fit your taste, for you they contain no element of delight, and you are bored utterly with them whoever may sing their praise. It is a question of temperament. The heart is not dull if the head istriste. Every eye makes its own beauty and every heart forms its own kinships. Put me in front of a post-impressionist picture and dulness covers me like a funeral pall. The beauties of the glowing picture composed of significant form and bunkum are lost on me completely. Here is something tremendously original that makes demands on my intelligence that I cannot meet. I am mentally bankrupt in front of this maddening art.
Looking at a post-impressionist picture, you see only shapes and forms tangled together within the limited area of a gilt frame; you see relations and quantities of colour splashed on canvas meaning anything you choose to label it, but in the likeness of nothing God made or man ever saw. It distorts nature and scoffs at portraiture. "Creating a work of art," trumpets the evangelist of post-impressionism, "is so tremendous a business that it leaves no leisure for catching a likeness." "You look at a landscape, and you are not to see it as fields and cottages; instead you are to see it as lines and colours." Yet up against this lucid statement I observe no reason why the portrait of a man should be drawn like a peculiarly shaped market-garden divided into plots for growing vegetables. Nor can I explain why the picture of a village street should look like a fortnight's wash suspended in a cherry orchard, and the policeman standing in front of the village inn at the corner should look like a laundry-maid hanging out the clothes. It requires uncommon genius to work the illusion successfully, and to start an indolent British public frivolling with the captivating puzzle. But it leaves me cold and passionless, for I am slow of understanding these things. They say an impressionist picture of top-note character is a painfully exciting object for the spectator to worship. To do it justice, he must squirm in front of it, for it is a picture that creates a thunderstorm of rhapsody, a deluge of delight, a roaring cataract of æsthetic emotion in the soul of the man who understands its cryptic language. The artist who limned the picture suffers agonies whilst working up significant form, being pricked with pins and needles of excitement, and is continually dancing on the hot-plate of rapture. The spectator's duty when viewing a work of art is to come into touch with the mind of the artist. To do this no wonder the spectator has a bad time when digesting a whole gallery of post-impressionist pictures.
Their religion is as bewildering as their art. For their moral vision is out of kilter, as their eyesight is out of focus. The aforesaid evangelist of the cult says: "I doubt whether the good artist bothers much more about the future than about the past. Why should artists bother about the fate of humanity? If art does not justify itself, æsthetic rapture does.... Rapture suffices. The artist has no more call to look forward than the lover in the arms of his mistress. There are moments in life that are ends to which the whole history of humanity would not be an extravagant means; of such are the moments of æsthetic ecstasy."
We return to the garden, for the lure of a garden relaxes not. The joy of it entangles you in its toils. Each successive season of the year unfolds new developments which lead you on to the next season. So you are handed on from one month to another throughout the gardener's calendar by endless enticements which keep the interest gently simmering. The procession of gay flowers that promenade the sheltered borders and disport themselves with flagrant pride on open beds during spring and summer days, tricked in rainbow colours, dazzle the eye with splendour, win the heart's endearment, and pay in noblest coin full recompense for the chill, dull toil given in grey winter hours.
A lady friend who lived to a ripe old age said to me jocosely, "To be a good gardener you need a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, for you are bending and stooping all day long in the garden." Only by constant labour spent on the good brown earth can you become candidate for possession of this useful garden requisite, a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, or the neatest imitation offered on the market. In the garden you get in touch with Nature, breathe fresh air, cultivate a contented mind, and never stagnate in idleness or degenerate into ennui. Your body, inured to all weathers, escapes many little ills of the flesh, and gradually you harden into an iron constitution, which is the nearest earthly substitute to a wooden back hung on iron hinges.
You never need remain indoors to smoke or sew or yawn because there is nothing doing in the garden: you can weed there the livelong day in the open. This lowly service offers immediate reward; it begets a healthy appetite at meal-times, and develops a night's sound sleep, which is some pleasure no millionaire can buy with his millions. Weeding puzzles my blind gardener Emilio.
I have two brothers gardeners, Enrico and Emilio. Enrico has sight only of one eye, Emilio is blind both eyes. The two brothers work together in brotherly love, and have only one working eye between them, yet it is wonderful how much good work the one eye accomplishes per day. Emilio sees with his hands. It is weeding that puzzles him most. He never pulls a flower instead of a weed--he feels the difference between them. It is the weeds that elude his fingers as he works along the border that grieve him. Weeding is a fascinating occupation to me. Nice people won't profane their hands grubbing in common garden soil, but, being a groundling myself, I enjoy the fun of coming into contact with my native element. Clean, sweet, caressing earth, it is the last flowery coverlet all of us will sleep under; why shun thy friendly touch to-day? There is always an abundant crop of weeds to practise on in an Italian garden, and your fingers itch to uproot them to the very last offender. I suppose it is the ruthlessness and slaughter of the deed, the close handgrip on the enemy, that compels you on; and when the skirmish is over, surveying the ground cleared of the foe and the heaps of the slain withering at your feet gives a pleasurable thrill of excitement in the hour of victory. You exult, for there is something done, and well done, to show for your backache.
The gardener's lure is irresistible. The devotee walks in flowerland of his own creation. In dreary winter hours he dreams splendid dreams of himself surrounded by summer harmonies, summer fragrance, and summer flowers, for which he has planned and planted and patiently tended along the covering months of winter and spring. The hour of full realization approaches when the roses mass their rival glories and spread their coloured raptures in the garden that he loves. This puts the crown on the brow of summer. This is the gardener's festival of the year. He invites his horticultural cronies to tea on the lawn, and they all talk rose jargon together. He takes them on a tour of inspection round the garden, and they congratulate the founder of the feast of flowers. They are happy as a band of Sunday-school children spending the afternoon out. They sit on the lawn under the spreading ilex-tree, which casts ample shadow for their comfort, and the summer sunshine lays ardent on the green-sward around them. It is a genial gathering, but the man who understands not roses would be speechless in their midst and not a little bored. Conversation cools off, the evening shadows lengthen, and in an interlude of silence there is a sort of whispering stillness in the warm evening air, as if the flowers and grass and trees are all saying kind words to one another, for having done their best to please. The lure of the garden is never so poignant as at this great moment, for your heart is brimming of sweet content, and you say to yourself: "Can it be true? Can anything in the world be more beautiful?"
There is another lure that lays hands on a man like grappling-irons tackling a Spanish galleon laden with treasure, with a grip which cannot be shaken off: I mean the writer's lure. I am fond of reading. The enticements of a good book are hard to resist, especially if you have no inclination to resist, but tumble a ready victim to the writer's charm.
What is the writer's lure? How does it cast its spell? You can talk round the subject by metaphor and symbol and figure of speech, but cannot solve it like a problem in Euclid and add Q.E.D. at the end. The writer's lure is the vividest way of saying things. It is a bolt shot from the mind that hits the penman's mark. The writer's lure fixes you even as a beautiful sympathetic picture holds you up by its witchery of art. In the picture warmth of colour, grace of line, melting tints, dreamy distance, and an added mystic charm brooding over all, voice lovingly your taste in art, and, like a haunted man, you carry the landscape about with you all day long. It intrudes on your mind midst pressing business affairs; the sunlight sleeping on the hills creates a pleasant interlude of thought when engrossed in life's little worries. Turner's "Crossing the Brook" in the Tate Gallery is a picture that bewitches me when I see it. It stimulates my imagination and sets my thoughts sailing over the country carried on the breezes which blow across the Turner landscape.
A book haunts you in the selfsame way as a picture. You read a book, and it stirs your emotions and captivates your fancy, and for a time it possesses you like a living spirit. The writer's lure holds you in its grip. The book soaks into you. A sentence here and there leaps to memory during odd moments of the day; the rhythm of the language ripples musically as a chime of bells, and you repeat the sentence to yourself again and again. The aptness of an image is lifelike, and a vision floats across your mind; the happy turn of a sentence sticks. The fresh, clear-cut thought shot out boldly from the writer's brain conveys a new idea; you recall the touch of humour resembling a patch of warm sunshine twinkling on the landscape, and your lips curve into a smile. There are passages of tenderness also that you treasure, because they find your heart like shafts of love feathered with joy. All these things in the book come back to you vividly, and whisper their fond message over again.
One cannot explain the writer's lure. You may name it, but you cannot catch it in the reviewer's trap of criticism. It is illusive as the angel who visited Manoah and his wife, wrought wondrously, and vanished leaving no trace. It is a secret of pencraft which defies definitions and eludes analysis, yet it is the vital element in composition. It is not a question of conforming to correct standards of good writing by which literary excellence is judged, the writer being blessed or cursed by the censors according to the measure of his allegiance to their literary creed. Some writers violate every literary canon set up to guide their pen in the way of righteousness, but they are alive with literary fire; the vital element is fecund within them, and they riot in the power of it. There are no rules in art that great writers have not shown us how to break with advantage. You cannot resolve the writer's lure into its component parts as you can a potato. Like electricity, it defies analysis, but, like the electric current, you feel it in your bones.
Blind Emilio does not work by rules taught in popular garden manuals; he gathers inspiration for his craft direct from the heavens. He is an oracle of occult information and prevision almost uncanny, concerning things in the garden and out of it. However, he is a cheerful soul and a born optimist, so we consult him often and rely on his wisdom, because, like honey, its flavour is pleasant to the taste.
The moon is the guiding providence regulating some of Emilio's important duties. He observes the phases of the moon with the reverence of an astrologer of legendary days. He awaits the waning moon in February to prune the rose-trees. A potent mystic virtue dwells in a waning moon according to his garden lore, which is old as his pagan ancestors. If you prune rose-trees in a waxing moon the new growths will be long, weak shoots, and the crop of roses in the summer poor, puny things. Prune in the waning moon and the new growths will be short, sturdy rods bearing large flowers, and an abundance of them. Garden seed must be sown under the auspices of the waning moon if you want your flower-beds in the summer-time to be renowned for beauty, to make your friends envious of your success and yourself just swaggeringly happy.
What applies to roses and seed applies equally to pruning vines and grafting fruit-trees. Bulbs and potatoes may be planted any time. They move in the spring when Nature signals whether they are in the ground or out of it. They are outside the ritual of the moon.
We had a heavy crop of diospyros last autumn, drawn from four trees in the kitchen-garden. These fruits are fat, round, rosy fellows, plump as overgrown tomatoes. The flesh of the ripe diospyros is Nature's jam, soft and mushy, delicious in flavour, and eaten politely with a spoon. Our neighbour who hails from Cincinnati grew a crop of small, sickly-looking fruit. "Ah!" said Emilio, "now that you see the difference in the two crops, you must believe me. Their diospyros were gathered in the growing moon, and they shrivel and lose colour and flavour; ours were gathered in the waning moon, and keep beautiful and sound to the end of the season." There is good luck under the waning moon. Another explanation of the difference in the crops has merit, which Emilio considers treason to the honourable tradition of his fathers. Our fruit was grown in the kitchen-garden on manured soil; our American neighbour's trees stand on a rocky bank in the wild garden which is never dressed with manure. The blessing of the moon falls on the crop that is best nourished in the days of its youth.
In the garden is an avenue of lime-trees about one hundred and sixty feet long. In the summer it forms a deliciously shady walk; in rainy weather it is a clean and pleasant promenade, for it has a paved pathway in it. The north end of the avenue terminates in a large semicircular stone seat mounted on a stone base one step higher than the pathway. The seat has no florid decorative carving on it to arouse hostility or provoke criticism. It is just a plain seat of simple Roman type, roomy and comfortable to sit on. Behind the seat curves a semicircle of thirteen cypress-trees screening the north winds. Again, behind the cypress-trees is an interesting old stone wall about twenty feet high, forming the boundary of the garden. Above the wall, rising in gentle slope, is the south shoulder of the hill, on the hill-top sits Fiesole, the famous Etruscan city of history and legend. The slope is covered with olives and vines, forming a mantle grey and green with its leafy fringe dropping on our garden wall.
This great retaining wall is old as the villa which was purchased by Domenico Mori in 1475. The history of the house earlier than this date is lost in the mist of antiquity. The ancient wall is a feature in the garden, for on two sides it towers like a cliff, forming a charming background to the scene. It has weathered beautifully with the ages, and is an immense stretch of canvas for the display of masses of colour. In places it is bleached silvery-grey, and elsewhere the tinted lichen mottle it with saffron and orange and brown, and every delectable shade and tone which Time, the great decorator, with loving hand, imparts to old stone. It looks warm and gay and friendly, and grows a rock-garden of its own, for wild flowers bloom in its cracks and crannies and red valerian flames upon its heights, side by side with golden broom. Ivy clothes it in parts, and most mysteriously so, for years back the plants were cut off their roots, and the ivy now exists only on nourishment drawn from the wall, and it exists vigorously on the meagre diet the wall supplies. When the sunshine pours down upon its hoary time-worn face, the old wall is transfigured into a thing of triple splendour, for its colours glow and blaze with spiritual fervour imparting that artistic touch of nature which is the happy gift of garden plaisance.
Deeply set in the wall is the ruin of a small shrine. Once upon a time this shrine was the home of the Madonna, but now no Madonna occupies the niche. Some pious ancestor of the house implored gracious protection of the Mother of Jesus on behalf of his vines and olives, fruits and flowers, and he set up her Ladyship's sheltered image in the little vaulted temple on the wall as guardian of the crops, hoping that fat harvest would follow his devotion to Our Lady of Plenty. The vacant shrine is desolate and crumbling and mossy now, and so is the sentimental faith of those ancient days. It was a hallowed sentiment in its way, this worship of the Madonna. Men lived up to it, and felt happy in their prayers to the Lady of Heaven. Nowadays men win good harvests on more scientific lines. They put trust in deep ploughing and artificial manure rather than in prayers and oblations to the Mother of God.
The personal intervention of the Deity in the affairs of men strikes a homely note in the world's domestic management, and brings the Heavenly Father in close touch with His earthly family; but the dear God's blessing is level-handed, and favours His children, bad or good, who work the hardest, and add intelligence to their toil.
VI
THE LURE OF THE MONTELUPO PLATE
My friend Federico wandering through Tuscany on one of those delightful excursions that he loves, passing from town to town and village to village picking up "old things"en route, called at a dealer's shop in Bagni di Lucca. In the miscellaneous collection of antiquities there offered for sale he found nothing to please him. To console him in the hour of disappointment, the little dealer, named Grosso, said: "I know of a beautiful Montelupo plate that will take your fancy. Come with me; it is away up the hills, a pleasant ride for us. Give me a few francs for my trouble, and you can buy the plate." So they took a vettura and rode up the mountains in quest of the Montelupo plate. After an hour's delightful drive they stopped at a contadino's cottage on the roadside, and there, boldly on view to the passer-by and stuck on the weather-beaten front of the cottage over the doorway, was the Montelupo plate, the very heart's desire of the two adventurers. It was a brave plate, round as the sun and about thirteen inches in diameter. In the centre of it, painted in flaming colours, trotted a soldier on horseback with drawn sword in hand, but no painted foeman visible into which to bury the thirsty blade. The interior of the plate surrounding the warrior was a mass of rich deep orange ground; the colour much esteemed by collectors of this rural pottery. The contadinos in Tuscany once owned numerous specimens of these rustic dishes, which were used daily by them in their homes as common household crockery. They were nothing thought of in those far-off days of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They were made for the peasants' service, and if a plate was broken another was bought for half a franc in the next market town. The day came when the supply stopped and the plates could not be replaced. Some other novelty in kitchenware had the run of the market, and nobody wanted Montelupo plates.
Fashion set in about twenty years ago to collect this crude, curious, neglected pottery, so grotesque and humorous in design and coarse in workmanship, but when reposing against the wall of a well-lit room certainly showy and decorative for all time. They carry amusing and picturesque subjects, comical or satirical in treatment. Not very artistic, but cleverly and freely drawn with a few bold lines to catch the peasant's sense of humour, which was easily tickled. The plates revel in brightness and colour. Colour holds the eye and courts our admiration, and fancy prices rule the market.
The rarest plates to find are those burlesquing the Churchman. The soldier, the farmer, and the serving-maid took the joke kindly, but the plates in which the monk was caricatured offended the Church dignitaries, and these specimens were bought up mysteriously, quickly destroyed, and now cannot be found.
When the fashion set in, wandering dealers and touring collectors made haste to buy. They spread themselves over the country; knocked at cottage doors in out-of-the-way places in Tuscany, begged a glass of milk, admired the plates on the kitchen dresser, and offered to buy at a few francs apiece. The contadino soon found he had something good, and the price rose to ten francs each. Still the plates were admired by tired travellers resting in out-of-the-way cottages drinking a glass of milk. The price rose incontinently to twenty, thirty, fifty francs, until the peasants discovered a gold-mine in their old kitchen crockery, and now their stock is sold out. To-day the plates are found only in the hands of dealers, and good specimens command prices anywhere between a hundred and two hundred and fifty francs each.
The owner of the Montelupo plate over the cottage door asked sixty francs for his family treasure. My friend borrowed a ladder, that he might have it down to examine. "No," said the owner; "you must buy it where it is, and pay for it first." Federico's fancy was caught with the pretty toy; he submitted to the hard terms, and paid the sixty francs. Little Grosso now mounted the ladder to bring down the plate. "I can't move it; it is cemented into the wall," he called to the new comer, standing below. So he borrowed a hammer and chisel, and ran nimbly up the ladder again and began chipping round the plate.
Immediately the whole village was on the spot, standing round, excited, chattering, watching the job. A noisy man, the cock of the village, slung himself forward and shouted strenuously. He demanded to know what they were doing: "That plate has been there for over a hundred years. It is a very important piece, and is worth much money. It is of great value. Who has bought it? What have you paid for it?"
"I have bought it," said my friend; "I have given sixty francs for it, and as you think it so valuable, I will sell it to you for sixty francs. Will you have it at the price I gave for it?"
Federico has a lovable disposition. He takes life placidly. He takes taxes placidly, he takes bad trade placidly, he takes the war placidly, he takes a human tornado placidly. The noisy man exploded--shouted louder and louder, and scattered his arms about in the air, gesticulating like the sails of a windmill racing in a stiff breeze, but he did not buy the village treasure. Grosso on the ladder kept on chipping round the plate, the crowd watching him critically.
Presently he called out, "Signore, the plate is in two pieces!" My friend said to the noisy man: "Do you want to buy the plate? It is in two pieces--you can have it for fifty francs." He did not take on, but continued talking, gesticulating, and exciting the onlookers. Grosso continued chipping round the plate. He called out again, "Signore, the plate is even in three pieces." So my friend said to the village bully, "You can have the plate for thirty francs." But he did not buy at the price. Grosso resumed his work, hacking round the plate. He called out again, "Signore, the plate is in many pieces!" So Federico shouted to the troublesome man: "Now is your chance; you can have the plate for twenty francs. I paid sixty for it; will you give me twenty?"
The man folded himself up and slunk off; the crowd also melted away, and Grosso went on chipping, and put fragment after fragment of the plate in his pocket as he released them from their cement setting. He came down the ladder with the broken plate in his pocket in ten pieces. They rode home to Bagni di Lucca, feeling a bit miserable on the journey. At Bagni di Lucca my friend comforted Grosso with a good dinner in the restaurant and gave him seven francs for his trouble. "And what about the plate?" said Grosso, when my friend bid him good-bye. "You keep it, Grosso. I don't want it." "No," said Grosso; "the plate is yours. You have treated me well and given me seven francs. I am more than satisfied." "Keep it," was the reply; and away Federico went home, just a little disappointed with the result of his expedition up the mountains. The lure of the Montelupo dish had proved a failure.
Next year he visited Bagni di Lucca in quest of antiques, and called upon Grosso the dealer. On entering the shop he saw the Montelupo plate hanging against the wall, looking gay as ever without visible crack or cleavage on it. The dealer had cunningly dove-tailed the plate together, and it looked faultless to the eye. "It is yours," said Grosso; "I have kept it for you. Customers wanted to buy it. I knew you would come again to see me." After much persuasion and a consideration, Federico took the plate home and hung it in his studio amongst a collection of treasured antiques which he has gathered round him there and are the joy of his heart. It was much admired, and the romance of its history, often related, was as often listened to with amusement and laughter.
One day a Florentine dealer visited the studio and fell in love with the Montelupo plate, and bought it for ninety francs.
VII
THE LURE OF PLUCK
It happened in Rome; in our apartment on the Piazza di Spagna. We had a visit from a Countess. She was heralded by her visiting-card, on which blazed a coronet--an awe-inspiring visiting-card, imposing enough to reduce to the ground the most blatant democrat. What did the unknown Countess want? we asked each other with palpitating hearts. Had she come to invite us to visit her ancestral castle in the Sabine Hills? Was she a messenger from the Queen of Italy summoning us to an audience in the Quirinal Palace? What did this high-toned lady want? My wife faced the music alone. She entered the room, and saw a shabbily dressed old lady rambling about amongst the furniture.
"Ah!" exclaimed the Countess; "please excuse me the liberty of admiring your old Italian furniture; it is very fine indeed. I am so fond of it. I used to have my rooms full of it, but we sold it all to dealers. They gave us a good price for it. We are reduced in circumstances now, and I have called to ask if you would buy some jam from me. I make it myself, and have good clients among the English and American residents. I charge 3.50 lire for a jar, and allow 50 centimes for the empty jar if returned when I call again."
She produced some glass jars of jam and honey from a basket she carried under her cloak. Refined-looking jars; artistically labelled jars, assuring the purchaser that the jam within was made under perfect hygienic conditions. The wording of the labels was printed in accurate English; but the Countess could not speak English, not a broken sentence of it could she utter. The conversation was carried on in French. We bought a jar of jam and a jar of honey, and are looking hopefully for the return of the 50 centimes on the empty jars when next she calls on business intent.
It is no hedgerow jam, no common cottage mixture of blackberry and apple she offered us, but highly aristocratic peach jam from choicest fruits grown in coroneted orchards. And the honey she offered was superior honey; not the produce of old-fashioned garden flowers and wild heather from the hills--anybody breeds that plebeian honey. Her bees were classic to the core, lived in the garden of Hesperides, and fed only on orange-blossoms and acacia. No honey had an aroma equal to hers.
Dear, good old soul! There was lots of fine metal in her character; she was a piece of rare old silver plate with hall-mark clearly impressed on it, but in somewhat battered and bruised condition. She had been roughly handled in the hard-hammering world. She had lost everything but manners and breeding. She could sell jam with the grace and dignity of a Queen bestowing royal favours on a subject. She was striving to maintain herself honourably in the sight of all men, and she would die in the last ditch rather than beg. Her pluck lured her on to the winning-post.
There are sensitive people who, when hard-hit by Fortune, mope like moulting fowls and creep into dark corners of the earth; they do not strut in the market-place and shout loud-throated their woes to the crowd; they lower their flag and surrender themselves to fate. Their vanity supports their poverty, and their poverty breaks their heart. Really, these people are victims of false shame. False shame deludes their common sense. It discolours their imagination, enfeebles their will-power, and drives them on to the rocks to feed with the goats. Their misfortune assumes an exaggerated character in their own minds. They fancy that the world stares coldly on them in their adversity and whispers contemptuously against them behind their backs, and they collapse in the frigid atmosphere with which they surround themselves.
Their vanity betrays them into surmising unwholesome things. They fidget about themselves in their supersensitiveness. They adore public opinion, and fancy themselves filling a large place in its consideration, and they dread the smiting lash of its hostile criticism. The truth is humiliating but very refreshing to our morbid disposition, and the truth is that people are not thinking much about us, however conspicuously we imagine ourselves to be painted in the picture. We are only one of a crowd of common people, nor even the most interesting figure in it. It is unwise to esteem ourselves to be of immeasurably more consequence than we really are. The busy world at best gives us only a passing thought. Dr. Johnson bluntly said: "No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. The utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle and be forgotten." If a man thinks no more seriously of his own misfortunes than his neighbour thinks of them, his troubles will be lightly borne.
However, the world is much more good-natured than the man of morbid temper gives it credit for. Penetrate through its cold reserve, and you often find within a warm, sympathetic heart. The good English heart is oft-times hedged by achevaux de friseof English hauteur hard to break through, but get within the lines and you receive a cordial welcome.
Our sturdy Countess was not afflicted with false shame. She had pride, but not vanity. Vanity is a coquette and says, "What do you think of me?" and tremblingly awaits your verdict. Pride says, "I am as good as you are, and I don't care a damn." It is not every decadent Countess who sells jam to keep her end up in this see-saw world. It requires grit and a rare brand of pride uncommon in the quality to rise to the occasion. There is a vain pride that welters into nothingness in the dismal hour of failure, and starves tragically like a rat in a trap rather than help itself or accept help from others. There is another pride--robust, full-blooded pride--that spurns the conventionalities of caste, takes off its coat and fights misfortune face to face resolutely for its daily bread, and wins through. This is where our heroic Countess steps in splendour.
Why immolate oneself on the altar of family pride? A false goddess sits enshrined there on a false throne. Why live on the reputation a forefather won in the Middle Ages? That reputation is now spent capital; it is worthless scrip on the social market to-day. Build another reputation for yourself, clean and sweet and new. If ill luck drops you in the ditch, to maintain inviolate the family honour you must get up and with ungloved hands work your way out of it like a man. Sell jam.
Perhaps you hate wearing a brand-new reputation. It sets on you like a misfitting coat. You are an heir of the glorious past, and exult on the length in your ancient lineage. Remember also you are a trustee of the splendid future; the shining days to come demand your thoughtful consideration. Do rare credit to your sacred trust. It is better to transmit honour to your descendants than to borrow fame from your ancestors. It is better to be lovingly remembered than nobly born. That grim old ancestor of yours who built the family fortune out of nothing and grimly fought every inch of the way up to renown single-handed would despise you for a poltroon lying derelict in the ditch of despair. If the family fall throws you to the ground, are you going to lie there indefinitely and rot like offal? Sell jam.
An Italian nobleman went to America to repair his fallen fortunes. He refused to soil his hands in trade; his old family title was the magic key he carried to open the treasure-chests of the New World. So he arrived in America armed with a despatch-box full of introductions to money magnates there. He called upon a banker in New York, and presented a letter of introduction. The banker asked him what he knew about business. "Nothing," replied the nobleman; "I am a cavalry officer." "Sorry I cannot help you," said the banker; "the circus left our town yesterday." The nobleman was floored. Enraged at the magnate's laconic insolence, he destroyed all letters of introduction contained in his despatch-box and tackled the world on his own. He folded up his family pedigree, laid it in lavender, went into the market and sold jam. In the market-place a long head is a better weapon to fight with than a long pedigree. He worked out his own salvation, and returned home and lived contentedly amongst the orange-groves and sunshine of Southern Italy.
VIII
THE LURE OF OLD FURNITURE
Eight old Chippendale chairs and two settees sold recently at Christie's for 5,600 guineas, and report says quickly after the auctioneer's hammer dismissed the lot they changed hands again at £1,000 profit to the buyer. There must be great charm in old furniture when people scramble for it regardless of cost. I suppose money is dull stuff to own heaps of unless you can exchange it for things that give the heart a passing thrill of pleasure (the great sport is in the making it); and the more money you make, the more it takes you to work up the thrill. A millionaire's smile is an expensive hobby to cultivate. Gathering a bunch of wild primroses in the sunny April woods gladdens the heart of a child amazingly, and he dreams the pleasure over again in his sleep. It costs over 5,000 guineas to tingle the feelings of a rich man. The child's outlay is more economical, but it fetches as much enjoyment.
Wherein lies the secret charm of old furniture? I love it myself, and for that reason ask the question for the pleasure given in answering it. I am only a trifler in antiques, possessing a few pieces of exquisite old oak of the seventeenth-century period; also several pieces of walnut furniture which are old Italian. The Italian pieces lie fallow in a villa just outside the barriéra St. Domenico, Florence, where we live with them half the year round. Beautiful old walnut furniture counts much more in its own homeland, while the alien oak of England, which we love here, is cold and expressionless in the rooms of an Italian villa on the sunny slopes of Fiesole. It loses its aura in a strange land.
Old furniture with a time-worn glossy face on it is interesting because it is made by the hands of man; and the man used his brain in making it, as well as his hands; surely man's delight is in man's work. A piece of old furniture reflects the mind of its maker in every detail of its construction, and that is a very fascinating feature to me; for we are told on high authority that "hand-work possesses character, almost personality," and we believe the high authority with all our heart.
Modern furniture has no personality, and so it transmits no message; it is machine-made, and I hold no kinship with machinery to cherish warm feeling in its favour; but handcraft ever commands our respect, and when well done wins our widest admiration.
Machine-made work carries a lie on the face of it; it imitates handwork. The machine simulates a trouble that has not been taken. It produces beautifully designed and ornamented imitations of ancient handcraft at trifling cost. Who cares for beauty produced by formula? Beauty is the flowering of noble labour linked to useful purpose. Cheapness and showiness are the flaring advertisements of the mechanical cabinet-maker to-day, and he hits with precision the public taste.
Give me to admire something a man has laboured lovingly and honestly to produce, not what a machine vomits out standard pattern; something a man has put the power of his brain into as well as the dexterity of his hand. William Morris quaintly remarks: "If you have anything to say, you may as well put it into a chair or a table." The cabinet-maker speaks to us with his tools in a language of his own invention. The cabinet-maker has helped to make English homes comfortable to live in, and for so doing we owe him a debt of gratitude. His tools are not the sword and the cannon, but the plane, the chisel, and the swift-moving saw. His art is not destructive to life, piling on misery to man's many woes, but he enriches life manifold by adding comfort and luxury to the widening circle of human happiness. His rewards are not stars and garters and hereditary honours conferred by princes for brave deeds done on the field of battle, but just the recompense that the master of the tools' true play appreciates; the simple pleasure of good work well and truly done sent forth to take honourable place in the stately homes of England, knowing that by such fine hand-craft he will speak from his grave to people unborn; and he even cherishes the inspiring hope that those who are possessors of his treasured work done in oak and walnut and sweet satinwood will, in the hereafterward, in the quietude of their sequestered homes, surrounded by familiar furniture of high lineage, bestow on the workman a passing measure of praise; for these worthy craftsmen put the best of their lives into the labour of their hands.
Old furniture is delightful in your home because it is old. Age has an alchemy of its own that ennobles the work of man. A brand-new house is deadly unromantic, even if it is a dream of architectural excellence. Its appearance is garish and crude. New stones and raw bricks are ugly in the days of their youth, but age transforms the place, be it manor-house or thatched cottage, until enchantment haunts the fabric. I dearly love the grace of antiquity that mellows the venerable homesteads of England and blends the intermingling lustre of tradition with the roll of their lengthening years.
Age likewise has a mellowing influence on furniture. Obliteration of exactitude of form is essential charm in it as it is in a man or woman. You resent the loudness of a newly made rich man. His manners smell strongly of varnish just put on; his vanity and self-importance are unsavoury morsels to swallow without salt. He is a terror to his polite neighbours and a stranger to himself. Wait and see; he will tone down as the mills of life grind off the sharp angles and smooth him into a decent fellow.
Good taste resents primness and self-assertiveness in new furniture; its raw outlines and sharp angles offend the eye. When these stubborn features are subdued by centuries of wear and tear and the wondrous old-time bloom of rich deep colour glorifies the ripened oak with softness and transparency of tone, that quality so delightful to sight and touch which distinguishes genuine antique furniture, then sentimental feeling waxes strong and renders the work attractive to us.
Vague and visionary thoughts of past owners flit across the mind, and kindle emotions in the presence of an ancient piece of furniture of good repute. It idealizes in our minds, and becomes beautiful to us. It is a call of the past. It is an unwritten chapter in some old family history, and we want to handle the key of the legend locked up in it. There may be tragedy or comedy, or a mixture of both, recorded in the family log-book, and the stately old carved-oak court cupboard dozing in the banqueting-hall, generation after generation, saw it all through from beginning to end, but it whispers away no family secrets to inquisitive people. An evil day broke the family fortunes. The venerable court cupboard vacated its place of honour which it occupied for centuries in the Yorkshire manor-house, and has taken up quarters with us in our Sussex home. It is no longer mere chattel; there is human interest in it.
I wonder if it takes kindly to its new home? Land, they say, sometimes resents change of owners, especially passing from a family who had held lordship of the soil for generations. When the old squire dies, the last of his line, the land grieves. It seems to know that it is going to be sold and broken up, and it loses heart. It goes rotten like apples. A patch goes wrong here and a patch goes wrong there, and the rottenness spreads and runs together. It takes the land long to get used to a new master.
Has our old oak court cupboard sensitive feelings like the ancestral acres? Or is it silently and sullenly indifferent to all the changes of fortune that befall it?
I have an oak armchair with a unique story to tell. The back of it is one large panel carved with heavy flora and foliated decoration; on the cross-rail below the panel is carved in bold raised letters: