IITHE GARDEN OF ENGLAND: THEPATCHWORK QUILT

Even your most unadventurous fellow can hardly look on a fair prospect of fields and meadows, woods, villages with smoking chimneys, a river, and a road, without a certain feeling rising in him that he would like to tread the road that winds so dapperly through the country, and discover for himself where it leads.

To those who love their country the road is but a garden path running between borders of fair flowers whose names and virtues should be known to every child.

A poet can weave a story from the speck of mud on a fellow traveller’s boot—the red soil of a Devonshire lane calls up such pictures of fern-covered banks, such rushing streams, as make a poem in themselves.

It strikes one from the very first how neatly most of England is kept. The dip and rise of softly swelling hills across which the curling ribbon of the road winds leisurely between neat hedges, the fields in patches, coloured brown and green, golden with Corn, scarlet with Poppies, yellow with Buttercups; the circular bunches of trees under whose shade fat cattle stand lazily switching their tails at flies; the woods, hangers, shaws and coppices, glades, dells, dingles and combes, all set out so orderly and precise that, from a hill, the country has the appearance of a patchwork quilt set ina pleasant irregularity, studded with straggling farms, and little sleepy villages where the resonant note of the church clock checks off the drowsy hours. The road that runs through this quilt land seems like a thread on which villages and market towns are strung, beads of endless variety, some huddled in a bunch upon a hill, some long and straggling, some thatched and warm, red-bricked and creeper-covered, others white with roofs of purple slate, others of grey stone, others of warm yellow. All alive with birds and flowers and village children, butterflies and trees; fed by broad rivers, or hanging over singing streams or deep in the lush grass of water meadows gay with kingcups.

This garden is for us who care to know it. We can take the road, our garden path, and pluck, as we will, flowers of all kinds from our borders; sleep in our garden on beds of bracken pulled and piled high under trees; or on soft heaps of heather heaped under sheltering stones. If we know our garden well enough it will give us food—salads, fruits and nuts; it will cure us of our ills by its herbs; feed our imagination by the quaint names of flower and herb. Here’s a small list that will sing a man to sleep, dreaming of England.

Poet’s Asphodel.Shepherd’s Purse.Our Lady’s Bedstraw.Water Soldier.Rowan.Hound’s Tongue.Gipsy Rose.Fool’s Parsley.Celandine.Columbine.Adder’s Tongue.Speedwell.Thorn Apple.Virgin Bower.Whin.

Poet’s Asphodel.

Shepherd’s Purse.

Our Lady’s Bedstraw.

Water Soldier.

Rowan.

Hound’s Tongue.

Gipsy Rose.

Fool’s Parsley.

Celandine.

Columbine.

Adder’s Tongue.

Speedwell.

Thorn Apple.

Virgin Bower.

Whin.

These alone of hundreds give a lift to the day: there’s a story to each of them.

Take our England as a garden and let the eye roam over the land. Here’s the flat country of the Fens,long, long vistas of fields, with spires and towers sticking up against the sky. Plenty of rare flowers there for your gardener, marsh flowers, water plants galore. That’s the place to see the sky, to watch a summer storm across the plain, to see the Poplars bending in an angry wind, and the white windmills glare against purple rain clouds. Few hedges here but plenty of banks and dykes, and canals they call drains. Here you may find Marsh Valerian, Water Crowsfoot, Frogbit, pink Cuckoo-flowers, Bog Bean, Sundews, Sea Lavender, and Bladder-worts. The Sundews alone will give you an hour’s pleasure with their glistening red glands tricked out to catch unwary flies and midges.

Then there’s a wild garden waiting you by stone walls in the dales of Derbyshire, or in the Yorkshire wolds, or the Lancashire fells. On the open heaths, where the grey roads wind through warm carpets of ling and heather, you can fill your nostrils with the sweet scent of Gorse and Thyme.

I was sitting one hot afternoon, drawing the twisted bole of a Beech tree. All the wood in which I sat was stirring with life; the dingle below me a mist of flowers, Primroses, Wind-flowers, Hyacinths whose bells made the air softly fragrant. Above me the sky showed through a trellis-work of young leaves, the distance of the wood was purple with opening buds, and the floor was a swaying sea of Bluebells dancing in a gentle breeze. Squirrels chattered in the trees; now and then a wood pigeon flopped out of a tree, and a blackbird whistled in some hidden place.

All absorbed in my work, following the grotesquely beautiful curves of the beech roots, I heard no sound of approaching footsteps. A voice behind me said “Good,” and I started, dropping my pencil in my confusion.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” said the voice.

I turned round and saw a man standing behind me, a man without a cap, with curly brown hair, and a face coloured deep brown by the sun. He was dressed in a faded suit of greenish tweed, wore a blue flannel shirt, carried a thick stick in his hand, and had a worn-looking box slung over his shoulders by a stained leather strap.

I suppose my surprise showed in my face in some comic way, for he laughed heartily, showing a set of strong white teeth.

“No, I’m not Pan,” he said laughing, “or a keeper, or a vision. I’m a gardener.”

His admirable assurance and pleasant address were very captivating.

I asked him what he did there, and he immediately sat down by me, pulled out a black clay pipe, and lit up before replying. He extended the honours of his match to my cigarette and I noticed that his hands were well formed, and that he wore a silver ring on the little finger of his right hand.

When he had arranged himself to his comfort, propping his back against a tree and crossing his legs, he told me he was a gardener on a very large scale.

I wished him joy of his garden, at which he smiled broadly, and informed me in the most matter-of-fact way that he gardened the whole of Great Britain.

For a moment I wondered if I had fallen in with an amiable lunatic, but a closer inspection of his face showed me he was sane, uncommonly healthy, and, I judged, a clever man.

“A vast garden?” I said.

Without exactly replying to my remark, which was put half in the manner of a question, he said, partly tohimself, “The slight fingers of April. Do you notice how delicate everything is?”

I had noticed. The air was full of suggestion, the flowers were very fairylike, the green of the trees very tender.

“Pied April,” said I.

Instead of answering me again he unstrapped the box that now lay beside him on the grass, opened it and took from it a beautiful Fritillaria.

“There’s one of the April Princesses, if you like,” he said. “There are not many about here, just an odd one or two; plenty near Oxford though.”

“You know Oxford?” said I.

“Guess again,” he said, smiling. “I’m no Oxford man, but I know the woods about there well. Please go on working; I’ll talk.”

I was about to look at my watch when he stopped me.

“It’s half-past two,” he said. “The slant of the sun on the leaves ought to tell you that.”

I was amused, interested in the man; he was so odd and quaint. “I’ve not eaten my lunch yet,” I said. “Perhaps you’ll share it with me.”

“I was wondering if you’d invite me,” he replied. “I’m rather hungry.”

I had, luckily, enough for two. Slices of ham, some cheese, a loaf of new bread, and a full flask. Very soon we were eating together like old friends.

In an inconsequent way he asked me what I thought of the name of Noakes.

I said it was as good as any other.

“Let’s have it Noakes, then,” he said, laughing again. A very merry man.

“About this garden of yours, Mr. Noakes?” I asked.

He tapped his wooden box and said, “If you want toknow, I’m a herbalist. You can scarcely call me a civilised being, except on occasions when I do go among my fellow men to winter.” He pulled a cap and a pair of gloves out of his pocket. “My titles to respectability,” he said.

“And in the Spring?”

“I take to the road with the Coltsfoot and the Butterburrs. I come out with the first Violet, and the Pussy-cat Willow. I wander, all through the year, up and down the length and breadth of England, with my box of herbs. I get my bread and cheese that way—while you draw for pleasure.”

“Partly.”

“It must be for pleasure, or you wouldn’t take so much pains. I suppose you think I’m a very disgraceful person, a bad citizen, a worse patriot. But I know the news of the world better than those who read newspapers. Although I trade on superstitions, I do no harm.”

“Do you sell your herbs?”

“Colchicum for gout—Autumn Crocus, you know it,” he replied. “Willow-bark quinine; Violet distilled, for coughs. Not a bad trade—besides, it keeps me free.”

I hazarded a question. “Tell me—you must observe these things—do swifts drink as they fly? It has often puzzled me.”

“I don’t know,” said he. “Ask Mother Nature. Some of these things are the province of professors. I’m not a learned man; just a herbalist.”

At that moment a thrush began to sing in a tree overhead. My friend cocked his head, just like an animal.

“There’s the wise thrush,” he quoted softly, “he sings his song twice over.”

“So you read Browning,” I said.

“I have a garret and a library,” he said. “Winter quarters. We shall meet one day, and you’ll be surprised. I actually possess two dress suits. It’s a mad world.” He stopped abruptly to listen to the thrush. “This is better than the Carlton or Delmonico’s, anyhow!”

“What do you do?” I asked. “Go from village to village selling herbs?”

“That’s about it. Lord! Listen to that bird. I heard and saw a nightingale sing once in a shaw near Ewelme. I think a thrush is the better musician, though. Yes, I sell my herbs, all sorts and kinds. Drugs and ointments, very simple I assure you—Hemlock and Poppy to cure the toothache. Wood Sorrel—full of oxalic acid, you know, like Rhubarb—for fevers. Aconite for rheumatics—very popular medicine I make of that, sells like hot cakes in water meadow land, so does Agrimony for Fen ague. Tansy and Camomile for liver—excellent. Hellebore for blisters, and Cowslip pips for measles—I’m a regular quack, you see.”

“And it’s worth doing, is it?”

He leaned back, his pipe between his lips, a very contented man. “Worth doing!” he said. “Worth owning England, with all the wonderful mornings, and the clean air; worth waking up to the scent of Violets; worth lying on your back near a Bean field on a summer day; worth seeing the Bracken fronds uncurl; watching kingfishers; worth having the fields and hedgerows for a garden, full of flowers always—I should think so. I earn my bread, and I’m happy, far happier than most men. I can lend a hand at haymaking, at the harvest; at sheep-shearing, at the cider press, at hoeing, when I’m tired of my own company. I’ve worked the seines in the mackerel season on the South coast—do you know the bend of shore by Lyme and Charmouth?I’ve ploughed in the Lowlands, and found lost sheep in the Lake Country; caught moles for a living in Norfolk, and cut Hop-poles in Kent, and Heather in the Highlands.—And I’m not forty, and I’m never ill.”

THE WEALD OF KENT SHOWING THE COUNTRY LIKE A PATCHWORK QUILT.

“It sounds delightful.”

He rose to his feet and gave me his hand.

“We shall meet again,” he said laughing. “Perhaps in the conventional armour of starched shirts and inky black. For the present—to my work,” he pointed over his shoulder. “I’m building hen-coops for a widow.Hasta luego.”

With that he vanished as quietly as he came. Almost as soon as the trees had hidden him from my sight, a blackbird began to whistle, then stopped, and a laugh came out of the woods.

Altogether a very strange man.

I found, when he had gone, that he had written something on a piece of paper and had pinned it to the tree with a long thorn. It was this:

“I think, very likely, you may not know Ben Jonson’s ‘Gipsy Benediction.’ If you don’t, accept the offering as a return for my excellent lunch.

“The faerybeam upon you—The stars to glisten on you—A moon of lightIn the noon of night,Till the firedrake hath o’er gone you!The wheel of fortune guide you;The boy with the bow beside you;Run aye in the wayTill the bird of day,And the luckier lot, betide you.”

“The faerybeam upon you—

The stars to glisten on you—

A moon of light

In the noon of night,

Till the firedrake hath o’er gone you!

The wheel of fortune guide you;

The boy with the bow beside you;

Run aye in the way

Till the bird of day,

And the luckier lot, betide you.”

He signed, at the foot, “Noakes, Under the Greenwood Tree.” And he seemed to have written some of his clear laughter into it.

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