CHAPTER IX

THE JULY FIELDS

“Through rich green solitudes,And wildly hanging woodsWith blossoms and with bell,In rich redundant swell,And the prideOf the mountain daisy there,And the forest everywhere,With the dress and with the airOf a bride.”Duncan Ban MacIntyre

“Through rich green solitudes,

And wildly hanging woods

With blossoms and with bell,

In rich redundant swell,

And the pride

Of the mountain daisy there,

And the forest everywhere,

With the dress and with the air

Of a bride.”

Duncan Ban MacIntyre

Amidthe brilliant floral gathering which crowds into the arena of the Alps upon the blazoned entry of July, one marks no sign of the fair and frail St. Bruno’s Lily. Nor is this as it should not be. Dainty to the point of extreme delicacy, this flower of Paradise is justly of a season more restrained, and one should not heap regrets upon its absence from so flamboyant a concourse as this present. The rich-blue Bell Gentian is likewise absent from the gay and jostling crowd, having atlast vanished from the shadier nooks where, in fond persistency, it has been continuing the cult of spring. But these two precious field-flowers form, possibly, the sum of June’s distinguished absentees.

“Why fret about them if to-day be sweet!”

And, surely, to-day is as sweet as ever yesterday was! The glory of the Bistort is not yet on the wane, and to it the tall Buttercup has wedded its lustre, andRanunculus aconitifolius, the Fair Maid of France; consequently, the moister meadows are a knee-deep wealth of pink, yellow, and white. On the drier fields, too, the rich blue and mauve expanses of Salvia and Geranium are now reinforced by the crowded blue bells ofCampanula rhomboidalis, and hosts of the mauve-blossomed Scabious; while upon the slopes the now declining Biscutella and Strawberry-flowered Potentilla have for new companionsHieracium alpinum,Hypochœris maculata,Crepis aurea,Campanula barbata, andC. Scheuchzeri, the tall lemon-yellowHypochœris uniflora, and the lilacGentiana campestris. The tall blue and tall whitePhyteuma betonicæfolium, and the blue, round-headedP. orbiculareare everywhere, and have been joinedby the tall blueP. Micheliand the little blueP. hemisphæricumof onion-like leaves. The Orchids, also everywhere, are still in full beauty, their numbers having been swelled by the arrival ofGymnadenia albida. The statelyVeratrum albumis in flower, companioning the equally stately Yellow Gentian, to which, in habit and foliage, though not in blossom, it bears a strong resemblance. The Arnica, also, is coming into bloom: the tall, red-brown Martagon Lily is fast filling out its buds; the Yellow Rattle and Anthyllis are ubiquitous; the graceful Thesium, with sprays of olive-coloured stems and leaves and tiny white stars (and ugly English name of Bastard Toadflax), is looking its daintiest; and hosts of Ox-eyed Marguerites and pink Umbelliferæ top the meadows far and wide. On the rough banks and edges of the fields, or on the rocks that so often crop up in these pastures,Saponaria ocymoides,Helianthemum alpestre,Calamintha alpina,Veronica saxatilis, andSilene rupestrisadd respectively their bright pink, orange-yellow, mauve, blue, and white abundance to the radiance of the field-flowers proper. In “the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling well-spring,”Myosotis palustrisis opening its myriad blue eyes; theBartsia lingers by “the flower-lit stream” and is joined by the tiny bright blueGentiana nivalis, here and there showing its rarer white form; whilst up upon the mountain-sides, backing and dominating the whole of this crowded, gay array, the Rhododendron is fast putting forth its red, amazing fulness.

If June be reckoned as a millionaire, then surely July must also, and with the additional prefix “multi”! “It is with flowers as with men,” says Major Reginald Rankin in “The Royal Ordering of Gardens,” and “Providence is on the side of big battalions.” And, of a truth, this is so in these fields; bigger battalions it would indeed be hard to find. Is there not here some striking suggestion of an element in ultimate beauty—that of an harmonious brotherhood? One certainly seems to catch a glimpse of that economic state where individuality is general rather than particular; where personality is absorbed by the mass, and beauty is conspicuous only in the whole; where, so to speak, the red neckties of leadership do not flare out in designed and conscious isolation. Among themselves plants have their likes and dislikes. It is well known that, for example, certain flowers are only found in the company ofCorn, and it is said that in the kitchen-garden the Radish simply detests the Thyme. But here, on these meadows, all trace of discord seems lost in one great accord, and the plants, both great and small, blue-blooded and plebeian,

“A social commerce hold, and firm supportThe full adjusted harmony of things.”

“A social commerce hold, and firm support

The full adjusted harmony of things.”

And what pageantry it all is; what consummate pageantry! “The flowers are at their Bacchanals!” The Old Mother, unlike many other parents, is not outdistanced by her children. Though man be loath to admit it, she holds the lead, and sets him both pace and tune. What are his pageants beside the pageantry of this his age-full parent? He summons up his past for glory, and, rightly or wrongly, sees magnificence only in what he has been; but his old mother, as here on these fairy fields, seeks naught further than the present. Were it not well that he read in this the lesson: “Nature must once more become his home, as it is the home of the animals and angels”? Were it not well that he should shift his ground and thus amend his outlook? Scarcely does it befit him to brag about

“Nature’s fair, fruitless, aimless worldMen take and mould at will!”

“Nature’s fair, fruitless, aimless world

Men take and mould at will!”

“Fruitless, aimless world”? Why, willy-nilly, Nature mouldshim—even by allowing him to think he is mouldingher.

Behold these meadows! Will he take them and mould them to anything better than they are? No, he certainly will not. Will he give them an aim higher than they possess at present? Possibly. There is, however, only one way by which he may succeed: let him unbend, and let him gather these meadows closer to his heart and understanding: let him transport what he can of them to his parks and gardens. But let him not for one moment imagine that by so doing he is “moulding” them; for, indubitably, it is they who will be moulding him.

And for this reason: Alpine fields are such superlatively true art that he cannot but find in them, as in all true art, a common ground of interest, fellowship, happiness, advancement; “a means”—as Tolstoi says of true art—“of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings”—feelings that must ameliorate, must refine.

We are now nearing the dread but necessary moment when the scythe will be laying low theflowers; but ere the arrival of this careful, callous friend of the cows, we have a few more hours in which to cast another greedy look around. The Bistort and Buttercup, Orchid and tall Rampion, have become, or are fast becoming, dingy and seed-full, but there are several handsome and interesting newcomers; and many of these subjects, such as the Martagon Lily and Field Gentian, which at the commencement of the month had only a bloom or two open here and there, are now at perfection. The redCentaurea uniflorais a vivid object among the grasses: a “distinct advance,” as nurserymen would say, uponC. scabiosa, our common Hard-heads or Knobweed, blooming beside it. The sturdy Brown Gentian (Gentiana purpurea) and its near relation, the cream-coloured or greenish-yellowG. punctata, are conspicuous objects, andHieracium aurantiacum, the fiery, orange-red Hawkweed or Grimm the Collier, burns as a jewel among them.Astrantia major, the Great Masterwort, unique and charming—more particularly when its flower-heads take on their truly Alpine tint of rosy magenta—is here with its little brother,A. minor, pale and fragile, perhaps from its habit of living in shadier places thanmajor. The Campanulas are glorious, andthe lilac pyramidal heads ofC. spicataare striking “bits of colour” where the grass is sparser. So also are the lovely deep-blue, pea-like masses ofVicia onobrychioides, associating with Rampion, Arnica, and Martagon or Turk’s-cap Lily.Dianthus superbusspreads a lace-like mantle of pink and white over the shadier portions of the fields by the forest’s edge; andD. sylvestrisis a glory of flesh-pink upon the hotter slopes by the rocks.Aconitum Napellus, blue Monkshood orChar de Venus, is not hereabouts as on the higher pastures; neither are the yellow and orange pea-likeOrobus luteusand that curious Bellflower,Campanula thyrsoides, with its stumpy hollow stem surmounted by a close-set mass of washed-out yellow flowers; nor is the handsome large-flowered yellow Foxglove (Digitalis ambigua) so plentiful in the Jura Mountains and in other limestone districts. ButThalictrum aquilegifolium, most seductive of the Meadowrues, raises its soft-lilac or cream-white plumes—often beside the majestic cream-white plumes ofSpiræa Aruncus, Queen of the Fields—in luxuriant hollows where dwell bushes of Alpine Eglantine and Honeysuckle. In these rich, grassy hollows, too, are noble plants of the sticky, yellowSalvia glutinosa, or Jupiter’sDistaff; the tall mauveMulgedium alpinum, theLaitue des Alpesor Alpine Lettuce of the French; the equally tall redAdenostyles albifrons; and the Lesser Foxglove (Digitalis lutea), with dark, shiny foliage and packed spikes of pale yellow blossoms. The orange-yellow Leopard’s-Bane,Senecio Doronicum, and the pink and whiteValeriana montana, are upon the dry, turfy banks; and down upon the lower slopes, among the shrubs or out in the sun-baked open, is a brilliant concourse of yellowOnonis natrix, pinkO. rotundifolia(here and there white in form), blue, Thrift-likeJasione montana, tall, rich-blue, open-floweredCampanula persicifolia, and pure yellow, red-stamenedVerbascum phlomoides, finest of the Mulleins. Intense-blue clumps of Hyssop enliven the hot, shaly spaces; and here, too, isLinum tenuifolium, a Flax with delicate lilac flowers; the Golden Thistle (Carlina vulgaris), which, with the whiteC. acaulis, is so useful for winter decoration: the exquisite pink and white rambling Vetch,Coronilla varia; andDianthus sylvestrisandD. Carthusianorumare wellnigh everywhere in pink and red abundance—the latter sometimes running to so deep and fiery a shade as to be found worthy of the additional name ofatrorubens.

GERANIUM SYLVATICUM,POTENTILLA RUPESTRIS,CENTAUREA MONTANA, the pink Bistort, the little Alpine Bistort, painted on the spot in the fields at the beginning of July.

Truly, this is a “sun-kissed land of plenty,” with July blazoned in tones of utmost triumph! Yet harmony, restraint, refinement, have not in any way been sacrificed. Our sense of this is so acute that when we return to the plains, the gardens and their gorgeous burdens are apt to jar upon us, as will vulgarity or a flagrant want of taste.

After some three months spent in intimacy with these slopes and fields, go down to the swallow’s summer quarters—to Martigny, or elsewhere on the plain—and mark the Zinnias and French Marigolds, Asters and Sweet-Williams, and the flaming beds of Petunias, Salvias, and Geraniums. Mark how gross seems all this “cultivation” after the Alpine wildness. You are at once constrained to ask yourself. What is there derogatory in wildness if to be cultivated is to be as these garden flowers? You see at once more clearly than possibly you ever saw before that, after all, refinement is largely a relative quantity, and that even the Rose, Dean Hole’s “Queen Rosa,” can appear coarse after you have spent a season with the Gentian.

And perhaps it is this feeling that can account in some measure for our habit of isolating all Alpines upon rockworks. Perhaps it prompts usto treat them with special deference; and though we will not, cannot deny the Balsam, or the Tropeolum, or the Cactus Dahlia our loudest acclamations; though we keep for these and suchlike products of cultivation a proud place in our affections, hailing them as familiars allied most intimately to our ordinary, worldly natures,—though, I say, we hold this grosser, gaudier vegetation with loving tenacity to our hearts, yet is our rarer self in instant touch with these Alpine wild-flowers, and, as it were, conducts them honourably to a shrine apart.

The Aster and the Edelweiss are now in bloom above us, and we are “list’ning with nice distant ears” to the chime of the cattle-bells, wind-wafted from the higher pastures, half wishing it were our business to climb. We could, if we would, be again with the youth of the year; for one of the delightful possibilities of Alpine residence is to be able to follow spring and summer well into the heart of autumn. But this year we dare not; our task is to watch these half-way fields to the end of the floral seasons. Nor is our lot a hard one. Though flower-land hereabouts is now nearly a dream of yesterday, yet have we much that canstill hold us to the spot, enchanted and instructed; though for some few days past the fields have seen their best, and are now for the most part spacious park-like pleasaunces of yellowish-green, yet have we still the famous setting of

“... dreaming mountains,Lifted from the world together”;

“... dreaming mountains,

Lifted from the world together”;

yet have we still the vast, irreproachable arena which, there is no gainsaying, has helped towards the deep and lasting impression we have gathered from the meadows.

Over yonder, towering high above the Grand St. Bernard road, and reflected snow for snow and precipice for precipice in the placid waters of the lake, is the Grand Combin, one of the noblest units of “those great constellations of snow-peaks which Nature has massed, in splendid and prodigal confusion,” in this part of Switzerland; away, at the end of the Val Ferret, are the white and graceful lines of the Grand Golliaz, flanked on the near side by themassifof Saleinaz, and on the further side by the Groupe du Grand Saint-Bernard; while, immediately above us, suffused with the red of the flowering Rhododendron, are the steep and rocky masses of the Breyaz, the Clocherd’Arpette, and the Catogne, that curious mountain that can be seen from Vevey and Lausanne, a sugarloaf-like cone, blocking the very centre of the Rhône Valley.

What a happy thing it is that in this neighbourhood the mountains are reminiscent of nothing except their own giant individualities. How vexing when this is otherwise—when, I mean, there is a lion rock, or a weeping woman, or a head of Napoleon in the landscape; as when Mark Twain discovered that one of the aiguilles flanking Mont Blanc “took the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit’s head.” At Château d’Oex, for instance, the outline of the Gummfluh is a really creditable profile likeness of the great Gladstone with his collar, and that of the Rubli next door presents the profile of O’Connell, the Irish patriot. Apart from the damage inflicted upon the landscape by the intrusion of party politics, such huge examples of Nature’s unconscious incursions into portraiture, when once they have made themselves plain, become a distressing obsession; and especially is this so for the artist who attempts to paint these mountains without producing a puzzle-picture. Fortunately, there are some places which up to the present seem to know nothing of such untowardresemblances in their surroundings; fortunately, there are some beauty-spots which have so far escaped the eye with the disturbing gift of “seeing forms” in clouds and trees and whatnot; and Champex is one such. At Champex we may rest and dream without fear of our indulgence degenerating into a nightmare.

But this is not such a season for dreaming as was the spring; we are far more of the world than we were when the Vernal Gentian, that “turquoise lighting a ground of green,” was heralding all that is now so rapidly falling before the scythe. Yet it must not be supposed that these fields have lost all power to nourish or stimulate the imagination. The configuration and nature of the ground are so varied that haymaking is a more lengthy and irregular operation than it is upon the plains. We have only to turn to the ousy land where the Grass-of-Parnassus[1]opens its white, green-veined, Ranunculus-like flowers among the large, rich-blue bells ofCampanula Scheuchzeriand the tall, paler blue spikes ofPolemonium cœruleum, the well-knownJacob’s Ladder of our gardens; or to the drier stretches where the Heather is just tinting its olive-green branches with a suspicion of rose, and the Rampions, Arnica, Hieracium, and Brown Gentian are mingling with the warm grey, feathery seed-heads ofAnemone sulphurea. Here we find the flowers and butterflies as numerous and as gay as ever; here among the grasses isBanagna Atrata, the little dull-black moth with white-tipped wings, seeking sanctuary from the devastating work of the reapers;Zygœna carniolica, one of the most distinct and fascinating of the bright Burnet butterflies, a stranger to England, greedily absorbed upon the flowers of the Scabious; numberless Fritillaries, speeding hither and thither, their burnished pearl-backed wings flashing in the sunlight,—here, in fact, we have summer at its height, uninjured, undisturbed—a place, as Walden was, where we may “transact some private business with the fewest obstacles.”

[1]The name “Grass-of-Parnassus” often occasions wonder; for the plant, a member of the St. John’s Wort tribe, shows no affinity to grass. Anne Pratt, in her celebrated book on English Wild-flowers, says the name possibly arises from the fact that the plant “is as common as the very grass itself on Mount Parnassus.”

Messieurs les étrangers(how good a name!) are now arriving by the hundred. Flora’s Feast in this region may be said to be over, and the table is all but cleared. For full two months have we been revelling in a luxury of colour which noother two months make any but an indifferent attempt to approach; and it is when these two months have run their unique, delightful course that the vast majority of our fellows arrive. How strangely perverse a state of things is this! How curiously sunken in the groove of custom!

PARADISIA LILIASTRUM, the Paradise or St. Bruno’s Lily.

The fields are bald, the slopes are shorn or ragged, and the grass that is left standing is looking for the most part very “seedy.” The golden-flowered, pink-flowered, and white-flowered Sedums are blossoming upon the field-rocks; the Willow-Herb is lighting up the rough and stony places with its rosy-red spikes; the Bilberry’s fruit is turning a dusty blue and its foliage here and there is showing promise of a fiery autumn; the Rhododendron is developing on its thick leaves the brilliant red excrescences which, like the hairy, red excrescences on our common Dog Rose, are said to be so efficacious in cases of rheumatism; the dainty, black-bordered Damon “Blue” butterfly flits from the Heather to stray blooms of Arnica and Astrantia, and many a brown Erebia is hampered and tired out by a horde of red parasites beneath its wings. Summer, in fact, is leaning obviously towards autumn, and we can expect nothing more of note from these meadows, excepta lovely wealth of magenta-pink Colchicum or “Autumn Crocus” in August and September.

When visitors, arriving at this late stage in Flora’s fortunes, see my coloured transcripts of the fields in May and June, they think that I, like any prejudiced enthusiast, have falsified my evidence. They find the picturesben trovato, and they say: “How beautiful! but of course you have used an artist’s licence?” They look at the shaven or dingy fields, then again at my paintings, and they tell me plainly they think they can prove analibifor the flowers in spring, or, at any rate, for a greater part of those I have depicted. And I—I can only assure them their case has “no leg to stand upon.” I can only insist that if they knew of my despair when seated with my picture among the flowers in spring—my despair of ever being able to give more than an inkling of the glorious riot that surrounded me—they would suspect the truth; and that if next year they came here and witnessed for themselves, then, when again they looked upon my pictures, they would curl the lip and speak of insufficiency.

I am aware that it is, of course, not possible for many of the late-coming visitors to leave the home shores earlier in the year: business is business,schooling is schooling, fixed holidays are fixed holidays. But without doubt there are many who could be more timely, if they chose—many who in June are crowding at Montreux, or Geneva, or Lucerne, thinking it too early for the mountains. For there are many who are persuaded that spring is a dangerous period in the Alps. They will tell you in all seriousness, as they have told me, that it is in spring in the Alps that the microbes re-awaken after their winter’s sleep, and that, therefore, it is better to be in the towns; in the towns, mark you, where the microbes, more monstrous and numerous, rarely if ever, slumber—or, if they do so, it is with one eye open!

Then there are those who, because they know nothing about flowers, are convinced that the Alps for them would be a place ofennuiin the spring when high excursions are not yet possible. But what a mistake it is to imagine we must be botanists or gardeners in order to feel a full joy in these fields! No particular knowledge is required to appreciate them; there is no peremptory need to know by name a Geranium from an Orchid, a Pansy from a Cauliflower. Indeed, I am not at all sure but that the “plain man” or woman does not really enjoy them more than does the plantspecialist. For joy comes mostly fuller with the broader moments of life, and analysis is apt to injure the soul-stirring harmony of things. And as the merely emotional value of these fields is immense, their appeal is quite as general as it is particular, perhaps even more so; for the emotional qualities of anything are more acceptable to the man-in-the-street than are its precise and reasoned quantities. And, just as there are far fewer musicians within the ranks of executants than outside, so there are more flower-lovers and lovers of floral beauty outside the ranks of botany and gardening than there are within. Thus amid these fields the plain, expansive man or woman need be in no fear ofennui.Ennui!—why, even when the visitors do come and the flowers have seen their best, there is noennui! Then how much more inspiring must it be when the fields are in their hey-day, not their hay-day!

It is, then, upon all and sundry that I urge the claims of the Alps from the middle of May to mid-July; it is to the merest tyro in plant-lore, as well as to the botanical and gardening enthusiast, that I say, and say in all persuasiveness of conviction: “You know not what you miss by failing

‘To catch the master-note of Nature’s lyre’;

you know not what you lose by neglecting the call of the flowers from off these Alpine fields.”

Go where you will—Champex alone is not the Alpine throne of Flora; she reigns superbly to right and left, from Neuchatel to Valais, from Tessin to Geneva—go where you will amid the Alps and you will find fields that shall enchant you, rejuvenating your spirit and causing the “knapsack of custom,” full of “city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish,” to slip from your back. The plains of the world are the better for the mountains of the world, and in no respect more so than when the mountains are a-flower.

Back to Index Next