CHAPTER V

IN STORM AND SHINE

“Well roars the storm to those that hearA deeper voice across the storm.”Tennyson.

“Well roars the storm to those that hear

A deeper voice across the storm.”

Tennyson.

Although Natureis moving apace, and the poet declares he has even “heard the grasses springing underneath the snow”; although one set of flowers is surplanting another in startlingly swift succession, and the first-fruits of the Alpine year are already on the wane, we will take our own time and study this progress with deliberate care and attention. We have seen May smiling; we ought—nay, we are in duty bound—to see her frowning. Like the récluse of Walden, we ought each of us to become a “self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms.”

JUNE MEADOWS of Salvia, Lychnis, &c., in the Val Ferret, just before arriving at the village of Praz de Fort.

An undoubtedly noble and proper philosophy assures us that there is truth and beauty in no matter what condition, and that they who seenothing but what is tiresome or hideous in certain estates, draw the overplus of tiresomeness and hideousness from their own selves. “Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty,” says this philosophy; “how, then,” it queries, “can any condition be unbeautiful? Is it not yourselves who are in part lacking in a sense of loveliness, since truth can never really be unbeautiful?”

Now, whatever we think of this as a species of sophistry, it behoves us to look into it with quiet and decent care. An everyday world, deep in its old conventions, will declare that it is certainly straining a point to try thus to make all geese appear as swans. With the exception of the poet minded to verse the innate grandeur of gloom, the entire sublimity of storm, the entrancing mellowness of fog and rain, and the wild joy which comes with a blizzard; or perhaps of the painter minded to achieve in paint what the poet is doing in ink (both of them, most probably, contriving their rhapsodies within the snug seclusion of their rooms)—with the exception of these two privileged persons comfortably absorbed in justifying a bias, an everyday world, voting bad weather a kill-joy and mar-plot, will find happiness only in avoiding and forgetting it.

Be that as it may; be fog, wind, and cloud and driving rain and sleet a luxury in which we should revel—or not; of all places in the world in bad weather, the Alps at springtide and at the altitude at which we are now studying them, are probably among the most interesting and absorbing. Let an everyday world, or as much of it as can, come and judge for itself.

If in our composition we have a grain of love for Nature and for Nature-study, there is a fund of opportunity for exercising it even in cloudland at its gloomiest; and if, as in the present case, we are bent upon studying the flowers and the means for their more adequate reception into our English homelands, then bad weather holds for us an amount of experience such as will aid us materially in our object. “Inclemency” takes so large a share in the nurture of these flowers. By companying with them when steeped in cloud and swept by wind, we catch an important glimpse of the grim and forceful side of their existence which is a prime cause of the superlative loveliness that so impresses us when the sun does shine from out an immaculate azure.

Just as the cheese-mite is a product of the cheese, and has attained its beauty and efficiency becauseof the nature of cheese, so are these Alpines the wonderful things they are because of the nature of the conditions with which they have to contend and upon which they have to subsist. It is all very well for us to arrive upon the scene at this late moment in their existence, transplant them to our gardens, and there grow them, maybe, with marked success; it is all very well for us to annex them now to our retinue of chattels, lord it over them, and display them on our rockworks as if it were to us and to our care and trouble that they owe their beauty; but these plants have arrived at what they are without us and our attentions. Our gardens never made them what they are, or gave them one particle of their supreme and striking beauty. Nor are our gardens likely to heighten that beauty in any real way; much more likely is it that we shall arrive at degrading their refinement by bringing it down from the severe purity of the skies to the grosser, easier circumstance of our sheltered soil.

Alpine plants, perhaps because of the extreme conditions with which they have to contend, and therefore because of the extreme measures they have to take in order to defend themselves, seem to be possessed of an efficiency surpassing thatof most other plants. They are what incessant warfare has made of them; they delight in it. Strenuous children of strenuous circumstance, they are self-reliant to a degree, and hold themselves with a winning air of independence. But it is independence begot of strict dependence; they admit as much quite frankly and sanely—an admittal of which man might well make a note in red ink. Nature all over the world is saying, not, “Let me help you to be independent,” but, “You shall and must depend upon me for your independence.” And no living things have better understood this truth than have the Alpines; no living things have acknowledged and mastered this obligation more thoroughly than they. Hence their beauty; hence their serenity and “nerve”; hence their “blended holiness of earth and sky.”

Mark with what consummate efficiency these Alpine field-flowers cope with stern inclemency. Tossed and torn by storms for which the Alps are famous, see how they anchor themselves to Mother Earth! Washed by torrential rains upon the rapid slopes, or parched by the most personal of suns, small wonder that their roots, in many cases, should form by far the greater part of their bulk and stature. They recall to mind that learnedprofessor who, wishing possibly to postulate something “new,” declared to an unconvinced but amused world that what it saw of a tree was not the tree—the tree was underground.

Whilst painting in the Val d’Arpette in June of this year (1910), I met with a striking instance of the boisterous treatment to which these plants must accustom themselves. The day was radiantly fine (as any one may see from the picture facing page 24), yet suddenly, and without warning, a most violent wind tore through the little valley, sweeping everything loose and insecure before it, upsetting my easel and camp-stool, carrying my Panama hat up on to the snow, and making of the Anemones and Violas a truly sorry sight.

This violence, albeit of a somewhat different nature, reminded me of several experiences I had had of uncommonly powerful eddies of wind, travelling, like some waterspout at sea, slowly, in growling, whirring spirals, over the steep pastures, tearing up the grass and blossoms and carrying them straight and high up into the air; whilst all around—except myself!—remained unmoved and peaceful. I have seen such eddies strike a forest, shaking and swaying the giant pines like saplings, wrenching off dead wood andmany a piece of living branch, and whirling them aloft. Under a glorious sky and amid the solitude and stillness of the Alps, such violence is at least uncanny, if not a little unnerving. One is moved to turn in admiration to the ever-smiling Alpines and ejaculate:

“Brave flowers—that I could gallant it like you,And be as little vain!”

“Brave flowers—that I could gallant it like you,

And be as little vain!”

With this as a sample—and a by no means uncommon sample—of what they have to withstand, small wonder that so many of these plants have endowed themselves with such a deep, tenacious grip upon their home! Try with your trowel to dig up an entire root of, for instance, the Alpine Clover (Trifolium alpinum), or the Sulphur Anemone, or the Bearded Campanula, or the tall blue Rampion (Phyteuma betonicifolium), or even so diminutive a plant asSibbaldia procumbens, or of so modest a one asPlantago alpina, and you will be astounded at the depth to which you must delve. You will find it the same with a hundred other subjects; and, unless you be digging in some loose and gritty soil, most probably your amazement will end in despair, and in destruction to the plant. More likely than not, you will hackthrough the main root long before you have unearthed the end of it. If for no other reason than this, then, it is at least unwise to try to uproot these pasture-flowers. Should they be required for the home-garden, it is far wiser and better behaviour to gather seed from them later in the season. Most of them grow admirably from seed thus gathered andsown as soon as possible; most of them develop rapidly and blossom within two years; and with this grand advantage over uprooted plants—they are able to acclimatize themselves from birth to their new conditions and surroundings, their translation being no rude and abrupt transition from one climate to another.

In this and in many other directions, it is when bad weather sweeps the Alps that we can perhaps best learn from Nature what Emerson learnt from her: that “she suffers nothing to remain in her Kingdom which cannot help itself.” And, in learning how these plants help themselves, we are also learning how best we can help them when we remove them to our gardens. Bad weather is the greatest of teachers all the world over. On sunny days we enjoy and admire what is very largely the product of the storms.

Everything, even the worst thing, in its place,is a good thing. As all sunshine and no storm would make man a nonentity, so would it produce Alpines devoid of their present great ability and comeliness. A thing of complete beauty is a thing of all weathers; and it is a thing of present joy, and of joy for ever, because of much anguish in the past. You and I could see nothing of loveliness if it were not for ugliness; and these Alpines would not be worth looking at were it not for the awful attempts made by Nature to overwhelm them. “A perpetual calm will never make a sailor”; or, as Mr. Dooley says, “Foorce rules the wurruld”—and keeps it peacefully disturbed, bewitchingly “alive.”

And Alpine inclemency possesses an æsthetic value which is as important as it is alluring. Whether “in the smiles or anger of the high air,” these flower-fields are invariably things of beauty; even as the diamond glitters in the gloom, so do these pastures shine throughout the storm. What could be more æsthetically beautiful than the rosy expanses of Mealy Primrose bathed in dense, driving mists, or (as in the picture facing page 16) the regiments of Globe-Flower, standing pale but fascinating, in weather which, were we down on the plains, we should consider “not fit for a dogto be abroad in”? Or what more winsome than the widespread colonies of Bartsia, Micheli’s Daisy, Pedicularis, Biscutella, and Bell-Gentian (Gentiana verna, unfortunately, is closed when the sun hides itself), lying subdued but colour-full beside the steaming waters of the lake?

Field ofCAMPANULA RHOMBOIDALISon the Col de la Forclaz, about the beginning of July.

Ah! where one of these Alpine lakes is in the landscape, what wonders of Nature’s artistry we may watch when rough winds howl and toss the seething cloud into ever-changing combinations of tint, form, and texture!

“With how ceaseless motion, with how strangeFlowing and fading, do the high Mists rangeThe gloomy gorges of the Mountains bare”!

“With how ceaseless motion, with how strange

Flowing and fading, do the high Mists range

The gloomy gorges of the Mountains bare”!

A hundred hues of grey fill the vapour-laden air and are mirrored in receptive waters—hues with which the fresh rose of the Primula and the rich, full yellow of the Marsh-Marigold blend with perfect felicity, lending that touch of human appeal which makes the scene ideal.

The forests, too, are never so picturesque as when clouds cling to the pine and larch, softening the tone and carriage of these somewhat formal trees, and breaking up every suggestion of monotony in their reiterated masses. A soft, weird, intimately mysterious beauty reigns over everything.What matter the winds and the rains if they bring us such expression? By what is regret justified in all this witchery? Regret that the sun no longer shines, inducing the Vernal Gentian to open wide its bright blue eyes? Nay; here, in Alp-land, if nowhere else, does an ultimate philosophy speak possibly of what is actual; here, if nowhere else, bad weather is but a delightful foil to bright and sunny days. Regret! There is no right room for such repining: no sound and balanced reason to moan, as moans, for instance, the Chinese poet:

“If only to darken the darkness, O Thou in Thy heavens above,Why dost Thou light for a moment the lamp of a beautiful thing?”

“If only to darken the darkness, O Thou in Thy heavens above,

Why dost Thou light for a moment the lamp of a beautiful thing?”

For in the Alps the lamp of Beauty burns without cessation; and where wondrous flowering pastures border some rough-cut lake, legacy from glaciers long since retired, the lamp burns always brightly.

By writing of inclemency in such full-flavoured tones, I am not trying to make the best of a bad case; I am simply and honestly setting forth the undoubted good there is in what may seem “impossible.” Any one who has lived with these things and has watched them springtime after springtime,is usually in no way eager to run away, although well aware that the sheltered distractions of the towns are within quite easy reach. One finds no really compensating counterpart in kursaals and shop-windows for an Alpine springtime where flowering pastures kiss “the crystal treasures of the liquid world.” One need not be a poet, one need not be a painter, one need not be a mystic, and one certainly need be no “neurasthenic” to appreciate the figurative sunshine of which spring’s Alpine inclemency is redolent. One has but to be natural—a sanely-simple human being, dismissing the hampering prejudices and conventions born of towns, and allowing the appeal of Nature to come freely into its own. Then oneself is busy a-weaving—a-weaving of cobweb dreams; and the cobwebs are woven of material worthy, substantial, and real. One’s dreams are not of that solid, sordid order, nor of that frail, unhealthy nature so common with dreams arising from unnatural town-life. They are children of completest sanity, and they are in no part begot ofennui. One builds, and one builds for health’s sake; nor does the building know aught of “castles in Spain.” There is no question here of anæmic fancy. All that one dreams is not only possible, but sound,touching upon realities which control and direct the best of destinies. Compared with town-life, one is in a new world; and it is often astounding to think that town-life is a necessity to which one is obliged to add the important word “imperative.”

And all this may be so even in wet weather. Here, even when clouds hold everything in damp and clinging embrace, we may

“Grow rich in that which never taketh rust.”

And grow rich quite comfortably; for have we not our mackintoshes and goloshes!

The Alps are not ours for climbing purpose only. They are not for us only when winter rules and gives us sports abounding, or when the snows retire to the cradles of the glaciers, and the days of late July and those of August and September grant us the conditions we most seek for long excursions. They are ours also for an intermediate season: a season of the utmost value, though, maybe, not for “sport.” Mr. Frederic Harrison, speaking of “the eternal mountains, vocal with all the most majestic and stirring appeals to the human spirit,” and of the treatment of them by those who think only of “rushing from pass to pass and from peak to peak in order to beatTompkins time or establish a new record,” says: “Switzerland might be made one of the most exquisite schools of every sense of beauty, one of the most pathetic schools of spiritual wonder.” And Mr. Harrison is right: this school exists, and is no mere fiction wrought of sentimental thinking. Nor is it ever closed to students—although there be periods when the attendance is lamentably slack. We know that its doors stand wide open in the winter and in the summer; let it be known, and as well known, that they stand equally wide open in the spring. Let it be known, moreover, that in spite sometimes of fickle, fitful weather, it is in the spring, above all other seasons, that this school is “one of the most exquisite schools of every sense of beauty, one of the most pathetic schools of spiritual wonder.”

Then once again,

“The sunlight, leaping from the Heights,Flames o’er the fields of May,• • • •And butterflies and insect mites,Born with the new-blown day,Cross fires in shifting opal lightsFrom spray to beckoning spray,”

“The sunlight, leaping from the Heights,

Flames o’er the fields of May,

• • • •

And butterflies and insect mites,

Born with the new-blown day,

Cross fires in shifting opal lights

From spray to beckoning spray,”

and we are aware that during the brief period of inclemency a very astonishing change has been taking place in our surroundings under cover of the heavy mists. Nature has been speedily busy, robing the fields in garments fit for June. Before the mists closed down upon us a few days ago insect-life was noticeable mostly by its scarcity. Except for the Orange-Tip and Dingy Skipper butterflies, and for the Skipper-like moth,Euclidia Mi, flitting among the Saponarias, Daisies, and Geums, and for a dainty milk-white spider on the rosy heads ofPrimula farinosa, there was little of “life” among the flowers. But now the butterflies are legion, a brilliant pea-green spider has joined the white one, and lustrous little beetles—among the most beautiful of Alpine creatures—are either frolicking or basking in the glorious sunshine on the wild Peppermint and other fragrant herbs. As for the flowers themselves, they have more than doubled in kind, if not actually in beauty and in number.

Indeed, there is such transformation in the meadows as makes us rub our eyes and wonder if we have not slept the sleep of Rip van Winkle! The Gentians have all but gone, the Anemone also, andPrimula farinosahas become most rare.In their places stand the Globe-Flower, the Bistort, the Paradise Lily (barely open), the Sylvan Geranium, the blue Centaurea, and the pale yellow Biscutella, while the last blossoms ofAnemone sulphureahave been joined by the exquisite blush-tinted heads ofAnemone narcissiflora. It is as though some curtain had rolled swiftly up upon another landscape—one which, as we are but human, we must applaud more rapturously than we did the last. For—

“To-day fresh colours break the soil, and butterflies take wingDown broidered lawns all bright with pearls in the garden of the King.”

“To-day fresh colours break the soil, and butterflies take wing

Down broidered lawns all bright with pearls in the garden of the King.”

And although we still may say we are in dainty May, more than the toe of our best foot is already in gorgeous June.

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