CHAPTER VI

THE JUNE MEADOWS

“The showers are over, the skiffing showers,Come, let us rise and goWhere the happy mountain flowers,Children of the young June hours,In their sweet haunts blow.”Principal Shairp.

“The showers are over, the skiffing showers,

Come, let us rise and go

Where the happy mountain flowers,

Children of the young June hours,

In their sweet haunts blow.”

Principal Shairp.

“Onprête aux riches,” and here is Nature lending yet more wealth to fields that were already so wealthy! It is simply amazing with what doting enthusiasm she pours her floral riches upon the Alps! Many who know only the June fields in England think that we who write of the Swiss fields at this season are either in a chronic state of hysteria, or else do wilfully point our story as if it were a snake story or the story of a tiger-hunt. But, let the fact be known, in writing or speaking upon this subject, the exigencies of the English language oblige us to be temperate; itis quite impossible to exaggerate. We may use all the adjectives in Webster, yet have we not even then said enough. Acutely conscious of our ineffectual effort, we have, nevertheless, done our best. We could say no more: the rest we must feel, and endeavour that our readers shall feel with us.

In the EARLY JULY FIELDS at Champex.

Maybe it is with us as it was with Robert Louis Stevenson when he was at Davos in search of a remedy for the malady that afterwards drove him to Samoa and to an early grave upon her mountains—maybe all our “little fishes talk like whales”; but, believe us, whale-talk is the only talk befitting. If Stevenson finds “it is the Alps who are to blame,” we find it is quite as much the fault of the Alpine flora; and if Stevenson found comfort in the fact that he was not alone in being forced to “this yeasty inflation, this stiff and strutting architecture of the sentence,” so also can we.

We English are not the only ones to find ourselves at the ineffectual extreme of language. The German tourist—and he is nowadays more enterprisingly early than are we in visiting the Alps—is equally at a loss, as he stands in wonderment and, with characteristic emphasis, repeatedlyutters the one resounding word “Kolossal!” Even the Englishman loses his habitual reserve, and, if he does not voice his wonderment as loudly as does his Teutonic brother, he is at least amazed in his own insular way. Assuredly, if these flowers themselves could speak, and speak out frankly, they would declare our seemingly over-coloured appreciation a very tame performance; they would vouch that we are a long way from being in the shoes of the proverbial amateur fisherman.

But let me, without further ado, attempt to describe some of the cause for this. Let me turn again for example to Champex and to notes made on the spot, and speak of a seven-hours’ walk down the rapid southern slopes which fall away from the lake, by the village of Prassorny, along the Val Ferret to Praz de Fort and themassifof Saleinaz, and back again to Champex by that scramble of a path which mounts the slopes directly from the village of Ville d’Issert. This walk takes us from 4,800 feet down to some 3,300 feet, and affords us as representative a range of slopes and fields as we could find anywhere. Starting amid rollinghectaresof Orchids and Lilies, passing along wide slopes bestrewn withLychnis and Anthericum, winding through copse and forest-edge peopled with Everlasting Pea and Alpine Eglantine, we arrive by entrancing stages amid crowded meadows of Salvia, Bistort, Ranunculus, Campion, Marguerite, Geranium, Campanula, and Phyteuma—meadows which, in long and wide-flung swell, sweep like a multi-coloured wave to lave the snowy sides and graceful, flowing forms of the Groupe du Grand Saint-Bernard and Grand Golliaz.

Used as I am to the glories of the mountain flora, I am moved afresh to wonder each time I come intimately amongst them, and such a walk as I took this day, the 15th of June, is always a revelation. From the very start to the very finish there was a continuous procession of as amazingly rich and variedly coloured fields as, surely, any quarter of the globe would find it difficult to surpass. Sometimes the predominant colour was clear yellow, sometimes rich French blue, and not infrequently, when there was no such distinct predominance, the fields, especially when the sun was at the back of me, were as bewildering as, I imagine, would be fields flashing with a profusion of every known gem. Steep grassy slopes—in places almost perpendicular; long, hot stretches ofgrass-grown grit and rubble; rich ousy dips and hollows; undulating acres of wavy, feather-light meadows—all were decked alike in such kaleidoscopic abundance as forced me repeatedly to exclaim: “Oh that some of this loveliness could be translated as fields to England! If only England would try!”

Here I must beg leave to make a slight digression from the strictness of my subject. At one spot in the steep descent, just outside the tiny hamlet of Prassorny, I came upon a blaze of colour which stood out from all else—a pre-eminently arresting object in the landscape. It was, of all things, our old friend the scarlet Field Poppy! To come upon this inimitable flower spread in serried numbers over a large square of ground on a steep slope at an altitude of over 4,000 feet, was not a little surprising. Waving its battalions of fiery blossoms against the grey mist-filled valley beneath, with old sun and wind-stained châlets standing just beside, it was an irresistiblemotiffor a painter. Seemingly as much at home as in any field in England, it appeared of even greater brilliance than with us—having, perhaps, caught something of the humour of the Gentian. That this Poppy canpossibly intensify its hue over and above what we know it can achieve in the cornfields of the plains, will seem incredible—another instance of whale-talk on the writer’s part! And yet such is certainly the case—as, indeed, it is the case with many another lowland flower whose powers will allow it to climb. These poppies, here on this slope, stood witness for the fact; and so, too, did the other lowland flowers growing with them. There were Cornflowers and Larkspur of a blue more rich and radiant than it is even in the plains; andViola tricolor, too, the Pansy of our own cornfields, was of a purple and yellow more deep than we are accustomed to have it. There was, also, the exquisiteAdonis aestivalisof most vivid salmon-orange—its dainty blossoms standing like fire-flies against the rich blue masses ofSalvia pratensis.i>.

Yet this was not a corn-patch (one can scarcely call them cornfields at this altitude, where they are mere terraces, many of them, like potato-patches, standing almost at an angle of 45°, carved from out the steep mountain-side by generations of thrifty peasants). In all probability, however, this particular terrace with its wealth of cornfield flowers had in quite recent years been sownwith oats or rye. Anyway, it were well worth taking note of this Poppy’s presence hereabouts, if only because on the slope next door was the Bell-Gentian!

After this “parenthetic enthusiasm” over so homely an intruder, we will hie us back to the more usual denizens of these slopes and fields. Perhaps enough has already been said to show what a poor thing language is when in the presence of such splendours as June spreads before us in the Alps. Very few, if any, of the flowers were growing singly or even sparsely; they were usually in dense bright masses, or close and broad-spread legions, forming an “infinite floral broidery” stretching above, below, in front, and behind as far as eye could reach. What a difficult, almost impossible matter it has been to select for pictorial presentation such sections of this wealthy panorama as shall give some small idea of the whole, will readily be understood. Halting attempts, however, will be found in the pictures facing pages 32 and 48. And to supplement and reinforce these, there is, at the end of this chapter, a short list of the chief grass-land flowers met with during my walk. The rock-plants, and those liking the poorest of soil, though theycertainly add an important quota to the brilliant prospect, have not been taken into account, as they fall somewhat outside our present purpose.

In his poem, “In Praise of June,” Leigh Hunt sings:

“May, by coming first in sight,Half defrauds thee of thy right;For her best is shared by theeWith a wealthier potency;So that thou dost bring us inA sort of May-time masculine.”

“May, by coming first in sight,

Half defrauds thee of thy right;

For her best is shared by thee

With a wealthier potency;

So that thou dost bring us in

A sort of May-time masculine.”

But this is only in small part true of these Alpine fields. There is, to be sure, something of the May fields in the June fields, but all of May’s best is certainly not shared by June—not, that is to say, unless we climb up higher than we intend to do. The Crocus and Soldanella have gone; they came “to show the paths that June must tread,” not to tread those paths with the Orchid and the Lily. Gone, also, is the pure yellow-petalled Mountain Geum. The Marsh Marigold, too, is no longer with us in rich, golden crowds; nor does the Mealy Primula spread its rosy carpet over acre upon acre. Onemisses, also, the bright white presence of Micheli’s Daisy; and the Vernal Gentian, “blue with the beauty of windless skies,” though still lingering here and there, is, for the most part, hidden by the Grasses and the Clovers.

Ah! yes, the Clovers—pink, rose-red, crimson, cream, white, yellow: we must not forget these! Of goodly and varied company, they are such important units in the rich composition of most Alpine meadows, and, where they grow, they form so compact a groundwork of colouring and so admirable a setting for many of the taller flowers, that it were, indeed, a dereliction of memory to overlook them! What could be lovelier than a wide area of these Clovers in June sown with lilac, rose-tinted, and white Orchids, deep, lustrous-blue Phyteumas, paper-white Paradise Lilies, and infinite hosts of the bright and fascinating little Euphrasia? Or in July, when the orange Arnica, the porcelain-blueCampanula barbata, and the graceful, distinguished-looking littleThesium alpinummake their ever-welcome appearance in the fields? Of course, there are degrees even in natural felicity, and the Orchids—with the exception of the creamy-white Butterfly Orchis—are not at their best if the predominant Clover bered. But, speaking generally, the groundwork of Clovers is a most valuable element in the colouring of these pastures. Were this groundwork removed we should wonder why the fields and slopes looked so meagre and thin. And this is also true ofEuphrasia officinalis, the Eyebright, a very precious, though humble denizen of the fields in July. This plant, by the way, owes its English name, not to its flower (as in the case of the little bright-blue Speedwell,Veronica Chamædrys, often erroneously called Eyebright), but to an infusion of the plant which long ago was supposed to cure defective vision. Milton, indeed, causes the Archangel Michael to use it upon Adam:

“... then purged with Euphrasy and RueThe visual nerve, for he had much to see.”

“... then purged with Euphrasy and Rue

The visual nerve, for he had much to see.”

EVENING among the fields of pink Bistort at Lac Champex; sunset-glow on the Grand Combin, July.

Like the Clovers, the Eyebright should certainly not be ignored, though it is easy to do so. It may be numbered amongst those things we should miss without being able to saywhatwe do miss—those things of a high and unobtrusive value, partly composed of half the worth of things in greater evidence. In other words, it is amongst those things which,in a quiet, self-effacing way, enhance their surroundings.

In applying the term “distinguished-looking” to the little Thesium, I am minded to do so because, just as with the flowers of the plain, there is anéliteamong Alpines. One can hardly explain why. Like the Roman Emperor who, when asked to define time, said, “I know when you do not ask me,” one feels there is anéliteamong flowers, though one is scarcely able to define it. And the feeling is real and undoubtedly well-founded. Nor, to feel this, is it necessary to go to florist’s garden-flowers, where vulgarity is rampant (though often highly prized and priced). The feeling comes in the presence of any field of wild flowers—the feeling that, by their form and bearing, some plants are more well-bred than others. This cannot be altogether accounted for by their colour or conspicuousness. The little Thesium, or the little silver-leaved Alchemilla are neither of them bright, conspicuous plants. It is the general habit that impresses: the “atmosphere” with which they surround themselves. How manifest this is when one meets with the Paradise Lily surrounded by a sea of Hieracium, Bistort, Blue Bottle, Trollius, Geranium, and Salvia. Onesingles out the Lily at once, though it be close beside the exquisite white Marguerite; and one’s heart goes out to it, above its companions, as a thing of greater breeding—a thing taking rank with any Lœlia or Dendrobium.

A cat is not a horse because it is born in a stable; and all Alpines are not of the same caste because they are born in the Alps. Among things Alpine, as among things of the plain, there is degree in attainment. Some things have had occasion to travel along lines that have led them to greater refinement than others—just as man, himself, is evidently the product of particular occasion for such travel. We cannot blink ourselves to the fact that there are weeds even among the Alpines—though there are not so many as 280, the number said to exist in England.

Degree in refinement is, perhaps, to some extent indicated by the way a plant will take care of itself. All plants have some means of fending for themselves, and these means are as varied in morality as are such means among human beings. Some are born fighters, brazen, pushing, and quarrelsome; others win through life by comparative self-effacement. Some elbow their wayto any place they want; others, seemingly, are content to be where they are wanted. All, of course, battle more or less faithfully, but some are forceful, self-assertive, while others resign themselves to unobtrusiveness. No plant can accept with entire equanimity what does not altogether agree with it; but many can rough it, putting up with conditions that will kill others or compel them to retire. Hence we have weeds: rough-souled invaders who make themselves too common.

Although “the invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common,” and although, therefore, we may admire, and quite reasonably admire, all that so capably wrestles with extremes of circumstance as do the Alpines, yet we can and must admit that some are more “classy” than others. For instance, the Alpine Plantain is, according to our instinct and possibly according to fact, on a lower rung of the ladder of vegetable society than is the Alpine Auricula. Both struggle with much the same rigours and disabilities, but we feel obliged to find that the latter has evolved greater refinement than the former from its struggles. In short, Maeterlinck’s“goût du mieux de la Nature”is as pronouncedin degree among Alpines as it is among valley flowers; there is an aristocracy even in the Alps.

And how admirable, for the most part, are the names these plants bear; how befitting the romantic character and circumstance which surrounds them. Linaria, Saponaria, Salvia, Ajuga, Anthyllis, Potentilla, Artemisia—what could be more charming? Are they not a thousand times more suggestive and more æsthetic than their English counterparts—Toadflax, Soapwort, Sage, Bugle, Kidney Vetch, Cinquefoil, Wormwood? Indeed, I am not sure but that, taking them as a whole, Latin names are not more satisfactory and picturesque for every kind of flower—quite apart from the important and simplifying question of a common vantage ground for gardener, scientist, and general public. The anonymous writer of “Studies in Gardening,” an admirable series of essays contributed to theTimes, pleads persuasively for the use, as far as possible, of English names in both gardening books and papers. He holds—and in so doing he is by no means singular—that “the rage for Latin names has gone so far that you will now sometimes see lilies called liliums”; he bemoans the growing use of Sedum instead of Stone-crop,and of Antirrhinum instead of Snapdragon, and he calls it an “unnecessary use of botanical terms,” and thinks that “the want of beautiful English names to many beautiful flowers seems a reproach to their beauty.” But there are other authorities, equally numerous, who hold a contrary view, considering that too much is being made of English names, and that “confusion worst confounded” is a very natural consequence. One catches the sound of more than two voices in the discussion: one hears not only the several plaints of botanist and flower-lover, but also the claims of the champion of folk-lore, the mere amateur gardener, the uncompromising patriot, and the incorrigible sentimentalist. And something in reason is said by each one of them—although honours are not so easy as to enable one to call it a case of six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. For, perhaps, those who strive for alangue bleuin this domain and choose Latin have the weightier cause at heart. George Crabbe, the poet, once wrote an English treatise on botany, but never published it, because of the remonstrances of the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who objected to degrading the science of botany by treating it in a modern language. Such rigorousadhesion to Latin is of the relatively narrow past; nor is this dead tongue likely ever again to be a subject for such blind idolatry. No doubt in time a becoming compromise will be arrived at by the two camps—a compromise that will allow a rose to be a rose, and not oblige it to be always and only aRosa.

“Men of science are pitiless tyrants,” says Alphonse Karr in “Les Fleurs Animées.” “See what they have done for Botany, that charming and graceful study!... Without pity or mercy, they have brutally seized upon the frail daughters of sky and dew; they have crushed and mutilated them; they have thrown them into the crucible of Etymology, and after all these awful tortures, and as if to assure themselves of impunity, they have hidden their victims beneath a heap of barbarous names. Thus, thanks to them, the Hawthorn, that symbol of virginity and hope, sighs under the dreadful nameMespilus oxyacantha.... All that is frightful, is it not?... Unfortunately, it is all very necessary. To admire is not to know, and, in order to know, system and method are indispensable.... How could we do without the help of Etymology? Pardon, then, these men of science, who have done nothingbut obey the law of necessity, and enter into the beautiful domain from which they have dissipated the darkness.” This is delightfully put and is all very true. Latin nomenclature does tend immensely to dispel confusion, though in certain quarters it may wound the sense of sentiment, and we shall no doubt always have confirmed adherents of popular names.

But, however it may be with the use of popular names in England, I venture to think we have better things to do than to Anglicise the Alpines in their Swiss home, and that—as says a well-known botanist—“when English names are coined for species which do not even occur in Britain, the result is sometimes ridiculous,e.g.‘Dodonœus’s French Willow’ for an Epilobium.” And it is not alone ridiculous: it is often paltry and in the worst of taste, and it will frequently drive romance and beauty from the Alpine landscape. What is there æsthetic, or even useful, about “Mignonette-leaved Lady’s Smock” forCardamine resedifolia; “Neglected Pinkwort” forDianthus neglectus; “Doronic Groundsel” forSenecio Doronicum; or “Glacier’s Yarrow” forAchillea nana? Are not the Latin names truer and more beautiful? And are they notas easy of retention as their English substitutes? Shall we say thatCampanula barbatais not a truer title than “Bearded Harebell” for a plant that has nothing of the English Harebell about it except “family”? Or shall we say that it is not just as easy, as the botanist already quoted points out, to rememberAtriplex deltoideaas “Deltoid-leaved Orache”? Those who, advocating English nomenclature to this extent in the Alps, plead the cause of intelligible simplicity, irresistibly recall the complicated efforts of those who aim at the Simple Life. And, on the whole, their efforts are no less ugly.

HAYMAKING at Champex in the middle of July.

But let us not stand haggling over such contentious matter.Revenons à nos moutons!

Scanning these fields and slopes, noting “the lavish hand of June,” and remembering that July’s hand will be no whit less lavish, we realise without any difficulty that there are more than twice as many flowering plants indigenous to Switzerland as in the whole of the British Isles. Indeed, June alone could easily convince us of this. What wealth! One feels that the proper way, the only adequate way of enjoying it is to abjure hotels and camp out in the midst of it all. When the meal-time bell rings out from theHôtel-Pension, one turns in answer to it with reluctance, declaring:

“I could be content to seeJune and no variety,Loitering here, and living there,With a book and frugal fare,With a finer gypsy time,And a cuckoo in the clime.”

“I could be content to see

June and no variety,

Loitering here, and living there,

With a book and frugal fare,

With a finer gypsy time,

And a cuckoo in the clime.”

And when the end of June arrives, and with it the Arnica, the Greater Astrantia, the orange-red Hawkweed, the Burnet butterfly, and the passage of the bell-decked cows to the higher Alpine pastures—“Liauba! Liauba!por alpa!”—we may tremble for the coming of the scythe. Already it will be commencing its deadly work 2,000 feet below, and its advance is rapid and quite regardless of all we flower-lovers may mutter under our breath, or more probably say aloud. However, we must be reasonable. Complaints of this description are not in order. The world must be helped round: hay must be made, and the flowers are not, and cannot be, our all-in-all. We benefit most by being seasonable; sufficient for the day is the good thereof; and the good of a day need not die with the day. We take our fill of these flowers whilstwe reasonably may; recollection does the rest for us in the gap of seasons. An emotion passed is yet part of our life—our life’s memory; and, in Meredith’s words,

“Dead seasons quicken in one petal spot of colour unforgot.”

For enough is far better than a feast. It is one thing to be spiritually sentimental; it is quite another thing to know where to draw a right line in spiritual sentiment. Happy the man who is endowed with the double capacity; happy the man who can allow these flowers to lift him to a higher plane of being; and then, when reasonableness begins to flag, turn to his floral cicerones and say with firmness: “Excuse me, but I must now be getting back to dinner. And you, in your turn, you know, must be preparing to be dinner for the cows.”

SOME PROMINENT PASTURE FLOWERS IN BLOOM AROUND CHAMPEX, JUNE 15, 1910

Ajuga pyramidalis(Alpine Bugle).Alchemilla alpina.”vulgaris(Lady’s Mantle).Anemone narcissiflora.”sulphurea.Antennaria dioica(Cudweed; Cat’s-ear).Anthericum Liliago.”ramosum.Anthyllis vulneraria, forma alpestris(Kidney Vetch or Ladies’ Fingers).Biscutella lævigata.Campanula rhomboidalis.”rotundifolia.Centaurea montana(Bluebottle; Knapweed; Mountain Cornflower).Cerastium arvense(Field Mouse-ear).Dianthus Carthusianorum(Carthusian Pink).Echium vulgare(Viper’s Bugloss).Euphrasia alpina.”minima(Yellow Eyebright).”officinalis(Eyebright).Geranium sylvaticum(Wood Crane’s-bill).Geum rivale(Water Avens).Globularia cordifolia.Hippocrepis comosa(Horseshoe Vetch).Lathyrus heterophyllus(Mountain Everlasting Pea).”sylvestris(Wood Everlasting Pea).Linum alpinum(Alpine Flax).Lotus corniculatus(Bird’s-foot Trefoil).Lychnis dioica(Wood Campion).”Flos-cuculi(Ragged Robin).”viscaria(Red Catchfly).Muscari comosum.Myosotis alpestris(Alpine Forget-me-not).Onobrychis viciæfolia(Sainfoin).

ORCHIDS:Cephalanthera ensifolia}Helleborine.”rubraGymnadenia odoratissimaandG. conopsea.Habenaria (Cœloglossum) viridis(Frog Orchis).Nigritella nigra (angustifolia)(Vanilla Orchis).Orchis latifolia.”maculata.”ustulata.PlantantheraorHabenaria bifolia(Butterfly Orchis).Paradisia Liliastrum(Paradise or St. Bruno’s Lily).Pedicularis tuberosa(Yellow Lousewort).Phyteuma betonicifolium}Rampion.”orbicularePimpinella magna rosea.Polygala alpestris}Milkwort.”vulgarisPolygonum Bistorta(Snake-root; Bistort).”viviparum(Alpine Knotweed).Potentilla rupestris(Strawberry-flowered Cinquefoil).Ranunculus aconitifolius(Fair Maid of France).Reseda luteola(Mignonette; Weld or Dyer’s Weed).Rhinanthus angustifolius(Yellow Rattle).Rosa alpina(Alpine Brier or Eglantine).Salvia pratensis(Meadow Sage; Clary)Scabiosa lucida.Silene inflata(Bladder Campion).Trollius europæus(Globe-Flower).Valeriana tripteris(Trefoil Valerian).

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