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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 05:16:54 -0700 |
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diff --git a/1327-h/1327-h.htm b/1327-h/1327-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68cbd31 --- /dev/null +++ b/1327-h/1327-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5641 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +span.figfloat { float: none; margin: 0 0.4em 0 0; line-height: .8 } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1327 ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]"> +</div> + +<h1>ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">By Elizabeth Von Arnim</h2> + +<hr> + +<h2>INTRODUCTION TO THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EDITION</h2> + +<p> +Originally published in 1898, “Elizabeth and her German Garden” is the first +book by Marie Annette Beauchamp—known all her life as “Elizabeth”. The book, +anonymously published, was an incredible success, going through printing after +printing by several publishers over the next few years. (I myself own three +separate early editions of this book by different publishers on both sides of +the Atlantic.) The present Gutenberg edition was scanned from the illustrated +deluxe MacMillan (London) edition of 1900. +</p> + +<p> +Elizabeth was a cousin of the better-known writer Katherine Mansfield (whose +real name was Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp). Born in Australia, Elizabeth was +educated in England. She was reputed to be a fine organist and musician. At a +young age, she captured the heart of a German Count, was persuaded to marry +him, and went to live in Germany. Over the next years she bore five daughters. +After her husband’s death and the decline of the estate, she returned to +England. She was a friend to many of high social standing, including people +such as H. G. Wells (who considered her one of the finest wits of the day). +Some time later she married the brother of Bertrand Russell; which marriage was +a failure and ended in divorce. Eventually Elizabeth fled to America at the +outbreak of the Second World War, and there died in 1941. +</p> + +<p> +Elizabeth is best known to modern readers by the name “Elizabeth von Arnim”, +author of “The Enchanted April” which was recently made into a successful film +by the same title. Another of her books, “Mr. Skeffington” was also once made +into a film starring Bette Davis, circa 1940. +</p> + +<p> +Some of Elizabeth’s work is published in modern editions by Virago and other +publishers. Among these are: “Love”, “The Enchanted April”, “Caravaners”, +“Christopher and Columbus”, “The Pastor’s Wife”, “Mr. Skeffington”, “The +Solitary Summer”, and “Elizabeth’s Adventures in Rugen”. Also published by +Virago is her non-autobiography “All the Dogs of My Life”—as the title +suggests, it is the story not of her life, but of the lives of the many dogs +she owned; though of course it does touch upon her own experiences. +</p> + +<p> +In the centennial year of this book’s first publication, I hope that its +availability through Project Gutenberg will stir some renewed interest in +Elizabeth and her delightful work. She is, I would venture, my favorite author; +and I hope that soon she will be one of your favorites. +</p> + +<p> +R. McGowan San Jose, April 11 1998. +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>May</i> 7<i>th</i>.—I love my garden. I am writing in it now in the late +afternoon loveliness, much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to +look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a +cold shower. Two owls are perched near me, and are carrying on a long +conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales. The +gentleman owl says <span class="figfloat"><img src="images/img01.jpg" +width="100" height="43" alt=""></span>, and she answers from her tree a +little way off, <span class="figfloat"><img src="images/img02.jpg" width="100" +height="48" alt=""></span>, beautifully assenting to and completing her +lord’s remark, as becomes a properly constructed German she-owl. They say the +same thing over and over again so emphatically that I think it must be +something nasty about me; but I shall not let myself be frightened away by the +sarcasm of owls. +</p> + +<p> +This is less a garden than a wilderness. No one has lived in the house, much +less in the garden, for twenty-five years, and it is such a pretty old place +that the people who might have lived here and did not, deliberately preferring +the horrors of a flat in a town, must have belonged to that vast number of +eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed. Noseless +too, though it does not sound pretty; but the greater part of my spring +happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves. +</p> + +<p> +I am always happy (out of doors be it understood, for indoors there are +servants and furniture) but in quite different ways, and my spring happiness +bears no resemblance to my summer or autumn happiness, though it is not more +intense, and there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my +frost-bound garden, in spite of my years and children. But I did it behind a +bush, having a due regard for the decencies. +</p> + +<p> +There are so many bird-cherries round me, great trees with branches sweeping +the grass, and they are so wreathed just now with white blossoms and tenderest +green that the garden looks like a wedding. I never saw such masses of them; +they seemed to fill the place. Even across a little stream that bounds the +garden on the east, and right in the middle of the cornfield beyond, there is +an immense one, a picture of grace and glory against the cold blue of the +spring sky. +</p> + +<p> +My garden is surrounded by cornfields and meadows, and beyond are great +stretches of sandy heath and pine forests, and where the forests leave off the +bare heath begins again; but the forests are beautiful in their lofty, +pink-stemmed vastness, far overhead the crowns of softest gray-green, and +underfoot a bright green wortleberry carpet, and everywhere the breathless +silence; and the bare heaths are beautiful too, for one can see across them +into eternity almost, and to go out on to them with one’s face towards the +setting sun is like going into the very presence of God. +</p> + +<p> +In the middle of this plain is the oasis of bird-cherries and greenery where I +spend my happy days, and in the middle of the oasis is the gray stone house +with many gables where I pass my reluctant nights. The house is very old, and +has been added to at various times. It was a convent before the Thirty Years’ +War, and the vaulted chapel, with its brick floor worn by pious peasant knees, +is now used as a hall. Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more +than once, as is duly recorded in archives still preserved, for we are on what +was then the high-road between Sweden and Brandenburg the unfortunate. The Lion +of the North was no doubt an estimable person and acted wholly up to his +convictions, but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns, who were not +without convictions of their own, sending them out on to the wide, empty plain +to piteously seek some life to replace the life of silence here. +</p> + +<p> +From nearly all the windows of the house I can look out across the plain, with +no obstacle in the shape of a hill, right away to a blue line of distant +forest, and on the west side uninterruptedly to the setting sun—nothing but a +green, rolling plain, with a sharp edge against the sunset. I love those west +windows better than any others, and have chosen my bedroom on that side of the +house so that even times of hair-brushing may not be entirely lost, and the +young woman who attends to such matters has been taught to fulfil her duties +about a mistress recumbent in an easy-chair before an open window, and not to +profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time. This girl is grieved at my +habit of living almost in the garden, and all her ideas as to the sort of life +a respectable German lady should lead have got into a sad muddle since she came +to me. The people round about are persuaded that I am, to put it as kindly as +possible, exceedingly eccentric, for the news has travelled that I spend the +day out of doors with a book, and that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew +or cook. But why cook when you can get some one to cook for you? And as for +sewing, the maids will hem the sheets better and quicker than I could, and all +forms of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one for +keeping the foolish from applying their heart to wisdom. +</p> + +<p> +We had been married five years before it struck us that we might as well make +use of this place by coming down and living in it. Those five years were spent +in a flat in a town, and during their whole interminable length I was perfectly +miserable and perfectly healthy, which disposes of the ugly notion that has at +times disturbed me that my happiness here is less due to the garden than to a +good digestion. And while we were wasting our lives there, here was this dear +place with dandelions up to the very door, all the paths grass-grown and +completely effaced, in winter so lonely, with nobody but the north wind taking +the least notice of it, and in May—in all those five lovely Mays—no one to look +at the wonderful bird-cherries and still more wonderful masses of lilacs, +everything glowing and blowing, the virginia creeper madder every year, until +at last, in October, the very roof was wreathed with blood-red tresses, the +owls and the squirrels and all the blessed little birds reigning supreme, and +not a living creature ever entering the empty house except the snakes, which +got into the habit during those silent years of wriggling up the south wall +into the rooms on that side whenever the old housekeeper opened the windows. +All that was here,—peace, and happiness, and a reasonable life,—and yet it +never struck me to come and live in it. Looking back I am astonished, and can +in no way account for the tardiness of my discovery that here, in this far-away +corner, was my kingdom of heaven. Indeed, so little did it enter my head to +even use the place in summer, that I submitted to weeks of seaside life with +all its horrors every year; until at last, in the early spring of last year, +having come down for the opening of the village school, and wandering out +afterwards into the bare and desolate garden, I don’t know what smell of wet +earth or rotting leaves brought back my childhood with a rush and all the happy +days I had spent in a garden. Shall I ever forget that day? It was the +beginning of my real life, my coming of age as it were, and entering into my +kingdom. Early March, gray, quiet skies, and brown, quiet earth; leafless and +sad and lonely enough out there in the damp and silence, yet there I stood +feeling the same rapture of pure delight in the first breath of spring that I +used to as a child, and the five wasted years fell from me like a cloak, and +the world was full of hope, and I vowed myself then and there to nature, and +have been happy ever since. +</p> + +<p> +My other half being indulgent, and with some faint thought perhaps that it +might be as well to look after the place, consented to live in it at any rate +for a time; whereupon followed six specially blissful weeks from the end of +April into June, during which I was here alone, supposed to be superintending +the painting and papering, but as a matter of fact only going into the house +when the workmen had gone out of it. +</p> + +<p> +How happy I was! I don’t remember any time quite so perfect since the days when +I was too little to do lessons and was turned out with sugar on my eleven +o’clock bread and butter on to a lawn closely strewn with dandelions and +daisies. The sugar on the bread and butter has lost its charm, but I love the +dandelions and daisies even more passionately now than then, and never would +endure to see them all mown away if I were not certain that in a day or two +they would be pushing up their little faces again as jauntily as ever. During +those six weeks I lived in a world of dandelions and delights. The dandelions +carpeted the three lawns,—they used to be lawns, but have long since blossomed +out into meadows filled with every sort of pretty weed,—and under and among the +groups of leafless oaks and beeches were blue hepaticas, white anemones, +violets, and celandines in sheets. The celandines in particular delighted me +with their clean, happy brightness, so beautifully trim and newly varnished, as +though they too had had the painters at work on them. Then, when the anemones +went, came a few stray periwinkles and Solomon’s Seal, and all the +bird-cherries blossomed in a burst. And then, before I had a little got used to +the joy of their flowers against the sky, came the lilacs—masses and masses of +them, in clumps on the grass, with other shrubs and trees by the side of walks, +and one great continuous bank of them half a mile long right past the west +front of the house, away down as far as one could see, shining glorious against +a background of firs. When that time came, and when, before it was over, the +acacias all blossomed too, and four great clumps of pale, silvery-pink peonies +flowered under the south windows, I felt so absolutely happy, and blest, and +thankful, and grateful, that I really cannot describe it. My days seemed to +melt away in a dream of pink and purple peace. +</p> + +<p> +There were only the old housekeeper and her handmaiden in the house, so that on +the plea of not giving too much trouble I could indulge what my other half +calls my <i>fantaisie déréglée</i> as regards meals—that is to say, meals so +simple that they could be brought out to the lilacs on a tray; and I lived, I +remember, on salad and bread and tea the whole time, sometimes a very tiny +pigeon appearing at lunch to save me, as the old lady thought, from starvation. +Who but a woman could have stood salad for six weeks, even salad sanctified by +the presence and scent of the most gorgeous lilac masses? I did, and grew in +grace every day, though I have never liked it since. How often now, oppressed +by the necessity of assisting at three dining-room meals daily, two of which +are conducted by the functionaries held indispensable to a proper maintenance +of the family dignity, and all of which are pervaded by joints of meat, how +often do I think of my salad days, forty in number, and of the blessedness of +being alone as I was then alone! +</p> + +<p> +And then the evenings, when the workmen had all gone and the house was left to +emptiness and echoes, and the old housekeeper had gathered up her rheumatic +limbs into her bed, and my little room in quite another part of the house had +been set ready, how reluctantly I used to leave the friendly frogs and owls, +and with my heart somewhere down in my shoes lock the door to the garden behind +me, and pass through the long series of echoing south rooms full of shadows and +ladders and ghostly pails of painters’ mess, and humming a tune to make myself +believe I liked it, go rather slowly across the brick-floored hall, up the +creaking stairs, down the long whitewashed passage, and with a final rush of +panic whisk into my room and double lock and bolt the door! +</p> + +<p> +There were no bells in the house, and I used to take a great dinner-bell to bed +with me so that at least I might be able to make a noise if frightened in the +night, though what good it would have been I don’t know, as there was no one to +hear. The housemaid slept in another little cell opening out of mine, and we +two were the only living creatures in the great empty west wing. She evidently +did not believe in ghosts, for I could hear how she fell asleep immediately +after getting into bed; nor do I believe in them, “<i>mais je les redoute</i>,” +as a French lady said, who from her books appears to have been strongminded. +</p> + +<p> +The dinner-bell was a great solace; it was never rung, but it comforted me to +see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights were anything but placid, it +was all so strange, and there were such queer creakings and other noises. I +used to lie awake for hours, startled out of a light sleep by the cracking of +some board, and listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room. +In the morning, of course, I was as brave as a lion and much amused at the cold +perspirations of the night before; but even the nights seem to me now to have +been delightful, and myself like those historic boys who heard a voice in every +wind and snatched a fearful joy. I would gladly shiver through them all over +again for the sake of the beautiful purity of the house, empty of servants and +upholstery. +</p> + +<p> +How pretty the bedrooms looked with nothing in them but their cheerful new +papers! Sometimes I would go into those that were finished and build all sorts +of castles in the air about their future and their past. Would the nuns who had +lived in them know their little white-washed cells again, all gay with delicate +flower papers and clean white paint? And how astonished they would be to see +cell No. 14 turned into a bathroom, with a bath big enough to insure a +cleanliness of body equal to their purity of soul! They would look upon it as a +snare of the tempter; and I know that in my own case I only began to be shocked +at the blackness of my nails the day that I began to lose the first whiteness +of my soul by falling in love at fifteen with the parish organist, or rather +with the glimpse of surplice and Roman nose and fiery moustache which was all I +ever saw of him, and which I loved to distraction for at least six months; at +the end of which time, going out with my governess one day, I passed him in the +street, and discovered that his unofficial garb was a frock-coat combined with +a turn-down collar and a “bowler” hat, and never loved him any more. +</p> + +<p> +The first part of that time of blessedness was the most perfect, for I had not +a thought of anything but the peace and beauty all round me. Then he appeared +suddenly who has a right to appear when and how he will and rebuked me for +never having written, and when I told him that I had been literally too happy +to think of writing, he seemed to take it as a reflection on himself that I +could be happy alone. I took him round the garden along the new paths I had had +made, and showed him the acacia and lilac glories, and he said that it was the +purest selfishness to enjoy myself when neither he nor the offspring were with +me, and that the lilacs wanted thoroughly pruning. I tried to appease him by +offering him the whole of my salad and toast supper which stood ready at the +foot of the little verandah steps when we came back, but nothing appeased that +Man of Wrath, and he said he would go straight back to the neglected family. So +he went; and the remainder of the precious time was disturbed by twinges of +conscience (to which I am much subject) whenever I found myself wanting to jump +for joy. I went to look at the painters every time my feet were for taking me +to look at the garden; I trotted diligently up and down the passages; I +criticised and suggested and commanded more in one day than I had done in all +the rest of the time; I wrote regularly and sent my love; but I could not +manage to fret and yearn. What are you to do if your conscience is clear and +your liver in order and the sun is shining? +</p> + +<p> +<i>May</i> 10<i>th</i>.—I knew nothing whatever last year about gardening and +this year know very little more, but I have dawnings of what may be done, and +have at least made one great stride—from ipomæa to tea-roses. +</p> + +<p> +The garden was an absolute wilderness. It is all round the house, but the +principal part is on the south side and has evidently always been so. The south +front is one-storied, a long series of rooms opening one into the other, and +the walls are covered with virginia creeper. There is a little verandah in the +middle, leading by a flight of rickety wooden steps down into what seems to +have been the only spot in the whole place that was ever cared for. This is a +semicircle cut into the lawn and edged with privet, and in this semicircle are +eleven beds of different sizes bordered with box and arranged round a sun-dial, +and the sun-dial is very venerable and moss-grown, and greatly beloved by me. +These beds were the only sign of any attempt at gardening to be seen (except a +solitary crocus that came up all by itself each spring in the grass, not +because it wanted to, but because it could not help it), and these I had sown +with ipomæa, the whole eleven, having found a German gardening book, according +to which ipomæa in vast quantities was the one thing needful to turn the most +hideous desert into a paradise. Nothing else in that book was recommended with +anything like the same warmth, and being entirely ignorant of the quantity of +seed necessary, I bought ten pounds of it and had it sown not only in the +eleven beds but round nearly every tree, and then waited in great agitation for +the promised paradise to appear. It did not, and I learned my first lesson. +</p> + +<p> +Luckily I had sown two great patches of sweet-peas which made me very happy all +the summer, and then there were some sunflowers and a few hollyhocks under the +south windows, with Madonna lilies in between. But the lilies, after being +transplanted, disappeared to my great dismay, for how was I to know it was the +way of lilies? And the hollyhocks turned out to be rather ugly colours, so that +my first summer was decorated and beautified solely by sweet-peas. At present +we are only just beginning to breathe after the bustle of getting new beds and +borders and paths made in time for this summer. The eleven beds round the +sun-dial are filled with roses, but I see already that I have made mistakes +with some. As I have not a living soul with whom to hold communion on this or +indeed on any matter, my only way of learning is by making mistakes. All eleven +were to have been carpeted with purple pansies, but finding that I had not +enough and that nobody had any to sell me, only six have got their pansies, the +others being sown with dwarf mignonette. Two of the eleven are filled with +Marie van Houtte roses, two with Viscountess Folkestone, two with Laurette +Messimy, one with Souvenir de la Malmaison, one with Adam and Devoniensis, two +with Persian Yellow and Bicolor, and one big bed behind the sun-dial with three +sorts of red roses (seventy-two in all), Duke of Teck, Cheshunt Scarlet, and +Prefet de Limburg. This bed is, I am sure, a mistake, and several of the others +are, I think, but of course I must wait and see, being such an ignorant person. +Then I have had two long beds made in the grass on either side of the +semicircle, each sown with mignonette, and one filled with Marie van Houtte, +and the other with Jules Finger and the Bride; and in a warm corner under the +drawing-room windows is a bed of Madame Lambard, Madame de Watteville, and +Comtesse Riza du Parc; while farther down the garden, sheltered on the north +and west by a group of beeches and lilacs, is another large bed, containing +Rubens, Madame Joseph Schwartz, and the Hon. Edith Gifford. All these roses are +dwarf; I have only two standards in the whole garden, two Madame George +Bruants, and they look like broomsticks. How I long for the day when the +tea-roses open their buds! Never did I look forward so intensely to anything; +and every day I go the rounds, admiring what the dear little things have +achieved in the twenty-four hours in the way of new leaf or increase of lovely +red shoot. +</p> + +<p> +The hollyhocks and lilies (now flourishing) are still under the south windows +in a narrow border on the top of a grass slope, at the foot of which I have +sown two long borders of sweet-peas facing the rose beds, so that my roses may +have something almost as sweet as themselves to look at until the autumn, when +everything is to make place for more tea-roses. The path leading away from this +semicircle down the garden is bordered with China roses, white and pink, with +here and there a Persian Yellow. I wish now I had put tea-roses there, and I +have misgivings as to the effect of the Persian Yellows among the Chinas, for +the Chinas are such wee little baby things, and the Persian Yellows look as +though they intended to be big bushes. +</p> + +<p> +There is not a creature in all this part of the world who could in the least +understand with what heart-beatings I am looking forward to the flowering of +these roses, and not a German gardening book that does not relegate all +tea-roses to hot-houses, imprisoning them for life, and depriving them for ever +of the breath of God. It was no doubt because I was so ignorant that I rushed +in where Teutonic angels fear to tread and made my tea-roses face a northern +winter; but they did face it under fir branches and leaves, and not one has +suffered, and they are looking to-day as happy and as determined to enjoy +themselves as any roses, I am sure, in Europe. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>May</i> 14<i>th</i>.—To-day I am writing on the verandah with the three +babies, more persistent than mosquitoes, raging round me, and already several +of the thirty fingers have been in the ink-pot and the owners consoled when +duty pointed to rebukes. But who can rebuke such penitent and drooping +sunbonnets? I can see nothing but sunbonnets and pinafores and nimble black +legs. +</p> + +<p> +These three, their patient nurse, myself, the gardener, and the gardener’s +assistant, are the only people who ever go into my garden, but then neither are +we ever out of it. The gardener has been here a year and has given me notice +regularly on the first of every month, but up to now has been induced to stay +on. On the first of this month he came as usual, and with determination written +on every feature told me he intended to go in June, and that nothing should +alter his decision. I don’t think he knows much about gardening, but he can at +least dig and water, and some of the things he sows come up, and some of the +plants he plants grow, besides which he is the most unflaggingly industrious +person I ever saw, and has the great merit of never appearing to take the +faintest interest in what we do in the garden. So I have tried to keep him on, +not knowing what the next one may be like, and when I asked him what he had to +complain of and he replied “Nothing,” I could only conclude that he has a +personal objection to me because of my eccentric preference for plants in +groups rather than plants in lines. Perhaps, too, he does not like the extracts +from gardening books I read to him sometimes when he is planting or sowing +something new. Being so helpless myself, I thought it simpler, instead of +explaining, to take the book itself out to him and let him have wisdom at its +very source, administering it in doses while he worked. I quite recognise that +this must be annoying, and only my anxiety not to lose a whole year through +some stupid mistake has given me the courage to do it. I laugh sometimes behind +the book at his disgusted face, and wish we could be photographed, so that I +may be reminded in twenty years’ time, when the garden is a bower of loveliness +and I learned in all its ways, of my first happy struggles and failures. +</p> + +<p> +All through April he was putting the perennials we had sown in the autumn into +their permanent places, and all through April he went about with a long piece +of string making parallel lines down the borders of beautiful exactitude and +arranging the poor plants like soldiers at a review. Two long borders were done +during my absence one day, and when I explained that I should like the third to +have plants in groups and not in lines, and that what I wanted was a natural +effect with no bare spaces of earth to be seen, he looked even more gloomily +hopeless than usual; and on my going out later on to see the result, I found he +had planted two long borders down the sides of a straight walk with little +lines of five plants in a row—first five pinks, and next to them five rockets, +and behind the rockets five pinks, and behind the pinks five rockets, and so on +with different plants of every sort and size down to the end. When I protested, +he said he had only carried out my orders and had known it would not look well; +so I gave in, and the remaining borders were done after the pattern of the +first two, and I will have patience and see how they look this summer, before +digging them up again; for it becomes beginners to be humble. +</p> + +<p> +If I could only dig and plant myself! How much easier, besides being so +fascinating, to make your own holes exactly where you want them and put in your +plants exactly as you choose instead of giving orders that can only be half +understood from the moment you depart from the lines laid down by that long +piece of string! In the first ecstasy of having a garden all my own, and in my +burning impatience to make the waste places blossom like a rose, I did one warm +Sunday in last year’s April during the servants’ dinner hour, doubly secure +from the gardener by the day and the dinner, slink out with a spade and a rake +and feverishly dig a little piece of ground and break it up and sow +surreptitious ipomæa, and run back very hot and guilty into the house, and get +into a chair and behind a book and look languid just in time to save my +reputation. And why not? It is not graceful, and it makes one hot; but it is a +blessed sort of work, and if Eve had had a spade in Paradise and known what to +do with it, we should not have had all that sad business of the apple. +</p> + +<p> +What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and +flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! Yet my town acquaintances look +upon it as imprisonment, and burying, and I don’t know what besides, and would +rend the air with their shrieks if condemned to such a life. Sometimes I feel +as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find my happiness so +easily. I believe I should always be good if the sun always shone, and could +enjoy myself very well in Siberia on a fine day. And what can life in town +offer in the way of pleasure to equal the delight of any one of the calm +evenings I have had this month sitting alone at the foot of the verandah steps, +with the perfume of young larches all about, and the May moon hanging low over +the beeches, and the beautiful silence made only more profound in its peace by +the croaking of distant frogs and hooting of owls? A cockchafer darting by +close to my ear with a loud hum sends a shiver through me, partly of pleasure +at the reminder of past summers, and partly of fear lest he should get caught +in my hair. The Man of Wrath says they are pernicious creatures and should be +killed. I would rather get the killing done at the end of the summer and not +crush them out of such a pretty world at the very beginning of all the fun. +</p> + +<p> +This has been quite an eventful afternoon. My eldest baby, born in April, is +five years old, and the youngest, born in June, is three; so that the +discerning will at once be able to guess the age of the remaining middle or May +baby. While I was stooping over a group of hollyhocks planted on the top of the +only thing in the shape of a hill the garden possesses, the April baby, who had +been sitting pensive on a tree stump close by, got up suddenly and began to run +aimlessly about, shrieking and wringing her hands with every symptom of terror. +I stared, wondering what had come to her; and then I saw that a whole army of +young cows, pasturing in a field next to the garden, had got through the hedge +and were grazing perilously near my tea-roses and most precious belongings. The +nurse and I managed to chase them away, but not before they had trampled down a +border of pinks and lilies in the cruellest way, and made great holes in a bed +of China roses, and even begun to nibble at a Jackmanni clematis that I am +trying to persuade to climb up a tree trunk. The gloomy gardener happened to be +ill in bed, and the assistant was at vespers—as Lutheran Germany calls +afternoon tea or its equivalent—so the nurse filled up the holes as well as she +could with mould, burying the crushed and mangled roses, cheated for ever of +their hopes of summer glory, and I stood by looking on dejectedly. The June +baby, who is two feet square and valiant beyond her size and years, seized a +stick much bigger than herself and went after the cows, the cowherd being +nowhere to be seen. She planted herself in front of them brandishing her stick, +and they stood in a row and stared at her in great astonishment; and she kept +them off until one of the men from the farm arrived with a whip, and having +found the cowherd sleeping peacefully in the shade, gave him a sound beating. +The cowherd is a great hulking young man, much bigger than the man who beat +him, but he took his punishment as part of the day’s work and made no remark of +any sort. It could not have hurt him much through his leather breeches, and I +think he deserved it; but it must be demoralising work for a strong young man +with no brains looking after cows. Nobody with less imagination than a poet +ought to take it up as a profession. +</p> + +<p> +After the June baby and I had been welcomed back by the other two with as many +hugs as though we had been restored to them from great perils, and while we +were peacefully drinking tea under a beech tree, I happened to look up into its +mazy green, and there, on a branch quite close to my head, sat a little baby +owl. I got on the seat and caught it easily, for it could not fly, and how it +had reached the branch at all is a mystery. It is a little round ball of gray +fluff, with the quaintest, wisest, solemn face. Poor thing! I ought to have let +it go, but the temptation to keep it until the Man of Wrath, at present on a +journey, has seen it was not to be resisted, as he has often said how much he +would like to have a young owl and try and tame it. So I put it into a roomy +cage and slung it up on a branch near where it had been sitting, and which +cannot be far from its nest and its mother. We had hardly subsided again to our +tea when I saw two more balls of fluff on the ground in the long grass and +scarcely distinguishable at a little distance from small mole-hills. These were +promptly united to their relation in the cage, and now when the Man of Wrath +comes home, not only shall he be welcomed by a wife decked with the orthodox +smiles, but by the three little longed-for owls. Only it seems wicked to take +them from their mother, and I know that I shall let them go again some +day—perhaps the very next time the Man of Wrath goes on a journey. I put a +small pot of water in the cage, though they never could have tasted water yet +unless they drink the raindrops off the beech leaves. I suppose they get all +the liquid they need from the bodies of the mice and other dainties provided +for them by their fond parents. But the raindrop idea is prettier. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>May</i> 15<i>th</i>.—How cruel it was of me to put those poor little owls +into a cage even for one night! I cannot forgive myself, and shall never pander +to the Man of Wrath’s wishes again. This morning I got up early to see how they +were getting on, and I found the door of the cage wide open and no owls to be +seen. I thought of course that somebody had stolen them—some boy from the +village, or perhaps the chastised cowherd. But looking about I saw one perched +high up in the branches of the beech tree, and then to my dismay one lying dead +on the ground. The third was nowhere to be seen, and is probably safe in its +nest. The parents must have torn at the bars of the cage until by chance they +got the door open, and then dragged the little ones out and up into the tree. +The one that is dead must have been blown off the branch, as it was a windy +night and its neck is broken. There is one happy life less in the garden to-day +through my fault, and it is such a lovely, warm day—just the sort of weather +for young soft things to enjoy and grow in. The babies are greatly distressed, +and are digging a grave, and preparing funeral wreaths of dandelions. +</p> + +<p> +Just as I had written that I heard sounds of arrival, and running out I +breathlessly told the Man of Wrath how nearly I had been able to give him the +owls he has so often said he would like to have, and how sorry I was they were +gone, and how grievous the death of one, and so on after the voluble manner of +women. +</p> + +<p> +He listened till I paused to breathe, and then he said, “I am surprised at such +cruelty. How could you make the mother owl suffer so? She had never done you +any harm.” +</p> + +<p> +Which sent me out of the house and into the garden more convinced than ever +that he sang true who sang— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +Two paradises ’twere in one to live in Paradise alone. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>May</i> 16<i>th</i>.—The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, +not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and +admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd round me at every +step—it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish +thoughts that are so much worse than they feel; it is there that all my sins +and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every +flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover. When I have been vexed I +run out to them for comfort, and when I have been angry without just cause, it +is there that I find absolution. Did ever a woman have so many friends? And +always the same, always ready to welcome me and fill me with cheerful thoughts. +Happy children of a common Father, why should I, their own sister, be less +content and joyous than they? Even in a thunder storm, when other people are +running into the house, I run out of it. I do not like thunder storms—they +frighten me for hours before they come, because I always feel them on the way; +but it is odd that I should go for shelter to the garden. I feel better there, +more taken care of, more petted. When it thunders, the April baby says, +“There’s <i>lieber Gott</i> scolding those angels again.” And once, when there +was a storm in the night, she complained loudly, and wanted to know why +<i>lieber Gott</i> didn’t do the scolding in the daytime, as she had been so +<i>tight</i> asleep. They all three speak a wonderful mixture of German and +English, adulterating the purity of their native tongue by putting in English +words in the middle of a German sentence. It always reminds me of Justice +tempered by Mercy. +</p> + +<p> +We have been cowslipping to-day in a little wood dignified by the name of the +Hirschwald, because it is the happy hunting-ground of innumerable deer who +fight there in the autumn evenings, calling each other out to combat with +bayings that ring through the silence and send agreeable shivers through the +lonely listener. I often walk there in September, late in the evening, and +sitting on a fallen tree listen fascinated to their angry cries. +</p> + +<p> +We made cowslip balls sitting on the grass. The babies had never seen such +things nor had imagined anything half so sweet. The Hirschwald is a little open +wood of silver birches and springy turf starred with flowers, and there is a +tiny stream meandering amiably about it and decking itself in June with yellow +flags. I have dreams of having a little cottage built there, with the daisies +up to the door, and no path of any sort—just big enough to hold myself and one +baby inside and a purple clematis outside. Two rooms—a bedroom and a kitchen. +How scared we would be at night, and how completely happy by day! I know the +exact spot where it should stand, facing south-east, so that we should get all +the cheerfulness of the morning, and close to the stream, so that we might wash +our plates among the flags. Sometimes, when in the mood for society, we would +invite the remaining babies to tea and entertain them with wild strawberries on +plates of horse-chestnut leaves; but no one less innocent and easily pleased +than a baby would be permitted to darken the effulgence of our sunny +cottage—indeed, I don’t suppose that anybody wiser would care to come. Wise +people want so many things before they can even begin to enjoy themselves, and +I feel perpetually apologetic when with them, for only being able to offer them +that which I love best myself—apologetic, and ashamed of being so easily +contented. +</p> + +<p> +The other day at a dinner party in the nearest town (it took us the whole +afternoon to get there) the women after dinner were curious to know how I had +endured the winter, cut off from everybody and snowed up sometimes for weeks. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, these husbands!” sighed an ample lady, lugubriously shaking her head; +“they shut up their wives because it suits them, and don’t care what their +sufferings are.” +</p> + +<p> +Then the others sighed and shook their heads too, for the ample lady was a +great local potentate, and one began to tell how another dreadful husband had +brought his young wife into the country and had kept her there, concealing her +beauty and accomplishments from the public in a most cruel manner, and how, +after spending a certain number of years in alternately weeping and producing +progeny, she had quite lately run away with somebody unspeakable—I think it was +the footman, or the baker, or some one of that sort. +</p> + +<p> +“But I am quite happy,” I began, as soon as I could put in a word. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, a good little wife, making the best of it,” and the female potentate +patted my hand, but continued gloomily to shake her head. +</p> + +<p> +“You cannot possibly be happy in the winter entirely alone,” asserted another +lady, the wife of a high military authority and not accustomed to be +contradicted. +</p> + +<p> +“But I am.” +</p> + +<p> +“But how can you possibly be at your age? No, it is not possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I <i>am</i>.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your husband ought to bring you to town in the winter.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t want to be brought to town.” +</p> + +<p> +“And not let you waste your best years buried.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I like being buried.” +</p> + +<p> +“Such solitude is not right.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I’m not solitary.” +</p> + +<p> +“And can come to no good.” She was getting quite angry. +</p> + +<p> +There was a chorus of No Indeeds at her last remark, and renewed shaking of +heads. +</p> + +<p> +“I enjoyed the winter immensely,” I persisted when they were a little quieter; +“I sleighed and skated, and then there were the children, and shelves and +shelves full of—” I was going to say books, but stopped. Reading is an +occupation for men; for women it is reprehensible waste of time. And how could +I talk to them of the happiness I felt when the sun shone on the snow, or of +the deep delight of hoar-frost days? +</p> + +<p> +“It is entirely my doing that we have come down here,” I proceeded, “and my +husband only did it to please me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Such a good little wife,” repeated the patronising potentate, again patting my +hand with an air of understanding all about it, “really an excellent little +wife. But you must not let your husband have his own way too much, my dear, and +take my advice and insist on his bringing you to town next winter.” And then +they fell to talking about their cooks, having settled to their entire +satisfaction that my fate was probably lying in wait for me too, lurking +perhaps at that very moment behind the apparently harmless brass buttons of the +man in the hall with my cloak. +</p> + +<p> +I laughed on the way home, and I laughed again for sheer satisfaction when we +reached the garden and drove between the quiet trees to the pretty old house; +and when I went into the library, with its four windows open to the moonlight +and the scent, and looked round at the familiar bookshelves, and could hear no +sounds but sounds of peace, and knew that here I might read or dream or idle +exactly as I chose with never a creature to disturb me, how grateful I felt to +the kindly Fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my +own blessedness, and rescued me from a life like that I had just seen—a life +spent with the odours of other people’s dinners in one’s nostrils, and the +noise of their wrangling servants in one’s ears, and parties and tattle for all +amusement. +</p> + +<p> +But I must confess to having felt sometimes quite crushed when some grand +person, examining the details of my home through her eyeglass, and coolly +dissecting all that I so much prize from the convenient distance of the open +window, has finished up by expressing sympathy with my loneliness, and on my +protesting that I like it, has murmured, “<i>sehr anspruchslos</i>.” Then +indeed I have felt ashamed of the fewness of my wants; but only for a moment, +and only under the withering influence of the eyeglass; for, after all, the +owner’s spirit is the same spirit as that which dwells in my servants—girls +whose one idea of happiness is to live in a town where there are others of +their sort with whom to drink beer and dance on Sunday afternoons. The passion +for being for ever with one’s fellows, and the fear of being left for a few +hours alone, is to me wholly incomprehensible. I can entertain myself quite +well for weeks together, hardly aware, except for the pervading peace, that I +have been alone at all. Not but what I like to have people staying with me for +a few days, or even for a few weeks, should they be as <i>anspruchslos</i> as I +am myself, and content with simple joys; only, any one who comes here and would +be happy must have something in him; if he be a mere blank creature, empty of +head and heart, he will very probably find it dull. I should like my house to +be often full if I could find people capable of enjoying themselves. They +should be welcomed and sped with equal heartiness; for truth compels me to +confess that, though it pleases me to see them come, it pleases me just as much +to see them go. +</p> + +<p> +On some very specially divine days, like today, I have actually longed for some +one else to be here to enjoy the beauty with me. There has been rain in the +night, and the whole garden seems to be singing—not the untiring birds only, +but the vigorous plants, the happy grass and trees, the lilac bushes—oh, those +lilac bushes! They are all out to-day, and the garden is drenched with the +scent. I have brought in armfuls, the picking is such a delight, and every pot +and bowl and tub in the house is filled with purple glory, and the servants +think there is going to be a party and are extra nimble, and I go from room to +room gazing at the sweetness, and the windows are all flung open so as to join +the scent within to the scent without; and the servants gradually discover that +there is no party, and wonder why the house should be filled with flowers for +one woman by herself, and I long more and more for a kindred spirit—it seems so +greedy to have so much loveliness to oneself—but kindred spirits are so very, +very rare; I might almost as well cry for the moon. It is true that my garden +is full of friends, only they are—dumb. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>June</i> 3<i>rd</i>.—This is such an out-of-the-way corner of the world that +it requires quite unusual energy to get here at all, and I am thus delivered +from casual callers; while, on the other hand, people I love, or people who +love me, which is much the same thing, are not likely to be deterred from +coming by the roundabout train journey and the long drive at the end. Not the +least of my many blessings is that we have only one neighbour. If you have to +have neighbours at all, it is at least a mercy that there should be only one; +for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are +you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and +dream your dreams to your satisfaction? Besides, there is always the certainty +that either you or the dropper-in will say something that would have been +better left unsaid, and I have a holy horror of gossip and mischief-making. A +woman’s tongue is a deadly weapon and the most difficult thing in the world to +keep in order, and things slip off it with a facility nothing short of +appalling at the very moment when it ought to be most quiet. In such cases the +only safe course is to talk steadily about cooks and children, and to pray that +the visit may not be too prolonged, for if it is you are lost. Cooks I have +found to be the best of all subjects—the most phlegmatic flush into life at the +mere word, and the joys and sufferings connected with them are experiences +common to us all. +</p> + +<p> +Luckily, our neighbour and his wife are both busy and charming, with a whole +troop of flaxen-haired little children to keep them occupied, besides the +business of their large estate. Our intercourse is arranged on lines of the +most beautiful simplicity. I call on her once a year, and she returns the call +a fortnight later; they ask us to dinner in the summer, and we ask them to +dinner in the winter. By strictly keeping to this, we avoid all danger of that +closer friendship which is only another name for frequent quarrels. She is a +pattern of what a German country lady should be, and is not only a pretty woman +but an energetic and practical one, and the combination is, to say the least, +effective. She is up at daylight superintending the feeding of the stock, the +butter-making, the sending off of the milk for sale; a thousand things get done +while most people are fast asleep, and before lazy folk are well at breakfast +she is off in her pony-carriage to the other farms on the place, to rate the +“mamsells,” as the head women are called, to poke into every corner, lift the +lids off the saucepans, count the new-laid eggs, and box, if necessary, any +careless dairymaid’s ears. We are allowed by law to administer “slight corporal +punishment” to our servants, it being left entirely to individual taste to +decide what “slight” shall be, and my neighbour really seems to enjoy using +this privilege, judging from the way she talks about it. I would give much to +be able to peep through a keyhole and see the dauntless little lady, terrible +in her wrath and dignity, standing on tiptoe to box the ears of some great +strapping girl big enough to eat her. +</p> + +<p> +The making of cheese and butter and sausages <i>excellently</i> well is a work +which requires brains, and is, to my thinking, a very admirable form of +activity, and entirely worthy of the attention of the intelligent. That my +neighbour is intelligent is at once made evident by the bright alertness of her +eyes—eyes that nothing escapes, and that only gain in prettiness by being used +to some good purpose. She is a recognised authority for miles around on the +mysteries of sausage-making, the care of calves, and the slaughtering of swine; +and with all her manifold duties and daily prolonged absences from home, her +children are patterns of health and neatness, and of what dear little German +children, with white pigtails and fearless eyes and thick legs, should be. Who +shall say that such a life is sordid and dull and unworthy of a high order of +intelligence? I protest that to me it is a beautiful life, full of wholesome +outdoor work, and with no room for those listless moments of depression and +boredom, and of wondering what you will do next, that leave wrinkles round a +pretty woman’s eyes, and are not unknown even to the most brilliant. But while +admiring my neighbour, I don’t think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, +my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather of +that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume +of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow +trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green +pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous +fields. And it would make me perfectly wretched to be confronted by ears so +refractory as to require boxing. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude, and it is on these +occasions that I realise how absolutely alone each individual is, and how far +away from his neighbour; and while they talk (generally about babies, past, +present, and to come), I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance +that separates one’s own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next +chair. I am speaking of comparative strangers, people who are forced to stay a +certain time by the eccentricities of trains, and in whose presence you grope +about after common interests and shrink back into your shell on finding that +you have none. Then a frost slowly settles down on me and I grow each minute +more benumbed and speechless, and the babies feel the frost in the air and look +vacant, and the callers go through the usual form of wondering who they most +take after, generally settling the question by saying that the May baby, who is +the beauty, is like her father, and that the two more or less plain ones are +the image of me, and this decision, though I know it of old and am sure it is +coming, never fails to depress me as much as though I heard it for the first +time. The babies are very little and inoffensive and good, and it is hard that +they should be used as a means of filling up gaps in conversation, and their +features pulled to pieces one by one, and all their weak points noted and +criticised, while they stand smiling shyly in the operator’s face, their very +smile drawing forth comments on the shape of their mouths; but, after all, it +does not occur very often, and they are one of those few interests one has in +common with other people, as everybody seems to have babies. A garden, I have +discovered, is by no means a fruitful topic, and it is amazing how few persons +really love theirs—they all pretend they do, but you can hear by the very tone +of their voice what a lukewarm affection it is. About June their interest is at +its warmest, nourished by agreeable supplies of strawberries and roses; but on +reflection I don’t know a single person within twenty miles who really cares +for his garden, or has discovered the treasures of happiness that are buried in +it, and are to be found if sought for diligently, and if needs be with tears. +It is after these rare calls that I experience the only moments of depression +from which I ever suffer, and then I am angry at myself, a well-nourished +person, for allowing even a single precious hour of life to be spoilt by +anything so indifferent. That is the worst of being fed enough, and clothed +enough, and warmed enough, and of having everything you can reasonably +desire—on the least provocation you are made uncomfortable and unhappy by such +abstract discomforts as being shut out from a nearer approach to your +neighbour’s soul; which is on the face of it foolish, the probability being +that he hasn’t got one. +</p> + +<p> +The rockets are all out. The gardener, in a fit of inspiration, put them right +along the very front of two borders, and I don’t know what his feelings can be +now that they are all flowering and the plants behind are completely hidden; +but I have learned another lesson, and no future gardener shall be allowed to +run riot among my rockets in quite so reckless a fashion. They are charming +things, as delicate in colour as in scent, and a bowl of them on my +writing-table fills the room with fragrance. Single rows, however, are a +mistake; I had masses of them planted in the grass, and these show how lovely +they can be. A border full of rockets, mauve and white, and nothing else, must +be beautiful; but I don’t know how long they last nor what they look like when +they have done flowering. This I shall find out in a week or two, I suppose. +Was ever a would-be gardener left so entirely to his own blundering? No doubt +it would be a gain of years to the garden if I were not forced to learn solely +by my failures, and if I had some kind creature to tell me when to do things. +At present the only flowers in the garden are the rockets, the pansies in the +rose beds, and two groups of azaleas—mollis and pontica. The azaleas have been +and still are gorgeous; I only planted them this spring and they almost at once +began to flower, and the sheltered corner they are in looks as though it were +filled with imprisoned and perpetual sunsets. Orange, lemon, pink in every +delicate shade—what they will be next year and in succeeding years when the +bushes are bigger, I can imagine from the way they have begun life. On gray, +dull days the effect is absolutely startling. Next autumn I shall make a great +bank of them in front of a belt of fir trees in rather a gloomy nook. My +tea-roses are covered with buds which will not open for at least another week, +so I conclude this is not the sort of climate where they will flower from the +very beginning of June to November, as they are said to do. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>July</i> 11<i>th</i>.—There has been no rain since the day before +Whitsunday, five weeks ago, which partly, but not entirely, accounts for the +disappointment my beds have been. The dejected gardener went mad soon after +Whitsuntide, and had to be sent to an asylum. He took to going about with a +spade in one hand and a revolver in the other, explaining that he felt safer +that way, and we bore it quite patiently, as becomes civilised beings who +respect each other’s prejudices, until one day, when I mildly asked him to tie +up a fallen creeper—and after he bought the revolver my tones in addressing him +were of the mildest, and I quite left off reading to him aloud—he turned round, +looked me straight in the face for the first time since he has been here, and +said, “Do I look like Graf X———— (a great local celebrity), or like a monkey?” +After which there was nothing for it but to get him into an asylum as +expeditiously as possible. There was no gardener to be had in his place, and I +have only just succeeded in getting one; so that what with the drought, and the +neglect, and the gardener’s madness, and my blunders, the garden is in a sad +condition; but even in a sad condition it is the dearest place in the world, +and all my mistakes only make me more determined to persevere. +</p> + +<p> +The long borders, where the rockets were, are looking dreadful. The rockets +have done flowering, and, after the manner of rockets in other walks of life, +have degenerated into sticks; and nothing else in those borders intends to +bloom this summer. The giant poppies I had planted out in them in April have +either died off or remained quite small, and so have the columbines; here and +there a delphinium droops unwillingly, and that is all. I suppose poppies +cannot stand being moved, or perhaps they were not watered enough at the time +of transplanting; anyhow, those borders are going to be sown to-morrow with +more poppies for next year; for poppies I will have, whether they like it or +not, and they shall not be touched, only thinned out. +</p> + +<p> +Well, it is no use being grieved, and after all, directly I come out and sit +under the trees, and look at the dappled sky, and see the sunshine on the +cornfields away on the plain, all the disappointment smooths itself out, and it +seems impossible to be sad and discontented when everything about me is so +radiant and kind. +</p> + +<p> +To-day is Sunday, and the garden is so quiet, that, sitting here in this shady +corner watching the lazy shadows stretching themselves across the grass, and +listening to the rooks quarrelling in the treetops, I almost expect to hear +English church bells ringing for the afternoon service. But the church is three +miles off, has no bells, and no afternoon service. Once a fortnight we go to +morning prayer at eleven and sit up in a sort of private box with a room +behind, whither we can retire unobserved when the sermon is too long or our +flesh too weak, and hear ourselves being prayed for by the black-robed parson. +In winter the church is bitterly cold; it is not heated, and we sit muffled up +in more furs than ever we wear out of doors; but it would of course be very +wicked for the parson to wear furs, however cold he may be, so he puts on a +great many extra coats under his gown, and, as the winter progresses, swells to +a prodigious size. We know when spring is coming by the reduction in his +figure. The congregation sit at ease while the parson does the praying for +them, and while they are droning the long-drawn-out chorales, he retires into a +little wooden box just big enough to hold him. He does not come out until he +thinks we have sung enough, nor do we stop until his appearance gives us the +signal. I have often thought how dreadful it would be if he fell ill in his box +and left us to go on singing. I am sure we should never dare to stop, +unauthorised by the Church. I asked him once what he did in there; he looked +very shocked at such a profane question, and made an evasive reply. +</p> + +<p> +If it were not for the garden, a German Sunday would be a terrible day; but in +the garden on that day there is a sigh of relief and more profound peace, +nobody raking or sweeping or fidgeting; only the little flowers themselves and +the whispering trees. +</p> + +<p> +I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors—not stray callers to be got +rid of after a due administration of tea and things you are sorry afterwards +that you said, but people staying in the house and not to be got rid of at all. +All June was lost to me in this way, and it was from first to last a radiant +month of heat and beauty; but a garden where you meet the people you saw at +breakfast, and will see again at lunch and dinner, is not a place to be happy +in. Besides, they had a knack of finding out my favourite seats and lounging in +them just when I longed to lounge myself; and they took books out of the +library with them, and left them face downwards on the seats all night to get +well drenched with dew, though they might have known that what is meat for +roses is poison for books; and they gave me to understand that if they had had +the arranging of the garden it would have been finished long ago—whereas I +don’t believe a garden ever is finished. They have all gone now, thank heaven, +except one, so that I have a little breathing space before others begin to +arrive. It seems that the place interests people, and that there is a sort of +novelty in staying in such a deserted corner of the world, for they were in a +perpetual state of mild amusement at being here at all. +</p> + +<p> +Irais is the only one left. She is a young woman with a beautiful, refined +face, and her eyes and straight, fine eyebrows are particularly lovable. At +meals she dips her bread into the salt-cellar, bites a bit off, and repeats the +process, although providence (taking my shape) has caused salt-spoons to be +placed at convenient intervals down the table. She lunched to-day on beer, +<i>Schweinekoteletten</i>, and cabbage-salad with caraway seeds in it, and now +I hear her through the open window, extemporising touching melodies in her +charming, cooing voice. She is thin, frail, intelligent, and lovable, all on +the above diet. What better proof can be needed to establish the superiority of +the Teuton than the fact that after such meals he can produce such music? +Cabbage salad is a horrid invention, but I don’t doubt its utility as a means +of encouraging thoughtfulness; nor will I quarrel with it, since it results so +poetically, any more than I quarrel with the manure that results in roses, and +I give it to Irais every day to make her sing. She is the sweetest singer I +have ever heard, and has a charming trick of making up songs as she goes along. +When she begins, I go and lean out of the window and look at my little friends +out there in the borders while listening to her music, and feel full of +pleasant sadness and regret. It is so sweet to be sad when one has nothing to +be sad about. +</p> + +<p> +The April baby came panting up just as I had written that, the others hurrying +along behind, and with flaming cheeks displayed for my admiration three +brand-new kittens, lean and blind, that she was carrying in her pinafore, and +that had just been found motherless in the woodshed. +</p> + +<p> +“Look,” she cried breathlessly, “such a much!” +</p> + +<p> +I was glad it was only kittens this time, for she had been once before this +afternoon on purpose, as she informed me, sitting herself down on the grass at +my feet, to ask about the <i>lieber Gott</i>, it being Sunday and her pious +little nurse’s conversation having run, as it seems, on heaven and angels. +</p> + +<p> +Her questions about the <i>lieber Gott</i> are better left unrecorded, and I +was relieved when she began about the angels. +</p> + +<p> +“What do they wear for clothes?” she asked in her German-English. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, you’ve seen them in pictures,” I answered, “in beautiful, long dresses, +and with big, white wings.” +</p> + +<p> +“Feathers?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose so,—and long dresses, all white and beautiful.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are they girlies?” +</p> + +<p> +“Girls? Ye—es.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t boys go into the <i>Himmel?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, of course, if they’re good.” +</p> + +<p> +“And then what do <i>they</i> wear?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, the same as all the other angels, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Dwesses?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +She began to laugh, looking at me sideways as though she suspected me of making +jokes. “What a funny Mummy!” she said, evidently much amused. She has a fat +little laugh that is very infectious. +</p> + +<p> +“I think,” said I, gravely, “you had better go and play with the other babies.” +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer, and sat still a moment watching the clouds. I began writing +again. +</p> + +<p> +“Mummy,” she said presently. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” +</p> + +<p> +“Where do the angels get their dwesses?” +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated. “From <i>lieber Gott</i>,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Are there shops in the <i>Himmel?</i>” +</p> + +<p> +“Shops? No.” +</p> + +<p> +“But, then, where does <i>lieber Gott</i> buy their dwesses?” +</p> + +<p> +“Now run away like a good baby; I’m busy.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you said yesterday, when I asked about <i>lieber Gott</i>, that you would +tell about Him on Sunday, and it is Sunday. Tell me a story about Him.” +</p> + +<p> +There was nothing for it but resignation, so I put down my pencil with a sigh. +“Call the others, then.” +</p> + +<p> +She ran away, and presently they all three emerged from the bushes one after +the other, and tried all together to scramble on to my knee. The April baby got +the knee as she always seems to get everything, and the other two had to sit on +the grass. +</p> + +<p> +I began about Adam and Eve, with an eye to future parsonic probings. The April +baby’s eyes opened wider and wider, and her face grew redder and redder. I was +surprised at the breathless interest she took in the story—the other two were +tearing up tufts of grass and hardly listening. I had scarcely got to the +angels with the flaming swords and announced that that was all, when she burst +out, “Now <i>I’ll</i> tell about it. Once upon a time there was Adam and Eva, +and they had <i>plenty</i> of clothes, and there was no snake, and <i>lieber +Gott</i> wasn’t angry with them, and they could eat as many apples as they +liked, and was happy for ever and ever—there now!” +</p> + +<p> +She began to jump up and down defiantly on my knee. +</p> + +<p> +“But that’s not the story,” I said rather helplessly. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes! It’s a much nicelier one! Now another.” +</p> + +<p> +“But these stories are <i>true</i>,” I said severely; “and it’s no use my +telling them if you make them up your own way afterwards.” +</p> + +<p> +“Another! another!” she shrieked, jumping up and down with redoubled energy, +all her silvery curls flying. +</p> + +<p> +I began about Noah and the flood. +</p> + +<p> +“Did it rain <i>so</i> badly?” she asked with a face of the deepest concern and +interest. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, all day long and all night long for weeks and weeks——” +</p> + +<p> +“And was everybody so wet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—” +</p> + +<p> +“But why didn’t they open their umbwellas?” +</p> + +<p> +Just then I saw the nurse coming out with the tea-tray. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll tell you the rest another time,” I said, putting her off my knee, greatly +relieved; “you must all go to Anna now and have tea.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t like Anna,” remarked the June baby, not having hitherto opened her +lips; “she is a stupid girl.” +</p> + +<p> +The other two stood transfixed with horror at this statement, for, besides +being naturally extremely polite, and at all times anxious not to hurt any +one’s feelings, they had been brought up to love and respect their kind little +nurse. +</p> + +<p> +The April baby recovered her speech first, and lifting her finger, pointed it +at the criminal in just indignation. “Such a child will never go into the +<i>Himmel</i>,” she said with great emphasis, and the air of one who delivers +judgment. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>September</i> 15<i>th</i>.—This is the month of quiet days, crimson +creepers, and blackberries; of mellow afternoons in the ripening garden; of tea +under the acacias instead of the too shady beeches; of wood-fires in the +library in the chilly evenings. The babies go out in the afternoon and +blackberry in the hedges; the three kittens, grown big and fat, sit cleaning +themselves on the sunny verandah steps; the Man of Wrath shoots partridges +across the distant stubble; and the summer seems as though it would dream on +for ever. It is hard to believe that in three months we shall probably be +snowed up and certainly be cold. There is a feeling about this month that +reminds me of March and the early days of April, when spring is still +hesitating on the threshold and the garden holds its breath in expectation. +There is the same mildness in the air, and the sky and grass have the same look +as then; but the leaves tell a different tale, and the reddening creeper on the +house is rapidly approaching its last and loveliest glory. +</p> + +<p> +My roses have behaved as well on the whole as was to be expected, and the +Viscountess Folkestones and Laurette Messimys have been most beautiful, the +latter being quite the loveliest things in the garden, each flower an exquisite +loose cluster of coral-pink petals, paling at the base to a yellow-white. I +have ordered a hundred standard tea-roses for planting next month, half of +which are Viscountess Folkestones, because the tea-roses have such a way of +hanging their little heads that one has to kneel down to be able to see them +well in the dwarf forms—not but what I entirely approve of kneeling before such +perfect beauty, only it dirties one’s clothes. So I am going to put standards +down each side of the walk under the south windows, and shall have the flowers +on a convenient level for worship. My only fear is, that they will stand the +winter less well than the dwarf sorts, being so difficult to pack up snugly. +The Persian Yellows and Bicolors have been, as I predicted, a mistake among the +tea-roses; they only flower twice in the season and all the rest of the time +look dull and moping; and then the Persian Yellows have such an odd smell and +so many insects inside them eating them up. I have ordered Safrano tea-roses to +put in their place, as they all come out next month and are to be grouped in +the grass; and the semicircle being immediately under the windows, besides +having the best position in the place, must be reserved solely for my choicest +treasures. I have had a great many disappointments, but feel as though I were +really beginning to learn. Humility, and the most patient perseverance, seem +almost as necessary in gardening as rain and sunshine, and every failure must +be used as a stepping-stone to something better. +</p> + +<p> +I had a visitor last week who knows a great deal about gardening and has had +much practical experience. When I heard he was coming, I felt I wanted to put +my arms right round my garden and hide it from him; but what was my surprise +and delight when he said, after having gone all over it, “Well, I think you +have done wonders.” Dear me, how pleased I was! It was so entirely unexpected, +and such a complete novelty after the remarks I have been listening to all the +summer. I could have hugged that discerning and indulgent critic, able to look +beyond the result to the intention, and appreciating the difficulties of every +kind that had been in the way. After that I opened my heart to him, and +listened reverently to all he had to say, and treasured up his kind and +encouraging advice, and wished he could stay here a whole year and help me +through the seasons. But he went, as people one likes always do go, and he was +the only guest I have had whose departure made me sorry. +</p> + +<p> +The people I love are always somewhere else and not able to come to me, while I +can at any time fill the house with visitors about whom I know little and care +less. Perhaps, if I saw more of those absent ones, I would not love them so +well—at least, that is what I think on wet days when the wind is howling round +the house and all nature is overcome with grief; and it has actually happened +once or twice when great friends have been staying with me that I have wished, +when they left, I might not see them again for at least ten years. I suppose +the fact is, that no friendship can stand the breakfast test, and here, in the +country, we invariably think it our duty to appear at breakfast. Civilisation +has done away with curl-papers, yet at that hour the soul of the +<i>Hausfrau</i> is as tightly screwed up in them as was ever her grandmother’s +hair; and though my body comes down mechanically, having been trained that way +by punctual parents, my soul never thinks of beginning to wake up for other +people till lunch-time, and never does so completely till it has been taken out +of doors and aired in the sunshine. Who can begin conventional amiability the +first thing in the morning? It is the hour of savage instincts and natural +tendencies; it is the triumph of the Disagreeable and the Cross. I am convinced +that the Muses and the Graces never thought of having breakfast anywhere but in +bed. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>November</i> 11<i>th</i>.—When the gray November weather came, and hung its +soft dark clouds low and unbroken over the brown of the ploughed fields and the +vivid emerald of the stretches of winter corn, the heavy stillness weighed my +heart down to a forlorn yearning after the pleasant things of childhood, the +petting, the comforting, the warming faith in the unfailing wisdom of elders. A +great need of something to lean on, and a great weariness of independence and +responsibility took possession of my soul; and looking round for support and +comfort in that transitory mood, the emptiness of the present and the blankness +of the future sent me back to the past with all its ghosts. Why should I not go +and see the place where I was born, and where I lived so long; the place where +I was so magnificently happy, so exquisitely wretched, so close to heaven, so +near to hell, always either up on a cloud of glory, or down in the depths with +the waters of despair closing over my head? Cousins live in it now, distant +cousins, loved with the exact measure of love usually bestowed on cousins who +reign in one’s stead; cousins of practical views, who have dug up the +flower-beds and planted cabbages where roses grew; and though through all the +years since my father’s death I have held my head so high that it hurt, and +loftily refused to listen to their repeated suggestions that I should revisit +my old home, something in the sad listlessness of the November days sent my +spirit back to old times with a persistency that would not be set aside, and I +woke from my musings surprised to find myself sick with longing. It is foolish +but natural to quarrel with one’s cousins, and especially foolish and natural +when they have done nothing, and are mere victims of chance. Is it their fault +that my not being a boy placed the shoes I should otherwise have stepped into +at their disposal? I know it is not; but their blamelessness does not make me +love them more. “<i>Noch ein dummes Frauenzimmer!</i>” cried my father, on my +arrival into the world—he had three of them already, and I was his last +hope,—and a <i>dummes Frauenzimmer</i> I have remained ever since; and that is +why for years I would have no dealings with the cousins in possession, and that +is why, the other day, overcome by the tender influence of the weather, the +purely sentimental longing to join hands again with my childhood was enough to +send all my pride to the winds, and to start me off without warning and without +invitation on my pilgrimage. +</p> + +<p> +I have always had a liking for pilgrimages, and if I had lived in the Middle +Ages would have spent most of my time on the way to Rome. The pilgrims, leaving +all their cares at home, the anxieties of their riches or their debts, the wife +that worried and the children that disturbed, took only their sins with them, +and turning their backs on their obligations, set out with that sole burden, +and perhaps a cheerful heart. How cheerful my heart would have been, starting +on a fine morning, with the smell of the spring in my nostrils, fortified by +the approval of those left behind, accompanied by the pious blessings of my +family, with every step getting farther from the suffocation of daily duties, +out into the wide fresh world, out into the glorious free world, so poor, so +penitent, and so happy! My dream, even now, is to walk for weeks with some +friend that I love, leisurely wandering from place to place, with no route +arranged and no object in view, with liberty to go on all day or to linger all +day, as we choose; but the question of luggage, unknown to the simple pilgrim, +is one of the rocks on which my plans have been shipwrecked, and the other is +the certain censure of relatives, who, not fond of walking themselves, and +having no taste for noonday naps under hedges, would be sure to paralyse my +plans before they had grown to maturity by the honest horror of their cry, “How +very unpleasant if you were to meet any one you know!” The relative of five +hundred years back would simply have said, “How holy!” +</p> + +<p> +My father had the same liking for pilgrimages—indeed, it is evident that I have +it from him—and he encouraged it in me when I was little, taking me with him on +his pious journeys to places he had lived in as a boy. Often have we been +together to the school he was at in Brandenburg, and spent pleasant days +wandering about the old town on the edge of one of those lakes that lie in a +chain in that wide green plain; and often have we been in Potsdam, where he was +quartered as a lieutenant, the Potsdam pilgrimage including hours in the woods +around and in the gardens of Sans Souci, with the second volume of Carlyle’s +Frederick under my father’s arm; and often did we spend long summer days at the +house in the Mark, at the head of the same blue chain of lakes, where his +mother spent her young years, and where, though it belonged to cousins, like +everything else that was worth having, we could wander about as we chose, for +it was empty, and sit in the deep windows of rooms where there was no +furniture, and the painted Venuses and cupids on the ceiling still smiled +irrelevantly and stretched their futile wreaths above the emptiness beneath. +And while we sat and rested, my father told me, as my grandmother had a hundred +times told him, all that had happened in those rooms in the far-off days when +people danced and sang and laughed through life, and nobody seemed ever to be +old or sorry. +</p> + +<p> +There was, and still is, an inn within a stone’s throw of the great iron gates, +with two very old lime trees in front of it, where we used to lunch on our +arrival at a little table spread with a red and blue check cloth, the lime +blossoms dropping into our soup, and the bees humming in the scented shadows +overhead. I have a picture of the house by my side as I write, done from the +lake in old times, with a boat full of ladies in hoops and powder in the +foreground, and a youth playing a guitar. The pilgrimages to this place were +those I loved the best. +</p> + +<p> +But the stories my father told me, sometimes odd enough stories to tell a +little girl, as we wandered about the echoing rooms, or hung over the stone +balustrade and fed the fishes in the lake, or picked the pale dog-roses in the +hedges, or lay in the boat in a shady reed-grown bay while he smoked to keep +the mosquitoes off, were after all only traditions, imparted to me in small +doses from time to time, when his earnest desire not to raise his remarks above +the level of dulness supposed to be wholesome for <i>Backfische</i> was +neutralised by an impulse to share his thoughts with somebody who would laugh; +whereas the place I was bound for on my latest pilgrimage was filled with +living, first-hand memories of all the enchanted years that lie between two and +eighteen. How enchanted those years are is made more and more clear to me the +older I grow. There has been nothing in the least like them since; and though I +have forgotten most of what happened six months ago, every incident, almost +every day of those wonderful long years is perfectly distinct in my memory. +</p> + +<p> +But I had been stiffnecked, proud, unpleasant, altogether cousinly in my +behaviour towards the people in possession. The invitations to revisit the old +home had ceased. The cousins had grown tired of refusals, and had left me +alone. I did not even know who lived in it now, it was so long since I had had +any news. For two days I fought against the strong desire to go there that had +suddenly seized me, and assured myself that I would not go, that it would be +absurd to go, undignified, sentimental, and silly, that I did not know them and +would be in an awkward position, and that I was old enough to know better. But +who can foretell from one hour to the next what a woman will do? And when does +she ever know better? On the third morning I set out as hopefully as though it +were the most natural thing in the world to fall unexpectedly upon hitherto +consistently neglected cousins, and expect to be received with open arms. +</p> + +<p> +It was a complicated journey, and lasted several hours. During the first part, +when it was still dark, I glowed with enthusiasm, with the spirit of adventure, +with delight at the prospect of so soon seeing the loved place again; and +thought with wonder of the long years I had allowed to pass since last I was +there. Of what I should say to the cousins, and of how I should introduce +myself into their midst, I did not think at all: the pilgrim spirit was upon +me, the unpractical spirit that takes no thought for anything, but simply +wanders along enjoying its own emotions. It was a quiet, sad morning, and there +was a thick mist. By the time I was in the little train on the light railway +that passed through the village nearest my old home, I had got over my first +enthusiasm, and had entered the stage of critically examining the changes that +had been made in the last ten years. It was so misty that I could see nothing +of the familiar country from the carriage windows, only the ghosts of pines in +the front row of the forests; but the railway itself was a new departure, +unknown in our day, when we used to drive over ten miles of deep, sandy forest +roads to and from the station, and although most people would have called it an +evident and great improvement, it was an innovation due, no doubt, to the zeal +and energy of the reigning cousin; and who was he, thought I, that he should +require more conveniences than my father had found needful? It was no use my +telling myself that in my father’s time the era of light railways had not +dawned, and that if it had, we should have done our utmost to secure one; the +thought of my cousin, stepping into my shoes, and then altering them, was +odious to me. By the time I was walking up the hill from the station I had got +over this feeling too, and had entered a third stage of wondering uneasily what +in the world I should do next. Where was the intrepid courage with which I had +started? At the top of the first hill I sat down to consider this question in +detail, for I was very near the house now, and felt I wanted time. Where, +indeed, was the courage and joy of the morning? It had vanished so completely +that I could only suppose that it must be lunch time, the observations of years +having led to the discovery that the higher sentiments and virtues fly +affrighted on the approach of lunch, and none fly quicker than courage. So I +ate the lunch I had brought with me, hoping that it was what I wanted; but it +was chilly, made up of sandwiches and pears, and it had to be eaten under a +tree at the edge of a field; and it was November, and the mist was thicker than +ever and very wet—the grass was wet with it, the gaunt tree was wet with it, I +was wet with it, and the sandwiches were wet with it. Nobody’s spirits can keep +up under such conditions; and as I ate the soaked sandwiches, I deplored the +headlong courage more with each mouthful that had torn me from a warm, dry home +where I was appreciated, and had brought me first to the damp tree in the damp +field, and when I had finished my lunch and dessert of cold pears, was going to +drag me into the midst of a circle of unprepared and astonished cousins. Vast +sheep loomed through the mist a few yards off. The sheep dog kept up a +perpetual, irritating yap. In the fog I could hardly tell where I was, though I +knew I must have played there a hundred times as a child. After the fashion of +woman directly she is not perfectly warm and perfectly comfortable, I began to +consider the uncertainty of human life, and to shake my head in gloomy approval +as lugubrious lines of pessimistic poetry suggested themselves to my mind. +</p> + +<p> +Now it is clearly a desirable plan, if you want to do anything, to do it in the +way consecrated by custom, more especially if you are a woman. The rattle of a +carriage along the road just behind me, and the fact that I started and turned +suddenly hot, drove this truth home to my soul. The mist hid me, and the +carriage, no doubt full of cousins, drove on in the direction of the house; but +what an absurd position I was in! Suppose the kindly mist had lifted, and +revealed me lunching in the wet on their property, the cousin of the short and +lofty letters, the <i>unangenehme Elisabeth!</i> “<i>Die war doch immer +verdreht</i>,” I could imagine them hastily muttering to each other, before +advancing wreathed in welcoming smiles. It gave me a great shock, this narrow +escape, and I got on to my feet quickly, and burying the remains of my lunch +under the gigantic molehill on which I had been sitting, asked myself nervously +what I proposed to do next. Should I walk back to the village, go to the +<i>Gasthof</i>, write a letter craving permission to call on my cousins, and +wait there till an answer came? It would be a discreet and sober course to +pursue; the next best thing to having written before leaving home. But the +<i>Gasthof</i> of a north German village is a dreadful place, and the +remembrance of one in which I had taken refuge once from a thunderstorm was +still so vivid that nature itself cried out against this plan. The mist, if +anything, was growing denser. I knew every path and gate in the place. What if +I gave up all hope of seeing the house, and went through the little door in the +wall at the bottom of the garden, and confined myself for this once to that? In +such weather I would be able to wander round as I pleased, without the least +risk of being seen by or meeting any cousins, and it was after all the garden +that lay nearest my heart. What a delight it would be to creep into it +unobserved, and revisit all the corners I so well remembered, and slip out +again and get away safely without any need of explanations, assurances, +protestations, displays of affection, without any need, in a word, of that +exhausting form of conversation, so dear to relations, known as +<i>Redensarten!</i> +</p> + +<p> +The mist tempted me. I think if it had been a fine day I would have gone +soberly to the <i>Gasthof</i> and written the conciliatory letter; but the +temptation was too great, it was altogether irresistible, and in ten minutes I +had found the gate, opened it with some difficulty, and was standing with a +beating heart in the garden of my childhood. +</p> + +<p> +Now I wonder whether I shall ever again feel thrills of the same potency as +those that ran through me at that moment. First of all I was trespassing, which +is in itself thrilling; but how much more thrilling when you are trespassing on +what might just as well have been your own ground, on what actually was for +years your own ground, and when you are in deadly peril of seeing the rightful +owners, whom you have never met, but with whom you have quarrelled, appear +round the corner, and of hearing them remark with an inquiring and awful +politeness “I do not think I have the pleasure—?” Then the place was unchanged. +I was standing in the same mysterious tangle of damp little paths that had +always been just there; they curled away on either side among the shrubs, with +the brown tracks of recent footsteps in the centre of their green stains, just +as they did in my day. The overgrown lilac bushes still met above my head. The +moisture dripped from the same ledge in the wall on to the sodden leaves +beneath, as it had done all through the afternoons of all those past Novembers. +This was the place, this damp and gloomy tangle, that had specially belonged to +me. Nobody ever came to it, for in winter it was too dreary, and in summer so +full of mosquitoes that only a <i>Backfisch</i> indifferent to spots could have +borne it. But it was a place where I could play unobserved, and where I could +walk up and down uninterrupted for hours, building castles in the air. There +was an unwholesome little arbour in one dark corner, much frequented by the +larger black slug, where I used to pass glorious afternoons making plans. I was +for ever making plans, and if nothing came of them, what did it matter? The +mere making had been a joy. To me this out-of-the-way corner was always a +wonderful and a mysterious place, where my castles in the air stood close +together in radiant rows, and where the strangest and most splendid adventures +befell me; for the hours I passed in it and the people I met in it were all +enchanted. +</p> + +<p> +Standing there and looking round with happy eyes, I forgot the existence of the +cousins. I could have cried for joy at being there again. It was the home of my +fathers, the home that would have been mine if I had been a boy, the home that +was mine now by a thousand tender and happy and miserable associations, of +which the people in possession could not dream. They were tenants, but it was +my home. I threw my arms round the trunk of a very wet fir tree, every branch +of which I remembered, for had I not climbed it, and fallen from it, and torn +and bruised myself on it uncountable numbers of times? and I gave it such a +hearty kiss that my nose and chin were smudged into one green stain, and still +I did not care. Far from caring, it filled me with a reckless, <i>Backfisch</i> +pleasure in being dirty, a delicious feeling that I had not had for years. +Alice in Wonderland, after she had drunk the contents of the magic bottle, +could not have grown smaller more suddenly than I grew younger the moment I +passed through that magic door. Bad habits cling to us, however, with such +persistency that I did mechanically pull out my handkerchief and begin to rub +off the welcoming smudge, a thing I never would have dreamed of doing in the +glorious old days; but an artful scent of violets clinging to the handkerchief +brought me to my senses, and with a sudden impulse of scorn, the fine scorn for +scent of every honest <i>Backfisch</i>, I rolled it up into a ball and flung it +away into the bushes, where I daresay it is at this moment. “Away with you,” I +cried, “away with you, symbol of conventionality, of slavery, of pandering to a +desire to please—away with you, miserable little lace-edged rag!” And so young +had I grown within the last few minutes that I did not even feel silly. +</p> + +<p> +As a <i>Backfisch</i> I had never used handkerchiefs—the child of nature scorns +to blow its nose—though for decency’s sake my governess insisted on giving me a +clean one of vast size and stubborn texture on Sundays. It was stowed away +unfolded in the remotest corner of my pocket, where it was gradually pressed +into a beautiful compactness by the other contents, which were knives. After a +while, I remember, the handkerchief being brought to light on Sundays to make +room for a successor, and being manifestly perfectly clean, we came to an +agreement that it should only be changed on the first and third Sundays in the +month, on condition that I promised to turn it on the other Sundays. My +governess said that the outer folds became soiled from the mere contact with +the other things in my pocket, and that visitors might catch sight of the +soiled side if it was never turned when I wished to blow my nose in their +presence, and that one had no right to give one’s visitors shocks. “But I never +do wish——” I began with great earnestness. “<i>Unsinn</i>,” said my governess, +cutting me short. +</p> + +<p> +After the first thrills of joy at being there again had gone, the profound +stillness of the dripping little shrubbery frightened me. It was so still that +I was afraid to move; so still, that I could count each drop of moisture +falling from the oozing wall; so still, that when I held my breath to listen, I +was deafened by my own heart-beats. I made a step forward in the direction +where the arbour ought to be, and the rustling and jingling of my clothes +terrified me into immobility. The house was only two hundred yards off; and if +any one had been about, the noise I had already made opening the creaking door +and so foolishly apostrophising my handkerchief must have been noticed. Suppose +an inquiring gardener, or a restless cousin, should presently loom through the +fog, bearing down upon me? Suppose Fräulein Wundermacher should pounce upon me +suddenly from behind, coming up noiselessly in her galoshes, and shatter my +castles with her customary triumphant “<i>Jetzt halte ich dich aber fest!</i>” +Why, what was I thinking of? Fräulein Wundermacher, so big and masterful, such +an enemy of day-dreams, such a friend of <i>das Praktische</i>, such a lover of +creature comforts, had died long ago, had been succeeded long ago by others, +German sometimes, and sometimes English, and sometimes at intervals French, and +they too had all in their turn vanished, and I was here a solitary ghost. +“Come, Elizabeth,” said I to myself impatiently, “are you actually growing +sentimental over your governesses? If you think you are a ghost, be glad at +least that you are a solitary one. Would you like the ghosts of all those poor +women you tormented to rise up now in this gloomy place against you? And do you +intend to stand here till you are caught?” And thus exhorting myself to action, +and recognising how great was the risk I ran in lingering, I started down the +little path leading to the arbour and the principal part of the garden, going, +it is true, on tiptoe, and very much frightened by the rustling of my +petticoats, but determined to see what I had come to see and not to be scared +away by phantoms. +</p> + +<p> +How regretfully did I think at that moment of the petticoats of my youth, so +short, so silent, and so woollen! And how convenient the canvas shoes were with +the india rubber soles, for creeping about without making a sound! Thanks to +them I could always run swiftly and unheard into my hiding-places, and stay +there listening to the garden resounding with cries of “Elizabeth! Elizabeth! +Come in at once to your lessons!” Or, at a different period, “<i>Où êtes-vous +donc, petite sotte?</i>” Or at yet another period, “<i>Warte nur, wenn ich dich +erst habe!</i>” As the voices came round one corner, I whisked in my noiseless +clothes round the next, and it was only Fräulein Wundermacher, a person of +resource, who discovered that all she needed for my successful circumvention +was galoshes. She purchased a pair, wasted no breath calling me, and would come +up silently, as I stood lapped in a false security lost in the contemplation of +a squirrel or a robin, and seize me by the shoulders from behind, to the +grievous unhinging of my nerves. Stealing along in the fog, I looked back +uneasily once or twice, so vivid was this disquieting memory, and could hardly +be reassured by putting up my hand to the elaborate twists and curls that +compose what my maid calls my <i>Frisur</i>, and that mark the gulf lying +between the present and the past; for it had happened once or twice, awful to +relate and to remember, that Fräulein Wundermacher, sooner than let me slip +through her fingers, had actually caught me by the long plait of hair to whose +other end I was attached and whose English name I had been told was pigtail, +just at the instant when I was springing away from her into the bushes; and so +had led me home triumphant, holding on tight to the rope of hair, and muttering +with a broad smile of special satisfaction, “<i>Diesmal wirst du mir aber nicht +entschlüpfen!</i>” Fräulein Wundermacher, now I came to think of it, must have +been a humourist. She was certainly a clever and a capable woman. But I wished +at that moment that she would not haunt me so persistently, and that I could +get rid of the feeling that she was just behind in her galoshes, with her hand +stretched out to seize me. +</p> + +<p> +Passing the arbour, and peering into its damp recesses, I started back with my +heart in my mouth. I thought I saw my grandfather’s stern eyes shining in the +darkness. It was evident that my anxiety lest the cousins should catch me had +quite upset my nerves, for I am not by nature inclined to see eyes where eyes +are not. “Don’t be foolish, Elizabeth,” murmured my soul in rather a faint +voice, “go in, and make sure.” “But I don’t like going in and making sure,” I +replied. I did go in, however, with a sufficient show of courage, and +fortunately the eyes vanished. What I should have done if they had not I am +altogether unable to imagine. Ghosts are things that I laugh at in the daytime +and fear at night, but I think if I were to meet one I should die. The arbour +had fallen into great decay, and was in the last stage of mouldiness. My +grandfather had had it made, and, like other buildings, it enjoyed a period of +prosperity before being left to the ravages of slugs and children, when he came +down every afternoon in summer and drank his coffee there and read his +<i>Kreuzzeitung</i> and dozed, while the rest of us went about on tiptoe, and +only the birds dared sing. Even the mosquitoes that infested the place were too +much in awe of him to sting him; they certainly never did sting him, and I +naturally concluded it must be because he had forbidden such familiarities. +Although I had played there for so many years since his death, my memory +skipped them all, and went back to the days when it was exclusively his. +Standing on the spot where his armchair used to be, I felt how well I knew him +now from the impressions he made then on my child’s mind, though I was not +conscious of them for more than twenty years. Nobody told me about him, and he +died when I was six, and yet within the last year or two, that strange Indian +summer of remembrance that comes to us in the leisured times when the children +have been born and we have time to think, has made me know him perfectly well. +It is rather an uncomfortable thought for the grown-up, and especially for the +parent, but of a salutary and restraining nature, that though children may not +understand what is said and done before them, and have no interest in it at the +time, and though they may forget it at once and for years, yet these things +that they have seen and heard and not noticed have after all impressed +themselves for ever on their minds, and when they are men and women come +crowding back with surprising and often painful distinctness, and away frisk +all the cherished little illusions in flocks. +</p> + +<p> +I had an awful reverence for my grandfather. He never petted, and he often +frowned, and such people are generally reverenced. Besides, he was a just man, +everybody said; a just man who might have been a great man if he had chosen, +and risen to almost any pinnacle of worldly glory. That he had not so chosen +was held to be a convincing proof of his greatness; for he was plainly too +great to be great in the vulgar sense, and shrouded himself in the dignity of +privacy and potentialities. This, at least, as time passed and he still did +nothing, was the belief of the simple people around. People must believe in +somebody, and having pinned their faith on my grandfather in the promising +years that lie round thirty, it was more convenient to let it remain there. He +pervaded our family life till my sixth year, and saw to it that we all behaved +ourselves, and then he died, and we were glad that he should be in heaven. He +was a good German (and when Germans are good they are very good) who kept the +commandments, voted for the Government, grew prize potatoes and bred +innumerable sheep, drove to Berlin once a year with the wool in a procession of +waggons behind him and sold it at the annual Wollmarkt, rioted soberly for a +few days there, and then carried most of the proceeds home, hunted as often as +possible, helped his friends, punished his children, read his Bible, said his +prayers, and was genuinely astonished when his wife had the affectation to die +of a broken heart. I cannot pretend to explain this conduct. She ought, of +course, to have been happy in the possession of so good a man; but good men are +sometimes oppressive, and to have one in the house with you and to live in the +daily glare of his goodness must be a tremendous business. After bearing him +seven sons and three daughters, therefore, my grandmother died in the way +described, and afforded, said my grandfather, another and a very curious proof +of the impossibility of ever being sure of your ground with women. The incident +faded more quickly from his mind than it might otherwise have done for its +having occurred simultaneously with the production of a new kind of potato, of +which he was justly proud. He called it <i>Trost in Trauer</i>, and quoted the +text of Scripture <i>Auge um Auge, Zabn um Zahn</i>, after which he did not +again allude to his wife’s decease. In his last years, when my father managed +the estate, and he only lived with us and criticised, he came to have the +reputation of an oracle. The neighbours sent him their sons at the beginning of +any important phase in their lives, and he received them in this very arbour, +administering eloquent and minute advice in the deep voice that rolled round +the shrubbery and filled me with a vague sense of guilt as I played. Sitting +among the bushes playing muffled games for fear of disturbing him, I supposed +he must be reading aloud, so unbroken was the monotony of that majestic roll. +The young men used to come out again bathed in perspiration, much stung by +mosquitoes, and looking bewildered; and when they had got over the impression +made by my grandfather’s speech and presence, no doubt forgot all he had said +with wholesome quickness, and set themselves to the interesting and necessary +work of gaining their own experience. Once, indeed, a dreadful thing happened, +whose immediate consequence was the abrupt end to the long and close friendship +between us and our nearest neighbour. His son was brought to the arbour and +left there in the usual way, and either he must have happened on the critical +half hour after the coffee and before the <i>Kreuzzeitung</i>, when my +grandfather was accustomed to sleep, or he was more courageous than the others +and tried to talk, for very shortly, playing as usual near at hand, I heard my +grandfather’s voice, raised to an extent that made me stop in my game and +quake, saying with deliberate anger, “<i>Hebe dich weg von mir, Sohn des +Satans!</i>” Which was all the advice this particular young man got, and which +he hastened to take, for out he came through the bushes, and though his face +was very pale, there was an odd twist about the corners of his mouth that +reassured me. +</p> + +<p> +This must have happened quite at the end of my grandfather’s life, for almost +immediately afterwards, as it now seems to me, he died before he need have done +because he would eat crab, a dish that never agreed with him, in the face of +his doctor’s warning that if he did he would surely die. “What! am I to be +conquered by crabs?” he demanded indignantly of the doctor; for apart from +loving them with all his heart he had never yet been conquered by anything. +“Nay, sir, the combat is too unequal—do not, I pray you, try it again,” replied +the doctor. But my grandfather ordered crabs that very night for supper, and +went in to table with the shining eyes of one who is determined to conquer or +die, and the crabs conquered, and he died. “He was a just man,” said the +neighbours, except that nearest neighbour, formerly his best friend, “and might +have been a great one had he so chosen.” And they buried him with profound +respect, and the sunshine came into our home life with a burst, and the birds +were not the only creatures that sang, and the arbour, from having been a +temple of Delphic utterances, sank into a home for slugs. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Musing on the strangeness of life, and on the invariable ultimate triumph of +the insignificant and small over the important and vast, illustrated in this +instance by the easy substitution in the arbour of slugs for grandfathers, I +went slowly round the next bend of the path, and came to the broad walk along +the south side of the high wall dividing the flower garden from the kitchen +garden, in which sheltered position my father had had his choicest flowers. +Here the cousins had been at work, and all the climbing roses that clothed the +wall with beauty were gone, and some very neat fruit trees, tidily nailed up at +proper intervals, reigned in their stead. Evidently the cousins knew the value +of this warm aspect, for in the border beneath, filled in my father’s time in +this month of November with the wallflowers that were to perfume the walk in +spring, there was a thick crop of—I stooped down close to make sure—yes, a +thick crop of radishes. My eyes filled with tears at the sight of those +radishes, and it is probably the only occasion on record on which radishes have +made anybody cry. My dear father, whom I so passionately loved, had in his turn +passionately loved this particular border, and spent the spare moments of a +busy life enjoying the flowers that grew in it. He had no time himself for a +more near acquaintance with the delights of gardening than directing what +plants were to be used, but found rest from his daily work strolling up and +down here, or sitting smoking as close to the flowers as possible. “It is the +Purest of Humane pleasures, it is the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of +Man,” he would quote (for he read other things besides the +<i>Kreuzzeitung</i>), looking round with satisfaction on reaching this fragrant +haven after a hot day in the fields. Well, the cousins did not think so. Less +fanciful, and more sensible as they probably would have said, their position +plainly was that you cannot eat flowers. Their spirits required no refreshment, +but their bodies needed much, and therefore radishes were more precious than +wallflowers. Nor was my youth wholly destitute of radishes, but they were grown +in the decent obscurity of odd kitchen garden corners and old cucumber frames, +and would never have been allowed to come among the flowers. And only because I +was not a boy here they were profaning the ground that used to be so beautiful. +Oh, it was a terrible misfortune not to have been a boy! And how sad and lonely +it was, after all, in this ghostly garden. The radish bed and what it +symbolised had turned my first joy into grief. This walk and border me too much +of my father reminded, and of all he had been to me. What I knew of good he had +taught me, and what I had of happiness was through him. Only once during all +the years we lived together had we been of different opinions and fallen out, +and it was the one time I ever saw him severe. I was four years old, and +demanded one Sunday to be taken to church. My father said no, for I had never +been to church, and the German service is long and exhausting. I implored. He +again said no. I implored again, and showed such a pious disposition, and so +earnest a determination to behave well, that he gave in, and we went off very +happily hand in hand. “Now mind, Elizabeth,” he said, turning to me at the +church door, “there is no coming out again in the middle. Having insisted on +being brought, thou shalt now sit patiently till the end.” “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” +I promised eagerly, and went in filled with holy fire. The shortness of my +legs, hanging helplessly for two hours midway between the seat and the floor, +was the weapon chosen by Satan for my destruction. In German churches you do +not kneel, and seldom stand, but sit nearly the whole time, praying and singing +in great comfort. If you are four years old, however, this unchanged position +soon becomes one of torture. Unknown and dreadful things go on in your legs, +strange prickings and tinglings and dartings up and down, a sudden terrifying +numbness, when you think they must have dropped off but are afraid to look, +then renewed and fiercer prickings, shootings, and burnings. I thought I must +be very ill, for I had never known my legs like that before. My father sitting +beside me was engrossed in the singing of a chorale that evidently had no end, +each verse finished with a long-drawn-out hallelujah, after which the organ +played by itself for a hundred years—by the organist’s watch, which was wrong, +two minutes exactly—and then another verse began. My father, being the patron +of the living, was careful to sing and pray and listen to the sermon with +exemplary attention, aware that every eye in the little church was on our pew, +and at first I tried to imitate him; but the behaviour of my legs became so +alarming that after vainly casting imploring glances at him and seeing that he +continued his singing unmoved, I put out my hand and pulled his sleeve. +</p> + +<p> +“Hal-le-lu-jah,” sang my father with deliberation; continuing in a low voice +without changing the expression of his face, his lips hardly moving, and his +eyes fixed abstractedly on the ceiling till the organist, who was also the +postman, should have finished his solo, “Did I not tell thee to sit still, +Elizabeth?” “Yes, but——” “Then do it.” “But I want to go home.” +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Unsinn</i>.” And the next verse beginning, my father sang louder than ever. +What could I do? Should I cry? I began to be afraid I was going to die on that +chair, so extraordinary were the sensations in my legs. What could my father do +to me if I did cry? With the quick instinct of small children I felt that he +could not put me in the corner in church, nor would he whip me in public, and +that with the whole village looking on, he was helpless, and would have to give +in. Therefore I tugged his sleeve again and more peremptorily, and prepared to +demand my immediate removal in a loud voice. But my father was ready for me. +Without interrupting his singing, or altering his devout expression, he put his +hand slowly down and gave me a hard pinch—not a playful pinch, but a good hard +unmistakeable pinch, such as I had never imagined possible, and then went on +serenely to the next hallelujah. For a moment I was petrified with +astonishment. Was this my indulgent father, my playmate, adorer, and friend? +Smarting with pain, for I was a round baby, with a nicely stretched, tight +skin, and dreadfully hurt in my feelings, I opened my mouth to shriek in +earnest, when my father’s clear whisper fell on my ear, each word distinct and +not to be misunderstood, his eyes as before gazing meditatively into space, and +his lips hardly moving, “<i>Elizabeth, wenn du schreist, kneife ich dich bis du +platzt</i>.” And he finished the verse with unruffled decorum— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Will Satan mich verschlingen,<br> +So lass die Engel singen<br> + Hallelujah!” +</p> + +<p> +We never had another difference. Up to then he had been my willing slave, and +after that I was his. +</p> + +<p> +With a smile and a shiver I turned from the border and its memories to the door +in the wall leading to the kitchen garden, in a corner of which my own little +garden used to be. The door was open, and I stood still a moment before going +through, to hold my breath and listen. The silence was as profound as before. +The place seemed deserted; and I should have thought the house empty and shut +up but for the carefully tended radishes and the recent footmarks on the green +of the path. They were the footmarks of a child. I was stooping down to examine +a specially clear one, when the loud caw of a very bored looking crow sitting +on the wall just above my head made me jump as I have seldom in my life jumped, +and reminded me that I was trespassing. Clearly my nerves were all to pieces, +for I gathered up my skirts and fled through the door as though a whole army of +ghosts and cousins were at my heels, nor did I stop till I had reached the +remote corner where my garden was. “Are you enjoying yourself, Elizabeth?” +asked the mocking sprite that calls itself my soul: but I was too much out of +breath to answer. +</p> + +<p> +This was really a very safe corner. It was separated from the main garden and +the house by the wall, and shut in on the north side by an orchard, and it was +to the last degree unlikely that any one would come there on such an afternoon. +This plot of ground, turned now as I saw into a rockery, had been the scene of +my most untiring labours. Into the cold earth of this north border on which the +sun never shone I had dug my brightest hopes. All my pocket money had been +spent on it, and as bulbs were dear and my weekly allowance small, in a fatal +hour I had borrowed from Fräulein Wundermacher, selling her my independence, +passing utterly into her power, forced as a result till my next birthday should +come round to an unnatural suavity of speech and manner in her company, against +which my very soul revolted. And after all, nothing came up. The labour of +digging and watering, the anxious zeal with which I pounced on weeds, the +poring over gardening books, the plans made as I sat on the little seat in the +middle gazing admiringly and with the eye of faith on the trim surface so soon +to be gemmed with a thousand flowers, the reckless expenditure of +<i>pfennings</i>, the humiliation of my position in regard to Fräulein +Wundermacher,—all, all had been in vain. No sun shone there, and nothing grew. +The gardener who reigned supreme in those days had given me this big piece for +that sole reason, because he could do nothing with it himself. He was no doubt +of opinion that it was quite good enough for a child to experiment upon, and +went his way, when I had thanked him with a profuseness of gratitude I still +remember, with an unmoved countenance. For more than a year I worked and +waited, and watched the career of the flourishing orchard opposite with puzzled +feelings. The orchard was only a few yards away, and yet, although my garden +was full of manure, and water, and attentions that were never bestowed on the +orchard, all it could show and ever did show were a few unhappy beginnings of +growth that either remained stationary and did not achieve flowers, or dwindled +down again and vanished. Once I timidly asked the gardener if he could explain +these signs and wonders, but he was a busy man with no time for answering +questions, and told me shortly that gardening was not learned in a day. How +well I remember that afternoon, and the very shape of the lazy clouds, and the +smell of spring things, and myself going away abashed and sitting on the shaky +bench in my domain and wondering for the hundredth time what it was that made +the difference between my bit and the bit of orchard in front of me. The fruit +trees, far enough away from the wall to be beyond the reach of its cold shade, +were tossing their flower-laden heads in the sunshine in a carelessly +well-satisfied fashion that filled my heart with envy. There was a rise in the +field behind them, and at the foot of its protecting slope they luxuriated in +the insolent glory of their white and pink perfection. It was May, and my heart +bled at the thought of the tulips I had put in in November, and that I had +never seen since. The whole of the rest of the garden was on fire with tulips; +behind me, on the other side of the wall, were rows and rows of them,—cups of +translucent loveliness, a jewelled ring flung right round the lawn. But what +was there not on the other side of that wall? Things came up there and grew and +flowered exactly as my gardening books said they should do; and in front of me, +in the gay orchard, things that nobody ever troubled about or cultivated or +noticed throve joyously beneath the trees,—daffodils thrusting their spears +through the grass, crocuses peeping out inquiringly, snowdrops uncovering their +small cold faces when the first shivering spring days came. Only my piece that +I so loved was perpetually ugly and empty. And I sat in it thinking of these +things on that radiant day, and wept aloud. +</p> + +<p> +Then an apprentice came by, a youth who had often seen me busily digging, and +noticing the unusual tears, and struck perhaps by the difference between my +garden and the profusion of splendour all around, paused with his barrow on the +path in front of me, and remarked that nobody could expect to get blood out of +a stone. The apparent irrelevance of this statement made me weep still louder, +the bitter tears of insulted sorrow; but he stuck to his point, and harangued +me from the path, explaining the connection between north walls and tulips and +blood and stones till my tears all dried up again and I listened attentively, +for the conclusion to be drawn from his remarks was plainly that I had been +shamefully taken in by the head gardener, who was an unprincipled person +thenceforward to be for ever mistrusted and shunned. Standing on the path from +which the kindly apprentice had expounded his proverb, this scene rose before +me as clearly as though it had taken place that very day; but how different +everything looked, and how it had shrunk! Was this the wide orchard that had +seemed to stretch away, it and the sloping field beyond, up to the gates of +heaven? I believe nearly every child who is much alone goes through a certain +time of hourly expecting the Day of Judgment, and I had made up my mind that on +that Day the heavenly host would enter the world by that very field, coming +down the slope in shining ranks, treading the daffodils under foot, filling the +orchard with their songs of exultation, joyously seeking out the sheep from +among the goats. Of course I was a sheep, and my governess and the head +gardener goats, so that the results could not fail to be in every way +satisfactory. But looking up at the slope and remembering my visions, I laughed +at the smallness of the field I had supposed would hold all heaven. +</p> + +<p> +Here again the cousins had been at work. The site of my garden was occupied by +a rockery, and the orchard grass with all its treasures had been dug up, and +the spaces between the trees planted with currant bushes and celery in +admirable rows; so that no future little cousins will be able to dream of +celestial hosts coming towards them across the fields of daffodils, and will +perhaps be the better for being free from visions of the kind, for as I grew +older, uncomfortable doubts laid hold of my heart with cold fingers, dim +uncertainties as to the exact ultimate position of the gardener and the +governess, anxious questionings as to how it would be if it were they who +turned out after all to be sheep, and I who—? For that we all three might be +gathered into the same fold at the last never, in those days, struck me as +possible, and if it had I should not have liked it. +</p> + +<p> +“Now what sort of person can that be,” I asked myself, shaking my head, as I +contemplated the changes before me, “who could put a rockery among vegetables +and currant bushes? A rockery, of all things in the gardening world, needs +consummate tact in its treatment. It is easier to make mistakes in forming a +rockery than in any other garden scheme. Either it is a great success, or it is +great failure; either it is very charming, or it is very absurd. There is no +state between the sublime and the ridiculous possible in a rockery.” I stood +shaking my head disapprovingly at the rockery before me, lost in these +reflections, when a sudden quick pattering of feet coming along in a great +hurry made me turn round with a start, just in time to receive the shock of a +body tumbling out of the mist and knocking violently against me. +</p> + +<p> +It was a little girl of about twelve years old. +</p> + +<p> +“Hullo!” said the little girl in excellent English; and then we stared at each +other in astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought you were Miss Robinson,” said the little girl, offering no apology +for having nearly knocked me down. “Who are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Miss Robinson? Miss Robinson?” I repeated, my eyes fixed on the little girl’s +face, and a host of memories stirring within me. “Why, didn’t she marry a +missionary, and go out to some place where they ate him?” +</p> + +<p> +The little girl stared harder. “Ate him? Marry? What, has she been married all +this time to somebody who’s been eaten and never let on? Oh, I say, what a +game!” And she threw back her head and laughed till the garden rang again. +</p> + +<p> +“O hush, you dreadful little girl!” I implored, catching her by the arm, and +terrified beyond measure by the loudness of her mirth. “Don’t make that horrid +noise—we are certain to be caught if you don’t stop——” +</p> + +<p> +The little girl broke off a shriek of laughter in the middle and shut her mouth +with a snap. Her eyes, round and black and shiny like boot buttons, came still +further out of her head. “Caught?” she said eagerly. “What, are you afraid of +being caught too? Well, this <i>is</i> a game!” And with her hands plunged deep +in the pockets of her coat she capered in front of me in the excess of her +enjoyment, reminding me of a very fat black lamb frisking round the dazed and +passive sheep its mother. +</p> + +<p> +It was clear that the time had come for me to get down to the gate at the end +of the garden as quickly as possible, and I began to move away in that +direction. The little girl at once stopped capering and planted herself +squarely in front of me. “Who are you?” she said, examining me from my hat to +my boots with the keenest interest. +</p> + +<p> +I considered this ungarnished manner of asking questions impertinent, and, +trying to look lofty, made an attempt to pass at the side. +</p> + +<p> +The little girl, with a quick, cork-like movement, was there before me. +</p> + +<p> +“Who are you?” she repeated, her expression friendly but firm. “Oh, I—I’m a +pilgrim,” I said in desperation. +</p> + +<p> +“A pilgrim!” echoed the little girl. She seemed struck, and while she was +struck I slipped past her and began to walk quickly towards the door in the +wall. “A pilgrim!” said the little girl, again, keeping close beside me, and +looking me up and down attentively. “I don’t like pilgrims. Aren’t they people +who are always walking about, and have things the matter with their feet? Have +you got anything the matter with your feet?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly not,” I replied indignantly, walking still faster. +</p> + +<p> +“And they never wash, Miss Robinson says. You don’t either, do you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not wash? Oh, I’m afraid you are a very badly brought-up little girl—oh, leave +me alone—I must run—” +</p> + +<p> +“So must I,” said the little girl, cheerfully, “for Miss Robinson must be close +behind us. She nearly had me just before I found you.” And she started running +by my side. +</p> + +<p> +The thought of Miss Robinson close behind us gave wings to my feet, and, +casting my dignity, of which, indeed, there was but little left, to the winds, +I fairly flew down the path. The little girl was not to be outrun, and though +she panted and turned weird colours, kept by my side and even talked. Oh, I was +tired, tired in body and mind, tired by the different shocks I had received, +tired by the journey, tired by the want of food; and here I was being forced to +run because this very naughty little girl chose to hide instead of going in to +her lessons. +</p> + +<p> +“I say—this is jolly—” she jerked out. +</p> + +<p> +“But why need we run to the same place?” I breathlessly asked, in the vain hope +of getting rid of her. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes—that’s just—the fun. We’d get on—together—you and I—” +</p> + +<p> +“No, no,” said I, decided on this point, bewildered though I was. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t stand washing—either—it’s awful—in winter—and makes one have—chaps.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t mind it in the least,” I protested faintly, not having any energy +left. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I say!” said the little girl, looking at my face, and making the sound +known as a guffaw. The familiarity of this little girl was wholly revolting. +</p> + +<p> +We had got safely through the door, round the corner past the radishes, and +were in the shrubbery. I knew from experience how easy it was to hide in the +tangle of little paths, and stopped a moment to look round and listen. The +little girl opened her mouth to speak. With great presence of mind I instantly +put my muff in front of it and held it there tight, while I listened. Dead +silence, except for the laboured breathing and struggles of the little girl. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t hear a sound,” I whispered, letting her go again. “Now what did you +want to say?” I added, eyeing her severely. +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to say,” she panted, “that it’s no good pretending you wash with a +nose like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“A nose like that! A nose like what?” I exclaimed, greatly offended; and though +I put up my hand and very tenderly and carefully felt it, I could find no +difference in it. “I am afraid poor Miss Robinson must have a wretched life,” I +said, in tones of deep disgust. +</p> + +<p> +The little girl smiled fatuously, as though I were paying her compliments. +“It’s all green and brown,” she said, pointing. “Is it always like that?” +</p> + +<p> +Then I remembered the wet fir tree near the gate, and the enraptured kiss it +had received, and blushed. +</p> + +<p> +“Won’t it come off?” persisted the little girl. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course it will come off,” I answered, frowning. +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you rub it off?” +</p> + +<p> +Then I remembered the throwing away of the handkerchief, and blushed again. +</p> + +<p> +“Please lend me your handkerchief,” I said humbly, “I—I have lost mine.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a great fumbling in six different pockets, and then a handkerchief +that made me young again merely to look at it was produced. I took it +thankfully and rubbed with energy, the little girl, intensely interested, +watching the operation and giving me advice. “There—it’s all right now—a little +more on the right—there—now it’s all off.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you sure? No green left?” I anxiously asked. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it’s red all over now,” she replied cheerfully. “Let me get home,” thought +I, very much upset by this information, “let me get home to my dear, +uncritical, admiring babies, who accept my nose as an example of what a nose +should be, and whatever its colour think it beautiful.” And thrusting the +handkerchief back into the little girl’s hands, I hurried away down the path. +She packed it away hastily, but it took some seconds for it was of the size of +a small sheet, and then came running after me. “Where are you going?” she asked +surprised, as I turned down the path leading to the gate. +</p> + +<p> +“Through this gate,” I replied with decision. +</p> + +<p> +“But you mustn’t—we’re not allowed to go through there——” +</p> + +<p> +So strong was the force of old habits in that place that at the words <i>not +allowed</i> my hand dropped of itself from the latch; and at that instant a +voice calling quite close to us through the mist struck me rigid. +</p> + +<p> +“Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” called the voice, “Come in at once to your +lessons—Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s Miss Robinson,” whispered the little girl, twinkling with excitement; +then, catching sight of my face, she said once more with eager insistence, “Who +are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I’m a ghost!” I cried with conviction, pressing my hands to my forehead +and looking round fearfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Pooh,” said the little girl. +</p> + +<p> +It was the last remark I heard her make, for there was a creaking of +approaching boots in the bushes, and seized by a frightful panic I pulled the +gate open with one desperate pull, flung it to behind me, and fled out and away +down the wide, misty fields. +</p> + +<p> +The <i>Gotha Almanach</i> says that the reigning cousin married the daughter of +a Mr. Johnstone, an Englishman, in 1885, and that in 1886 their only child was +born, Elizabeth. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>November</i> 20<i>th</i>.—Last night we had ten degrees of frost +(Fahrenheit), and I went out the first thing this morning to see what had +become of the tea-roses, and behold, they were wide awake and quite +cheerful—covered with rime it is true, but anything but black and shrivelled. +Even those in boxes on each side of the verandah steps were perfectly alive and +full of buds, and one in particular, a Bouquet d’Or, is a mass of buds, and +would flower if it could get the least encouragement. I am beginning to think +that the tenderness of tea-roses is much exaggerated, and am certainly very +glad I had the courage to try them in this northern garden. But I must not fly +too boldly in the face of Providence, and have ordered those in the boxes to be +taken into the greenhouse for the winter, and hope the Bouquet d’Or, in a sunny +place near the glass, may be induced to open some of those buds. The greenhouse +is only used as a refuge, and kept at a temperature just above freezing, and is +reserved entirely for such plants as cannot stand the very coldest part of the +winter out of doors. I don’t use it for growing anything, because I don’t love +things that will only bear the garden for three or four months in the year and +require coaxing and petting for the rest of it. Give me a garden full of +strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally +giving in and dying. I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, +either in plants or women. No doubt there are many lovely flowers to be had by +heat and constant coaxing, but then for each of these there are fifty others +still lovelier that will gratefully grow in God’s wholesome air and are blessed +in return with a far greater intensity of scent and colour. +</p> + +<p> +We have been very busy till now getting the permanent beds into order and +planting the new tea-roses, and I am looking forward to next summer with more +hope than ever in spite of my many failures. I wish the years would pass +quickly that will bring my garden to perfection! The Persian Yellows have gone +into their new quarters, and their place is occupied by the tea-rose Safrano; +all the rose beds are carpeted with pansies sown in July and transplanted in +October, each bed having a separate colour. The purple ones are the most +charming and go well with every rose, but I have white ones with Laurette +Messimy, and yellow ones with Safrano, and a new red sort in the big centre bed +of red roses. Round the semicircle on the south side of the little privet hedge +two rows of annual larkspurs in all their delicate shades have been sown, and +just beyond the larkspurs, on the grass, is a semicircle of standard tea and +pillar roses. +</p> + +<p> +In front of the house the long borders have been stocked with larkspurs, annual +and perennial, columbines, giant poppies, pinks, Madonna lilies, wallflowers, +hollyhocks, perennial phloxes, peonies, lavender, starworts, cornflowers, +Lychnis chalcedonica, and bulbs packed in wherever bulbs could go. These are +the borders that were so hardly used by the other gardener. The spring boxes +for the verandah steps have been filled with pink and white and yellow tulips. +I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of +alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a +wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement +weighs down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement +itself; and is there anything in the world more charming than the sprightly way +they hold up their little faces to the sun? I have heard them called bold and +flaunting, but to me they seem modest grace itself, only always on the alert to +enjoy life as much as they can and not afraid of looking the sun or anything +else above them in the face. On the grass there are two beds of them carpeted +with forget-me-nots; and in the grass, in scattered groups, are daffodils and +narcissus. Down the wilder shrubbery walks foxgloves and mulleins will (I hope) +shine majestic; and one cool corner, backed by a group of firs, is graced by +Madonna lilies, white foxgloves, and columbines. +</p> + +<p> +In a distant glade I have made a spring garden round an oak tree that stands +alone in the sun—groups of crocuses, daffodils, narcissus, hyacinths, and +tulips, among such flowering shrubs and trees as Pirus Malus spectabilis, +floribunda, and coronaria; Prunus Juliana, Mahaleb, serotina, triloba, and +Pissardi; Cydonias and Weigelias in every colour, and several kinds of Cratægus +and other May lovelinesses. If the weather behaves itself nicely, and we get +gentle rains in due season, I think this little corner will be beautiful—but +what a big “if” it is! Drought is our great enemy, and the two last summers +each contained five weeks of blazing, cloudless heat when all the ditches dried +up and the soil was like hot pastry. At such times the watering is naturally +quite beyond the strength of two men; but as a garden is a place to be happy +in, and not one where you want to meet a dozen curious eyes at every turn, I +should not like to have more than these two, or rather one and a half—the +assistant having stork-like proclivities and going home in the autumn to his +native Russia, returning in the spring with the first warm winds. I want to +keep him over the winter, as there is much to be done even then, and I sounded +him on the point the other day. He is the most abject-looking of human +beings—lame, and afflicted with a hideous eye-disease; but he is a good worker +and plods along unwearyingly from sunrise to dusk. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray, my good stork,” said I, or German words to that effect, “why don’t you +stay here altogether, instead of going home and rioting away all you have +earned?” +</p> + +<p> +“I would stay,” he answered, “but I have my wife there in Russia.” +</p> + +<p> +“Your wife!” I exclaimed, stupidly surprised that the poor deformed creature +should have found a mate—as though there were not a superfluity of mates in the +world—“I didn’t know you were married?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, and I have two little children, and I don’t know what they would do if I +were not to come home. But it is a very expensive journey to Russia, and costs +me every time seven marks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Seven marks!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it is a great sum.” +</p> + +<p> +I wondered whether I should be able to get to Russia for seven marks, supposing +I were to be seized with an unnatural craving to go there. +</p> + +<p> +All the labourers who work here from March to December are Russians and Poles, +or a mixture of both. We send a man over who can speak their language, to fetch +as many as he can early in the year, and they arrive with their bundles, men +and women and babies, and as soon as they have got here and had their fares +paid, they disappear in the night if they get the chance, sometimes fifty of +them at a time, to go and work singly or in couples for the peasants, who pay +them a <i>pfenning</i> or two more a day than we do, and let them eat with the +family. From us they get a mark and a half to two marks a day, and as many +potatoes as they can eat. The women get less, not because they work less, but +because they are women and must not be encouraged. The overseer lives with +them, and has a loaded revolver in his pocket and a savage dog at his heels. +For the first week or two after their arrival, the foresters and other +permanent officials keep guard at night over the houses they are put into. I +suppose they find it sleepy work; for certain it is that spring after spring +the same thing happens, fifty of them getting away in spite of all our +precautions, and we are left with our mouths open and much out of pocket. This +spring, by some mistake, they arrived without their bundles, which had gone +astray on the road, and, as they travel in their best clothes, they refused +utterly to work until their luggage came. Nearly a week was lost waiting, to +the despair of all in authority. +</p> + +<p> +Nor will any persuasions induce them to do anything on Saints’ days, and there +surely never was a church so full of them as the Russian Church. In the spring, +when every hour is of vital importance, the work is constantly being +interrupted by them, and the workers lie sleeping in the sun the whole day, +agreeably conscious that they are pleasing themselves and the Church at one and +the same time—a state of perfection as rare as it is desirable. Reason unaided +by Faith is of course exasperated at this waste of precious time, and I confess +that during the first mild days after the long winter frost when it is possible +to begin to work the ground, I have sympathised with the gloom of the Man of +Wrath, confronted in one week by two or three empty days on which no man will +labour, and have listened in silence to his remarks about distant Russian +saints. +</p> + +<p> +I suppose it was my own superfluous amount of civilisation that made me pity +these people when first I came to live among them. They herd together like +animals and do the work of animals; but in spite of the armed overseer, the +dirt and the rags, the meals of potatoes washed down by weak vinegar and water, +I am beginning to believe that they would strongly object to soap, I am sure +they would not wear new clothes, and I hear them coming home from their work at +dusk singing. They are like little children or animals in their utter inability +to grasp the idea of a future; and after all, if you work all day in God’s +sunshine, when evening comes you are pleasantly tired and ready for rest and +not much inclined to find fault with your lot. I have not yet persuaded myself, +however, that the women are happy. They have to work as hard as the men and get +less for it; they have to produce offspring, quite regardless of times and +seasons and the general fitness of things; they have to do this as +expeditiously as possible, so that they may not unduly interrupt the work in +hand; nobody helps them, notices them, or cares about them, least of all the +husband. It is quite a usual thing to see them working in the fields in the +morning, and working again in the afternoon, having in the interval produced a +baby. The baby is left to an old woman whose duty it is to look after babies +collectively. When I expressed my horror at the poor creatures working +immediately afterwards as though nothing had happened, the Man of Wrath +informed me that they did not suffer because they had never worn corsets, nor +had their mothers and grandmothers. We were riding together at the time, and +had just passed a batch of workers, and my husband was speaking to the +overseer, when a woman arrived alone, and taking up a spade, began to dig. She +grinned cheerfully at us as she made a curtesy, and the overseer remarked that +she had just been back to the house and had a baby. +</p> + +<p> +“Poor, <i>poor</i> woman!” I cried, as we rode on, feeling for some occult +reason very angry with the Man of Wrath. “And her wretched husband doesn’t care +a rap, and will probably beat her to-night if his supper isn’t right. What +nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women have the +babies!” +</p> + +<p> +“Quite so, my dear,” replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly. “You +have got to the very root of the matter. Nature, while imposing this agreeable +duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any serious competition +with man. How can a person who is constantly losing a year of the best part of +her life compete with a young man who never loses any time at all? He has the +brute force, and his last word on any subject could always be his fist.” +</p> + +<p> +I said nothing. It was a dull, gray afternoon in the beginning of November, and +the leaves dropped slowly and silently at our horses’ feet as we rode towards +the Hirschwald. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a universal custom,” proceeded the Man of Wrath, “amongst these +Russians, and I believe amongst the lower classes everywhere, and certainly +commendable on the score of simplicity, to silence a woman’s objections and +aspirations by knocking her down. I have heard it said that this apparently +brutal action has anything but the maddening effect tenderly nurtured persons +might suppose, and that the patient is soothed and satisfied with a rapidity +and completeness unattainable by other and more polite methods. Do you +suppose,” he went on, flicking a twig off a tree with his whip as we passed, +“that the intellectual husband, wrestling intellectually with the chaotic +yearnings of his intellectual wife, ever achieves the result aimed at? He may +and does go on wrestling till he is tired, but never does he in the very least +convince her of her folly; while his brother in the ragged coat has got through +the whole business in less time than it takes me to speak about it. There is no +doubt that these poor women fulfil their vocation far more thoroughly than the +women in our class, and, as the truest: happiness consists in finding one’s +vocation quickly and continuing in it all one’s days, I consider they are to be +envied rather than not, since they are early taught, by the impossibility of +argument with marital muscle, the impotence of female endeavour and the +blessings of content.” +</p> + +<p> +“Pray go on,” I said politely. +</p> + +<p> +“These women accept their beatings with a simplicity worthy of all praise, and +far from considering themselves insulted, admire the strength and energy of the +man who can administer such eloquent rebukes. In Russia, not only <i>may</i> a +man beat his wife, but it is laid down in the catechism and taught all boys at +the time of confirmation as necessary at least once a week, whether she has +done anything or not, for the sake of her general health and happiness.” +</p> + +<p> +I thought I observed a tendency in the Man of Wrath rather to gloat over these +castigations. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray, my dear man,” I said, pointing with my whip, “look at that baby moon so +innocently peeping at us over the edge of the mist just behind that silver +birch; and don’t talk so much about women and things you don’t understand. What +is the use of your bothering about fists and whips and muscles and all the +dreadful things invented for the confusion of obstreperous wives? You know you +are a civilised husband, and a civilised husband is a creature who has ceased +to be a man.” +</p> + +<p> +“And a civilised wife?” he asked, bringing his horse close up beside me and +putting his arm round my waist, “has she ceased to be a woman?” +</p> + +<p> +“I should think so indeed,—she is a goddess, and can never be worshipped and +adored enough.” +</p> + +<p> +“It seems to me,” he said, “that the conversation is growing personal.” +</p> + +<p> +I started off at a canter across the short, springy turf. The Hirschwald is an +enchanted place on such an evening, when the mists lie low on the turf, and +overhead the delicate, bare branches of the silver birches stand out clear +against the soft sky, while the little moon looks down kindly on the damp +November world. Where the trees thicken into a wood, the fragrance of the wet +earth and rotting leaves kicked up by the horses’ hoofs fills my soul with +delight. I particularly love that smell,—it brings before me the entire +benevolence of Nature, for ever working death and decay, so piteous in +themselves, into the means of fresh life and glory, and sending up sweet odours +as she works. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>December</i> 7<i>th</i>.—I have been to England. I went for at least a month +and stayed a week in a fog and was blown home again in a gale. Twice I fled +before the fogs into the country to see friends with gardens, but it was +raining, and except the beautiful lawns (not to be had in the Fatherland) and +the infinite possibilities, there was nothing to interest the intelligent and +garden-loving foreigner, for the good reason that you cannot be interested in +gardens under an umbrella. So I went back to the fogs, and after groping about +for a few days more began to long inordinately for Germany. A terrific gale +sprang up after I had started, and the journey both by sea and land was full of +horrors, the trains in Germany being heated to such an extent that it is next +to impossible to sit still, great gusts of hot air coming up under the +cushions, the cushions themselves being very hot, and the wretched traveller +still hotter. +</p> + +<p> +But when I reached my home and got out of the train into the purest, brightest +snow-atmosphere, the air so still that the whole world seemed to be listening, +the sky cloudless, the crisp snow sparkling underfoot and on the trees, and a +happy row of three beaming babies awaiting me, I was consoled for all my +torments, only remembering them enough to wonder why I had gone away at all. +</p> + +<p> +The babies each had a kitten in one hand and an elegant bouquet of pine needles +and grass in the other, and what with the due presentation of the bouquets and +the struggles of the kittens, the hugging and kissing was much interfered with. +Kittens, bouquets, and babies were all somehow squeezed into the sleigh, and +off we went with jingling bells and shrieks of delight. “Directly you comes +home the fun begins,” said the May baby, sitting very close to me. “How the +snow purrs!” cried the April baby, as the horses scrunched it up with their +feet. The June baby sat loudly singing “The King of Love my Shepherd is,” and +swinging her kitten round by its tail to emphasise the rhythm. +</p> + +<p> +The house, half-buried in the snow, looked the very abode of peace, and I ran +through all the rooms, eager to take possession of them again, and feeling as +though I had been away for ever. When I got to the library I came to a +standstill,—ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging +amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, +writing, dreaming, doing nothing! There was a big peat fire blazing half up the +chimney, and the old housekeeper had put pots of flowers about, and on the +writing-table was a great bunch of violets scenting the room. “Oh, how +<i>good</i> it is to be home again!” I sighed in my satisfaction. The babies +clung about my knees, looking up at me with eyes full of love. Outside the +dazzling snow and sunshine, inside the bright room and happy faces—I thought of +those yellow fogs and shivered. The library is not used by the Man of Wrath; it +is neutral ground where we meet in the evenings for an hour before he +disappears into his own rooms—a series of very smoky dens in the southeast +corner of the house. It looks, I am afraid, rather too gay for an ideal +library; and its colouring, white and yellow, is so cheerful as to be almost +frivolous. There are white bookcases all round the walls, and there is a great +fireplace, and four windows, facing full south, opening on to my most cherished +bit of garden, the bit round the sun-dial; so that with so much colour and such +a big fire and such floods of sunshine it has anything but a sober air, in +spite of the venerable volumes filling the shelves. Indeed, I should never be +surprised if they skipped down from their places, and, picking up their leaves, +began to dance. +</p> + +<p> +With this room to live in, I can look forward with perfect equanimity to being +snowed up for any time Providence thinks proper; and to go into the garden in +its snowed-up state is like going into a bath of purity. The first breath on +opening the door is so ineffably pure that it makes me gasp, and I feel a black +and sinful object in the midst of all the spotlessness. Yesterday I sat out of +doors near the sun-dial the whole afternoon, with the thermometer so many +degrees below freezing that it will be weeks finding its way up again; but +there was no wind, and beautiful sunshine, and I was well wrapped up in furs. I +even had tea brought out there, to the astonishment of the menials, and sat +till long after the sun had set, enjoying the frosty air. I had to drink the +tea very quickly, for it showed a strong inclination to begin to freeze. After +the sun had gone down the rooks came home to their nests in the garden with a +great fuss and fluttering, and many hesitations and squabbles before they +settled on their respective trees. They flew over my head in hundreds with a +mighty swish of wings, and when they had arranged themselves comfortably, an +intense hush fell upon the garden, and the house began to look like a Christmas +card, with its white roof against the clear, pale green of the western sky, and +lamplight shining in the windows. +</p> + +<p> +I had been reading a Life of Luther, lent me by our parson, in the intervals +between looking round me and being happy. He came one day with the book and +begged me to read it, having discovered that my interest in Luther was not as +living as it ought to be; so I took it out with me into the garden, because the +dullest book takes on a certain saving grace if read out of doors, just as +bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eaten under +a tree. I read Luther all the afternoon with pauses for refreshing glances at +the garden and the sky, and much thankfulness in my heart. His struggles with +devils amazed me; and I wondered whether such a day as that, full of grace and +the forgiveness of sins, never struck him as something to make him relent even +towards devils. He apparently never allowed himself just to be happy. He was a +wonderful man, but I am glad I was not his wife. +</p> + +<p> +Our parson is an interesting person, and untiring in his efforts to improve +himself. Both he and his wife study whenever they have a spare moment, and +there is a tradition that she stirs her puddings with one hand and holds a +Latin grammar in the other, the grammar, of course, getting the greater share +of her attention. To most German <i>Hausfraus</i> the dinners and the puddings +are of paramount importance, and they pride themselves on keeping those parts +of their houses that are seen in a state of perpetual and spotless perfection, +and this is exceedingly praiseworthy; but, I would humbly inquire, are there +not other things even more important? And is not plain living and high thinking +better than the other way about? And all too careful making of dinners and +dusting of furniture takes a terrible amount of precious time, and—and with +shame I confess that my sympathies are all with the pudding and the grammar. It +cannot be right to be the slave of one’s household gods, and I protest that if +my furniture ever annoyed me by wanting to be dusted when I wanted to be doing +something else, and there was no one to do the dusting for me, I would cast it +all into the nearest bonfire and sit and warm my toes at the flames with great +contentment, triumphantly selling my dusters to the very next pedlar who was +weak enough to buy them. Parsons’ wives have to do the housework and cooking +themselves, and are thus not only cooks and housemaids, but if they have +children—and they always do have children—they are head and under nurse as +well; and besides these trifling duties have a good deal to do with their fruit +and vegetable garden, and everything to do with their poultry. This being so, +is it not pathetic to find a young woman bravely struggling to learn languages +and keep up with her husband? If I were that husband, those puddings would +taste sweetest to me that were served with Latin sauce. They are both severely +pious, and are for ever engaged in desperate efforts to practise what they +preach; than which, as we all know, nothing is more difficult. He works in his +parish with the most noble self-devotion, and never loses courage, although his +efforts have been several times rewarded by disgusting libels pasted up on the +street-corners, thrown under doors, and even fastened to his own garden wall. +The peasant hereabouts is past belief low and animal, and a sensitive, +intellectual parson among them is really a pearl before swine. For years he has +gone on unflinchingly, filled with the most living faith and hope and charity, +and I sometimes wonder whether they are any better now in his parish than they +were under his predecessor, a man who smoked and drank beer from Monday morning +to Saturday night, never did a stroke of work, and often kept the scanty +congregation waiting on Sunday afternoons while he finished his postprandial +nap. It is discouraging enough to make most men give in, and leave the parish +to get to heaven or not as it pleases; but he never seems discouraged, and goes +on sacrificing the best part of his life to these people when all his tastes +are literary, and all his inclinations towards the life of the student. His +convictions drag him out of his little home at all hours to minister to the +sick and exhort the wicked; they give him no rest, and never let him feel he +has done enough; and when he comes home weary, after a day’s wrestling with his +parishioners’ souls, he is confronted on his doorstep by filthy abuse pasted up +on his own front door. He never speaks of these things, but how shall they be +hid? Everybody here knows everything that happens before the day is over, and +what we have for dinner is of far greater general interest than the most +astounding political earthquake. They have a pretty, roomy cottage, and a good +bit of ground adjoining the churchyard. His predecessor used to hang out his +washing on the tombstones to dry, but then he was a person entirely lost to all +sense of decency, and had finally to be removed, preaching a farewell sermon of +a most vituperative description, and hurling invective at the Man of Wrath, who +sat up in his box drinking in every word and enjoying himself thoroughly. The +Man of Wrath likes novelty, and such a sermon had never been heard before. It +is spoken of in the village to this day with bated breath and awful joy. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>December</i> 22<i>nd</i>.—Up to now we have had a beautiful winter. Clear +skies, frost, little wind, and, except for a sharp touch now and then, very few +really cold days. My windows are gay with hyacinths and lilies of the valley; +and though, as I have said, I don’t admire the smell of hyacinths in the spring +when it seems wanting in youth and chastity next to that of other flowers, I am +glad enough now to bury my nose in their heavy sweetness. In December one +cannot afford to be fastidious; besides, one is actually less fastidious about +everything in the winter. The keen air braces soul as well as body into +robustness, and the food and the perfume disliked in the summer are perfectly +welcome then. +</p> + +<p> +I am very busy preparing for Christmas, but have often locked myself up in a +room alone, shutting out my unfinished duties, to study the flower catalogues +and make my lists of seeds and shrubs and trees for the spring. It is a +fascinating occupation, and acquires an additional charm when you know you +ought to be doing something else, that Christmas is at the door, that children +and servants and farm hands depend on you for their pleasure, and that, if you +don’t see to the decoration of the trees and house, and the buying of the +presents, nobody else will. The hours fly by shut up with those catalogues and +with Duty snarling on the other side of the door. I don’t like Duty—everything +in the least disagreeable is always sure to be one’s duty. Why cannot it be my +duty to make lists and plans for the dear garden? “And so it <i>is</i>,” I +insisted to the Man of Wrath, when he protested against what he called wasting +my time upstairs. “No,” he replied sagely; “your garden is not your duty, +because it is your Pleasure.” +</p> + +<p> +What a comfort it is to have such wells of wisdom constantly at my disposal! +Anybody can have a husband, but to few is it given to have a sage, and the +combination of both is as rare as it is useful. Indeed, in its practical +utility the only thing I ever saw to equal it is a sofa my neighbour has bought +as a Christmas surprise for her husband, and which she showed me the last time +I called there—a beautiful invention, as she explained, combining a bedstead, a +sofa, and a chest of drawers, and into which you put your clothes, and on top +of which you put yourself, and if anybody calls in the middle of the night and +you happen to be using the drawing-room as a bedroom, you just pop the +bedclothes inside, and there you are discovered sitting on your sofa and +looking for all the world as though you had been expecting visitors for hours. +</p> + +<p> +“Pray, does he wear pyjamas?” I inquired. +</p> + +<p> +But she had never heard of pyjamas. +</p> + +<p> +It takes a long time to make my spring lists. I want to have a border all +yellow, every shade of yellow from fieriest orange to nearly white, and the +amount of work and studying of gardening books it costs me will only be +appreciated by beginners like myself. I have been weeks planning it, and it is +not nearly finished. I want it to be a succession of glories from May till the +frosts, and the chief feature is to be the number of “ardent marigolds”—flowers +that I very tenderly love—and nasturtiums. The nasturtiums are to be of every +sort and shade, and are to climb and creep and grow in bushes, and show their +lovely flowers and leaves to the best advantage. Then there are to be +eschscholtzias, dahlias, sunflowers, zinnias, scabiosa, portulaca, yellow +violas, yellow stocks, yellow sweet-peas, yellow lupins—everything that is +yellow or that has a yellow variety. The place I have chosen for it is a long, +wide border in the sun, at the foot of a grassy slope crowned with lilacs and +pines, and facing southeast. You go through a little pine wood, and, turning a +corner, are to come suddenly upon this bit of captured morning glory. I want it +to be blinding in its brightness after the dark, cool path through the wood. +</p> + +<p> +That is the idea. Depression seizes me when I reflect upon the probable +difference between the idea and its realisation. I am ignorant, and the +gardener is, I do believe, still more so; for he was forcing some tulips, and +they have all shrivelled up and died, and he says he cannot imagine why. +Besides, he is in love with the cook, and is going to marry her after +Christmas, and refuses to enter into any of my plans with the enthusiasm they +deserve, but sits with vacant eye dreamily chopping wood from morning till +night to keep the beloved one’s kitchen fire well supplied. I cannot understand +any one preferring cooks to marigolds; those future marigolds, shadowy as they +are, and whose seeds are still sleeping at the seedsman’s, have shone through +my winter days like golden lamps. +</p> + +<p> +I wish with all my heart I were a man, for of course the first thing I should +do would be to buy a spade and go and garden, and then I should have the +delight of doing everything for my flowers with my own hands and need not waste +time explaining what I want done to somebody else. It is dull work giving +orders and trying to describe the bright visions of one’s brain to a person who +has no visions and no brain, and who thinks a yellow bed should be calceolarias +edged with blue. +</p> + +<p> +I have taken care in choosing my yellow plants to put down only those humble +ones that are easily pleased and grateful for little, for my soil is by no +means all that it might be, and to most plants the climate is rather trying. I +feel really grateful to any flower that is sturdy and willing enough to +flourish here. Pansies seem to like the place and so do sweet-peas; pinks +don’t, and after much coaxing gave hardly any flowers last summer. Nearly all +the roses were a success, in spite of the sandy soil, except the tea-rose Adam, +which was covered with buds ready to open, when they suddenly turned brown and +died, and three standard Dr. Grills which stood in a row and simply sulked. I +had been very excited about Dr. Grill, his description in the catalogues being +specially fascinating, and no doubt I deserved the snubbing I got. “Never be +excited, my dears, about <i>anything</i>,” shall be the advice I will give the +three babies when the time comes to take them out to parties, “or, if you are, +don’t show it. If by nature you are volcanoes, at least be only smouldering +ones. Don’t look pleased, don’t look interested, don’t, above all things, look +eager. Calm indifference should be written on every feature of your faces. +Never show that you like any one person, or any one thing. Be cool, languid, +and reserved. If you don’t do as your mother tells you and are just gushing, +frisky, young idiots, snubs will be your portion. If you do as she tells you, +you’ll marry princes and live happily ever after.” +</p> + +<p> +Dr. Grill must be a German rose. In this part of the world the more you are +pleased to see a person the less is he pleased to see you; whereas, if you are +disagreeable, he will grow pleasant visibly, his countenance expanding into +wider amiability the more your own is stiff and sour. But I was not prepared +for that sort of thing in a rose, and was disgusted with Dr. Grill. He had the +best place in the garden—warm, sunny, and sheltered; his holes were prepared +with the tenderest care; he was given the most dainty mixture of compost, clay, +and manure; he was watered assiduously all through the drought when more +willing flowers got nothing; and he refused to do anything but look black and +shrivel. He did not die, but neither did he live—he just existed; and at the +end of the summer not one of him had a scrap more shoot or leaf than when he +was first put in in April. It would have been better if he had died straight +away, for then I should have known what to do; as it is, there he is still +occupying the best place, wrapped up carefully for the winter, excluding kinder +roses, and probably intending to repeat the same conduct next year. Well, +trials are the portion of mankind, and gardeners have their share, and in any +case it is better to be tried by plants than persons, seeing that with plants +you know that it is you who are in the wrong, and with persons it is always the +other way about—and who is there among us who has not felt the pangs of injured +innocence, and known them to be grievous? +</p> + +<p> +I have two visitors staying with me, though I have done nothing to provoke such +an infliction, and had been looking forward to a happy little Christmas alone +with the Man of Wrath and the babies. Fate decreed otherwise. Quite regularly, +if I look forward to anything, Fate steps in and decrees otherwise; I don’t +know why it should, but it does. I had not even invited these good ladies—like +greatness on the modest, they were thrust upon me. One is Irais, the sweet +singer of the summer, whom I love as she deserves, but of whom I certainly +thought I had seen the last for at least a year, when she wrote and asked if I +would have her over Christmas, as her husband was out of sorts, and she didn’t +like him in that state. Neither do I like sick husbands, so, full of sympathy, +I begged her to come, and here she is. And the other is Minora. +</p> + +<p> +Why I have to have Minora I don’t know, for I was not even aware of her +existence a fortnight ago. Then coming down cheerfully one morning to +breakfast—it was the very day after my return from England—I found a letter +from an English friend, who up till then had been perfectly innocuous, asking +me to befriend Minora. I read the letter aloud for the benefit of the Man of +Wrath, who was eating <i>Spickgans</i>, a delicacy much sought after in these +parts. “Do, my dear Elizabeth,” wrote my friend, “take some notice of the poor +thing. She is studying art in Dresden, and has nowhere literally to go for +Christmas. She is very ambitious and hardworking—” +</p> + +<p> +“Then,” interrupted the Man of Wrath, “she is not pretty. Only ugly girls work +hard.” +</p> + +<p> +“—and she is really very clever—” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not like clever girls, they are so stupid,” again interrupted the Man of +Wrath. +</p> + +<p> +“—and unless some kind creature like yourself takes pity on her she will be +very lonely.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then let her be lonely.” +</p> + +<p> +“Her mother is my oldest friend, and would be greatly distressed to think that +her daughter should be alone in a foreign town at such a season.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do not mind the distress of the mother.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, dear me,” I exclaimed impatiently, “I shall have to ask her to come!” +</p> + +<p> +“If you <i>should</i> be inclined,” the letter went on, “to play the good +Samaritan, dear Elizabeth, I am positive you would find Minora a bright, +intelligent companion—” +</p> + +<p> +“Minora?” questioned the Man of Wrath. +</p> + +<p> +The April baby, who has had a nursery governess of an altogether alarmingly +zealous type attached to her person for the last six weeks, looked up from her +bread and milk. +</p> + +<p> +“It sounds like islands,” she remarked pensively. +</p> + +<p> +The governess coughed. +</p> + +<p> +“Majora, Minora, Alderney, and Sark,” explained her pupil. +</p> + +<p> +I looked at her severely. +</p> + +<p> +“If you are not careful, April,” I said, “you’ll be a genius when you grow up +and disgrace your parents.” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Jones looked as though she did not like Germans. I am afraid she despises +us because she thinks we are foreigners—an attitude of mind quite British and +wholly to her credit; but we, on the other hand, regard <i>her</i> as a +foreigner, which, of course, makes things complicated. +</p> + +<p> +“Shall I really have to have this strange girl?” I asked, addressing nobody in +particular and not expecting a reply. +</p> + +<p> +“You need not have her,” said the Man of Wrath composedly, “but you will. You +will write to-day and cordially invite her, and when she has been here +twenty-four hours you will quarrel with her. I know you, my dear.” +</p> + +<p> +“Quarrel! I? With a little art-student?” +</p> + +<p> +Miss Jones cast down her eyes. She is perpetually scenting a scene, and is +always ready to bring whole batteries of discretion and tact and good taste to +bear on us, and seems to know we are disputing in an unseemly manner when we +would never dream it ourselves but for the warning of her downcast eyes. I +would take my courage in both hands and ask her to go, for besides this +superfluity of discreet behaviour she is, although only nursery, much too +zealous, and inclined to be always teaching and never playing; but, +unfortunately, the April baby adores her and is sure there never was any one so +beautiful before. She comes every day with fresh accounts of the splendours of +her wardrobe, and feeling descriptions of her umbrellas and hats; and Miss +Jones looks offended and purses up her lips. In common with most governesses, +she has a little dark down on her upper lip, and the April baby appeared one +day at dinner with her own decorated in faithful imitation, having achieved it +after much struggling, with the aid of a lead pencil and unbounded love. Miss +Jones put her in the corner for impertinence. I wonder why governesses are so +unpleasant. The Man of Wrath says it is because they are not married. Without +venturing to differ entirely from the opinion of experience, I would add that +the strain of continually having to set an example must surely be very great. +It is much easier, and often more pleasant, to be a warning than an example, +and governesses are but women, and women are sometimes foolish, and when you +want to be foolish it must be annoying to have to be wise. +</p> + +<p> +Minora and Irais arrived yesterday together; or rather, when the carriage drove +up, Irais got out of it alone, and informed me that there was a strange girl on +a bicycle a little way behind. I sent back the carriage to pick her up, for it +was dusk and the roads are terrible. +</p> + +<p> +“But why do you have strange girls here at all?” asked Irais rather peevishly, +taking off her hat in the library before the fire, and otherwise making herself +very much at home; “I don’t like them. I’m not sure that they’re not worse than +husbands who are out of order. Who is she? She would bicycle from the station, +and is, I am sure, the first woman who has done it. The little boys threw +stones at her.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, that only shows the ignorance of the little boys. Never mind her. +Let us have tea in peace before she comes.” +</p> + +<p> +“But we should be much happier without her,” she grumbled. “Weren’t we happy +enough in the summer, Elizabeth—just you and I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, indeed we were,” I answered heartily, putting my arms round her. The +flame of my affection for Irais burns very brightly on the day of her arrival; +besides, this time I have prudently provided against her sinning with the +salt-cellars by ordering them to be handed round like vegetable dishes. We had +finished tea and she had gone up to her room to dress before Minora and her +bicycle were got here. I hurried out to meet her, feeling sorry for her, +plunged into a circle of strangers at such a very personal season as Christmas. +But she was not very shy; indeed, she was less shy than I was, and lingered in +the hall, giving the servants directions to wipe the snow off the tyres of her +machine before she lent an attentive ear to my welcoming remarks. +</p> + +<p> +“I couldn’t make your man understand me at the station,” she said at last, when +her mind was at rest about her bicycle; “I asked him how far it was, and what +the roads were like, and he only smiled. Is he German? But of course he is—how +odd that he didn’t understand. You speak English very well,—very well indeed, +do you know.” By this time we were in the library, and she stood on the +hearth-rug warming her back while I poured her out some tea. +</p> + +<p> +“What a quaint room,” she remarked, looking round, “and the hall is so curious +too. Very old, isn’t it? There’s a lot of copy here.” +</p> + +<p> +The Man of Wrath, who had been in the hall on her arrival and had come in with +us, began to look about on the carpet. “Copy?” he inquired, “Where’s copy?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh—material, you know, for a book. I’m just jotting down what strikes me in +your country, and when I have time shall throw it into book form.” She spoke +very loud, as English people always do to foreigners. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear,” I said breathlessly to Irais, when I had got into her room and shut +the door and Minora was safely in hers, “what do you think—she writes books!” +</p> + +<p> +“What—the bicycling girl?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—Minora—imagine it!” +</p> + +<p> +We stood and looked at each other with awestruck faces. +</p> + +<p> +“How dreadful!” murmured Irais. “I never met a young girl who did that before.” +</p> + +<p> +“She says this place is full of copy.” +</p> + +<p> +“Full of what?” +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what you make books with.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, this is worse than I expected! A strange girl is always a bore +among good friends, but one can generally manage her. But a girl who writes +books—why, it isn’t respectable! And you can’t snub that sort of people; +they’re unsnubbable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but we’ll try!” I cried, with such heartiness that we both laughed. +</p> + +<p> +The hall and the library struck Minora most; indeed, she lingered so long after +dinner in the hall, which is cold, that the Man of Wrath put on his fur coat by +way of a gentle hint. His hints are always gentle. +</p> + +<p> +She wanted to hear the whole story about the chapel and the nuns and Gustavus +Adolphus, and pulling out a fat note-book began to take down what I said. I at +once relapsed into silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s all.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but you’ve only just begun.” +</p> + +<p> +“It doesn’t go any further. Won’t you come into the library?” +</p> + +<p> +In the library she again took up her stand before the fire and warmed herself, +and we sat in a row and were cold. She has a wonderfully good profile, which is +irritating. The wind, however, is tempered to the shorn lamb by her eyes being +set too closely together. +</p> + +<p> +Irais lit a cigarette, and leaning back in her chair, contemplated her +critically beneath her long eyelashes. “You are writing a book?” she asked +presently. +</p> + +<p> +“Well—yes, I suppose I may say that I am. Just my impressions, you know, of +your country. Anything that strikes me as curious or amusing—I jot it down, and +when I have time shall work it up into something, I daresay.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you not studying painting?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I can’t study that for ever. We have an English proverb: ‘Life is +short and Art is long’—too long, I sometimes think—and writing is a great +relaxation when I am tired.” +</p> + +<p> +“What shall you call it?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I thought of calling it <i>Journeyings in Germany</i>. It sounds well, and +would be correct. Or <i>Jottings from German Journeyings</i>,—I haven’t quite +decided yet which.” +</p> + +<p> +“By the author of <i>Prowls in Pomerania</i>, you might add,” suggested Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>Drivel from Dresden</i>,” said I. +</p> + +<p> +“And <i>Bosh from Berlin</i>,” added Irais. +</p> + +<p> +Minora stared. “I don’t think those two last ones would do,” she said, “because +it is not to be a facetious book. But your first one is rather a good title,” +she added, looking at Irais and drawing out her note-book. “I think I’ll just +jot that down.” +</p> + +<p> +“If you jot down all we say and then publish it, will it still be your book?” +asked Irais. +</p> + +<p> +But Minora was so busy scribbling that she did not hear. +</p> + +<p> +“And have <i>you</i> no suggestions to make, Sage?” asked Irais, turning to the +Man of Wrath, who was blowing out clouds of smoke in silence. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, do you call him Sage?” cried Minora; “and always in English?” +</p> + +<p> +Irais and I looked at each other. We knew what we did call him, and were afraid +Minora would in time ferret it out and enter it in her note-book. The Man of +Wrath looked none too well pleased to be alluded to under his very nose by our +new guest as “him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Husbands are always sages,” said I gravely. +</p> + +<p> +“Though sages are not always husbands,” said Irais with equal gravity. “Sages +and husbands—sage and husbands—” she went on musingly, “what does that remind +you of, Miss Minora?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I know,—how stupid of me!” cried Minora eagerly, her pencil in mid-air and +her brain clutching at the elusive recollection, “sage and,—why,—yes,—no,—yes, +of course—oh,” disappointedly, “but that’s vulgar—I can’t put it in.” +</p> + +<p> +“What is vulgar?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“She thinks sage and onions is vulgar,” said Irais languidly; “but it isn’t, it +is very good.” She got up and walked to the piano, and, sitting down, began, +after a little wandering over the keys, to sing. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you play?” I asked Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, but I am afraid I am rather out of practice.” +</p> + +<p> +I said no more. I know what <i>that</i> sort of playing is. +</p> + +<p> +When we were lighting our bedroom candles Minora began suddenly to speak in an +unknown tongue. We stared. “What is the matter with her?” murmured Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“I thought, perhaps,” said Minora in English, “you might prefer to talk German, +and as it is all the same to me what I talk—” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, pray don’t trouble,” said Irais. “We like airing our English—don’t we, +Elizabeth?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want my German to get rusty though,” said Minora; “I shouldn’t like to +forget it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but isn’t there an English song,” said Irais, twisting round her neck as +she preceded us upstairs, “‘’Tis folly to remember, ’tis wisdom to forget’?” +</p> + +<p> +“You are not nervous sleeping alone, I hope,” I said hastily. +</p> + +<p> +“What room is she in?” asked Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“No. 12.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh!—do you believe in ghosts?” +</p> + +<p> +Minora turned pale. +</p> + +<p> +“What nonsense,” said I; “we have no ghosts here. Good-night. If you want +anything, mind you ring.” +</p> + +<p> +“And if you see anything curious in that room,” called Irais from her bedroom +door, “mind you jot it down.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>December</i> 27<i>th</i>—It is the fashion, I believe, to regard Christmas +as a bore of rather a gross description, and as a time when you are invited to +over-eat yourself, and pretend to be merry without just cause. As a matter of +fact, it is one of the prettiest and most poetic institutions possible, if +observed in the proper manner, and after having been more or less unpleasant to +everybody for a whole year, it is a blessing to be forced on that one day to be +amiable, and it is certainly delightful to be able to give presents without +being haunted by the conviction that you are spoiling the recipient, and will +suffer for it afterward. Servants are only big children, and are made just as +happy as children by little presents and nice things to eat, and, for days +beforehand, every time the three babies go into the garden they expect to meet +the Christ Child with His arms full of gifts. They firmly believe that it is +thus their presents are brought, and it is such a charming idea that Christmas +would be worth celebrating for its sake alone. +</p> + +<p> +As great secrecy is observed, the preparations devolve entirely on me, and it +is not very easy work, with so many people in our own house and on each of the +farms, and all the children, big and little, expecting their share of +happiness. The library is uninhabitable for several days before and after, as +it is there that we have the trees and presents. All down one side are the +trees, and the other three sides are lined with tables, a separate one for each +person in the house. When the trees are lighted, and stand in their radiance +shining down on the happy faces, I forget all the trouble it has been, and the +number of times I have had to run up and down stairs, and the various aches in +head and feet, and enjoy myself as much as anybody. First the June baby is +ushered in, then the others and ourselves according to age, then the servants, +then come the head inspector and his family, the other inspectors from the +different farms, the mamsells, the bookkeepers and secretaries, and then all +the children, troops and troops of them—the big ones leading the little ones by +the hand and carrying the babies in their arms, and the mothers peeping round +the door. As many as can get in stand in front of the trees, and sing two or +three carols; then they are given their presents, and go off triumphantly, +making room for the next batch. My three babies sang lustily too, whether they +happened to know what was being sung or not. They had on white dresses in +honour of the occasion, and the June baby was even arrayed in a low-necked and +short-sleeved garment, after the manner of Teutonic infants, whatever the state +of the thermometer. Her arms are like miniature prize-fighter’s arms—I never +saw such things; they are the pride and joy of her little nurse, who had tied +them up with blue ribbons, and kept on kissing them. I shall certainly not be +able to take her to balls when she grows up, if she goes on having arms like +that. +</p> + +<p> +When they came to say good-night, they were all very pale and subdued. The +April baby had an exhausted-looking Japanese doll with her, which she said she +was taking to bed, not because she liked him, but because she was so sorry for +him, he seemed so very tired. They kissed me absently, and went away, only the +April baby glancing at the trees as she passed and making them a curtesy. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-bye, trees,” I heard her say; and then she made the Japanese doll bow to +them, which he did, in a very languid and blasé fashion. “<i>You’ll</i> never +see such trees again,” she told him, giving him a vindictive shake, “for you’ll +be brokened <i>long</i> before next time.” +</p> + +<p> +She went out, but came back as though she had forgotten something. +</p> + +<p> +“Thank the <i>Christkind</i> so <i>much</i>, Mummy, won’t you, for all the +lovely things He brought us. I suppose you’re writing to Him now, isn’t you?” +</p> + +<p> +I cannot see that there was anything gross about our Christmas, and we were +perfectly merry without any need to pretend, and for at least two days it +brought us a little nearer together, and made us kind. Happiness is so +wholesome; it invigorates and warms me into piety far more effectually than any +amount of trials and griefs, and an unexpected pleasure is the surest means of +bringing me to my knees. In spite of the protestations of some peculiarly +constructed persons that they are the better for trials, I don’t believe it. +Such things must sour us, just as happiness must sweeten us, and make us +kinder, and more gentle. And will anybody affirm that it behoves us to be more +thankful for trials than for blessings? We were meant to be happy, and to +accept all the happiness offered with thankfulness—indeed, we are none of us +ever thankful enough, and yet we each get so much, so very much, more than we +deserve. I know a woman—she stayed with me last summer—who rejoices grimly when +those she loves suffer. She believes that it is our lot, and that it braces us +and does us good, and she would shield no one from even unnecessary pain; she +weeps with the sufferer, but is convinced it is all for the best. Well, let her +continue in her dreary beliefs; she has no garden to teach her the beauty and +the happiness of holiness, nor does she in the least desire to possess one; her +convictions have the sad gray colouring of the dingy streets and houses she +lives amongst—the sad colour of humanity in masses. Submission to what people +call their “lot” is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, +get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don’t listen to the +shrieks of your relations, to their gibes or their entreaties; don’t let your +own microscopic set prescribe your goings-out and comings-in; don’t be afraid +of public opinion in the shape of the neighbour in the next house, when all the +world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will +only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the +neck. +</p> + +<p> +“To hear you talk,” said Irais, “no one would ever imagine that you dream away +your days in a garden with a book, and that you never in your life seized +anything by the scruff of its neck. And what is scruff? I hope I have not got +any on me.” And she craned her neck before the glass. +</p> + +<p> +She and Minora were going to help me decorate the trees, but very soon Irais +wandered off to the piano, and Minora was tired and took up a book; so I called +in Miss Jones and the babies—it was Miss Jones’s last public appearance, as I +shall relate—and after working for the best part of two days they were +finished, and looked like lovely ladies in widespreading, sparkling petticoats, +holding up their skirts with glittering fingers. Minora wrote a long +description of them for a chapter of her book which is headed <i>Noel</i>,—I +saw that much, because she left it open on the table while she went to talk to +Miss Jones. They were fast friends from the very first, and though it is said +to be natural to take to one’s own countrymen, I am unable altogether to +sympathise with such a reason for sudden affection. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder what they talk about?” I said to Irais yesterday, when there was no +getting Minora to come to tea, so deeply was she engaged in conversation with +Miss Jones. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my dear, how can I tell? Lovers, I suppose, or else they think they are +clever, and then they talk rubbish.” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, of course, Minora thinks she is clever.” +</p> + +<p> +“I suppose she does. What does it matter what she thinks? Why does your +governess look so gloomy? When I see her at luncheon I always imagine she must +have just heard that somebody is dead. But she can’t hear that every day. What +is the matter with her?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think she feels quite as proper as she looks,” I said doubtfully; I +was for ever trying to account for Miss Jones’s expression. +</p> + +<p> +“But that must be rather nice,” said Irais. “It would be awful for her if she +felt exactly the same as she looks.” +</p> + +<p> +At that moment the door leading into the schoolroom opened softly, and the +April baby, tired of playing, came in and sat down at my feet, leaving the door +open; and this is what we heard Miss Jones saying— +</p> + +<p> +“Parents are seldom wise, and the strain the conscientious place upon +themselves to appear so before their children and governess must be terrible. +Nor are clergymen more pious than other men, yet they have continually to pose +before their flock as such. As for governesses, Miss Minora, I know what I am +saying when I affirm that there is nothing more intolerable than to have to be +polite, and even humble, to persons whose weaknesses and follies are glaringly +apparent in every word they utter, and to be forced by the presence of children +and employers to a dignity of manner in no way corresponding to one’s feelings. +The grave father of a family, who was probably one of the least respectable of +bachelors, is an interesting study at his own table, where he is constrained to +assume airs of infallibility merely because his children are looking at him. +The fact of his being a parent does not endow him with any supreme and sudden +virtue; and I can assure you that among the eyes fixed upon him, not the least +critical and amused are those of the humble person who fills the post of +governess.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Miss Jones, how lovely!” we heard Minora say in accents of rapture, while +we sat transfixed with horror at these sentiments. “Do you mind if I put that +down in my book? You say it all so beautifully.” +</p> + +<p> +“Without a few hours of relaxation,” continued Miss Jones, “of private +indemnification for the toilsome virtues displayed in public, who could wade +through days of correct behaviour? There would be no reaction, no room for +better impulses, no place for repentance. Parents, priests, and governesses +would be in the situation of a stout lady who never has a quiet moment in which +she can take off her corsets.” +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, what a firebrand!” whispered Irais. I got up and went in. They were +sitting on the sofa, Minora with clasped hands, gazing admiringly into Miss +Jones’s face, which wore a very different expression from the one of sour and +unwilling propriety I have been used to seeing. +</p> + +<p> +“May I ask you to come to tea?” I said to Minora. “And I should like to have +the children a little while.” +</p> + +<p> +She got up very reluctantly, but I waited with the door open until she had gone +in and the two babies had followed. They had been playing at stuffing each +other’s ears with pieces of newspaper while Miss Jones provided Minora with +noble thoughts for her work, and had to be tortured afterward with tweezers. I +said nothing to Minora, but kept her with us till dinner-time, and this morning +we went for a long sleigh-drive. When we came in to lunch there was no Miss +Jones. +</p> + +<p> +“Is Miss Jones ill?” asked Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“She is gone,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Gone?” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you never hear of such things as sick mothers?” asked Irais blandly; and +we talked resolutely of something else. +</p> + +<p> +All the afternoon Minora has moped. She had found a kindred spirit, and it has +been ruthlessly torn from her arms as kindred spirits so often are. It is +enough to make her mope, and it is not her fault, poor thing, that she should +have preferred the society of a Miss Jones to that of Irais and myself. +</p> + +<p> +At dinner Irais surveyed her with her head on one side. “You look so pale,” she +said; “are you not well?” +</p> + +<p> +Minora raised her eyes heavily, with the patient air of one who likes to be +thought a sufferer. “I have a slight headache,” she replied gently. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you are not going to be ill,” said Irais with great concern, “because +there is only a cow-doctor to be had here, and though he means well, I believe +he is rather rough.” Minora was plainly startled. “But what do you do if you +are ill?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, we are never ill,” said I; “the very knowledge that there would be no one +to cure us seems to keep us healthy.” +</p> + +<p> +“And if any one takes to her bed,” said Irais, “Elizabeth always calls in the +cow-doctor.” +</p> + +<p> +Minora was silent. She feels, I am sure, that she has got into a part of the +world peopled solely by barbarians, and that the only civilised creature +besides herself has departed and left her at our mercy. Whatever her +reflections may be her symptoms are visibly abating. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>January</i> 1<i>st</i>.—The service on New Year’s Eve is the only one in the +whole year that in the least impresses me in our little church, and then the +very bareness and ugliness of the place and the ceremonial produce an effect +that a snug service in a well-lit church never would. Last night we took Irais +and Minora, and drove the three lonely miles in a sleigh. It was pitch-dark, +and blowing great guns. We sat wrapped up to our eyes in furs, and as mute as a +funeral procession. +</p> + +<p> +“We are going to the burial of our last year’s sins,” said Irais, as we +started; and there certainly was a funereal sort of feeling in the air. Up in +our gallery pew we tried to decipher our chorales by the light of the +spluttering tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames wildly +blown about by the draughts. The wind banged against the windows in great +gusts, screaming louder than the organ, and threatening to blow out the +agitated lights together. The parson in his gloomy pulpit, surrounded by a +framework of dusty carved angels, took on an awful appearance of menacing +Authority as he raised his voice to make himself heard above the clatter. +Sitting there in the dark, I felt very small, and solitary, and defenceless, +alone in a great, big, black world. The church was as cold as a tomb; some of +the candles guttered and went out; the parson in his black robe spoke of death +and judgment; I thought I heard a child’s voice screaming, and could hardly +believe it was only the wind, and felt uneasy and full of forebodings; all my +faith and philosophy deserted me, and I had a horrid feeling that I should +probably be well punished, though for what I had no precise idea. If it had not +been so dark, and if the wind had not howled so despairingly, I should have +paid little attention to the threats issuing from the pulpit; but, as it was, I +fell to making good resolutions. This is always a bad sign,—only those who +break them make them; and if you simply do as a matter of course that which is +right as it comes, any preparatory resolving to do so becomes completely +superfluous. I have for some years past left off making them on New Year’s Eve, +and only the gale happening as it did reduced me to doing so last night; for I +have long since discovered that, though the year and the resolutions may be +new, I myself am not, and it is worse than useless putting new wine into old +bottles. +</p> + +<p> +“But I am not an old bottle,” said Irais indignantly, when I held forth to her +to the above effect a few hours later in the library, restored to all my +philosophy by the warmth and light, “and I find my resolutions carry me very +nicely into the spring. I revise them at the end of each month, and strike out +the unnecessary ones. By the end of April they have been so severely revised +that there are none left.” +</p> + +<p> +“There, you see I am right; if you were not an old bottle your new contents +would gradually arrange themselves amiably as a part of you, and the practice +of your resolutions would lose its bitterness by becoming a habit.” +</p> + +<p> +She shook her head. “Such things never lose their bitterness,” she said, “and +that is why I don’t let them cling to me right into the summer. When May comes, +I give myself up to jollity with all the rest of the world, and am too busy +being happy to bother about anything I may have resolved when the days were +cold and dark.” +</p> + +<p> +“And that is just why I love you,” I thought. She often says what I feel. +</p> + +<p> +“I wonder,” she went on after a pause, “whether men ever make resolutions?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t think they do. Only women indulge in such luxuries. It is a nice sort +of feeling, when you have nothing else to do, giving way to endless grief and +penitence, and steeping yourself to the eyes in contrition; but it is silly. +Why cry over things that are done? Why do naughty things at all, if you are +going to repent afterward? Nobody is naughty unless they like being naughty; +and nobody ever really repents unless they are afraid they are going to be +found out.” +</p> + +<p> +“By ‘nobody’ of course you mean women,” said Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“Naturally; the terms are synonymous. Besides, men generally have the courage +of their opinions.” +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you are listening, Miss Minora,” said Irais in the amiably polite tone +she assumes whenever she speaks to that young person. +</p> + +<p> +It was getting on towards midnight, and we were sitting round the fire, waiting +for the New Year, and sipping <i>Glühwein</i>, prepared at a small table by the +Man of Wrath. It was hot, and sweet, and rather nasty, but it is proper to +drink it on this one night, so of course we did. +</p> + +<p> +Minora does not like either Irais or myself. We very soon discovered that, and +laugh about it when we are alone together. I can understand her disliking +Irais, but she must be a perverse creature not to like me. Irais has poked fun +at her, and I have been, I hope, very kind; yet we are bracketed together in +her black books. It is also apparent that she looks upon the Man of Wrath as an +interesting example of an ill-used and misunderstood husband, and she is +disposed to take him under her wing, and defend him on all occasions against +us. He never speaks to her; he is at all times a man of few words, but, as far +as Minora is concerned, he might have no tongue at all, and sits sphinx-like +and impenetrable while she takes us to task about some remark of a profane +nature that we may have addressed to him. One night, some days after her +arrival, she developed a skittishness of manner which has since disappeared, +and tried to be playful with him; but you might as well try to be playful with +a graven image. The wife of one of the servants had just produced a boy, the +first after a series of five daughters, and at dinner we drank the health of +all parties concerned, the Man of Wrath making the happy father drink a glass +off at one gulp, his heels well together in military fashion. Minora thought +the incident typical of German manners, and not only made notes about it, but +joined heartily in the health-drinking, and afterward grew skittish. +</p> + +<p> +She proposed, first of all, to teach us a dance called, I think, the Washington +Post, and which was, she said, much danced in England; and, to induce us to +learn, she played the tune to us on the piano. We remained untouched by its +beauties, each buried in an easy-chair toasting our toes at the fire. Amongst +those toes were those of the Man of Wrath, who sat peaceably reading a book and +smoking. Minora volunteered to show us the steps, and as we still did not move, +danced solitary behind our chairs. Irais did not even turn her head to look, +and I was the only one amiable or polite enough to do so. Do I deserve to be +placed in Minora’s list of disagreeable people side by side with Irais? +Certainly not. Yet I most surely am. +</p> + +<p> +“It wants the music, of course,” observed Minora breathlessly, darting in and +out between the chairs, apparently addressing me, but glancing at the Man of +Wrath. +</p> + +<p> +No answer from anybody. +</p> + +<p> +“It is <i>such</i> a pretty dance,” she panted again, after a few more +gyrations. +</p> + +<p> +No answer. +</p> + +<p> +“And is all the rage at home.” +</p> + +<p> +No answer. +</p> + +<p> +“Do let me teach you. Won’t <i>you</i> try, Herr Sage?” +</p> + +<p> +She went up to him and dropped him a little curtesy. It is thus she always +addresses him, entirely oblivious to the fact, so patent to every one else, +that he resents it. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh come, put away that tiresome old book,” she went on gaily, as he did not +move; “I am certain it is only some dry agricultural work that you just nod +over. Dancing is much better for you.” Irais and I looked at one another quite +frightened. I am sure we both turned pale when the unhappy girl actually laid +hold forcibly of his book, and, with a playful little shriek, ran away with it +into the next room, hugging it to her bosom and looking back roguishly over her +shoulder at him as she ran. There was an awful pause. We hardly dared raise our +eyes. Then the Man of Wrath got up slowly, knocked the ashes off the end of +his cigar, looked at his watch, and went out at the opposite door into his own +rooms, where he stayed for the rest of the evening. She has never, I must say, +been skittish since. +</p> + +<p> +“I hope you are listening, Miss Minora,” said Irais, “because this sort of +conversation is likely to do you good.” +</p> + +<p> +“I always listen when people talk sensibly,” replied Minora, stirring her grog. +</p> + +<p> +Irais glanced at her with slightly doubtful eyebrows. “Do you agree with our +hostess’s description of women?” she asked after a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“As nobodies? No, of course I do not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yet she is right. In the eye of the law we are literally nobodies in our +country. Did you know that women are forbidden to go to political meetings +here?”</p> + +<p>“Really?” Out came the note-book. +</p> + +<p> +“The law expressly forbids the attendance at such meetings of women, children, +and idiots.” +</p> + +<p> +“Children and idiots—I understand that,” said Minora; “but women—and classed +with children and idiots?” +</p> + +<p> +“Classed with children and idiots,” repeated Irais, gravely nodding her head. +“Did you know that the law forbids females of any age to ride on the top of +omnibuses or tramcars?” +</p> + +<p> +“Not really?” +</p> + +<p> +“Do you know why?” +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t imagine.” +</p> + +<p> +“Because in going up and down the stairs those inside might perhaps catch a +glimpse of the stocking covering their ankles.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what—” +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know that the morals of the German public are in such a shaky +condition that a glimpse of that sort would be fatal to them?” +</p> + +<p> +“But I don’t see how a stocking—” +</p> + +<p> +“With stripes round it,” said Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“And darns in it,” I added. +</p> + +<p> +“—could possibly be pernicious?” +</p> + +<p> +“‘The Pernicious Stocking; or, Thoughts on the Ethics of Petticoats,’” said +Irais. “Put that down as the name of your next book on Germany.” +</p> + +<p> +“I never know,” complained Minora, letting her note-book fall, “whether you are +in earnest or not.” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you?” said Irais sweetly. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it true,” appealed Minora to the Man of Wrath, busy with his lemons in the +background, “that your law classes women with children and idiots?” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” he answered promptly, “and a very proper classification, too.” +</p> + +<p> +We all looked blank. “That’s rude,” said I at last. +</p> + +<p> +“Truth is always rude, my dear,” he replied complacently. Then he added, “If I +were commissioned to draw up a new legal code, and had previously enjoyed the +privilege, as I have been doing lately, of listening to the conversation of you +three young ladies, I should make precisely the same classification.” +</p> + +<p> +Even Minora was incensed at this. +</p> + +<p> +“You are telling us in the most unvarnished manner that we are idiots,” said +Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“Idiots? No, no, by no means. But children,—nice little agreeable children. I +very much like to hear you talk together. It is all so young and fresh what you +think and what you believe, and not of the least consequence to any one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Not of the least consequence?” cried Minora. “What we believe is of very great +consequence indeed to us.” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you jeering at our beliefs?” inquired Irais sternly. +</p> + +<p> +“Not for worlds. I would not on any account disturb or change your pretty +little beliefs. It is your chief charm that you always believe every-thing. How +desperate would our case be if young ladies only believed facts, and never +accepted another person’s assurance, but preferred the evidence of their own +eyes! They would have no illusions, and a woman without illusions is the +dreariest and most difficult thing to manage possible.” +</p> + +<p> +“Thing?” protested Irais. +</p> + +<p> +The Man of Wrath, usually so silent, makes up for it from time to time by +holding forth at unnecessary length. He took up his stand now with his back to +the fire, and a glass of <i>Glühwein</i> in his hand. Minora had hardly heard +his voice before, so quiet had he been since she came, and sat with her pencil +raised, ready to fix for ever the wisdom that should flow from his lips. +</p> + +<p> +“What would become of poetry if women became so sensible that they turned a +deaf ear to the poetic platitudes of love? That love does indulge in platitudes +I suppose you will admit.” He looked at Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, they all say exactly the same thing,” she acknowledged. +</p> + +<p> +“Who could murmur pretty speeches on the beauty of a common sacrifice, if the +listener’s want of imagination was such as to enable her only to distinguish +one victim in the picture, and that one herself?” +</p> + +<p> +Minora took that down word for word,—much good may it do her. +</p> + +<p> +“Who would be brave enough to affirm that if refused he will die, if his +assurances merely elicit a recommendation to diet himself, and take plenty of +outdoor exercise? Women are responsible for such lies, because they believe +them. Their amazing vanity makes them swallow flattery so gross that it is an +insult, and men will always be ready to tell the precise number of lies that a +woman is ready to listen to. Who indulges more recklessly in glowing +exaggerations than the lover who hopes, and has not yet obtained? He will, like +the nightingale, sing with unceasing modulations, display all his talent, +untiringly repeat his sweetest notes, until he has what he wants, when his +song, like the nightingale’s, immediately ceases, never again to be heard.” +</p> + +<p> +“Take that down,” murmured Irais aside to Minora—unnecessary advice, for her +pencil was scribbling as fast as it could. +</p> + +<p> +“A woman’s vanity is so immeasurable that, after having had ninety-nine +object-lessons in the difference between promise and performance and the +emptiness of pretty speeches, the beginning of the hundredth will find her +lending the same willing and enchanted ear to the eloquence of flattery as she +did on the occasion of the first. What can the exhortations of the +strong-minded sister, who has never had these experiences, do for such a woman? +It is useless to tell her she is man’s victim, that she is his plaything, that +she is cheated, down-trodden, kept under, laughed at, shabbily treated in every +way—that is not a true statement of the case. She is simply the victim of her +own vanity, and against that, against the belief in her own fascinations, +against the very part of herself that gives all the colour to her life, who +shall expect a woman to take up arms?” +</p> + +<p> +“Are you so vain, Elizabeth?” inquired Irais with a shocked face, “and had you +lent a willing ear to the blandishments of ninety-nine before you reached your +final destiny?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am one of the sensible ones, I suppose,” I replied, “for nobody ever wanted +me to listen to blandishments.” +</p> + +<p> +Minora sighed. +</p> + +<p> +“I like to hear you talk together about the position of women,” he went on, +“and wonder when you will realise that they hold exactly the position they are +fitted for. As soon as they are fit to occupy a better, no power on earth will +be able to keep them out of it. Meanwhile, let me warn you that, as things now +are, only strong-minded women wish to see you the equals of men, and the +strong-minded are invariably plain. The pretty ones would rather see men their +slaves than their equals.” +</p> + +<p> +“You know,” said Irais, frowning, “that I consider myself strong-minded.” +</p> + +<p> +“And never rise till lunch-time?” +</p> + +<p> +Irais blushed. Although I don’t approve of such conduct, it is very convenient +in more ways than one; I get through my housekeeping undisturbed, and whenever +she is disposed to lecture me, I begin about this habit of hers. Her conscience +must be terribly stricken on the point, for she is by no means as a rule given +to meekness. +</p> + +<p> +“A woman without vanity would be unattackable,” resumed the Man of Wrath. “When +a girl enters that downward path that leads to ruin, she is led solely by her +own vanity; for in these days of policemen no young woman can be forced against +her will from the path of virtue, and the cries of the injured are never heard +until the destroyer begins to express his penitence for having destroyed. If +his passion could remain at white-heat and he could continue to feed her ear +with the protestations she loves, no principles of piety or virtue would +disturb the happiness of his companion; for a mournful experience teaches that +piety begins only where passion ends, and that principles are strongest where +temptations are most rare.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what has all this to do with us?” I inquired severely. +</p> + +<p> +“You were displeased at our law classing you as it does, and I merely wish to +justify it,” he answered. “Creatures who habitually say <i>yes</i> to +everything a man proposes, when no one can oblige them to say it, and when it +is so often fatal, are plainly not responsible beings.” +</p> + +<p> +“I shall never say it to you again, my dear man,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“And not only <i>that</i> fatal weakness,” he continued, “but what is there, +candidly, to distinguish you from children? You are older, but not +wiser,—really not so wise, for with years you lose the common sense you had as +children. Have you ever heard a group of women talking reasonably together?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes—we do!” Irais and I cried in a breath. +</p> + +<p> +“It has interested me,” went on the Man of Wrath, “in my idle moments, to +listen to their talk. It amused me to hear the malicious little stories they +told of their best friends who were absent, to note the spiteful little digs +they gave their best friends who were present, to watch the utter incredulity +with which they listened to the tale of some other woman’s conquests, the +radiant good faith they displayed in connection with their own, the instant +collapse into boredom, if some topic of so-called general interest, by some +extraordinary chance, were introduced.” +</p> + +<p> +“You must have belonged to a particularly nice set,” remarked Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“And as for politics,” he said, “I have never heard them mentioned among +women.” +</p> + +<p> +“Children and idiots are not interested in such things,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“And we are much too frightened of being put in prison,” said Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“In prison?” echoed Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you know,” said Irais, turning to her “that if you talk about such +things here you run a great risk of being imprisoned?” +</p> + +<p> +“But why?” +</p> + +<p> +“But why? Because, though you yourself may have meant nothing but what was +innocent, your words may have suggested something less innocent to the evil +minds of your hearers; and then the law steps in, and calls it <i>dolus +eventualis</i>, and everybody says how dreadful, and off you go to prison and +are punished as you deserve to be.” +</p> + +<p> +Minora looked mystified. +</p> + +<p> +“That is not, however, your real reason for not discussing them,” said the Man +of Wrath; “they simply do not interest you. Or it may be, that you do not +consider your female friends’ opinions worth listening to, for you certainly +display an astonishing thirst for information when male politicians are +present. I have seen a pretty young woman, hardly in her twenties, sitting a +whole evening drinking in the doubtful wisdom of an elderly political star, +with every appearance of eager interest. He was a bimetallic star, and was +giving her whole pamphletsful of information.” +</p> + +<p> +“She wanted to make up to him for some reason,” said Irais, “and got him to +explain his hobby to her, and he was silly enough to be taken in. Now which was +the sillier in that case?” +</p> + +<p> +She threw herself back in her chair and looked up defiantly, beating her foot +impatiently on the carpet. +</p> + +<p> +“She wanted to be thought clever,” said the Man of Wrath. “What puzzled me,” he +went on musingly, “was that she went away apparently as serene and happy as +when she came. The explanation of the principles of bimetallism produce, as a +rule, a contrary effect.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why, she hadn’t been listening,” cried Irais, “and your simple star had been +making a fine goose of himself the whole evening. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Prattle, prattle, simple star,<br> +Bimetallic, <i>wunderbar</i>.<br> +Though you’re given to describe<br> +Woman as a <i>dummes Weib</i>.<br> +You yourself are sillier far,<br> +Prattling, bimetallic star!” +</p> + +<p> +“No doubt she had understood very little,” said the Man of Wrath, taking no +notice of this effusion. +</p> + +<p> +“And no doubt the gentleman hadn’t understood much either.” Irais was plainly +irritated. +</p> + +<p> +“Your opinion of woman,” said Minora in a very small voice, “is not a high one. +But, in the sick chamber, I suppose you agree that no one could take her +place?” +</p> + +<p> +“If you are thinking of hospital-nurses,” I said, “I must tell you that I +believe he married chiefly that he might have a wife instead of a strange woman +to nurse him when he is sick.” +</p> + +<p> +“But,” said Minora, bewildered at the way her illusions were being knocked +about, “the sick-room is surely the very place of all others in which a woman’s +gentleness and tact are most valuable.” +</p> + +<p> +“Gentleness and tact?” repeated the Man of Wrath. “I have never met those +qualities in the professional nurse. According to my experience, she is a +disagreeable person who finds in private nursing exquisite opportunities for +asserting her superiority over ordinary and prostrate mankind. I know of no +more humiliating position for a man than to be in bed having his feverish brow +soothed by a sprucely-dressed strange woman, bristling with starch and +spotlessness. He would give half his income for his clothes, and probably the +other half if she would leave him alone, and go away altogether. He feels her +superiority through every pore; he never before realised how absolutely +inferior he is; he is abjectly polite, and contemptibly conciliatory; if a +friend comes to see him, he eagerly praises her in case she should be listening +behind the screen; he cannot call his soul his own, and, what is far more +intolerable, neither is he sure that his body really belongs to him; he has +read of ministering angels and the light touch of a woman’s hand, but the day +on which he can ring for his servant and put on his socks in private fills him +with the same sort of wildness of joy that he felt as a homesick schoolboy at +the end of his first term.” +</p> + +<p> +Minora was silent. Irais’s foot was livelier than ever. The Man of Wrath stood +smiling blandly down upon us. You can’t argue with a person so utterly +convinced of his infallibility that he won’t even get angry with you; so we sat +round and said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +“If,” he went on, addressing Irais, who looked rebellious, “you doubt the truth +of my remarks, and still cling to the old poetic notion of noble, +self-sacrificing women tenderly helping the patient over the rough places on +the road to death or recovery, let me beg you to try for yourself, next time +any one in your house is ill, whether the actual fact in any way corresponds to +the picturesque belief. The angel who is to alleviate our sufferings comes in +such a questionable shape, that to the unimaginative she appears merely as an +extremely self-confident young woman, wisely concerned first of all in securing +her personal comfort, much given to complaints about her food and to +helplessness where she should be helpful, possessing an extraordinary capacity +for fancying herself slighted, or not regarded as the superior being she knows +herself to be, morbidly anxious lest the servants should, by some mistake, +treat her with offensive cordiality, pettish if the patient gives more trouble +than she had expected, intensely injured and disagreeable if he is made so +courageous by his wretchedness as to wake her during the night—an act of +desperation of which I was guilty once, and once only. Oh, these good women! +What sane man wants to have to do with angels? And especially do we object to +having them about us when we are sick and sorry, when we feel in every fibre +what poor things we are, and when all our fortitude is needed to enable us to +bear our temporary inferiority patiently, without being forced besides to +assume an attitude of eager and grovelling politeness towards the angel in the +house.” +</p> + +<p> +There was a pause. +</p> + +<p> +“I didn’t know you could talk so much, Sage,” said Irais at length. +</p> + +<p> +“What would you have women do, then?” asked Minora meekly. Irais began to beat +her foot up and down again,—what did it matter what Men of Wrath would have us +do? “There are not,” continued Minora, blushing, “husbands enough for every +one, and the rest must do something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Certainly,” replied the oracle. “Study the art of pleasing by dress and manner +as long as you are of an age to interest us, and above all, let all women, +pretty and plain, married and single, study the art of cookery. If you are an +artist in the kitchen you will always be esteemed.” +</p> + +<p> +I sat very still. Every German woman, even the wayward Irais, has learned to +cook; I seem to have been the only one who was naughty and wouldn’t. +</p> + +<p> +“Only be careful,” he went on, “in studying both arts, never to forget the +great truth that dinner precedes blandishments and not blandishments dinner. A +man must be made comfortable before he will make love to you; and though it is +true that if you offered him a choice between <i>Spickgans</i> and kisses, he +would say he would take both, yet he would invariably begin with the +<i>Spickgans</i>, and allow the kisses to wait.” +</p> + +<p> +At this I got up, and Irais followed my example. “Your cynicism is disgusting,” +I said icily. +</p> + +<p> +“You two are always exceptions to anything I may say,” he said, smiling +amiably. +</p> + +<p> +He stooped and kissed Irais’s hand. She is inordinately vain of her hands, and +says her husband married her for their sake, which I can quite believe. I am +glad they are on her and not on Minora, for if Minora had had them I should +have been annoyed. Minora’s are bony, with chilly-looking knuckles, ignored +nails, and too much wrist. I feel very well disposed towards her when my eye +falls on them. She put one forward now, evidently thinking it would be kissed +too. +</p> + +<p> +“Did you know,” said Irais, seeing the movement, “that it is the custom here to +kiss women’s hands?” +</p> + +<p> +“But only married women’s,” I added, not desiring her to feel out of it, “never +young girls’.” +</p> + +<p> +She drew it in again. “It is a pretty custom,” she said with a sigh; and +pensively inscribed it in her book. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>January</i> 15<i>th</i>.—The bills for my roses and bulbs and other last +year’s horticultural indulgences were all on the table when I came down to +breakfast this morning. They rather frightened me. Gardening is expensive, I +find, when it has to be paid for out of one’s own private pin-money. The Man of +Wrath does not in the least want roses, or flowering shrubs, or plantations, or +new paths, and therefore, he asks, why should he pay for them? So he does not +and I do, and I have to make up for it by not indulging all too riotously in +new clothes, which is no doubt very chastening. I certainly prefer buying new +rose-trees to new dresses, if I cannot comfortably have both; and I see a time +coming when the passion for my garden will have taken such a hold on me that I +shall not only entirely cease buying more clothes, but begin to sell those that +I already have. The garden is so big that everything has to be bought +wholesale; and I fear I shall not be able to go on much longer with only one +man and a stork, because the more I plant the more there will be to water in +the inevitable drought, and the watering is a serious consideration when it +means going backwards and forwards all day long to a pump near the house, with +a little water-cart. People living in England, in almost perpetual mildness and +moisture, don’t really know what a drought is. If they have some weeks of +cloudless weather, it is generally preceded and followed by good rains; but we +have perhaps an hour’s shower every week, and then comes a month or six weeks’ +drought. The soil is very light, and dries so quickly that, after the heaviest +thunder-shower, I can walk over any of my paths in my thin shoes; and to keep +the garden even moderately damp it should pour with rain regularly every day +for three hours. My only means of getting water is to go to the pump near the +house, or to the little stream that forms my eastern boundary, and the little +stream dries up too unless there has been rain, and is at the best of times +difficult to get at, having steep banks covered with forget-me-nots. I possess +one moist, peaty bit of ground, and that is to be planted with silver birches +in imitation of the Hirschwald, and is to be carpeted between the birches with +flaming azaleas. All the rest of my soil is sandy—the soil for pines and +acacias, but not the soil for roses; yet see what love will do—there are more +roses in my garden than any other flower! Next spring the bare places are to be +filled with trees that I have ordered: pines behind the delicate acacias, and +startling mountain-ashes, oaks, copper-beeches, maples, larches, +juniper-trees—was it not Elijah who sat down to rest under a juniper-tree? I +have often wondered how he managed to get under it. It is a compact little +tree, not more than two to three yards high here, and all closely squeezed up +together. Perhaps they grew more aggressively where he was. By the time the +babies have grown old and disagreeable it will be very pretty here, and then +possibly they won’t like it; and, if they have inherited the Man of Wrath’s +indifference to gardens, they will let it run wild and leave it to return to +the state in which I found it. Or perhaps their three husbands will refuse to +live in it, or to come to such a lonely place at all, and then of course its +fate is sealed. My only comfort is that husbands don’t flourish in the desert, +and that the three will have to wait a long time before enough are found to go +round. Mothers tell me that it is a dreadful business finding one husband; how +much more painful then to have to look for three at once!—the babies are so +nearly the same age that they only just escaped being twins. But I won’t look. +I can imagine nothing more uncomfortable than a son-in-law, and besides, I +don’t think a husband is at all a good thing for a girl to have. I shall do my +best in the years at my disposal to train them so to love the garden, and +out-door life, and even farming, that, if they have a spark of their mother in +them, they will want and ask for nothing better. My hope of success is however +exceedingly small, and there is probably a fearful period in store for me when +I shall be taken every day during the winter to the distant towns to balls—a +poor old mother shivering in broad daylight in her party gown, and being made +to start after an early lunch and not getting home till breakfast-time next +morning. Indeed, they have already developed an alarming desire to go to +“partings” as they call them, the April baby announcing her intention of +beginning to do so when she is twelve. “Are <i>you</i> twelve, Mummy?” she +asked. +</p> + +<p> +The gardener is leaving on the first of April, and I am trying to find another. +It is grievous changing so often—in two years I shall have had three—because at +each change a great part of my plants and plans necessarily suffers. Seeds get +lost, seedlings are not pricked out in time, places already sown are planted +with something else, and there is confusion out of doors and despair in my +heart. But he was to have married the cook, and the cook saw a ghost and +immediately left, and he is going after her as soon as he can, and meanwhile is +wasting visibly away. What she saw was doors that are locked opening with a +great clatter all by themselves <i>on the hinge-side</i>, and then somebody +invisible cursed at her. These phenomena now go by the name of “the ghost.” She +asked to be allowed to leave at once, as she had never been in a place where +there was a ghost before. I suggested that she should try and get used to it; +but she thought it would be wasting time, and she looked so ill that I let her +go, and the garden has to suffer. I don’t know why it should be given to cooks +to see such interesting things and withheld from me, but I have had two others +since she left, and they both have seen the ghost. Minora grows very silent as +bed-time approaches, and relents towards Irais and myself; and, after having +shown us all day how little she approves us, when the bedroom candles are +brought she quite begins to cling. She has once or twice anxiously inquired +whether Irais is sure she does not object to sleeping alone. +</p> + +<p> +“If you are at all nervous, I will come and keep you company,” she said; “I +don’t mind at all, I assure you.” +</p> + +<p> +But Irais is not to be taken in by such simple wiles, and has told me she would +rather sleep with fifty ghosts than with one Minora. +</p> + +<p> +Since Miss Jones was so unexpectedly called away to her parent’s bedside I have +seen a good deal of the babies; and it is so nice without a governess that I +would put off engaging another for a year or two, if it were not that I should +in so doing come within the reach of the arm of the law, which is what every +German spends his life in trying to avoid. The April baby will be six next +month, and, after her sixth birthday is passed, we are liable at any moment to +receive a visit from a school inspector, who will inquire curiously into the +state of her education, and, if it is not up to the required standard, all +sorts of fearful things might happen to the guilty parents, probably beginning +with fines, and going on <i>crescendo</i> to dungeons if, owing to gaps between +governesses and difficulties in finding the right one, we persisted in our evil +courses. Shades of the prison-house begin to close here upon the growing boy, +and prisons compass the Teuton about on every side all through life to such an +extent that he has to walk very delicately indeed if he would stay outside them +and pay for their maintenance. Cultured individuals do not, as a rule, neglect +to teach their offspring to read, and write, and say their prayers, and are apt +to resent the intrusion of an examining inspector into their homes; but it does +not much matter after all, and I daresay it is very good for us to be worried; +indeed, a philosopher of my acquaintance declares that people who are not +regularly and properly worried are never any good for anything. In the eye of +the law we are all sinners, and every man is held to be guilty until he has +proved that he is innocent. +</p> + +<p> +Minora has seen so much of the babies that, after vainly trying to get out of +their way for several days, she thought it better to resign herself, and make +the best of it by regarding them as copy, and using them to fill a chapter in +her book. So she took to dogging their footsteps wherever they went, attended +their uprisings and their lyings down, engaged them, if she could, in +intelligent conversation, went with them into the garden to study their ways +when they were sleighing, drawn by a big dog, and generally made their lives a +burden to them. This went on for three days, and then she settled down to write +the result with the Man of Wrath’s typewriter, borrowed whenever her notes for +any chapter have reached the state of ripeness necessary for the process she +describes as “throwing into form.” She writes everything with a typewriter, +even her private letters. +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t forget to put in something about a mother’s knee,” said Irais; “you +can’t write effectively about children without that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, of course I shall mention that,” replied Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“And pink toes,” I added. “There are always toes, and they are never anything +but pink.” +</p> + +<p> +“I have that somewhere,” said Minora, turning over her notes. +</p> + +<p> +“But, after all, babies are not a German speciality,” said Irais, “and I don’t +quite see why you should bring them into a book of German travels. Elizabeth’s +babies have each got the fashionable number of arms and legs, and are exactly +the same as English ones.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, but they can’t be <i>just</i> the same, you know,” said Minora, looking +worried. “It must make a difference living here in this place, and eating such +odd things, and never having a doctor, and never being ill. Children who have +never had measles and those things can’t be quite the same as other children; +it must all be in their systems and can’t get out for some reason or other. And +a child brought up on chicken and rice-pudding must be different to a child +that eats <i>Spickgans</i> and liver sausages. And they <i>are</i> different; I +can’t tell in what way, but they certainly are; and I think if I steadily +describe them from the materials I have collected the last three days, I may +perhaps hit on the points of difference.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why bother about points of difference?” asked Irais. “I should write some +little thing, bringing in the usual parts of the picture, such as knees and +toes, and make it mildly pathetic.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it is by no means an easy thing for me to do,” said Minora plaintively; “I +have so little experience of children.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then why write it at all?” asked that sensible person Elizabeth. +</p> + +<p> +“I have as little experience as you,” said Irais, “because I have no children; +but if you don’t yearn after startling originality, nothing is easier than to +write bits about them. I believe I could do a dozen in an hour.” +</p> + +<p> +She sat down at the writing-table, took up an old letter, and scribbled for +about five minutes. “There,” she said, throwing it to Minora, “you may have +it—pink toes and all complete.” +</p> + +<p> +Minora put on her eye-glasses and read aloud: +</p> + +<p> +“When my baby shuts her eyes and sings her hymns at bed-time my stale and +battered soul is filled with awe. All sorts of vague memories crowd into my +mind—memories of my own mother and myself—how many years ago!—of the sweet +helplessness of being gathered up half asleep in her arms, and undressed, and +put in my cot, without being wakened; of the angels I believed in; of little +children coming straight from heaven, and still being surrounded, so long as +they were good, by the shadow of white wings,—all the dear poetic nonsense +learned, just as my baby is learning it, at her mother’s knee. She has not an +idea of the beauty of the charming things she is told, and stares wide-eyed, +with heavenly eyes, while her mother talks of the heaven she has so lately come +from, and is relieved and comforted by the interrupting bread and milk. At two +years old she does not understand angels, and does understand bread and milk; +at five she has vague notions about them, and prefers bread and milk; at ten +both bread and milk and angels have been left behind in the nursery, and she +has already found out that they are luxuries not necessary to her everyday +life. In later years she may be disinclined to accept truths second-hand, +insist on thinking for herself, be earnest in her desire to shake off exploded +traditions, be untiring in her efforts to live according to a high moral +standard and to be strong, and pure, and good—” +</p> + +<p> +“Like tea,” explained Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“—yet will she never, with all her virtues, possess one-thousandth part of the +charm that clung about her when she sang, with quiet eyelids, her first +reluctant hymns, kneeling on her mother’s knees. I love to come in at bed-time +and sit in the window in the setting sunshine watching the mysteries of her +going to bed. Her mother tubs her, for she is far too precious to be touched by +any nurse, and then she is rolled up in a big bath towel, and only her little +pink toes peep out; and when she is powdered, and combed, and tied up in her +night-dress, and all her curls are on end, and her ears glowing, she is knelt +down on her mother’s lap, a little bundle of fragrant flesh, and her face +reflects the quiet of her mother’s face as she goes through her evening prayer +for pity and for peace.” +</p> + +<p> +“How very curious!” said Minora, when she had finished. “That is exactly what I +was going to say.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, then I have saved you the trouble of putting it together; you can copy +that if you like.” +</p> + +<p> +“But have you a stale soul, Miss Minora?” I asked. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, do you know, I rather think that is a good touch,” she replied; “it will +make people really think a man wrote the book. You know I am going to take a +man’s name.” +</p> + +<p> +“That is precisely what I imagined,” said Irais. “You will call yourself John +Jones, or George Potts, or some such sternly commonplace name, to emphasise +your uncompromising attitude towards all feminine weaknesses, and no one will +be taken in.” +</p> + +<p> +“I really think, Elizabeth,” said Irais to me later, when the click of Minora’s +typewriter was heard hesitating in the next room, “that you and I are writing +her book for her. She takes down everything we say. Why does she copy all that +about the baby? I wonder why mothers’ knees are supposed to be touching? I +never learned anything at them, did you? But then in my case they were only +stepmother’s, and nobody ever sings their praises.” +</p> + +<p> +“My mother was always at parties,” I said; “and the nurse made me say my +prayers in French.” +</p> + +<p> +“And as for tubs and powder,” went on Irais, “when I was a baby such things +were not the fashion. There were never any bathrooms, and no tubs; our faces +and hands were washed, and there was a foot-bath in the room, and in the summer +we had a bath and were put to bed afterwards for fear we might catch cold. My +stepmother didn’t worry much; she used to wear pink dresses all over lace, and +the older she got the prettier the dresses got. When is she going?” +</p> + +<p> +“Who? Minora? I haven’t asked her that.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I will. It is really bad for her art to be neglected like this. She has +been here an unconscionable time,—it must be nearly three weeks.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, she came the same day you did,” I said pleasantly. +</p> + +<p> +Irais was silent. I hope she was reflecting that it is not worse to neglect +one’s art than one’s husband, and her husband is lying all this time stretched +on a bed of sickness, while she is spending her days so agreeably with me. She +has a way of forgetting that she has a home, or any other business in the world +than just to stay on chatting with me, and reading, and singing, and laughing +at any one there is to laugh at, and kissing the babies, and tilting with the +Man of Wrath. Naturally I love her—she is so pretty that anybody with eyes in +his head must love her—but too much of anything is bad, and next month the +passages and offices are to be whitewashed, and people who have ever +whitewashed their houses inside know what nice places they are to live in while +it is being done; and there will be no dinner for Irais, and none of those +succulent salads full of caraway seeds that she so devotedly loves. I shall +begin to lead her thoughts gently back to her duties by inquiring every day +anxiously after her husband’s health. She is not very fond of him, because he +does not run and hold the door open for her every time she gets up to leave the +room; and though she has asked him to do so, and told him how much she wishes +he would, he still won’t. She stayed once in a house where there was an +Englishman, and his nimbleness in regard to doors and chairs so impressed her +that her husband has had no peace since, and each time she has to go out of a +room she is reminded of her disregarded wishes, so that a shut door is to her +symbolic of the failure of her married life, and the very sight of one makes +her wonder why she was born; at least, that is what she told me once, in a +burst of confidence. He is quite a nice, harmless little man, pleasant to talk +to, good-tempered, and full of fun; but he thinks he is too old to begin to +learn new and uncomfortable ways, and he has that horror of being made better +by his wife that distinguishes so many righteous men, and is shared by the Man +of Wrath, who persists in holding his glass in his left hand at meals, because +if he did not (and I don’t believe he particularly likes doing it) his +relations might say that marriage has improved him, and thus drive the iron +into his soul. This habit occasions an almost daily argument between one or +other of the babies and myself. +</p> + +<p> +“April, hold your glass in your right hand.” +</p> + +<p> +“But papa doesn’t.” +</p> + +<p> +“When you are as old as papa you can do as you like.” +</p> + +<p> +Which was embellished only yesterday by Minora adding impressively, “And only +think how strange it would look if <i>everybody</i> held their glasses so.” +</p> + +<p> +April was greatly struck by the force of this proposition. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>January</i> 28<i>th</i>.—It is very cold,—fifteen degrees of frost +<i>Réaumur</i>, but perfectly delicious, still, bright weather, and one feels +jolly and energetic and amiably disposed towards everybody. The two young +ladies are still here, but the air is so buoyant that even they don’t weigh on +me any longer, and besides, they have both announced their approaching +departure, so that after all I shall get my whitewashing done in peace, and the +house will have on its clean pinafore in time to welcome the spring. +</p> + +<p> +Minora has painted my portrait, and is going to present it as a parting gift to +the Man of Wrath; and the fact that I let her do it, and sat meekly times +innumerable, proves conclusively, I hope, that I am not vain. When Irais first +saw it she laughed till she cried, and at once commissioned her to paint hers, +so that she may take it away with her and give it to her husband on his +birthday, which happens to be early in February. Indeed, if it were not for +this birthday, I really think she would have forgotten to go at all; but +birthdays are great and solemn festivals with us, never allowed to slip by +unnoticed, and always celebrated in the presence of a sympathetic crowd of +relations (gathered from far and near to tell you how well you are wearing, and +that nobody would ever dream, and that really it is wonderful), who stand round +a sort of sacrificial altar, on which your years are offered up as a +burnt-offering to the gods in the shape of lighted pink and white candles, +stuck in a very large, flat, jammy cake. The cake with its candles is the chief +feature, and on the table round it lie the gifts each person present is more or +less bound to give. As my birthday falls in the winter I get mittens as well as +blotting-books and photograph-frames, and if it were in the summer I should get +photograph-frames and blotting-books and no mittens; but whatever the present +may be, and by whomsoever given, it has to be welcomed with the noisiest +gratitude, and loudest exclamations of joy, and such words as <i>entzückend, +reizend, herrlich, wundervoll</i>, and <i>süss</i> repeated over and over +again, until the unfortunate <i>Geburtstagskind</i> feels indeed that another +year has gone, and that she has grown older, and wiser, and more tired of folly +and of vain repetitions. A flag is hoisted, and all the morning the rites are +celebrated, the cake eaten, healths drunk, speeches made, and hands nearly +shaken off. The neighbouring parsons drive up, and when nobody is looking their +wives count the candles in the cake; the active lady in the next <i>Schloss</i> +spares time to send a pot of flowers, and to look up my age in the <i>Gotha +Almanach;</i> a deputation comes from the farms headed by the chief inspector +in white kid gloves who invokes Heaven’s blessings on the gracious lady’s head; +and the babies are enchanted, and sit in a corner trying on all the mittens. In +the evening there is a dinner for the relations and the chief local +authorities, with more health-drinking and speechifying, and the next morning, +when I come downstairs thankful to have done with it, I am confronted by the +altar still in its place, cake crumbs and candle-grease and all, because any +hasty removal of it would imply a most lamentable want of sentiment, deplorable +in anybody, but scandalous and disgusting in a tender female. All birthdays are +observed in this fashion, and not a few wise persons go for a short trip just +about the time theirs is due, and I think I shall imitate them next year; only +trips to the country or seaside in December are not usually pleasant, and if I +go to a town there are sure to be relations in it, and then the cake will +spring up mushroom-like from the teeming soil of their affection. +</p> + +<p> +I hope it has been made evident in these pages how superior Irais and myself +are to the ordinary weaknesses of mankind; if any further proof were needed, it +is furnished by the fact that we both, in defiance of tradition, scorn this +celebration of birthday rites. Years ago, when first I knew her, and long +before we were either of us married, I sent her a little brass candlestick on +her birthday; and when mine followed a few months later, she sent me a +note-book. No notes were written in it, and on her next birthday I presented it +to her; she thanked me profusely in the customary manner, and when my turn came +I received the brass candlestick. Since then we alternately enjoy the +possession of each of these articles, and the present question is comfortably +settled once and for all, at a minimum of trouble and expense. We never mention +this little arrangement except at the proper time, when we send a letter of +fervid thanks. +</p> + +<p> +This radiant weather, when mere living is a joy, and sitting still over the +fire out of the question, has been going on for more than a week. Sleighing and +skating have been our chief occupation, especially skating, which is more than +usually fascinating here, because the place is intersected by small canals +communicating with a lake and the river belonging to the lake, and as +everything is frozen black and hard, we can skate for miles straight ahead +without being obliged to turn round and come back again,—at all times an +annoying, and even mortifying, proceeding. Irais skates beautifully: modesty is +the only obstacle to my saying the same of myself; but I may remark that all +Germans skate well, for the simple reason that every year of their lives, for +three or four months, they may do it as much as they like. Minora was +astonished and disconcerted by finding herself left behind, and arriving at the +place where tea meets us half an hour after we had finished. In some places the +banks of the canals are so high that only our heads appear level with the +fields, and it is, as Minora noted in her book, a curious sight to see three +female heads skimming along apparently by themselves, and enjoying it +tremendously. When the banks are low, we appear to be gliding deliciously over +the roughest ploughed fields, with or without legs according to circumstances. +Before we start, I fix on the place where tea and a sleigh are to meet us, and +we drive home again; because skating against the wind is as detestable as +skating with it is delightful, and an unkind Nature arranges its blowing +without the smallest regard for our convenience. Yesterday, by way of a change, +we went for a picnic to the shores of the Baltic, ice-bound at this season, and +utterly desolate at our nearest point. I have a weakness for picnics, +especially in winter, when the mosquitoes cease from troubling and the +ant-hills are at rest; and of all my many favourite picnic spots this one on +the Baltic is the loveliest and best. As it is a three-hours’ drive, the Man of +Wrath is loud in his lamentations when the special sort of weather comes which +means, as experience has taught him, this particular excursion. There must be +deep snow, hard frost, no wind, and a cloudless sky; and when, on waking up, I +see these conditions fulfilled, then it would need some very potent reason to +keep me from having out a sleigh and going off. It is, I admit, a hard day for +the horses; but why have horses if they are not to take you where you want to +go to, and at the time you want to go? And why should not horses have hard days +as well as everybody else? The Man of Wrath loathes picnics, and has no eye for +nature and frozen seas, and is simply bored by a long drive through a forest +that does not belong to him; a single turnip on his own place is more admirable +in his eyes than the tallest, pinkest, straightest pine that ever reared its +snow-crowned head against the setting sunlight. Now observe the superiority of +woman, who sees that both are good, and after having gazed at the pine and been +made happy by its beauty, goes home and placidly eats the turnip. He went once +and only once to this particular place, and made us feel so small by his +<i>blasé</i> behaviour that I never invite him now. It is a beautiful spot, +endless forest stretching along the shore as far as the eye can reach; and +after driving through it for miles you come suddenly, at the end of an avenue +of arching trees, upon the glistening, oily sea, with the orange-coloured sails +of distant fishing-smacks shining in the sunlight. Whenever I have been there +it has been windless weather, and the silence so profound that I could hear my +pulses beating. The humming of insects and the sudden scream of a jay are the +only sounds in summer, and in winter the stillness is the stillness of death. +</p> + +<p> +Every paradise has its serpent, however, and this one is so infested by +mosquitoes during the season when picnics seem most natural, that those of my +visitors who have been taken there for a treat have invariably lost their +tempers, and made the quiet shores ring with their wailing and lamentations. +These despicable but irritating insects don’t seem to have anything to do but +to sit in multitudes on the sand, waiting for any prey Providence may send +them; and as soon as the carriage appears they rise up in a cloud, and rush to +meet us, almost dragging us out bodily, and never leave us until we drive away +again. The sudden view of the sea from the mossy, pine-covered height directly +above it where we picnic; the wonderful stretch of lonely shore with the forest +to the water’s edge; the coloured sails in the blue distance; the freshness, +the brightness, the vastness—all is lost upon the picnickers, and made worse +than indifferent to them, by the perpetual necessity they are under of fighting +these horrid creatures. It is nice being the only person who ever goes there or +shows it to anybody, but if more people went, perhaps the mosquitoes would be +less lean, and hungry, and pleased to see us. It has, however, the advantage of +being a suitable place to which to take refractory visitors when they have +stayed too long, or left my books out in the garden all night, or otherwise +made their presence a burden too grievous to be borne; then one fine hot +morning when they are all looking limp, I suddenly propose a picnic on the +Baltic. I have never known this proposal fail to be greeted with exclamations +of surprise and delight. +</p> + +<p> +“The Baltic! You never told us you were within driving distance? How +<i>heavenly</i> to get a breath of sea air on a day like this! The very +<i>thought</i> puts new life into one! And how <i>delightful</i> to see the +Baltic! Oh, <i>please</i> take us!” And then I take them. +</p> + +<p> +But on a brilliant winter’s day my conscience is as clear as the frosty air +itself, and yesterday morning we started off in the gayest of spirits, even +Minora being disposed to laugh immoderately on the least provocation. Only our +eyes were allowed to peep out from the fur and woollen wrappings necessary to +our heads if we would come back with our ears and noses in the same places they +were in when we started, and for the first two miles the mirth created by each +other’s strange appearance was uproarious,—a fact I mention merely to show what +an effect dry, bright, intense cold produces on healthy bodies, and how much +better it is to go out in it and enjoy it than to stay indoors and sulk. As we +passed through the neighbouring village with cracking of whip and jingling of +bells, heads popped up at the windows to stare, and the only living thing in +the silent, sunny street was a melancholy fowl with ruffled feathers, which +looked at us reproachfully, as we dashed with so much energy over the crackling +snow. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, foolish bird!” Irais called out as we passed; “you’ll be indeed a cold +fowl if you stand there motionless, and every one prefers them hot in weather +like this!” +</p> + +<p> +And then we all laughed exceedingly, as though the most splendid joke had been +made, and before we had done we were out of the village and in the open country +beyond, and could see my house and garden far away behind, glittering in the +sunshine; and in front of us lay the forest, with its vistas of pines +stretching away into infinity, and a drive through it of fourteen miles before +we reached the sea. It was a hoar-frost day, and the forest was an enchanted +forest leading into fairyland, and though Irais and I have been there often +before, and always thought it beautiful, yet yesterday we stood under the final +arch of frosted trees, struck silent by the sheer loveliness of the place. For +a long way out the sea was frozen, and then there was a deep blue line, and a +cluster of motionless orange sails; at our feet a narrow strip of pale yellow +sand; right and left the line of sparkling forest; and we ourselves standing in +a world of white and diamond traceries. The stillness of an eternal Sunday lay +on the place like a benediction. +</p> + +<p> +Minora broke the silence by remarking that Dresden was pretty, but she thought +this beat it almost. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t quite see,” said Irais in a hushed voice, as though she were in a holy +place, “how the two can be compared.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, Dresden is more convenient, of course,” replied Minora; after which we +turned away and thought we would keep her quiet by feeding her, so we went back +to the sleigh and had the horses taken out and their cloths put on, and they +were walked up and down a distant glade while we sat in the sleigh and +picnicked. It <i>is</i> a hard day for the horses,—nearly thirty miles there +and back and no stable in the middle; but they are so fat and spoiled that it +cannot do them much harm sometimes to taste the bitterness of life. I warmed +soup in a little apparatus I have for such occasions, which helped to take the +chilliness off the sandwiches,—this is the only unpleasant part of a winter +picnic, the clammy quality of the provisions just when you most long for +something very hot. Minora let her nose very carefully out of its wrappings, +took a mouthful, and covered it up quickly again. She was nervous lest it +should be frost-nipped, and truth compels me to add that her nose is not a bad +nose, and might even be pretty on anybody else; but she does not know how to +carry it, and there is an art in the angle at which one’s nose is held just as +in everything else, and really noses were intended for something besides mere +blowing. +</p> + +<p> +It is the most difficult thing in the world to eat sandwiches with immense fur +and woollen gloves on, and I think we ate almost as much fur as anything, and +choked exceedingly during the process. Minora was angry at this, and at last +pulled off her glove, but quickly put it on again. +</p> + +<p> +“How very unpleasant,” she remarked after swallowing a large piece of fur. +</p> + +<p> +“It will wrap round your pipes, and keep them warm,” said Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“Pipes!” echoed Minora, greatly disgusted by such vulgarity. +</p> + +<p> +“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” I said, as she continued to choke and splutter; +“we are all in the same case, and I don’t know how to alter it.” +</p> + +<p> +“There are such things as forks, I suppose,” snapped Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s true,” said I, crushed by the obviousness of the remedy; but of what +use are forks if they are fifteen miles off? So Minora had to continue to eat +her gloves. +</p> + +<p> +By the time we had finished, the sun was already low behind the trees and the +clouds beginning to flush a faint pink. The old coachman was given sandwiches +and soup, and while he led the horses up and down with one hand and held his +lunch in the other, we packed up—or, to be correct, I packed, and the others +looked on and gave me valuable advice. +</p> + +<p> +This coachman, Peter by name, is seventy years old, and was born on the place, +and has driven its occupants for fifty years, and I am nearly as fond of him as +I am of the sun-dial; indeed, I don’t know what I should do without him, so +entirely does he appear to understand and approve of my tastes and wishes. No +drive is too long or difficult for the horses if I want to take it, no place +impossible to reach if I want to go to it, no weather or roads too bad to +prevent my going out if I wish to: to all my suggestions he responds with the +readiest cheerfulness, and smoothes away all objections raised by the Man of +Wrath, who rewards his alacrity in doing my pleasure by speaking of him as an +<i>alter Esel</i>. In the summer, on fine evenings, I love to drive late and +alone in the scented forests, and when I have reached a dark part stop, and sit +quite still, listening to the nightingales repeating their little tune over and +over again after interludes of gurgling, or if there are no nightingales, +listening to the marvellous silence, and letting its blessedness descend into +my very soul. The nightingales in the forests about here all sing the same +tune, and in the same key of (E flat). +</p> + +<div class="fig" style="width:100%;"> +<img src="images/img03.jpg" width="479" height="70" alt=""> +</div> + +<p class="noindent"> +I don’t know whether all nightingales do this, or if it is peculiar to this +particular spot. When they have sung it once, they clear their throats a +little, and hesitate, and then do it again, and it is the prettiest little song +in the world. How could I indulge my passion for these drives with their pauses +without Peter? He is so used to them that he stops now at the right moment +without having to be told, and he is ready to drive me all night if I wish it, +with no sign of anything but cheerful willingness on his nice old face. The Man +of Wrath deplores these eccentric tastes, as he calls them, of mine; but has +given up trying to prevent my indulging them because, while he is deploring in +one part of the house, I have slipped out at a door in the other, and am gone +before he can catch me, and have reached and am lost in the shadows of the +forest by the time he has discovered that I am nowhere to be found. +</p> + +<p> +The brightness of Peter’s perfections are sullied however by one spot, and that +is, that as age creeps upon him, he not only cannot hold the horses in if they +don’t want to be held in, but he goes to sleep sometimes on his box if I have +him out too soon after lunch, and has upset me twice within the last year—once +last winter out of a sleigh, and once this summer, when the horses shied at a +bicycle, and bolted into the ditch on one side of the <i>chaussée</i> (German +for high road), and the bicycle was so terrified at the horses shying that it +shied too into the ditch on the other side, and the carriage was smashed, and +the bicycle was smashed, and we were all very unhappy, except Peter, who never +lost his pleasant smile, and looked so placid that my tongue clave to the roof +of my mouth when I tried to make it scold him. +</p> + +<p> +“But I should think he ought to have been <i>thoroughly</i> scolded on an +occasion like that,” said Minora, to whom I had been telling this story as we +wandered on the yellow sands while the horses were being put in the sleigh; and +she glanced nervously up at Peter, whose mild head was visible between the +bushes above us. “Shall we get home before dark?” she asked. +</p> + +<p> +The sun had altogether disappeared behind the pines and only the very highest +of the little clouds were still pink; out at sea the mists were creeping up, +and the sails of the fishing-smacks had turned a dull brown; a flight of wild +geese passed across the disc of the moon with loud cacklings. +</p> + +<p> +“Before dark?” echoed Irais, “I should think not. It is dark now nearly in the +forest, and we shall have the loveliest moonlight drive back.” +</p> + +<p> +“But it is surely very dangerous to let a man who goes to sleep drive you,” +said Minora apprehensively. +</p> + +<p> +“But he’s such an old dear,” I said. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes, no doubt,” she replied testily; “but there are wakeful old dears to +be had, and on a box they are preferable.” +</p> + +<p> +Irais laughed. “You are growing quite amusing, Miss Minora,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“He isn’t on a box to-day,” said I; “and I never knew him to go to sleep +standing up behind us on a sleigh.” But Minora was not to be appeased, and +muttered something about seeing no fun in foolhardiness, which shows how +alarmed she was, for it was rude. +</p> + +<p> +Peter, however, behaved beautifully on the way home, and Irais and I at least +were as happy as possible driving back, with all the glories of the western sky +flashing at us every now and then at the end of a long avenue as we swiftly +passed, and later on, when they had faded, myriads of stars in the narrow black +strip of sky over our heads. It was bitterly cold, and Minora was silent, and +not in the least inclined to laugh with us as she had been six hours before. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you enjoyed yourself, Miss Minora?’ inquired Irais, as we got out of the +forest on to the <i>chaussée</i>, and the lights of the village before ours +twinkled in the distance. +</p> + +<p> +“How many degrees do you suppose there are now?” was Minora’s reply to this +question. +</p> + +<p> +“Degrees?—Of frost? Oh, dear me, are you cold,” cried Irais solicitously. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, it isn’t exactly warm, is it?” said Minora sulkily; and Irais pinched +me. “Well, but think how much colder you would have been without all that fur +you ate for lunch inside you,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“And what a nice chapter you will be able to write about the Baltic,” said I. +“Why, it is practically certain that you are the first English person who has +ever been to just this part of it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Isn’t there some English poem,” said Irais, “about being the first who ever +burst—” +</p> + +<p> +“‘Into that silent sea,’” finished Minora hastily. “You can’t quote that +without its context, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I wasn’t going to,” said Irais meekly; “I only paused to breathe. I must +breathe, or perhaps I might die.” +</p> + +<p> +The lights from my energetic friend’s <i>Schloss</i> shone brightly down upon +us as we passed round the base of the hill on which it stands; she is very +proud of this hill, as well she may be, seeing that it is the only one in the +whole district. +</p> + +<p> +“Do you never go there?” asked Minora, jerking her head in the direction of the +house. +</p> + +<p> +“Sometimes. She is a very busy woman, and I should feel I was in the way if I +went often.” +</p> + +<p> +“It would be interesting to see another North German interior,” said Minora; +“and I should be obliged if you would take me.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I can’t fall upon her suddenly with a strange girl,” I protested; “and we +are not at all on such intimate terms as to justify my taking all my visitors +to see her.” +</p> + +<p> +“What do you want to see another interior for?” asked Irais. “I can tell you +what it is like; and if you went nobody would speak to you, and if you were to +ask questions, and began to take notes, the good lady would stare at you in the +frankest amazement, and think Elizabeth had brought a young lunatic out for an +airing. <i>Everybody</i> is not as patient as Elizabeth,” added Irais, anxious +to pay off old scores. +</p> + +<p> +“I would do a great deal for you, Miss Minora,” I said, “but I can’t do that.” +</p> + +<p> +“If we went,” said Irais, “Elizabeth and I would be placed with great ceremony +on a sofa behind a large, polished oval table with a crochet-mat in the +centre—it <i>has</i> got a crochet-mat in the centre, hasn’t it?” I nodded. +“And you would sit on one of the four little podgy, buttony, tasselly red +chairs that are ranged on the other side of the table facing the sofa. They +<i>are</i> red, Elizabeth?” Again I nodded. “The floor is painted yellow, and +there is no carpet except a rug in front of the sofa. The paper is dark +chocolate colour, almost black; that is in order that after years of use the +dirt may not show, and the room need not be done up. Dirt is like wickedness, +you see, Miss Minora—its being there never matters; it is only when it shows so +much as to be apparent to everybody that we are ashamed of it. At intervals +round the high walls are chairs, and cabinets with lamps on them, and in one +corner is a great white cold stove—or is it majolica?” she asked, turning to +me. +</p> + +<p> +“No, it is white.” +</p> + +<p> +“There are a great many lovely big windows, all ready to let in the air and the +sun, but they are as carefully covered with brown lace curtains under heavy +stuff ones as though a whole row of houses were just opposite, with peering +eyes at every window trying to look in, instead of there only being fields, and +trees, and birds. No fire, no sunlight, no books, no flowers; but a consoling +smell of red cabbage coming up under the door, mixed, in due season, with +soapsuds.” +</p> + +<p> +“When did you go there?” asked Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, when did I go there indeed? When did I not go there? I have been calling +there all my life.” +</p> + +<p> +Minora’s eyes rolled doubtfully first at me then at Irais from the depths of +her head-wrappings; they are large eyes with long dark eyelashes, and far be it +from me to deny that each eye taken by itself is fine, but they are put in all +wrong. +</p> + +<p> +“The only thing you would learn there,” went on Irais, “would be the +significance of sofa corners in Germany. If we three went there together, I +should be ushered into the right-hand corner of the sofa, because it is the +place of honour, and I am the greatest stranger; Elizabeth would be invited to +seat herself in the left-hand corner, as next in importance; the hostess would +sit near us in an arm-chair; and you, as a person of no importance whatever, +would either be left to sit where you could, or would be put on a chair facing +us, and with the entire breadth of the table between us to mark the immense +social gulf that separates the married woman from the mere virgin. These sofa +corners make the drawing of nice distinctions possible in a way that nothing +else could. The world might come to an end, and create less sensation in doing +it, than you would, Miss Minora, if by any chance you got into the right-hand +corner of one. That you are put on a chair on the other side of the table +places you at once in the scale of precedence, and exactly defines your social +position, or rather your complete want of a social position.” And Irais tilted +her nose ever so little heavenwards. +</p> + +<p> +“Note it,” she added, “as the heading of your next chapter.” +</p> + +<p> +“Note what?” asked Minora impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, ‘The Subtle Significance of Sofas’, of course,” replied Irais. “If,” she +continued, as Minora made no reply appreciative of this suggestion, “you were +to call unexpectedly, the bad luck which pursues the innocent would most likely +make you hit on a washing-day, and the distracted mistress of the house would +keep you waiting in the cold room so long while she changed her dress, that you +would begin to fear you were to be left to perish from want and hunger; and +when she did appear, would show by the bitterness of her welcoming smile the +rage that was boiling in her heart.” +</p> + +<p> +“But what has the mistress of the house to do with washing?” +</p> + +<p> +“What has she to do with washing? Oh, you sweet innocent—pardon my familiarity, +but such ignorance of country-life customs is very touching in one who is +writing a book about them.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, I have no doubt I am very ignorant,” said Minora loftily. +</p> + +<p> +“Seasons of washing,” explained Irais, “are seasons set apart by the +<i>Hausfrau</i> to be kept holy. They only occur every two or three months, and +while they are going on the whole house is in an uproar, every other +consideration sacrificed, husband and children sunk into insignificance, and no +one approaching, or interfering with the mistress of the house during these +days of purification, but at their peril.” +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t really mean,” said Minora, “that you only wash your clothes four +times a year?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, I do mean it,” replied Irais. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, I think that is very disgusting,” said Minora emphatically. +</p> + +<p> +Irais raised those pretty, delicate eyebrows of hers. “Then you must take care +and not marry a German,” she said. +</p> + +<p> +“But what is the object of it?” went on Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“Why, to clean the linen, I suppose.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, yes, but why only at such long intervals?” +</p> + +<p> +“It is an outward and visible sign of vast possessions in the shape of linen. +If you were to want to have your clothes washed every week, as you do in +England, you would be put down as a person who only has just enough to last +that length of time, and would be an object of general contempt.” +</p> + +<p> +“But I should be a clean object,” cried Minora, “and my house would not be full +of accumulated dirt.” +</p> + +<p> +We said nothing—there was nothing to be said. +</p> + +<p> +“It must be a happy land, that England of yours,” Irais remarked after a while +with a sigh—a beatific vision no doubt presenting itself to her mind of a land +full of washerwomen and agile gentlemen darting at door-handles. +</p> + +<p> +“It is a <i>clean</i> land, at any rate,” replied Minora. +</p> + +<p> +“<i>I</i> don’t want to go and live in it,” I said—for we were driving up to +the house, and a memory of fogs and umbrellas came into my mind as I looked up +fondly at its dear old west front, and I felt that what I want is to live and +die just here, and that there never was such a happy woman as Elizabeth. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p> +<i>April</i> 18<i>th</i>.—I have been so busy ever since Irais and Minora left +that I can hardly believe the spring is here, and the garden hurrying on its +green and flowered petticoat—only its petticoat as yet, for though the +underwood is a fairyland of tender little leaves, the trees above are still +quite bare. +</p> + +<p> +February was gone before I well knew that it had come, so deeply was I engaged +in making hot-beds, and having them sown with petunias, verbenas, and nicotina +affinis; while no less than thirty are dedicated solely to vegetables, it +having been borne in upon me lately that vegetables must be interesting things +to grow, besides possessing solid virtues not given to flowers, and that I +might as well take the orchard and kitchen garden under my wing. So I have +rushed in with all the zeal of utter inexperience, and my February evenings +were spent poring over gardening books, and my days in applying the freshly +absorbed wisdom. Who says that February is a dull, sad, slow month in the +country? It was of the cheerfullest, swiftest description here, and its mild +days enabled me to get on beautifully with the digging and manuring, and filled +my rooms with snowdrops. The longer I live the greater is my respect and +affection for manure in all its forms, and already, though the year is so +young, a considerable portion of its pin-money has been spent on artificial +manure. The Man of Wrath says he never met a young woman who spent her money +that way before; I remarked that it must be nice to have an original wife; and +he retorted that the word original hardly described me, and that the word +eccentric was the one required. Very well, I suppose I am eccentric, since even +my husband says so; but if my eccentricities are of such a practical nature as +to result later in the biggest cauliflowers and tenderest lettuce in Prussia, +why then he ought to be the first to rise up and call me blessed. +</p> + +<p> +I sent to England for vegetable-marrow seeds, as they are not grown here, and +people try and make boiled cucumbers take their place; but boiled cucumbers are +nasty things, and I don’t see why marrows should not do here perfectly well. +These, and primrose-roots, are the English contributions to my garden. I +brought over the roots in a tin box last time I came from England, and am +anxious to see whether they will consent to live here. Certain it is that they +don’t exist in the Fatherland, so I can only conclude the winter kills them, +for surely, if such lovely things would grow, they never would have been +overlooked. Irais is deeply interested in the experiment; she reads so many +English books, and has heard so much about primroses, and they have got so +mixed up in her mind with leagues, and dames, and Disraelis, that she longs to +see this mysterious political flower, and has made me promise to telegraph when +it appears, and she will come over. But they are not going to do anything this +year, and I only hope those cold days did not send them off to the Paradise of +flowers. I am afraid their first impression of Germany was a chilly one. +</p> + +<p> +Irais writes about once a week, and inquires after the garden and the babies, +and announces her intention of coming back as soon as the numerous relations +staying with her have left,—“which they won’t do,” she wrote the other day, +“until the first frosts nip them off, when they will disappear like belated +dahlias—double ones of course, for single dahlias are too charming to be +compared to relations. I have every sort of cousin and uncle and aunt here, and +here they have been ever since my husband’s birthday—not the same ones exactly, +but I get so confused that I never know where one ends and the other begins. My +husband goes off after breakfast to look at his crops, he says, and I am left +at their mercy. I wish I had crops to go and look at—I should be grateful even +for one, and would look at it from morning till night, and quite stare it out +of countenance, sooner than stay at home and have the truth told me by +enigmatic aunts. Do you know my Aunt Bertha? she, in particular, spends her +time propounding obscure questions for my solution. I get so tired and worried +trying to guess the answers, which are always truths supposed to be good for me +to hear. ‘Why do you wear your hair on your forehead?’ she asks,—and that sets +me off wondering why I <i>do</i> wear it on my forehead, and what she wants to +know for, or whether she does know and only wants to know if I will answer +truthfully. ‘I am sure I don’t know, aunt,’ I say meekly, after puzzling over +it for ever so long; ‘perhaps my maid knows. Shall I ring and ask her?’ And +then she informs me that I wear it so to hide an ugly line she says I have down +the middle of my forehead, and that betokens a listless and discontented +disposition. Well, if she knew, what did she ask me for? Whenever I am with +them they ask me riddles like that, and I simply lead a <i>dog’s</i> life. Oh, +my dear, relations are like drugs,—useful sometimes, and even pleasant, if +taken in small quantities and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, +and the truly wise avoid them.” +</p> + +<p> +From Minora I have only had one communication since her departure, in which she +thanked me for her pleasant visit, and said she was sending me a bottle of +English embrocation to rub on my bruises after skating; that it was wonderful +stuff, and she was sure I would like it; and that it cost two marks, and would +I send stamps. I pondered long over this. Was it a parting hit, intended as +revenge for our having laughed at her? Was she personally interested in the +sale of embrocation? Or was it merely Minora’s idea of a graceful return for my +hospitality? As for bruises, nobody who skates decently regards it as a +bruise-producing exercise, and whenever there were any they were all on Minora; +but she did happen to turn round once, I remember, just as I was in the act of +tumbling down for the first and only time, and her delight was but thinly +veiled by her excessive solicitude and sympathy. I sent her the stamps, +received the bottle, and resolved to let her drop out of my life; I had been a +good Samaritan to her at the request of my friend, but the best of Samaritans +resents the offer of healing oil for his own use. But why waste a thought on +Minora at Easter, the real beginning of the year in defiance of calendars. She +belongs to the winter that is past, to the darkness that is over, and has no +part or lot in the life I shall lead for the next six months. Oh, I could dance +and sing for joy that the spring is here! What a resurrection of beauty there +is in my garden, and of brightest hope in my heart! The whole of this radiant +Easter day I have spent out of doors, sitting at first among the windflowers +and celandines, and then, later, walking with the babies to the Hirschwald, to +see what the spring had been doing there; and the afternoon was so hot that we +lay a long time on the turf, blinking up through the leafless branches of the +silver birches at the soft, fat little white clouds floating motionless in the +blue. We had tea on the grass in the sun, and when it began to grow late, and +the babies were in bed, and all the little wind-flowers folded up for the +night, I still wandered in the green paths, my heart full of happiest +gratitude. It makes one very humble to see oneself surrounded by such a wealth +of beauty and perfection <i>anonymously</i> lavished, and to think of the +infinite meanness of our own grudging charities, and how displeased we are if +they are not promptly and properly appreciated. I do sincerely trust that the +benediction that is always awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more +deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and patience, and cheerfulness, just +like the happy flowers I so much love. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1327 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/1327-h/images/cover.jpg b/1327-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4758b6e --- /dev/null +++ b/1327-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/1327-h/images/img01.jpg b/1327-h/images/img01.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..375c8e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/1327-h/images/img01.jpg diff --git a/1327-h/images/img02.jpg b/1327-h/images/img02.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d13e54 --- /dev/null +++ b/1327-h/images/img02.jpg diff --git a/1327-h/images/img03.jpg b/1327-h/images/img03.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7c8fe29 --- /dev/null +++ b/1327-h/images/img03.jpg |
