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Page 6
I have a plant whose seed is much more beautiful than its flower.
By the way, I have two, for the Spindle Tree is in seed, which has
a quite insignificant blossom. But the plant I mean is a wild peony,
which I dug up in a brake on the slopes of Helikon. It is a single
white whose flower lasts, perhaps, three days. It makes a large
seed-pod, which burst a short time ago, and revealed blue-black seeds
sheathed in coralline forms of the most absolute vermilion. You could
see them fifty yards away. It seems to have no purpose in life but
to pack the seeds--or perhaps, they are beacons for the birds. I took
pains to be beforehand with the birds, having no desire to see Greek
peonies in my neighbours' gardens. The seeds are safely bestowed,
though their fate has not been Jonah's. There's a spinney of
elder-trees in the combe of my hermitage, which, I am told, was
planted entirely by magpies. And I suppose it was wood-pigeons who
planted two ilex trees on the top of the Guinigi tower in Lucca; and
some bird or other, once more, which is answerable for a fine
fig-tree growing in the parapet of the bridge at Cordova, in no soil
whatsoever. It was loaded with fruit when I saw it. But fig-trees are
like poets; if you want them to sing you must torture their roots. The
parallel wobbles, but will be understood.
DORIAN MODES
Being known in these parts for a friendly soul, and trusted, moreover,
I have fallen into the position among the peasantry which the parson
used to hold, and does still when he takes the trouble to qualify for
it. If I can't always tell them what to do I may be able to put them
in the way of the man who can. One learns how to make a dictionary of
life as one gets on in it. Another use which they can have of me: I
can tell them how to put their requests or demands. They have no sense
whatever of a written language.
I must not betray confidences, or I could relate some curious matters
on this head. I know, for instance, a farmer who is worth a couple of
hundred thousand at the least, and who can neither write nor read.
He has learned somehow a cross between a scratch and a blot which is
accepted as a signature to cheques--but no more than that. And there
is no harm in saying that I often need an interpreter. I had a
case the other night when a man I know brought in a friend for
consultation--a youth of the round-headed, flaxen, Teutonic type,
rather rare here, who came from a village still more remote from the
world than this one. Not one word of his fluent and frequent speeches
could I understand. It was largely a question of intonation I
believe--but there it was.
He had the wild, inspired look of a savage. He again could neither
read nor write, though he must have been at school within the last
ten or twelve years; but, as I think I have said elsewhere, it is not
uncommon for boys to go through the school course and fail to pass
the standards. There are here two families in particular, admirable
workmen, who for two generations have left school without having
acquired either writing or reading. One wonders deeply what kind of
processes go on in the minds of these fine young men, steady workmen,
as they are, good husbands, kind fathers, useful citizens oftener
than not. What is their conception of God, of human destiny? How does
Religion get at them? Or does it? Shall we ever know? Not if Mr. Hardy
cannot tell us. No other poet of peasant origin has done so--neither
Clare, nor Blomfield, nor even Burns. Mr. Hardy has told us something,
and might have told us a good deal more if by the time he had learned
his craft, he had not learned to be chiefly interested in himself.
That is the way of poets.
Then there's _The Shropshire Lad_, a fake perhaps, since its author
was not a peasant, but a divine little book. _The Shropshire Lad_ is
morbid, unless lads are so in Shropshire--in which case they, too, are
morbid; but it is a golden book of whose beauty and felicity I never
tire. Technically it is by far the most considerable thing since _In
Memoriam_: "Loveliest of trees, the Cherry," makes me cry for sheer
pleasure. But it is haunted by the fear of death and old age; it is
afraid of love; it is sometimes cynical--none of which things are true
of youth in Salop or Salonika. The young peasant is a fatalist to the
core; but fatalists are not afraid of death. Youth is ephemeral and so
is the young peasant. He is always happy when the sun is out.
As for love, it is truly the hot-and-cold disease with him. He is
himself his "own fever and pain," like the rest of us; but I think
love is a physical passion, until marriage. After marriage it may grow
into something very beautiful indeed, and the more beautiful for being
incapable of bodily utterance. I have a pair often under my eye down
here who are, I know, all in all to each other; yet their conversation
is that of two old gossips. But at fortunate moments I may induce one
of them to tell of the other, and then you find out. My _Village Wife_
was no imagination of mine. She lives and suffers not so many miles
from where I write. Indeed, you may say of our peasantry very much
what French people will tell you of their marriage custom, that love
at its best follows that ceremony. It is not bred by romance, but by
intimacy. The romantic attachment flames up, and satiety quenches it.
The other kind glows red-hot but rarely breaks into a flame. You may
have which you choose: you are lucky indeed if you get both.
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