|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 39
It is scarcely a digression to note his way of dealing with flowers,
which, moreover, gives us an apt illustration of that change without
thought of beauty, change for the sake of change, which has played
such a great part in the degradation of art in all times. So I ask
you to note the way he has treated the rose, for instance: the rose
has been grown double from I don't know when; the double rose was a
gain to the world, a new beauty was given us by it, and nothing
taken away, since the wild rose grows in every hedge. Yet even then
one might be excused for thinking that the wild rose was scarce
improved on, for nothing can be more beautiful in general growth or
in detail than a wayside bush of it, nor can any scent be as sweet
and pure as its scent. Nevertheless the garden rose had a new
beauty of abundant form, while its leaves had not lost the
wonderfully delicate texture of the wild one. The full colour it
had gained, from the blush rose to the damask, was pure and true
amidst all its added force, and though its scent had certainly lost
some of the sweetness of the eglantine, it was fresh still, as well
as so abundantly rich. Well, all that lasted till quite our own
day, when the florists fell upon the rose--men who could never have
enough--they strove for size and got it, a fine specimen of a
florist's rose being about as big as a moderate Savoy cabbage. They
tried for strong scent and got it--till a florist's rose has not
unseldom a suspicion of the scent of the aforesaid cabbage--not at
its best. They tried for strong colour and got it, strong and bad--
like a conqueror. But all this while they missed the very essence
of the rose's being; they thought there was nothing in it but
redundance and luxury; they exaggerated these into coarseness, while
they threw away the exquisite subtilty of form, delicacy of texture,
and sweetness of colour, which, blent with the richness which the
true garden rose shares with many other flowers, yet makes it the
queen of them all--the flower of flowers. Indeed, the worst of this
is that these sham roses are driving the real ones out of existence.
If we do not look to it our descendants will know nothing of the
cabbage rose, the loveliest in form of all, or the blush rose with
its dark green stems and unequalled colour, or the yellow-centred
rose of the East, which carries the richness of scent to the very
furthest point it can go without losing freshness: they will know
nothing of all these, and I fear they will reproach the poets of
past time for having done according to their wont, and exaggerated
grossly the beauties of the rose.
Well, as a Londoner perhaps I have said too much of roses, since we
can scarcely grow them among suburban smoke, but what I have said of
them applies to other flowers, of which I will say this much more.
Be very shy of double flowers; choose the old columbine where the
clustering doves are unmistakable and distinct, not the double one,
where they run into mere tatters. Choose (if you can get it) the
old china-aster with the yellow centre, that goes so well with the
purple-brown stems and curiously coloured florets, instead of the
lumps that look like cut paper, of which we are now so proud. Don't
be swindled out of that wonder of beauty, a single snowdrop; there
is no gain and plenty of loss in the double one. More loss still in
the double sunflower, which is a coarse-coloured and dull plant,
whereas the single one, though a late comer to our gardens, is by no
means to be despised, since it will grow anywhere, and is both
interesting and beautiful, with its sharply chiselled yellow florets
relieved by the quaintly patterned sad-coloured centre clogged with
honey and beset with bees and butterflies.
So much for over-artificiality in flowers. A word or two about the
misplacing of them. Don't have ferns in your garden. The hart's
tongue in the clefts of the rock, the queer things that grow within
reach of the spray of the waterfall; these are right in their
places. Still more the brake on the woodside, whether in late
autumn, when its withered haulm helps out the well-remembered
woodland scent, or in spring, when it is thrusting its volutes
through last year's waste. But all this is nothing to a garden, and
is not to be got out of it; and if you try it you will take away
from it all possible romance, the romance of a garden.
The same thing may be said about many plants, which are curiosities
only, which Nature meant to be grotesque, not beautiful, and which
are generally the growth of hot countries, where things sprout over
quick and rank. Take note that the strangest of these come from the
jungle and the tropical waste, from places where man is not at home,
but is an intruder, an enemy. Go to a botanical garden and look at
them, and think of those strange places to your heart's content.
But don't set them to starve in your smoke-drenched scrap of ground
amongst the bricks, for they will be no ornament to it.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|