The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 34

Where am I? Away up north on a Yorks.h.i.+re wold. The horses are out and grazing on the clovery sward by the roadside.

How silent it is!

As I lie here on my rugs on the _coupe_, I can hear a mole rustling through the gra.s.s at the hedge-foot. But the hedgerow itself, and all about it, how refres.h.i.+ng to look upon!

Surely no billhook or axe of woodsman has ever come near it since first it began to grow. Its very irregularity gives it additional charm. The hedge itself is really of blackthorn, but its white or pink-ticked blossoms have faded and given place to haws. Here and there, as far as you can see, up through it grow wild dwarf oak bushes, their foliage crimson or carmine tipped, dwarf plane-trees, with broad sienna leaves, that glitter in the suns.h.i.+ne as if they had been varnished; and elder-trees with big white stars of blossom, and rougher leaves of darkest green. Young elms, too, are yonder, and infant ash trees with stems as black as ink and strangely tinted leaves.

[Plane-trees, so-called, but in reality the Sycamore: the Acer pseudo-plata.n.u.s of naturalists.]

"The sycamore, capricious in attire, Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet Has changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright."

Here and there wild roses, pale pink or deepest crimson, blush out; here and there are patches of honeysuckle, and here and there waves of the white flowery bryony roll foaming over the green.

In some places the light and tender-leaved woody nightshade, whose berries in bunches of crimson and green are so pretty in autumn, impart a spring-like appearance to this hedgerow.

Nor does the beauty of my hedgerow end here for all along beneath grow rare and lovely gra.s.ses, interspersed with star-eyed silenes and gorgeous spikes of the purple stachys, while the adjoining sward is carpeted over with beds of brilliant clover, red and white, with golden bird's-foot trefoil, and patches of pale blue speedwells.

Bees are very busy all over this glory of colour, humming as they fly from flower to flower, but becoming abruptly silent as soon as their feet touch the silken blossoms. And birds there are too, though now they have for the most part ceased to sing, except the robin and a yellow-hammer, and these birds will continue lilting long after even the autumn tints are on the trees.

Hedgerows in General.

These were almost ever with us--one long-drawn delight. For five hundred miles, indeed, they accompanied the Wanderer on her journey.

When, at any time, they left us for a s.p.a.ce, and stone fences or wooden palings took their place, we were never happy until they again appeared.

From memory I jot down the names of a few of the plants and flowers that mingled with them, or trailed over or through them, const.i.tuting their chief charm and beauty.

First on the list, naturally enough, come the rose gems, including the sweetbriar or eglantine, with its deep pink flowers and sweetly-scented leaves; the field-rose, the _Rosa arvensis_, with pale pink blossoms, and the charming _Rosa canina_, or dog-rose, with petals of a darker red.

As I have already said, these roses grew everywhere among the hedges, in garlands, in wreaths, and in canopies, and always looked their best where the blackthorns had not been disfigured by touch of billhook or pruning shears.

In the earlier spring the hedges had a beauty of their own, being snowed over with cl.u.s.tering blossoms.

The bryony and the honeysuckle I have already mentioned. The green and crimson berries on the former, when the summer begins to wane, are rivalled only by those of the charming woody nightshade.

Regarding the honeysuckle, a naturalist in a London magazine wrote the other day as follows:--

"In the ordinary way, the branches grow out from the parent stem and twine round the first support they meet _front right to left_;"--the italics are mine--"but should they fail to find that support, two branches will mutually support each other, one twining from left to right, the other from right to left."

Now the fact is that the honeysuckle twines from left to right, and if two or three branches are together, as we often find them, it is the weaker who twine round the stronger,--still from left to right.

The wild convolvulus, with its great white bell-like blossoms, that so often stars the hedgerows with a singular beauty, twines always to meet the sun.

The _Vicia cracca_, or purple climbing vetch, is an object of rare loveliness in July and August. It is a species of cl.u.s.tering-blossomed tare or sweet-pea, with neat, wee green leaves, and flowers of a bluish purple. It is not content with creeping up through the hedge, but it must go crawling along over the top to woo the suns.h.i.+ne.

Later on in summer and early autumn blooms the well-known bramble--the black-fruited _rubus_.

No poet, as far as I am aware, has yet celebrated the purple trailing vetch in song, but the bramble has not been forgotten.

Hear Elliott's exquisite lines:--

"Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow O'er all the fragrant bowers, Thou needst not be ashamed to show Thy satin-threaded flowers.

For dull the eye, the heart is dull, That cannot feel how fair, Amid all beauty, beautiful, Thy tender blossoms are.

"While silent showers are falling slow, And 'mid the general hush, A sweet air lifts the little bough, Low whispering through the bush.

The primrose to the grave has gone; The hawthorn flower is dead; The violet by the moss'd grey stone Hath laid her weary head; But thou, wild bramble, back dost bring, In all their beauteous power, The fresh green days of life's fair spring, And boyhood's blossoming hour."

Nestling down by the hedgerow foot, among tall reeds and grey or brown seedling gra.s.ses, is many and many a charming wild flower, such as the stachys, the crimson ragged-robbin, with flowers like coral, and the snow-white silene.

Woodland and Copse.

Far away in bonnie Scotland, where the woods are mostly composed of dark, waving, brown-stemmed pine-trees, feathery larches-- crimson-ta.s.selled in early spring--or gloomy spruces, there is often an absence of any undergrowth, unless it be heather. But English copses are often one wild tanglement of trailing flowering shrubs, with banks of bracken or ferns.

I have often stopped to admire the marvellous beauty of these copse-lands; their wealth of silent loveliness has more than once brought the tears to my eyes.

So now I refrain from describing them, because any attempt to do so would end in failure. But, reader, have you seen an English woodland carpeted with deep-blue hyacinths, with snowy anemones, or with the sweet wee white pink-streaked sorrel, with its bashful leaves of bending green? Have you seen the golden-ta.s.selled broom waving in the soft spring wind? Or, later on in the season, the tall and stately foxgloves blooming red amidst the greenery of a fern bank? If not, a treat, both rich and rare, may still be yours.

Is it not said that the wild anemone or wind-flower grew from the tears shed by Venus over the grave of Adonis?

"But gentle flowers are born, and bloom around, From every drop that falls upon the ground: Where streams his blood, there blus.h.i.+ng springs the rose, And where a tear has dropped a wind-flower blows."

I think it must be the wood-anemone that is referred to as the snowdrop in that bonnie old Scottish song, _My Nannie's awa'_:--

"The snowdrop and primrose our woodlands adorn, And violets blaw in the dews o' the morn, They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw, They mind me on Nannie--and Nannie's awa'."

Fields and Moorland.

Turning to these, what oceans of beauty I saw everywhere around me during all the months of my travel!

In May, many of the uplands were covered with the yellow-blooming furze or whins. The black forest, for instance, 'twixt Guildford and Frimley, was a sight worth travelling long miles to look upon; while nothing could excel the fragrance of the perfume shed everywhere around.

The furze lies low to the ground where it has plenty of sunlight, but straggles upwards to seek the light when it grows in the woodlands.

Sweet-scented thistles of every shade--I had almost added "and every shape"--grew plentifully in corners of fields we pa.s.sed, mostly p.r.i.c.kly, but some harmless; lilac, pale pink, dark crimson, and purple; field thistles, milk thistles, melancholy thistles, and nodding thistles.

This latter species I found growing in glorious profusion on the links of Musselburgh, and I quite adorned my caravan with them.

Wherever thistles grow in fields, the tansy is not far off; a showy, yellow, too-hardy flower, without, in my opinion, a vestige of romance about it. Perhaps the sheep think differently, for long after Scottish fields and "baulks" are picked bare, they can always find a pluck of sweet green gra.s.s by taking their tongues round a tansy stem.

The yellow meadow vetchling is a beautiful, bright-yellow, pea-like flower, that dearly loves a snug corner under a hedge or bush of furze.

The pink-blossomed geranium-like mallow we all know. It is none the less lovely, however, because common; and here is a hint worth knowing-- it looks well in a vase, and will bloom for weeks in water.

But a far more lovely flower, that I first foregathered with, I think, in Yorks.h.i.+re, is the wild blue geranium, or meadow crane's-bill. Words alone could not describe its beauty, it must be seen. It mostly grows by the wayside.

Need I even name the corn-marigold, or the blush of the corn-poppies among green growing wheat, or the exquisitely lovely sainfoin, that sheds its crimson beauty over many a southern field; or the blue and charming corn-flower, that delights to bloom amid the ripening grain?