“How it must have amused Almighty God,” said our daughter one day last winter, lifting the cineraria foliage to show the purple bloom of the lining which exactly matched the note of the starry flower, “how it must have amused Him to do this.”
And surely a violet bears in her little modest face the promise of her insinuating and delicate perfume.
And if the big pink peonies had had bright green instead of shadowy grey foliage they might have been vulgar.
And if you had put lily leaves to an iris instead of their own romantic sword-blades, how awkward and wrong it would have been; whereas the lily-stalk, with its conventional layers, is perfection in support of the queenly head of the Madonna or the Auratum. It is not association, but recognition of a Great Artist, in all reverence be it said: “He hath done all things well.”
To come back to the walled enclosure about the old Dorset manor house. Here, looking down our wind-swept terraces, we sometimes hanker for the sunny seclusion of that walled garden, though apparently all is not perfect even there, for the last message from it says:
“The strong sun takes all the strength out of the pinks after the first day or two. It has been very hot in the early afternoon, and as the garden faces west all the poor little things are drawn in a long slant towards the setting sun. Some of the long-stemmed ones have got positive wriggles in their stalks from so much exercise; it is really bad for their systems.”
In a previous letter she writes less pessimistically:
“I can’t tell you the loveliness of the garden. It is like Venus rising from the sea--Venus and her foam together--roses, pinks, sweet-williams, everything leaping into bloom and over the walls. I have given up trying to harmonize colours. There is nothing so wilful as an old garden. The plants simply walk about, much as our ‘Pekies’ do. I planted nigella last year, which didn’t do very well; however it skipped across a path of its own accord this year, and there is a patch of it in a forbidden corner which shames the sky. One looks on and laughs helplessly, as one does with ‘Pekies.’”
The Penzance briar hedge dividing the new rosary from the reserve garden promises very well. It is already breaking into many coloured stars, carmine, pink, amber, and the fashionable khaki. Is this the musk-rose of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream”?