Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

My great hound walked at my heels. At night she is always watchful, and is haunted by a persistent sense of danger. But even she, that still night, could find nothing to be alarmed about, or to hurl defiance at. All the world seemed bathed in a mystic sapphire bath of splendour, and round me I knew that mystic process of what we call life was silently but rapidly taking form. I could almost feel the budding of the trees, for the wonderful revelation of summer was at hand. To-night, on an ancient larch, one of the first I have heard that was planted in Shropshire, a storm-cock, as the country people call the missel-thrush, piped into the growing night. What a joyous song his was. He had sung on and off, since January, and his voice was almost the loudest and clearest of all the feathered songsters. No cold could daunt him, but soon he would be silent, for the storm-cock sings little after May.

The world, where not spoilt by smoke and man, was very fair and full of wonderful things. All was flowering and growing apace. As I stood in the ruined church, love and joy seemed to be borne upon the soft winds as they fanned my face and played amongst the tender leaves. I sat down by the ancient lavabo and looked at the ruined church. How much the walls might tell me if they could but speak. What stories of stately processions, for kings and queens were often the guests of the Prior of Wenlock. Henry I., Henry III., and his queen Eleanor came, if tradition says true, Charles Stuart, when fate fought against him, and Impetuous Rupert, at least to Wenlock. Then the story runs that Arthur and his Spanish bride passed through Wenlock on their way to Ludlow. And as I sat there and mused, I thought of all the great ones who had passed through and spent days, happy or otherwise, at Wenlock – the world’s delight and wonder, they were all gone, and the Abbey too, which was once the pride of Catholicism in Shropshire, the meeting-place of devout pilgrims, the resort of royalty, that too had gone. Its walls have served to build cottages. Its splendour is a thing of the past, and the owl and the wild birds fly where once abbot and friar paced in solemn devotion.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the church was used as a quarry, the old folks have often said. “No need to dig out stone,” one old wheezy man told me; “when cottages was run up, us used to know where to go, for pigsties, or even a patch on the road. Have in a cart, and down went a bit of the Abbey. It was mighty handy, a deal better than blasting the rock as they do now to rear a wall.”

“King Collins,” as the old people used to call Sir Watkin’s agent, who lived in the red-brick house which is now the Vicarage, carted away whatever he had a mind to. “What he set his heart on that he took,” another old man said, “and put it afore his own door.”

A HANDFUL OF EARTH

I thought of all the changes that Wenlock had seen, beginning with the foundation of the Saxon nunnery. Then later of Roger de Montgomery’s Clugniac monks – the fame of the great Abbey, the Dissolution, poor John Cressage, its last Prior, the Civil Wars, and the breaking up of the Abbey fabric through the nineteenth century. Life often seems to go so slowly, and yet how many changes Wenlock – and for that matter, every yard of English soil – has seen, since the dawn of English history, up to this twentieth century.

Here we were in the year 1904, I mused, and this little plot of ground on which I sat had seen a Saxon saint go by. It had been traversed by Roger de Montgomery, Cromwell’s soldiers had fired across it with cannon, and all the while, sun and rain had had their turns, and soft spring showers had rejoiced daisy and lady’s-slipper. Deep winter snows had enshrined tomb and arch, and all the natural changes of season and climate had occurred, and will recur to the end of time. Ah, there are many thoughts to ponder over merely in a handful of British earth!

As I sat on, lost in thought, my great hound’s head resting at my feet, the silence was broken by the sound of the old church clock. It struck eleven. I touched the grass at my feet: it was wet with dew.

From behind me as I rose came strongly in a soft breeze all the perfumes of the sweet things then in flower, and as I passed out of the cloisters my last vision was the mead of narcissi nodding softly in the night wind.

Mouse and I turned back out of the lily gate, and so into the quadrangle. Light flashed from the hanging lamps in the ambulatory, and I heard in the distance the refrain of an old Brittany song, that Auguste was singing in his kitchen. Half an hour later not a sound, and the lights were put out, and all was still. Only the scents of the honeysuckle and the budding lilac reached me from my open casement, and the cry of the corncrake, which seemed mysteriously to record the passing of the hours and the passing of all things – Kings, Queens, Abbots, Kingdoms and Commonwealths. So musing I fell asleep.

Several weeks later I rose “betimes,” as they say here, and whilst the dew was lying like a mantle of diamonds on the glistening turf. I stepped off to the old red-walled garden and visited the beds of tulips.

My late tulips were all out in a blaze of beauty – rose, red, white, yellow, and gold, whilst some were splashed with sombre purple. On the walls, the creepers were all clad in green, and the honeysuckles cast their perfume in all the corners of the garden. But I did not stop to linger; a wild spirit was on me, and I made my way across the golden meadows, past the fern-clad hill, and beyond what folks call here the paddock. I walked on, faithful Mouse following closely, until I reached the bottom of the hill on which the hamlet of Wyke is built, and then I turned to the north, and retraced my steps by Farley Dingle.

What an enchantingly beautiful thing the dew on the opening flowers of the dog-rose is, and how delicate are the red shades of the opening fronds of the bracken. Then I saw other treasures, none of which were more lovely than some pink cheeked oak-apples, encircled in the golden tassels of the oak blossom.

Why does one not get up every morning? I said to myself. Why miss daily the enchantments of morning? The dew, the scents, and the sunshine were all delicious.

I returned through the little town. Life was just beginning. Shops were opening. A few people drove past in noisy carts. Mothers were preparing their children to go to school. Men were going to work after their breakfasts, to the near fields, or in the shops; whilst whelp, and hound, and pup, were all gaily frolicking in the streets.

THE ROYAL OAK

I saw little friends go by. They laughed and bowed to me. Nearly all the little lads had got, I noticed, a sprig of oak leaves in their cap, for it was the 29th of May, Royal Oak Apple Day, as the folks call it; and some of them as they passed called out —

“Royal OakI Whig provoke,”

and pointed to the badge in their caps.

Shropshire is the land of loyalty, and people still cherish there the memory of the hiding of the King at Boscobel.

The 29th of May is the anniversary of Charles II.’s Restoration, and the custom since then of wearing oak leaves on that day still lingers on in many counties.

I read once a terrible story of two soldiers in George I.’s time who were nearly flogged to death in 1716 for putting oak sprigs in their hats.

The Royal Oak, wrote Stukeley, “stood a bow shot from the house (of Boscobel). Into this tree, Colonel Carlos and the King climbed by the aid of a hen-roost ladder. Members of the family fed them by fastening the victuals to a nut hook. The tree is now enclosed with a brick wall in the inside of which are placed laurels. Close to the oak is a thriving plant reared from one of its acorns.”

The story runs that the King, in gratitude, collected some acorns at a later date from the oak which had afforded him a shelter, had them planted in St. James’s Park, and watered them with his own hands.

Are they still growing? I have often asked myself; or have they perished like the Stuart line and cause? Be this as it may, the custom of wearing the oak is still dear to Shropshire lads, and at Wenlock any lad “who will not mount the green” is considered fair game for other little lads to pummel and cuff.

As I walked down Sheinton Street I noticed that three little boys came out of a house together. Suddenly a little lad passed them without the orthodox “tuft of green.” With a wild whoop the little lads gave chase. “Bash and bummel him,” they called. “Have at ’un.”

I hardly think they knew what they were making this onslaught on a comrade for, but they would have vaguely told you, if they could, that it was not what Etonians would call “good form” to appear at Wenlock on the 29th of May without a “badge of green.”

I stood and watched the chase. My little Roundhead was not caught. He dodged his pursuers adroitly, and in the midst of the hunt the school-bell sounded, so for a moment an armistice was declared.

Before I went in I visited my beds of anemone and ranunculi. What is there of such enchanting brilliancy as the exquisite scarlet anemone, the well-known wind flower of the Pyrenees, as I have heard it called, with its dazzling scarlet blossoms? But my few clumps were over. This lovely variety I have never known “a free grower,” as gardeners call it, in the North, but in Sussex and Hampshire it is said to do well. The roots that I had out then were the exquisite double sorts, and some of the large flowering single varieties. Amongst my most beautiful named sorts I saw by the labels were – Rose de Nice, a delicate satiny rose, Snowball, and Rose Mignon, which last is of a splendid deep shade of pink. There were also Chapeau de Cardinal, Fire King, and la Dame Blanche. How lovely they all were, and how vividly they brought back to me the florists’ shops at Nice, Cannes, and Mentone. How well I remembered the big bunches in all colours in their picturesque green jars of native pottery. But more beautiful still was the recollection of the sheets of anemones as I saw them in Sir Thomas Hanbury’s beautiful garden of La Mortola. They were principally single, and raised from seed by his gardener, I was told. What a glory of colour they made with the cypress trees, ilexes and orange groves as a background, mingling with daffodils and cyclamen, whilst the air was laden with the scent of orange and lemon-blossom.

I recalled the glory of these lovely visions. Even here in England a few patches seemed to add greatly to the beauty and joy of a garden. Then I stopped and picked a few sprays to copy in my curtain. Whilst thus engaged, I was conscious that some one was approaching me. I looked up, and saw my little girl’s governess, Miss Weldon. By her troubled face I knew that she had unpleasant news to communicate; in fact, I was sure the unpleasant rock of Worry was ahead.

BESS NAUGHTY

I listened, and Bess’s delinquencies were poured forth into my unwilling ears. My little maid, it appeared, had bitten the nursery maid, slapped her nurse, and had ended in a fit of rage by throwing her lesson-books in her governess’ face. She had flatly refused to do any lessons to-day. In fact, I was told, she had declined “to study” ever since the excitement of the recitals for the May dance; and Miss Weldon declared that she did not approve of public performances, and pursed up her lips severely.

I did not wait to hear any more for, to quote Burbidge, “the less of a disagreeable you mind, the better for your supper,” but I went straight into the house. I went up the old newel stairs and found Bess on the floor of the nursery. The whole room resounded with her angry cries. “Horrid slug, stupid snail,” and other words of opprobrium I heard in quick reiteration. She kicked, screamed, and vowed she hated everybody and everything, with a furious, scarlet face. Even old Nana did not escape her abuse. There was nothing to be done but to put Bess to bed, and tell her that there she must remain till I could forgive her, and let her get up again.

“I hate you, mother!” she cried in a shower of tears. “When I’m rich I’ll buy a new mother.” And as I closed the door an angry little voice called out, “I’d sell you all for sixpence; you’re all horrid, horrid!”

I tried to seek peace with my crewels and my needle, and bethought myself of the bunch of anemones which in haste I had thrown upon a table in the chapel hall. But peace that day might not be mine. War, black war, seemed to have set in in all parts of my demesne. Célestine bounced in like a whirlwind of discord and fury.

VOICES OF DISCORD

“Cette odieuse femme! Cet animal empesté!” by which civil terms she alluded to the old housekeeper, who had done something unpardonable; “mais j’aurai ma place quand même.” Then followed a string of incoherent abuse. A second afterwards, Mrs. Langdale appeared, took up the tale, and vindicated her honour and position. The two women glared at each other like wild cats, and set to work to abuse each other roundly, each in her own mother tongue. Célestine spoke in high southern French, breathless, scarlet, her eyes burning like live coals, whilst Mrs. Langdale screamed shrilly in angry Shropshire tones. Our old housekeeper does not generally speak in her native dialect, but in moments of excitement she takes to it as to her native element. Her voice ran up like the women’s of the west, and she trembled with fury as she called forth judgments on foreigners, “furies, and such like good-for-nothing losellers and vagrants.”

So great was their indignation and so near did they approach each other in passion, that I feared they must come to blows; but at last they vanished, vowing vengeance, and filling the monks’ passage with cries of discord. The causa belli was difficult to discover, but there seemed to have been a disagreement over a towel, a bit of soap, and some key of a cupboard. Anyway, what was wanting in wit, was fully made up by wrath.

How eloquent, at least how voluble, two furious women of the lower classes can be, like Shakespeare’s women, in their flights of rage. With us the power of vituperation is a power of the past. We control ourselves and our anger smoulders in our hearts, but rarely flies forth in a whirlwind of words.

At last I was left with Mouse, and alone we sat on, hoping only for peace. How good life would be without its worries and its quarrels. Mouse and I looked at each other. “My dog,” I said, “you have one great merit: you cannot speak.”

CHAPTER VI

JUNE

“Now is the time for mirth,Nor cheek or tongue be dumbe,For the flowrie earthThe golden pomp is come.”Herrick.

Yes, the golden pomp had come. The earth was radiant. Down below the Abbey extended sheets of golden buttercups, the world was full of song, and a clear turquoise sky, cloudless and glorious, rose above us, and all through the joyous days we were bathed in glad sunshine.

Peace had come, inside and outside the house. The storms that ended May had vanished, and my domestic coach seemed rolling gaily along. Bess had grown good again, the roughest children sometimes do. The lessons were learnt without too much grumbling, and Miss Weldon no longer carried her head low with shame. Mrs. Langdale and Célestine had settled down into hostile neutrality, and for that I was thankful.

“Ma’zelle’s tongue is like a firebrand, but I give her no chance, I never speak to her,” my old friend told me. And as angry silence is better than open war, I received its advent with thanksgiving; but all messages were impossible, and I suspected Fremantle had hard work to steer his boat between the sullen seas of “the room.”

A SUMMER GARDEN

But a truce to domestic worries, for early in June I gardened; that is to say, I stood about on the close-shorn turf and Burbidge gave directions for the summer plants to be put in the beds. This always is a solemn summer function, and Burbidge had all the importance of a Prime Minister moving amongst his Cabinet, whilst I stood by and admired.

On the east side of the Abbey Farmery, as it was once called, we had already put in round beds of heliotrope (the old cherry-pie of childhood). Burbidge had planted a bed of scarlet verbenas, and was, when I went out, putting in one of the delicate pure white variety, that smells so sweet after a passing shower in the twilight. Besides these, there were to be spudded in beds of crimson and scarlet geraniums, near the high southern wall running from the oratory to the gazebo. We had planted, a few years before, sweet tea-roses of all colours – pink, orange, and copper, a Choisya ternata, the orange-blossom of Mexico, patches of close-clinging Virginian creeper, to enjoy their autumn glory, and over the pillars different varieties of large-flowering clematises. These, as they make their full growth, will be tied to the stone balls that crown the wall. The clematises are of the most beautiful modern sorts, mauve, lavender, and purple, and in August and September, I trust, will repay us amply for our care during the dark winter months, and in the sharp winds of March.

Burbidge was solemnly having his plants brought out, and stood watching that no mishap took place, for, he assured me, “boys were born careless.”

Round the sundial were to be planted four scarlet plots of geraniums, and all were to be edged with a ribbon of blue lobelia. “How commonplace!” some of my readers will exclaim; but all the same, very gay and cheery during the late summer and early autumn, and a brilliant note of colour when the glory of the herbaceous borders is over. We must always remember that there are many forms of beauty, and that even the newest one day will be old-fashioned, and that a fashion immediately past may have something to commend it, in spite of the gardening papers of the day, and learned critics. When the beds were planted and the tiny little string of lobelia added, then the wire netting that encircled each bed was carefully put back, or otherwise, to quote Burbidge, “Adam and his crew would soon be the death of the greenhouse stuff, sure enough.”

After that, we planted a bed of heliotrope, of a beautiful Jamaica variety, that was brought back from there by a friend; and then a bed or two of fuchsias, including a few two- or three-year-old standards in the centre, for nothing gives a bed greater beauty than that it should be of different heights. The old flat bed was poor and ugly, and did not give half the effect of colour that one does of different heights. Then I saw put out beds of latana, red, yellow, and brown, and salmon and pink geraniums, and the old stone troughs and tubs were filled with rich velvety petunias. After all the small beds were planted, we came to the long border immediately in front of the new southern wall. There Burbidge put in squares of that dear old plant known to children as the lemon verbena plant, and great patches of many different sorts of sweet-scented geraniums. Amongst these delights were the old peppermint, the rose geranium, the lemon-scented, the citron-scented, the apple-scented, and the pennyroyal, and some of the best of the named sorts, such as Little Gem, Pretty Polly, Lady Plymouth, Shottesham Park, and Lady Scarborough. Altogether, Burbidge told me with pride, there were not less than twenty sorts. All these perfumed pelargoniums have a delicious fragrance of their own, distinct, and exquisitely sweet. All will bed out well in an English garden, but care should be taken to plant out in the same bed sorts that grow about the same height, as some varieties are much more vigorous than others in the open, and, to quote Burbidge’s words, “fair trample down the weaker sorts, like horses wud childer, if yer put ’em alongside.”

In this long border there were also placed round bushes of Paris Marguerites, and here and there Burbidge slipped in a castor-oil plant with its overshadowing handsome foliage and horse-chestnut-like fruit, and at intervals a spike of cannas, and a plant or two of tasselled maize with variegated leaf, “to bring them tropics home,” I was told. Then in the foreground, “his boys” spudded in African marigolds, soft mauve violas, asters, and stocks, besides patches of geraniums, to bring in “a smart snap of colour,” as my old gardener put it.

“SOME NOSEGAY BLOWS”

After luncheon I went out on the other side of the old house, to what is known as the Quadrangle, to witness further garden operations. I pleaded in favour of putting into some of the tubs what Burbidge calls “some nosegay blows.” Burbidge acceded to my request; “But us must mind the colours too,” he declared. He put in, however, to please me, a few little brown evening stocks, that smell sweetest at nights, for I told him that it was delightful to come and sit out after dinner, and enjoy the scents of night. He put in a few verbenas also, for the chance of evening showers, some nicotianas, and a few crimson humeas. Round the old redstone building, he planted three rows of Jacoby geraniums, “For them will mean brightness,” he said.

As I stood and watched the last row of geraniums being put in the soil, I was joined by Bess and Mouse.

“Oh, mum!” Bess told me, “Mouse has been growling and growling at something behind the ivy. If it had been at night, I should say she had met a devil or ogre. Every minute she was with Nana and me, she got crosser and crosser; and see, her nose is quite red and bleeding, just like Hals’ when he tumbled downstairs. Could it be a real robber?” and Bess’s eyes opened wide.

“No,” I answered, “I don’t think it could be a robber; but let’s go and see.”

So we started off across the gravel. Mouse ran on ahead, as if anxious to show us something. Suddenly she stopped with a whimper. I followed on, jumped down the crypt, and, peering behind the ivy leaves, soon discovered the cause of my dog’s excitement and displeasure. I found half covered up with dead leaves and rolled tightly into a ball of prickles, a poor little hedgehog.

“For shame, Mouse!” I cried, and called her off. For Mouse, at the sight of the poor little beast, growled angrily, and wished once more to go for her antagonist.

“Better to kill un’,” said Burbidge, who had arrived on the scene. “Hedgehogs baint good for naught. They be milk-suckers, and death on the squire’s game.”

For like most country-folks, Burbidge’s hand was against hedgehogs. Burbidge had in his hand a rake, and was about to strike the poor little prickly creature, but I interposed.

MY SANCTUARY

“They do no harm. Besides, this is my sanctuary,” I said. “In the Abbey Church no bird or beast may be harmed.”

Burbidge walked away growling, “Varmint should be killed anywhere.”

Then Bess and I went and inspected the little ball of spikes.

“See, Bess,” I said, “how it defends itself. All the winter this hedgehog has slept amongst a bed of dead ivy leaves, and so has passed long months. But now that summer has returned it will walk about, and at nights he will crop the grass, and eat insects.”

Mouse looked abashed at my lavishing notice on a hedgehog, and jumped up on a bank of thyme and watched intently what I was doing. Great Danes are remarkably sensitive dogs, and the mildest rebuke is often sufficient to make them miserable for long spells. A friend of mine, who had a very large one, said, “I never dared do more than whip its kennel. As a puppy, that was punishment enough.” So I spoke gently to Mouse, and said, “You must never hurt hedgehogs again.” At this, Mouse gravely descended from her heights, sat down by my side, and inspected the hedgehog, and I felt certain she would never hurt one again.

Then I said to Bess that perhaps there were some little hedgehogs not far off, funny little creatures, born with little, almost soft, prickles; and I told the child how useful they were in a garden. How they feed on slugs and insects, and how, when introduced in a kitchen, they would even eat black beetles.

“Once,” I told my little maid, “I had read that a poor scullion, in the Middle Ages, had one that he taught to turn the spit. So you see, Bess,” I said, “hedgehogs can be very useful creatures; not at all the wicked murderous race that Burbidge would wish you to believe.”

Bess looked at me askance. “I cannot like them as much as you, mama,” she answered in a pained voice; “for Nana said too that they sucked the cows. And see how this one has pricked poor Mouse’s nose.”

“Well, let us leave the hedgehog,” at last I said, “and wash foolish Mouse’s wounds.” So we wandered off to the fountain, and dipped our handkerchiefs into the clear water, and washed my great hound’s fond and foolish nose.