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MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN
MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER CONTENTS:
SUMMER IN A GARDEN
CALVIN A STUDY OF CHARACTER
INTRODUCTORY LETTER
MY DEAR MR. FIELDS--I did promise to write an Introduction to these
charming papers but an Introduction--what is it?--a sort of
pilaster put upon the face of a building for looks' sake and
usually flat--very flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid
which is as I understand it a cruel device of architecture
representing a man or a woman obliged to hold up upon his or her
head or shoulders a structure which they did not build and which
could stand just as well without as with them. But an Introduction
is more apt to be a pillar such as one may see in Baalbec standing
up in the air all alone with nothing on it and with nothing for it
to do.
But an Introductory Letter is different. There is in that no
formality no assumption of function no awkward propriety or dignity
to be sustained. A letter at the opening of a book may be only a
footpath leading the curious to a favorable point of observation
and then leaving them to wander as they will.
Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers might
better be sent to the spider not because he works all night and
watches all day but because he works unconsciously. He dare not
even bring his work before his own eyes but keeps it behind him as
if too much knowledge of what one is doing would spoil the delicacy
and modesty of one's work.
Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born like a dream that
comes noiselessly and tarries silently and goes as a bubble bursts.
And yet somewhere work must come in--real well-considered work.
Inness (the best American painter of Nature in her moods of real
human feeling) once said "No man can do anything in art unless he
has intuitions; but between whiles one must work hard in collecting
the materials out of which intuitions are made." The truth could not
be hit off better. Knowledge is the soil and intuitions are the
flowers which grow up out of it. The soil must be well enriched and
worked.
It is very plain or will be to those who read these papers now
gathered up into this book as into a chariot for a race that the
author has long employed his eyes his ears and his understanding
in observing and considering the facts of Nature and in weaving
curious analogies. Being an editor of one of the oldest daily news-
papers in New England and obliged to fill its columns day after day
(as the village mill is obliged to render every day so many sacks of
flour or of meal to its hungry customers) it naturally occurred to
him "Why not write something which I myself as well as my readers
shall enjoy? The market gives them facts enough; politics lies
enough; art affectations enough; criminal news horrors enough;
fashion more than enough of vanity upon vanity and vexation of
purse. Why should they not have some of those wandering and joyous
fancies which solace my hours?"
The suggestion ripened into execution. Men and women read and
wanted more. These garden letters began to blossom every week; and
many hands were glad to gather pleasure from them. A sign it was of
wisdom. In our feverish days it is a sign of health or of
convalescence that men love gentle pleasure and enjoyments that do
not rush or roar but distill as the dew.
The love of rural life the habit of finding enjoyment in familiar
things that susceptibility to Nature which keeps the nerve gently
thrilled in her homliest nooks and by her commonest sounds is worth
a thousand fortunes of money or its equivalents.
Every book which interprets the secret lore of fields and gardens
every essay that brings men nearer to the understanding of the
mysteries which every tree whispers every brook murmurs every weed
even hints is a contribution to the wealth and the happiness of our
kind. And if the lines of the writer shall be traced in quaint
characters and be filled with a grave humor or break out at times
into merriment all this will be no presumption against their wisdom
or his goodness. Is the oak less strong and tough because the mosses
and weather-stains stick in all manner of grotesque sketches along
its bark? Now truly one may not learn from this little book either
divinity or horticulture; but if he gets a pure happiness and a
tendency to repeat the happiness from the simple stores of Nature he
will gain from our friend's garden what Adam lost in his and what
neither philosophy nor divinity has always been able to restore.
Wherefore thanking you for listening to a former letter which
begged you to consider whether these curious and ingenious papers
that go winding about like a half-trodden path between the garden and
the field might not be given in book-form to your million readers I
remain yours to command in everything but the writing of an
Introduction
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
BY WAY OF DEDICATION
MY DEAR POLLY--When a few of these papers had appeared in "The
Courant" I was encouraged to continue them by hearing that they had
at least one reader who read them with the serious mind from which
alone profit is to be expected. It was a maiden lady who I am
sure was no more to blame for her singleness than for her age; and
she looked to these honest sketches of experience for that aid which
the professional agricultural papers could not give in the management
of the little bit of garden which she called her own. She may have
been my only disciple; and I confess that the thought of her yielding
a simple faith to what a gainsaying world may have regarded with
levity has contributed much to give an increased practical turn to my
reports of what I know about gardening. The thought that I had
misled a lady whose age is not her only singularity who looked to
me for advice which should be not at all the fanciful product of the
Garden of Gull would give me great pain. I trust that her autumn is
a peaceful one and undisturbed by either the humorous or the
satirical side of Nature.
You know that this attempt to tell the truth about one of the most
fascinating occupations in the world has not been without its
dangers. I have received anonymous letters. Some of them were
murderously spelled; others were missives in such elegant phrase and
dress that danger was only to be apprehended in them by one skilled
in the mysteries of medieval poisoning when death flew on the wings
of a perfume. One lady whose entreaty that I should pause had
something of command in it wrote that my strictures on "pusley " had
so inflamed her husband's zeal that in her absence in the country
he had rooted up all her beds of portulaca (a sort of cousin of the
fat weed) and utterly cast it out. It is however to be expected
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