Elizabeth and Her German Garden

December 7th.—­I have been to England.  I went for at least a month and stayed a week in a fog and was blown home again in a gale.  Twice I fled before the fogs into the country to see friends with gardens, but it was raining, and except the beautiful lawns (not to be had in the Fatherland) and the infinite possibilities, there was nothing to interest the intelligent and garden-loving foreigner, for the good reason that you cannot be interested in gardens under an umbrella.  So I went back to the fogs, and after groping about for a few days more began to long inordinately for Germany.  A terrific gale sprang up after I had started, and the journey both by sea and land was full of horrors, the trains in Germany being heated to such an extent that it is next to impossible to sit still, great gusts of hot air coming up under the cushions, the cushions themselves being very hot, and the wretched traveller still hotter.

But when I reached my home and got out of the train into the purest, brightest snow-atmosphere, the air so still that the whole world seemed to be listening, the sky cloudless, the crisp snow sparkling underfoot and on the trees, and a happy row of three beaming babies awaiting me, I was consoled for all my torments, only remembering them enough to wonder why I had gone away at all.

The babies each had a kitten in one hand and an elegant bouquet of pine needles and grass in the other, and what with the due presentation of the bouquets and the struggles of the kittens, the hugging and kissing was much interfered with.  Kittens, bouquets, and babies were all somehow squeezed into the sleigh, and off we went with jingling bells and shrieks of delight.  “Directly you comes home the fun begins,” said the May baby, sitting very close to me.  “How the snow purrs!” cried the April baby, as the horses scrunched it up with their feet.  The June baby sat loudly singing “The King of Love my Shepherd is,” and swinging her kitten round by its tail to emphasise the rhythm.

The house, half-buried in the snow, looked the very abode of peace, and I ran through all the rooms, eager to take possession of them again, and feeling as though I had been away for ever.  When I got to the library I came to a standstill,—­ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing!  There was a big peat fire blazing half up the chimney, and the old housekeeper had put pots of flowers about, and on the writingtable was a great bunch of violets scenting the room.  “Oh, how good it is to be home again!” I sighed in my satisfaction.  The babies clung about my knees, looking up at me with eyes full of love.  Outside the dazzling snow and sunshine, inside the bright room and happy faces—­I thought of those yellow fogs and shivered.  The library is not used by the Man of Wrath ; it is neutral ground where we meet in the evenings for an hour before he disappears into his own rooms—­a series of very smoky dens in the southeast corner of the house.  It looks, I am afraid, rather too gay for an ideal library; and its colouring, white and yellow, is so cheerful as to be almost frivolous.  There are white bookcases all round the walls, and there is a great fireplace, and four windows, facing full south, opening on to my most cherished bit of garden, the bit round the sun-dial; so that with so much colour and such a big fire and such floods of sunshine it has anything but a sober air, in spite of the venerable volumes filling the shelves.  Indeed, I should never be surprised if they skipped down from their places, and, picking up their leaves, began to dance.

With this room to live in, I can look forward with perfect equanimity to being snowed up for any time Providence thinks proper; and to go into the garden in its snowed-up state is like going into a bath of purity.  The first breath on opening the door is so ineffably pure that it makes me gasp, and I feel a black and sinful object in the midst of all the spotlessness.  Yesterday I sat out of doors near the sun-dial the whole afternoon, with the thermometer so many degrees below freezing that it will be weeks finding its way up again; but there was no wind, and beautiful sunshine, and I was well wrapped up in furs.  I even had tea brought out there, to the astonishment of the menials, and sat till long after the sun had set, enjoying the frosty air.  I had to drink the tea very quickly, for it showed a strong inclination to begin to freeze.  After the sun had gone down the rooks came home to their nests in the garden with a great fuss and fluttering, and many hesitations and squabbles before they settled on their respective trees.  They flew over my head in hundreds with a mighty swish of wings, and when they had arranged themselves comfortably, an intense hush fell upon the garden, and the house began to look like a Christmas card, with its white roof against the clear, pale green of the western sky, and lamplight shining in the windows.

I had been reading a Life of Luther, lent me by our parson, in the intervals between looking round me and being happy.  He came one day with the book and begged me to read it, having discovered that my interest in Luther was not as living as it ought to be; so I took it out with me into the garden, because the dullest book takes on a certain saving grace if read out of doors, just as bread and butter, devoid of charm in the drawing-room, is ambrosia eaten under a tree.  I read Luther all the afternoon with pauses for refreshing glances at the garden and the sky, and much thankfulness in my heart.  His struggles with devils amazed me ; and I wondered whether such a day as that, full of grace and the forgiveness of sins, never struck him as something to make him relent even towards devils.  He apparently never allowed himself just to be happy.  He was a wonderful man, but I am glad I was not his wife.

Our parson is an interesting person, and untiring in his efforts to improve himself.  Both he and his wife study whenever they have a spare moment, and there is a tradition that she stirs her puddings with one hand and holds a Latin grammar in the other, the grammar, of course, getting the greater share of her attention.  To most German Hausfraus the dinners and the puddings are of paramount importance, and they pride themselves on keeping those parts of their houses that are seen in a state of perpetual and spotless perfection, and this is exceedingly praiseworthy; but, I would humbly inquire, are there not other things even more important?  And is not plain living and high thinking better than the other way about?  And all too careful making of dinners and dusting of furniture takes a terrible amount of precious time, and—­and with shame I confess that my sympathies are all with the pudding and the grammar.  It cannot be right to be the slave of one’s household gods, and I protest that if my furniture ever annoyed me by wanting to be dusted when I wanted to be doing something else, and there was no one to do the dusting for me, I would cast it all into the nearest bonfire and sit and warm my toes at the flames with great contentment, triumphantly selling my dusters to the very next pedlar who was weak enough to buy them.  Parsons’ wives have to do the housework and cooking themselves, and are thus not only cooks and housemaids, but if they have children—­ and they always do have children—­they are head and under nurse as well; and besides these trifling duties have a good deal to do with their fruit and vegetable garden, and everything to do with their poultry.  This being so, is it not pathetic to find a young woman bravely struggling to learn languages and keep up with her husband?  If I were that husband, those puddings would taste sweetest to me that were served with Latin sauce.  They are both severely pious, and are for ever engaged in desperate efforts to practise what they preach; than which, as we all know, nothing is more difficult.  He works in his parish with the most noble self-devotion, and never loses courage, although his efforts have been several times rewarded by disgusting libels pasted up on the street-corners, thrown under doors, and even fastened to his own garden wall.  The peasant hereabouts is past belief low and animal, and a sensitive, intellectual parson among them is really a pearl before swine.  For years he has gone on unflinchingly, filled with the most living faith and hope and charity, and I sometimes wonder whether they are any better now in his parish than they were under his predecessor, a man who smoked and drank beer from Monday morning to Saturday night, never did a stroke of work, and often kept the scanty congregation waiting on Sunday afternoons while he finished his postprandial nap.  It is discouraging enough to make most men give in, and leave the parish to get to heaven or not as it pleases; but he never seems discouraged, and goes on sacrificing the best part of his life to these people when all his tastes are literary, and all his inclinations towards the life of the student.  His convictions drag him out of his little home at all hours to minister to the sick and exhort the wicked; they give him no rest, and never let him feel he has done enough; and when he comes home weary, after a day’s wrestling with his parishioners’ souls, he is confronted on his doorstep by filthy abuse pasted up on his own front door.  He never speaks of these things, but how shall they be hid?  Everybody here knows everything that happens before the day is over, and what we have for dinner is of far greater general interest than the most astounding political earthquake.  They have a pretty, roomy cottage, and a good bit of ground adjoining the churchyard.  His predecessor used to hang out his washing on the tombstones to dry, but then he was a person entirely lost to all sense of decency, and had finally to be removed, preaching a farewell sermon of a most vituperative description, and hurling invective at the Man of Wrath, who sat up in his box drinking in every word and enjoying himself thoroughly.  The Man of Wrath likes novelty, and such a sermon had never been heard before.  It is spoken of in the village to this day with bated breath and awful joy.