Apt that Edith should cite Francis Bacon’s classic essay ‘Of Gardens’ as her model. His musings for a garden were grand (no less than thirty acres should be considered), but very much in favour of retaining their ‘natural wildness’.
‘Some thickets made only of sweet-briar and honeysuckle,’ he instructed, ‘and some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries, and primroses. For these are sweet, and prosper in the shade. And these to be in the heath, here and there, not in any order. I like also little heaps, in the nature of mole-hills (such as are in wild heaths), to be set, some with wild thyme; some with pinks; some with germander, that gives a good flower to the eye; some with periwinkle; some with violets; some with strawberries; some with cowslips; some with daisies; some with red roses; some with lilium convallium; some with sweet-williams red; some with bear’s-foot: and the like low flowers, being withal sweet and sightly. Part of which heaps to be with standards of little bushes pricked upon their top, and part without. The standards to be roses; juniper; holly; berberries (but here and there, because of the smell of their blossoms); red currants; gooseberries; rosemary; bays; sweetbriar; and such like.’
Bacon’s essay of 1625 is regarded as a pioneer in garden writing. But then, he was a polymath and pioneer of so many things: politics, law, essays, plays, science. He wrote the first collection of personal essays ever written in English and founded the modern scientific method. Small wonder some people think he was Shakespeare. It was Bacon who proposed the use of observation over speculation, hypothesis testing rather than logic, writing articles not books, detail not generality, constant replication, critical questioning and the public sharing of knowledge – and the notion that anyone could make such contributions, that anyone could be such an analytical observer, could adopt this ‘scientific’ way of thinking. Not just a model for beautiful gardens then, but the very model for a modern naturalist and nature writer.
In her later years Edith painted a ‘charming picture of a beautiful home life in which father, mother and children (six of them) all shared the same interests – literature, science and nature lore’. She seems to have mentioned her hometown often to her correspondents in England. She always hoped she might return one day.
How different their lives might have been had they stayed in Surrey and its surrounds, following in the footsteps of countless generations of yeoman farming Harmses before them. But this idyllic childhood was about to end.
On 6 April 1887, tragedy struck the Harms family. Edith’s closest sister, sixteen-year-old Harriett, died suddenly of meningitis.
Wind in the willows: Nature’s Æolian harps
By Edith Coleman, 1930
I offered him my company to a willow tree, either to make him a garland as being forsaken, or to bind him up a rod, as being worthy to be whipped. – Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
If you have never heard the song the wind sings in the willows you have missed some of the sweetest music that Nature plays on her Æolian harps. Not every ear is attuned to the melodies of her gentle moments, which she lightly stirs the slender boughs into a far-off refrain which only an eager ear may follow; a hushed melody on muted strings; sweet, inarticulate sounds, soft as the song a mother sings to her first-born.
Briccialdi has caught the song of the wind among many trees, and it has been conveyed to us by the magic flutes of Lemmone and Amadio, but no musician’s cunning has yet captured the elusive airs the wind weaves among the willow’s supple branches. The themes of her turbulent days, when she whips and lashes the tossing green limbs into the seething hiss of the sea’s unquiet moods, may be followed by the least imaginative ear.
The weeping-willow has always been associated with sadness and despair, due doubtless to the drooping habit of its branches. Though it is so often chosen as a symbol of woe and mourning, however, there are times, even in winter, when a joyous ripple runs through its leafless boughs. Along the river the willow now trails brown tresses over slow, sluggish waters, like rows of sad dryads weeping for the loss of their summer finery. It will not be long now before they are clothed in the ‘green fire of spring’, and droop dreamily to full singing rivers.
The weeping-willows have always been favourites. Back into the mists of the past they carry us, to the tears that fell by the rivers of Babylon, when the faithful children of Israel refused to be comforted. I remember reading somewhere that the great Linnæus had erred in naming the weeping-willow Salix Babylonica, for willows had never been known on the banks of the Euphrates; and that it was a kind of poplar tree upon which the captive Jews hung their harps when those who had brought them there demanded of them a song. It may be so. I have never looked it up, for, as I read, I felt a sense of loss. So long I had liked to murmur the beautiful words as I stood under some lovely willows in one of my happiest haunts. We are always, I think, a little impatient of those matter-of-fact people who shatter our pet illusions, and so, should any of you verify the statement, I beg of you not to tell me.
Though frequently seen in valleys or along shady river banks the willow is really a lover of light and open spaces. Under these conditions it may attain a great height and girth, with widespread branches making deep shade. I have in mind two wonderful weeping-willows of great age. To every lover of Healesville they are an essential part of it. Old they are – Oh! so
