XIV - ENGLISH VIGNETTES

Summary

Towaed the last of April, in Monmouthshire, the primroses were as big as your fist. I say “ in Monmouthshire,” because I believe that a certain grassy mountain which I gave myself the pleasure of climbing, and to which I took my way across the charming country, through lanes where the hedges were perched upon blooming banks, lay within the borders of this ancient province. It was the festive Eastertide, and a pretext for leaving London had not been wanting. Of course it rained,—it rained a good deal,—for man and the weather are usually at cross-purposes. But there were intervals of light and warmth, and in England a couple of hours of fine weather, islanded in moisture, assert their independence and leave an uncompromised memory. These bright episodes were even of longer duration; that whole morning, for instance, on which, with a companion, I scrambled up the little Skirrid. One had a feeling that one was very far from London; as, in fact, one was, after six or seven hours in a smooth, swift English train. In England this is a great remoteness; it seemed to justify the half-reluctant confession which I heard constantly made, that the country was extremely “ wild.” There is wildness and wildness, I thought; and though I had not been a great explorer, I compared this rough district with several neighbourhoods in another part of the world that passed for tame. I went even so far as to wish that some of its ruder features might be transplanted to that relatively unregulated landscape and commingled with its suburban savagery.