Elizabeth and her German Garden | Page 4

years, and it is such a pretty
old place that the people who might have lived here and did not,
deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town, must have
belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom
the world seems chiefly composed. Noseless too, though it does not
sound pretty; but the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the
scent of the wet earth and young leaves.
I am always happy (out of doors be it understood, for indoors there are
servants and furniture) but in quite different ways, and my spring
happiness bears no resemblance to my summer or autumn happiness,
though it is not more intense, and there were days last winter when I
danced for sheer joy out in my frost-bound garden, in spite of my years
and children. But I did it behind a bush, having a due regard for the
decencies.
There are so many bird-cherries round me, great trees with branches
sweeping the grass, and they are so wreathed just now with white
blossoms and tenderest green that the garden looks like a wedding. I
never saw such masses of them; they seemed to fill the place. Even
across a little stream that bounds the garden on the east, and right in the
middle of the cornfield beyond, there is an immense one, a picture of
grace and glory against the cold blue of the spring sky.
My garden is surrounded by cornfields and meadows, and beyond are
great stretches of sandy heath and pine forests, and where the forests
leave off the bare heath begins again; but the forests are beautiful in
their lofty, pink-stemmed vastness, far overhead the crowns of softest
gray-green, and underfoot a bright green wortleberry carpet, and
everywhere the breathless silence; and the bare heaths are beautiful too,
for one can see across them into eternity almost, and to go out on to

them with one's face towards the setting sun is like going into the very
presence of God.
In the middle of this plain is the oasis of birdcherries and greenery
where I spend my happy days, and in the middle of the oasis is the gray
stone house with many gables where I pass my reluctant nights. The
house is very old, and has been added to at various times. It was a
convent before the Thirty Years' War, and the vaulted chapel, with its
brick floor worn by pious peasant knees, is now used as a hall.
Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more than once, as
is duly recorded in archives still preserved, for we are on what was then
the high-road between Sweden and Brandenburg the unfortunate. The
Lion of the North was no doubt an estimable person and acted wholly
up to his convictions, but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns,
who were not without convictions of their own, sending them out on to
the wide, empty plain to piteously seek some life to replace the life of
silence here.
From nearly all the windows of the house I can look out across the
plain, with no obstacle in the shape of a hill, right away to a blue line of
distant forest, and on the west side uninterruptedly to the setting
sun--nothing but a green, rolling plain, with a sharp edge against the
sunset. I love those west windows better than any others, and have
chosen my bedroom on that side of the house so that even times of
hair-brushing may not be entirely lost, and the young woman who
attends to such matters has been taught to fulfil her duties about a
mistress recumbent in an easychair before an open window, and not to
profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time. This girl is grieved at
my habit of living almost in the garden, and all her ideas as to the sort
of life a respectable German lady should lead have got into a sad
muddle since she came to me. The people round about are persuaded
that I am, to put it as kindly as possible, exceedingly eccentric, for the
news has travelled that I spend the day out of doors with a book, and
that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook. But why cook
when you can get some one to cook for you? And as for sewing, the
maids will hem the sheets better and quicker than I could, and all forms
of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one for
keeping the foolish from applying their heart to wisdom.
We had been married five years before it struck us that we might as

well make use of this place by coming down and living in