The Lost Dahlia | Page 2

my shoulder, the gentleman was sure to hop off. My favourite mare,
Pearl, the pretty docile creature which draws my little phaeton, has such
a talent for leaping, that she is no sooner turned out in either of our
meadows, than she disappears. And Dash himself, paragon of spaniels,
pet of pets, beauty of beauties, has only one shade of
imperfection--would be thoroughly faultless, if it were not for a slight
tendency to run away. He is regularly lost four or five times every
winter, and has been oftener cried through the streets of Belford, and
advertised in the county newspapers, than comports with a dog of his
dignity. Now, these mischances clearly belong to that class of accidents
commonly called casualties, and are quite unconnected with any
infirmity of temperament on my part I cannot help Pearl's proficiency
in jumping, nor Dash's propensity to wander through the country;
neither had I any hand in the loss which has given its title to this paper,
and which, after so much previous dallying, I am at length about to
narrate.

The autumn before last, that is to say, above a year ago, the boast and
glory of my little garden was a dahlia called the Phoebus. How it came
there, nobody very distinctly knew, nor where it came from, nor how
we came by it, nor how it came by its own most appropriate name.
Neither the lad who tends our flowers, nor my father, the person chiefly
concerned in procuring them, nor I myself, who more even than my
father or John take delight and pride in their beauty, could recollect
who gave us this most splendid plant, or who first instructed us as to
the style and title by which it was known. Certes never was blossom
fitlier named. Regular as the sun's face in an almanack, it had a tint of
golden scarlet, of ruddy yellow, which realised Shakspeare's gorgeous
expression of "flame-coloured." The sky at sunset sometimes puts on
such a hue, or a fire at Christmas when it burns red as well as bright.
The blossom was dazzling to look upon. It seemed as if there were light
in the leaves, like that coloured-lamp of a flower, the Oriental Poppy.
Phoebus was not too glorious a name for that dahlia. The
Golden-haired Apollo might be proud of such an emblem. It was
worthy of the god of day; a very Phoenix of floral beauty.
Every dahlia fancier who came into our garden or who had an
opportunity of seeing a bloom elsewhere; and, sooth to say, we were
rather ostentatious in our display; John put it into stands, and jars, and
baskets, and dishes; Dick stuck it into Dash's collar, his own
button-hole, and Pearl's bridle; my father presented it to such lady
visiters as he delighted to honour; and I, who have the habit of dangling
a flower, generally a sweet one, caught myself more than once rejecting
the spicy clove and the starry jessamine, the blossomed myrtle and the
tuberose, my old fragrant favourites, for this scentless (but triumphant)
beauty; everybody who beheld the Phoebus begged for a plant or a
cutting; and we, generous in our ostentation, willing to redeem the vice
by the virtue, promised as many plants and cuttings as we could
reasonably imagine the root might be made to produce*--perhaps rather
more; and half the dahlia growers round rejoiced over the glories of the
gorgeous flower, and speculated, as the wont is now, upon seedling
after seedling to the twentieth generation.
* It is wonderful how many plants may, by dint of forcing, and cutting

and forcing again, be extracted from one root. But the experiment is not
always safe. Nature sometimes avenges herself for the encroachments
of art, by weakening the progeny. The Napoleon Dahlia, for instance,
the finest of last year's seedlings, being over-propagated, this season
has hardly produced one perfect bloom, even in the hands of the most
skilful cultivators.
Alas for the vanity of human expectations! February came, the
twenty-second of February, the very St. Valentine of dahlias, when the
roots which have been buried in the ground during the winter are
disinterred, and placed in a hotbed to put forth their first shoots
previous to the grand operations of potting and dividing them. Of
course the first object of search in the choicest corner of the nicely
labelled hoard, was the Phoebus: but no Phoebus was forthcoming; root
and label had vanished bodily! There was, to be sure, a dahlia without a
label, which we would gladly have transformed into the missing
treasure; but as we speedily discovered a label without a dahlia, it was
but too obvious that they belonged to each other. Until last year we
might have had plenty of the consolation which results