Mirror of the Months Part 9

OCTOBER.

They tell us, in regard to this voyage of ours, called Human Life, that

"Hope travels through, nor leaves us till we die."

But they might have gone still farther, and shown us that Hope is not only our companion on the journey, but at once the vehicle which bears us along, the food which supports us as we go, and the goal to which all our travels tend, not merely in the great voyage of discovery itself, but in all the little outlets and byeways which break in upon and diversify it.

Even in regard to the objects of external nature, Hope is the great principle on which we take any thing like a continuous moral interest in the contemplation of them; and if we never cease to feel that interest during all the different periods of the year, it is because hope is no sooner lost in fruition, than, like the Phnix, it revives again, and keeps fluttering on before us, like the beautiful Green Bird before the lover, in the fairy tale; leading us--no matter where, so that it do not leave us to plod on by ourselves, through a world that, however beautiful _with_ it, were without it an overpeopled wilderness.

The month that we have just left behind us was indeed one made up, for the most part, of consummations; the promises of the year being almost forgotten in the fulness of their performance, and the season standing still to enjoy itself, and to let its admirers satiate themselves upon the rich completeness of its charms. It is now gone; and October is come; and Hope is come with it; and the general impulse that we feel is, to _look forward_ again, as we have done from the beginning of the year.

It must be confessed, however, that the hopes of _this_ month, in particular, are not unblended with that sentiment of melancholy--gentle and genial, but still melancholy--which results from the constant presence of decay. The year has reached its grand climacteric, and is fast falling "into the sere, the yellow leaf." Every day a flower drops from out the wreath that binds its brow--not to be renewed. Every hour the Sun looks more and more askance upon it, and the winds, those Summer flatterers, come to it less fawningly. Every breath shakes down showers of its leafy attire, leaving it gradually barer and barer, for the blasts of winter to blow through it. Every morning and evening takes away from it a portion of that light which gives beauty to its life, and chills it more and more into that torpor which at length const.i.tutes its temporary death. And yet October is beautiful still, no less "for what it gives than what it takes away;" and even for what it gives during the very act of taking away.

Let us begin our observations with an example of the latter. The whole year cannot produce a sight fraught with more rich and harmonious beauty than that which the Woods and Groves present during this month, notwithstanding, or rather in consequence of, the daily decay of their summer attire; and at no other season can any given spot of landscape be seen to much advantage as a mere picture. This, therefore, is, above all others, the month for the artist to ply his delightful task, of fixing the fugitive beauties of the scene; which, however, he must do quickly, for they fade away, day by day, as he looks upon them.

And yet, if it were represented faithfully, an extensive plantation of Forest Trees now presents a variety of colours and of tints that would scarcely be considered as _natural_ in a picture, any more than many of the Sunsets of September would. Among those trees which retain their green hues, the Fir tribe are the princ.i.p.al; and these, spiring up among the deciduous ones, now differ from them no less in colour than they do in form. The Alders, too, and the Poplars, Limes, and Horse-chestnuts, are still green,--the hues of their leaves not undergoing much change as long as they remain on the branches. Most of the other Forest Trees have put on each its peculiar livery; the Planes and Sycamores presenting every variety of tinge, from bright yellow to brilliant red; the Elms being, for the most part, of a rich sunny umber, varying according to the age of the tree and the circ.u.mstances of its soil, &c.; the Beeches having deepened into a warm glowing brown, which the young ones will retain all the winter, and till the new spring leaves push the present ones off; the Oaks varying from a dull dusky green to a deep russet, according to their ages; and the Spanish Chestnuts, with their n.o.ble embowering heads, glowing like clouds of gold.

As for the Hedge-rows this month, they still retain all their effect as part of a general and distant view; and when looked at more closely, though they have lost nearly all their flowers, the various fruits that are spread out upon them for the winter food of the birds, make them little less gay than they were in Spring and Summer. The most conspicuous of these are the red hips of the Wild Rose; the dark purple bunches of the luxuriant Blackberry; the brilliant scarlet and green berries of the Nightshade; the wintry-looking fruit of the Hawthorn; the blue Sloes, covered with their soft tempting-looking bloom; the dull bunches of the Woodbine; and the sparkling Holly-berries.

We may also still, by seeking for them, find a few flowers scattered about beneath the Hedge-rows, and the dry Banks that skirt the Woods, and even in the Woods themselves, peeping up meekly from among the crowds of newly fallen leaves. The prettiest of these is the Primrose, which now blows a second time. But two or three of the Persicaria tribe are still in flower, and also some of the Goosefoots. And even the elegant and fragile Heathbell, or Harebell, has not yet quite disappeared; while some of the ground flowers that have pa.s.sed away have left in their place strange evidences of their late presence; in particular, the singular flower (if it can be called one) of the Arums, or Lords and Ladies, has changed into an upright bunch, or long cl.u.s.ter, of red berries, starting up from out the ground on a single stiff stem, and looking almost like the flower of a Hyacinth.

The open Fields during this month, though they are bereaved of much of their actual beauty and variety, present sights that are as agreeable to the eye, and even more stirring to the imagination, than those which have pa.s.sed away. The Husbandman is now ploughing up the arable land, and putting into it the seeds that are to produce the next year's crops; and there are not, among rural occupations, two more pleasant to look upon than these: the latter, in particular, is one that, while it gives perfect satisfaction to the eye as a mere picture, awakens and fills the imagination with the prospective views which it opens.

Another very lively rural sight, on account of the many hands that it employs at the same time, men, women, and children, is the general Potato gathering of this month.

Among the miscellaneous events of October, one of the most striking and curious is the interchange which seems to take place between our country, and the more northern as well as the more southern ones in regard to the Birds. The Swallow tribe now all quit us; the Swift disappeared wholly, more than a month ago; and now the House Swallow, House Martin, and Bank or Sand Martin, after congregating for awhile in vast flocks about the banks of rivers and other waters, are seen no more as general frequenters of the air. And if one or two _are_ seen during the warm days that sometimes occur for the next two or three weeks, they are to be looked upon as strangers and wanderers; and the sight of them, which has. .h.i.therto been so pleasant, becomes altogether different in its effect: it gives one a feeling of desolateness, such as we experience on meeting a poor shivering Lascar in our winter streets.

In exchange for this tribe of truly Summer visitors, we have now great flocks of the Fieldfares and Redwings come back to us; and also Wood Pigeons, Snipes, Woodc.o.c.ks, and several of the numerous tribe of Water-fowl.

Now, occasionally, we may observe the singular effects of a mist, coming gradually on, and wrapping in its dusky cloak a whole landscape that was, the moment before, clear and bright as in a Spring morning. The vapour rises visibly (from the face of a distant river perhaps) like steam from a boiling caldron; and climbing up into the blue air as it advances, rolls wreath over wreath till it reaches the spot on which you are standing; and then, seeming to hurry past you, its edges, which have hitherto been distinctly defined, become no longer visible, and the whole scene of beauty, which a few moments before surrounded you, is as it were wrapt from your sight like an unreal vision of the air, and you seem (and in fact _are_) transferred into the bosom of a cloud.

Drawing towards the home scene, we find the Orchard by no means devoid of interest this month. The Apples are among the last to shed their leaves; so that they retain them yet; and in some cases of late fruit, they retain that too,--looking as bright and tempting as ever it did.

The Cherry-trees, too, are more beautiful at this time than ever they have been since their brief period of blossoming, on account of the brilliant scarlet which their leaves a.s.sume,--varying, however, from that colour all the way through the warm ones, up to the bright yellow.

There are also two species of the Plum, the Purple and the White Damson, which have only now reached their maturity.

The Elders, that frequently skirt the Orchard, or form part of its bounding hedge, are also now loaded with their broad outspread bunches of purple and white berries, and instantly call up (to those who are lucky enough to possess such an a.s.sociation at all) that ideal of old English snugness and comfort, the farm-house chimney corner, on a cold winter's Sat.u.r.day night; with the jug of hot Elder-wine on the red brick hearth; the embers crackling and blazing; the toasted bread, and the long-stemmed gla.s.ses on the two-flapped oak table; and the happy ruddy faces of the young ones around, looking expectantly towards the comely and portly dame for their weekly _treat_.

The gentle (query _genteel_) reader will be good enough to remember that I am now speaking of old times; that is to say, twenty years ago; and will not suppose me ignorant enough to imagine that _they_ can possibly know what I mean either by "_Elder-wine_," or a "_chimney corner_." But though the merits of mulled claret, an ottoman, and a hearth-rug, shall never be called in question by me, I must be excused for remembering that there _was_ a time when I knew no better than the above, and that I have not grown wise enough to cease sighing for the return of that time ever since it has pa.s.sed away. Accordingly, though I would on no account be supposed to permit Elder-wine to pa.s.s my actual palate, I could not resist the above occasion of tasting it once more in imagination; and I must say, that the flavour of it is quite as agreeable as it was before claret became a common-place.

Now is the time for performing another of those praiseworthy operations which modern refinement has driven almost out of fashion. I mean the brewing of Beer that is to be called, _par excellence_, "October," some ten or fifteen years hence, when it is worth drinking. Country folks brew as usual, it is true; because the drink which is sent them down by the London dealers is what they cannot comprehend: but it has become a regular monthly work; bearing, however, about the same relation to those of the good old times which have pa.s.sed away, as the innumerable "twopenny trash" of the present day do to the good old "Gentleman's Magazine" that they have almost superseded. Brewing, nowadays, (thanks to Mr. Cobbet's Cottage Economy) is an affair of a tea-kettle, a washing-tub, and a currant-wine cask; and "October," now, will scarcely keep till November.

Now, the Hives are despoiled of their honey; and by one of those sad necessities attendant on artificial life, the hitherto happy and industrious collectors of it are rewarded with death for their pains.

It is not till this month that we usually experience the Equinoxial Gales, those fatal visitations which may now be looked upon as the immediate heralds of the coming on of Winter; as in the Spring they were the sure signs of its having pa.s.sed away. Bitter-sweet is it, now, to lie awake at night, and listen wilfully (as if we would not let them escape us) to the fierce howlings of the winds, each accession of which gives new vividness to the vision of some tall ship, illumined by every flash of lightning--illumined, but not rendered _visible_--for there are no eyes within a hundred leagues to look upon it; and crowded with human beings--(not "souls" only, as the sea-phrase is, for then it were pastime--but _bodies_) every one of which sees, in imagination, its own grave a thousand fathom deep beneath the dark waters that roar around, and feels itself there beforehand.

Returning to the home enclosures, we shall find them far from dest.i.tute of attraction; and indeed if they have been properly attended to, with a view to that almost unceasing succession of which the various objects of cultivation admit, we shall scarcely as yet perceive any of the ravages which the mere approach of Winter has already made among their uncultivated kindred.

In the Flower Garden, if much of the beauty of Summer has now pa.s.sed away, its place has been supplied by that which affords one of the pleasantest employments of the lover of gardening; for those who do not grow and collect their own seeds know but half the pleasures of that most delightful of all merely physical occupations. The princ.i.p.al flower seeds come to perfection this month, and are now to be gathered and laid by, before they scatter themselves abroad at random.

Now, too, is the time for employing another and an equally fertile and interesting mode of propagation; that by means of offsets, suckers, cuttings, partings, &c. Now, in short, most of the fibrous-rooted perennial plants (regardless of Mr. Malthus's principles of population) put forth more offspring than the ground which they occupy can support; and unless the Government under which they live were to provide them with due means of colonization, they would presently over-run and destroy each other, until the whole kingdom, which now belongs to them jointly, became the exclusive property and possession of some one powerful but worthless family among them: as we see on lands that are left to themselves, and suffered to lie waste: whatever variety of plants may spring up spontaneously upon them during the first season or two, at the end of three or four years all is one unbroken expanse of rank unproductive gra.s.s.

It may be a childish pleasure, perhaps, but it is a very unequivocal and a very innocent one, to bid the perennial plants "increase and multiply," and to see how aptly and willingly they obey the mandate.

Making plants by this means is a pleasant subst.i.tute for making money, to those who have none of the latter to begin with. Indeed I question whether a dozen money-bags, made out of one, ever yet afforded the maker half the real satisfaction that a dozen Daisies have done, multiplied in a similar manner. Not that I can pretend to judge by experience of the comparative merits of these multiplication tables; and I am liberal enough to be willing to give the former a fair trial, on the very first opportunity that offers itself.

But though most of the Garden plants are now busily employed in disseminating themselves by seeds and offsets, many of them are still wearing their merely ornamental attire, and looking about them for admiration as if they were made for nothing else. If the arrangements of the borders have been attended to with a properly prospective eye, they still present us with several of the Amaranths, and particularly the everlasting ones; with some of the finest Dahlias; the great climbing Convolvolus; French and African Marigolds, which have now increased to almost the size of flowering shrubs; Scabious; China-Asters; Golden-rod; the interminable Stocks; and, running about among them all, and flowering almost as profusely and as prettily as ever, sweet-breathing Mignonette.

Among the Shrubs, too, there are still some whose flowers continue to look the coming Winter in the face. In particular, the Arbutus is in all its beauty,--hanging forth, like the Orange, its flowers, fruit, and leaves, all at once. The Ivy, too, is covered with its una.s.suming blossoms, which are as rich in honey as they are poor in show, and are rifled of their sweets by the all-wooing bees, with even more avidity than the fantastical Pa.s.sion-flower, or the flaunting Rose.

It is a little singular that the most gorgeous show which the Garden presents during the whole year should occur at this late period of the season, and without the intervention of flowers. I allude to the splendid foliage of the Great Virginian Creeper, which may now be seen hanging out its scarlet banners against some high battlement, or wreathing them into gay and graceful tapestry about the mouldering walls of some old watch-tower, or, still more appropriately, fringing and festooning the embayed windows of some secluded building, sacred to the silence of study and contemplation. If I remember rightly, some beautiful examples of it, under the latter character, may be seen in two or three of the inner quadrangles both of Oxford and Cambridge.

Finally, now, that at once wildest and tamest of birds, most social and most solitary, the Robin, first begins to place its trust in man; flitting about the feet of the Gardener, as he turns up the freshened earth, and taking its food almost from the spade as it moves in his hand; or standing at a little distance from him among the fallen leaves, and singing plaintively, as if practising beforehand the dirge of the departing year.

October is to London what April is to the Country; it is the Spring of the London Summer, when the hopes of the shopkeeper begin to bud forth, and he lays aside the insupportable labour of having nothing to do, for the delightful leisure of preparing to be in a perpetual bustle. During the last month or two he has been strenuously endeavouring to persuade himself that the Steyne at Brighton is as healthy as Bond-street; the _pave_ of Pall Mall no more picturesque than the Pantiles of Tunbridge Wells; and winning a prize at one-card-loo at Margate as piquant a process as serving a customer to the same amount of profit. But now that the time is returned when "business" must again be attended to, he discards with contempt all such mischievous heresies, and re-embraces the only orthodox faith of a London shopkeeper--that London and his shop are the true "beauteous and sublime" of human life. In fact, "now is the winter of his discontent" (that is to say, what other people call Summer) "made glorious Summer" by the near approach of Winter; and all the wit he is master of is put in requisition, to devise the means of proving that every thing he has offered to "his friends the public," up to this particular period, has become worse than obsolete. Accordingly, now are those poets of the shopkeepers, the investors of patterns, "perplexed in the extreme;" since, unless they can produce a something which shall necessarily supersede all their previous productions, their occupation's gone.

It is the same with all other caterers for the public taste; even the literary ones. Mr. Elliston, "ever anxious to contribute to the amus.e.m.e.nt of his liberal patrons, the public," is already busied in sowing the seeds of a New Tragedy, two Operatic Romances, three Grand Romantic Melodrames, and half a dozen Farces, in the fertile soil of those _poets_ whom he employs in each of these departments respectively; while each of the London publishers is projecting a new "periodical," to appear on the first of January next; that which he started on the first of _last_ January having, of course, died of old age ere this!

As to the external appearance of London this month, the East End of it shows symptoms of reviving animation, after the two months' trance which the absence of its citizens had cast over it; and Cheapside, though it cannot boast of being absolutely impa.s.sable, is sufficiently crowded to create hopes in its inhabitants that it soon will be.

But the West End is as melancholy as the want of that which ever makes it otherwise can render it: for the fashionables, though it is more than a month since they retired from the fatiguing activity of a London Winter in July, to the still more fatiguing repose of an October Summer in the Country, pertinaciously refuse themselves permission to return to the lesser evil of the two, till they have partaken of the greater to such a degree of repletion as to make them fancy, when the former is on the point of being restored to them, that it is none at all; thus making each re-act upon the other, until, to their enfeebled and diseased imaginations, "nothing is but what is not;" and being in London, they sigh for the Country; and in the Country, for London.

But has London no one positive merit in October, then? Yes; one it has, which half redeems all its delinquencies. In October, Fires have fairly gained possession of their places, and even greet us on coming down to breakfast in the morning. Of all the discomforts of that most comfortless period of the London year which is neither winter nor summer, the most unequivocal is that of its being too cold to be without a fire, and not cold enough to have one. At a season of this kind, to enter an English sitting-room, the very ideal of snugness and comfort in all other respects, but with a great gaping hiatus in one side of it, which makes it look like a pleasant face deprived of its best feature, is not to be thought of without feeling chilly. And as to filling up the deficiency by a set of polished fire-irons, standing sentry beside a pile of dead coals imprisoned behind a row of glittering bars,--this, instead of mending the matter, makes it worse; inasmuch as it is better to look into an empty coffin, than to see the dead face of a friend in it. At the season in question, especially in the evening, one feels in a perpetual perplexity, whether to go out or stay at home; sit down or walk about; read, write, cast accounts, or call for the candle and go to bed. But let the fire be lighted, and all uncertainty is at an end, and we (or even _one_) may do any or all of these with equal satisfaction.

In short, light but the fire, and you bring the Winter in at once; and what are twenty Summers, with all their sunshine (when they are gone), to one Winter, with its indoor sunshine of a sea-coal fire?

Henceforth, then, be Winter my theme; and if I do not grow warm in its praise, it shall not be for want of inditing that praise beside as pleasant a fire as nubbly Wall's Ends, a register-stove (not a Cobbett's-Register one, I am sorry to say[4]), and a slim-pointed poker, can produce.

[4] I modestly propose, that the stoves lately introduced by Mr.

Cobbett, and recommended in his Register, be henceforth known by no other than the above style and t.i.tle:--Cobbett's-Register Stoves. And if they are, it shall never be said that, anonymous as I am, I have lived or written in vain; for the next best thing to _having_ a name, is the being able to _give_ one, even to a fire-place. Let me add, for fear of being taxed with that meanest of all our mental propensities, the habit of joking at the expense of justice, that I offer the proposed name as any thing but a "nick" one. In fact, nothing but that change of climate which the Quarterly Reviewers have promised us can prevent Mr. Cobbett's stoves from one day or other gaining him almost as sure a pa.s.sport to immortality, as any other of his works.

NOVEMBER.

Of the twin maxims, which bid us to "Welcome the coming, speed the going guest," the latter is better appreciated than practised. The over refinements of modern life make people afraid of giving in to it, who yet feel it to be an excellent one. The truth is, that when a guest, of no matter how agreeable a presence, or how attractive an air, has made up his mind to go, the sooner he goes the better. Let him go at once, therefore. Do not press him to stay, or detain him at the door, but "speed" him on his way. It is best for both parties, if they like each other. When, indeed, an unpleasant intruder is about to depart, there is a kind of satisfaction in detaining him a little. We dally with the prospective pleasure of having him gone, till we forget that he is present. But when those we love are leaving us, the best way is, to wink, and part at once; for to be "going" is even worse than to be "gone."

Thus let it be, then, with that delightful annual guest, the Summer (under the agreeable alias of Autumn), in whose presence we have lately been luxuriating. We might perhaps, by a little gentle violence, prevail upon her to stay with us for a brief s.p.a.ce longer; or might at least prevail upon ourselves to believe that she is not quite gone. But we shall do better by speeding her on her way to other climes, and welcoming "the coming guest," gray-haired Winter. So be it, then.

The last storm of Autumn, or the first of Winter, call it which you will, has strewed the bosom of the all-receiving earth with the few leaves that were still clinging, though dead, to the already sapless branches; and now all stand bare at once,--spreading out their innumerable ramifications against the cold, gray sky, as if sketched there for a study, by the pencil of your only successful drawing-mistress--Nature. Of all the numerous changes that are perpetually taking place in the general appearance of rural scenery during the year, there is none so striking as this which is attendant on the falling of the leaves; and there is none in which the unpleasing effects so greatly predominate over the pleasing ones. To say truth, a Grove, denuded of its late gorgeous attire, and instead of bowing majestically before the winds, standing erect and motionless while they are blowing through it, is "a sorry sight," and one upon which we will not dwell. But even this sad consequence of the coming on of Winter, sad in most of its mere visible effects, is not entirely without redeeming accompaniments; for in most cases it lays open to our view objects that we are glad to see again, if it be but in virtue of their a.s.sociation with past years; and in many cases it opens vistas into sweet distances that we had almost forgotten, and brings into view objects that we may have been sighing for the sight of all the Summer long. Suppose, for example, that the summer view from the windows of a favourite sleeping-room is bounded by a screen of shrubs, shelving upward from the turf, and terminating in a little copse of Limes, Beeches, and Sycamores--the prettiest boundary that can greet the morning glance, when the shutters are opened, and the Sun slants gaily in at them, as if glad to be again admitted. How pleasant is it,--when, as now, the winds of Winter have stripped the branches that thus bound our view in,--to spy beyond them, as if through net-work, the sky-pointing spire of the distant village church, rising from behind the old Yew-tree that darkens its portal; and the trim parsonage beside it, its ivy-grown windows glittering perhaps in the early sun! Oh--none, but those who _will_ see the good that is in everything, know how very few evils there are without some of it attendant on them.

But though the least pleasant sight connected with the coming on of Winter in this month is, to see the leaves, that have so gladdened the groves all the Summer long, falling everywhere around us, withered and dead,--that sight is accompanied by another which is too often overlooked. Though most of the leaves fall in Winter, and the stems and branches which they beautified stand bare, many of them remain all the year round, and look brighter and fresher now than they did in Spring, in virtue of the contrasts that are everywhere about them. Indeed the cultivation of Evergreens has become so general with us of late years, that the home enclosures about our country dwellings, from the proudest down to even the poorest, are seldom to be seen without a plentiful supply, which we now, in this month, first begin to observe, and acknowledge the value of. It must be a poor plot of garden-ground indeed that does not now boast its clumps of Winter-blowing Laurestinus; its trim Holly-bushes, bright with their scarlet berries; or its tall Spruce Firs, shooting up their pyramid of feathery branches beside the low, ivy-grown porch.

Of this last-named profuse ornamenter of whatever is permitted to afford it support (the Ivy), we now too everywhere perceive the beautifully picturesque effects: though there is one effect of it, also perceived about this time, which I cannot persuade myself to be reconciled to: I mean where the trunk of a tall tree is bound about with Ivy almost to its top, which during the Summer has scarcely been distinguished as a separate growth, but which now, when the other leaves are fallen, and the outspread branches stand bare, offers to the eye, not a contrast, but a contradiction.

But let us not dwell on any thing in disfavour of Ivy,--which is one of the prime boasts of the village scenery of our island, and which, even at this season of the year, offers pictures to the eye that cannot be paralleled elsewhere. Perhaps as a single object of sight, there is nothing which gives so much innocent pleasure to so many persons, as an English Village Church, when the Ivy has held undisputed possession of it for many years, and has hung its fantastic banners all about it.