May 30
A brilliantly sunny day. This funny old farmhouse where we are staying quite delights me. It is pleasant, too, to dawdle over dressing, to put away shaving tackle for a day or so, to jump out of bed in the morning and thrust my head out of the window into the fresh and stock-scented air of the garden, listen to the bird chorus or watch a “scrap” in the poultry-run. Then all unashamed, I dress myself before a dear old lady in a flowery print gown concealing 4 thin legs and over the top of the mirror a piece of lace just like a bonnet, caught up in front by a piece of pink ribbon. On the walls Pear’s Soap Annuals, on a side table Swiss Family Robinson and Children of the New Forest. Then there are rats under the floors, two wooden staircases which wind up out of sight, two white dairies, iron hapses on all the doors and a privy at the top of the orchard. (Tell me—how do you explain the psychosis of a being who on a day must have seized hammer and nail and an almanac picture of a woman in the snow with a basket of goodies—“An Errand of Mercy”—carried all three to the top of the orchard and nailed the picture up on the dirty wall in the semidarkness of an earth-closet?)
Got up quite early before breakfast and went birds’-nesting. … It would take too long and be too sentimental for me to record my feelings on looking into the first nest I found—a Chaffinch’s, the first wild bird’s eggs I have seen for many years. As I stood with an egg between thumb and forefinger, my memories flocked down like white birds and surrounded me. I remained still, fed them with my thoughts and let them perch upon my person—a second St. Francis of Assisi. Then I shoo’ed them all away and prepared for the more palpitating enjoyment of today.
After breakfast we sat in the Buttercup field—my love and I—and “plucked up kisses by the roots that grew upon our lips.” The sun was streaming down and the field thickly peopled with Buttercups. From where we sat we could see the whole of the valley below and Farmer Whaley—a speck in the distance—working a machine in a field. We watched him idly. The gamekeeper’s gun went off in one of the covers. It was jolly to put our heads together right down deep in the Buttercups and luxuriously follow the pelting activities of the tiny insects crawling here and there in the forest of grass, clambering over a broken blade athwart another like a wrecked tree or busily enquiring into some low scrub at the roots. A chicken came our way and he seemed an enormous bird from the grass-blade’s point of view. How nice to be a chicken in a field of Buttercups and see them as big as Sunflowers! or to be a Gulliver in the Beech Woods! to be so small as to be able to climb a Buttercup, tumble into the corolla and be dusted yellow or to be so big as to be able to pull up a Beech-tree with finger and thumb! If only a man were a magician, could play fast and loose with rigid Nature? what a multitude of rich experiences he could discover for himself!
I looked long and steadily this morning at the magnificent torso of a high forest Beech and tried to project myself into its lithe tiger-like form, to feel its electric sap vitalising all my frame out to the tip of every tingling leaf, to possess its splendid erectness in my own bones. I could have flung my arms around its fascinating body but the austerity of the great creature forbad it. Then a Hawk fired my ambition!—to be a Hawk, or a Falcon, to have a Falcon’s soul, a Falcon’s heart—that splendid muscle in the cage of the thorax—and the Falcon’s pride and sagacious eye!
When the sun grew too hot we went into the wood where waves of Bluebells dashed up around the foot of the Oak in front of us. … I never knew before, the delight of offering oneself up—an oblation of one’s whole being; I even longed for some self-sacrifice, to have to give up something for her sake. It intoxicated me to think I was making another happy. …
After a lunch of scrambled eggs and rhubarb and cream went up into the Beech Wood again and sat on a rug at the foot of a tree. The sun filtered in through the greenery casting a “dim, religious light.”
“It’s like a cathedral,” I chattered away, “stained glass windows, pillars, aisles—all complete.”
“It would be nice to be married in a Cathedral like this,” she said. “At C⸺ Hall Cathedral, by the Rev. Canon Beech. …”
“Sir Henry Wood was the organist.”
“Yes,” she said, “and the Rev. Blackbird the precentor.”
We laughed over our silliness!
Shrewmice pattered over the dead leaves and one came boldly into view under a bramble bush—she had never seen one before. Overhead, a ribald fellow of a Blackbird whistled a jaunty tune. E⸺ laughed. “I am sure that Blackbird is laughing at us,” she said. “It makes me feel quite hot.”
This evening we sat on the slope of a big field where by lowering our eyes we could see the sun setting behind the grass blades—a very pretty sight which I do not remember ever to have noted before. A large blue Carabus beetle was stumbling about, Culvers cooed in the woods near by. It was delightful to be up 600 feet on a grassy field under the shadow of a large wood at sunset with my darling.