19 JULY 1946, Page 14

Nature's Melodrama

Just before midnight the lightning began, flashing out in broad sheets up and over the sky, in a bed-making movement. The castings gradually became continuous, so that one could see to read. Then suddenly the wind began, with a slap at the side of the house that shook it, and set the orchards moaning and writhing. I saw a bed of delphiniums go down like hay before the scythe. The Russell lupins followed (a first- year show which I had raised from seed last autumn). I watched the cornfield leaping about below me like a maddened horse, the lightning exaggerating its contortions. 'Then the rain came, drumming down through the flashes. Hollywood could not have produced anything more overdone.