AND ANOTHER THING
May-time's tongues in trees and sermons in stones
PAUL JOHNSON
The long-delayed spring finally came to west Somerset last weekend. The sky, from dawn to dusk, was the true cerulean. The icy wind which has tortured us these many past weeks died down to a cool zephyr. The birds, hitherto discouraged, began to sing full-throated, led by the thrushes nearby and echoed by woodpigeons and the cuck- oo in the distant hills. And I have found a new wood. I treasure the woods of this part of England. Not only have we kept all our hedgerows, with the wildflowers and birds and small furry animals that go with them, but we also have countless small woods, varying from an acre or two to 50, which have ancient names and strong individual characteristics and definite metaphysical qualities.
A wood is more than the sum of its parts. It is not just a hundred trees but the rap- port between them, the little universe of lesser growths which their canopies and trunks and roots create between them, their avenues of light and shade and dense- ness, the communities of living things for which they provide food and shelter, the spooky or joyous or mysterious atmo- spheres they generate. A wood has a collec- tive growth of its own, quite distinct from its individual units. Lewis Carroll invented the word `tulgey' to express the intertwining and mutual support and federalism of an old wood.
This new one is just down the hill from an old, ruinous cottage which my wife Marigold has bought, and which my second son, Cosmo, is rebuilding. The place is very remote even for these parts. Nobody goes there and nothing has happened for decades. So it is exciting bringing this old habitation back to life. Cosmo has discov- ered, buried in the tangled old garden, the vast black slates which constituted the old fireplace, and they are now back in place, cleaned and polished and austerely beauti- ful. It is a small miracle of rebirth.
But it is down in the wood that the true miracle is taking place. This is an ancient wood of immense height, elegance and dig- nity. All woods are cathedrals to me: their canopies, vaults; their trunks, pillars; their undergrowth, furnishings; their internal spaces, aisles, choirs and transepts. Some dense, low-slung woods are romanesque in character, others, more aspiring, Early English or Decorated. In west Somerset, I have come across baroque woods and even rococo ones. This new wood I have found is definitely perpendicular. It is a little mas- terpiece of immense verticals soaring out of the bracken and furze and blossoming into pendant vaulting. It might have been designed by Henry Yevele himself, or William of Wynford or one of the Vertues.
Last Saturday morning, I stood looking at this wood, in the glittering sunlight, root- ed to the spot, quite entranced by its majes- tic form and the marvellous things which were happening to it. As if with pent-up energy now that the sunlight was at last beating down, the new leaf was appearing everywhere, thrusting emerald horizontals across and between the dark pillars of the trunks, which looked as if they were made of basalt or Portland marble. Great shafts of sunlight pierced the thin foliage. Below, the tangled undergrowth — I almost said the pavement — appeared to heave and shudder with growth. About 1250, an anonymous early English poet captured this moment exactly when he wrote `sprungth the wude nu'. My wood was indeed alive with sprungthing. And every variety of tiny leaf was distinctive. I count- ed 27 different shades of green and yellow.
It is at moments like this that one becomes conscious of the transcendental event which the spring constitutes, the annual re-enactment of the original cre- ation. This is a metaphysical happening which the scientific explanations of Oxford's new Professor of Atheism cannot illuminate, and which David Attenbor- ough's pagan nature programmes cannot reproduce. It is an event which has to be felt in the heart. Artists sense it, of course. At exactly this time of year, in a letter dated 9 May 1819, Constable wrote to his wife from East Bergholt, expressing pre- cisely the feeling I experienced at the week- end: 'Every tree seems full of blossom of some kind, & the surface of the ground seems quite living — every step I take & on whatever object I turn my Eye, that sublime expression in the Scripture "I am the resur- rection and the life" etc. seems verified about me.'
But, as Constable knew very well, the sheer dynamism, the kaleidoscopic force of spring poses problems for the painter. It is one thing to describe it in words, much more difficult to get it down on paper or canvas. The magnitude of the visual glory makes you despair of achieving verisimili- tude. The infinite shades of green are themselves baffling. It is a fact that neither traditional lore nor modern technology has provided artists with satisfactory greens. This may explain why Turner tried to avoid green altogether, and his grim and mysteri- ous remark when challenged on this point: `Can't afford it — can't afford it!'
However, we must do our best with the materials available. As Constable said, you have to go into the wood and master it. That is not easy because the hard-to-define uniqueness of each wood, the special visual quality which makes it quite distinct from all the other woods in the world, is mighty hard to show in line and tint. It is rather like doing a portrait — one minute error of brushstroke, especially around the eyes or lips, and the likeness is gone. Woods are elusive, like the characters of human beings. Indeed, in a sense, a wood is human or rather superhuman, exuding a mysteri- ous personality and primaeval wisdom. Per- haps that is what Wordsworth meant when he wrote:
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
The old Cumbrian wizard may be right and I intend to put him to the test. Now that I have discovered this wood — old in time, new to me — I intend to explore it and examine it and paint it, to discover what deep secrets it holds and what truth it has to convey. Perhaps I shall begin by buy- ing it — insofar as any miracle like a wood can be got by mere money.
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