Vernon Lee : The Enchanted Woods

Caspar David Friedrich

Uttewalder Grund, Elbe valley, 1825

Vernon Lee

The Enchanted Woods

(1905)

THE ENCHANTED WOODS

I MAY not tell you — it were indiscreet and to no purpose — on what part of the earth's surface the Enchanted Woods are situate. When one is in them they seem to march nowhere with reality ; and after issuing one is tempted to deny their existence. For they are full of spells and of adventure without end, drawing one, up that dark, gliding river, into their hidden heart. The soil into which the thousand-year-old oaks strike their gnarled roots, is the soil of romance itself. Rinaldo or Sir Guyon was steered along those translucent brown waters in the twilight of the boughs, and enchantresses plied the oars. The heron who has rattled up from among the reeds is the cousin of the wonderful Blue Bird ; the fountain of Merlin is hidden among the twisted whitethorns; perhaps Merlin himself.

One wanders along muttering scraps of verse, or, as happened to me, pursued by a phrase of recitative, a bar of purling accompaniment, telling the loves of Amadis ; one follows now one path, now another, through marshland or underwood, up and down, endlessly, aimlessly, much as one reads, listlessly turning pages,the suddenly broken off, suddenly resumed narrative of Ariosto or Tasso or Spenser ; the fancy roving, galloping, changing loves and identities like the willing victims of great wizards and fairies. Who was it, and where, who sailed upstream inland, inland into such woods as these, on a river like this one ? The river glides swiftly, flush with the grass, clear reddish brown close by, clear golden green in the distance, but always wonderfully deep and dark ; dimpling and eddying with the pebbles it rolls, murmuring and rustling where it sweeps the branches of the overhanging oaks. The sunshine is in small spots, in broken stars, through the foliage. Scarcely a rustle of leaves, a distant twitter and cooing of birds ; every sound dominated by the murmur of that stream in the deep woodland silence.

I am faced by the sunset in a wide chace, green and browned over with rushes ; the sunset among branches of immense trees and in the gaps between them, vivid crimson and bars of pale fresh blue. Back in the thickets it is dusk, and I lose my way, and am happy to lose it ; and the creaking of the branches, the sudden hurtle of wings — wild duck rising in the marsh hard by — makes my heart stop with delightful fright, and I sing, but under my breath, to keep myself company. And, of a sudden, stop. For I have struck once more that strange river, gliding exceeding swiftly, smooth, silent, dark between the trees. And the oaks and beeches loom in the dusk, colossal, the pale branches take threatening appearances, as of elephants or writhing snakes. Shapes still exist, but all colour is gone, and with it all life, in that brown light made of darkness. Such, surely, might be the rivers, the trees and thickets of Elysium, where Orpheus, seeking Eurydice, need scarcely avert his eyes, seeing her already as a shadow among shadows.

Here is a bridge, which I cross ; and issuing from the magic gloom, and striding through the rough grass under the open starlit sky, behold ! close in front is the long terraced house, with ground-floor windows standing open, lit up orange in the serene blue evening. And my heart rejoices at the nearness of gracious and hospitable inmates, not wizards or enchantresses, but ten thousand times more delightful.

Enchanted woods are rare. But I suspect that where they exist, and seem — so deep is their magic — to march nowhere on reality, they are most often within a stone's-throw of the dear homes of every day ; nor is it needful to travel very far afield in order to find them.

This belief is beginning to be borne in on me, and to cure me of hankerings after new and distant places. For although the pleasures of travel, the quest of the kindly genius of localities, have been perhaps the greatest blessing of my life, I find, on thinking things over, that on the whole I have travelled less than my neighbours, and far less for travelling's own sake. There are moments, of course, when I feel just a little saddened at seeing them start without me for wonderful places — Egypt and Spain and Greece, which I shall never go to ; and when certain names, mere casual references to this thing or that, drive into my heart a funny little wedge, gentle and yet quite sharp, of longing—the nostalgia of the hills and streets one will never see with bodily eye.

But is not this tiny pang the preparation for all happiness and its accompaniment ? And is there not, in our finest pleasures, something analogous to that sense of delicrhtful breathlessness with which we climb a hillside or make head against the waves of a sea-wind? In other words, does not the thorough having of anything require a wide margin of — I will not say of lacking but of forgoing, of not having, other things ; and is not sparingness and comparative emptiness — the sparingness and comparative emptiness of the monk's table and cell — the rule of true votaries of enjoyment ? Stay at home, explore the surrounding ten miles (and no pleasure of travel is keener than that of the first hundred yards of the eleventh mile from home), promenade round one's garden or bedroom like De Maistre, and thus get up a fine hunger for distant wanderings, for China or Peru ? Heaven forbid ! There is no folly more vain or fruitless than to manipulate one's own happiness !

My growing belief is that the journeys richest in pleasant memories are those undertaken accidentally, or under the stress of necessity ; moreover, that the most interesting places are those which we stray into, or just deflect towards, as we wander for the sake of friends or work, or even in humbler quest of cheapness of living or economy of health. This belief that the best travel is not for travelling's sake goes hand in hand with a certain philosophy of life, very vague, difficult to define, but perhaps the deeper down and more inevitable, forcing itself upon one with every added year of experience. As we continue to live, and see more of our own and other folks' lives behind, or alongside of us, there arises a dim comprehension of some mysterious law by which the good things of life, all the happiness — nay, the very power of being happy — are not life's aims but life's furtherance, and their true possession depends on willing and uncalculating response to life's multifold and changing beckonings and behests.

Life itself is a journey from an unknown starting point to an unknown goal. We who move along its tracks cannot overlook the roads which cross and recross one another in endless intricacy ; and the maps we make for ourselves are the mere scrawlings of fanciful children. All we can do, while thus travelling we know neither whence nor whither, is to keep our eyes clear, our feet undefiled, to drop as much useless baggage as possible, and fill our hands with the fruits and herbs, sweet or salutary, of the roadside. But if we imagine that we can bend our course to the hidden Temples of Sais, or the Gardens of Armida, or the Heavenly Jerusalem, why ! there is no mischief in hoping ; only, methinks we shall be disappointed.

For wisdom, beauty — nay, holiness itself — are not regions of the soul, attainable and separate kingdoms ; but rather, methinks, modes in which the soul carries itself, or not, along the mysterious journey to which it is elected or condemned. And as to the gods, we need not pilgrimage towards them : they walk, majestic, through the universe ; and if our spirit is reverent and cheerful, they take us now and then by the hand, and lead us a few yards — yes, lead even our poor selves, with the fish in our hand and the dog at our heels as the two archangels lead the little Tobit in the pictures.

If this be the case, as I think, with the angels and the great gods, how much more with so humble a divinity as the friendly one of localities ! We need undertake no voyages of discovery to meet the Genius Loci. There is a presiding spirit, an oread, in every venerable and well-grown tree, overtopping the forest or lonely upon the ploughed ridges ; a naiad in every well-head, among the trickling cress and the mossy stones ; nay, even in every cistern of fair masonry and pure beryl water open to the sky, where watering-cans are filled of evenings. And as to enchanted woods, why, they lie in many parks and girdle many cities ; only you must know them when you see them, and submit willingly to their beneficent magic. Thus we enrich our life, not by the making of far-fetched plans, nor by the seeking of change and gain ; but by the faithful putting to profit of what is within our grasp.

Wherefore, O benign divinity of places, bestow upon us eyes and hearts such as will recognize thy hidden shrines all over the world and within every lane's turning ; and grant us,

as thy highest boon, to wander every now and then in the Enchanted Woods, between the hour of rising from our solitary work and the hour of sitting down to meat with our dear friends !

* * *