Spring in a Shropshire AbbeyGaskell, Catherine Henrietta Milnes, Lady
General
Spring in a Shropshire Abbey
Gaskell, Catherine Henrietta Milnes, Lady
Shropshire (England) -- Description and travel; Wenlock Abby (England)
I went home, my eyes almost dazzled with their radiancy, and a week
after attempted to work into my curtain something of what I had
seen--a feeble reflection, I fear, but still a reflection. In my
angels and cherubim I have allowed no greys or browns, no twilight
shades. Everywhere I have introduced a pure warm note of intense
joyous colour, and if I have not always succeeded, at least the wings
of my celestial beings have been a great source of delight to
imagine, and to execute. In my colouring it has been always morning.
Bess was charmed to run and fetch me the different wools
needed--"Summer suns," she called them.
I have often noticed that to a young child, pure brilliant colours
are an intense joy and a source of gaiety. It is only as the shades
of the prison-house draw near, and press upon us, that the lack of
appreciation creeps in for what to children and to primitive man is a
great and constant glory. That day I was going to embroider some
anemones, such as I remembered in the old market-place of Mentone,
and a sprig of stocks, such as I recollected once having seen on a
drive to Brigg. The eye of the mind can be a great pleasure if
properly cultivated. It may not be actually correct, but it can give
the soul and the life of things remembered, even through the mist of
years.
And now one word, dear sister-devotees of the needle, about
embroidery. Do not imagine that shading in five or six shades of the
same colour, which is the way that nine people out of ten work, is
the true and natural one. This only produces a sad and wooden flower,
without life or gladness, and conceived and worked amongst the shades
of twilight. Take any flower and place it in the sunlight, and you
will see in any purple flower, for instance, that there are not only
different shades, but different colours--red, mauve, blue, lavender,
and violet. I realized as I gazed at my anemone, that it must be
embroidered in greyish lavenders, with here and there pure notes of
violet with heather tints, in red purples, in greyish whites, and
with a vivid apple-green centre. All these were strikingly different
colours, but were necessary in the shading to make my blossom look as
if it had grown amidst sunlight and shower.
I stood my bunch of real flowers in water in as strong a light as
possible; as to the sunshine, alas! of that there was but a scanty
supply, and I had to imagine that mostly, as also the scent of the
orange groves and the thrilling song of the blackcaps overhead, for
in our northern world, let it be written with sorrow, many and long
are the dull leaden months between each summer. Still light did
something, and imagination did the rest. I imagined myself back under
the brilliant sky of southern France, and I thought I saw the bowls
of brilliant flowers as I had known them, whilst I threaded my needle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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