The Road At Abbotsbury Was Near And
Looked To Me More Intensely Red Than Any Ordinary Red Earth,
And The Sight Was Strangely Pleasing.
These two complementary
colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus - a
little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the
red and vivid the green the better they please us.
We see
this in flowers - in the red geranium, for example - where there
is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I
sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our
most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the
meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall
translucent grasses. I remember the joy it was in boyhood in
early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in
our gallops over the level grass pampas we came upon a patch
of scarlet verbenas. The first sight of the intense blooms
scattered all about the turf would make us wild with delight,
and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go down among
the flowers to feast on the sight.
Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing
amid the green is distributed very partially, and it may be
the redness of the soil and the cliffs in Devon have given
that county a more vivid personality, so to speak, than most
others. Think of Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and
dull-coloured clays in this connection!
The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a
good colourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to
burrow in, and the hillocks he throws up from numberless
irregular splashes of bright red colour on a green sward. The
wild animals that strike us as most beautiful, when seen
against a green background, are those which bear the reddest
fur - fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow a few
miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch
cows scattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying
down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving
about and cropping the long flowery grasses. All were of that
fine rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon
cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red animals
in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception of
a rare variety of the collie dog. The Irish setter and red
chouchou come near it. So beautiful did these red cows look
in the meadow that I stood still for half an hour feasting my
eyes on the sight.
No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of
that road winding over the hill above the village. On going
to it I found that it had looked as red as rust simply because
it was rust-earth made rich and beautiful in colour with iron,
its red hue variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple
or violet.
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