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!
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