Country Diary Reflections, Jan 1906 | Among Fields and Flowers: Seasons with an Edwardian Lady ~ Part 2 | A Slowly Unfolding Series
In my first post, Among Fields and Flowers: Reading the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, I shared how Edith Holden’s diary has stirred my sense of wonder. By slowing down and pondering her sketches and writings, I am beginning to notice the quiet details tucked in.
As I turn to her January pages, one image stands out: a curious oak tree, rooted in a field near Elmdon Park, uniquely catching Edith’s attention from afar.
Before this solitary oak appears in her diary, January is shaped by a series of quieter notes. The entries dwell on the damp and frosty weather, the comings and goings of birds as well as a curious robin—haunting the neighborhood’s gardens—and the picturesque countryside of flowers and foliage.
I am first greeted with her sketching of Blue and Cole Tit birds. Although I cannot share her sketch with you, I can share this resemblance.
Journal entries describe rain, gales of wind, and hard frosts. Not far from a pond, she saw several Moorhens feeding. I anticipate that Edith had her favorite haunts she returned to time and time again.
In addition to weather and wild life, she was particularly fascinated with foliage.
“Jan. 23…Went for a country walk. Every twig on every tree and bush was outlined in silver tracery against the sky…The mild winter has brought out the Hazel Catkins early, the small green flowers are fully expand: red on some of the catkins, and the pretty little red stars on the female flowers are appearing.”
An entire page was devoted to The Yew Tree, which can live to a great age—some “in this country being recorded up to 1000 years of age. It is supposed to have been planted by the Druids in their sacred groves.”
Edith often quotes poetry, and for the Yew she included lines from William Wordsworth’s poem of Yew Trees where he described them as “the pride of Lorton Vale,” “stands single in the midst / Of vast circumference and gloom profound,” “a living thing / Produced too slowly ever to decay.”
Still my favorite is the curious oak tree. Edith described how from a distance it looked as if “half the tree were dead and the other half covered with glossy green leaves.” Upon closer inspection, she found that the main trunk and two of the main branches were a type of oak tree that is leafless in winter. And “growing out of the crown of the trunk and forming fully half of the tree was an Evergreen or Cork Oak in full foliage. The join in the two trunks was scarcely perceptible.”
A beautiful thing it is to see nature through the eyes of Edith Holden. Before reading these pages, I was not aware of Blue and Cole Tit birds, or of Hazel Catkins, or even a Yew Tree. But I am now the richer for it. And the next time I see an oak, her words about the curious oak tree of Elmdon Park will certainly come to mind.
I stole a peek at her February pages for the next in this series. I am anxious to read of the new foliage and critters she encountered as well as the new places she explored of Solihull and Bentley Heath.
