20 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
1 H E ultimate pin¬ 
nacle of the gar¬ 
dener’s life is reached, 
mes soeurs, when one attains that facility with Latin which 
makes it possible for one to pass through her garden and 
offhandedly call each bush and blossom by its classical, its 
botanical name. 
This is an astral plane, and one arrives there only after 
patiently consorting with men learned on the subject—or 
with flamboyant garden labels and seed catalogues. 
One must not stumble 
over the names. One must 
not hesitate and run down 
the neuter of the second 
declension or the feminine 
of the third to find the 
proper ending. Not at all. 
One should be able to roam 
through one’s garden chat¬ 
ting a Latin as far above 
reproach as was Caesar’s 
wife. Pachysandra termi- 
nalis var. variegata, Sem- 
pervivum tectorum (which 
grows wonderfully in poor 
soil), Erigeron Glabellas, 
Calistephus hortensis (dear 
old China aster!), Helian- 
themnm vidgare, Gnapha- 
lium Leontopodium —these 
should trip from 
tongue as though, 
well really one pre- 
Pliny to Ernest 
and Ovid’s “Ars 
to Dreiser’s 
TANICALLY SPEAKING 
names 
one’s 
really, 
ferred 
Poole 
Atnatoria 
“Genius.” 
'HAT a consoling 
sense of universality 
the world over whether 
Caesar be pronounced 
with a C or a K. And 
whether one understands it or not, the very use of the 
language in the garden is a pass to that household of many 
tongues and many customs. 
Those of other minds have also their justifiable reason, and 
one is tempted to say that in the garden sentiment is good 
logic. These are the insurgents—the Wycliffs and Luthers 
(not Burbank) of the gardening world who have scant pa¬ 
tience with a tongue not 
understanded of the people. 
MARCH NIGHT 
The z'istacd concaves of infinity. 
Star-vast, and archipelagocd with suns, 
And gulfed with stellar space—the luminous banks 
Of the gigantic, straggling Milky Way, 
The moon that takes the huge world at one glance, 
Give me a winging sense of stars and space. 
Dim-bodied shapes of unimagined Dream 
Beat round me with a multitude of wings; 
Eternity’s presence overshadozvs me, 
And I reach out tozvard everlastingness . . . 
But now the moon’s a ghost in silver mail, 
As, blowing through a storm of stars, the earth 
Dips dozvnward into dawn, deluged with light —• 
Sunlight which is the golden laugh of God! 
The naked trees — gaunt, sullen limbs a-creak — 
That shivered half-alive in the rushing air 
Of Winter, dream of greenness and are glad; 
The marching armies of the snow have gone; 
White blossoms soon will rain from windy boughs; 
All Nature’s little gentle things will zvake, 
And earth will grow a Wonder to the sky! 
—Harry Kemp 
w 
this Latin gives! One 
speaks the same garden 
tongue as the little Jap who 
sucks at his three-puff pipe 
beside a stone lantern in 
Yamagani, the same as the 
devout Moslem pulling on 
his houkah in an Omar 
Khayyam garden, the same 
as some exquisite daughter 
of La Belle France pulling 
on a cigarette beside her 
tapis vert, the same as Mrs. 
Reginald Chomley-Brook- 
hausen pulling on her gum 
in her strictly proper and 
formal garden at Wichita, 
Kansas. Now you may call a spade a spade, and the Jap 
call it a shovel, and La Belle France a bcche and the Turk 
a cha’on, and Mrs. Reginald Chomlev-Brookhausen a dig¬ 
ging instrument, but to all-American, Jap, Turk, French 
and divorcee— rosa must always be a rose. 
And through the varying changes and chances of this 
wicked world that nomenclature holds its own. Slavic ani¬ 
mosity may rouse the Tsar to change Petersburg to Petro- 
grad, Celtic rage may rename Le Boulevard Houssman Le 
Boulevard Kitchener, British wrath strip the Garter off Wil¬ 
helm’s leg and the Star off his breast, yet, despite these rav¬ 
aging wars, these soul-wrecking mutations, the humble 
Tradescantia Virginiana var. coccinea remains the humble 
Tradescantia Virginiana var. coccinea —that gentle little 
flower in the cranny of the wall, the red spiderwort. 
Of course, there are eminently justifiable reasons for this: 
the very work of classical scholarship forms a bond of unity 
between differing nations and diverse peoples. Latin is Latin 
R' 
OBERT BROWN¬ 
ING was a brave 
man. He had the courage 
to marry against the wishes 
of a stem parent. He had 
the courage to live over a 
deep canal in Venice. He 
had the courage to write 
“The Ring and the Book.” 
But even greater courage 
did he display when he 
flung conventions to the 
winds, tore up the botany 
manuals as though they 
were mere scraps of paper, 
and descanted on the Span¬ 
ish name of a flower. He 
even went so far as to say 
that he “must learn Span¬ 
ish, one of these days, 
only for that slow, sweet 
name’s sake.” 
Whether he did or not 
is a matter for conjecture. 
He may have taken out a 
poet’s license to say such 
things. But there is the 
vow, down in black and 
white, in the third verse of 
the first section of “Garden 
Fancies.” 
It is a terrifying sight to 
see a dignified old gentle¬ 
man thus kicking over the 
enthroned gods of Classical 
Nomenclature. It makes 
one tremble for the stabil¬ 
ity of all things antique and 
orthodox. One wonders 
what would happen if gar¬ 
deners rose in their might 
and scourged forth the La¬ 
tin name changers from 
the Temple of All Growing 
Things. Chaos, irretrievable chaos. Rosa would no longer 
be a rose to all men. It would become as extinct as the Dodo 
and the split skirt, as diverse a thing as the spade, 
T HERE are a few other intrepid souls who face conse¬ 
quences and cling to the names they love, names that 
mean something to them. They walk down the garden of 
their delight, and no rose ever bloomed so fair as where some 
buried Caesar’s Latin lies. To them rest harrow—if they 
chance to have it—brings the vision of the field and the spot 
where the harrow rested from its furrowing; to them wall¬ 
flowers flash the memories of old secluded gardens that have 
place in their hearts. 
These are the old names—gillyflower, primrose, cowslip, 
forget-me-not, daisy, periwinkle, camomile, marigold, mi¬ 
gnonette, mallow, hollyhock, foxglove, Sweet William, clem¬ 
atis, honeysuckle. 
Is there not slow, sweet music in such names? 
