The Weekly Machen
The following article is the fifth in a series by Arthur Machen for The Daily Express.
London’s Tree Tyrant
Why Our Streets Look So Sad in Autumn
by
Arthur Machen
September 30, 1918
The London tree is a sad object in autumn. I was observing the trees of the streets yesterday, under dismal conditions of a wet afternoon, and I am bound to say that the general aspect of misery was made more miserable by the sad leaves that dripped on the wet pavements.
For in London, autumn brings no touch of grace to the fading leaf. The leaves of the planes turn dirty, dingy, disreputable. Even while they still hang on the boughs they look as if they ought to be lying in the gutter, speedily to be swept away with other rubbish. They are only sodden and ugly things.
It is different in the country. Far in the west I know a certain forest wood that goes through the heart of a great wood. Here in autumn the beech shines against the sky in golden glory, the wild cherry burns and glows red in the middle of the wood, the maple is bright yellow, the dying elm leaves are lie pale in autumn sunshine. The hedges were festooned with the scarlet berries of the briony, and the red haws of the wild rose away over the ferns that are still green and flourishing, sheltered from the frost under the arched roots of the tree.
We cannot look for those beauties in London; our soot and smoke will not suffer it. But one thing we might have; a revolt against the tyranny of the plane. It is a fine tree, and it stands the acids and the sulphurs of the London air very well; but perpetual planes grow a little tiresome.
There are other trees that will prosper in the very heart of London. The ash, one of the most beautiful of all trees, does well; I know a thriving specimen in the Marylobone-road. For garden planting, the mulberry is excellent. The fig grows great as if it were in its native Syria, and if it is a matter of covering a wall, there is no more beautiful or luxuriant climber for London than the vine.
Once I was walking up Pentonville, and I wondered at the curious aspect of one of the rather dingy houses that border that grim road. The wall was, as it were, a curious marble richly veined in green and purple. This was a vine, laden with bunches of ripe grapes.
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This makes me realize how little I know of the history of parks and gardens and public and private planting (for want of a better general term) in London. The scope of Machen’s comments make me think he may be touching on both public and private planting with an eye to policies and choices made, and how easily that situation might be varied and enriched. How one might get a general and further a detailed sense of such things in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, I have no good idea.
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Alas, I am no gardener, but it seems he has a practical eye to what could be done at once in the concrete situation of “our soot and smoke” and “the acids and the sulphurs of the London air”. But I wonder just what could be done to assure confidently edible mulberries, figs, and grapes?
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You point out some interesting questions. Sadly, I’m no gardener either. It seems like there should be some forgotten tome on the urban flora of the Great City. The “London air” comment reminds me that AM wrote a short piece on the vanishing London fogs. This week, I will post it in the Miscellanea section.
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