April beginnings: "so priketh hem Nature in hir coragis"*

"Sweet Thames run Softly",  Robert Gibbings wood engraving, 1940

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms.  Spring was moving in the air above  and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.  It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said "Bother!" and "O Blow!" and also "Hang spring-cleaning!" and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.  Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air.  So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again  and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, "Up we go! Up we go!" till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."

The Wind in the Willows,  Kenneth Grahame 1908

"The Wind in the Willows"     Paul Bransom

The first illustrations, by Paul Bransom, were not until the eighth edition in 1913, and many notable illustrators have followed, like Arthur Rackham and E. H. Shepard, but I have always read Kenneth Grahame's story of Ratty, Mole, Badger and Mr Toad in a sibling's 1941 school edition with no pictures, just the excitement of Grahame's words.

As a child, when his mother died, Kenneth Grahame and his sister and brothers were sent to England  to live with their grandmother at The Mount, Cookham Dean, close to the Thames.  Here his uncle, the local curate, introduced him to boats and the river and later when Grahame lived further west at Blewbury with his family, the stories he wrote in The Wind in the Willows were those he had told to his young son Alastair.

  The gardens at The Mount,  Cookham Dean,  Stanley Spencer  1938 © artist's estate

Cookham Reach and Barley Hill,  Stanley Spencer c. 1920

Stanley Spencer grew up in Cookham itself and his paintings of the village and Cookham Lock have made the place famous.  Robert Gibbings was a friend from the Slade Art School, and in 1939 rowed along the Thames in his boat the "Willow" compiling his book Sweet Thames Run Softly.

*"Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages."  The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer

April Labours: the promise of abundance

These April flowers come from the Labours of the Months series in the famous Rose Window of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Lausanne, Switzerland.  It is the work of an intinerant artist from Picardy,  one Peter of Arras,  dated c. 1231-35.

And here I show my ignorance:  is this man bringing spring flowers indoors from the outside to welcome spring, or even to store like herbs in a rather grand cupboard, or is that a window shutter he is opening to show the new clover growing in abundance?   His headdress could be a crown or a garland,  personifying April, holding large bunches of purple trefoil and perhaps alfalfa, or other fodder plant; his gown is also decorated with flower patterns.

Figure of April, from the Rose Window, Cathedral of Notre Dame, Lausanne, Switzerland 

It is a masterly piece of design, interpreting the typical April Labours motif of spring flowers in an unusual style, to suit its ecclesiastic setting.  Notice how his foot brings him outside the circular frame and the sense of movement in the plants and his robes.  

Set in the Cathedral's great Rose window, and its detail not all visible to the naked eye, its christian message seems to read of good husbandry and the promise of abundance.

Today is Easter Sunday in the UK and although some snow is forecast, primroses are blooming at the end of my road.  Happy Easter!