Waterfalls by Alice Meynell

‘We then went out to see a cascade. I trudged unwillingly, and was not sorry to find it dry. ' Dr. Johnson was not often pleased, it seems, upon this tour in Wales in the company of ‘my mistress' and her family, and the arid waterfall was no doubt a welcome incident, for the scenery had been tedious to his spirit. He made light of the mountains, and did not hesitate to propose a strange image to the fancy of his companions when he derided a river unlucky enough to come into the prospect: ‘Why, sir, I could clear any part of it by a leap. ' He rated very low the old house of Mrs. Thrale's family, though as a house it amused him more than any view. ‘The addition of another storey would make an useful house, but it cannot be great. ' The old parish clerk who, seeing Mrs. Thrale again, ‘foolishly said that he was now willing to die,' is no doubt justly rebuked; but so seems to be Mrs. Thrale herself: ‘He had only a crown given him by my mistress. ' Then there was that dispute on the Chester walls; and, first and last, Dr. Johnson was not found to be best of companions by the ‘pretty woman' witty enough to ‘add something to the conversation', with whom he himself would have been all content.

There is reason to think that scenery in those days was rather unfairly and dully insisted upon as a matter of taste. ‘Dispositions of wood and water' were the subjects of a kind of expert study, and it is easy to understand what a bore a landscape might become under the eye of a judge. Miss Austen shows a distinct tendency to bring water, rising ground, and well-wooded slopes under review. If a modern mansion has been erected, with ignorance, in too low a situation, she has an instant eye for the barbarism. The shrubberies, the curving carriage drives, the conifers, the farm-buildings, if any, duly planted out, come under the rapid approval of an elegant mind, and so does the far prospect no less. The distance is declared to be in harmony with the demands of a lover of nature; and as you read you can hardly think of the scenery as thrilled with summer wind, or believe that its miles would mark human feet with dust, or would be measured by the wavering rods of human weariness, or subject to any incidents except those of a careful engraving. There is some charm in the false-classical landscape of that time, merely looked back upon; but it would be something less than interesting to be presently in the company of people who talked much of the dispositions of wood and water. There is a certain way of looking at a view that affects one almost with dismay to hear of. When a professor of scenery asks you to enjoy what he always calls a peep, with several kinds of fir-trees coyly betraying the way to it, there is little delight there; nor are cottages so pleasant when they, too, are said to peep; but this is a later and even a duller fancy. Landscape a hundred years ago had more dignity, though no more ‘spirit in the woods'.

If the dispositions of wood and water allowed of a waterfall, it is impossible to imagine a more welcome addition at that day to scenery constructed, like Mr. Pecksniff's younger daughter, upon good principles. The cascade had not yet been made quite a common convention, for the ‘picturesque' had not then come and gone, making dull in its passage, at least in art and in letters, the sallies of nature. To find a waterfall, in the right place, was in those days an elegant and natural joy; and it must have been no small disappointment to see Dr. Johnson trudging unwillingly. But no doubt there had been too much said.

Taste, always so nearly in peril of derogation, and, in fact, so quickly, according to all experience, dimmed by habit, has done wrong, by its weak preferences, to all the flowers of scenery-not to the actual flowers of vegetation only, though these have long been turned to the basest uses of all decoration-but to the other outbreaks of the movement and vitality of earth. The white tops of mountains and the climax of storms, forests in their utmost leaf, waves at the crest, the clouds of sunset newly on fire, waters in haste-what a gathering of blossoms is this from the summits of the world, whether on heights or on plains! Light and sound seem to be set free by the mere resounding thought of so much fruition. But, for their all-intelligible beauty, these crowns of things were long tossed together for the use of any one who so much as knew their names, and not the less cheaply because the language of description grew to be more subtle, more expert, and more poetic. Soon that expert quality also became, as it were, the waste and refuse of literature.

Waterfalls, then, have been too much in use. Not only by the travelling party of the Thrales have they been proposed too pressingly to admiration. They cannot be restored at second hand to their dignity. A very great man might restore them to his readers by a word, but no one of less authority than his need begin to take the trouble to look for it. The right course is to see them where they are, and to let the literature of the matter rest. Any phrase written here in praise of waterfalls-if such should escape-is not intended to do more than point the way whither the traveller may trudge if he will. Norway and the Pyrenees keep for us the surprise of perpetually new waters drawing to the ancient fall.