HOW SPRING CAME IN NEW ENGLAND

By Charles Dudley Warner

New England is the battle-ground of the seasons. It is La Vendee. Toconquer it is only to begin the fight. When it is completely subdued, what kind of weather have you? None whatever. 

What is this New England? A country? No: a camp. It is alternatelyinvaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of thetropics. Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoastsare fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a third of the year a contestbetween the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of the gulf. Theresult of this is a compromise: the compromise is called Thaw. It is thenormal condition in New England. The New-Englander is a person who isalways just about to be warm and comfortable. This is the stuff of whichheroes and martyrs are made. A person thoroughly heated or frozen isgood for nothing. Look at the Bongos. Examine (on the map) the Dog-Ribnation. The New-Englander, by incessant activity, hopes to get warm. Edwards made his theology. Thank God, New England is not in Paris!

Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole zone of ice andwalruses, make it unpleasant for New England. This icy cover, like thelid of a pot, is always suspended over it: when it shuts down, that iswinter. This would be intolerable, were it not for the Gulf Stream. TheGulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing from under the ribs ofthe equator, --a white knight of the South going up to battle the giantof the North. The two meet in New England, and have it out there. 

This is the theory; but, in fact, the Gulf Stream is mostly a delusionas to New England. For Ireland it is quite another thing. Potatoes ripenin Ireland before they are planted in New England. That is the reasonthe Irish emigrate--they desire two crops the same year. The Gulf Streamgets shunted off from New England by the formation of the coast below:besides, it is too shallow to be of any service. Icebergs float downagainst its surface-current, and fill all the New-England air withthe chill of death till June: after that the fogs drift down fromNewfoundland. There never was such a mockery as this Gulf Stream. It islike the English influence on France, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg. 

Still New England survives. To what purpose? I say, as an example:the politician says, to produce "Poor Boys. " Bah! The poor boy is ananachronism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is not a boy. In Tartary they would hang him for sucking all the asses' milk thatbelongs to the children: in New England he has all the cream from thePublic Cow. What can you expect in a country where one knows not todaywhat the weather will be tomorrow? Climate makes the man. Suppose he, too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where he has all climates, and issuperior to all. Perhaps he will become the prophet, the seer, of hisage, as he is its Poet. The New-Englander is the man without a climate. Why is his country recognized? You won't find it on any map of Paris. 

And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomaly! The greater must includethe less; but how if the less leaks out? This sometimes happens. 

And yet there are phenomena in that country worth observing. One of themis the conduct of Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st of June, or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice. AsTourmalain remarked, "You'd better observe the unpleasant than to beblind. " This was in 802. Tourmalain is dead; so is Gross Alain; so islittle Pee-Wee: we shall all be dead before things get any better. 

That is the law. Without revolution there is nothing. What isrevolution? It is turning society over, and putting the best undergroundfor a fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. What has this to dowith New England? In the language of that flash of social lightning, Beranger, "May the Devil fly away with me if I can see!"

Let us speak of the period in the year in New England when winterappears to hesitate. Except in the calendar, the action is ironical;but it is still deceptive. The sun mounts high: it is above the horizontwelve hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks away in liquidrepentance. One morning it is gone, except in shaded spots and close bythe fences. From about the trunks of the trees it has long departed:the tree is a living thing, and its growth repels it. The fence is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid line by man: the fence, in short, isdogma: icy prejudice lingers near it. The snow has disappeared; but thelandscape is a ghastly sight, --bleached, dead. The trees are stakes; thegrass is of no color; and the bare soil is not brown with a healthfulbrown; life has gone out of it. Take up a piece of turf: it is a clod, without warmth, inanimate. Pull it in pieces: there is no hope in it:it is a part of the past; it is the refuse of last year. This is thecondition to which winter has reduced the landscape. When the snow, which was a pall, is removed, you see how ghastly it is. The face of thecountry is sodden. It needs now only the south wind to sweep over it, full of the damp breath of death; and that begins to blow. No prospectwould be more dreary. 

And yet the south wind fills credulous man with joy. He opens thewindow. He goes out, and catches cold. He is stirred by the mysteriouscoming of something. If there is sign of change nowhere else, we detectit in the newspaper. In sheltered corners of that truculent instrumentfor the diffusion of the prejudices of the few among the many begin togrow the violets of tender sentiment, the early greens of yearning. Thepoet feels the sap of the new year before the marsh-willow. He blossomsin advance of the catkins. Man is greater than Nature. The poet isgreater than man: he is nature on two legs, --ambulatory. 

At first there is no appearance of conflict. The winter garrison seemsto have withdrawn. The invading hosts of the South are entering withoutopposition. The hard ground softens; the sun lies warm upon the southernbank, and water oozes from its base. If you examine the buds of thelilac and the flowering shrubs, you cannot say that they are swelling;but the varnish with which they were coated in the fall to keep outthe frost seems to be cracking. If the sugar-maple is hacked, it willbleed, --the pure white blood of Nature. 

At the close of a sunny day the western sky has a softened aspect: itscolor, we say, has warmth in it On such a day you may meet a caterpillaron the footpath, and turn out for him. The house-fly thaws out; acompany of cheerful wasps take possession of a chamber-window. Itis oppressive indoors at night, and the window is raised. A flock ofmillers, born out of time, flutter in. It is most unusual weather forthe season: it is so every year. The delusion is complete, when, on amild evening, the tree-toads open their brittle-brattle chorus on theedge of the pond. The citizen asks his neighbor, "Did you hear thefrogs last night?" That seems to open the new world. One thinks of hischildhood and its innocence, and of his first loves. It fills one withsentiment and a tender longing, this voice of the tree-toad. Man isa strange being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the sermons andwarnings of the church, to the calls of duty, to the pleadings of hisbetter nature, he is touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the springmultiply. The passer in the street in the evening sees the maid-servantleaning on the area-gate in sweet converse with some one leaning on theother side; or in the park, which is still too damp for anything buttrue affection, he sees her seated by the side of one who is able toprotect her from the policeman, and hears her sigh, "How sweet it is tobe with those we love to be with!"

All this is very well; but next morning the newspaper nips these earlybuds of sentiment. The telegraph announces, "Twenty feet of snow atOgden, on the Pacific Road; winds blowing a gale at Omaha, and snowstill falling; mercury frozen at Duluth; storm-signals at Port Huron. "

Where now are your tree-toads, your young love, your early season?Before noon it rains, by three o'clock it hails; before night thebleak storm-cloud of the northwest envelops the sky; a gale is raging, whirling about a tempest of snow. By morning the snow is drifted inbanks, and two feet deep on a level. Early in the seventeenth century, Drebbel of Holland invented the weather-glass. Before that, men hadsuffered without knowing the degree of their suffering. A centurylater, Romer hit upon the idea of using mercury in a thermometer; andFahrenheit constructed the instrument which adds a new because distinctterror to the weather. Science names and registers the ills of life; andyet it is a gain to know the names and habits of our enemies. It is withsome satisfaction in our knowledge that we say the thermometer markszero. 

In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untamed, has returned, and takenpossession of New England. Nature, giving up her melting mood, hasretired into dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. We say itis better to have it now than later. We have a conceit of understandingthings. 

The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the two the snow isuncomfortable. Compelled to go, it decides to go suddenly. The first daythere is slush with rain; the second day, mud with hail; the third daya flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares that the temperature isdelightful. Man shivers and sneezes. His neighbor dies of some diseasenewly named by science; but he dies all the same as if it hadn't beennewly named. Science has not discovered any name that is not fatal. 

This is called the breaking-up of winter. 

Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not exactly able to standstill, not daring to put forth anything tender. Man says that the worstis over. If he should live a thousand years, he would be deceived everyyear. And this is called an age of skepticism. Man never believed in somany things as now: he never believed so much in himself. As to Nature, he knows her secrets: he can predict what she will do. He communicateswith the next world by means of an alphabet which he has invented. He talks with souls at the other end of the spirit-wire. To be sure, neither of them says anything; but they talk. Is not that something? Hesuspends the law of gravitation as to his own body--he has learned howto evade it--as tyrants suspend the legal writs of habeas corpus. WhenGravitation asks for his body, she cannot have it. He says of himself, "I am infallible; I am sublime. " He believes all these things. He ismaster of the elements. Shakespeare sends him a poem just made, and asgood a poem as the man could write himself. And yet this man--he goesout of doors without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in threedays. "On the 21st of January, " exclaimed Mercier, "all kings felt forthe backs of their necks. " This might be said of all men in New Englandin the spring. This is the season that all the poets celebrate. Let ussuppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a genial spring, and there wasa poet who sang of it. All later poets have sung the same song. "Voilatout!" That is the root of poetry. 

Another delusion. We hear toward evening, high in air, the "conk" ofthe wild-geese. Looking up, you see the black specks of that adventuroustriangle, winging along in rapid flight northward. Perhaps it takes awide returning sweep, in doubt; but it disappears in the north. Thereis no mistaking that sign. This unmusical "conk" is sweeter than the"kerchunk" of the bull-frog. Probably these birds are not idiots, andprobably they turned back south again after spying out the nakedness ofthe land; but they have made their sign. Next day there is a rumor thatsomebody has seen a bluebird. This rumor, unhappily for the bird (whichwill freeze to death), is confirmed. In less than three days everybodyhas seen a bluebird; and favored people have heard a robin or rather theyellow-breasted thrush, misnamed a robin in America. This is no doubttrue: for angle-worms have been seen on the surface of the ground; and, wherever there is anything to eat, the robin is promptly on hand. Aboutthis time you notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the grass has alittle color. But you say that it is the grass of last fall. It is verydifficult to tell when the grass of last fall became the grass of thisspring. It looks "warmed over. " The green is rusty. The lilac-buds havecertainly swollen a little, and so have those of the soft maple. In therain the grass does not brighten as you think it ought to, and it isonly when the rain turns to snow that you see any decided green colorby contrast with the white. The snow gradually covers everything veryquietly, however. Winter comes back without the least noise or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable. Neither party in the fight now makesmuch fuss over it; and you might think that Nature had surrenderedaltogether, if you did not find about this time, in the Woods, onthe edge of a snow-bank, the modest blossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding their delicious perfume. The bravest are always the tenderest, says the poet. The season, in its blind way, is trying to expressitself. 

And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter in the trees. Theblackbirds have come, and in numbers, households of them, villages ofthem, --communes, rather. They do not believe in God, these black-birds. They think they can take care of themselves. We shall see. But theyare well informed. They arrived just as the last snow-bank melted. Onecannot say now that there is not greenness in the grass; not in thewide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and banks sloping south. Thedark-spotted leaves of the dog-tooth violet begin to show. EvenFahrenheit's contrivance joins in the upward movement: the mercury hassuddenly gone up from thirty degrees to sixty-five degrees. It is timefor the ice-man. Ice has no sooner disappeared than we desire it. 

There is a smile, if one may say so, in the blue sky, and thereis softness in the south wind. The song-sparrow is singing in theapple-tree. Another bird-note is heard, --two long, musical whistles, liquid but metallic. A brown bird this one, darker than thesong-sparrow, and without the latter's light stripes, and smaller, yetbigger than the queer little chipping-bird. He wants a familiar name, this sweet singer, who appears to be a sort of sparrow. He is such acontrast to the blue-jays, who have arrived in a passion, as usual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, spoiled beauties! They wrangle frommorning till night, these beautiful, high-tempered aristocrats. 

Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of the lilac-buds, by thepeeping-up of the crocuses, by tradition, by the sweet flutterings ofa double hope, another sign appears. This is the Easter bonnets, mostdelightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, hope, devotion. Alas that they have to be worn under umbrellas, so much thought, freshness, feeling, tenderness have gone into them! And a northeaststorm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown all these virtueswith that of self-sacrifice. The frail hat is offered up to theimplacable season. In fact, Nature is not to be forestalled nor hurriedin this way. Things cannot be pushed. Nature hesitates. The woman whodoes not hesitate in April is lost. The appearance of the bonnets ispremature. The blackbirds see it. They assemble. For two days they holda noisy convention, with high debate, in the tree-tops. Something isgoing to happen. 

Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur. There is a wind calledAuster, another called Eurus, another called Septentrio, anotherMeridies, besides Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. There are the eight greatwinds of the classical dictionary, --arsenal of mystery and terror and ofthe unknown, --besides the wind Euroaquilo of St. Luke. This is the windthat drives an apostle wishing to gain Crete upon the African Syrtis. IfSt. Luke had been tacking to get to Hyannis, this wind would have forcedhim into Holmes's Hole. The Euroaquilo is no respecter of persons. 

These winds, and others unnamed and more terrible, circle about NewEngland. They form a ring about it: they lie in wait on its borders, but only to spring upon it and harry it. They follow each other incontracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere:they meet and cross each other, all at a moment. This New England is setapart: it is the exercise-ground of the weather. Storms bred elsewherecome here full-grown: they come in couples, in quartets, in choruses. If New England were not mostly rock, these winds would carry it off; butthey would bring it all back again, as happens with the sandy portions. What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africus brings back. When the airis not full of snow, it is full of dust. This is called one of thecompensations of Nature. 

This is what happened after the convention of the blackbirds: A moaningsouth wind brought rain; a southwest wind turned the rain to snow; whatis called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow; a north windsent the mercury far below freezing. Salt added to snow increases theevaporation and the cold. This was the office of the northeast wind: itmade the snow damp, and increased its bulk; but then it rained a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. The air was full of fog andsnow and rain. And then the wind changed, went back round the circle, reversing everything, like dragging a cat by its tail. The mercuryapproached zero. This was nothing uncommon. We know all these winds. Weare familiar with the different "forms of water. "

All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might be permittedto speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of the instruments. Theopera was to come, --the Flying Dutchman of the air. 

There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides;only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-wind ofthe equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind: it is a monster. Its breathis frost. It has snow in its hair. It is something terrible. It peddlesrheumatism, and plants consumption. 

The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into the discord of theweather in New England. From its lair about Point Desolation, from theglaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast, leavingwrecks in its track, it marched right athwart the other conflictingwinds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurating chaos. It was theMarat of the elements. It was the revolution marching into the "dreadedwood of La Sandraie. "

Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there is noname. 

Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What does itleave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England is prostrate. Ithas left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patent medicines. Thisis an epic; this is destiny. You think Providence is expelled out of NewEngland? Listen!

Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica--earliestof wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wild work of thearmies trampling over New England--daring to hold up its tender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity of Nature. She had beenpainting the grass under the snow. In spots it was vivid green. Therewas a mild rain, --mild, but chilly. The clouds gathered, and broke awayin light, fleecy masses. There was a softness on the hills. The birdssuddenly were on every tree, glancing through the air, filling it withsong, sometimes shaking raindrops from their wings. The cat brings inone in his mouth. He thinks the season has begun, and the game-laws areoff. He is fond of Nature, this cat, as we all are: he wants to possessit. At four o'clock in the morning there is a grand dress-rehearsal ofthe birds. Not all the pieces of the orchestra have arrived; but thereare enough. The grass-sparrow has come. This is certainly charming. Thegardener comes to talk about seeds: he uncovers the straw-berries andthe grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and plants the peas. You askif he planted them with a shot-gun. In the shade there is still frost inthe ground. Nature, in fact, still hesitates; puts forth one hepatica ata time, and waits to see the result; pushes up the grass slowly, perhapsdraws it in at night. 

This indecision we call Spring. 

It becomes painful. It is like being on the rack for ninety days, expecting every day a reprieve. Men grow hardened to it, however. 

This is the order with man, --hope, surprise, bewilderment, disgust, facetiousness. The people in New England finally become facetious aboutspring. This is the last stage: it is the most dangerous. When a manhas come to make a jest of misfortune, he is lost. "It bores me to die, "said the journalist Carra to the headsman at the foot of the guillotine:"I would like to have seen the continuation. " One is also interested tosee how spring is going to turn out. 

A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight of the mellow earth, --allthese begin to beget confidence. The night, even, has been warm. Butwhat is this in the morning journal, at breakfast?--"An area of lowpressure is moving from the Tortugas north. " You shudder. 

What is this Low Pressure itself, --it? It is something frightful, low, crouching, creeping, advancing; it is a foreboding; it is misfortune bytelegraph; it is the "'93" of the atmosphere. 

This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. What is that? Old Prob. Isthe new deity of the Americans, greater than AEolus, more despotic thanSans-Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the lightning his messenger. Heis a mystery made of six parts electricity, and one part "guess. " Thisdeity is worshiped by the Americans; his name is on every man's lipsfirst in the morning; he is the Frankenstein of modern science. Housedat Washington, his business is to direct the storms of the whole countryupon New England, and to give notice in advance. This he does. Sometimeshe sends the storm, and then gives notice. This is mere playfulness onhis part: it is all one to him. His great power is in the low pressure. 

On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of the Presidio, along theRio Grande, low pressure is bred; it is nursed also in the Atchafalayaswamps of Louisiana; it moves by the way of Thibodeaux and Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of atmospheric disasters. Low pressure maybe no worse than the others: it is better known, and is most used toinspire terror. It can be summoned any time also from the everglades ofFlorida, from the morasses of the Okeechobee. 

When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what itmeans. He has twenty-four hours' warning; but what can he do? Nothingbut watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers in anticipation. That is what Old Prob. Has brought about, suffering by anticipation. This low pressure advances against the wind. The wind is from thenortheast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than a northeast wind? Waittill low pressure joins it. Together they make spring in New England. A northeast storm from the southwest!--there is no bitterer satire thanthis. It lasts three days. After that the weather changes into somethingwinter-like. 

A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snow tothe dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looks up. Heis hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping her hands behind herback, stands and looks at him, and says, "Po' birdie!" They appear tounderstand each other. The sparrow gets his crumb; but he knows too muchto let Minnette get hold of him. Neither of these little things couldtake care of itself in a New-England spring not in the depths of it. This is what the father of Minnette, looking out of the window uponthe wide waste of snow, and the evergreens bent to the ground with theweight of it, says, "It looks like the depths of spring. " To this hasman come: to his facetiousness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first ofMay. 

Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open themorning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, lowpressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. By theroadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of the color ofemerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there are twenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breasts contrast with thetender green of the newly-springing clover and herd's-grass. If theywould only stand still, we might think the dandelions had blossomed. Onan evergreen-bough, looking at them, sits a graceful bird, whose back isbluer than the sky. There is a red tint on the tips of the boughs ofthe hard maple. With Nature, color is life. See, already, green, yellow, blue, red! In a few days--is it not so?--through the green masses of thetrees will flash the orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager;perhaps tomorrow. 

But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clearoverhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden; theythreaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain, orsnow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry of thephoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soon drives inswerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, from the west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinary winds of NewEngland), from all points of the compass. The fine snow becomes rain;it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezes as it falls. Atlast a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon the bleak scene. 

During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens. Towardmorning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis. This is a signof colder weather. 

The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take nopleasure in biting in such weather. 

Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of last year, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years. Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year the spring will beearly. Man is the most gullible of creatures. 

And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. Duringthis most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almostimmediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-toothviolet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow, andall discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressive hasteand rapidity. Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadows are deeplygreen, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In a burst of sunshinethe cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink, the hawthorns give asweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; the world, of color. 

In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed withthe white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day themercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come. 

There was no Spring. 

The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought the Revolutionwas over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He lost his head afterthat. 

When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbers havefour leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north and kills themin a night. 

That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninetydegrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful. Manypeople survive it.