The berries were not the round and rosy ones of the meadow, but the
long, slender, dark crimson ones of the forest. One, two, three; no
more on that vine; but each one as it touched my lips was a drop of
nectar and a crumb of ambrosia, a concentrated essence of all the
pungent sweetness of the wildwood, sapid, penetrating, and
delicious. I tasted the odour of a hundred blossoms and the green
shimmering of innumerable leaves and the sparkle of sifted sunbeams
and the breath of highland breezes and the song of many birds and
the murmur of flowing streams,--all in a wild strawberry.
Do you remember, in THE COMPLEAT ANGLER, a remark which Isaak Walton
quotes from a certain "Doctor Boteler" about strawberries?
"Doubtless," said that wise old man, "God could have made a better
berry, but doubtless God never did."
Well, the wild strawberry is the one that God made.
I think it would have been pleasant to know a man who could sum up
his reflections upon the important question of berries in such a
pithy saying as that which Walton repeats. His tongue must have
been in close communication with his heart. He must have had a fair
sense of that sprightly humour without which piety itself is often
insipid.
I have often tried to find out more about him, and some day I hope I
shall. But up to the present, all that the books have told me of
this obscure sage is that his name was William Butler, and that he
was an eminent physician, sometimes called "the Aesculapius of his
age." He was born at Ipswich, in 1535, and educated at Clare Hall,
Cambridge; in the neighbourhood of which town he appears to have
spent the most of his life, in high repute as a practitioner of
physic. He had the honour of doctoring King James the First after
an accident on the hunting field, and must have proved himself a
pleasant old fellow, for the king looked him up at Cambridge the
next year, and spent an hour in his lodgings. This wise physician
also invented a medicinal beverage called "Doctor Butler's Ale." I
do not quite like the sound of it, but perhaps it was better than
its name. This much is sure, at all events: either it was really a
harmless drink, or else the doctor must have confined its use
entirely to his patients; for he lived to the ripe age of eighty-
three years.
Between the time when William Butler first needed the services of a
physician, in 1535, and the time when he last prescribed for a
patient, in 1618, there was plenty of trouble in England. Bloody
Queen Mary sat on the throne; and there were all kinds of quarrels
about religion and politics; and Catholics and Protestants were
killing one another in the name of God. After that the red-haired
Elizabeth, called the Virgin Queen, wore the crown, and waged
triumphant war and tempestuous love. Then fat James of Scotland was
made king of Great Britain; and Guy Fawkes tried to blow him up with
gunpowder, and failed; and the king tried to blow out all the pipes
in England with his COUNTERBLAST AGAINST TOBACCO; but he failed too.
Somewhere about that time, early in the seventeenth century, a very
small event happened. A new berry was brought over from Virginia,--
FRAGRARIA VIRGINIANA,--and then, amid wars and rumours of wars,
Doctor Butler's happiness was secure. That new berry was so much
richer and sweeter and more generous than the familiar FRAGRARIA
VESCA of Europe, that it attracted the sincere interest of all
persons of good taste. It inaugurated a new era in the history of
the strawberry. The long lost masterpiece of Paradise was restored
to its true place in the affections of man.
Is there not a touch of merry contempt for all the vain
controversies and conflicts of humanity in the grateful ejaculation
with which the old doctor greeted that peaceful, comforting gift of
Providence?
"From this time forward," he seems to say, "the fates cannot beggar
me, for I have eaten strawberries. With every Maytime that visits
this distracted island, the white blossoms with hearts of gold will
arrive. In every June the red drops of pleasant savour will hang
among the scalloped leaves. The children of this world may wrangle
and give one another wounds that even my good ale cannot cure.
Nevertheless, the earth as God created it is a fair dwelling and
full of comfort for all who have a quiet mind and a thankful heart.
Doubtless God might have made a better world, but doubtless this is
the world He made for us; and in it He planted the strawberry."
Fine old doctor! Brave philosopher of cheerfulness! The Virginian
berry should have been brought to England sooner, or you should have
lived longer, at least to a hundred years, so that you might have
welcomed a score of strawberry-seasons with gratitude and an
epigram.
Since that time a great change has passed over the fruit which
Doctor Butler praised so well. That product of creative art which
Divine wisdom did not choose to surpass, human industry has laboured
to improve. It has grown immensely in size and substance. The
traveller from America who steams into Queenstown harbour in early
summer is presented (for a consideration) with a cabbage-leaf full
of pale-hued berries, sweet and juicy, any one of which would
outbulk a dozen of those that used to grow in Virginia when
Pocahontas was smitten with the charms of Captain John Smith. They
are superb, those light-tinted Irish strawberries. And there are
wonderful new varieties developed in the gardens of New Jersey and
Rhode Island, which compare with the ancient berries of the woods
and meadows as Leviathan with a minnow. The huge crimson cushions
hang among the plants so thick that they seem like bunches of fruit
with a few leaves attached for ornament. You can satisfy your
hunger in such a berry-patch in ten minutes, while out in the field
you must pick for half an hour, and in the forest thrice as long,
before you can fill a small tin cup.
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