The Lake District, though Chinese sensibilities

 

Sometimes, in the higgledy-piggledy chaos of charity shops overwhelmed with book donations from declutterers, I come across hidden gems. This wonderful travel book, The Silent Traveller in Lakeland, was in the 50p. box of old Ordnance Survey maps and tourist leaflets.

Author Chiang Yee, fleeing political turmoil in his native China, was exiled to England in 1933. He studied politics at the University of London, and wrote The Chinese Eye, a successful literary companion to the 1935-36 International Exhibition of Chinese Art at the Royal Academy, providing an entertaining insight into the ways in which his countrymen perceive works of art and nature.

In July 1935, weary of traffic, smog and crowded pavements in London, seeking solitude and homesick for the mountainous landscapes of central China, he set out for a two-week walking holiday of the Lake District.

The Silent Traveller in Lakeland is his daily account of encounters and observations in a much-loved English landscape: Wordsworth country, seen though Chinese eyes and interpreted with Chinese sensibilities. It is, though, much more that a travelogue. Separated from his own family, and craving inner peace at a time when Europe edged towards Fascism and the precipice of war (the Spanish Civil War has just broken out) he muses on the human folly of armed conflict.

Chiang Yee was a poet and skilled artist. Along the way he illustrated his account with spontaneous paintings using brush, ink and soft paper, water techniques that seem to suit the rainy Lakeland landscape, each accompanied by a poem written in exquisite Chinese calligraphy and translated in the text. They encapsulate what he describes as one of the fundamental distinctions between British and Chinese landscape painting; the former tactual representation, the latter a response to the artist’s inner emotions.

Chiang Lee struggled to find a buyer for his book in London and eventually his publisher only took it on a no-royalty basis. It sold out within a month and, after a rapid renegotiation of contracts, became a best-seller, running through six editions. It was republished posthumously, in this edition, by Mercat Press in 2004.

Chiang Yee’s literary and academic career flourished, with an international series of Silent Traveller titles. For many readers The Silent Traveller in Lakeland remains his masterpiece.

He emigrated to the United States in 1955, was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973, then finally returned to his hometown of Jiujiang in China in 1975, where he died, aged 72, in 1977.

 

Ash, unclothed and clothed

 An ash tree Fraxinus excelsior, in the prime of life, undressed and dressed, photographed in April and June, in Teesdale. 

Ash is always the last native tree to come into full leaf, and one of the first to lose its foliage in autumn

Will this be a 'painted lady summer'?

 

This spring was notable for an early influx of migrant painted lady butterflies that arrived here on warm southerly winds, raising hopes that this might be a 'painted lady summer'.

They began to appear in Weardale in substantial numbers towards the end of the heatwave in May but were reported in southern and western counties from mid-April onwards. There has long been speculation that these early arrivals fly here directly from North Africa. The tattered state of the butterfly in the photo above, nectaring on sweet rocket aka dame's violet Hesperis matrionalis in my garden, suggests that it might have had a long and eventful journey.

L. Hugh Newman, whose family ran a butterfly farm in Kent (that supplied Winston Churchill with butterflies for his garden at Chartwell) kept detailed records of their lifespans. Resident breeding species typically had lifespans of less than a month , with the exception of those that overwintered as adults (10-11 months for brimstone, small tortoiseshell, peacock) and found that 30 days was the maximum lifespan of painted ladies. They are known to fly at night and with a favourable wind, they are reckoned to fly about 150km. per day, so it’s just conceivable that some early spring arrivals here might have made the one-way journey directly from North Africa, but there’s no doubt that the true test of whether we are due a ‘painted lady summer’ depends on their breeding success at various locations in continental  Europe, and favourable summer winds.

Most arrive in relays, crossing the Mediterranean to breed in France and Spain first. With their short life cycle - egg to imago in six weeks - their numbers multiply exponentially as they move northwards, a rolling wave of butterflies that reaches our shores in mid- summer.

Spectacular ‘painted lady summers’ are the stuff of lepidopterists’ legends. I recall walking along the coast near Whitby in 1996, surrounded by hundreds of painted ladies settling to feed in flowery cliff-top grassland. That invasion reached Orkney and Shetland. The most recent mass migration that I remember here was in 2009, but size and frequency of such events are subject to favourable winds and clement weather.

 

Ox-eye daisies in a County Durham churchyard

 

St. Brandon’s, at Brancepeth, County Durham, is a shining example of the way in which an ancient churchyard can be managed for the benefit of people and native wild flowers. The south side of the churchyard is a wild flower meadow, with mown paths between 18th. and 19th. century memorial stones.

Throughout spring, drifts of snowdrops have been followed by daffodils and bluebells, then cowslips that last week ceded centre stage to thousands of waist-high ox-eye daisies Leucanthemum vulgare.

In The Englishman’s Flora (1960) botanist-author Geoffrey Grigson listed about 30 local, colloquial names for Leucanthemum vulgare; some familiar, like moon daisy, dog daisy and marguerite, others less so, like Billy buttons, crazy Bett, hayweed and poverty weed, that have fallen out of use.

You might expect that a plant known by so many names would have been part of the daily lives of past generations, used in herbal medicine.

According to John Pechey, in his The Compleat Herbal of Physical Plants (1694) it “cast forth Beams of Brightness” so just looking at it might do you good: a nature cure to boost mental wellbeing.

But there’s more: “The whole herb, stalks, leaves ad flowers, boyl’d in posset-drink, and drunk, I accounted an excellent remedy for an asthma, consumption and difficulty of breathing, “ he claimed.” ‘Tis very good in wounds and ulcers, taken inwardly, or outwardly applied,” he assured readers, and went on to mention a use that might have benefitted quaffers of too much chilled beer during the recent heatwave: “A decoction of the herb cures all diseases that are occasion’d by drinking cold beer when the body is hot.”

Pechey’s herbal is available to download or read on-line. Its full, less-than-snappy title is

The compleat herbal of physical plants : containing all such English and foreign herbs, shrubs and trees, as are used in physick and surgery : and to the vertues that are now in use, is added one receipt or more, of some learned physician : the doses or quantities of such as are prescribed by the Londond-physicians, and others, are proportioned : also directions for making compound-waters, syrups, simple and compound : electuaries, pills, powders, and other sorts of medicines : moreover, the gums, balsams, oils, juices, and the like, which are sold by apothecaries and druggists, are added to this herbal : and their virtues and sues are fully described