lblanchard | Mimpish Monday: "Doesn't it make your very soul ache?" (Meconopsis quintuplinervia)

I like this passage from The Rainbow Bridge, the second volume of Reginald Farrer's account of his 1914-1915 collecting trip to Northwest China/Tibet. Here, Farrer is writing about a vision of loveliness shared by his fellow traveler William Purdom. The two of them were moved by the beauty of the Harebell Poppy, Meconopsis quintuplinervia.

In the low loose scrub of the white Rhododendron the wild sheep have their tracks everywhere in the mossy ripples of the voluminous slopes opposite. But on the side of the Ma-Chang the fell is open, with patches of dense lush pasture, thick as hay, and violently green, except for sky-blue drifts of a rather rank Omphalodes. We descended the yak-dunged richness, to where the beck furiously roars, but, though the scene was opulent everywhere with flowers, there were no new ones. So we returned up to the Ma-Chang, perched above on its height ; and there lay revelling in the gigantic splendour of the view, while far up overhead among the skeleton pines the silhouetted antlers of an inquisitive elk appeared, far-branched and wide themselves as the wreck of a dead tree. It was a real alpine situation, a real alpine view ; for the first time in my Chinese travels a well-known scene, cousin to any one might see up the Val Savine, or beside the Lac Clair, but incomparably larger and grander. With a feeling of being at home once more, I sprawled at ease on my springy cushions of Potentilla and Honeysuckle, contemplating the vast loveliness of the world with that curious proprietary feeling that such loveliness gives as if one somehow owned it, or were responsible for it, and had a right to be proud of it. And yet, I suppose, a glory so great that it floods and overwhelms one, and absorbs one wholly into its possession, does also, by that very fact pass into one's own possession, too, becomes an inseparable part of one for evermore. The mere fact of perceiving and assimilating such things means that one is storing their glory up to render again for others, even as the giant tree ferns who assimilated the glow of the Coal Age, now render it out again in flame. So that I, indeed, become the medium, the middleman, the mere conduit, to pour forth upon all you who read, a trickle or so, no matter how diluted and defiled and wasted, of the torrential beauty that held me breathless and stupid up on that Tibetan Ma-Chang that you will otherwise never see.

And so, by degrees, the air darkened solemnly like deep water, and a deeper stillness than ever seemed to fill the world. The golden radiance faded upwards, as dusk came swiftly climbing the opposite slopes ; at length the last red glow died off the crags of Hypselos, and the Alps all stood cold and grey and dead in the cold dead clearness of the alpine night. And a roaring fire was built beside the Ma-Chang, clattering and streaming and swirling up into the quiet air, to keep off wolves and bears and Powers of Darkness. On the morrow the high Gods beamed on us auspiciously in a cloudless dawn, with the Alps sombre and lifeless still against the pale sky. We were off about four, leaving the tent and its plenishings to be disestablished and carried back to Wolvesden ; up and up, along the righthand slope we continued from the Ma-Chang, round the countless bays and folds that descend from Crest Royal. From the Ma-Chang it had looked a mere nothing, a quiet stroll, just a hop, skip and jump, up to the alpine levels at the glen head. But it proved a very far cry, and a very long mighty toil ; the vegetation was luxuriant, crowded with seedspires of the Lampshade Poppy (but always and only where low scrub filled some dip of the slope) and the gross spikes of hideous Primula tangutica. And so, in due course, we did leave below us the sudden downward sink of the streams from the alp-level, and continued yet higher, for some distance, before crossing leftwards over a dip of runnels and marshes, to clamber up on to the alpine lawns themselves.

Meconopsis quintuplinervia, the Harebell poppy
http://www.plant-world-seeds.com/store/view_seed_item/2158

And now, immediately, the beauty of the Harebell Poppy began to break upon us. It was everywhere, flickering and dancing in millions upon millions of pale purple butterflies, as far as eye could see, over all the enormous slopes and braes of the grass. The sun was now coming up, and its earliest rays slanted upon the upland in shafts of gold-dust ; in the young fresh light the whole alp was a glistering jewel-work with dew in a powdered haze of diamond, with the innumerable soft blue laughter of the Poppies rippling universally above a floor of pale purple Alpine Asters, interspersed with here and there the complacent pinkness of the Welcome Primula. In the far-off memory of that scene I have to rein myself in, for fear a flux of words should ensue : but do not be embittered, all you who incline to be jealous, scornful, or incredulous of lovelinesses you have never shared (and possibly never could) if I tell you coldly that even I, in those moments, was stricken dumb and helpless by the sight of a glory surpassing, as I do truly think, all that I have ever seen elsewhere. Stupid with a blank delight, I wandered spellbound over those unharvested lawns, agonizing with the effort to contain without breaking the infinite flood of glory they were so mercilessly pouring into so frail and finite a vessel. One did not dare speak. It was indeed a pain almost like the water-torture of Madame de Brinvillers. And at my side walked Bill, silent as I. What was he thinking then ? How was this sight striking home to him ? But who can ever know what even these dearest and nearest are doing and enduring in the secret inmost rooms of the soul ? We continued together, voiceless and smitten.

Primula gemmifera, Welcome Primula
http://www.primulaworld.com/pwweb/gallery/gemmifera.html

And then at last he turned to me, and in the awe-stricken whisper of one overwhelmed by a divine presence, he said : "Doesn't it make your very soul ache ?" It was the right, the absolute and final word. It did. It twisted one's very being, in the agony to absorb that sight wholly, to get outside it, possess it, delay its passing, tear it away from its native hills and keep it with one for ever flesh of one's flesh, and brain of one's brain. But beauty is so big and enduring, and we so small and evanescent, that for us the almost physical pain of trying to pack the incommensurable inside the infinitesimal is, indeed, as if one should try to decant the Yellow River into a thimble. Let us hope that even a drop remains inside the poor little vessel round which so titanic an overflow goes inevitably lost, roaring and seething in a spate that would baffle any holding capacity.

Aster alpinus, alpine aster
By Michael Schmid - Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.0 at, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=227580

Meconopsis quintuplinervia ! Will anybody wonder that even I, hating as I do the Wardour Street popular names with which Ruskin tried to "affubler" such known beauties as Saxifrage and Campanula, should now yield to the same weakness, and try to give my beloved Tibetan Poppy an English name to which she has no right at all ? But I hope it is only proleptically that I forge the name of Harebell Poppy. I hope that the plant's beauty and its charm and its permanence will so ensure its popularity in gardens as to make a popular name inevitable. And, that being so, there will be "Harebell Poppy" ready made. For indeed, to cherish or even to purchase, a plant called Meconopsis quintuplinervia is as impossible as to love a woman called Georgiana : mitigating substitutes inevitably have to be invented. So, as the "Harebell Poppy," may my Tibetan treasure long enrich our gardens, luxuriant and enduring in rich moist ground, and inimitably lovely in the well-bred grace of its habit, as well as in the serene and tranquil loveliness of its lavender bells. Some there are, indeed, who misprise these, and find them insufficiently "showy." Alas, the prevailing fault of Meconopsis is not modesty ; but it is in modesty that M. quintuplinervia, alone of her kind, excels. Not for her the blatant crude enormousness of M. integrifolia, the sinister and snaky splendour of M. punicea, the hard clear glory of M. simplicifolia : her fluttering butterflies aim at a more quiet charm, that only the dull-eyed and deboshed in taste could dream of calling dull.

--The Rainbow Bridge
Summer Work, pp. 221-224

Note: Farrer's publisher has not italicized genus and species names, and I have not added italicization in the quoted passage.

[This is an occasional series of postings inspired by Abigail Rorer, Mimpish Squinnies: Reginald Farrer's Short Guide to Worthless Plants. Rorer's book includes prints of fourteen plants Farrer considered worthless-- an interesting hybrid of botanically accurate and...different. You can see her work, including all fourteen mimpish squinnies, here: http://www.theloneoakpress.com/prints/newer.html ]