312 From a letter to Amy Ronald 

16 November 1969

I meant to write to let you know how much I am perturbed by and sorry for your afflictions: poor dear. I pray for you – because I have a feeling (more near a certainty) that God, for some ineffable reason which to us may seem almost like humour, is so curiously ready to answer the prayers of the least worthy of his suppliants – if they pray for others. I do not of course mean to say that He only answers the prayers of the unworthy (who ought not to expect to be heard at all), or I should not now be benefitting by the prayers of others. What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in – especially for those who have also the burden of age, whose friends and all they especially care for are afflicted in the same way. Chesterton once said that it is our duty to keep the Flag of This World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. Gandalf added that it is not for us to choose the times into which we are born, but to do what we could to repair them; but the spirit of wickedness in high places is now so powerful and so many-headed in its incarnations that there seems nothing more to do than personally to refuse to worship any of the hydras' heads. ....

I have greatly enjoyed the Cape Flower Book. Quite fascinating in itself and in its general botanical and indeed paleo-implications. I have not seen anything that immediately recalls niphredil or elanor or alfirin: but that I think is because those imagined flowers are lit by a light that would not be seen ever in a growing plant and cannot be recaptured by paint. Lit by that light, niphredil would be simply a delicate kin of a snowdrop; and elanor a pimpernel (perhaps a little enlarged) growing sun-golden flowers and star-silver ones on the same plant, and sometimes the two combined. Alfirin ('immortal') would be an immortelle, but not dry and papery: simply a beautiful bell-like flower, running through many colours, but soft and gentle. ....

All illustrated botany books (or better, contact direct with an unfamiliar flora) have for me a special fascination. Not so much the rare, unusual, or totally unrelated specimens, as in the variations and permutations of flowers that are the evident kin of those I know – but not the same. They rouse in me visions of kinship and descent through great ages, and also thoughts of the mystery of pattern/design as a thing other than its individual embodiment, and recognizable. How? I remember once in the comer of a botanical garden growing (unlabelled and unnamed) a plant that fascinated me. I knew of the 'family' Scrofulariceæ, and had always accepted that the scientific bases of grouping plants in 'families' was sound, and that in general this grouping did point to actual physical kinship in descent. But in contemplating say Figwort and the Foxglove, one has to take this on trust. But there I saw a 'missing link'. A beautiful 'fox-glove', bells and all – but also a figwort: for the bells were brown-red, the red tincture ran through the veins of all the leaves, and its stem was angular. One of the 17 species (I suppose) of Digitalis which we do not possess in Britain. But such botany books as I have do not comment on such 'links' between the branches of the family (Scrofularia & Digitalis). Just occasionally one actually sees a change take place – which might in favourable circumstances become permanent. In a former garden I had a border planted with garden daisies (mostly red); but they seeded into the lawn, where in the struggle for life they reverted to ordinary daisies and conducted their battle with the grass like their ancestors. Some seeds, however, managed to reach a place where an enormously rich soil had developed (rotting grass and deep black bonfire ash). One hardy adventurer tried to do something about it – but could only do it in daisy fashion : it grew four times the size with a flower the size of a half-crown. I said 'magnificent; but a little coarse? No real improvement on bellis perennis. ' It or Something may have heard. Next morning it had put out from its flower, on delicate stalks rising in a ring out of the rim of the disc, six pink-tipped little elvish daisies like an airy crown. Far more graceful and patterned than any hen-and-chickens development I had – or have – seen. (I had not the time or skill to perpetuate it.)