Introduction to Gardening.

Les Miserables,

Volume 1, Book 1, Chapter 6 -"Who Guarded His House For Him"

An Introduction to Gardening.

One of the most surprising themes in this book is Gardening, but to convince you of that, I must do two things: break a rule, and tell a story. The first is easily understandable, after all, a man who's unable to break a rule with elegance is an idiot - not the type of idiot described by a certain Russian writer, but the dull type often found teaching in universities.

The rule in question is the "one chapter per day" - It just so happens that, to do this theme justice, I must go back to a specific sentence the previous chapter.

The sentence, which ends a paragraph with no further elaboration, is: "Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening. 'The mind is a garden,' said he."

Let's move on to the story.

As soon as our overlords decided to forbid life itself, shutting down the service market by decree, I chose to live out the Arcadian dream, and escaped from the city life.

As is also a theme in Les Miserable, the city-dwelling men of letters, facing a crisis, made use of said letters to weave a web of shit. Meanwhile, in the countryside, the common men did what they've always done - they continued to live. As a consequence, this particular city-dwelling man of some letters, could enjoy one of his greatest fears: living in the countryside.

And while walking through the streets of this little town - my new home - I came across a man installing a wooden beam in a ravine by his house.

One day latter, one beam turned into two. In the following day, two became three - and in less then a week, I saw the slow, but steady construction of a bank. In the next week, I witnessed the birth of an orchard. In the next, a well being dug out.

If I had been graced, as my metropolitan counterparts were punished, with 6 more months, a year - or even 20 - I would have seen that garden prosper more than I have seen anything grow in the big cities I've lived at for so long. Yes, I might exaggerating when it comes to the time-frame - I am young, and what I lack in experience, I make up for in exaggerated mannerisms

Now, why scream that particular sentence, and tell this story? The first serves as a starting point to my analogy - the latter, to vouch for its verisimilitude. In this chapter, rather than a passing statement about the unity of external and internal care, we have the first of Victor Hugo's tips on how to care for our mental gardens, taken from how his (possibly) greatest hero cared for his.

To illustrate someone else's advice, paraphrasing only leads to distraction - and my daily quota of chronicling has already been reached. So these are the first tips on this different type of gardening, from Hugo, embodied by the bishop, Monseigneur Bienvenu:

"Madame Magloire had once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: 'Monseigneur, you who turn everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot. It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets.' 'Madame Magloire,' retorted the Bishop, 'you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.' He added after a pause, 'More so, perhaps.'"

"He liked to pass an hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu against Linnæus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers."

"He respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more; and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green."

What is the full meaning and extent of each of these principles, or habits? What would we find by completely unraveling the analogy? What would be the equivalent, for the human mind, of not studying plants, but loving flowers instead? We'll have plenty of opportunity to discuss each and every one of these virtues, throughout the remaining 359 chapters, and over 359 days.

~ F.D. The Romantic