About autumn

We’ve passed the equinox, the evenings are drawing in, it’s getting cool enough in the mornings to have the central heating on, the leaves have started to turn colour and fall from the trees. Autumn is here.
Some people, like Verlaine, find autumn depressing:

“Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone”

But I would tend rather to agree with Keats that it is the

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”

Perhaps it’s a question of whether you look ahead and see it as a prelude to winter, a phase of shrivelling and dying; or whether you look back and view it rather as the culmination and epilogue to summer. Indeed as autumn progresses towards winter and the trees become barer and the days shorter, our mood may change. To look at it though just in the present, a mild sunny autumn day is exquisite: gorgeous colours, beautiful light, still warm enough to sit outside and contemplate.
This weekend Clara and I went for a walk in the Ardennes. Driven out of one of our regular haunts near Lesse by hunters, who are one of the less attractive aspects of autumn, we moved on to nearby Our and the wooded valley of the river of the same name which was new to us. The low sunlight caught the golden leaves drifting down and made the rushing river water sparkle. The leaves were now deep on the track and their rustling as we trudged along competed with the gurgling water. The air was clear and mild with the faint peppery smell of autumn.
Autumn is a fine time of year, a season of Northern fruit, apples, pears, plums, quinces, nuts and in the woods wild mushrooms and game. It’s a great time for walking, enjoying the last decent days and longish daylight. Best of all though is the sheer spectacle of the autumn leaves.
I used to love late October holidays in the Cévennes in the South of France, an isolated rugged hilly area, yet with smiling valleys and endless chestnut trees, their leaves yellowing on the branch and strewn on the ground scattered with countless chestnuts for the picking.

At fifty I have inevitably to see the parallel between this season and my own life: by any reckoning, dividing life expectancy by four, I am in the third quarter, that is the autumn and I do indeed regard it as a season of mellow fruitfulness, past its youthful vigour but still very pleasant, garnering past achievements and experience.

It’s not part of my active vocabulary but I prefer the American word Fall to Autumn, as it is the mirror image of Spring; the season when the plants spring from the ground and the season when the leaves fall to earth. I gleaned from Michael Frayn’s amusing novel “Headlong” that Brueghel’s cycle of famous paintings of the seasons probably comprised six scenes (five known, one lost, the speculative subject of the novel). I have written in “About painting” of my love for “Hunters in the snow” which is Winter. One comes after it where the snow has melted and the landscape is all grey and brown in which the peasants are performing tasks such as pollarding trees. It is pre-Spring. Let us call this season Lent. I will make six seasons of two months for this country where I live and where Brueghel lived too, and give them all Germanic names. Winter: December and January; Lent: February and March; Spring: April and May; Summer: June and July; Harvest: August and September; Fall: October and November. Here we are in Fall and it is one of the prettiest. Keats’ Autumn is really the combination of Harvest and Fall: a celebration of the fullness of life while knowing it is on the wane.

Autumn is a time for taking stock, reflecting on the summer, in the evenings now spent inside in the cosiness of home. It is indeed the mellow season.