Ceres' Runaway, and Other Essays — Themes and Context

The Runaway Crop and Civic Vigilance

Meynell's title essay presents a Rome where the municipality is perpetually outrun by vegetation. She describes men weeding the Appian Way, laying grass on ancient stones 'as at Upper Tooting,' and mowing buttercups at the cemetery by Porta San Paolo. The civic effort is futile: the wild summer 'breaks all bounds, flies to the summits, lodges in the sun, swings in the wind.' Meynell's eye for detail—the bee-orchis overtopping the grass, the snapdragon 'tiptoe against its sky'—makes the contest vivid. She notes that the church 'full of attitude' is unaware of its crimson tenant, and that the marigolds are 'accidental.' The essay's charm lies in this personification of a city that cannot catch a flower.

The Conspiracy Against Time

In a later essay, Meynell turns to the human attempt to thwart time itself. She recounts the 1842 commission for frescoes at the Houses of Parliament, where experts from Genoa, Rome, and Munich gathered to defeat 'the natural and not superfluous operation of efficient and effacing time.' Cornelius, the Bavarian master, dug a pit for lime and stirred it for eight years, laid tiles against bulging, and asphalt against trickling. Meynell calls this 'the human conspiracy.' Yet she observes that the dull pictures at Munich 'seem to stand well'—and suggests that the day that admired them should have had them exclusively. The medieval cathedrals, she notes, 'have undergone the natural correction; why not the Ludwig Kirche?'

The Virtue of Omission

Meynell's critique of preservation culminates in a pointed observation: the faded figure of Bavaria, painted by Kaulbach, was executed with lime 'too fresh.' She cannot refrain from italics, noting that 'the way was so easy; it was only to take a little less of this important care about the lime.' The virtue of omission—of allowing time its gentle act—is a recurring undercurrent. Meynell does not argue for neglect, but she questions the elaborate schemes that produce immortality at the cost of vitality. Her prose, precise and ironic, invites readers to consider what is lost when we try to fix a moment forever.

Meynell's essays reward attention to her syntax and word choice: she uses 'banters' for historic ages, 'flagrant' for a flourishing statue, and 'conspiracy' for preservation efforts. Her contrasts—between Rome's wild growth and civic weeding, between Cornelius's eight-year lime and Kaulbach's fresh one—are not merely decorative but structural. Read these essays as a series of meditations on what escapes control, whether botanical or temporal.

I remember a summer afternoon, sitting on a cracked stone step, watching weeds push through mortar just like those snapdragons on Rome’s cornices. It struck me that our tidy plans were always losing to this quiet persistence. Later, reading Thoughts Suggested by Mr. Froude's "Progress" — Reading Notes, the same feeling returned—how each generation imagines it holds time still, yet the wildness always whispers back. That whisper stays with me longer than any argument.