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OUR VILLAGE
BY
MARY RUSSELL. MITFORD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
AND ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
HUGH THOMSON
London
MACMILLAN AND CoO.
AND NEW YORE
1893
Adl vights reserved
Furst Edition printed November 1893
Reprinted December 1893
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THERE is a great deal of admirable literature concerning
Miss Mitford, so much of it indeed, that the writer of
this little notice feels as if she almost owed an apology to
those who remember, for having ventured to write, on
hearsay only, and without having ever known or ever seen
the author of Our Village. And yet, so vivid ws the
homely friendly presence, so clear the sound of that voice
‘Like a chime of bells; with its hospitable cheery greeting,
that she can scarcely realise that this acquaintance exists
only in the world of the might-have-beens.
For people who are beginning to remember, rather than
looking forward any more, there certainly exists no more
delightful reading than the memoirs and stories of heroes
and heroines, many of whom we ourselves may have seen,
and to whom we may have spoken. As we read on we
are led into some happy bygone region,—such as that one
described by Mr. du Maurier in Peter Ibbetson,—e region
in which we ourselves, together with all our friends and
acquaintances, grow young again ;—very young, very
vill OUR VILLAGE
brash, very hopeful. The people we love are there, along
with the people we remember. Music begins to play, we
are dancing, laughing, scampering over the country once
more, our parents too are young and laughing cheerily.
Every now and then perhaps some old Sricnd, also
vigorous and hopeful, bursts into the book, and begins to
talk or to write a letter ; early sights and sounds return
to us, we have now, and we have then, in a pleasant
harmony. To those of a certain literary generation who
read Miss Mitford’s memoirs, how many such familiar
presences ant names must appear and reappear. Not
least among them that of her biographer, Mr. Harness
himself, who was so valued by his friends. Mrs. Kemble,
Mrs. Sartoris, Charles Allston Collins, always talked of
him with a great respect and tenderness. TI used to think
they had a special voice with which to Speak his name.
fle was never among our intimate Jreends, but how
Jamiliar to my recollection are the two figures, that of
Myr. Harness and Miss Harness, his sister and house-
keeper, coming together along the busy Kensington road-
way. The brother and sister were like characters out of
some book, with their kind faces, their Seniple spiritual
ways; ti touch with so much that was interesting and
romantic, and in heart with so much that suffered, I
remember him with grey hair and a smile. He was
not tall; he walked rather lame, Miss Harness too was
little, looking up at all the rest of the world with a
kind round face and sparkling eyes Sringed with thick
lashes, Mary Mitford was indeed happy in her Sriends,
as happy as she was unfortunate in her nearer relations.
INTRODUCTION 1X
With much that is sad, there is a great deal of beauty
and enjoyment in Miss Alitford’s life. For her the
absence of material happiness was made up for by the
presence of warm-hearted sensibility, of enthustasin, by
her devotion to her parents. Her long endurance and
filial piety are very remarkable, her loving heart carried
her safely to the end, and she found comfort im her
anreasoning lifes devotion. She had none of the restless-
ness whith is so apt to spoil much that might be
harmonious; all the charm of a certain unity and
simplicity of motive ts hers, ‘the single eye; of which
Charles Kingsley wrote so sweetly. She loved her houie,
her trees, her surrounding lanes and commons. She
loved her friends. Fler books and flowers are real and
eimportant events in her life, soothing and distracting her
Jrom the contemplation of its constant anxicties. ‘TL may
truly say, she once writes to Miss Barrett, ‘that ever
since L was a very young girl, I have never (although for
some years living apparently tn affluence) been without
pecuniary care,—the care that pressed upon my thoughts
the last thing at night, and woke in the morning with a
dreary sense of pain aud pressure, of something which
weighed me to the earth?
Mary Russel Mitford was born on the 16th of
December 1787. She was the only child of her parents,
who «were well connected; her mother was an hetress.
fler father belonged to the Mitfords of the North. She
describes herself as ‘a puny child, with an affluence of
curls which made her look as if she were twin sister to
x OUR VILLAGE
her own great doll? She could read at three years old ;
she learnt the Percy ballads by heart almost before she
could read. Long after, she used to describe how she
jirst studied her beloved ballads in the breakfast-room
lined with books, warmly spread with its Turkey carpet,
with its bright fire, easy chairs, and the windows opening
to a garden full of flowers,—stocks, honeysuckles, and
pinks. It ts touching to note how, all through her difficult
life, her path was (literally) lined with flowers, and how
the love of them comforted and cheered her from the first
to the very last. In her saddest hours, the passing
Sragrance and beauty of her favourite geraniums cheered
and revived her. Even when her mother died she Sound
comfort tn the plants they had tended together, and at
the very last breaks into delighted descriptions of them.
She was sent to school in the year 1798 to No. 22
Flans Place, to a Mrs. St. Quintin’s. It seems to have
been an excellent establishment. Mary learnt. the harp
and astronomy ; her taste for literature was encouraged,
Lhe young ladies, attired as shepherdesses, were also
taught to skip through many masy movements, but she
never distinguished herself as a shepherdess. She had
Sreater success in her literary efforts, and her composition
‘on balloons’ was much applauded. She returned to her
home in 1802. ‘Plain in figure and in face, she was
never coimmon-looking, says Mr. Harness. He gives a
pretty description of her as ‘no ordinary child, her sweet
smiles, her animated conversation, her keen enjoyment of
life, and her gentle voice won the love and admiration of
her friends, whether young or old? Myr. Harness has
INTRODUCTION x1
chiefly told Miss Mitford’s story tn her own words by
guotations frou. her letters, and, as one reads, one can
almost follow her moods as they succeed cach other, and
these moods are her real history. The assiduity of
childhood, the bright enthusiasm and gaicty of her
early days, the growing anxiety of her later life, the
maturer judgments, the occasional despatring terrors
which came to try her bright nature, but along with
it all, that innocent and enduring hopefulness which never
really deserted her. Her clastic spirit she owed to her
Jather, that incorrigible old Skimpole. ‘Lf am generally
happy everywhere, she writes in her youth—and then
later on: ‘It ts a great pleasure to me to love and to
admire, this ts a faculty which has survived many
frosts and storms? It ts true that she adds a query
somewhere else,‘ Did you ever remark how supertor old
gately ts to new ?? she asks.
fler handsome father, her plain and long-enduring
uother, ave both unconsciously described in her corre-
spondence. ‘The Doctors manners were easy, natural,
cordial, and apparently extremely frank; says Mr.
Flarness,‘ but he nevertheless met the world on its own
terms, and was prepared to allow himself any insincerity
which seemed expedient. He was not only recklessly
extravagant, but addicted to high play. His wife's
large fortune, his daughter's, his own patrimony, all
passed through his hands in an incredibly short space
of time, but his wife and daughter were never heard to
coniplain of his conduct, nor appeared to admire him less,
The story of Miss Mitfora’s £20,000 ts unique
Xil OUR VILLAGE
anong the adventures of authoresses. Dr. Mitford,
having spent all his wifes fortune, and having brought
his family from a comfortable home, with flowers and a
Lurkey carpet, to a simuall lodging near Blackfriars Bridge,
determined to present his daughter with an expensive
lottery ticket on the occasion of her tenth birthday. She
had a fancy for No, 2224, of which the added numbers
came to io. This number actually came out the first
prise of £20,000, which money started the family once
more in comparative affiuence. Dr, Mitford tiumediately
built a new square house, which he calls Bertram House,
on the stte of a pretty old farmhouse which he causes
to be pulled down. He also orders a dessert-service
painted with the Mitford arms; Mrs. Mitford ts
supplied with a carriage, and she subscribes to a circu-
lating library.
Ai list still exists of the books taken out by her for her
daughter's use; some fifty-five volumes a month, chiefly
trash: Vicenza, A Sailor’s Friendship and Soldier's
Love, Clarentina, Robert and Adela, The Count de
Valmont, The Three Spaniards, De Clifford (x four
volumes) and so on.
The next two or three years were brilliant enough; for
the fantly must have lived at the rate of three or four
thousand a year. Their hospitality was profuse, they had
servants, carriages, they bought pictures and furniture,
they entertained. Cobbett was among their intimate
Jriends. The Doctor naturally enough invested im a
good many more lottery tickets, but without any further
return,
INTRODUCTION XU
Lhe ladies seem to take tt as a matter of course that
he should speculate and gamble at cards, and indeed do
anything and everything he fancied, but they beg him at
least to keep to respectable clubs. He ts constantly away
ffis daughter tries to tempt hii home with the bloom of
her hyacinths. ‘ How they long to see him again !? she
says, ‘how greatly have they been disappointed, whei,
every day, the journey to Reading has becn fruttless.
The driver of the Reading coach ts quite accustomed to
being waylaid by their carriage? Then she tells him
about the primroses, but netther hyacinths nor primroses
bring the Doctor away from his cards. finally, the
rhododendrons and the azaleas are in bloom, but these
also fail to attract hdim.
Miss Mitford herself as she grows wp 7s sent to London
more than once, to the St. Quintin’s and elsewhere. She
goes to the play and to Westminster Hall, she sees her
hero, Charles James Fox, and has the happiness of
watching him helped on to his horse. Mr. Romelly
delights her, but her greatest favourite of all is Mr.
Whitbread. ‘Vou know TI am aways an enthustast,
she writes, ‘but at present it ts zmpossible to describe
the admiration I feel for this exalted character? She
speaks of his voice ‘which she could Usten to with
transport even if he spoke in an unknown language I?
she writes a sonnet to him,‘ an emiproniptit, on hearing
Mr. Whitbread declare in Westminster Hall that he
Joudly trusted his name would descend to posterity,
‘ The hope of Fame thy noble bosom Sires,
Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind ZSPUICS 5
xiv OUR VILLAGE
In British breasts whilst Purity remains,
Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains,
Stall shall the muse of History proclaim
To future ages thy immortal name !â€
There are many references to the celebrities of the
time tn her letters home,—every one agrees as to the
extreme folly of Sheridans entertainments, Ifrs. Opie
is spoken of as a rising authoress, etc, ete. etc.
Miss Austen used to go to 23 Hans Place,and Miss
Mitford used to stay at No. 22, but not at the same time.
Mrs. Mitford had known Miss Austen as a child. She
may perhaps be forgiven for some prejudice and maternal
jealousy, tn her later inipressions, but Mary Mitford admired
Jane Austen always wath warmest enthusiasm. She writes
to her mother at length from London, describing everything,
all the people and books and experiences that she contes
across,—the elegant suppers at Brompton, the Grecian
lamps, Mr. Barker's beauty, Mr. Plummer’s plainness, and
the destruction of her purple gown.
Mrs. Mitford writes back in return describing Reading
festivities, an agrecable dinner at Doctor Valpy’s, where
Mrs. Women and Miss Peacock are present and Mr. j.
Sinpson, M.P., the dinner very good, two full courses
and one remove, the soup giving place to one quarter of
lamb. Mrs. Mitford sends a menu of every dinner she
goes to.
In 1806 Dr. Mitford takes his daughter, who was
then about nineteen, to the North to visit his relations ;
they are entertained by the grandparents of the Trevelyanus
and the Swinburnes, the Ogles and the Mitfords of the
INTRODUCTION XV
present day. They fish in Sir Solin Swinburne's lake,
they visit at Alnwick Castle. Muss M. wford kept her
Jront hair in papers till she reached Alnwick, nor was
her dress adtscomposed though she had travelled thirty
miles. They sat down, sirty-five to dinner, which was
‘of course’ (she somewhat magnificently says) entirely
served on plate. Poor Mary's’ pleasure ts very much
dashed by the sudden disappearance of her father,—Dr.
Mitford was in the habit of doing anything he felt
zuclined to do at once and on the Spot, quite irrespectively
of the convenience of others,—and although a party had
been arranged on purpose to meet him in the North, and
fis daughter was counting on hes escort to return home,
( people posted in those days, they did not take thety tickets
direct from Newcastle to London), Dr. Mitford one
uorning leaves word that he has goue off to attend the
Reading election, where his fresence was not in the least
required. For the first and apparently for the only time
on her life his daughter Protests. “ Mr, Ogle is extremely
offended , nothing but your immediate return can ever
excuse you to htm! TI implore you to return, T call upon
Mammeas sense of propriety to send you here atrectly,
Little did I suspect that my father, my beloved Sather,
would desert me at this distance Jrom home! Every one
2s surprised’ Dr. Mitford was finally persuaded to
travel back to Northumberland to Jetch his daughter.
The constant conpanionship of Dr, Afitford must
have given a curtous colour to his 00d and upright
daughters views af life. Adoring her father as she aid,
she must have soon accustomed herself to take his Jine
xvi OUR VILLAGE
speeches for fine actions, to accept hes self-complacency in
the place of a conscience. She was a woman of warie
impressions, with a strong sense of right. But it was
not within her daily experience, poor soul, that people who
did not make grand professions were ready to do their
duty all the same; nor did she always depend upon the
uprightness, the courage, the self-denial of those who
made no protestations. At that time loud talking was
still the fashion, and loud living was considered romantic.
They both exist among ws, but they are less admired, and
there is a different language spoken now to that of
Dr. Mitford and his school’ This must account for
some of Miss Mitford's juagments of what she calls a
‘cynical’ generation, to which she did little Justice.
LL
There is one penalty people pay for being authors,
which is that from cultivating vivid impresstons and
mental pictures they are apt to take fancies too seriously
and to mistake them for reality. In story-telling this ts
well enough, and it interferes with nobody ; but in real hts-
tory, and in one’s own history most of all, this faculty ts
apt to raise up bogies and nightmares along one’s path ;
and while one is fighting imaginary demons, the good
things and true are passed by unnoticed, the best realities
of life are sometimes overlooked. .
1 People nowadays are more ready to laugh than to admire when they
hear the lions bray ; for mewing and bleating, the taste, T fear, 1s on the
INC EASE.
INTRODUCTION xvil
But after all, Mary Russell Mitford, who spent most
of her tune gathering figs off thistles and making the
best of her difficult circumstances, suffered less than many
people do from the influence of imaginary things.
She was twenty-three years old when her first book
of poems was published; so we read in her letters, in
which she entreats her father not to curtail any of the
verses addressed to him, there ts no reason, she says,
except fis extreme modesty why the verses should be
suppressed,—she speaks not only with the fondness of a
daughter but with the sensibility of a poet. Our young
authoress 1s modest, although in print; she compares her-
self to Crabbe (as Jane Austen might have done), and feels
‘what she supposes a farthing candle would experience
when the sun rises in all its glory? Then comes the
Publisher's bill for 4593 she ts quite shocked at the bill,
which ts really exorbitant! In her next letter Miss
Mitford reminds her father that the taxes are still un-
paid, and a correspondence follows with somebody asking
Jor a chowe of the Doctor's pictures in payment Jor the
taxes. Ihe Doctor is in London all the time, dining out
and generally amusing himself, Everybody ts Speculat-
ing whether Sir Francis Burdett will go to the Tower}
‘Oh, my darling, how I envy you at the fountain-head of
entelligence tn these interesting times! How I envy Lady
Burdett for the fine opportunity she has to show the
1 Here, in our little suburban garden at Wimbledon, are the remains of an
old hedgerow which used to grow in the kitchen garden of the Grange where
Sir Lrancis Burdett then lived. The tradition ts that he was walking tn
the lane in his own kitchen garden when he was taken up and carried off to
honourable captivity.—A. T. R.
b
xvill OUR VILLAGE
heroism of our sex!’ writes the daughter, who ts only
encountering angry tax-gatherers al home... . Somehow
or other the bills are paid for the téme, and the Samily
arrangements go on as before.
Besides writing to the members of her own honte,
Miss Mitford startcd another correspondent very carly in
life; this was Sir William Elford, to whont she describes
her outings and adventures, her vrstts to Tavistock House,
where her kind friends the Perrys receive her. Mr.
Perry was the editor of the Morning Chronicle ; he and
his beautiful wife were the friends of all the most
interesting people of the day. Here again the present
writer's own expertences can interpret the printed page,
for her own first sight of London people and of London
society came to her in a little house wm Chesham Place,
where her father’s old friends, Mrs. Frederick Liltiot and
Miss Perry, the daughters of Miss Mitford's friends,
lived with a very notable and interesting set of people,
making a soctal centre, by that kindly unconscious art
which cannot be defined, that quick apprehension, that
benevolent fastidiousness (I have to use rather Jar-fetched
zvords) which are so essential to good hosts and hostesses.
A different standard 1s looked for now, by the rising
genevations knocking at the doors, behind which the
dignified Past is lying as stark as King Duncan him-
self !
Among other entertainments Miss Mitford went to the
fites which celebrated the battle of Vittoria ; she had also
the happiness of getting a good sight of Mime. ade Staél,
who was a great friend of the Perrys. ‘ She is almost
INTRODUCTION XIX
as much followed in the gardens as the Princess) she
says, pouring out her wonders, her pleasures, her raptures,
She begins to read Burns with youthful delight, dilates
upon his exhaustless imagination, his versatility, and then
she suggests a very just criticism. ‘ Does it not appear,
she says, ‘that versatility ts the true and rare character-
estic of that rare thing called gentus—versatility and
playfulness; then she goes on to speak of two highly-
reputed novels just come out and ascribed to Lady
Aforley, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
She ws still writing from Bertram House, but her
pleasant gossip continually alternates with more urgent
and less agreeable letters addressed to her Sather.
Lawyers’ clerks are again calling with notices and
warnings, tax-gatherers are troubling. Dr. M itford has,
as usual, left no address, so that she can only write to the
‘Star Office? and trust to chance. ‘Mamma Joins in
tenderest love, so the letters invariably conclude.
Notwithstanding the adoration bestowed by the ladies
of the family and their endearing adjectives, Mr. Harness
ws very outspoken on the subject of the handsome Doctor !
fle disliked his manners, his morals, his self-sufficiency, hts
loud talk. ‘ The old brute never enformed his friends of
anything » all they knew of him or his affatrs, or whatever
Jalse or true he intended them to belteve, came out
carelessly in his loose, dissointed talk?
fn 1814 Miss Mitford ts living on still with
her parents at Bertram House, but a change has come
over their home ; the servants are gone, the gravel turned
to moss, the turf into pasture, the shrubbertes to theckets,
XX OUR VILLAGE
the house a sort of new ‘ruin half inhabited, and a
Chancery suit ts hanging over their heads? Meantime
some news comes to cheer her from America, Two
editzons of her poens have been printed and sold.
Narrative Poems on the Female Character proved a
real success. ‘All who have hearts to feel and under-
standings to discriminate, must wish you health and leisure
to complete your plan, so write publishers in those golden
days, with complimentary copies of the work. . .
Great things are happening all this time, battles are
being fought and won, Napoleon ts on his way to St.
flelena ; London 1s in a frensy of rejoicings, entertainings,
wluminations. Lo Mary Mitford the appearance of
Waverley seems as great an event as the return of the
Bourbons » she ts certain that Waverley zs written by Sir
Walter Scott, but Guy Mannering, she thinks, ts by
another hand: her mind ts full of a genuine romantic
devotion to books and belles lettres, and she is also re-
jowing even more, in the spring-time of 1816. Dr, Muit-
Jord may be timpecunious and their affairs may be thread-
bare, but the lovely seasons conte out ever in fresh beauty
and abundance. The coppices are carpeted with primyroses,
with pansies and wild strawberry blosson,—the woods are
spangled with the delicate flowers of the woodsorrel and
qvood anemone, the meadows enamelled with cowslips. . .
Certainly few human betngs were ever created more fit
Jor this present world, and more capable of admiring and
enjoying its beauties, than Muss Mitford, who only
destved to be beautiful herself, she somewhere says, to be
perfectly contented.
INTRODUCTION xxi
LLL
Most people's lives are divided into first, second, and
third volumes; and as we read Miss Mrtford’s history
it forms no exception to the rule. The early cnthustastic
volume ts there, with tts hopes and wild judgments, its
quaint old-fashioned dress and phraseology ; then comes
the second volume, full of actual work and serous
responsibility ; with those childish parents to provide
for, whose lives, though so protracted, never seem to reach
beyond their nurseries. Miss Mitford's third volume ws
retrospective ; her growing infirmities are courageously
endured, there ts the certainty of success well carned and
well deserved; we realise her legitimate hold upon the
outer world of readers and writers, besides the reputation
which she won upon the stage by her tragedies.
The literary ladies of the early part of the century in
some ways had a very good time of it. A copy of verses,
a small volume of travels, a few tca-parties, a harp in one
corner of the room, and a hat and feathers worn rather
on one side, seemed to be all that was wanted to establish
a claim to fashion and inspiration. They had footstools
to rest their satin shoes upon, they had admirers and
panegyrists to their heart’s content, and above all they
possessed that peculiar complacency in which (with a few
notable exceptions) our age is singularly deficient. We
are earnest, we are audacious, we are original, but we
are not complacent. They were dolls perhaps, and lived
in dolls houses; we are gshosts without houses at all;
? oS
xxil OUR VILLAGE
we come and go wrapped in sheets of newspaper, holding
fuckering lights im our hands, paraffin lamps, by the
light of which we are seeking our proper sphere. Poor
vered spirits! We do not belong to the old world
any more! The new world is not yet ready for us.
Even Mr. Gladstone will not let us into the House of
Commons ; the Geographical Society rejects us, so does
the Royal Academy ; and yet who could say that any of
their standards vise too high! Some one or two are happily
safe, carried by the angels of the Press to little altars and
pinnacles all their own ; but the majority of hard-working
wntelligent women, ‘contented with little, pet ready for more,
may they not in moments of depression be allowed to
picture to themselves what their chances might have been
had they only been born half a century earlier P
Miss Mitford, notwithstanding all her troubles (she
has been known to say she had rather be a washerwoman
than a literary lady), had opportunities such as few
wwonten can now obtain. One ts lost in admiration a
the solidity of one’s grandparents’ taste, chen one attenipts
to read the tragedies they delighted in, and yet Rienz
sold four thousand copies and was acted forty-five times ,
and at one time Miss Mitford had two tragedies re
hearsed upon the boards together ; one at Covent Garde
and one at Drury Lane, with Charles Kentble ane
Macready disputing for her work. Has not one ats
read similar descriptions of the triumphs of Hanna
More, or of Johanna Baillie ; cheered by enthusiast
audiences, while men shed tears."
-1 Afem. Hannah More, v. 7. p. 124.
INTRODUCTION xxl
Julian was the first of Miss Mitford's acted plays.
Tt was brought out at Covent Garden 11182 3, chen she was
thirty-six years old ; Macready played the principal part.
“Tf the play do reach the ninth night, Mass M elford writes
to Macready, ‘it will be a very complete refutation of
Mr. Kemble's axiom that no single performer can fill the
theatre ; for except our pretty Alfonso (Miss Foote) there ts
only Julian, one and only one, Let hime tmagine how
deeply we feel his exertions and hes kindness. 4
Julian was stopped on the eighth night, to her great
disappointment, but she ts already engaged on another—on
several more——tragedies ; she wants the money badly ; for
the editor of her magazine has absconded, owing her £50.
Some trying and bewildering quarrel then ensues between
Charles Kemble and Macready, which puts off her tragedies,
and sadly affects poor Miss Mitford's nerves and profits.
She has one solace. Her father, partly instigated, she says,
by the effect which the terrible feeling of responsibility and
want of power has hud upon her health and spirits, at last
resalues to try if he can himself obtain any employitent
that may lighten the burthen of the home. Itits a good
thing that Dr. Mitford has braced himself to this herow
determination. ‘ The addition of two or even one hundred
a year to our Little income, joined to what I am,in a
manner, sure of gaining by mere industry, would take a
1 In Macready’s diary we find an entry which is not over sractous.
‘Julian acted March the 15th. Had but moderate success. The C. ©.
company was no longer equal to the support of plays containing moral
characters, The authoress in her dedication to me was profuse in her
acknowledgments and compliments, but the performance made Little
impression, and was soon forgotten.’
Xxiv OUR VILLAGE
load from muy heart of which I can scarcely give you an
vdea... evenjulian was writlen under a pressure of anxicty
which left me not a moments rest... So she Sondly
dwells upon the delightful prospects. Then comes the
next letter to Sir William Elford, and we read that her dear
Sather, ‘relying with a blessed sanguineness on my poor
endeavours, has not, [ believe, even inquired Jor @ situation,
and I do not press the matter, though I anxiously wish it ;
being willing to give one more trial to the theatre?
On one of the many occasions when Miss Mi etford
writes to her trustee tmploring him to sell out the small
remaining fragment of her fortune, she says,‘ My dear
Juther has, years ago, been tmprovident, is still irritable
and difficult to live with, but he ts a person of a thousand
virtues... there are very few half so good in this
mixed world, it is my fault that this money ts needed,
entirely my fault, and if it be withheld, my dear father
wll be overthrown, mind and body, and I shall never
know another happy hour?
No wonder Mr. Harness, who was behind the scenes,
remonstrated against the filial infatuation which sacrificed
health, sleep, peace of mind, to gratify every passing whim
of the Doctor's. Ata time when she was sttting up at
night and slaving, hour after hour, to earn the MECESSALY
means of living, Dr. Mitford must needs have a cow, a
stable, and dairy tmplements procured for his amusement,
and when he died he left £1000 of debts Jor the
scrupulous woman to pay off. She is determined to pay,
of she sells her clothes to do so. Meanwhile, the Doctor
7s still alive, and Miss Mitford ds straining every nerve
INTRODUCTION XXV
to keep hint so. She ts engaged (tu strict confidence) on a
grand historical subject, Charles and Cromwell, the finest
episode in English history, she says. Here, too, fresh
obstacles arise. This time tt ts the theatrical censor who
nterferes. It would be dangerous for the country to touch
upon such topics; Mr. George Colman dwells upon this
theme, although he gives the lady full credit for no cvil
ententions ; but for the present all her work is again
thrown away. While Miss Mitford is struggling on as
best she can against this confusion of worries and difficulty
(she eventually recetved £200 for Julian from a Surrey
theatre), a new firm ‘Whittaker’ undertakes to republish
the ‘village sketches’ which had been written for the
absconding editor. The book is to be published under
the title of Our Village.
ay
‘dre your characters and descriptions true?’ some-
body once asked our authoress. ‘Ves, Ves, Yes, AS true, as
true as ts well possible; she answers. ‘Vou, as a great
landscape painter, know that in painting a favourite scene
Jou do a little embellish and cawt help it; you avail
yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere ; of anything
be ugly you strike it out, or if anything be wanting you
put itin. But still the picture ts a likeness.
So wrote Miss Mitford, but with all due respect for her
and for Sir William Elford, the great landscape painter,
! cannot help thinking that what 1s admirable in her book,
are not her actual descriptions and pictures of intelligent
Xxxvi OUR VILLAGE
villagers and greyhounds, but the more imaginative things ;
the sense of space and nature and progress which she
knows how to convey; the sweet and emotional chord she
strikes with so true a touch. Take at hazard her de-
scription of the sunset. How simple and yet how finely
felt it ts. Her genuine delight reaches us and carries
us along, it ts not any entbellishing of effects, or ex-
aggcration of facts, but the reality of a true and very
present feeling... .‘ The narrow line of clouds which
“a few minutes ago lay like long vapouring streaks along
‘ the horizon, now lighted with a golden splendour, that
* the eye can scarcely endure ; those still softer clouds which
‘ floated above, wreathing and curling into a thousand
‘ fantastic forms as thin and changeful as suninter smoke,
defined and deepened into grandeur, and hedged wth
ineffable, insufferable light. Another minute and the
brilliant orb totally disappears and the sky above grows,
every moment, more varted and more beautiful, as the
dazzling golden lines are mixed with glowing red and
gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark specks, and
mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-
sparrow. .. . To look up at that glorious sky, and then
to see that magnificent picture reflected in the clear and
lovely Loddon water, ts a pleasure never to be described,
and never to be forgotten. My heart swells, and my eyes
‘fill as I write of tt, and think of the tmineasurable
majesty of nature and the unspeakable goodness of God,
who has spread an enjoyment so pure, so peaceful, and so
intense before the meanest and lowliest of His creatures,
But it ts needless now to go on praising Our Village,
INTRODUCTION XXVI
or to recount what a success was tn store for the little
book. Certain books hold thetr own by indtwdual right
and might; they are part of everybody's life as a matter
of course. They are not always read, but they tacitly
take theiy place among us. The editions succeeded
editions here and in America, artists came down to
ilustrate the scenes. Miss Mitford, who was so delighted
with the drawings by Mr. Baxter, should have lived to
see the charming glimpses of rural life we owe to Afr.
Thomson. ‘1 don’t mind ’em,’ says Lizzy to the cows,
as they stand with spirited bovine grace behind the
stable door. ‘Dow t mind them indecd !’
L think the author would assuredly have enjoyed the
picture of the baker, the wheelwright and the shoentaker,
cach following his special Alderney along the road to the
village, or of the farmer driving his old wife in the
gig... . One design, that of the lady in her pattens,
comes home to the writer of these notes, who has perhaps
the distinction of being the only authoress now alive who
has cver walked out in patiens. At the age of seven
years she was provided with a pair by a great-great-
aunt, a kind old lady kiving at Fareham, in Hampshire,
where they were still in use. How interesting the little
circles looked stamped upon the muddy road, and how
nearly down upon one’s nose one was at every other step |
Lut even with all her success, Miss Mitford was
not out of her troubles. She writes to Mr. Harness
saying: ‘You cannot imagine how perplexed I am.
Lhere are points in my domestic situation too long and
too painful to write about ; the terrible improvidence of one
XXVili OUR VILLAGE
dear parent, the failure of memory and decay of faculty
in that other who ts still dearer, cast on me a weight of
care and fear that I can hardly bear up against’ Fler
difficulties were unending. The new publisher now
stopped payment, so that even Our Village brought 7 no
return for the moment, Charles Kemble was unable to
make any offer for Foscari. She went up to town i the
greatest hurry to try and collect some of the money owing
to her from her various publishers, but, as Mr. Harness
says, received little from her debtors beyond invitations
and compliments. She meditates a novel, she plans an
opera, Cupid and Psyche.
At last, better times began to dawn, and she recetves
£130 down for a new novel and ten guineas front
Blackwood as a retaining fee. Then comes a letter from
Charles Kemble giving her new hope, for her tragedy,
which was soon afterwards produced at Covent Garden.
The tragedies are in tragic English, of course that
language of the boards, but not without a semplicity
and music of their own. In the introduction to
them, tm sonte volumes published by Hurst and Blacket
in 1884, Miss Mitford describes ‘the scene of indescrib-
able chaos preceding the performance, the vague sense of
obscurity and confusion ; tragedians, hatted and coated,
skipping about, chatting and joking ; the only very
grave person being Liston himself. Ballet-girls watk-
ing through their quadrilles to the sound of a solitary
fiddle, striking up as if of its own accord, from amid the
tall stools and music-desks of the orchestra, and piercing,
one hardly knew how, through the din that was going on
INTRODUCTION XX1X
incessantly. Oh, that din! Voices from every part ;
above, below, around, and in every key. Heavy weights
rolling here and falling there. Bells ringing, one could
not tell why, and the ubiquitous call-boy everywhere.
She describes her astonishment when the play succeeds.
‘Not that [ had nerve enough to attend the first repre-
sentation of my tragedies. I sat still and trembling im
some quiet apartinent near, and thither some friend
flew to set my heart at ease. Generally the messenger of
good tidings was poor Haydon, whose quick and ardent
spirit lent him wings on such an occasion.
We have the letter to her mother about Foscari, from
which I have quoted; and on the occaston of the production
of Rienzi at Drury Lane (two years later in October
1828), the letter to Sir Witham Elford when the poor
old mother was no longer here to rejoice in her daughter's
SUCCESS.
Miss Mitford gratefully records the sympathy of her
friends, the warm-hearted muses of the day. Mrs.
Trollope, Miss Landon, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Porden,
Mrs. Hofland, Mrs. Opte, who all appear with their
congratulations.
Miss Mitford says that Haydon, above all, sym-
pathised with her love for a large canvas. The
Classics, Spain, Italy, Medieval Rome, these are her
favourite scenes and periods. Dukes and tribunes were
her heroes; daggers, dungeous, and executioners her
means of effects.
She moralises very sensibly upon Dramatic success.
‘Jt is not, she says, ‘so delicious, so glorious, so complete
XXX OUR VILLAGE
a gratification as, tn our secret longings, we all expect.
Lt does not fill the heart,—tt ts an intoxication followed
by a dismal reaction†She tells a friend that never in
all her life was she so depressed and out of spirits as
after Rienzi, her first really successful venture. But there
2s also a passing allusion to her father’s state of mind,
to his mingled irritation and sulkiness, which partly
explains things. Could it be that the Doctor added
petty jealousy and envy to his other tnconventent
qualities ? Hts tntolerance for any author or actor, in
short, for any one not belonging to a county family, his
violent annoyance at any acquaintances such as those
which she now necessarily made, would naturally account
Jor some want of spirits oun the daughter's part; over-
wrought, over-taxed, for ever on the strain, her work
was exhausting tndecd. The small pension she after-
wards obtained from the Civil List must have been an
unspeakable boon to the poor harassed woman.
Tragedy seems to have resulted in a substantial pony
and a basket carriage for Miss Mitford, and in various
envetations (from the Talfourds, among the rest) during
which she ts liontsed right and left. It must have been
on thes occasion that Serjeant Talfourd complained so
bitterly of a review of lon which appeared about that
time, His guest, to soothe him, unwarily said, ‘she
should not have minded such a review of her Tragedy?
“Your Rienzi, zzdeed! I should think not; says the
sergeant, ‘lon ws very different’ The Talfourd house-
hold, as it is described by Mr. Lestrange, ts a droll
mature of poetry and prose, of hospitality, of untidiness,
INTRODUCTION XXN1
of petulance, of most genuine kindness and most genuine
human nature,
There are also many mentions of Aliss Mitford in
the Life of Macready by Sir I. Pollock. The great
tragedian seems not to have liked her with any cordiality ;
but he gives a pleasant account of a certain supper-party
en honour of lon at which she is present, and during
which she asks Macready if he will not now bring out
her tragedy. The tragedian does not answer, but Words-
worth, sitting by, says,‘ Ay, keep him to it?
V
Besides the Life of Miss Mitford by Messrs. Harness
and Lestrange, there is also a book of the Friendships
of Mary Russell Mitford, consésting of the letters she
recetued rather than of those which she wrote. It
certainly occurs to one, as one looks through the printed
correspondence of celebrated people, how different are
written from printed letters. Your frtend’s voice
sounds, your friend's eyes look out, of the written
page, even tts blots and erasures remind you of your
human being. But the magnetism ts gone out of these
printers lines with their even margins ; in which every-
body's handwriting ts exactly alike; in whitch everybody
uses the same type, the same expressions, in which the
eye roams from page to page untouched, unconvinced.
L can imagine the pleasure each one of these letters may
have given to Miss Mitford to receive in turn. T hey
XXxil OUR VILLAGE
come from well-known ladies, accustomed to be considered.
Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Hofland, Mrs. Howttt, Mrs. S.C. Hatt,
Miss Strickland, Mrs. Opie ; there, too, are M: iss Barrett
and Mrs. Jamieson and Miss Sedgwick who «writes
from America; they are all interesting people, but wt
must be confessed that the correspondence is not very
enlivening. Miss Barret’s is an exception, that zs
almost as good as handwriting to read. But there ts
no doubt that compliments to other authoresses are much
less amusing than those one writes or vecetves oneself ;
apologies also for not writing sooner, can pall wpon one
in print, however soothing they may be to the justly
offended recipient, or to the consctence- stricken corre-
spondent.
‘T must have seemed a thankless wretch, my dear
Miss Mitford} etc. etc. ‘ You, my dear friend, know too
well what itis to have to finish a book, to blame my not
attempting, etc. etc. ‘ Thes ts the thirty-ninth letter [ have
written since yesterday morning, says Harriet Martineau.
‘On, IL can scarcely hold the pen! I well not allow my
shame for not having written, to prevent me from writing
now: All these people seem to have been just as busy as
people are now, as amusing, as tiresome. They had the
additional difficulty of having to procure Sranks, and of
having to cover four pages instead of a post-card. Our
letters may be dull, but at all events they are not nearly
so long. We come sooner to the point and avoid elegant
circumlocutions. But one is struck, among other things,
by the keener literary zest of those days, and by the
immense numbers of MSS. and tragedies im circulation,
INTRODUCTION XXXII
all of which their authors confidingly send froi one to
another, There are also whole flights of travelling poents
flapping their wings and uttering thetr cries as they go,
An enthustastic American critic who comes over
to England emphasises the situation, Mr. Willis's
‘superlative admiration’ seems to give point to every-
thing, and to all the enthustasim, Miss Austen's Collins
hiniself could not have been more appreciative, not even
uf Miss de Burgh had tried her hand ata MS... |
Could he—Mr. Willis—choose, he would have tragedy
once a year from Muss Mitford’s pen. ‘What an
intoxicating life it ts, he cries; ‘I met Jane Porter and
Afiss Atkin and Tom Moore and a troop more beaux
esprits at dinner yesterday! I never shail be content
elsewhere,
Miss Mitford's own letters speak in a much more
natural votce.
‘L never could understand what people could find to
like in my letters) Miss Motford writes, ‘unless tt be that
they have a root to them? The root was in her own
hind heart. Miss M: etford may have been wanting a
“utile in discrimination, but she was never wanting ti
synpathy. She seems to have loved people for kindness’s
sake indiscriminately as if they were creations of her
own brain: but to friendliness or to trouble of any sort
she responds with fullest measure. Who shall complain
of some rosy vetl coloured the aspects of life for her ?
‘Among the many blessings I enjoy,—my dear father,
my admirable mother, my tried and excellent Sricnds,—$§
there ts nothing for which I ought to thank God so
c
XXXIV OUR VILLAGE
earnestly as for the constitutional buoyancy of spirits, the
aptness to hope, the will to be happy which I inherit from
my father, she writes. Was ever filial piety so irritating
as hers? It is difficult to bear, with any patience, her
praises of Dr. Mvttford. His illusions were no less a
part of his nature than his daughter's, the one a self-
centred absolutely selfish existence, the other generous,
humble, beautiful. She ts hardly ever really angry except
when some reports get about concerning her marriage.
There was an announcement that she was engaged to
one of her own clan, and the news spread among her
Jriends. The romantic Mrs. Hofland had conjured up
the suggestion, to Miss Mitford’s extreme annoyance. It
as said Mrs. Hofland also married off Miss Edgeworth
in the same manner.
Mary Mitford found her true romance in friendship,
not tn love. One day Mr. Kenyon came to see her while
she was staying in London, and offered to show her the
Zoological Gardens, and on the way he proposed calling in
Gloucester Place to take up a young lady, a connection of
his own, Miss Barrett by name. It was thus that Miss
Mitford first made the acquaintance of Mrs. Browning,
whose friendship was one of the happiest events of her
whole life. A happy romance indeed, with that added
reality which must have given it endurance, And indeed
to make anew friend is like learning a new language. I
myself have a friend who says that we have each one of
as a chosen audience of our own to whom we turn in-
stinctively, and before whom we rehearse that which ts tn
our minds, whose opinion influences us, whose approval ts
INTRODUCTION XXXV
our secret atm. Al thts Mrs. Browning seems to have
been to Miss Mitford.
‘T stt and think of you and of the poems that you well
write, and of that strange rainbow crown called fame,
until the vision is before me... . My pride and my
hopes seem altogether merged im you. At my time of
life and wrth so few to love, and with a tendency to body
Jorth images of gladness, you cannot think what joy tt ts
to anticipate... . So wrote the elder woman to the
younger with romantic devotion. What Miss Mitford
once said of herself was true, hers was the instinct of the
bee sucking honey from the hedge flower. IWhatever
sweetness and happiness there was to find she turned to
weth unerring directness.
Lt ts to Muss Barrett that she sometimes complains.
‘Lt will help you to understand how tupossible it zs for
me to earn money as I ought to do, when I tell you that
this very day I recetved your dear letter and sixteen
others ; then my father brought into my room the news-
paper to hear the ten or twelve columns of news from
Lnidia , then I dined and breakfasted in one; then I got
up, and by that time there were three parties of people in
the garden ; eight others arrived soon after... . I was
Jorced to leave, being engaged to call on Lady Madeline
Palmer. She took me some six miles on foot in Mr.
Palmer's beautiful plantations, in search of that exquisite
wildflower the bog-bean, do you know it? most beautiful
of flowers, either wild-—or, as K. puts tt—* tame.â€
After long search we found the plant not yet in bloom.
Dr. Mitford weeps over his daughter's exhaustion,
XXXV1 OUR VILLAGE
telling everybody that she is killing herself by her walks
and drives. He would lke her never to go beyond the
garden and beyond reach of the columns of his newspaper.
She declares that tt is only by getting out and afield that
she can bear the strain and the constant alternation of
enforced work and anxiety. Nature was, indeed, a second
nature to her. Charles Kingsley himself could scarcely
write better of the East wind... .
‘We have had nine weeks of drought and cast wind,
scarcely a flower to be seen, no verdure in the meadows,
no leaves tn the hedgerows ; if a poor violet or primrose
aid make its appearance it was scentless. TI have not
once heard my aversion the cuckoo... . and in this place,
so evidently the rendezvous of swallows, that tt takes tts
name from them, not a swallow has yet appeared. The
only time that I have heard the nightingale, I drove, the
one mild day we have had, to a wood where I used to
jind the woodsorrel in beds; only two blossoms of that
could be found, but a whole chorus of nightingales saluted
me the moment I drove into the wood,
There ts something of Madame de Sévigne in her
vivid realisation of natural things.
She nursed her father through a long and trying
illness, and when he died found herself alone tn the world
with unpatred health and very little besides her pension
Jrom the Crvil List to live upon. Dr. Mitford left £1000
worth of debts, which this honourable woman then and
there set to work to try and pay. So much courage and
devotion touched the hearts of her many friends and
readers, and this sum was actually subscribed by them.
INTRODUCTION XXxvii
Queens, archbishops, dukes, and margutses subscribe to
the testtnontal, so do the literary ladies, Mesdames Batley,
Edgeworth, Trollope » Mrs. Opie ts determined to collect
£20 at least, although she justly says she wishes tt were
Jor anything but to pay the Doctor's debts.
Ln 1844 tt 2s delightful to read of a little ease at last
en this harassed life ; of a school-feast with buns and flags
organised by the kind lady, the children riding in waggons
decked with laurel, Miss Mitford leading the way,
followed by erght or ten neighbouring carriages, and the
whole party watting in Swallowfield Lane to sce the
Queen and Prince Albert returning from their vistt to
the Duke of Wellington. ‘Our Duke went to no great
expense, says Miss Mitford. (Dr. Mitford would have
certainly disapproved had he been still alive.) One strip of
carpet the Duke did buy, the rest of the furniture he hired
mm Reading for the week. The ringers, after being hard
at work for four hours, sent a can to the house to ask for
some beer, and the can was sent back enpty.
Lt was towards the end of her life that Miss M: etford
left Three Mlile Cross and came to § wallowfield to stay
altogether. ‘The poor cottage was tumbling around us,
and if we had stayed much longer we should have been
buried in the ruins; she says; ‘there I had toiled and
striven and tasted as bitterly of bitter anxiety, of fear and
hope, as often falls to the lot of women’? Then comes a
charming description of the three miles of Straight and
dusty road. ‘I walked from one cottage to the other on
an autunin evening when the vagrant birds, whose habit
XXXVIIL OUR VILLAGE
of assembling there for their annual departure, gives, I
Suppose, its name of Swallowfield to the village, were
circling over my head, and I repeated to myself the pathetic
fines of Hayley as he saw those same birds gathering
upon hes roof during hts last tliness :-—
‘“ Ve gentle birds, that perch aloof,
And smooth your pintons on my roof. . .
‘“< Prepare for your departure hence
Ere winter's angry threats commence ;
Like you my soul would smooth her plume
Lor longer flights beyond the tomb.
‘“« May God by whom is seen and heard
Departing men and wandering bird,
tn mercy mark us for His own
And guide us to the land unknown /�
Thoughts soothing and tender came with those touching
lines, and gayer tmages followed. . .
Lt is from Swallowfield that she writes: ‘I have felt
this blessing of being able to respond to new friendships
very strongly lately, for I have lost many old and valucd
connections during this trying spring. TI thank God far
more earnestly for such blessings than for my daily
bread, for friendship ts the bread of the heart?
lt was late in life to make such warm new thes as
those which followed her removal from Three Mile Cross ss
but some of the most cordial friendships of her life date
Srom this time. Mr. James Payn and Mr. Fields she
loved with some veal motherly feeling, and Lady Russell
who lived at the Hall became her tender and devoted
SJriend.
INTRODUCTION XXXIX
VI
We went down to Reading the other day, as so many of
Miss Mitford's friends have done before, to look at ‘ our
village’ with our own eyes, and at the cottage tn which she
lived for so long. A phaeton with a fast-stepping horse
met us at the station and whirled us through the busy town
and along the straight dusty road beyond it. As we drove
along in the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges
on etther side,and I could see fields and hedgerows and red
roofs clustering here and there, while the low background
of blue hills spread towards the horizon. It was an
unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minute
by the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending
this or that rival pill. ‘ Tongues tu trees’ indeed, in
a very different sense from the exiled duke’s experience !
Then we come within sight of the running brook, uncon-
“taminated as yet; the river flowing cool and swift,
without quack medicines stamped upon tts waters: we
reach Whitley presently, with its pretty gabled hostel
(Mrs. Mitford used to drive to Whitley and back for
her airing), the dust rises on the fresh keen wind, the
scent of the ripe corn ts in the atr, the cows stoop under
the elm trees, looking exactly as they do in Mr. Thomsoi’s
pretty pictures, dappled and brown, with delicate legs and
horns. We pass very few people, a baby lugged along in
ats cart, and accompanied by its brothers and sisters; a
Jox-terrier comes barking at our wheels; at last the phaeton
stops abruptly between two or three roadside houses, and the
xl OUR VILLAGE
coachman, pointing with his whip, says, ‘That is “The Mit-
Jord,†maam.— Thats where Miss M, etford used to lve |â€
Was that all? TI saw two or three commouplace
houses skirting the dusty road, IT saw a comfortable
public-house with an elm tree, and beside tt another EVey
unpretentious little house, with a slate roof and Square
walls, and an inscription, ‘The Mitford, painted over
the doorway.
L had been expecting I knew not what; a Spire, a
pump, a green, a winding street: my preconceived village
wn the air had immediately to be swept into Space, and
2 its stead, behold the inn with its sign-post, and these
half-dozen brick tenements, more or less cut to one SQUQATE
pattern! So this was all! this was ‘our village’ of which
the author had written so charmingly! These were the
sights the kind eyes had dwelt upon, seeing in them all, the
soul of hidden things, rather than dull bricks and slates,
Except for one memory, Three Mile Cross would seem to
be one of the dullest and most uninteresting of country
places.
But we have Miss Mitford's own description. ‘ The
Cross is not a borough, thank Heaven, either rotten or
endependent. The inhabitants are quiet, peaceable people
who would not think of visiting us, even uf we had a
knocker to knock at. Our residence is a cottage’ (she ts
writing to her correspondent, Str William Elford), ‘no,
not a cottage, it does not deserve the name—a MESSUALE
or tenement such as a little farmer who had made
41400 might retire to when he left off business to
five on his means. It consists of a series of closets,
INTRODUCTION xii
the largest of which may be about eight feet square, which
they call parlours and kitchens and pantries, some of them
minus a corner, which has been unnaturally filched for a
chimney, others deficient in half a side, which has been
truncated by a shelving roof. Behind is a garden about
the size of a good drawing-room, with an arbour, which ts
a complete sentry-box of privet. On one side a public-
house, on the other a village shop, and right opposite a
cobbler's stall. Notwithstanding all this “ the cabin, as
Boabdil says, “ts conventent.†It 1s within reach of any
dear old walks, the banks where I find my vtolets, the
meadows full of cowslips, and the woods where the
woodsorrel blows. .. . Papa has already had the satis-
faction of setting the neighbourhood to rights and
committing a disorderly person who was the pest of
“ The Cross†to Bridewell. .. . Mamma has Jurbished
up an old dairy; I have lost uy only key and stuffed the
garden with flowers†. . . So writes the contented young
‘Wwontan.,
flow much more delightful is all this than any
commonplace stagey effect of lattice and gable; and
weth what pleasant unconscious art the writer of this
letter describes what ts not there and brings in her banks
of violets to perfume the dull rooms. The postscript to
this letter is Miss Mitford all over. ‘ Pray excuse my
blots and interlineations. They have been caused by my
attention being distracted by a nightingale in full song
whois pouring a world of music through my window.
‘Do you not like to meet with good company im your
jriends hearts?’ Miss Mitford says somewhere,—to no
xlii OUR VILLAGE
one better than to herself does this apply. Her heart was
Sull of gracious things, and the best of company was ever
hers, ‘La fleur de la hotte? as Madame de S evrgn says.
We walked ito the small square hall where Dr.
Mitford's bed was established after his wlness, whelst
visitors and all the rest of the household came and went
through the kitchen door. In the parlour, once kept for
his private use, now sat a party of honely friends from
Reading, resting and drinking tea: we too were served
with smoking cups, and poured our Libation to her who
once presided in the quiet place; and then the landlady
took us round and about, showed us the kitchen wrth zts
comfortable corners and low window-frames— I Suppose
this ts scarcely changed at all ?? said one of us,
‘Oh yes, ma@am, says the housekecper— We uses a
Kitchener, Miss Mitford always kept an open range.
The garden, with its sentry-box of privet, exists no
longer ; an tron mission-room stands in its place, with
the harmonium, the rows of straw chatrs, the table and
the candlesticks de circonstance, Jfiss A: ulforad’s picture
hangs on the wall, a hand-coloured copy of one of her
portraits. The kindly homely features smile Srvont the oils,
nm good humour and attentive intelligence. The sentiment
of to-day is assuredly to be found tn the Spirit of things
rather than in their outward signs. . . . Any one of us
can feel the romance of a wayside shrine put up to the
memory of some medieval well-dressed saint with a
nimbus at the back of her head, and a trailing cloak
and ve... . Here, after all, ts the same sentiment, only
translated into nineteenth-century language; uses corrogated
INTRODUCTION xliii
tron sheds, and cups of tea, and oakum matting. ‘ Mr.
Palmer, he bought the place; says the landlady, ‘he made
at into a Temperance Hotel, and built the Temperance
Hall in the garden.
No romantic marble shrine, but a square meeting-house
of good intent, a tribute not less sincere because 2 1s
square, than if it were drawn into Gothic arch and
curve. It speaks, not of a holy and mythical saint, but
of a good and warm-hearted woman; of a life-long
penance borne with charity and cheerfulness ; of sweet
fancies and blessings which have given tnnocent pleasure
to many generations !
VIL
There ts a note, written in a close and pretty
writing, something between Sir Walter Scott's and Mrs.
‘Browning's, which the present writer has possessed for
years, fastened tn a book among other carly treasures :—
Thank you, dearest Miss Priscilla, for your great kindness.
L veturn the ninth volume of [illegible|, with the four succeeding
ones, all that I have; probably all that ave yet published. You
shall have the rest when I get them. Tell dear Mr. George
(L must not call him Vert-Vert) that I have recollected the name
of the author of the clever novel Le Rouge et le Noir (that ts
the right title of the book, which has nothing to do with the
name); the author's name is Stendhal, or so he calls himself. L
think that he was either a musician or a musical critic, and that
he is dead. . . . My visitor has not yet arrived (6 clock, p.1.),
JSrightened no doubt by the abruptness of the two notes which LT
xliv OUR VILLAGE
wrote tn reply to hers yesterday morning ; and indeed nobody
could fancy the hurry in which one is forced to write by this
walking post. :
Lell my visitors of yesterday with my kind love that they did
me all the good in the world, as indeed everybody of your house
does.—Lever, dear Miss Priscilla, very affectionately OUTS,
M. R. Mirrorp.
Ln the present writer's own carly days, when the now
owner of Swallowfield was a very young, younger son, she
used to hear him and his sister, Mrs. Brackenbury (the
Miss Priscilla of the note), speaking with affectionate
remembrance of the old friend lately gone, who had dwelt
at thety very gates ; through which friendly gates one is
glad, indeed, to realise what delightful companionship and
loving help came to cheer the end of that long and totl-
some life; and when Messrs. Macmillan suggested this
preface the writer looked for her old autograph-book, and
at its suggestion wrote (wondering whether any links
existed still) to ask for information concerning Miss
Mitford, and so it happened that she found herself also
kindly entertained at Swallowfield, and invited to vistt
the scenes of which the author of Our Village had
written with so much delight.
L think I should like to reverse the old proverb about
letting those who run read, my own particular fancy
being for reading first and running afterwards. There
are few greater pleasures than to meet with an Indt-
viduality, to listen to tt speaking from a printed page,
recounting, suggesting, growing wpon you every hour,
gaming im life and presence, and then, while still under
INTRODUCTION xiv
its influence, to find oneself suddenly transported into the
very scene of that life, to stand anong its fanuliar
impressions and experiences, vealising another adtstinct
existence by some odd metempsychosis, and what may—
or rather, what must have been. It ts existing a book
rather than reading it when this happens to one.
The house in Swallowfield Park is an old English
country home, a fastness stell piled up against tine ;
whose stately walls and halls within, and beautiful
century-old trees tm the park without, record great tines
and striking figures. The manor was a part of the
dowry of Henry the VIII's luckless queens. The
modern house was built by Clarendon, and the old church
among the elms dates from 1200, with carved signs and
symbols and brasses of knights and burgesses, and nantes
of strange sound and bygone fashion.
Lady Russell, who had sent the phaeton with the fast-
stepping horse to meet us, was walking in the park as we
‘drove up, and instead of taking us back to the house, she
first led the way across the grass and by the streani to
the old church, standing in its trim sweet garden, where
Death itself seems smiling and fearless; where kind
Mary Mitford’s warm heart rests quiet, and ‘her busy
hand, as she says herself, ‘is lying in peace there, where
the sun glances through the great elm trees in the beautiful
churchyard of Swallowfield,
The last baronet, Sir Charles, who fought tn the Crimea,
and who succeeded his father, Sir Henry, moved the divid-
ing rail so that his old friend should be well within the
shadow of these elm trees. Lady Russell showed us
xlvi OUR VILLAGE
the tranquil green place, and told us its story, and
how the old church had once been doomed to destruction
when Kingsley came over by chance, and pleaded that
tt should be spared ; and how, when rubbish and outward
signs of decay had been cleared away, the restorers were
rewarded for their piety, by coming upon noble beams of
oak, untouched by time, upon some fine old buried monu-
ments and brasses and inscriptions, among which the people
still say theiy prayers in the shrine where their fathers
knelt, and of which the tradition is not yet swept away.
The present Lady of the Manor, who loves old traditions,
has done her part to preserve the records for her children.
So Miss Mitford walked from Three Mile Cross to
Swallowfield to end her days, with these kind friends to
cheer and to comfort her. Sir Henry Russell was alive
when she first established herself, but he was already
suffering from some sudden seizure, which she, with her
usual tinpetuosity, describes in her letters as a chronic state
of things. After his death, his widow, the Lady Russell
of those days, was her kindest friend and comforter.
The little Swallowfield cottage at the meeting of the
three roads, to which Mary Mitford came when she left
Three Mile Cross, has thrown out a room or two, as
cottages do, but otherwise I think it can be litile
changed. It was here Miss Mitford was visited
by so many interesting people, here she used to sit
writing at her big table under the ‘tassels of her
acacia tree? When the present Lady of the Manor
brought us to the gate, the acacia flowers were over, but
a baliny breath of summer was everywhere ; a beautiful
INTRODUCTION xlvii
rose was hanging upon the wall beneath the window (zz
must have taken many years to grow to such a height),
and beyond the palings of the garden spread the fields,
ripening in the late July, and turning to gold. The
Jarmer and his son were at work with thetr seythes ;
the birds were still flying, the sweet scents were in the atr.
from a lady who had known her,‘ my own Miss Anne’
of the letters, we heard something more that day of the
author of ‘Our Village’; of her charming intellect, her
Sift of talk, her impulsiveness, her essential sociability, and
rapid grace of mind. She had the SJaults of her qualities ;
she jumped too easily to conclustons 3 she was too much
under the influence of those with whom she lived. She
was born to be a victtm,—even after her old tyrant father’s
death, she was more or less over-ridden by her servants,
Neighbours looked somewhat doubtfully on K. and Ben,
but they were good to her, on the whole, and tended her
carefully, Muss Russell said that when she and her
brother took refuge in the cottage, one morning from a
Storm, while they dried themselves by the fire, they saw
the careful meal carried up to the old lady, the kidneys,
the custard, for her déjeuner & la fourchette.
When Miss Mitford died, she left everything she had
to her beloved K. and to Ben, except that she said she
weshed that one book from her well-stocked Library should
be given to each of her Jrunds. The old Doctor, wtih
all his faults, had loved books, and bought handsome and
valuable first editions of good authors. K. and Ben also
seem to have loved books and Jierst editions. To the
Russells, who had nursed Miss Mitford, comforted her,
xlviil OUR VILLAGE
by whose gates she dwelt, in whose arms she died, Ben
brought, as a token of remembrance, an old shilling volume
of one of G. P. R. James's novels, which was all he could
bear to part with. A prettier incident was told me by
Miss Russell, who once went to visit Miss Mitford's grave.
She found a young man standing there whom she did
not know. ‘Don't you know me?’ said he ; ‘I am Fenry,
maam. I have just come back from Australia’ He
was one of the children of the couple who had lived in
the cottage, and his first visit on his return from abroad
had been to the tomb of his old protectress.
T also heard a friend who knew Miss Mitford in her
latest days, describe going to sce her within a very few
months of her death» she was still bright and responding
as ever, though very ill. The young visitor had herself
been laid up and absent from the invalid’s bedside for
some time. They talked over many things,—an authoress
among the rest, concerning whose power of writing a book
Miss Mitford seems to have been very doubtful. After her
visitor was gone, the sick woman wrote one of her delicate
pretty little notes and despatched it with tts tiny seal
(there it is still unbroken, with its M. R. MM, gust as
she stamped it), and this is the little letter :-—
Thank you, dearest Miss .. . for once again showing me
your fair face by the side of the dear, dear friend | Lady Russell|
for whose goodness I have neither thanks nor words. To the
end of my life I shall go on sinning and repenting. LTeariily
sorry have I been ever since you went away to have spoken so
unkindly to Mrs... . Heaven forgive me for it, and send
her a happier conclusion to her life than the beginning might
INTRODUCTION xlix
warrant, Lf you have an idle lover, my dear, present over to
him my sernion, for those were words of worth.
God bless you all! Ever, most faithfully and affectionately
VOUrs, AL, R. Aflirrory.
Sunday Evening.
VILT
When one turns from Miss Mitford's works to the
notices im the biographical dictionary (in which Miss
Mitford and Mithridates occupy the same page), one
finds how firmly her reputation ts established. ‘Dame
auteur, says my faithful mentor, the Biographie Generale,
‘considerée comme le peintre le plus fidéle de la vie
rurale en Angleterre†‘Author of a remarkable tragedy,
“Julian, 7 which Macready played a princtpal part,
Jollowed by Foscari, Rienzi, and others; says the English
Biographical Dictionary.
‘Tan charmed with my new cottage, she writes soon
after her last installation ; ‘the neighbours are most kind.
Kingsley was one of the first to call upon her. ‘ He took
me quite by surprise in his extraordinary fascination,
says the old lady,
Mr. Fields, the American publisher, also went to
see Miss Mitford at Swallowfield, and immediately
became a very great ally of hers. Itwas to him that
she gave her own portrait, by Lucas. Mr. Fields has
left an interesting account of her in his Yesterdays
with Authors — Her dogs and her geraniuins, he says,
@
1 OUR VILLAGE
‘were her great glories! She used to write me long
letters about Fanchon, a dog whose personal acquaintance
L had made some time before, while on a visit to her
cottage. vuery virtue under heaven she attributed to
that canine individual; and I was obliged to allow tn
my return letters that since our planet began to spin,
nothing comparable to Fanchon had ever run on Jour
legs. I had also known Flush, the ancestor of Fanchon,
intimately, and had been accustomed to hear wonderful
things of that dog, but Fanchon had graces and
gemus unique. Miss Mitford would have joined with
flamerton, when he says, ‘I hunbly thank Divine
Providence for having invented dogs, and I regard
that man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless
life,
Another of Miss Mitford's great friends was John
Ruskin, and one can well imagine how much they neust
have had in common. Of Miss Mitford's writings Ruskin
says,‘ They have the playfulness and purity of the Vicar
of Wakefield zzthout the naughtiness of tts occasional
wet, or the dust of the world’s great road on the other
side of the heage... -
Netther the dust nor the ethics of the world of men
quite belonged to Miss Mitford's genius. It ts always
a sort of relief to turn from her criticism of people, her
prawse of Louts Napoleon, her facts about Mr. Dickens,
whom she describes as a dull companion, or about my
" Ltis Mr, Harness who says, writing of Ruskin and ALiss Milford, ‘ Hts
hindness cheered her closing days. He sent her every book that would
interest, every delicacy that would strengthen her
INTRODUCTION li
father, whom she looked upon as an utter heartless world-
ling, to the natural spontaneous sweet flow of nature in
which she lived and moved tnstinctively.
Mr. James Payn gives, perhaps, the most charming of
all the descriptions of the author of Our Village. He
has many letters frone her to quote from. ‘The paper is
all odds and ends, he says,‘ and not a scrap of it but ts
covered and crossed. The very flaps of the envelopes and
the outsides of them have their message
Mr. Payn went to see her at Swallowfield, and
describes the sinall apartment lined with books from floor
to ceiling and fragrant with flowers. ‘Its tenant rose
Jrom her arm-chair with difficulty, but with a sunny smile
and a charming manner bade me welcome. My father
had been an old friend of hers, and she spoke of my home
and belongings as only a woman can speak of such things,
then we plunged into medea res, tuto men and books. She
seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing
from the Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker.
And she talked like an angel, but her views upon poetry
as a calling in life, shocked me not a tittle. She satd
she preferred a mariage de convenance Zo a love match,
because it generally turned out better. “This surprises
you,’ she sar, smiting, “but then I suppose I am the least
romantic person that ever wrote plays.’ She was much
more proud of her plays, even then well-nigh forgotten,
than of the works by which she was well known, and
which at that time brought people from the ends of the
earth to see her.
‘Nothing ever destroyed her faith tn those she loved.
a2
lit OUR VILLAGE
Lf T had not known all about him from my own folk I
should have thought her father had been a patriot and a
martyr. She spoke of him as tf there had never been
such a father—which in a sense was true.
Mr. Payn quotes Miss Mitford’s charming description
of K., ‘for whom she had the highest admiration’ ‘K.
as a great curtosity, by far the cleverest wontan tn these
parts, not in a literary way [this was not to disappoint
me|, but in everything that rs useful. She could make a
Court dress for a duchess or cook a dinner for a Lord
Mayor, but her principal talent is shown in managing
everybody whoui she comes near. Especially her husband
and myself; she keeps the money of both and never allows
either of us to spend stxpence without her knowledge... .
Vou should see the manner in which she makes Ben reckon
with her, and her contempt for all women who do not
manage their husbands,
Another delightful quotation ts from one of Charles
Kingsley’s letters to Mr. Payn. It brings the past before
us from another point of view.
‘7 can never forget the little figure rolled up in two
chatrs tn the little Swallowfield room, packed round with
books up to the ceiling—the little figure wrth clothes on
of no recognised or recognisable pattern , and somewhere,
out of the upper end of the heap, gleaming under a great
deep globular brow, two such eyes as I never perhaps saw
in any other Englishwoman—though I believe she must
have had French blood in her veins to breed such eyes and
such a tongue, the beautiful speech which came out of that
ugly (tt was that) face, and the glitter and depth too of
INTRODUCTION Titi
the eves, like live coals—perfectly honest the while...
One would like to go on quoting and copying, but here
my preface must cease, for tt is but a preface after all,
one of those many prefaces written out of the past and
when everything 1s over.
INTRODUCTION
COUNTRY PICTURES
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY
THE FIRST PRIMROSE
: VIOLETING
THE COPSE
THE Woop
THE DELL
THE CowsLiv-BALL
THE OLD HOUSE AT ABERLEIGH
THE HARD SUMMER
THE SHAW
NUTTING
THE VISIT
HANNAH BIN?
THE FALL OF THE LEAF .
aS 2 see
‘Watering my flowers’
Heading to Introduction
Heading to Contents .
Heading to List of Illustrations
Heading to Country Pictures .
‘A retired publican ’
‘Playfellows’ é
‘The thickest of the fray’
‘Mine host’
‘A recruiting sergeant’
‘The worthy wheeler carry the gown’
‘And a horseman passing it at a full trot’
Tailpiece to Country Pictures
leading to Walks in the Country
‘There they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawling’
‘The road is gay now’
‘The frost-bitten gentleman ’
‘The lieutenant skating ’
‘Pattens paddle’
Heading to The First Primrose
PAGE
Frontispiece
vil
lvill OUR VILLAGE
‘Fine March weather’
“A vestry meeting’
«An old gamekeeper’
«A knowing look’
‘Joseph White carrying off the fair Rachel’
Tailpiece to The First Primrose
leading to Violeting
“A group on horseback ’
© Three sturdy farmers’
‘A merry group’
‘A whistling boy’
‘Bean-setting’
Tailpiece to Violeting
IJeading to The Copse
‘ Bringing her game’
‘Tome to “their walk â€
“Sent to Coventry’
‘Mrs. Sally Mearing’
‘ Giving his lodger fair warning
*Soundly scolded’
‘ After the sheep’
‘The shameless villain Saladin’
Tailpiece to The Copse
Heading to The Wood
‘ Saladin’s affair with the Gander’
‘Let us gather some’
‘The hedgehog ’
Heading to The Dell .
‘Talf the cows in the street’ .
‘Poor blind Robert’
‘Ah! little rogues 1’
‘ Peaceful evenings’
‘There sits Mrs. Allen, feeding her poultry’ .
PAGE
44
46
50
51
56
59
60
62
65
66
68
â€
7t
2
ao
75
76
79
84
86
88
90
92
95
96
99
Iol
107
108
109
113
115
17
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
‘Over the bridge’
Heading to The Cowslip-Ball
‘I don’t mind ’em’
‘A flirtation’
*Cuckoo ! cuckoo !’
‘Making the cowslip-ball’
‘Faster, faster |’
‘Cloaks and umbrellas’
‘May went to bed’. z
Heading to The Old House at Naa
* Off we drove’
‘Youth and age’
‘Here we must alight !’
Heading to The Hard Summer
‘Staring at a balloon’
‘ All one dust’
‘That poor boy’ 3 5 . : >
‘ Cricket ’ : ° ; ee >
‘Thank you, Joe Kirby i
‘Carter’s boy’ a 3 S .
‘Squabbling’.
‘The little hussar’
‘ Dipping up water’ :
Tailpiece to The Hard Summer
Heading to The Shaw
‘By sheer beggary’
‘Maid and boy, and mistress and master’
‘He likes Dash’
‘A battle’ d : : ;
‘The Bench’ . , : : .
‘Daddy! daddy!’ . . :
‘Tottering up the path’
Heading to Nutting
167
168
171
173
175
176
179
183
185
186
188
190
Igt
193
199
Ix OUR VILLAGE
‘In the apple-tree’. °
Yeading to The Visit
‘A fine noble animal’
“Prentice to the footman
‘The mill team’
Heading to Hannah Bint
‘Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint’s famous dog, Watch’
“To the lord of the manor’
‘ Admission to the charity-school’
‘As much like lovers’
Tailpiece to Hannah Bint
Ileading to The Fall of the Leaf
‘The little post-boy’
‘Ah! a pheasant ! a superb cock pheasant !’
‘Grazing under the tall elms’
GOUNTERY PICTURES
&
tA
2
2 :
al hee
.é¥ | Sagi ESET
— oe
(Gu ntry Petu res.
all situations for a constant residence,
that which appears to me most delightful
is a little village far in the country ; a
small neighbourhood, not of fine man-
sions finely peopled, but of cottages and
cottage-like houses, ‘messuages or tene-
ments, as a friend of mine calls such -
ignoble and nondescript dwellings, with
inhabitants whose faces are as familiar to
us as the flowers in our garden; a little
world of our own, close-packed and in-
sulated like ants in an ant-hill, or bees
in a hive, or sheep in a fold, or nuns in
a convent, or sailors in a ship; where we
know every one, are known to every one,
interested in every one, and authorised
to hope that every one feels an interest
‘inus. How pleasant it is to slide into these true-hearted
Y
4 OUR VILLAGE
feelings from the kindly and unconscious influence of
habit, and to learn to know and to love the people about
us, with all their peculiarities, just as we learn to know
and to love the nooks and turns of the shady lanes and
sunny commons that we pass every day. Even in books
I like a confined locality, and so do the critics when
they talk of the unities. Nothing is so tiresome as to
be whirled half over Europe at the chariot-wheels of a
hero, to go to sleep at Vienna, and awaken at Madrid ;
it produces a real fatigue, a weariness of spirit. On
the other hand, nothing is so delightful as to sit down
in a country village in one of Miss Austen’s delicious
novels, quite sure before we leave it to become in-
timate with every spot and every person it contains ;
or to ramble with Mr. White over his own parish of
Selborne, and form a friendship with the fields and
coppices, as well as with the birds, mice, and squirrels,
who inhabit them; or to sail with Robinson Crusoe
to his island, and live there with him and his goats
and his man Friday ;—how much we dread any new
comers, any fresh importation of savage or sailor! we
never sympathise for a moment in our hero’s want of
company, and are quite grieved when he gets away ;—
or to be shipwrecked with Ferdinand on that other
lovelier island—the island of Prospero, and Miranda,
and Caliban, and Ariel, and nobody else, none of
Dryden’s exotic inventions:—that is best of all.
1White’s Watural History and Antiquities of Selborne; one of the
most fascinating books ever written. J wonder that no naturalist has
adopted the same plan.
COUNTRY PICTURES 5
And a small neighbourhood is as good in sober waking
reality as in poetry or prose; a village neighbourhood,
such as this Berkshire hamlet in which I write, a long,
straggling, winding street at the bottom of a fine
eminence, with a road through it, always abounding in
carts, horsemen, and carriages, and lately enlivened by
a stage-coach from B—-— to S——, which passed
through about ten days ago, and will I suppose return
some time or other. There are coaches of all varieties
nowadays; perhaps this may be intended for a
monthly diligence, or a fortnight fly. Will you walk
with me through our village, courteous reader? The
journey is not long. We will begin at the lower end,
and proceed up the hill.
The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand,
with the long well-stocked garden by the side of the
road, belongs to a retired publican from a neighbour-
ing town; a substantial person with a comely wife ;
one who piques himself on independence and idleness,
talks politics, reads newspapers, hates the minister, and
cries out for reform. He introduced into our peaceful
vicinage the rebellious innovation of an illumination on
the Queen’s acquittal. Remonstrance and persuasion
were in vain; he talked of liberty and broken windows
—so we all lighted up. Oh! how he shone that night
with candles, and laurel, and white bows, and gold
paper, and a transparency (originally designed for a
pocket-handkerchief) with a flaming portrait of her
Majesty, hatted and feathered, in red ochre. He had
no rival in the village, that we all acknowledged ; the
6 OUR VILLAGE
very bonfire was less splendid ; the little boys reserved
their best crackers to be expended in his honour, and
he gave them full sixpence more than any one else.
He would like an illumination once a month ; for it
‘A retired publican.’
Copyright 1833 by Macmillan & Co,
must not be concealed that, in spite of gardening, of
newspaper reading, of jaunting about in his little cart,
and frequenting both church and meeting, our worthy
neighbour begins to feel the weariness of idleness.
COUNTRY PICTURES 7
He hangs over his gate, and tries to entice passengers
to stop and chat; he volunteers little jobs all round,
smokes cherry trees to cure the blight, and traces and
blows up all the wasps’-nests in the parish. I have
seen a great many wasps in our garden to-day, and
shall enchant him with the intelligence. He even
assists his wife in her sweepings and dustings, Poor
man! he is a very respectable person, and would be a
very happy one, if he would add a little employment
to his dignity. It would be the salt of life to him.
Next to his house, though parted from it by another
long garden with a yew arbour at the end, is the pretty
dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale, sickly-looking, black-
haired man, the very model of sober industry. There
he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at
night. An earthquake would hardly stir him: the
illumination did not. He stuck immovably to his
last, from the first lighting up, through the long blaze
and the slow decay, till his large solitary candle was
the only light in the place. One cannot conceive
anything more perfect than the contempt which the
man of transparencies and the man of shoes must have
felt for each other on that evening. There was at
least as much vanity in the sturdy industry as in the
strenuous idleness, for our shoemaker is a man of sub-
stance; he employs three journeymen, two lame, and one
a dwarf, so that his shop looks like an hospital ; he has
purchased the lease of his commodious dwelling, some
even say that he has bought it out and out; and he
has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate, fair-
8 OUR VILLAGE
haired girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and
playfellow of every brat under three years old, whom
‘ Playfellows.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds all day long. A
very attractive person is that child-loving girl. I have
never seen any one in her station who possessed so
COUNTRY PICTURES 9
thoroughly that undefinable charm, the lady-look. Sce
her on a Sunday in her simplicity and her white frock,
and she might pass for an earl’s daughter. She likes
flowers too, and has a profusion of white stocks under
her window, as pure and delicate as herself.
The first house on the opposite side of the way is
the blacksmith’s; a gloomy dwelling, where the sun
never seems to shine; dark and smoky within and
without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer
in our little state, nothing less than a constable; but,
alas! alas! when tumults arise, and the constable is
called for, he will commonly be found in the thickest
of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wife and her
eight children if there were no public-house in the land :
an inveterate inclination to enter those bewitching doors
is Mr. Constable’s only fault.
Next to this official dwelling is a spruce brick
tenement, red, high, and narrow, boasting, one above
another, three sash-windows, the only sash-windows in
the village, with a clematis on one side and a rose on
the other, tall and narrow like itself. That slender
mansion has a fine, genteel look. The little parlour
seems made for Hogarth’s old maid and her stunted
footboy ; for tea and card parties,—it would just hold
one table ; for the rustle of faded silks, and the splen-
dour of old china; for the delight of four by honours,
and a little snug, quiet scandal between the deals; for
affected gentility and real starvation. This should
have been its destiny ; but fate has been unpropitious :
it belongs to a plump, merry, bustling dame, with four
10 OUR VILLAGE
fat, rosy, noisy children, the very essence of vulgarity
and plenty.
Then comes the village shop, like other village shops,
‘The thickest of the fray.’
multifarious as a bazaar ; a repository for bread, shoes,
tea, cheese, tape, ribands, and bacon ; for everything,
in short, except the one particular thing which you
COUNTRY PICTURES Il
happen to want at the moment, and will be sure not
to find. The people are civil and thriving, and frugal
withal ; they have let the upper part of their house to
two young women (one of them is a pretty blue-eyed
girl) who teach little children their A B C, and make
caps and gowns for their mammas,—parcel school-
mistress, parcel mantua-maker. I believe they find
adorning the body a more profitable vocation than
adorning the mind.
Divided from the shop by a narrow yard, and
opposite the shoemaker’s, is a habitation of whose
inmates I shall say nothing. A cottage—no—a minia-
ture house, with many additions, little odds and ends
of places, pantries, and what not; all angles, and of a
charming in-and-outness ; a little bricked court before
one half, and a little flower-yard before the other ; the
walls, old and weather-stained, covered with holly-
hocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot-tree ;
the casements full of geraniums (ah! there is our
superb white cat peeping out from among them) ; the
closets (our landlord has the assurance to call them
rooms) full of contrivances and corner-cupboards ; and
the little garden behind full of common flowers, tulips,
pinks, larkspurs, peonies, stocks, and carnations, with
an arbour of privet, not unlike a sentry-box, where one
lives in a delicious green light, and looks out on the
gayest of all gay flower-beds. That house was built
on purpose to show in what an exceeding small com-
pass comfort may be packed. Well, I will loiter there
no longer.
12 OUR VILLAGE
The next tenement is a place of importance, the
Rose Inn: a white-washed building, retired from the
road behind its fine swinging sign, with a little bow-
window room coming out on one side, and forming,
* Adine host.
with our stable on the other, a sort of open square,
which is the constant resort of carts, waggons, and
return chaises. There are two carts there now, and
mine host is serving them with beer in his eternal red
COUNTRY PICTURES 13
waistcoat. He is a thriving man and a portly, as his
waistcoat attests, which has been twice let out within
this twelvemonth. Our landlord has a stirring wife, a
hopeful son, and a daughter, the belle of the village ;
not so pretty as the fair nymph of the shoe-shop, and far
less elegant, but ten times as fine ; all curl-papers in the
morning, like a porcupine, all curls in the afternoon,
like a poodle, with more flounces than curl-papers, and
more lovers than curls. Miss Phcebe is fitter for town
than country ; and to do her justice, she has a conscious-
ness of that fitness, and turns her steps townward as
often as she can. She is gone to B—-— to-day with
her last and principal lover, a recruiting sergeant—a
man as tall as Sergeant Kite, and as impudent. Some
day or other he will carry off Miss Phoebe.
In a line with the bow-window room is a low garden-
wall, belonging to a house under repair :—the white
house opposite the collar-maker’s shop, with four lime-
trees before it, and a waggon-load of bricks at the
door. That house is the plaything of a wealthy, well-
meaning, whimsical person who lives about a mile off.
He has a passion for brick and mortar, and, being too
wise to meddle with his own residence, diverts himself
with altering and re-altering, improving and re-improv-
ing, doing and undoing here. Itisa perfect Penelope’s
web. Carpenters and bricklayers have been at work
for these eighteen months, and yet I sometimes stand
and wonder whether anything has really been done.
One exploit in last June was, however, by no means
equivocal. Our good neighbour fancied that the limes
14 OUR VILLAGE
shaded the rooms, and made them dark (there was
not a creature in the house but the workmen), so he had
all the leaves stripped from every tree. There they
stood, poor miserable skeletons, as bare as Christmas
under the glowing midsummer sun. Nature revenged
herself, in her own sweet and gracious manner; fresh
leaves sprang out, and at nearly Christmas the foliage
was as brilliant as when the outrage was committed.
Next door lives a carpenter, ‘famed ten miles round,
and worthy all his fame,—few cabinet-makers surpass
him, with his excellent wife, and their little daughter
Lizzy, the plaything and queen of the village, a child
three years old according to the register, but six in size
and strength and intellect, in power and in self-will.
She manages everybody in the place, her schoolmistress
included ; turns the wheeler’s children out of their own
little cart, and makes them draw her; seduces cakes
and lollypops from the very shop window; makes the
lazy carry her, the silent talk to her, the grave romp
with her; does anything she pleases; is absolutely
irresistible. Her chief attraction lies in her exceeding
power of loving, and her firm reliance on the love and
indulgence of others. How impossible it would be to
disappoint the dear little girl when she runs to meet
you, slides her pretty hand into yours, looks up gladly
in your face, and says ‘Come!’ You must go: you
cannot help it. Another part of her charm is her
singular beauty. Together with a good deal of the
character of Napoleon, she has something of his square,
sturdy, upright form, with the finest limbs in the world,
‘A recruiting sergeant,
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co,
COUNTRY PICTURES 17
a complexion purely English, a round laughing face,
sunburnt and rosy, large merry blue eyes, curling brown
hair, and a wonderful play of countenance. She has
the imperial attitudes too, and loves to stand with her
hands behind her, or folded over her bosom; and
sometimes, when she has a little touch of shyness, she
clasps them together on the top of her head, pressing
down her shining curls, and looking so exquisitely
pretty! Yes, Lizzy is queen of the village! She has
but one rival in her dominions, a certain white grey-
hound called Mayflower, much her friend, who resembles
her in beauty and strength, in playfulness, and almost
in sagacity, and reigns over the animal world as she
over the human. They are both coming with me,
Lizzy and Lizzy’s ‘pretty May. We are now at the
end of the street ; a cross-lane, a rope-walk shaded with
limes and oaks, and a cool clear pond overhung with
elms, lead us to the bottom of the hill. There is still
one house round the corner, ending in a picturesque
wheeler’s shop. The dwelling-house is more ambitious.
Look at the fine flowered window-blinds, the green door
with the brass knocker, and the somewhat prim but
very civil person, who is sending off a labouring man
with sirs and curtsies enough for a prince of the blood.
Those are the curate’s lodgings—apartments his land-
lady would call them; he lives with his own family
four miles off, but once or twice a week he comes to
his neat little parlour to write sermons, to marry, or to
bury, as the case may require. Never were better or
kinder people than his host and hostess ; and there is a
Cc
18 OUR VILLAGE
reflection of clerical importance about them since their
connection with the Church, which is quite edifying—a
‘The worthy wheeler
carry the gown.
decorum, a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see
the worthy wheeler carry the gown after his lodger on
a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife’s best hand-
COUNTRY PICTURES 19
kerchief!—or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or
a squabbling woman! The curate is nothing to him.
He is fit to be perpetual churchwarden.
We must now cross the lane into the shady rope-
walk. That pretty white cottage opposite, which stands
straggling at the end of the village in a garden full of
flowers, belongs to our mason, the shortest of men, and
his handsome, tall wife: he, a dwarf, with the voice of
a giant; one starts when he begins to talk as if he
were shouting through a speaking trumpet; she, the
sister, daughter, and grand-daughter, of a long line
of gardeners, and no contemptible one herself. It is
very magnanimous in me not to hate her; for she
beats me in my own way, in chrysanthemums, and
dahlias, and the like gauds. Her plants are sure to
live; mine have a sad trick of dying, perhaps because
I love them, ‘not wisely, but too well, and kill
them with over-kindness. Half-way up the hill is
another detached cottage, the residence of an officer,
and his beautiful family. That eldest boy, who is
hanging over the gate, and looking with such intense
childish admiration at my Lizzy, might be a model
for a Cupid.
How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, with
its broad green borders and hedgerows so thickly
timbered! How finely the evening sun falls on that
sandy excavated bank, and touches the farmhouse on
the top of the eminence! and. how clearly defined and
relieved is the figure of the man who is just coming
down! It is poor John Evans, the gardener—an
20 OUR VILLAGE
excellent gardener till about ten years ago, when he
lost his wife, and became insane. He was sent to St.
Luke’s, and dismissed as cured; but his power was
gone and his strength ; he could no longer manage a
garden, nor submit to the restraint, nor encounter the
fatigue of regular employment: so he retreated to the
workhouse, the pensioner and factotum of the village,
amongst whom he divides his services. His mind often
wanders, intent on some fantastic and impracticable
plan, and lost to present objects; but he is perfectly
harmless, and full of a childlike simplicity, a smiling
contentedness, a most touching gratitude. Every one
is kind to John Evans, for there is that about him
which must be loved; and _ his unprotectedness, his
utter defencelessness, have an irresistible claim on every
better feeling. I know nobody who inspires so deep
and tender a pity; he improves all around him. He
is useful, too, to the extent of his little power ; will do
anything, but loves gardening best, and still piques
himself on his old arts of pruning fruit-trees, and raising
cucumbers. He is the happiest of men just now, for
he has the management of a melon bed—a melon bed !
fie! What a grand pompous name was that for
three melon plants under a hand-light! John Evans is
sure that they will succeed. We shall see: as the
chancellor said, ‘I doubt.’
We are now on the very brow of the eminence, close
to the Hill-house and its beautiful garden. On the
outer edge of the paling, hanging over the bank that
skirts the road, is an old thorn—such a thorn! The
COUNTRY PICTURES 21
long sprays covered with snowy blossoms, so graceful,
so elegant, so lightsome, and yet so rich! There only
wants a pool under the thorn to give a still lovelier re-
flection, quivering and trembling, like a tuft of feathers,
whiter and greener than the life, and more prettily
mixed with the bright blue sky. There should indeed
be a pool; but on the dark grass-plat, under the high
bank, which is crowned by that magnificent plume,
there is something that does almost as well,—Lizzy and
Mayflower in the midst of a game at romps, ‘making
a sunshine in the shady place ;’ Lizzy rolling, laugh-
ing, clapping her hands, and glowing like a rose;
Mayflower playing about her like summer lightning,
dazzling the eyes with her sudden turns, her leaps, her
bounds, her attacks, and her escapes. She darts round
the lovely little girl, with the same momentary touch
that the swallow skims over the water, and has exactly
the same power of flight, the same matchless ease and
strength and grace. What a pretty picture they would
make ; what a pretty foreground they do make to the
real landscape! The road winding down the hill with
a slight bend, like that in the High Street at Oxford ;
a waggon slowly ascending, and a horseman passing it
at a full trot—(ah! Lizzy, Mayflower will certainly
desert you to have a gambol with that blood-horse !)
half-way down, just at the turn, the red cottage of the
lieutenant, covered with vines, the very image of comfort
and content; farther down, on the opposite side, the
small white dwelling of the little mason ; then the limes
and the rope-walk; then the village street, peeping
22 OUR VILLAGE
through the trees, whose clustering tops hide all but the
chimneys, and various roofs of the houses, and here and
RSS ,
t
‘And a horseman passing tt at
a full trot.’
there some angle of a wall; farther on, the elegant town
of B——, with its fine old church-towers and spires ;
the whole view shut in by a range of chalky hills ; and
COUNTRY PICTURES 23
over every part of the picture, trees so profusely
scattered, that it appears like a woodland scene, with
glades and villages intermixed. The trees are of all
kinds and all hues, chiefly the finely-shaped elm, of so
bright and deep a green, the tips of whose high outer
branches drop down with such a crisp and garland-like
richness, and the oak, whose stately form is just now so
splendidly adorned by the sunny colouring of the young
leaves. Turning again up the hill, we find ourselves on
that peculiar charm of English scenery, a green common,
divided by the road; the right side fringed by hedge-
rows and trees, with cottages and farmhouses irregu-
larly placed, and terminated by a double avenue of
noble oaks; the left, prettier still, dappled by bright
pools of water, and islands of cottages and cottage-
gardens, and sinking gradually down to cornfields and
meadows, and an old farmhouse, with pointed roofs and
clustered chimneys, looking out from its blooming
orchard, and backed by woody hills. The common is
itself the prettiest part of the prospect; half covered
with low furze, whose golden blossoms reflect so intensely
the last beams of the setting sun, and alive with cows
and sheep, and two sets of cricketers; one of young
men, surrounded by spectators, some standing, some
sitting, some stretched on the grass, all taking a
delighted interest in the game ; the other, a merry group
of little boys, at a humble distance, for whom even
cricket is scarcely lively enough, shouting, leaping, and
enjoying themselves to their hearts’ content. But
cricketers and country boys are too important persons
24 OUR VILLAGE
in our village to be talked of merely as figures in the
landscape. They deserve an individual introduction—
an essay to themselves—and they shall have it. No
fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet
us in our walks every day.
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY
Lb anuary 23r4— At noon to-day I and my white
greyhound, Mayflower, set out for a walk
into a very beautiful world,—a sort of
silent fairyland,—a creation of that match-
less magician the hoar-frost. There had
_been just snow enough to cover the earth and all its
covers with one sheet of pure and uniform white, and
just time enough since the snow had fallen to allow the
hedges to be freed of their fleecy load, and clothed
with a delicate coating of rime. The atmosphere was
deliciously calm ; soft, even mild, in spite of the ther-
mometer ; no perceptible air, but a stillness that might
almost be felt, the sky, rather gray than blue, throwing
out in bold relief the snow-covered roofs of our village,
and the rimy trees that rise above them, and the sun
shining dimly as through a veil, giving a pale fair light,
like the moon, only brighter. There was a silence, too,
that might become the moon, as we stood at our little
28 OUR VILLAGE
gate looking up the quiet street; a Sabbath-like pause
of work and play, rare on a work-day; nothing was
audible but the pleasant hum of frost, that low
monotonous sound, which is perhaps the nearest
approach that life and nature can make to absolute
silence. The very waggons as they come down the
hill along the beaten track of crisp yellowish frost-dust,
glide along like shadows; even May’s bounding foot-
steps, at her height of glee and of speed, fall like snow
upon snow.
But we shall have noise enough presently: May
has stopped at Lizzy’s door; and Lizzy, as she sat on
the window-sill with her bright rosy face laughing
through the casement, has seen her and disappeared.
She is coming. No! The key is turning in the door,
and sounds of evil omen issue through the keyhole—
sturdy ‘let me outs, and ‘I will goes, mixed with shrill
cries on May and on me from Lizzy, piercing through
a low continuous harangue, of which the prominent
parts are apologies, chilblains, sliding, broken bones,
lollypops, rods, and gingerbread, from Lizzy’s careful
mother. ‘Don’t scratch the door, May! Don’t roar
so, my Lizzy! We'll call for you as we come back.’—
‘lll go now! Let me out! I will go!’ are the last
words of Miss Lizzy. Mem. Not to spoil that child
—if I can help it. But I do think her mother might
have let the poor little soul walk with us to-day.
Nothing worse for children than coddling. Nothing
better for chilblains than exercise. Besides, I don’t
believe she has any——and as to breaking her bones in
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 29
sliding, I don’t suppose there’s a slide on the common.
These murmuring cogitations have brought us up the
hill, and half-way across the light and airy common,
with its bright expanse of snow and its clusters of
cottages, whose turf fires send such wreaths of smoke
sailing up the air, and diffuse such aromatic fragrance
around. And now comes the delightful sound of
‘There they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawling,’
childish voices, ringing with glee and merriment almost
from beneath our feet. Ah, Lizzy, your mother was
right! They are shouting from that deep irregular
pool, all glass now, where, on two long, smooth, liny
slides, half a dozen ragged urchins are slipping along
in tottering triumph. Half a dozen steps bring us to
the bank right above them. May can hardly resist the
temptation of joining her friends, for most of the varlets
30 OUR VILLAGE
are of her acquaintance, especially the rogue who leads
the slide,—he with the brimless hat, whose bronzed
complexion and white flaxen hair, reversing the usual
lights and shadows of the human countenance, give
so.strange and foreign a look to his flat and comic
features. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is
May’s great crony; and she stands on the brink of the
steep, irregular descent, her black eyes fixed full upon
him, as if she intended him the favour of jumping on
his head. She does: she is down, and upon him; but
Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off his feet.
He saw her coming, and in the moment of her leap
sprung dexterously off the slide on the rough ice,
steadying himself by the shoulder of the next in the
file, which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked
in his career, fell plump backwards, knocking down the
rest of the line like a nest of card-houses. There is no
harm done; but there they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawl-
ing, in every attitude of comic distress, whilst Jack
Rapley and Mayflower, sole authors of this calamity,
stand apart from the throng, fondling, and coquetting,
and complimenting each other, and very visibly
laughing, May in her black eyes, Jack in his wide,
close-shut mouth, and his whole monkey-face, at their
comrades’ mischances. I think, Miss May, you may as
well come up again, and leave Master Rapley to fight
your battles. He'll get out of the scrape. He is a
rustic wit—a sort of Rcbin Goodfellow—the sauciest,
idlest, cleverest, best-natured boy in the parish ; always
foremost in mischief, and always ready to do a good
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 31
turn. The sages of our village predict sad things of
Jack Rapley, so that I am sometimes a little ashamed
to confess, before wise people, that I have a lurking
predilection for him (in common with other naughty
‘ The road is gay now,’
ones), and that I like to hear him talk to May almost
as well as she does. ‘Come, May!’ and up she springs,
as light as a bird. The road is gay now; carts and
post-chaises, and girls in red cloaks, and, afar off,
looking almost like a toy, the coach. It meets us fast
and soon, How much happier the walkers look than
32 OUR VILLAGE
the riders—especially the frost-bitten gentleman, and
the shivering lady with the invisible face, sole passen-
ye
|
‘ The frost-bitten gentleman.’
gers of that commodious machine! Hooded, veiled,
and bonneted, as she is, one sees from her attitude how
miserable she would look uncovered.
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 33
Another pond, and another noise of children. More
sliding? Ohno! This is a sport of higher preten-
sion. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and
his own pretty little boys, and two or three other four-
year-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of
joy and wonder! Oh what happy spectators! And
what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired,
with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the
quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the
Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am
glad I-came this way ; for, with all the father’s feelings
sitting gaily at his heart, it must still gratify the pride
of skill to have one spectator at that solitary pond who
has seen skating before.
Now we have reached the trees,—the beautiful
trees! never so beautiful as to-day. Imagine the effect
of a straight and regular double avenue of oaks, nearly
a mile long, arching overhead, and closing into per-
spective like the roof and columns of a cathedral, every
tree and branch incrusted with the bright and delicate
congelation of hoar-frost, white and pure as snow, deli-
cate and defined as carved ivory. How beautiful it is,
how uniform, how various, how filling, how satiating to
the eye and to the mind—above all, how melancholy !
There is a thrilling awfulness, an intense feeling of
sumple power in that naked and colourless beauty,
which falls on the earth like the thoughts of death—
death pure, and glorious, and smiling,—but still death.
Sculpture has always the same effect on my imagina-
tion, and painting never. Colour is life-——-We are now
D
34 OUR VILLAGE
at the end of this magnificent avenue, and at the top
of a steep eminence commanding a wide view over four
countics——a landscape of snow. A deep lane leads
abruptly down the hill; a mere narrow cart-track, sink-
ing between high banks clothed with fern and furze
and low broom, crowned with luxuriant hedgerows,
and famous for their summer smell of thyme. How
lovely these banks are now—the tall weeds and the
gorse fixed and stiffened in the hoar-frost, which fringes
round the bright prickly holly, the pendent foliage of
the bramble, and the deep orange leaves of the pollard
oaks! Oh, this is rime in its loveliest form! And
there is still a berry here and there on the holly,
‘blushing in its natural coral’ through the delicate
tracery, still a stray hip or haw for the birds, who
abound here always. The poor birds, how tame they
are, how sadly tame! There is the beautiful and rare
crested wren, ‘that shadow of a bird, as White of Sel-
borne calls it, perched in the middle of the hedge, nest-
ling as it were amongst the cold bare boughs, seeking,
poor pretty thing, for the warmth it will not find. And
there, farther on, just under the bank, by the slender
runlet, which still trickles between its transparent fan-
tastic margin of thin ice, as if it were a thing of life,—
there, with a swift, scudding motion, flits, in short low
flights, the gorgeous kingfisher, its magnificent plumage
of scarlet and blue flashing in the sun, like the glories
of some tropical bird. He is come for water to this
little spring by the hillside,—water which even his
long bill and slender head can hardly reach, so nearly
‘The lieutenant skating.’
Copyright 1893 by Maonitlan & Co,
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 37
do the fantastic forms of those garland-like icy margins
meet over the tiny stream beneath. It is rarely that
one sees the shy beauty so close or so long; and it is
pleasant to see him in the grace and beauty of his
natural liberty, the only way to look at a bird. We
used, before we lived in a street, to fix a little board
outside the parlour window, and cover it with bread
crumbs in the hard weather. It was quite delightful to
see the pretty things come and feed, to conquer their
shyness, and do away their mistrust. First came the
more social tribes, ‘the robin red-breast and the wren,’
cautiously, suspiciously, picking up a crumb on the wing,
with the little keen bright eye fixed on the window ;
then they would stop for two pecks ; then stay till they
were satished. The shyer birds, tamed by their example,
came next; and at last one saucy fellow of a blackbird
—a sad glutton, he would clear the board in two
minutes,—used to tap his yellow bill against the window
for more. How we loved the fearless confidence of
that fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he loved
us. I wonder the practice is not more general.
‘May! May! ‘naughty May!’ She has frightened
away the kingfisher; and now, in her coaxing peni-
tence, she is covering me with snow. ‘Come, pretty
May! it is time to go home,’
THAW.
January 28th—We have had rain, and snow, and
frost, and rain again ; four days of absolute confinement.
38 OUR VILLAGE
Now it is a thaw and a flood; but our light gravelly
soil, and country boots, and country hardihood, will
carry us through. What a dripping, comfortless day it
is! just like the last days of November: no sun, no
sky, gray or blue; one low, overhanging, dark, dismal
cloud, like London smoke ; Mayflower is out coursing
too, and Lizzy gone to school. Never mind. Up the
hill again! Walk we must. Oh what a watery world
to look back upon! Thames, Kennet, Loddon—all
overflowed ; our famous town, inland once, turned into
a sort of Venice; C. park converted into an island ;
and the long range of meadows from B. to W. one
huge unnatural lake, with trees growing out of it. Oh
what a watery world !—I will look at it no longer. I
will walk on. The road is alive again. Noise is re-
born. Waggons creak, horses splash, carts rattle, and
pattens paddle through the dirt with more than their
usual clink. The common has its old fine tints of
green and brown, and its old variety of inhabitants,
horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and donkeys. The ponds
are unfrozen, except where some melancholy piece of
melting ice floats sullenly on the water; and cackling
geese and gabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant
and Jack Rapley. The avenue is chill and dark, the
hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and all nature
is in a state of ‘dissolution and thaw.’
' Pattens paddle?
Copyright 1893 by Macnuitian & Co.
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OUR VILLAGE
BY
MARY RUSSELL. MITFORD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
AND ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
HUGH THOMSON
London
MACMILLAN AND CoO.
AND NEW YORE
1893
Adl vights reserved
Furst Edition printed November 1893
Reprinted December 1893
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THERE is a great deal of admirable literature concerning
Miss Mitford, so much of it indeed, that the writer of
this little notice feels as if she almost owed an apology to
those who remember, for having ventured to write, on
hearsay only, and without having ever known or ever seen
the author of Our Village. And yet, so vivid ws the
homely friendly presence, so clear the sound of that voice
‘Like a chime of bells; with its hospitable cheery greeting,
that she can scarcely realise that this acquaintance exists
only in the world of the might-have-beens.
For people who are beginning to remember, rather than
looking forward any more, there certainly exists no more
delightful reading than the memoirs and stories of heroes
and heroines, many of whom we ourselves may have seen,
and to whom we may have spoken. As we read on we
are led into some happy bygone region,—such as that one
described by Mr. du Maurier in Peter Ibbetson,—e region
in which we ourselves, together with all our friends and
acquaintances, grow young again ;—very young, very
vill OUR VILLAGE
brash, very hopeful. The people we love are there, along
with the people we remember. Music begins to play, we
are dancing, laughing, scampering over the country once
more, our parents too are young and laughing cheerily.
Every now and then perhaps some old Sricnd, also
vigorous and hopeful, bursts into the book, and begins to
talk or to write a letter ; early sights and sounds return
to us, we have now, and we have then, in a pleasant
harmony. To those of a certain literary generation who
read Miss Mitford’s memoirs, how many such familiar
presences ant names must appear and reappear. Not
least among them that of her biographer, Mr. Harness
himself, who was so valued by his friends. Mrs. Kemble,
Mrs. Sartoris, Charles Allston Collins, always talked of
him with a great respect and tenderness. TI used to think
they had a special voice with which to Speak his name.
fle was never among our intimate Jreends, but how
Jamiliar to my recollection are the two figures, that of
Myr. Harness and Miss Harness, his sister and house-
keeper, coming together along the busy Kensington road-
way. The brother and sister were like characters out of
some book, with their kind faces, their Seniple spiritual
ways; ti touch with so much that was interesting and
romantic, and in heart with so much that suffered, I
remember him with grey hair and a smile. He was
not tall; he walked rather lame, Miss Harness too was
little, looking up at all the rest of the world with a
kind round face and sparkling eyes Sringed with thick
lashes, Mary Mitford was indeed happy in her Sriends,
as happy as she was unfortunate in her nearer relations.
INTRODUCTION 1X
With much that is sad, there is a great deal of beauty
and enjoyment in Miss Alitford’s life. For her the
absence of material happiness was made up for by the
presence of warm-hearted sensibility, of enthustasin, by
her devotion to her parents. Her long endurance and
filial piety are very remarkable, her loving heart carried
her safely to the end, and she found comfort im her
anreasoning lifes devotion. She had none of the restless-
ness whith is so apt to spoil much that might be
harmonious; all the charm of a certain unity and
simplicity of motive ts hers, ‘the single eye; of which
Charles Kingsley wrote so sweetly. She loved her houie,
her trees, her surrounding lanes and commons. She
loved her friends. Fler books and flowers are real and
eimportant events in her life, soothing and distracting her
Jrom the contemplation of its constant anxicties. ‘TL may
truly say, she once writes to Miss Barrett, ‘that ever
since L was a very young girl, I have never (although for
some years living apparently tn affluence) been without
pecuniary care,—the care that pressed upon my thoughts
the last thing at night, and woke in the morning with a
dreary sense of pain aud pressure, of something which
weighed me to the earth?
Mary Russel Mitford was born on the 16th of
December 1787. She was the only child of her parents,
who «were well connected; her mother was an hetress.
fler father belonged to the Mitfords of the North. She
describes herself as ‘a puny child, with an affluence of
curls which made her look as if she were twin sister to
x OUR VILLAGE
her own great doll? She could read at three years old ;
she learnt the Percy ballads by heart almost before she
could read. Long after, she used to describe how she
jirst studied her beloved ballads in the breakfast-room
lined with books, warmly spread with its Turkey carpet,
with its bright fire, easy chairs, and the windows opening
to a garden full of flowers,—stocks, honeysuckles, and
pinks. It ts touching to note how, all through her difficult
life, her path was (literally) lined with flowers, and how
the love of them comforted and cheered her from the first
to the very last. In her saddest hours, the passing
Sragrance and beauty of her favourite geraniums cheered
and revived her. Even when her mother died she Sound
comfort tn the plants they had tended together, and at
the very last breaks into delighted descriptions of them.
She was sent to school in the year 1798 to No. 22
Flans Place, to a Mrs. St. Quintin’s. It seems to have
been an excellent establishment. Mary learnt. the harp
and astronomy ; her taste for literature was encouraged,
Lhe young ladies, attired as shepherdesses, were also
taught to skip through many masy movements, but she
never distinguished herself as a shepherdess. She had
Sreater success in her literary efforts, and her composition
‘on balloons’ was much applauded. She returned to her
home in 1802. ‘Plain in figure and in face, she was
never coimmon-looking, says Mr. Harness. He gives a
pretty description of her as ‘no ordinary child, her sweet
smiles, her animated conversation, her keen enjoyment of
life, and her gentle voice won the love and admiration of
her friends, whether young or old? Myr. Harness has
INTRODUCTION x1
chiefly told Miss Mitford’s story tn her own words by
guotations frou. her letters, and, as one reads, one can
almost follow her moods as they succeed cach other, and
these moods are her real history. The assiduity of
childhood, the bright enthusiasm and gaicty of her
early days, the growing anxiety of her later life, the
maturer judgments, the occasional despatring terrors
which came to try her bright nature, but along with
it all, that innocent and enduring hopefulness which never
really deserted her. Her clastic spirit she owed to her
Jather, that incorrigible old Skimpole. ‘Lf am generally
happy everywhere, she writes in her youth—and then
later on: ‘It ts a great pleasure to me to love and to
admire, this ts a faculty which has survived many
frosts and storms? It ts true that she adds a query
somewhere else,‘ Did you ever remark how supertor old
gately ts to new ?? she asks.
fler handsome father, her plain and long-enduring
uother, ave both unconsciously described in her corre-
spondence. ‘The Doctors manners were easy, natural,
cordial, and apparently extremely frank; says Mr.
Flarness,‘ but he nevertheless met the world on its own
terms, and was prepared to allow himself any insincerity
which seemed expedient. He was not only recklessly
extravagant, but addicted to high play. His wife's
large fortune, his daughter's, his own patrimony, all
passed through his hands in an incredibly short space
of time, but his wife and daughter were never heard to
coniplain of his conduct, nor appeared to admire him less,
The story of Miss Mitfora’s £20,000 ts unique
Xil OUR VILLAGE
anong the adventures of authoresses. Dr. Mitford,
having spent all his wifes fortune, and having brought
his family from a comfortable home, with flowers and a
Lurkey carpet, to a simuall lodging near Blackfriars Bridge,
determined to present his daughter with an expensive
lottery ticket on the occasion of her tenth birthday. She
had a fancy for No, 2224, of which the added numbers
came to io. This number actually came out the first
prise of £20,000, which money started the family once
more in comparative affiuence. Dr, Mitford tiumediately
built a new square house, which he calls Bertram House,
on the stte of a pretty old farmhouse which he causes
to be pulled down. He also orders a dessert-service
painted with the Mitford arms; Mrs. Mitford ts
supplied with a carriage, and she subscribes to a circu-
lating library.
Ai list still exists of the books taken out by her for her
daughter's use; some fifty-five volumes a month, chiefly
trash: Vicenza, A Sailor’s Friendship and Soldier's
Love, Clarentina, Robert and Adela, The Count de
Valmont, The Three Spaniards, De Clifford (x four
volumes) and so on.
The next two or three years were brilliant enough; for
the fantly must have lived at the rate of three or four
thousand a year. Their hospitality was profuse, they had
servants, carriages, they bought pictures and furniture,
they entertained. Cobbett was among their intimate
Jriends. The Doctor naturally enough invested im a
good many more lottery tickets, but without any further
return,
INTRODUCTION XU
Lhe ladies seem to take tt as a matter of course that
he should speculate and gamble at cards, and indeed do
anything and everything he fancied, but they beg him at
least to keep to respectable clubs. He ts constantly away
ffis daughter tries to tempt hii home with the bloom of
her hyacinths. ‘ How they long to see him again !? she
says, ‘how greatly have they been disappointed, whei,
every day, the journey to Reading has becn fruttless.
The driver of the Reading coach ts quite accustomed to
being waylaid by their carriage? Then she tells him
about the primroses, but netther hyacinths nor primroses
bring the Doctor away from his cards. finally, the
rhododendrons and the azaleas are in bloom, but these
also fail to attract hdim.
Miss Mitford herself as she grows wp 7s sent to London
more than once, to the St. Quintin’s and elsewhere. She
goes to the play and to Westminster Hall, she sees her
hero, Charles James Fox, and has the happiness of
watching him helped on to his horse. Mr. Romelly
delights her, but her greatest favourite of all is Mr.
Whitbread. ‘Vou know TI am aways an enthustast,
she writes, ‘but at present it ts zmpossible to describe
the admiration I feel for this exalted character? She
speaks of his voice ‘which she could Usten to with
transport even if he spoke in an unknown language I?
she writes a sonnet to him,‘ an emiproniptit, on hearing
Mr. Whitbread declare in Westminster Hall that he
Joudly trusted his name would descend to posterity,
‘ The hope of Fame thy noble bosom Sires,
Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind ZSPUICS 5
xiv OUR VILLAGE
In British breasts whilst Purity remains,
Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains,
Stall shall the muse of History proclaim
To future ages thy immortal name !â€
There are many references to the celebrities of the
time tn her letters home,—every one agrees as to the
extreme folly of Sheridans entertainments, Ifrs. Opie
is spoken of as a rising authoress, etc, ete. etc.
Miss Austen used to go to 23 Hans Place,and Miss
Mitford used to stay at No. 22, but not at the same time.
Mrs. Mitford had known Miss Austen as a child. She
may perhaps be forgiven for some prejudice and maternal
jealousy, tn her later inipressions, but Mary Mitford admired
Jane Austen always wath warmest enthusiasm. She writes
to her mother at length from London, describing everything,
all the people and books and experiences that she contes
across,—the elegant suppers at Brompton, the Grecian
lamps, Mr. Barker's beauty, Mr. Plummer’s plainness, and
the destruction of her purple gown.
Mrs. Mitford writes back in return describing Reading
festivities, an agrecable dinner at Doctor Valpy’s, where
Mrs. Women and Miss Peacock are present and Mr. j.
Sinpson, M.P., the dinner very good, two full courses
and one remove, the soup giving place to one quarter of
lamb. Mrs. Mitford sends a menu of every dinner she
goes to.
In 1806 Dr. Mitford takes his daughter, who was
then about nineteen, to the North to visit his relations ;
they are entertained by the grandparents of the Trevelyanus
and the Swinburnes, the Ogles and the Mitfords of the
INTRODUCTION XV
present day. They fish in Sir Solin Swinburne's lake,
they visit at Alnwick Castle. Muss M. wford kept her
Jront hair in papers till she reached Alnwick, nor was
her dress adtscomposed though she had travelled thirty
miles. They sat down, sirty-five to dinner, which was
‘of course’ (she somewhat magnificently says) entirely
served on plate. Poor Mary's’ pleasure ts very much
dashed by the sudden disappearance of her father,—Dr.
Mitford was in the habit of doing anything he felt
zuclined to do at once and on the Spot, quite irrespectively
of the convenience of others,—and although a party had
been arranged on purpose to meet him in the North, and
fis daughter was counting on hes escort to return home,
( people posted in those days, they did not take thety tickets
direct from Newcastle to London), Dr. Mitford one
uorning leaves word that he has goue off to attend the
Reading election, where his fresence was not in the least
required. For the first and apparently for the only time
on her life his daughter Protests. “ Mr, Ogle is extremely
offended , nothing but your immediate return can ever
excuse you to htm! TI implore you to return, T call upon
Mammeas sense of propriety to send you here atrectly,
Little did I suspect that my father, my beloved Sather,
would desert me at this distance Jrom home! Every one
2s surprised’ Dr. Mitford was finally persuaded to
travel back to Northumberland to Jetch his daughter.
The constant conpanionship of Dr, Afitford must
have given a curtous colour to his 00d and upright
daughters views af life. Adoring her father as she aid,
she must have soon accustomed herself to take his Jine
xvi OUR VILLAGE
speeches for fine actions, to accept hes self-complacency in
the place of a conscience. She was a woman of warie
impressions, with a strong sense of right. But it was
not within her daily experience, poor soul, that people who
did not make grand professions were ready to do their
duty all the same; nor did she always depend upon the
uprightness, the courage, the self-denial of those who
made no protestations. At that time loud talking was
still the fashion, and loud living was considered romantic.
They both exist among ws, but they are less admired, and
there is a different language spoken now to that of
Dr. Mitford and his school’ This must account for
some of Miss Mitford's juagments of what she calls a
‘cynical’ generation, to which she did little Justice.
LL
There is one penalty people pay for being authors,
which is that from cultivating vivid impresstons and
mental pictures they are apt to take fancies too seriously
and to mistake them for reality. In story-telling this ts
well enough, and it interferes with nobody ; but in real hts-
tory, and in one’s own history most of all, this faculty ts
apt to raise up bogies and nightmares along one’s path ;
and while one is fighting imaginary demons, the good
things and true are passed by unnoticed, the best realities
of life are sometimes overlooked. .
1 People nowadays are more ready to laugh than to admire when they
hear the lions bray ; for mewing and bleating, the taste, T fear, 1s on the
INC EASE.
INTRODUCTION xvil
But after all, Mary Russell Mitford, who spent most
of her tune gathering figs off thistles and making the
best of her difficult circumstances, suffered less than many
people do from the influence of imaginary things.
She was twenty-three years old when her first book
of poems was published; so we read in her letters, in
which she entreats her father not to curtail any of the
verses addressed to him, there ts no reason, she says,
except fis extreme modesty why the verses should be
suppressed,—she speaks not only with the fondness of a
daughter but with the sensibility of a poet. Our young
authoress 1s modest, although in print; she compares her-
self to Crabbe (as Jane Austen might have done), and feels
‘what she supposes a farthing candle would experience
when the sun rises in all its glory? Then comes the
Publisher's bill for 4593 she ts quite shocked at the bill,
which ts really exorbitant! In her next letter Miss
Mitford reminds her father that the taxes are still un-
paid, and a correspondence follows with somebody asking
Jor a chowe of the Doctor's pictures in payment Jor the
taxes. Ihe Doctor is in London all the time, dining out
and generally amusing himself, Everybody ts Speculat-
ing whether Sir Francis Burdett will go to the Tower}
‘Oh, my darling, how I envy you at the fountain-head of
entelligence tn these interesting times! How I envy Lady
Burdett for the fine opportunity she has to show the
1 Here, in our little suburban garden at Wimbledon, are the remains of an
old hedgerow which used to grow in the kitchen garden of the Grange where
Sir Lrancis Burdett then lived. The tradition ts that he was walking tn
the lane in his own kitchen garden when he was taken up and carried off to
honourable captivity.—A. T. R.
b
xvill OUR VILLAGE
heroism of our sex!’ writes the daughter, who ts only
encountering angry tax-gatherers al home... . Somehow
or other the bills are paid for the téme, and the Samily
arrangements go on as before.
Besides writing to the members of her own honte,
Miss Mitford startcd another correspondent very carly in
life; this was Sir William Elford, to whont she describes
her outings and adventures, her vrstts to Tavistock House,
where her kind friends the Perrys receive her. Mr.
Perry was the editor of the Morning Chronicle ; he and
his beautiful wife were the friends of all the most
interesting people of the day. Here again the present
writer's own expertences can interpret the printed page,
for her own first sight of London people and of London
society came to her in a little house wm Chesham Place,
where her father’s old friends, Mrs. Frederick Liltiot and
Miss Perry, the daughters of Miss Mitford's friends,
lived with a very notable and interesting set of people,
making a soctal centre, by that kindly unconscious art
which cannot be defined, that quick apprehension, that
benevolent fastidiousness (I have to use rather Jar-fetched
zvords) which are so essential to good hosts and hostesses.
A different standard 1s looked for now, by the rising
genevations knocking at the doors, behind which the
dignified Past is lying as stark as King Duncan him-
self !
Among other entertainments Miss Mitford went to the
fites which celebrated the battle of Vittoria ; she had also
the happiness of getting a good sight of Mime. ade Staél,
who was a great friend of the Perrys. ‘ She is almost
INTRODUCTION XIX
as much followed in the gardens as the Princess) she
says, pouring out her wonders, her pleasures, her raptures,
She begins to read Burns with youthful delight, dilates
upon his exhaustless imagination, his versatility, and then
she suggests a very just criticism. ‘ Does it not appear,
she says, ‘that versatility ts the true and rare character-
estic of that rare thing called gentus—versatility and
playfulness; then she goes on to speak of two highly-
reputed novels just come out and ascribed to Lady
Aforley, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
She ws still writing from Bertram House, but her
pleasant gossip continually alternates with more urgent
and less agreeable letters addressed to her Sather.
Lawyers’ clerks are again calling with notices and
warnings, tax-gatherers are troubling. Dr. M itford has,
as usual, left no address, so that she can only write to the
‘Star Office? and trust to chance. ‘Mamma Joins in
tenderest love, so the letters invariably conclude.
Notwithstanding the adoration bestowed by the ladies
of the family and their endearing adjectives, Mr. Harness
ws very outspoken on the subject of the handsome Doctor !
fle disliked his manners, his morals, his self-sufficiency, hts
loud talk. ‘ The old brute never enformed his friends of
anything » all they knew of him or his affatrs, or whatever
Jalse or true he intended them to belteve, came out
carelessly in his loose, dissointed talk?
fn 1814 Miss Mitford ts living on still with
her parents at Bertram House, but a change has come
over their home ; the servants are gone, the gravel turned
to moss, the turf into pasture, the shrubbertes to theckets,
XX OUR VILLAGE
the house a sort of new ‘ruin half inhabited, and a
Chancery suit ts hanging over their heads? Meantime
some news comes to cheer her from America, Two
editzons of her poens have been printed and sold.
Narrative Poems on the Female Character proved a
real success. ‘All who have hearts to feel and under-
standings to discriminate, must wish you health and leisure
to complete your plan, so write publishers in those golden
days, with complimentary copies of the work. . .
Great things are happening all this time, battles are
being fought and won, Napoleon ts on his way to St.
flelena ; London 1s in a frensy of rejoicings, entertainings,
wluminations. Lo Mary Mitford the appearance of
Waverley seems as great an event as the return of the
Bourbons » she ts certain that Waverley zs written by Sir
Walter Scott, but Guy Mannering, she thinks, ts by
another hand: her mind ts full of a genuine romantic
devotion to books and belles lettres, and she is also re-
jowing even more, in the spring-time of 1816. Dr, Muit-
Jord may be timpecunious and their affairs may be thread-
bare, but the lovely seasons conte out ever in fresh beauty
and abundance. The coppices are carpeted with primyroses,
with pansies and wild strawberry blosson,—the woods are
spangled with the delicate flowers of the woodsorrel and
qvood anemone, the meadows enamelled with cowslips. . .
Certainly few human betngs were ever created more fit
Jor this present world, and more capable of admiring and
enjoying its beauties, than Muss Mitford, who only
destved to be beautiful herself, she somewhere says, to be
perfectly contented.
INTRODUCTION xxi
LLL
Most people's lives are divided into first, second, and
third volumes; and as we read Miss Mrtford’s history
it forms no exception to the rule. The early cnthustastic
volume ts there, with tts hopes and wild judgments, its
quaint old-fashioned dress and phraseology ; then comes
the second volume, full of actual work and serous
responsibility ; with those childish parents to provide
for, whose lives, though so protracted, never seem to reach
beyond their nurseries. Miss Mitford's third volume ws
retrospective ; her growing infirmities are courageously
endured, there ts the certainty of success well carned and
well deserved; we realise her legitimate hold upon the
outer world of readers and writers, besides the reputation
which she won upon the stage by her tragedies.
The literary ladies of the early part of the century in
some ways had a very good time of it. A copy of verses,
a small volume of travels, a few tca-parties, a harp in one
corner of the room, and a hat and feathers worn rather
on one side, seemed to be all that was wanted to establish
a claim to fashion and inspiration. They had footstools
to rest their satin shoes upon, they had admirers and
panegyrists to their heart’s content, and above all they
possessed that peculiar complacency in which (with a few
notable exceptions) our age is singularly deficient. We
are earnest, we are audacious, we are original, but we
are not complacent. They were dolls perhaps, and lived
in dolls houses; we are gshosts without houses at all;
? oS
xxil OUR VILLAGE
we come and go wrapped in sheets of newspaper, holding
fuckering lights im our hands, paraffin lamps, by the
light of which we are seeking our proper sphere. Poor
vered spirits! We do not belong to the old world
any more! The new world is not yet ready for us.
Even Mr. Gladstone will not let us into the House of
Commons ; the Geographical Society rejects us, so does
the Royal Academy ; and yet who could say that any of
their standards vise too high! Some one or two are happily
safe, carried by the angels of the Press to little altars and
pinnacles all their own ; but the majority of hard-working
wntelligent women, ‘contented with little, pet ready for more,
may they not in moments of depression be allowed to
picture to themselves what their chances might have been
had they only been born half a century earlier P
Miss Mitford, notwithstanding all her troubles (she
has been known to say she had rather be a washerwoman
than a literary lady), had opportunities such as few
wwonten can now obtain. One ts lost in admiration a
the solidity of one’s grandparents’ taste, chen one attenipts
to read the tragedies they delighted in, and yet Rienz
sold four thousand copies and was acted forty-five times ,
and at one time Miss Mitford had two tragedies re
hearsed upon the boards together ; one at Covent Garde
and one at Drury Lane, with Charles Kentble ane
Macready disputing for her work. Has not one ats
read similar descriptions of the triumphs of Hanna
More, or of Johanna Baillie ; cheered by enthusiast
audiences, while men shed tears."
-1 Afem. Hannah More, v. 7. p. 124.
INTRODUCTION xxl
Julian was the first of Miss Mitford's acted plays.
Tt was brought out at Covent Garden 11182 3, chen she was
thirty-six years old ; Macready played the principal part.
“Tf the play do reach the ninth night, Mass M elford writes
to Macready, ‘it will be a very complete refutation of
Mr. Kemble's axiom that no single performer can fill the
theatre ; for except our pretty Alfonso (Miss Foote) there ts
only Julian, one and only one, Let hime tmagine how
deeply we feel his exertions and hes kindness. 4
Julian was stopped on the eighth night, to her great
disappointment, but she ts already engaged on another—on
several more——tragedies ; she wants the money badly ; for
the editor of her magazine has absconded, owing her £50.
Some trying and bewildering quarrel then ensues between
Charles Kemble and Macready, which puts off her tragedies,
and sadly affects poor Miss Mitford's nerves and profits.
She has one solace. Her father, partly instigated, she says,
by the effect which the terrible feeling of responsibility and
want of power has hud upon her health and spirits, at last
resalues to try if he can himself obtain any employitent
that may lighten the burthen of the home. Itits a good
thing that Dr. Mitford has braced himself to this herow
determination. ‘ The addition of two or even one hundred
a year to our Little income, joined to what I am,in a
manner, sure of gaining by mere industry, would take a
1 In Macready’s diary we find an entry which is not over sractous.
‘Julian acted March the 15th. Had but moderate success. The C. ©.
company was no longer equal to the support of plays containing moral
characters, The authoress in her dedication to me was profuse in her
acknowledgments and compliments, but the performance made Little
impression, and was soon forgotten.’
Xxiv OUR VILLAGE
load from muy heart of which I can scarcely give you an
vdea... evenjulian was writlen under a pressure of anxicty
which left me not a moments rest... So she Sondly
dwells upon the delightful prospects. Then comes the
next letter to Sir William Elford, and we read that her dear
Sather, ‘relying with a blessed sanguineness on my poor
endeavours, has not, [ believe, even inquired Jor @ situation,
and I do not press the matter, though I anxiously wish it ;
being willing to give one more trial to the theatre?
On one of the many occasions when Miss Mi etford
writes to her trustee tmploring him to sell out the small
remaining fragment of her fortune, she says,‘ My dear
Juther has, years ago, been tmprovident, is still irritable
and difficult to live with, but he ts a person of a thousand
virtues... there are very few half so good in this
mixed world, it is my fault that this money ts needed,
entirely my fault, and if it be withheld, my dear father
wll be overthrown, mind and body, and I shall never
know another happy hour?
No wonder Mr. Harness, who was behind the scenes,
remonstrated against the filial infatuation which sacrificed
health, sleep, peace of mind, to gratify every passing whim
of the Doctor's. Ata time when she was sttting up at
night and slaving, hour after hour, to earn the MECESSALY
means of living, Dr. Mitford must needs have a cow, a
stable, and dairy tmplements procured for his amusement,
and when he died he left £1000 of debts Jor the
scrupulous woman to pay off. She is determined to pay,
of she sells her clothes to do so. Meanwhile, the Doctor
7s still alive, and Miss Mitford ds straining every nerve
INTRODUCTION XXV
to keep hint so. She ts engaged (tu strict confidence) on a
grand historical subject, Charles and Cromwell, the finest
episode in English history, she says. Here, too, fresh
obstacles arise. This time tt ts the theatrical censor who
nterferes. It would be dangerous for the country to touch
upon such topics; Mr. George Colman dwells upon this
theme, although he gives the lady full credit for no cvil
ententions ; but for the present all her work is again
thrown away. While Miss Mitford is struggling on as
best she can against this confusion of worries and difficulty
(she eventually recetved £200 for Julian from a Surrey
theatre), a new firm ‘Whittaker’ undertakes to republish
the ‘village sketches’ which had been written for the
absconding editor. The book is to be published under
the title of Our Village.
ay
‘dre your characters and descriptions true?’ some-
body once asked our authoress. ‘Ves, Ves, Yes, AS true, as
true as ts well possible; she answers. ‘Vou, as a great
landscape painter, know that in painting a favourite scene
Jou do a little embellish and cawt help it; you avail
yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere ; of anything
be ugly you strike it out, or if anything be wanting you
put itin. But still the picture ts a likeness.
So wrote Miss Mitford, but with all due respect for her
and for Sir William Elford, the great landscape painter,
! cannot help thinking that what 1s admirable in her book,
are not her actual descriptions and pictures of intelligent
Xxxvi OUR VILLAGE
villagers and greyhounds, but the more imaginative things ;
the sense of space and nature and progress which she
knows how to convey; the sweet and emotional chord she
strikes with so true a touch. Take at hazard her de-
scription of the sunset. How simple and yet how finely
felt it ts. Her genuine delight reaches us and carries
us along, it ts not any entbellishing of effects, or ex-
aggcration of facts, but the reality of a true and very
present feeling... .‘ The narrow line of clouds which
“a few minutes ago lay like long vapouring streaks along
‘ the horizon, now lighted with a golden splendour, that
* the eye can scarcely endure ; those still softer clouds which
‘ floated above, wreathing and curling into a thousand
‘ fantastic forms as thin and changeful as suninter smoke,
defined and deepened into grandeur, and hedged wth
ineffable, insufferable light. Another minute and the
brilliant orb totally disappears and the sky above grows,
every moment, more varted and more beautiful, as the
dazzling golden lines are mixed with glowing red and
gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark specks, and
mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-
sparrow. .. . To look up at that glorious sky, and then
to see that magnificent picture reflected in the clear and
lovely Loddon water, ts a pleasure never to be described,
and never to be forgotten. My heart swells, and my eyes
‘fill as I write of tt, and think of the tmineasurable
majesty of nature and the unspeakable goodness of God,
who has spread an enjoyment so pure, so peaceful, and so
intense before the meanest and lowliest of His creatures,
But it ts needless now to go on praising Our Village,
INTRODUCTION XXVI
or to recount what a success was tn store for the little
book. Certain books hold thetr own by indtwdual right
and might; they are part of everybody's life as a matter
of course. They are not always read, but they tacitly
take theiy place among us. The editions succeeded
editions here and in America, artists came down to
ilustrate the scenes. Miss Mitford, who was so delighted
with the drawings by Mr. Baxter, should have lived to
see the charming glimpses of rural life we owe to Afr.
Thomson. ‘1 don’t mind ’em,’ says Lizzy to the cows,
as they stand with spirited bovine grace behind the
stable door. ‘Dow t mind them indecd !’
L think the author would assuredly have enjoyed the
picture of the baker, the wheelwright and the shoentaker,
cach following his special Alderney along the road to the
village, or of the farmer driving his old wife in the
gig... . One design, that of the lady in her pattens,
comes home to the writer of these notes, who has perhaps
the distinction of being the only authoress now alive who
has cver walked out in patiens. At the age of seven
years she was provided with a pair by a great-great-
aunt, a kind old lady kiving at Fareham, in Hampshire,
where they were still in use. How interesting the little
circles looked stamped upon the muddy road, and how
nearly down upon one’s nose one was at every other step |
Lut even with all her success, Miss Mitford was
not out of her troubles. She writes to Mr. Harness
saying: ‘You cannot imagine how perplexed I am.
Lhere are points in my domestic situation too long and
too painful to write about ; the terrible improvidence of one
XXVili OUR VILLAGE
dear parent, the failure of memory and decay of faculty
in that other who ts still dearer, cast on me a weight of
care and fear that I can hardly bear up against’ Fler
difficulties were unending. The new publisher now
stopped payment, so that even Our Village brought 7 no
return for the moment, Charles Kemble was unable to
make any offer for Foscari. She went up to town i the
greatest hurry to try and collect some of the money owing
to her from her various publishers, but, as Mr. Harness
says, received little from her debtors beyond invitations
and compliments. She meditates a novel, she plans an
opera, Cupid and Psyche.
At last, better times began to dawn, and she recetves
£130 down for a new novel and ten guineas front
Blackwood as a retaining fee. Then comes a letter from
Charles Kemble giving her new hope, for her tragedy,
which was soon afterwards produced at Covent Garden.
The tragedies are in tragic English, of course that
language of the boards, but not without a semplicity
and music of their own. In the introduction to
them, tm sonte volumes published by Hurst and Blacket
in 1884, Miss Mitford describes ‘the scene of indescrib-
able chaos preceding the performance, the vague sense of
obscurity and confusion ; tragedians, hatted and coated,
skipping about, chatting and joking ; the only very
grave person being Liston himself. Ballet-girls watk-
ing through their quadrilles to the sound of a solitary
fiddle, striking up as if of its own accord, from amid the
tall stools and music-desks of the orchestra, and piercing,
one hardly knew how, through the din that was going on
INTRODUCTION XX1X
incessantly. Oh, that din! Voices from every part ;
above, below, around, and in every key. Heavy weights
rolling here and falling there. Bells ringing, one could
not tell why, and the ubiquitous call-boy everywhere.
She describes her astonishment when the play succeeds.
‘Not that [ had nerve enough to attend the first repre-
sentation of my tragedies. I sat still and trembling im
some quiet apartinent near, and thither some friend
flew to set my heart at ease. Generally the messenger of
good tidings was poor Haydon, whose quick and ardent
spirit lent him wings on such an occasion.
We have the letter to her mother about Foscari, from
which I have quoted; and on the occaston of the production
of Rienzi at Drury Lane (two years later in October
1828), the letter to Sir Witham Elford when the poor
old mother was no longer here to rejoice in her daughter's
SUCCESS.
Miss Mitford gratefully records the sympathy of her
friends, the warm-hearted muses of the day. Mrs.
Trollope, Miss Landon, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Porden,
Mrs. Hofland, Mrs. Opte, who all appear with their
congratulations.
Miss Mitford says that Haydon, above all, sym-
pathised with her love for a large canvas. The
Classics, Spain, Italy, Medieval Rome, these are her
favourite scenes and periods. Dukes and tribunes were
her heroes; daggers, dungeous, and executioners her
means of effects.
She moralises very sensibly upon Dramatic success.
‘Jt is not, she says, ‘so delicious, so glorious, so complete
XXX OUR VILLAGE
a gratification as, tn our secret longings, we all expect.
Lt does not fill the heart,—tt ts an intoxication followed
by a dismal reaction†She tells a friend that never in
all her life was she so depressed and out of spirits as
after Rienzi, her first really successful venture. But there
2s also a passing allusion to her father’s state of mind,
to his mingled irritation and sulkiness, which partly
explains things. Could it be that the Doctor added
petty jealousy and envy to his other tnconventent
qualities ? Hts tntolerance for any author or actor, in
short, for any one not belonging to a county family, his
violent annoyance at any acquaintances such as those
which she now necessarily made, would naturally account
Jor some want of spirits oun the daughter's part; over-
wrought, over-taxed, for ever on the strain, her work
was exhausting tndecd. The small pension she after-
wards obtained from the Civil List must have been an
unspeakable boon to the poor harassed woman.
Tragedy seems to have resulted in a substantial pony
and a basket carriage for Miss Mitford, and in various
envetations (from the Talfourds, among the rest) during
which she ts liontsed right and left. It must have been
on thes occasion that Serjeant Talfourd complained so
bitterly of a review of lon which appeared about that
time, His guest, to soothe him, unwarily said, ‘she
should not have minded such a review of her Tragedy?
“Your Rienzi, zzdeed! I should think not; says the
sergeant, ‘lon ws very different’ The Talfourd house-
hold, as it is described by Mr. Lestrange, ts a droll
mature of poetry and prose, of hospitality, of untidiness,
INTRODUCTION XXN1
of petulance, of most genuine kindness and most genuine
human nature,
There are also many mentions of Aliss Mitford in
the Life of Macready by Sir I. Pollock. The great
tragedian seems not to have liked her with any cordiality ;
but he gives a pleasant account of a certain supper-party
en honour of lon at which she is present, and during
which she asks Macready if he will not now bring out
her tragedy. The tragedian does not answer, but Words-
worth, sitting by, says,‘ Ay, keep him to it?
V
Besides the Life of Miss Mitford by Messrs. Harness
and Lestrange, there is also a book of the Friendships
of Mary Russell Mitford, consésting of the letters she
recetued rather than of those which she wrote. It
certainly occurs to one, as one looks through the printed
correspondence of celebrated people, how different are
written from printed letters. Your frtend’s voice
sounds, your friend's eyes look out, of the written
page, even tts blots and erasures remind you of your
human being. But the magnetism ts gone out of these
printers lines with their even margins ; in which every-
body's handwriting ts exactly alike; in whitch everybody
uses the same type, the same expressions, in which the
eye roams from page to page untouched, unconvinced.
L can imagine the pleasure each one of these letters may
have given to Miss Mitford to receive in turn. T hey
XXxil OUR VILLAGE
come from well-known ladies, accustomed to be considered.
Mrs. Trollope, Mrs. Hofland, Mrs. Howttt, Mrs. S.C. Hatt,
Miss Strickland, Mrs. Opie ; there, too, are M: iss Barrett
and Mrs. Jamieson and Miss Sedgwick who «writes
from America; they are all interesting people, but wt
must be confessed that the correspondence is not very
enlivening. Miss Barret’s is an exception, that zs
almost as good as handwriting to read. But there ts
no doubt that compliments to other authoresses are much
less amusing than those one writes or vecetves oneself ;
apologies also for not writing sooner, can pall wpon one
in print, however soothing they may be to the justly
offended recipient, or to the consctence- stricken corre-
spondent.
‘T must have seemed a thankless wretch, my dear
Miss Mitford} etc. etc. ‘ You, my dear friend, know too
well what itis to have to finish a book, to blame my not
attempting, etc. etc. ‘ Thes ts the thirty-ninth letter [ have
written since yesterday morning, says Harriet Martineau.
‘On, IL can scarcely hold the pen! I well not allow my
shame for not having written, to prevent me from writing
now: All these people seem to have been just as busy as
people are now, as amusing, as tiresome. They had the
additional difficulty of having to procure Sranks, and of
having to cover four pages instead of a post-card. Our
letters may be dull, but at all events they are not nearly
so long. We come sooner to the point and avoid elegant
circumlocutions. But one is struck, among other things,
by the keener literary zest of those days, and by the
immense numbers of MSS. and tragedies im circulation,
INTRODUCTION XXXII
all of which their authors confidingly send froi one to
another, There are also whole flights of travelling poents
flapping their wings and uttering thetr cries as they go,
An enthustastic American critic who comes over
to England emphasises the situation, Mr. Willis's
‘superlative admiration’ seems to give point to every-
thing, and to all the enthustasim, Miss Austen's Collins
hiniself could not have been more appreciative, not even
uf Miss de Burgh had tried her hand ata MS... |
Could he—Mr. Willis—choose, he would have tragedy
once a year from Muss Mitford’s pen. ‘What an
intoxicating life it ts, he cries; ‘I met Jane Porter and
Afiss Atkin and Tom Moore and a troop more beaux
esprits at dinner yesterday! I never shail be content
elsewhere,
Miss Mitford's own letters speak in a much more
natural votce.
‘L never could understand what people could find to
like in my letters) Miss Motford writes, ‘unless tt be that
they have a root to them? The root was in her own
hind heart. Miss M: etford may have been wanting a
“utile in discrimination, but she was never wanting ti
synpathy. She seems to have loved people for kindness’s
sake indiscriminately as if they were creations of her
own brain: but to friendliness or to trouble of any sort
she responds with fullest measure. Who shall complain
of some rosy vetl coloured the aspects of life for her ?
‘Among the many blessings I enjoy,—my dear father,
my admirable mother, my tried and excellent Sricnds,—$§
there ts nothing for which I ought to thank God so
c
XXXIV OUR VILLAGE
earnestly as for the constitutional buoyancy of spirits, the
aptness to hope, the will to be happy which I inherit from
my father, she writes. Was ever filial piety so irritating
as hers? It is difficult to bear, with any patience, her
praises of Dr. Mvttford. His illusions were no less a
part of his nature than his daughter's, the one a self-
centred absolutely selfish existence, the other generous,
humble, beautiful. She ts hardly ever really angry except
when some reports get about concerning her marriage.
There was an announcement that she was engaged to
one of her own clan, and the news spread among her
Jriends. The romantic Mrs. Hofland had conjured up
the suggestion, to Miss Mitford’s extreme annoyance. It
as said Mrs. Hofland also married off Miss Edgeworth
in the same manner.
Mary Mitford found her true romance in friendship,
not tn love. One day Mr. Kenyon came to see her while
she was staying in London, and offered to show her the
Zoological Gardens, and on the way he proposed calling in
Gloucester Place to take up a young lady, a connection of
his own, Miss Barrett by name. It was thus that Miss
Mitford first made the acquaintance of Mrs. Browning,
whose friendship was one of the happiest events of her
whole life. A happy romance indeed, with that added
reality which must have given it endurance, And indeed
to make anew friend is like learning a new language. I
myself have a friend who says that we have each one of
as a chosen audience of our own to whom we turn in-
stinctively, and before whom we rehearse that which ts tn
our minds, whose opinion influences us, whose approval ts
INTRODUCTION XXXV
our secret atm. Al thts Mrs. Browning seems to have
been to Miss Mitford.
‘T stt and think of you and of the poems that you well
write, and of that strange rainbow crown called fame,
until the vision is before me... . My pride and my
hopes seem altogether merged im you. At my time of
life and wrth so few to love, and with a tendency to body
Jorth images of gladness, you cannot think what joy tt ts
to anticipate... . So wrote the elder woman to the
younger with romantic devotion. What Miss Mitford
once said of herself was true, hers was the instinct of the
bee sucking honey from the hedge flower. IWhatever
sweetness and happiness there was to find she turned to
weth unerring directness.
Lt ts to Muss Barrett that she sometimes complains.
‘Lt will help you to understand how tupossible it zs for
me to earn money as I ought to do, when I tell you that
this very day I recetved your dear letter and sixteen
others ; then my father brought into my room the news-
paper to hear the ten or twelve columns of news from
Lnidia , then I dined and breakfasted in one; then I got
up, and by that time there were three parties of people in
the garden ; eight others arrived soon after... . I was
Jorced to leave, being engaged to call on Lady Madeline
Palmer. She took me some six miles on foot in Mr.
Palmer's beautiful plantations, in search of that exquisite
wildflower the bog-bean, do you know it? most beautiful
of flowers, either wild-—or, as K. puts tt—* tame.â€
After long search we found the plant not yet in bloom.
Dr. Mitford weeps over his daughter's exhaustion,
XXXV1 OUR VILLAGE
telling everybody that she is killing herself by her walks
and drives. He would lke her never to go beyond the
garden and beyond reach of the columns of his newspaper.
She declares that tt is only by getting out and afield that
she can bear the strain and the constant alternation of
enforced work and anxiety. Nature was, indeed, a second
nature to her. Charles Kingsley himself could scarcely
write better of the East wind... .
‘We have had nine weeks of drought and cast wind,
scarcely a flower to be seen, no verdure in the meadows,
no leaves tn the hedgerows ; if a poor violet or primrose
aid make its appearance it was scentless. TI have not
once heard my aversion the cuckoo... . and in this place,
so evidently the rendezvous of swallows, that tt takes tts
name from them, not a swallow has yet appeared. The
only time that I have heard the nightingale, I drove, the
one mild day we have had, to a wood where I used to
jind the woodsorrel in beds; only two blossoms of that
could be found, but a whole chorus of nightingales saluted
me the moment I drove into the wood,
There ts something of Madame de Sévigne in her
vivid realisation of natural things.
She nursed her father through a long and trying
illness, and when he died found herself alone tn the world
with unpatred health and very little besides her pension
Jrom the Crvil List to live upon. Dr. Mitford left £1000
worth of debts, which this honourable woman then and
there set to work to try and pay. So much courage and
devotion touched the hearts of her many friends and
readers, and this sum was actually subscribed by them.
INTRODUCTION XXxvii
Queens, archbishops, dukes, and margutses subscribe to
the testtnontal, so do the literary ladies, Mesdames Batley,
Edgeworth, Trollope » Mrs. Opie ts determined to collect
£20 at least, although she justly says she wishes tt were
Jor anything but to pay the Doctor's debts.
Ln 1844 tt 2s delightful to read of a little ease at last
en this harassed life ; of a school-feast with buns and flags
organised by the kind lady, the children riding in waggons
decked with laurel, Miss Mitford leading the way,
followed by erght or ten neighbouring carriages, and the
whole party watting in Swallowfield Lane to sce the
Queen and Prince Albert returning from their vistt to
the Duke of Wellington. ‘Our Duke went to no great
expense, says Miss Mitford. (Dr. Mitford would have
certainly disapproved had he been still alive.) One strip of
carpet the Duke did buy, the rest of the furniture he hired
mm Reading for the week. The ringers, after being hard
at work for four hours, sent a can to the house to ask for
some beer, and the can was sent back enpty.
Lt was towards the end of her life that Miss M: etford
left Three Mlile Cross and came to § wallowfield to stay
altogether. ‘The poor cottage was tumbling around us,
and if we had stayed much longer we should have been
buried in the ruins; she says; ‘there I had toiled and
striven and tasted as bitterly of bitter anxiety, of fear and
hope, as often falls to the lot of women’? Then comes a
charming description of the three miles of Straight and
dusty road. ‘I walked from one cottage to the other on
an autunin evening when the vagrant birds, whose habit
XXXVIIL OUR VILLAGE
of assembling there for their annual departure, gives, I
Suppose, its name of Swallowfield to the village, were
circling over my head, and I repeated to myself the pathetic
fines of Hayley as he saw those same birds gathering
upon hes roof during hts last tliness :-—
‘“ Ve gentle birds, that perch aloof,
And smooth your pintons on my roof. . .
‘“< Prepare for your departure hence
Ere winter's angry threats commence ;
Like you my soul would smooth her plume
Lor longer flights beyond the tomb.
‘“« May God by whom is seen and heard
Departing men and wandering bird,
tn mercy mark us for His own
And guide us to the land unknown /�
Thoughts soothing and tender came with those touching
lines, and gayer tmages followed. . .
Lt is from Swallowfield that she writes: ‘I have felt
this blessing of being able to respond to new friendships
very strongly lately, for I have lost many old and valucd
connections during this trying spring. TI thank God far
more earnestly for such blessings than for my daily
bread, for friendship ts the bread of the heart?
lt was late in life to make such warm new thes as
those which followed her removal from Three Mile Cross ss
but some of the most cordial friendships of her life date
Srom this time. Mr. James Payn and Mr. Fields she
loved with some veal motherly feeling, and Lady Russell
who lived at the Hall became her tender and devoted
SJriend.
INTRODUCTION XXXIX
VI
We went down to Reading the other day, as so many of
Miss Mitford's friends have done before, to look at ‘ our
village’ with our own eyes, and at the cottage tn which she
lived for so long. A phaeton with a fast-stepping horse
met us at the station and whirled us through the busy town
and along the straight dusty road beyond it. As we drove
along in the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges
on etther side,and I could see fields and hedgerows and red
roofs clustering here and there, while the low background
of blue hills spread towards the horizon. It was an
unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minute
by the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending
this or that rival pill. ‘ Tongues tu trees’ indeed, in
a very different sense from the exiled duke’s experience !
Then we come within sight of the running brook, uncon-
“taminated as yet; the river flowing cool and swift,
without quack medicines stamped upon tts waters: we
reach Whitley presently, with its pretty gabled hostel
(Mrs. Mitford used to drive to Whitley and back for
her airing), the dust rises on the fresh keen wind, the
scent of the ripe corn ts in the atr, the cows stoop under
the elm trees, looking exactly as they do in Mr. Thomsoi’s
pretty pictures, dappled and brown, with delicate legs and
horns. We pass very few people, a baby lugged along in
ats cart, and accompanied by its brothers and sisters; a
Jox-terrier comes barking at our wheels; at last the phaeton
stops abruptly between two or three roadside houses, and the
xl OUR VILLAGE
coachman, pointing with his whip, says, ‘That is “The Mit-
Jord,†maam.— Thats where Miss M, etford used to lve |â€
Was that all? TI saw two or three commouplace
houses skirting the dusty road, IT saw a comfortable
public-house with an elm tree, and beside tt another EVey
unpretentious little house, with a slate roof and Square
walls, and an inscription, ‘The Mitford, painted over
the doorway.
L had been expecting I knew not what; a Spire, a
pump, a green, a winding street: my preconceived village
wn the air had immediately to be swept into Space, and
2 its stead, behold the inn with its sign-post, and these
half-dozen brick tenements, more or less cut to one SQUQATE
pattern! So this was all! this was ‘our village’ of which
the author had written so charmingly! These were the
sights the kind eyes had dwelt upon, seeing in them all, the
soul of hidden things, rather than dull bricks and slates,
Except for one memory, Three Mile Cross would seem to
be one of the dullest and most uninteresting of country
places.
But we have Miss Mitford's own description. ‘ The
Cross is not a borough, thank Heaven, either rotten or
endependent. The inhabitants are quiet, peaceable people
who would not think of visiting us, even uf we had a
knocker to knock at. Our residence is a cottage’ (she ts
writing to her correspondent, Str William Elford), ‘no,
not a cottage, it does not deserve the name—a MESSUALE
or tenement such as a little farmer who had made
41400 might retire to when he left off business to
five on his means. It consists of a series of closets,
INTRODUCTION xii
the largest of which may be about eight feet square, which
they call parlours and kitchens and pantries, some of them
minus a corner, which has been unnaturally filched for a
chimney, others deficient in half a side, which has been
truncated by a shelving roof. Behind is a garden about
the size of a good drawing-room, with an arbour, which ts
a complete sentry-box of privet. On one side a public-
house, on the other a village shop, and right opposite a
cobbler's stall. Notwithstanding all this “ the cabin, as
Boabdil says, “ts conventent.†It 1s within reach of any
dear old walks, the banks where I find my vtolets, the
meadows full of cowslips, and the woods where the
woodsorrel blows. .. . Papa has already had the satis-
faction of setting the neighbourhood to rights and
committing a disorderly person who was the pest of
“ The Cross†to Bridewell. .. . Mamma has Jurbished
up an old dairy; I have lost uy only key and stuffed the
garden with flowers†. . . So writes the contented young
‘Wwontan.,
flow much more delightful is all this than any
commonplace stagey effect of lattice and gable; and
weth what pleasant unconscious art the writer of this
letter describes what ts not there and brings in her banks
of violets to perfume the dull rooms. The postscript to
this letter is Miss Mitford all over. ‘ Pray excuse my
blots and interlineations. They have been caused by my
attention being distracted by a nightingale in full song
whois pouring a world of music through my window.
‘Do you not like to meet with good company im your
jriends hearts?’ Miss Mitford says somewhere,—to no
xlii OUR VILLAGE
one better than to herself does this apply. Her heart was
Sull of gracious things, and the best of company was ever
hers, ‘La fleur de la hotte? as Madame de S evrgn says.
We walked ito the small square hall where Dr.
Mitford's bed was established after his wlness, whelst
visitors and all the rest of the household came and went
through the kitchen door. In the parlour, once kept for
his private use, now sat a party of honely friends from
Reading, resting and drinking tea: we too were served
with smoking cups, and poured our Libation to her who
once presided in the quiet place; and then the landlady
took us round and about, showed us the kitchen wrth zts
comfortable corners and low window-frames— I Suppose
this ts scarcely changed at all ?? said one of us,
‘Oh yes, ma@am, says the housekecper— We uses a
Kitchener, Miss Mitford always kept an open range.
The garden, with its sentry-box of privet, exists no
longer ; an tron mission-room stands in its place, with
the harmonium, the rows of straw chatrs, the table and
the candlesticks de circonstance, Jfiss A: ulforad’s picture
hangs on the wall, a hand-coloured copy of one of her
portraits. The kindly homely features smile Srvont the oils,
nm good humour and attentive intelligence. The sentiment
of to-day is assuredly to be found tn the Spirit of things
rather than in their outward signs. . . . Any one of us
can feel the romance of a wayside shrine put up to the
memory of some medieval well-dressed saint with a
nimbus at the back of her head, and a trailing cloak
and ve... . Here, after all, ts the same sentiment, only
translated into nineteenth-century language; uses corrogated
INTRODUCTION xliii
tron sheds, and cups of tea, and oakum matting. ‘ Mr.
Palmer, he bought the place; says the landlady, ‘he made
at into a Temperance Hotel, and built the Temperance
Hall in the garden.
No romantic marble shrine, but a square meeting-house
of good intent, a tribute not less sincere because 2 1s
square, than if it were drawn into Gothic arch and
curve. It speaks, not of a holy and mythical saint, but
of a good and warm-hearted woman; of a life-long
penance borne with charity and cheerfulness ; of sweet
fancies and blessings which have given tnnocent pleasure
to many generations !
VIL
There ts a note, written in a close and pretty
writing, something between Sir Walter Scott's and Mrs.
‘Browning's, which the present writer has possessed for
years, fastened tn a book among other carly treasures :—
Thank you, dearest Miss Priscilla, for your great kindness.
L veturn the ninth volume of [illegible|, with the four succeeding
ones, all that I have; probably all that ave yet published. You
shall have the rest when I get them. Tell dear Mr. George
(L must not call him Vert-Vert) that I have recollected the name
of the author of the clever novel Le Rouge et le Noir (that ts
the right title of the book, which has nothing to do with the
name); the author's name is Stendhal, or so he calls himself. L
think that he was either a musician or a musical critic, and that
he is dead. . . . My visitor has not yet arrived (6 clock, p.1.),
JSrightened no doubt by the abruptness of the two notes which LT
xliv OUR VILLAGE
wrote tn reply to hers yesterday morning ; and indeed nobody
could fancy the hurry in which one is forced to write by this
walking post. :
Lell my visitors of yesterday with my kind love that they did
me all the good in the world, as indeed everybody of your house
does.—Lever, dear Miss Priscilla, very affectionately OUTS,
M. R. Mirrorp.
Ln the present writer's own carly days, when the now
owner of Swallowfield was a very young, younger son, she
used to hear him and his sister, Mrs. Brackenbury (the
Miss Priscilla of the note), speaking with affectionate
remembrance of the old friend lately gone, who had dwelt
at thety very gates ; through which friendly gates one is
glad, indeed, to realise what delightful companionship and
loving help came to cheer the end of that long and totl-
some life; and when Messrs. Macmillan suggested this
preface the writer looked for her old autograph-book, and
at its suggestion wrote (wondering whether any links
existed still) to ask for information concerning Miss
Mitford, and so it happened that she found herself also
kindly entertained at Swallowfield, and invited to vistt
the scenes of which the author of Our Village had
written with so much delight.
L think I should like to reverse the old proverb about
letting those who run read, my own particular fancy
being for reading first and running afterwards. There
are few greater pleasures than to meet with an Indt-
viduality, to listen to tt speaking from a printed page,
recounting, suggesting, growing wpon you every hour,
gaming im life and presence, and then, while still under
INTRODUCTION xiv
its influence, to find oneself suddenly transported into the
very scene of that life, to stand anong its fanuliar
impressions and experiences, vealising another adtstinct
existence by some odd metempsychosis, and what may—
or rather, what must have been. It ts existing a book
rather than reading it when this happens to one.
The house in Swallowfield Park is an old English
country home, a fastness stell piled up against tine ;
whose stately walls and halls within, and beautiful
century-old trees tm the park without, record great tines
and striking figures. The manor was a part of the
dowry of Henry the VIII's luckless queens. The
modern house was built by Clarendon, and the old church
among the elms dates from 1200, with carved signs and
symbols and brasses of knights and burgesses, and nantes
of strange sound and bygone fashion.
Lady Russell, who had sent the phaeton with the fast-
stepping horse to meet us, was walking in the park as we
‘drove up, and instead of taking us back to the house, she
first led the way across the grass and by the streani to
the old church, standing in its trim sweet garden, where
Death itself seems smiling and fearless; where kind
Mary Mitford’s warm heart rests quiet, and ‘her busy
hand, as she says herself, ‘is lying in peace there, where
the sun glances through the great elm trees in the beautiful
churchyard of Swallowfield,
The last baronet, Sir Charles, who fought tn the Crimea,
and who succeeded his father, Sir Henry, moved the divid-
ing rail so that his old friend should be well within the
shadow of these elm trees. Lady Russell showed us
xlvi OUR VILLAGE
the tranquil green place, and told us its story, and
how the old church had once been doomed to destruction
when Kingsley came over by chance, and pleaded that
tt should be spared ; and how, when rubbish and outward
signs of decay had been cleared away, the restorers were
rewarded for their piety, by coming upon noble beams of
oak, untouched by time, upon some fine old buried monu-
ments and brasses and inscriptions, among which the people
still say theiy prayers in the shrine where their fathers
knelt, and of which the tradition is not yet swept away.
The present Lady of the Manor, who loves old traditions,
has done her part to preserve the records for her children.
So Miss Mitford walked from Three Mile Cross to
Swallowfield to end her days, with these kind friends to
cheer and to comfort her. Sir Henry Russell was alive
when she first established herself, but he was already
suffering from some sudden seizure, which she, with her
usual tinpetuosity, describes in her letters as a chronic state
of things. After his death, his widow, the Lady Russell
of those days, was her kindest friend and comforter.
The little Swallowfield cottage at the meeting of the
three roads, to which Mary Mitford came when she left
Three Mile Cross, has thrown out a room or two, as
cottages do, but otherwise I think it can be litile
changed. It was here Miss Mitford was visited
by so many interesting people, here she used to sit
writing at her big table under the ‘tassels of her
acacia tree? When the present Lady of the Manor
brought us to the gate, the acacia flowers were over, but
a baliny breath of summer was everywhere ; a beautiful
INTRODUCTION xlvii
rose was hanging upon the wall beneath the window (zz
must have taken many years to grow to such a height),
and beyond the palings of the garden spread the fields,
ripening in the late July, and turning to gold. The
Jarmer and his son were at work with thetr seythes ;
the birds were still flying, the sweet scents were in the atr.
from a lady who had known her,‘ my own Miss Anne’
of the letters, we heard something more that day of the
author of ‘Our Village’; of her charming intellect, her
Sift of talk, her impulsiveness, her essential sociability, and
rapid grace of mind. She had the SJaults of her qualities ;
she jumped too easily to conclustons 3 she was too much
under the influence of those with whom she lived. She
was born to be a victtm,—even after her old tyrant father’s
death, she was more or less over-ridden by her servants,
Neighbours looked somewhat doubtfully on K. and Ben,
but they were good to her, on the whole, and tended her
carefully, Muss Russell said that when she and her
brother took refuge in the cottage, one morning from a
Storm, while they dried themselves by the fire, they saw
the careful meal carried up to the old lady, the kidneys,
the custard, for her déjeuner & la fourchette.
When Miss Mitford died, she left everything she had
to her beloved K. and to Ben, except that she said she
weshed that one book from her well-stocked Library should
be given to each of her Jrunds. The old Doctor, wtih
all his faults, had loved books, and bought handsome and
valuable first editions of good authors. K. and Ben also
seem to have loved books and Jierst editions. To the
Russells, who had nursed Miss Mitford, comforted her,
xlviil OUR VILLAGE
by whose gates she dwelt, in whose arms she died, Ben
brought, as a token of remembrance, an old shilling volume
of one of G. P. R. James's novels, which was all he could
bear to part with. A prettier incident was told me by
Miss Russell, who once went to visit Miss Mitford's grave.
She found a young man standing there whom she did
not know. ‘Don't you know me?’ said he ; ‘I am Fenry,
maam. I have just come back from Australia’ He
was one of the children of the couple who had lived in
the cottage, and his first visit on his return from abroad
had been to the tomb of his old protectress.
T also heard a friend who knew Miss Mitford in her
latest days, describe going to sce her within a very few
months of her death» she was still bright and responding
as ever, though very ill. The young visitor had herself
been laid up and absent from the invalid’s bedside for
some time. They talked over many things,—an authoress
among the rest, concerning whose power of writing a book
Miss Mitford seems to have been very doubtful. After her
visitor was gone, the sick woman wrote one of her delicate
pretty little notes and despatched it with tts tiny seal
(there it is still unbroken, with its M. R. MM, gust as
she stamped it), and this is the little letter :-—
Thank you, dearest Miss .. . for once again showing me
your fair face by the side of the dear, dear friend | Lady Russell|
for whose goodness I have neither thanks nor words. To the
end of my life I shall go on sinning and repenting. LTeariily
sorry have I been ever since you went away to have spoken so
unkindly to Mrs... . Heaven forgive me for it, and send
her a happier conclusion to her life than the beginning might
INTRODUCTION xlix
warrant, Lf you have an idle lover, my dear, present over to
him my sernion, for those were words of worth.
God bless you all! Ever, most faithfully and affectionately
VOUrs, AL, R. Aflirrory.
Sunday Evening.
VILT
When one turns from Miss Mitford's works to the
notices im the biographical dictionary (in which Miss
Mitford and Mithridates occupy the same page), one
finds how firmly her reputation ts established. ‘Dame
auteur, says my faithful mentor, the Biographie Generale,
‘considerée comme le peintre le plus fidéle de la vie
rurale en Angleterre†‘Author of a remarkable tragedy,
“Julian, 7 which Macready played a princtpal part,
Jollowed by Foscari, Rienzi, and others; says the English
Biographical Dictionary.
‘Tan charmed with my new cottage, she writes soon
after her last installation ; ‘the neighbours are most kind.
Kingsley was one of the first to call upon her. ‘ He took
me quite by surprise in his extraordinary fascination,
says the old lady,
Mr. Fields, the American publisher, also went to
see Miss Mitford at Swallowfield, and immediately
became a very great ally of hers. Itwas to him that
she gave her own portrait, by Lucas. Mr. Fields has
left an interesting account of her in his Yesterdays
with Authors — Her dogs and her geraniuins, he says,
@
1 OUR VILLAGE
‘were her great glories! She used to write me long
letters about Fanchon, a dog whose personal acquaintance
L had made some time before, while on a visit to her
cottage. vuery virtue under heaven she attributed to
that canine individual; and I was obliged to allow tn
my return letters that since our planet began to spin,
nothing comparable to Fanchon had ever run on Jour
legs. I had also known Flush, the ancestor of Fanchon,
intimately, and had been accustomed to hear wonderful
things of that dog, but Fanchon had graces and
gemus unique. Miss Mitford would have joined with
flamerton, when he says, ‘I hunbly thank Divine
Providence for having invented dogs, and I regard
that man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless
life,
Another of Miss Mitford's great friends was John
Ruskin, and one can well imagine how much they neust
have had in common. Of Miss Mitford's writings Ruskin
says,‘ They have the playfulness and purity of the Vicar
of Wakefield zzthout the naughtiness of tts occasional
wet, or the dust of the world’s great road on the other
side of the heage... -
Netther the dust nor the ethics of the world of men
quite belonged to Miss Mitford's genius. It ts always
a sort of relief to turn from her criticism of people, her
prawse of Louts Napoleon, her facts about Mr. Dickens,
whom she describes as a dull companion, or about my
" Ltis Mr, Harness who says, writing of Ruskin and ALiss Milford, ‘ Hts
hindness cheered her closing days. He sent her every book that would
interest, every delicacy that would strengthen her
INTRODUCTION li
father, whom she looked upon as an utter heartless world-
ling, to the natural spontaneous sweet flow of nature in
which she lived and moved tnstinctively.
Mr. James Payn gives, perhaps, the most charming of
all the descriptions of the author of Our Village. He
has many letters frone her to quote from. ‘The paper is
all odds and ends, he says,‘ and not a scrap of it but ts
covered and crossed. The very flaps of the envelopes and
the outsides of them have their message
Mr. Payn went to see her at Swallowfield, and
describes the sinall apartment lined with books from floor
to ceiling and fragrant with flowers. ‘Its tenant rose
Jrom her arm-chair with difficulty, but with a sunny smile
and a charming manner bade me welcome. My father
had been an old friend of hers, and she spoke of my home
and belongings as only a woman can speak of such things,
then we plunged into medea res, tuto men and books. She
seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing
from the Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker.
And she talked like an angel, but her views upon poetry
as a calling in life, shocked me not a tittle. She satd
she preferred a mariage de convenance Zo a love match,
because it generally turned out better. “This surprises
you,’ she sar, smiting, “but then I suppose I am the least
romantic person that ever wrote plays.’ She was much
more proud of her plays, even then well-nigh forgotten,
than of the works by which she was well known, and
which at that time brought people from the ends of the
earth to see her.
‘Nothing ever destroyed her faith tn those she loved.
a2
lit OUR VILLAGE
Lf T had not known all about him from my own folk I
should have thought her father had been a patriot and a
martyr. She spoke of him as tf there had never been
such a father—which in a sense was true.
Mr. Payn quotes Miss Mitford’s charming description
of K., ‘for whom she had the highest admiration’ ‘K.
as a great curtosity, by far the cleverest wontan tn these
parts, not in a literary way [this was not to disappoint
me|, but in everything that rs useful. She could make a
Court dress for a duchess or cook a dinner for a Lord
Mayor, but her principal talent is shown in managing
everybody whoui she comes near. Especially her husband
and myself; she keeps the money of both and never allows
either of us to spend stxpence without her knowledge... .
Vou should see the manner in which she makes Ben reckon
with her, and her contempt for all women who do not
manage their husbands,
Another delightful quotation ts from one of Charles
Kingsley’s letters to Mr. Payn. It brings the past before
us from another point of view.
‘7 can never forget the little figure rolled up in two
chatrs tn the little Swallowfield room, packed round with
books up to the ceiling—the little figure wrth clothes on
of no recognised or recognisable pattern , and somewhere,
out of the upper end of the heap, gleaming under a great
deep globular brow, two such eyes as I never perhaps saw
in any other Englishwoman—though I believe she must
have had French blood in her veins to breed such eyes and
such a tongue, the beautiful speech which came out of that
ugly (tt was that) face, and the glitter and depth too of
INTRODUCTION Titi
the eves, like live coals—perfectly honest the while...
One would like to go on quoting and copying, but here
my preface must cease, for tt is but a preface after all,
one of those many prefaces written out of the past and
when everything 1s over.
INTRODUCTION
COUNTRY PICTURES
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY
THE FIRST PRIMROSE
: VIOLETING
THE COPSE
THE Woop
THE DELL
THE CowsLiv-BALL
THE OLD HOUSE AT ABERLEIGH
THE HARD SUMMER
THE SHAW
NUTTING
THE VISIT
HANNAH BIN?
THE FALL OF THE LEAF .
aS 2 see
‘Watering my flowers’
Heading to Introduction
Heading to Contents .
Heading to List of Illustrations
Heading to Country Pictures .
‘A retired publican ’
‘Playfellows’ é
‘The thickest of the fray’
‘Mine host’
‘A recruiting sergeant’
‘The worthy wheeler carry the gown’
‘And a horseman passing it at a full trot’
Tailpiece to Country Pictures
leading to Walks in the Country
‘There they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawling’
‘The road is gay now’
‘The frost-bitten gentleman ’
‘The lieutenant skating ’
‘Pattens paddle’
Heading to The First Primrose
PAGE
Frontispiece
vil
lvill OUR VILLAGE
‘Fine March weather’
“A vestry meeting’
«An old gamekeeper’
«A knowing look’
‘Joseph White carrying off the fair Rachel’
Tailpiece to The First Primrose
leading to Violeting
“A group on horseback ’
© Three sturdy farmers’
‘A merry group’
‘A whistling boy’
‘Bean-setting’
Tailpiece to Violeting
IJeading to The Copse
‘ Bringing her game’
‘Tome to “their walk â€
“Sent to Coventry’
‘Mrs. Sally Mearing’
‘ Giving his lodger fair warning
*Soundly scolded’
‘ After the sheep’
‘The shameless villain Saladin’
Tailpiece to The Copse
Heading to The Wood
‘ Saladin’s affair with the Gander’
‘Let us gather some’
‘The hedgehog ’
Heading to The Dell .
‘Talf the cows in the street’ .
‘Poor blind Robert’
‘Ah! little rogues 1’
‘ Peaceful evenings’
‘There sits Mrs. Allen, feeding her poultry’ .
PAGE
44
46
50
51
56
59
60
62
65
66
68
â€
7t
2
ao
75
76
79
84
86
88
90
92
95
96
99
Iol
107
108
109
113
115
17
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
‘Over the bridge’
Heading to The Cowslip-Ball
‘I don’t mind ’em’
‘A flirtation’
*Cuckoo ! cuckoo !’
‘Making the cowslip-ball’
‘Faster, faster |’
‘Cloaks and umbrellas’
‘May went to bed’. z
Heading to The Old House at Naa
* Off we drove’
‘Youth and age’
‘Here we must alight !’
Heading to The Hard Summer
‘Staring at a balloon’
‘ All one dust’
‘That poor boy’ 3 5 . : >
‘ Cricket ’ : ° ; ee >
‘Thank you, Joe Kirby i
‘Carter’s boy’ a 3 S .
‘Squabbling’.
‘The little hussar’
‘ Dipping up water’ :
Tailpiece to The Hard Summer
Heading to The Shaw
‘By sheer beggary’
‘Maid and boy, and mistress and master’
‘He likes Dash’
‘A battle’ d : : ;
‘The Bench’ . , : : .
‘Daddy! daddy!’ . . :
‘Tottering up the path’
Heading to Nutting
167
168
171
173
175
176
179
183
185
186
188
190
Igt
193
199
Ix OUR VILLAGE
‘In the apple-tree’. °
Yeading to The Visit
‘A fine noble animal’
“Prentice to the footman
‘The mill team’
Heading to Hannah Bint
‘Jack Bint, aided by Jack Bint’s famous dog, Watch’
“To the lord of the manor’
‘ Admission to the charity-school’
‘As much like lovers’
Tailpiece to Hannah Bint
Ileading to The Fall of the Leaf
‘The little post-boy’
‘Ah! a pheasant ! a superb cock pheasant !’
‘Grazing under the tall elms’
GOUNTERY PICTURES
&
tA
2
2 :
al hee
.é¥ | Sagi ESET
— oe
(Gu ntry Petu res.
all situations for a constant residence,
that which appears to me most delightful
is a little village far in the country ; a
small neighbourhood, not of fine man-
sions finely peopled, but of cottages and
cottage-like houses, ‘messuages or tene-
ments, as a friend of mine calls such -
ignoble and nondescript dwellings, with
inhabitants whose faces are as familiar to
us as the flowers in our garden; a little
world of our own, close-packed and in-
sulated like ants in an ant-hill, or bees
in a hive, or sheep in a fold, or nuns in
a convent, or sailors in a ship; where we
know every one, are known to every one,
interested in every one, and authorised
to hope that every one feels an interest
‘inus. How pleasant it is to slide into these true-hearted
Y
4 OUR VILLAGE
feelings from the kindly and unconscious influence of
habit, and to learn to know and to love the people about
us, with all their peculiarities, just as we learn to know
and to love the nooks and turns of the shady lanes and
sunny commons that we pass every day. Even in books
I like a confined locality, and so do the critics when
they talk of the unities. Nothing is so tiresome as to
be whirled half over Europe at the chariot-wheels of a
hero, to go to sleep at Vienna, and awaken at Madrid ;
it produces a real fatigue, a weariness of spirit. On
the other hand, nothing is so delightful as to sit down
in a country village in one of Miss Austen’s delicious
novels, quite sure before we leave it to become in-
timate with every spot and every person it contains ;
or to ramble with Mr. White over his own parish of
Selborne, and form a friendship with the fields and
coppices, as well as with the birds, mice, and squirrels,
who inhabit them; or to sail with Robinson Crusoe
to his island, and live there with him and his goats
and his man Friday ;—how much we dread any new
comers, any fresh importation of savage or sailor! we
never sympathise for a moment in our hero’s want of
company, and are quite grieved when he gets away ;—
or to be shipwrecked with Ferdinand on that other
lovelier island—the island of Prospero, and Miranda,
and Caliban, and Ariel, and nobody else, none of
Dryden’s exotic inventions:—that is best of all.
1White’s Watural History and Antiquities of Selborne; one of the
most fascinating books ever written. J wonder that no naturalist has
adopted the same plan.
COUNTRY PICTURES 5
And a small neighbourhood is as good in sober waking
reality as in poetry or prose; a village neighbourhood,
such as this Berkshire hamlet in which I write, a long,
straggling, winding street at the bottom of a fine
eminence, with a road through it, always abounding in
carts, horsemen, and carriages, and lately enlivened by
a stage-coach from B—-— to S——, which passed
through about ten days ago, and will I suppose return
some time or other. There are coaches of all varieties
nowadays; perhaps this may be intended for a
monthly diligence, or a fortnight fly. Will you walk
with me through our village, courteous reader? The
journey is not long. We will begin at the lower end,
and proceed up the hill.
The tidy, square, red cottage on the right hand,
with the long well-stocked garden by the side of the
road, belongs to a retired publican from a neighbour-
ing town; a substantial person with a comely wife ;
one who piques himself on independence and idleness,
talks politics, reads newspapers, hates the minister, and
cries out for reform. He introduced into our peaceful
vicinage the rebellious innovation of an illumination on
the Queen’s acquittal. Remonstrance and persuasion
were in vain; he talked of liberty and broken windows
—so we all lighted up. Oh! how he shone that night
with candles, and laurel, and white bows, and gold
paper, and a transparency (originally designed for a
pocket-handkerchief) with a flaming portrait of her
Majesty, hatted and feathered, in red ochre. He had
no rival in the village, that we all acknowledged ; the
6 OUR VILLAGE
very bonfire was less splendid ; the little boys reserved
their best crackers to be expended in his honour, and
he gave them full sixpence more than any one else.
He would like an illumination once a month ; for it
‘A retired publican.’
Copyright 1833 by Macmillan & Co,
must not be concealed that, in spite of gardening, of
newspaper reading, of jaunting about in his little cart,
and frequenting both church and meeting, our worthy
neighbour begins to feel the weariness of idleness.
COUNTRY PICTURES 7
He hangs over his gate, and tries to entice passengers
to stop and chat; he volunteers little jobs all round,
smokes cherry trees to cure the blight, and traces and
blows up all the wasps’-nests in the parish. I have
seen a great many wasps in our garden to-day, and
shall enchant him with the intelligence. He even
assists his wife in her sweepings and dustings, Poor
man! he is a very respectable person, and would be a
very happy one, if he would add a little employment
to his dignity. It would be the salt of life to him.
Next to his house, though parted from it by another
long garden with a yew arbour at the end, is the pretty
dwelling of the shoemaker, a pale, sickly-looking, black-
haired man, the very model of sober industry. There
he sits in his little shop from early morning till late at
night. An earthquake would hardly stir him: the
illumination did not. He stuck immovably to his
last, from the first lighting up, through the long blaze
and the slow decay, till his large solitary candle was
the only light in the place. One cannot conceive
anything more perfect than the contempt which the
man of transparencies and the man of shoes must have
felt for each other on that evening. There was at
least as much vanity in the sturdy industry as in the
strenuous idleness, for our shoemaker is a man of sub-
stance; he employs three journeymen, two lame, and one
a dwarf, so that his shop looks like an hospital ; he has
purchased the lease of his commodious dwelling, some
even say that he has bought it out and out; and he
has only one pretty daughter, a light, delicate, fair-
8 OUR VILLAGE
haired girl of fourteen, the champion, protectress, and
playfellow of every brat under three years old, whom
‘ Playfellows.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
she jumps, dances, dandles, and feeds all day long. A
very attractive person is that child-loving girl. I have
never seen any one in her station who possessed so
COUNTRY PICTURES 9
thoroughly that undefinable charm, the lady-look. Sce
her on a Sunday in her simplicity and her white frock,
and she might pass for an earl’s daughter. She likes
flowers too, and has a profusion of white stocks under
her window, as pure and delicate as herself.
The first house on the opposite side of the way is
the blacksmith’s; a gloomy dwelling, where the sun
never seems to shine; dark and smoky within and
without, like a forge. The blacksmith is a high officer
in our little state, nothing less than a constable; but,
alas! alas! when tumults arise, and the constable is
called for, he will commonly be found in the thickest
of the fray. Lucky would it be for his wife and her
eight children if there were no public-house in the land :
an inveterate inclination to enter those bewitching doors
is Mr. Constable’s only fault.
Next to this official dwelling is a spruce brick
tenement, red, high, and narrow, boasting, one above
another, three sash-windows, the only sash-windows in
the village, with a clematis on one side and a rose on
the other, tall and narrow like itself. That slender
mansion has a fine, genteel look. The little parlour
seems made for Hogarth’s old maid and her stunted
footboy ; for tea and card parties,—it would just hold
one table ; for the rustle of faded silks, and the splen-
dour of old china; for the delight of four by honours,
and a little snug, quiet scandal between the deals; for
affected gentility and real starvation. This should
have been its destiny ; but fate has been unpropitious :
it belongs to a plump, merry, bustling dame, with four
10 OUR VILLAGE
fat, rosy, noisy children, the very essence of vulgarity
and plenty.
Then comes the village shop, like other village shops,
‘The thickest of the fray.’
multifarious as a bazaar ; a repository for bread, shoes,
tea, cheese, tape, ribands, and bacon ; for everything,
in short, except the one particular thing which you
COUNTRY PICTURES Il
happen to want at the moment, and will be sure not
to find. The people are civil and thriving, and frugal
withal ; they have let the upper part of their house to
two young women (one of them is a pretty blue-eyed
girl) who teach little children their A B C, and make
caps and gowns for their mammas,—parcel school-
mistress, parcel mantua-maker. I believe they find
adorning the body a more profitable vocation than
adorning the mind.
Divided from the shop by a narrow yard, and
opposite the shoemaker’s, is a habitation of whose
inmates I shall say nothing. A cottage—no—a minia-
ture house, with many additions, little odds and ends
of places, pantries, and what not; all angles, and of a
charming in-and-outness ; a little bricked court before
one half, and a little flower-yard before the other ; the
walls, old and weather-stained, covered with holly-
hocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot-tree ;
the casements full of geraniums (ah! there is our
superb white cat peeping out from among them) ; the
closets (our landlord has the assurance to call them
rooms) full of contrivances and corner-cupboards ; and
the little garden behind full of common flowers, tulips,
pinks, larkspurs, peonies, stocks, and carnations, with
an arbour of privet, not unlike a sentry-box, where one
lives in a delicious green light, and looks out on the
gayest of all gay flower-beds. That house was built
on purpose to show in what an exceeding small com-
pass comfort may be packed. Well, I will loiter there
no longer.
12 OUR VILLAGE
The next tenement is a place of importance, the
Rose Inn: a white-washed building, retired from the
road behind its fine swinging sign, with a little bow-
window room coming out on one side, and forming,
* Adine host.
with our stable on the other, a sort of open square,
which is the constant resort of carts, waggons, and
return chaises. There are two carts there now, and
mine host is serving them with beer in his eternal red
COUNTRY PICTURES 13
waistcoat. He is a thriving man and a portly, as his
waistcoat attests, which has been twice let out within
this twelvemonth. Our landlord has a stirring wife, a
hopeful son, and a daughter, the belle of the village ;
not so pretty as the fair nymph of the shoe-shop, and far
less elegant, but ten times as fine ; all curl-papers in the
morning, like a porcupine, all curls in the afternoon,
like a poodle, with more flounces than curl-papers, and
more lovers than curls. Miss Phcebe is fitter for town
than country ; and to do her justice, she has a conscious-
ness of that fitness, and turns her steps townward as
often as she can. She is gone to B—-— to-day with
her last and principal lover, a recruiting sergeant—a
man as tall as Sergeant Kite, and as impudent. Some
day or other he will carry off Miss Phoebe.
In a line with the bow-window room is a low garden-
wall, belonging to a house under repair :—the white
house opposite the collar-maker’s shop, with four lime-
trees before it, and a waggon-load of bricks at the
door. That house is the plaything of a wealthy, well-
meaning, whimsical person who lives about a mile off.
He has a passion for brick and mortar, and, being too
wise to meddle with his own residence, diverts himself
with altering and re-altering, improving and re-improv-
ing, doing and undoing here. Itisa perfect Penelope’s
web. Carpenters and bricklayers have been at work
for these eighteen months, and yet I sometimes stand
and wonder whether anything has really been done.
One exploit in last June was, however, by no means
equivocal. Our good neighbour fancied that the limes
14 OUR VILLAGE
shaded the rooms, and made them dark (there was
not a creature in the house but the workmen), so he had
all the leaves stripped from every tree. There they
stood, poor miserable skeletons, as bare as Christmas
under the glowing midsummer sun. Nature revenged
herself, in her own sweet and gracious manner; fresh
leaves sprang out, and at nearly Christmas the foliage
was as brilliant as when the outrage was committed.
Next door lives a carpenter, ‘famed ten miles round,
and worthy all his fame,—few cabinet-makers surpass
him, with his excellent wife, and their little daughter
Lizzy, the plaything and queen of the village, a child
three years old according to the register, but six in size
and strength and intellect, in power and in self-will.
She manages everybody in the place, her schoolmistress
included ; turns the wheeler’s children out of their own
little cart, and makes them draw her; seduces cakes
and lollypops from the very shop window; makes the
lazy carry her, the silent talk to her, the grave romp
with her; does anything she pleases; is absolutely
irresistible. Her chief attraction lies in her exceeding
power of loving, and her firm reliance on the love and
indulgence of others. How impossible it would be to
disappoint the dear little girl when she runs to meet
you, slides her pretty hand into yours, looks up gladly
in your face, and says ‘Come!’ You must go: you
cannot help it. Another part of her charm is her
singular beauty. Together with a good deal of the
character of Napoleon, she has something of his square,
sturdy, upright form, with the finest limbs in the world,
‘A recruiting sergeant,
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co,
COUNTRY PICTURES 17
a complexion purely English, a round laughing face,
sunburnt and rosy, large merry blue eyes, curling brown
hair, and a wonderful play of countenance. She has
the imperial attitudes too, and loves to stand with her
hands behind her, or folded over her bosom; and
sometimes, when she has a little touch of shyness, she
clasps them together on the top of her head, pressing
down her shining curls, and looking so exquisitely
pretty! Yes, Lizzy is queen of the village! She has
but one rival in her dominions, a certain white grey-
hound called Mayflower, much her friend, who resembles
her in beauty and strength, in playfulness, and almost
in sagacity, and reigns over the animal world as she
over the human. They are both coming with me,
Lizzy and Lizzy’s ‘pretty May. We are now at the
end of the street ; a cross-lane, a rope-walk shaded with
limes and oaks, and a cool clear pond overhung with
elms, lead us to the bottom of the hill. There is still
one house round the corner, ending in a picturesque
wheeler’s shop. The dwelling-house is more ambitious.
Look at the fine flowered window-blinds, the green door
with the brass knocker, and the somewhat prim but
very civil person, who is sending off a labouring man
with sirs and curtsies enough for a prince of the blood.
Those are the curate’s lodgings—apartments his land-
lady would call them; he lives with his own family
four miles off, but once or twice a week he comes to
his neat little parlour to write sermons, to marry, or to
bury, as the case may require. Never were better or
kinder people than his host and hostess ; and there is a
Cc
18 OUR VILLAGE
reflection of clerical importance about them since their
connection with the Church, which is quite edifying—a
‘The worthy wheeler
carry the gown.
decorum, a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see
the worthy wheeler carry the gown after his lodger on
a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife’s best hand-
COUNTRY PICTURES 19
kerchief!—or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or
a squabbling woman! The curate is nothing to him.
He is fit to be perpetual churchwarden.
We must now cross the lane into the shady rope-
walk. That pretty white cottage opposite, which stands
straggling at the end of the village in a garden full of
flowers, belongs to our mason, the shortest of men, and
his handsome, tall wife: he, a dwarf, with the voice of
a giant; one starts when he begins to talk as if he
were shouting through a speaking trumpet; she, the
sister, daughter, and grand-daughter, of a long line
of gardeners, and no contemptible one herself. It is
very magnanimous in me not to hate her; for she
beats me in my own way, in chrysanthemums, and
dahlias, and the like gauds. Her plants are sure to
live; mine have a sad trick of dying, perhaps because
I love them, ‘not wisely, but too well, and kill
them with over-kindness. Half-way up the hill is
another detached cottage, the residence of an officer,
and his beautiful family. That eldest boy, who is
hanging over the gate, and looking with such intense
childish admiration at my Lizzy, might be a model
for a Cupid.
How pleasantly the road winds up the hill, with
its broad green borders and hedgerows so thickly
timbered! How finely the evening sun falls on that
sandy excavated bank, and touches the farmhouse on
the top of the eminence! and. how clearly defined and
relieved is the figure of the man who is just coming
down! It is poor John Evans, the gardener—an
20 OUR VILLAGE
excellent gardener till about ten years ago, when he
lost his wife, and became insane. He was sent to St.
Luke’s, and dismissed as cured; but his power was
gone and his strength ; he could no longer manage a
garden, nor submit to the restraint, nor encounter the
fatigue of regular employment: so he retreated to the
workhouse, the pensioner and factotum of the village,
amongst whom he divides his services. His mind often
wanders, intent on some fantastic and impracticable
plan, and lost to present objects; but he is perfectly
harmless, and full of a childlike simplicity, a smiling
contentedness, a most touching gratitude. Every one
is kind to John Evans, for there is that about him
which must be loved; and _ his unprotectedness, his
utter defencelessness, have an irresistible claim on every
better feeling. I know nobody who inspires so deep
and tender a pity; he improves all around him. He
is useful, too, to the extent of his little power ; will do
anything, but loves gardening best, and still piques
himself on his old arts of pruning fruit-trees, and raising
cucumbers. He is the happiest of men just now, for
he has the management of a melon bed—a melon bed !
fie! What a grand pompous name was that for
three melon plants under a hand-light! John Evans is
sure that they will succeed. We shall see: as the
chancellor said, ‘I doubt.’
We are now on the very brow of the eminence, close
to the Hill-house and its beautiful garden. On the
outer edge of the paling, hanging over the bank that
skirts the road, is an old thorn—such a thorn! The
COUNTRY PICTURES 21
long sprays covered with snowy blossoms, so graceful,
so elegant, so lightsome, and yet so rich! There only
wants a pool under the thorn to give a still lovelier re-
flection, quivering and trembling, like a tuft of feathers,
whiter and greener than the life, and more prettily
mixed with the bright blue sky. There should indeed
be a pool; but on the dark grass-plat, under the high
bank, which is crowned by that magnificent plume,
there is something that does almost as well,—Lizzy and
Mayflower in the midst of a game at romps, ‘making
a sunshine in the shady place ;’ Lizzy rolling, laugh-
ing, clapping her hands, and glowing like a rose;
Mayflower playing about her like summer lightning,
dazzling the eyes with her sudden turns, her leaps, her
bounds, her attacks, and her escapes. She darts round
the lovely little girl, with the same momentary touch
that the swallow skims over the water, and has exactly
the same power of flight, the same matchless ease and
strength and grace. What a pretty picture they would
make ; what a pretty foreground they do make to the
real landscape! The road winding down the hill with
a slight bend, like that in the High Street at Oxford ;
a waggon slowly ascending, and a horseman passing it
at a full trot—(ah! Lizzy, Mayflower will certainly
desert you to have a gambol with that blood-horse !)
half-way down, just at the turn, the red cottage of the
lieutenant, covered with vines, the very image of comfort
and content; farther down, on the opposite side, the
small white dwelling of the little mason ; then the limes
and the rope-walk; then the village street, peeping
22 OUR VILLAGE
through the trees, whose clustering tops hide all but the
chimneys, and various roofs of the houses, and here and
RSS ,
t
‘And a horseman passing tt at
a full trot.’
there some angle of a wall; farther on, the elegant town
of B——, with its fine old church-towers and spires ;
the whole view shut in by a range of chalky hills ; and
COUNTRY PICTURES 23
over every part of the picture, trees so profusely
scattered, that it appears like a woodland scene, with
glades and villages intermixed. The trees are of all
kinds and all hues, chiefly the finely-shaped elm, of so
bright and deep a green, the tips of whose high outer
branches drop down with such a crisp and garland-like
richness, and the oak, whose stately form is just now so
splendidly adorned by the sunny colouring of the young
leaves. Turning again up the hill, we find ourselves on
that peculiar charm of English scenery, a green common,
divided by the road; the right side fringed by hedge-
rows and trees, with cottages and farmhouses irregu-
larly placed, and terminated by a double avenue of
noble oaks; the left, prettier still, dappled by bright
pools of water, and islands of cottages and cottage-
gardens, and sinking gradually down to cornfields and
meadows, and an old farmhouse, with pointed roofs and
clustered chimneys, looking out from its blooming
orchard, and backed by woody hills. The common is
itself the prettiest part of the prospect; half covered
with low furze, whose golden blossoms reflect so intensely
the last beams of the setting sun, and alive with cows
and sheep, and two sets of cricketers; one of young
men, surrounded by spectators, some standing, some
sitting, some stretched on the grass, all taking a
delighted interest in the game ; the other, a merry group
of little boys, at a humble distance, for whom even
cricket is scarcely lively enough, shouting, leaping, and
enjoying themselves to their hearts’ content. But
cricketers and country boys are too important persons
24 OUR VILLAGE
in our village to be talked of merely as figures in the
landscape. They deserve an individual introduction—
an essay to themselves—and they shall have it. No
fear of forgetting the good-humoured faces that meet
us in our walks every day.
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY
Lb anuary 23r4— At noon to-day I and my white
greyhound, Mayflower, set out for a walk
into a very beautiful world,—a sort of
silent fairyland,—a creation of that match-
less magician the hoar-frost. There had
_been just snow enough to cover the earth and all its
covers with one sheet of pure and uniform white, and
just time enough since the snow had fallen to allow the
hedges to be freed of their fleecy load, and clothed
with a delicate coating of rime. The atmosphere was
deliciously calm ; soft, even mild, in spite of the ther-
mometer ; no perceptible air, but a stillness that might
almost be felt, the sky, rather gray than blue, throwing
out in bold relief the snow-covered roofs of our village,
and the rimy trees that rise above them, and the sun
shining dimly as through a veil, giving a pale fair light,
like the moon, only brighter. There was a silence, too,
that might become the moon, as we stood at our little
28 OUR VILLAGE
gate looking up the quiet street; a Sabbath-like pause
of work and play, rare on a work-day; nothing was
audible but the pleasant hum of frost, that low
monotonous sound, which is perhaps the nearest
approach that life and nature can make to absolute
silence. The very waggons as they come down the
hill along the beaten track of crisp yellowish frost-dust,
glide along like shadows; even May’s bounding foot-
steps, at her height of glee and of speed, fall like snow
upon snow.
But we shall have noise enough presently: May
has stopped at Lizzy’s door; and Lizzy, as she sat on
the window-sill with her bright rosy face laughing
through the casement, has seen her and disappeared.
She is coming. No! The key is turning in the door,
and sounds of evil omen issue through the keyhole—
sturdy ‘let me outs, and ‘I will goes, mixed with shrill
cries on May and on me from Lizzy, piercing through
a low continuous harangue, of which the prominent
parts are apologies, chilblains, sliding, broken bones,
lollypops, rods, and gingerbread, from Lizzy’s careful
mother. ‘Don’t scratch the door, May! Don’t roar
so, my Lizzy! We'll call for you as we come back.’—
‘lll go now! Let me out! I will go!’ are the last
words of Miss Lizzy. Mem. Not to spoil that child
—if I can help it. But I do think her mother might
have let the poor little soul walk with us to-day.
Nothing worse for children than coddling. Nothing
better for chilblains than exercise. Besides, I don’t
believe she has any——and as to breaking her bones in
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 29
sliding, I don’t suppose there’s a slide on the common.
These murmuring cogitations have brought us up the
hill, and half-way across the light and airy common,
with its bright expanse of snow and its clusters of
cottages, whose turf fires send such wreaths of smoke
sailing up the air, and diffuse such aromatic fragrance
around. And now comes the delightful sound of
‘There they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawling,’
childish voices, ringing with glee and merriment almost
from beneath our feet. Ah, Lizzy, your mother was
right! They are shouting from that deep irregular
pool, all glass now, where, on two long, smooth, liny
slides, half a dozen ragged urchins are slipping along
in tottering triumph. Half a dozen steps bring us to
the bank right above them. May can hardly resist the
temptation of joining her friends, for most of the varlets
30 OUR VILLAGE
are of her acquaintance, especially the rogue who leads
the slide,—he with the brimless hat, whose bronzed
complexion and white flaxen hair, reversing the usual
lights and shadows of the human countenance, give
so.strange and foreign a look to his flat and comic
features. This hobgoblin, Jack Rapley by name, is
May’s great crony; and she stands on the brink of the
steep, irregular descent, her black eyes fixed full upon
him, as if she intended him the favour of jumping on
his head. She does: she is down, and upon him; but
Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off his feet.
He saw her coming, and in the moment of her leap
sprung dexterously off the slide on the rough ice,
steadying himself by the shoulder of the next in the
file, which unlucky follower, thus unexpectedly checked
in his career, fell plump backwards, knocking down the
rest of the line like a nest of card-houses. There is no
harm done; but there they lie, roaring, kicking, sprawl-
ing, in every attitude of comic distress, whilst Jack
Rapley and Mayflower, sole authors of this calamity,
stand apart from the throng, fondling, and coquetting,
and complimenting each other, and very visibly
laughing, May in her black eyes, Jack in his wide,
close-shut mouth, and his whole monkey-face, at their
comrades’ mischances. I think, Miss May, you may as
well come up again, and leave Master Rapley to fight
your battles. He'll get out of the scrape. He is a
rustic wit—a sort of Rcbin Goodfellow—the sauciest,
idlest, cleverest, best-natured boy in the parish ; always
foremost in mischief, and always ready to do a good
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 31
turn. The sages of our village predict sad things of
Jack Rapley, so that I am sometimes a little ashamed
to confess, before wise people, that I have a lurking
predilection for him (in common with other naughty
‘ The road is gay now,’
ones), and that I like to hear him talk to May almost
as well as she does. ‘Come, May!’ and up she springs,
as light as a bird. The road is gay now; carts and
post-chaises, and girls in red cloaks, and, afar off,
looking almost like a toy, the coach. It meets us fast
and soon, How much happier the walkers look than
32 OUR VILLAGE
the riders—especially the frost-bitten gentleman, and
the shivering lady with the invisible face, sole passen-
ye
|
‘ The frost-bitten gentleman.’
gers of that commodious machine! Hooded, veiled,
and bonneted, as she is, one sees from her attitude how
miserable she would look uncovered.
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 33
Another pond, and another noise of children. More
sliding? Ohno! This is a sport of higher preten-
sion. Our good neighbour, the lieutenant, skating, and
his own pretty little boys, and two or three other four-
year-old elves, standing on the brink in an ecstasy of
joy and wonder! Oh what happy spectators! And
what a happy performer! They admiring, he admired,
with an ardour and sincerity never excited by all the
quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the Seine and the
Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am
glad I-came this way ; for, with all the father’s feelings
sitting gaily at his heart, it must still gratify the pride
of skill to have one spectator at that solitary pond who
has seen skating before.
Now we have reached the trees,—the beautiful
trees! never so beautiful as to-day. Imagine the effect
of a straight and regular double avenue of oaks, nearly
a mile long, arching overhead, and closing into per-
spective like the roof and columns of a cathedral, every
tree and branch incrusted with the bright and delicate
congelation of hoar-frost, white and pure as snow, deli-
cate and defined as carved ivory. How beautiful it is,
how uniform, how various, how filling, how satiating to
the eye and to the mind—above all, how melancholy !
There is a thrilling awfulness, an intense feeling of
sumple power in that naked and colourless beauty,
which falls on the earth like the thoughts of death—
death pure, and glorious, and smiling,—but still death.
Sculpture has always the same effect on my imagina-
tion, and painting never. Colour is life-——-We are now
D
34 OUR VILLAGE
at the end of this magnificent avenue, and at the top
of a steep eminence commanding a wide view over four
countics——a landscape of snow. A deep lane leads
abruptly down the hill; a mere narrow cart-track, sink-
ing between high banks clothed with fern and furze
and low broom, crowned with luxuriant hedgerows,
and famous for their summer smell of thyme. How
lovely these banks are now—the tall weeds and the
gorse fixed and stiffened in the hoar-frost, which fringes
round the bright prickly holly, the pendent foliage of
the bramble, and the deep orange leaves of the pollard
oaks! Oh, this is rime in its loveliest form! And
there is still a berry here and there on the holly,
‘blushing in its natural coral’ through the delicate
tracery, still a stray hip or haw for the birds, who
abound here always. The poor birds, how tame they
are, how sadly tame! There is the beautiful and rare
crested wren, ‘that shadow of a bird, as White of Sel-
borne calls it, perched in the middle of the hedge, nest-
ling as it were amongst the cold bare boughs, seeking,
poor pretty thing, for the warmth it will not find. And
there, farther on, just under the bank, by the slender
runlet, which still trickles between its transparent fan-
tastic margin of thin ice, as if it were a thing of life,—
there, with a swift, scudding motion, flits, in short low
flights, the gorgeous kingfisher, its magnificent plumage
of scarlet and blue flashing in the sun, like the glories
of some tropical bird. He is come for water to this
little spring by the hillside,—water which even his
long bill and slender head can hardly reach, so nearly
‘The lieutenant skating.’
Copyright 1893 by Maonitlan & Co,
WALKS IN THE COUNTRY 37
do the fantastic forms of those garland-like icy margins
meet over the tiny stream beneath. It is rarely that
one sees the shy beauty so close or so long; and it is
pleasant to see him in the grace and beauty of his
natural liberty, the only way to look at a bird. We
used, before we lived in a street, to fix a little board
outside the parlour window, and cover it with bread
crumbs in the hard weather. It was quite delightful to
see the pretty things come and feed, to conquer their
shyness, and do away their mistrust. First came the
more social tribes, ‘the robin red-breast and the wren,’
cautiously, suspiciously, picking up a crumb on the wing,
with the little keen bright eye fixed on the window ;
then they would stop for two pecks ; then stay till they
were satished. The shyer birds, tamed by their example,
came next; and at last one saucy fellow of a blackbird
—a sad glutton, he would clear the board in two
minutes,—used to tap his yellow bill against the window
for more. How we loved the fearless confidence of
that fine, frank-hearted creature! And surely he loved
us. I wonder the practice is not more general.
‘May! May! ‘naughty May!’ She has frightened
away the kingfisher; and now, in her coaxing peni-
tence, she is covering me with snow. ‘Come, pretty
May! it is time to go home,’
THAW.
January 28th—We have had rain, and snow, and
frost, and rain again ; four days of absolute confinement.
38 OUR VILLAGE
Now it is a thaw and a flood; but our light gravelly
soil, and country boots, and country hardihood, will
carry us through. What a dripping, comfortless day it
is! just like the last days of November: no sun, no
sky, gray or blue; one low, overhanging, dark, dismal
cloud, like London smoke ; Mayflower is out coursing
too, and Lizzy gone to school. Never mind. Up the
hill again! Walk we must. Oh what a watery world
to look back upon! Thames, Kennet, Loddon—all
overflowed ; our famous town, inland once, turned into
a sort of Venice; C. park converted into an island ;
and the long range of meadows from B. to W. one
huge unnatural lake, with trees growing out of it. Oh
what a watery world !—I will look at it no longer. I
will walk on. The road is alive again. Noise is re-
born. Waggons creak, horses splash, carts rattle, and
pattens paddle through the dirt with more than their
usual clink. The common has its old fine tints of
green and brown, and its old variety of inhabitants,
horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and donkeys. The ponds
are unfrozen, except where some melancholy piece of
melting ice floats sullenly on the water; and cackling
geese and gabbling ducks have replaced the lieutenant
and Jack Rapley. The avenue is chill and dark, the
hedges are dripping, the lanes knee-deep, and all nature
is in a state of ‘dissolution and thaw.’
' Pattens paddle?
Copyright 1893 by Macnuitian & Co.
THE FIRST PRIMROSE
The Fret Promrose
Vdsarck 6th.— Fine March weather: boister-
ous, blustering, much wind and squalls
of rain; and yet the sky, where the
clouds are swept away, deliciously blue,
with snatches of sunshine, bright, and
clear, and healthful, and the roads, in spite of the slight
glittering showers, crisply dry. Altogether the day is
tempting, very tempting. It will not do for the dear
common, that windmill of a walk; but the close sheltered
lanes at the bottom of the hill, which keep out just
enough of the stormy air, and Ict in all the sun, will be
delightful. Past our old house, and round by the wind-
ing lanes, and the workhouse, and across the lea, and
so into the turnpike-road again,—that is our route for
to-day. Forth we set, Mayflower and I, rejoicing in
the sunshine, and still more in the wind, which gives
such an intense feeling of existence, and, co-operating
with brisk motion, sets our blood and our spirits in a
glow. For mere physical pleasure, there is nothing
44 OUR VILLAGE
perhaps equal to the enjoyment of being drawn, in a
light carriage, against such a wind as this, by a blood-
horse at his height of speed. Walking comes next to
‘Fine March weather’
it; but walking is not quite so luxurious or so spiritual,
not quite so much what one fancies of flying, or being
carried above the clouds in a balloon.
Nevertheless, a walk is a good thing; especially
THE FIRST PRIMROSE 45
under this southern hedgerow, where nature is just
beginning to live again; the periwinkles, with their
starry blue flowers, and their shining myrtle-like leaves,
garlanding the bushes ; woodbines and elder-trees push-
ing out their small swelling buds; and grasses and
mosses springing forth in every variety of brown and
green. Here we are at the corner where four lanes
meet, or rather where a passable road of stones and
gravel crosses an impassable one of beautiful but
treacherous turf, and where the small white farmhouse,
scarcely larger than a cottage, and the well-stocked
rick-yard behind, tell of comfort and order, but leave
all unguessed the great riches of the master. How he
became so rich is almost a puzzle; for, though the
farm be his own, it is not large; and though prudent
and frugal on ordinary occasions, Farmer Barnard is no
miser. His horses, dogs, and pigs are the best kept in
the parish,—May herself, although her beauty be injured
by her fatness, half envies the plight of his bitch Fly:
his wife’s gowns and shawls cost as much again as any
shawls or gowns in the village; his dinner parties (to
be sure they are not frequent) display twice the ordinary
quantity of good things—two couples of ducks, two
dishes of green peas, two turkey poults, two gammons
of bacon, two plum-puddings; moreover, he keeps a:
single- horse chaise, and has built and endowed a
Methodist chapel. Yet is he the richest man in these
parts. Everything prospers with him. Money drifts
about him like snow. He looks like a rich man.
There is a sturdy squareness of face and figure ; a good-
46 OUR VILLAGE
humoured obstinacy; a civil importance. He never
boasts of his wealth, or gives himself undue airs ; but
nobody can meet him at market or vestry without
finding out immediately that he is the richest man
‘A vestry meeting.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmitian & Co.
there. They have no child to all this money; but
there is an adopted nephew, a fine spirited lad, who may,
perhaps, some day or other, play the part of a fountain
to the reservoir.
Now turn up the wide road till we come to the
Wr, HANS.
1
‘ ohevher.’
stn old gamekecper.
Copyright 1853 by Macmitian & Co,
THE FIRST PRIMROSE 49
open common, with its park-like trees, its beautiful
stream, wandering and twisting along, and its rural
bridge. Here we turn again, past that other white
farmhouse, half hidden by the magnificent elms which
stand before it. Ah! riches dwell not there, but there
is found the next best thing—an industrious and light-
hearted poverty. . Twenty years ago Rachel Hilton
was the prettiest and merriest lass in the country. Her
father, an old gamekeeper, had retired to a village ale-
house, where his good beer, his social humour, and his
black-eyed daughter, brought much custom. She had
lovers by the score; but Joseph White, the dashing
and lively son of an opulent farmer, carried off the fair
Rachel. They married and settled here, and here they
live still, as merrily as ever, with fourteen children of
all ages and sizes, from nineteen years to nineteen
months, working harder than any people in the parish,
and enjoying themselves more. I would match them
for labour and laughter against any family in England.
She is a blithe, jolly dame, whose beauty has amplified
into comeliness ; he is tall, and thin, and bony, with
sinews like whipcord, a strong lively voice, a sharp
weather-beaten face, and eyes and lips that smile and
brighten when he speaks into a most contagious hilarity.
They are very poor, and I often wish them richer ; but
I. don’t know—perhaps it might put them out.
Quite close to Farmer White’s is a little ruinous
cottage, white-washed once, and now in a sad state of
betweenity, where dangling stockings and shirts, swelled
by the wind, drying in a neglected garden, give signal
E
50 OUR VILLAGE
of a washerwoman. There dwells, at present in single
blessedness, Betty Adams, the wife of our sometimes
gardener. I never saw any one who so much reminded
me in person of that lady whom everybody knows,
Mistress Meg Merrilies ;—as tall, as grizzled, as stately,
as dark, as gipsy-looking, bonneted and gowned like
her prototype, and almost as oracular. Here the re-
semblance ceases. Mrs. Adams is a perfectly honest,
‘ Joseph White carrving Off the fair Rachel.’
THE FIRST PRIMROSE 53
industrious, painstaking person, who earns a good deal
of money by washing and charing, and spends it in
other luxuries than tidiness,—in green tea, and gin, and
snuff. Her husband lives in a great family, ten miles
off. He is a capital gardener—or rather he would be
so, if he were not too ambitious. He undertakes all
things, and finishes none. But a smooth tongue, a
knowing look, and a great capacity of labour, carry
him through. Let him but like his ale and his master,
and he will do work enough for four. Give him his
own way, and his full quantum, and nothing comes
amiss to him.
Ah, May is bounding forward! Her silly heart
leaps at the sight of the old place—and so in good
truth does mine. What a pretty place it was—or
rather, how pretty I thought it! I suppose I should
have thought any place so where I had spent eighteen
happy years. But it was really pretty. A large, heavy,
white house, in the simplest style, surrounded by fine
oaks and elms, and tall massy plantations shaded down
into a beautiful lawn by wild overgrown shrubs, bowery
acacias, ragged sweet-briers, promontories of dogwood,
and Portugal laurel, and bays, overhung by laburnum
and bird-cherry ; a long piece of water letting light
into the picture, and looking just like a natural stream,
the banks as rude and wild as the shrubbery, inter-
spersed with broom, and furze, and bramble, and pollard
oaks covered with ivy and honeysuckle; the whole
enclosed by an old mossy park paling, and terminating
in a series of rich meadows, richly planted. This is an
54 OUR VILLAGE
exact description of the home which, three years ago,
it nearly broke my heart to leave. What a tearing up
by the root it was! I have pitied cabbage-plants and
celery, and all transplantable things, ever since ; though,
in common with them, and with other vegetables, the
first agony of the transportation being over, I have
taken such firm and tenacious hold of my new soil,
that I would not for the world be pulled up again, even
to be restored to the old beloved ground ;—not even if
its beauty were undiminished, which is by no means
the case; for in those three years it has thrice changed’
masters, and every successive possessor has brought the
curse of improvement upon the place; so that between
filling up the water to cure dampness, cutting down
trees to let in prospects, planting to keep them out,
shutting up windows to darken the inside of the house
(by which means one end looks precisely as an eight
of spades would do that should have the misfortune to
lose one of his corner pips), and building colonnades to
lighten the out, added to a general clearance of pollards,
and brambles, and ivy, and honeysuckles, and park
palings, and irregular shrubs, the poor place is so trans-
mogrified, that if it had its old looking-glass, the water,
back again, it would not know its own face. And yet
I love to haunt round about it: so does May. Her
particular attraction is a certain broken bank full of
rabbit burrows, into which she insinuates her long
pliant head and neck, and tears her pretty feet by vain
scratchings: mine is a warm sunny hedgerow, in the
same remote field, famous for early flowers, Never
THE FIRST PRIMROSE 55
was a spot more variously flowery: primroses yellow
,
lilac white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxslips, arums,
orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, pansies, strawberries,
heart’s-ease, formed a small part of the Flora of that
wild hedgerow. How profusely they covered the
sunny open slope under.the weeping birch, ‘the lady
of the woods’—and how often have I started to see
the early innocent brown snake, who loved the spot as
well as I did, winding along the young blossoms,
or rustling amongst the fallen leaves! There are
primrose leaves already, and short green buds, but no
flowers ; not even in that furze cradle so full of roots,
where they used to blow as in a basket. No, my May,
no rabbits! no primroses! We may as well get over
the gate into the woody winding lane, which will bring
us home again.
Here we are making the best of our way between
the old elms that arch so solemnly over head, dark and
sheltered even now. They say that a spirit haunts
this deep pool—a white lady without a head. I cannot
say that I have seen her, often as I have paced this
lane at deep midnight, to hear the nightingales, and
look at the glow-worms ;—but there, better and rarer
than a thousand ghosts, dearer even than nightingales
or glow-worms, there is a primrose, the first of the
year; a tuft of primroses, springing in yonder sheltered
nook, from the mossy roots of an old willow, and liv-
ing again in the clear bright pool. Oh, how beautiful
they are—three fully blown, and two bursting buds!
How glad I am I came this way! They are not to be
56 OUR VILLAGE
reached. Even Jack Rapley’s love of the difficult and
the unattainable would fail him here: May herself could
not stand on that steep bank. So much the better.
Who would wish to disturb them? There they live
in their innocent and fragrant beauty, sheltered from
the storms, and rejoicing in the sunshine, and looking
as if they could feel their happiness. Who would dis-
turb them? Oh, how glad I am I came this way
home!
VIOLETING
“Yloleting
Farch 7% — Tt is a dull gray morning, with
a dewy feeling in the air; fresh, but
not windy; cool, but not cold ;—thevery
day for a person newly arrived from the
heat, the glare, the noise, and the fever
of London, to plunge into the remotest labyrinths of the
country, and regain the repose of mind, the calmness of
heart, which has been lost in that great Babel. I must
go violeting—it is a necessity—-and I must go alone:
the sound of a voice, even my Lizzy’s, the touch of
Mayflower’s head, even the bounding of her elastic foot,
would disturb the serenity of fecling which I am trying
to recover. I shall go quite alone, with my little
basket, twisted like a bee-hive, which I love so well,
because she gave it to me, and kept sacred to violets
and to those whom I love; and I shall get out of the
high-road the moment I can. I would not meet any
one just now, even of those whom I best like to mect.
Ha!—_Is not that group—a gentleman on a blood-
60 OUR VILLAGE
horse, a lady keeping pace with him so gracefully and
easily—-see how prettily her veil waves in the wind
created by her own rapid motion !|—and that gay, gal-
lant boy, on the gallant white Arabian, curveting at
5
wide it
went 4
‘4 group on horseback.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
their side, but ready to spring before them every instant
——is not that chivalrous-looking party Mr. and Mrs. M.
and dear B.? No! the servant is in a different livery.
It is some of the ducal family, and one of their young
Etonians. I may go on. I shall meet no one now;
for I have fairly left the road, and am crossing the lea
by one of those wandering paths, amidst the gorse, and
VIOLETING 61
the heath, and the low broom, which the sheep and
lambs have made
a path turfy, elastic, thymy, and
sweet, even at this season.
We have the good fortune to live in an unenclosed
parish, and may thank the wise obstinacy of two or
three sturdy farmers, and the lucky unpopularity of a
ranting madcap lord of the manor, for preserving the
delicious green patches, the islets of wilderness amidst
cultivation, which form, perhaps, the peculiar beauty
of English scenery. The common that I am passing
now—the lea, as it is called—-is one of the loveliest
of these favoured spots. It is a little sheltered scene,
retiring, as it were, from the village ; sunk amidst higher
lands, hills would be almost too grand a word; edged
on one side by one gay high-road, and intersected
by another; and surrounded by a most picturesque
confusion of meadows, cottages, farms, and orchards ;
with a great pond in one corner, unusually bright and
clear, giving a delightful cheerfulness and daylight to
the picture. The swallows haunt that pond; so do
the children. There is a merry group round it now;
I have seldom seen it without one. Children love
water, clear, bright, sparkling water; it excites and
feeds their curiosity ; it is motion and life.
The path that I am treading leads to a less lively
spot, to that large heavy building on one side of the
common, whose solid wings, jutting out far beyond the
main body, occupy three sides of a square, and give a
cold, shadowy look to the court. On one side is a
gloomy garden, with an old man digging in it, laid out
62 OUR VILLAGE
in straight dark beds of vegetables, potatoes, cabbages,
onions, beans; all earthy and mouldy as a newly-dug
grave. Not a flower or flowering shrub! Not a
‘ Three sturdy farmers.’
tine Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
Ue ¥ rose-tree or currant - bush !
: Nothing but for sober, mel-
ancholy use. Oh, different
from the long irregular slips of the cottage-gardens,
FES
with their gay bunches of polyanthuses and crocuses,
VIOLETING ; 63
their wallflowers sending sweet odours through the
narrow casement, and their gooseberry-trees bursting
into a brilliancy of leaf, whose vivid greenness has the
effect of a blossom on the eye! Oh, how different !
On the other side of this gloomy abode is a meadow
of that deep, intense emerald hue, which denotes the
‘A merry group.
presence of stagnant water, surrounded by willows at
regular distances, and like the garden, separated from
the common by a wide, moat-like ditch. That is
the parish workhouse. All about it is solid, sub-
stantial, useful;——but so dreary! so cold! so dark!
There are children in the court, and yet all is silent.
I always hurry past that place as if it were a prison.
64 ‘ OUR VILLAGE
Restraint, sickness, age, extreme poverty, misery, which
I have no power to remove or alleviate,—these are the
ideas, the feelings, which the sight of those walls excites ;
yet, perhaps, if not certainly, they contain less of that
extreme desolation than the morbid fancy is apt to
paint. There will be found order, cleanliness, food,
clothing, warmth, refuge for the homeless, medicine and
attendance for the sick, rest and sufficiency for old age,
and sympathy, the true and active sympathy which the
poor show to the poor, for the unhappy. There may
be worse places than a parish workhouse——and yet I
hurry past it. The feeling, the prejudice, will not be
controlled.
The end of the dreary garden edges off into a close-
sheltered lane, wandering and winding, like a rivulet,
in gentle ‘sinuosities’ (to use a word once applied by
Mr. Wilberforce to the Thames at Henley), amidst green
meadows, all alive with cattle, sheep, and beautiful
lambs, in the very spring and pride of their tottering
prettiness ; or fields of arable land, more lively still with
troops of stooping bean-setters, women and children, in
all varieties of costume and colour; and ploughs and
harrows, with their whistling boys and steady carters,
going through, with a slow and plodding industry, the
main business of this busy season. What work bean-
setting is! What a reverse of the position assigned to
man to distinguish him from the beasts of the field!
Only think of stooping for six, eight, ten hours a day,
drilling holes in the earth with a little stick, and then
dropping in the beans one by one. They are paid
VIOLETING 65
according to the quantity they plant ; and some of the
poor women used to be accused of clumping them—that
is to say, of dropping more than one bean into a hole.
Be, aby p
‘4 whistling boy.’ a Hey, "
It seems to me, considering the temptation, that not to
clump is to be at the very pinnacle of human virtue.
Another turn in the lane, and we come to the old
house standing amongst the high elms—the old farm-
e
66 OUR VILLAGE
house, which always, I don’t know why, carries back
my imagination to Shakspeare’s days. It is a long,
low, irregular building, with one room, at an angle from
oo 2 “ Hive
‘ Bean-setting.’ 4 Fass
the house, covered with ivy, fine white-veined ivy ; the
first floor of the main building projecting and supported
by oaken beams, and one of the windows below, with
its old casement and long narrow panes, forming the
VIOLETING 67
half of a shallow hexagon. A porch, with seats in it,
surmounted by a pinnacle, pointed roofs, and clustered
chimneys, complete the picture! Alas! it is little else
but a picture! The very walls are crumbling to decay
under a careless landlord and ruined tenant.
Now a few yards farther, and I reach the bank.
Ah! I smell them already—their exquisite perfume
steams and lingers in this moist, heavy air. Through
this little gate, and along the green south bank of this
green wheat-field, and they burst upon me, the lovely
violets, in tenfold loveliness. The ground is covered
with them, white and purple, enamelling the short dewy
grass, looking but the more vividly coloured under the
dull, leaden sky. There they lic by hundreds, by
thousands. In former years I have been used to watch
them from the tiny green bud, till one or two stole into
bloom. They never came on me before in such a
sudden and luxuriant glory of simple beauty,—and I
do really owe one pure and genuine pleasure to feverish
London! How beautifully they are placed too, on this
sloping bank, with the palm branches waving over them,
full of carly bees, and mixing their honeyed scent with
the more delicate violet odour! How transparent and
smooth and lusty are the branches, full of sap and life!
And there, just by the old mossy root, is a superb tuft
of primroses, with a yellow butterfly hovering over them,
like a flower floating on the air. What happiness to
sit on this tufty knoll, and fill my basket with the
blossoms! What a renewal of heart and mind! To
inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness is again to
68 OUR VILLAGE
be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child. Then it is that
thought becomes poetry, and feeling religion. Then it
is that we are happy and good. Oh, that my whole life
could pass so, floating on blissful and innocent sensation,
enjoying in peace and gratitude the common blessings
of Nature, thankful above all for the simple habits, the
healthful temperament, which render them so dear!
Alas! who may dare expect a life of such happiness?
But I can at least snatch and prolong the fleeting
pleasure, can fill my basket with pure flowers, and my
heart with pure thoughts; can gladden my little home
with their sweetness; can divide my treasures with
one, a dear one, who cannot seek them; can see them
when I shut my eyes; and dream of them when I fall
asleep.
THE CORSE
The Copse.
pri( isin. — Sad wintry weather; a north-
east wind ; a sun that puts out one’s eyes,
without affording the slightest warmth ;
dryness that chaps lips and hands like a
frost in December ; rain that comes chilly
and arrowy like hail in January; nature at a dead
pause ; no seeds up in the garden; no leaves out in the
hedgerows ; no cowslips swinging their pretty bells in
the fields ; no nightingales in the dingles ; no swallows
skimming round the great pond ; no cuckoos (that ever
I should miss that rascally sonneteer!) in any part.
Nevertheless there is something of a charm in this
wintry spring, this putting-back of the seasons. If the
flower-clock must stand still for a month or two, could
it choose a better time than that of the primroses and
violets? I never remember (and for such gauds my
memory, if not very good for aught of wise or useful,
may be trusted) such an affluence of the one or such a
duration of the other. Primrosy is the epithet which
72 OUR VILLAGE
this year will retain in my recollection. Hedge, ditch,
meadow, field, even the very paths and highways, are
set with them; but their chief Aadztat is a certain copse,
about a mile off, where they are spread like a carpet,
and where I go to visit them rather oftener than quite
comports with the dignity of a lady of mature age. I
am going thither this very afternoon, and May and her
company are going too.
This Mayflower of mine is a strange animal. In-
stinct and imitation make in her an approach to reason
which is sometimes almost startling. She mimics all
that she sees us do, with the dexterity of a monkey,
and far more of gravity and apparent purpose ; cracks
nuts and eats them; gathers currants and severs them
from the stalk with the most delicate nicety; filches
and munches apples and pears; is as dangerous in an
orchard as a schoolboy; smells to flowers; smiles at
meeting ; answers in a pretty lively voice when spoken
to (sad pity that the language should be unknown !)
and has greatly the advantage of us in a conversation,
inasmuch as our meaning is certainly clear to her ;—
all this and a thousand amusing prettinesses (to say
nothing of her canine feat of bringing her game straight
to her master’s feet, and refusing to resign it to any
hand but his), does my beautiful greyhound perform
untaught, by the mere effect of imitation and sagacity.
Well, May, at the end of the coursing season, having
lost Brush, our old spaniel, her great friend, and the
blue greyhound, Mariette, her comrade and rival, both
of which four-footed worthies were sent out to keep for
cs og , 4 “ 7
Bringing her game.
Copyright 1893 by Macmilian & Co.
THE COPSE 75
the summer, began to find solitude a weary condition,
and to look abroad for company. Now it so happened
that the same suspension of sport which had reduced
‘ Home to‘ their walk,"’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
our little establishment from three dogs to one, had
also dispersed the splendid kennel of a celebrated
courser in our neighbourhood, three of whose finest
76 OUR VILLAGE
young dogs came home to ‘their walk’ (as the sport-
ing phrase goes) at the collarmaker’s in our village.
May, accordingly, on the first morning of her solitude
(she had never taken the slightest notice of her neigh-
bours before, although they had sojourned in our street
‘Sent to Coventry.’
upwards of a fortnight), bethought her-
self of the timely resource offered to
her by the vicinity of these canine deaux, and went
up boldly and knocked at their stable door, which
was already very commodiously on the half-latch.
The three dogs came out with much alertness and
gallantry, and May, declining apparently to enter
THE COPSE 77
their territories, brought them off to her own. This
manceuvre has been repeated every day, with one
variation; of the three dogs, the first a brindle, the
second a yellow, and the third a black, the two first
only are now allowed to walk or consort with her, and
the last, poor fellow, for no fault that I can discover
except May’s caprice, is driven away not only by the
fair lady, but even by his old companions—is, so to say,
sent to Coventry. Of her two permitted followers, the
yellow gentleman, Saladin by name, is decidedly the
favourite. He is, indeed, May’s shadow, and will walk
with me whether I choose or not. It is quite impossible
to get rid of him unless by discarding Miss May also ;
—and to accomplish a walk in the country without her,
would be like an adventure of Don Quixote without
his faithful ’squire Sancho.
So forth we set, May and I, and Saladin and the
brindle ; May and myself walking with the sedateness
and decorum befitting our sex and age (she is five years
old this grass, rising six)—the young things, for the
soldan and the brindle are (not meaning any disrespect)
little better than puppies, frisking and frolicking as best
pleased them.
Our route lay for the first part along the sheltered
quiet lanes which lead to our old habitation; a way
never trodden by me without peculiar and homelike
feelings, full of the recollections, the pains and pleasures,
of other days. But we are not to talk sentiment now ;
—even May would not understand that maudlin lan-
guage. We must get on. What a wintry hedgerow
78 OUR VILLAGE
this is for the eighteenth of April! Primrosy to be
sure, abundantly spangled with those stars of the earth,
—but so bare, so leafless, so cold! The wind whistles
through the brown boughs as in winter. Even the
early elder shoots, which do make an approach to
springiness, look brown, and the small leaves of the
woodbine, which have also ventured to peep forth, are
of a sad purple, frost-bitten, like a dairymaid’s elbows
on a snowy morning. The very birds, in this season
of pairing and building, look chilly and uncomfortable,
and their nests !—‘ Oh, Saladin! come away from the
hedge! Don’t you see that what puzzles you and
makes you leap up in the air is a redbreast’s nest?
Don’t you see the pretty speckled eggs? Don’t you
hear the poor hen calling as it were for help? Come
here this moment, sir!’ And by good luck Saladin
(who for a paynim has tolerable qualities) comes, before
he has touched the nest, or before his playmate the
brindle, the less manageable of the two, has espied it.
Now we go round the corner and cross the bridge,
where the common, with its clear stream winding be-
tween clumps of elms, assumes so park-like an appear-
ance, Who is this approaching so slowly and majestic-
ally, this square bundle of petticoat and cloak, this
road-waggon of a woman? It is, it must be Mrs.
Sally Mearing, the completest specimen within my
knowledge of farmeresses (may I be allowed that in-
novation in language?) as they were. It can be nobody
else.
Mrs. Sally Mearing, when I first became acquainted
,
Mfrs. Sally Meari.
CHD.
‘
2 & Co.
Lean,
£1893 dy Macnté
ight
Copyrt
THE COPSE 81
with her, occupied, together with her father (a super-
annuated man of ninety), a large farm very near our
former habitation. It had been anciently a great
manor-farm or court-house, and was still a stately, sub-
stantial building, whose lofty halls and spacious chambers
gave an air of grandeur to the common offices to which
they were applied. Traces of gilding might yet be
seen on the panels which covered the walls, and on the
huge carved chimney-pieces which rose almost to the
ceilings; and the marble tables and the inlaid oak
staircase still spoke of the former grandeur of the court.
Mrs. Sally corresponded well with the date of her man-
sion, although she troubled herself little with its dignity.
She was thoroughly of the old school, and had a most
comfortable contempt for the new: rose at four in
winter and summer, breakfasted at six, dined at cleven
in the forenoon, supped at five, and was regularly in
bed before eight, except when the hay-time or the
harvest imperiously required her to sit up till sunset,—
a necessity to which she submitted with no very good
grace. To a deviation from these hours, and to the
modern iniquities of white aprons, cotton stockings,
and muslin handkerchiefs (Mrs. Sally herself always
wore check, black worsted, and a sort of yellow com-
pound which she was wont to call szsy), together with
the invention of drill plough and thrashing-machines,
and other agricultural novelties, she failed not to attri-
bute all the mishaps or misdoings of the whole parish.
The last-mentioned discovery especially aroused her
indignation. Oh to hear her descant on the merits of
G
82 OUR VILLAGE
the flail, wielded by a stout right arm, such as she had
known in her youth (for by her account there was as
great a deterioration in bones and sinews as in the
other implements of husbandry), was enough to make
the very inventor break his machine. She would even
take up her favourite instrument, and thrash the air
herself by way of illustrating her argument, and, to say
truth, few men in these degenerate days could have
matched the stout, brawny, muscular limb which Mrs.
Sally displayed at sixty-five.
In spite of this contumacious rejection of agri-
cultural improvements, the world went well with her at
Court Farm. A good landlord, an easy rent, incessant
labour, unremitting frugality, and excellent times, insured
a regular though moderate profit; and she lived on,
grumbling and prospering, flourishing and complaining,
till two misfortunes befell her at once—her father died,
and her lease expired. The loss of her father although
a bedridden man, turned of ninety, who could not in
the course of nature have been expected to live long,
was a terrible shock to a daughter, who was not so
much younger as to be without fears for her own life,
and who had besides been so used to nursing the good
old man, and looking to his little comforts, that she
missed him as a mother would miss an ailing child.
The expiration of the lease was a grievance and a
puzzle of a different nature. Her landlord would have
willingly retained his excellent tenant, but not on the
terms on which she then held the land, which had not
varied for fifty years; so that poor Mrs. Sally had the
THE COPSE 83
misfortune to find rent rising and prices sinking both
at the same moment—a terrible solecism in political
economy. ven this, however, I believe she would
have endured, rather than have quitted the house where
she was born, and to which all her ways and notions
were adapted, had not a priggish steward, as much
addicted to improvement and reform as she was to
precedent and established usages, insisted on binding
her by lease to spread a certain number of loads of
chalk on every field. This tremendous innovation, for
never had that novelty in manure whitened the crofts
and pightles of Court Farm, decided her at once, She
threw the proposals into the fire, and left the place in
a week.
Her choice of a habitation occasioned some wonder,
and much amusement in our village world. To be
sure, upon the verge of seventy, an old maid may be
permitted to dispense with the more rigid punctilio of
her class, but Mrs, Sally had always been so tenacious
on the score of character, so very a prude, so determined
an avoider of the ‘men folk’ (as she was wont
contemptuously to call them), that we all were con-
scious of something like astonishment, on finding that
she and her little handmaid had taken up their abode
in one end of a spacious farmhouse belonging to the
bluff old bachelor, George Robinson, of the Lea. Now
Farmer Robinson was quite as notorious for his aversion
to petticoated things, as Mrs. Sally for her hatred to
the unfeathered bipeds who wear doublet and hose, so
that there was a little astonishment in that quarter too,
84 OUR VILLAGE
and plenty of jests, which the honest farmer speedily
silenced, by telling all who joked on the subject that
he had given his lodger fair warning, that, let people
say what they would, he was quite determined not to
‘ Giving his lodger fair Warning.
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
marry her: so that if she had any views that way, it
would be better for her to go elsewhere. This declara-
tion, which must be admitted to have been more re-
markable for frankness than civility, made, however, no
ill impression on Mrs. Sally. To the farmer’s she went,
and at his house she lives still, with her little maid, her
THE COPSE 8s
tabby cat, a decrepit sheep-dog, and much of the
lumber of Court Farm, which she could not find in her
heart to part from. There she follows her old ways
and her old hours, untempted by matrimony, and un-
assailed (as far as I hear) by love or by scandal, with
no other grievance than an occasional dearth of em-
ployment for herself and her young lass (even pewter
dishes do not always want scouring), and now and then
a twinge of the rheumatism.
Here she is, that good relique of the olden time—
for, in spite of her whims and prejudices, a better and
a kinder woman never lived—here she is, with the
hood of her red cloak pulled over her close black
bonnet, of that silk which once (it may be presumed)
was fashionable, since it is still called mode, and her whole
stout figure huddled up in a miscellaneous and most
substantial covering of thick petticoats, gowns, aprons,
shawls, and cloaks—a weight which it requires the
strength of a thrasher to walk under—here she is, with
her square honest visage, and her loud frank voice ;—
and we hold a pleasant disjointed chat of rheumatisms
and early chickens, bad weather, and hats with feathers
in them ;—the last exceedingly sore subject being
introduced by poor Jane Davis (a cousin of Mrs. Sally),
who, passing us in a beaver bonnet, on her road from
school, stopped to drop her little curtsy, and was
soundly scolded for her civility. Jane, who is a
gentle, humble, smiling lass, about twelve years old,
receives so many rebukes from her worthy relative, and
bears them so meekly, that I should not wonder if they
86 OUR VILLAGE
were to be followed by a legacy: I sincerely wish they
may. Well, at last we said good-bye; when, on
ZN te ‘ Soundly scolded.’
< J Copyright 1893 by Macntillan & Co.
inquiring my destination, and hearing that I was bent
to the ten-acre copse (part of the farm which she ruled
so long), she stopped me to tell a dismal story of two
sheep-stealers who, sixty years ago, were found hidden
THE COPSE 87
in that copse, and only taken after great difficulty and
resistance, and the maiming of a peace-officer—‘ Pray
don’t go there, Miss! For mercy’s sake don’t be so
venturesome! Think if they should kill you!’ were
the last words of Mrs. Sally.
Many thanks for her care and kindness! But,
without being at all foolhardy in general, 1 have no
great fear of the sheep-stealers of sixty years ago.
Even if they escaped hanging for that exploit, I should
greatly doubt their being in case to attempt another.
So on we go: down the short shady lane, and out on
the pretty retired green, shut in by fields and hedge-
rows, which we must cross to reach the copse. How
lively this green nook is to-day, half covered with cows,
and horses,and sheep! And how glad these frolicsome
greyhounds are to exchange the hard gravel of the
high road for this pleasant short turf, which seems
made for their gambols! How beautifully they are at
play, chasing each other round and round in lessening
circles, darting off at all kinds of angles, crossing and
recrossing May, and trying to win her sedateness into
a game at romps, turning round on each other with gay
defiance, pursuing the cows and the colts, leaping up as
_if to catch the crows in their flight ;—all in their harm-
less and innocent——‘ Ah, wretches! villains! rascals!
four - footed mischiefs! canine plagues! Saladin !
Brindle !’—-They are after the sheep—‘ Saladin, I
say !’—-They have actually singled out that pretty
spotted lamb—‘Brutes, if I catch you! Saladin!
Brindle!’ We shall be taken up for sheep-stealing
88 OUR VILLAGE
presently ourselves. They have chased the poor little
lamb into a ditch, and are mounting guard over it,
standing at bay.—‘ Ah, wretches, I have you now! for
shame, Saladin! Get away, Brindle! See how good
May is. Off with you, brutes! For shame! Tor
shame!’ and brandishing a handkerchief, which could
‘ After the sheep.
hardly be an efficient instrument of correction, I suc-
ceeded in driving away the two puppies, who after all
meant nothing more than play, although it was some-
what rough, and rather too much in the style of the
old fable of the boys and the frogs. May is gone after
them, perhaps to scold them: for she has been as grave
as a judge during the whole proceeding, keeping osten-
tatiously close to me, and taking no part whatever in
the mischief.
The poor little pretty lamb! here it lies on the
THE COPSE 89
bank quite motionless, frightened I believe to death, for
certainly those villains never touched it. It does not
stir. ‘Does it breathe? Oh yes, it does! It is alive,
safe enough. Look, it opens its eyes, and, finding the
coast clear and its enemies far away, it springs up in a
moment and gallops to its dam, who has stood bleating
the whole time at a most respectful distance. Who
would suspect a lamb of so much simple cunning? I
really thought the pretty thing was dead—and now
how glad the ewe is to recover her curling spotted little
one! How fluttered they look! Well! this adventure
has flurried me too; between fright and running, I
warrant you my heart beats as fast as the lamb’s.
Ah! here is the shameless villain Saladin, the cause
of the commotion, thrusting his slender nose into my
hand to beg pardon and make up! ‘Oh wickedest of
soldans! Most iniquitous pagan! Soul of a Turk!’
—but there is no resisting the good-humoured creature’s
penitence. I must pat him. ‘There! there! Now
we will go to the copse; I am sure we shall find no
worse malefactors than ourselves—shall we, May ?—
and the sooner we get out of sight of the sheep the
better; for Brindle seems meditating another attack.
Allons, messteurs, over this gate, across this meadow,
and here is the copse.’
How boldly that superb ash-tree with its fine silver
bark rises from the bank, and what a fine entrance it
makes with the holly beside it, which also deserves to
be called a tree! But here we are in the copse. Ah!
only one half of the underwood was cut last year, and
90 OUR VILLAGE
the other is at its full growth: hazel, brier, woodbinc,
bramble, forming one impenetrable thicket, and almost
,
enn ‘ The shameless villain Saladin,
wy (ete
pele
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan'& Co,
i
uniting with the lower branches of the elms, and oaks,
and beeches, which rise at regular distances overhead.
No foot can penetrate that dense and thorny entangle-
THE COPSE gI
ment; but there is a walk all round by the side of the
wide sloping bank, walk and bank and copse carpeted
with primroses, whose fresh and balmy odour impreg-
nates the very air. Oh how exquisitely beautiful! and
it is not the primroses only, those gems of flowers, but
the natural mosaic of which they form a part; that
network of ground-ivy, with its lilac blossoms and the
subdued tint of its purplish leaves, those rich mosses,
those enamelled wild hyacinths, those spotted arums, and
above all those wreaths of ivy linking all those flowers
together with chains of leaves more beautiful than
blossoms, whose white veins seem swelling amidst the
deep green or splendid brown ;—it is the whole earth
that is so beautiful! Never surely were primroses so
richly set, and never did primroses better deserve such
a setting. There they are of their own lovely yellow,
the hue to which they have given a name, the exact
tint of the butterfly that overhangs them (the first I
have seen this year! can spring really be coming at
last ?)—-sprinkled here and there with tufts of a reddish
purple, and others of the purest white, as some accident
of soil affects that strange and inscrutable operation of
nature, the colouring of flowers. Oh how fragrant they
are, and how pleasant it is to sit in this sheltered copse,
listening to the fine creaking of the wind amongst the
branches, the most unearthly of sounds, with this gay
tapestry under our feet, and the wood-pigeons flitting
from tree to tree, and mixing the deep note of love
with the elemental music.
Yes! spring is coming. Wood-pigeons, butterflies,
92 OUR VILLAGE
and swect flowers, all give token of the sweetest of the
seasons. Spring is coming. The hazel stalks are
swelling and putting forth their pale tassels, the satin
palms with their honeyed odours are out on the willow,
and the last lingering winter berries are dropping from
the hawthorn, and making way for the bright and
blossomy leaves,
Tre Wood
pri 20%. — Spring is actually come now, with
the fulness and almost the suddenness of a
northern summer. To-day is completely
April ;——clouds and sunshine, wind and
showers; blossoms on the trees, grass in the
fields, swallows by the ponds, snakes in the hedgerows,
nightingales in the thickets, and cuckoos everywhere,
My young friend Ellen G. is going with me this evening
to gather wood-sorrel. She never saw that most elegant
plant, and is so delicate an artist that the introduction
will be a mutual benefit; Ellen will gain a subject
worthy of her pencil, and the pretty weed will live ;—
no small favour toa flower almost as transitory as the
gum cistus: duration is the only charm which it wants,
and that Ellen will give it. The weather is, to be sure,
a little threatening, but we are not people to mind the
weather when we have an object in view; we shall
certainly go in quest of the wood-sorrel, and will take
May, provided we can escape May’s followers; for
96 OUR VILLAGE
since the adventure of the lamb, Saladin has had an
affair with a gander, furious in defence of his goslings,
in which rencontre the gander came off conqueror ; and
as geese abound in the wood to which we are going
‘ Saladin's affair with the Gander,’ 7 Cale eres
(called by the country people the Pinge), and the victory
may not always incline to the right side, 1 should be
very sorry to lead the Soldan to fight his battles over
again. We will take nobody but May.
So saying, we proceeded on our way through wind-
ing lanes, between hedgerows tenderly green, till we
THE WOOD 97
reached the hatch-gate, with the white cottage beside
it embosomed in fruit-trees, which forms the entrance
to the Pinge, and in a moment the whole scene was
before our eyes.
‘Is not this beautiful, Ellen?’ The answer could
hardly be other than a glowing rapid ‘Yes !’—-A wood
is generally a pretty place; but this wood—lImagine a
smaller forest, full of glades and sheep-walks, surrounded
by irregular cottages with their blooming orchards, a
clear stream winding about the brakes, and a road inter-
secting it, and giving life and light to the picture; and
you will have a. faint idea of the Pinge. Every step
was opening a new point of view, a fresh combination
of glade and path and thicket. The accessories too
were changing every moment. Ducks, gcese, pigs, and
children, giving way, as we advanced into the wood, to
sheep and forest ponies; and they again disappearing
as we became more entangled in its mazes, till we heard
nothing but the song of the nightingale, and saw only
the silent flowers.
What a piece of fairy land! The tall elms over-
head just bursting into tender vivid leaf, with here and
there a hoary oak or a silver-barked beech, every twig
swelling with the brown buds, and yet not quite stripped
of the tawny foliage of autumn; tall hollies and
hawthorn beneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves
mixed with the white blossoms of the sloe, and woven
together with garlands of woodbines and wild-briers ;
—-what a fairy land!
Primroses, cowslips, pansies, and the regular open-
Ht
98 OUR VILLAGE
eyed white blossom of the wood anemone (or, to use
the more elegant Hampshire name, the windflower),
were set under our feet as thick as daisies in a meadow ;
but the pretty weed that we came to seek was coyer ;
and Ellen began to fear that we had mistaken the
place or the season——At last she had herself the
pleasure of finding it under a brake of holly— Oh, look !
look! I am sure that this is the wood-sorrel! Look
at the pendent white flower, shaped like a snowdrop
and veined with purple streaks, and the beautiful
trefoil leaves folded like a-heart——some, the young
ones, so vividly yet tenderly green that the foliage of
the elm and the hawthorn would show dully at their
side,—others of a deeper tint, and lined, as it were, with
a rich and changeful purple!—Don’t you see them?’
pursued my dear young friend, who is a delightful piece
of life and sunshine, and was half inclined to scold me
for the calmness with which, amused by her enthusiasm,
I stood listening to her ardent exclamations—‘ Don’t
you see them? Oh how beautiful! and in what
quantity! what profusion! See how the dark shade
of the holly sets off the light and delicate colouring of
the flower !|—-And sce that other bed of them springing
from the rich moss in the roots of that old beech-tree !
Pray, let us gather some. Here are baskets.’ So,
quickly and carefully we began gathering, leaves,
blossoms, roots and all, for the plant is so fragile that
it will not brook separation ;—quickly and carefully
we gathered, encountering divers petty misfortunes in
spite of all our care, now caught by the veil in a holly
THE WOOD 99
bush, now hitching our shawls in a bramble, still
gathering on, in spite of scratched fingers, till we had
‘Let us gather some.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
nearly filled our baskets and began to talk of our
departure :—
‘But where is May? May! May! No going home
100 OUR VILLAGE
without her. May! Here she comes galloping, the
beauty !’—(Ellen is almost as fond of May as I am.)
_—‘What has she got in her mouth? that rough, round,
brown substance which she touches so tenderly? What
can it be? A bird’s nest? Naughty May!’
‘No! as I live, a hedgehog! Look, Ellen, how it
has coiled itself into a thorny ball! Off with it, May !
And May, somewhat re-
Don’t bring it to me!’
luctant to part with her prickly prize, however trouble-
some of carriage, whose change of shape seemed to me
to have puzzled her sagacity more than any event I
ever witnessed, for in general she has perfectly the air
of understanding all that is going forward—-May at
last dropt the hedgehog ; continuing, however, to pat it
with her delicate cat-like paw, cautiously and daintily
applied, and caught back suddenly and rapidly after
every touch, as if her poor captive had been a red-hot
coal. Finding that these pats entirely failed in solving
the riddle (for the hedgehog shammed dead, like the
lamb the other day, and appeared entirely motionless),
she gave him so spirited a nudge with her pretty
black nose, that she not only turned him over, but sent
him rolling some little way along the turfy path,—an
operation which that sagacious quadruped endured with
the most perfect passiveness, the most admirable non-
resistance. No wonder that May’s discernment was
at fault, I myself, if I had not been aware of the trick,
should have said that the ugly rough thing which she
was trundling along, like a bowl or a cricket-ball, was
an inanimate substance, something devoid of sensation
THE WOOD 101
and of will. At last my poor pet, thoroughly perplexed
and tired out, fairly relinquished the contest, and came
‘ The hedgehog.’ Vet jf Gye Sd Qe aaee oF
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co. \y !
slowly away, turning back once or twice to look at the
object of her curiosity, as if half inclined to return and
try the event of another shove. The sudden flight of
102 OUR VILLAGE
a wood-pigeon effectually diverted her attention ; and
Ellen amused herself by fancying how the hedgehog
was scuttling away, till our notice was also attracted by
a very different object.
We had nearly threaded the wood, and were ap-
proaching an open grove of magnificent oaks on the
other side, when sounds other than of nightingales burst
on our ear, the deep and frequent strokes of the wood-
man’s axe, and emerging from the Pinge we discovered
the havoc which that axe had committed. Above
twenty of the finest trees lay stretched on the velvet —
turf. There they lay in every shape and form of
devastation : some, bare trunks stripped ready for the
timber carriage, with the bark built up in long piles at
the side; some with the spoilers busy about them,
stripping, hacking, hewing; others with their noble
branches, their brown and fragrant shoots all fresh as if
they were alive—majestic corses, the slain of to-day!
The grove was like a field of battle. The young lads
who were stripping the bark, the very children who
were picking up the chips, seemed awed and silent, as
if conscious that death was around them. The
nightingales sang faintly and interruptedly—a few low
frightened notes like a requiem.
Ah! here we are at the very scene of murder, the
very tree that they are felling; they have just hewn
round the trunk with those slaughtering axes, and are
about to saw it asunder. After all, it is a fine and
thrilling operation, as the work of death usually is.
Into how grand an attitude was that young man thrown
THE WoOoD 103
as he gave the final strokes round the root; and how
wonderful is the effect of that supple and apparently
powerless saw, bending like a riband, and yet over-
mastering that giant of the woods, conquering and
overthrowing that thing of life! Now it has passed
half through the trunk, and the woodman has begun
to calculate which way the tree will fall; he drives
a wedge to direct its course ;—now a few more move-
ments of the noiseless saw; and then a larger wedge.
Sce how the branches tremble! Hark how the trunk
begins to crack! Another stroke of the huge ham-
mer on the wedge, and the tree quivers, as with a
mortal agony, shakes, reels, and falls. How slow, and
solemn, and awful it is! How like to death, to human
death in its grandest form! Cesar in the Capitol,
Seneca in the bath, could not fall more sublimely than
that oak.
Even the heavens seem to sympathise with the
devastation. The clouds have gathered into one thick
low canopy, dark and vapoury as the smoke which
overhangs London; the setting sun is just gleaming
underneath with a dim and bloody glare, and the
crimson rays spreading upward with a lurid and
portentous grandeur, a subdued and dusky glow, like
the light reflected on the sky from some vast conflagra-
tion. The deep flush fades away, and the rain begins
to descend; and we hurry homeward rapidly, yet
sadly, forgetful alike of the flowers, the hedgehog,
and the wetting, thinking and talking only of the
fallen tree.
The Oe
ay Qna.— A delicious evening ;—bright
sunshine ; light summer air; a sky
almost cloudless; and a fresh yet
delicate verdure on the hedges and
in the fields ;
an evening that seems
made for a visit to my newly-discovered haunt, the
mossy dell, one of the most beautiful spots in the
neighbourhood, which after passing, times out of num-
ber, the field which it terminates, we found out about
two months ago from the accident of May’s killing a
rabbit there. May has had a fancy for the place ever
since ; and so have I.
Thither accordingly we bend our way ;—through
the village ;—up the hill ;—along the common ;—past
the avenue ;—across the bridge ; and by the hill. How
deserted the road is to-night! We have not seen a
single acquaintance, except poor blind Robert, laden
with his sack of grass plucked from the hedges, and the
little boy that leads him. A singular division of labour !
Little Jem guides Robert to the spots where the long
108 OUR VILLAGE
grass grows, and tells him where it is most plentiful ;
and then the old man cuts it close to the roots, and
between them they fill the sack, and sell the contents
in the village. Half the cows in the street—for our
baker, our wheelwright, and cur shoemaker has each
‘ Half the cows in the street.’
Copyright 1893 by Macwmitlan & Co.
his Alderney—-owe the best part of their maintenance
to blind Robert’s industry.
Here we are at the entrance of the cornfield which
leads to the dell, and which commands so fine a
view of the Loddon, the mill, the great farm, with its
picturesque outbuildings, and the range of woody hills
beyond. It is impossible not to pause a moment at
that gate, the landscape, always beautiful, is so suited
‘ Poor blind Robert.’
THE DELL 111
to the season and the hour,—so bright, and gay, and
spring-like. But May, who has the chance of another
rabbit in her pretty head, has galloped forward to the
dingle, and poor May, who follows me so faithfully in
all my wanderings, has a right to a little indulgence in
hers. So to the dingle we go.
At the end of the field, which when seen from the
road seems terminated by a thick dark coppice, we
come suddenly to the edge of a ravine, on one side
fringed with a low growth of alder, birch, and willow,
on the other mossy, turfy, and bare, or only broken by
bright tufts of blossomed broom. One or two old
pollards almost conceal the winding road that leads
down the descent, by the side of which a spring as
bright as crystal runs gurgling along. The dell itself
is an irregular piece of broken ground, in some parts
very deep, intersected by two or three high banks of
equal irregularity, now abrupt and bare, and rock-
like, now crowned with tufts of the feathery willow
or magnificent old thorns. Everywhere the earth is
covered by short, fine turf, mixed with mosses, soft,
beautiful, and various, and embossed with the speckled
leaves and lilac flowers of the arum, the paler blossoms
of the common orchis, the enamelled blue of the wild
hyacinth, so splendid in this evening light, and large
tufts of oxslips and cowslips rising like nosegays from
the short turf.
The ground on the other side of the dell is much
lower than the field through which we came, so that it
is mainly to the labyrinthine intricacy of these high
112 OUR VILLAGE
banks that it owes its singular character of wildness
and variety. Now we seem hemmed in by those
green cliffs, shut out from all the world, with nothing
visible but those verdant mounds and the deep blue
sky ; now by some sudden turn we get a peep at an
adjoining meadow, where the sheep ave lying, dappling
its sloping surface like the small clouds on the summer
heaven. Poor harmless, quiet creatures, how still
they are! Some socially lying side by side; some
grouped in threes and fours; some quite apart. Ah!
there are lambs amongst them—pretty, pretty lambs ;
—nestled in by their mothers. Soft, quiet, sleepy
things! Not all so quiet, though! There is a party
of these young lambs as wide awake as heart can
desire ; half a dozen of them playing together, frisking,
dancing, leaping, butting, and crying in the young
voice, which is so pretty a diminutive of the full-grown
bleat. How beautiful they are with their innocent
spotted faces, their mottled feet, their long curly tails,
and their light flexible forms, frolicking like so many
kittens, but with a gentleness, an assurance of swect-
ness and innocence, which no kitten, nothing that ever
is to be a cat, can have. How complete and _ perfect
is their enjoyment of existence! Ah! little rogues!
your play has been too noisy; you have awakened
your mammas ; and two or three of the old ewes are
getting up; and one of them marching gravely to the
troop of lambs has selected her own, given her a gentle
butt, and trotted off; the poor rebuked lamb following
meekly, but every now and then stopping and casting
THE DELL 113
a longing look at its playmates ; who, after a moment's
awed pause, had resumed their gambols; whilst the
stately dame every now and then looked back in her
turn, to see that her little one was following. At last
she lay down, and the lamb by her side. I never saw
so pretty a pastoral scene in my life.
‘Ah! little rogues !
' I] have seen one which affected me much more. Walking in the
Church-lane with one of the young ladies of the vicarage, we met a large
flock of sheep, with the usual retinue of shepherds and dogs. Lingering
after them and almost out of sight, we encountered a straggling ewe, now
trotting along, now walking, and every now and then stopping to look
back, and bleating. A little behind her came a lame lamb, bleating
occasionally, as if in answer to ils dam, and doing its very best to keep up
with her. It was a lameness of both the fore-feet ; the knees were bent,
and it seemed to walk on the very edge of the hoof—on tip-toe, if I may
venture such an expression. My young friend thought that the lameness
I
Il4 OUR VILLAGE
Another turning of the dell gives a glimpse of the
dark coppice by which it is backed, and from which
we are separated by some marshy, rushy ground, where
the springs have formed into a pool, and where the
moor-hen loves to build her nest. Ay, there is one
scudding away now;—I can hear her plash into the
water, and the rustling of her wings amongst the
rushes. This is the deepest part of the wild dingle.
How uneven the ground is! Surely these excavations,
now so thoroughly clothed with vegetation, must origin-
ally have been huge gravel pits; there is no other way
of accounting for the labyrinth, for they do dig gravel
in such capricious meanders; but the quantity seems
incredible. Well! there is no end of guessing! We
are getting amongst the springs, and must turn back.
Round this corner, where on ledges like fairy terraces
the orchises and arums grow, and we emerge suddenly
on a new side of the dell, just fronting the small home-
stead of our good neighbour Farmer Allen.
This rustic dwelling belongs to what used to be called
in this part of the country ‘a little bargain’: thirty or
proceeded from original malformation, I am rather of opinion that it was
accidental, and that the poor creature was wretchedly foot-sore. However
that might be, the pain and difficulty with which it took every step were not
to be mistaken ; and the distress and fondness of the mother, her perplexity
as the flock passed gradually out of sight, the effort with which the poor
lamb contrived to keep up a sort of trot, and their mutual calls and
Jamentations were really so affecting, that Ellen and I, although not at all
lachrymose sort of people, had much ado not to cry. We could not find a
hoy to carry the lamb, which was too big for us to manage j——but I was
quite sure that the ewe would not desert it, and as the dark was coming
on, we both trusted that the shepherds on folding their flock would miss
them and return for them ;--and so I am happy to say it proved.
THE DELL 118
forty acres, perhaps, of arable land, which the owner and
his sons cultivated themselves, whilst the wife and
daughters assisted in the husbandry, and cked out the
slender earnings by the produce of the dairy, the poultry
‘ Peaceful evenings.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co,
yard, and the orchard ;—an order of cultivators now
passing rapidly away, but in which much of the best part
of the English character, its industry, its frugality, its
sound sense, and its kindness might be found. Farmer
Allen himself is an excellent specimen, the cheerful
116 OUR VILLAGE
venerable old man with his long white hair, and his
bright grey eye, and his wife is a still finer, They have
had a hard struggle to win through the world and keep
their little property undivided ; but good management
and good principles, and the assistance afforded them
by an admirable son, who left our village a poor ’prentice
boy, and is now a partner in a great house in London,
have enabled them to overcome all the difficulties of
these trying times, and they are now enjoying the peace-
ful evenings of a well-spent life as free from care and
anxiety as their best friends could desire.
Ah! there is Mr. Allen in the orchard, the beautiful
orchard, with its glorious gardens of pink and white, its
pearly pear-blossoms and coral apple-buds. What a
flush of bloom it is! How brightly delicate it appears,
thrown into strong relief by the dark house and the
weather-stained barn, in this soft evening light! The
very grass is strewed with the snowy petals of the pear
and the cherry. And there sits Mrs. Allen, feeding her
poultry, with her three little grand-daughters from
London, pretty fairies from three years old to five (only
two-and-twenty months elapsed between the birth of
the eldest and the youngest) playing round her feet.
Mrs. Allen, my dear Mrs. Allen, has been that rare
thing a beauty, and although she be now an old woman
I had almost said that she is so still Why should I
not say so? Nobleness of feature and sweetness of
expression are surely as delightful in age as in youth.
Her face and figure are much like those which are
stamped indelibly on the memory of every one who
THE DELL 117
Mrs. Siddons.
ever saw that grand specimen of woman
The outline of Mrs. Allen’s face is exactly the same;
but there is more softness, more gentleness, a more
feminine composure in the eye and in the smile. Mrs.
‘ There stts drs. Allen, feeding her poultry.
Allen never played Lady Macbeth. Her hair, almost
as black as at twenty, is parted on her large fair fore-
head, and combed under her exquisitely neat and snowy
cap; a muslin neckerchief, a grey stuff gown and a
white apron complete the picture.
118 OUR VILLAGE
There she sits under an old elder-tree which flings
its branches over her like a canopy, whilst the setting
sun illumines her venerable figure and touches the leaves
with an emerald light; there she sits, placid and smil-
ing, with her spectacles in her hand and a measure of
barley on her lap, into which the little girls are dipping
their chubby hands and scattering the corn amongst the
ducks and chickens with unspeakable glee. But those
ingrates the poultry don’t seem so pleased and thankful
as they ought to be ; they mistrust their young feeders.
All domestic animals dislike children, partly from an
instinctive fear of their tricks and their thoughtlessness ;
partly, I suspect, from jealousy. Jealousy seems a
strange tragic passion to attribute to the inmates of the
basse cour,——but only look at that strutting fellow of a
bantam cock (evidently a favourite), who sidles up to
his old mistress with an air half affronted and half
tender, turning so scornfully from the barley-corns which
Annie is flinging towards him, and say if he be not as
jealous as Othello? Nothing can pacify him but Mrs.
Allen’s notice and a dole from her hand. See, she is
calling to him and feeding him, and now how he swells
out his feathers, and flutters his wings, and erects his
glossy neck, and struts and crows and pecks, proudest
and happiest of bantams, the pet and glory of the
poultry yard !
In the meantime my own pet May, who has all this
while been pceping into every hole, and penetrating
every nook and winding of the dell, in hopes to find
another rabbit, has returned to my side, and is sliding
he bridge?
wer by
‘0
& Co,
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893 Gy 4.
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THE DELL 121
her snake-like head into my hand, at once to invite the
caress which she likes so well, and to intimate, with all
due respect, that it is time to go home. The setting
sun gives the same warning ; and in a moment we are
through the dell, the field, and the gate, past the farm
and the mill, and hanging over the bridge that crosses
the Loddon river.
What a sunset! how golden! how beautiful! The
sun just disappearing, and the narrow liny clouds, which
a few minutes ago lay like soft vapoury streaks along
the horizon, lighted up with a golden splendour that the
eye can scarcely endure, and those still softer clouds
which floated above them wreathing and curling into
a thousand fantastic forms, as thin and changeful as
summer smoke, now defined and deepened into grandeur,
and edged with ineffable, insufferable light! Another
minute and the brilliant orb totally disappears, and the
sky above grows every moment more varied and more
beautiful as the dazzling golden lines are mixed with
glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small
dark specks, and mingled with such a blue as the egg of
the hedge-sparrow. To look up at that glorious sky, and
then to see that magnificent picture reflected in the clear
and lovely Loddon water, is a pleasure never to be
described and never forgotten. My heart swells and
my cyes fill as I write of it, and think of the immeasur-
able majesty of nature, and the unspeakable goodness
of God, who has spread an enjoyment 50 pure, SO peace-
ful, and so intense before the meanest and the lowliest
of His creatures.
THE COWSLIP-BALL
The Cust -Ball
ay i6th.— There are moments in_ life
when, without any visible or imme-
diate cause, the spirits sink and
fail, as it were, under the mere
pressure of existence: moments of
unaccountable depression, when one is weary of
one’s very thoughts, haunted by images that will
not depart—images many and various, but all pain-
ful; friends lost, or changed, or dead; hopes dis-
appointed even in their accomplishment; fruitless
regrets, powerless wishes, doubt and fear, and self-
distrust, and self-disapprobation. They who have
known these feelings (and who is there so happy as
not to have known some of them?) will understand
why Alfieri became powerless, and Froissart dull; and
why even needle-work, the most effectual sedative, that
grand soother and composer of woman’s distress, fails
to comfort me to-day. I will go out into the air this
cool, pleasant afternoon, and try what that will do. I
fancy that exercise or exertion of any kind, is the true
126 OUR VILLAGE
specific for nervousness. ‘Fling but a stone, the giant
dies.’ I will go to the meadows, the beautiful meadows !
and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzy and
May, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a
cowslip-ball. ‘Did you ever see a cowslip-ball, my
©T don'l mind em.’
3
Lizzy ?’—-‘No’-——‘ Come away, then; make haste!
run, Lizzy 1’
And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across the
lea, past the workhouse, along by the great pond, till
we slide into the deep narrow lane, whose hedges seem
to mect over the water, and win our way to the
little farmhouse at the end. ‘Through the farmyard,
THE COWSLIP-BALL 127
Lizzy ; over the gate ; never mind the cows ; they are
quiet enough.â€â€”‘I don’t mind ’em, said Miss Lizzy,
boldly and truly, and with a proud affronted air, dis-
pleased at being thought to mind anything, and showing
by her attitude and manner some design of proving her
courage by an attack on the largest of the herd, in the
shape of a pull by the tail. ‘I don’t mind ’em’—‘l
know you don’t, Lizzy ; but let them alone, and don't
chase the turkey-cock. Come to me, my dear!’ and,
for a wonder, Lizzy came.
In the meantime, my other pet, Mayflower, had also
gotten into a scrape. She had driven about a huge
unwieldy sow, till the animal’s grunting had disturbed
the repose of a still more enormous Newfoundland dog,
the guardian of the yard. Out he sallied, growling,
from the depth of his kennel, erecting his tail, and
shaking his long chain. May’s attention was instantly
diverted from the sow to this new playmate, friend or
foe, she cared not which; and he of the kennel, secing
his charge unhurt, and out of danger, was at leisure to
observe the charms of his fair enemy, as she frolicked
round him, always beyond the reach of his chain, yet
always, with the natural instinctive coquetry of her sex,
alluring him to the pursuit which she knew to be vain.
I never saw a prettier flirtation. At last the noble
animal, wearied out, retired to the inmost recesses of
his habitation, and would not even approach her when
she stood right before the entrance. ‘ You are properly
served, May. Come along, Lizzy. Across this wheat-
field, and now over the gate. Stop! let me lift you
128 OUR VILLAGE
down. No jumping, no breaking of necks, Lizzy!’
And here we are in the meadows, and out of the world.
Robinson Crusoe, in his lonely island, had scarcely a
more complete, or a more beautiful solitude.
These meadows consist of a double row of small
enclosures of rich grass-land, a mile or two in length,
‘A flirtation.’
sloping down from high arable grounds on either side,
to a little nameless brook that winds between them
with a course which, in its infinite variety, clearness,
and rapidity, seems to emulate the bold rivers of the
north, of whom, far more than of our lazy southern
streams, our rivulet presents a miniature likeness.
Never was water more exquisitely tricksy :—now
darting over the bright pebbles, sparkling and flashing
THE COWSLIP-BALL 129
in the light with a bubbling music, as sweet and wild
as the song of the woodlark; now stretching quietly
along, giving back the rich tufts of the golden marsh-
marigolds which grow on its margin; now sweeping
round a fine reach of green grass, rising stceply into a
high mound, a mimic promontory, whilst the other side
sinks softly away, like some tiny bay, and the water
flows between, so clear, so wide, so shallow, that Lizzy,
longing for adventure, is sure she could cross unwetted ;
now dashing through two sand-banks, a torrent deep
and narrow, which May clears at a bound; now sleep-
ing, half hidden, beneath the alders, and hawthorns,
and wild roses, with which the banks are so profusely
and variously fringed, whilst flags,’ lilies, and other
aquatic plants, almost cover the surface of the stream.
In good truth, it is a beautiful brook, and one that
Walton himself might have sitten by and loved, for
trout are there; we see them as they dart up the
stream, and hear and start at the sudden plunge when
they spring to the surface for the summer flies. Izaak
Walton would have loved our brook and our quiet
1 Walking along these meadows one bright sunny afternoon, a year or
two back, and rather later in the season, I had an opportunity of noticing a
curious circumstance in natural history. Standing close to the edge of the
stream, I remarked a singular appearance on a large tuft of flags. It
looked like bunches of flowers, the leaves of which seemed dark, yet
transparent, intermingled with brilliant tubes of bright blue or shining
green. On examining this phenomenon more closely, it turned out to be
several clusters of dragon-flies, just emerged from their deiormed chrysalis
state, and still torpid and motionless from the wetness of their filmy wings.
Ifalf an hour later we returned to the spot and they were gone. We had
seen them at the very moment when beauty was complete and animation
dormant. Ihave since found nearly a similar account of this curious process
in Mr. Bingley’s very entertaining work, called Anémal Biography,
kK
130 OUR VILLAGE
meadows; they breathe the very spirit of his own
peacefulness, a soothing quictude that sinks into the
soul. There is no path through them, not onc; we
might wander a whole spring day, and not see a trace
of human habitation. They belong to a number of
small proprietors, who allow each other access through
their respective grounds, from pure kindness and
neighbourly feeling; a privilege never abused: and
the fields on the other side of the water are reached by
a rough plank, or a tree thrown across, or some such
homely bridge. We ourselves possess one of the most
beautiful; so that the strange pleasure of property,
that instinct which makes Lizzy delight in her broken
doll, and May in the bare bone which she has pilfered
from the kennel of her recreant admirer of Newfound-
land, is added to the other charms of this enchanting
scenery ; a strange pleasure it is, when one so poor as
I can feel it! Perhaps it is felt most by the poor, with
the rich it may be less intense—too much diffused and
spread out, becoming thin by expansion, like leaf-gold ;
the little of the poor may be not only more precious,
but more pleasant to them: certain that bit of grassy
and blossomy earth, with its green knolls and tufted
bushes, its old pollards wreathed with ivy, and its
bright and babbling waters, is very dear to me. But
I must always have loved these meadows, so fresh, and
cool, and delicious to the eye and to the tread, full of
cowslips, and of all vernal flowers: Shakspeare’s Song
of Spring bursts irrepressibly from our lips as we step
on them.
THE COWSLIP-BALL 131
* Cuckoo / cuckoo!’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Ce,
‘When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree—’
‘Cuckoo! cuckoo!’ cried Lizzy, breaking in with her
clear childish voice; and immediately, as if at her
132 OUR VILLAGE
call, the real bird, from a neighbouring tree (for these
meadows are dotted with timber like a park), began
to echo my lovely little girl, ‘cuckoo! cuckoo!’ = I
have a prejudice very unpastoral and unpoetical (but
I cannot help it, I have many such) against this
‘harbinger of spring.†His note is so monotonous,
so melancholy; and then the boys mimic him; one
hears ‘cuckoo! cuckoo!’ in dirty streets, amongst
smoky houses, and the bird is hated for faults not his
own. But prejudices of taste, likings and dislikings,
are not always vanquishable by reason; so, to escape
the serenade from the tree, which promised to be of
considerable duration (when once that eternal song
begins, on it goes ticking like a clock)—to escape that
noise I determined to excite another, and challenged
Lizzy to a cowslip-gathering; a trial of skill and
speed, to see which should soonest fill her basket.
My stratagem succeeded completely. What scramb-
ling, what shouting, what glee from Lizzy! twenty
cuckoos might have sung unheard whilst she was pull-
ing her own flowers, and stealing mine, and laughing,
screaming, and talking through all.
At last the baskets were filled, and Lizzy declared
victor: and down we sat, on the brink of the stream,
under a spreading hawthorn, just disclosing its own
pearly buds, and surrounded with the rich and enamelled
flowers of the wild hyacinth, blue and white, to make
our cowslip-ball. Every one knows the process: to
nip off the tuft of flowerets just below the top of the
stalk, and hang each cluster nicely balanced across a
THE COWSLIP-BALL 133
riband, till you have a long string like a garland; then
to press them closely together, and tie them tightly up.
iG Sp j
ON
pleat :
‘ Making the cowslip-ball.’
\ Capyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
We went on very prosperously, considering ; as people
say of a young lady’s drawing, or a Frenchman’s English,
or a woman’s tragedy, or of the poor little dwarf who
134 OUR VILLAGE
works without fingers, or the ingenious sailor who writes
with his toes, or generally of any performance which is
accomplished by means seemingly inadequate to its
production. To be sure we met with a few accidents.
First, Lizzy spoiled nearly all her cowslips by snapping
them off too short; so there was a fresh gathering ;
in the next place, May overset my full basket, and sent
the blossoms floating, like so many fairy favours, down
the brook; then, when we were going on pretty steadily,
just as we had made a superb wreath, and were think-
ing of tying it together, Lizzy, who held the riband,
caught a glimpse of a gorgeous butterfly, all brown
and red and purple, and, skipping off to pursue the
new object, let go her hold; so all our treasures were
abroad again. At last, however, by dint of taking a
branch of alder as a substitute for Lizzy, and hanging
the basket in a pollard-ash, out of sight of May, the
cowslip-ball was finished. What a concentration of
fragrance and beauty it was! golden and sweet to
satiety! rich to sight, and touch, and smell! Lizzy
was enchanted, and ran off with her prize, hiding
amongst the trees in the very coyness of ecstasy, as if
any human cye, even mine, would be a restraint on her
innocent raptures.
In the meanwhile I sat listening, not to my enemy
the cuckoo, but to a whole concert of nightingales,
scarcely interrupted by any meaner bird, answering
and vying with each other in those short delicious
strains which are to the ear as roses to the eye: those
snatches of lovely sound which come across us as airs
THE COWSLIP-BALL 135
from heaven. Pleasant thoughts, delightful associa-
tions, awoke as I listened ; and almost unconsciously I
repeated to myself the beautiful story of the Lutist and
the Nightingale, from Ford’s Lover's Afelancholy. Here
itis. Is there in English poetry anything finer ?
‘Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales
Which poets of an elder time have feign’d
To glorify their Tempe, bred in me
Desire of visiting Paradise.
To Thessaly I came, and living private,
Without acquaintance of more sweet companions
Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,
I day by day frequented silent groves
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encounter’d me: I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention
That art and nature ever were at strife in.
A sound of music touch’d mine ears, or rather
Indeed entranced my soul ; as I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, I saw
This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute
With strains of strange variety and harmony
Proclaiming, as it seem’d, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds,
That as they flock’d about him, all stood silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wonder’d too.
A nightingale,
Nature’s best skill’d musician, undertakes
The challenge ; and for every several strain
The well-shaped youth could touch, she sang him down.
He could not run divisions with more art
Upon his quaking instrument than she,
The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to.
136 OUR VILLAGE
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird,
Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice.
To end the controversy, in a rapture
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,
That there was curiosity and cunning,
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.
The bird (ordain’d to be
Music’s first martyr) strove to imitate
These several sounds ; which when her warbling throat
Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute,
And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness
To see the conqueror upon her hearse
To weep a funeral clegy of tears.
He look’d upon the trophies of his art,
Then sigh’d, then wiped his eyes ; then sigh’d, and cry’d
“ Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge
This cruelty upon the author of it.
Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,
Shall never more betray a harmless peace
To an untimely end:†and in that sorrow,
As he was pashing it against a tree,
I suddenly stept in.’
When I had finished the recitation of this exquisite
passage, the sky, which had been all the afternoon dull
and heavy, began to look more and more threatening ;
darker clouds, like wreaths of black smoke, flew across
the dead leaden tint; a cooler, damper air blew over
the meadows, and a few large heavy drops splashed in
THE COWSLIP-BALL I
I
Ge
the water. ‘We shall have a storm. Lizzy! May!
where are ye? Quick, quick, my Lizzy! run, run!
faster, faster !’
And off we ran; Lizzy not at all displeased at the
thoughts of a wetting, to which indecd she is almost as
familiar as a duck; May, on the other hand, peering
‘ Faster, faster f°
up at the weather, and shaking her pretty cars with
manifest dismay. Of all animals, next to a cat, a
greyhound dreads rain. She might have escaped it ;
her light feet would have borne her home long before
the shower; but May is too faithful for that, too true
a comrade, understands too well the laws of good-fellow-
ship ; so she waited for us. She did, to be sure, gallop
138 OUR VILLAGE
on before, and then stop and look back, and beckon,,as
it were, with some scorn in her black eyes at the slow-
ness of our progress. We in the meanwhile got on as
fast as we could, encouraging and reproaching each
‘ Cloaks and umbrellas.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
other, ‘Faster, my Lizzy! Oh, what a bad runner!’
‘Taster, faster! Oh, what a bad runner!’ echoed
my saucebox. ‘You are so fat, Lizzy, you make no
way |’ Ah! who else is fat?’ retorted the darling.
Certainly her mother is right ; I do spoil that child.
THE COWSLIP-BALL 139
By this time we were thoroughly soaked, all three.
It was a pelting shower, that drove through our thin
summer clothing and poor May’s short glossy coat in a
moment. And then, when we were wet to the skin,
the sun came out, actually the sun, as if to laugh at our
plight ; and then, more provoking still, when the sun
was shining, and the shower over, came a maid and a
boy to look after us, loaded with cloaks and umbrellas
enough to fence us against a whole day’s rain. Never
mind! on we go, faster and faster ; Lizzy obliged to be
most ignobly carried, having had the misfortune to lose
a shoe in the mud, which we left the boy to look after.
Here we are at home—dripping ; but glowing and
laughing, and bearing our calamity most manfully.
May, a dog of excellent sense, went instantly to bed in
the stable, and is at this moment over head and ears in
straw; Lizzy is gone to bed too, coaxed into that wise
measure by a promise of tea and toast, and of not
going home till to-morrow, and the story of Little Red
Riding Hood; and I am enjoying the luxury of dry
clothing by a good fire. Really getting wet through
now and then is no bad thing, finery apart; for one
should not like spoiling a new pelisse, or a handsome
plume ; but when there is nothing in question but a
white gown and a straw bonnet, as was the case to-day,
it is rather pleasant than not. The little chill refreshes,
and our enjoyment of the subsequent warmth and
dryness is positive and absolute. Besides, the stimulus
and exertion do good to the mind as well as body.
How melancholy I was all the morning! how cheerful
140 OUR VILLAGE
I am now! Nothing like a shower-bath—a real
shower-bath, such as Lizzy and May and I have under-
gone, to cure low spirits. Try it, my dear readers, if
ever ye be nervous—I will answer for its success.
‘ May went lo bed.’
EEt OLD HOUSE At ABER E IG hl
The or House at Mberleigh :
une 25% — What a glowing glorious day !
Summer in its richest prime, noon in its
most sparkling brightness, little white
clouds dappling the deep blue sky, and the
sun, now partially veiled, and now burst-
ing through them with an intensity of light! It would
not do to walk to-day, professedly to walk,—we should
be frightened at the very sound! and yet it is probable
that we may be beguiled into a pretty long stroll before
we return home. We are going to drive to the old
house at Aberleigh, to spend the morning under the
shade of those balmy firs, and amongst those luxuriant
rose trees, and by the side of that brimming Loddon
river. ‘Do not expect us before six o'clock, said I, as
I left the house; ‘Six at soonest!’ added my charm-
ing companion; and off we drove in our little pony
chaise, drawn by our old mare, and with the good-
humoured urchin, Henry’s successor, a sort of younger
Scrub, who takes care of horse and chaise, and cow and
garden, for our charioteer.
144 OUR VILLAGE
My comrade in this homely equipage was a young
lady of high family and higher endowments, to whom
the novelty of the thing, and her own naturalness of
character and simplicity of taste, gave an unspeakable
‘ Of we drove.’
enjoyment. She danced the little chaise up and down
as she got into it, and laughed for very glee like a child,
Lizzy herself could not have been more delighted. She
praised the horse and the driver, and the roads and the
scenery, and gave herself fully up to the enchantment
of a rural excursion in the sweetest weather of this
THE OLD HOUSE AT ABEKLEIGIL 145
sweet season. I enjoyed all this too; for the road was
pleasant to every sense, winding through narrow lanes,
under high elms, and between hedges garlanded with
woodbine and rose trees, whilst the air was scented with
the delicious fragrance of blossomed beans. I enjoyed
it all——but, I believe, my principal pleasure was .de-
rived from my companion herself
Emily I. is a person whom it is a privilege to know.
She is quite like a creation of the older poets, and might
pass for one of Shakspeare’s or Fletcher’s women
stepped into life; just as tender, as playful, as gentle,
and as kind. She is clever too, and has all the know-
ledge and accomplishments that a carefully-conducted
education, acting on a mind of singular clearness and
ductility, matured and improved by the very best
company, can bestow. But one never thinks of her
acquirements. It is the charming artless character
the bewitching sweetness of manner, the real and uni-
versal sympathy, the quick taste and the ardent feeling,
that one loves in Emily. She is Irish by birth, and
has in perfection the melting voice and soft caressing
accent by which her fair countrywomen are distinguished.
Moreover she is pretty—I think her beautiful, and so
do all who have heard as well as seen her,—but pretty,
very pretty, all the world must confess; and perhaps
that is a distinction more enviable, because less envied,
than the ‘palmy state’ of beauty. Her prettiness is of
the prettiest kind—that of which the chief character
is youthfulness. A short but pleasing figure, all grace
and symmetry, a fair blooming face, beaming with intelli-
L
146 OUR VILLAGE
gence and good-humour; the prettiest little feet and
the whitest hands in the world ;—such is Emily I.
She resides with her maternal grandmother, a vener-
able old lady, slightly shaken with the palsy; and when
together (and they are so fondly attached to cach other
that they are seldom parted), it is one of the loveliest
combinations of youth and age ever witnessed. There
THE OLD HOUSE AT ABERLEIGIL 147
is no seeing them without feeling an increase of respect
and affection for both grandmother and granddaughter
—always one of the tenderest and most beautiful of
natural connections—as Richardson knew when he made
such exquisite use of it in his matchless book. I fancy
that grandmamma Shirley must have been just such
another venerable lady as Mrs. S., and our sweet Emily
—Oh no! Harriet Byron is not half good enough for her!
There is nothing like her in the whole seven volumes.
But here we are at the bridge! Here we must
alight! ‘This is the Loddon, Emily. Is it not a
beautiful river? rising level with its banks, so clear, and
smooth, and peaceful, giving back the verdant landscape
and the bright blue sky, and bearing on its pellucid stream
the snowy water-lily, the purest of flowers, which sits
enthroned on its own cool leaves, looking chastity itself,
like the lady in Comus. That queenly flower becomes
the water, and so do the stately swans who are sailing
so majestically down the stream, like those who
“On St. Mary’s lake
Float double, swan and shadow.â€
We must dismount here, and leave Richard to take
care of our equipage under the shade of these trees,
whilst we walk up to the house :—See there itis! We
must cross this stile ; there is no other way now.’
And crossing the stile we were immediately in what
had been a drive round a spacious park, and still re-
tained something of the character, though the park
itself had long been broken into arable fields,—and in
148 OUR VILLAGE
full view of the Great House, a beautiful structure of
James the First’s time, whose glassless windows and
dilapidated doors form a melancholy contrast with the
strength and entireness of the rich and massive front.
‘ Here we must alight!’
The story of that ruin—for such it is—is always to
me singularly affecting. It is that of the decay of an
ancient and distinguished family, gradually reduced from
the highest wealth and station to actual poverty. The
house and park, and a small estate around it, were
entailed on a distant cousin, and could not be alienated ;
THE OLD IIOUSE AT ABERLEIGI 149
and the late owner, the last of his name and lineage,
after long struggling with debt and difficulty, farming
his own lands, and clinging to his magnificent home
with a love of place almost as tenacious as that of the
younger Foscari, was at last forced to abandon it,
retired to a paltry lodging in a paltry town, and died
there about twenty years ago, broken-hearted. His
successor, bound by no ties of association to the spot,
and rightly judging the residence to be much too large
for the diminished estate, immediately sold the superb
fixtures, and would have entirely taken down the
house, if, on making the attempt, the masonry had not
been found so solid that the materials were not worth
the labour. A great part, however, of one side is laid
open, and the splendid chambers, with their carving
and gilding, are exposed to the wind and rain—sad
memorials of past grandeur! The grounds have been
left in a merciful neglect; the park, indeed, is broken
up, the lawn mown twice a year like a common hay-
field, the grotto mouldering into ruin, and the fish-
ponds choked with rushes and aquatic plants; but
the shrubs and flowering trees are undestroyed, and
have grown into a magnificence of size and wildness of
beauty, such as we may imagine them to attain in
their native forests. Nothing can exceed their luxuri-
ance, especially in the spring, when the lilac, and
laburnum, and double-cherry put forth their gorgeous
blossoms. There is a sweet sadness in the sight of
such floweriness amidst such desolation ; it seems the
triumph of nature over the destructive power of man.
150 OUR VILLAGE
The whole place, in that season more particularly, is
full of a soft and soothing melancholy, reminding me,
I scarcely know why, of some of the descriptions of
natural scenery in the novels of Charlotte Smith, which
I read when a girl, and which, perhaps, for that reason
hang on my memory.
But here we are, in the smooth grassy ride, on the
top of a steep turfy slope descending to the river,
crowned with enormous firs and limes of equal growth,
looking across the winding waters into a sweet peaceful
landscape of quiet meadows, shut in by distant woods.
What a fragrance is in the air from the balmy fir trees
and the blossomed limes! What an intensity of
odour! And what a murmur of bees in the lime trees !
What a coil those little winged people make over our
heads! And what a pleasant sound it is! the pleasant-
est of busy sounds, that which comes associated with
all that is good and beautiful—industry and forecast,
and sunshine and flowers. Surely these lime trees
might store a hundred hives; the very odour is of a
honeyed richness, cloying, satiating.
Emily exclaimed in admiration as we stood under
the deep, strong, leafy shadow, and still more when
honeysuckles trailed their untrimmed profusion in our
path, and roses, really trees, almost intercepted our
passage.
‘On, Emily! farther yet! Force your way by that
jessamine-——it will yield; I will take care of this
stubborn white rose bough,-—‘ Take care of yourself!
Pray take care, said my fairest friend; ‘let me hold
TIE OLD HOUSE AT ABERLEIGIL 151
back the branches.-—After we had won our way
through the strait, at some expense of veils and flounces,
she stopped to contemplate and admire the tall, grace-
ful shrub, whose long thorny stems, spreading in every
direction, had opposed our progress, and now waved
their delicate clusters over our heads. ‘Did I ever
think, exclaimed she, ‘of standing under the shadow
of a white rose tree! What an exquisite fragrance !
And what a beautiful flower! so pale, and white, and
tender, and the petals thin and smooth as silk! What
rose is it?’—‘ Don’t you know? Did you never see
it before? It is rare now, I believe, and seems rarer
than it is, because it only blossoms in very hot
summets; but this, Emily, is the musk rose,—that
very musk rose of which Titania talks, and which is
worthy of Shakspeare and of her. Is it not?—No?
do not smell to it; it is less sweet so than other roses ;
but one cluster in a vase, or even that bunch in your
bosom, will perfume a large room, as it does the
summer air’—‘ Oh! we will take twenty clusters,’ said
Emily. ‘I wish grandmamma were here! She talks
so often of a musk rose tree that grew against one end
of her father's house. I wish she were here to see
this !?
Echoing her wish, and well laden with musk roses,
planted perhaps in the days of Shakspeare, we reached
the steps that led to a square summer-house or
banqueting-room, overhanging the river: the under
part was a boat-house, whose projecting roof, as well
as the walls and the very top of the little tower, was
152 OUR VILLAGE
covered with ivy and woodbine, and surmounted by
tufted barberries, bird cherries, acacias, covered with
their snowy chains, and other pendent and flowering
trees. Beyond rose two poplars of unrivalled magni-
tude, towering like stately columns over the dark tall
firs, and giving a sort of pillared and architectural
grandeur to the scene.
We were now close to the mansion: but it looked
sad and desolate, and the entrance, choked with
brambles and nettles, seemed almost to repel our steps.
The summer-house, the beautiful summer-house, was
free and open, and inviting, commanding from the
unglazed windows, which hung high above the water, a
reach of the river terminated by a rustic mill.
There we sat, emptying our little basket of fruit
and country cakes, till Emily was seized with a desire
of viewing, from the other side of the Loddon, the
scenery which had so much enchanted her. ‘I must,
said she, ‘take a sketch of the ivied boat-house, and of
this swect room, and this pleasant window ;—grand-
mamma would never be able to walk from the road to
see the place itself, but she must see its likeness.’ So
forth we sallied, not forgetting the dear musk roses.
We had no way of reaching the desired spot but
by retracing our steps a mile, during the heat of the
hottest hour of the day, and then following the course
of the river to an equal distance on the other side ;
nor had we any materials for sketching, except the
rumpled paper which had contained our repast, and a
pencil without a point which I happened to have about
THE OLD TIOUSE AT ABERLEIGII 153
3
me. But these small difficulties are pleasures to gay
and happy youth. Regardless of such obstacles, the
sweet Emily bounded on like a fawn, and I followed
delighting in her delight. The sun went in, and the
walk was delicious; a reviving coolness seemed to
breathe over the water, wafting the balmy scent of the
firs and limes; we found a point of view presenting
the boat-house, the water, the poplars, and the mill, in
a most felicitous combination; the little straw fruit
basket made a capital table ; and refreshed and sharp-
ened and pointed by our trusty lacquey’s excellent knife
(your country boy is never without a good knife, it is
his prime treasure), the pencil did double duty ;—first
in the skilful hands of Emily, whose faithful and spirited
sketch does equal honour to the scene and to the artist,
and then in the humbler office of attempting a faint
transcript of my own impressions in the following
sonnet :—
it was an hour of calmest noon, at day
Of ripest summer: o’er the deep blue sky
White speckled clouds came sailing peacefully,
Half-shrouding in a chequer’d veil the ray
Of the sun, too ardent else,—what time we lay
By the smooth Loddon, opposite the high
Steep bank, which as a corenet gloriously
Wore its rich crest of firs and lime trees, gay
With their pale tassels ; while from out a bower
Of ivy @vhere those column’d poplars rear
Their heads) the ruin’d boat-house, like a tower,
Flung its deep shadow on the waters clear.
My Emily! forget not that calm hour,
Nor that fair scene, by thee made doubly dear !
THE HARD SUMMER
ugust 15th-——Cold, cloudy, windy, wet.
Here we are, in the midst of the
dog-days, clustering merrily round the
warm hearth like so many crickets,
instead of chirruping in the green
fields like that other merry insect
the grasshopper; shivering under the influence of the
Jupiter Pluvius of England, the watery St. Swithin ;
peering at that scarce personage the sun, when he hap-
pens to make his appearance, as intently as astronomers
look after a comet, or the common people stare at
a balloon; exclaiming against the cold weather, just as
we used to exclaim against the warm. ‘What a change
from last year!’ is the first sentence you hear, go where
you may. Everybody remarks it, and everybody com-
plains of it; and yet in my mind it has its advantages,
or at least its compensations, as everything in nature
has, if we would only take the trouble to seek for them.
Last year, in spite of the love which we are now
pleased to profess towards that ardent luminary, not one
158 OUR VILLAGE
of the sun’s numerous admirers had courage to look him
in the face: there was no bearing the world till he had
said ‘Good-night’ to it. Then we might stir: then we
began to wake and to live. All day long we languished
under his influence in a strange dreaminess, too hot to
work, too hot to read, too hot to write, too hot even to
talk; sitting hour after hour in a green arbour, em-
bowered in leafiness, letting thought and fancy float as
they would. Those day-dreams were pretty things in
their way ; there is no denying that. But then, if one
half of the world were to dream through a whole summer,
like the sleeping Beauty in the wood, what would become
of the other?
The only office requiring the slightest exertion, which
I performed in that warm weather, was watering my
flowers. Common sympathy called for that labour.
The poor things withered, and faded, and pined away ;
they almost, so to say, panted for draught. Moreover,
if I had not watered them myself, I suspect that no one
else would ; for water last year was nearly as precious
hereabout as wine. Our land-springs were dried up;
our wells were exhausted; our deep ponds were
dwindling into mud; and geese, and ducks, and pigs,
and laundresses, used to look with a jealous and sus-
picious eye on the few and scanty half-buckets of that
impure element, which my trusty lacquey was fain to filch
for my poor geraniums and campanulas and tuberoses.
We were forced to smuggle them in through my faithful
adherent’s territories, the stable, to avoid lectures within
doors ; and at last even that resource failed ; my garden,
at «a balloon.’
‘ Staring
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan
& Co.
THE HARD SUMMER 161
my blooming garden, the joy of my eyes, was forced to
go waterless like its neighbours, and became shrivelled,
scorched, and sunburnt, like them. It really went to
my heart to look at it.
On the other side of the house matters were still
~ worse. What a dusty world it was, when about sunset
we became cool enough to creep into it! Flowers in
the court looking fit for a hortus sitccus ; mummies of
plants, dried as in an oven; hollyhocks, once pink,
turned into Quakers; cloves smelling of dust. Oh,
dusty world! May herself looked of that complexion ;
so did Lizzy ; so did all the houses, windows, chickens,
children, trees, and pigs in the village ; so above all did
the shoes. No foot could make three plunges into that
abyss of pulverised gravel, which had the impudence to
call itself a hard road, without being clothed with a coat
a quarter of an inch thick. Woe to white gowns! woe
to black! Drab was your only wear.
Then, when we were out of the street, what a toil it
was to mount the hill, climbing with weary steps and
slow upon the brown turf by the wayside, slippery, hot,
and hard asarock! And then if we happened to mect
a carriage coming along the middle of the road,—the
bottomless middle,—what a sandy whirlwind it was!
What choking! what suffocation! No state could be
more pitiable, except indeed that of the travellers who
carried this misery about with them. I shall never for-
get the plight in which we met the coach one evening
in last August, full an hour after its time, steeds and
driver, carriage and passengers, all one dust. The out-
M
162 OUR VILLAGE
sides, and the horses, and the coachman, seemed reduced
to a torpid quietness, the resignation of despair. They
had left off trying to better their condition, and taken
refuge in a wise and patient hopelessness, bent to endure
in silence the extremity of ill, The six insides, on the
contrary, were still fighting against their fate, vainly
struggling to ameliorate their hapless destiny. They
* All one dust.’
were visibly grumbling at the weather, scolding at the
dust, and heating themselves like a furnace, by striving
against the heat. How well I remember the fat gentle-
man without his coat, who was wiping his forehead,
heaving up his wig, and certainly uttering that English
ejaculation, which, to our national reproach, is the phrase
of our language best known on the continent. And
that poor boy, red-hot, all in a flame, whose mamma,
THE HARD SUMMER 163
having divested her own person of all superfluous apparel,
was trying to relieve his sufferings by the removal of his
neckerchief—an operation which he resisted with all his
‘ That poor boy.
might. How perfectly I remember him, as well as the
pale girl who sat opposite, fanning herself with her
bonnet into an absolute fever! They vanished after a
while into their own dust ; but I have them all before
164 OUR VILLAGE
my eyes at this moment, a companion picture to
Hogarth’s ‘ Afternoon,’ a standing lesson to the grumblers
at cold summers.
For my part, I really like this wet season. It keeps
us within, to be sure, rather more than is quite agreeable ;
but then we are at least awake and alive there, and the
world out of doors is so much the pleasanter when we
can get abroad. Everything does well, except those
fastidious bipeds, men and women; corn ripens, grass
grows, fruit is plentiful ; there is no lack of birds to eat
it, and there has not been such a wasp-season these
dozen years. My garden wants no watering, and is
more beautiful than ever, beating my old rival in that
primitive art, the pretty wife of the little mason, out
and out. Measured with mine, her flowers are naught.
Look at those hollyhocks, like pyramids of roses ; those
garlands of the convolvulus major of all colours, hanging
around that tall pole, like the wreathy hop-bine ; those
magnificent dusky cloves, breathing of the Spice Islands ;
those flaunting double dahlias ; those splendid scarlet
geraniums, and those fierce and warlike flowers the
tiger-lilies. Oh, how beautiful they are! Besides, the
weather clears sometimes—it has cleared this evening ;
and here are we, after a merry walk up the hill, almost
as quick as in the winter, bounding lightly along the
bright green turf of the pleasant common, enticed by
the gay shouts of a dozen clear young voices, to linger
awhile, and see the boys play at cricket.
I plead guilty to a strong partiality towards that
unpopular class of beings, country boys: I have a large
THE HARD SUMMER 165
acquaintance amongst them, and I can almost say, that
I know good of many and harm of none. In general
they are an open, spirited, good-humoured race, with a
proneness to embrace the pleasures and eschew the evils
of their condition, a capacity for happiness, quite un-
matched in man, or woman, ora girl. They are patient,
too, and bear their fate as scape-goats (for all sins what-
‘ Cricket?
soever are laid as matters of course to their door),
whether at home or abroad, with amazing resignation ;
and, considering the many lies of which they are the
objects, they tell wonderfully few in return, The worst
that can be said of them is, that they seldom, when
grown to man’s estate, keep the promise of their boy-
hood; but that is a fault to come—a fault that may
not come, and ought not to be anticipated. It is
astonishing how sensible they are to notice from their
166 OUR VILLAGE
betters, or those whom they think such. I do not speak
of money, or gifts, or praise, or the more coarse and
common briberies—they are more delicate courtiers ; a
word, a nod, a smile, or the mere calling of them by
their names, is enough to ensure their hearts and their
services. Half a dozen of them, poor urchins, have run
away now to bring us chairs from their several homes.
‘Thank you, Joe Kirby |!—you are always first—yes,
that is just the place—-I shall see everything there.
Have you been in yet, Joe?’—‘No, ma'am! I go in
next. —‘ Ah, I am glad of that—and now’s the time.
Really that was a pretty ball of Jem Eusden’s !—I was
sure it would go to the wicket. Run, Joe! They are
waiting for you. There was small need to bid Joe
Kirby make haste; I think he is, next to a race-horse,
or a greyhound, or a deer, the fastest creature that runs
——the most completely alert and active. Joe is mine
especial friend, and leader of the ‘tender juveniles,’ as
Joel Brent is of the adults. In both instances this post
of honour was gained by merit, even more remarkably
so in Joe’s case than in Joel’s; for Joe is a less boy
than many of his companions (some of whom are
fifteeners and sixteeners, quite as tall and nearly as old
as Tom Coper), and a poorer than all, as may be con-
jectured from the lamentable state of that patched round
frock, and the ragged condition of those unpatched shoes,
which would encumber, if anything could, the light feet
that wear them. But why should I lament the poverty
that never troubles him? Joe is the merriest and
happiest creature that ever lived twelve years in this
THE HARD SUMMER 107
wicked world. Care cannot come near him. He hath
a perpetual smile on his round ruddy face, and a laugh
in his hazel eye, that drives the witch away. He works
‘ Thank you, Joe Kirby.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
at yonder farm on the top of the hill, where he is in such
repute for intelligence and good-humour, that he has
the honour of performing all the errands of the house,
168 OUR VILLAGE
of helping the maid, the mistress, and the master, in
addition to his own stated office of carters boy. There
he works hard from five till seven, and then he comes
here to work still harder, under the name of play—
‘ Carter's boy.’
batting, bowling, and fielding, as if for life, filling the
place of four boys; being, at a pinch, a whole eleven.
The late Mr. Knyvett, the king’s organist, who used
in his own person to sing twenty parts at once of the
Hallelujah Chorus, so that you would have thought he
had a nest of nightingales in his throat, was but a type
THE HARD SUMMER' 169
of Joe Kirby. There is a sort of ubiquity about him ;
he thinks nothing of being in two places at once, and
for pitching a ball, William Grey himself is nothing to
him. It goes straight to the mark like a bullet. He
is king of the cricketers from eight to sixteen, both
inclusive, and an excellent ruler he makes. Neverthe-
less, in the best-ordered states there will be grumblers,
and we have an opposition here in the shape of Jem
Eusden.,
Jem Eusden is a stunted lad of thirteen, or there-
about, lean, small, and short, yet strong and active.
His face is of an extraordinary ugliness, colourless,
withered, haggard, with a look of extreme age, much
increased by hair so light that it might rather pass for
white than flaxen. He is constantly arrayed in the blue
cap and old-fashioned coat, the costume of an endowed
school to which he belongs; where he sits still all day,
and rushes into the field at night, fresh, untired, and
ripe for action, to scold and brawl, and storm, and bluster.
He hates Joe Kirby, whose immovable good-humour,
broad smiles, and knowing nods, must certainly be very
provoking to so fierce and turbulent a spirit; and he
has himself (being, except by rare accident, no great
player) the preposterous ambition of wishing to be
manager of the sports. In short, he is a demagogue
in embryo, with every quality necessary to a splendid
success in that vocation,—a strong voice, a fluent utter-
ance, an incessant iteration, and a frontless impudence.
He is a great ‘scholar’ too, to use the country phrase ;
his ‘ piece, as our village schoolmaster terms a fine sheet
170 OUR VILLAGE
of flourishing writing, something between a valentine
and a sampler, enclosed within a border of little coloured
prints—-his last, I remember, was encircled by an
engraved history of Moses, beginning at the finding in
the bulrushes, with Pharaoh’s daughter dressed in a
rose-coloured gown and blue feathers——his piece is
not only the admiration of the school, but of the parish,
and is sent triumphantly round from house to house at
Christmas, to extort halfpence and sixpences from all
encouragers of learning—/Vontem in miniature. The
Mosaic history was so successful, that the produce
enabled Jem to purchase a bat and ball, which, besides
adding to his natural arrogance (for the little pedant
actually began to mutter against being eclipsed by a
dunce, and went so far as to challenge Joe Kirby to a
trial in Practice, or the Rule of Three), gave him, when
compared with the general poverty, a most unnatural
preponderance in the cricket state. He had the ways
and means in his hands (for alas! the hard winter
had made sad havoc among the bats, and the best ball
was a bad one)—he had the ways and means, could
withhold the supplies, and his party was beginning to
wax strong, when Joe received a present of two bats
and a ball for the youngsters in general and himself in
particular
and Jem’s adherents left him on the spot—
they ratted, to a man, that very evening. Notwith-
standing this desertion, their forsaken leader has in
nothing relaxed from his pretensions, or his ill-humour.
He stills quarrels and brawls as if he had a faction to
back him, and thinks nothing of contending with both
THE HARD SUMMER 171
sides, the ins and the outs, secure of out-talking the
whole field. He has been squabbling these ten minutes,
and is just marching off now with his own bat (he has
never deigned to use one of Joe’s) in his hand. What
‘ Sguaddling.’
I Nj {5
an ill-conditioned hobgoblin it is! And yet there is
something bold and sturdy about him too. I should
miss Jem Eusden.
Ah, there is another deserter from the party! my
friend the little hussar—I do not know his name, and
call him after his cap and jacket. He is a very re-
markable person, about the age of eight years, the
172 OUR VILLAGE
youngest piece of gravity and dignity I ever en-
countered ; short, and square, and upright, and slow,
with a fine bronzed flat visage, resembling those con-
vertible signs the Broad-Face and the Saracen’s-Head,
which, happening to be next-door neighbours in the
town of B., I never knew apart, resembling, indeed, any
face that is open-eyed and immovable, the very sign of
a boy! He stalks about with his hands in his breeches
pockets, like a piece of machinery; sits leisurely
down when he ought to field, and never gets farther
in batting than to stop the ball. His is the only
voice never heard in the méée: I doubt, indeed, if he
have one, which may be partly the reason of a circum-
stance that I record to his honour, his fidelity to Jem
Eusden, to whom he has adhered through every change
of fortune, with a tenacity proceeding perhaps from
an instinctive consciousness that the loquacious leader
talks enough for two. He is the only thing resembling
a follower that our demagogue possesses, and is
cherished by him accordingly. Jem quarrels for him,
scolds for him, pushes for him; and but for Joe
Kirby’s invincible good-humour, and a just discrimi-
nation of the innocent from the guilty, the activity of
Jem’s friendship would get the poor hussar ten drub-
bings a day.
But it is growing late. The sun has set a long
time. Only see what a gorgeous colouring has spread
itself over those parting masses of clouds in the west,—
what a train of rosy light! We shall have a fine sun-
shiny day to-morrow,—a blessing not to be under-
THE HARD SUMMER ; 173
valued, in spite of my late vituperation of heat. Shall
-we go home now? And shall we take the longest
but prettiest road, that by the green lanes? This
way, to the left, round the corner of the common, past
' The little hussar.'
Mr. Welles’s cottage, and our path lies straight before
us. How snug and comfortable that cottage looks!
Its little yard all alive with the cow, and the marc,
and the colt almost as large as the mare, and the
young foal, and the great yard-dog, all so fat! Fenced
174 OUR VILLAGE
in with hay-rick, and wheat-rick, and bean-stack, and
backed by the long garden, the spacious drying-ground,
the fine orchard, and that large field quartered into
four different crops. How comfortable this cottage
looks, and how well the owners earn their comforts |
They are the most prosperous pair in the parish—she
a laundress with twenty times more work than she can
do, unrivalled in flounces and shirt-frills, and such
delicacies of the craft; he, partly a farmer, partly a
farmer’s man, tilling his own ground, and then tilling
other people’s ;—affording a proof, even in this declining
age, when the circumstances of so many worthy members
of the community seem to have ‘an alacrity in sinking,
that it is possible to amend them by sheer industry.
He, who was born in the workhouse, and bred up as a
parish boy, has now, by mere manual labour, risen to
the rank of a land-owner, pays rates and taxes, grumbles
at the times, and is called Master Welles,—the title
next to Mister—that by which Shakspeare was called ;
——what would man have more? His wife, besides being
the best laundress in the county, is a comely woman
still. There she stands at the spring, dipping up water
for to-morrow,—the clear, deep, silent spring, which
sleeps so peacefully under its high flowery bank, red
with the tall spiral stalks of the foxglove and their rich
pendent bells, blue with the beautiful forget-me-not, that
gem-like blossom, which looks like a living jewel of
turquoise and topaz. It is almost too late to see its
beauty ; and here is the pleasant shady lane, where the
high elms will shut out the little twilight that remains.
THE HARD SUMMER 175
Ah, but we shall have the fairies’ lamps to guide us, the
stars of the earth, the glow-worms! Here they are,
‘ Dipping up water.’
three almost together. Do you not see them? Once
seems tremulous, vibrating, as if on the extremity of a
leaf of grass; the others are deeper in the hedge, in
176 OUR VILLAGE
some green cell on which their light falls with an emerald
lustre. I hope my friends the cricketers will not come
this way home. I would not have the pretty creatures
removed for more than I care to say, and in this matter
I would hardly trust Joe Kirby—boys so love to stick
them in their hats. But this lane is quite deserted. It
is only aroad from field to field. No one comes here
at this hour. They are quite safe; and I shall walk
here to-morrow and visit them again. And now, good-
night! beautiful insects, lamps of the fairies, good-night !
noon. What a comfort it is to get out
again—to see once more that rarity
of rarities, a fine day! We English
people are accused of talking over-
much of the weather ; but the weather,
this summer, has forced people to talk of it. Summer!
did I say? Oh! season most unworthy of that sweet,
sunny name! Season of coldness and cloudiness,
of gloom and rain! A worse November !—for in
November the days are short; and shut up in a warm
room, lighted by that household sun, a lamp, one feels
through the long evenings comfortably independent of
the out-of-door tempests. But though we may have,
and did have, fires all through the dog-days, there is
no shutting out daylight; and sixteen hours of rain,
pattering against the windows and dripping from the
eaves——-sixteen hours of rain, not merely audible, but
visible for seven days in the week—would be enough
to exhaust the patience of Job or Grizzel ; especially if
180 OUR VILLAGE
Job were a farmer, and Grizzel a country gentlewoman.
Never was known such a season! Hay swimming,
cattle drowning, fruit rotting, corn spoiling! and that
naughty river, the Loddon, who never can take Puff’s
advice, and ‘keep between its banks, running about
the country, fields, roads, gardens, and houses, like mad !
The weather would be talked of. Indeed, it was not
easy to talk of anything else. A friend of mine having
occasion to write me a letter, thought it worth abusing
in rhyme, and bepommelled it through three pages of
Bath-guide verse ; of which I subjoin a specimen :—
‘Aquarius surely vezZgvs over the world,
And of late he his water-pot strangely has twirl’d ;
Or he’s taken a cullender up by mistake,
And unceasingly dips it in some mighty lake ;
Though it is not in Lethe—for who can forget
The annoyance of getting most thoroughly wet ?
It must be in the river called Styx, I declare,
For the moment it drizzles it makes the men swear.
“Jt did rain to-morrow,â€
is growing good grammar ;
Vauxhall and camp-stools have been brought to the hammer ;
A pony-gondola is all I can keep,
And I use my umbrella and pattens in sleep :
Row out of my window, whene’er ’tis my whim
To visit a friend, and just ask, “Can you swim?â€â€™
So far my friend In short, whether in prose or in
verse, everybody railed at the weather. But this is over
1 This friend of mine is a person of great quickness and talent, who, if
she were not a beauty and a woman of fortune—that is to say, if she were
prompted by either of those two powerful sééwz/7, want of money or want
of admiration, to take due pains—would inevitably become a clever writer.
As it is, her notes and jeev Pesprit struck off & trazt de plume, have great
point and neatness. Take the following billet, which formed the label to
THE SHAW 181
now. The sun has come to dry the world; mud is
turned into dust; rivers have retreated to their proper
limits; farmers have left off grumbling; and we are
about to take a walk, as usual, as far as the Shaw, a
pretty wood about a mile off. But one of our com-
panions being a stranger to the gentle reader, we must
do him the honour of an introduction.
Dogs, when they are sure of having their own way,
have sometimes ways as odd as those of the unfurred,
unfeathered animals, who walk on two legs, and talk,
and are called rational. My beautiful white greyhound,
Mayflower, for instance, is as whimsical as the finest
lady in the land. Amongst her other fancies, she has
taken a violent affection for a most hideous stray dog,
who made his appearance here about six months ago,
and contrived to pick up a living in the village, one
can hardly tell how. Now appealing to the charity of
old Rachael Strong, the laundress—a dog-lover by pro-
fession ; now winning a meal from the lightfooted and
open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his
hind-legs, to extort by sheer beggary a scanty morsel
from some pair of ‘drouthy cronics, or solitary drover,
discussing his dinner or supper on the alehouse-bench ;
a closed basket, containing the ponderous present alluded to, last Michael-
mas day :—
‘To Atiss AM.
‘* When this you see
Remember me,â€
Was long a phrase in use ;
And so I send
To you, dear friend,
My proxy, ‘‘ What ?â€â€”A goose !’
1 Dead, alas, since this was written.
182 OUR VILLAGE
now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure con-
tempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot,
mounted on his throne, the coach-box, whose notice he
had attracted by dint of ugliness; now sharing the
commons of Master Keep the shoemaker’s pigs; now
succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of
Master Brown the shopkeeper’s fierce house-dog ; now
filching the skim-milk of Dame Wheeler’s cat :—spit
at by the cat; worried by the mastiff; chased by the
pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the
shoemaker ; flogged by the shopkeeper; teased by all
the children, and scouted by all the animals of the
parish ;—but yet living through his griefs, and bearing
them patiently, ‘for sufferance is the badge of all his
tribe ;’—-and even seeming to find, in an occasional
full meal, or a gleam of sunshine, or a wisp of dry
straw on which to repose his sorry carcase, some com-
fort in his disconsolate condition.
In this plight was he found by May, the most high-
blooded and aristocratic of greyhounds; and from this
plight did May rescue him ;—invited him into her
territory, the stable; resisted all attempts to turn him
out; reinstated him there, in spite of maid and boy,
and mistress and master ; wore out everybody’s oppo-
sition, by the activity of her protection, and the per-
tinacity of her self-will; made him sharer of her bed
and of her mess; and, finally, established him as one
of the family as firmly as herself.
Dash—for he has even won himself a name amongst
us, before he was anonymous-——Dash is a sort of a kind
’
‘ By sheer beggary.
THE SHAW 185
of a spaniel; at least there is in his mongrel composi-
tion some sign of that beautiful race. Besides his
ugliness, which is of the worst sort—that is to say, the
shabbiest—he has a limp on one leg that gives a
‘Ataid and boy, and mistress and master.’
Copyright 1893 by Meacwetllan & Co.
peculiar one-sided awkwardness to his gait; but in-
dependently of his great merit in being May’s pet, he
has other merits which serve to account for that
phenomenon—being, beyond all comparison, the most
faithful, attached, and affectionate animal that I. have
186 OUR VILLAGE
ever known; and that is saying much. He seems to
think it necessary to atone for his ugliness by extra
good conduct, and does so dance on his lame leg, and
' He likes Dash.
so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any one who has
a taste for happiness good to look at him—so that he
may now be said to stand on his own footing. We
are all rather ashamed of him when strangers come in
THE SHAW 187
the way, and think it necessary to explain that he is
May’s pet; but amongst ourselves, and those who are
used to his appearance, he has reached the point of
favouritism in his own person. I have, in common
with wiser women, the feminine weakness of loving
whatever loves me—and, therefore, I like Dash. His
master has found out that he is a capital finder, and in
spite of his lameness will hunt a field or beat a cover
with any spaniel in England—and, therefore, he likes
Dash. The boy has fought a battle, in defence of his
beauty, with another boy, bigger than himself, and beat
his opponent most handsomely—and, therefore, “e likes
Dash ; and the maids like him, or pretend to like him,
because we do—as is the fashion of that pliant and imi-
tative class) And now Dash and May follow us every-
where, and are going with us to the Shaw, as I said before
-—or rather to the cottage by the Shaw, to bespeak milk
and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah Bint—a
housewifely occupation, to which we owe some of our
pleasantest rambles.
And now we pass the sunny, dusty village street—
who would have thought, a month ago, that we should
complain of sun and dust again !—and turn the corner
where the two great oaks hang so beautifully over the
clear deep pond, mixing their cool green shadows with
the bright blue sky, and the white clouds that flit over it ;
and loiter at the wheeler’s shop, always picturesque,
with its tools, and its work, and its materials, all so
various in form, and so harmonious in colour; and its
noise, merry workmen, hammering and singing, and
188 OUR VILLAGE
making a various harmony also. The shop is rather
empty to-day, for its usual inmates are busy on the
green beyond the pond—one set building a cart, another
painting a waggon. And then we leave the village
‘A battle.’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co.
quite behind, and proceed slowly up the cool, quiet lane,
between tall hedgerows of the darkest verdure, over-
shadowing banks green and fresh as an emerald.
Not so quick as I expected, though—for they are
shooting here to-day, as Dash and I have both dis-
covered: he with great delight, fora gun to him is as
THE SHAW 189
a trumpet to a war-horse; I with no less annoyance,
for I don’t think that a partridge itself, barring the
accident of being killed, can be more startled than I at
that abominable explosion. Dash has certainly better
blood in his veins than any one would guess to look at
him. He even shows some inclination to elope into
the fields, in pursuit of those noisy iniquities. But he is
an orderly person after all, and a word has checked him.
Ah! here is a shriller din mingling with the small
artillery——-a shriller and more continuous. We are not
yet arrived within sight of Master Weston’s cottage,
snugly hidden behind a clump of elms; but we are in
full hearing of Dame Weston’s tongue, raised as usual
to scolding pitch. The Westons are new arrivals in
our neighbourhood, and the first thing heard of them
was a complaint from the wife to our magistrate of her
husband’s beating her: it was a regular charge of assault
—an information in full form. A most piteous case did
Dame Weston make of it, softening her voice for the
nonce into a shrill tremulous whine, and exciting the
mingled pity and anger—pity towards herself, anger
towards her husband—of the whole female world, piti-
ful and indignant as the female world is wont to be on
such occasions. Every woman in the parish railed at
Master Weston; and poor Master Weston was summoned
to attend the bench on the ensuing Saturday, and answer
the charge; and such was the clamour abroad and at
home, that the unlucky culprit, terrified at the sound
of a warrant and a constable, ran away, and was not
heard of for a fortnight.
190 OUR VILLAGE
At the end of that time he was discovered, and
brought to the bench; and Dame Weston again told
her story, and, as before, on the full cry. She had no
witnesses, and the bruises of which she made complaint
‘ The Bench,’
Copyright 1893 by Macmillan & Co,
had disappeared, and there were no women present to
make common cause with the sex. Still, however, the
general feeling was against Master Weston; and it
would have gone hard with him when he was called in,
if a most unexpected witness had not risen up in his
THE SHAW I9I
favour. His wife had brought in her arms a little girl
about eighteen months old, partly perhaps to move com-
passion in her favour; for a woman with a child in her
arms is always an object that excites kind feelings.
The little girl had looked shy and frightened, and had
been as quiet as a lamb during her mother’s examina-
tion; but she no sooner saw her father, from whom
192 OUR VILLAGE
she had been a fortnight separated, than she clapped
her hands, and laughed, and cried, ‘Daddy! daddy !’
and sprang into his arms, and hung round his neck,
and covered him with kisses—again shouting, ‘ Daddy,
come home! daddy! daddy!’—and finally nestled
her little head in his bosom, with a fulness of content-
ment, an assurance of tenderness and protection such
as no wife-beating tyrant ever did inspire, or ever could
inspire, since the days of King Solomon. Our magis-
trates acted in the very spirit of the Jewish monarch:
they accepted the evidence of nature, and dismissed the
complaint. And subsequent events have fully justified
their decision; Mistress Weston proving not only re-
nowned for the feminine accomplishment of scolding
(tongue-banging, it is called in our parts, a compound
word which deserves to be Greek), but is actually her-
self addicted to administering the conjugal discipline,
the infliction of which she was pleased to impute to her
luckless husband.
Now we cross the stile, and walk up the fields to
the Shaw. How beautifully green this pasture looks!
and how finely the evening sun glances between the
boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash, and aspen !
and how sweet the hedgerows are with woodbine and
wild scabious, or, as the country people call it, the gipsy-
rose! Here is little Dolly Weston, the unconscious
witness, with cheeks as red as a real rose, tottering up
the path to meet her father. And here is the carroty-
poled urchin, George Coper, returning from work, and
singing ‘Home! sweet Home!’ at the top of his voice ;
THE SHAW 193
and then, when the notes prove too high for him, con-
tinuing the air in a whistle, until he has turned the
impassable corner; then taking up again the song and
the words, ‘Home! sweet Home!’ and looking as if
he felt their full import, ploughboy though he be. And
‘ Tottering up the path.’
so he does; for he is one of a large, an honest, a kind,
and an industrious family, where all goes well, and
where the poor ploughboy is sure of finding cheerful
faces and coarse comforts—all that he has learned to
desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughly con-
tented as George Coper! All his luxuries a cricket-
match !—all his wants satisfied in ‘home! sweet home!’
oO
194 OUR VILLAGE
Nothing but noises to-day! They are clearing
Farmer Brooke's great bean-field, and crying the
‘Harvest Home!’ in a chorus, before which all other
fade
away, and become faint echoes. A pleasant noise is
sounds—the song, the scolding, the gunnery
that! though, for one’s ears’ sake, one makes some
haste to get away from it. And _ here, in happy time,
is that pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad pathway,
its tangled dingles, its nuts and its honeysuckles ;—
and, carrying away a faggot of those sweetest flowers,
we reach Hannah Bint’s: of whom, and of whose
doings, we shall say more another time.
NoTE.—Poor Dash is also dead. We did not keep
him long, indeed I believe that he died of the transition
from starvation to good feed, as dangerous to a dog’s
stomach, and to most stomachs, as the less agreeable
change from good feed to starvation. He has been
succeeded in place and favour by another Dash, not less
amiable in demeanour and far more creditable in appear-
ance, bearing no small resemblance to the pet spanicl of
my friend Master Dinely, he who stole the bone from
the magpies, and who figures as the first Dash of this
volume, Let not the unwary reader opine, that in as-
signing the same name to three several individuals, I am
acting as an humble imitator of the inimitable writer
who has given immortality to the Peppers and the
Mustards, on the one hand; or showing a poverty of
invention or a want of acquaintance with the bead-roll
of canine appellations on the other. I merely, with my
THE SHAW 195
usual scrupulous fidelity, take the names as I find them.
The fact is that half the handsome spaniels in England
are called Dash, just as half the tall footmen are called
Thomas. The name belongs to the species. Sitting in
an open carriage one day last summer at the door of a
farmhouse where my father had some business, I saw a
noble and beautiful animal of this kind lying in great
state and laziness on the steps, and felt an immediate
desire to make acquaintance with him. My father, who
had had the same fancy, had patted him and called him
‘poor fellow’ in passing, without eliciting the smallest
notice in return. ‘Dash!’ cried I at a venture, ‘good
Dash! noble Dash!’ and up he started in a moment,
making but one spring from the door into the gig. Of
course I was right in my guess. The gentleman’s name
was Dash.
NUT ENG
\| eptember QA. — One of those delicious
autumnal days, when the air, the sky,
and the earth seem lulled into a universal
calm, softer and milder even than May.
We sallied forth for a walk, in a mood
congenial to the weather and the season, avoiding, by
mutual consent, the bright and sunny common, and the
gay highroad, and stealing through shady, unfrequented
lanes, where we were not likely to meet any one,—not
even the pretty family procession which in other years
we used to contemplate with so much interest—the father,
mother, and children, returning from the wheat-field, the
little ones laden with bristling close-tied bunches of
wheat-ears, their own gleanings, or a bottle and a basket
which had contained their frugal dinner, whilst the
mother would carry her babe hushing and lulling it,
and the father and an elder child trudged after with the
cradle, all seeming weary and all happy. We shall not
see such a procession as this to-day ; for the harvest is
200 OUR VILLAGE
nearly over, the fields are deserted, the silence may almost
be felt. Except the wintry notes of the redbreast,
nature herself is mute. But how beautiful, how gentle,
how harmonious, how rich! The rain has preserved to
the herbage all the freshness and verdure of spring, and
the world of leaves has lost nothing of its midsummer
brightness, and the harebell is on the banks, and the
woodbine in the hedges, and the low furze, which the
lambs cropped in the spring, has burst again into its
golden blossoms.
All is beautiful that the eye can see ; perhaps the
more beautiful for being shut in with a forest-like close-
ness. We have no prospect in this labyrinth of lanes,
cross-roads, mere cart-ways, leading to the innumerable
little farms into which this part of the parish is divided.
Up-hill or down, these quiet woody lanes scarcely give
us a peep at the world, except when, leaning over a
gate, we look into one of the small enclosures, hemmed
in with hedgerows, so closely set with growing timber,
that the meady opening looks almost like a glade ina
wood ; or when some cottage, planted at a corner of
one of the little greens formed by the meeting of these
cross-ways, almost startles us by the unexpected sight
of the dwellings of men in such a solitude. But that
we have more of hill and dale, and that our cross-roads
are excellent in their kind, this side of our parish would
resemble the description given of La Vendée, in Madame
Laroche-Jacquelin’s most interesting book. TI am sure
* An almost equally interesting account of that very peculiar and interest-
ing scenery, may be found in The Afaid of La Vendée, an English novel,
NUTTING 201
if wood can entitle a country to be called Le Bocage,
none can have a better right to the name. ven this
pretty snug farmhouse on the hillside, with its front
covered with the rich vine, which goes wreathing up to
the very top of the clustered chimney, and its sloping
orchard full of fruit—even this pretty quiet nest can
hardly peep out of its leaves. Ah! they are gathering
in the orchard harvest. Look at that young rogue in
the old mossy apple-tree—that great tree, bending with
the weight of its golden-rennets—see how he pelts his
little sister beneath with apples as red and as round as
her own cheeks, while she, with her outstretched frock, is
trying to catch them, and laughing and offering to pelt
again as often as one bobs against her ; and look at that
still younger imp, who, as grave as a judge, is creeping
on hands and knees under the tree, picking up the
land depositing them so
apples as they fall so deedily,
honestly in the great basket on the grass, already fixed
so firmly and opened so widely, and filled almost to
overflowing by the brown rough fruitage of the golden-
rennet’s next neighbour the russeting; and sec that
smallest urchin of all, seated apart in infantine state on
the turfy bank, with that toothsome piece of deformity
a crumpling in each hand, now biting from one swect,
remarkable for its simplicity and truth of painting, written by Mrs. Le Noir,
the daughter of Christopher Smart, an inheritrix of much of his talent. Ter
works deserve to be better known.
1 «Deedily,’—I am not quite sure that this word is good English ; but
it is genuine Hampshire, and is used by the most correct of female writers,
Miss Austen. It means (and it is no small merit that it has no exact
synonym) anything done with a profound and plodding attention, an action
which engrosses all the powers of mind and body.
202 OUR VILLAGE
hard, juicy morsel and now from another.—Is not that
a pretty English picture? And _ then, farther up the
“
“lu the apple-trec.
orchard, that bold hardy lad, the eldest born, who has
scaled (Heaven knows how) the tall, straight upper
branch of that great pear-tree, and is sitting there as
NUTTING - 203
securely and as fearlessly, in as much real safety and
apparent danger, as a sailor on the top-mast. Now he
shakes the tree with a mighty swing that brings down
a pelting shower of stony bergamots, which the father
gathers rapidly up, whilst the mother can hardly assist
for her motherly fear
a fear which only spurs the
spirited boy to bolder ventures. Is not that a pretty
picture? And they are such a handsome family too,
the Brookers. Ido not know that there is any gipsy
blood, but there is the true gipsy complexion, richly
brown, with cheeks and lips so red, black hair curling
close to their heads in short crisp rings, white shining
teeth
eclipses your mere roses and lilies. Even Lizzy, the
and such eyes!—That sort of beauty entirely
prettiest of fair children, would look poor and watery
by the side of Willy Brooker, the sober little personage
who is picking up the apples with his small chubby
hands, and filling the basket so orderly, next to his
father the most useful man in the field. ‘Willy!’
He hears without seeing ; for we are quite hidden by
the high bank, and a spreading hawthorn bush that over-
tops it, though between the lower branches and the
grass we have found a convenient peep-hole. ‘ Willy !’
The voice sounds to him like some fairy dream, and
the black eyes are raised from the ground with sudden
wonder, the long silky eyelashes thrown back till they
rest on the delicate brow, and a deeper blush is burning
on those dark cheeks, and a smile is dimpling about
those scarlet lips. But the voice is silent now, and the
little quiet boy, after a moment’s pause, is gone coolly
204 OUR VILLAGE
to work again. He is indeed a most lovely child. I
think some day or other he must marry Lizzy ; I shall
propose the match to their respective mammas. At
present the partics are rather too young for a wedding
—the intended bridegroom being, as I should judge,
six, or thereabout, and the fair bride barely five,—but
at least we might have a betrothment after the royal
fashion,—there could be no harm in that. Miss Lizzy,
I have no doubt, would be as demure and coquettish
as if ten winters more had gone over her head, and
poor Willy would open his innocent black eyes, and
wonder what was going forward. They would be the
very Oberon and Titania of the village, the fairy king
and queen.
Ah! here is the hedge along which the periwinkle
wreathes and twines so profusely, with its evergreen
leaves shining like the myrtle, and its starry blue
flowers. It is seldom found wild in this part of
England; but, when we do meet with it, it is so
abundant and so welcome,—the very robin-redbreast of
flowers, a winter friend. Unless in those unfrequent
frosts which destroy all vegetation, it blossoms from
September to June, surviving the last lingering crane’s-
bill, forerunning the earliest primrose, hardier even than
the mountain daisy,—peeping out from beneath the
snow, looking at itself in the ice, smiling through the
tempests of life, and yet welcoming and enjoying the
sunbeams. Oh, to be like that flower !
The little spring that has been bubbling under the
hedge all along the hillside, begins, now that we have
NUTTING 205
mounted the eminence and are imperceptibly descending,
to deviate into a capricious variety of clear deep pools
and channels, so narrow and so choked with weeds,
that a child might overstep them. The hedge has also
changed its character. It is no longer the close com-
pact vegetable wall of hawthorn, and maple, and brier-
roses, intertwined with bramble and woodbine, and
crowned with large elms or thickly-set saplings. No!
the pretty meadow which rises high above us, backed
and almost surrounded by a tall coppice, needs no
defence on our side but its own steep bank, garnished
with tufts of broom, with pollard oaks wreathed with
ivy, and here and there with long patches of hazel over-
hanging the water. ‘Ah, there are still nuts on that
bough!’ and in an instant my dear companion, active
and eager and delighted as a boy, has hooked down
with his walking-stick one of the lissome hazel stalks,
and cleared it of its tawny clusters, and in another
moment he has mounted the bank, and is in the midst
of the nuttery, now transferring the spoil from the
lower branches into that vast variety of pockets which
gentlemen carry about them, now bending the tall tops
into the lane, holding them down by main force, so
that I might reach them and enjoy the pleasure of
collecting some of the plunder mysclf. A very great
pleasure. he knew it would be. I doffed my shawl,
tucked up my flounces, turned» my straw bonnet into
a basket, and began gathering and scrambling—for,
manage it how you may, nutting is scrambling work,
those boughs, however tightly you may grasp them by
206 OUR VILLAGE
the young fragrant twigs and the bright green leaves,
will recoil and burst away ; but there is a pleasure even
in that: so on we go, scrambling and gathering with
all our might and all our glee. Oh, what an enjoyment !
All my life long I have had a passion for that sort of
secking which implies finding (the secret, I believe, of
the love of field-sports, which is in man’s mind a natural
impulse)—therefore I love violeting,—therefore, when
we had a fine garden, I used to love to gather straw-
berries, and cut asparagus, and above all, to collect the
filberts from the shrubberies : but this hedgerow nutting
beats that sport all to nothing. That was a make-
believe thing, compared with this ; there was no surprise,
no suspense, no unexpectedness—it was as inferior to
this wild nutting, as the turning out of a bag-fox is to
unearthing the fellow, in the eyes of a staunch fox-
hunter.
Oh, what enjoyment this nut-gathering is! They
are in such abundance, that it seems as if there were
not a boy in the parish, nor a young man, nor a young
woman,—for a basket of nuts is the universal tribute
of country gallantry ; our pretty damsel Harriet has
had at least half a dozen this season ; but no one has
found out these. And they are so full too, we lose
half of them from over-ripeness ; they drop from the
socket at the slightest motion. If we lose, there is one
who finds. May is as fond of nuts asa squirrel, and
cracks the shell and extracts the kernel with equal
dexterity. Her white glossy head is upturned now to
watch them as they fall. See how her necl is thrown
NUTTING 207
back like that of a swan, and how beautifully her folded
ears quiver with expectation, and how her quick cyc
follows the rustling noise, and her light feet dance and
pat the ground, and leap up with eagerness, seeming
almost sustained in the air, just as I have seen her
when Brush is beating a hedgerow, and she knows
from his questing that there is a hare afoot. Sec, she
has caught that nut just before it touched the water ;
but the water would have been no defence,—she fishes
them from the bottom, she delves after them amongst
the matted grass—even my bonnet—how beggingly
she looks at that! ‘Oh, what a pleasure nutting is !—
Is it not, May? But the pockets are almost full, and
so is the basket-bonnet, and that bright watch the sun
says it is late; and after all it is wrong to rob the poor
boys—is it not, May ?’—-May shakes her graceful head
denyingly, as if she understood the question-——‘ And we
must go home now—must we not? But we will come
nutting again some time or other—shall we not, my
May?’
etober 27t4.—A lovely autumnal day :
the air soft, balmy, genial; the sky of
that softened and delicate blue upon
which the eye loves to rest,—the blue
which gives such relief to the rich beauty of the earth,
all around glowing in the ripe and mellow tints of the
most gorgeous of the seasons. Really such an autumn
may well compensate our English climate for the fine
spring of the south, that spring of which the poets talk,
but which we so seldom enjoy. Such an autumn glows
upon us like a splendid evening ; it is the very sunset
of the year; and I have been tempted forth into a
wider range of enjoyment than usual. This wadk (if I
may use the Irish figure of speech called a bull) will
be a ride. A very dear friend has beguiled me into
accompanying her in her pretty equipage to her
beautiful home, four miles off; and having sent forward
in the style of a running footman the servant who had
driven her, she assumes the reins, and off we set.
My fair companion is a person whom nature and
212 OUR VILLAGE
fortune would have spoiled if they could. She is one
of those striking women whom a stranger cannot
pass without turning to look again; tall and finely
proportioned, with a bold Roman contour of figure and
feature, a delicate English complexion, and an air of
distinction altogether her own. Her beauty is duchess-
like. She seems born to wear feathers and diamonds,
and to form the grace and ornament of a court; and
the noble frankness and simplicity of her countenance
and manner confirm the impression. Destiny has,
however, dealt more kindly by her. She is the wife
of a rich country gentleman of high descent and
higher attainments, to whom she is most devotedly
attached,—the mother of a little girl as lovely as
herself, and the delight of all who have the happiness
of her acquaintance, to whom she is endeared not
merely by her remarkable sweetness of temper and
kindness of heart, but by the singular ingenuousness
and openness of character which communicate an
indescribable charm to her conversation. She is as
transparent as water. You may see every colour, every
shade of a mind as lofty and beautiful as her person.
Talking with her is like being in the Palace of Truth
described by Madame de Genlis; and yet so kindly
are her feclings, so great her indulgence to the little
failings and foibles of our common nature, so intense
her sympathy with the wants, the wishes, the sorrows,
and the happiness of her fellow-creatures, that, with all
her frank-speaking, I never knew her make an enemy
or lose a friend.
THE VISIT 213
But we must get on. What would she say if she
knew I was putting her into print? We must get on
up the hill. Ah! that is precisely what we are not likely
to do! This horse, this beautiful and high-bred horse,
well-fed, and fat and glossy, who stood prancing at our
gate like an Arabian, has suddenly turned sulky. He
does not indeed stand quite still, but his way of moving
is little better—the slowest and most sullen of all walks.
Even they who ply the hearse at funerals, sad-looking
beasts who totter under black feathers, go faster. It is
of no use to admonish him by whip, or rein, or word.
The rogue has found out that it is a weak and tender
hand that guides him now. Oh, for one pull, one
stroke of his old driver, the groom! how he would fly!
But there is the groom half a mile before us, out of
earshot, clearing the ground at a. capital rate, beating
us hollow. He has just turned the top of the hill ;-—
and in a moment—ay, ow he is out of sight, and will
undoubtedly so continue till he meets us at the lawn
gate. Well! there is no great harm. It is only
prolonging the pleasure of enjoying together this
charming scenery in this fine weather. If once we
make up our minds not to care how slowly our steed
goes, not to fret ourselves by vain exertions, it is no
matter what his pace may be. There is little doubt of
his getting home by sunset, and that will content us.
He is, after all, a fine noble animal; and perhaps when
he finds that we are determined to give him his way,
he may relent and give us ours. All his sex are
sticklers for dominion, though, when it is undisputed,
2r4 OUR VILLAGE
some of them are generous enough to abandon it.
Two or three of the most discreet wives of my
acquaintance contrive to manage their husbands
sufficiently with no better secret than this seeming
‘A fine noble animal.’
submission; and in our case the example has the
more weight since we have no possible way of helping
ourselves.
Thus philosophising, we reached the top of the hill,
and viewed with ‘reverted eyes’ the beautiful prospect
THE VISIT 215
that lay bathed in golden sunshine behind us. Cowper
says, with that boldness of expressing in poetry the
commonest and simplest feelings, which is perhaps one
great secret of his originality,
‘Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily seen,
Please daily, and whose novelty survives
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.’
Every day I walk up this hill—every day I pause at
the top to admire the broad winding road with the
green waste on each side, uniting it with the thickly
timbered hedgerows; the two pretty cottages at
unequal distances, placed so as to mark the bends ;
the village beyond, with its mass of roofs and clustered
chimneys peeping through the trees; and the rich
distance, where cottages, mansions, churches, towns,
seem embowered in some wide forest, and shut in by
blue shadowy hills. Every day I admire this most
beautiful landscape; yet never did it seem to me so
fine or so glowing as now. All the tints of the
glorious autumn, orange, tawny, yellow, red, are poured
in profusion among the bright greens of the meadows
and turnip fields, till the eyes are satiated with colour ;
and then before us we have the common with its
picturesque roughness of surface tufted with cottages,
dappled with water, edging off on one side into fields
and farms and orchards, and terminated on the other
by the princely oak avenue. What a richness and
variety the wild broken ground gives to the luxuriant
cultivation of the rest of the landscape! Cowper has
described it for me. How perpetually, as we walk in
216 OUR VILLAGE
the country, his vivid pictures recur to the memory !
Here is his common and mine!
‘The common overgrown with fern, and rough
With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform’d
And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom,
And decks itself with ornaments of gold ;—
there the turf
Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs
And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense
With luxury of unexpected sweets.’
The description is exact. There, too, to the left is
my cricket-ground (Cowper's common wanted that
finishing grace); and there stands one solitary urchin,
as if in contemplation of its past and future glories;
alas! cricket is over for the season. Ah! it is
Ben Kirby, next brother to Joe, king of the youngsters,
and probably his successor—for this Michaelmas has
cost us Joe! He is promoted from the farm to the
mansion-house, two miles off; there he cleans shoes,
rubs knives, and runs on errands, and is, as his mother
expresses it, ‘a sort of ’prentice to the footman.’ — I
should not wonder if Joe, some day or other, should
overtop the footman, and rise to be butler; and his
splendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss
of this great favourite. In the meantime we have Ben.
Ben Kirby is a year younger than Joe, and the
school-fellow and rival of Jem Eusden. To be sure his
abilities lie in rather a different line: Jem is a scholar,
Ben is a wag: Jem is great in figures and writing, Ben
in faces and mischief. His master says of him, that,
THE VISIT 217
if there were two such in the school, he must resign his
office; and as far as my observation goes, the worthy
pedagogue is right. Ben is, it must be confessed, a
‘’ Prentice to the footman.'
great corrupter of gravity. He hath an exceeding
aversion to authority and decorum, and a wonderful
boldness and dexterity in overthrowing the one and
puzzling the other. His contortions of visage arc
astounding. His ‘power over his own muscles and
218 OUR VILLAGE
those of other people’ is almost equal to that of Liston ;
and indeed the original face, flat and square and Chinese
in its shape, of a fine tan complexion, with a snub nose,
and a slit for a mouth, is nearly as comical as that
matchless performer’s. When aided by Ben’s singular
mobility of feature, his knowing winks and grins and
shrugs and nods, together with a certain dry shrewdness,
a habit of saying sharp things, and a marvellous gift of
impudence, it forms as fine a specimen as possible of a
humorous country boy, an oddity in embryo. Every-
body likes Ben, except his butts (which may perhaps
comprise half his acquaintance) ; and of them no one so
thoroughly hates and dreads him as our parish school-
master, a most worthy King Log, whom Ben dumbfounds
twenty times a day. He is a great ornament of the
cricket-ground, has a real genius for the game, and
displays it after a very original manner, under the
disguise of awkwardness—-as the clown shows off his
agility in a pantomime. Nothing comes amiss to him.
By the bye, he would have been the very lad for us in
our present dilemma; not a horse in England could
master Ben Kirby. But we are too far from him now.
and perhaps it is as well that we are so. I believe the
rogue has a kindness for me, in remembrance of certain
apples and nuts, which my usual companion, who
delights in his wit, is accustomed to dole out to him.
But it is a Robin Goodfellow nevertheless, a perfect
Puck, that loves nothing on earth so well as mischief.
Perhaps the horse may be the safer conductor of the
two,
THE VISIT 219
The avenue is quite alive to-day. Old women are
picking up twigs and acorns, and pigs of all sizes doing
their utmost to spare them the latter part of the trouble ;
boys and girls groping for beech-nuts under yonder
clump; and a group of younger elves collecting as many
dead leaves as they can find to feed the bonfire which
a sort
is smoking away so briskly amongst the trees,
of rehearsal of the grand bonfire nine days hence; of
the loyal conflagration of the arch-traitor Guy Vauy,
which is annually solemnised in the avenue, accompanied
with as much of squibbery and crackery as our boys
can beg or borrow—not to say steal. Ben Kirby is a
great man on the 5th of November. All the savings
of a month, the hoarded halfpence, the new farthings,
the very luck-penny, go off 7 fumo on that night. Tor
my part, I like this daylight mockery better. There is
no gunpowder—odious gunpowder! no noise but the
merry shouts of the small fry, so shrill and happy, and
the cawing of the rooks, who are wheeling in large
circles overhead, and wondering what is going forward
in their territory-—seeming in their loud clamour to ask
what that light smoke may mean that curls so prettily
amongst their old oaks, towering as if to mect the
clouds. There is something very intelligent in the ways
of that black people the rooks, particularly in their
wonder. I suppose it results from their numbers and
their unity of purpose, a sort of collective and corporate
wisdom. Yet geese congregate also; and geese never
by any chance look wise. But then geese are a
domestic fowl; we have spoiled them; and rooks are
220 OUR VILLAGE
free commoners of nature, who use the habitations we
provide for them, tenant our groves and our avenues,
but never dream of becoming our subjects.
What a labyrinth of a road this is! I do think
there are four turnings in the short half-mile between the
avenue and the mill. And what a pity, as my com-
panion observes—not that our good and jolly miller,
the very representative of the old English yeomanry,
should be so rich, but that one consequence of his riches
should be the pulling down of the prettiest old mill that
ever looked at itself in the Loddon, with the picturesque,
low-browed, irregular cottage, which stood with its
light-pointed roof, its clustered chimneys, and its ever-
open door, looking like the real abode of comfort and
hospitality, to build this huge, staring, frightful, red-
brick mill, as ugly as a manufactory, and this great
square house, ugly and red to match, just behind. The
old buildings always used to remind me of Wollett’s
beautiful engraving of a scene in the Maid of the Mill.
It will be long before any artist will make a drawing of
this. Only think of this redness in a picture! this
boiled lobster of a house! Falstaff’s description of
Bardolph’s nose would look pale in the comparison.
Here is that monstrous machine of a tilted waggon,
with its load of flour, and its four fat horses. I wonder
whether our horse will have the decency to get out of
the way. If he does not, I am sure we cannot make
him ; and that enormous ship upon wheels, that ark on
dry land, would roll over us like the car of Juggernaut.
Really
Oh no! there is ng danger now. I should
THE VISIT 221
have, remembered that it is my friend Samuel Long
who drives the mill team. He will take care of us.
‘Thank you, Samuel!’ And Samuel has put us on
our way, steered us safely past his waggon, escorted us
over the bridge ; and now, having seen us through our
‘The mill team.
immediate difficulties, has parted from us with a very
civil bow and good-humoured smile, as one who is
always civil and good-humoured, but with a certain
triumphant masterful look in his eyes, which I have
noted in men, even the best of them, when a woman
gets into straits by attempting manly employments.
He has done us great good though, and may be allowed
his little feeling of superiority. The parting salute he
222 OUR VILLAGE
bestowed on our steed, in the shape of an astounding
crack of his huge whip, has put that refractory animal
on his mettle. On we go! past the glazier’s pretty
house, with its porch and its filbert walk; along the
narrow lane bordered with elms, whose fallen leaves
have made the road one yellow; past that little farm-
house with the horse-chestnut trees before, glowing like
oranges ; past the whitewashed school on the other side,
gay with October roses ; past the park, and the lodge,
and the mansion, where once dwelt the great Earl of
Clarendon ;—and now the rascal has begun to discover
that Samuel Long and his whip are a mile off, and that
his mistress is driving him, and he slackens his pace
accordingly. Perhaps he feels the beauty of the road
just here, and goes slowly to enjoy it. Very beautiful
it certainly is. The park paling forms the boundary
on one side, with fine clumps of oak, and deer in all
attitudes ; the water, tufted with alders, lowing along
on the other. Another turn, and the water winds away,
succeeded by a low hedge, and a sweep of green
meadows ; whilst the park and its palings are replaced
by a steep bank, on which stands a small, quiet, village
alehouse ; and higher up, embosomed in wood, is the
little country church, with its sloping churchyard and its
low white steeple, peeping out from amongst magnificent
vew-trees :—
‘Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and invet’rately convolved.’
WORDSWORTH,
THE VISIT 223
No village church was ever more happily placed. It is
the very image of the peace and humbleness inculcated
within its walls. ,
Ah! here is a higher hill rising before us, almost
like a mountain. How grandly the view opens as we
ascend over that wild bank, overgrown with fern, and
heath, and gorse, and between those tall hollies, glowing
with their coral berries! What an expanse! But we
have little time to gaze at present; for that piece of
perversity, our horse, who has walked over so much
level ground, has now, inspired, I presume, by a desire
to revisit his stable, taken it into that unaccountable
noddle of his to trot up this, the very steepest hill in
the county. Here we are on the top; and in five
- minutes we have reached the lawn gate, and are in the
very midst of that beautiful piece of art or nature (I
do not know to which class it belongs), the pleasurc-
ground of F. Hill. Never was the ‘prophetic eye of
taste’ exerted with more magical skill than in these
plantations. Thirty years ago this place had no exist-
ence; it was a mere undistinguished tract of field and
meadow and common land; now it is a mimic forest,
delighting the eye with the finest combinations of trees
and shrubs, the rarest effects of form and foliage, and
bewildering the mind with its green glades, and imper-
vious recesses, and apparently interminable extent. It
is the triumph of landscape gardening, and never more
beautiful than in this autumn sunset, lighting up the
ruddy beech and the spotted sycamore, and gilding the
shining fir-cones that hang so thickly amongst the dark
224 OUR VILLAGE
pines. The robins are singing around us, as if they
too felt the magic of the hour. How gracefully the
road winds through the leafy labyrinth, leading imper-
ceptibly to the more ornamented sweep. Here we are
at the door amidst geraniums, and carnations, and jas-
mines, still in flower. Ah! here is a flower sweeter than
all, a bird gayer than the robin, the little bird that chirps
to the tune of ‘mamma! mamma!’ the bright-faced
fairy, whose tiny feet come pattering along, making a
merry music, mamma’s own Frances! And following
her guidance, here we are in the dear round room time
enough to catch the last rays of the sun, as they light
the noble landscape which lies like a panorama around
us, lingering longest on that long island of old thorns
and stunted oaks, the oasis of B. Heath, and then
vanishing in a succession of gorgeous clouds.
October 28ti.—Another soft and brilliant morning.
But the pleasures of to-day must be written in short-
hand. I have left myself no room for notes of admira-
tion,
First we drove about the coppice: an extensive
wood of oak, and elm, and beech, chiefly the former,
which adjoins the park-paling of F. Hill, of which
demesne, indeed, it forms one of the most delightful
parts. The roads through the coppice are studiously
wild; so that they have the appearance of mere cart-
tracks: and the manner in which the ground is tumbled
about, the steep declivities, the sunny slopes, the sudden
swells and falls, now a close narrow valley, then a sharp
ascent to an eminence commanding an immense extent
THE VIisIT 225
of prospect, have a striking air of natural beauty, de-
veloped and heightened by the perfection of art. All
this, indeed, was familiar to me; the colouring only
was new. I had been there in early spring, when the
fragrant palms were on the willow, and the yellow
tassels on the hazel, and every twig was swelling with
renewed life; and I had been there again and again
in the green leafiness of midsummer ; but never as
now, when the dark verdure of the fir-plantations, hang-
ing over the picturesque and unequal paling, partly
covered with moss and ivy, contrasts so remarkably
with the shining orange-leaves of the beech, already
half fallen, the pale yellow of the scattering elm, the
deeper and richer tints of the oak, and the glossy stems
of the ‘lady of the woods,’ the delicate weeping birch.
The underwood is no less picturesque. The red-spotted
leaves and redder berries of the old thorns, the scarlet
festoons of the bramble, the tall fern of every hue, seem
to vie with the brilliant mosaic of the ground, now
covered with dead leaves and strewn with fir-cones,
now, where a little glade intervenes, gay with various
mosses and splendid fungz How beautiful is this
coppice to-day! especially where the little spring, as clear
as crystal, comes bubbling out from the old ‘fantastic’
beech root, and trickles over the grass, bright and silent
as the dew in a May morning. The wood-pigeons
(who are just returned from their summer migration,
and are cropping the ivy berries) add their low cooings,
the very note of love, to the slight fluttering of the
falling leaves in the quict air, giving a voice to the sun-
Q
226 OUR VILLAGE
shine and the beauty. This coppice is a place to live
and die in. But we must go. And how fine is the
ascent which leads us again into the world, past those
cottages hidden as in a pit, and by that hanging
orchard and that rough heathy bank! The scenery in
this one spot has a wildness, an abruptness of rise and
fall, rare in any part of England, rare above all in this
rich and lovely but monotonous county. It is Switzer-
land in miniature.
And now we cross the hill to pay a morning visit
to the family at the great house,—another fine place,
commanding another fine sweep of country. The
park, studded with old trees, and sinking gently into
a valley, rich in wood and water, is in the best style
of ornamental landscape, though more according to the
common routine of gentlemen’s seats than the singularly
original place which we have just left. There is, how-
ever, one distinctive beauty in the grounds of the great
house ;~-the magnificent firs which shade the terraces
and surround the sweep, giving out in summer odours
really Sabean, and now in this low autumn sun pro-
ducing an effect almost magical, as the huge red trunks,
garlanded with ivy, stand out from the deep shadows
like an army of giants. Indoors—Oh I must not take
tay readers indoors, or we shall never get away !|-—
Indoors the sunshine is brighter still; for there, in a
lofty, lightsome room, sat a damsel fair and arch and
piquante, one whom Titian or Velasquez should be born
again to paint, leaning over an instrument? as sparkling
1 The dital harp.
THE VISIT 227
and fanciful as herself, singing pretty French romances,
and Scottish Jacobite songs, and all sorts of graceful
and airy drolleries picked up I know not where
an
English improvisatrice! a gayer Annot Lyle! whilst her
sister, of a higher order of beauty, and with an earnest
kindness in her smile that deepens its power, lends to
the piano, as her father to the violin, an expression, a
sensibility, a spirit, an eloquence almost superhuman
—almost divine! Oh to hear these two instruments
accompanying my dear companion (I forgot to say
that she is a singer worthy to be so accompanied) in
Haydn’s exquisite canzonet, “She never told her love,â€
——to hear her voice, with all its power, its sweetness,
its gush of sound, so sustained and assisted by modula-
tions that rivalled its intensity of expression ; to hear
at once such poctry, such music, such execution, is a
pleasure never to be forgotten, or mixed with meaner
things. 1 seem to hear it still.
As in the bursting spring time o’er the eye
Of one who haunts the fields fair visions creep
Beneath the closed lids (afore dull sleep
Dims the quick fancy) of sweet flowers that lic
On grassy banks, oxlip of orient dye,
And palest primrose and blue violet,
All in their fresh and dewy beauty set,
Pictured within the sense, and will not fly:
So in mine ear resounds and lives again
One mingled melody,—a voice, a pair
Of instruments most voice-like! Of the air
Rather than of the earth seems that high strain,
A spirit’s song, and worthy of the train
That soothed old Prospero with music rare.
HANNAH BINT
TO Pint:
HE Shaw, leading to Hannah Bint’s
habitation, is, as I perhaps have said
before, a very pretty mixture of wood
and coppice; that is to say, a tract
of thirty or forty acres covered with
fine growing timber—ash, and oak, and elm, very
regularly planted; and interspersed here and there
with large patches of underwood, hazel, maple, birch,
holly, and hawthorn, woven into almost impenetrable
thickets by long wreaths of the bramble, the briony,
and the brier-rose, or by the pliant and twisting
garlands of the wild honeysuckle. In other parts,
the Shaw is quite clear of its bosky undergrowth,
and clothed only with large beds of feathery fern, or
carpets of flowers, primroses, orchises, cowslips, ground-
ivy, crane’s-bill, cotton-grass, Solomon’s seal, and forget-
me-not, crowded together with a profusion and brilliancy
of colour, such as I have rarely seen equalled even in
a garden. Here the wild hyacinth really enamels the
ground with its fresh and lovely purple ; there,
232 OUR VILLAGE
‘On aged roots, with bright green mosses clad,
Dwells the wood-sorrel, with its bright thin leaves
Heart-shaped and triply folded, and its root
Creeping like beaded coral ; whilst around
Flourish the copse’s pride, anemones,
With rays like golden studs on ivory laid
Most delicate ; but touch’d with purple clouds,
Fit crown for April’s fair but changeful brow,’
The variety is much greater than I have enumerated ;
for the ground is so unequal, now swelling in gentle
accents, now dimpling into dells and hollows, and the
soil so different in different parts, that the sylvan Flora
is unusually extensive and complete,
The season is, however, now too late for this floweri-
ness; and except the tufted woodbines, which have
continued in bloom during the whole of this lovely
autumn, and some lingering garlands of the purple wild
vetch, wreathing round the thickets, and uniting with
the ruddy leaves of the bramble, and the pale festoons
of the briony, there is little to call one’s attention from
the grander beauties of the trees—the sycamore, its
broad Icaves already spotted—the oak, heavy with
acorns—and the delicate shining rind of the weeping
birch, ‘the lady of the woods, thrown out in strong
relief from a background of holly and hawthorn, each
studded with coral berries, and backed with old beeches,
beginning to assume the rich tawny hue which makes
them perhaps the most picturesque of autumnal trees,
as the transparent freshness of their young foliage is
undoubtedly the choicest ornament of the forest in
spring.
ITTANNAITL BINT
to
A sudden turn round one of these magnificent
beeches brings us to the boundary of the Shaw, and
leaning upon a rude gate, we look over an open space
of about ten acres of ground, still more varied and
broken than that which we have passed, and surrounded
on all sides by thick woodland. Asa picce of colour,
nothing can be well finer. The ruddy glow of the
heath-flower, contrasting, on the one hand, with .the
golden-blossomed furze—on the other, with a patch of
buck-wheat, of which the bloom is not past, although
the grain be ripening, the beautiful buck-wheat, whose
transparent leaves and stalks are so brightly tinged
with vermilion, while the delicate pink-white of the
flower, a paler persicaria, has a feathery fall, at once so
rich and so graceful, and a fresh and reviving odour,
like that of birch trees in the dew of a May evening.
The bank that surmounts this attempt at cultivation is
crowned with the late foxglove and the stately mullein ;
the pasture of which so great a part of the waste
consists, looks as green as an emerald; a clear pond,
with the bright sky reflected in it, lets light into the
picture; the white cottage of the keeper peeps from
the opposite coppice ; and the vine-covered dwelling of
Hannah Bint rises from amidst the pretty garden, which
lies bathed in the sunshine around it.
The living and moving accessories are all in keeping
with the cheerfulness and repose of the landscape. Han-
nah’s cow grazing quictly beside the keeper’s pony; a
brace of fat pointer puppies holding amicable intercourse
with a litter of young pigs ; ducks, geese, cocks, hens, and
234 OUR VILLAGE
chickens scattered over the turf; Hannah herself sallying
forth from the cottage-door, with her milk-bucket in her
hand,and her little brother following with the milking-stool,
My friend, Hannah Bint, is by no means an ordinary
person. Her father, Jack Bint (for in all his life he
never arrived at the dignity of being called John, in-
decd in our parts he was commonly known by the
cognomen of London Jack), was a drover of high
repute in his profession. No man, between Salisbury
Plain and Smithfield, was thought to conduct a flock
of sheep so skilfully through all the difficulties of lanes
and commons, streets and high-roads, as Jack Bint,
aided by Jack Bint’s famous dog, Watch ; for Watch’s
rough, honest face, black, with a little white about the
muzzle, and one white ear, was as well known at fairs
and markets as his master’s equally honest and weather-
beaten visage. Lucky was the dealer that could secure
their services ; Watch being renowned for keeping a
flock together better than any shepherd’s dog on the
road—Jack, for delivering them more punctually, and
in better condition. No man had a more thorough
knowledge of the proper night stations, where good
feed might be procured for his charge, and good liquor
for Watch and himself; Watch, like other sheep dogs,
being accustomed to live chiefly on bread and beer.
His master, though not averse to a pot of good, double
X, preferred gin; and they who plod slowly along,
through wet and weary ways, in frost and in fog, have
undoubtedly a stronger temptation to indulge in that
cordial and reviving stimulus, than we water-drinkers,
ITANNAIL BINT
to
wo
ut
sitting in warm and comfortable rooms, can readily
imagine. For certain, our drover could never resist
‘Jack Bint, aided by Juck Binds famous dog, Watch.
the gentle seduction of the gin-bottle, and being of a
free, merry, jovial temperament, one of those persons
commonly called good fellows, who like to see others
236 OUR VILLAGE
happy in the same way with themselves, he was apt to
circulate it at his own expense, to the great improve-
ment of his popularity, and the great detriment of his
finances.
All this did vastly well whilst his earnings continued
proportionate to his spendings, and the little family
at home were comfortably supported by his industry :
but when a rheumatic fever came on, one hard winter,
and finally settled in his limbs, reducing the most
active and hardy man in the parish to the state of a
confirmed cripple, then his reckless improvidence stared
him in the face; and poor Jack, a thoughtless, but kind
creature, and a most affectionate father, looked at his
three motherless children with the acute misery of a
parent who has brought those whom he loves best in
the world to abject destitution. He found help, where
he probably least expected it, in the sense and spirit
of his young daughter, a girl of twelve years old.
Hannah was the eldest of the family, and had, ever
since her mother’s death, which event had occurred
two or three years before, been accustomed to take
the direction of their domestic concerns, to manage
her two brothers, to feed the pigs and the poultry, and
to keep house during the almost constant absence of
her father. She was a quick, clever lass, of a high
spirit, a firm temper, some pride, and a horror of
accepting parochial relief, which is every day becoming
rarcr amongst the peasantry; but which forms the
surest safeguard to the sturdy independence of the
English character. Our little damsel possessed _ this
HANNAH BINT 237
quality in perfection; and when her father talked of
giving up their comfortable cottage, and removing to
the workhouse, whilst she and her brothers must go to
service, Hannah formed a bold resolution, and without
disturbing the sick man by any participation of her
hopes and fears, proceeded after settling their trifling
affairs to act at once on her own plans and designs.
Careless of the future as the poor drover had seemed,
he had yet kept clear of debt, and by subscribing
constantly to a benefit club, had secured a pittance
that might at least assist in supporting him during the
long years of sickness and helplessness to which he
was doomed to look forward. This his daughter knew.
She knew also, that the employer in whose service his
health had suffered so severely, was a rich and liberal
cattle-dealer in the neighbourhood, who would willingly
aid an old and faithful servant, and had, indeed, come
forward with offers of money. To assistance from
such a quarter Hannah saw no objection. Farmer
Oakley and the parish were quite distinct things. Of
him, accordingly, she asked, not money, but something
much more in his own way—‘a cow! any cow! old
or lame, or what not, so that it were a cow! she would
be bound to keep it well; if she did not, he might
take it back again. She even hoped to pay for it
by and by, by instalments, but that she would not
promise!’ and, partly amused, partly interested by the
child’s earnestness, the wealthy yeoman gave lier, not
as a purchase, but as a present, a very fine young
Alderney. She then went to the lord of the manor,
238 OUR VILLAGE
and, with equal knowledge of character, begged his
permission to keep her cow on the Shaw common.
‘To the lord of the manor.
Copyright 1893 by Macmitlan & Ce.
‘Farmer Oakley had given her a fine Alderney, and
she would be bound to pay the rent, and keep her
father off the parish, if he would only let it graze on
the waste ;’ and he too, half from real good nature—
HANNAIT BINT 239
half, not to be outdone in liberality by his tenant, not
only granted the requested permission, but reduced the
rent so much, that the produce of the vine seldom fails
to satisfy their kind landlord.
Now Hannah showed great judgment in setting up
as a dairy-woman. She could not have chosen an
occupation more completely unoccupied, or more loudly
called for. One of the most provoking of the petty
difficulties which beset people with a small establish-
ment in this neighbourhood, is the trouble, almost the
impossibility, of procuring the pastoral luxuries of
milk, eggs, and butter, which rank, unfortunately,
amongst the indispensable necessaries of housekeeping.
To your thoroughbred Londoner, who, whilst grumbling
over his own breakfast, is apt to fancy that thick
cream, and fresh butter, and new-laid eggs, grow, so to
say, in the country—form an actual part of its natural
produce—it may be some comfort to learn, that in this
great grazing district, however the calves and the
farmers may be the better for cows, nobody else is;
that farmers’ wives have ceased to keep poultry ; and
that we unlucky villagers sit down often to our first
meal in a state of destitution, which may well make
him content with his thin milk and his Cambridge
butter, when compared to our imputed pastoralities.
HMannal’s Alderney restored us to one rural
privilege. Never was so cleanly a little milkmaid,
She changed away some of the cottage finery, which,
in his prosperous days, poor Jack had pleased himself
with bringing home, the china tea-service, the gilded
240 OUR VILLAGE
mugs, and the painted waiters, for the useful utensils of
the dairy, and speedily established a regular and gain-
ful trade in milk, eggs, butter, honey, and poultry—for
poultry they had always kept.
Her domestic management prospered equally. Her
Me ‘ Admission to the charity-school.’
father, who retained the perfect use of his hands, began
a manufacture of mats and baskets, which he con-
structed with great nicety and adroitness; the eldest
boy, a sharp and clever lad, cut for him his rushes and
osiers ; erected, under his sister's direction, a shed for
HANNAILL BINT 241
the cow, and enlarged and cultivated the garden
(always with the good leave of her kind patron the
|
lord of the manor) until it became so ample, that the
produce not only kept the pig, and half kept the family,
but afforded another branch of merchandise to the
indefatigable directress of the establishment. -For the
younger boy, less quick and active, Hannah contrived
to obtain an admission to the charity-school, where he
made great progress—-retaining him at home, however,
in the hay-making and leasing season, or whenever his
services could be made available, to the great annoy-
ance of the schoolmaster, whose favourite he is, and who
piques himself so much on George’s scholarship (your
heavy sluggish boy at country work often turns out
quick at his book), that it is the general opinion that
this much-vaunted pupil will, in process of time, be
promoted to the post of assistant, and may, possibly,
in course of years, rise to the dignity of a parish
pedagogue in his own person; so that his sister,
although still making him useful at odd times, now
considers George as pretty well off her hands, whilst
his elder brother, Tom, could take an under-gardener’s
place directly, if he were not too important at home to
be spared even for a day.
In short, during the five years that she has ruled
at the Shaw cottage, the world has gone well with
Hannah Bint. Her cow, her calves, her pigs, her bees,
her poultry, have cach, in their several ways, thriven
and prospered. She has even brought Watch to like
butter-milk, as well as strong beer, and has nearly per-
Ik
242 OUR VILLAGE
suaded her father (to whose wants and wishes she is
most anxiously attentive) to accept of milk as a sub-
stitute for gin. Not but Hannah hath had her enemies
as well as her betters. Why should she not? The
old woman at the lodge, who always piqued herself on
being spiteful, and crying down new ways, foretold
from the first she would come to no good, and could
not forgive her for falsifying her prediction; and Betty
Barnes, the slatternly widow of a tippling farmer, who
rented a field, and set up a cow herself, and was
universally discarded for insufferable dirt, said all that
the wit of an envious woman could devise against
Hannah and her Alderney ; nay, even Ned Miles, the
keeper, her next neighbour, who had whilom held
entire sway over the Shaw common, as well as its
coppices, grumbled as much as so good-natured and
genial a person could grumble, when he found a little
girl sharing his dominion, a cow grazing beside his
pony, and vulgar cocks and hens hovering around the
buck- wheat destined to feed his noble pheasants.
Nobody that had been accustomed to see that paragon
of keepers, so tall and manly, and pleasant looking,
with his merry eye, and his knowing smile, striding
gaily along, in his green coat, and his gold-laced hat,
with Neptune, his noble Newfoundland dog (a retriever
is the sporting word), and his beautiful spaniel Flirt at
his heels, could conceive how askew he looked, when
he first found Hannah and Watch holding equal reign
over his old territory, the Shaw common.
Yes! Hannah hath had her enemies; but they are
“4s much like lovers?
JIANNAILL BINT 245
passing away. The old woman at the lodge is dead,
poor creature ; and Betty Barnes, having herself taken
to tippling, has lost the few friends she once possessed,
and looks, luckless wretch, as if she would soon die
too!—and the keeper ?—why, he is not dead, or like
to die; but the change that has taken place there is
the most astonishing of all—except, perhaps, the
change in Hannah herself.
Few damsels of twelve years old, generally a very
pretty age, were less pretty than Hannah Bint. Short
and stunted in her figure, thin in face, sharp in feature,
with a muddled complexion, wild sunburnt hair, and
eyes whose very brightness had in them something
startling, over-informed, super-subtle, too clever for her
age,—at twelve years old she had quite the air of a
little old fairy. Now, at seventeen, matters are mended.
Her complexion has cleared; her countenance has
developed itself; her figure has shot up into height
and lightness, and a sort of rustic grace; her bright,
acute eye is softened and sweetened by the womanly.
wish to please; her hair is trimmed, and curled and
brushed, with exquisite neatness ; and her whole dress
arranged with that nice attention to the becoming, the
suitable both in form and texture, which would be called
the highest degree of coquetry, if it did not deserve
the better name of propriety. Never was such a
transmogrification beheld. The lass is really pretty,
and Ned Miles has discovered that she is so. There
he stands, the rogue, close at her side (for he hath
joined her whilst we have been telling her little story,
240 OUR VILLAGE
and the milking is over!)—there he stands—holding
her milk-pail in one hand, and stroking Watch with
the other ; whilst she is returning the compliment by
patting Neptune’s magnificent head. There they stand,
as much like lovers as may be; he smiling, and she
blushing—he never looking so handsome nor she so
pretty in all their lives. There they stand, in blessed
forgetfulness of all except each other; as happy a
couple as ever trod the earth. There they stand, and
one would not disturb them for all the milk and butter
in Christendom. I should not wonder if they were
fixing the wedding day.
Insr= gto acy oy len © Tce gorges ote
Hee
ene
SS AN
(2S wy
hie Fal of the leaf
ovember Gt. The weather is as peaceful
nt J
ashi
to-day, as calm, and as mild, as in carly
April; and, perhaps, an autumn after-
noon and a spring morning do resemble
cach other more in feeling, and even in
appearance, than any two periods of the year. There
is in both the same freshness and dewiness of the
herbage ; the same balmy softness in the air; and the
same pure and lovely blue sky, with white fleecy clouds
floating across it. The chief difference lies in the
absence of flowers, and the presence of leaves. But
then the foliage of November is so rich, and glowing,
and varied, that it may well supply the place of the gay
blossoms of the spring; whilst all the flowers of the
field or the garden could never make amends for the
want of Icaves,——that beautiful and graceful attire in
which nature has clothed the rugged forms of trees—-
the verdant drapery to which the landscape owes its |
loveliness, and the forests their glory.
250 OUR VILLAGE
If choice must be between two seasons, each so full
of charm, it is at least no bad philosophy to prefer the
present good, even whilst looking gratefully back, and
hopefully forward, to the past and the future. And of
a surety, no fairer specimen of a November day could
well be found than this,
a day made to wander
‘By yellow commons and birch-shaded hollows,
And hedgerows bordering unfrequented lanes ;’
nor could a prettier country be found for our walk than
this shady and yet sunny Berkshire, where the scenery,
without rising into grandeur or breaking into wildness,
is so peaceful, so cheerful, so varied, and so thoroughly
Lenglish. ‘
We must bend our steps towards the water side, for
I have a message to leave at Farmer Riley’s: and sooth
to say, it is no unpleasant necessity ; for the road thither
is smooth and dry, retired, as one likes a country walk
to be, but not too lonely, which women never like ; lead-
ing past the Loddon—the bright, brimming, transparent
Loddon—a fitting mirror for this bright blue sky, and
terminating at one of the prettiest and most comfortable
farmhouses in the neighbourhood.
How beautiful the lane is to-day, decorated with a
thousand colours! The brown road, and the rich
verdure that borders it, strewed with the pale yellow
leaves of the elm, just beginning to fall; hedgerows
glowing with long wreaths of the bramble in every
variety of purplish red ; and overhead the unchanged
green of the fir, contrasting with the spotted sycamore,
THE FALL Of THE LEAF
we
waa
the tawny beech, and the dry sere leaves of the oak,
which rustle as the light wind passes through them; a
few common hardy yellow flowers (for yellow is the
common colour of flowers, whether wild or cultivated, as
blue is the rare one), flowers of many sorts, but almost
© The little post-boy?
of one tint, still blowing in spite of the season, and ruddy
berries glowing through all. How very beautiful is the
lane !
And how pleasant is this hill where the road widens,
with the group of cattle by the wayside, and George
252 OUR VILLAGE
Hearn, the little post-boy, trundling his hoop at full
speed, making all the better haste in his work, because
he cheats himself into thinking it play! And how
beautiful, again, is this patch of common at the hilltop
with the clear pool, where Martha Pither’s children,—
elves of three, and four, and five years old, — with-
out any distinction of sex in their sunburnt faces and
tattered drapery, are dipping up water in their little
homely cups shining with cleanliness, and a small
brown pitcher with the lip broken, to fill that great
kettle, which, when it is filled, their united streneth
will never be able to lift! They are quite a group for
a painter, with their rosy cheeks, and chubby hands,
and round merry faces; and the low cottage in the
background, peeping out of its vine leaves and china
roses, with Martha at the door, tidy, and comely, and
smiling, preparing the potatoes for the pot, and watching
the progress of dipping and filling that useful utensil,
completes the picture.
But we must go on. No time for more sketches jn
these short days. It is getting cold too. We must
proceed in our walk. Dash is showing us the way and
beating the thick double hedgerow that runs along the
side of the meadows, at a rate that indicates game astir,
and causes the leaves to fly as fast as an east-wind after
ahard frost. Ah! a pheasant! a superb cock pheasant !
Nothing is more certain than Dash’s questing, whether
in a hedgerow or covert, for a better spaniel never
went into the field; but I fancied that it was a hare
afoot, and was almost as much startled to hear the
THE FAL OF THE LEAF 25;
wan
whirring of those splendid wings, as the princely bird
himself would havé been at the report of a gun. Indeed,
‘Ah! a pheasant! a superb cock pheasant |"
I believe that the way in which a pheasant goes off,
does sometimes make young sportsmen a little nervous,
254 OUR VILLAGE
(they don't own it very readily, but the observation may
be relied on nevertheless), until they get as it were
broken in to the sound; and then that grand and
sudden burst of wing becomes as pleasant to them as it
seems to be to Dash, who is beating the hedgerow with
might and main, and giving tongue louder, and sending
the leaves about faster than ever—-very proud of finding
the pheasant, and perhaps a little angry with me for
not shooting it; at least looking as if he would be angry
if ] were aman; for Dash is a dog of great sagacity, and
has doubtless not lived four years in the sporting world
without making the discovery, that although gentlemen
do shoot, ladies do not.
The Loddon at last! the beautiful Loddon! and the
bridge, where every one stops, as by instinct, to lean
over the rails, and gaze a moment ona landscape of
surpassing loveliness,—the fine grounds of the Great
House, with their magnificent groups of limes, and firs,
and poplars grander than ever poplars were ; the green
meadows opposite, studded with oaks and elms; the
clear winding river; the mill with its picturesque old
buildings bounding the scene ; all glowing with the rich
colouring of autumn, and harmonised by the soft beauty
of the clear blue sky, and the delicious calmness of the
hour. The very peasant whose daily path it is, cannot
cross that bridge without a pause.
But the day is wearing fast, and it grows colder and
colder. I really think it will be a frost. After all,
spring is the pleasantest season, beautiful as this scenery
is. We must get on. Down that broad yet shadowy
THE FALL OF THE LEAF 255
lane, between the park, dark with evergreens and dappled
with deer, and the meadows where sheep, and cows, and
horses are grazing under the tall elms; that lane, where
the wild bank, clothed with fern, and tufted with furze,
and crowned by rich berried thorn, and thick shining
‘ Grasing under the tall elms,’
holly on the one side, seems to vic in beauty with the
picturesque old paling, the bright laurels, and the plumy
cedars, on the other ;—down that shady lane, until the
sudden turn brings us to an opening where four roads
meet, where a noble avenue turns down to the Great
House ; where the village church rears its modest spire
from amidst its venerable yew trees: and where, em-
bosomed in orchards and gardens, and backed by barns
256 OUR VILLAGE
and ricks, and all the wealth of the farmyard, stands
the spacious and comfortable abode of good Farmer
Riley,——the end and object of our walk.
And in happy time the message is said and the
answer given, for this beautiful mild day is edging off
into a dense frosty evening ; the leaves of the elm and
the linden in the old avenue are quivering and vibrating
and fluttering in the air, and at length falling crisply on
the earth, as if Dash were beating for pheasants in the
tree-tops ; the sun gleams dimly through the fog, giving
little more of light and heat than his fair sister the lady
moon ;-—I don’t know a more disappointing person than
a cold sun; and I am beginning to wrap my cloak
closely round me, and to calculate the distance to my
own fireside, recanting all the way my praises of
November, and longing for the showery, flowery April,
as much as if I were a half-chilled butterfly, or a dahlia
knocked down by the frost.
Ah, dear me! what a climate this is, that one can-
not keep in the same mind about it for half an hour
together! I wonder, by the way, whether the fault is
in the weather, which Dash does not seem to care for,
orin me? If I should happen to be wet through in a
shower next spring, and should catch myself longing
for autumn, that would settle the question.
Printed by BR. & R. Ciarn, Edinburgh.
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