as the trunk itself, came down almost to the ground. They touched the
tops of the white wild parsley; and when sheep were lying beneath, the
jackdaws stepped from the sheep’s back to the bough and returned again.
The jackdaws had their nests in the hollow places of these elms; for
the elm as it ages becomes full of cavities. These great trees often
divided into two main boughs, rising side by side, and afar off visible
as two dark streaks among the green. For many years no cattle had been
permitted in the park, and the boughs of the trees had grown in a
drooping form, as they naturally do unless eaten, or broken by animals
pushing against them. But since the times of agricultural pressure, a
large part of the domain had been fenced off, and was now partly grazed
and partly mown, being called the Out-park. There were copses at the
farther side, where in spring the May flowered, the purple orchis was
drawn up high by the trees and bushes—twice as high as its fellows in
the mead, where a stray spindle-tree grew; and from these copses the
cuckoos flew round the park.
But the thinnest hedge about the wheat-fields was as interesting as
the park or the covers; and this is the remarkable feature of English
scenery, that its perfection, its beauty, and its interest are not
confined to any masterpiece here and there, walled in or inclosed,
or at least difficult of access and isolated, but it extends to the
smallest portion of the country. Wheat-field hedges are the thinnest
of hedges, kept so that the birds may find no shelter, and that the
numerous caterpillars may not breed in them more than can be helped.
Such a hedge is so low it can be leaped over, and so narrow that it is
a mere screen of twisted hawthorn branches which can be seen through,
like screens of twisted stone in ancient chapels. But the sparrows come
to it, and the finches, the mice, and weasels, and now and then a crow,
who searches along, and goes in and out and quests like a spaniel.
It is so tough this twisted screen of branches that a charge of shot
would be stopped by it; if a pellet or two slid through an interstice,
the majority would be held as if by a shield of wicker-work. Old
Bartholomew, the farmer, sent his men once or twice along with
reaping-hooks to clear away the weeds that grew up here under such
slight shelter; but other farmers were not so careful. Then convolvulus
grew over the thin screen, a corncockle stood up taller than the hedge
itself; in time of harvest, yellow St John’s wort flowered beside it,
and later on, bunches of yellow-weed.
A lark rose on the other side, and so caused the glance to be lifted
and to look farther, and away yonder was a farmhouse at the foot of a
hill. Pale yellow stubble covered the hill, rising like a background
to the red-tile roof, and to the elms beside the house, among whose
branches there were pale yellow spots. Round wheat-ricks stood in a
double row on the left hand; count them, and you counted the coin of
the land—bank-notes in straw—and on the right and in front were green
meads, and horses feeding, horses who had done good work in plough-time
and harvest-time, and would soon be at plough again. There were
green meads, because some green meads are a necessity of an English
farmhouse, and there are few without them, even when in the midst of
corn. Meads in which the horses feed, a pony for the children and for
the pony-cart, turkeys, two or three cows; all the large and small
creatures that live about the place. When the land was torn up and
ploughed for corn of old time, these green inclosures were left to stay
on, till now it seems as if pressure of low prices for wheat would
cause the cornland to again become pasture. Of old time, golden wheat
conquered and held possession, and now the grass threatens to oust the
conqueror.
Had any one studied either of these three, the great elms in the
Out-park, or the thin twisted screen of hedge, or the red-tile roof,
and the yellow stubble behind it on the hill, he might have found
material for a picture in each. There was, in truth, in each far more
than any one could put into a picture, or than any one could put into
a book; for the painter can but give one aspect of one day, and the
writer a mere catalogue of things; but nature refreshes the reality
every day with different tints, and as it were new ideas, so that,
although it is always there, it is never twice the same. Over that
stubble on the hill there were other hills, and among these a coombe or
valley, in which stood just such another farmhouse, but so differently
placed, with few trees, and those low, somewhat bare in its immediate
surroundings, but above, on each side, close at hand, sloping ramparts
of green turf rising high, till the larks that sang above seemed
to sing in another land, like that found by Jack when he clomb the
beanstalk. Along this coombe was a cover of gorse, and in spring there
was a mile of golden bloom, richer than gold in colour, leading like a
broad highway of gold down to the house. From those ramparts in high
summer—which is when the corn is ripe and the reapers in it—there could
be seen a slope divided into squares of varied grain. This on the left
of the fertile undulation was a maize colour, which, when the sunlight
touched it, seemed to have a fleeting hue of purple somewhere within.
There is no purple in ripe wheat visible to direct and considering
vision; look for it specially, and it will not be seen. Purple forms
no part of any separate wheatear or straw; brown and yellow in the
ear, yellow in the upper part of the straw, and still green towards
the earth. But when the distant beams of sunlight travelling over the
hill swept through the rich ripe grain, for a moment there was a sense
of purple on the retina. Beyond this square was a pale gold piece, and
then one where the reapers had worked hard, and the shocks stood in
diagonal rows; this was a bronze, or brown and bronze, and beside it
was a green of clover.
Farther on, the different green of the hill turf, and white sheep,
feeding in an extended crescent, the bow of the crescent gradually
descending the sward. The hills of themselves beautiful, and possessing
views which are their property and belong to them; a twofold value.
The woods on the lower slopes full of tall brake fern, and holding
in their shadowy depths the spirit of old time. In the woods it is
still the past, and the noisy mechanic present of this manufacturing
century has no place. Enter in among the round-boled beeches which
the squirrels rush up, twining round like ivy in ascent, where they
nibble the beech-nuts forty feet aloft, and let the husks drop to your
feet, where the wood-pigeon sits and does not move, safe in the height
and thickness of the spray. There are jew-berries or dew-berries on a
bramble-bush, which grows where the sunlight and rain fall direct to
the ground, unchecked by boughs. They are full of the juice of autumn,
black, rich, vine-like, taken fresh from the prickly bough. Low down
in the hollow is a marshy spot, sedge-grown, and in the sedge lie
yellow leaves of willow already fallen. Here in the later months will
come a woodcock or two, with feathers so brown and leaf-like of hue,
and markings, that the plumage might have been printed in colours from
brown leaves of beech. No springes are set for the woodcocks now, but
the markings are the same on the feathers as centuries since; the brown
beech-leaves lie in the dry hollows the year through just as they did
then; the large dew-berries are as rich; and the nuts as sweet. It is
the past in the wood, and Time here never grows any older. Could you
bring back the red stag—as you may easily in fancy—and place him among
the tall brake, and under the beeches, he should not know that a day
had gone by since the stern Roundheads shot down the last of his race
hereabouts in Charles I.’s days. For the leaves are turning as they
turned then to the altered colour of the sun’s rays as he declines in
his noonday arch, lower and lower every day; his rays are somewhat
yellower than in dry hot June; a little of the tint of the ripe wheat
floats in the sunshine. To this the woods turn. First, the nut-tree
leaves drop, and the green brake is quickly yellow; the slender birch
becomes lemon on its upper branches; the beech reddens; by-and-by the
first ripe acorn falls, and there’s as much cawing of the rooks in the
oaks at acorn-time as at their nests in the elms in March.
All these things happened in the old old time before the red stags were
shot down; the leaves changed as the sunbeams became less brilliantly
white, the woodcocks arrived, the mice had the last of the acorns
which had fallen, and which the rooks and jays and squirrels had
spared for them after feasting to the full of their greediness. This
ancient oak, whose thick bark, like cast-iron for ruggedness at the
base, has grown on steadily ever since the last deer bounded beneath
it, utterly heedless of the noisy rattle of machinery in the northern
cities, unmoved by any shriek of engine, or hum, or flapping of loose
belting, or any volume of smoke drifting into the air—I wish that the
men now serving the great polished wheels, and works in iron and steel
and brass, could somehow be spared an hour to sit under this ancient
oak in Thardover South Wood, and come to know from actual touch of its
rugged bark that the past is living now, that Time is no older, that
nature still exists as full as ever, and to see that all the factories
of the world have made no difference, and therefore not to pin their
faith to any theory born and sprung up among the crush and pale-faced
life of modern time; but to look for themselves at the rugged oak-bark,
and up to the sky above the highest branches, and to take an acorn and
consider its story and possibilities, and to watch the sly squirrel
coming down, as they sit quietly, to play almost at their feet. That
they might gather to themselves some of the leaves—mental and spiritual
leaves—of the ancient forest, feeling nearer to the truth and soul,
as it were, that lives on in it. They would feel as if they had got
back to their original existence, and had become themselves, as they
ought to be, could they live such life, untouched by artificial care.
Then, how hurt they would be if any proposed to cut down that oak; if
any proposed the felling of the forest; and the death of its meaning.
It would be like a blow aimed at themselves. No picture that could be
bought at a thousand guineas could come near that ancient oak; but you
can carry away the memory of it, the picture and thought in your mind
for nothing. If the oak were cut down, it would be like thrusting a
stick through some valuable painting on your walls at home.
The common below the South Wood, even James Thardover with all his
desire for improvement could not do much good with; the soil, and
the impossibility of getting a fall for draining, all checked effort
there. A wild, rugged waste, you say, at first, glancing at the
rushes, and the gaunt signpost standing up among them, the anthills,
and thistles. Thistles have colour in their bloom, and the prickly
leaves are finely cut; rushes—green rushes—are notes of the season,
and with their slender tips point to the days in the book of the year;
they are brown now at the tip, and some bent downwards in an angle.
The brown will descend the stalk till the snipes come with gray-grass
colours in their wings. But all the beatings of the rain will not cast
the rushes utterly down; they will send up fresh green successors
for the spring, for the cuckoo to float along over on his way to the
signpost, where he will perch a few minutes, and call in the midst of
the wilderness. There, too, the lapwings leave their eggs on the ground
among the rushes, and rise, and complainingly call. The warm showers
of June call up the iris in the corner where the streamlet widens, and
under the willows appear large yellow flowers above the flags. Pink
and white blossom of the rest-harrow comes on bushy plants where the
common is dry, and there is heath, and heather, and fern. The waste has
its treasures too—as the song-thrush has his in the hawthorn bush—its
treasures of flowers, as the wood its beauties of tree and leaf, and
the hills their wheat.
The ringfence goes farther than this; it incloses the living creatures,
yet without confining them. The wing of the wood-pigeon as the bird
perches, forms a defined curve against its body. The forward edge of
the wing—its thickest part—as it is pressed to its side, draws a line
sweeping round; a painter’s line. How many wood-pigeons are there in
the South Wood alone, besides the copses and the fir-plantations? How
many turtle-doves in spring in the hedges and outlying thickets, in
summer among the shocks of corn? And all these are his—the Squire’s—not
in the sense of possession, for no true wild creature was ever any
one’s yet; it would die first; but still within his ringfence, and
their destinies affected by his will, since he can cut down their
favourite ash and hawthorn, or thin them with shot. Neither of which he
does. The robin, methinks, sings sweetest of autumn-tide in the deep
woods, when no other birds speak or trill, unexpectedly giving forth
his plaintive note, complaining that the summer is going, and the time
of love, and the sweet cares of the nest; telling you that the berries
are brown, the dew-berries over-ripe, and dropping of over-ripeness
like dew as the morning wind shakes the branch; that the wheat is going
to the stack, and that the rusty plough will soon be bright once more
by the attrition of the earth.
Many of them sing thus in the South Wood, yet scarce any two within
sound of each other, for the robin is jealous, and likes to have you
all to himself as he tells his tale. Song-thrushes—what ranks of them
in April; larks, what hundreds and hundreds of them on the hills above
the green wheat; finches of varied species; blackbirds; nightingales;
crakes in the meadows; partridges; a whole page might be filled merely
with their names.
These, too, are in the ringfence with the hills and woods, the yellow
iris of the common, and the red-roofed farmhouses. Besides which,
there are beings infinitely higher, something of whom has been said
in a previous chapter—namely, men and women in village and hamlet,
and more precious still, those little children with hobnail boots and
clean jackets and pinafores, who go a-blackberrying on their way to
school. All these are in the ringfence. Upon their physical destinies,
the Squire can exercise a powerful influence, and has done so, as the
school itself testifies.
Now, is not a large estate a living picture? Or rather, is it not
formed of a hundred living pictures? So beautiful it looks, its hills,
its ripe wheat, its red-roofed farmhouses, and acres upon acres
of oaks; so beautiful, it must be valuable; most valuable; it is
visible, tangible wealth. It is difficult to disabuse any one’s mind
of that idea; yet, as we have seen, with all the skill, science, and
expenditure Thardover could bring to bear upon it, all his personal
effort was in vain. It was a possession, not a profit. Had not James
Thardover’s ancestors invested their wealth in building streets
of villas in the outskirts of a great city, he could not have done
one-fifth what he had. Men who had made their fortunes in factories—the
noisy factories of the present century—paid him high rents for these
residences; and thus it was that the labour and time of the many-handed
operatives in mill, factory, and workshop really went to aid in
maintaining these living pictures. Without that outside income the
Squire could not have reduced the rents of his tenants so that they
could push through the depression; without that outside income he could
not have drained the lands; put up those good buildings; assisted the
school, and in a hundred ways helped the people. Those who watched the
polished machinery under the revolving shaft, and tended the loom,
really helped to keep the beauties of South Wood, the grain-grown
hills, the flower-strewn meadows. These were so beautiful, it seemed as
if they must represent money—riches; but they did not. They had a value
much higher than that. As the spring rises in the valley at the foot of
the hills and slowly increases till it forms a river, to which ships
resort, so these fields and woods, meads and brooks, were the source
from which the city was derived. If the operative in the factory, or
tending the loom, had traced his descent, he would have found that
his grandfather, or some scarcely more remote ancestor, was a man
of the land. He followed the plough, or tended the cattle, and his
children went forth to earn higher wages in the town. For the hamlet
and the outlying cottage are the springs whence the sinew and muscle of
populous cities are derived. The land is the fountainhead from which
the spring of life flows, widening into a river. The river at its broad
mouth disdains the spring; the city in its immensity disdains the
hamlet and the ploughman. Yet if the spring ceased, the ships could not
frequent the river; if the hamlet and the ploughman were wiped out by
degrees, the city must run dry of life. Therefore the South Wood and
the park, the hamlet and the fields, had a value no one can tell how
many times above the actual money rental, and the money earned by the
operatives in factory and workshop could not have been better expended
than in supporting it.
But it had another value still—which they too helped to sustain—the
value of beauty. Parliament has several times intervened to save the
Lake district from the desecrating intrusion of useless railways. So
too, the beauty of these woods, and grain-grown hills, of the very
common, is worth preservation at the hands and votes of the operatives
in factory and mill. If a man loves the brick walls of his narrow
dwelling in a close-built city, and the flowers which he has trained
with care in the window; how much more would he love the hundred living
pictures like those round about Thardover House. After any artificer
had once seen such an oak and rested under it, if any threatened to cut
it down, he would feel as if a blow had been delivered at his heart.
His efforts, therefore, should be not to destroy these pictures but
to preserve them. All the help that they can give is needed to assist
a King of Acres in his struggle, and the struggle of the farmers and
labourers—equally involved—against the adverse influences which press
so heavily on English agriculture.
MRS SHAW: THE LATE PRINCE IMPERIAL’S NURSE.
Visitors to Paris during the meretricious glories of the Second Empire
may possibly recall to mind that amidst the glare and glitter of that
feverish epoch, one wholesome and interesting sight was constantly to
be seen in the Tuileries gardens when the court was in residence at the
palace—a bright-looking child playing with his English nurse; and the
spectators were particularly attracted by the devoted attachment that
appeared to exist between them. The child was the Prince Imperial of
France; and his attendant, the pleasant-looking Yorkshire woman, was
known in Paris as Mrs Shaw. A curious history is connected with her
entrance into the imperial household, the story of which the writer
obtained from what she believes to be a well-authenticated source.
Mrs Shaw was a valued nurse in a family where she had lived for some
time, when one morning she startled her mistress with the announcement
that she had dreamt she was destined to have the charge of the future
Prince Imperial of France, and must leave her place at once. Although
the expected event was causing the greatest excitement in Paris,
it seems unlikely that it should have created much interest in a
quiet English establishment, and naturally enough, her inspiration
was treated as an unreasonable and inconvenient delusion. But no
persuasions or arguments could induce her to remain, or remove what
appeared to be an aberration of mind. Off she set, back to her
Yorkshire village, and sought an interview with the clergyman of the
parish, who appears to have been one of those worthy souls to whom his
parishioners could resort as to a father-confessor; and struck with
her determination and energy, he promised, after some expostulation,
to assist her to the best of his power, though holding out no hope of
success. He happened to have a slight acquaintance with the eminent
London physician who had been honoured by Her Imperial Majesty with
instructions to select a certain number of nurses, from whom she
herself would choose the one that seemed most fitting for the post.
Although besieged with applications, he consented to place Mrs Shaw
on his list of candidates, and to grant her an interview, which
resulted in his sending her with five others to Paris for the Empress’s
approval, who at once chose her; and her dream was fulfilled!
The strength of character that had carried her to this triumphant
issue, by no means deserted her in this new position. Amusing anecdotes
reached us from time to time of the way in which the sensible, homely
Yorkshire woman carried all before her in the imperial nurseries;
would have no foreign ways or interference from court dames or
lady-superintendents, or allow her small charge to be harassed with
tedious toilets and fatiguing ceremonials; and finally gained her
point, after personally appealing to the Emperor, who was only too glad
to have the child brought up in the healthy English fashion; and fully
appreciating her fidelity, gave orders that she was to rule alone,
without let or hindrance; and always treated her with the greatest
kindness and consideration.
And is it not possible that the true and perfect knight the Prince in
after-years became, may have been owing in some measure to this early
training in English ways and English thoughts, which made us look upon
him as the child of our adoption when in exile among us, and take a
mournful pride in his heroic martyrdom?
At the end of seven years, rumours of another tug of war reached us
from the nursery domain. Mrs Shaw was to retire with a pension, and the
Prince transferred to tutors and governors, as befitted his exalted
prospects. But she absolutely refused to go and break her heart and
the child’s too; and again gaining her point, was transformed into a
sort of Madame la Gouvernante, and allowed to retain her apartments in
the Tuileries; and a pleasant retreat they must have been for the poor
Prince, when bored and wearied with lessons and precepts and all the
miseries attendant upon high education, which seem to be inflicted in a
more burdensome form upon royal pupils than on their subjects, perhaps
because it is conducted on the solitary confinement fashion, without
the competition and other natural excitements of a public school. The
writer believes she afterwards married an officer in the Imperial
Guard, so that her fortunes were still more closely bound up with those
whom she loved and served so well; and we often wondered what became
of her in the dark days of Sedan and the downfall of their race, and
whether she lived to join them in exile, and share the last crushing
sorrow with the beloved and bereaved Empress.
A YEAR’S WOOING.
’Twas autumn when first they stood on the bridge;
Ripe pears on the pear-tree, ripe corn on the ridge;
The swallows flew swiftly far up in the blue,
And speeding still southward, were lost to the view.
Said he: ‘Can you love me, as I can love you?’
She said, quite demurely: ‘Already I do!’
’Twas winter when next they met on the bridge;
The pear-trees were brown, and white was the ridge;
The swallows were feathering their nests in Algiers.
She looked in his face, and she burst into tears!
His nose it was pinched, and his lips they were blue.
Said she: ‘I can’t love you!’ Said he: ‘Nor I you!’
’Twas spring-time when next they stood on the bridge,
And white was the pear-tree, and green was the ridge;
The swallows had thoughts of a speedy return;
And the midges were dancing a-down the brown burn.
He said: ‘Pretty maiden, let by-gones go by—
Can you love me again?’ She said: ‘I can try.’
’Twas summer when next they stood on the bridge;
There were pears on the pear-tree, tall corn on the ridge;
The swallows wheeled round them, far up in the blue,
Then swooped down and snapped up a midgelet or two.
Said he: ‘Lest some trifle should come in the way,
And part us again, will you mention the day?’
She stood, looking down on the fast-flowing rill,
Then answered, demurely: ‘As soon as you will!’
H. L. R.
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