I FIND MY COTTAGE
In the meantime a circumstance had occurred which was of great
importance to me. Some enterprising spirits had started a new weekly
local paper, and--_mirabile dictu_--they actually contemplated a
literary page! With a faith in suburban culture, so unprecedented as
to be almost sublime, these daring adventurers proposed giving their
readers reviews of books, literary gossip, and general information
about the doings of eminent writers. They offered the work to me at
the modest honorarium of two pounds a week, and were willing to give me
a three years' agreement. They were frank enough to acknowledge that
their journal was likely to die of 'superiority to its public,' long
before the three years were over; but, barring this disaster, they gave
me assurance of regular employment. This was the very thing for me.
One could write about books anywhere. I thankfully closed with the
offer and began to study the ha'-penny evening papers with assiduity,
in order to learn the craft of manufacturing biographies of living
authors.
The greatest of all questions was thus settled: I should not starve.
But the question of a local habitation remained as difficult as ever.
I went upon wild-goose chases innumerable; was the victim of every kind
of chance hint; gathered fallacious information from garrulous
third-class passengers on many railways; confided my case to carters
and rural postmen, who played upon my innocence with genial malice;
stayed so long at village public-houses without visible motive that I
incurred the suspicion of the local constabulary, and on one memorable
occasion found myself identified with a long watched-for robber of
local hen-roosts. When I dropped upon some quaint village that, from a
pictorial point of view, seemed to offer all that I desired, I found my
tale, that I wished to settle in it, universally derided. No one could
conceive any sane person as being desirous of living in a village; the
design seemed wholly unaccountable to people who themselves would have
been only too glad to live in towns.
That I came from London was against me, It seemed to these village
Daniels barely possible that I was honest, and quite certain that I
cloaked some base designs under an innocent inquiry for empty cottages.
The little black bag in which I carried my lunch on these excursions
was the object of extraordinary hypotheses. At one time I was believed
to be selling tracts, at another time, tea; once I was suspected of
being an itinerant anarchist, doing a brisk business in infernal
machines. Landladies, who had lavished smiles upon me when they
supposed me an ordinary pedestrian in search of the picturesque, gave
me the cold shoulder when I began to explain my genuine intentions.
They sometimes treated me with such a mixture of aversion and alarm
that it was plain they doubted not only my sincerity but my sanity.
The travelling artist they knew, the pedlar, the insurance agent, and
the cockney beanfeaster; but the stranger who desired permanent
neighbourship with them they knew not; him they treated as a lunatic at
large. If the papers had chanced to be full at this time of the doings
of some flagrant murderer flying from justice, which fortunately for me
they were not, I have little doubt that these amiable villagers would
have delivered me up to the police without scruple, and have chuckled
over their sagacity.
The thing was amusing enough, and yet it had a certain serious
significance. It was a striking illustration of the way in which the
growth of cities had perverted even the rural mind. I had thoughts of
writing an article on _The Reluctant Villagers_, and a very good
article I could have made of it; for I found hardly any one who was a
villager by choice. A village might appear fair as Paradise to the
casual eye; but closer inspection always revealed the serpent of
discontent among the flowers. Where every outward object breathed of
rest, there was universal restlessness among the people. The common
ambition of all the younger generation was to get to London by almost
any means, and in almost any capacity. There was not a household that
had not children or relatives in London. The young ploughman went to
London as a carter or ostler; the milkmaid as a servant. The village
carpenter was invariably a middle-aged or an old man, secretly despised
by his apprentice, if he had one, for his contentment with his lot.
One saw very few young people in the village street, except mere
children. The universal complaint was that life was dull. There were
no libraries or reading-rooms; no concerts or entertainments; even the
innocuous penny-reading had died out. Nor were there cricket clubs, or
any organised system of sport, except in isolated cases. Here and
there a modern-minded clergyman had recognised the need of recreation
in his parishioners, and had done something to provide for it; but he
was an exception. Hence it happened that the public-house was the
common centre of the village life: it was the poor man's club, and it
was used less for purposes of social intercourse than for the
discussing of racing odds.
Artists have often painted village politicians in earnest confabulation
in an oak-pannelled inn-parlour. I can only say that, so far as my
experience went, I found the village politician quite extinct. The
sort of talk I heard in village bar-rooms was inane and contemptible to
the last degree, and it never once touched on politics. Nor, as a
rule, was there any trace of that leaven of superior intelligence which
comes from a fusion of the classes. All the landlords were practically
non-resident. They knew nothing of their tenants; and that pleasant
intercourse between hall and cottage which poets and novelists depict,
rarely happened. Once a year, perhaps, and for a few weeks only, the
blinds of the Hall windows were drawn up; carriages rolled through the
park gates; young ladies, bright in Bond Street toilets, flashed like
deities upon the village street; my Lady Bountiful left a quarter of a
pound of tea at half a dozen cottages; and then the whole vision faded
like an unsubstantial pageant. The blinds were drawn down again, the
lodge-keeper went to sleep, and the monotonies of life submerged
everything like a wave. The clergyman alone remained as the symbol of
a fuller life, sometimes doing his duty with intelligence, sometimes
not; but the case was rare where any definite attempt was made to
uplift the village community by the infusion of any intellectual
interest, any sense of Art, or any care for honest sport. And here
lies the whole secret of the discontent of villages; their inhabitants
are conscious of unjust deprivations in their lot; and if they remain
villagers, it is rather from lethargy than love.
Were I to describe all the places I visited in search of a habitation,
my list would be interminable. I have given one example in Dawes'
Farm; let me give one other, as illustrating another kind of difficulty
in my quest.
On an exquisite morning in June I found myself climbing the long chalk
hills that lie northward of the Thames valley. At every step the air
became more pure and sparkling; and while in the hazy lowlands not a
leaf stirred, here a brisk and gusty breeze was blowing. The road ran
through high chalk banks, like a railway cutting, and I have since
found that Roman soldiers used it in the days of Caesar. At the height
of three hundred feet authentic forest scenery began. Here the elms
ceased, and enormous woods of beech took their place. The turf was of
the greenest, the solitude intense, the air exhilarating; and never had
I so admired the lace-like delicacy of foliage which distinguishes the
beech, for never had I seen it in such mass or such perfection. The
house I sought stood at fully eight hundred feet above sea-level, on a
carpet of soft turf, round which the forest rose like a wall. Never
did place look so sweetly habitable; it was a kind of green hermitage
in the woods, inimitably quiet, warmed by clearest sunlight, cooled by
freshest winds. Here, said I, at last is my much sought El Dorado; nor
did the cottage, when I came to it, belie my hopes. It was a true
woodland cottage, an intimate part and parcel of the scenery. It had
been recently inhabited by a man of letters, a poet and a dreamer; and
a fitter spot to dream in eye never rested on.
My enthusiasm rose as I drew nearer to it, There was a warm, homely
compactness about it, as of a nest among the trees. The forest turf
came to the very gate; a young orchard of five hundred trees lay to the
southward of the house, a green paddock to the northward; and, as my
advertisement informed me, the entire price of this eligible freehold
property was five hundred pounds! Why, then, was its possessor so
eager to be quit of it? I walked round the house, went through its
rooms, took the view from various windows, already treating it as mine,
and it was long before I came upon the cause. That cause was not its
remoteness or its solitude; it was lack of water. There was no well,
and to have sunk a well would have been costly. The only water-supply
was the rain-water from the roofs. Men can laugh at a good many
deprivations, but deprivation of water is a serious business. I found
upon inquiry that the nearest spring was two miles away. In time of
drought--and in this high district summer drought was normal--it was
this or nothing. Water was then sold by the bucket, nor was it easy to
find any one to fetch and carry for you. I had no mind to condemn
myself to drink the droppings of a roof for life, nor to perform my
ablutions by the aid of a teacup and a saucer. The place, for all its
beauty, was plainly uninhabitable as the Sahara. A camel might have
lived there with content; it was no place for a family used to the
delights of tubbing. I had remarked in the owner of the house a
certain elementary lack of linen; the cause was now explained. I think
his only method of attaining cleanliness must have been by what is
called 'the dry air process.'
This adventure lives in my memory, not only because it had delightful
elements, but because it was the last of a long series, which might
have been called more truthfully misadventures. For an exhilarating
month I scoured the neighbourhood of London, living in a happy fever of
enterprise and hope, but without result. July came, and my problem was
still unsolved. I had already given notice to terminate the tenancy
of my house in London, and there seemed a fair prospect that September
would find me homeless. At my present height of good spirits I cannot
say that even this prospect dismayed me. If the worst came to the
worst I meant to take to the road in one of those convenient vans much
used by travelling hawkers. I had long envied the extraordinary
snugness of those itinerant habitations; to be a Dr. Marigold seemed
the happiest of fates; rent free, and finally delivered from
tax-collectors and their tribe, I might yet roam the world as a
superior kind of vagrant. I knew indeed a young friend of mine who had
adopted this very life. He sold tracts and Bibles upon village greens,
and I promise you no mansion had a warmer glow of comfort than the
interior of his yellow van when the lamp was lit at night for supper.
He has since found his way to a lonely missionary station in Peru; but
he has often told me that he was never happier than when he played the
part of pious gipsy on the village greens of England. At a pinch I
thought that I could do what he had done; it was a romantic trade, and
a new _Lavengro_ might be written on it.
But whatever dreams of permanent and dedicated vagrancy I might
entertain, manifestly my first duty was to find a cottage if I could.
At last, and almost by accident, I came on what I wanted. I had gone
to the Lake District in the month of August, and one day I struck into
a lonely road to the north-west of Buttermere. Half an hour's walk
brought me to a tiny hamlet beside a rushing stream, and here, for the
first time in all my wanderings, I found a genuine deserted cottage.
To speak by the book there were two cottages exactly similar, covered
by a single roof. They stood upon a gentle slope; a group of pines
formed a shelter from the north, the moorland rose behind them, and the
river sang through a contiguous glen. My first glance told me that
they had not long been out of occupation. They showed no marks of
dilapidation, and the little gardens, though weed-grown, gave signs of
recent care. A woman whom I met told me their history. They had long
been inhabited by two families, father and son. A few months
previously these families had sailed for Canada. No one had applied
for the cottages, for in that part work was scarce, and the foundries
and shipyards on the coast drew away the younger population. The
rent--it seemed incredible--was two shillings a week. The woman
yielded to what she thought my idle curiosity, and brought me the keys.
Each cottage contained four rooms, and the two could easily be thrown
into one. They were dry and water-tight, the walls whitewashed and
clean, the woodwork sound and well cared for. I sat down upon the
sun-warmed bank beside the gate and thought. Here was solitude indeed;
a dozen neighbours in all, simple labouring folk:
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
Here, too, was beauty in excess; a glen untrodden by the feet of
tourists, moorland and pine-wood, a stream that lifted up a cheerful
voice, hills and mountains of delightful form and colour, and not far
away the silver gleam of lakes. In all external features it was my
dream come true, and the deep-bosomed woman at my side, with her face
of rosy, placid health, was herself the proof of how lightly the wings
of time passed over this haunt of ancient peace.
I suppose that no one ever approaches the realisation of his hopes
without a kind of fear. In those imaginary dramas which we invent and
rehearse perpetually in the silent theatre of our own minds, we always
take care that we get the best of the situation and the dialogue. The
dramas of real life are apt to end differently. The coveted occasion
finds us incapable; a baffling scepticism of our own powers leaves us
impotent; the part that ran so easily, with such unanimous applause,
when we were both the dramatist and the actor, suddenly bristles with a
hundred unsuspected difficulties. For the first time, as I sat on that
sunny bank, I began to ask myself whether I could really play the part
I had so long desired to play. Could I reconcile myself to seclusion
so entire? Would not this weight of utter silence grow heavier than I
could bear? It was not always June, I told myself, and there were days
of lashing rain, grey skies, and 'death-dumb autumn dripping' fog to
think of. The vision of lighted streets and bustling crowds, the warm
contiguity of numbers, the long lines of windows all aglow at evening,
the genial stir and tumult of congregated life, took masterful
possession of my mind. Could I bear to relinquish the familiar scene?
A thousand threads of use and habit bound me to it, each in itself as
light as gossamer, but the whole tough as cords of steel. I foresaw
that I had underestimated the ease of my deliverance. It would
require a strength of consistent resolution of which perhaps I was not
capable. It was but too likely that I should be one of those who put
their hand to the plough and look back, a reluctant recruit of a cause
that won my faith, but could not win my will. This would be not only
fatal to my peace, it would make me despicable in my own eyes, which is
the worst of all calamities that man can suffer.
Such a distress of mind was natural; yet I think that behind it all my
thought was firm and clear. What I had proposed to do for twenty years
I must do, or attempt to do, if I would retain my self-respect. I
might become despicable to myself by failure in my task, but I should
be much more despicable by never trying to accomplish it. In that
half-hour of meditation the die was cast. I had come to my predestined
battlefield. I must here be triumphant or defeated; in any case I must
attempt the conflict.
The decision restored, as by a stroke of magic, all my good spirits. I
examined my two cottages again with an eye less critical, more kindly,
more urbane. I saw with how few touches they could be transformed into
a habitation suited to my needs. With the two main rooms thrown into
one I should have a spacious living-room; the two gardens would compose
an admirable lawn; roses should grow against the walls, warm-hued
creepers frame the upper windows; it should become a lodge in Eden.
Then there was the air, the view, the company of the silent mountains
and the singing stream. Here was my theatre, my orchestra, my
concert-room. The woman who was my guide took me into her own cottage
for a cup of tea, and I was struck with its homely air of comfort. An
oak dresser, covered with blue ware such as is common in these parts,
filled one wall; an oak chest of drawers another; there was a
broad-seated oak settle by the fire; all solid, of a good design, and
polished to a deep brown by use and industry. The floor was red brick;
flowers lined the windows; and everything was clean as hands could make
it. I saw my house furnished on the same plan, and it pleased me. A
recollection crossed my mind, curious and most fantastic at such a
time, of a certain room in one of the show-houses in London, furnished
entirely in the French style. I recalled the console tables of old
gilt, the brocaded couch, and the gilded chairs which no one dared to
sit upon; and I confess that I preferred this habitable cottage-room.
There was something satisfying in its plainness; a sense of something
honest and intimately right; a suggestion of solid worth and homely
ease. My spirits had already been restored by my decision; they were
now invigorated to the point of joy, for I saw the concrete emblems, as
it were, of the beauty which is found in true simplicity.
The next day I returned to the spot accompanied by my wife and my two
boys. We made a new and elaborate inspection of the two cottages. In
the afternoon the landlord, a neighbouring farmer, met us. He was a
dales-man born and bred, shrewd, much given to silence, but with a
plenitude of genial good sense. He began by being somewhat suspicious
of us after the usual country fashion. When he at last understood the
sincerity and novelty of our intentions, he treated us with a kind of
fatherly derision, which had no hint of impoliteness or impertinence in
it. 'It will na do, I'm thinking,' he said, several times. When he
saw us persistent, and that our persistence grew in the ratio of his
dissuasion, he said, just as though he were talking to wayward
children, 'Well, a wilful man maun have his way. As for my bit of
cottages, ye're welcome to them, an' I'll ask no rent till ye've been
in them long enough to know your own minds better. They're of no worth
to me, an' I'll be your debtor for living in them. If ye want to pull
them aboot, ye'll do it at your own expense, I'm willing. Later on, if
ye care to stay, you and me'll fix a rent, an' I gie ye ma word it
shall na be more than ten pund a year. I'll help ye too if ye'll let
me. I can find ye a man as 'll do all the little jobs you want done,
an' glad to do it. As for fishing, the stream's yours, an' I would na
say but what ye might get some shooting too. But ye'll tire of it,
ye'll tire of it,' he concluded, with a grave smile.
With that he handed us the keys. He then shook our hands with the
melancholy air of a man who says farewell to friends embarked upon a
perilous adventure, and strode away across the heather, stopping once
to wave his hand to us as if in wise dissuasion.
So Mahomet might have stood above Damascus when he said, 'My Paradise
is not there,' and yet Damascus was a Paradise all the same.