RECOLLECTIONS OF OLD READING
In the spring of the year 1802 Dr. Mitford purchased an old farm-house
with its surrounding fields amounting to about seventy acres, near
to the small village of Graseley, which lies about three miles to
the south of Reading. The house, known as Graseley Court, had been
built in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and it possessed fine rooms
with ornamental panelling, oriel windows and a great oaken staircase
with massive balustrades. It had fallen out of repair, and the
doctor’s first plan was to carry out such restorations only as would
make it a comfortable dwelling-place for himself and his family. But
unfortunately he soon abandoned this plan and determined to pull down
the old house and to build upon its site a new and spacious mansion.
Dr. Mitford had little appreciation of the beauty he was destroying,
nor did he foresee the large sums of money that would be sunk in this
undertaking.
[Illustration: STRIKING LIKENESSES TAKEN IN THIS MANNER _ONE GUINEA
EACH_]
Mary’s school life came to an end at the close of the year 1802,
when she had just reached the age of fifteen. Her connection, however,
with Hans Place was not over, for she paid happy visits from time to
time to the St. Quintins and Miss Rowden, going to the London theatres,
hearing concerts, and seeing interesting society under their auspices.
Her first introduction to the Reading gaieties of a grown-up order
was to be at the Race Ball in August, 1803. “At these balls,” we are
told, “it was the custom for the steward of the races to dance with the
young ladies who then came out.” After alluding to the distress felt
by one of her companions on having to dance with a stranger on such an
occasion, Mary writes in 1802: “I think myself very fortunate that Mr.
Shaw Lefevre will be steward next year, for by that time I shall hope
to know him well enough to render the undertaking of dancing with him
less disagreeable.”
“The public amusements of the town,” she writes, “as I remember them
at bonny fifteen were sober enough. They were limited to an annual
visit from a respectable company of actors, the theatre being very
well conducted and exceedingly ill-attended; to biennial concerts ...
rather better patronized, to almost weekly incursions from itinerant
lecturers on all the arts and sciences, and from prodigies of every
kind, whether three-year-old fiddlers or learned dogs.”
“The good town of Belford [Reading],” she tells us, “was the paradise
of ill-jointured widows and portionless old-maids. They met in the
tableland of gentility, passing their mornings in calls at each
other’s houses and their evenings in small tea-parties, seasoned with
a rubber or a pool, and garnished with a little quiet gossiping ...
which their habits required. The part of the town in which they chiefly
congregated, the lady’s _quarter_, was one hilly corner of the parish
of St. Nicholas, a sort of highland district, all made up of short Rows
and pigmy Places entirely uncontaminated by the vulgarity of shops.”
Miss Mitford has given us many a racy description of the type of small
tradespeople of the period. Here is one of them:—
“The greatest man in these parts (I use the word in the sense of
Louis-le-Gros, not Louis-le-Grand) is our worthy neighbour Stephen
Lane, the grazier ex-butcher of Belford. Nothing so big hath been seen
since Lambert the gaoler or the Durham ox.
“When he walks he overfills the pavement and is more difficult to pass
than a link of full-dressed misses or a chain of becloaked dandies....
Chairs crack under him, couches rock, bolsters groan and floors
tremble....
“Tailors, although he was a liberal and punctual paymaster, dreaded his
custom. It was not only the quantity of material that he took, and yet
that cloth universally called ‘broad’ was not broad enough for him; it
was not only the stuff but the work—the sewing, stitching, plaiting and
button-holing without end. The very shears grew weary of their labours.”
For a contrast to this personage we have “little Miss Philly Firkin the
china woman,” whose shop stood in a narrow twisting lane called Oriel
Street. This street was cribbed and confined on one side by the remains
of an old monastic building, and after winding round the churchyard
of St. Stephens with an awkward curve it finally abutted upon the
market-place. So popular was this “incommodious avenue of shops”
that nobody dreamt of visiting Belford without desiring to purchase
something there, so that “horse-people and foot-people jostled upon its
pavement,” whilst “coaches and phaetons ran against each other in the
road.” Of all the shops the prettiest and most sought after was that of
Miss Philly Firkin.
“She herself was in appearance most fit to be its inhabitant, being a
trim, prim little woman, whose dress hung about her in stiff, regular
folds, very like the drapery of a china shepherdess on a mantelpiece,
and whose pink and white complexion ... had the same professional hue.
Change her spruce cap for a wide-brimmed hat and the damask napkin
which she flourished in wiping her wares for a china crook and the
figure in question might have passed for a miniature of the mistress.
In one respect they differed. The china shepherdess was a silent
personage. Miss Philadelphia was not; on the contrary, she was reckoned
to make ... as good a use of her tongue as any woman, gentle or simple,
in the whole town of Belford.”
Miss Mitford describes another female shop-keeper of those days, “a
reduced gentlewoman by name Mrs. Martin, who endeavoured to eke out a
small annuity by letting lodgings at eight shillings a week, and by
keeping a toyshop. The whole stock (of the little shop)—fiddles, drums,
balls, dolls and shuttle-cocks—might be easily appraised at under eight
pounds, including a stately rocking-horse, the poor widow’s _cheval de
bataille_, which had occupied one side of Mrs. Martin’s shop from the
time of her setting up in business, and still continued to keep his
station, uncheapened by her thrifty customers.”
When a certain Mr. Singleton, we are told, was ordained curate of
St. Nicholas after taking his degrees at college with “respectable
mediocrity” he was attracted by the appearance of the rooms above
the toyshop, “and there by the advice of Dr. Grampound (the Rector)
did he place himself on his arrival at Belford. He occupied the first
floor, consisting of the sitting-room—a pleasant apartment with one
window abutting on the High Bridge and the other on the market-place,
also a small chamber behind with its tent-bed and dimity furniture.”
And there the curate continued “to live for full thirty years with
the selfsame spare, quiet, decent landlady and her small serving
maiden Patty, a demure, civil damsel dwarfed as it should seem by
constant curtseying.... Except for the clock of time, which, however
imperceptibly, does still keep moving, everything about the little
toyshop was at a standstill. The very tabby cat, which lay basking on
the hearth, might have passed for his progenitor of happy memory, who
took his station there the night of Mr. Singleton’s arrival; and the
self-same hobby-horse still stood rocking opposite the counter, the
admiration of every urchin who passed the door.
“There the rocking-horse remained, and there remained Mr. Singleton,
gradually advancing from a personable youth to a portly middle-aged
man.”
We have already mentioned the frequent small fairs that were held in
the market-place from time to time, but the chief event of the year
in such matters was the Reading Great Fair, which took place regularly
upon May Day. “It was a scene of business as well as of pleasure,”
writes Mary Mitford, “being not only a great market for horses and
cattle, but one of the principal marts for the celebrated cheese of
the great dairy counties.... Before the actual fair day waggon after
waggon, laden with the round, hard, heavy merchandise, rumbled slowly
into the Forbury, where the great space before the school-house was
fairly covered with stacks of Cheddar and North Wilts.
“Fancy the singular effect of piles of cheeses several feet high
extending over a whole large cricket ground, and divided only by narrow
paths littered with straw, amongst which wandered chapmen offering
a taste of their wares to their cautious customers, the country
shop-keepers (who poured in from every village within twenty miles),
and to the thrifty house-wives of the town.... Fancy the effect of this
remarkable scene, surrounded by the usual moving picture of a fair,
the fine Gothic church of St. Nicholas on one side, the old arch of
the Abbey and the abrupt eminence called Forbury Hill, crowned with a
grand clump of trees, on the other.... When lighted up at night it was,
perhaps, still more fantastic and attractive, when the roars and
howlings of the travelling wild beasts used to mingle so grotesquely
with the drums, trumpets and fiddles of the dramatic and equestrian
exhibitions, and the laugh and shout and song of the merry visitors.”
[Illustration: THE OLD MARKET PLACE, READING]
In the year 1804 the building of the large new house at Graseley
was completed, and it received the name of Bertram House, so called
in honour of the Mitfords’ Norman ancestor, Sir Robert Bertram. The
doctor’s usual extravagance was shown in the style of its decorations
and furniture, which were little suited to his small and modest family.
We have visited Bertram House. It is a large square white building of
little architectural beauty, but there is beauty in a wide verandah
standing at the summit of a broad flight of stone steps leading up to
the entrance, which is completely festooned by roses and honeysuckles.
The house faces spreading lawns and gay flower-beds, whilst its
approach from the lane hard by is beneath an avenue of tall limes.
Fields stretch far away behind the building, their “richly timbered
hedgerows edging into wild, rude and solemn fir plantations.”
Here Mary Mitford passed sixteen years of her life, and here she got to
know and love not only their own beautiful grounds but also every turn
of the surrounding shady lanes, where the first violets and primroses
were to be found, and delighted in the wide expanse of its neighbouring
common gay with gorse and broom. Many of her pastoral stories are
connected with this smiling country.
[Illustration]