THE NEW HOME
Miss Mitford’s cottage in Three Mile Cross is practically the same as
it was in her day, the chief alterations being that the windows to the
front of the house, which were formerly leaded casement windows, have
been enlarged and are now sashed. Also that the window of a parlour
looking unto the back garden has been enlarged. In former times, too,
the red bricks of which the house is built were exposed, but they are
now covered with plaster.
Curiously enough some early prints of the cottage are very misleading.
A limner at a distance has evidently tried to make a pleasing drawing
from some very imperfect sketch done on the spot, which did not reveal
the fact that the right-hand portion of the house recedes, and that
the front door is not in the middle but on one side. Thus a report
arose that the cottage had been rebuilt in later years. But happily
we possess conclusive evidence to the contrary given by a gentleman
still living who passed his childhood in the cottage almost as an
adopted son of the household. When visiting the place a few years ago
he declared that the cottage was unchanged, and recalled, as he passed
from room to room, his happy associations with each spot.
The house is now used as a working man’s club, and the caretaker is
ready to show the place to any visitors desirous to see the home of
Miss Mitford.
Behind the house on part of the site of Miss Mitford’s garden there
is a large edifice built called the “Mitford Hall,” which is used as
an Institute for the working classes, and is a source of much good to
the neighbourhood. But happily it stands well back and cannot be seen
by the visitor who gazes at the cottage from the village street, and
who is glad to dwell only on what is connected with Miss Mitford’s
residence in the place.
In the sketch of the cottage given the reader will observe that the
windows have been drawn as they were formerly and a few other small
alterations made.
[Illustration: THE WRITING PARLOUR]
The cottage consists of a ground floor with one storey only above it.
The casement window in the receding portion of the cottage, just below
the shelving roof, belongs to Miss Mitford’s study, a quaint little
room where at a small table she used to write her stories of village
life. The window looks down upon the “shoemaker’s” little shop, with
its pointed roof and tiny window panes. It must be quite unchanged in
appearance since Miss Mitford described it, the sole alteration being
in the business carried on there, as it and the collar-maker’s quaint
shop at the top of the village have exchanged trades.
As she sat at that window Miss Mitford would jot down all the incidents
that occurred in the village street below. “It is a pleasant, lively
scene this May morning,” she writes, “with the sun shining so gaily on
the irregular rustic dwellings, intermixed with their pretty gardens;
a cart and a waggon watering (it would be more correct perhaps to say
_beering_) at the ‘Rose’; Dame Wheeler with her basket and her brown
loaf just coming from the bakehouse; the nymph of the shoe shop feeding
a large family of goslings at the open door; two or three women in
high gossip dawdling up the street; Charles North the gardener, with
his blue apron and a ladder on his shoulder, walking rapidly by; a cow
and a donkey browsing the grass by the wayside; my white greyhound,
Mayflower, sitting majestically in front of her own stable; and ducks,
chickens, pigs and children scattered over all.... Ah! here is the post
cart coming up the road at its most respectable rumble, that cart,
or rather caravan, which so much resembles a house upon wheels, or a
show of the smaller kind at a country fair. It is now crammed full of
passengers, the driver just protruding his head and hands out of the
vehicle, and the sharp, clever boy, who, in the occasional absence of
his father, officiates as deputy, perched like a monkey on the roof.”
“I have got exceedingly fond of this little place,” writes Mary to
Sir William Elford; “could be content to live and die here. To be
sure the rooms are of the smallest; I, in our little parlour, look
something like a blackbird in a goldfinch’s cage—but it is so snug and
comfortable.”
The projecting piece of building seen in the sketch in the front of the
cottage was appropriated by the doctor as his dispensary. It has a door
that opens into the little front court. The bedrooms are on the first
floor.
Mary’s study window commands a pretty view beyond the low peaked roofs
of the shoemaker’s shop and of its neighbouring cottages. At the foot
of a grassy slope can be seen a dark line of tree tops. They form part
of a magnificent avenue of elms that border a long stretch of grass—one
of the old drover’s roads—extending for nearly two miles. “The effect
of these tall solemn trees,” remarks Mary, “so equal in height, so
unbroken and so continuous, is quite grand and imposing as twilight
comes on, especially when some slight bend in the lane gives to the
outline almost the look of an amphitheatre.” This spot—Woodcock Lane as
it is called—was a favourite resort of Mary’s, and thither she often
repaired when composing her country sketches.
“In that very lane,” she writes one day, “am I writing on this sultry
June day, luxuriating in the shade, the verdure, the fragrance of
hayfield and beanfield, and the absence of all noise except the song of
birds and that strange mingling of many sounds, the whir of a thousand
forms of insect life, so often heard among the general hush of a summer
noon.
“... Here comes a procession of cows going to milking, with an old
attendant, still called the cow-boy, who, although they have seen me
often enough, one should think, sitting beneath a tree writing ... with
my dog Fanchon nestled at my feet—still _will_ start as if they had
never seen a woman before in their lives. Back they start, and then
they rush forward, and then the old drover emits certain sounds so
horribly discordant that little Fanchon starts up in a fright on her
feet, deranging all the economy of my extemporary desk and wellnigh
upsetting the inkstand. Very much frightened is my pretty pet, the
arrantest coward that ever walked upon four legs! And so she avenges
herself, as cowards are wont to do, by following the cows at a safe
distance as soon as they are fairly passed, and beginning to bark amain
when they are nearly out of sight.”
[Illustration: THE WHEELWRIGHT’S SHOP]
Mary delighted in the beauty of the country that surrounds Three Mile
Cross even from the first moment of her arrival, but her delight
increased as she became more intimately acquainted with its charms.
“This country is eminently flowery,” she writes. “Besides the variously
tinted primroses and violets in singular profusion we have all sorts
of orchises and arums; the delicate wood anemones; the still more
delicate wood sorrel, with its lovely purple veins meandering over
the white drooping flower; the field tulips [or fritillary] with its
rich checker-work of lilac and crimson, and the sun shining through
the leaves as through old painted glass; the ghostly field star of
Bethlehem [and] the wild lilies-of-the-valley.... Yes, this is really a
country of flowers!”
She revelled, too, in the wilder beauty of the great commons in the
neighbourhood “always picturesque and romantic,” she writes one day
in early summer, “and now peculiarly brilliant, and glowing with the
luxuriant orange flowers of the furze ... stretching around us like a
sea of gold, and loading the very air with its rich almond odour.”
She loved the winding rivers that water her part of the country; the
“pleasant and pastoral Kennet for silver eels renowned,” upon whose
bordering meadows the fritillary, both purple and white, grow in
profusion; and the changeful, beautiful Loddon “rising sometimes level
with its banks, so clear and smooth and peaceful ... and sometimes like
a frisky, tricksy watersprite much addicted to wandering out of bounds.”
There is a fine old stone bridge that crosses the Loddon about a mile
beyond Shinfield, with a small inn, “The George,” close by, a favourite
resort of fishermen. Standing on that bridge one summer evening Miss
Mitford watched the setting sun descend over the water.
“What a sunset! How golden! how beautiful!” she exclaims. “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.... 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 eyes fill
as I write of it and think of the immeasurable 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 the lowest of His
creatures.”
[Illustration]