A FURTHER GLANCE AT OUR VILLAGE
Miss Mitford writes in 1830:—
“Our village continues to stand pretty much where it did, and has
undergone as little change in the last two years as any hamlet of its
inches in the county.... I have hinted that it had a trick of standing
still, of remaining stationary, unchanged and unimproved in this most
changeable and improving world.... There it stands, the same long
straggling street of pretty cottages divided by pretty gardens, wholly
unchanged in size or appearance, unincreased and undiminished by a
single brick.
“Ah, the in-and-out cottage! the dear, dear home!... No changes there!
except that the white kitten who sits purring at the window under the
great myrtle has succeeded to his lamented grandfather, our beautiful
Persian cat. I cannot find an alteration. To be sure, yesterday evening
a slight misfortune happened to our goodly tenement, occasioned by the
unlucky diligence which, under the conduct of a sleepy coachman and
a restive horse, contrived to knock down and demolish the wall of our
court, and fairly to drive through the front garden, thereby destroying
sundry curious stocks, carnations and geraniums. It is a mercy that
the unruly steed was content with battering the wall.... There was
quite din enough without any addition. The three insides (ladies)
squalling from the interior of that commodious vehicle; the outsides
(gentlemen) swearing on the roof; the coachman still half asleep, but
unconsciously blowing his horn; we in the house screaming and scolding;
the passers-by shouting and hallooing; May, who little brooked such an
invasion of her territories, barking in her tremendous lion note, and
putting down the other noises like a clap of thunder. The passengers,
coachman, horses and spectators all righted at last, and no harm done
but to my flowers and to the wall. May, however, stands bewailing
the ruins, for that low wall was her favourite haunt; she used to
parade backwards and forwards on the top of it as if to show herself,
just after the manner of a peacock on the top of a house. But the
wall is to be rebuilt to-morrow with old weather-stained bricks—no
patchwork! exactly in the same form; May herself will not find out the
difference, so that in the way of alteration this little misfortune
will pass for nothing. Neither have we any improvements worth calling
such, except that the wheeler’s green door has been retouched out of
the same pot (as I judge from the tint) with which he furbished up
our new-old pony-chaise; that the shop window of our neighbour, the
universal dealer Bromley’s, hath been beautified, and his name and
calling splendidly set forth in yellow letters on a black ground; and
that our landlord of the ‘Rose’ has hoisted a new sign of unparalleled
splendour.”
Miss Mitford happened to possess an “historic staff” which she greatly
valued, and which had been handed down from one relative to another
from its former owner—that Duchess of Athol and Lady of Man of whom
mention has been made in an earlier chapter.
At the period we are writing of Miss Mitford used the staff rather as
an ornament than otherwise, being then, as she says, “the best walker
of her years for a dozen miles round”; but in later life she was glad
of its support. “Now this staff,” she writes, “one of the oldest
friends I have in the world, is pretty nearly as well known as myself
in our Berkshire village.”
One day the stick was not to be found in its usual place in the hall,
“it was missing, was gone, was lost!” A great search was made for it
far and wide. “Really, ma’am,” quoth her faithful maid, “there is
some comfort in the interest the people take in the stick! If it were
anything alive—the pony, or Fanchon, or ourselves—they could not be
more sorry. Master Brent, ma’am, at the top of the street, he promises
to speak to everybody, so does William Wheeler, who goes everywhere,
and Mrs. Bromley at the shop; and the carrier and the postman. I
daresay the whole parish knows it by this time! I have not been outside
the gate to-day, but a dozen people have asked me if we had heard of
_our_ stick!”
The bustle of the village and the anxiety of Mary were, however, soon
to be allayed. “At ten o’clock one evening a rustling of the front
door latch was heard, together with a pattering of little feet, then
the little feet advanced into the house and some little tongues gained
courage to tell their good news—the stick was found!
An intimate friend of Miss Mitford’s, a certain Miss James, of Binfield
Park, had been staying for a short time at the inn hard by, on which
occasion Mary addressed the following lines to her:—
“The village inn! The wood-fire burning bright, The solitary taper’s
flickering light! The lowly couch! the casement swinging free! My
noblest friend, was this a place for thee? Yet in that humble room,
from all apart, We poured forth mind for mind and heart for heart,
Ranging from idlest words and tales of mirth To the deep mysteries of
heaven and earth.
* * * * *
No fitting place; yet (inconsistent strain And selfish) come, I
prythee! come again.”
* * * * *
In a story entitled _The Black Velvet Bag_ Miss Mitford has given
an amusing account of some of her shopping experiences in “Belford
Regis,” her name for Reading, where the various purchases for the small
household of Three Mile Cross were usually made.
“Last Friday fortnight,” she writes, “was one of those anomalies in the
weather with which we English people are visited for our sins; a day
of intolerable wind and insupportable dust, an equinoctial gale out
of season, a piece of March unnaturally foisted into the very heart
of May.... On that day did I set forth to the good town of B—— on the
feminine errand called shopping. I am a true daughter of Eve, a dear
lover of bargains and bright colours, and, knowing this, have generally
been wise enough to keep as much as I can out of temptation. At last
a sort of necessity arose for some slight purchases. The shopping was
inevitable, and I undertook the whole concern at once, most heroically
resolving to spend just so much and no more, and half comforting
myself that I had a full morning’s work of indispensables and should
have no time for extraneous extravagances.
“There was to be sure a prodigious accumulation of errands and wants.
The evening before they had been set down in great form on a slip of
paper headed thus—‘things wanted.’ To how many and various catalogues
that title would apply—from him who wants a blue riband to him who
wants bread and cheese! My list was astounding. It was written in
double columns in an invisible hand.... In good open printing it would
have cut a respectable figure as a catalogue and filled a decent number
of pages—a priced catalogue too, for as I had a given sum to carry
to market I amused myself with calculating the proper and probable
cost of every article, in which process I most egregiously cheated
the shop-keeper and myself by copying with the credulity of hope from
the puffs of newspapers, and expecting to buy fine solid wearable
goods at advertising prices. In this way I stretched my money a good
deal further than it would go, and swelled my catalogue, so that at
last, in spite of compression, I had no room for another word, and was
obliged to crowd several small but important articles such as cotton,
laces, pins, needles, shoe-strings, etc., into that very irregular
and disorderly store-house—that place where most things deposited are
lost—_my memory_, by courtesy so called.
“The written list was safely consigned, with a well-filled purse, to
my usual repository, a black velvet bag, and the next morning I and
my bag, with its nicely balanced contents of wants and money, were
safely convoyed in a little open carriage to the good town of B——.
There I dismounted and began to bargain most vigorously, visiting the
cheapest shops, cheapening the cheapest articles, yet wisely buying
the strongest and the best, a little astonished at first to find
everything so much dearer than I had set it down, yet soon reconciled
to this misfortune by the magical influence which shopping possesses
over a woman’s fancy—all the sooner reconciled as the monetary list lay
unlooked at and unthought of in its grave receptacle, the black velvet
bag.
“On I went with an air of cheerful business, of happy importance, till
my money began to wax small. Certain small aberrations had occurred,
too, in my economy. One article that had happened, by rare accident,
to be below my calculation, and indeed below any calculation—calico at
ninepence, fine, thick, strong, wide calico at ninepence absolutely
enchanted me and I took the whole piece; then after buying M.
[material for] a gown according to order, I saw one that I liked better
and bought that too. Then I fell in love, was actually captivated by a
sky-blue sash and handkerchief,—not the poor, thin greeny colour which
usually passes under that dishonoured name, but the rich full tint of
the noonday sky, and a cap riband really pink that might have vied
with the inside leaves of a moss-rose. Then in hunting after cheapness
I got into obscure shops where, not finding what I asked for, I was
fain to take something that they had, purely to make a compensation
for the trouble of lugging out drawers and answering questions. Lastly
I was fairly coaxed into some articles by the irresistibility of the
sellers, [in one case] by the fluent impudence of a lying shopman who,
under cover of a well-darkened window, affirmed on his honour that his
brown satin was a perfect match to my green pattern, and forced the
said satin down my throat accordingly. With these helps my money melted
all too fast; at half-past five my purse was entirely empty, and as
shopping with an empty purse has by no means the relish of shopping
with a full one I was quite willing and ready to go home to dinner,
pleased as a child with my purchases and wholly unsuspecting the sins
of omission, the errands unperformed, which were the natural result of
my unconsulted _memoranda_ and my treacherous memory.
“Home I returned a happy and proud woman, wise in my own conceit, a
thrifty fashion-monger, laden like a pedlar, with huge packages in
stout brown holland tied up with whipcord, and genteel little parcels
papered and pack-threaded in shopman-like style. At last we were
safely stowed in the pony-chaise, which had much ado to hold us, my
little black bag as usual in my lap. When we ascended the steep hill
out of B—— a sudden puff of wind took at once my cottage-bonnet and my
large cloak, blew the bonnet off my head so that it hung behind me,
suspended by the riband, and fairly snapped the string of the cloak,
which flew away much in the style of John Gilpin’s renowned in story.
My companion, pitying my plight, exerted himself manfully to regain
the fly-away garments, shoved the head into the bonnet, or the bonnet
over the head (I do not know which phrase best describes the manœuvre),
with one hand and recovered the refractory cloak with the other. It was
wonderful what a tug he was forced to give before that obstinate cloak
could be brought round; it was swelled with the wind like a bladder,
animated, so to say, like a living thing, and threatened to carry pony
and chaise and riders and packages backward down the hill, as if it had
been a sail of a ship. At last the contumacious garment was mastered.
We righted, and by dint of sitting sideways and turning my back on my
kind comrade, I got home without any further damage than the loss of
my bag, which, though not missed before the chaise had been unladen,
had undoubtedly gone by the board in the gale, and I lamented my trusty
companion without in the least foreseeing the use it would probably be
of to my reputation.
“Immediately after dinner I produced my purchases. They were much
admired, and the quantity when spread out in our little room being
altogether dazzling, and the quality satisfactory, the cheapness was
never doubted. Nobody calculated, and the bills being really lost in
the lost bag, and the particular prices just as much lost in memory
(the ninepenny calico was the only article whose cost occurred to me),
I passed, without telling anything like a fib, merely by a discreet
silence, for the best and thriftiest bargainer that ever went shopping.
After some time spent very pleasantly in admiration on one side and
display on the other we were interrupted by the demand for some of the
little articles which I had forgotten.
“‘The sewing-silk, please, ma’am.’
“‘Sewing-silk! I don’t know—look about.’
“Ah! she might look long enough! no sewing-silk was there. ‘Very
strange.’
“Presently came other enquiries. ‘Where’s the tape?’ ‘The tape!’
“‘Yes, my dear; and the needles, pins, cotton, stay-laces, boot-laces.’
“‘The bobbin, the ferret, shirt buttons, shoe-strings?’ quoth she of
the sewing-silk, taking up the cry, and forthwith began a search.... At
last she suddenly desisted from her rummage.
“‘Without doubt, ma’am, they are in the reticule, and all lost,’ said
she in a very pathetic tone.
“‘Really,’ said I, a little conscious stricken, ‘I don’t recollect,
perhaps I might forget.’
“‘But you never could forget so many things; besides, you wrote them
down.’
“‘I don’t know. I am not sure.’ But I was not listened to; Harriet’s
conjecture had been metamorphosed into a certainty; all my sins of
omission were stowed in the reticule, and before bed-time the little
black bag held forgotten things enough to fill a sack.
“Never was reticule so lamented by all but its owner; a boy was
immediately dispatched to look for it, and on his returning
empty-handed there was even a talk of having it cried. My care, on the
other hand, was all directed to prevent its being found. I had had the
good luck to lose it in a suburb of B—— renowned for filching, and I
remembered that the street was at that moment full of people ... so I
went to bed in the comfortable assurance that it was gone for ever.
“But there is nothing certain in this world—not even a thief’s
dishonesty. Two old women, who had pounced at once on my valuable
property, quarrelled about the plunder, and one of them in a fit of
resentment at being cheated of her share went to the mayor of B—— and
informed against her companion. The mayor, an intelligent and active
magistrate, immediately took the disputed bag and all its contents
into his own possession, and as he is also a man of great politeness
he restored it as soon as possible to the right owner. The very first
thing that saluted my eyes when I awoke in the morning was a note from
Mr. Mayor with a sealed packet. The fatal truth was visible. There
it lay, that identical black bag, with its name-tickets, its cambric
handkerchief, its unconsulted list and its thirteen bills.... I had
recovered my reticule and lost my reputation!”