THE MAY-HOUSES
Miss Mitford delighted in all the simple pleasures of country life, and
entered into them with the enthusiasm of youth.
On a certain morning in spring-time she and her father set out in their
pony-chaise to attend the “Maying” at Bramley.
“Never was a day more congenial to a happy purpose,” she writes. “It
was a day made for country weddings and dances on the green—a day of
dazzling light, of ardent sunshine falling on hedgerows and meadows
fresh with spring showers.... We passed through the well-known and
beautiful scenery of W——[14] Park and the pretty village of M——[15]
with a feeling of new admiration, as if we had never before felt their
charms.... On we passed gaily and happily as far as we knew our way,
perhaps a little further, for the place of our destination was new to
both of us, when we had the luck, good or bad, to meet with a director
in the person of the butcher of M——. He soon gave us the customary and
unintelligible directions as to lanes and turnings, first to the right,
then to the left, etc....
[Footnote 14: Wokefield Park.]
[Footnote 15: Mortimer.]
“On we went, twisting and turning through a labyrinth of lanes ...
till we came suddenly on a solitary farm-house which had one solitary
inmate, a smiling, middle-aged woman, who came to us and offered her
services with the most alert civility.
“All her boys and girls were gone to the Maying, she said, and she
remained to keep house.
“‘The Maying! We are near Bramley then? Is there no carriage road?
Where are we?’
“‘At Silchester, close to the walls, only half a mile from the church.’
“‘At Silchester!’ and in ten minutes we had said a thankful farewell
to our kind informant, had retraced our steps a little, had turned up
another lane, and found ourselves at the foot of that commanding spot
which antiquaries call the amphitheatre, close under the walls of the
Roman city.”
Miss Mitford has written the following lines on this striking scene:—
“Firm as rocks thy ruins stand And hem around thy fertile land; That
land where once a city fair Flourished and pour’d her thousands there:
Where now the waving cornfields glow And trace thy wide streets as
they grow. Ah! chronicle of ages gone, Thou dwellest in thy pride
alone.”
“Under the walls,” she continues, “I [met] an old acquaintance, the
schoolmaster of Silchester, who happened to be there in his full glory,
playing the part of cicerone to a party of ladies, and explaining far
more than he knows, or than anyone knows of streets and gates and sites
of temples, which, by the way, the worthy pedagogue usually calls
parish churches. I never was so glad to see him in my life, never
thought he could have spoken with so much sense and eloquence as were
comprised in the two words ‘straight forward,’ by which he answered our
enquiry as to the road to Bramley.
“And forward we went by a way beautiful beyond description, and left
the venerable walls behind us.... But I must loiter on the road no
longer. Our various delays of a broken bridge—a bog—another wrong
turning—and a meeting with a loaded waggon in a lane too narrow to
pass—all this must remain untold.
“At last we reached a large farm-house at Bramley; another mile
remained to the Green, but that was impassable. Nobody thinks of
riding at Bramley.... We must walk, but the appearance of gay crowds
of rustics, all passing along one path, gave assurance that this time
we should not lose our way.... Cross two fields more and up a quiet
lane and we are at the Maying, announced afar off by the merry sound of
music and the merrier clatter of childish voices. Here we are at the
Green, a little turfy spot where three roads meet, close, shut in by
hedgerows, with a pretty white cottage and its long slip of a garden at
one angle.... In the midst grows a superb horse-chestnut in the full
glory of its flowery pyramids, and from the trunk of this chestnut the
May-houses commence. They are covered alleys built of green boughs,
decorated with garlands and great bunches of flowers—the gayest that
blow—lilacs, guelder roses, peonies, tulips, stocks—hanging down like
chandeliers among the dancers; for of dancers, gay, dark-eyed young
girls in straw bonnets and white gowns, and their lovers in their
Sunday attire, the May-houses were full. The girls had mostly the look
of extreme youth, and danced well and quietly like ladies—too much
so.... Outside was the fun. It is the outside, the upper gallery of the
world that has that good thing. There were children laughing, eating,
trying to cheat and being cheated round an ancient and practised vender
of oranges and ginger-bread; and on the other side of the tree lay a
merry group of old men.... That group would have suited Teniers; it
smoked and drank a little, but it laughed a great deal more. There
were ... young mothers strolling about with infants in their arms, and
ragged boys peeping through the boughs at the dancers, and the bright
sun shining gloriously on all this innocent happiness. Oh, what a
pretty sight it was—worth losing our way for!”
We hear of another Maying which took place in a neighbouring hamlet
of “Our Village,” which Miss Mitford calls Whitley Wood, into which
narrative is interwoven an amusing account of the love affairs of mine
host of the “Rose”—the village inn hard by the Mitfords’ cottage.
“Landlord Sims, the master of the revels,” writes Miss Mitford, “and
our very good neighbour, is a portly, bustling man of five-and-forty
or thereabout, with a hale, jovial visage, a merry eye, a pleasant
smile and a general air of good-fellowship.... There is not a better
companion or a more judicious listener in the county.... No one can
wonder at Master Sim’s popularity.
“After his good wife’s death this popularity began to extend itself in
a remarkable manner amongst the females of the neighbourhood. [His]
Betsy and Letty were good little girls, quick, civil and active, yet,
poor things, what could such young girls know of a house like the
‘Rose’? All would go to rack and ruin without the eye of a mistress!
Master Sims must look out for a wife. So thought the whole female
world, and apparently Master Sims began to think so himself.
[Illustration: OLD SHOEING FORGE]
“The first fair one to whom his attention was directed was a rosy,
pretty widow, a pastry-cook of the next town who arrived in our
village on a visit to her cousin the baker for the purpose of giving
confectionery lessons to his wife. Nothing was ever so hot as that
courtship. During the week that the lady of pie-crust stayed, her
lover almost lived in the oven.... It would be a most suitable match,
as all the parish agreed.... And when our landlord carried her back to
B—— in his new-painted green cart all the village agreed that they were
gone to be married, and the ringers were just setting up a peal when
Master Sims returned alone, single, crestfallen, dejected; the bells
stopped of themselves, and we heard no more of the pretty pastry-cook.
For three months after that rebuff mine host, albeit not addicted to
assertions, testified an equal dislike to women and tartlets, widows
and plum-cake....
“The fit, however, wore off in time, and he began again to follow the
advice of his neighbours and to look out for a wife, up street and down
street.... The down-street lady was a widow also, the portly, comely
relict of our drunken village blacksmith, who began to find her shop,
her journeymen and her eight children ... rather more than a lone woman
could manage, and to sigh for a helpmate to ease her of her cares....
Master Sims was the coadjutor on whom she had inwardly pitched, and
accordingly she threw out broad hints to that effect every time she
encountered him ... and Mr. Sims was far too gallant and too much in
the habit of assenting to listen unmoved ... and the whispers and
smiles and hand-pressings were becoming very tender.... This was his
down-street flame.
“The rival lady was Miss Lydia Day, the carpenter’s sister, a slim,
upright maiden, not remarkable for beauty and not quite so young as
she had been, who, on inheriting a small annuity from the mistress
with whom she had spent the best of her days, retired to her native
village to live on her means. A genteel, demure, quiet personage was
Miss Lydia Day, much addicted to snuff and green tea, and not averse to
a little gentle scandal—for the rest a good sort of woman and _un très
bon parti_ for Master Sims, who ... made love to her whenever she came
into his head.... Remiss as he was, he had no lack of encouragement
to complain of—for she ... put on her best silk, and her best simper,
and lighted up her faded complexion into something approaching a blush
whenever he came to visit her. And this was Master Sims’ up-street love.
“So stood affairs at the ‘Rose’ when the day of the Maying arrived, and
the double flirtation ... proved on this occasion extremely useful.
Each of the ladies contributed her aid to the festival, Miss Lydia by
tying up sentimental garlands for the May-house ... the widow by giving
her whole bevy of boys and girls a holiday and turning them loose
in the neighbourhood to collect flowers as they could. Very useful
auxiliaries were these eight foragers; they scoured the country far and
near—irresistible mendicants, pardonable thieves!
“... By the time a cricket match [which opened proceedings] was over
the world began to be gay at Whitley Wood. Carts and gigs and horses
and carriages and people of all sorts arrived from all quarters....
Fiddlers, ballad-singers, cake, baskets—Punch—Master Frost crying
cherries—a Frenchman with dancing dogs—a Bavarian woman selling
brooms—half a dozen stalls with fruit and frippery—and twenty noisy
games of quoits and bowls and ninepins gave to the assemblage the
bustle, clatter and gaiety of a Dutch fair. Plenty of eating in the
booths ... and landlord Sims bustling everywhere, assisted by the
little light-footed maidens, his daughters, all smiles and curtsies,
and by a pretty black-eyed young woman—name unknown—with whom, even
in the midst of his hurry, he found time, as it seemed to me, for a
little philandering. What would the widow and Miss Lydia have said? But
they remained in happy ignorance—the one drinking tea in most decorous
primness in a distant marquee, the other in full chase after the most
unlucky of all her urchins.
“Meanwhile the band struck up in the Mayhouse, and the dance, after
a little dinner, was fairly set afloat—an honest English country
dance—with ladies and gentlemen at the top and country lads and lassies
at the bottom; a happy mixture of cordial kindness on the one hand and
pleased respect on the other. It was droll though to see the beplumed
and beflowered French hats, the silks and the furbelows sailing and
rustling amidst the straw bonnets and cotton gowns of the humbler
dancers.
“Well! the dance finished, the sun went down, and we departed. The
Maying is over, the booths carried away and the May-house demolished.
Everything has fallen into its old position except the love affairs
of landlord Sims. The pretty lass with the black eyes, who first made
her appearance at Whitley Wood, is actually staying at the Rose Inn on
a visit to his daughters, and the village talk goes that she is to be
the mistress of that thriving hostelry and the wife of its master....
Nobody knows exactly who the black-eyed damsel may be—but she’s young
and pretty and civil and modest, and without intending to depreciate
the merits of either of her competitors, I cannot help thinking that
our good neighbour has shown his taste.”