_By Miss Mitford_.[5]
[5] This ingenious lady is the most indefatigable of all
lady-writers of the present day. Her "Sketches" will soon reach
the famed "One Thousand and One." At this moment too, our
favourite authoress is engaged on two tragedies for the patent
theatres--one _Inez de Castro_, which has been poetized in
half-a-dozen forms of late, and is even in the _Amulet_
before us: the subject and title of the second tragedy is
_Otho_: both will probably be of a melo-dramatic cast, which
founded the success of _Rienzi_. If it should be so, the fault
will not rest with the fair authoress, the managers, or admirers
of the pure drama; we need not add where the blame lies.
"Can any one tell me of a house to be let hereabouts?" asked I, this
afternoon, coming into the room, with an open letter in my hand, and an
unusual animation of feeling and of manner. "Our friends, the Camdens,
want to live amongst us again, and have commissioned me to make
inquiries for a residence."
This announcement, as I expected, gave general delight; for Mr. Camden
is the most excellent and most agreeable person under the sun, except
his wife, who is even more amiable than her amiable husband: to regain
such neighbours was felt to be an universal benefit, more especially
to us who were so happy as to call them friends. My own interest in
the house question was participated by all around me, and the usual
enumeration of vacant mansions, and the several objections to each (for
where ever was a vacant mansion without its objection?) began with zeal
and rapidity.
"Cranley Hall," said one.
"Too large!"
"Hinton Park?"
"Too much land."
"The White House at Hannonby--the Belvidere, as the late people called
it?"
"What! is that flourishing establishment done up? But Hannonby is too
far off--ten miles at least."
"Queen's Bridge Cottage?"
"Ay, that sweet place would have suited exactly, but it's let. The
Browns took it only yesterday."
"Sydenham Court?"
"That might have done too, but it's not in the market. The Smiths intend
to stay."
"Lanton Abbey?"
"Too low; grievously damp."
By this time, however, we had arrived at the end of our list; nobody
could remember another place to be let, or likely to be let, and
confessing ourselves too fastidious, we went again over our catalogue
_raisonée_ with expectations much sobered, and objections much
modified, and were beginning to find out that Cranley Hall was not so
very large, nor Lanton Abbey so exceedingly damp, when one of our party
exclaimed suddenly, "We never thought of Hatherden Hill! surely that is
small enough and dry enough!" and it being immediately recollected that
Hatherden was only a mile off, we lost sight of all faults in this great
recommendation, and wrote immediately to the lawyer who had the charge
of letting the place, whilst I myself and my most efficient assistant,
sallied forth to survey it on the instant.
It was a bright cool afternoon about the middle of August, and we
proceeded in high spirits towards our destination, talking, as, we went,
of the excellence and agreeableness of our delightful friends, and
anticipating the high intellectual pleasure, the gratification to the
taste and the affections, which our renewed intercourse with persons so
accomplished and so amiable, could not fail to afford; both agreeing
that Hatherden was the very place we wanted, the very situation, the
very distance, the very size. In agreeing with me, however, my companion
could not help reminding me rather maliciously how very much, in our
late worthy neighbours, the Norrises' time, I had been used to hate and
shun this paragon of places; how frequently I had declared Hatherden
too distant for a walk, and too near for a drive; how constantly I had
complained of fatigue in mounting the hill, and of cold in crossing
the common; and how, finally, my half yearly visits of civility had
dwindled first into annual, then into biennial calls, and would
doubtless have extended themselves into triennial marks of remembrance,
if our neighbours had but remained long enough. "To be sure," added he,
recollecting, probably, how he, with his stricter sense of politeness,
used to stave off a call for a month together, taking shame to himself
every evening for his neglect, retaining 'at once the conscience and the
sin!' "To be sure, Norris was a sad bore! We shall find the hill easier
to climb when the Camdens live on the top of it." An observation to
which I assented most heartily.
On we went gaily; just pausing to admire Master Keep, the shoemaker's
farming, who having a bit of garden ground to spare, sowed it with wheat
instead of planting it with potatoes, and is now, aided by his lame
apprentice, very literally carrying his crop. I fancy they mean to
thrash their corn in the woodhouse, at least there they are depositing
the sheaves. The produce may amount to four bushels. My companion, a
better judge, says to three; and it has cost the new farmer two superb
scarecrows, and gunpowder enough for a review, to keep off the sparrows.
Well, it has been amusement and variety, however! and gives him an
interest in the agricultural corner of the county newspaper. Master Keep
is well to do in the world, and can afford himself such a diversion.
For my part, I like these little experiments, even if they be not over
gainful. They show enterprise: a shoemaker of less genius would never
have got beyond a crop of turnips.
On we went--down the lane, over the bridge, up the hill--for there
really is a hill, and one of some steepness for Berkshire, and across
the common, once so dreary, but now bright and glittering, under the
double influence of an August sun, and our own good spirits, until we
were stopped by the gate of the lawn, which was of course locked, and
obliged to wait until a boy should summon the old woman who had charge
of the house, and who was now at work in a neighbouring harvest-field,
to give us entrance.
* * * * *
------ the aged portress (Dame Wheeler, Susan's grandmother) had given
us admittance, and we soon stood on the steps in front of the house, in
calm survey of the scene before us. Hatherden was just the place to like
or not to like, according to the feeling of the hour; a respectable,
comfortable country house, with a lawn before, a paddock on one side, a
shrubbery on the other; offices and a kitchen garden behind, and the
usual ornaments of villas and advertisements, a greenhouse and a
veranda. Now my thoughts were _couleur de rose_, and Hatherden was
charming. Even the beds intended for flowers on the lawn, but which,
under a summer's neglect, were now dismal receptacles of seeds and
weeds, did not shock my gardening eye so much as my companion evidently
expected. "We must get my factotum, Clarke, here to-morrow," so ran my
thoughts, "to clear away that rubbish, and try a little bold
transplanting; late hollyhocks, late dahlias, a few pots of lobellias
and chrysanthemums, a few patches of coreopsis and china-asters, and
plenty of scarlet geraniums, will soon make this desolation flourishing.
A good gardener can move any thing now-a-days, whether in bloom or not,"
thought I, with much complacency, "and Clarke's a man to transplant
Windsor forest without withering a leaf. We'll have him to-morrow."
The same good disposition continued after I entered the house. And when
left alone in the echoing empty breakfast-room, with only one shutter
opened, whilst Dame Wheeler was guiding the companion of my survey to
the stableyard, I amused myself with making in my own mind, comparisons
between what had been, and what would be. There she used to sit, poor
Mrs. Norris, in this large airy room, in the midst of its solid handsome
furniture, in a great chair at a great table, busily at work for one of
her seven small children; the table piled with frocks, trousers,
petticoats, shirts, pinafores, hats, bonnets, all sorts of children's
gear, masculine and feminine, together with spelling books, copy books,
ivory alphabets, dissected maps, dolls, toys, and gingerbread, for the
same small people. There she sat a careful mother, fretting over their
naughtiness and their ailments; always in fear of the sun, or the wind,
or the rain, of their running to heat themselves, or their standing
still to catch cold: not a book in the house fit for a person turned of
eight years old! not a grown up idea! not a thought beyond the nursery!
One wondered what she could have talked of before she had children. Good
Mrs. Norris, such was she. Good Mr. Norris was, for all purposes of
neighbourhood, worse still. He was gapy and fidgetty, and prosy and
dosy, kept a tool chest and a medicine chest, weighed out manna and
magnesia, constructed fishing-flies, and nets for fruit-trees, turned
nutmeg-graters, lined his wife's work-box, and dressed his little
daughter's doll; and had a tone of conversation perfectly in keeping
with his tastes and pursuits, abundantly tedious, thin, and small. One
talked down to him, worthy gentleman, as one would to his son Harry.
These were the neighbours that had been. What wonder that the hill was
steep, and the way long, and the common dreary? Then came pleasant
thoughts of the neighbours that were to be. The lovely and accomplished
wife, so sweet and womanly; the elegant and highly-informed husband, so
spirited and manly! Art and literature, and wisdom and wit, adorning
with a wreathy and garlandy splendour all that is noblest in mind and
purest in heart! What wonder that Hatherden became more and more
interesting in its anticipated charms, and that I went gaily about the
place, taking note of all that could contribute to the comfort of its
future inhabitants.
Home I came, a glad and busy creature, revolving in my mind the wants of
the house and their speediest remedies--new paper for the drawing-room;
new wainscoting for the dining parlour; a stove for the laundry; a lock
for the wine-cellar; baizing the door of the library; and new painting
the hall;--to say nothing of the grand design of Clarke and the
flower-beds.
So full was I of busy thoughts, and so desirous to put my plans in train
without the loss of a moment, that although the tossing of apples had
now resolved itself into a most irregular game of cricket--George Copley
being batting at one wicket, with little Sam Roper for his mate at the
other;--Sam, an urchin of seven years old, but the son of an old player,
full of cricket blood, born, as it were, with a bat in his hand, getting
double the notches of his tall partner--an indignity which that
well-natured stripling bore with surprising good humour; and although
the opposite side consisted of Susan Wheeler bowling at one end, her old
competitor of the ragged jacket at the other, and one urchin in trousers,
and one in petticoats, standing out; in spite of the temptation of
watching this comical parody on that manly exercise, rendered doubly
amusing by the scientific manner in which little Sam stood at his
wicket, the perfect gravity of the fieldsman in petticoats, and the
serious air with which these two worthies called Susan to order whenever
she transgressed any rule of the game:--Sam will certainly be a great
player some day or other, and so (if he be not a girl, for really
there's no telling) will the young gentleman standing out. In
spite, however, of the great temptation of overlooking a favourite
divertisement, with variations so truly original, home we went, hardly
pausing to observe the housing of Master Keep's wheat harvest. Home
we went, adding at every step a fresh story to our Castle in the Air,
anticipating happy mornings and joyous evenings at dear Hatherden;--in
love with the place and all about it, and quite convinced that the hill
was nothing, the distance nothing, and the walk by far the prettiest
in the neighbourhood.
Home we came, and there we found two letters: one from Mr. Camden, sent
per coach, to say that he found they must go abroad immediately, and
that they could not therefore think of coming into Berkshire for a year
or more; one from the lawyer, left in charge of Hatherden, to say, that
we could not have the place, as the Norrises were returning to their old
house forthwith. And my Castle is knocked down, blown up--which is the
right word for the demolishing such airy edifices? And Hatherden is as
far-off, and the hill as steep, and the common as dreary as ever.
We have already quoted the most striking of the poetical pieces, at page
283. Allan Cunningham has some spirited lines, My Native Vale; and the
Ettrick Shepherd, a touching Lay of the Martyrs. Archdeacon Wrangham,
one of the most elegant and classical scholars of the day, has
translated twenty-three beautiful verses on the Spider, from Pignotti,
besides a few other little garnishing pieces. The Brothers, a Sketch,
by the Hon. Mrs. Norton, is full of sweet simplicity; and some Stanzas,
which follow, by Mr. Crofton Croker, are gems of affection. Thoughts on
Flowers, by H.G. Bell, breathe the same sweet and touching spirit; and
the Banks of the Dove, written by M.T. Sadler, Esq. on leaving his
"native village in early youth," are not only interesting as gems of
talent which has since ripened into literary distinction in honourable
public service, but will delight every admirer of genuine feeling.
The Engravings are nearly all of first-rate excellence. The
frontispiece, the Minstrel of Chamouni, after Pickersgill, by J.H.
Robinson, in effect, spirit, and finish, cannot be surpassed. But how
shall we describe the Crucifixion, engraved by Le Keux, from a drawing
by Martin: how can we speak of the light shedding over the Holy City
and "Calvary's wild hill," the crucified MESSIAH, the living stream,
and the thousands and tens of thousands that cluster on this "earthly
throne"--the magnificent architectural masses--the vivid light streaming
in the distance; and the warlike turmoil of helmet heads, spears and
floating banners that aid the shout of blood in the foreground: this
must suffice. The First Interview between the Spaniards and Peruvians,
after Briggs, by Greatbach, is a triumph of art; Wilkie's Dorty Bairn
is excellent; the Fisherman's Children, after Collins, by C. Rolls, is
exquisitely delicate; and the Gleaner, by Finden, after Holmes, has
a lovely set of features, which art and fashion may court in vain.
But we have outrun our tether, and must halt here.
* * * * *
The Literary Souvenir.
From the _Amulet_ we turn to Mr. Watts's _El Dorado_ of poetry
and romance in superb crimson silken sheen and burnished gold edges.
Rich as the exterior unquestionably is, it but accords with the rare
treasures which it envelopes. We first indulged our early custom of
"looking at the pictures," but must, as sober middle-aged persons ought
to do--begin at the beginning. Passing over the Advertisement, in which
the editor makes some judicious observations on the remuneration of
British artists, &c. the first tale is the Love-Draught, in the best
style of the author of "Highways and Bye-ways," with many fine touches
of Irish humour and sentiment. We next notice a Village Romance, by Miss
Mitford, with a host of pretty facts and feelings; and a Calabrian Tale,
the Forest of Sant Eufemia, by the author of "Constantinople in 1829:"
it is the longest, and perhaps the best story in the volume, and brings
the author's descriptive powers into full play in the stirring scenes
of brigand life. Next is The Last of the Storm, a tale of deep and
thrilling interest, by Mr. Banim. Of the same description is our prose
extract--