I never shall forget the sparkling splendor of that frosty morning in
December when I went with a younger friend from Oatlands Park for a day's
walk. I may have seen at other times, but I do not remember, such winter
lace-work as then adorned the hedges. The gossamer spider has within her
an inward monitor which tells if the weather will be fine; but it says
nothing about sudden changes to keen cold, and the artistic result was
that the hedges were hung with thousands of Honiton lamp-mats, instead of
the thread fly-catchers which their little artists had intended. And on
twigs and dead leaves, grass and rock and wall, were such expenditures of
Brussels and Spanish point, such a luxury of real old Venetian run mad,
and such deliria of Russian lace as made it evident that Mrs. Jack Frost
is a very extravagant fairy, but one gifted with exquisite taste. When I
reflect how I have in my time spoken of the taste for lace and diamonds
in women as entirely without foundation in nature, I feel that I sinned
deeply. For Nature, in this lace-work, displays at times a sympathy with
humanity,--especially womanity,--and coquets and flirts with it, as
becomes the subject, in a manner which is merrily awful. There was once
in Philadelphia a shop the windows of which were always filled with
different kinds of the richest and rarest lace, and one cold morning I
found that the fairies had covered the panes with literal frost
fac-similes of the exquisite wares which hung behind. This was no fancy;
the copies were as accurate as photographs. Can it be that in the
invisible world there are Female Fairy Schools of Design, whose scholars
combine in this graceful style Etching on Glass and Art Needlework?
We were going to the village of Hersham to make a call. It was not at
any stylish villa or lordly manor-house,--though I knew of more than one
in the vicinity where we would have been welcome,--but at a rather
disreputable-looking edifice, which bore on its front the sign of
"Lodgings for Travellers." Now "traveller" means, below a certain circle
of English life, not the occasional, but the habitual wanderer, or one
who dwells upon the roads, and gains his living thereon. I have in my
possession several cards of such a house. I found them wrapped in a
piece of paper, by a deserted gypsy camp, where they had been lost:--