_By Miss Mitford._
The pride of my heart and the delight of my eyes is my garden. Our
house, which is in dimensions very much like a bird-cage, and might,
with almost equal convenience, be laid on a shelf, or hung up in a tree,
would be utterly unbearable in warm weather, were it not that we have a
retreat out of doors,--and a very pleasant retreat it is. To make my
readers fully comprehend it, I must describe our whole territories.
Fancy a small plot of ground, with a pretty low irregular cottage at one
end; a large granary, divided from the dwelling by a little court
running along one side; and a long thatched shed open towards the
garden, and supported by wooden pillars on the other. The bottom is
bounded, half by an old wall, and half by an old paling, over which we
see a pretty distance of woody hills. The house, granary, wall, and
paling, are covered with vines, cherry-trees, roses, honey-suckles, and
jessamines, with great clusters of tall hollyhocks running up between
them; a large elder overhanging the little gate, and a magnificent
bay-tree, such a tree as shall scarcely be matched in these parts,
breaking with its beautiful conical form the horizontal lines of the
buildings. This is my garden; and the long pillared shed, the sort of
rustic arcade which runs along one side, parted from the flower-beds by
a row of rich geraniums, is our out-of-door drawing-room.
I know nothing so pleasant as to sit there on a summer afternoon, with
the western sun flickering through the great elder-tree, and lighting up
our gay parterres, where flowers and flowering shrubs are set as thick
as grass in a field, a wilderness of blossom, interwoven, intertwined,
wreathy, garlandy, profuse beyond all profusion, where we may guess that
there is such a thing as mould, but never see it. I know nothing so
pleasant as to sit in the shade of that dark bower, with the eye resting
on that bright piece of colour, lighted so gloriously by the evening
sun, now catching a glimpse of the little birds as they fly rapidly in
and out of their nests--for there are always two or three birds' nests
in the thick tapestry of cherry-trees, honey-suckles, and China roses,
which cover our walls--now tracing the gay gambols of the common
butterflies as they sport around the dahlias; now watching that rarer
moth, which the country people, fertile in pretty names, call the
bee-bird;[1] that bird-like insect, which flutters in the hottest days
over the sweetest flowers, inserting its long proboscis into the small
tube of the jessamine, and hovering over the scarlet blossoms of the
geranium, whose bright colour seems reflected on its own feathery
breast; that insect which seems so thoroughly a creature of the air,
never at rest; always, even when feeding, self-poised, and
self-supported, and whose wings in their ceaseless motion, have a sound
so deep, so full, so lulling, so musical. Nothing so pleasant as to sit
amid that mixture of the flower and the leaf, watching the bee-bird!
Nothing so pretty to look at as my garden! It is quite a picture; only
unluckily it resembles a picture in more qualities than one,--it is fit
for nothing but to look at. One might as well think of walking in a bit
of framed canvass. There are walks to be sure--tiny paths of smooth
gravel, by courtesy called such--but--they are so overhung by roses and
lilies, and such gay encroachers--so over-run by convolvolus, and
heart's-ease, and mignonette, and other sweet stragglers, that, except
to edge through them occasionally, for the purpose of planting, or
weeding, or watering, there might as well be no paths at all. Nobody
thinks of walking in my garden. Even May glides along with a delicate
and trackless step, like a swan through the wafer; and we, its
two-footed denizens, are fain to treat it as if it were really a saloon,
and go out for a walk towards sun-set, just as if we had not been
sitting in the open air all day.
[1] Sphinx ligustri, privet hank-moth.
What a contrast from the quiet garden to the lively street! Saturday
night is always a time of stir and bustle in our village, and this is
Whitsun Eve, the pleasantest Saturday of all the year, when London
journeymen and servant lads and lasses snatch a short holiday to visit
their families. A short and precious holiday, the happiest and liveliest
of any; for even the gambols and merrymakings of Christmas offer but a
poor enjoyment, compared with the rural diversions, the Mayings, revels,
and cricket-matches of Whitsuntide.
We ourselves are to have a cricket-match on Monday, not played by the
men, who, since their misadventure with the Beech-hillers, are, I am
sorry to say, rather chap-fallen, but by the boys, who, zealous for the
honours of their parish, and headed by their bold leader, Ben Kirby,
marched in a body to our antagonist's ground the Sunday after our
melancholy defeat, challenged the boys of that proud hamlet, and beat
them out and out on the spot. Never was a more signal victory. Our boys
enjoyed this triumph with so little moderation, that it had like to have
produced a very tragical catastrophe. The captain of the Beech-hill
youngsters, a capital bowler, by name Amos Stokes, enraged past all
bearing by the crowing of his adversaries, flung the ball at Ben Kirby
with so true an aim, that if that sagacious leader had not warily ducked
his head when he saw it coming, there would probably have been a
coroner's inquest on the case, and Amos Stokes would have been tried for
manslaughter. He let fly with such vengeance, that the cricket-ball was
found embedded in a bank of clay five hundred yards off, as if it had
been a cannon shot. Tom Coper and Farmer Thackum, the umpires, both say
that they never saw so tremendous a ball. If Amos Stokes live to be a
man (I mean to say if he be not hanged first), he'll be a pretty player.
He is coming here on Monday with his party to play the return match, the
umpires having respectively engaged Farmer Thackum that Amos shall keep
the peace, Tom Coper that Ben shall give no unnecessary or wanton
provocation--a nicely-worded and lawyer-like clause, and one that proves
that Tom Coper hath his doubts of the young gentleman's discretion; and,
of a truth, so have I. I would not be Ben Kirby's surety, cautiously as
the security is worded,--no! not for a white double dahlia, the present
object of my ambition.
This village of our's is swarming to-night like a hive of bees, and all
the church bells round are pouring out their merriest peals, as if to
call them together. I must try to give some notion of the
various figures.
First, there is a groupe suited to Teniers, a cluster of out-of-door
customers of the Rose, old benchers of the inn, who sit round a table
smoking and drinking in high solemnity to the sound of Timothy's fiddle.
Next, a mass of eager boys, the combatants of Monday, who are
surrounding the shoemaker's shop, where an invisible hole in their ball
is mending by Master Keep himself, under the joint superintendence of
Ben Kirby and Tom Coper, Ben showing much verbal respect and outward
deference for his umpire's judgment and experience, but managing to get
the ball done his own way after all; whilst outside the shop, the rest
of the eleven, the less-trusted commons, are shouting and bawling round
Joel Brent, who is twisting the waxed twine round the handles of
bats--the poor bats, which please nobody, which the taller youths are
despising as too little and too light, and the smaller are abusing as
too heavy and two large. Happy critics! winning their match can hardly
be a greater delight--even if to win it they be doomed! Farther down the
street is the pretty black-eyed girl, Sally Wheeler, come home for a
day's holiday from B., escorted by a tall footman in a dashing livery,
whom she is trying to curtesy off before her deaf grandmother sees him.
I wonder whether she will succeed!
Ascending the hill are two couples of different description, Daniel Tubb
and Sally North, walking boldly along like licensed lovers; they have
been asked twice in church, and are to be married on Tuesday; and
closely following that happy pair, near each other, but not together,
come Jem Tanner and Susan Green, the poor culprits of the wheat-hoeing.
Ah! the little clerk hath not relented! The course of true love doth not
yet run smooth in that quarter. Jem dodges along, whistling "Cherry
Ripe," pretending to walk by himself, and to be thinking of nobody; but
every now and then he pauses in his negligent saunter, and turns round
outright to steal a glance at Susan, who, on her part, is making believe
to walk with poor Olive Hathaway, the lame mantua-maker, and even
affecting to talk and to listen to that gentle humble creature as she
points to the wild flowers on the common, and the lambs and children
disporting amongst the gorse, but whose thoughts and eyes are evidently
fixed on Jem Tanner, as she meets his backward glance with a blushing
smile, and half springs forward to meet him; whilst Olive has broken off
the conversation as soon as she perceived the preoccupation of her
companion, and began humming, perhaps unconsciously, two or three lines
of Burns, whose "Whistle and I'll come to thee, my love," and "Gi'e me a
glance of thy bonny black ee," were never better exemplified than in the
couple before her. Really it is curious to watch them, and to see how
gradually the attraction of this tantalizing vicinity becomes
irresistible, and the rustic lover rushes to his pretty mistress like
the needle to the magnet. On they go, trusting to the deepening
twilight, to the little clerk's absence, to the good humour of the happy
lads and lasses, who are passing and re-passing on all sides--or rather,
perhaps, in a happy oblivion of the cross uncle, the kind villagers, the
squinting lover, and the whole world. On they trip, linked arm-in-arm,
he trying to catch a glimpse of her glowing face under her bonnet, and
she hanging down her head and avoiding his gaze with a mixture of
modesty and coquetry, which well becomes the rural beauty. On they go,
with a reality and intensity of affection, which must overcome all
obstacles; and poor Olive follows with art evident sympathy in their
happiness, which makes her almost as enviable as they; and we pursue our
walk amidst the moonshine and the nightingales, with Jacob Frost's cart
looming in the distance, and the merry sounds of Whitsuntide, the shout,
the laugh, and the song echoing all around us, like "noises of the
air."--_Monthly Magazine._
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