March 27th.--It is a dull gray morning, with a dewy feeling in the air;
fresh, but not windy; cool, but not cold;--the very day for a person
newly arrived from the heat, the glare, the noise, and the fever of
London, to plunge into the remotest labyrinths of the country, and
regain the repose of mind, the calmness of heart, which has been lost in
that great Babel. I must go violeting--it is a necessity--and I must go
alone: the sound of a voice, even my Lizzy's, the touch of Mayflower's
head, even the bounding of her elastic foot, would disturb the serenity
of feeling which I am trying to recover. I shall go quite alone, with
my little basket, twisted like a bee-hive, which I love so well, because
SHE gave it to me, and kept sacred to violets and to those whom I love;
and I shall get out of the high-road the moment I can. I would not meet
any one just now, even of those whom I best like to meet.
Ha!--Is not that group--a gentleman on a blood-horse, a lady keeping
pace with him so gracefully and easily--see how prettily her veil waves
in the wind created by her own rapid motion!--and that gay, gallant
boy, on the gallant white Arabian, curveting at their side, but ready to
spring before them every instant--is not that chivalrous-looking party
Mr. and Mrs. M. and dear R? No! the servant is in a different livery. It
is some of the ducal family, and one of their young Etonians. I may go
on. I shall meet no one now; for I have fairly left the road, and am
crossing the lea by one of those wandering paths, amidst the gorse, and
the heath, and the low broom, which the sheep and lambs have made--a
path turfy, elastic, thymy, and sweet, even at this season.
We have the good fortune to live in an unenclosed parish, and may
thank the wise obstinacy of two or three sturdy farmers, and the lucky
unpopularity of a ranting madcap lord of the manor, for preserving the
delicious green patches, the islets of wilderness amidst cultivation,
which form, perhaps, the peculiar beauty of English scenery. The common
that I am passing now--the lea, as it is called--is one of the loveliest
of these favoured spots. It is a little sheltered scene, retiring, as it
were, from the village; sunk amidst higher lands, hills would be
almost too grand a word; edged on one side by one gay high-road, and
intersected by another; and surrounded by a most picturesque confusion
of meadows, cottages, farms, and orchards; with a great pond in one
corner, unusually bright and clear, giving a delightful cheerfulness
and daylight to the picture. The swallows haunt that pond; so do the
children. There is a merry group round it now; I have seldom seen it
without one. Children love water, clear, bright, sparkling water; it
excites and feeds their curiosity; it is motion and life.
The path that I am treading leads to a less lively spot, to that large
heavy building on one side of the common, whose solid wings, jutting
out far beyond the main body, occupy three sides of a square, and give a
cold, shadowy look to the court. On one side is a gloomy garden, with
an old man digging in it, laid out in straight dark beds of vegetables,
potatoes, cabbages, onions, beans; all earthy and mouldy as a newly-dug
grave. Not a flower or flowering shrub! Not a rose-tree or currant-bush!
Nothing but for sober, melancholy use. Oh, different from the long
irregular slips of the cottage-gardens, with their gay bunches of
polyanthuses and crocuses, their wallflowers sending sweet odours
through the narrow casement, and their gooseberry-trees bursting into a
brilliancy of leaf, whose vivid greenness has the effect of a blossom on
the eye! Oh, how different! On the other side of this gloomy abode is a
meadow of that deep, intense emerald hue, which denotes the presence of
stagnant water, surrounded by willows at regular distances, and like the
garden, separated from the common by a wide, moat-like ditch. That is
the parish workhouse. All about it is solid, substantial, useful;--but
so dreary! so cold! so dark! There are children in the court, and yet
all is silent. I always hurry past that place as if it were a prison.
Restraint, sickness, age, extreme poverty, misery, which I have no power
to remove or alleviate,--these are the ideas, the feelings, which the
sight of those walls excites; yet, perhaps, if not certainly, they
contain less of that extreme desolation than the morbid fancy is apt to
paint. There will be found order, cleanliness, food, clothing, warmth,
refuge for the homeless, medicine and attendance for the sick, rest
and sufficiency for old age, and sympathy, the true and active sympathy
which the poor show to the poor, for the unhappy. There may be worse
places than a parish workhouse--and yet I hurry past it. The feeling,
the prejudice, will not be controlled.
The end of the dreary garden edges off into a close-sheltered lane,
wandering and winding, like a rivulet, in gentle 'sinuosities' (to use
a word once applied by Mr. Wilberforce to the Thames at Henley), amidst
green meadows, all alive with cattle, sheep, and beautiful lambs, in the
very spring and pride of their tottering prettiness; or fields of arable
land, more lively still with troops of stooping bean-setters, women
and children, in all varieties of costume and colour; and ploughs and
harrows, with their whistling boys and steady carters, going through,
with a slow and plodding industry, the main business of this busy
season. What work beansetting is! What a reverse of the position
assigned to man to distinguish him from the beasts of the field! Only
think of stooping for six, eight, ten hours a day, drilling holes in the
earth with a little stick, and then dropping in the beans one by one.
They are paid according to the quantity they plant; and some of the poor
women used to be accused of clumping them--that is to say, of dropping
more than one bean into a hole. It seems to me, considering the
temptation, that not to clump is to be at the very pinnacle of human
virtue.
Another turn in the lane, and we come to the old house standing amongst
the high elms--the old farm-house, which always, I don't know why,
carries back my imagination to Shakspeare's days. It is a long, low,
irregular building, with one room, at an angle from the house, covered
with ivy, fine white-veined ivy; the first floor of the main building
projecting and supported by oaken beams, and one of the windows below,
with its old casement and long narrow panes, forming the half of a
shallow hexagon. A porch, with seats in it, surmounted by a pinnacle,
pointed roofs, and clustered chimneys, complete the picture! Alas! it is
little else but a picture! The very walls are crumbling to decay under a
careless landlord and ruined tenant.
Now a few yards farther, and I reach the bank. Ah! I smell them
already--their exquisite perfume steams and lingers in this moist, heavy
air. Through this little gate, and along the green south bank of this
green wheat-field, and they burst upon me, the lovely violets, in
tenfold loveliness. The ground is covered with them, white and purple,
enamelling the short dewy grass, looking but the more vividly coloured
under the dull, leaden sky. There they lie by hundreds, by thousands.
In former years I have been used to watch them from the tiny green bud,
till one or two stole into bloom. They never came on me before in such
a sudden and luxuriant glory of simple beauty,--and I do really owe one
pure and genuine pleasure to feverish London! How beautifully they are
placed too, on this sloping bank, with the palm branches waving over
them, full of early bees, and mixing their honeyed scent with the more
delicate violet odour! How transparent and smooth and lusty are the
branches, full of sap and life! And there, just by the old mossy root,
is a superb tuft of primroses, with a yellow butterfly hovering over
them, like a flower floating on the air. What happiness to sit on this
tufty knoll, and fill my basket with the blossoms! What a renewal of
heart and mind! To inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness is again
to be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child. Then it is that thought
becomes poetry, and feeling religion. Then it is that we are happy and
good. Oh, that my whole life could pass so, floating on blissful and
innocent sensation, enjoying in peace and gratitude the common blessings
of Nature, thankful above all for the simple habits, the healthful
temperament, which render them so dear! Alas! who may dare expect a life
of such happiness? But I can at least snatch and prolong the fleeting
pleasure, can fill my basket with pure flowers, and my heart with pure
thoughts; can gladden my little home with their sweetness; can divide my
treasures with one, a dear one, who cannot seek them; can see them when
I shut my eyes and dream of them when I fall asleep.