September 9th.--A bright sunshiny afternoon. What a comfort it is to
get out again--to see once more that rarity of rarities, a fine day! We
English people are accused of talking overmuch of the weather; but the
weather, this summer, has forced people to talk of it. Summer! did
I say? Oh! season most unworthy of that sweet, sunny name! Season of
coldness and cloudiness, of gloom and rain! A worse November!--for in
November the days are short; and shut up in a warm room, lighted by that
household sun, a lamp, one feels through the long evenings comfortably
independent of the out-of-door tempests. But though we may have, and did
have, fires all through the dog-days, there is no shutting out daylight;
and sixteen hours of rain, pattering against the windows and dripping
from the eaves--sixteen hours of rain, not merely audible, but visible
for seven days in the week--would be enough to exhaust the patience of
Job or Grizzel; especially if Job were a farmer, and Grizzel a country
gentlewoman. Never was known such a season! Hay swimming, cattle
drowning, fruit rotting, corn spoiling! and that naughty river, the
Loddon, who never can take Puff's advice, and 'keep between its banks,'
running about the country, fields, roads, gardens, and houses, like
mad! The weather would be talked of. Indeed, it was not easy to talk of
anything else. A friend of mine having occasion to write me a letter,
thought it worth abusing in rhyme, and bepommelled it through three
pages of Bath-guide verse; of which I subjoin a specimen:--
'Aquarius surely REIGNS over the world,
And of late he his water-pot strangely has twirl'd;
Or he's taken a cullender up by mistake,
And unceasingly dips it in some mighty lake;
Though it is not in Lethe--for who can forget
The annoyance of getting most thoroughly wet?
It must be in the river called Styx, I declare,
For the moment it drizzles it makes the men swear.
"It did rain to-morrow," is growing good grammar;
Vauxhall and camp-stools have been brought to the hammer;
A pony-gondola is all I can keep,
And I use my umbrella and pattens in sleep:
Row out of my window, whene'er 'tis my whim
To visit a friend, and just ask, "Can you swim?"'
So far my friend. * In short, whether in prose or in verse, everybody
railed at the weather. But this is over now. The sun has come to dry the
world; mud is turned into dust; rivers have retreated to their proper
limits; farmers have left off grumbling; and we are about to take a
walk, as usual, as far as the Shaw, a pretty wood about a mile off. But
one of our companions being a stranger to the gentle reader, we must do
him the honour of an introduction.
*This friend of mine is a person of great quickness and
talent, who, if she were not a beauty and a woman of
fortune--that is to say, if she were prompted by either of
those two powerful stimuli, want of money or want of
admiration, to take due pains--would inevitably become a
clever writer. As it is, her notes and 'jeux d'esprit'
struck off 'a trait de plume,' have great point and
neatness. Take the following billet, which formed the label
to a closed basket, containing the ponderous present alluded
to, last Michaelmas day:--
'To Miss M.
"When this you see
Remember me,"
Was long a phrase in use;
And so I send
To you, dear friend,
My proxy, "What?"--A goose!'
Dogs, when they are sure of having their own way, have sometimes ways as
odd as those of the unfurred, unfeathered animals, who walk on two
legs, and talk, and are called rational. My beautiful white greyhound,
Mayflower,* for instance, is as whimsical as the finest lady in the
land. Amongst her other fancies, she has taken a violent affection for
a most hideous stray dog, who made his appearance here about six months
ago, and contrived to pick up a living in the village, one can hardly
tell how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the
laundress--a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the
lightfooted and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his
hind-legs, to extort by sheer beggary a scanty morsel from some pair of
'drouthy cronies,' or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper
on the alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure
contempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot, mounted on
his throne, the coach-box, whose notice he had attracted by dint of
ugliness; now sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker's pigs;
now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of Master Brown
the shopkeeper's fierce house-dog; now filching the skim-milk of Dame
Wheeler's cat:--spit at by the cat; worried by the mastiff; chased by
the pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the shoemaker; flogged
by the shopkeeper; teased by all the children, and scouted by all the
animals of the parish;--but yet living through his griefs, and bearing
them patiently, 'for sufferance is the badge of all his tribe;'--and
even seeming to find, in an occasional full meal, or a gleam of
sunshine, or a wisp of dry straw on which to repose his sorry carcase,
some comfort in his disconsolate condition.
*Dead, alas, since this was written.
In this plight was he found by May, the most high-blooded and
aristocratic of greyhounds; and from this plight did May rescue
him;--invited him into her territory, the stable; resisted all attempts
to turn him out; reinstated him there, in spite of maid and boy, and
mistress and master; wore out everybody's opposition, by the activity of
her protection, and the pertinacity of her self-will; made him sharer
of her bed and of her mess; and, finally, established him as one of the
family as firmly as herself.
Dash--for he has even won himself a name amongst us, before he was
anonymous--Dash is a sort of a kind of a spaniel; at least there is in
his mongrel composition some sign of that beautiful race. Besides his
ugliness, which is of the worst sort--that is to say, the shabbiest--he
has a limp on one leg that gives a peculiar one-sided awkwardness to his
gait; but independently of his great merit in being May's pet, he has
other merits which serve to account for that phenomenon--being, beyond
all comparison, the most faithful, attached, and affectionate animal
that I have ever known; and that is saying much. He seems to think it
necessary to atone for his ugliness by extra good conduct, and does so
dance on his lame leg, and so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any one
who has a taste for happiness good to look at him--so that he may now be
said to stand on his own footing. We are all rather ashamed of him when
strangers come in the way, and think it necessary to explain that he
is May's pet; but amongst ourselves, and those who are used to his
appearance, he has reached the point of favouritism in his own person.
I have, in common with wiser women, the feminine weakness of loving
whatever loves me--and, therefore, I like Dash. His master has found out
that he is a capital finder, and in spite of his lameness will hunt a
field or beat a cover with any spaniel in England--and, therefore, HE
likes Dash. The boy has fought a battle, in defence of his beauty,
with another boy, bigger than himself, and beat his opponent most
handsomely--and, therefore, HE likes Dash; and the maids like him, or
pretend to like him, because we do--as is the fashion of that pliant
and imitative class. And now Dash and May follow us everywhere, and are
going with us to the Shaw, as I said before--or rather to the cottage by
the Shaw, to bespeak milk and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah
Bint--a housewifely occupation, to which we owe some of our pleasantest
rambles.
And now we pass the sunny, dusty village street--who would have thought,
a month ago, that we should complain of sun and dust again!--and turn
the corner where the two great oaks hang so beautifully over the clear
deep pond, mixing their cool green shadows with the bright blue sky, and
the white clouds that flit over it; and loiter at the wheeler's shop,
always picturesque, with its tools, and its work, and its materials, all
so various in form, and so harmonious in colour; and its noise, merry
workmen, hammering and singing, and making a various harmony also. The
shop is rather empty to-day, for its usual inmates are busy on the green
beyond the pond--one set building a cart, another painting a waggon. And
then we leave the village quite behind, and proceed slowly up the cool,
quiet lane, between tall hedgerows of the darkest verdure, overshadowing
banks green and fresh as an emerald.
Not so quick as I expected, though--for they are shooting here to-day,
as Dash and I have both discovered: he with great delight, for a gun
to him is as a trumpet to a war-horse; I with no less annoyance, for
I don't think that a partridge itself, barring the accident of being
killed, can be more startled than I at that abominable explosion. Dash
has certainly better blood in his veins than any one would guess to
look at him. He even shows some inclination to elope into the fields,
in pursuit of those noisy iniquities. But he is an orderly person after
all, and a word has checked him.
Ah! here is a shriller din mingling with the small artillery--a shriller
and more continuous. We are not yet arrived within sight of Master
Weston's cottage, snugly hidden behind a clump of elms; but we are in
full hearing of Dame Weston's tongue, raised as usual to scolding pitch.
The Westons are new arrivals in our neighbourhood, and the first thing
heard of them was a complaint from the wife to our magistrate of
her husband's beating her: it was a regular charge of assault--an
information in full form. A most piteous case did Dame Weston make of
it, softening her voice for the nonce into a shrill tremulous whine, and
exciting the mingled pity and anger--pity towards herself, anger towards
her husband--of the whole female world, pitiful and indignant as the
female world is wont to be on such occasions. Every woman in the parish
railed at Master Weston; and poor Master Weston was summoned to attend
the bench on the ensuing Saturday, and answer the charge; and such was
the clamour abroad and at home, that the unlucky culprit, terrified at
the sound of a warrant and a constable, ran away, and was not heard of
for a fortnight.
At the end of that time he was discovered, and brought to the bench; and
Dame Weston again told her story, and, as before, on the full cry.
She had no witnesses, and the bruises of which she made complaint had
disappeared, and there were no women present to make common cause with
the sex. Still, however, the general feeling was against Master Weston;
and it would have gone hard with him when he was called in, if a most
unexpected witness had not risen up in his favour. His wife had brought
in her arms a little girl about eighteen months old, partly perhaps to
move compassion in her favour; for a woman with a child in her arms is
always an object that excites kind feelings. The little girl had looked
shy and frightened, and had been as quiet as a lamb during her mother's
examination; but she no sooner saw her father, from whom she had been a
fortnight separated, than she clapped her hands, and laughed, and cried,
'Daddy! daddy!' and sprang into his arms, and hung round his neck,
and covered him with kisses--again shouting, 'Daddy, come home! daddy!
daddy!'--and finally nestled her little head in his bosom, with a
fulness of contentment, an assurance of tenderness and protection such
as no wife-beating tyrant ever did inspire, or ever could inspire, since
the days of King Solomon. Our magistrates acted in the very spirit of
the Jewish monarch: they accepted the evidence of nature, and dismissed
the complaint. And subsequent events have fully justified their
decision; Mistress Weston proving not only renowned for the feminine
accomplishment of scolding (tongue-banging, it is called in our parts,
a compound word which deserves to be Greek), but is actually herself
addicted to administering the conjugal discipline, the infliction of
which she was pleased to impute to her luckless husband.
Now we cross the stile, and walk up the fields to the Shaw. How
beautifully green this pasture looks! and how finely the evening sun
glances between the boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash, and
aspen! and how sweet the hedgerows are with woodbine and wild scabious,
or, as the country people call it, the gipsy-rose! Here is little Dolly
Weston, the unconscious witness, with cheeks as red as a real rose,
tottering up the path to meet her father. And here is the carroty-poled
urchin, George Coper, returning from work, and singing 'Home! sweet
Home!' at the top of his voice; and then, when the notes prove too
high for him, continuing the air in a whistle, until he has turned the
impassable corner; then taking up again the song and the words, 'Home!
sweet Home!' and looking as if he felt their full import, ploughboy
though he be. And so he does; for he is one of a large, an honest, a
kind, and an industrious family, where all goes well, and where the poor
ploughboy is sure of finding cheerful faces and coarse comforts--all
that he has learned to desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughly
contented as George Coper! All his luxuries a cricket-match!--all his
wants satisfied in 'home! sweet home!'
Nothing but noises to-day! They are clearing Farmer Brooke's great
bean-field, and crying the 'Harvest Home!' in a chorus, before which all
other sounds--the song, the scolding, the gunnery--fade away, and become
faint echoes. A pleasant noise is that! though, for one's ears' sake,
one makes some haste to get away from it. And here, in happy time, is
that pretty wood, the Shaw, with its broad pathway, its tangled dingles,
its nuts and its honeysuckles;--and, carrying away a faggot of those
sweetest flowers, we reach Hannah Bint's: of whom, and of whose doings,
we shall say more another time.
NOTE.--Poor Dash is also dead. We did not keep him long, indeed I
believe that he died of the transition from starvation to good feed,
as dangerous to a dog's stomach, and to most stomachs, as the less
agreeable change from good feed to starvation. He has been succeeded in
place and favour by another Dash, not less amiable in demeanour and far
more creditable in appearance, bearing no small resemblance to the
pet spaniel of my friend Master Dinely, he who stole the bone from the
magpies, and who figures as the first Dash of this volume. Let not the
unwary reader opine, that in assigning the same name to three several
individuals, I am acting as an humble imitator of the inimitable writer
who has given immortality to the Peppers and the Mustards, on the one
hand; or showing a poverty of invention or a want of acquaintance with
the bead-roll of canine appellations on the other. I merely, with my
usual scrupulous fidelity, take the names as I find them. The fact is
that half the handsome spaniels in England are called Dash, just as half
the tall footmen are called Thomas. The name belongs to the species.
Sitting in an open carriage one day last summer at the door of a
farmhouse where my father had some business, I saw a noble and beautiful
animal of this kind lying in great state and laziness on the steps, and
felt an immediate desire to make acquaintance with him. My father, who
had had the same fancy, had patted him and called him 'poor fellow' in
passing, without eliciting the smallest notice in return. 'Dash!' cried
I at a venture, 'good Dash! noble Dash!' and up he started in a moment,
making but one spring from the door into the gig. Of course I was right
in my guess. The gentleman's name was Dash.