October 27th.--A lovely autumnal day; the air soft, balmy, genial;
the sky of that softened and delicate blue upon which the eye loves to
rest,--the blue which gives such relief to the rich beauty of the earth,
all around glowing in the ripe and mellow tints of the most gorgeous
of the seasons. Really such an autumn may well compensate our English
climate for the fine spring of the south, that spring of which the poets
talk, but which we so seldom enjoy. Such an autumn glows upon us like
a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year; and I have been
tempted forth into a wider range of enjoyment than usual. This WALK (if
I may use the Irish figure of speech called a bull) will be a RIDE. A
very dear friend has beguiled me into accompanying her in her pretty
equipage to her beautiful home, four miles off; and having sent forward
in the style of a running footman the servant who had driven her, she
assumes the reins, and off we set.
My fair companion is a person whom nature and fortune would have spoiled
if they could. She is one of those striking women whom a stranger cannot
pass without turning to look again; tall and finely proportioned, with a
bold Roman contour of figure and feature, a delicate English
complexion, and an air of distinction altogether her own. Her beauty is
duchess-like. She seems born to wear feathers and diamonds, and to
form the grace and ornament of a court; and the noble frankness and
simplicity of her countenance and manner confirm the impression. Destiny
has, however, dealt more kindly by her. She is the wife of a rich
country gentleman of high descent and higher attainments, to whom she
is most devotedly attached,--the mother of a little girl as lovely
as herself, and the delight of all who have the happiness of her
acquaintance, to whom she is endeared not merely by her remarkable
sweetness of temper and kindness of heart, but by the singular
ingenuousness and openness of character which communicate an
indescribable charm to her conversation. She is as transparent as water.
You may see every colour, every shade of a mind as lofty and beautiful
as her person. Talking with her is like being in the Palace of Truth
described by Madame de Genlis; and yet so kindly are her feelings, so
great her indulgence to the little failings and foibles of our common
nature, so intense her sympathy with the wants, the wishes, the
sorrows, and the happiness of her fellow-creatures, that, with all her
frank-speaking, I never knew her make an enemy or lose a friend.
But we must get on. What would she say if she knew I was putting her
into print? We must get on up the hill. Ah! that is precisely what we
are not likely to do! This horse, this beautiful and high-bred horse,
well-fed, and fat and glossy, who stood prancing at our gate like an
Arabian, has suddenly turned sulky. He does not indeed stand quite
still, but his way of moving is little better--the slowest and
most sullen of all walks. Even they who ply the hearse at funerals,
sad-looking beasts who totter under black feathers, go faster. It is of
no use to admonish him by whip, or rein, or word. The rogue has found
out that it is a weak and tender hand that guides him now. Oh, for one
pull, one stroke of his old driver, the groom! how he would fly! But
there is the groom half a mile before us, out of earshot, clearing the
ground at a capital rate, beating us hollow. He has just turned the
top of the hill;--and in a moment--ay, NOW he is out of sight, and will
undoubtedly so continue till he meets us at the lawn gate. Well!
there is no great harm. It is only prolonging the pleasure of enjoying
together this charming scenery in this fine weather. If once we make up
our minds not to care how slowly our steed goes, not to fret ourselves
by vain exertions, it is no matter what his pace may be. There is little
doubt of his getting home by sunset, and that will content us. He is,
after all, a fine noble animal; and perhaps when he finds that we are
determined to give him his way, he may relent and give us ours. All his
sex are sticklers for dominion, though, when it is undisputed, some
of them are generous enough to abandon it. Two or three of the most
discreet wives of my acquaintance contrive to manage their husbands
sufficiently with no better secret than this seeming submission; and in
our case the example has the more weight since we have no possible way
of helping ourselves.
Thus philosophising, we reached the top of the hill, and viewed with
'reverted eyes' the beautiful prospect that lay bathed in golden
sunshine behind us. Cowper says, with that boldness of expressing in
poetry the commonest and simplest feelings, which is perhaps one great
secret of his originality,
'Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily seen,
Please daily, and whose novelty survives
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.'
Every day I walk up this hill--every day I pause at the top to admire
the broad winding road with the green waste on each side, uniting it
with the thickly timbered hedgerows; the two pretty cottages at unequal
distances, placed so as to mark the bends; the village beyond, with its
mass of roofs and clustered chimneys peeping through the trees; and the
rich distance, where cottages, mansions, churches, towns, seem embowered
in some wide forest, and shut in by blue shadowy hills. Every day I
admire this most beautiful landscape; yet never did it seem to me so
fine or so glowing as now. All the tints of the glorious autumn, orange,
tawny, yellow, red, are poured in profusion among the bright greens of
the meadows and turnip fields, till the eyes are satiated with colour;
and then before us we have the common with its picturesque roughness of
surface tufted with cottages, dappled with water, edging off on one side
into fields and farms and orchards, and terminated on the other by the
princely oak avenue. What a richness and variety the wild broken ground
gives to the luxuriant cultivation of the rest of the landscape! Cowper
has described it for me. How perpetually, as we walk in the country, his
vivid pictures recur to the memory! Here is his common and mine!
'The common overgrown with fern, and rough
With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deform'd
And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom,
And decks itself with ornaments of gold;--
--------------- there the turf
Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs
And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense
With luxury of unexpected sweets.'
The description is exact. There, too, to the left is my cricket-ground
(Cowper's common wanted that finishing grace); and there stands one
solitary urchin, as if in contemplation of its past and future glories;
for, alas! cricket is over for the season. Ah! it is Ben Kirby, next
brother to Joe, king of the youngsters, and probably his successor--for
this Michaelmas has cost us Joe! He is promoted from the farm to the
mansion-house, two miles off; there he cleans shoes, rubs knives,
and runs on errands, and is, as his mother expresses it, 'a sort of
'prentice to the footman.' I should not wonder if Joe, some day or
other, should overtop the footman, and rise to be butler; and his
splendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss of this great
favourite. In the meantime we have Ben.
Ben Kirby is a year younger than Joe, and the school-fellow and rival of
Jem Eusden. To be sure his abilities lie in rather a different line: Jem
is a scholar, Ben is a wag: Jem is great in figures and writing, Ben in
faces and mischief. His master says of him, that, if there were two such
in the school, he must resign his office; and as far as my observation
goes, the worthy pedagogue is right. Ben is, it must be confessed, a
great corrupter of gravity. He hath an exceeding aversion to authority
and decorum, and a wonderful boldness and dexterity in overthrowing the
one and puzzling the other. His contortions of visage are astounding.
His 'power over his own muscles and those of other people' is almost
equal to that of Liston; and indeed the original face, flat and square
and Chinese in its shape, of a fine tan complexion, with a snub
nose, and a slit for a mouth, is nearly as comical as that matchless
performer's. When aided by Ben's singular mobility of feature, his
knowing winks and grins and shrugs and nods, together with a certain
dry shrewdness, a habit of saying sharp things, and a marvellous gift of
impudence, it forms as fine a specimen as possible of a humorous country
boy, an oddity in embryo. Everybody likes Ben, except his butts (which
may perhaps comprise half his acquaintance); and of them no one so
thoroughly hates and dreads him as our parish schoolmaster, a most
worthy King Log, whom Ben dumbfounds twenty times a day. He is a great
ornament of the cricket-ground, has a real genius for the game,
and displays it after a very original manner, under the disguise of
awkwardness--as the clown shows off his agility in a pantomime. Nothing
comes amiss to him. By the bye, he would have been the very lad for us
in our present dilemma; not a horse in England could master Ben Kirby.
But we are too far from him now--and perhaps it is as well that we are
so. I believe the rogue has a kindness for me, in remembrance of certain
apples and nuts, which my usual companion, who delights in his wit,
is accustomed to dole out to him. But it is a Robin Goodfellow
nevertheless, a perfect Puck, that loves nothing on earth so well as
mischief. Perhaps the horse may be the safer conductor of the two.
The avenue is quite alive to-day. Old women are picking up twigs and
acorns, and pigs of all sizes doing their utmost to spare them the
latter part of the trouble; boys and girls groping for beech-nuts under
yonder clump; and a group of younger elves collecting as many dead
leaves as they can find to feed the bonfire which is smoking away so
briskly amongst the trees,--a sort of rehearsal of the grand bonfire
nine days hence; of the loyal conflagration of the arch-traitor Guy
Vaux, which is annually solemnised in the avenue, accompanied with as
much of squibbery and crackery as our boys can beg or borrow--not to say
steal. Ben Kirby is a great man on the 5th of November. All the
savings of a month, the hoarded halfpence, the new farthings, the very
luck-penny, go off in fumo on that night. For my part, I like this
daylight mockery better. There is no gunpowder--odious gunpowder! no
noise but the merry shouts of the small fry, so shrill and happy, and
the cawing of the rooks, who are wheeling in large circles overhead,
and wondering what is going forward in their territory--seeming in
their loud clamour to ask what that light smoke may mean that curls
so prettily amongst their old oaks, towering as if to meet the clouds.
There is something very intelligent in the ways of that black people
the rooks, particularly in their wonder. I suppose it results from their
numbers and their unity of purpose, a sort of collective and corporate
wisdom. Yet geese congregate also; and geese never by any chance look
wise. But then geese are a domestic fowl; we have spoiled them; and
rooks are free commoners of nature, who use the habitations we provide
for them, tenant our groves and our avenues, but never dream of becoming
our subjects.
What a labyrinth of a road this is! I do think there are four turnings
in the short half-mile between the avenue and the mill. And what a pity,
as my companion observes--not that our good and jolly miller, the very
representative of the old English yeomanry, should be so rich, but
that one consequence of his riches should be the pulling down of the
prettiest old mill that ever looked at itself in the Loddon, with
the picturesque, low-browed, irregular cottage, which stood with its
light-pointed roof, its clustered chimneys, and its ever-open door,
looking like the real abode of comfort and hospitality, to build this
huge, staring, frightful, red-brick mill, as ugly as a manufactory, and
this great square house, ugly and red to match, just behind. The old
buildings always used to remind me of Wollett's beautiful engraving of
a scene in the Maid of the Mill. It will be long before any artist will
make a drawing of this. Only think of this redness in a picture! this
boiled lobster of a house! Falstaff's description of Bardolph's nose
would look pale in the comparison.
Here is that monstrous machine of a tilted waggon, with its load of
flour, and its four fat horses. I wonder whether our horse will have the
decency to get out of the way. If he does not, I am sure we cannot make
him; and that enormous ship upon wheels, that ark on dry land, would
roll over us like the car of Juggernaut. Really--Oh no! there is no
danger now. I should have remembered that it is my friend Samuel Long
who drives the mill team. He will take care of us. 'Thank you, Samuel!'
And Samuel has put us on our way, steered us safely past his waggon,
escorted us over the bridge and now, having seen us through our
immediate difficulties, has parted from us with a very civil bow and
good-humoured smile, as one who is always civil and good-humoured, but
with a certain triumphant masterful look in his eyes, which I have
noted in men, even the best of them, when a woman gets into straits by
attempting manly employments. He has done us great good though, and
may be allowed his little feeling of superiority. The parting salute he
bestowed on our steed, in the shape of an astounding crack of his huge
whip, has put that refractory animal on his mettle. On we go! past the
glazier's pretty house, with its porch and its filbert walk; along the
narrow lane bordered with elms, whose fallen leaves have made the road
one yellow; past that little farmhouse with the horse-chestnut trees
before, glowing like oranges; past the whitewashed school on the other
side, gay with October roses; past the park, and the lodge, and the
mansion, where once dwelt the great Earl of Clarendon;--and now the
rascal has begun to discover that Samuel Long and his whip are a mile
off, and that his mistress is driving him, and he slackens his pace
accordingly. Perhaps he feels the beauty of the road just here, and
goes slowly to enjoy it. Very beautiful it certainly is. The park paling
forms the boundary on one side, with fine clumps of oak, and deer in all
attitudes; the water, tufted with alders, flowing along on the other.
Another turn, and the water winds away, succeeded by a low hedge, and a
sweep of green meadows; whilst the park and its palings are replaced
by a steep bank, on which stands a small, quiet, village alehouse; and
higher up, embosomed in wood, is the little country church, with its
sloping churchyard and its low white steeple, peeping out from amongst
magnificent yew-trees:--
'Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and invet'rately convolved.'
WORDSWORTH.
No village church was ever more happily placed. It is the very image of
the peace and humbleness inculcated within its walls.
Ah! here is a higher hill rising before us, almost like a mountain. How
grandly the view opens as we ascend over that wild bank, overgrown with
fern, and heath, and gorse, and between those tall hollies, glowing with
their coral berries! What an expanse! But we have little time to gaze at
present; for that piece of perversity, our horse, who has walked over so
much level ground, has now, inspired, I presume, by a desire to revisit
his stable, taken it into that unaccountable noddle of his to trot up
this, the very steepest hill in the county. Here we are on the top; and
in five minutes we have reached the lawn gate, and are in the very midst
of that beautiful piece of art or nature (I do not know to which class
it belongs), the pleasure-ground of F. Hill. Never was the 'prophetic
eye of taste' exerted with more magical skill than in these
plantations. Thirty years ago this place had no existence; it was a mere
undistinguished tract of field and meadow and common land; now it is a
mimic forest, delighting the eye with the finest combinations of trees
and shrubs, the rarest effects of form and foliage, and bewildering
the mind with its green glades, and impervious recesses, and apparently
interminable extent. It is the triumph of landscape gardening, and never
more beautiful than in this autumn sunset, lighting up the ruddy beech
and the spotted sycamore, and gilding the shining fir-cones that hang so
thickly amongst the dark pines. The robins are singing around us, as
if they too felt the magic of the hour. How gracefully the road
winds through the leafy labyrinth, leading imperceptibly to the
more ornamented sweep. Here we are at the door amidst geraniums, and
carnations, and jasmines, still in flower. Ah! here is a flower sweeter
than all, a bird gayer than the robin, the little bird that chirps to
the tune of 'mamma! mamma!', the bright-faced fairy, whose tiny feet
come pattering along, making a merry music, mamma's own Frances! And
following her guidance, here we are in the dear round room time enough
to catch the last rays of the sun, as they light the noble landscape
which lies like a panorama around us, lingering longest on that long
island of old thorns and stunted oaks, the oasis of B. Heath, and then
vanishing in a succession of gorgeous clouds.
October 28th.--Another soft and brilliant morning. But the pleasures
of to-day must be written in shorthand. I have left myself no room for
notes of admiration.
First we drove about the coppice: an extensive wood of oak, and elm, and
beech, chiefly the former, which adjoins the park-paling of F. Hill, of
which demesne, indeed, it forms one of the most delightful parts. The
roads through the coppice are studiously wild; so that they have the
appearance of mere cart-tracks: and the manner in which the ground
is tumbled about, the steep declivities, the sunny slopes, the sudden
swells and falls, now a close narrow valley, then a sharp ascent to an
eminence commanding an immense extent of prospect, have a striking air
of natural beauty, developed and heightened by the perfection of art.
All this, indeed, was familiar to me; the colouring only was new. I had
been there in early spring, when the fragrant palms were on the willow,
and the yellow tassels on the hazel, and every twig was swelling
with renewed life; and I had been there again and again in the green
leafiness of midsummer; but never as now, when the dark verdure of the
fir-plantations, hanging over the picturesque and unequal paling, partly
covered with moss and ivy, contrasts so remarkably with the shining
orange-leaves of the beech, already half fallen, the pale yellow of the
scattering elm, the deeper and richer tints of the oak, and the glossy
stems of the 'lady of the woods,' the delicate weeping birch. The
underwood is no less picturesque. The red-spotted leaves and redder
berries of the old thorns, the scarlet festoons of the bramble, the tall
fern of every hue, seem to vie with the brilliant mosaic of the ground,
now covered with dead leaves and strewn with fir-cones, now, where a
little glade intervenes, gay with various mosses and splendid fungi. How
beautiful is this coppice to-day! especially where the little spring,
as clear as crystal, comes bubbling out from the old 'fantastic' beech
root, and trickles over the grass, bright and silent as the dew in a
May morning. The wood-pigeons (who are just returned from their summer
migration, and are cropping the ivy berries) add their low cooings, the
very note of love, to the slight fluttering of the falling leaves in the
quiet air, giving a voice to the sunshine and the beauty. This coppice
is a place to live and die in. But we must go. And how fine is the
ascent which leads us again into the world, past those cottages hidden
as in a pit, and by that hanging orchard and that rough heathy bank! The
scenery in this one spot has a wildness, an abruptness of rise and fall,
rare in any part of England, rare above all in this rich and lovely but
monotonous county. It is Switzerland in miniature.
And now we cross the hill to pay a morning visit to the family at the
great house,--another fine place, commanding another fine sweep of
country. The park, studded with old trees, and sinking gently into
a valley, rich in wood and water, is in the best style of ornamental
landscape, though more according to the common routine of gentlemen's
seats than the singularly original place which we have just left.
There is, however, one distinctive beauty in the grounds of the great
house;--the magnificent firs which shade the terraces and surround the
sweep, giving out in summer odours really Sabaean, and now in this low
autumn sun producing an effect almost magical, as the huge red trunks,
garlanded with ivy, stand out from the deep shadows like an army of
giants. Indoors--Oh I must not take my readers indoors, or we shall
never get away! Indoors the sunshine is brighter still; for there, in a
lofty, lightsome room, sat a damsel fair and arch and piquante, one
whom Titian or Velasquez should be born again to paint, leaning over an
instrument* as sparkling and fanciful as herself, singing pretty French
romances, and Scottish Jacobite songs, and all sorts of graceful and
airy drolleries picked up I know not where--an English improvisatrice!
a gayer Annot Lyle! whilst her sister, of a higher order of beauty, and
with an earnest kindness in her smile that deepens its power, lends to
the piano, as her father to the violin, an expression, a sensibility, a
spirit, an eloquence almost superhuman--almost divine! Oh to hear these
two instruments accompanying my dear companion (I forgot to say that she
is a singer worthy to be so accompanied) in Haydn's exquisite canzonet,
"She never told her love,"--to hear her voice, with all its power, its
sweetness, its gush of sound, so sustained and assisted by modulations
that rivalled its intensity of expression; to hear at once such poetry,
such music, such execution, is a pleasure never to be forgotten, or
mixed with meaner things. I seem to hear it still.
As in the bursting spring time o'er the eye
Of one who haunts the fields fair visions creep
Beneath the closed lids (afore dull sleep
Dims the quick fancy) of sweet flowers that lie
On grassy banks, oxlip of orient dye,
And palest primrose and blue violet,
All in their fresh and dewy beauty set,
Pictured within the sense, and will not fly:
So in mine ear resounds and lives again
One mingled melody,--a voice, a pair
Of instruments most voice-like! Of the air
Rather than of the earth seems that high strain,
A spirit's song, and worthy of the train
That soothed old Prospero with music rare.
*The dital harp.