COTTAGES AND HOMESTEADS
The ancient haunts of men have numberless tongues for those who know
how to hear them speak.
It was not until some fifteen years of Mrs. Allingham's career as
a painter in water-colour had been accomplished that she found the
subject with which her name has since been so inseparably linked.
Looking through the ranks of her associates in the Art it is in
rare instances that we encounter so complete a departure out of a
long-practised groove, or one which has been so amply justified. But
in selecting English Cottages and Homesteads, and peopling them with a
comely tenantry, she happened upon a theme that was certain not only
to obtain the suffrages of the ordinary exhibition visitors, but of
those who add to seeing, admiration and acquisition. Thus it has come
to pass that in the other fifteen years which have elapsed since she
first began to paint them, "Mrs. Allingham's Cottages" have become a
household word amongst connoisseurs of English water-colours, and no
representative collection has been deemed to be complete without an
example of them.
This appreciation is very assuredly a sound one, as the value of
these pictures does not consist solely in their beauty as works of
Art, but in their recording in line and colour a most interesting but
unfortunately vanishing phase of English domestic architecture. For the
cottages are almost without exception veritable portraits, the artist
(whilst naturally selecting those best suited to her purpose) having
felt it a duty to present them with an accuracy of structural feature
which is not always the case in creations of this kind, where the
painter has had other views, and considered that he could improve his
picture by an addition here and an omission there.
So many of Mrs. Allingham's drawings of cottages have been taken from
the counties of Surrey and Sussex, that it may interest not only
the owners of those here reproduced, but others who possess similar
subjects, to read a short description of the features that distinguish
the buildings in these districts.
One is perhaps too apt to pass these lowlier habitations of our
fellow-men, whether we see them in reality or in their counterfeits,
without a thought as to their structure, or an idea that it is an
evolution which has grown on very marked lines from primitive types,
and which in almost every instance has been influenced by local
surroundings.
In the early days of housebuilding the use of local materials was
naturally a distinctive feature of dwellings of every kind, but more
especially in those where expenditure had to be kept within narrow
limits. But even in such a case the style of architecture affected in
the better built houses influenced and may be traced in the more humble
ones. Change amongst our forefathers was even less hastily assumed than
in these days, and a style which experience had proved to be convenient
was persevered in for generation after generation, individuality seldom
having any play, although a necessary adaptation to the site gave to
most buildings a distinction of their own. One of the earliest forms,
and one still to be found even in buildings which have now descended
to the use of yeomen's dwellings, was that of a large central room
having on one side of it the smaller living and sleeping rooms, and on
the other the kitchens and servants' apartments, the wings projecting
sometimes both to back and front, sometimes only to the latter.
In later times, as such a house fell into less well-to-do hands,
necessity usually compelled the splitting-up of the house into various
tenements, in which event the central room was generally divided into
compartments, often into a complete dwelling. Types of this kind may be
found in most villages in the south-eastern counties, and examples will
be seen in "The Six Bells" (Plate 57) and the house at West Tarring,
near Worthing (Plate 51), where the central portion falls back from the
gabled ends. This arrangement of a central hall used for a living room,
after going out of favour for some centuries, is curiously enough once
more coming into fashion.
Local materials having, as we have said, much to do with the structure,
the type of dwelling that we may expect to find in counties where
wood was plentiful, and the cost of preparing and putting it on the
ground less than that of quarrying, shaping, and carrying stone, is the
picturesque, timber-formed cottage. Those interested in the plan of
construction, which was always simple, of these will find full details
in Mr. Guy Dawber's Introduction to _Old Cottages and Farm Houses in
Kent and Sussex_, as well as many illustrations of examples that occur
in these counties.
The materials other than wood used for the framework, and which were
necessary to fill up the interstices, were, in the better class of
dwellings, bricks; in others, a consistency formed of chopped straw and
clay, an outward symmetry of appearance being gained by a covering of
plaster where it was not deemed advisable to protect the woodwork, and
of boarding or tiles where the whole surface called for protection.
Several of the cottages illustrated in this volume have been protected
by these tilings on some part or another, perhaps only on a gable end,
most often on the upper story, sometimes over the whole building, but
of course, principally, where it was most exposed to the weather (see
Cherry-Tree Cottage, Plate 43; Chiddingfold, Plate 44; Shottermill,
Plate 49; and Valewood Farm, Plate 50). This purpose of the tile in
the old houses, and its use only for protection, distinguishes them
from the modern erections, where it is oftentimes affixed in the most
haphazard style, and clearly without any idea of fitting it where it
will be most serviceable.
The space in the interior was very irregularly apportioned, whilst the
cubic space allotted to living rooms, both on the ground and first
floors, was singularly insufficient for modern hygienic views. A
reason for the small size of the rooms may have been that it enabled
them to be more readily warmed, either by the heat given off by the
closely-packed indwellers, or by the small wood fires which alone could
be indulged in. Little use was made of the large space in the roof, but
this omission adds much to the picturesqueness of the exterior, for the
roofs gain in simplicity by their unbroken surface and treatment. It
is somewhat astonishing that the old builders did not recognise this
costly disregard of space.
The roofs, like the framework, testify to the geological formation and
agricultural conditions of the district.
The roof-tree was always of hand-hewn oak, and this it was, according
to Birket Foster, which gave to many of the old roofs their pleasant
curves away from the central chimney. The ordinary unseasoned sawn deal
of the modern roof may swag in any direction.
The roof-covering where the land was chiefly arable, or the distance
from market considerable, was usually wheaten thatch, which was
certainly the most comfortable, being warm in winter and cool in
summer, just the reverse of the tiles or slates that have practically
supplanted it.[11] In other districts the cottages are covered with
what are known as stone slates, thick and heavy. Roofs to carry the
weight of these had always to be flattened, with the result that they
require mortaring to keep out the wet. The West Tarring cottage (Plate
51) is an instance of a stone roofing.
The red tiles, which were used for the most part, are certainly the
most agreeable to the artistic eye, for their seemingly haphazard
setting, due in part to the builder and in part to nature, affords that
pleasure which always arises from an unstudied irregularity of line.
Roof tiles were made thicker and less carefully in the old days, and
our artist's truth in delineation may be detected in almost any drawing
by examining where the weight has swagged away the tiles between the
main roof beams.
Unlike chimneys erected by our cottage builders of to-day, which appear
to issue out of a single mould, those of the untutored architects of
the past present every variety of treatment and appearance.
The old solidly built chimney seen in many of Mrs. Allingham's cottages
(Chiddingfold, Plate 44) is worthy of note as a type of many sturdy
fellows which have resisted the ravages of time, and have stood for
centuries almost without need of repair. In old days the chimney was
regarded not only as a special feature but as an ornament, and not as
a necessary but ugly excrescence. Although probably it only served
for one room in the house, that service was an important one, and so
materials were liberally used in its construction.
In Kent and Sussex many of the chimneys are of brick, although the
house and the base of the chimney-stack are of stone. This arose from
the stone not lending itself to thin slabs, and consequently being
altogether too cumbrous and bulky.
The windows in the old cottages were naturally small when glass was a
luxury, and became fewer in number when a tax upon light was one of
the means for carrying on the country's wars. They were usually filled
with the smallest panes, fitted into lead lattice, so that breakages
might be reduced to the smallest area. Not much of this remains, but a
specimen of it is to be seen in the Old Buckinghamshire House (Plate
52). One of the few alterations that Mrs. Allingham allows herself is
the substitution of these diamond lattices throughout a house where she
finds a single example in any of the lights, or if, as she has on more
than one occasion found, that they have been replaced by others, and
are themselves stacked up as rubbish. She has in her studio some that
have been served in this way, and which have now become useful models.
It would be imagined that the sense of pride in these, the last traces
of their village ancestors, would have prompted their descendants,
whether of the same kin or not, to deal reverently with them, and
endeavour to hand on as long as possible these silent witnesses to
the honest workmanship of their forbears. Such, unfortunately, is
but seldom the case. If any one will visit Witley with this book in
his hand, and compare the present state of the few examples given
there, not twenty years after they were painted, he will see what is
taking place not only in this little village but through the length
and breadth of England. It is not always wilful on the part of the
landlord, but arises from either his lack of sympathy, time, or
interest.
He probably has a sense of his duty to "keep up" things, and so sends
his agent to go round with an architect and settle a general plan
for doing up the old places (usually described as "tumbling down" or
"falling to pieces"). Thereupon a village builder makes an estimate
and sends in a scratch pack of masons and joiners, and between them
they often supplant fine old work, most of it as firm as a rock,
with poor materials and careless labour, and rub out a piece of old
England, irrecoverable henceforth by all the genius in the world and
all the money in the bank. The drainage and water supply, points where
improvement is often desirable, may be left unattended to. But whatever
else is decided on, no uneven tiled roofs, with moss and houseleek,
must remain; no thatch on any pretence, nor ivy on the wall, nor vine
along the eaves. The cherry or apple tree, that pushed its blossoms
almost into a lattice, will probably be cut down, and the wild rose and
honeysuckle hedge be replaced by a row of pales or wires. The leaden
lattice itself and all its fellows, however perfect, must inevitably
give place to a set of mean little square windows of unseasoned wood,
though perhaps on the very next property an architect is building
imitation old cottages with lattices! With the needful small repairs,
most of the real old cottages would have lasted for many generations
to come, to the satisfaction of their inhabitants and the delight of
all who can feel the charm of beauty combined with ancientness--a
charm once lost, lost for ever. And unquestionably the well-repaired
old cottages would generally be more comfortable than the new or the
done-up ones, to say nothing of the "sentiment" of the cottager.
An old man, who was in a temporary lodging during the doing-up of
his cottage, being asked, "When shall you get back to your house?"
answered, "In about a month, they tells me; but it won't be like going
home." At the same time it is fair to add that many of the "doings-up"
in Mrs. Allingham's country are of good intention and less ruthless
execution than may be seen elsewhere, and that certain owners show a
real feeling of wise conservatism. It would perhaps be a low estimate,
however, to say that a thousand ancient cottages are now disappearing
in England every twelvemonth, without trace or record left--many that
Shakespeare might have seen, some Chaucer; while the number "done up"
is beyond computation.
The baronial halls have had abundant recognition and laudation at the
hands of the historian and the painter; the numerous manor-houses, less
pretentious, often more lovely, very little; the old cottages next
to none, even the local chronicler running his spectacles over them
without a pause.
It really looks as if we were, one and all, constituted as a poet has
seen us:--
For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted--better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that--
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out.
Had Mrs. Allingham done nothing else for her country, she has justified
her career as a recorder of this altogether overlooked phase of
English architecture--a phase which will soon be a thing of the past.
I remember once being accosted by a bystander in Angers, as I was
wrestling with the perspective of a beautiful old house, with the
remark, "Ah, you had better hurry more than you are doing and finish
the roof of that house, for it will be off to-morrow and the whole
down in three days." That has often been the case with Mrs. Allingham.
More than once a cottage limned one summer has disappeared before the
drawing was exhibited the following spring. Year in and year out the
process has been at work during the quarter of a century during which
the artist has been garnering, and it has almost come to be a joke that
were she to paint as long again as she has, she might have to cease
from actual lack of material.
* * * * *
Our illustrations of cottages divide themselves into, first the
examples in the immediate neighbourhood of Sandhills; and secondly,
those farther afield in Kent, Buckingham, Dorset, the Isle of Wight,
and Cheshire.
Those near Sandhills form points in the circumference of a
circle of which it is the centre, the most southern being Chiddingfold,
where we start on our survey.
[Illustration:
43. CHERRY-TREE COTTAGE, CHIDDINGFOLD
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Lord Chief Justice of
England._
Painted 1885.]
The old hamlet of Chiddingfold lies about as far to the south as Witley
does to the north of the station on the London and South-Western
Railway which bears their joint names. It boasts of a very ancient
inn, "The Crown,"--formed, it is said, in part out of a monastic
building,--and a large village green. Cherry-Tree Cottage is, as will
be seen, the milk shop of the place, and, if we may judge from the
coming and going in Mrs. Allingham's picture, carries on an animated,
prosperous trade at certain times of the day.
[Illustration:
44. COTTAGE AT CHIDDINGFOLD
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. H. L. Florence._
Painted 1889.]
We have here a March day, or rather one of the type associated with
that month, but which usually visits us with increasing severity as
April and May and the summer progress. Wind in the east, with the sky
a cold, steely blue in the zenith, greying even the young elm shoots a
stone's-throw distant. The cottage almanack, Old Moore's, will foretell
that night frosts will prevail, and the cottager will be fearsome of
its effect upon his apple crop, always so promising in its blossom,
so scanty in its fulfilment. Splendid weather for the full-blooded
lassies, who can tarry to gossip without fear of chills, and also for
drying clothes on the hedgerow, but nipping for the old beldame who
tends them, and who has to wrap up against it with shawl and cap.
Laburnum, rich
In streaming gold,
competes in colour with the spikes of the broom, which the artist must
have been thankful to the hedgecutter for sparing as he passed his
shears along its surface when last he trimmed it. For some reason the
broom bears an ill repute hereabouts as bringing bad luck, although
in early times it was put to a desirable use, as Gerard tells us that
"that worthy Prince of famous memory, Henry VIII. of England, was wont
to drink the distilled water of Broome floures." Wordsworth also
gives it[12] a special word in his lines--
Am I not
In truth a favour'd plant?
On me such bounty summer showers,
That I am cover'd o'er with flowers;
And when the frost is in the sky,
My branches are so fresh and gay,
That you might look on me and say--
"This plant can never die."
The cottage contains a typical example of the massive central chimney,
and also an end one, which it is unusual to find in company with the
other in so small a dwelling. Note also the weather tiling round the
gable end and the upper story.
[Illustration:
45. A COTTAGE AT HAMBLEDON
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. F. Pennington._
Painted 1888.]
For those who read between the lines there are plenty of pretty
allegories connected with these drawings. This, for instance, might
well be termed "Youth and Age." The venerable cottage in its declining
years, so appropriately set in a framework of autumn tints and
flowers, supported on its colder side by the tendrils of ivy, almost of
its own age, but on its warmer side maturing a fruitful vine, emblem
of the mother and child which gather at the gate, and of the brood of
fowls which busily search the wayside.
[Illustration:
46. IN WORMLEY WOOD
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Le Poer Trench._
Painted 1886.]
Half a century ago most of the old dwellings on the Surrey border were
thatched with good wheaten straw from the Weald of Sussex, but thatch
will soon be a thing of the past, partly for the reason that there
are no thatchers (or "thackers" as they are called in local midland
dialect) left, principally because the straw, of which they consumed
a good deal, and which used to be a cheap commodity and not very
realisable, in villages whose access to market was difficult, now finds
a ready sale. Locomotion has also enabled slates to be conveyed from
hundreds of miles away, and placed on the ground at a less rate than
straw.
Thus the old order changeth, and without any regard to the comfort of
the tenant, whose roof, as I have already said, instead of consisting
of a covering which was warm in winter and cool in summer, is now one
which is practically the reverse. Strawen roofs are easy of repair or
renewal, and look very trim and cosy when kept in condition.
At the time when this drawing was painted this cottage, lying snugly in
the recesses of Wormley Wood (whose pines always attract the attention
as the train passes them just before Witley station is reached), was
the last specimen of thatch in the neighbourhood, and it only continued
so to be through the intervention of a well-known artist who lived not
far off. That artist is dead, and probably in the score of years which
have since elapsed the thatch has gone the way of the rest, and the
harmony of yellowish greys which existed between it and its background
have given way to a gaudy contrast of unweathered red tiles or cold
unsympathetic blue slates.
The cottage itself may well date back to Tudor times, and the
sweetwilliams, pansies, and lavender which border the path leading
to it may be the descendants of far-away progenitors, culled by a
long-forgotten labourer in his master's "nosegay garden," which at
that time was a luxury of the well-to-do only.
Many of the flowers found in this plot of ground were in early days
conserved in the gardens of the simple folk rather for their medicinal
use than their decorative qualities. Such was certainly the case with
lavender. "The floures of lavender do cure the beating of the harte,"
says one contemporary herbal; and another written in Commonwealth times
says, "They are very pleasing and delightful to the brain, which is
much refreshed with their sweetness." It was always found in the garden
of women who pretended to good housewifery, not only because the heads
of the flowers were used for "nosegays and posies," but for putting
into "linen and apparel."
[Illustration:
47. THE ELDER BUSH, BROOK LANE, WITLEY
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Marcus Huish._
Painted 1887.]
Those who are ingenious enough to see the inspiration of another hand
in every work that an artist produces would probably raise an outcry
against anybody infringing the copyright which they consider that
Collins secured more than half a century ago for the children swinging
on a gate in his "Happy as a King." But who that examines with any
interest or care the figures in this water-colour could for a moment
believe that Mrs. Allingham had ever had Collins even unconsciously
in her mind when she put in these happy little mortals as adjuncts to
her landscape. Having enjoyed at ages such as theirs a swing on many a
gate, one can testify that these children must have been seen, studied,
and put in from the life and on the spot. See how the elder girl leans
over the gate, with perfect self-assurance, directing the boy as to
how far back the gate may go; how the younger one has to climb a rung
higher than her sister in order to obtain the necessary purchase with
her arms, and even then she can only do so with a strain and with a
certain nervousness as to the result of the jar when the gate reaches
the post on its return. Again, some one has to do the swinging, and
Mrs. Allingham has given the proper touch of gallantry by making the
second in age of the party, a boy, the first to undertake this part of
the business. The excitement of the moment has communicated itself to
the youngest of the family, who raises his stick to cheer as the gate
swings to. Although painted within thirty miles of London, the age of
cheap rickety perambulators had not reached the countryside when this
drawing was made nearly twenty years ago, and so we see the youngest in
a sturdy, hand-made go-cart.
The country folk who passed the artist when she was making this
drawing wondered doubtless at her selection of a point of sight where
practically nothing but roof and wall of the building were visible,
when a few steps farther on its front door and windows might have made
a picture; but the charm of the drawing exists in this simplicity
of subject, the greatest pleasure being procurable from the least
important features, such, for instance, as the lichen-covered and
leek-topped wall, and the untended, buttercup-flecked bank on which it
stands. The locality of the drawing is Brook Lane, near Witley, and
the drawing was an almost exact portrait of the cottage as it stood in
1886, but since then it has been modernised like the majority of its
fellows, and though the oak-timbered walls, tiled roof, and massive
chimney still stand, the old curves of the roof-tree have gone, and
American windows have replaced the old lattices. The other side of
the house, as it then appeared, has been preserved to us in the next
picture.
[Illustration:
48. THE BASKET WOMAN
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Backhouse._
Painted 1887.]
The art critic of _The Times_, in speaking of the Exhibition where this
drawing was exhibited, singled it out as "taking rank amongst the very
best of Mrs. Allingham's work, and the very model of what an English
water-colour should be, with its woodside cottage, its tangled hedges,
its background of sombre fir trees, and figures of the girl with
basket, and of the cottagers to whom she is offering her wares, showing
as it does intense love for our beautiful south country landscape, with
the power of seizing its most picturesque aspects with truth of eye and
delicacy of hand."
To my mind the most remarkable feature of the drawing is the way in
which the long stretch of hedge has been managed. In most hands it
would either be a monotonous and uninteresting feature or an absolute
failure, for the difficulty of lending variety of surface and texture
to so large a mass is only known to those who have attempted it; it
could only be effected by painting it entirely from nature and on the
spot, as was the case here. Many would have been tempted to break it
up by varieties of garden blooms, but Mrs. Allingham has only relieved
it by a stray spray or two of wild honeysuckle, which never flowers in
masses, and a few white convolvuli.
That we are not far removed from the small hop district which is to
be found west and northward of this part is evidenced by the hops
which the old woman was in course of plucking from the pole when her
attention was arrested by the wandering pedlar. This and the apples
ripening on the straggling apple tree show the season to be early
autumn, whereas the elder bush in the companion drawing puts its season
as June.
[Illustration:
49. COTTAGE AT SHOTTERMILL, NEAR HASLEMERE
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. W. D. Houghton._
Painted 1891.]
Each of three counties may practically claim this cottage for one of
its types, for it lies absolutely at the junction of Surrey, Sussex,
and Hampshire.
For a single tenement it is particularly roomy, and a comfortable
one to boot, for its screen of tiles is carried so low down.
It was a curious mood of the artist's to sit down square in front of it
and paint its paling paralleling across the picture, a somewhat daring
stroke of composition to carry on the line of white tiling with one of
white clothes. The sky displays an unusual departure from the artist's
custom, as the whole length of it is banked up with banks of cumuli.
The figures and the empty basket point to a little domestic episode.
Boy and girl have been sent on an errand, but have not got beyond the
farther side of the gate before they betake themselves to a loll on
the grass, which has lengthened out to such an extent that the old
grand-dame comes to the cottage door to look for their return, little
witting that they are quietly crouched within a few feet of her, hidden
behind the paling, over which lavender, sweet-pea, roses, peonies, and
hollyhocks nod at them. They are even less conscious of wrong-doing and
of impending scoldings than the cat, which sneaks homewards after a
lengthened absence on a poaching expedition.
[Illustration:
50. VALEWOOD FARM
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._
Painted 1903.]
Valewood is over the ridge which protects Haslemere on the south, and
is a very pretty vale of sloping meadows fringed with wood, all under
the shadow of Blackdown, to which it belongs. This is distinguished
from most houses hereabouts in boasting a stream, the headwater of
a string of ponds, whence starts the river Wey northwards on its
tortuous journey round the western slopes of Hindhead. When Mrs.
Allingham painted the house, which was inhabited by well-to-do yeomen
from Devonshire, the dairying and the milking were still conducted by
desirable hands, namely, those of milkmaids.
[Illustration:
51. AN OLD HOUSE AT WEST TARRING
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._
Painted 1900.]
Worthing has been termed "a dull and dreary place, the only relief
to which is its suburb of West Tarring." This happening to have been
one of the "peculiars" of the Archbishops of Canterbury,
has buildings and objects of considerable antiquarian interest. The
cottages which Mrs. Allingham selected for her drawing may be classed
amongst them, for they are a type, as good as any in this volume, of
the well-built, substantial dwelling-house of our progenitors of many
centuries ago--one in which all the features that we have pointed
out are to be found. The house has in course of time clearly become
too big for its situation, and has consequently been parcelled out
into cottages; this has necessitated some alteration of the front of
the lower story, but otherwise it is an exceptionally well-preserved
specimen. Long may it remain so.
[Illustration:
52. AN OLD BUCKINGHAMSHIRE HOUSE
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. H. W. Birks._
Painted 1899.]
This is a somewhat rare instance of the artist selecting for
portraiture a house of larger dimensions than a cottage. It is a
singular trait, perhaps a womanly trait, that we never find her choice
falling upon the country gentleman's seat, although their formal
gardening and parterres of flowers must oftentimes have tempted her.
Her selection, in fact, never rises beyond the wayside tenement, which
in that before us no doubt once housed a well-to-do yeoman, but was,
when Mrs. Allingham limned it, only tenanted in part by a small farmer
and in part by a butcher. But it is planned and fashioned on the old
English lines to which we have referred, and which in the days when it
was built governed those of the dwelling of every well-to-do person.
[Illustration:
53. THE DUKE'S COTTAGE
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Maurice Hill._
Painted 1896.]
The trend of the trees indicates that this scene is laid where the
winds are not only strong, but blow most frequently from one particular
quarter. It is, in fact, on the coast of Dorset, at Burton, a little
seaside resort of the inhabitants of Bridport, when they want a change
from their own water-side town. The English Channel comes up to one
side of the buttercup-clad field, and was behind the artist as she sat
to paint the carrier's cottage, a man of some local celebrity, who took
the artist to task for not painting his home from a particular
point of view, saying, "I've had it painted many a time, and theyse
always took it from there." He was a man accustomed to boss the village
in a kindly but firm way, never allowing any controversy concerning
his charges, which were, however, always reasonable. Hence he had
come to be nicknamed "The Duke," and as such did not understand Mrs.
Allingham's declining at once to recommence her sketch at the spot he
indicated.
The Dorsetshire cottages, for the most part, differ altogether from
their fellows in Surrey and Sussex, for their walls are made of what
would seem to be the flimsiest and clumsiest materials,--dried mud,
intermixed with straw to give it consistency, entering mainly into
their composition. Many are not far removed from the Irish cabins, of
which we see an example in Plate 78.
[Illustration:
54. THE CONDEMNED COTTAGE
_From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist._
Painted 1902.]
In speaking of Duke's Cottage, I dwelt upon the poor materials of
which it and its Dorsetshire fellows were made, and this, coupled
with Mrs. Allingham presenting a picture of one that is too decayed
to live in, may raise a suggestion as to their instability. But such
is not the case. The lack of substance in the material is made up by
increased thickness, and the cottage before us has stood the wear and
tear of several hundred years, and now only lacks a tenant through its
insanitary condition. A robin greeted the artist from the topmost of
the grass-grown steps, glad no doubt to see some one about the place
once more.
[Illustration:
55. ON IDE HILL
_From the Drawing in the possession of Mr. E. W. Fordham._
Painted 1900.]
Ide Hill is to be found in Kent, on the south side of the Westerham
Valley, and the old cottage is the last survival of a type, every one
of which has given place to the newly built and commonplace.[13] The
view from hereabouts is very fine--so fine, indeed, that Miss Octavia
Hill has, for some time, been endeavouring, and at last with success,
to preserve a point for the use of the public whence the best
can be seen.
[Illustration:
56. A CHESHIRE COTTAGE, ALDERLEY EDGE
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. A. S. Littlejohns._
Painted 1898.]
The almost invariable rule of the south, that cottages are formed out
of the local material that is nearest to hand, is clearly not practised
farther north, to judge by this example of a typical Cheshire cottage.
Stone is apparently so ready to hand that not only is the roadway paved
with it, but even the approach to the cottage, whilst the large blocks
seen elsewhere in the picture show that it is not limited in size. Yet
the only portion of the building that is constructed of stone, so far
as we can see, is the lean-to shed.
The cottage itself differs in many respects from those we have been
used to in Surrey and Sussex. The roof is utilised, in fact the level
of the first floor is on a line almost with its eaves, and a large bay
window in the centre, and one at the end, show that it is well lighted.
Heavy barge-boards are affixed to the gables, which is by no means
always the case down south, and the wooden framework has at one time
been blackened in consonance with a custom prevalent in Cheshire and
Lancashire, but which is probably only of comparatively recent date;
for gas-tar, which is used, was not invented a hundred years ago, and
there seems no sense in a preservative for oak beams which usually are
almost too hard to drive a nail into. The fashion is probably due to
the substitution of unseasoned timber for oak.
[Illustration:
57. THE SIX BELLS
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. G. Wills._
Painted 1892.]
This beautiful old specimen of a timbered house was discovered by
Mrs. Allingham by accident when staying with some artistic friends at
Bearsted, in Kent, who were unaware of its existence. Although the
weather was very cold and the season late, she lost no time in painting
it, as its inmates said that it would be pulled down directly its
owner, an old lady of ninety-two, who was very ill, died. Having spent
a long day absorbed in putting down on paper its intricate details, she
went into the house for a little warmth and a cup of tea, only
to find a single fire, by which sat a labourer with his pot of warmed
ale on the hob. Asking whether she could not go to some other fire, she
was assured that nowhere else in the house could one be lit, as water
lay below all the floors, and a fire caused this to evaporate and fill
the rooms with steam.
As we have said, Mrs. Allingham alters her compositions as little as
possible when painting from Nature, but in this case she has omitted
a church tower that stood just to the right of the inn, and added the
tall trees behind it. The omission was due to a feeling that the house
itself was the point, and a quite sufficient point of interest, that
would only be lessened by a competing one. The addition of the trees
was made in order to give value to the grey of the house-side, which
would have been considerably diminished by a broad expanse of sky.
[Illustration:
58. A KENTISH FARMYARD
_From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Arthur R. Moro._
Painted 1900.]
Farmyards are out of fashion nowadays, and a Royal Water-Colour
Society's Exhibition, which in the days of Prout and William Hunt
probably contained a dozen of them, will now find place for a single
example only from the hand of Mr. Wilmot Pilsbury, who alone faithfully
records for us the range of straw-thatched buildings sheltering an
array of picturesque waggons and obsolete farming implements. But this
"stead" is just opposite to the farm in which Mrs. Allingham stays, and
it has often attracted her on damp days by its looking like "a blaze
of raw sienna." We can understand the tiled expanse of steep-pitched,
moss-covered roof affording her some of that material on which her
heart delights, and which she has felt it a duty to hand down to
posterity before it gives place to some corrugated iron structure which
must, ere long, supplant this old timber-built barn.
What was originally a study has been transformed by her, through the
human incidents, into a picture: the milkmaid carrying the laden
pail from the byre; the cock on the dunghill, seemingly amazed that
his wives are too busily engaged on its contents to admire him; the
lily-white ducks waddling to the pool to indulge in a drink, the gusto
of which seems to increase in proportion to the questionableness of its
quality.