Country stories

i^

>

■ '>* .

^ ;\* J >

> '

) ■ 9 ,

.i^S* -)1S,

3> ■■

> >■

rm J%

i> '

",' >

1^ y '^

mm

./^*„^^i

^^^^!:'A^AA(^^i^lllaiilii.fi.£.

'^t?^

s^^^

rwfl

i^^^-^"::

f^^,.«:

■^•i'i

^^f^f

Bi

^

^Ip^^a?'

ic^^,0^2^>^A«

^^w'/^v

r'^^^m

:' .iiMfei^f ':«^*' *

■#.i#^S?«'

Aii

lor^j^.

COUNTRY STORIES.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD,

AUTHORESS OP

OUR VILLAGE," " BELFORD REGIS," " RIENZI," &C.

LONDON

SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.

1837.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY IBOTSON AND PALMER.
SAVOY STREET.

TO

THE REV. WILLIAM HARNESS,

WHOSE OLD HEREDITARY FRIENDSHIP".
HAS BEEN THE PRIDE AND PLEASURE
OF HER HAPPIER HOURS,
HER CONSOLATION IN THE SORROWS,

AND

HER SUPPORT IN THE DIFFICULTIES OF LIFE,

THIS LITTLE VOLUME,

IS MOST RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
INSCRIBED BY

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

Country Lodgings

Page

1

The London Visiter

26

Jesse Cliffe ....

. 42

Miss Philly Firkin, the China-woman

89

The Ground-ash ....

. 108

Mr. Joseph Hanson, the Haberdasher

134

The Beauty of the Village

. 161

Town versus Country

185

The Widow's Dog

. 203

The Lost Dahlia . . . .

229

Honor O'CJallaghan

. 250

Aunt Deborah

268

COUNTRY STORIES.

COUNTRY LODGINGS.

Between two and three years ago, the following
pithy advertisement appeared in several of the
London papers : —

" Country Lodgings. — Apartments to let in a
large farm-house, situate in a cheap and pleasant
village, about forty miles from London. Apply
(if by letter post-paid) to A. B., No. 7, Salis-
bury-street, Strand."

Little did I think, whilst admiring in the broad
page of the Morning Chronicle the compendious
brevity of this announcement, that the pleasant
village referred to was our own dear Aberleigh ;
and that the first tenant of those apartments
should be a lady whose family I had long known,
and in whose fortunes and destiny I took a more
than common interest !

VOL. I. B

2 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

Upton Court was a manor-house of con-
siderable extent, which had in former times
been the residence of a distinguished CathoUc
family, but which, in the changes of property
incident to our fluctuating neighbourhood, was
now " fallen from its high estate," and degraded
into the homestead of a farm so small, that the
tenant, a yeoman of the poorest class, was fain
to eke out his rent by entering into an agree-
ment with a speculating Belford upholsterer,
and letting off a part of the fine old mansion in
the shape of furnished lodgings.

Nothing could be finer than the situation of
Upton, placed on the summit of a steep accli-
vity, looking over a rich and fertile valley to a
range of woody hills; nothing more beautiful
than the approach from Belford, the road lead-
ing across a common between a double row of
noble oaks, the ground on one side sinking with
the abruptness of a north-country burn, whilst
a clear spring, bursting from the hill side, made
its way to the bottom between patches of shaggy
underwood and a grove of smaller trees ; a vine-
covered cottage just peeping between the foli-

COUNTRY LODGINGS. O

age, and the picturesque outline of the Court,
with its old-fashioned porch, its long windows,
and its tall, clustered chimneys towering in the
distance. It was the prettiest prospect in all
Aberleigh.

The house itself retained strong marks of form-
er stateliness, especially in one projecting wing,
too remote from the yard to be devoted to the
domestic purposes' of the farmer's family. The
fine proportions of the lofty and spacious apart-
ments, the rich mouldings of the ceilings, the
carved chimney-pieces, and the panelled walls,
all attested the former grandeur of the mansion ;
whilst the fragments of stained glass in the
windows of the great gallery, the half-effaced
coats of arms over the door-way, the faded
family portraits, grim black-visaged knights,
and pale shadowy ladies, or the reliques of
mouldering tapestry that fluttered against the
walls, and, above all, the secret chamber con-
structed for the priest's hiding-place in days
of Protestant persecution, for in darker ages
neither of the dominant churches was free from
that foul stain,— each of these vestiges of the

B 2

4 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

manners and the history of times long gone by
appealed to the imagination, and conspired to
give a Mrs. Radcliffe-like, Castle-of-Udolpho-sort
of romance to the manor-house. Really, when
the wind swept through the overgrown espaliers
of that neglected but luxuriant wilderness, the
terraced garden ; when the screech-owl shrieked
from the ivy which clustered up one side of the
walls, and " rats and mice, and such small deer,"
were playing their pranks behind the wainscot,
it would have formed as pretty a locality for a
supernatural adventure, as ever decayed hunting
lodge in the recesses of the Hartz, or ruined
fortress on the castled Rhine. Nothing was
wanting but the ghost, and a ghost of any taste
would have been proud of such a habitation.

Less like a ghost than the inhabitant who did
arrive, no human being well could be.

Mrs. Cameron was a young widow. Her
father, a Scotch officer, well-born, sickly, and
poor, had been but too happy to bestow the
hand of his only child upon an old friend and
fellow-countryman, the principal clerk in a go-
vernment office, whose respectable station, easy

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 5

fortune, excellent sense, and super-excellent
character, were, as he thought, and as fathers,
right or wrong, are apt to think, advantages
more than sufficient to counterbalance a dis-
parity of years and appearance, which some
daughters might have thought startling, — the
bride being a beautiful girl of seventeen, the
bridegroom a plain man of seven-and-fifty. In
this case, at least, the father was right. He
lived long enough to see that the young wife
was unusually attached to her kind and indulgent
husband, and died, about a twelve-month after
the marriage, with the fullest confidence in her
respectability and happiness. Mr. Cameron
did not long survive him. Before she was nine-
teen the fair Helen Cameron was a widow and
an orphan, with one beautiful boy, to whom she
was left sole personal guardian, an income be-
ing secured to her ample for her rank in life,
but clogged with the one condition of her not
marrying again.

Such was the tenant, who, wearied of her dull
suburban home, a red brick house in the middle
of a row of red brick houses ; tired of the loneli-
ness which never presses so much upon the spirits

() COUNTRY LODGINGS.

as when left solitary in the environs of a great
city ; pining for country liberty, for green trees,
and fresh air; much caught by the picturesque -
ness of Upton, and its mixture of old-fashioned
stateliness and village rusticity ; and, perhaps,
a little swayed by a desire to be near an old
friend and correspondent of the mother, to
whose memory she was so strongly attached,
came in the budding spring time, the showery,
flowery month of April, to spend the ensuing
summer at the Court.

We, on our part, regarded her arrival with no
common interest. To me it seemed but yester-
day since I had received an epistle of thanks for
a present of one of dear Mary Hewitt's charming
children's books, — an epistle undoubtedly not
indited by the writer, — in huge round text, be-
tween double pencil lines, with certain small
errors of orthography corrected in as mailer hand
above ; followed in due time by postscripts to her
mother's letters, upon one single line, and the
spelling much amended ; then by a short, very
short note, in French ; and at last, by a despatch
of unquestionable authenticity, all about doves
and rabbits, — a holiday scrawl, rambling, scram-

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 7

bling, and uneven, and free from restraint as
heart could desire. It appeared but yesterday
since Helen Graham was herself a child; and
here she was, within two miles of us, a widow
and a mother !

Our correspondence had been broken off' by
the death of Mrs. Graham when she was about
ten years old, and although I had twice called
upon her in my casual visits to town during the
lifetime of Mr. Cameron; and although these
visits had been most punctually returned, it had
happened, as those things do happen in dear,
provoking London, where one is sure to miss
the people one wishes most to see, that neither
party had ever been at home ; so that we had
never met, and I Mas at full liberty to indulge
in my foolish propensity of sketching in my
mind's eye a fancy portrait of my unknown
friend.

II Penseroso is not more different from L' Al-
legro than was my anticipation from the charm-
ing reality. Remembering well her mother's
delicate and fragile grace of figure and counte-
nance, and coupling with that recollection her

O COUNTRY LODGINGS.

own unprotected and solitary state, and some-
what melancholy story, I had pi ctured to myself
(as if contrast were not in this world of ours
much more frequent than congruity) a mild,
pensive, interesting, fair-haired beauty, tall,
pale, and slender; — I found a Hebe, an Eu-
phrosyne, — a round, rosy, joyous creature, the
very impersonation of youth, health, sweetness,
and gaiety, laughter flashing from her hazel
eyes, smiles dimpling round her coral lips, and
the rich curls of her chestnut hair, — for having
been fourteen months a widow, she had, of course,
laid aside the peculiar dress, — the glossy ringlets
of her " bonny brown hair " literally bursting
fi'om the comb that attempted to confine them.

We soon found that her mind was as charm-
ing as her person. Indeed, her face, lovely as it
was, derived the best part of its loveliness from
her sunny temper, her frank and ardent spirit,
her affectionate and generous heart. It was the
ever-varying expression, an expression which
could not deceive, that lent such matchless
charms to her glowing and animated counte-
nance, and to the round and musical voice

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 9

sweet as the spoken voice of Malibran, or the
still fuller and more exquisite tones of Mrs.
Jordan, which, true to the feeling of the mo-
ment, vibrated alike to the wildest gaiety and
the deepest pathos. In a word, the chief beauty
of Helen Cameron was her sensibility. It was
the perfume to the rose.

Her little boy, born just before his father's
death, and upon whom she doated, was a mag-
nificent piece of still life. Calm, placid, dig-
nified, an infant Hercules for strength and fair
proportions, grave as a judge, quiet as a flower,
he was, in point of age, exactly at that most
delightful period when children are very plea-
sant to look upon, and require no other sort
of notice whatsoever. Of course this state of
perfection could not be expected to continue.
The young gentleman would soon aspire to the
accomplishments of walking and talking — and
then ! — but as that hour of turmoil and com-
motion to which his mamma looked forward
with ecstacy was yet at some months distance, I
contented myself with saying of master Archv,
with considerably less than the usual falsehood,

10 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

that which everybody does say of only children,
that he was the finest baby that ever was
seen.

We met ahnost every day. Mrs. Cameron
was never weary of driving about our beautiful
lanes in her little pony-carriage, and usually
called upon us in her way home, we being
not merely her oldest, but almost her only
friends ; for lively and social as was her temper,
there was a little touch of shyness about her,
which induced her rather to shun than to covet
the company of strangers. And indeed the
cheerfulness of temper, and activity of mind,
which made her so charming an acquisition to
a small circle, rendered her independent of
general society. Busy as a bee, sportive as a
butterfly, she passed the greater part of her
time in the open air, and having caught from
me that very contagious and engrossing passion,
a love of floriculture, had actually undertaken
the operation of restoring the old garden at
the Court — a coppice of brambles, thistles,
and weeds of every description, mixed with
flowering shrubs, and overgrown fruit-trees —

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 11

to something like its original order. The farmer,
to be sure, had abandoned the job in despair,
contenting himself with growing his cabbages
and potatoes in a tield hard by. But she was
certain that she and her maid Martha, and the
boy Bill, who looked after her pony, would
weed the paths, and fill the flower-borders in
no time. We should see ; I had need take
good care of my reputation, for she meant her
garden to beat mine.

What progress Helen and her forces, a
shatter-brain boy who did not know a violet
from a nettle, and a London-bred girl who had
hardly seen a rose-bush in her life, would have
made in clearing this forest of underwood,
might easily be foretold. Accident, however,
that frequent favourer of bold projects, came to
her aid in the shape of a more efficient coad-
jutor.

Late one evening the fair Helen arrived at
our cottage with a face of unwonted gravity.
Mrs. Davies (her landlady) had used her
very ill. She had taken the west wing in total
ignorance of there being other apartments to

12 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

let at the Court, or she would have secured
them. And now a new lodger had arrived, had
actually taken possession of two rooms in the
centre of the house ; and Martha, who had seen
him, said he was a young man, and a hand-
some man — and she herself a young woman un-
protected and alone ! — It was awkward, very
awkward ! Was it not very awkward ? What
was she to do ?

Nothing could be done that night; so far
was clear ; but we praised her prudence, pro-
mised to call at Upton the next day, and if
necessary, to speak to this new lodger, who
might, after all, be no very formidable person ;
and quite relieved by the vent which she had
given to her scruples, she departed in her usual
good spirits.

Early the next morning she re-appeared.
" She would not have the new lodger disturbed
for the world ! He was a Pole. One doubt-
less of those unfortunate exiles. He had told
Mrs. Davies that he was a Polish gentleman
desirous chiefly of good air, cheapness, and
retirement. Beyond a doubt he was one of

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 13

those unhappy fugitives. He looked grave, and
pale, and thoughtful, quite like a hero of
romance. Besides, he was the very person
who a week before had caught hold of the
reins when that little restive pony had taken
fright at the baker's cart, and nearly backed
Bill and herself into the great gravel-pit on
Lanton Common. Bill had entirely lost all
command over the pony, and but for the
stranger's presence of mind, she did not know
what would have become of them. Surely I
must remember her telling me the circum-
stance ? Besides, he was unfortunate ! He was
poor ! He was an exile ! She would not be
the means of driving him from the asylum
which he had chosen for all the world ! — No !
not for all my geraniums !" an expression which
is by no means the anti-chmax that it seems —
for in the eyes of a florist, and that florist an
enthusiast and a woman, what is this rusty
fusty dusty musty bit of earth, called the world,
compared to a stand of bright flowers ?

And finding, upon inquiry, that M. Choy-
nowski (so he called himself) had brought a

14 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

letter of recommendation from a respectable
London tradesman, and that there was every
appearance of his being, as our fair young
friend had conjectured, a foreigner in distress,
my father not only agreed that it would be a
cruel attempt to drive him from his new home,
(a piece of tyranny which, even in this land of
freedom, might, I suspect, have been managed
in the form of an offer of double rent, by that
grand despot, money,) but resolved to offer the
few attentions in our poor power, to one whom
every look and word proclaimed him to be, in
the largest sense of the word, a gentleman.

My father had seen him, not on his visit of
inquiry, but on a few days after, bill-hook in
hand, hacking av/ay manfully at the briers and
brambles of the garden. My first view of him
was in a position even less romantic, assisting
a Belford tradesman to put up a stove in the
nursery.

One of Mrs. Cameron's few causes of com-
plaint in her country lodgings had been the
tendency to smoke in that important apartment.
We all know that when those two subtle es

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 15

sences, smoke and wind, once come to do battle
in a wide, open chimney, the invisible agent is
pretty sure to have the best of the day, and to
drive his vapoury enemy at full speed before
him. M. Choynowski, who by this time had
established a gardening acquaintance, not merely
with Bill and Martha, but with their fair
mistress, happening to see her, one windy even-
ing, in a paroxysm of smoky distress, not
merely recommended a stove, after the fashion
of the northern nations' notions, but immediately
walked into Belford to give his own orders to a
respectable ironmonger ; and they were in the
very act of erecting this admirable accessary
to warmth and comfort (really these words are
synonymous) when I happened to calL

I could hardly have seen him under circum-
stances better calculated to display his intelli-
gence, his delicacy, or his good-breeding. The
patience, gentleness, and kind feeling, with
which he contrived at once to excuse and to
remedy certain blunders made by the workmen
in the execution of his orders, and the clearness
with which, in perfectly correct and idiomatic En-

16 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

glish, slightly tinged with a foreign accent, he ex-
plained the mechanical and scientific reasons for
the construction he had suggested, gave evidence
at once of no common talent, and of a considerate-
ness and good -nature in its exercise more valuable
than all the talent in the world. If trifling and
every-day occurrences afford, as I believe they
do, the surest and safest indications of character,
we could have no hesitation in pronouncing
upon the amiable qualities of M. Choynowski.

In person he was tall and graceful, and very
noble-looking. His head was particularly in-
tellectual, and there was a calm sweetness
about the mouth that was singularly prepossess-
ing. Helen had likened him to a hero of
romance. In m.y eyes he bore much more
plainly the stamp of a man of fashion — of that
very highest fashion which is too refined for
finery, too full of self-respect for affectation.
Simple, natural, mild, and gracious, the gentle
reserve of his manner added, under the cir-
cumstances, to the interest which he inspired.
Somewhat of that reserve continued even after
our acquaintance had ripened into intimacy.

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 17

He never spoke of his own past history, or
future prospects, shunned all political discourse,
and was with difficulty drawn into conversa-
tion upon the scenery and manners of the
North of Europe. He seemed afraid of the
subject.

Upon general topics, whether of literature
or art, he was remarkably open and candid.
He possessed in an eminent degree the talent
of acquiring languages for which his country-
men are distinguished, and had made the best
use of those keys of knowledge. I have never
met with any person whose mind was more
richly cultivated, or who was more calculated
to adorn the highest station. And here he
was wasting life in a secluded village in a
foreign country ! What would become of him
after his present apparently slender resources
should be exhausted, was painful to imagine.
The more painful, that the accidental discovery
of the direction of a letter had disclosed his
former rank. It was part of an envelope ad-
dressed, "A Monsieur Monsieur le Comte Choy-
nowski," and left as a mark in a book, all

18 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

except the name being torn off. But tbe
fact needed no confirmation. All his habits
and ways of thinking bore marks of high station.
What would become of him ?

It was but too evident that another calamity
was impending over the unfortunate exile.
Although most discreet in word and guarded
in manner, every action bespoke his devotion
to his lovely fellow inmate. Her wishes were
his law. His attentions to her little boy were
such as young men rarely show to infants except
for love of the mother ; and the garden, that
garden abandoned since the memory of man,
(for the Court, previous to the arrival of the
present tenant, had been for years uninhabited,)
was, under his exertions and superintendence,
rapidly assuming an aspect of luxuriance and
order. It was not impossible but Helen might
realise her playful vaunt, and beat me in my
own art after all.

John (our gardening lad) was as near
being jealous as possible, and, considering the
estimation in which John is known to hold our
doings in the flower way, such jealousy must

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 19

be accepted as the most flattering testimony
to his rival's success. To go beyond our gar-
den was, m John's opinion, to be great in-
deed !

Every thought of the Count Choynovvski was
engrossed by the fair Helen ; and we saw with
some anxiety that she in her turn was but too
sensible of his attentions, and that everything
belonging to his country assumed in her eyes
an absorbing importance. She sent to London
for all the books that could be obtained respect-
ing Poland; ordered all the journals that in-
terested themselves in that interesting though
apparently hopeless cause; turned liberal, — she
who had been reared in the lap of conservatism,
and whom my father used laughingly to call
the little Tory;— turned Radical, turned Re-
pubhcan,— for she far out- soared the moderate
doctrines of whiggism in her political flights ;
denounced the Emperor Nicholas as a tyrant;
spoke of the Russians as a nation of savages ;
and in spite of the evident uneasiness with
which the Polish exile listened to any allusion
to the wrongs of his country, for he never

20 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

mingled in such discussions, omitted no
opportunity of proving her sympathy hy de-
claiming with an animation and vehemence, as
becoming as anything so like scolding well
could be, against the cruelty and wickedness of
the oppressors of that most unfortunate of na-
tions.

It was clear that the peace of both was
endangered, perhaps gone; and that it had
become the painful duty of friendship to awaken
them from their too bewitching dream.

We had made an excursion, on one sunny
summer's day, as far as the Everley Hills.
Helen, always impassioned, had been wrought
into a passionate recollection of her own native
country, by the sight of the heather just burst-
ing into its purple bloom ; and M. Choynowski,
usually so self-possessed, had been betrayed
into the expression of a kindred feeling by the
delicious odour of the fir plantations, which
served to transport him in imagination to the
balm-breathing forests of the North. This
sympathy was a new, and a strong bond of
union between two spirits but too congenial :

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 21

and I determined no longer to defer informing
the gentleman, in whose honour I placed the
most implicit reliance, of the peculiar position
of our fair friend.

Detaining him, therefore, to coffee, (we had
taken an early dinner in the fir grove,) and
suffering Helen to go home to her little boy,
I contrived, by leading the conversation to
capricious wills, to communicate to him, as if
accidentally, the fact of her forfeiting her whole
income in the event of a second marriage. — He
listened with grave attention.

" Is she also deprived," inquired he, " of the
guardianship of her child ?"

" No. But as the sum allowed for the main-
tenance is also to cease from the day of her
nuptials, and the money to accumulate until he
is of age, she would, by marrying a poor man,
do irreparable injury to her son, by cramping
his education. It is a grievous restraint."

He made no answer. And after two or three

attempts at conversation, which liis mind was

too completely pre-occupied to sustain, he bade

us good-night, and returned to the Court.

The next morninfir we heard that he had left

22 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

Upton and gone, they said, to Oxford. And I
could not help hoping that he had seen his
danger, and woidd not return until the peril
was past.

I was mistaken. In two or three days he re-
turned, exhibiting less self-command than I had
been led to anticipate. The fair lady, too, I
took occasion to remind of this terrible will, in
hopes, since he would not go, that she would
have had the wisdom to have taken her de-
parture. No such thing; neither party would
move a jot. I might as well have bestowed my
counsel upon the two stone figures on the great
gateway. And heartily sorrj^, and a little angry,
I resolved to let matters take their own course.

Several weeks passed on, when one morning
she came to me in the sweetest confusion, the
loveliest mixture of bashfulness and joy.

" He loves me !" she said ; " he has told me
that he loves me !"

« Well ?"

" And I have referred him to you. That
clause "

" He already knows it." And then I told
her, word for word, what had passed.

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 23

" He knows of that clause, and he still wishes
to marry me ! He loves me for myself ! Loves
me, knowing me to be a beggar ! It is true,
pure, disinterested affection!"

" Beyond all doubt it is. And if you could
live upon true love ""

" Oh, but where that exists, and youth, and
health, and strength, and education, may we not
be well content to try to earn a living together ?
think of the happiness comprised in that word !
I could give lessons ; — I am sure that I could.
I v.ould teach music, and drawing, and dancing
—anything for him ! or we could keep a school
here at Upton — anywhere with him !"

" And I am to tell him this ?"

" Not the words !" replied she, blushing like
a rose at her own earnestness; " not those
words !"

Of course, it was not very long before M. le
Comte made his appearance.

" God bless her, noble, generous creature !"
cried he, when I had fulfilled my commission.
" God for ever bless her !"

24 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

" And you intend, then, to take her at her
word, and set up school together ?" exclaimed I,
a little provoked at his unscrupulous acceptance
of her proffered sacrifice. " You really intend
to keep a lady's boarding-school here at the
Court?"

" I intend to take her at her word, most
certainly," replied he, very composedly; " but
I should like to know, my good friend, what has
put it into her head, and into yours, that if Helen
marries me she must needs earn her own living?
Suppose I should tell you," continued he, smil-
ing, " that my father, one of the richest of the
PoUsh nobility, was a favourite friend of the
Emperor Alexander ; that the Emperor Nicho-
las continued to me the kindness which his bro-
ther had shown to my father, and that I thought,
as he had done, (gratitude and personal attach-
ment apart,) that I could better serve my coun-
try, and more effectually ameliorate the condition
of my tenants and vassals, by submitting to the
Russian government, than by a hopeless strug-
gle for national independence ? Suppose that I
were to confess, that chancing in the course of a

COUNTRY LODGINGS. 25

three-years' travel to walk through this pretty
village of yours, I saw Helen, and could not
rest until I had seen more of her ; — supposing
all this, would you pardon the deception, or
rather the allowing you to deceive yourselves ?
Oh, if you could but imagine how delightful it
is to a man, upon whom the humbling conviction
has been forced, that his society is courted and his
alliance sought for the accidents of rank and for-
tune, to feel that he is, for once in his life, honestly
liked, fervently loved for himself, such as he is, his
own very self, — if you could but fancy how proud
he is of such fi'iendship, how happy in such love,
you would pardon him, I am sure you would ; you
would never have the heart to be angry. And now
that the Imperial consent to a foreign union — the
gracious consent for which I so anxiously waited
to authorize my proposals— has at length arrived,
do you think," added the Count, with some
seriousness, " that there is any chance of recon-
ciling this dear Helen to my august master ? or
will she still continue a rebel ?"

At this question, so gravely put, I laughed
outright. « Why really, my dear Count, I can-

VOL. I. c

26 COUNTRY LODGINGS.

not pretend to answer decidedly for the turn
that the affair might take; but my impression
— to speak in that idiomatic Enghsh, more racy
than elegant, which you pique yourself upon
understanding — my full impression is, that Helen
having for no reason upon earth but her interest
in you, ratted fi'om Conservatism to Radicalism,
will for the same cause lose no time in ratting
back again. A woman's politics, especially if
she be a young woman, are generally the result
of feeling rather than of opinion, and our fair
friend strikes me as a most unlikely subject to
form an exception to the rule. However, if
you doubt my authority in this matter, you have
nothing to do but to inquire at the fountain-
head. There she sits, in the arbour. Go and
ask."

And before the words were well spoken, the
lover, radiant with happiness, was at the side of
his beloved.

27

THE LONDON VISITOR.

Being in a state of utter mystification, (a very
disagreeable state, by-the-bye,) I hold it advisa-
ble to lay my unhappy case, in strict confidence,
in the lowest possible whisper, and quite in a
corner, before my kind friend, patron, and
protector, the public, through whose means —
for now-a-days every body knows everything,
and there is no riddle so dark but shall find an
CEdipus to solve it — I may possibly be able to
discover whether the bewilderment under which
I have been labouring for the last three days
be the result of natural causes, like the delu-
sions recorded in Dr. Brewster's book, or whe-
ther there be in this little south of England
county of ours, year 1836, a revival of the

c 2

'2S THE LONDON VISITOR.

old science of Gramarye, the glamour art,
which, according to that veracious minstrel,
Sir Walter Scott, was exercised with such
singular success in the sixteenth century by
the Ladye of Branksome upon the good knight,
William of Deloi aine, and others his peers. In

short, I want to know But the best way

to make my readers understand my story, will
be to begin at the beginning.

I am a wretched visitor. There is not a
person in all Berkshire who has so often
occasion to appeal to the indulgence of her
acquaintance to pardon her sins of omission
upon this score. I cannot tell how it happens ;
nobody likes society better when in it, or is
more delighted to see her friends; but it is
almost as easy to pull a tree of my age and
size up by the roots, as it is to dislodge me in
summer from my flowery garden, or in the
winter from my sunny parlour, for the purpose
of accepting a dinner invitation, or making a
morning call. Perhaps the great accumulation
of my debts in this way, the very despair of
ever paying them all, may be one reason (as is

THE LONDON VISITOR. 29

often the case, I believe, in pecuniary obliga-
tions) why I so seldom pay any ; then, whether I
do much or not, I have generally plenty to do ;
then again, I so dearly love to do nothing;
then, summer or winter, the weather is com-
monly too cold for an open carriage, and I am
eminently a catch-cold person ; so that between
wind and rain, business and idleness, no lady in
the county with so many places that she ought
to go to, goes to so few : and yet it was from
the extraordinary event of my happening to
leave home three days following, that my
present mystification took its rise. Thus the
case stands.

Last Thursday morning, being the 23rd day
of this present month of June, 1 received a note
from my kind friend and neighbour, Mrs.
Dunbar, requesting very earnestly that my
father and myself would dine that evening at
the Hall, apologising for the short notice, as
arising out of the unexpected arrival of a guest
fi'om London, and the equally unexpected
absence of the General, which threw her (she
was pleased to say) upon our kindness to assist

80 THE LONDON VISITOR.

in entertaining her visitor. At seven o'clock,
accordingly, we repaired to General Dunbar's,
and found our hostess surrounded by her fine
boys and girls, conversing with a gentleman,
whom she immediately introduced to us as Mr.
Thompson.

Mr. Thompson was a gentleman of about

Pshaw ! nothing is so unpolite as to go guessing
how many years a man may have lived in this
most excellent world, especially when it is per-
fectly clear, from his dress and demeanour, that
the register of his birth is the last document
relating to himself which he would care to see
produced.

Mr. Thompson, then, was a gentleman of no
particular age; not quite so young as he had
been, but still in very tolerable preservation,
being pretty exactly that which is understood by
the phrase an old beau. He was of middle size
and middle height, with a slight stoop in the
shoulders ; a skin of the true London complexion,
between brown and yellow, and slightly wrinkled :
eyes of no very distinct colour: a nose which,
belonging to none of the recognised classes of

THE I,ONDON VISITOR. 31

that many-named feature, may fairly be called
anonymous ; and a mouth, whose habitual me-
chanical smile (a smile which, by the way,
conveyed no impi*ession either of gaiety or of
sweetness) displayed a set of teeth which did
great honour to his dentist. His whiskers and
his wig were a capital match as to colour ; and
altogether it was a head calculated to convey a
very favourable impression of the different
artists employed in getting it up.

His dress was equally creditable to his tailor
and his valet, " rather rich than gaudy," (as
Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison,)
except in the grand article of the waistcoat, a
brocade brode of resplendent lustre, which
combined both qualities. His shoes were
bright with the new French blacking, and his
jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, and chains
(for he wore two, that belonging to his watch,
and one from which depended a pair of spec-
tacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,)
were of the finest material and the latest
fashion.

In short, our new acquaintance was an old

32 THE LONDON VISITOR.

beau. He was not, however, that which an old
beau so frequently is, an old bachelor. On
the contrary, he spoke of Mrs. Thompson and
her parties, and her box at the opera (he did
not say on what tier) with some unction, and
mentioned with considerable pride a certain
Mr. Browne, who had lately married his eldest
daughter ; Browne, be it observed, with an e, as
his name (I beg his pardon for having misspelt
it) was Thomson without the p ; there being I
know not what of dignity in the absence of the
consonant, and the presence of the vowel,
though mute. We soon found that both he and
Mr. Browne lent these illustrious names to
half a score of clubs, from the Athenaeum down-
ward. We also gathered from his conversation
that he resided somewhere in Gloucester Place
or Devonshire Place, in Wimpole Street or
Harley Street, (I could not quite make out in
which of those respectable double rows of houses
his domicile was situate,) and that he contem-
plated with considerable jealousy the manner
in which the tide of fashion had set in to the
south-west, rolling its changeful current round

THE LONDON VISITOR. 33

the splendid mansions of Belgrave Square, and
threatening to leave this once distinguished
quartier as bare and open to the jesters of the
silver-fork school as the ignoble precincts of
Bloomsbury, It was a strange mixture of
feeling. He was evidently upon the point of
becoming ashamed of a neighbourhood of which
he had once been not a little proud. He spoke
slightingly of the Regent's Park, and eschewed
as much as possible all mention of the Diorama
and the Zoological, and yet seemed pleased and
flattered, and to take it as a sort of personal
compliment, when Mrs. Dunbar professed her
fidelity to the scene of her youthful gaiety,
Cavendish Square and its environs.

He had been, it seemed, an old friend of the
General's, and had come down partly to see
him, and partly for the purpose of a day's
fishing, although, by some mistake in the word-
ing of his letter, his host, who did not expect
him until the next week, happened to be absent.
This, however, had troubled him little. He
saw the General often enough in town.
Angling was his first object in the country ;

c 5

34 THE LONDON VISITOR.

and as the fine piece of water in the park
(famous for its enormous pike) remained
in statu quo, and Edward Dunbar was ready to
accompany and assist him, he had talked the
night before of nothing but his flies and his
rods, and boasted, in speaking of Ireland, the
classic land of modern fishermen, of what he
m.eant to do, and what he had done — of salmon
caught in the wilds of Connemara, and trout
drawn out amid the beauties of Killarney.
Fishing exploits, past and future, formed the
only theme of his conversation during his first
evening at the Hall. On that which we spent
in his company, nothing could be farther from
his inclination than any allusion, however
remote, to his beloved sport. He had been out
in the morning, and we at last extorted from
Edward Dunbar, upon a promise not to hint at
the story until the hero of the adventure should
be fairly off, that, after trying with exemplary
patience all parts of the mere for several hours
without so much as a nibble, a huge pike, as
Mr. Thompson asserted, or, as Edward sus-
pected, the root of a tree, had caught fast hold

THE LONDON VISITOR. 35

of the hook. If pike it were, the fish had the
best of the battle, for, in a mighty jerk on one
side or the other (the famous Dublin tackle
maintaining its reputation, and holding as firm
as the cordage of a man-of-war,) the unlucky
angler had been fairly pulled into the water,
and soused over head and ears. How his valet
contrived to reinstate his coeffure, unless, indeed,
he travelled with a change of wigs, is one of
those mysteries of an old beau's toilet which
pass female comprehension.

Of course there was no further mention of
angling. Our new acquaintance had quite
subjects enough without touching upon that.
In eating, for instance, he might fairly be called
learned. Mrs. Dunbar's cuisine was excellent,
and he not only praised the different dishes in
a most scientific and edifying manner, but
volunteered a recipe for certain little mutton
pies, the fashion of the season. In drinking
he was equally at home. Edward had pro-
duced his father's choicest hermitage and lachry-
ma, and he seemed to me to know literally
by heart all the most celebrated vintages, and to

36 THE LONDON VISITOR.

have made pilgrimages to the most famous vine-
yards all over Europe. He talked to Helen
Dunbar, a musical young lady, of Grisi and
Malibran; to her sister Caroline, a literary
enthusiast, of the poems of the year, " Ion,"
and " Paracelsus ;" to me he spoke of gera-
niums ; and to my father of politics — contriving
to conciliate both parties, (for there were Whigs
and Tories in the room,) by dubbing himself a
liberal Conservative. In short, he played his
part of Man of the World perfectly to his own
satisfaction, and would have passed with the
whole family for the very model of all London
visitors, had he not unfortunately nodded over
certain verses which he had flattered Miss
Caroline into producing, and fallen fast asleep
during her sister's cavatina; and if his conver-
sation, however easy and smooth, had not been
felt to be upon the whole rather vapid and
prosy. " Just exactly," said young Edward Dun-
bar, who, in the migration transit between Eton,
which he had left at Easter, and Oxford, which he
was to enter at Michaelmas, was plentifully im-
bued with the aristocratic prejudices common to

THE LONDON VISITOR. 37

each of those venerable seats of learning " just
exactly what m the fitness of thhigs the talk
of a Mr. Thompson ought to be."

The next afternoon I happened to be en-
gaged to the Lady Margaret Gore, another
pleasant neighbour, to drink tea : a convenient
fashion, which saves time and trouble, and
is much followed in these parts during the
summer months. A little after eight 1 made
my appearance in her saloon, which, contrary to
her usual pohte attention, I found empty. In
the course of a few minutes she entered, and
apologised for her momentary absence, as
having been caused by a London gentleman on
a visit at the house, who arriving the evening
before, had spent all that morning at the side
of Loddon fishing, (where, by the way, observed
her ladyship, he had caught nothing,) and had
kept them waiting dinner. " He is a very old
friend of ours," added Lady Margaret ; " Mr.
Thompson, of Harley Street, whose daughter
lately married Mr. Browne of Gloucester Place,"
and, with the word, entered Mr, Thompson in
his own proper person.

38 THE LONDON VISITOR.

Was it or was it not the Mr, Thompson of

the day before ? Yes ! no ! No ! yes ! It

would have been, only that it could not be.
The alibi was too clearly proved : Lady Mar-
garet had spent the preceding evening with
her Mr. Thompson in one place, and I myself
with my Mr. Thompson in another. Different
they must be, but oh, how alike ! I am too
short-sighted to be cognizant of each separate
feature. But there it was, the same common
height and common size, and common phy-
siognomy, wigged, whiskered, and perfumed to a
hair ! The self-same sober magnificence of
dress, the same cut and colour of coat, the
same waistcoat of brocade brode — of a surety
they must have employed one identical tailor,
and one measure had served for both ! Chains,
studs, brooches, rings — even the eye-glass spec-
tacles were there. Had he (this he) stolen
them ? Or did the Thompsons use them alter-
nately, upon the principle of ride and tie ?

In conversation the similarity was even more
striking— safe, civil, prosy, dosy, and yet not
without a certain small pretension. The Mr.

THE LONDON VISITOR. 39

Thompson of Friday talked as his predecessor
of Thursday had done, of Malibran and Grisi,
" Paracelsus" and " Ion," politics and gera-
niums. He alluded to a recipe (doubtless the
famous recipe for mutton pies) which he had
promised to write out for the benefit of the
housekeeper, and would beyond all question
have dosed over one young lady's verses, and
fallen asleep to another's singing, if there had
happened to be such narcotics as music and
poetry in dear Lady Margaret's drawing-room.
Mind and body, the two Mr. Thompsons were
as alike as two peas, as two drops of water, as
two Emperor-of-Morocco butterflies, as two
death's-head moths. Could they have been
twin brothers, like the Dromios of the old
drama? or was the vicinity of the Regent's
Park peopled with Cockney anglers — Thomp-
sons whose daughters had married Brownes ?

The resemblance haunted me all night. I
dreamt of Brownes and Thompsons, and to
freshen my fancy and sweep away the shapes by
which I was beset, I resolved to take a drive. Ac^
cordingly, I ordered my little phaeton, and.

40 THE LONDON VISITOR.

perplexed and silent, bent my way to call
upon my fair friend, Miss Mortimer. Arriving
at Queen's-bridge Cottage, I vv'as met in the
rose-covered porch by the fair Frances. " Come
this way, if you please," said she, advancing
towards the dining-room ; " we are late at
luncheon to-day. My friend, Mrs. Browne, and
her father, Mr. Thompson, our old neighbours
when we lived in Welbeck Street, have been
here for this week past, and he is so fond of
fishing that he will scarcely leave the river even
to take his meals, although for aught I can
hear he never gets so much as a bite."

As she ceased to speak, we entered: and
another Mr. Thompson — another, yet the
same, stood before me. It was not yet four
o'clock in the day, therefore of course the dress-
coat and the brocade waistcoat were wanting ;
but there was the man himself, Thompson the
third, wigged, whiskered, and eye-glassed, just
as Thompson the first might have tumbled into
the water at General Dunbar's, or Thompson
the second have stood waiting for a nibble at
Lady Margarefs. There he sat evidently pre-

THE LONDON VISIT»)R. 4 1

paring to do the agreeable, to talk of music and
of poetry, of Grisi and Malibran, of " Ion"
and " Paracelsus," to profess himself a liberal
Conservative, to give recipes for pates, and to
fall asleep over albums. It was quite clear that
he was about to make this display of his con-
versational abilities; but I could not stand it.
Nervous and mystified as the poor Frenchman
in the memorable story of " Monsieur Tonson,"
I instinctively followed his example, and fairly
fled the field.

42

JESSE CLIFFE.

Living as we do in the midst of rivers, water in
all its forms, except indeed that of the track-
less and mighty ocean, is famiUar to our little
inland county. The slow majestic Thames,
the swift and wandering Kennett, the clear
and brimming Loddon, all lend life and
verdure to our rich and fertile valleys. Of
the great river of England — whose course from
its earliest source, near Cirencester, to where
it rolls calm, equable, and full, through the
magnificent bridges of our splendid metropolis,
giving and reflecting beauty,* presents so grand

* There is nothing finer in London than the view
from Waterloo-bridge on a July evening, whether
coloured by the gorgeous hues of the setting sun re-

JESSE CLIFFE. 43

an image of power in repose — it is not now my
purpose to speak ; nor am I about to expatiate
on that still nearer and dearer stream, the
pellucid Loddon, — although to be rowed by
one dear and near friend up those transparent

fleeted on the water in tenfold glory^ or illuminated by
a thousand twinkling lights from lamps, and boats,
and houses, mingling with the mild beams of the rising
moon. The calm and glassy river, gay with unnum-
bered vessels ; the magnificent buildings which line
its shores ; the combination of all that is loveliest in
art or in nature, with all that is most animating in
motion and in life, produce a picture gratifying alike
to the eye and to the heart— and the more exhilarating,
or rather perhaps the more soothing, because, for
London, so singularly peaceful and quiet. It is like
some gorgeous town in fairyland, astir with busy and
happy creatures, the hum of whose voices comes
floating from the craft upon the river, or the quays by
the water side. Life is there, and sound and motion ;
but blessedly free from the jostling of the streets, the
rattling of the pavement, the crowd, the confusion,
the tumult, and the din of the work-a-day world.
There is nothing in the great city like the scene from
Waterloo bridge at sunset. I see it in my mind's eye
at this instant.

44 JESSE CLIFFE.

and meandering waters, from where they sweep
at their extremest breadth under the hme-
crowned terraces of the Old Park at Aberleigh,
to the pastoral meadows of Sandford, through
which the narrowed current wanders so brightly
— now impeded by beds of white water-lilies,
or feathery-blossomed bulrushes, or golden flags
— now overhung by thickets of the rich wayfaring
tree, with its wealth of glorious berries, redder
and more transparent than rubies — now spanned
from side to side by the fantastic branches of some
aged oak ; —although to be rowed along that clear
stream, has long been amongst the choicest of my
summer pleasures, so exquisite is the scenery,
so perfect and so unbroken the solitude. Even
the shy and foreign-looking kingfisher, most
gorgeous of English birds, who, like the wild
Indian retiring before the foot of man, has
nearly deserted our populous and cultivated
country, knows and loves the lovely valley of
the Loddon,

It is not, however, of the Loddon that I am
now to speak. The scene of my little story
belongs to a spot quite as solitary, but far less

JESSE CLIFFE. 45

beautiful, on the banks of the Kennett, which,
a few miles before its junction with the Thames,
passes through a tract of wild, marshy country
— water-meadows at once drained and fertilised
by artificial irrigation, and totally unmixed with
arable land ; so that the fields being for the
most part too wet to admit the feeding of
cattle, divided by deep ditches, undotted by
timber, unchequered by cottages, and untra-
versed by roads, convey in their monotonous
expanse (except perhaps at the gay season of
haymaking) a feeling of dreariness and desola-
tion, singularly contrasted with the picturesque
and varied scenery, rich, glowing, sunny, bland,
of the equally solitary Loddon meadows.

A large portion of these English prairies,
comprising a farm called the Moors, was, at
the time of which I write, in the occupation of
a wealthy yeoman named John Cobham, who,
the absentee tenant of an absentee landlord,
resided upon a small property of his own about
two miles distant, leaving the large deserted
house, and dilapidated outbuildings, to sink into
gradual decay. Barns half unthatched, tumble-

46 JESSE CLIFFE,

down cart-houses, palings rotting to pieces,
and pigsties in ruins, contributed, together with
a grand collection of substantial and dingy
ricks of fine old hay — that most valuable but
most gloomy looking species of agricultural
property — to the general aspect of desolation
by which the place was distinguished. One
solitary old labourer, a dreary bachelor, in-
habited, it is true, a corner of the old roomy
house, calculated for the convenient accommo-
dation of the patriarchal family of sons and
daughters, men-servants and maid-servants, of
which a farmer's household consisted in former
days ; and one open window, (the remainder were
bricked up to avoid taxes,) occasionally a door
ajar, and still more rarely a thin wreath of
smoke ascending from one of the cold dismal-
looking chimneys, gave token that the place
was not wholly abandoned. But the uncul-
tivated garden, the grass growing in the bricked
court, the pond green with duckweed, and the
absence of all living things, cows, horses, pigs,
turkeys, geese, or chickens — and still more
of those talking, as well as living things,

JESSE CLIFFE. 47

women and children — all impressed on the
beholder that strange sensation of melancholy
which few can have failed to experience at the
sight of an uninhabited human habitation.
The one solitary inmate failed to reheve the
pressing sense of solitude. Nothing but the
ringing sound of female voices, the pleasant and
familiar noise of domestic animals, could have
done that; and nothing approaching to noise
was ever heard in the Moors. It was a silence
that might be felt.

The house itself was approached through a
long, narrow lane, leading from a wild and
watery common ; a lane so deeply excavated
between the adjoining hedge-rows, that in winter
it was little better than a water-course ; and
beyond the barns and stables, where even that
apology for a road terminated, lay the exten-
sive tract of low, level, marshy ground from
whence the farm derived its title; a series of
flat, productive water-meadows, surrounded
partly by thick coppices, partly by the winding
Kennett, and divided by deep and broad
ditches ; a few pollard willows, so old that the

48 JESSE CLIFFE.

trunk was, in some, riven asunder, whilst in
others nothing but the mere shell remained,
together with here and there a stunted thorn,
alone relieving the monotony of the surface.

The only regular inhabitant of this dreary
scene was, as I have before said, the old la-
bourer, Daniel Thorpe, who slept in one
corner of the house, partly to prevent its total
dilapidation, and to preserve the valuable hay-
ricks and the tumble-down farm buildings from
the pillage to which unprotected property is
necessarily exposed, and partly to keep in
repair the long line of boundary fence, to clean
the graffages, clear out the moat-like ditches,
and see that the hollow-sounding wooden
bridges which formed the sole communication
by which the hay wagons could pass to and
from the distant meadows, were in proper order
to sustain their ponderous annual load. Daniel
Thorpe was the only accredited unfeathered
biped who figured in the parish books as
occupant of The Moors; nevertheless that
swampy district could boast of one other irregular
and forbidden but most pertinacious inhabi-

JESSE CLIFFE. 49

tant — and that inhabitant was our hero, Jesse
Chffe.

Jesse Cliffe was a lad some fifteen or sixteen
years of age — there or thereabout ; for with the
exact date of his birth, although ft'om circum-
stances most easily ascertained, even the as-
sistant-overseer did not take the trouble to
make himself acquainted. He was a parish
child born in the workhouse, the offspring of a
half-witted orphan girl and a sturdy vagrant,
partly tinker, partly ballad -singer, who took
good care to disappear before the strong arm
of justice, in the shape of a tardy warrant and a
halting constable, could contrive to intercept
his flight. He joined, it was said, a tribe of
gipsies, to whom he was suspected to have all
along belonged ; and who vanishing at the
same time, accompanied by half the linen and
poultry of the neighbourhood, were never heard
of in our parts again ; whilst the poor girl whom
he had seduced and abandoned, with sense
enough to feel her miserj', although hardly suf-
ficient to be responsible for the sin, fretted,
moaned, and pined — losing, she hardly knew

VOL. I. D

50 JESSE CLIFFE.

how, the half-unconscious light-heartedness
which had almost seemed a compensation for
her deficiency of intellect, and with that light-
heartedness losing also her bodily strength, her
flesh, her colour, and her appetite, until, about
a twelvemonth after the birth of her boy, she
fell into a decline and died.

Poor Jesse, born and reared in the workhouse,
soon began to evince symptoms of the pecu-
liarities of both his parents. Half-witted like
his mother, wild and roving as his father — it
was found impossible to check his propensity to
an out-of-door life.

From the moment, postponed as long as
possible in such establishments, in which he
doffed the petticoat — a moment, by the way,
in which the obstinate and masterful spirit of
the ungentle sex often begins to show itself in
nurseries of a far more polished description ;
— from that moment may Jesse's wanderings
be said to commence. Disobedience lurked in
the habit masculine. The wilful urchin stood,
like some dandy ay)prentice, contemplating his
brown sturdy legs, as they stuck out from his

JESSE CLIFFE. 51

new trowsers, already (such was the economy
of the tailor employed on the occasion) " a
world too short," and the first use he made of
those useful supporters was to run away.
So little did any one really care for the poor
child, that not being missed till night-fall, or
sought after till the next morning, he had
strayed far enough, when, at last picked up, and
identified by the parish mark on his new jacket,
to be half frozen, (it was mid- winter when his
first elopement happened,) half-starved, half-
drowned, and more than half-dead of fatigue
and exhaustion . " It will be a lesson !" said
the moralising matron of the workhouse, as,
after a sound scolding, she fed the little culprit
and put him to bed. " It will be a lesson to
the rover !" And so it proved ; for, after being
recruited by a few days' nursing, he again ran
awaj', in a different direction.

When recovered the second time, he Mas
whipped as well as fed — another lesson which
only made the stubborn recusant run the faster.
Then, upon his next return, they shut him up
in a dark den appropriately called the black-

D 2

52 JESSE CLIFFE.

hole, a restraint which, of course, increased his
zest for hght and hberty, and in the first
moment of freedom — a moment greatly acce-
lerated by his own strenuous efforts in the
shape of squalling, bawling, roaring, and stamp-
ing, unparalleled and insupportable, even in that
mansion of din — in the very instant of freedom
he was off again ; he ran away fi'om work ; he
ran away from school; certain to be immersed
in his dismal dungeon as soon as he could be
recaught ; so that his whole childhood be-
came a series of alternate imprisonments and
escapes.

That he should be so often lost was, con-
sidering his propensities and the proverbial
cunning of his caste, not, perhaps, very remark-
able. But the number of times and the variety
of ways, in which, in spite of the little trouble
taken in searching for him, he vt'as sent back
to the place from whence he came, was really
something wonderful. If any creature in the
world had cared a straw for the poor child, he
must have been lost over and over : nobody did
care for him, and he was as sure to turn up as

JESSE CLIFFE. 33

a bad guinea. He has been cried like Found
Goods in Belford Market : advertised like a

strayed donkey in the H shire C our ant ;

put for safe keeping into compters, cages,
roundhouses, and bridewells: passed, by dif-
ferent constables, through half the parishes in
the county; and so frequently and minutely
described in handbills and the Hue and Cry,
that by the time he was twelve years old, his
stature, features, and complexion were as well
known to the rural police as those of some
great state criminal. In a word, " the lad
would live ;" and the Aberleigh overseers, who
would doubtless have been far from inconsolable
if they had never happened to hear of him
again, were reluctantly obliged to make the best
of their bargain.

Accordingly, they placed him as a sort of boy
of all-work at " the shop" at Hinton, where he
remained, upon an accurate computation, some-
where about seven hours ; they then put him
with a butcher at Langley, where he staid
about five hours and a-half, arriving at dusk, and
escaping before midnight : then with a baker at

54 JESSE CLIFFE.

Belford, in which good town he sojourned the
(for him) unusual space of two nights and a
day ; and then they apprenticed him to Master
Samuel Goddard, an eminent dealer in cattle'
leaving his new master to punish him accord-
ing to law, provided he should run away again.
Run away of course he did ; but as he had con-
trived to earn for himself a comfortably bad
character for stupidity and laziness, and as he
timed his evasion well — during the interval
between the sale of a bargain of Devonshire
stots, and the purchase of a lot of Scotch kyloes,
when his services were little needed — and as
Master Samuel Goddard had too much to do
and to think of, to waste his time and his trouble
on a search after a heavy-looking under-drover,
with a considerable reputation for laziness,
Jesse, for the first time in his life, escaped his
ordinary penalties of pursuit and discovery —
the parish officers contenting themselves by
notifying to Master Samuel Goddard, that they
considered their responsibility, legal as well as
moral, completely transferred to him in virtue
of their indentures, and that whatever might

JESSE CLIFFE. 55

be the future destiny of his unlucky apprentice,
whether frozen or famished, hanged or drowned,
the blame would rest with the cattle-dealer
aforesaid, to whom they resolved to refer all
claims on their protection, whether advanced
by Jesse himself or by others.

Small intention had Jesse Cliife to return to
their protection or their workhouse ! The in-
stinct of freedom was strong in the poor boy —
quick and strong as in the beast of the field, or
the bird of the air. He betook himself to the
Moors (one of his earliest and favourite haunts)
with a vague assurance of safety in the deep
solitude of those wide-spreading meadows, and
the close coppices that surrounded them : and
at little more than twelve years of age he began
a course of lonely, half-savage, self-dependent
life, such as has been rarely heard of in this
civilised country. How he lived is to a certain
point a mystery. Not by stealing. That was
agi'eed on all hands — except indeed, so far as a
few roots of turnips and potatoes, and a few
ears of green corn, in their several seasons,
may be called theft. Ripe corn for his winter's

56 JESSE CLIFFE.

hoard, he gleaned after the fields were cleared,
with a scrupulous honesty that might have read
a lesson to peasant children of a happier
nurture. And they who had opportunities to
watch the process, said that it was curious to
see him bruise the grain between large stones,
knead the rude flour with fair water, mould his
simple cakes, and then bake them in a primitive
oven formed by his own labour in a dry bank
of the coppice, and heated by rotten wood
shaken from the tops of the trees, (which he
climbed like a squirrel,) and kindled by a flint
and a piece of an old horse-shoe: — such was
his unsophisticated cookery ! Nuts and berries
from the woods ; fish from the Kennett —
caught with such tackle as might be constructed
of a stick and a bit of packthread, with a strong
pin or needle formed into a hook ; and perhaps
an occasional rabbit or partridge, entrapped by
some such rough and inartificial contrivance,
formed his principal support ; a modified, anc^
according to his vague notions of right and
wrong, an innocent form of poaching, since he
sought only what was requisite for his own

JESSE CLIFFE. 57

consumption, and would have shunned as a sin
the killing game to sell. Money, indeed, he
little needed. He formed his bed of fern or
dead grass, in the deepest recesses of the
coppice — a natural shelter; and the renewal
of raiment, which warmth and decency de-
manded, he obtained by emerging from his
solitude, and joining such parties as a love of
field sports brought into his vicinity in the
pursuit of game — an inspiring combination of
labour and diversion, which seemed to awaken
something like companionship and sympathy
even in this wild boy of the Moors, one in
which his knowledge of the haunts and habits
of wild animals, his strength, activity, and
actual insensibility to hardship or fatigue,
rendered his services of more than ordinary
value. There was not so good a hare-finder
throughout that division of the county ; and it
was curious to observe how completely his
skill in sportmanship overcame the contempt
with which grooms and gamekeepers, to say
nothing of their less fine and more tolerant
masters, were wont to regard poor Jesse's ragged

D 5

58 JESSE CLIFFE.

garments, the sunburnt hair and skin, the
want of words to express even his simple mean-
ing, and most of all, the strange obhquity of
taste which led him to prefer Kennett water to
Kennett ale. Sportsmanship, sheer sportsman-
ship, carried him through all !

Jesse was, as I have said, the most popular
hare-finder of the country-side, and during the
coursing season was brought by that good gift
into considerable communication with his fellow
creatures : amongst the rest with his involuntary
landlord, John Cobham.

John Cobham was a fair specimen of an English
yeoman of the old school — honest, generous,
brave, and kind ; but in an equal degree, igno-
rant, obstinate and prejudiced. His first im-
pression respecting Jesse had been one of
strong dislike, fostered and cherished by the old
labourer Daniel Thorpe, who, accustomed for
twenty years to reign sole sovereign of that
unpeopled territory, was as much startled at
the sight of Jesse's wild, ragged figure, and
sunburnt face, as Robinson Crusoe when he first
spied the track of a human foot upon his desert

JESSE CLIFFE. 59

island. It was natural that old Daniel should
feel his monarchy, or, more correctly speaking,
his vice-royalty, invaded and endangered ; and
at least equally natural that he should com-
municate his alarm to his master, who sallied
forth one November morning to the Moors,
fully prepared to drive the intruder from his
grounds, and resolved, if necessary, to lodge
him in the County Bridewell before night.

But the good farmer, who chanced to be a
keen sportsman, and to be followed that day by
a favourite greyhound, was so dulcified by the
manner in which the delinquent started a hare
at the very moment of Venus's passing, and
still more by the culprit's keen enjoyment of a
capital single-handed course, (in which Venus
had even excelled herself,) that he could not
find in his heart to take any harsh measures
against him, for that day at least, more es-
pecially as Venus seemed to have taken a fancy
to the lad — so his expulsion was postponed to
another season ; and before that season arrived,
poor Jesse had secured the goodwill of an ad-
vocate far more powerful than Venus— an ad-

60 JESSE CLIFFE.

vocate who, contrasted with himself, looked
like Ariel by the side of Caliban, or Titania
watching over Bottom the Weaver.

John Cobham had married late in life, and
had been left, after seven years of happy wed-
lock, a widower with five children. In his
family he may be said to have been singularly
fortunate, and singularly unfortunate. Promis-
ing in no common degree, his sons and daugh-
ters, inheriting their mother's fragile constitu-
tion as well as her amiable character, fell
victims one after another to the flattering and
fatal disease which had carried her off in the
prime of life ; one of them only, the eldest son,
leaving any issue ; and his little girl, an orphan,
(for her mother had died in bringing her into
the world,) was now the only hope and comfort
of her doting grandfather, and of a maiden
sister who lived with him as housekeeper,
and, having officiated as head-nurse in a noble-
man's family, was well calculated to bring up a
delicate child.

And delicate in all that the word conveys of
beauty — delicate as the Virgins of Guido, or

JESSE CLIFFE. 61

the Angels of Correggio, as the valley lily
or the maiden rose — was at eight years old, the
little charmer, Phoebe Cobham. But it was a
delicacy so blended with activity and power, so
light and airy, and buoyant and spirited, that
the admiration which it awakened was wholly
unmingled with fear. Fair, blooming, polished,
and pure, her complexion had at once the
colouring and the texture of a flower-leaf;
and her regular and lovely features — the red
smiling lips, the clear blue eyes, the curling
golden hair, and the round yet slender figure
— formed a most rare combination of childish
beauty. The expression, too, at once gentle
and lively, the sweet and joyous temper, the
quick intellect, and the affectionate heart, ren-
dered little Phoebe one of the most attractive
children that the imagination can picture. Her
grandfather idolised her; taking her with him
in his walks, never weary of carrying her
when her own little feet were tired — and it was
wonderful how many miles those tiny feet,
aided by the gay and buoyant spirit, would
compass in the course of the day; and so bent

G2 JESSE CLIFFE.

upon keeping her constantly with him, and
constantly in the open air, (which he justly
considered the best means of warding off the
approach of that disease which had proved so
fatal to his family,) that he even had a pad con-
structed, and took her out before him on liorse-
back.

A strange contrast formed the old farmer, so
gruiF and bluff-looking — with his stout square
figure, his weather-beaten face, short grey hair,
and dark bushy eyebrows — to the slight and
graceful child, her aristocratic beauty set off
by exactly the same style of paraphernalia that
had adorned the young Lady Janes and Lady
Marys, Mrs. Dorothy's former charge, and her
habitual grace of demeanour adding fresh ele-
gance to the most studied elegancies of the
toilet ! A strange contrast ! — but one which
seemed as nothing compared with that which
was soon to follow: for Phoebe, happening to
be with her grandfather and her great friend
and playmate Venus, a jet-black greyhound of
the very highest breed, whose fine limbed and
shining beauty was a,lmost as elegant and

JESSE CLIFFE. 63

aristocratic as that of PhcEbe herself; — the little
damsel, happening to be with her grandfather
when, instigated by Daniel Thorpe's grumbling
accusation of broken fences and I know not
what, he was a second time upon the point of
warning poor Jesse off the ground — was so
moved by the culprit's tattered attire and help-
less condition, as he stood twirling, betw-een
his long lean fingers, the remains of what had
once been a hat, that she interceded most
warmly in his behalf.

" Don't turn him off the Moors, grandpapa,"
said Phoebe, " pray don't ! Never mind old
Daniel ! I'm sure he'll do no harm ; — will you,
Jesse ? Venus likes him, grandpapa ; see how
she puts her pretty nose into his hand ; and
Venus never likes bad people. How often I
have heard you say that. And / like him,
poor fellow ! He looks so thin and so pitiful.
Do let him stay, dear grandpapa !"

And John Cobham sat down on the bank,
and took the pitying child in his arms, and
kissed and blessed her, and said, that, since

64 JESSE CLIFFE.

she wished it, Jesse should stay; adding, in a
sort of soliloquy, that he hoped she never would
ask him to do what was wrong, for he could
refuse her nothing.

And Jesse — what did he say to these, the
first words of kindness that he had ever heard
from human lips ? or rather, what did he feel ?
for beyond a muttered " Thankye," speak he
could not. But gratitude worked strongly in
the poor boy's heart: gratitude ! — so new, so
overpowering, and inspired by one so sweet,
so lovely, so gentle as his protectress, as far
as he was concerned, all-powerful ; and yet a
mere infant whom he might protect as well
as serve ! It was a strange mixture of feelings,
all good, and all delightful ; a stirring of im-
pulses, a quickening of affections, a striking
of chords never touched before. Substitute
the sacred innocence of childhood for the
equally sacred power of virgin purity, and his
feelings of affectionate reverence, of devoted
service and submission, much resembled those
entertained by the Satyr towards " the holy

JESSE CLIFFE. 65

shepherdess," in Fletcher's exquisite drama.*

Onr

" Rough thing, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity,"

could not have spoken nor have thought such
words as those of the satyr ; but so far as our

* That matchless Pastoral, " The Faithful Shep-
herdess," is so much less known than talked of, that I
subjoin the passage in question. One more beautiful
can hardly be found in the wide range of English
poetry.

Satyr. Through yon same bending plain
That flings his arms down to the main ;
And through these thick woods, have I run.
Whose depths have never kiss'd the sun ;
Since the lusty Spring began.
All to please my master. Pan,
Have I trotted without rest
To get him fruit ; for at a feast
He entertains, this coming night.
His paramour, the Syrinx bright.

\_He sees Clorin and stands amazed.
But behold a fairer sight !
By that heavenly form of thine.
Brightest fair, thou art divine.
Sprung from great, immortal race

66 JESSE CLIFFE.

English climate and his unfruitful territory might
permit, he put much of the poetry into action.

Of the Gods ; for in thy face

Shines more awful majesty,

Than dull, weak mortality

Dare with misty eyes behold

And live ! Therefore on this mould

Slowly do I bend my knee,

In worship of thy deity.

Deign it, goddess, from my hand

To receive whate'er this land.

From her fertile womb doth send

Of her choice fruits ; and but lend

Belief to that the Satyr tells :

Fairer by the famous wells

To this present day ne'er grew.

Never better nor more true.

Here be grapes whose lusty blood

Is the learned poet's good;

Sweeter yet did never crown

The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown

Than the squirrel whose teeth crack 'em.

Deign, oh fairest fair, to take 'em !

For these black-eyed Dryope

Hath often times commanded me,

With my clasped knee to climb ;

See how well the lustv time

JESSE CLIFFE. 67

Sluggish of intellect, and uncouth of de-
meanour, as the poor lad seemed, it was quite

Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red.

Such as on your lips is spread.

Here be berries for a queen,

Some be red, and some be green ;

These are of that luscious sweet.

The great god Pan himself doth eat ;

All these, and what the woods can yield.

The hanging mountain, or the field,

I freely offer, and ere long

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong ;

Till when, humbly leave I take.

Lest the great Pan do awake.

That sleeping lies in a deej) glade.

Under a broad beech's shade.

I must go, — I must run

Swifter than the fiery sun.

Clorin.
And all my fears go with thee !
What greatness or what private hidden power
Is there in me to draw submission
From this rude man and beast .'' sure 1 am mortal ;
The daughter of a shepherd ; he was mortal.
And she that bore me mortal : Prick my hand
And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and

68 JESSE CLIFFE.

wonderful how quickly ho discovered the several
ways in which he might best please and gratify
his youthful benefactress.

The self-same wind that makes the young lambs

shrink
Makes me a-cold. My fear says I am mortal.
Yet I have heard (my mother told it me,
And now I do believe it) if I keep
My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair.
No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend.
Satyr, or other power, that haunts the groves.
Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion
Draw me to wander after idle fires.
Or voices calling me in dead of night
To make me follow, and so tempt me on
Through mire and standing pools to find my swain
Else why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity, whose herds
Are rougher than himself, and more misshapen.
Thus mildly kneel to me? &c. &c.
Beaumont and Fletcher s Works, (Seward's edition,)
vol. iii. p. 117—121.

How we track Milton's exquisite Comus in this no
less exquisite pastoral Drama ! and the imitation is
so beautiful, that the perception of the plagiarism
rather hicreases than diminishes the pleasure with

JESSE CLIFFE, 69

Phoebe loved flowers ; and from the earUest
tuft of violets ensconced under the sunny
southern hedge, to the last Ungering sprig of
woodbine shaded by some time-hallowed oak,
the blossoms of the meadow and the coppice
were laid under contribution for her posies.

Phoebe had her own little garden; and to
fill that garden, Jesse was never weary of seeking
after the roots of such wild plants as he himself
thought pretty, or such as he found (one can
hardly tell how) were considered by better
judges to be worthy of a place in the parterre.
The diiferent orchises, for instance, the white
and lilac primrose, the golden oxslip, the lily of
the valley, the chequered fritillary, which blows
so freely along the banks of the Kennett, and
the purple campanula which covers with equal
profusion the meadows of the Thames, all found
their way to Phoebe's flower-plats. He brought

which we read either deathless work. Republican
although he were, the great poet sits a throned king
upon Parnassus, privileged to cull flowers where he
listeth in right of his immortal laurel-crown.

70 JESSE CLIFFE.

her in summer evenings glow-worms enough to
form a constellation on the grass; and would
spend half a July day in chasing for her some
glorious insect, dragon-fly, or bee-bird, or golden
beetle, or gorgeous butterfly. He not only be-
stowed upon her sloes, and dew-berries, and
hazel-nuts " brown as the squirrel whose teeth
crack "em," but caught for her the squirrel itself.
He brought her a whole litter of dormice, and
tamed for her diversion a young magpie, whose
first effort at flattery was " Pretty Phcebe !"

But his greatest present of all, most prized both
by donor and receiver, (albeit her tender heart
smote her as she accepted it, and she made her
faithful slave promise most faithfully to take
nests no more,) was a grand string of birds' eggs,
long enough to hang in festoons round, and
round, and round her play- room, and sufficiently
various and beautiful to gratify more fastidious
eyes than those of our little heroine.

To collect this rope of variously-tinted beads
— a natural rosary — he had sought the mossy
and bair-lined nest of the hedge-sparrow for her

JESSE CLIFFE. 71

turquoise-like rounds ; had scrambled up the
chimney-corner to bear away those pearls of the
land, the small white eggs of the house-martin ;
had found deposited in an old magpie's nest the
ovals of the sparrow-hawk, red and smooth as
the finest coral ; had dived into the ground-
mansion of the skylark for her lilac-tinted shells,
and groped amongst the bushes for the rosy-tinted
ones of the woodlark; climbed the taller t trees
for the sea-green eggs of the rooks ; had pilfered
the spotted treasures from the snug dweUing
which the wren constructed in the eaves ; and,
worst of all — I hardly like to write it, I hardly
care to think, that Jesse could have committed
such an outrage, — saddest and worst of all, in
the very midst of that varied garland might be
seen the brown and dusky egg, as little
showy as its quaker-like plumage, the dark
brown egg, from which should have issued
that " angel of the air," the songstress,
famous in every land, the unparagoned nightin-
gale. It is but just towards Jesse to add, that
he took the nest in a mistake, and was quite

7*2 JESSE CLIFFE.

unconscious of the mischief he had done until
it was too late to repair it.

Of course these gifts were not only graciously
accepted, but duly i-eturned; cakes, apples,
tarts, and gingerbread, halfpence in profusion,
and now and then a new shilling, or a bright
sixpence — all, in short, that poor Phoebe had to
bestow, she showered upon her uncouth fa-
vourite, and she would fain have amended his
condition by more substantial benefits : but
authoritative as she was with her grandfather in
other instances, in this alone her usual powers
of persuasion utterly failed. Whether infected
by old Daniel's dislike, (and be it observed, an
unfounded prejudice, that sort of prejudice for
which he who entertains it does not pretend to
account even to himself, is unluckily not only
one of the most contagious feelings in the world,
but one of the most invincible :) whether Farmer
Cobham were inoculated with old Daniel's
hatred of Jesse, or had taken that very virulent
disease the natural w^ay, nothing could exceed
the bitterness of the aversion which gradually
grew up in his mind towards the poor lad.

JKSSE CLIFFE. 73

That Venus liked him, and Phoebe liked him,
added strength to the feeling. He would have
been ashamed to confess himself jealous of their
good-will towards such an object, and yet most
certainly jealous he was. He did not drive him
from his shelter in the Moors, because he had
unwarily passed his word — his word, which,
with yeomanly pride, John Cobham held sa-
cred as his bond — to let him remain until he
committed some offence; but, for this offence,
both he and Daniel watched and waited with an
impatience and irritability which contrasted
strangely with the honourable self- restraint that
withheld him from direct abuse of his power.

For a long time, Daniel and his master waited
in vain. Jesse, whom they had entertained some
vague hope of chasing away by angry looks and
scornful words, had been so much accustomed
all his life long to taunts and contumely, that it
was a great while before he became conscious
of their unkindness ; and when at last it forced
itself upon his attention, he shrank away crouch-
ing and cowering, and buried himself in the
closest recesses of the coppice, until the foot-

E

74 JESSE CLIFFE.

step of the reviler had passed by. One look at
his sweet Uttle friend repaid him twenty-fold;
and although farmer Cobham had really worked
himself into believing that there w^as danger in
allowing the beautiful child to approach poor
Jesse, and had therefore on different pretexts
forbidden her visits to the Moors, she did yet
happen in her various walks to encounter that
devoted adherent oftener than would be believed
possible by any one who has not been led to re-
mark, how often in this best of all possible
worlds, an earnest and innocent wish does as it
were fulfil itself.

At last, however, a wish of a very different
nature came to pass. Daniel Thorpe detected
Jesse in an actual offence against that fertile
source of crime and misery, the game laws.

Thus the affair happened.

During many weeks, the neighbourhood had
been infested by a gang of bold, sturdy pil-
ferers, roving vagabonds, begging by day, steal-
ing and poaching by night — who had committed
such extensive devastations amongst the poultry
and linen of the village, as well as the game in the

JESSE CLIFFE. 75

preserves, that the whole population was upon
the alert ; and the lonely coppices of the Moors
rendering that spot one peculiarly likely to
attract the attention of the gang, old Daniel, re-
inforced by a stout lad as a sort of extra-guard,
kept a most jealous watch over his territory.

Perambulating the outside of the wood one
evening at sunset, he heard the cry of a hare ;
and climbing over the fence, had the unexpected
pleasure of seeing our friend Jesse in the act of
taking a leveret still alive from the wire. " So,
so, master Jesse ! thou be'st turned poacher,
be'st thou ?" ejaculated Daniel, with a malicious
chuckle, seizing, at one fell grip, the hare and
the lad.

" Miss Phoebe !" ejaculated Jesse, submitting
himself to the old man's grasp, but struggling
to retain the leveret ; " Miss Phoebe !"

" Miss Phoebe, indeed !" responded Daniel ;
" she saved thee once, my lad, but thy time's
come now. What do'st thee want of the leveret,
mon ? Do'st not thee know that 'tis part of the
evidence against thee ? Well, he may carry that
whilst I carry the snare. Master'll be main

e2

76 JESSE C'LIFFE.

glad to see un. He always suspected the chap.
And for the matter of that so did I. Miss
Phoebe, indeed ! Come along, my mon, I war-
rant thou hast seen thy last o' Miss Phoebe.
Come on wi' thee."

And Jesse was hurried as fast as Daniel's
legs would carry him to the presence of Farmer
Cobham.

On entering the house (not the old deserted
homestead of the Moors, but the comfortable
dwelling-house at Aberleigh) Jesse delivered
the panting, trembling leveret to the first person
he met, with no other explanation than might
be comprised in the words, " Miss Phcebe !"
and followed Daniel quietly to the hall.

" Poaching, was he ? Taking the hare from
the wire ? And you saw him ? You can swear
to the fact?" quoth John Cobham, rubbing his
hands with unusual glee. " Well, now we shall
be fairly rid of the fellow ! Take him to the
Chequers for the night, Daniel, and get another
man beside yourself to sit up with him. It's
too late to disturb Sir Robert this evening.
To-morrow morninff we'll take him to the Hall.

JESSE CLIFFE. 77

See that the constable's ready by nine o'clock.
No doubt but Sir Robert will commit him to
the county bridewell."

" Oh, grandpapa !" exclaimed Phcebe, darting
into the room with the leveret in her arms, and
catching the last words. " Oh, grandpapa !
poor Jesse !"

" Miss Phoebe !" ejaculated the culprit,

" Oh, grandfather, it's all my fault," continued
Phoebe; "and if anybody is to go to prison,
you ought to send me. I had been reading
about Cowper's hares, and I wanted a young
hare to tame : I took a fancy for one, and told
poor Jesse ! And to think of his going to
prison for that !"

" And did you tell him to set a wire for the
hare, Phoebe ?"

" A wire ! what does that mean ?" said the be-
wildered child. " But I dare say," added she,
upon Farmer Cobham's explaining the nature of
the snare, " I dare say that the poachers set the
wire, and that he only took up the hare for me,
to please my foolish fancy ! Oh, grandpapa !

78 JESSE CLIFFE.

Poor Jesse ! " and Phoebe cried as if her heart
would break.

" God bless you, Miss Phcebe !" said Jesse.

" All this is nonsense !" exclaimed the unre-
lenting farmer. "Take the prisoner to the
Chequers, Daniel, and get another man to keep
you company in sitting up with him. Have as
much strong beer as you like, and be sure to
bring him and the constable here by nine o'clock
to-morrow morning."

" Oh, grandfather, you'll be sorry for this !
I did not think you had been so hard-hearted !"
sobbed Phcebe. " You'll be very sorry for
this."

" Yes, very sorry, that he will. God bless
you. Miss PhcEbe," said Jesse.

" What ! does he threaten ? Take him off,
Daniel. And you, Phoebe, go to bed and com-
pose yourself. Heaven bless you, my darling !"
said the fond grandfather, smoothing her hair,
as, the tears still chasing each other down he-
cheeks, she stood leaning against his knee.
" Go to bed and to sleep, my precious ! and

JESSE CLIFFE. " 79

you, Sally, bring me my pipe :" and wondering
why the fulfilment of a strong desire should not
make him happier, the honest farmer endea-
voured to smoke away his cares.

In the meanwhile, old Daniel conducted Jesse
to the Chequers, and having lodged him safely
in an upper room, sought out " an ancient,
trusty, drouthy crony," with whom he sate down
to carouse in the same apartment with his pri-
soner. It was a dark, cold, windy, October
night, and the two warders sate cosily by the
fire, enjoying their gossip and their ale, while
the unlucky delinquent placed himself pensively
by the window. About midnight the tvv'o old
men were startled by his flinging open the
casement.

« Miss Phcebe ! look ! look !"

" What ? where ?" inquired Daniel.

" Miss Phcebe !" repeated the prisoner ; and,
looking in the direction to which Jesse pointed,
they saw the flames bursting from Farmer Cob-
ham's house.

In a very few seconds they had alarmed the
family, and sprung forth in the direction of the

80 JESSE CLIFFE.

tire; the prisoner accompanying them, unnoticed
in the confusion.

"Luckily, master's always insured to the
value of all he's worth, stock and goods," quoth
the prudent Daniel.

" Miss Phoebe I" exclaimed Jesse : and even
as he spoke he burst in the door, darted up the
staircase, and returned with the trembling child
in his arms, followed by aunt Dorothy and the
frightened servants.

" Grandpapa ! dear grandpapa ! where is
grandpapa? Will no one save my dear grand-
papa?" cried Phoebe.

And placing the little girl at the side of her
aunt, Jesse again mounted the blazing staircase.
For a few moments all gave him up for lost.
But he returned, tottering under the weight
of a man scarcely yet aroused from heavy
sleep, and half suiFocated by the smoke and
flames.

" Miss Phoebe ! he's safe, Miss Phoebe !—
Down, Venus, down — He's safe, Miss Phoebe !
And now, I sha'n't mind going to prison, 'cause
when I come back you'll be living at the Moors.

JESSE CLIFFE. 81

Sha'n't you, Miss Phcebe ? And I shall see you
every day !"

One part of this speech turned out true and
another part false — no uncommon fate, by the way,
of prophetic speeches, even when uttered by wiser
persons than poor Jesse. Phoebe did come to
live at the Moors, and he did not go to prison.

On the contrary, so violent was the revulsion
of feeling in the honest hearts of the good yeo-
man, John Cobham, and his faithful servant, old
Daniel, and so deep the remorse which they both
felt for their injustice and unkindness towards the
friendless lad, that there was considerable dan-
ger of their falling into the opposite extreme,
and ruining him by sudden and excessive indul-
gence. Jesse, however, was not of a tempera-
ment to be easily spoilt. He had been so long
an outcast from human society that he had be-
come as wild and shy as his old companions of
the fields and the coppice, the beasts of the
earth and the birds of the air. The hare which
he had himself given to Phcebe was easier to
tame than Jesse Cliffe.

Gradually, very gradually, under the gentle

E 5

82 JESSE CLIFFE.

influence of the gentle child, this great feat was
accomplished, almost as effectually, although by
no means so suddenly, as in the well-known case
of Cymon and Iphigenia, the most noted pre-
cedent upon record of the process of reaching the
head through the heart. Venus, and a beautiful
Welsh pony called Taffy, which her grandfather
had recently purchased for her riding, had their
share in the good deed ; these two favourites being
placed by Phoebe's desire under Jesse's sole
charge and management; a measure which not
only brought him necessarily into something like
intercourse with the other lads about the yard,
but ended in his conceiving so strong an attach-
ment to the animals of whom he had the care,
that before the winter set in he had deserted his
old lair in the wood, and actually passed his
nights in a vacant stall of the small stable appro-
priated to their use.

From the moment that John Cobham detected
such an approach to the habits of civilised life as
sleeping under a roof, he looked upon the wild
son of the Moors as virtually reclaimed, and so it
proved. Every day he became more and more

JESSE CLIFFE. 83

like his fellow-men. He abandoned his primitive
oven, and bought his bread at the baker's. He
accepted thankfully the decent clothing necessary
to his attending Miss Phoebe in her rides round
the country. He worked regularly and steadily
at whatever labour was assigned to him, receiving
wages like the other farm servants ; and finally
it was discovered that one of the first uses he
made of these wages was to purchase spelling-
books and copy-books, and enter himself at an
evening school, where the opening dilficulties
being surmounted, his progress astonished every
body.

His chief fancy was for gardening. The love,
and, to a certain point, the knowledge of flowers
which he had always evinced increased upon him
every day; — and happening to accompany
Phcebe on one of her visits to the young ladies
at the Hall, M^ho were much attached to the
ovely little girl, he saw Lady Mordaunt's French
garden, and imitated it the next year for his
young mistress in wild flowers, after such a
fashion as to excite the wonder and admiration
of all beholders.

From that moment Jesse's destiny was de-

84 JESSE CLIFFE.

cided. Sir Robert's gardener, a clever Scotch-
man, took great notice of him and offered to em-
l^loy him at the Hall ; but the Moors had to poor
Jesse a fascination which he could not surmount.
He felt that it would be easier to tear himself
from the place altogether, than to live in the
neighbourhood and not there. Accordingly he
lingered on for a year or two, and then took a
grateful leave of his benefactors, and set forth to
London with the avowed intention of seeking
employment in a great nursery-ground, to the
proprietor of which he was furnished with let-
ters, not merely from his friend the gardener,
but from Sir Robert himself.

N. B. It is recorded that on the night of
Jesse's departure, Venus refused her supper and
Phoebe cried herself to sleep.

Time wore on. Occasional tidings had
reached the Moors of the prosperous fortunes of
the adventurer. He had been immediately
engaged by the great nurseryman to whom he
was recommended, and so highly approved, that
in little more than two years he became fore-
man of the flower department; another two
years saw him chief manager of the garden ;

JESSE CLIFFE. 85

and now, at the end of a somewhat longer
period, there was a rumour of his having been
taken into the concern as acting partner; a
rumour which received full confirmation in a
letter from himself, accompanying a magnificent
present of shrubs, plants, and flower-roots,
amongst which were two Dahlias, ticketed ' the
Moors' and ' the Phoebe,"' and announcing his in-
tention of visiting his best and earliest friends
in the course of the ensuing summer.

Still time wore on. It was full six months
after this intimation, that on a bright morning
in October, John Cobham, with tvi^o or three
visiters from Belford, and his granddaughter
Phoebe, now a lovely young woman, were
coursing on the Moors. The townspeople
had boasted of their greyhounds, and the old
sportsman was in high spirits fi'om having
beaten them out of the field.

" If that's your best dog," quoth John, " why,
I'll be bound that our Snowball would beat him
with one of his legs tied up. Talk of running
such a cur as that against Snowball ! Why there's
Phoebe's pet Venus, Snowball's great grandam,

86 JESSE CLIFFE.

who was twelve years old last May, and has not
seen a hare these three seasons, shall give him
the go-by in the first hundred yards. Go and
fetch Venus, Daniel ! It will do her heart good
to see a hare again," added he, answering the
looks rather than the words of his granddaughter,
for she had not spoken, " and I'll be bound to
say she'll beat him out of sight. He won't come
in for a turn."

Upon Venus's arrival, great admiration was
expressed at her symmetry and beauty; the
grayness incident to her age having fallen upon
her, as it sometimes does upon black greyhounds,
in the form of small white spots, so that she ap-
peared as if originally what the coursers call
" ticked." She was in excellent condition, and
appeared to understand the design of the
meeting as well as any one present, and to be
delighted to find herself once more in the field
of fame. Her competitor, a yellow dog called
Smoaker, was let loose, and the whole party
awaited in eager expectation of a hare.

" Soho !" cried John Cobham, and off the dogs
sprang ; Venus taking the turn, as he had fore-

JESSE CLTFFE. 87

told, running as true as in her first season, doing
all the work, and killing the hare, after a course
which, for any part Smoaker took in it, might as
well have been single-handed.

" Look how she's bringing the hare to my
grandfather !" exclaimed Phoebe ; " she always
brings her game !"

And with the hare in her mouth, carefully
poised by the middle of the back, she was slowly
advancing towards her master, when a stranger,
well dressed and well mounted, who had joined
the party unperceived during the course, sud-
denly called " Venus !"

And Venus started, pricked up her ears as if
to listen, and stood stock still.

" Venus !" again cried the horseman.

And Venus, apparently recognising the voice,
walked towards the stranger, (who by this time
had dismounted,) laid the hare down at his feet,
and then sprang up herself to meet and return
his caresses.

"Jesse ! It must be Jesse Cliffe !" said Phcebe,
in a tone which wavered between exclamation
and interrogatory.

88 JESSE CLIFFE.

" It can be none other," responded her grand-
father. " I'd trust Venus beyond all the world
in the matter of recognising an old friend, and
we all know that except her old master and her
young mistress, she never cared a straw for any-
body but Jesse. It must be Jesse ClifFe, though
to be sure he's so altered that how the bitch
could find him out, is beyond my comprehension.
It's remarkable," continued he in an under tone,
walking away with Jesse from the Belford party,
"that we five (counting Venus and old Daniel)
should meet just on this very spot — isn't it?
It looks as if we were to come together. And if
you have a fancy for Phoebe, as your friend Sir
Robert says you have, and if Phogbe retains her
old fancy for you, (as I partly believe may be the
case,) why my consent sha'n't be wanting. Don't
keep squeezing ray hand, man, but go and find
out what she thinks of the matter."

Five minutes after this conversation Jesse and
Phoebe were walking together towards the house :
what he said we have no business to inquire,
but if blushes may be trusted, of a certainty the
little damsel did not answer " No."

89

MISS PHILLY FIRKIN, THE CHINA-
WOMAN.

In Belford Regis, as in many of those provincial
capitals of the south of England, whose growth
and importance have kept pace with the increased
affluence and population of the neighbourhood,
the principal shops will be found clustered in the
close, inconvenient streets of the antique portion
of the good town ; whilst the more showy and
commodious modern buildings are quite unable
to compete in point of custom with the old
crowded localities, which seem even to derive an
advantage from the appearance of business and
bustle occasioned by the sharp turnings, the
steep declivities, the narrow causeways, the
jutting-out windows, and the various obstruc-

90 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

tions incident to the picturesque but irregular
street-architecture of our ancestors.

Accordingly, Oriel Street, in Belford, — a
narrow lane, cribbed and confined on the one
side by an old monastic establishment, now
turned into alms-houses, called the Oriel, which
divided the street from that branch of the river
called the Holy Brook, and on the other bounded
by the market-place, whilst one end abutted on
the yard of a great inn, and turned so sharply up
a steep acclivity that accidents happened there
every day, and the other terminus wound with an
equally awkward curvature round the churchyard
of St. Stephen's, — this most strait and incommo-
dious avenue of shops was the wealthiest quarter
of the Borough. It was a provincial combina-
tion of Regent Street and Cheapside. The
houses let for double their value ; and, as a
necessary consequence, goods sold there at
pretty nearly the same rate ; horse-people and
foot-people jostled upon the pavement ; coaches
and phaetons ran against each other in the
road. Nobody dreamt of visiting Belford with-
out wanting something or other in Oriel Street ;

THE CHINA-WOMAN. 91

and although noise, and crowd, and bustle, be
very far from usual attributes of the good town,
yet in driving through this favoured region on a
fine day, between the hours of three and five,
we stood a fair chance of encountering as many
difficulties and obstructions from carriages, and
as much din and disoi'der on the causeway as
we shall often have the pleasure of meeting
with out of London.

One of the most popular and frequented
shops in the street, and out of all manner of
comparison the prettiest to look at, was the
well-furnished glass and china warehouse of
Philadelphia Firkin, spinster. Few things are
indeed more agreeable to the eye than the mix-
ture of glittering cut glass, with rich and deli-
cate china, so beautiful in shape, colour, and
material, which adorn a nicely-assorted show-
room of that description. The manufactures
of Sevres, of Dresden, of Derby, and of Wor-
cester, are really works of art, and very beauti-
ful ones too; and even the less choice speci-
mens have about them a clearness, a glossiness,
and a nicety, exceedingly pleasant to look upon :

92 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

SO that a china-shop is in some sense a shop of
temptation : and that it is also a shop of neces-
sity, every housekeeper who knows to her cost
the infinite number of plates, dishes, cups, and
glasses, which contrive to get broken in the
course of the year, (chiefly by that grand demo-
lisher of crockery ware called Nobody,) will not
fail to bear testimony.

Miss Philadelphia's was therefore a well ac-
customed shop, and she herself was in appear-
ance most fit to be its inhabitant, being a trim,
prim little woman, neither old nor young, whose
dress hung about her in stiff" regular folds, very
like the drapery of a china shepherdess on a
mantel-piece, and whose pink and white com-
plexion, skin, eyebrows, eyes, and hair, all tinted
as it seemed with one dash of ruddy colour, had
the same professional hue. Change her spruce
cap for a wide-brimmed hat, and the damask
napkin which she flourished in wiping her
wares, for a china crook, and the figure in ques-
tion might have passed for a miniature of the
mistress. In one respect they differed. The
china shepherdess was a silent personage. Miss

THE CHINA-WOMAN. 93

Philadelphia was not; on the contrary, she was
reckoned to make, after her own mincing fashion,
as good a use of her tongue as any woman,
gentle or simple, in the whole town of Belford.

She was assisted in her avocations by a little
shopwoman, not much taller than a china man-
darin, remarkable for the height of her comb,
and the length of her earrings, whom she
addressed sometimes as Miss Wolfe, sometimes
as Marianne, and sometimes as Polly, thus
multiplying the young lady's individuality by
three ; and a little shopman in apron and sleeves,
whom, with equal ingenuity, she called by the
several appellations of Jack, Jonathan, and Mr.
I^amb — mister ! — but who was really such a cock-
o'-my- thumb as might have been served up in a
tureen, or baked in a pie-dish, without in the
slightest degree abridging his personal dimen-
sions. I have known him quite hidden behind
a china jar, and as completely buried, whilst
standing on tip-toe, in a crate, as the dessert-
service which he was engaged in unpacking.
Whether this pair of originals was transferred
from a show at a fair to Miss Philly's warehouse.

94 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

or whether she had picked them up accidentally,
first one and then the other, guided by a fine
sense of congruity, as she might match a wine-
glass or a tea-cup, must be left to conjecture.
Certain they answered her purpose, as well as
if they had been the size of Gog and Magog ;
were attentive to the customers, faithful to their
employer, and crept about amongst the china
as softly as two mice.

The world went well with Miss Philly Firkin
in the shop and out. She won favour in the
sight of her betters by a certain prim, demure,
simpering civility, and a power of multiplying
herself as well as her little officials, like Yates
or Matthews in a monopolologue, and attending
to half-a-dozen persons at once; whilst she was
no less popular amongst her equals in virtue of
her excellent gift in gossiping. Nobody better
loved a gentle tale of scandal, to sweeten a
quiet cup of tea. Nobody evinced a finer talent
for picking up whatever news happened to be
stirring, or greater liberality in its diffusion.
She was the intelligencer of the place — a walk-
ing chronicle.

THE CHINA-WOMAN. 95

In a word, Miss Philly Firkin was certainly a
prosperous, and, as times go, a tolerably happy
woman. To be sure, her closest intimates,
those very dear friends, who as our confidence
gives them the opportunity, are so obliging as to
watch our weaknesses and report our foibles, —
certain of these bosom companions had been
heard to hint, that Miss Philly, who had refused
two or three good matches in her bloom, re-
pented her of this cruelty, and would probably
be found less obdurate now that suitors had
ceased to offer. This, if true, was one hidden
grievance, a flitting shadow upon a sunny des-
tiny ; whilst another might be found in a cir-
cumstance of which she was so far from making
a secret, that it was one of her most frequent
topics of discourse.

The calamity in question took the not un-
frequent form of a next-door neighbour. On
her right dwelt an eminent tinman with his
pretty daughter, two of the most respectable,
kindest, and best- conducted persons in the town ;
but on her left was an open bricked archway, just
wide enough to admit a cart, surmounted by a
dim and dingy representation of some horned

96 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

animal, with " The Old Red Cow" written in
white capitals above, and " James Tyler, licensed
to sell beer, ale, wine, and all sorts of spi-
rituous liquors," below ; and down the aforesaid
passage, divided only by a paling from the spa-
cious premises where her earthenware and
coarser kinds of crockery were deposited, were
the public-house, stables, cowhouses, and pig-
sties of Mr. James Tyler, who added to his
calling of publican, the several capacities of
milkman, cattle dealer, and pig merchant, so
that the place was one constant scene of dirt
and noise and bustle without and within ; — this
Old Red Cow, in spite of its unpromising
locality, being one of the best frequented
houses in Belford, the constant resort of
drovers, drivers, and cattle dealers, with a
market dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays,
and a club called the Jolly Tailors, every
Monday night.

Master James Tyler — popularly called Jem —
was the very man to secure and increase this sort
of custom. Of vast stature and extraordinary
physical power, combined with a degree of
animal spirits not often found in combination

THE CHINA WOMAN. 97

with such large proportions, he was at once a fit
ruler over his four-footed subjects in the yard,
a miscellaneous and most disorderly collection
of cows, horses, pigs, and oxen, to say nothing
of his own five boys, (for Jem was a widower,)
each of whom, in striving to remedy, was apt to
enhance the confusion, and an admirable lord of
misrule at the drovers' dinners and tradesmen's
suppers over which he presided. There was a
mixture of command and good-humour, of de-
cision and fun, in the gruff, bluff, weather-beaten
countenance, surmounted with its rough shock of
coal-black hair, and in the voice loud as a stentor,
with which he now guided a drove of oxen, and
now roared a catch, that his listeners in
either case found irresistible. Jem Tyler was
the very spirit of vulgar jollity, and could, as he
boasted, run, leap, box, wrestle, drink, sing, and
shoot (he had been a keeper in his youth, and
still retained the love of sportsmanship which
those who imbibe it early seldom lose) with any
man in the county. He was discreet, too, for a
man of his occupation; knew precisely how
drunk a journeyman tailor ought to get, and

VOL. I. F

98 MISS PHILLY FIRKINT,

when to stop a fight between a Somersetshire
cattle-dealer and an Irish pig-driver. No in-
quest had ever sat upon any of his customers.
Small wonder, that with such a landlord the Old
Red Cow should be a hostelry of unmatched
resort and unblemished reputation.

The chief exception to Jem Tyler's almost
universal popularity was beyond all manner of
doubt his fair neighbour Miss Philadelphia
Firkin. She, together with her trusty adherents,
Miss Wolfe and Mr. Lamb, held Jem, his ale-
house, and his customers, whether tailor, drover,
or dealer, his yard and its contents, horse or
donkey, ox or cow, pig or dog, in unmeasured
and undisguised abhorrence : she threatened to
indict the place as a nuisance, to appeal to the
mayor; and upon "some good-natured friend"
telling her that mine host had snapped his
fingers at her as a chattering old maid, she did
actually go so far as to speak to her landlord,
who was also Jem's, upon the iniquity of his
doings. This worthy happening, however, to be
a ereat brewer, knew better than to dismiss a
teu^nt whose consumption of double X was so

THE CHINA WOMAN. 99

satisfactory. So that Miss Firkin took nothing
by her motion beyond a few of those smoothen-
ing and pacificatory speeches, which, when
administered to a person in a passion, have, as
I have often observed, a remarkable tendency to
exasperate the disease.

At last, however, came a real and substantial
grievance, an actionable trespass ; and although
Miss Philly was a considerable loser by the
mischance, and a lawsuit is always rather a
questionable remedy for pecuniary damage, yet
such was the keenness of her hatred towards
poor Jem, that I am quite convinced that in her
inmost heart (although being an excellent person
in her way, it is doubtful whether she told
herself the whole truth in the matter) she re-
joiced at a loss which would enable her to take
such signal vengeance over her next-door enemy.
An obstreperous cow, walking backward instead
of forward, as that placid animal when provoked
has the habit of doing, came in contact with a
weak part of the paling which divided Miss
Firkin's back premises from Master Tyler's
yard, and not only upset Mr. Lamb into a crate

F 2

100 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

of crockery which he was in the act of unpack-
ing, to the inexpressible discomfiture of both par-
ties, but Miss Wolfe, who, upon hearing the mix-
ture of crash and squall, ran to the rescue, found
herself knocked down by a donkey who had
entered at the breach, and was saluted as she
rose by a peal of laughter from young Sam
Tyler, Jem's eldest hope, a thorough Pickle,
who, accompanied by two or three other chaps
as unlucky as himself, sat quietly on a gate sur-
veying and enjoying the mischief.

" I'll bring an action against the villain !"
ejaculated Miss Philly, as soon as the enemy was
driven from her quarters, and her china and her
dependants set upon their feet : — " I'll take the
law of him !" And in this spirited resolution did
mistress, shopman, and shopwoman, find comfort
for the losses, the scratches, and the bruises of
the day.

This affray commenced on a Thursday even-
ing towards the latter end of March ; and it so
happened that we had occasion to send to Miss
Philly early the next morning for a cart-load of
garden-pots for the use of my geraniums.

THE CHINA WOMAN. 101

Our messenger was, as it chanced, a certain
lad by name Dick Barnett, who has lived with us
oif and on ever since he was the height of the
table, and who originally a saucy, lively, merry
boy, arch, quick-witted, and amusing, has been
indulged in giving vent to all manner of imper-
tinences imtil he has become a sort of privi-
leged person, and takes, with high or low, a
freedom of speech that might become a lady's
page or a king's jester. Every now and then
we feel that this licence, which in a child of ten
years old we found so diverting, has become in-
convenient in a youth of seventeen, and favour
him and ourselves with a lecture accordingly. But
such is the force of inveterate habit that our re-
monstrances upon this subject are usually so
much gravity wasted upon him and upon our-
selves. He, in the course of a day or two, comes
forth with some fresh prank more amusing than
before, and we (I grieve to confess such a weak-
ness) resume our laughter.

To do justice, however, to this modern Robin
Goodfellow, there was most commonly a fund
of goodnature at the bottom of his wildest

102 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

Iricks or his most egregious romances, — for in
the matter of a jest he was apt to draw pretty
largely from an inventive faculty of remarkable
fertility; he was constant in his attachments,
whether to man or beast, loyal to his employers,
and although idle and uncertain enough in other
work, admirable in all that related to the stable
or the kennel — the best driver, best rider, best
trainer of a greyhound, and best finder of a
hare, in all Berkshire,

He was, as usual, accompanied on this errand
by one of his four-footed favourites, a delicate
snow-white greyhound called Mayfly, of whom
Miss Philly flatteringly observed, that " she
was as beautiful as china;" and upon the civil
lady of the shop proceeding to inquire after the
health of his master and mistress, and the ge-
neral news of Aberleigh, master Ben, who well
knew her proficiency in gossiping, and had the
dislike of a man and a rival to any female prac-
titioner in that art, checked at once this conde-
scending overture to conversation by answering
with more than his usual consequence : " The
chief news that I know. Miss Firkin, is, that

THE CHINA-WOMAN. 103

our geraniums are all pining away for want of
fresh earth, and that I am sent in furious haste
after a load of your best garden-pots. There's
no time to be lost, I can tell you, if you mean to
save their precious lives. Miss Ada is upon
her last legs, and master Diomede in a galloping
consumption — two of our prime geraniums,
ma'am !" quoth Dick, with a condescending nod
to Miss Wolfe, as that Lilliputian lady looked
up at him with a stare of unspeakable mystifica-
tion; " queerish names, a'nt they? Well, there
are the patterns of the sizes, and there's the
order ; so if your little gentleman will but look
the pots out, I have left the cart in Jem Tyler's
yard, (I've a message to Jem from master,) and
we can pack 'em over the paling. I suppose you've
a ladder for the little man's use, in loading carts
and waggons, if not Jem or I can take them from
him. There is not a better-natured fellow in
England than Jem Tyler, and he'll be sure to
do me a good turn any day, if it's only for the
love of our Mayfly here. He bred her, poor
thing, and is well nigh as fond of her as if she
was a child of his own ; and so's Sam. Nay,
what's the matter with you all ?" pursued Dick,

104 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

as at the name of Jem Tyler Miss Wolfe turned
up her hands and eyes, Mr. Lamb let fall the
pattern pots, and Miss Philly flung the order
upon the counter — " What the deuce is come
to the people ?"

And then out burst the story of the last
night's adventure, of Mr. Lamb's scratched
face, which indeed was visible enough, of Miss
Wolfe's bruises, of the broken china, the cow,
the donkey, and the action at law.

" Whew !" whistled Dick in an aside whistle ;
" going to law is she ? We must pacify her if we
can," thought he, " for a lawsuit's no joke, as
poor Jem would find. Jem must come and
speechify. It's hard if between us we can't
manage a woman."

" Sad affair, indeed. Miss Firkin," said Dick,
aloud, in a soft, sympathising tone, and with a
most condoling countenance ; " it's unknown
what obstropolous creatures cows and donkies
are, and what mischief they do amongst gim-
cracks. A brute of a donkey got into our gar-
den last summer, and ate up half-a-dozen rose-
trees and fuchsias, besides trampling over the
flower-beds. One of the roses was a present

THE CHINA-WOMAN. 105

from France, worth five guineas. I hope Mr.
Lamb and Miss Wolfe are not much hurt. Very
sad affair ! strange too that it should happen
through Jem Tyler's cattle — poor Jem, who
had such a respect for you !"

" Respect for me !" echoed Miss Philly,
" when he called me a chattering old maid,
— Mrs. Loveit heard him. Respect for me !"

" Aye," continued Dick, " it was but last
Monday was a fortnight that Kit Mahony, the
tall pig-dealer, was boasting of the beauty of the
Tipperary lasses, and crying down our English
ladies, whereupon, although the tap was full of
Irish chaps, Jem took the matter up, and swore
that he could show Kit two as fine women in
this very street — you, ma'am, being one, and Miss
Parsons the other — two as fine women as ever he
saw in Tipperary. Nay, he offered to lay any
wager, from a pot of double X to half a score of
his own pigs, that Kit should confess it himself!.
Now, if tliat's not having a respect I don't know
what is," added Dick, with much gravity ; " and
I put it to your good sense, whether it is not more
likely that Mrs. Loveit, who is as deaf as a post,

F 5

106 MISS PHILLY FIRKIN,

should be mistaken, than that he should offer to
lay such a wager respecting a lady of whom he
had spoken so disparagingly."

" This will do," thought Dick to himself as he
observed the softening of Miss Philly's features
and noted her very remarkable and unnatural
silence — " this will do ;" and reiterating his re-
quest that the order might be got ready, he
walked out of the shop.

" You'll find that I have settled the matter,"
observed the young gentleman to Jem Tyler,
after telling him the story, " and you have no-
thing to do but to follow up my hints. Did not
I manage her famously ? 'Twas well I recol-
lected your challenge to Mahony, about that
pretty creature, Harriet Parsons. It had a ca-
pital effect, I promise you. Now go and make
yourself decent ; put on your Sunday coat, wash
your face and hands, and don't spare for fine
speeches. Be off with you."

" I shall laugh in her face," replied Jem.

" Not you," quoth his sage adviser : " just
think of the length of a lawyer's bill, and you'll
be in no danger of laughing. Besides, she's

THE CHINA WOMAN. 107

really a niceish sort of a body enough, a tidyish
little soul in her way, and you're a gay
widower — so who knows ?""

And home went Dick, chuckling all the way,
partly at his own good management, partly at
the new idea which his quick fancy had started.

About a fortnight after, I had occasion to drive
into Belford, attended as usual by master
Richard. The bells of St. Stephen's were ring-
ing merrily as we passed down Oriel Street, and
happening to look up at the well-known sign of
the Old Red Cow, we saw that celebrated work
of art surmounted by a bow of white ribbons — a
bridal favour. Looking onward to Miss Philly's
door, what should we perceive but Mr. Lamb
standing on the step with a similar cockade, half
as big as himself, stuck in his hat ; whilst Miss
Wolfe stood simpering behind the counter, dis-
pensing to her old enemy Sam, and four other
grinning boys in their best apparel, five huge
slices of bridecake.

The fact was clear. Jem Tyler and Miss
Philly were married.

108

THE GROUND-ASH.

Amongst the many pleasant circumstances at-
tendant on a love of flowers — that sort of love
which leads us into the woods for the earliest prim-
rose, or to the river side for the latest forget-me-
not, and carries us to the parching heath or the
watery mere to procure for the cultivated, or, if
I may use the expression, the tame beauties of
the parterre, the soil that they love ; amongst
the many gratifications which such pursuits
bring with them, such as seeing in the seasons
in which it shows best, the prettiest, coyest,
most unhackneyed scenery, and taking, with
just motive enough for stimulus and for reward.

THE GROUND-ASH. 109

drives and walks which approach to fatigue,
without being fatiguing ; amongst all the de-
lights consequent on a love of flowers, I know
none greater than the half unconscious and
wholly unintended manner in which such expe-
ditions make us acquainted with the peasant
children of remote and out-of-the-way regions,
the inhabitants of the wild woodlands and still
wilder commons of the hilly part of the north of
Hampshire, which forms so strong a contrast
with this sunny and populous county of Berks,
whose very fields are gay and neat as gardens,
and whose roads are as level and even as a gravel-
walk.

Two of the most interesting of these flower-
formed acquaintances, were my little friends
Harry and Bessy Leigh.

Every year I go to the Everley woods to
gather wild lilies of the valley. It is one of the
delights that May — the charming, ay, and the
merry month of May, which I love as fondly as
ever that bright and joyous season was loved by
our older poets — regularly brings in her train;
one of those rational pleasures in which (and it

110 THE GROUND-ASH.

is the great point of superiority over plea-
sures that are artificial and worldly) there is no
disappointment. About four years ago, I made
such a visit. Tlie day was glorious, and we had
driven through lanes perfumed by the fresh
green birch, with its bark silvery and many-
tinted, and over commons where the very air
was loaded with the heavy fragrance of the
furze, an odour resembling in richness its golden
blossoms, just as the scent of the birch is cool,
refreshing, and penetrating, like the exquisite
colour of its young leaves, until we reached the
top of the hill, where, on one side, the enclosed
wood, where the lilies grow, sank gradually, in
an amphitheatre of natural terraces, to a piece
of water at the bottom ; whilst on the other, the
wild open heath formed a sort of promontory
overhanging a steep ravine, through which a
slow and sluggish stream crept along amongst
stunted alders, until it was lost in the deep re-
cesses of Lidhurst Forest, over the tall trees of
which we literally looked down. We had come
without a servant ; and on arriving at the gate
of the wood with neither human figure nor

THE GROUND-ASH. Ill

human habitation in sight, and a high- blooded
and high-spirited horse in the phaeton, we be-
gan to feel all the awkwardness of our situation.
My companion, however, at length espied a
thin wreath of smoke issuing from a small clay-
built hut thatched with furze, built against the
steepest part of the hill, of which it seemed a
mere excrescence, about half way down the
declivity; and, on calling aloud, two children,
who had been picking up dry stumps of heath
and gorse, and collecting them in a heap for
fuel at the door of their hovel, first carefully de-
posited their little load, and then came running
to know what we wanted.

If we had wondered to see human beings
living in a habitation, which, both for space and
appearance, would have been despised by a pig
of any pretension, as too small and too mean for
his accommodation, so we were again surprised
at the strange union of poverty and content
evinced by the apparel and countenances of its
young inmates. The children, bareheaded and
barefooted, and with little more clothing than
one shabby-looking garment, were yet as fine,

112 THE GROUND-ASH.

sturdy, hardy, ruddy, sunburnt urchins, as one
should see on a summer day. They were
clean, too: the stunted bit of raiment was
patched, but not ragged ; and when the girl,
(for, although it was rather difficult to distin-
guish between the brother and sister, the pair
were of different sexes,) when the bright-eyed,
square-made, upright little damsel clasped her
two brown hands together, on the top of her
head, pressed down her thick curls, looking
at us and listening to us with an air of the most
intelligent attention that returned our curiosity
with interest; and when the boy, in answer to
our inquiry if he could hold a horse, clutched
the reins with his small fingers, and planted
himself beside our high-mettled steed with an
air of firm determination, that seemed to say,
" I'm your master ! Run awry if you dare !"
we both of us felt that they were subjects for a
picture, and that, though Sir Joshua might not
have painted them, Gainsborough and our own
Collins would.

But besides their exceeding picturesqueness,
the evident content, and helpfulness, and in-

THE GROUND-ASH. 113

dustry of these little creatures, was delightful to
look at and to think of. In conversation they
were at once very civil and respectful (Bessy
dropping her little curtsy, and Harry putting
his hand to the lock of hair where the hat should
have been, at every sentence they uttered) and
perfectly frank and unfearing. In answer to
our questions, they told us that " Father was a
broom-maker, from the low country; that he
had come to these parts and married mother,
and built their cottage, because houses were so
scarce hereabouts, and because of its conveni-
ence to the heath ; that they had done very well
till the last winter, when poor father had had
the fever for five months, and they had had much
ado to get on ; but that father was brave again
now, and was building another house (house ! ! )
larger and finer, upon Squire Benson's lands :
the squire had promised them a garden from the
waste, and mother hoped to keep a pig. They
were trying to get all the money they could to
buy the pig ; and what his honour had promised
them for holding the horse, was all to be given
to mother for that purpose."

114 THE GROUND-ASH.

It was impossible not to be charmed with
these children. We went again and again to
the Everley wood, partly to gather lilies, partly
to rejoice in the trees with their young leaves
so beautiful in texture as well as in colour, but
chiefly to indulge ourselves in the pleasure of
talking to the children, of adding something
to their scanty stock of clothing, (Bessy ran as
fast as her feet could carry her to the clear pool
at the bottom of the wood, to look at herself in
her new bonnet,) and of assisting in the accu-
mulations of the Grand Pig Savings' Bank, by
engaging Harry to hold the horse, and Bessy to
help fill the lily basket.

This employment, by showing that the lilies
had a money value, put a new branch of traffic
into the heads of these thoughtful children,
already accustomed to gather heath for their
father's brooms, and to collect the dead furze
which served as fuel to the family. After gain-
ing permission of the farmer who rented the
wood, and ascertaining that we had no objec-
tion, they set about making nosegays of the
flowers, and collecting the roots for sale, and

THE GROUND-ASH. 1J5

actually stood two Saturdays in Belford market
(the smallest merchants of a surety that ever
appeared in that rural Exchange) to dispose of
their wares; having obtained a cast in a waggon
there and back, and carrying home faithfully
every penny of their gainings, to deposit in the
common stock.

The next year we lost sight of them. No
smoke issued from the small chimney by the
hill-side. The hut itself was half demolished
by wind and weather ; its tenants had emigrated
to the new house on Squire Benson's land ; and
after two or three attempts to understand and
to follow the directions as to the spot given us
by the good farmer at Everley, we were forced to
give up the search.

Accident, the great discoverer and recoverer
of lost goods, at last restored to us these good
little children. It happened as follows : —

In new potting some large hydrangeas, we
were seized with a desire to give the blue tinge
to the petals, which so greatly improves the
beauty of that fine bold flower, and which is so
desirable when they are placed, as these were

116 THE GROUND-ASH.

destined to be, in the midst of red and pink
blossoms, fuchsias, salvias, and geraniums. Ac-
cordingly, we sallied forth to a place called the
Moss, a wild tract of moorland lying about a
mile to the right of the road to Everley, and
famous for the red bog, produced, I presume, by
chalybeate springs, which, when mixed with the
fine Bagshot silver sand, is so effectual in
changing the colour of flowers.

It was a bleak gusty day in February, raining
by fits, but not with sufficient violence to deter
me from an expedition to which I had taken a
fancy. Putting up, therefore, the head and
apron of the phaeton, and followed by one lad
(the shrewd boy Dick) on horseback, and another
(John, the steady gardening youth) in a cart
laden with tubs and sacks, spades and watering-
pots, to procure and contain the bog mould, (for
we were prudently determined to provide for all
emergencies, and to carry with us fit receptacles
to receive our treasure, whether it presented
itself in the form of red earth or of red mud,)
our little procession set forth early in the after-
noon, towards the wildest and most dreary piece

THE GROUND-ASH. 117

of scenery that I have ever met with in this part
of the country.

Wild and dreary of a truth was the Moss, and
the stormy sky, the moaning wind, and the
occasional gushes of driving rain, suited well
with the dark and cheerless region into which
we had entered by a road, if a rude cart-track
may be so called, such as shall seldom be en-
countered in this land of Macadamisation. And
yet, partly perhaps from their novelty, the wild
day and the wild scenery had for me a strange
and thrilling charm. The ground, covered with
the sea-green moss, whence it derived its name,
mingled in the higher parts with brown patches
of heather, and dark bushes of stunted furze,
was broken with deep hollows full of stagnant
water ; some almost black, others covered with
the rusty scum which denoted the presence of
the powerful mineral, upon whose agency we
relied for performing that strange piece of
natural magic which may almost be called the
transmutation of flowers.

Towards the ruddiest of these pools, situated

118 THE GROUND-ASH.

in a deep glen, our active coadjutors, leaving
phaeton, cart, and horses, on the brow of the
hill, began rolling and tossing the several tubs,
buckets, watering-pots, sacks, and spades, which
were destined for the removal and conveyance
of the much coveted-bog; we followed, amused
and pleased, as, in certain moods, physical and
mental, people are pleased and amused at self-
imposed difficulties, down the abrupt and broken
descent ; and for some time the process of dig^
ging among the mould at the edge of the bank
went steadily on.

In a few minutes, however, Dick, whose quick
and restless eye was never long bent on any
single object, most of all when that object pre-
sented itself in the form of work, exclaimed to
his comrade, " Look at those children wander-
ing about amongst the firs, like the babes in
the wood in the old ballad. What can they be
about?" And looking in the direction to which
he pointed, we saw, amidst the gloomy fir plan-
tations, which formed a dark and massive border
nearly round the Moss, our old friends Harry

THE GROUND-ASH. 119

and Bessy Leigh, collecting, as it seemed, the
fir cones with which the ground was strewed,
and depositing them carefully in a large basket.

A manful shout from my companion soon
brought the children to our side — good, busy,
cheerful, and healthy-looking as ever, and mar-
vellously improved in the matter of equipment.
Harry had been promoted to a cap, which added
the grace of a flourish to his bow ; Bessy had
added the luxury of a pinafore to her nonde-
script garments ; and both pairs of little feet
were advanced to the certain dignity, although
somewhat equivocal comfort, of shoes and stock-
ings.

The world had gone well with them, and with
their parents. The house was built. Upon re-
mounting the hill, and advancing a little farther
into the centre of the Moss, we saw the comfort-
able low-browed cottage, full of light and shadow,
of juttings out, and corners and angles of every
sort and description, with a garden stretching
along the side, backed and sheltered by the tall
impenetrable plantation, a wall of trees, against
whose dark masses a wreath of light smoke was

120 THE GROUND-ASH.

curling, whose fragrance seemed really to per-
fume the winter air. The pig had been bought,
fatted, and killed ; but other pigs were inhabit-
ing the sty, almost as large as their former
dwelling, which stood at the end of their garden ;
and the children told with honest joy how all
this prosperity had come about. Their father,
taking some brooms to my kind fi-iend Lady
Denys, had seen some of the ornamental baskets
used for flowers upon a lawn, and had been
struck with the fancy of trying to make some,
decorated with fir cones; and he had been so
successful in this profitable manufacture, that
he had more orders than he could execute.
Lady Denys had also, with characteristic bene-
volence, put the children to her Sunday-school.
One misfortune had a little overshadowed the
sunshine. Squire Benson had died, and the
consent to the erection of the cottage being only
verbal, the attorney who managed for the infant
heir, a ward in Chancery, had claimed the pro-
perty. But the matter had been compromised
upon the payment of such a rent as the present
prospects of the family would fairly allow. Be-

THE GROUND-ASH. 121

sides collecting fir cones for the baskets, they
picked up all they could in that pine forest, (for
it was little less,) and sold such as were disco-
loured, or otherwise unfit for working up, to
Lady Denys and other persons who liked the
fine aromatic odour of these the pleasantest of
pastilles, in their dressing-room or drawing-
room fires. " Did I like the smell ? We had
a cart there — might they bring us a hamper-
ful ?" And it was with great difficulty that a
trifling present (for we did not think of offering
money as payment) could be forced upon the
grateful children. " We," they said, " had been
their first friends." For what very small assist-
ance the poor are often deeply, permanently
thankful ! Well says the great poet —

"I've heard of hearts unkind, good deeds
With ill deeds still returning ;
Alas, the gratitude of man
Hath oftener left me mourning!"

Wordsworth,
Again for above a year we lost sight of our
little favourites, for such they were with both
of us ; though absence, indisposition, business,

VOL. I. G

122 THE GROUND-ASH.

company — engagements, in short, of raany
sorts — combined to keep us from the Moss for
upwards of a twelvemonth. Early in the suc-
ceeding April, however, it happened that, dis-
cussing with some morning visiters the course
of a beautiful winding brook, (one of the tribu-
taries to the Loddon, which bright and brim-
ming river has nearly as many sources as the
Nile,) one of them observed that the well-head
was in Lanton Wood, and that it was a bit of
scenery more like the burns of the North Coun-
trie (my visiter was a Northumbrian) than any-
thing he had seen in the south. Surely I had
seen it ? I was half ashamed to confess that I
had not — (how often are we obliged to confess
that we have not seen the beauties which lie
close to our doors, too near for observation !) —
and the next day proving fine, I determined to
repair my omission.

It was a soft and balmy April morning, just at
that point of the flowery spring when violets and
primroses are lingering under the northern
hedgerows, and cowslips and orchises peeping
out upon the sunny banks. My driver was the

THE GROUND-ASH. 123

clever, shrewd, arch boy Dick ; and the first part
of our way lay along the green winding lanes
which lead to Everley ; we then turned to the
left, and putting up our phaeton at a small farm-
house, where my attendant (who found ac-
quaintances everywhere) was intimate, we pro-
ceeded to the wood ; Dick accompanying me,
carrying my flower-basket, opening the gates,
and taking care of my dog Dash, a very beautiful
thorough-bred Old English spaniel, who was a
little apt, when he got into a wood, to run after
the game, and forget to come out again.

I have seldom seen anything in woodland
scenery more picturesque and attractive than
the old coppice of Lanton, on that soft and
balmy April morning. The underwood was
nearly cut, and bundles of long split poles for
hooping barrels were piled together against the
tall oak trees, bursting with their sap ; whilst
piles of faggots were built up in other parts of
the copse, and one or two saw-pits, with light
open sheds erected over them, whence issued
the measured sound of the saw and the occa-
sional voices of the workmen, almost concealed

g2

124 THE GROUND-ASH.

by their subterranean position, were placed in the
hollows. At the far side of the coppice, the
operation of hewing down the underwood was
still proceeding, and the sharp strokes of the axe
and the bill, softened by distance, came across
the monotonous jar of the never-ceasing saw.

The surface of the ground was prettily tum-
bled about, comprehending as pleasant a variety
of hill and dale as could well be comprised
in some thirty acres. It declined, however,
generally speaking, towards the centre of the
coppice, along which a small, very small rivulet,
scarcely more than a runlet, wound its way in a
thousand graceful meanders. Tracking up-
ward the course of the little stream, we soon
arrived at that which had been the ostensible
object of our drive — the spot whence it sprung.

It was a steep irregular acclivity on the high-
est side of the wood, a mound, I had almost said
a rock, of earth, cloven in two about the middle,
but with so narrow a fissure that the brushwood
which grew on either side nearly filled up the
opening, so that the source of the spring still
remained concealed, although the rapid gushing

THE GROUND-ASH. 1'25

of the water made a pleasant music in that
pleasant place ; and here and there a sunbeam,
striking upon the sparkling stream, shone with
a bright and glancing light amidst the dark ivies,
and brambles, and mossy stumps of trees, that
grew around.

This mound had apparently been cut a year
or two ago, so that it presented an appearance
of mingled wildness and gaiety, that contrasted
very agreeably with the rest of the coppice ;
whose trodden-down flowers I had grieved over,
even whilst admiring the picturesque effect of
the woodcutters and their several operations.
Here, however, reigiied the flowery spring in all
her glory. Violets, pansies, orchises, oxslips,
the elegant woodsorrel, the delicate wood ane-
mone, and the enamelled wild hyacinth, were
sprinkled profusely amongst the mosses, and
lichens, and dead leaves, which formed so rich a
carpet beneath our feet. Primroses, above all,
were there of almost every hue, from the rare
and pearly white, to the deepest pinkish purple,
coloured by some diversity of soil, the pretty
freak of nature's gardening ; whilst the common

126 THE GROUND-ASH.

yellow blossom — commonest and prettiest of all
— peeped out from amongst the boughs in the
stump of an old willow, like (to borrow the
simile of a dear friend, now no more) a canary
bird from its cage. The wild geranium was
already showing its pink stem and scarlet-edged
leaves, themselves almost gorgeous enough to
pass for flowers ; the periwinkle, with its wreaths
of shining foliage, was hanging in garlands over
the precipitous descent ; and the lily of the val-
ley, the fragrant woodroof, and the silvery wild
garlick, were just peeping from the earth in the
most sheltered nooks. Charmed to find myself
surrounded by so much beauty, I had scrambled,
with much ado, to the top of the woody cliff, (no
other word can convey an idea of its precipitous
abruptness,) and was vainly attempting to trace
by my eye the actual course of the spring, which
was, by the clearest evidence of sound, gushing
from the fount many feet below me ; when a
peculiar whistle of delight, (for whistling was to
Dick, although no ordinary proficient in our
common tongue, another language,) and a tre-
mendous scrambling amongst the bushes, gave

THE GROUND-ASH. 127

token that my faithful attendant had met with
something as agreeable to his fancy, as the prim-
roses and orchises had proved to mine.

Guided by a repetition of the whistle, I soon
saw my trusty adherent spanning the chasm
like a Colossus, one foot on one bank, the other
on the opposite — each of which appeared to me
to be resting, so to say, on nothing — tugging
away at a long twig that grew on the brink of
the precipice, and exceedingly likely to resolve
the inquiry as to the source of the Loddon, by
plumping souse into the fountain-head. I, of
course, called out to warn him ; and he equally,
of course, w ent on with his labour, without pay-
ing the slightest attention to my caution. On
the contrary, having possessed himself of one
straight slender twig, which, to my great asto-
nishment, he wound round his fingers, and depo-
sited in his pocket, as one should do by a bit of
pack-thread, he apparently, during the opera-
tion, caught sight of another. Testifying his
delight by a second whistle, which, having his
knife in his mouth, one wonders how he could
accomplish ; and scrambling with the fearless

128 THE GROUND-ASH.

daring of a monkey up the perpendicular bank,
supported by strings of ivy, or ledges of roots,
and clinging by hand and foot to the frail bram-
ble or the slippery moss, leaping like a squirrel
from bough to bough, and yet, by happy bold-
ness, escaping all danger, he attained his object
as easily as if he had been upon level ground.
Three, four, five times was the knowing, joyous,
triumphant whistle sounded, and every time with
a fresh peril and a fresh escape. At last, the
young gentleman, panting and breathless, stood
at my side, and I began to question him as to
the treasure he had been pursuing.

" It's the ground-ash, ma'am," responded
master Dick, taking one of the coils from his
pocket ; " the best riding-switch in the world.
All the whips that ever were made are nothing
to it. Only see how strong it is, how light,
and how supple ! You may twist it a thousand
ways without breaking. It won't break, do
what you will. Each of these, now, is worth
half-a-crown or three shillings, for they are the
scarcest things possible. They grow up at a
little distance from the root of an old tree, like

THE GROUND-ASH. 129

a sucker from a rose-bush. Great luck, indeed !"^
continued Dick, putting up his treasure with
another joyful whistle ; "it was but t'other day
that Jack Barlow offered me half-a-guinea for
four, if I could but come by them. I shall cer-
tainly keep the best, though, for myself — unless,
ma'am, you would be pleased to accept it for
the purpose of whipping Dash." Whipping
Dash ! ! ! Well have I said that Dick was as
saucy as a lady's page or a king's jester. Talk
of whipping Dash ! Why, the young gentleman
knew perfectly well that I had rather be whipt
myself twenty times over. The very sound
seemed a profanation. Whip my Dash ! Of
course I read master Dick a lecture for this irre-
verent mention of my pet, who, poor fellow,
hearing his name called in question, came up in
all innocence to fondle me ; to which grave re-
monstrance the hopeful youth replied by ano-
ther whistle, half of penitence, half of amuse-
ment.

These discourses brought us to the bottom of
the mound, and turning round a clump of haw-
thorn and holly, we espied a little damsel with

g5

130 THE GROUND-ASH.

a basket at her side, and a large knife in her
hand, carefully digging up a large root of white
primroses, and immediately recognised my old
acquaintance, Bessy Leigh.

She was, as before, clean, and healthy, and
tidy, and unaffectedly glad to see me ; but the
joyousness and buoyancy which had made so
much of her original charm, were greatly dimi-
nished. It was clear that poor Bessy had suf-
fered worse griefs than those of cold and hunger ;
and upon questioning her, so it turned out.

Her father had died, and her mother had
been ill, and the long hard winter had been hard
to get through ; and then the rent had come
upon her, and the steward (for the young gen-
tleman himself was a minor) had threatened to
turn them out if it were not paid to a day — the
very next day after that on which we were
speaking ; and her mother had been afraid they
must go to the workhouse, which would have
been a sad thing, because now she had got so
much washing to do, and Harry was so clever at
basket-making, that there was every chance,
this rent once paid, of their getting on com-

THE GROUND-ASH. 131

fortably. "And the rent will be paid now,
ma'am, thank God !" added Bessy, her sweet
face brightening ; " for we want only a guinea
of the whole sum, and Lady Denys has employed
me to get scarce wild-flowers for her wood, and
has promised me half-a-guinea for what I have
carried her, and this last parcel, which I am to
take to the lodge to-night ; and Mr. John Bar-
low, her groom, has offered Harry twelve and
sixpence for five ground-ashes that Harry has
been so lucky as to find by the spring, and
Harry is gone to cut them : so that now we
shall get on bravely, and mother need not fret
any longer. I hope no harm will befal Harry
in getting the ground-ash, though, for it's a
noted dangerous place. But he's a careful
boy."

Just at this point of her little speech, poor
Bessy was interrupted by her brother, who ran
down the declivity exclaiming, " They're gone,
Bessy ! — they're gone ! somebody has taken
them ! the ground-ashes are gone !"

Dick put his hand irresolutely to his pocket,
and then, uttering a dismal whistle, pulled it

132 THE GROUND-ASH.

resolutely out again, with a hardness, or an
affectation of hardness, common to all lads, from
the prince to the stable-boy.

I also put my hand into my pocket, and
found, with the deep disappointment which
often punishes such carelessness, that I had left
ray purse at home. All that I could do, there-
fore, was to bid the poor children be comforted,
and ascertain at what time Bessy intended to
take her roots, which in the midst of her distress
she continued to dig up, to my excellent friend
I^ady Denys. I then, exhorting them to hope
the best, made my way quickly out of the wood.

Arriving at the gate, I missed my attendant.
Before, however, I had reached the farm at
which we had left our phaeton, I heard his gay-
est and most triumphant whistle behind me.
Thinking of the poor children, it jarred upon
my feelings. " Where have you been loitering,
Sir?" I asked, in a sterner voice than he had
probably ever heard from me before.

" Where have I been ?" replied he ; " giving
little Harry the ground- ashes, to be sure : I felt
just as if I had stolen them. And now, I do

THE GROUND -ASH. 133

believe," continued he, with a prodigious burst
of whistling, which seemed to me as melodious
as the song of the nightingale, " I do believe,"
quoth Dick, " that I am happier than they are.
I would not have kept those ground- ashes, no,
not for fifty pounds !"

134

MR. JOSEPH HANSON, THE HABER-
DASHER.

These are good days for great heroes ; so far at
least as regards the general spread and universal
diffusion of celebrity. In the matter of fame,
indeed, that grand bill upon posterity which is
to be found written in the page of history, and the
changes of empires, Alexander may, for aught I
know, be nearly on a par with the Duke of Wel-
lington ; but in point of local and temporary
tributes to reputation, the great ancient, king
though he were, must have been far behind the
great modern. Even that comparatively recent
warrior, the Duke of Marlborough, made but a
slight approach to the popular honours paid to
the conqueror of Napoleon. A few alehouse signs

THE HABERDASHER. 135

and the ballad of " Marlbrook s'en va't en guerre,"
(for we are not talking now of the titles, and pen-
sions, and palaces, granted to him by the Sovereign
and the Parliament,) seem to have been the chief
if not the only popular demonstrations vouch-
safed by friends and enemies to the hero of
Blenheim.

The name of Wellington, on the other hand, is
necessarily in every man's mouth at every hour
of every day. He is the universal godfather of
every novelty, whether in art, in literature, or in
science. Streets, bridges, places, crescents, ter-
races, and railways, on the land ; steam -boats
on the water; balloons in the air, are all distin-
guished by that honoured appellation. We live
in Wellington squares, we travel in Wellington
coaches, we dine in Wellington hotels, we are
educated in WeUington establishments, and are
clothed from top to toe (that is to say the male
half of the nation) in Wellington boots, Welling-
ton cloaks, Wellington hats, each of which shall
have been severally purchased at a warehouse
bearing the same distinguished title.

Since every market town and almost every

136 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

village in the kingdom, could boast a Wellington
house, or a Waterloo house, emulous to catch
some gilded ray from the blaze of their great name-
sake's glory, it would have been strange indeed if
the linendrapers and haberdashers of our good
town of Belford Regis had been so much in the
rear of fashion as to neglect this easy method of
puffing off their wares. On the contrary, so much
did our shopkeepers rely upon the influence of
an illustrious appellation, that they seemed to de-
spair of success unless sheltered by the laurels
of the great commander, and would press his
name into the service, even after its accustomed
and legitimate forms of use seemed exhausted.
Accordingly we had not only a Wellington house
and a Waterloo house, but a new Waterloo
establishment, and a genuine and original Duke
of Wellington warehouse.

The new W^aterloo establishment, a flashy
dashy shop in the market-place, occupying a
considerable extent of frontage, and " conducted
(as the advertisements have it) by Mr. Joseph
Hanson, late of London," put forth by far the
boldest pretensions of any magazine of finery and

THE HABERDASHER. 137

frippery in the town ; and it is with that magni-
ficent store^ and with that only, that I intend to
deal in the present story.

If the celebrated Mr. PufF, he of the Critic,
who, although Sheridan probably borrowed the
idea of that most amusing personage from the
auctioneers and picture-dealers of Foote's admi-
rable farces, first reduced to system the art of
profitable lying, setting forth methodically
(scientifically it would be called in these days)
the different genera and species of that flourishing
craft — if Mr. Puff himself were to revisit this
mortal stage, he would lift up his hands and eyes
in admiration and astonishment at the improve-
ments which have taken place in the art from
whence he took, or to which he gave, a name (for
the fact is doubtful) the renowned art of Puff-
ing !

Talk of the progress of society, indeed ! of the
march of intellect, and the diffusion of know-
ledge, of infant schools and adult colleges, of
gas-lights and rail-roads, of steam-boats and
steam-coaches, of literature for nothing, and

138 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

science for less ! What are they and fifty other
such nick-nacks compared with the vast strides
made by this improving age in the grand art of
puffing ? Nay, are they not for the most part
mere implements and accessories of that mighty
engine of trade ? What is half the march of in-
tellect, but puffery? Why do little children
learn their letters at school, but that they may
come hereafter to read puffs at college? Why
but for the propagation of puffs do honorary lec-
turers hold forth upon science, and gratuitous
editors circulate literature ? Are not gas-lights
chiefly used for their illumination, and steam-
boats for their spread ? And shall not history,
which has given to one era the name of the age
of gold, and has entitled another the age of sil-
ver, call this present nineteenth century the age
of puffs?

Take up the first thing upon your table, the
newspaper for instance, or the magazine, the
decorated drawing-box, the Bramah pen, and
twenty to one but a puff more or less direct shall
lurk in the patent of the one, while a whole

THE HABERDASHER. 139

congeries of puffs shall swarm in bare and undis-
guised effrontery between the pages of the
other.

Walk into the streets ; — and what meet you
there ? Puffs ! puffs ! puffs ! From the dead
walls, chalked over with recommendations to
purchase Mr. Such-an-one's blacking, to the
walking placard insinuating the excellences of
Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's Cream Gin* — from the
bright resplendent brass-knob, garnished with the
significant words " Office Bell," beside the door
of an obscure surveyor, to the spruce carriage of
a newly arrived physician driving emp^y up and

* He was a genius in his line (I had ahnost written
an evil genius) who invented that rare epithet^ that
singular combination of the sweetest and purest of all
luxuries, the most healthful and innocent of dainties,
redolent of association so rural and poetical, with the
vilest abominations of great cities, the impure and dis-
gusting source of misery and crime. Cream Gin ! The
union of such words is really a desecration of one of
nature's most genial gifts, as well as a burlesque on the
charming old pastoral poets ; a flagrant offence against
morals, and against that which in its highest sense may
almost be considered a branch of morality— taste.

140 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

down the street, everything whether movable
or stationary is a puff.

But shops form, of course, the chief locality of
the craft of puffing. The getting off of goods is
its grand aim and object. And of all shops
those which are devoted to the thousand and one
articles of female decoration, the few^ things
which women do, and the many which they do
not want, stand pre-eminent in this great art of
the nineteenth century.

Not to enter upon the grand manoeuvres of the
London establishments, the doors for carriages
to set down and the doors for carriages to take
up, indicating an affluence of customers, a de-
gree of crowd and inconvenience equal to the
King's Theatre, on a Saturday night, or the
queen's drawing-room on a birthday, and at-
tracting the whole female world by that which
in a fashionable cause the whole female world
loves so dearly, confusion, pressure, heat and
noise ; — to say nothing of those bold schemes
which require the multitudes of the metropolis to
afford them the slightest°chance of success, w^e in

THE HABERDASHER. 141

our good borough of Belford Regis, simple as it
stands, had, as I have said, as pretty a show of
speculating haberdashers as any country town of
its inches could well desire ; the most eminent of
whom was beyond all question or competition, the
proprietor of the New Waterloo Establishment,
Mr. Joseph Hanson, late of London.

His shop displayed, asl have already intimated,
one of the largest and showiest frontages in the
market-place, and had been distinguished by a
greater number of occupants and a more rapid
succession of failures in the same line than any
other in the town.

The last tenant, save one, of that celebrated
warehouse — the penultimate bankrupt — had
followed the beaten road of pufBng, and an-
nounced his goods as the cheapest ever manu-
factured. According to himself, his handbills,
and his advertisements, everything contained in
that shop was so very much under prime cost,
that the more he sold the sooner he must be
ruined. To hear him, you would expect not
only that he should give his ribbons and mus-

142 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

lins for nothing, but that he should offer you a
premium for consenting to accept of them.
Gloves, handkerchiefs, nightcaps, gown-pieces,
every article at the door and in the window was
covered with tickets, each nearly as large as
itself, tickets that might be read across the
market-place; and townspeople and country-
people came flocking round about, some to stare
and some to buy. The starers were, however, it is
to be presumed, more numerous than the
buyers, for notwithstanding his tickets, his hand-
bills, and his advertisements, in less than six
months the advertiser had failed, and that stock
never, as it's luckless owner used to say, ap-
proached for cheapness, was sold oflP at half its
original price.

Warned by his predecessor's fate, the next
comer adopted a newer and a nobler style
of attracting public attention. He called him-
self a steady trader of the old school, abjured
cheapness as synonymous with cheating, dis-
claimed everything that savoured of a puff",
denounced handbills and advertisements, and

THE HABERDASHER. 143

had not a ticket in his whole shop. He cited
the high price of his articles as proofs of their
goodness, and would have held himself disgraced
for ever if he had been detected in selling a
reasonable piece of goods. " He could not,"
he observed, " expect to attract the rabble by
such a mode of transacting business; his aim
was to secure a select body of customers
amongst the nobility and gentry, persons who
looked to quality and durability in their pur-
chases, and were capable of estimating the solid
advantages of dealing with a tradesman who
despised the trumpery artifices of the day."

So high-minded a declaration, enforced too by
much solemnity of utterance and appearance —
the speaker being a solid, substantial, middle-
aged man, equipped in a full suit of black, with
a head nicely powdered, and a pen stuck behind
his ear — such a declaration from so important a
personage ought to have succeeded ; but some-
how or other it did not. His customers, gentle
and simple, were more select than nume-
rous, and in another six months the high-price

144 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

man failed just as the low-price man had
failed before him.

Their successor, INIr. Joseph Hanson, claimed
to unite in his own person the several merits of
both his antecedents. Cheaper than the cheap-
est, better, finer, more durable, than the best,
nothing at all approaching his assortment of
linendrapery had, as he swore, and his head
shopman, Mr. Thomas Long, asseverated, ever
been seen before in the streets of Belford Regis ;
and the oaths of the master and the assevera-
tions of the man, together with a very grand dis-
play of fashions and finery, did really seem, in
the first instance at least, to attract more cus-
tomers than had of late visited those unfortunate
premises.

Mr. Joseph Hanson and Mr. Thomas Long
were a pair admirably suited to the concern, and
to one another. Each possessed pre-eminently
the various requisites and qualifications in which
the other happened to be deficient. Tall, slen-
der, elderly, with a fine bald head, a mild coun-
tenance, a most insinuating address, and a gene-

THE HABERDASHER. 145

ral air of faded gentility, Mr. Thomas Long was
exactly the foreman to give respectability to his
employer; whilst bold, fluent, rapid, loud, dashing
in aspect and manner, with a great fund of
animal spirits, and a prodigious stock of assu-
rance and conceit, respectability was, to say the
truth, the precise qualification which Mr. Joseph
Hanson most needed.

Then the good town of Belford being divided,
like most other country towns, into two prevail-
ing factions, theological and political, the wor-
thies whom I am attempting to describe pru-
dently endeavoured to catch all parties by em-
bracing different sides; Mr. Joseph Hanson being
a tory and high -churchman of the very first
water, who showed his loyalty according to the
most approved faction, by abusing his Ma-
jesty's ministers as revolutionary, thwarting the
town-council, getting tipsy at conservative din-
ners, and riding twenty miles to attend an emi-
nent preacher who wielded in a neighbouring
county all the thunders of orthodoxy; whilst
the soft-spoken Mr. Thomas Long was a Dis-

H

146 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

senter and a radical, who proved his allegiance
to the House of Brunswick (for both claimed to
be amongst the best wishers to the present dy-
nasty and the reigning sovereign) by denounc-
ing the government as weak and aristocratic,
advocating the abolition of the peerage, getting
up an operative reform club, and going to chapel
three times every Sunday.

These measures succeeded so well, that the
allotted six months (the general period of failure
in that concern) elapsed, and still found Mr.
Joseph Hanson as flourishing as ever in man-
ner, and apparently flourishing in trade; they
stood him, too, in no small stead, in a matter
which promised to be still more conducive to
his prosperity than buying and selling feminine
gear, — ^in the grand matter (for Joseph jocosely
professed to be a forlorn bachelor upon the look-
out for a wife) of a wealthy marriage.

One of the most thrifty and thriving trades-
men in the town of Belford, was old John Par-
sons, the tinman. His spacious shop, crowded
with its ghttering and rattling commodities,

THE HABERDASHER. 147

pots, pans, kettles, meat-covers, in a word, the
whole hatterie de cuisine, was situate in the
narrow, inconvenient lane called Oriel Street,
which I have already done myself the honour of
introducing to the courteous reader, standing
betwixt a great chemist on one side, his win-
dows filled with coloured jars, red, blue, and
green, looking like painted glass, or like the
fruit made of gems in Aladdin's garden, (I am
as much taken myself with those jars in a che-
mist's window as ever was Miss Edgeworth's
Rosamond,) and an eminent china warehouse on
the other ; our tinman having the honour to be
next-door neighbour to no less a lady than Mrs.
Philadelphia Tyler. Many a thriving trades-
man might be found in Oriel Street, and many
a blooming damsel amongst the tradesmen's
daughters ; but if the town gossip might be be-
lieved, the richest of all the rich shopkeepers
was old John Parsons, and the prettiest girl
(even without reference to her father's money-
bags) was his fair daughter Harriet.

John Parsons was one of those loud, violent,
blustering, boisterous personages who always

H 2

148 MR. JOSEPH HANSON.

put me in mind of the description so often ap-
pended to characters of that sort in the dra-
matis personse of Beaumont and Fletcher's
plays, where one constantly meets with Ernul-
pho or Bertoldo, or some such Italianised ap-
pellation, "an old angry gentleman." The
" old angry gentleman" of the fine old dramatists
generally keeps the promise of the play-bill. He
storms and . rails during the whole five acts,
scolding those the most whom he loves the best,
making all around him uncomfortable, and yet
meaning fully to do right, and firmly convinced
that he is himself the injured party ; and after
quarrelling with cause or without to the end of
the comedy, makes fi'iends all round at the conclu-
sion : — a sort of person whose good intentions
everybody appreciates, but from whose violence
everybody that can is sure to get away.

Now such men are just as common in the
real workaday world as in the old drama ; and
precisely such a man was John Parsons.

His daughter was exactly the sort of creature
that such training was calculated to produce;
gentle, timid, shrinking, fond of her father, who

THE HABERDASHER. 149

indeed doated upon her, and would have sacri-
ficed his whole substance, his right arm, his
life, anything except his will or his humour, to
give her a moment's pleasure ; gratefully fond
of her father, but yet more afraid than fond.

The youngest and only surviving child of a
large family, and brought up without a mother's
care, since Mrs. Parsons had died in her in-
fancy, there was a delicacy and fragility, a slen-
derness of form and transparency of complexion,
which, added to her gentleness and modesty,
gave an unexpected elegance to the tinman's
daughter. A soft appealing voice, dove-like
eyes, a smile rather sweet than gay, a constant
desire to please, and a total unconsciousness of
her own attractions, were amongst her chief cha-
racteristics. Some persons hold the theory that
dissimilarity answers best in matrimony, and
such persons would have found a most satisfac-
tory contrast of appearance, mind, and manner,
between the fair Harriet and her dashing
suitor.

Besides his one great and distinguishing qua-
lity of assurance and vulgar pretension, which it

150 MR. JOSEPH HANSON.

is difficult to describe by any word short of
impudence, Mr. Joseph Hanson Mas by no
means calculated to please the eye of a damsel
of seventeen, an age at which a man who owned
to five-and-thirty, and who looked and most
probably was at least ten years farther advanced
on the journey of life, v/ould not fail to be set
down as a confirmed old bachelor. He had, too,
a large mouth, full of large irregular teeth, a
head of hair which bore a great resemblance to
a wig, and a suspicion of a squint, (for it did
not quite amount to that odious deformity,)
which added a most sinister expression to his
countenance. Harriet Parsons could not abide
him ; and I verily believe she would have dis-
liked him just as much though a certain Fre-
derick Mallet had never been in existence.

How her father, a dissenter, a radical, and a
steady tradesman of the old school, who hated
puffs and puffery, and finery and fashion, came
to be taken in by a man opposed to him in reli-
gion and politics, in action and in speech, was a
riddle that puzzled half the gossips in Belford.
It happened through a mutual enmity, often (to

THE HABERDASHER. 151

tell an unpalatable truth of poor human nature)
a stronger bond of union than a mutual af-
fection.

Thus it fell out.

Amongst the reforms carried into effect by the
town-council, whereof John Parsons was a lead-
ing member, was the establishment of an efficient
new police to replace the incapable old watch-
men, who had hitherto been the sole guardians
of life and property in our ancient borough. As
far as the principle went, the liberal party were
united and triumphant. They split, as liberals
are apt to split, upon the rock of detail. It so
happened that a turnpike, belonging to one of
the roads leading into Belford, had been re-
moved, by order of the commissioners, half a
mile farther from the town ; — half a mile indeed
beyond the town boundary ; and although there
were only three houses, one a beer-shop, and the
two others small tenements inhabited by labour-
ing people, between the site of the old turnpike
at the end of Prince's Street, and that of the
new, at the King's Head Pond, our friend the
tinman, who was nothing if not crotchetty, in-

152 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

sisted with so much pertinacity upon the per-
ambulation of the blue-coated officials ap-
pointed for that beat, being extended along the
highway for the distance aforesaid, that the
whole council were set together by the ears, and
the measure had very nearly gone by the board
in consequence. The imminence of the peril saved
them. The danger of reinstating the ancient
Dogberry s of the watch, and still worse, of giving
a triumph to the tories, brought the reformers
to their senses — all except the man of tin, who,
becoming only the more confirmed in his own
opinion as ally after ally fell off from him, per-
sisted in dividing the council six different times,
and had the gratification of finding himself on
each of the three last divisions, in a minority of
one. He was about to bring forward the question
upon a seventh occasion, when a hint as to the
propriety in such case of moving a vote of censure
against him for wasting the time of the board,
caused him to secede from the council in a fury,
and to quarrel with the whole municipal body,
from the mayor downward.

Now the mayor, a respectable and intelligent

THE HABERDASHER. 153

attorney, heretofore John Parsons' most inti-
mate friend, happened to have been brought
publicly and privately into collision with Mr.
Joseph Hanson, who, delighted to find an occa-
sion on which he might at once indulge his aver-
sion to the civic dignitary, and promote the
interest of his love-suit, was not content with
denouncing the corporation de vive voLv, but
wrote three grandiloquent letters to the Belford
Courant, in which he demonstrated that the
welfare of the borough, and the safety of the
constitution, depended upon the police parading
regularly, by day and by night, along the high
road to the King's Head Pond, and that none
but a pettifogging chief magistrate, and an in-
capable town-council, corrupt tools of a corrupt
administration, could have had the gratuitous
audacity to cause the policeman to turn at the
top of Prince's Street, thereby leaving the per-
sons and property of his majesty's liege sub-
jects unprotected and uncared for. He enlarged
upon the fact of the tenements in question being
occupied by agricultural labourers, a class over
whom, as he observed, the demagogues now in

H 5

154 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

power delighted to tyrannise ; and concluded his
flourishing appeal to the conservatives of the
borough, the county, and the empire at large,
by a threat of getting up a petition against the
council, and bringing the whole affair before the
two Houses of Parliament.

Although this precious epistle was signed
Amicus Patriae, the writer was far too proud of
his production to entrench himself behind the
inglorious shield of a fictitious signature, and as
the mayor, professionally indignant at the epi-
thet pettifogging, threatened both the editor of
the Belford Courant and Mr. Joseph Hanson
with an action for libel, it followed, as matter of
course, that John Parsons not only thought the
haberdasher the most able and honest man in
the borough, but regarded him as the champion,
if not the martyr, of his cause, and one who
deserved everything that he had to bestow, even
to the hand and portion of the pretty Harriet.

Affairs were in this posture, when one fine
morning the chief magistrate of Belford entered
the tinman's shop.

" Mr. Parsons," said the worthy dignitary, in

THE HABERDASHER. 155

a very conciliatory tone, " you may be as angry
with me as you like, but I find from our good
vicar that the fellow Hanson has applied to him
for a licence, and I cannot let you throw away
my little friend Harriet without giving you
warning, that a long and bitter repentance will
follow such a union. There are emergencies
in which it becomes a duty to throw aside pro-
fessional niceties, and to sacrifice etiquette to
the interests of an old friendship ; and I tell
you, as a prudent man, that I know of my
own knowledge that this intended son-in-law of
your's will be arrested before the wedding-day."

" I'll bail him," said John Parsons, stoutly.

" He is not worth a farthing," quoth the chief
magistrate.

" I shall give him ten thousand pounds with
my daughter," answered the man of pots and
kettles.

" I doubt if ten thousand pounds will pay his
just debts," rejoined the mayor.

" Then I'll give him twenty," responded the
tinman.

" He has failed in five different places within

1.36 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

the last five years," persisted the pertinacious
adviser ; " has run away from his creditors. Hea-
ven knows how often; has taken the benefit of
the Act time after time ! You would not give
your own sweet Harriet, the best and prettiest
girl in the county, to an adventurer, the history
of whose life is to be found in the Gazette and
the Insolvent Court, and who is a high church-
man and a tory to boot. Surely you would not
fling away your daughter and your honest earn-
ings upon a man of notorious bad character,
with whom you have not an opinion or a preju-
dice in common ? Just think what the other
party will say !"

"I'll tell you what, Mr. Mallet or Mr.
Mayor, if you prefer the sound of your new
dignity," broke out John Parsons, in a fury, " I
shall do what I like with my money and my
daughter, without consulting you, or caring what
anybody may chance to say, whether whig or
tory. For my part, I think there's little to
choose between them. One side's as bad as the
other. Tyrants in office and patriots out. If
Hanson is a conservative and a churchman, his

THE HABERDASHER. 157

foreman is a radical and a dissenter ; and they
neither of them pretend to dictate to their bet-
ters, which is more than I can say of some who
call themselves reformers. Once for all, I tell
you that he shall marry my Harriet, and that
your nephew sha'n't: so now you may arrest
him as soon as you like. Fm not to be managed
here, however you and your tools may carry
matters at the Town Hall. An Englishman's
house is his castle."

" Well," said Mr. Mallet, "I am going.
God knows I came out of old friendship towards
yourself, and sincere affection for the dear girl
your daughter. As to my nephew, besides that
I firmly believe the young people like each
other, I know him to be as steady a lad as ever
drew a conveyance ; and with what his father
has left him, and what I can give him, to say
nothing of his professional prospects, he would
be a fit match for Harriet as far as money goes.
But if you are determined — "

" I am determined," roared John Parsons.
" Before next week is out, Joseph Hanson shall
be my son-in-law. And now, sir, I advise you

158 MR. JOSEPH HANSON,

to go and drill your police." And the tinman
retired from behind the counter into the interior
of his dwelling, (for this colloquy had taken
place in the shop,) banging the door behind him
with a violence that really shook the house.

" Poor pretty Harriet !" thought the compas-
sionate chief magistrate, " and poor Frederick
too ! The end of next week ! This is only
Monday ; something may turn up in that time ;
we must make inquiries ; I had feared that it
would have been earlier. My old tetchy friend
here is just the man to have arranged the mar-
riage one day, and had the ceremony performed
the next. We must look about us." And full
of such cogitations, the mayor returned to his
habitation.

On the Thursday week after this conversa-
tion a coach drew up, about eight o'clock in the
morning, at the gate of St. Stephen''s church-
yard, and Mr. Joseph Hanson, in all the gloss
of bridal finery, newly clad from top to toe,
smiling and smirking at every instant, jumped
down, followed by John Parsons, and prepared
to hand out his reluctant bride elect, when

THE HABERDASHER. 159

Mr. Mallet, with a showy-looking middle-aged
woman (a sort of feminine of Joseph himself)
hanging upon his arm, accosted our friend the
tinman.

" Stop !" cried the mayor.

" What for ?" inquired John Parsons . " If
it's a debt, I've already told you that I'll be his
bail."

" It is a debt," responded the chief magis-
trate; "and one that luckily he must pay,
and not you. Three years ago he married this
lady at Liverpool. We have the certificate and
all the documents."

" Yes, sir," added the injured fair one ; " and
I find that he has another wife in Dublin, and a
third at Manchester. I have heard, too, that
he ran away with a young lady to Scotland ;
but that don't count, as he was under age."

" Four wives !" ejaculated John Parsons, in
a transport of astonishment and indignation.
" Why the man is an absolute great Turk !
But the thing's impossible. Come and answer
for yourself, Joseph Hanson."

And the tinman turned to look for his intended

160 MR. JOSEPH HANSON, &C.

son-in-law; but frightened at the sight of the
fair claimant of his hand and person, the bride-
groom had absconded, and John Parsons and
the mayor had nothing for it but to rejoin the
pretty Harriet, smiling through her tears as she
sate with her bride-maiden in the coach at the
churchyard-gate.

" Well ; it's a great escape ! and we're for
ever obliged to you, Mr. Mayor. Don't cry any
more, Harriet. If Frederick was but here, why,

in spite of the policemen but a week hence

will do as well ; and I am beginning to be of
Harriet's mind, that even if he had not had
three or four wives, we should be well off to be
fairly rid of Mr. Joseph Hanson, the puffing
haberdasher."

161

THE BEAUTY OF THE VILLAGE.

Three years ago, Hannah Colson was, beyond
all manner of dispute, the prettiest girl in
Aberleigh. It was a rare union of face, form,
complexion, and expression. Of that just height,
which, although certainly tall, would yet hardly
be called so, her figure united to its youthful
roundness, and still more youthful lightness, an
airy flexibility, a bounding grace, and when
in repose, a gentle dignity, which alternately
reminded one of a fawn bounding through the
forest, or a swan at rest upon the lake. A
sculptor would have modelled her for the
youngest of the Graces ; whilst a painter, caught
by the bright colouring of that fair blooming
face, the white forehead so vividly contrasted by
the masses of dark curls, the jet-black eye-

16*2 THE BEAUTY

brows, and long rich eyelashes, which shaded
her finely-cut grey eye, and the pearly teeth
disclosed by the scarlet lips, whose every move-
ment was an unconscious smile, would doubtless
have selected her for the very goddess of youth.
Beyond all question, Hannah Colson, at eigh-
teen, was the beauty of Aberleigh, and, unfor-
tunately, no inhabitant of that populous village
was more thoroughly aware that she was so than
the fair damsel herself.

Her late father, good Master Colson, had
been all his life a respectable and flourishing
master bricklayer in the place. Many a man
with less pretensions to the title would call him-
self a builder now-a-days, or " by'r lady,"" an
architect, and put forth a flaming card, vaunting
his accomplishments in the mason's craft, his
skill in plans and elevations, and his unparal-
leled dispatch and cheapness in carrying his
designs into execution. But John Colson was
no new-fangled personage. A plain honest
tradesman was our bricklayer, and thoroughly
of the old school ; one who did his duty to his
employers with punctual industry, who was

OF THE VILLAGE. 163

never above his calling, a good son, a good
brother, a good husband, and an excellent
father, who trained up a large family in the way
they should go, and never entered a pubHc-
house in his life.

The loss of this invaluable parent about three
years before had been the only grief that Hannah
Colson had known. But as her father, although
loving her with the mixture of pride and fond-
ness, which her remarkable beauty, her delight-
ful gaiety, and the accident of her being by
many years the youngest of his children, ren-
dered natural, if not excusable, had yet been
the only one about her, who had discernment
to perceive, and authority to check her little
ebullitions of vanity and self-will; she felt, as
soon as the first natural tears were wiped away,
that a restraint had been removed, and, scarcely
knowing why, was too soon consoled for the
greatest misfortune that could possibly have
befallen one so dangerously gifted. Her mother
was a kind, good, gentle woman, who having by
necessity worked hard in the early part of her
life, still continued the practice, partly from

164 THE BEAUTY

inclination, partly from a sense of duty? and
partly from mere habit, and amongst her many
excellent qualities had the Ailie Dinmont pro-
pensity of giving all her children their own
way,* especially this the blooming cadette of
the family : and her eldest brother, a bachelor,
— who, succeeding to his father's business, took
his place as master of the house, retaining his
surviving parent as its mistress, and his pretty
sister as something between a plaything and a
pet, both in their several ways seemed vying
with each other as to which should most tho-
roughly humour and indulge the lovely creature
whom nature had already done her best or her
worst to spoil to their hands.

Her other brothers and sisters, married and
dispersed over the coimtry, had of course no
authority, even if they had wished to assume
anything like power over the graceful and

* " Eh, poor things, what else have I to give them ?"
This reply of Ailie Dinmont, and indeed her whole
sweet character, short though it be, has always seemed
to me the finest female sketch in the Waverly Novels
— finer even, because so much tenderer, than the bold
and honest Jeanie Deans.

OF THE VILLAGE. 165

charming young woman whom every one be-
longing to her felt to be an object of pride and
delight ; so that their presents and caresses
and smiling invitations aided in strengthening
Hannah's impression, poor girl though she were,
that her little world, the small horizon of her
own secluded hamlet, was made for her, and for
her only -, and if this persuasion had needed any
additional confirmation, such confirmation would
have been found in the universal admiration of
the village beaux, and the envy, almost as ge-
neral, of the village belles, particularly in the
latter ; the envy of rival beauties being, as every-
body knows, of all flatteries the most piquant and
seducing — in a word, the most genuine and real.
The only person from whom Hannah Colson
ever heard that rare thing called truth, was her
friend and school- fellow, Lucy Meadows, a
young woman two or three years older than her-
self in actual age, and half a lifetime more ad-
vanced in the best fruits of mature age, in clear-
ness of judgment, and steadiness of conduct.

A greater contrast of manner and character
than that exhibited between the light-headed

166 THE BEAUTY

and light-hearted beauty, and her mild and quiet
companion could hardly be imagined. Lucy
was pretty too, very pretty ; but it was the calm,
sedate, composed expression, the pure alabaster
complexion, the soft dove-like eye, the general
harmony and delicacy of feature and of form
that we so often observe in a female Friend ;
and her low gentle voice, her retiring deport-
ment, and quaker-like simplicity of dress were
in perfect accordance with that impression. Her
clearness of intellect, also, and rectitude of un-
derstanding, were such as are often found
amongst that intelligent race of people; al-
though there was an intuitive perception of cha-
racter and motive, a fineness of observation
under that demure and modest exterior, that, if
Lucy had ever in her life been ten miles from
her native village, might have been called know-
ledge of the world.

How she came by this quality, which some
women seem to possess by instinct. Heaven
only knows ! Her early gravity of manner, and
sedateness of mind, might be more easily ac-
counted for. Poor Lucy was an orphan, and

OF THE VILLAGE. 167

had from the asre of fourteen been called
upon to keep house for her only brother, a
young man of seven or eight-and-twenty, well to
do in the world, who, as the principal carpenter
of Aberleigh, had had much intercourse with
the Colsons in the way of business, and was on
the most fi-iendly terms with the whole family.

With one branch of that family James Mea-
dows would fain have been upon terms nearer
and dearer than those of friendship. Even be-
fore John Colson's death, his love for Hannah,
although not openly avowed, had been the object
of remark to the whole village ; and it is certain
that the fond and anxious father found his last
moments soothed by the hope that the happiness
and prosperity of his favourite child were secured
by the attachment of one so excellent in charac-
ter and respectable in situation.

James Meadows was indeed a man to whom
any father would have confided his dearest and
loveliest daughter with untroubled confidence.
He joined to the calm good sense and quiet ob-
servation that distinguished his sister, an inven-
tive and constructive power, which, turned as it

168 THE BEAUTY

was to the purposes of his own trade, rendered
him a most ingenious and dexterous mechanic :
and which only needed the spur of emulation, or
the still more active stimulus of personal ambi-
tion, to procure for him high distinction in any
line to which his extraordinary faculty of inven-
tion and combination might be applied.

Ambition, however, he had none. He was
happily quite free from that tormenting task-
master, who, next perhaps to praise, makes the
severest demand on human faculty, and human
labour. To maintain in the spot where he was
born, the character for honesty, independence,
and industry, that his father had borne before
him, to support in credit and comfort the sister
whom he loved so well, and one whom he loved
still better, formed the safe and humble boun-
dary of his wishes. But with the contrariety
with which fortune so often seems to pursue
those who do not follow her, his success far out-
stripped his moderate desires. The neighbour-
ing gentlemen soon discovered his talent. Em-
ployment poured in upon him. His taste proved
to be equal to his skill ; and from the ornamen-

OF THE VILLAGE. 169

tal out-door work — the Swiss cottages, and fancy
dairies, the treillage and the rustic seats belong-
ing to a great country place, — to the most deli-
cate mouldings of the boudoir and the saloon,
nothing went well that wanted the guiding eye
and finishing hand of James Meadows. The
best workmen were proud to be employed by
him ; the most respectable yeomen offered their
sons as his apprentices ; and without any such
design on his part, our village carpenter was in
a fair way to become one of the wealthiest trades-
men in the county.

His personal character and peculiarly modest
and respectful manners contributed not a little to
his popularity with his superiors. He was a fair
slender young man, with a pale complexion, a
composed but expressive countenance, a thought-
ful, deep-set, grey eye, and a remarkably fine head,
with a profusion of curling brown hair, which
gave a distinguished air to his whole appearance ;
so that he was constantly taken by strangers for
a gentleman ; and the gentle propriety with
which he was accustomed to correct the mistake
was such as seldom failed to heighten their esti-

T

170 THE BEAUTY

mation of the individual, whilst it set them right
as to his station. Hannah Colson, with all her
youthful charms, might think herself a lucky
damsel in securing the affections of such a lover
as this ; and that she did actually think so was
the persuasion of those who knew her best — of
her mother, of her brother William, and of Lucy
Meadows ; although the coy, fantastic beauty,
shy as a ring-dove, wild as a fawn of the forest,
was so far from confessing any return of affec-
tion, that whilst suffering his attentions, and ac-
cepting his escort to the rural gaieties which be-
seemed her age, she would now profess, even
while hanging on his arm, her intention of never
marrying, and now coquet before his eyes with
some passing admirer whom she had never seen
before. She took good care, however, not to go
too far in her coquetry, or to flirt twice with the
same person ; and so contrived to temper her re-
solutions against matrimony with "nods and
becks and wreathed smiles," that, modest as he
was by nature, and that natural modesty en-
hanced by the diffidence which belongs to
a deep and ardent passion, James Meadows

OF THE VILLAGE. 171

himself saw no real cause for fear in the
pretty petulance of his fair mistress, in a
love of power so full of playful grace that it
seemed rather a charm than a fault, and in a
blushing reluctance to change her maiden state,
and lose her maiden freedom, which had in his
eyes all the attractions of youthful shamefaced-
ness. That she would eventually be his own
dear wife, James entertained no manner of
doubt ; and, pleased with all that pleased her,
was not unwilling to prolong the happy days of
courtship.

In this humour Lucy had left him, when,
towards the end of May, she had gone for the first
time to spend a few weeks with some relations in
London. Her cousins were kind and wealthy ;
and, much pleased with the modest intelligence of
their young kinswoman, they exerted themselves
to render their house agreeable to her, and to
show her the innumerable sights of the Queen of
Cities. So that her stay, being urged by James,
who, thoroughly unselfish, rejoiced to find his
sister so well amused, was prolonged to the end
of July, when, alarmed at the total cessation of

i2

172 THE BEAUTY

letters from Hannah, and at the constrained and
dispirited tone which she discovered, or fancied
that she discovered in her brother's, Lucy re-
solved to hasten home.

He received her with his usual gentle kind-
ness and his sweet and thoughtful smile ; assured
her that he was well ; exerted himself more than
usual to talk, and waived away her anxious ques-
tions by extorting from her an account of her
journey and her residence, of all that she had
seen, and of her own feelings on returning to her
country home after so long a sojourn in the
splendid and beautiful metropolis. He talked
more than was usual with him ; and more gaily ;
but still Lucy was dissatisfied. The hand that
had pressed hers on alighting was cold as death ;
the lip that had kissed her fair brow was pale
and trembling ; his appetite was gone, and his
frequent and apparently unconscious habit of
pushing away the clustering curls from his fore-
head proved, as plainly as words could have
done, that there was pain in the throbbing tem-
ples. The pulsation was even visible ; but still
he denied that he was ill, and declared that her

OF THE VILLAGE. 173

notion of his having grown thin and pale was
nothing but a woman's fancy, — the fond whim of
a fond sister.

To escape from the subject he took her into
the garden,— her own pretty flower garden, di-
vided by a wall covered with creepers from the
larger plot of ground devoted to vegetables, and
bounded on one side by buildings connected
with his trade, and parted on the other from a
well-stored timber-yard, by a beautiful rustic
screen of fir and oak and birch with the bark
on, which terminating in a graceful curve at the
end next the house, and at that leading to the
garden in a projecting gothic porch, — partly
covered by climbing plants, partly broken by
tall pyramidal hollyhocks, and magnificent dah-
lias, and backed by a clump of tall elms, formed
a most graceful veil to an unsightly object. This
screen had been erected during Lucy's absence,
and without her knowledge; and her brother
smiling at the delight which she expressed,
pointed out to her the splendid beauty of
her flowers and the luxuriant profusion of their
growth.

174 THE BEAUTY

The old buildings matted with roses, honey-
suckles, and jessamines, broken only by the
pretty out-door room which Lucy called her green-
house ; the pile of variously tinted geraniums
in front of that prettiest room; the wall garlanded,
covered, hidden with interwoven myrtles, fus-
chias, passion-flowers, clematis, and the silky
blossoms of the grandiflora pea; the beds filled
with dahlias, salvias, calceolarias, and carnations
of every hue, with the rich purple and the pure
white petunia, with the many-coloured marvel
of Peru, with the enamelled blue of the Siberian
larkspur, with the richly scented changeable
lupine, with the glowing lavatera, the dark-
eyed hybiscus, the pure and alabaster cup of
the white Oenothera, the lilac clusters of the
phlox, and the delicate blossom of the yellow
sultan, most elegant amongst flowers ; — all
these, with a hundred other plants too long to
name, and all their various greens, and the pet
weed mignionette growing like grass in a mea-
dow, and mingling its aromatic odour amongst
the general fragrance — all this sweetness and
beauty glowing in the evening sun, and breath-

OF THE VILLAGE. 175

ing of freshness and of cool air, came with such
a thrill of delight upon the poor village maiden,
who, in spite of her admiration of London, had
languished in its heat and noise and dirt, for
the calm and quiet, the green leaves and the
bright flowers of her country home, that, from
the very fulness of her heart, from joy and grati-
tude and tenderness and anxiety, she flung her
arms round her brother's neck and burst into
tears.

Lucy was usually so calm and self-command-
ed, that such an ebullition of feeling from her
astonished and affected James Meadows more
than any words, however tender. He pressed
her to his heart, and when, following up the
train of her own thoughts, — sure that this kind
brother, who had done so much to please her
was himself unhappy, guessing, and longing, and
yet fearing to know the cause, — when Lucy,
agitated by such feelings, ventured to whisper
" Hannah ?" her brother placing her gently on
the steps leading to the green-house, and lean-
ing himself against the open door, began in a
low and subdued tone to pour out his whole

176 THE BEAUTY

heart to his sympathismg auditress. The story
was nearly such as she had been led to expect
from the silence of one party, and the distress
of the other. A rival — a most unworthy rival —
had appeared upon the scene ; and James
Meadows, besides the fear of losing the lovely
creature whom he had loved so fondly, had the
additional grief of believing that the man whose
flatteries had at least gained from her a flattering
hearing, was of all others the least likely to
make her respectable and happy. — Much misery
may be comprised in few words. Poor James's
story was soon told.

A young and gay Baronet had, as Lucy
knew, taken the manor-house and manor of
Aberleigh : and during her absence, a part of his
retinue with a train of dogs and horses had estab-
lished themselves in the mansion, in preparation
for their master's arrival. Amongst these new
comers, by far the most showy and important
was the head keeper, Edward Forester, a fine
looking young man, with a tall, firm, upright
figure, a clear dark complexion, bright black
eyes, a smile alternately winning and scornful,

OF THE VILLAGE. 177

aud a prodigious fluency of speech, and readi-
ness of compliment. He fell in love with Han-
nah at first sight, and declared his passion the
same afternoon ; and, although discouraged by
every one about her, never failed to parade be-
fore her mother's house two or three times
a-day, mounted on his master's superb blood-
horse, to waylay her in her walks, and to come
across her in her visits. Go where she might,
Hannah was sure to encounter Edward Forester ;
and this devotion from one whose personal at-
tractions extorted as much admiration from the
lasses, her companions, as she herself had been
used to excite amongst the country lads, had in
it, in spite of its ostentatious openness, a flattery
that seemed irresistible.

"I do not think she loves him, Lucy," said
James Meadows, sighingly ; " indeed I am sure
that she does not. She is dazzled by his showi-
ness and his fluency, his horsemanship and his
dancing ; but love him she does not. It is fas-
cination, such a fascination as leads a moth to
flutter round a candle, or a bird to drop into the
rattlesnake's mouth, — and never was flame more

I 5

178 THE BEAUTY

dangerous, or serpent more deadly. He is un-
worthy of her, Lucy, — thoroughly unworthy.
This man, who calls himself devoted to a crea-
ture as innocent as she is lovely, — who pretends
to feel a pure and genuine passion for this pure
and too-believing girl, passes his evenings, his
nights, in drinking, in gambling, in debauchery
of the lowest and most degrading nature. He
is doubtless at this very instant at the wretched
beer-shop at the corner of the common — the
haunt of all that is wicked, and corrupter of all
that is frail, " The Foaming Tankard." It is
there, in the noble game of Four Corners, that
the man who aspires to the love of Hannah
Colson passes his hours. — Lucy, do you remem-
ber the exquisite story of Phcebe Dawson, in
Crabbe's Parish Register?— such as she was,
will Hannah be. I could resign her, Heaven
knows, grievous as the loss would be, to one
whom she loved, and who would ensure her
happiness. But to give her up to Edward
Forester — the very thought is madness !"

" Surely, brother, she cannot know that he is
so unworthy ! surely, surely, when she is con-

OF THE VILLAGE. 179

vinced that he is so, she will throw him off like an
infected garment ! I know Hannah well. She
would be protected from such an one as you de-
scribe, as well by pride as by purity. She can-
not be aware of these propensities."

" She has been told of them repeatedly ; but
he denies the accusation, and she rather believes
his denial than the assertion of her best friends.
Knowing Hannah as you do, Lucy, you cannot
but remember the petulant self-will, the scorn
of contradiction and opposition, which used half
to vex and half to amuse us in the charming
spoilt child. We little dreamt how dangerous
that fault, almost diverting in trifles, might
become in the serious business of life. Her
mother and brother are my warm advocates,
and the determined opponents of my rival ; and
therefore, to assert what she calls her indepen-
dence and her disinterestedness, (for with this
sweet perverse creature the worldly prosperity
which I valued chiefly for her sake makes
against me,) she will fling herself away on one
wholly unworthy of her, one whom she does not

180 THE BEAUTY

even love, and with whom her whole life will be
a scene of degradation and misery."

" Will he be to-night at the Foaming Tan-
kard ? "

" He is there every night."

At this point of their conversation the brother
was called away ; and Lucy, after a little con-
sideration, tied on her bonnet, and walked to
Mrs Colson's.

Her welcome fi-om William Colson and his
mother was as cordial and hearty as ever, per-
haps more so ; Hannah's greetings were affec-
tionate, but constrained. Not to receive Lucy
kindly was impossible ; and yet her own internal
consciousness rendered poor Lucy, next perhaps
to her brother, the very last person whom she
would have desired to see ; and this uncomfort-
able feeling increased to a painful degree, when
the fond sister, with some diminution of her
customary gentleness, spoke to her openly of
her conduct to James, and repeated with strong
and earnest reprehension, all that she had heard
of the conduct and pursuits of her new admirer.

OF THE VILLAGE. 181

" He frequent the Foaming Tankard ! He
drink to intoxication ! He play for days and
nights at Four Corners ! It is a vile slander !
I would answer for it with my life ! He told
me this very day that he has never even entered
that den of infamy."

" I believe him to be there at this very hour,"
replied Lucy, calmly. And Hannah, excited to
the highest point of anger and agitation, dared
Lucy to the instant proof, invited her to go with
her at once to the beer-house, and offered to
abandon all thoughts of Edward Forester if he
proved to be there. Lucy, willing enough to
place the fate of the cause on that issue, pre-
pared to accompany her ; and the* two girls were
so engrossed by the importance of their errand,
that they did not even hear Mrs. Colson's terri
fied remonstrance, who vainly endeavoured to
detain or recal them by 'assurances that small-
pox of the confluent sort was in the house ; and
that she had heard only that very afternoon, that
a young woman, vaccinated at the same time,
and by the same person with her Hannah, lay

182 THE BEAUTY

dead in one of the rooms of the Foamhig
Tankard.

Not listening to, not even hearing her mother,
Hannah walked with the desperate speed of
passion through the village street, up the wind-
ing hill, across the common, along the avenue ;
and reached in less time than seemed possible
the open grove of oaks, in one corner of which
this obnoxious beer-house, the torment and
puzzle of the magistrates, and the pest of the
parish, was situated. There was no sign of
death or sickness about the place. The lights
from the tap-room and the garden, along one
side of which the alley for four-corners was
erected, gleamed in the darkness of a moonless
summer night between the trees ; and even far-
ther than the streaming light, pierced the loud
oaths and louder laughter, the shouts of triumph,
and the yells of defeat, mixed with the dull
heavy blow s of the large wooden bowl, from the
drunken gamesters in the alley.

Hannah started as she heard one voice ; but,
determined to proceed, she passed straight

OF THE VILLAGE. 183

through the garden-gate, and rushed hastily on
to the open shed where the players were assem-
bled. There, stripped of his coat and waistcoat,
in all the agony of an intoxicated gambler, stood
Edward Forester, in the act of staking his gold-
laced hat upon the next cast. He threw and
lost: and casting from him with a furious oath
the massive wooden ball, struck, in his blind
frenzy, the lovely creature transfixed in silent
horror at the side of the alley, who fell with the
blow, and was carried for dead into the Foaming
Tankard.

Hannah did not, however, die ; although her
left arm was broken, her shoulder dislocated,
and much injury inflicted by the fall. She lived,
and she still lives, but no longer as the Beauty
of the Village. Her fine shape injured by the
blow, and her fair face disfigured by the small-
pox, she can no longer boast the surpassing
loveliness which obtained for her the title of the
Rose of Aberleigh. And yet she has gained
more than she has lost, even in mere attraction :

184 THE BEAUTY, &C.

the vain coquettish girl is become a sweet and
gentle woman; gaiety has been replaced by
sensibility, and the sauciness of conscious power,
by the modest wish to please. In her long and
dangerous illness, her slow and doubtful conva-
lescence, Hannah learnt the difficult lesson to
acknowledge and to amend her own faults ; and
when, after many scruples on the score of her
changed person and impaired health, she became
the happy wife of James Meadows, she brought
to him, in a corrected temper and purified
heart, a dowry ftir more precious in his mind
than the transient beauty which had been her
only charm in the eyes of Edward Forester.

185

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

" I'm desperately afear'd, Sue, that that brother
of thine will turn out a jackanapes," was the apos-
trophe of the good yeoman Michael Howe, to his
pretty daughter Susan, as they were walking one
fine afternoon in harvest through some narrow
and richly wooded lanes, which wound between
the crofts of his farm of Rutherford West, situate
in that out-of-the-way part of Berkshire which is
emphatically called " the Low Country," for no
better reason that I can discover than that it is
the very hilliest part of the royal county. " Tm
sadly afear'd. Sue, that he'll turn out a jack-
anapes ! " — and the stout farmer brandished the
tall paddle which served him at once as a walking
stick and a weeding-hook, and began vigorously

186 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

eradicating the huge thistles which grew by the
roadside, as a mere vent for his vexation. " You'll
see that he'll come back an arrant puppy," quoth
Michael Howe.

" Oh, father ! don't say so," rejoined Susan ^
" why should you think so hardly of poor Wil-
liam— our own dear William, whom we have not
seen these three years ? ^Vhat earthly harm has
he done ?"

" Harm, girl ! Look at his letters ! You
know you're ashamed yourself to take 'em of the
postman. Pink paper, forsooth, and blue ink,
and a seal with bits of make-believe gold speckled
about in it like a ladybird's wings — I hate all
make-believes, all shams ; they're worse than
poison ; — and stinking of some outlandish scent,
so that I'm forced to smoke a couple of pipes
extra to get rid of the smell ; and latterly, as if
this folly Avas not enough, he has crammed
these precious scrawls into a sort of paper-bag,
pasted together just as if o"* purpose to make us
pay double postage. Jackanapes did I call him ?
He's a worse molly cot than a woman."

" Dear father, all young men will be foolish

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 187

one way or another ; and you know my uncle
says, that William is wonderfully steady for so
young a man, and his master is so well pleased
with him, that he is now foreman in his great
concern. You must pardon a little nonsense in
a country youth, thrown suddenly into a fine
shop in the gayest part of London, and with his
godfather's legacy coming unexpectedly upon
him, and making him too rich for a journeyman
tradesman. But he's coming to see us now.
He would have come six months ago, as soon as
he got this money, if his master could have
spared him ; and he'll he wiser before he goes
back to London."

" Not he. Hang Lunnon ! Why did he go
to Lunnon at all ? Why could not he stop at
Rutherford like his father and his father's father,
and see to the farm ? What business had he in
a great shop ? — a man-mercer's they call it.
What call had he to Lunnon, I say ? Tell me
that, Miss Susan.

" Why, dear father, you know very well that
when Master George Arnot was so unluckily
obstinate about the affair of the water-course,

188 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

and would go to law with you, and swore that
instead of marrying William, poor Mary should
be married to the rich maltster old Jacob Giles,
William, who had loved Mary ever since they
were children togetherj could not bear to stay in
the country, and went off to my uncle, forbidding
me ever to mention her name in a letter ; and

so "

" Well ! well !" rejoined the father, somewhat
softened, " but he need not have turned puppy
and coxcomb because he was crossed in love.
Pshaw !" added the good farmer, giving a mighty
tug with his paddle at a tough mullein which
happened to stand in his way, " I was crossed in
love myself, in my young days, but I did not run
off and turn tailor. I made up plump to another
wench — your poor mother, Susan, that's dead and
gone — and carried her off like a man; married
her in a month, girl : and that's what Will should
have done. I'm afear'd we shall find hira a sad
jackanapes. Jem Hathaway, the ganger, told
me last market-day that he saw him one Sun-
day in the what-dye-calFt — the Park there, co-
vered with rings, and gold chains, and fine vel-

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 189

vets — all green and gold, like our great peacock.
Well ! we shall soon see. He comes to-night,
you say ? 'Tis not above six o'clock by the sun,
and the Wantage coach don't come in till seven.
Even if they lend him a horse and cart at the
Nag's Head, he can't be here these two hours.
So I shall just see the ten acre field cleared, and
be home time enough to shake him by the hand
if he comes like a man, or to kick him out of
doors if he looks like a dandy." And off strode
the stout yeoman in his clouted shoes, his leather
gaiters, and smockfrock, and a beard (it was
Friday) of six days' growth ; looking altogether
prodigiously like a man who would keep his
word.

Susan, on her part, continued to thread the
narrow winding lanes that led towards Wan-
tage ; walking leisurely along, and forming as
she went, half unconsciously, a nosegay of the
wild flowers of the season ; the delicate hare-bell,
the lingering wood-vetch, the blue scabious, the
heaths which clustered on the bank, the tall
graceful lilac campanula, the snowy bells of the
bindweed, the latest briar-rose, and tliat species

190 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

of clematis, which, perhaps, because it generally
indicates the neighbourhood of houses, has won
for itself the pretty name of the traveller's joy,
whilst that loveliest of wild flowers, whose name
is now sentimentalised out of prettiness, the in-
tensely blue forget-me-not, was there in rich
profusion.

Susan herself was not unlike her posy ; sweet
and delicate, and full of a certain pastoral grace.
Her light and airy figure suited well with a fair
mild countenance, breaking into blushes and
smiles when she spoke, and set off" by
bright ringlets of golden hair, parted on her
white forehead, and hanging in long curls on her
finely-rounded cheeks. Always neat but never
fine, gentle, cheerful, and modest, it would be
difficult to find a prettier specimen of an English
farmer's daughter than Susan Howe. But just
now the little damsel wore a look of care not
usual to her fair and tranquil features; she
seemed, as she was, full of trouble.

" Poor William !" so ran her thoughts, " my
father would not even listen to his last letter
because it poisoned him with musk. I wonder

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 191

that William can like that disagreeable smell !
and he expects him to come down on the top of
the coach, instead of which, he says that he means
to purchase a — a — (even in her thoughts poor
Susan could not master the word, and was obliged
to have recourse to the musk-scented billet)
britschka — ay, that's it!— oradroschky; I wonder
what sort of things they are — and that he only
visits us en passant in a tour, for which, town being
so empty, and business slack, his employer has
given him leave, and in which he is to be accom-
panied by his fi-iend Monsieur Victor — Victor
— I can't make out his other name — an eminent
perfumer who lives next door. To think of
bringing a Frenchman here, remembering how
my father hates the whole nation ! Oh dear,
dear ! And yet I know William. I know why
he went, and I do believe, in spite of a little
finery and foolishness, and of all the britschkas,
and droschkies, and Victors, into the bargain, that
he'll be glad to get home again. No place like
home ! Even in these silly notes that feeling
is always at the bottom. Did not I hear
a carriage before me ? Yes ! — no ! — I can't

192 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

tell. One takes every thing for the sound
of wheels when one is expecting a dear
friend ! — And if we can but get him to look,
as he used to look, and to be what he used
to be, he won't leave us again for all the fine
shops in Regent Street, or all the britschkas and
droschkies in Christendom. My father is getting
old now, and William ought to stay at home,"
thought the affectionate sister; "and I firmly
believe that what he ought to do, he will do.
Besides which — surely there is a carriage now."
Just as Susan arrived at this point of her co-
gitations, that sound which had haunted her
imagination all the afternoon, the sound of
wheels rapidly advancing, became more and
more audible, and was suddenly succeeded by a
tremendous crash, mixed with men's voices— one
of them her brother's — venting in two languages
(for Monsieur Victor, whatever might be his
proficiency in English, had recourse in this
emergency to his native tongue) the different
ejaculations of anger and astonishment which are
pretty sure to accompany an overset : and on
turning a corner of the lane, Susan caught her

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 193

first sight of the britschka or droschky, whichever
it might be, that had so much puzzled her sim-
ple apprehension, in the shape of a heavy-look-
ing open carriage garnished with head and apron,
lying prostrate against a gate-post, of which the
wheels had fallen foul. Her brother was fully
occupied in disengaging the horses from the
traces, in reprimanding his companion for his
bad driving, which he declared had occasioned
the accident, and in directing him to go for
assistance to a cottage half a mile back on the
road to Wantage, whilst he himself intimated
his intention of proceeding for more help to the
Farm ; and the obedient Frenchman — who, not-
withstanding the derangement which his coeffure
might naturally be expected to have experienced
in his tumble, looked, Susan thought, as if his hair
were put in paper every night and pomatumed
every morning, and as if his whole dapper person
were saturated with his own finest essences, a
sort of travelling perfumer's shop, a peripatetic
pouncet-box — walked off in the direction indi-
cated, with an air of habitual submission, which
showed pretty plainly that, whether as proprie-

K

194 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

tor of the unlucky britschka, or fi'om his ov\n
force of character, William was considered as
the principal director of the present expedition.

Having sent his comrade oiF, William Howe,
leaving his steeds quietly browsing by the way-
side, bent his steps towards home. Susan ad-
vanced rapidly to meet him; and in a fev»'
seconds the brother and sister were in each
other's arms ; and, after most affectionate greet-
ings, they sat down by mutual consent upon a
piece of felled timber which lay upon the bank
— the lane on one side being bounded by an old
coppice — and began to ask each other the thou-
sand questions so interesting to the children of
one house who have been long parted.

Seldom surely has the rough and rugged bark
of an unhewed elm had the honour of support-
ing so perfect an exquisite. Jem Hathaway,
the exciseman, had in nothing exaggerated the
magnificence of our young Londoner. From
shoes which looked as if they had come from
Paris in the ambassador's bag, to the curled
head and the whiskered and mustachio'd coun-
tenance, (for the hat which should have been the

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 195

crown of the finery was wanting — probably in
consequence of the recent overturn,) from top
to toe he looked fit for a ball at Almack's, or a
fete at Bridgewater House ; and, oh ! how un-
suited to the old-fashioned homestead at Ruther-
ford West ! His lower appointments, hose and
trousers, were of the finest woven silk ; his coat
was claret colour, of the latest cut; his waist-
coat— talk of the great peacock, he would have
seemed dingy and dusky beside such a splen-
dour of colour ! — his waistcoat literally dazzled
poor Susan's eyes ; and his rings, and chains, and
studs, and brooches, seemed to the wondering
girl almost sufficient to stock a jeweller's shop.

In spite of all this nonsense, it was clear to
her from every look and word that she was not
mistaken in believing William unchanged in
mind and disposition, and that there was a warm
and a kind heart beating under the finery.
Moreover, she felt that if the unseemly mag-
nificence could once be thrown aside, the whis-
kers and mustachios cleared away, and his fine
manly person reinstated in the rustic costume
in which she had been accustomed to see him,

K 2

196 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

her brother would then appear greatly improved
in face and figure, taller, more vigorous, and
with an expression of intelligence and frankness
delightful to behold. But how to get quit of
the finery, and the Frenchman, and the britschka?
Or how reconcile her father to iniquities so far
surpassing even the smell of musk ?

William, on his part, regarded his sister with
unqualified admiration. He had left a laughing
blooming girl, he found a delicate and lovely
young woman, all the more lovely for the tears
that mingled with her smiles, true tokens of a
most pure affection.

" And you really are glad to see me, Susy ?
And my father is well ? And here is the old
place, looking just as it used to do ; house, and
ricks, and barnyard, not quite in sight, but one
feels that one shall see them at the next turn-
ing— the great coppice right opposite, looking
thicker and greener than ever ! how often we
have gone nutting in that coppice ! — the tall
holly at the gate, with the woodbine climbing
up, and twisting its sweet garlands round the
very topmost spray like a coronet; — many a

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 197

time and often have I climbed the holly to twine
the flaunting wreath round your straw-bonnet,
Miss Susy ! And here, on the other side of
the hedge, is the very field where Hector and
Harebell ran their famous course, and gave their
hare fifty turns before they killed her, without
ever letting her get out of the stubble. Those
were pleasant days, Susan, after all !"

" Happy days, dear William !"

" And we shall go nutting again, shall we not ?"

" Surely, dear brother ! Only" And

Susan suddenly stopped.

" Only what. Miss Susy?"

" Only I don't see how you can possibly go
into the copse in this dress. Think how the
brambles would prick and tear, and how that
chain would catch in the hazel stems ! and as
to climbing the holly-tree in that fine tight coat,
or beating the stubbles for a hare in those
delicate thin shoes, why the thing is out of the
question. And 1 really don't believe," continued
Susan, finding it easier to go on than to begin,
" I really don't believe that either Hector or

198 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

Harebell would know you if they saw you so
decked out."

William laughed outright.

" I don't mean to go coursing in these shoes,
I assure you, Susy. This is an evening dress.
I have a shooting-jacket and all thereunto be-
longing in the britschka, which will not puzzle
either Harebell or Hector, because it's just what
they have been used to see me wear."

" Put it on, then, I beseech you ?" exclaimed
Susy ; " put it on directly !"

" Why, I am not going coursing this even-
ing."

« No — but my father ! — Oh, dear William !
if you did but know how he hates finery, and
foreigners, and whiskers, and britschkas ! Oh,
dear William, send off the French gentleman
and the outlandish carriage — run into the cop-
pice and put on the shooting -dress !"

" Oh, Susan !" began William ; but Susan
having once summoned up courage sufficient to
put her remonstrances into words, followed up
the attack with an earnestness that did not
admit a moment's interruption.

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 199

" My father hates finery even more than Hare-
bell or Hector would do. You know his country
notions, dear William ; and I think that latterly
he has hated everything that looks Londonish
and new-fangled worse than ever. We are old-
fashioned people at Rutherford, There's your
pretty old friend Mary Arnott can't abide gew-
gaws any more than my father."

" Mary Arnott ! You mean Mrs. Giles. What
do I care for her likes and dislikes ? ' exclaimed
William, haughtily.

" I mean Mary Arnott, and not Mrs. Giles,
and you do care for her likes and dislikes a
great deal," replied his sister, with some arch-
ness. " Poor Mary, when the week before that
fixed for the wedding arrived, felt that she could
not marry Master Jacob Giles ; so she found an
opportunity of speaking to him alone, and told
him the truth. I even believe, although I have
no warrant for saying so, that she confessed she
could not love him because she loved another.
Master Giles behaved like a wise man, and told
her father that it would be very wrong to force

200 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

her inclinations. He behaved kindly as well as
wisely, for he endeavoured to reconcile all par-
ties, and put matters in train for the wedding
that had hindered his. This at that time Mas-
ter Arnott would not hear ot^ and therefore we
did not tell you that the marriage which you
took for granted had gone off. Till about three
months ago, that odious lawsuit was in full
action, and Master Arnott as violently set
against my father as ever. Then, however, he
was taken ill, and, upon his deathbed, he sent
for his old friend, begged his pardon, and ap-
pointed him guardian to Mary. And there she
is at home — for she would not come to meet
you — but there she is, hoping to find you just
what you were when you went away, and hating
Frenchmen, and britschkas, and finery, and the
smell of musk, just as if she were my father's
daughter in good earnest. And now, dear Wil-
liam, I know what has been passing in your
mind, quite as well as if hearts were peep-shows,
and one could see to the bottom of them at the rate
of a penny a look. I know that you went away

TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY. 201

for love of Mary, and flung yourself into the
finery of London to try to get rid of the thought
of her, and came down with all this nonsense of
britschkas, and whiskers, and waistcoats, and
rings, just to show her what a beau she had lost
in losing you — Did not you, now ? Well ! don't
stand squeezing my hand, but go and meet your
French friend, who has got a man, I see, to help
to pick up the fallen equipage. Go and get rid
of him," quoth Susan.

" How can I ?" exclaimed William, in laugh-
ing perplexity.

" Give him the britschka !" responded his
sister, " and send them off together as fast as
may be. That will be a magnificent farewell.
And then take your portmanteau into the copse,
and change all this trumpery for the shooting-
jacket and its belongings ; and then come
back and let me trim these whiskers as
closely as scissors can trim them, and then we'll
go to the farm, to gladden the hearts of Hare-
bell, Hector, my dear father, and — somebody
else ; and it will not be that somebody's fault if
ever you go to London again, or get into a

K 5

202 TOWN VERSUS COUNTRY.

britschka, or put on a chain, or a ring, or write
with blue ink upon pink paper, as long as you
live. Now go and dismiss the Frenchman,"
added Susan, laughing, " and we'll walk home
together the happiest brother and sister in
Christendom."

•203

THE WIDOW'S DOG.

One of the most beautiful spots in the north of
Hampshire — a part of the country which, from
its winding green lanes, with the trees meeting
over head-hke a cradle, its winding roads be-
tween coppices, with wide turfy margents on
either side, as if left on purpose for the pictu-
resque and frequent gipsy camp, its abundance
of hedgerow timber, and its extensive tracts of
woodland, seems as if the fields were just dug
out of the forest, as might have happened in
the days of William Rufus — 'One of the loveliest
scenes in this lovely county is the Great Pond
at Ashley End.

Ashley End is itself a romantic and beautiful
village, straggling down a steep hill to a clear

204 THE widow's dog.

and narrow running stream, which crosses the
road in the bottom, crossed in its turn by a
picturesque wooden bridge, and then winding
with equal abruptness up the opposite acclivity,
so that the scattered cottages, separated from
each other by long strips of garden ground, the
little country inn, and two or three old-fashioned
tenements of somewhat higher pretensions, sur-
rounded by their own moss-grown orchards,
seemed to be completely shut out from this
bustling world, buried in the sloping meadows
so deeply green, and the hanging woods so rich
in their various tinting, along which the slender
wreaths of smoke from the old clustered chim-
neys went smiling peacefully in the pleasant
autumn air. So profound was the tranquillity,
that the slender streamlet which gushed along
the valley, following its natural windings, and
glittering in the noonday sun like a thread of
silver, seemed to the unfrequent visiters of that
remote hamlet the only trace of life and motion
in the picture.

The source of this pretty brook was undoubt-
edly the Great Pond, although there was no

THE widow's dog. 205

other road to it than by climbing the steep hill
beyond the village, and then turning suddenly
to the right, and descending by a deep cart-
track, which led between wild banks covered
with heath and feathery broom, garlanded with
bramble and briar roses, and gay with the pur-
ple heath-flower and the delicate harebell,* to a

* One of the pleasantest moments that I have ever
known, was that of the introduction of an accom-
plished young American to the common harebell, upon
the very spot which I have attempted to describe.
He had never seen that English wild-flower, conse-
crated by the poetry of our common language, was
struck even more than I expected by its delicate
beauty, placed it in his button-hole, and repeated with
enthusiasm the charming lines of Scott, from the Lady
of the Lake : —

" For me," — she stooped^ and, looking round,.

Plucked a blue harebell from the ground, —

" For me, whose memory scarce conveys

An image of more splendid days.

This little flower, that loves the lea.

May well my simple emblem be ;

It drinks heaven's dew as blithe as rose

That in the King's own garden grows.

And when I place it in my hair,

Allan, a bard, is bound to swear

He ne'er saw coronet so fair."

Still greater was the delight with which another

206 THE widow's dog.

scene even more beautiful and more solitary
than the hamlet itself.

It was a small clear lake almost embosomed
in trees, across which an embankment, formed
for the purpose of a decoy for the wildfowl with
which it abounded, led into a wood which covered
the opposite hill ; an old forest-like wood, where
the noble oaks, whose boughs almost dipped into
the water, were surrounded by their sylvan ac-

American recognised that blossom of a thousand as-
sociations— the flower sacred to Milton and Shaks-
peare — the English primrose. He bent his knee to the
ground in gathering a bunch, with a reverential ex-
pression which I shall not easily forget, as if the flower
were to him an embodiment of the great poets by whom
it has been consecrated to fame ; and he also had tlie
good taste not to be ashamed of his own enthusiasm,
I have had the pleasure of exporting, this spring, to my
friend Miss Sedgwick, (to whose family one of my visi-
ters belongs,) roots and seeds of these wild flowers, of
the common violet, the cowslip, and the ivy, another of
our indigenous plants which our Transatlantic brethren
want, and with which Mr. Theodore Sedgwick was
especially delighted. It will be a real distinction to be
the introductress of these plants into that Berkshire
village of New England, where Miss Sedgwick, sur-
rounded by relatives worthy of her in talent and in
character, passes her summers.

THE widow's dog. 207

companiments of birch, and holly, and hawthorn,
where the tall trees met over the straggling
paths, and waved across the grassy dells and
turfy brakes with which it was interspersed.
One low-browed cottage stood in a little meadow
— it might almost be called a little orchard — ^just
at the bottom of the winding road that led
to the Great Pond : the cottage of the widow
King.

Independently of its beautiful situation, there
was much that was at once picturesque and
comfortable about the cottage itself, with its
irregularity of outline, its gable ends and jut-
ting-out chimneys, its thatched roof and pent-
house windows. A little yard, with a small
building which just held an old donkey-chaise
and an old donkey, a still older cow, and a few
pens for geese and chickens, lay on one side of
the house ; in front, a flower court, surrounded
by a mossy paling ; a larger plot for vegetables
behind ; and, stretching down to the Great Pond
on the side opposite the yard, was the greenest
of all possible meadows, which, as I have before
said, two noble walnut and mulberry-trees, and a

208 THE widow's dog.

few aged pears and apples, clustered near the
dwelling, almost converted into that pleasantest
appanage of country life, an orchard.

Notwithstanding, however, the exceeding neat-
ness of the flower-court, and the little garden
filled with choice beds of strawberries, and
lavender, and old-fashioned flowers, stocks, car-
nations, roses, pinks ; and in spite of the cottage
itself being not only almost covered with climb-
ing shrubs, woodbine, jessamine, clematis, and
musk-roses, and in one southern nook a magnifi-
cent tree-like fuchsia, but the old chimney actually
garlanded with delicate creepers, the maurandia,
and the lotus spermus, whose pink and purple
bells, peeping out from between their elegant
foliage, and mingling with the bolder blossoms
and darker leaves of the passion-flower, give
such a wreathy and airy grace to the humblest
building ;* in spite of this luxuriance of natural

* I know nothing so pretty as the manner in which
creeping plants interwreath themselves one with an-
other. We have at this moment a wall quite covered
with honeysuckles, fuchsias, roses^ clematis, passion-
flowers, myrtles, scobjea, acrima carpis, lotus spermus.

THE widow's dog. 209

beauty, and of the evident care bestowed upon
the cultivation of the beds, and the training of
the cUmbing plants, we yet felt, we hardly could
tell why, but yet we instinctively felt, that the
moss-grown thatch, the mouldering paling, the
hoary apple trees, in a word, the evidences of
decay visible around the place, were but types
of the fading fortunes of the inmates.

And such was really the case. The widow
King had known better days. Her husband

and maurandia Barclayana, in which two long sprays
of the last-mentioned climbers have jutted out from the
wall, and entwined themselves together, like the handle
of an antique basket. The rich profvision of leaves,
those of the lotus spermus, comparatively rounded and
dim, soft in texture and colour, with a darker patch
in the middle, like the leaf of the old gum geranium ;
those of the maurandia, so bright, and shining, and
sharply outlined — the stalks equally graceful in their
varied green, and the roseate bells of the one contrast-
ing and harmonising so finely with the rich violet
tlowers of the other, might really form a study for a
painter. I never saw anything more graceful in quaint
and cunning art than this bit of simple nature. But
nature often takes a fancy to outvie her skilful and am-
bitious handmaiden, and is always certain to succeed
in the competition.

*210 THE widow's dog.

liad been the head keeper, her only son head
gardener, of the lord of the manor ; but both
were dead ; and she, with an orphan grandchild,
a thoughtful boy of eight or nine years old, now
gained a scanty subsistence from the produce of
their little dairy, their few poultry, their honey,
(have I not said that a row of bee-hives held
their station on the sunny side of the garden ?)
and the fruit and flowers which little Tom and
the old donkey carried in their season to Belford
every market-day.

Besides these their accustomed sources of
income, Mrs. King and Tom neglected no
means of earning an honest penny. They
stripped the downy spikes of the bulrushes to
stuff" cushions and pillows, and wove the rushes
themselves into mats. Poor Tom was as handy
as a girl ; and in the long winter evenings he
would plait the straw hats in which he went to
Belford market, and knit the stockings, which,
kept rather for show than for use, were just
assumed to go to church on Sundays, and then
laid aside for the week. So exact was their
economy.

THE widow's dog. 211

llie only extravagance in which Mrs. King
indulged herself was keeping a pet spaniel, the
descendant of a breed for which her husband
had been famous, and which was so great a
favourite, that it ranked next to Tom in her
affections, and next to his grandmother in Tom's.
The first time that I ever saw them, this pretty
dog had brought her kind mistress into no small
trouble.

We had been taking a drive through these
beautiful lanes, never more beautiful than when
the richly tinted autumnal foliage contrasts with
the deep emerald hue of the autumnal herbage,
and were admiring the fine effect of the majestic
oaks, whose lower branches almost touched the
clear water which reflected so brightly the
bright blue sky, when Mrs. King, who was well
known to my father, advanced to the gate of her
little court, and modestly requested to speak
with him.

The group in front of the cottage door was
one which it was impossible to contemplate
without strong interest. The poor widow, in
her neat crimped cap, her well-worn mourning

212 THE widow's dog.

gown, her apron and handkerchief, coarse, in-
deed, and of cheap material, but delicately clean,
her grey hair parted on her brow, and her pale
intelligent countenance, stood leaning against
the doorway, holding in one thin trembling hand
a letter newly opened, and in the other her
spectacles, which she had been fain to take off,
half hoping that they had played her false, and
that the ill-omened epistle would not be found
to contain what had so grieved her. Tom, a
fine rosy boy, stout and manly for his years, sat
on the ground with Chloe in his arms, giving
vent to a most unmanly fit of crying ; and Chloe,
a dog worthy of Edwin Landseer's pencil, a
large and beautiful spaniel, of the scarce old
English breed, brown and white, with shining
wavy hair feathering her thighs and legs, and
clustering into curls towards her tail and fore-
head, and upon the long glossy magnificent ears
which gave so much richness to her fine ex-
pressive countenance, looked at him wistfully,
with eyes that expressed the fullest sympathy
in his affliction, and stooped to lick his hand,
and nestled her head in his bosom, as if trying,

THE widow's dog. 213

as far as her caresses had the power, to soothe
and comfort him.

" And so, sir," continued Mrs. King, who
had been teUing her httle story to my father,
whilst I had been admiring her pet, " this Mr.
Poulton, the tax-gatherer, because I refused to
give him our Chloe, whom my boy is so fond of
that he shares his meals with her, poor fellow,
has laid an information against us for keeping a
sporting dog — I don't know what the proper
word is — and has had us surcharged ; and the first
that ever I have heard of it is by this letter,
from which I find that I must pay I don't know
how much money by Saturday next, or else my
goods will be seized and sold. And I have but
just managed to pay my rent, and v/here to get
a farthing I can't tell. I dare say he would let
us off now if I would but give him Chloe; but
that I can't find in my heart to do. He's a
hard man, and a bad dog-master. I've all along
been afraid that we must part with Chloe, now
that she's growing up like, because of our living
so near the preserves — "

214 THE widow's dog.

" Oh, grandmother !" interrupted Tom, " poor
Chloe!"

" But I can't give her to Mm. Don't cry so,
Tom ! I'd sooner have my little goods sold,
and lie upon the boards. I should not mind
parting with her if she were taken good care of,
but I never will give her to him."

" Is this the first you have heard of the mat-
ter ?" inquired my father ; you ought to have
had notice in time to appeal."

" I never heard a word till to-day."

" Poulton seems to say that he sent a letter,
nevertheless, and offers to prove the sending, if
need be ; it's not in our division, not even in our
county, and I am afraid that in this matter of
the surcharge I can do nothing," observed my
father ; " though I have no doubt but it's a ras-
cally trick to come by the dog. She's a pretty
creature," continued he, stooping to pat her,
and examining her head and mouth with the
air of a connoisseur in canine affairs, " a very
fine creature ! How old is she ?"

" Not quite a twelvemonth, sir. She was

THE widow's dog. 215

pupped on the sixteenth of last October, grand-
mother's birthday, of all the days in the year,"
said Tom, somewhat comforted by his visiter's
evident sympathy,

" The sixteenth of October ! Then Mr.
Poulton may bid good-bye to his surcharge ; for
unless she was six months old on the fifth of
April, she cannot be taxed for this year — so his
letter is so much waste paper. I'll write this
very night to the chairman of the commissioners,
and manage the matter for you. And I'll also
write to Master Poulton, and let him know that
I'll acquaint the board if he gives you any far-
ther trouble. You're sure that you can prove
the day she was pupped ? " continued his wor-
ship, highly delighted. " Very lucky ! You'll
have nothing to pay for her till next half-year,
and then I'm afraid that this fellow Poulton will
insist upon her being entered as a sporting dog,
which is fourteen shillings. But that's a future
concern. As to the surcharge, I'll take care of
that. A beautiful creature, is not she, Mary ?
Very lucky that we happened to drive this
way." And with kind adieus to Tom and his

216 THE widow's dog.

grandmother, who were as grateful as people
could be, we departed.

About a week after, Tom and Chloe in their
turn appeared at our cottage. All had gone
right in the matter of the surcharge. The
commissioners had decided in Mrs. King's fa-
vour, and Mr. Poulton had been forced to suc-
cumb. But his grandmother had considered
the danger of offending their good landlord Sir
John, by keeping a sporting dog so near his
coverts, and also the difficulty of paying the
tax ; and both she and Tom had made up their
minds to offer Chloe to my father. He had
admired her, and evei7body said that he was as
good a dog-master as Mr. Poulton was a bad
one ; and he came sometimes coursing to Ashley
End, and then perhaps he would let them both
see poor Chloe ; " for grandmother," added
Tom, " though she seemed somehow ashamed
to confess as much, was at the bottom of her
heart pretty nigh as fond of her as he was him-
self. Indeed, he did not know who could help
being fond of Chloe, she had so many pretty
ways." And Tom, making manful battle against

THE widow's dog. 217

the tears that would start into his eyes, ahnost
as full of affection as the eyes of Chloe herself,
and hugging his beautiful pet, who seemed upon
her part to have a presentiment of the evil that
awaited her, sate down as requested in the hall,
whilst my father considered his proposition.

Upon the whole, it seemed to us kindest to
the parties concerned, the widow King, Tom,
and Chloe, to accept the gift. Sir John was a
kind man, and a good landlord, but he was also
a keen sportsman ; and it was quite certain that
he would have no great taste for a dog of such
high sporting blood close to his best preserves ;
the keeper also would probably seize hold of
such a neighbour as a scapegoat, in case of any
deficiency in the number of hares and pheasants ;
and then their great enemy, Mr. Poulton, might
avail himself of some technical deficiency to
bring Mrs. King within the clutch of a sur-
charge. There might not always be an over-
sight in that Shylock's bond, nor a wise judge,
young or old, to detect it if there were. So
that, upon due consideration, my father (deter-
mined, of course, to make a proper return for

L.

218 THE widow's dog.

the present) agreed to consider Chloc as his own
property; and Tom, having seen her very com-
fortably installed in clean dry straw in a warm
stable, and fed in a manner which gave a
satisfactory specimen of her future diet, and
being himself regaled with plum-cake and cherry
brandy, (a liquor of which he had, he said, heard
much talk, and which proved, as my father had
augured, exceedingly cheering and consolatory
in the moment of affliction,) departed in much
better spirits than could have been expected
after such a separation. I myself, duly appre-
ciating the merits of Chloe, was a little jealous
for my own noble Dash, whom she resembled,
with a slight inferiority of size and colouring ;
much such a resemblance as Viola, I suppose,
bore to Sebastian. But upon being reminded
of the affinity between the two dogs, (for Dash
came originally from the Ashley End kennel, and
was, as nearly as we could make out, grand-
uncle to Chloe,) and of our singular good for-
tune, in having two such beautiful spaniels under
one roof, my objections were entirely removed.
Under the same roof they did not seem likely

THE widow's dog. 219

to continue. When sent after to the stable the
next morning, Chloe was missing. Everybody
declared that the door had not been opened, and
Dick, who had her in charge, vowed that the key
had never been out of his pocket. But accusa-
tions and affirmations were equally useless — the
bird was flown. Of course she had returned to
Ashley End. And upon being sent for to her
old abode, Tom was found preparing to bring
her to Aberleigh ; and Mrs. King suggested,
that, having been accustomed to live with them,
she would, perhaps, sooner get accustomed to
the kitchen fireside than to a stable, however
comfortable.

The suggestion was followed. A mat was
placed by the side of the kitchen fire ; much
pains were taken to coax the shy stranger; (Dick,
who loved and understood dogs, devoting him-
self to the task of making himself agreeable to
this gentle and beautiful creature;) and she
seemed so far reconciled as to suffer his cares-
ses, to lap a little milk when sure that nobody
saw her, and even to bridle with instinctive
coquetry, when Dash, head and tail up, ad-

L 2

2*20 THE widow's dog.

vanced with a sort of stately and conscious
courtesy to examine into the claims of the new-
comer. For the first evening all seemed pro-
mising; but on the next morning, nobody
knew how or when, Chloe eloped to her old
quarters.

Again she was fetched back ; this time to the
parlour : and again she ran away. Then she
was tied up, and she gnawed the string; chained
up, and she slipped the collar ; and we began to
think, that unless we could find some good
home for her at a distance, there was nothing
for it but to return her altogether to Mrs. King,
when a letter from a friend at Bath gave a new
aspect to Chloe's affairs.

The letter was from a dear friend of mine — a
young married lady, with an invalid husband,
and one lovely little girl, a damsel of some two
years old, commonly called " Pretty May."
They wanted a pet dog to live in the parlour,
and walk out with mother and daughter — not a
cross yelping Blenheim spaniel, (those trouble-
some little creatures spoil every body's manners
who is so unlucky as to possess them, the first

THE widow's dog. 221

five minutes of every morning call being inva-
riably devoted to silencing the lapdog and apo-
logising to the visiter,) — not a pigmy Blenheim,
but a large, noble animal, something, in short,
as like as might be to Dash, with whom Mrs.
Keating had a personal acquaintance, and for
whom, in common with most of his acquaint-
ances, she entertained a very decided partiality:
I do not believe that there is a dog in England
who has more friends than my Dash. A spaniel
was wanted at Bath like my Dash : and what
spaniel could be more like Dash than Chloe ?
A distant home was wanted for Chloe : and what
home could open a brighter prospect of canine
felicity than to be the pet of Mrs. Keating, and
the playmate of Pretty May ? It seemed one
of those startling coincidences which amuse one
by their singular fitness and propriety, and
make one believe that there is more in the ex-
ploded doctrine of sympathies than can be found
in our philosophy.

So, upon the matter being explained to her,
thought Mrs. King; and writing duly to an-
nounce the arrival of Chloe, she was deposited,

222 THE widow's dog.

with a quantity of soft hay, in a large hamper,
and conveyed into Belford by my father himself,
who would entrust to none other the office of
delivering her to the coachman, and charging
that very civil member of a very civil body of
men to have especial care of the pretty creature,
who was parted with for no other fault than an
excess of affection and fidelity to her first kind
protectors.

Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of her
reception. Pretty May, the sweet smiling child
of a sweet smiling mother, had been kept up a
full hour after her usual time to welcome the
stranger, and was so charmed with this her first
living toy, that it was difficult to get her to bed.
She divided her own supper with poor Chloe,
hungry after her long journey ; rolled with her
upon the Turkey carpet, and at last fell asleep
with her arms clasped round her new pet's neck,
and her bright face, coloured like lilies and
roses, flung across her body; Chloe enduring
these caresses with a careful, quiet gentleness,
which immediately won for her the hearts of the
lovely mother, of the fond father, (for to an ac-

THE widow's dog. '2'2S

complished and right-minded man, in delicate
health, what a treasure is a little prattling girl,
his only one !) of two grandmothers, of three or
four young aunts, and of the whole tribe of nur-
sery attendants. Never was debut so success-
ful, as Chloe's first appearance in Camden
Place.

As her new dog had been Pretty May's last
thought at night, so was it her first on awak-
ening. He shared her breakfast as he had
shared her supper ; and immediately after break-
fast, mother and daughter, attended by nurserj-
maid and footman, sallied forth to provide pro-
per luxuries for Chloe's accommodation. First
they purchased a sheepskin rug ; then a splendid
porcelain trough for water, and a porcelain dish
to match, for food ; then a spaniel basket, duly
lined, and stuffed, and curtained — a splendid
piece of canine upholstery ; then a necklace-like
collar with silver bells, which was left to have
the address engraved upon the clasp ; and then
May, finding herself in the vicinity of a hosier
and a shoemaker, bethought herself of a want
which undoubtedly had not occurred to any

224 THE widow's dog.

other of her party, and holdhig up her own
pretty little foot, demanded " tilk tocks and boo
thoose for Tloe."

For two days did Chloe endure the petting
and the luxuries. On the third she disappeared.
Great was the consternation in Camden Place.
Pretty May cried as she had never been known
to cry before ; and papa, mamma, grandmam-
mas, aunts, nursery and house-maids, fretted
and wondered, wondered and fretted, and vented
their distress in every variety of exclamation,
from the refined language of the drawing-room
to the patois of a Somersetshire kitchen. Re-
wards were offered, and handbills dispersed over
the town. She was cried, and she was adver-
tised ; and at last, giving up every hope of her
recovery, Mrs. Keating wrote to me.

It happened that we received the letter on
one of those soft November days, which some-
times intervene between the rough winds of
October and the crisp frosts of Christmas, and
which, although too dirty under foot to be quite
pleasant for walking, are yet, during the few
hours that the sun is above the horizon, mild

THE widow's dog. 225

enough for an open carriage in our shady lanes,
strewed as they are at that period with the
yellow leaves of the elm, whilst the hedgerows
are still rich with the tawny foliage of the oak,
and the rich colouring of the hawthorn and the
bramble. It was such weather as the Americans
generally enjoy at this season, and call by the
pretty name of the Indian summer. And we
resolved to avail ourselves of the fineness of the
day to drive to Ashley End, and inform Mrs.
King and Tom (who we felt ought to know) of
the loss of Chloe, and our fear, according with
Mrs. Keating's, that she had been stolen ; adding
our persuasion, which was also that of Mrs.
Keating, that, fall into whatever hands she might,
she was too beautiful and valuable not to ensure
good usage.

On the way we were overtaken by the good
widow's landlord, returning from hunting, in his
red coat and top-boots, who was also bound to
Ashley End. As he rode chatting by the side
of the carriage, we could not forbear telling him
our present errand, and the whole story of poor
Chloe, How often, without being particularly

L 5

2'26 THK widow's dog.

uncharitable in judging of our neighbours, we
have the gratification of finding them even better
than we had supposed ! He blamed us for not
having thought well enough of him to put the
whole affair into his management from the first,
and exclaimed against us for fearing that he
would compare the preserves and the pheasant-
shooting with such an attachment as had sub-
sisted between his good old tenant and her
faithful dog. " By Jove !" cried he, " I would
have paid the tax myself rather than they should
have been parted. But it's too late to talk of
that now, for, of course, the dog is stolen.
Eighty miles is too far even for a spaniel to find
its way back ! Carried by coach, too ! I would
give twenty pounds willingly to replace her with
old Dame King and Master Tom. By the way,
we must see what can be done for that boy —
he's a fine spanking fellow. We must consult
his grandmother. The descendant of two faith-
ful servants has an hereditary claim to all that
can be done for him. How could you imagine
that I should be thinking of those coverts ? I
that am as great a dog-lover as Dame King her-

THE widow's dog. 'I'll

self ! I have a great mind to be very angry
with you."

These words, spoken in the good sportsman's
earnest, hearty, joyous, kindly voice, {tJiat ought
to have given an assurance of his kindly nature,
— I have a religious faith invoices,) these words
brought us within sight of Ashley End, and
there, in front of the cottage, we saw a group
which fixed our attention at once : Chloe, her own
identical self— poor, dear Chloe, apparently just
arrived, dirty, weary, jaded, wet, lying in Tom's
arras as he sat on the ground, feeding her with
the bacon and cabbage, his own and his grand-
mother's dinner, all the contents of the platter :
and she, too happy to eat, wagging her tail as it
she would wag it oft"; now licking Mrs. King's
hands as the good old dame leant over her, the
tears streaming from her eyes : now kissing
Tom's honest face, who broke into loud laughter
for very joy, and, with looks that spoke as plain
as ever looks did speak. " Here I am come
home again to those whom I love best — to those
who best love me !" Poor dear Chloe ! Even we

228 THE widow's dog.

whom she left, sympathised with her fidelity.
Poor dear Chloe ! there we found her, and there,
I need not, I hope, say, we left her, one of the
happiest of living creatures.

•2-29

THE LOST DAHLIA.

If to have "had losses" be, as affirmed by Dog-
berry in one of Shakspeare's most charming
plays, and corroborated by Sir Walter Scott in
one of his most charming romances — (those two
names do well in juxtaposition, the great Eng-
lishman ! the great Scotsman!) — If to have
" had losses" be a main proof of credit and
respectability, then am I one of the most respon-
sible persons in the whole county of Berks.
To say nothing of the graver matters which
figure in a banker's book, and make, in these
days of pounds, shillings, and pence, so large a
part of the domestic tragedy of life — putting
wholly aside all the grander transitions of pro-
perty in house and land, of money on mortgage,

'230 THE LOST DAHLIA.

and money in the funds — (and yet I might put
in my claim to no trifling amount of ill luck in
that way also, if I had a mind to try my hand
at a dismal story) — counting for nought all
weightier grievances, there is not a lady within
twenty miles who can produce so large a list of
small losses as my unfortunate self.

From the day when, a tiny damsel of some
four years old, I first had a pocket-handkerchief
to lose, down to this very night — I will not say
how many years after — when, as I have just
discovered, I have most certainly lost from
my pocket the new cambric kerchief which I
deposited therein a little before dinner, scarcely
a week has passed without some part of my
goods and chattels being returned missing.
Gloves, muffs, parasols, reticules, have each of
them a provoking knack of falling from my
hands; boas glide from my neck, rings slip
from my fingers, the bow has vanished from my
cap, the veil from my bonnet, the sandal from
my foot, the brooch from my collar, and the col-
lar from my brooch. The trinket which I liked
best, a jewelled pin, the first gift of a dear friend,

THE LOST DAHLIA. 231

(luckily the friendship is not necessarily ap-
pended to the token,) dropped from my shawl
in the midst of the high road ; and of shawls
themselves, there is no end to the loss. The two
prettiest that ever I had in my life, one a splen-
did specimen of Glasgow manufacture — a scarlet
hardly to be distinguished from Cashmere — the
other a lighter and cheaper fabric, white in the
centre, with a delicate sprig, and a border har-
moniously compounded of the deepest blue, the
brightest orange, and the richest brown, disap-
peared in two successive summers and winters,
in the very bloom of their novelty, from the folds
of the phaeton, in which they had been depo-
sited for safety — fairly blown overboard ! If I
left things about, they were lost. If I put them
away, they were lost. They were lost in the
drawers — they were lost out. And if for a mi-
racle I had them safe under lock and key, why,
then, I lost my keys ! I was certainly the most
unlucky person under the sun. If there was
nothing else to lose, I was fain to lose myself — I
mean my way; bewildered in these Aberleigh
lanes of ours, or in the woodland recesses of the

2:3*2 THE LOST DAHLIA.

Penge, as if haunted by that fairy, Robin Good-
fellow, who led Hermia and Helena such a dance
in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Alas ! that
there should be no Fairies now-a-days, or rather
no true believers in Fairies, to help us to bear
the burthen of our own mortal carelessness.

It was not quite all carelessness, though !
Some ill luck did mingle with a great deal of
mismanagement, as the " one poor happ'orth of
bread" with the huge gallon of sack in the bill of
which Poins picked FalstaflF's pocket when he
was asleep behind the arras. Things belonging
to me, or things that I cared for, did contrive to get
lost, without my having any hand in the matter.
For instance, if out of the variety of " talking
birds,"" starlings, jackdaws, and magpies, which my
father delights to entertain, any one particularly
diverting or accomplished, more than usually
coaxing and mischievous, happened to attract
my attention, and to pay me the compliment of
following at my heels, or perching upon my
shoulder, the gentleman was sure to hop off^
My favourite mare, Pearl, the pretty docile
creature which draws my little phaeton, has such

THE LOST DAHLIA. 233

a talent for leaping, that she is no sooner turned
out in either of our meadows, than she disap-
pears. And Dash himself, paragon of spaniels,
pet of pets, beauty of beauties, has only one
shade of imperfection — would be thoroughly
faultless, if it were not for a slight tendency to
run away. He is regularly lost four or five
times every winter, and has been oftener cried
through the streets of Belford, and advertised in
the county newspapers, than comports with a
dog of his dignity. Now, these mischances
clearly belong to that class of accidents commonly
called casualties, and are quite unconnected
with any infirmity of temperament on my part.
I cannot help Pearl's proficiency in jumping,
nor Dash's propensity to wander through the
country ; neither had I any hand in the loss
which has given its title to this paper, and which,
after so much previous dallying, I am at length
about to narrate.

The autumn before last, that is to say, above a
year ago, the boast and glory of my little garden
was a dahlia called the Phoebus. How it came
there, nobody very distinctly knew, nor where it

234 THE LOST DAHLIA.

came from, nor how we came by it, nor how it
came by its own most appropriate name. Neither
the lad who tends our flowers, nor my father, the
person chiefly concerned in procuring them, nor
I myself, who more even than my father or John
take delight and pride in their beauty, could
recollect who gave us this most splendid plant, or
who first instructed us as to the style and title
by which it was known, Certes never was blos-
som fitlier named. Regular as the sun''s face in
an almanack, it had a tint of golden scarlet, of
ruddy yellow, which realised Shakspeare's gor-
geous expression of "flame-coloured." The sky
at sunset sometimes puts on such a hue, or a
fire at Christmas when it burns red as well as
bright. The blossom was dazzling to look upon.
It seemed as if there were light in the leaves,
like that coloured-lamp of a flower, the Oriental
Poppy. Phcebus w^as not too glorious a name
for that dahlia. The Golden-haired Apollo
might be proud of such an emblem. It was
worthy of the god of day ; a very Phoenix of
floral beauty.

Every dahlia fancier who came into our gar-

THE LOST DAHLIA. '2S5

den or v/ho had an opportunity of seeing a bloom
elsewhere ; and, sooth to say, we were rather os-
tentatious in our display ; John put it into stands,
and jars, and baskets, and dishes ; Dick stuck it
into Dash's collar, his own button-hole, and
Pearl's bridle ; my father presented it to such
lady visiters as he delighted to honour ; and I,
who have the habit of dangling a flower, gene-
rally a sweet one, caught myself more than once
rejecting the spicy clove and the starry jessamine,
the blossomed myrtle and the tuberose, my old
fragrant favourites, for this scentless (but tri-
umphant) beauty; everybody who beheld the
Phoebus begged for a plant or a cutting; and
we, generous in our ostentation, willing to re-
deem the vice by the virtue, promised as many
plants and cuttings as we could reasonably
imagine the root might be made to produce* —
perhaps rather more ; and half the dahlia grow-
ers round rejoiced over the glories of the gor-

* It is wonderful how many plants may, by dint of
forcing, and cutting and forcing again, be extracted
from one root. But the experiment is not always safe.
Nature sometimes avenges herself for the encroach-

2:36 THE LOST DAHLIA.

geous flower, and speculated, as the wont is now,
upon seedling after seedling to the twentieth
generation.

Alas for the vanity of human expectations !
February came, the twenty-second of February,
the very St. Valentine of dahlias, when the roots
which have been buried in the ground during the
winter are disinterred, and placed in a hotbed to
put forth their first shoots previous to the grand
operations of potting and dividing them. Of
course the first object of search in the choicest
corner of the nicely labelled hoard, was the
Phcebus : but no Phoebus w as forthcoming ;
root and label had vanished bodily ! There w^as,
to be sure, a dahlia without a label, which we
would gladly have transformed into the missing
treasure; but as we speedily discovered a label
without a dahlia, it was but too obvious that
they belonged to each other. Until last year
we might have had plenty of the consolation

meiits of art, by weakening the progeny. The Napo-
leon Dahlia, for instance, the finest of last year's seed-
lings, being orer-propagated, this season has hardly
produced one perfect bloom, even in the hands of the
most skilful cultivators.

THE LOST DAHLIA. 2-37

which results from such divorces of the name from
the thing; for our labels, sometimes written
upon parchment, sometimes upon leather, some-
times upon wood, as each material happened to
be recommended by gardening authorities, and
fastened on with packthread, or whip-cord, or
silk twist, had generally parted company from
the roots, and frequently become utterly ille-
gible, producing a state of confusion which most
undoubtedly we never expected to regret:
but this year we had followed the one perfect
system of labels of unglazed china, highly var-
nished after writing on them, and fastened on
by wire ; and it had answered so completely,
that one, and one only, had broken from its
moorings. No hope could be gathered from
that quarter. The Phoebus was gone. So much
was clear ; and our loss being fully ascertained,
we all began, as the custom is, to divert our
grief and exercise our ingenuity by different
guesses as to the fate of the vanished treasure.

My father, although certain that he had
written the label, and wired the root, had his
misgivings about the place in which it had been

238 THE LOST DAHLIA.

deposited, and half suspected that it had slipt
in amongst a basket which we had sent as a
present to Ireland; I myself, judging from a
similar accident which had once happened to a
choice hyacinth bulb, partly thought that one or
other of us might have put it for care and safety
in some such very snug corner, that it would
be six months or more before it turned up ;
John, impressed with a high notion of the
money- value of the property, and estimating it
something as a keeper of the regalia might
estimate the most precious of the crown jewels,
boldly affirmed that it was stolen; and Dick,
who had just had a demele with the cook, upon
the score of her refusal to dress a beef-steak for
a sick greyhound, asserted, between jest and
earnest, that that hard-hearted official had either
ignorantly or maliciously boiled the root for a
Jerusalem artichoke, and that we, who stood
lamenting over our regretted Phoebus, had
actually eaten it, dished up with white sauce.
John turned pale at the thought The beautiful
story of the Falcon, in Boccaccio, which the
young knight killed to regale his mistress, or

THE LOST DAHLIA. 239

the still more tragical history of Couci, who
minced his rival's heart, and served it up to his
wife, could not have affected him more deeply.
We grieved over our lost dahlia, as if it had
l)een a thing of life.

Grieving, however, would not repair our loss;
and we determined, as the only chance of be-
coming again possessed of this beautiful flower,
to visit, as soon as the dahlia season began, all
the celebrated collections in the neighbourhood,
especially all those from which there was any
chance of our having procured the root which
had so mysteriously vanished.

Early in September, I set forth on my voyage
of discovery — my voyages, I ought to say; for
every day I and my pony-phaeton made our way
to whatever garden within our reach bore a
sufficiently high character to be suspected of
harbouring the good Dahlia Phoebus.

Monday we called at Lady A.'s; Tuesday at
General B.'s ; Wednesday at Sir John C.'s ;
Thursday at Mrs. D's ; Friday at Lord E.''s :
and Saturday at Mr. F.'s. We might as well

240 THE LOST DAHLIA.

have staid at home ; not a Phoebus had they, or
anything Uke one.

We then visited the nurseries, from Brown's,
at Slough, a princely establishment, worthy of
its regal neighbourhood, to the pretty rural gar-
dens at South Warnborough, not forgetting our
own most intelligent and obliging nurseryman,
Mr. Sutton of Reading — (Belford Regis, I mean)
— whose collection of flowers of all sorts is
amongst the most choice and select that I have
ever known. Hundreds of magnificent blossoms
did we see in our progress, but not the blossom
we wanted.

There was no lack, heaven knows, of dahlias
of the desired colour. Besides a score of
" Orange Perfections," bearing the names of
their respective growers, we were introduced to
four Princes of Orange, three Kings of Holland,
two Williams the Third, and one Lord Roden.*

* The nomenclature of dahlias is a curious sign of
the times. It rivals in oddity that of the Racing Ca-
lendar. Next to the peerage, Shakspeare and Homer
seem to be the chief sources whence they have derived

THE LOST DAHLIA. 241

We were even shown a bloom called the Phoe-
bus, about as like to our Phoebus " as I to Her-
cules." But the true Phoebus, " the real Simon
Pure," was as far to seek as ever.

Learnedly did I descant with the learned in
dahlias over the merits of my lost beauty. " It
was a cupped flower, Mr. Sutton," quoth I, to
my agreeable and sympathising listener; (gar-
deners are a most cultivated and gentlemanly

their appellations. Thus we have Hectors and Dio-
medes of all colours^ a very black Othello, and a very
fair Desdemona. One beautiful blossom, which seems
like a white ground thickly rouged with carmine, is
called " the Honourable Mrs. Harris ;" and it is droll
to observe how punctiliously the working gardeners
retain the dignified prefix in speaking of the flower.
I heard the other day of a serious dahlia grower who
had called his seedlings after his favourite preachers,
so that we shall have the Reverend Edward So-and-so,
and the Reverend John Such-an-one, fraternising with
the profane Ariels and Imogenes, the Giaours and Me-
doras of the old catalogue. So much the better.
Floriculture is amongst the most innocent and hu-
manising of all pleasures, and everything which tends
to diflTuse such p\irsuits amongst those who have too
few amusements, is a point gained for happiness and
for virtue.

M

242 THE LOST DAHLIA.

race ;) "a cupped dahlia, of the genuine metro-
politan shape ; large as the Criterion, regular as
the Springfield Rival, perfect as Dodd's Mary,
with a long bloom stalk like those good old
flowers, the Countess of Liverpool and the
WidnalPs Perfection. And such a free blower,
and so true ! I am quite sure that there is not
so good a dahlia this year. I prefer it to
' Corinne,' over and over." And Mr. Sutton
assented and condoled, and I was as near to
being comforted as anybody could be, who had
lost such a flower as the Phoebus.

After so many vain researches, most persons
would have abandoned the pursuit in despair.
But despair is not in my nature. I have a com-
fortable share of the quality which the possessor
is wont to call perseverance — whilst the uncivil
world is apt to designate it by the name of
obstinacy — and do not easily give in. Then the
chase, however fruitless, led, like other chases,
into beautiful scenery, and formed an excuse for
my visiting or revisiting many of the prettiest
places in the county.

Two of the most remarkable spots in the

THE LOST DAHLIA. 243

neighbourhood are, as it happens, famous for
their collections of dahlias — Strathfield-saye, the
seat of the Duke of Wellington, and the ruins
of Reading Abbey.

Nothing can well be prettier than the drive
to Strathfield-saye, passing, as we do, through a
great part of Heckfield Heath,* a tract of
wild woodland, a forest, or rather a chase,
full of fine sylvan beauty — thickets of fern and
holly, and hawthorn and birch, surmounted by .
oaks and beeches, and interspersed with lawny
glades and deep pools, letting light into the pic-
ture. Nothing can be prettier than the ap-
proach to the duke's lodge. And the entrance
to the demesne, through a deep dell dark with
magnificent firs, from which we emerge into a
finely wooded park of the richest verdure, is
also striking and impressive. But the distinctive

* It may be interesting to the lovers of lite-
rature to hear that my accomplished friend Mrs.
Trollope was " raised/' as her friends the Americans
would say, upon this spot. Her father, the Rev.
William Milton, himself a very clever man, and an able
mechanician and engineer, held the living of Heckfield
for many years.

M 2

2-14 THE LOST DAHLIA.

feature of the place (for the mansion, merely a
comfortable and convenient nobleman's house,
hardly responds to the fame of its owner) is the
grand avenue of noble elms, three quarters of a
mile long, which leads to the front door. It is
difficult to imagine anything which more com-
pletely realises the poetical fancy, that the pil-
lars and arches of a Gothic cathedral were bor-
rowed from the interlacing of the branches of
trees planted at stated intervals, than this
avenue, in which Nature has so completely suc-
ceeded in outrivalling her handmaiden Art, that
not a single trunk, hardly even a bough or a twig,
appears to mar the grand regularity of the
design as a piece of perspective. No cathedral
aisle was ever more perfect ; and the effect,
under every variety of aspect, the magical light
and shadow of the cold white moonshine, the
cool green light of a cloudy day, and the glan-
cing sunbeams which pierce through the leafy
umbrage in the bright summer noon, are such
as no words can convey. Separately considered,
each tree (and the north of Hampshire is cele-
brated for the size and shape of its elms) is a

THE LOST DAHLIA. 245

model of stately growth, and they are now just
at perfection, probably about a hundred and
thirty years old. There is scarcely perhaps in
the kingdom such another avenue.

On one side of this noble approach is the
garden, where, under the care of the skilful and
excellent gardener, Mr. Cooper, so many mag-
nificent dahlias are raised, but where, alas ! the
Phoebus was not ; and between that and the
mansion is the sunny, shady paddock, with its
rich pasture and its roomy stable, where, for so
many years, Copenhagen, the charger who car-
ried the Duke at Waterloo, formed so great an
object of attraction to the visiters of Strathfield-
saye.* Then came the house itself, and then I
returned home,

* Copenhagen — (I had the honour of naming one of
Mr. Cooper's dahlias after him — a sort of hay dahlia^
if I may be permitted the expression) — Copenhagen
was a most interesting horse. He died last year at
the age of twenty-seven. He was therefore in his
prime on the day of Waterloo, when the duke (then
and still a man of iron) rode him for seventeen hours
and a half, without dismounting. When his Grace
got off, he patted him^ and the horse kicked, to the
great delight of his brave rider, as it proved that he

•246 THE LOST DAHLIA.

Well ! this was one beautiful and fruitless
drive. The ruins of Reading Abbey formed
another as fruitless, and still more beautiful.

was not beaten by that tremendous day's work
After his return, this paddock was assigned to him, in
which he passed the rest of his life in the most perfect
comfort tliat can be imagined ; fed twice a-day, (lat-
terly upon oats broken for him,) with a comfortable
stable to retire to, and a rich pasture in which to
range. The late amiable duchess used regularly to
feed him with bread, and this kindness had given him
the habit, (especially after her death,) of approaching
every lady with the most confiding familiarity. He
had been a fine animal, of middle size and a chestnut
colour, but latterly he exhibited an interesting speci-
men of natural decay, in a state as nearly that of na-
ture as can well be found in a civilised country. He
had lost an eye from age, and had become lean and
feeble, and, in the manner in which he approached
even a casual visiter, there was something of the de-
mand of sympathy, the appeal to human kindness,
which one has so often observed from a very old dog
towards his master. Poor Copenhagen, who, when
alive, furnished so many reliques from his mane and
tail to enthusiastic young ladies, who had his hair set
in brooches and rings, -tvus, after being interred with
military honours, dug up by some miscreant, (never, I
believe, discovered,) and one of his hoofs cut off, it is
to be presumed, for a memorial, although one that
would hardly go in the compass of a ring. A very fine

THE LOST DAHLIA. 247

Whether in the " palmy state " of the faith
of Rome, the pillared aisles of the Abbey church
might have vied in grandeur with the avenue at
Strathfield-saye, I can hardly say ; but certainly,
as they stand, the venerable arched gateway,
the rock-like masses of wall, the crumbling
cloisters, and the exquisite finish of the surbases
of the columns and other fragments, fresh as if
chiselled yesterday, which are re-appearing in
the excavations now making, there is an inte-
rest which leaves the grandeur of life, palaces
and their pageantry, parks and their adorn-
ments, all grandeur except the indestructible
grandeur of nature, at an immeasurable dis-
tance. The place was a history. Centuries
passed before us as we thought of the magnifi-
cent monastery, the third in size and splendour
in England, with its area of thirty acres between
the walls — and gazed upon it now !

And yet, even now, how beautiful ! Trees of

portrait of Copenhagen has been executed by my
young friend Edmund Havell, a youth of seventeen,
whose genius as an animal painter, will certainly place
him second only to Landseer.

•248 THE LOST DAIILIA.

every growth mingling with those grey ruins,
creepers wreathing their fantastic garlands
around the mouldering arches, gorgeous flowers
flourishing in the midst of that decay ! I al-
most forgot my search for the dear Phoebus, as
I rambled with my friend Mr. M alone, the gar-
dener, a man who would in any station be
remarkable for acuteness and acquirement,
amongst the august remains of the venerable
abbey, with the history of which he was as con-
versant as with his own immediate profession.
There was no speaking of smaller objects in the
presence of the mighty past !*

Gradually chilled by so much unsuccess, the
ardour of my pursuit began to abate. I began
to admit the merits of other dahlias of divers
colours, and actually caught myself committing
the inconstancy of considering which of the four
Princes of Orange I should bespeak for next
year. Time, in short, was beginning to play
his part as the great comforter of human afflic-
tions, and the poor Phoebus seemed as likely to
be forgotten as a last year's bonnet, or a last

* Vide, note at the end of the volume

THE LOST DAHLIA. 249

week's newspaper —when, happening to walk
with my father to look at a field of his, a pretty
bit of upland pasture about a mile off, I was
struck, in one corner where the manure for
dressing had been deposited, and a heap of
earth and dung still remained, to be spread, I
suppose, next spring, with some tall plant sur-
mounteJ with bright flowers. Could it be ? — •
was it possible ? — did my eyes play me false ? —
No; there it was, upon a dunghill — the object
of all my researches and lamentations, the iden-
tical Phoebus ! the lost dahlia !

M o

250

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

Times are altered since Gray spoke of the young
Etonians as a set of dirty boys playing at cricket.
There are no such things as boys to be met
with now, either at Eton or elsewhere; they are
all men from ten years old upwards. Dirt also
hath vanished bodily, to be replaced by finery.
An aristocratic spirit, an aristocracy not of rank
but of money, possesses the place, and an en-
lightened young gentleman of ray acquaintance,
who when somewhere about the ripe age of
eleven, conjured his mother "wo# to come to
see him until she had got her new carriage, lest
he should be quizzed by the rest of the men,"
was perhaps no unfair representative of the
mass of his schoolfellows. There are of course

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN. 231

exceptions to the rule. The sons of the old
nobility, too much accustomed to splendour in
its grander forms, and too sure of their own sta-
tion to care about such matters, and the few
finer spirits, whose ambition even in boyhood
soars to far higher and holier aims, are, gene-
rally speaking, ahke exempt from these vulgar
cravings after petty distinctions. And for the
rest of the small people, why " winter and rough
weather," and that most excellent schoolmaster,
the world, will not fail, sooner or later, to bring
them to wiser thoughts.

In the meanwhile, as according to our homely
proverb, "for every gander there's a goose,"
so there are not wanting in London and its
environs " establishments," (the good old name
of boarding-school being altogether done away
with,) where young ladies are trained up in a
love of fashion and finery, and a reverence for
the outward symbols of wealth, which cannot
fail to render them worthy compeers of the
young gentlemen their contemporaries. I have
known a little girl, (fit mate for the above-men-
tioned amateur of new carriages,) who com-

25'2 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

plained that her mamma called upon her, at-
tended only by one footman ; and it is certain,
that the position of a new-comer in one of these
houses of education will not fail to be materially
influenced by such considerations as the situa-
tion of her father's town residence, or the name
of her mother's milliner. At so early a period
does the exclusiveness which more or less per-
vades the whole current of English society make
its appearance amongst our female youth.

Even in the comparatively rational and old-
fashioned seminary in which I was brought up,
we were not quite free from these vanities. We
too had our high castes and our low castes, and
(alas ! for her and for ourselves !) we counted
among our number one who in her loneliness
and desolation might almost be called a Pariah
• — or if that be too strong an illustration, who
was at least, in more senses than one, the Cinde-
rella of the school.

Honor O'Callaghan was, as her name imports,
an Irish girl. She had been placed under the
care of Mrs. Sherwood before she was five
years old, her father being designated, in an

HONOR O CALLAGHAN. 253

introductory letter which he brought in his hand,
as a barrister from Dublin, of ancient family,
of considerable ability, and the very highest
honour. The friend, however, who had given
him this excellent character, had, unfortunately,
died a very short time after poor Honor's arrival ;
and of Mr. O'Callaghan nothing had ever been
heard after the first half-year, when he sent the
amount of the bill in a draft, which, when due,
proved to be dishonoured. The worst part of
this communication, however unsatisfactory in
its nature, was, that it was final. All inquiries,
whether in Dublin or elsewhere, proved unavail-
ing ; Mr. O'Callaghan had disappeared ; and
our unlucky gouvernante found herself saddled
vnth the board, clothing, and education, the
present care, and future destiny, of a little girl,
for whom she felt about as much afi*ection as
was felt by the overseers of Aberleigh towards
their involuntary protege, Jesse ClifFe. Nay,
in saying this, I am probably giving our worthy
governess credit for somewhat milder feelings
upon this subject than she actually entertained ;
the overseers in question, accustomed to such

254 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

circumstances, harbouring no stronger sentiment
than a cold, passive indifference towards the
parish boy, whilst she, good sort of woman as in
general she was, did certainly upon this occa-
sion cherish something very like an active aver-
sion to the little intruder.

The fact is, that Mrs. Sherwood, who had been
much captivated by Mr. O'Callaghan's show}-,
off-hand manner, his civilities, and his flatteries,
felt, for the first time in her life, that she had
been taken in ; and being a peculiarly prudent,
cautious personage, of the slow, sluggish, stag-
nant temperament, which those who possess it
are apt to account a virtue, and to hold in scorn
their more excitable and impressible neighbours,
found herself touched in the very point of ho-
nour, piqued, aggrieved, mortified; and de-
nouncing the father as the greatest deceiver that
ever trod the earth, could not help transferring
some part of her hatred to the innocent child.
She was really a good sort of woman, as I have
said before, and every now and then her con-
science twitched her, and she struggled hard to
seem kind and to be so : but it would not do.

HONOR O CALLAGHAN. 255

There the feeling was, and the more she strug-
gled against it, the stronger, I verily believe,
it became. Trying to conquer a deep-rooted
aversion, is something like trampling upon ca-
momile : the harder you tread it down the more
it flourishes.

Under these evil auspices, the poor little Irish
girl grew up amongst us. Not ill-used certainly,
for she was fed and taught as we were ; and
some forty shillings a year more expended upon
the trifles, gloves, and shoes, and ribbons, which
make the difference between nicety and shabbi-
ness in female dress, would have brought her
apparel upon an equality with ours. Ill-used
she was not : to be sure, teachers, and masters
seemed to consider it a duty to reprimand her
for such faults as would have passed unno-
ticed in another ; and if there were any noise
amongst us, she, by far the quietest and most
silent person in the house, was, as a matter of
course, accused of making it. Still she was not
what would be commonly called ill-treated ; al-
though her young heart was withered and
blighted, and her spirit crushed and broken by

256 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

the chilling indiiference, or the harsh unkind-
ness which surrounded her on every side.

Nothing, indeed, could come in stronger con-
trast than the position of the young Irish girl,
and that of her English companions. A stranger,
almost a foreigner amongst us, with no home
but that great school-room ; no comforts, no in-
dulgences, no knick-knacks, no money, nothing
but the sheer, bare, naked necessaries of a school-
girl's life ; no dear family to think of and to go
to ; no fond father to come to see her ; no bro-
thers and sisters ; no kindred ; no friends. It
was a loneliness, a desolation, which, especially
at breaking-up times, when all her schoolfellows
went joyfully away each to her happy home, and
she was left the solitary and neglected inhabitant
of the deserted mansion, must have pressed upon
her very heart. The heaviest tasks of the half
year must have been pleasure and enjoyment
compared with the dreariness of those lonesome
holidays.

And yet she was almost as lonely when we
were all assembled. Childhood is, for the most
part, generous and sympathising; and there

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN. 257

were many amongst us who, interested by hex-
deserted situation, would have been happy to
have been her friends. But Honor was one of
those flowers which will only open in the bright
sunshine. Never did marigold under a cloudy
sky shut up her heart more closely than Honor
O'Callaghan. In a word. Honor had really one
of the many faults ascribed to her by Mrs. Sher-
wood, and her teachers and masters — that fault
so natural and so pardonable in adversity — she
was proud.

National and family pride blended with the
personal feeling. Young as she was when she
left Ireland, she had caught from the old nurse
who had had the care of her infancy, rude le-
gends of the ancient greatness of her country,
and of the regal grandeur of the O'Connors, her
maternal ancestors ; and over such dim traces of
Cathleen's legends as floated in her memory,
fragments wild, shadow}', and indistinct, as the
recollections of a dream, did the poor Irish girl
love to brood. Visions of long-past splendour
possessed her wholly, and the half-unconscious

258 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

reveries in which she had the habit of indulging,
gave a tinge of romance and enthusiasm to her
character, as peculiar as her story.

Everything connected with her country had
for her an indescribable charm. It was wonder-
ful how, with the apparently scanty means of ac-
quiring knowledge which the common school
histories afforded, together with here and there
a stray book borrowed for her by her young
companions from their home libraries, and ques-
tions answered from the same source, she had
contrived to collect her abundant and accurate
information, as to its early annals and present
position. Her antiquarian lore was perhaps a
little tinged, as such antiquarianism is apt to be,
by the colouring of a warm imagination; but still
it was a remarkable exemplification of the power
of an ardent mind to ascertain and combine facts
upon a favourite subject under apparently in-
superable difficulties. Unless in pursuing her his-
torical inquiries, she did not often speak upon
the subject. Her enthusiasm was too deep and
too concentrated for words. But she was Irish

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN. '259

to the heart's core, and had even retained, one
can hardly tell how, the slight accent which
in a sweet-toned female voice is so pretty.

In her appearance, also, there were many of
the characteristics of her countrywomen. The
roundness of form and clearness of complexion,
the result of good nurture and pure blood which
are often found in those who have been nursed
in an Irish cabin, the abundant wavy hair and
the deep-set grey eye. The face, in spite of
some irregularity of feature, would have been
pretty, decidedly pretty, if the owner had been
happy ; but the expression was too abstracted,
too thoughtful, too melancholy for childhood or
even for youth. She was like a rose shut up in
a room, whose pale blossoms have hardly felt the
touch of the glorious sunshine or the blessed
air. A daisy of the field, a common, simple,
cheerful looking daisy, would be pleasanter to
gaze upon than the blighted queen of flowers.

Her figure was, however, decidedly beautiful.
Not merely tall, but pliant, elastic, and grace-
ful in no ordinary degree. She was not gene-
rally remarkable for accomplishment. How

260 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

could she, in the total absence of the most
powerful, as well as the most amiable motives to
exertion ? She had no one to please ; no one to
watch her progress, to rejoice in her success,
to lament her failure. In many branches of
education she had not advanced beyond medio-
crity, but her dancing was perfection ; or rather
it would have been so, if to her other graces
she had added the charm of gaiety. But that
want, as our French dancing-master used to
observe, was so universal in this country, that
the wonder would have been to see any young
lady, whose face in a cotillion (for it was before
the days of quadrilles) did not look as if she
was following a funeral.

Such at thirteen I found Honor CCallaghan,
when I, a damsel some three years younger, was
first placed at Mrs. Sherwood's; such five years
afterwards I left her, when I quitted the
school.

Calling there the following spring, accompa-
nied by my good godfather, we again saw Honor
silent and pensive as ever. The old gentleman
was much struck with her figure and her melan-

HONOR 0'CAI.LAGHAN. 261

choly. " Fine girl that !" observed he to me ;
" looks as if she was in love though," added he,
putting his finger to his nose with a knowing
nod, as was usual with him upon occasions of
that kind. I, for my part, in whom a passion
for literature was just beginning to develope
itself, had a theory of my own upon the subject,
and regarded her with unwonted respect in con-
quence. Her abstraction appeared to me ex-
actly that of an author when contemplating
some great work, and I had no doubt but she
would turn out a poetess. Both conjectures
were characteristic, and both, as it happened,
wrong.

Upon my next visit to London, I found that
a great change had happened in Honor's des-
tiny. Her father, whom she had been fond of
investing with the dignity of a rebel, but who
had, according to Mrs. Sherwood's more reason-
able suspicion, been a reckless, extravagant,
thoughtless person, whose follies had been visited
upon himself and his family, with the evil con-
sequences of crimes, had died in America ; and
his sister, the richly- jointured widow of a baronet,

262 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

of old Milesian blood, who during his life had
been inexorable to his entreaties to befriend the
poor girl, left as it were in pledge at a London
boarding-school, had relented upon hearing of
his death, had come to England, settled all
pecuniary matters to the full satisfaction of the
astonished and delighted governess, and finally
carried Honor back with her to Dublin.

From this time we lost sight altogether of
our old companion. With her schoolfellows she
had never formed even the common school inti-
macies, and to Mrs. Sherwood and her functiona-
ries, she owed no obligation except that of
money, which was now discharged. The only
debt of gratitude which she had ever acknow-
ledged, was to the old French teacher, who,
although she never got nearer the pronuncia-
tion or the orthography of her name than
Mademoiselle I'Ocalle, had yet, in the over-
flowing benevolence of her temper, taken such
notice of the deserted child, as amidst the gene-
ral neglect might pass for kindness. But she
had returned to France. For no one else did
Honor profess the slightest interest. Accord-

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN. 263

ingly, she left the house where she had passed
nearly all her life, without expressing any desire
to hear again of its inmates, and never wrote a
line to any of them.

We did hear of her, however, occasionally.
Rumours reached us, vague and distant, and
more conflicting even than distant rumours are
wont to be. She was distinguished at the vice-
regal court, a beauty and a wit ; she was mar-
ried to a nobleman of the highest rank ; she
was a nun of the order of Mercy ; she was
dead.

And as years glided on, as the old school
passed into other hands, and the band of youth-
ful companions became more and more dis-
persed, one of the latter opinions began to gain
ground among us, when two or three chanced
to meet, and to talk of old schoolfellows. If
she had been alive and in the great world, surely
some of us should have heard of her. Her hav-
ing been a Catholic, rendered her taking the
veil not improbable; and to a person of her
enthusiastic temper, the duties of the sisters of
Mercy would have peculiar charms.

As one of that most useful and most benevo-

264 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

lent order, or as actually dead, we were there-
fore content to consider her, until, in the lapse
of years and the changes of destiny, we had
ceased to think of her at all.

The second of this present month of May
was a busy and a noisy day in my garden.
All the world knows what a spring this has
been. The famous black spring commemorated
by Gilbert White can hardly have been more
thoroughly ungenial, more fatal to man or beast,
to leaf and flower, than this most miserable
season, this winter of long days, when the sun
shines as if in mockery, giving little more heat
than his cold sister the moon, and the bitter
north-east produces at one and the same mo-
ment the incongruous annoyances of biting cold
and suffocating dust. Never was such a season.
The swallows, nightingales, and cuckoos were
a fortnight after their usual time. I wonder
what they thought of it, pretty creatures, and
how they made up their minds to come at all !
— and the sloe blossom, the black thorn winter
as the common people call it, which generally
makes its appearance early in March along with
the first violets, did not whiten the hedges this

HONOR O'CALLAGIIAN. 265

year until full two months later.* In short,
everj'body knows that this has been a most vil-
lanous season, and deserves all the ill that can
possibly be said of it. But the second of May
held forth a promise which, according to a very
usual trick of English weather, it has not kept ;
and was so mild and smiling and gracious, that,
without being quite so foolish as to indulge in
any romantic and visionary expectation of ever
seeing summer again, we were yet silly enough
to be cheered by the thought that spring was
coming at last in good earnest.

In a word, it was that pleasant rarity a fine
day ; and it was also a day of considerable stir,

* It is extraordinary how some flowers seem to obey
the season, whilst others are influenced by the wea-
ther. The hawthorn, certainly nearly akin to the sloe
blossom, is this year rather forwarder, if anything,
than in common years ; and the fritillary, always a
May flower, is painting the water meadows at this
moment in company with "the blackthorn winter;"
or rather is nearly over, whilst its cousin german,
•the tulip, is scarcely showing for bloom hi the
warmest exposures and most sheltered borders of the
garden.

266 HONOR O'CALLAGHAX.

as I shall attempt to describe hereafter, in my
small territories.

In the street too, and in the house, there was
as much noise and bustle as one would well
desire to hear in our village.

The first of May is Belford Great Fair, where
horses and cows are sold, and men meet gravely
to transact grave business ; and the second of
May is Belford Little Fair, where boys and
girls of all ages, women and children of all
ranks, flock into the town, to buy ribbons and
dolls and balls and gingerbread, to eat cakes
and suck oranges, to stare at the shows, and
gaze at the wild beasts, and to follow merrily
the merry business called pleasure.

Carts and carriages, horsepeople and foot-
people, were flocking to the fair ; unsold cows
and horses, with their weary drivers, and labour-
ing men who., having made a night as well as a
day of it, began to think it time to find their way
home, M'ere coming from it; Punch was being
exhibited at one end of the street, a barrel-organ,
surmounted by a most accomplished monkey,

HONOR O'CALLAGHAX. 267

was playing at the other ; a half tipsy horse-
dealer was galloping up and down the road,
showing off an unbroken forest pony, who threat-
ened every moment to throw him and break his
neck; a hawker was walking up the street cry-
ing Greenacre's last dying speech, who was
hanged that morning at Newgate, and as
all the world knows, made none; and the
highway in front of our house was well nigh
blocked up by three or four carriages waiting for
different sets of visiters, and by a gang of gip-
sies who stood clustered round the gate, waiting
with great anxiety the issue of an investigation
going on in the hall, where one of their gang
was under examination upon a question of steal-
ing a goose. Witnesses, constables, and other
officials were loitering in the court, and dogs
were barking, women chattering, boys blowing
horns, and babies squalling through all. It was
as pretty a scene of crowd and din and bustle
as one shall see in a summer's day. The fair
itself was calm and quiet in comparison ; the
complication of discordant sounds in Hogarth's
Enraged Musician was nothing to it.

N 2

268 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

Within my garden the genius of noise was
equally triumphant. An ingenious device, con-
ti'ived and executed by a most kind and
ingenious friend, for the purpose of shelter-
ing the pyramid of geraniums in front of
my greenhouse, — consisting of a wooden roof,
drawn by puUies up and down a high, strong
post, something like the mast of a ship,*
had given way ; and another most kind friend
had arrived with the requisite machinery,
blocks and ropes, and tackle of all sorts, to re-
place it upon an improved construction. With
him came a tall blacksmith, a short carpenter,
and a stout collar-maker, with hammers, nails,
chisels, and tools of all sorts, enough to build a
house ; ladders of all heights and sizes, two or

* This description does not sound prettily^, but the
real effect is exceedingly graceful : the appearance of
the dark canopy suspended over the pile of bright
flowers, at a considerable height, has something about
it not merely picturesque but oriental; and that a
gentleman's contrivance should succeed at all points,
as if he had been a real carpenter, instead of an earl's
son and a captain in the navy, is a fact quite unpa-
ralleled in the annals of inventions.

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN. 269

three gaping apprentices, who stood about in the
way, John willing to lend his aid in behalf of his
flowers, and master Dick with his hands in his
pockets looking on. The short carpenter perched
himself upon one ladder, the tall blacksmith on
another ; my good friend, Mr. Lawson, mounted
to the mast head ; and such a clatter ensued of
hammers and voices — (for it was exactly one of
those fancy jobs where every one feels privileged
to advise and find fault) — such clashing of opi-
nions and conceptions and suggestions as would
go to the building a county town.

Whilst this was going forward in middle air, 1
and my company were doing our best to furnish
forth the chorus below. It so happened that two
sets of my visiters were scientific botanists, the
one party holding the Linnsean system, the
others disciples of Jussieu ; and the garden being
a most natural place for such a discussion, a war
of hard words ensued, which would have done
honour to the Tower of Babel. "Tetrady-
namia," exclaimed one set ; " Monocotyledones,"
thundered the other; whilst a third friend, a
skilful florist, but no botanist, unconsciously

270 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

out-long-wordecl both of them, by telUng me
that the name of a new annual was " Leptosiphon
androsaceus."

Never was such a confusion of noises ! The
house door opened, and my father's strong clear
voice was heard in tones of warning. " Woman,
how can you swear to this goose ?" Whilst the
respondent squeaked out in something between
a scream and a cry, " Please your worship, the
poor bird having a-laid all his eggs, we had
marked un, and so — " What farther she would
have said being drowned in a prodigious
clatter occasioned by the downfal of the lad-
der that supported the tall blacksmith, which,
striking against that whereon was placed the
short carpenter, overset that climbing machine
also, and the clamor incident to such a calamity
overpowered all minor noises.

In the meanwhile I became aware that a fourth
party of visiters had entered the garden, my
excellent neighbour. Miss Mortimer, and three
other ladies, whom she introduced as Mrs. and
the Misses Dobbs; and the botanists and flo-
rists having departed, and the disaster at the

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN. 271

mast being repaired, quiet was so far restored,
that I ushered my guests into the greenhouse,
with something like a hope that we should be
able to hear each other speak.

Mrs. Dobbs was about the largest woman I had
ever seen in my life, fat, fair, and jifty^ with
a broad rosy countenance, beaming with good-
humour and contentment, and with a general
look of affluence over her whole comfortable
person. She spoke in a loud voice which made
itself heard over the remaining din in the garden
and out, and with a patois between Scotch and
Irish, which puzzled me, until I found from her
discourse that she was the widow of a linen
manufacturer, in the neighbourhood of Belfast.

" Ay," quoth she, with the most open-hearted
familiarity, " times are changed for the better
with me since you and I parted in Cadogan
Place. Poor Mr. Dobbs left me and those

two girls a fortune of Why, I verily

believe," continued she, interrupting herself,
" that you don't know me !"

" Honor !" said one of the young ladies to the
other, " only look at this butterfly !"

27*2 HONOR o'CALLAGHA.N.

Honor ! Was it, could it be Honor O'Cal-
laghan, the slight, pale, romantic visionary, so
proud, so reserved, so abstracted, so elegant, and
so melancholy ? Had thirty years of the coarse
realities of life transformed that pensive and deli-
cate damsel into the comely, hearty, and to say
the truth, somewhat vulgar dame whom I saw
before me ? Was such a change possible ?

"Married a nobleman !" exclaimed she when
I told her the reports respecting herself- "Taken
the veil ! No, indeed ! I have been a far
humbler and happier woman. It is very strange,
though, that during my Cinderella-like life at
school, I used always in my day-dreams to make
my story end like that of the heroine of the
fairy tale ; and it is still stranger, that both
rumours were within a very little of coming
true, — for when I got to Ireland, which, so far as
1 was concerned, turned out a very different
place from what I expected, I found myself shut
up in an old castle, fifty times more dreary
and melancholy than ever was our great
school-room in the holidays, with my aunt
setting her heart upon marrying me to an old

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN. 273

lord, who might, for age and infirmities, have
passed for my great grandfather ; and I really,
in my perplexity, had serious thoughts of
turning nun to get rid of my suitor ; but
then I was allowed to go into the north upon a
visit, and fell in with my late excellent husband,
who obtained Lady OTIara's consent to the match
by the offer of taking me without a portion ; and
ever since," continued she, " I have been a very
common-place and a very happy woman. Mr.
Dobbs was a man who had made his own fortune,
and all he asked of me was, to lay aside my
airs and graces, and live with him in his own
homely, old-fashioned way amongst his own old
people, (kind people they were !)his looms, and
his bleaehing-grounds ; so that my heart was
opened, and I grew fat and comfortable, and
merry and hearty, as different fi'om the foolish,
romantic girl whom you remember, as plain
honest prose is from the silly thing called poetrv.
I don't believe that T have ever once thought
of my old castles in the air for these five-and-
twenty years. It is very odd, though," added
she, with a frankness which was really like think-

N 5

•274 HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

ing aloud, " that I always did contrive in my vi-
sions that my history should conclude like that
of Cinderella. To be sure, things are much better
as they are, but it is an odd thing, nevertheless.

Well ! perhaps my daughters !"

And as they are rich and pretty, and good-
natured, although much more in the style of the
present Honor than the past, it is by no means
improbable that the vision v/hich was evidently
glittering before the fond mother's eyes, may be
rea;lised. At all events, my old friend is, as
she says herself, a happy woman — in all proba-
bility, happier than if the Cinderella day-dream
had actually come to pass in her own comely
person. But the transition ! After all, there
are real transformations in this e very-day world,
which beat the doings of fairy land all to nothing ;
and the change of the pumpkin into a chariot,
and the mice into horses, was not to be compared
for a moment with the transmogrification of
Honor O'Callaghan into Mrs. Dobbs.

275

AUNT DEBORAH.

A GROSSER old woman than Mrs. Deborah
Thornby was certainly not to be found in the
whole village of Hilton. Worth, in country
phrase, a power of money, and living (to borrow
another rustic expression) upon her means,
the exercise of her extraordinary faculty for
grumbling and scolding seemed the sole occu-
pation of her existence, her only pursuit, solace,
and amusement ; and really it would have been
a great pity to have deprived the poor woman
of a pastime so consolatory to herself, and which
did harm to nobody : her family consisting only
of an old labourer, to guard the house, take care
of her horse, her cow, and her chaise and cart,
and work in the garden, who was happily, for

•276 AUNT DEBORAH.

his comfort, stone deaf, and could not hear her
vituperation, and of a parish girl of twelve, to
do the indoor work, who had been so used to be
scolded all her life, that she minded the noise
no more than a miller minds the clack of his
mill, or than people who live in a churchyard
mind the sound of the church bells, and would
probably, from long habit, have felt some miss
of the sound had it ceased, of which, by the
way, there was small danger, so long as Mrs.
Deborah continued in this life. Her crossness
was so far innocent that it hurt nobody except
herself. But she was also cross-grained, and
that evil quality is unluckily apt to injure other
people ; and did so very materially in the pre-
sent instance.

Mrs. Deborah was the only daughter of old
Simon Thornby, of Chalcott great farm ; she had
had one brother, who having married the rosy-
cheeked daughter of the parish clerk, a girl with
no portion except her modesty, her good-nature,
and her prettiness, had been discarded by his
father, and after trying various ways to gain a
living, and failing in all, had finally died broken-

AUNT DEBORAH. 277

hearted, leaving the unfortunate clerk's daugh-
ter, rosy-cheeked no longer, and one little boy,
to the tender mercy of his family. Old Simon
showed none. He drove his son's widow from
the door as he had before driven off his son ;
and when he also died, an event which occurred
within a year or two, bequeathed all his pro-
perty to his daughter Deborah.

This bequest was exceedingly agreeable to
Mrs. Deborah, (for she was already of an age to
assume that title,) who valued money, not cer-
tainly for the comforts and luxuries which it
may be the means of procuring, nor even for its
own sake, as the pbrase goes, but for that which,
to a woman of her temper, was perhaps the
highest that she was capable of enjoying, the
power which wealth confers over all who are
connected with or dependent on its possessor.

The principal subjects of herdespoticdominion
were the young widow and her boy, whom she
placed in a cottage near her own house, and with
whose comfort and happiness she dallied pretty
much as a cat plays with the mouse which she has
got into her clutches, and lets go only to catch

278 AUNT DEBORAH.

again, or an angler with the trout which he has
fairly hooked, and merely suffers to struggle in
the stream until it is sufficiently exhausted to
bring to land. She did not mean to be cruel,
but she could not help it; so her poor mice
were mocked with the semblance of liberty, al-
though surrounded by restraints ; and the awful
paw seemingly sheathed in velvet, whilst they
were in reality never out of reach of the horrors
of the pat.

It sometimes, however, happens that the little
mouse makes her escape from madam pussy at
the very moment when she seems to have the
unlucky trembler actually within her claws ; and
so it occurred in the present instance.

The dwelling to which Mrs. Deborah retired
after the death of her father, was exceedingly
romantic and beautiful in point of situation. It
was a small but picturesque farm-house, on the
very banks of the I^oddon, a small branch of
which, diverging from the parent stream, and
crossed by a pretty footbridge, swept round the
homestead, the orchard and garden, and went
winding along the water meadows in a thousand

AUNT DEBORAH. 279

glittering meanders, until it was lost in the rich
woodlands which formed the back-ground of the
picture. In the month of May, when the
orchard was full of its rosy and pearly blossoms,
a forest of lovely bloom, the meadows yellow
with cowslips, and the clear brimming river,
bordered by the golden tufts of the water ranun-
culus, and garlanded by the snowy flowers of the
hawthorn and the wild cherry, the thin wreath
of smoke curling from the tall, old-fashioned
chimneys of the pretty irregular building,
with its porch, and its baywindows, and gable-
ends full of light and shadow, — in that month
of beauty it would be difficult to imagine a more
beautiful or a more English landscape.

On the other side of the narrow winding road,
parted from Mrs. Deborah's demesne by a
long low bridge of many arches, stood a little
rustic mill, and its small low-browed cottage,
with its own varied back-ground of garden and
fruit trees and thickly wooded meadows, ex-
tending in long perspective, a smiling verdant
valley of many miles.

Now Chalcott mill, reckoned by everybody

'280 AUNT DEBORAH.

else the prettiest point in her prospect, was to
Mrs. Deborah not merely an eye-sore, but a
heart -sore, not on its own account ; cantankerous
as she was, she had no quarrel with the innocent
buildings, but for the sake of its inhabitants.

Honest John Stokes, the miller, was her
cousin-german. People did say that some forty
years before there had been question of a mar-
riage between the parties ; and really they both
denied the thing with so much vehemence and
fury, that one should almost be tempted to be-
lieve there was some truth in the report. Cer-
tain it is, that if they had been that wretched
thing a mismatched couple, and had gone on
snarling together all their lives, they could not
have hated each other more zealously. One
shall not often meet with anything so perfect in
its way as that aversion. It was none of your
silent hatreds that never come to words ; nor of
your civil hatreds, that veil themselves under
smooth phrases and smiling looks. Their ill-
will was frank, open, and above-board. They
could not afford to come to an absolute breach,
because it would have deprived them of the

AUNT DEBORAH. 281

pleasure of quarrelling ; and in spite of the fre-
quent complaints they were wont to make of
their near neighbourhood, I am convinced that
they derived no small gratification fi'om the op-
portunities which it afforded them of saying dis-
agreeable things to each other.

And yet Mr. John Stokes was a well-meaning
man, and Mrs. Deborah Thornby was not an ill-
meaning woman. But she was, as I have said
before, cross in the grain ; and he — why he was
one of those plain-dealing personages who will
speak their whole mind, and who pique them-
selves upon that sort of sincerity which is com-
prised in telling to another all the ill that they
have ever heard, or thought, or imagined con-
cerning him, in repeating, as if it were a point
of duty, all the harm that one neighbour says
of another, and in denouncing, as if it were a
sin, whatever the unlucky person whom they ad-
dress may happen to do, or to leave undone.

" I am none of your palavering chaps, to
flummer over an old vixen for the sake of her
strong-box. I hate such falseness. I speak the
truth and care for no man," quoth John Stokes.

28*2 AUNT DEBORAH.

And accordingly John Stokes never saw Mrs.
Deborah Thornby but he saluted her, pretty
much as his mastiff accosted her favourite cat ;
erected his bristles, looked at her with savage,
bloodshot eyes, showed his teeth, and vented a
sound something between a snarl and a growl ;
whilst she, (like the fourfooted tabby,) set up
her back and spit at him in return.

They met often, as I have said, for the enjoy-
ment of quarrelling ; and as whatever he advised
she was pretty sure not to do, it is probable
that his remonstrances in favour of her friend-
less relations served to confirm her in the small
tyranny which she exercised towards them.

Such being the state of feeling between these
two jangling cousins, it may be imagined with
what indignation Mrs. Deborah found John
Stokes, upon the death of his wife, removing her
widowed sister-in-law from the cottage in which
she had placed her, and bringing her home to
the mill, to officiate as his housekeeper, and
take charge of a lovely little girl, his only child.
She vowed one of those vows of anger which I
fear are oftener kept than the vows of love, to

AUNT DEBORAH. 283

strike both mother and son out of her will, (by
the way, she had a superstitious horror of that
disagreeable ceremony, and even the temptation
of choosing new legatees whenever the old dis-
pleased her, had not been sufficient to induce
her to make one, — the threat did as well,) and
never to speak to either of them again as long
as she lived.

She proclaimed this resolution at the rate of
twelve times an hour, (that is to say, once in five
minutes,) every day for a fortnight ; and in spite
of her well-known caprice, there seemed for
once in her life reason to believe that she would
keep her word.

Those prudent and sagacious persons who are
so good as to take the superintendence of other
people's affairs, and to tell by the look of the foot
where the shoe pinches and where it does not, all
united in blaming the poor widow for withdraw-
ing herself and her son from Mrs. Deborah's pro-
tection. But besides that no human being can
adequately estimate the misery of leading a life
of dependence upon one to whom scolding was
as the air she breathed, without it she must die,

284 AUNT DEBORAH.

a penurious dependence too, which supphed
grudgingly the humblest wants, and yet would
not permit the exertions by which she would
joyfully have endeavoured to support herself; —
besides the temptation to exchange Mrs. Debo-
rah's incessant maundering for the Miller's
rough kindness, and her scanty fare for the
coarse plenty of his board, — besides these homely
but natural temptations — hardly to be ade-
quately allowed for by those who have passed
their lives amidst smiling kindness and luxurious
abundance; besides these motives she had a
stronger and dearer in her desire to rescue her
boy from the dangers of an enforced and mise-
rable idleness, and to put him in the way of
earning his bread by honest industry.

Through the interest of his grandfather the
parish clerk, the little Edward had been early
placed in the Hilton free school, where
he had acquitted himself so much to the
satisfaction of the master, that at twelve years
old he was the head boy on the foundation, and
took precedence of the other nine~and~twenty
wearers of the full-skirted blue coats, leathern

AUNT DEBORAH. 285

belts, and tasseled caps, in the various arts of
reading, writing, cyphering, and mensuration.
He could flourish a swan without ever taking
his pen from the paper. Nay, there is little
doubt but from long habit he could have flou-
rished it blindfold, like the man who had so
often modelled the wit of Ferney in breadcrumbs,
that he could produce little busts of Voltaire
with his hands under the table ; he had not his
equal in Practice or the Rule of Three, and his
piece, when sent round at Christmas, was the
admiration of the whole parish.

Unfortunately, his arrival at this pre-eminence
was also the signal of his dismissal from the
free school. He returned home to his mother, and
as Mrs. Deborah, although hourly complaining of
the expense of supporting a great lubberly boy
in idleness, refused to appentice him to any
trade, and even forbade his finding employment
in helping her deaf man of all work to cultivate
her garden, which the poor lad, naturally indus-
trious and active, begged her permission to do,
his mother, considering that no uncertain expec-
tations of money at the death of his kinswoman

•286 AUNT DEBORAH.

could counterbalance the certain evil of dragging
on his days in penury and indolence during her
life, wisely determined to betake herself to the
mill, and accept John Stokes's oiFer of sending
Edward to a friend in town, for the purpose of
being placed with a civil engineer: — a destina-
tion with which the boy himself — a fine intelli-
gent youth, by the way, tall and manly, with
black eyes that talked and laughed, and curling
dark hair, — was delighted in every point of view.
He longed for a profession for which he had a
decided turn; he longed to see the world as
personified by the city of cities, the unparagoned
London; and he longed more than either to get
away from Aunt Deborah, the storm of whose
vituperation seemed ringing in his ears so long
as he continued within sight of her dwelling.
One would think the clack of the mill and the
prattle of his pretty cousin Cicely might have
drowned it, but it did not. Nothing short of
leaving the spinster fifty miles behind, and set-
ting the great city between him and her, could
efface the impression.

" I hope I am not ungrateful," thought Ed-

AUNT DEBORAH. 287

ward to himself, as he was trudging London-ward
after taking a tender leave of all at the mill ; " I
hope I am not ungrateful. I do not think I am,
for I would give my right arm, ay, or my life,
if it would serve master John Stokes or please
dear Cissy. But really I do hope never to
come within hearing of Aunt Deborah again,
she storms so. I wonder whether all old
women are so cross. 1 don't think my mother
will be, nor Cissy. I am sure Cissy won't.
Poor Aunt Deborah ! I suppose she can't help
it." And with this indulgent conclusion, Edward
wended on his way.

Aunt Deborah's mood was by no means so
pacific. She staid at home fretting, fuming,
and chafing, and storming herself hoarse — which,
as the people at the mill took care to keep out
of earshot, was all so much good scolding thrown
away. The state of things since Edward's de-
parture had been so decisive,that even John
Stokes thought it wiser to keep himself aloof for
a time ; and although they pretty well guessed
that she would take measures to put in effect
her threat of disinheritance, the first outward
demonstration came in the shape of a young

288 AUNT DEBORAH.

man (gentleman I suppose he called himself —
ay, there is no doubt but he wrote himself Es-
quire) who attended her to church a few Sun-
days after, and was admitted to the honour of sit-
ting in the same pew.

Nothing could be more unlike our friend PM-
ward than the stranger. Fair, freckled, light-
haired, light-eyed, with invisible eye-brows and
eye-lashes, insignificant in feature, pert and perk-
ing in expression, and in figure so dwarfed and
stunted, that though in point of age he had evi-
dently attained his full growth, (if one may use
the expression to such a he- doll,) Robert at fif-
teen would have made two of him, — such
was the new favourite. So far as appearance
went, for certain Mrs. Deborah had not changed
for the better.

Gradually it oozed out, as, somehow or other,
news, like water, will find a vent, however small
the cranny, — by slow degrees it came to be un-
derstood that Mrs. Deborah's visiter was a cer-
tain Mr. Adolphus Lynfield, clerk to an attorney
of no great note in the good town of Belford
Regis, and nearly related, as he affirmed, to the
Thornby family.

AUNT DEBORAH. 289

Upon hearing these tidings, John Stokes, the
son of old Simon Thornly's sister, marched
across the road, and finding the door upon the
latch, entered unannounced into the presence of
his enemy.

" 1 think it my duty to let you know, cousin
Deborah, that this here chap's an impostor — a
sham — and that you are a fool," was his conci-
liatory opening. " Search the register. The
Thornlys have been yeomen of this parish
ever since the time of Elizabeth — more shame
to you for forcing the last of the race to
seek his bread elsewhere; and if you can find
such a name as Lynfield amongst 'em, I'll give
you leave to turn me into a pettifogging lawyer
— that's all. Saunderses, and Symondses, and
Stokeses, and Mays, you'll find in plenty, but
never a Lynfield. Lynfield, quotha ! it sounds
like a made-up name in a story-book ! And as
for 'Dolphus, why there never was anything
like it in all the generation, except my good old
great aunt Dolly, and that stood for Dorothy. All
our names have been christian-like and English,
Toms, and Jacks, and Jems, and Bills, and Sims,

290 AUNT DEBORAH.

and Neds — poor fellow ! None of your out-
landish 'Dolphuses. Dang it, I believe the fool-
ish woman likes the chap the better for having a
name she can't speak ! Remember, I warn you
he's a sham !" And off strode the honest miller,
leaving Mrs. Deborah too angry for reply, and
confirmed both in her prejudice and prepossession
by the natural effect of that spirit of contradic-
tion which formed so large an ingredient in her
composition, and was not wholly wanting in that
of John Stokes.

Years passed away, and in spite of frequent
ebbs and flows, the tide of Mrs. Deborah's favour
continued to set towards Mr. Adolphus Lynfield.
Once or twice indeed, report had said that he was
fairly discarded, but the very appearance of the
good miller, anxious to improve the opportunity
for his protege, had been sufficient to determine
his cousin to reinstate Mr. Adolphus in her good
graces. Whether she really liked him is doubt-
ful. He entertained too good an opinion of him-
self to be very successful in gaining that of other
people.

That the ffentleman was not deficient in " left-

AUNT DEBORAH. 291

handed wisdom," was proved pretty clearly by
most of his actions ; for instance, when routed
by the downright miller from the position which
he had taken up of a near kinsman by the
father's side, he, like an able tactician, wheeled
about and called cousins with Mrs. Deborah's
mother ; and as that good lady happened to have
borne the very general, almost universal, name
of Smith, which is next to anonymous, even
John Stokes could not dislodge him from that
entrenchment. But he was not always so dex-
terous. Cunning in him lacked the crowning
perfection of hiding itself under the appearance
of honesty. His art never looked like nature.
It stared you in the face, and could not deceive
the dullest observer. His very flattery had a
tone of falseness that affronted the person flat-
tered ; and Mrs. Deborah, in particular, who
did not want for shrewdness, found it so dis-
tasteful, that she would certainly have discarded
him upon that one ground of offence, had not
her love of power been unconsciously propitiated
by the perception of the efforts which he made,
and the degradation to which he submitted, in

o 2

292 AUNT DEBORAH.

the vain attempt to please her. She liked the
homage offered to " les beaux yeux de sa cas-
sette" pretty much as a young beauty likes the
devotion extorted by her charms, and for the
sake of the incense tolerated the worshipper.

iSevertheless there were moments when the
conceit which I have mentioned as the leading
characteristic of Mr. Adolphus Lynfield had
well nigh banished him from Chalcott. Piquing
himself on the variety and extent of his know-
ledge, the universality of his genius, he of course
paid the penalty of other universal geniuses, by
being in no small degree superficial. Not con-
tent with understanding every trade better than
those who had followed it all their lives, he had
a most unlucky propensity to put his devices
into execution, and as his information was, for
the most part, picked up from the column
headed " varieties," in the county newspaper,
where of course there is some chaff mingled with
the grain, and as the figments in question
were generally ill understood and imperfectly
recollected, it is really surprising that the young
gentleman did not occasion more mischief than

AUNT DEBORAH. 293

actually occurred by the quips and quiddities
which he delighted to put in practice whenever
he met with any one simple enough to permit
the exercise of his talents.

Some damage he did effect by his experiments,
as Mrs. Deborah found to her cost. He killed
a bed of old-fashioned spice cloves, the pride of
her heart, by salting the ground to get rid of the
worms. Her broods of geese also, and of tur-
keys, fell victims to a new and infallible mode of
feeding, which was to make them twice as fat
in half the time. Somehow or other, they all
died under the operation. So did half a score of
fine apple-trees, under an improved method of
grafting ; whilst a magnificent brown Bury pear,
that covered one end of the house, perished of
the grand discovery of severing the bark to in-
crease the crop. He lamed Mrs. Deborah's old
horse by doctoring him for a prick in shoeing,
and ruined her favourite cow, the best milch
cow in the county, by a most needless attempt
to increase her milk.

Now these mischances and misdemeanors,
ay, or the half of them, would undoubtedly

•294 AUNT DEBORAH.

have occasioned Mr. Adolphus's dismission, and
the recal of poor Edward, every account of whom
was in the highest degree favourable, had the
worthy miller been able to refrain from lecturing
his cousin upon her neglect of the one, and her
partiality for the other. It was really astonish-
ing that John Stokes, a man of sagacity in all
other respects, never could understand that
scolding was of all devisable processes the least
likely to succeed in carrying his point with one
who was such a proficient in that accomplish-
ment, that if the old penalty for female
scolds, the ducking-stool, had continued in
fashion, she would have stood an excellent chance
of attaining to that distinction. But so it was.
The same blood coursed through their veins,
and his tempestuous good-will and her fiery
anger took the same form of violence and
passion.

Nothing but these lectures could have kept
Mrs. Deborah constant in the train of such a
trumpery, jiggetting, fidgetty little personage as
Mr. Adolphus, — the more especially as her heart
was assailed in its better and softer parts, by

AUNT DEBORAH. 295

the quiet respectfulness of Mrs. Thornly's de-
meanour, who never forgot that she had expe-
rienced her protection in the hour of need, and
by the irresistible good-nature of Cicely, a
smiling, rosy, sunny-looking creature, whose
only vocation in this world seemed to be the
trying to make everybody as happy as herself.

Mrs. Deborah (with such a humanising taste,
she could not, in spite of her cantankerous
temper, be all bad) loved flowers: and Cicely,
a rover of the woods and fields from early child-
hood, and no despicable practical gardener, took
care to keep her beaupots constantly supplied
from the first snowdrop to the last china rose.
Nothing was too large for Cicely's good-will,
nothing too small. Huge chimney jars of lilacs,
laburnums, horse-chestnuts, peonies, and the
golden and gorgeous double furze ; china jugs
filled with magnificent double stocks, and rich
wallflowers,* with their bitter-sweet odour, like

* Few flowers, (and almost all look best when ar-
ranged each sort in its separate vase,) — few look so
well together as the four sorts of double wallflowers.
The common dark, (the old bloody warrior— I have
a love for those graphic names — words which paint)

296 AUNT DEBORAH.

the taste of orange marmalade, pinks, sweet -
peas, and mignonette, from her own httle garden,
or woodland posies that might beseem the hand
of the faerie queen, composed of those gems
of flowers, the scarlet pimpernel, and the blue
anagallis, the rosy star of the wild geranium,
with its aromatic crimson-tipped leaves, the
snowy star of the white ochil, and that third
starry flower the yellow loose-strife, the milk
vetch, purple, or pink, or cream coloured, backed
by moss-like leaves and lilac blossoms of the
lousewort, and overhung by the fragrant bells
and cool green leaves of the lily of the valley.

the common dark, the common yellow, the newer and
more intensely coloured dark, and that new gold
colour still so rare, which is in tint, form, growth,
hardiness, and profusion, one of the most valuable ac-
quisitions to the flower garden. When placed together
in ajar, the brighter blossoms seem to stand out from
those of deeper hue, with exactly the sort of relief,
the harmonious combination of light and shade, that
one sometimes sees hi the rich gilt carving of an old
flower-wreathed picture-frame, or, better still, it
might seem a pot of flowers chased in gold, by Benve-
nuto Cellini, in which the workmanship outvalued
the metal. Many beaupots are gayer, many sweeter,
but this is the richest, both for scent and colour, that
I have ever seen.

AUXT DEBORAH. 297

It would puzzle a gardener to surpass the ele-
gance and delicacy of such a nosegay.

Offerings like these did our miller's maiden
delight to bring at all seasons, and under all
circumstances, whether of peace or war between
the heads of the two opposite houses; and when-
ever there chanced to be a lull in the storm,
she availed herself of the opportunity to add to
her simple tribute a dish of eels from the mill-
stream, or perch from the rivei*. That the
thought of Edward ("dear Edward," as she
always called him,) might not add somewhat of
alacrity to her attentions to his wayward aunt,
I will not venture to deny, but she would have
done the same if Edward had not been in ex-
istence, from the mere effect of her own peace-
making spirit, and a generosity of nature which
found more pleasure in giving than in possessing.
A sweet and happy creature was Cicely ; it was
difficult even for Mrs. Deborah to resist her
gentle voice and artless smiles.

Affairs were in this posture between the bel-
ligerents, sometimes war to the knife, sometimes
a truce under favour of Cissy's white flag, when

o 5

298 AUNT DEBORAH.

one October evening, John Stokes entered the
dwelhng of his kinswoman to inform her that
Edward's apprenticeship had been some time at
an end, that he had come of age about a month
ago, and that his master, for whom he had con-
tinued to work, was so satisfied of his talents,
industry, and integrity, that he had offered to
take him into partnership for a sum incredibly
moderate, considering the advantages which
such a connexion would ensure.

" You have more than the money wanted in
the Belford Bank, money that ought to have
been his," quoth John Stokes, " besides all your
property in land and houses and the funds ; and
if you did advance this sum, which all the world
knows is only a small part of what should have
belonged to him in right of his father, it would be
as safe as if it was in the Bank of England, and
the interest paid half-yearly. You ought to give
it him out and out ; but of course you won't
even lend it," pursued this judicious negoti-
ator ; " you keep all your money for that pre-
cious chap, Mr. 'Dolphus, to make ducks and
drakes with after you are dead ; a fine jig he'll

AUNT DEBORAH. 299

dance over your grave. You know, I suppose,
that we've got the fellow in a cleft stick about
that petition the other day? He persuaded old
Jacob, who's as deaf as a post, to put his mark
to it, and when he was gone, Jacob came to me
(I'm the only man in the parish who can make
him hear) to ask what it was about. So upon
my explaining the matter, Jacob found he had
got into the wrong box. But as the chap had
taken away his petition, and Jacob could not
scratch out his name, what does he do but
set his mark to ours o' t'other side ; and we've
wrote all about it to Sir Robert to explain to
the Parliament, lest seeing Jacob's name both
ways like, they should think 'twas he, poor fel-
low, that meant to humbug 'em. A pretty figure
Mr. 'Dolphus '11 cut when the story comes to be
told in the House of Commons ! But that's not
the worst. He took the petition to the work-
house, and meeting with little Fan Ropley, who
had been taught to write at our charity-school,
and is quick at her pen, he makes her sign
her name at full length, and then strikes a dot
over the e to turn it into Francis, and persuade

300 AUNT DEBORAH.

the great folk up at Lunnun, that little Fan's
a grown-up man. If that chap won't come
someday to be transported for forgery, my name's
not John Stokes ! Well, dame, will you let Ned
have the money? Yes or no?"

That Mrs. Deborah should have suffered the
good miller to proceed with his harangue with-
out interruption, can only be accounted for
on the score of the loudness of tone on which
he piqued himself with so much justice. When
she did take up the word, her reply made up in
volubility and virulence for any deficiency in
sound, concluding by a formal renunciation of
her nephew, and a command to his zealous ad-
vocate never again to appear within her doors.
Upon which, honest John vowed he never would,
and departed.

Two or three days after this quarrel, Mr.
Adolphus having arrived, as happened not un-
frequently, to spend the afternoon at Chalcott,
persuaded his hostess to accompany him to see a
pond drawn at the Hall, to which, as the daughter
of one of Sir Robert's old tenants, she would
undoubtedly have the right of entree ; and Mrs.

AUNT DEBORAH. 301

Deborah assented to his request, partly because
the weather was fine, and the distance short,
partly, it may be, from a lurking desire to take
her chance as a bystander of a dish of fish ; they
who need such windfalls least, being commonly
those who are most desirous to put themselves
in their way-
Mr. Adolphus Lynfield's reasons were obvious
enough. Besides the ennui of a tete-a-tete, all
flattery on one side and contradiction on the
other, he was naturally of the fidgetty restless
temperament which hates to be long confined to
one place or one occupation, and can never hear
of a gathering of people, whatever might be
the occasion, without longing to find himself
amongst them.

Moreover, he had, or professed to have, a
passion for field sports of every description ; and
having that very season contrived, with his usual
curious infelicity, to get into as many scrapes in
shooting as shall last most sportsmen their
whole lives — having shot a spaniel instead of a
hare, a keeper instead of a partridge, and his
own foot instead of a pheasant, and finally,
having been taken up for a poacher, although

SO'2 AUNT DEBORAH.

wholly innocent of the death of any bird that
ever wore feathers, — after all these woeful ex-
periences, (to say nothing of mischances in
anghng which might put to shame those of our
friend Mr. Thompson,) he found himself par-
ticularly well disposed to a diversion which ap-
peared to combine in most choice union the ap-
pearance of sporting, which he considered
essential to his reputation, with a most happy
exemption from the usual sporting requisites,
exertion or skill. All that he would have to do
would be to look on and talk, — to throw out a
hint here and a suggestion there, and find fault
with everything and everybody, like a man
who understood what was going forward.

The weather was most propitious ; a bright
breezy sunny October day, with light snowy
clouds, chased by a keen crisp wind across
the deep blue heavens, — and the beautiful
park, the turf of an emerald green, contrasting
with the brown fern and tawny woods, rivalling
in richness and brightness the vivid hues of the
autumnal sky. Nothing could exceed the gor-
geous tinting of the magnificent trees, which,
whether in detached clumps or forest-like masses,

AUNT DEBORAH. 303

formed the pride and glory of the place. The
oak still retaining its dark and heavy verdure ;
the elm letting fall a shower of yellow leaves,
that tinged the ground beneath; the deep orange
of the horse-chestnut, the beech varying from
ruddy gold to greenish brown ; and above all, the
shining green of the holly, and the rich purplish
red of the old thorns, those hoary thorns, the
growth of centuries, gave to this old English gen-
tleman's seat much of the variety and beauty of
the American backwoods. The house, a stately
ancient mansion, from the porch of which you
might expect to see Sir Roger de Coverley issue,
stood half-way up a gentle hill, finely backed by
woods of great extent; and the pond, which
was the object of the visit, was within sight of
the windows, but so skilfully veiled by trees, as to
appear of much greater extent than it really was.
The master and mistress of the Hall, with
their pretty daughters, were absent on a tour : —
Is any English country family ever at home in
the month of October in these days of fashion-
able enterprise ? They were gone to visit the
temples of Thebes, or the ruins of Carthage, the

304 AUNT DEBORAH.

Fountains of the Nile or the Falls of Niagara,
St. Sophia, or the Kremlin, or some such pretty
little excursion, which ladies and gentlemen now
talk of as familiarly " as maids of puppy dogs."
They were away. But enough of the house-
hold remained at Chalcott, to compose, with a
few visiters, a sufficiently numerous and ani-
mated group.

The first person whom Mrs. Deborah espied,
(and it is remarkable that we always see first
those whom we had rather not see at all,) was
her old enemy the miller, — a fisherman of so
much experience and celebrity, that his presence
might have been reckoned upon as certain —
busily engaged,- together with some half-dozen
stout and active coadjutors, in dragging the net
ashore, amidst a chorus of exclamations and
cautions from the various assistants, and the
breathless expectation of the spectators on the
bank, amongst whom were Mrs. Thornly and
Cicely, accompanied by a tall, athletic young
man of dark complexion, with peculiarly bright
eyes and curling hair, whom his aunt immedi-
atelv recognised as Edward.

AUNT DEBORAH. 305

" How improved he is !" was the thought that
flashed across her mind, as with an air of re-
spectful alacrity he stepped forward to meet
her; but the miller, in tugging at his nets,
happened to look towards them, and ashamed
that he of all men should see her change of
feeling, she turned away abruptly, without ac-
knowledging his salutation, and walked off to the
other side with her attendant, Mr. Adolphus,

"Drat the perverse old jade!" exclaimed
John Stokes, involuntarily, as he gave a mighty
tug, which brought half the net ashore.

" She's heavy, my good sir ! " observed the
pompous butler, conceiving that the honest
miller's exclamation had reference to the sport :
" only see how full she is ! We shall have a
magnificent hawl !"

And the spectators, male and female, crowded
round, and the fishermen exerted themselves so
efiiciently, that in two minutes the net was on
dry land.

" Nothing but weeds and rubbish ! " ejaculated
the disappointed butler, a peculiarly blank look

306 AUNT DEBORAH.

taking the place of his usual self-importance.
" What can have become of the fish ?"

" The net has been improperly drawn,"
observed Mr. Adolphus ; " I myself saw four or
five large carp just before it was dragged
ashore !"

" Better fling you in, master 'Dolphus, by
way of bait !" ejaculated our friend the miller;
" I've seen jacks in this pond that would make
no more bones of swallowing a leg or an arm of
such an atomy as you, if they did not have a try
at the whole body, than a shark v/ould of bolting
down Punch in the show ; as to carp, everybody
that ever fished a pond knows their tricks. Catch
them in a net if you can. They swim round
and round, just to let you look at 'em, and then
they drop plump into the mud, and lie as still
and as close as so many stones. Bur. come, Mr.
Tomkins," continued honest John, addressing
the butler, " we'll try again. I'm minded that
we shall have better luck this time. Here are
some brave large tench, which never move till
the water is disturbed ; we shall have a good

AUNT DEBORAH. 307

chance for them as well as for the jacks. Now,
steady there, you in the boat. Throw her in,
boys, and mind you don't draw too fast !" So
to work they all went again.

All was proceeding prosperously, and the net,
evidently well filled with fish, was dragging
slowly to land, when John Stokes shouted sud-
denly from the other side of the pond — " Dang
it, if that unlucky chap, master 'Dolphus there,
has not got hold of the top of the net ! He'll
pull it over. See, that great jack has got out al-
ready. Take the net from him, Tom ! He'll
let all the fish loose, and tumble in himself,
and the water at that part is deep enough to
drown twenty such mannikins. Not that I think
drowning likely to be his fate, — witness that
petition business," muttered John to himself in
a sort of parenthesis. " Let go, I say, or you
will be in. Let go, can't ye ?" added he, in his
loudest tone.

And with the word, Mr. Adolphus, still strug-
gling to retain his hold of the net, lost his ba-
lance and fell in, and catching at the person next
him, who happened to be Mrs. Deborah, with

308 AUNT DEBOKAH.

the hope of saving himself, dragged her in after
him.

Both sank, and amidst the confusion that
ensued, the shrieks and sobs of the women, the
oaths and exclamations of the men, the danger
was so imminent that both might have been
drowned, had not Edward Thornly, hastily
flinging off his coat and hat, plunged in and res-
cued Mrs. Deborah, whilst good John Stokes,
running round the head of the pond as nimbly as
a boy, did the same kind office for his prime
aversion, the attorney's clerk. What a sound
kernel is sometimes hidden under a rough and
rugged rind !

Mr. Adolphus, more frightened than hurt, and
with so much of the conceit washed out of him
by his involuntary cold bath, that it might be ac-
counted one of the most fortunate accidents in
his life, was conveyed to the Hall ; but her own
house being almost equally near, Mrs. Deborah
was at once taken home, and put comfortably to
bed in her own chamber.

About two hours afterwards, the whole of the
miller's family, Mrs. Thornly still pallid and

AUNT DEBORAH. 309

trembling, Cicely smiling through her tears, and
her father as blunt and freespoken as ever, were '
assembled round the homely couch of their
maiden cousin.

" I tell you I must have the lawyer fetched di-
rectly. I can't sleep till I have made my will;"
said Mrs. Deborah.

" Better not," responded John Stokes ; " you'll
want it altered to-morrow."

" What's that you say, cousin John ?" in-
quired the spinster.

" That if you make j^our will to night, you'll
change your mind to-morrow," reiterated John
Stokes. " Ned's going to be married to ray
Cicely," added he, " and that you mayn't like,
or if you did like it this week, you might not
like it next. So you'd better let matters rest as
they are."

" You're a provoking man, John Stokes," said
his cousin — "a very provoking, obstinate man.
But I'll convince you for once. Take that key,
Mrs. Thornly," quoth she, raising herself in
bed, and fumbling in an immense pair of pockets
for a small old-fashioned key, "and open the 'scru-

310 AUNT DEBORAH,

toire, and give me the pen and ink, and the old
narrow brown book, that you'll find at the top.
Not like his marrying Cicely ! Why I always
have loved that child — don't cry, Cissy ! — and
have always had cause, for she has been a kind
little creature to me. Those dahlias came from
her, and the sweet posy," pursued Mrs. Deborah,
pointing to a nosegay of autumn flowers, the
old fragrant monthly rose, mignionette, helio-
trope, cloves, and jessamine, which stood by the
bedside. "Ay, thafs the book, Mrs. Thorn-
ly ; and there, Cissy," continued Aunt Deborah,
filling up the check, with a sum far larger than
that required for the partnership — " there,
Cissy, is your marriage portion. Don't cry so,
child !" said she, as the aiFectionate girl hung
round her neck in a passion of grateful tears —
"don't cry, but find out Edward, and send for
the lawyer, for I'm determined to settle my af-
fairs to night. And now, John Stokes, I know

I've been a cross old woman, but "

" Cousin Deborah," interrupted John, seizing
her withered hand with a gripe like a smith's vice,
— " Cousin Deborah, thou hast acted nobly, and I

AUNT DEBORAH. 311

beg thy pardon once for all. God bless thee ! —
Dang it," added the honest miller to himself, " I
do verily believe that this squabbling has been
mainly my fault, and that if I had not been so
provoking she would not have been so contrary.
Well, she has made us all happy, and we must
try to make her happy in return. If we did not,
we should deserve to be soused in the fish-pond
along with that unhappy chap. Master 'Dolphus.
For my part," continued the good yeoman, form-
ing with great earnestness a solemn resolution —
" for my part, I've fully made up my mind never
to contradict her again, say what she will. No,
not if she says black's white ! It's contradic-
tion that makes women contrary; it sets their
backs up, like. I'll never contradict her again
so long as my name's John Stokes/'

313

NOTE ON THE LOST DAHLIA.

Page 248.

By far the most interesting object in our neigh-
bourhood has always seemed to me the rock-hke
ruins of Reading Abbey, themselves a history ;
all the more interesting because, until lately, that,
the most important part of these remains, has become
the property of my friend, Mr. Wheble, the present
High Sheriff of Berks, whose researches have drawn
some attention to the subject, these venerable
relics of an earlier day, situate close to a wealthy
and populous town, not forty miles from London,
and actually within sight of the great road from
Bath and Bristol to the metropolis, have seemed
utterly unnoticed and unknown. Here and there,
indeed, some fanciful virtuoso, like Marshal Conway,
(best known as the friend and correspondent of
Hoi'aceWalpole,) has evinced his passion for antiquity
by the desire of appropriating what he admired, and

p

314 NOTE.

has dragged away whole masses of the walls to assist
in his fantastical doings at Henley and elsewhere, —
or a set of Goths and Vandals, the county magistrates
of fifty years ago (sure am I that their successors
would not have dreamt of such a desecration) have
pitched upon the outskirts of the old monastery for
the erection of their huge, hideous, staring, glaring
gaol and Bridewell, with all its miserable associations
of wretchedness and crime, — or an education com-
mittee, with equal bad taste in a different way (they
really seem to have imagined that they had done a fine
thing) have run up a roof of red tiles within the walls
of the refectory, and moved the children of a national
school, upon Dr. Bell's system, into the noble hall,
where kings had signed edicts and parliaments
framed laws. This last nuisance has been abated.
The children have now a school-room of their own,
far better adapted to its object, more healthful and
more comfortable, and the Abbey is left to the si-
lence and solitude which best beseem the recollec-
tions and associations attendant on this stupendous
structure.

Reading Abbey was founded by Henry the First,
in the beginning of the year 1121, and dedicated to
th.e honour of the Virgin INIary and St. John, as
appears by the charter granted four years after-
wards : vide Dugdale's Monasticon; "for my soul's
hea'th, and the souls of King William my father, of
my son William, of Queen Matilda my mother,

NOTE. 345

of Queen Matilda my wife, and of all my prede-
cessors and successors."

The charter then goes on to recite the immense
possessions and regal privileges bestowed upon the
monastery at Reading, and its cells at Leominster
and at Cholsey.

It grants them a mint, with the privilege of
striking money.

It exempts them from all taxes, imposts, or con-
tributions whatsoever, and from all levies of men
for wars or other services.

It gives " the abbot and his monks full power to
try all offences committed within or without the
borough, in the highways, and in all other places,
whether by their own servants or strangers, with all
causes which can or may arise with socca^ and
sacca,- tol, and theam,^ and infangentheft,^ and

' Socca, the place or precinct wherein the liberty of
court was exercised.

^ Sacca, a liberty granted by the king to try and
judge causes, and to receive the forfeitures arising
from them.

3 Theam, a privilege to take and keep bondsmen,
villains, and serfs, with their generations, one after
another.

■• Infangentheft, a liberty to try and judge a thief
taken within the jurisdiction of the manor or borough.

p2

316 NOTE.

outfangentheft,^ and ham socna,^ within the borough
and without the borough, in the roads and footpaths,
and in all places, and with all causes, which do or
may arise.

" And the abbot and his monks shall hold courts
of justice for trials of assaults, thefts, and murders,
for the shedding of blood, and breaches of the
peace, in the same manner that belongs to the roj'al
authority," &c &c.

Then follows a paragraph which we insert in
honour of the accomplished founder. It is worthy
of Alfred.

" But this also we determine and appoint to be
for ever observed, that seeing the Abbot of Ra-
dynge hath no revenues but what are in common
with his brethren ; therefore, whoever by devise,
consent and canonical election shall be made abbot,
shall not bestow the alms of the monastery on his
lay kindred or any others, but reserve them for the
entertainment of the poor and strangers."

And William of Malmesbury certifies that this
part of the charter was so well observed, that there

^Outfangentheft, the same privilege to try any thiei'
taken out of the jurisdiction of the manor or bo.
rough.

^ Hani Socna, the levying a fine on the disturbers of
the king's peace.

NOTE. 317

was always more expended upon strangers than
upon the inhabitants, " the monks being," as he
asserts, " great examples of piety/'

The charter concludes with a strenuous recom-
mendation to all succeeding kings to continue the
above privileges and immunities to the monastery,
and with this remarkable malison, the fear of which
Beauclerc's burly successor, Henry, the eighth of
that name, most assuredly had not before his eyes,
when he hanged the abbot and knocked down the
walls.

" But if any one shall knowingly presume to in-
fringe, diminish, or alter this our foundation charter,
may the great God of all withdraw and eradicate
him and his posterity, and may he remain without
any inheritance, in misery and hunger," &c.

The extent and magnificence of the monastery
were commensurate with the high privileges grant-
ed by the royal founder, and with the station of the
superior, who ranked as third amongst the mitred
abbots of England : next after the abbots of Glaston-
bury and St. Albans.

A space of thirty acres was comprised within the
outer walls ; and though a considerable part of this
was devoted to the inner and outer courts, the
cloisters, and the gardens, yet the building itself was
stupendous in size and in strength. I have seen
decayed specimens of gothic architecture which bear
more striking traces of lightness and ornament, but

318 NOTE.

none that ever seemed so calculated for duration,
so prodigally massive and solid. The great hall,
whose noble proportions are eighty feet in length,
forty in width, and forty to the centre of the arched
stone ceiling, had walls six feet thick, coated with
freestone, and filled up with flints and stones, ce-
mented with a mortar as durable as the materials
themselves. This was the width of all the walls,
inner as well as outer, and seems to be only a fair
sample of the general proportions of the aj)art-
ments. The foundations under ground were seven
feet deep and twelve wide ; and the excavations
making in the church, of which many of the sur-
bases of the columns, bits of stained glass, and
other ornamental parts, remain as fresh as if only
finished yesterday, prove that the execution of this
magnificent pile was as perfect and beautiful as the
design was stupendous and grand. Sir Henry En-
glefield says, (Archaeologia,) every form of Saxon
moulding, and many never seen before, may be
found in the stones dispersed through the town.

Everything belonging to these magnificent monks
seems to have been conducted with this union of
largeness and finish. They appear to have brought
for their use, from the river Kennett, a canal called
the Holy (or Hallowed) Brook, from Coley, an
elevated spot nearly two miles from the Abbey,
conducting it by a descent so equal and gradual,
diat it moved the abbey mills (which still exist) with

NOTE. 319

the same regularity in the most parching droughts
or the wildest floods, even taking the precau-
tions of paving it with brick, and arching it in
great part over, during its passage through the
town. And having thus provided themselves with
soft water, and with the constant assurance of
grinding their corn through every season, however
unfavourable, they provided themselves with the
luxury of spring water from the conduit, a cele-
brated spring rising on a hill on another side of
Reading, and at least a mile from the abode of the
lord abbot. This water was brought to the monas-
tery in pipes, and from a discovery made acciden-
tally by some labourers who were excavating a
sawpit in a bank on the south side of the Kennett,
in the middle of the last century, it appears to have
passed under the Kennett. The story is told in
Mann's history of Reading. — " They" (the men
employed at the sawpit) " found a leaden pipe,
about two inches in diameter, lying in the direc-
tion of the conduit, and passing under the river to-
wards the Abbey, part of which, from its situation
under the water, they were obliged to leave. The
rest was sold for old lead." Coates also brings
undoubted testimony to prove that the conduit
spring supplied the Abbey, and that the water was
brought under the Kennett.

Certainly, as the river runs between the conduit
and the Abbey, the pipe must have gone under or

320 NOTE.

over it ; but the fact is worth mentioning as curious
in itself, and as tending to prove, in these days, wlien
we are a little apt, if not to overvalue our own do-
ings, at least to undervalue those of our ancestors,
that, not merely in architecture, (for in that grandest
art we are pigmies indeed, compared to those great
masters whose names are lost, though their works,
in spite of a thousand foes, seem indestructible,) that
not in architecture only, but in tunnel-making, we
might take lessons from those old-fashioned person-
ages the monks.

From the period of its consecration, we find the
name of Reading Abbey occurring frequently in all
the histories of the times. Parliaments and coun-
cils were holden there ; legates received ; traitors
executed ; kings, queens, and princes buried in the
holy precincts. Speed mentions, picturesquely,
King Henry and his Queen " who lay there veiled
and crowned." Bishops were consecrated, joustings
celebrated, knights dubbed, and money coined.

One incident which has reference to the Abbey,
related by Stowe, is so romantic that I cannot refrain
from giving the story. It would make a fine dra-
matic scene — almost a drama.

" In 1 167, a single combat was fought at Reading,
between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry
de Essex, defendant ; the occasion of which was as
follows. In an engagement which Henry the Second
had with the Welch, in 1157, some of his nobles,

NOTE. 321

who had been detached with a considerable part
of the army, were cut off by an ambuscade ; those
who escaped, thinking the king was also surrounded,
told every one they met that he w^as either taken
or slain.

" The news of this imaginary disaster put to flight
the greatest part of the surviving army. Among
the rest, Henry de Essex, hereditary standard
bearer to the kings of England, threw away the
royal banner, and fled. For this act of coward-
ice he was challenged by Robert de Montford as a
traitor. Essex denied the charge, declaring he was
fully persuaded that the king was slain or taken ;
which probably would have happened, if Roger, Earl
of Clare, had not brought up a body of troops, and,
by displaying again the royal standard, encouraged
the soldiers ; by which means he preserved the re-
mainder of the army.

" The king ordered this quarrel to be decided by
single combat ; and the two knights met at Reading,
on the 8th of April, on an island* near the Abbey,

* Tradition assigns as the place of this combat a
beautiful green island nearly surrounded with willows,
in the midst of the Thames, to the east of Caversham
bridge. A more beautiful spot could not have been
devised for such a combat. It was in sight of the
Abbey, and of the remarkable chapel erected
in the centre of the bridge, of which the foundation
still remains, surmounted by a modern house.

'3*2'2 NOTE.

the king being present in person, with many of the
nobility and other spectators. Montford began the
combat with great fury, and Essex, having endured this
violent attack for some time, at length turning
into rage, took upon himself the part of a chal-
lenger and not of a defender. He fell after
receiving many wounds ; and the king, supposing
him slain, at the request of several noblemen, his
relations, gave permission to the monks to mter the
body, commanding that no further violence should
be offered to it. The monks took up the vanquished
knight, and carried him into the Abbey, where he re-
vived. When he recovered from his wounds, he
was received into the community and assumed the
habit of the order, his lands being forfeited to the
king."

Such was the Abbey from its foundation to the
Reformation ; succeeding Monarchs augmenting its
demesnes and revenues by magnificent gifts, and
confirming by successive charters the privileges and
immunities enjoyed by the abbot and monks ; for
although the superior had various country houses
and parks, and was a spiritual peer of the highest
rank, there yet appears, from many of the rules which
have come down to us, one especially, in which no
member of the community could absent himself for
a night without first obtaining permission from every
individual monk in the convent, sufficient reason to
believe that the internal government of the house was

NOTE. 323

not altogether monarchical, but that it partook some-
uhat of the mixed form of the English constitution,
and that the commons, if we may so term the
brethren of the order, had some voice in the ma-
nagement of its concerns.

Upon the whole, the rule of the monks of Read-
ing over their vassals, the burghers, and their feudal
tenants in the villages round, to say nothing of their
dependent cells at Leominster and at Cholsey, seems
to have been mild, benevolent, and charitable. Rich
landlords are, generally speaking, kind landlords ; it
is those who are themselves pushed for money who
become hard creditors in return ; and besides the
wealth that flowed into the good borough from
the trains of knights and nobles who attended
the parliaments and councils held in the Abbey, the
fathers of the community were not only zealous
protectors of their vassals against the aggressions
so common in that age of violence, but they furnished
alms to the poor, shelter to the houseless, and medi-
cal aid to the sick, from their own resources. Traces
of their power and their charity, as well as of the
manners of the times, meet us constantly in the
incidental allusions to the Abbey in our old histo-
rians and topographers ; thus, for instance, amongst
the hospitals attached to the foundation, mention is
made of a house for lepers at Erleigh.

That the town flourished under their guardian
care, is sufficiently proved, by the fact that Speed's

•324 NOTE.

map,* taken a comparatively short period after the
Reformation, might almost have passed for a plan
of Reading forty years ago, so little had the old
town increased (it has made a huge spring in the
present century) during the long period that inter-
vened between Elizabeth and George the Third.

The palmy days of the church of Rome in this
country were, however, numbered, and upon none
of the great monastic establishments did the storm
of the Reformation burst with more unsparing vio-
lence than upon the fated Abbey of Reading.

In September, 1539, John London, one of the
commissioners for visiting and suppressing religious
houses, arrived at Reading, and notwithstanding
the submission of Hugh, the then abbot, which

* Very curious is this old map of " Redding." The
vacant spaces representing fields round the town being
illustrated by certain curious representations of trees
and animals particularly unlike, such as a cow in the
act of being milked, (the sex of the milking figure
is doubtful, the dress being equally imsuitable to man
or woman, girl or boy,) two horses fighting, with sheep
grazing, and another creature which may stand for a
pig or an ox at discretion, standing at ease in a mea-
dow. It is remarkable that each of these animals
would make three or four of the trees, under which it
is supposed to stand, and is very much bigger and
taller than any church in the place. Those old artists
had strange notions of perspective and proportion.

NOTE. 325

appears to have been implicit, he was hanged and
quartered with two of his monks at one of the gates
of the monastery, on the 14th of November fol-
lowing.

The work of destruction then commenced. No
particulars of the demolition of the Abbey have
come down to us ; but it is clear that the magnifi-
cent church was levelled at once, partly, perhaps,
for the sake of the valuable materials, and partly to
prevent the people, attached by habit to the splen-
did ceremonies of the Catholic worship, from cling-
ing to the cherished associations connected with
the spot.

The site of the monastery itself remained with
the crown, and a part of the house was converted
into a royal residence, visited more than once by
Elizabeth, and mentioned by Camden. But the
enormous possessions of the Abbey granted to one
favourite and another, were slowly frittered away,
while what remained of the house itself was nearly
destroyed in the siege of Reading during the civil
wars.

Every twenty years has brought a fresh diminu-
tion, until little now remains, except the shell of
the refectory, and of one or two other large de-
tached buildings more or less entire, parts of the
cloisters, and large rock-like fragments of the grey
walls, denuded of the cut free-stone by which they
were coated, some upright, some leaning against
each other, and some pitched violently into the

326 NOTE.

earth, as if by a tremendous convulsion of nature.
But in the very absence of artificial ornament, in
the massiveness and vastness of these remains, there
is something singularly impressive and majestic.
They have about them much of the hoary gran-
deur, the wild and naked desolation which charac-
terise Stonehenge. And as the paltry modern
buildings which disfigured them are gradually dis-
appearing, there is every reason to hope, from
the excellent taste of the present proprietor, that
as soon as the excavations which have brought to
light so much that is curious and beautiful shall be
completed, they may be left to the great artist
Nature, so that we may, in a few years, see our
once-famous Abbey more august and beautiful than
it has been at any period since the days of its pris-
tine magnificence ; rescued, as far as is now possible,
from the din and bustle of this work-a-day world,
and rising like the stately ruins of Netley, or rather
like the tall grey cliffs of some sylvan solitude, from
the fine elastic turf, a natural carpet, the green
elder bush and the young ash tree growing amongst
the mouldering niches, the ivy and the wall-flower
waving from above, and the bright, clear river flow-
ing silently along, adorning and reflecting a scene
which is at once a picture and a history.

THE END.
LONDON :

IBOTSON ASi) I'.LMER, PRINTERS, SAV'iV SI B 1 KT, STRAND.

//f:f-9f93B>^i

'i^

flP^u^ d^^f iTi'

'iV^^'^o'^vgW^^

GENERAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA— BERKELEY

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED

This book is due on the last date stamped below, or on the

date to which renewed.

Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.

,«,<,*a

JI\N

i(^C>

3'b'

RECEIVED

APR 2 2 1971 2

LD 21-100m-l,'54(1887sl6)47f;

iv.. MHk.A!iM^A .j£<^.«

I'i^r^ivliiiv

^^WW^

i'Mmm^

-•■■'riwi'm

M^r^Tiii

r*

Mfo*'^ S

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

r^>Si(^W'

'^^ife^*S?«?f^?!J£:

:'>^'

» >»J JOB* > )»,.

,3 j*""^ »

-> . *

r>> > ,.t-

K» >

11'

% ^

,1^5iL

_ .^3

•• &J2

* >^

IIhi

>5rfl

■^

:>>

>^ »i«

■ o3S»

::^^?^ll^

>^>22»

..i^

»S*>.

^',>'

^^>^:v> f^/^

■i^"'«-^i