 Chapter 29 of Our Village Vol. 1, by Mary Russell Mitford, read by Anne Fletcher Hobart, 2020. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Our Village Vol. 1, Chapter 29, Mrs. Moss I do not know whether I ever hinted to the courteous reader that I had been in my younger days without prejudice to my present condition, somewhat of a spoiled child. The person who, next after my father and mother, contributed most materially to this melancholy catastrophe was an old female domestic, Mrs. Elizabeth Moss, who at the time of her death had lived nearly sixty years in our house and that of my maternal grandfather. Of course, during the latter part of this long period the common forms and feelings of a servant and master were entirely swept away. She was a member of the family, a humble friend, happy are they who have such a friend, living as she liked upstairs or down in the kitchen or the nursery, considered, consulted, and beloved by the whole household. Mossy, for by that fondling nursery name she best liked to be called, had never been married, so that the family of her master and mistress had no rival in her heart, and on me, their only child, was concentrated that intensity of affection which distinguishes the attachments of age. I loved her dearly too, as dearly as a spoiled child can love its prime spoiler. Oh! How selfish was my love, compared to the depth and the purity, the indulgence, the self-denial of hers! Dear Mossy, I shall never do her justice, and yet I must try. Mrs. Moss, in her appearance, was in the highest degree what is called respectable. She must have been tall when young, for even when bent with age she was above the middle height. A large maid, though meager woman, she walked with feebleness and difficulty from the attacks of her editory gout, which not even her temperance and activity could ward off. There was something very interesting in this tottering helplessness, clinging to the balusters or holding by doors and chairs like a child. It had nothing of vulgar lameness. It told of age, venerable age. Out of doors she seldom ventured, unless on some sunny afternoon I could entice her into the air, and then once around the garden, or to the lawn-gate and back again, was the extent of her walk, propped by a very aristocratic walking-stick, once the property of a duchess, as tall as herself, with a hooked ivory handle joined to the cane by a rim of gold. Her face was as venerable as her person. She must have been very handsome. Indeed, she was so still, as far as regular and delicate features, a pale brown complexion, dark eyes still retaining the intelligence and animation of youth, and an expression perfectly gentle and feminine could make her so. It is one of the worst penalties that a woman pays to age, that often when advanced in life, the face loses its characteristic softness. In short, but for the difference in dress, many an old woman's head might pass for that of an old man. This misfortune could never have happened to Mossie. No one could mistake the sex of that sweet countenance. Her dress manifested a good deal of laudable cocketry, a nice and minute attention to the becoming. I do not know at what precise date her costume was fixed, but as long as I remember her, fixed it was, and stood as invariably at one point of fashion as the hand of an unwound clock stands at one hour of the day. It consisted, to begin from the feet and describe upwards, of black shoes of shining stuff with very pointed toes, high heels and a peak up the instep, showing to advantage her delicately white cotton stockings, and peeping beneath petticoats so numerous and substantial as to give a retundity and projection almost equal to a hoop. Her exterior garment was always quilted, varying according to the season or the occasion, from simple stuff, or fine white dimity, or an obsolete manufacture called Marseille, up to silk and satin. For as the wardrobes of my three grandmothers, oh sure, I mean my grandfather's three wives, had fallen to her lot, few gentle women of the last century could boast a greater variety of silks that stood on end. Over the quilted petticoat came an open gown, whose long waist reached the bottom of her stiff stays, and whose very full tail, about six inches longer than the petticoat, would have formed a very inconvenient little train if it had been permitted to hang down, but that inconvenience never happened and could scarcely have been contemplated by the designer. The tail was constantly looped up, so as to hang behind in a sort of bunchy festoon, exhibiting on each side the aforesaid petticoat. In material the gown also varied with the occasion, although it was always either composed of dark cotton or of the rich silks and satins of my grandmothers wardrobe. The sleeves came down just below the elbow, and were finished by a narrow white ruffle meeting her neat mittens. On her neck she wore a snow white double muslin kerchief pinned over the gown in front and confined by an apron also of muslin, and overall a handsome silk shawl, so pinned back as to show a part of the snowy necker chief. Her headdress was equally becoming and more particularly precise, for if ever she betrayed an atom of old maydishness it was on the score of her caps. From a touch of the gout in her hands which had enlarged and stiffened the joints she could do no work which required nicety, and the successive ladies-maids on whom the operation devolved used to say that they would rather make up ten caps for their mistress than one for Mrs Moss, and yet the construction seemed simple enough. A fine plain clear starch call, sticking up rather high and peaked in front, was plaited on a Scotch Gore's headpiece. I remember there used to be exactly six plaits on each side, woe to the damsel who should put more or less, and on the other side a border consisting of a strip of fine muslin edged with narrow lace, clear starched and crimped, was plaited on with equal precision. In one part of this millinery I used to assist. I dearly loved to crimp Moss's frills, and she with her usual indulgence used frequently to let me, however keeping a pretty close eye on her laces and muslins, while I was passing them with triumphant rapidity between the small wooden machine, not longitudinally, and the corresponding roller. Perhaps a greater proof of indulgence could hardly have been shown, since she must, during this operation, have been in double fear for her own cap strips, which did occasionally get a rent, and for my fingers which were sometimes well pinched. Then she would threaten that I should never crimp her muslin again, and never which seldom lasted beyond the next cap making. The headpiece was then concealed, by a satin ribbon fastened in a peculiar bow, something between a bow and a puffing, behind, while the front was adorned with an equally peculiar small knot, of which the two bows were pinned down flat, and the two ends left sticking up, cut into scallops of a prodigious regularity. The purchase of the ribbons formed another branch of the cap making department to which I laid claim. From the earliest period, at which I could distinguish one colour from another, I had been purveyor of ribbons to Mossy, and indeed at all fares, or whenever I received a present, or entered a shop, and I was so liberally supplied that there was nothing like generosity in the case, it was the first and pleasantest destination of money that occurred to me, so that the dear woman used to complain that Miss bought her so many ribbons that they spoiled in keeping. We did not quite agree, either, in our taste. White, as both acknowledged, was the only wear for Sunday and holidays, but then she loved plain white, and I couldn't always control a certain wandering inclination for figured patterns and pearl edges. If Mossy had an aversion to anything, it was to a pearl edge. I never could persuade her to wear that simple piece of finery but once, and then she made as many rye faces as a child eating olives, and stood before a glass, eyeing the obnoxious ribbon with so much discomposure, that I was feigned to take it out myself and promise to buy no more pearl edges. The everyday ribbons were coloured, and there, too, we had our little differences of taste and opinion. Both agreed in the propriety of grave colours, but then my reading of a grave colour was not always the same as hers. My eyes were not old enough. She used to accuse my French greys of blueness and my crimson's of redness and my greens of their greenness. She had a penchant for brown, and to brown I had a repugnance only to be equalled by that which she professed towards a pearl edge. Indeed, I retain my dislike to this hour. It's such an exceedingly cross and frumpish-looking colour, and then its ugliness. Show me a brown flower. No, I couldn't bring myself to buy brown. So, after fighting many battles about grey and green, we at last settled on purple as a sort of neutral tint, a hue which pleased both parties. To return to the cap which we have been so long making, the finish both to that and to my description was a strip of crimped muslin with edging on both sides to match the border, quilled on a piece of tape, and fastened on the cap at each ear. This, she called the shinum. A straight short row of hair, rather grey, but still very dark for her age, just appeared under the plaited lace, and a pair of silver-mounted spectacles completed her equipment. If I live to the age of seventy, I will dress so too, with an exception of the stiff stays. Only a waist native to the fashion could endure that whale-bone armour. Her employments were many and various. No work was required of her from her mistress, but idleness was a misery to her habits of active usefulness, and it was astonishing how much those crippled fingers could do. She preferred coarse needlework, as it was least difficult to her eyes and hands, and she attended also to those numerous and undefined avocations of a gentleman's family, which come under the denomination of odd jobs, shelling peas, pairing apples, splitting French beans, washing china, darning stockings, hemming, and mending dusters and housecloths, making cabbage nets, and knitting garters. These were her daily avocations, the amusements which she loved. The only more delicate operation of needlework that she ever undertook was the making of pin cushions, a manufacture in which she delighted. Not the quips and quiddities of these degenerate days, little bits of ribbundom, pasteboard and gilt paper in the shape of books or butterflies, by which at charitable repositories half a dozen pins are smuggled into a lady's pocket, and shillings and half-crowns are smuggled out. No! Mosses were real solid, old-fashioned silk and pin cushions, such as Autolicus might have carried about amongst his peddlery where square and roomy, and capable at a moderate computation of containing a whole paper of short whites and another of middlings. It was delightful to observe her enjoyment of this playwork, the conscious importance with which she produced her satins and brocades, and her cards of sewing silks. She generally made a whole batch at once, the deliberation with which she assorted the colours, the care with which she tacked and fitted side to side and corner to corner, the earnestness with which when all was sewed up except one small aperture for the insertion of the stuffing, she would pour in the bran or stow in the wool. Then the care with which she poked the stuffing into every separate corner, ramming it down with all her strength and making the little bags, so to say, hold more than it would hold until it became almost as hard as a cricket ball. Then how she drew the aperture together by main force, putting so many last stitches and fastening off with such care, and then distributing them to all around her, for her ladylike spirit would have scorned the idea of selling them, and always reserving the gayest and prettiest for me. Dear old soul, I have several of them still. But if I should begin to enumerate all the instances of kindness which I experienced at her hands, through the changes and varieties of a troublesome childhood and fantastic youth, from the time when I was a pooling baby to the still more exacting state of a young girl at home in the holidays, I should never know when to end. Her sweet and loving temper was self-rewarded. She enjoyed the happiness she gave. Those were pleasant evenings when my father and mother were engaged in the Christmas dinner visits of a gay and extensive neighbourhood, and Mrs. Moss used to put on her handsomest shawl and her kindest smile and totter upstairs to drink tea with me and keep me company. From those evenings I imbibed in the first place a love of strong green tea for which gentle womanly excitation Mossy had a remarkable predilection, and secondly a very discreditable and unladylike partiality, which I am quite ashamed, which I keep a secret from my most intimate friends and wouldn't mention for the world, a sort of sneaking kindness for her favourite game of cribbage. An old-fashioned vulgarity which in my mind beats the gentiler past times of wist and pique, and every game except quadril, out and out. I make no exception in favour of chess, because thanks to my stupidity I never could learn that reckondite diversion. Moreover, judging from the grave faces and fatiguing silence of the initiated, I cannot help suspecting that board for board we cribbage players are as well amused as they. Dear Mossy could neither feel to deal and shuffle nor see to peg, so that the greater part of the business fell to my share. The success was pretty equally divided. Three rubbers were our stint, and we were often game and game in the last before victory declared itself. She was very anxious to beat, certainly, and note we never played for anything. Is she like to win, and yet she didn't quite like that I should lose? If we could both have won, if it had been for-handed cribbage, and she my partner, still there would have been somebody to be beaten and pitted, but then that somebody would not have been Miss. The cribbage hour was pleasant, but I think the hours of chat which preceded and followed it were pleasanter still. Mossy was a most agreeable companion, sensible and modest, simple, shrewd, with an exactness of recollection and honesty of memory that gave exceeding interest to her stories. You were sure that you heard the truth. There was one striking peculiarity in her manner of talking, or rather one striking contrast. The voice and accent were quite those of a gentlewoman, a sweet-toned and correct as could be. The words and their arrangement were altogether those of a common person, provincial and ungrammatical in every phrase and combination. I believe it's an effect of association, from the little slips in her grammar, that I have contracted a most unscolly-like prejudice in favour of false syntax, which is so connected in my mind with right notions, that I no sooner catch the sound of bad English than I begin to listen for good sense. And really they often go together, always supposing that the bad English be not of the order called slang. They meet much more frequently than those exclusive people, ladies and gentlemen, are willing to allow. In her they were always united. But the charm of her conversation was in the old family stories, and the unconscious peeps at old manners which they afforded. My grandfather, with whom she'd lived in his first wife's time, full twenty years before my mother's birth, was a most respectable clergyman, who after passing a few years in London amongst the wits and poets of the day, seeing the star of Pope in its decline and that of Johnson in its rise, had retired into the country, where he held two adjoining livings of considerable value, both of which he served for over forty years, until the duty becoming too severe he resigned one of them under an old-fashioned notion that he who did the duty ought to receive the remuneration. I'm very proud of my venerable ancestor. We have a portrait of him, taken shortly after he was ordained, in his gown and band, with a curious flowing wig, something like that of a judge, fashionable doubtless at the time, but which at present rather discomposes one's notions of clerical costume. He seems to have been a dark little man, with a sensible countenance, and a pair of black eyes that even in the picture look you through. He was a votary of the Muses, too, a contributor to Louis' miscellany. Did my readers ever hear of that collection? Translated Horace, as all gentlemen do, and wrote Love Verses, which had the unusual good fortune of obtaining their object. Being, as Mrs. Moss was wont to affirm, the chief engine and implement, by which at fifty he gained the heart of his third wife, my real grandmama, the beautiful daughter of a neighbouring squire. Of Dr. R, his wives and his sermons, the bishop who visited, and the poets who wrote to him, Moss's talk was mainly composed, a chiefly of the wives. Mrs. R, the first, was a fine London lady, a widow, and considerably older than her spouse, in as much as my grand-papa's passion for her commenced, when he and her son, by her former husband, were school fellows at Westminster. Mrs. Moss never talked much of her, and I suspected not much like her, though when closely questioned, she would say that Madam was a fine, portly lady, stately and personable, but rather too high. Her son made a sad misalliance. He ran away with the Sexton's daughter, an adventure which cost the Sexton his post, and his mother her pride. She never looked up after it. That disgrace and a cold, caught by bumping on a pillion six miles through the rain, sent her to her grave. Of the second Mrs. R, little remains on record, except a gown and petticoat of primrose silk, curiously embossed and embroidered, with gold and silver thread and silks of all colours, in an enormous running pattern of staring flowers wonderfully unlike nature. Also, various recipes in the family receipt book, which show a delicate Italian hand, and a bold originality of orthography. The chief event of her married life appears to have been the smallpox. She and two of her sisters and Mrs. Moss were all inoculated together. The other servants, who had not gone through the disorder, were sent out of the house. Dr. R himself took refuge with a neighbouring friend, and the patients were consigned to the care of two or three nurses, gossips by profession, hired from the next town. The best parlour, in those days drawing rooms were not, was turned into a hospital. A quarantine almost as strict as would be required in the plague was kept up, and the preparation, the disease, and the recovery consumed nearly two months. Mrs. Moss always spoke of it as one of the pleasantest passages of her life. None of them suffered much. There was nothing to do, plenty of gossiping, a sense of self-importance, such as all prisoners must feel more or less, and for amusement they had Pamela, the spectator, and Sir Charles Grandison. My grandfather had a very fine library, but Sir Charles was a female book, having been purchased by the joint contributions of six young ladies, and circulated amongst them once a year, sojourning two months with each fair partner till death or marriage broke up the coterie. Isn't that fame? Well, the second Mrs. R died in the course of time, though not of the smallpox, and my grandfather, faithful to his wives, but not to their memories, married again as usual. His third adventure in that line was particularly happy, for my grandmother, besides being a celebrated beauty, appears to have been one of the best and kindest women that ever gladdened a country home. She had a large household, for the tithes of one rich rectory were taken in kind, and the gleebe cultivated, so that the cares of a farmhouse were added to the hospitality of a man of good fortune, and to the sort of stateliness which in those primitive days appertained to a doctor of divinity. The superintendence of that large household seems to have been at once her duty and her delight. It was a plenty and festivity, almost resembling that of Camacho's wedding, guided by a wise and liberal economy, and a spirit of indefatigable industry. Oh, the saltings, the picklings, the preservings and cake makings, the unnamed and unnameable confectionery doings over which she presided. The very titles of her territories denoted the extent of her stores. The apple-room, the pear-bin, the cheese loft, the minced meat closet, were household words as familiar in Moss's mouth as the dairy or the poultry-yard. A migrant-mama was no hoarder for hoarding's sake, no maker of good things which were not to be eaten, as I have sometimes noted amongst your managing ladies. The object of her cares and stores was to contribute to the comfort of all who came within her influence. The large parsonage-house was generally overflowing with guests, and from the Oxford Professor, who with his wife, children, servants and horses, passed his vacations there, to the poor pew-opener, who came with her little ones at tide-times, all felt the charm of her smiling graciousness, her sweet and cheerful spirit, her open hand and open heart. It is difficult to imagine a happier couple than my venerable grandfather and his charming wife. He retained to the last his studious habits, his love of literature, and his strong and warm family affections, while she cast the sunshine of her innocent gaiety over his respectable age, proud of his scholarship and proud still of his virtues. Both died long ago, but Mossy was an honest chronicler, and never weary of her theme. Even the daily airings of the good doctor, who in spite of his three wives, had a little of the peculiar preciseness in his studies and his exercise, which one is apt to attribute exclusively to that dreary person and old bachelor, even those airings from twelve to two, four miles on the Turnpike Road and four miles back, with the fat horses and the grey-haired coachmen, became vivid and characteristic in her description. The very carriage-dog, Sancho, was individualised. We felt that he belonged to the people and to the time. Of these things we talked, mingled with many miscellaneous anecdotes of the same date, how an electioneering duke saluted madam, and lost master's interest by the freedom, how Sir Thomas S., the lovelace of his day, came in his chariot and six full twenty miles out of his way, to show himself to Miss Fanny in a Spanish masquerade dress, white satin slushed with blue, a blue cloak embroidered with silver, and point lace that might have won any woman's heart, except that of his fair but obdurate mistress, and lastly, how Henry Fielding, when on a visit in the neighbourhood had been accustomed to come and swing the children in the great barn, he had even swung mossy herself to her no small edification and delight, only think of being chucked backwards and forwards by the man who wrote about Parson Adams and Squire Allworthy. I used to envy her that felicity. Then from authors we got to books. She could not see in my time to read anything but the Folio Bible and Common Prayer Book, with which my dear mother had furnished her. But in her younger days she had seen or heard parts at least of a variety of books, and entered into them with a very keen though uncritical relish. Her chief favourites were The Pilgrim's Progress, Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and the equally apocryphal, but still truer seeming, history of the plague in London by the same author, all of which she believed with the most earnest simplicity. I used frequently to read to her the passages she liked best, and she in her turn would repeat to me songs and ballads, good, bad, and indifferent, a strange medley and strangely confounded in her memory, and so the time passed till ten o'clock. Those were pleasant evenings for her and me. I have sometimes, on recollection, feared that her down-stair life was less happy. All that the orders of a mistress could effect for her comfort was done. But we were rich then, unluckily, and there were skip-jacks of footmen and surly coachmen and affected waiting-maids, and vixenish cooks with tempers red-hot like their coals to vex and tease our dear old woman. She must have suffered greatly between her ardent zeal for her master's interest, and that strange principle of concealing evil doings which servants call honour, and of which she was perpetually the slave and the victim. She had another infirmity too, an impossibility of saying no, which added to an unbounded generosity of temper rendered her the easy dupe of the artful and the designing. She would give anything to the appearance of want or the pretence of affection, in short, to importunity, however clothed. It was the only point of weakness in her character, and to watch that she did not throw away her own little comforts to protect her from the effects of her over-liberality was the chief care of her mistress. Three inferior servants were successively turned away for trespassing on Moss's goodness, drinking her green tea, eating her diet bread and begging her gowns. But the evil was incurable. She could dispense with any pleasure except that of giving. So she lived on, beloved as the kind, the gentle, and the generous must be, till I left school, an event that gave her great satisfaction. We passed the succeeding spring in London, and she took the opportunity to pay a long promise visit to a half-nephew and niece, or rather a half-nice and her husband, who lived in Princess Street, Barbican. Mrs. Beck, one naturally mentions her first as the person of most consequence, was the only real woman who ever came up to the magnificent abstract idea of the fat woman of Brentford, the only being for whom Sir John Falstaff might have passed undetected. She was indeed a mountain of flesh, exuberant, rubicant, and bearded like a man, and she spoke in a loud, deep, mannish voice, a broad Wilshire dialect. But she was hearty and jovial with all, a thorough good fellow in petticoats. Mr. Beck, on the other hand, was a little insignificant, perking, sharp-featured man, with a jerry-sneak expression in his pale, wavy face, a thin, squeaking voice, and a cockney accent. He had been lucky enough to keep a little shop in an independent borough at the time of a violently contested election, and having adroitly kept back his vote, till votes rose to their full value—I hope this is no breach of privilege—and then voted on the stronger side, he was, at the time of which I speak, comfortably settled in the XIs as a tide-waiter, had a neat, pretty house, brought up his family in good repute, wore a flaming red waistcoat, attended a dissenting meeting, and owed no man a shilling. These good people were very fond of their aunt, who had indeed, before they were so well off, shown them innumerable kindnesses. Perhaps there might be in the case a little gratitude for favours to come, for she had three or four hundred pounds to bequeath, partly her own savings, and partly a legacy from a distant relative, and they were her natural heirs. However, that might be, they paid her all possible attention, and when we were about to return into the country, petitioned so vehemently for a few weeks more, that, yielding to the above-mentioned infirmity, she consented to stay. I had myself been the ambassadress to Barbican to fetch our dear old friend, and I remember as if it were yesterday how earnestly I entreated her to come with me, and how seriously I lectured Mrs. Beck for her selfishness, in wishing to keep her aunt in London during the heat of June. I even, after taking leave, sprang out of the carriage, and ran again upstairs to persuade her to come with me. Mossy's wishes were evidently on my side, but she had promised, and the performance of her promise was peremptorily claimed, so with her heavy heart I left her. I never saw her again. There is surely such a thing as presentiment. A violent attack of gout in the stomach carried her off in a few hours. Hail to thy memory, for thou wasst of the antique world, when service swept for duty, not for need. End of chapter 29 Chapter 30 of Our Village Volume 1 by Mary Russell Mitford, read by Anne Fletcher Hobart 2020. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Our Village Volume 1 Chapter 30 Aunt Martha One of the pleasantest habitations I have ever known is an old white house, built at right angles with the pointed roofs and cluster chimneys of Elizabeth's Day, covered with roses, vines, and passion flowers, and parted by a green sloping meadow from a straggling picturesque village street. In this charming abode resides a more charming family, a gentleman, polite as all his life in courts had been, and good as he the world had never seen, two daughters full of sweetness and talent, and Aunt Martha, the most delightful of old maids. She has another appellation, I suppose, she must have one, but I scarcely know it. Aunt Martha is the name that belongs to her, the name of affection. Such is the universal feeling which she inspires, that all her friends, all her acquaintances, in this case the terms are almost synonymous, speak of her like her own family. She is everybody's Aunt Martha, and a very charming Aunt Martha she is. First of all, she is, as all women should be, if they can, remarkably handsome. She may be, it's a delicate matter to speak of a lady's age, she must be five and forty, but few beauties of twenty could stand a comparison to her loveliness. It is such a fullness of bloom, so luxuriating and so satiating, just tall enough to carry off the plumpness, which at forty-five is so becoming, a brilliant complexion, curled pouting lips, long clear bright grey eyes, the colour for expression, that which unites the quickness of the black with the softness of the blue, a Roman regularity of feature, and a profusion of rich brown hair. Such is Aunt Martha. Add to this a very gentle and pleasant speech, always kind and generally lively, the sweetest temper, the easiest manner, a singular erectitude and singleness of mind, a perfect open-heartedness and a total unconsciousness of all of these charms, and you will wonder a little that she is Aunt Martha still. I have heard hints of an early engagement broken by the fickleness of man, and there is about her an aversion to love in one particular direction, the love matrimonial, and an overflowing of affection in all other channels, that it seems as if the natural course of the stream had been violently damned up. Oh, she has many lovers, admirers, I should say, for there is amidst her good-humoured gaiety a coyness that forbids their going farther, a modesty almost amounting to shyness, that checks even the laughing girls, who sometimes accuse her of stealing away their bows. I do not think any man on earth would tempt her into wedlock. It would be a most unpardonable monopoly, if any one should, an intolerable engrossing of a general blessing, a theft from the whole community. Her usual home is the White House covered with roses, and her station in the family is rather doubtful. She is not the mistress, for her charming nieces are old enough to take and adorn the head of the table, nor the housekeeper, though as she is the only lady of the establishment who wears pockets, those end-signs of authority, the keys will sometimes be found with other strays in that goodly receptacle. Nor a guest! Her spirit is too active for that lazy post. Her real vocation there and everywhere seems to be comforting, cheering, welcoming, and spoiling everything that comes in her way. And above all, nursing and taking care. Of all kind employments, these are her favourites. Oh, the shawlings, the cloakings, the cloggings, the cautions against cold, or heat, or rain, or sun, the remedies for diseases not arrived, colds uncaught, and incipient toothaches, rheumatism to come. She loves nursing so well that we use to accuse her of inventing maladies for other people that she might have the pleasure of curing them. And when they really come, as come they will sometimes, in spite of Aunt Martha, what a nurse she is. It is worthwhile to be a little sick to be so attended. All the cousins and cousins, cousins of her connection, as regularly send for her on the occasion of her lying in, as for the midwife. I suppose she has undergone the ceremony of dandling the baby, sitting up with the new mama, and dispensing the caudal twenty times at least. She is equally important at weddings or funerals. Her humanity is inexhaustible. She has an intense feeling of fellowship with her kind, and grieves or rejoices in the sufferings or happiness of others with a reality as genuine as it is rare. Her accomplishments are exactly of this sympathetic order, all calculated to administer much to the pleasure of her companions, and nothing to her own importance or vanity. She leaves to the sirens her nieces, the higher enchantments of the piano, the harp and the guitar, and that noblest of instruments, the human voice, ambitious of no other musical fame than such as belongs to the playing of quadrilles and walses for their little dances, in which she is indefatigable. She neither caricatures the face of man nor of nature under pretence of drawing figures or landscapes, but she ornaments the reticules, bellropes, ottomans and chair covers of all her acquaintance with flowers as rich and luxuriant as her own beauty. She draws patterns for the ignorant and works flounces, frills and babylin and for the idol. She reads aloud to the sick, plays at cards with the old, and loses at chess to the unhappy. Her gifting gossiping, too, is extraordinary. She is a gentle news monger and turns her scandal on the sunny side. But she is an old maid still, and certain small peculiarities hang about her. She is a thorough hoarder. Whatever fashion comes up, she is sure to have something of the sort by her, or at least something there unto convertible. She is a little superstitious, sees strangers in her teacup, gifts in her fingernails, letters and winding sheets in the candle, and purses and coffins in the fire, would not spill the salt for all the worlds that one ever has to give, and looks with dismay on a cross-knife and fork. Moreover, she is orderly to fidgetiness. That's her greatest calamity, for young ladies nowadays are not quite so tidy as they should be, and ladies' maids are so much worse, and draws are tumbled and drawing rooms in a litter. Happy she to whom a disarranged draw can be a misery! Dear and Happy and Martha. It is now eighteen months since our village first sat for its picture, and I cannot say fair well to my courteous readers, without giving them some little intelligence of our goings-on, a sort of parting glance at us and our condition. In outward appearance it hath, I suppose, undergone less alteration than any place of its inches in the kingdom. There it stands, the same long, straggling street of pretty cottages divided by pretty gardens, wholly unchanged in size or appearance, unincreased and undiminished by a single brick. To be sure, a yesterday evening a slight misfortune happened to our goodly tenement, occasioned by the unlucky diligence mentioned in my first notice, which, under the conduct of a sleepy coachman and a restive horse, contrived to knock down and demolish the wall of our court, and fairly to drive through the front garden, thereby destroying sundry curious stocks, carnations, and geraniums. It is a mercy that the unruly steed was content with battering the wall, for the mess-wage itself would come about our ears at the touch of a finger, and really there is one little end, parlor, an afterthought of the original builder, which stands so temptingly in the way that I wonder the sagacious quadruped missed it. There was quite din enough without that addition. The three insides, ladies, squalling from the interior of that commodities vehicle, the outsides, gentlemen swearing on the roof. The coachman, still half asleep, but unconsciously blowing his horn, we in the house, screaming and scolding, and the passers-by shouting and hallowing. And May, who little brooked such an invasion of her territories, barking in her tremendous lion-note, and putting down the other noises like a clap of thunder. But passengers, coachmen, horses, and spectators all righted at last. And there's no harm done, but to my flowers and to the wall. May, however, stands bewailing the ruins, for that low wall was her favourite haunt. She used to parade backwards and forwards on the top of it, as if to show herself, just after the manner of a peacock on the top of a house, and would sit or lie for hours on the corner next to the gate, basking in the sunshine like a marble statue. Really, she has the air of one who laments the destruction of personal property. But the wall is to be rebuilt tomorrow, with old weather-stained bricks, no patchwork, and exactly in the same form. May herself will not find the difference, so that in the way of alteration this little misfortune will pass for nothing. Neither have we any improvements worth calling such, except that the wheeler's green door has been retouched, out of the same pot as I judge from the tint, with which he furbished up our new old pony-shays, that the shop window of our neighbour, the universal dealer, has been beautified, and his name and calling splendidly set forth in yellow letters on a black ground, and that our landlord of the rose have hoisted a new sign of unparalleled splendour, one side consisting of a full-faced damask rose of the size and hue of a peony, the other of a maiden blush in profile, which looks exactly like a carnation, so that both flowers are considerably indebted to the modesty of the out-of-door artist who has wearily written the rose under each, except these trifling ornaments which nothing but the jealous eye of a lover could detect, the dear place is altogether unchanged. The only real improvement with which we have been visited for our sins, I hate all innovation, whether for better or worse, as if I were a furious Tory or a woman of three score and ten. The only misfortune of that sort which has befallen us is underfoot. The road has been adjusted on the plan of Mr. McHaddon, and a tremendous operation it is. I do not know what good may ensue, but for the last six months some part or other of the highway has been impassable for any feet, except such as are shod by the blacksmith, and even the full-footed people who wear iron shoes make wry faces, poor things, at those stones, enemies to man and beast. However, the business is nearly done now. We are covered with sharp flints every inch of us, except a bad step up the hill, which indeed looks like a bit cut out of the deserts of Arabia, fitter for camels and caravans than for Christian horses and coaches. A point which in spite of my dislike of alteration, I was forced to acknowledge to our surveyor, a portly gentleman, who in a smart gig drawn by a prancing steed was kicking up a prodigious dust at that very moment. He and I ought to be great enemies, for besides the McAdamite enormity of the stony road, he hath actually been guilty of tree murder, having been an accessory before the fact in the death of three limes along the rope-walk, dear sweet innocent limes that did no harm on earth except shading the path. I never should have forgiven that offence, had not their removal by opening a beautiful view from the village up the hill, reconciled even my tree-loving eye to their abstraction. And to say the truth, though we have had twenty little squabbles, there is no bearing malice with our surveyor. He is so civil and good-humoured, has such a bustling and happy self-importance, such an honest earnestness in his vocation, which is gratuitous, by the by, and such an intense conviction that the state of the turnpike road between B and K is the principal affair of this life, that I would not undeceive him for the world. How often have I seen him on a cold winter morning, with a face all frost and business greatcoated up to the eyes, driving from post to post, from one gang of labourers to another, praising, scolding, ordering, cheated, laughed at, and liked by them all. Well, once the hill is finished, we shall have done with him for ever, as he used to tell me by way of consolation, when I shook my head at him, as he went jolting along over his dear new roads, at the imminent risk of his springs and his bones. We shall see no more of him, for the Macadam ways are warranted not to wear out. So be it, I never wish to see a roadmender again. But if the form of outward things be all unchanged around us, if the dwellings of man remain the same to the sight and the touch, the little world within have undergone its usual mutations. The hive is the same, but of the bees, some are dead and some are flown away, and some that we left insects in the shell are already putting forth their young wings. Children in our village really sprout up like mushrooms. The air is so promotive of growth that the rogues spring into men and women as if touched by Harlequin's wand, and are quite offended if one happens to say or do anything which has a reference to their previous condition. My father grievously affronted Sally L. only yesterday, by bestowing upon her a great lump of gingerbread, with which he had stuffed his pockets at a fair. She immediately, as she said, gave it to the children. Now Sally cannot be above twelve to my certain knowledge, though taller than I am. Lizzie herself is growing womanly. I actually caught that little lady stuck on a chest of drawers, contemplating herself in the glass, and striving with all her might to gather the rich curls that hung about her neck and turn them under a comb. Well, if Sally and Lizzie live to be old maids, they may probably make the amande honorable to time, and wish to be thought young again. In the meanwhile, shall we walk up the street? The first cottage is that of Mr. H., the patriot, the illuminator, the independent and sturdy yet friendly member of our little state, who, stout and comely, with a handsome chaise card, a strong mare, and a neat garden, might have passed for a portrait of that enviable class of Englishmen, who, after a youth of frugal industry, sit down in some retired place to live on their means. He and his wife seemed the happiest couple on earth. Except a little too much leisure, I never suspected that they had one trouble or one care. But care, the witch, will come everywhere, even to that happiest station, and this prettiest place. She came in one of her most terrific forms, blindness, or, which is perhaps still more tremendous, the faint glimmering light and gradual darkness which precede the total eclipse. For a long time we had missed the pleasant bustling officiousness, the little services, the voluntary tasks, which our good neighbour loved so well. Fruit trees were blighted and escaped his grand specific fumigation. Wasps multiplied, and their nest remained untraced. The cheerful, modest knock, with which, just at the very hour when he knew it could be spared, he presented himself to ask for the newspaper, was heard no more. He no longer hung over his gate to waylay passengers and enticed them into chat. At last he even left off driving his little shays, and was only seen moping up and down the garden-walk, or stealing gropingly from the woodpile to the house. He evidently shunned conversation or questions for bad his wife to tell what ailed him, and even when he put a green shade over his darkened eyes, fled from human sympathy with a stern pride that seemed almost ashamed of the humbling infirmity. That strange, but to a vigorous and healthy man perhaps natural, feeling, soon softened. The disease increased hourly, and he became dependent on his excellent wife for every comfort and relief. She had many willing assistants in her labour of love. All his neighbours strove to return, according to their several means, the kindness which all had received from him in some shape or other. The country boys, to whose service he had devoted so much time, in shaping bats, constructing bows and arrows, and other quips and trickeries of the same nature, vied with each other in performing little offices about the yard and stable. And John Evans, the half-witted gardener, to whom he had been a constant friend, repaid his goodness by the most unweary detention. Gratitude even seemed to sharpen poor John's perception and faculties. There is an old man in our parish work-house, who occasionally walks through the street, led by a little boy, holding the end of a long stick. The idea of this man, who had lived in utter blindness for thirty years, was always singularly distressing to Mr. H. I shall never forget the address with which our simple gardener used to try to divert his attention from this miserable fellow-sufferer. He would get between them to prevent the possibility of recognition by the dim and uncertain vision, would talk loudly to drown the peculiar noise, the sort of duet of feet, caused by the quick short steps of the child and the slow, irregular tread of the old man. And if anyone ventured to allude to blind Robert, he would turn the conversation with an adroitness and acuteness which might put to shame the proudest intellect. So passed many months. At last Mr. H. was persuaded to consult a celebrated oculist, and the result was most comforting. The disease was ascertained to be a cataract, and now with the increase of darkness came an increase of hope. The film spread, thickened, ripened speedily and healthily, and today the requisite operation has been performed with equal skill and success. You may still see some of the country boys lingering around the gate with looks of strong and wondering interest. Poor John is going to and fro, he knows not for what, unable to rest a moment. Mrs. H. II is walking in the garden, shedding tears of thankfulness. And he who came to support their spirit, the strong, stout-hearted farmer A, seems trembling and overcome. The most tranquil person in the house is probably the patient. He bore the operation with resolute firmness, and he has seen again. Think of the bliss bound up in those four words. He is in darkness now, and must remain so for some weeks, but he has seen, and he will see, and that humble cottage is again a happy dwelling. Next we come to the shoemaker's abode. All is unchanged there, except that its master becomes more industrious and more pale-faced, and that his fair daughter is a notable exemplification of the development which I have already noticed amongst our young things. But she is in the real transition state, just emerging from the chrysalis, and the eighteen months between fourteen and a half and sixteen, would metamorphose a child into a woman all the world over. She is still pretty, but not so elegant as when she wore frocks and pinafores, and unconsciously classical, parted her long brown locks in the middle of her forehead, and twisted them up in a knot behind, giving to her finely shaped head and throat the air of a Grecian statue. Then she was stirring all day in her small house-wifery, or her busy idleness, delving and digging in her flower-border, tossing and dandling every infant that came within her reach, feeding pigs and poultry, and playing with may, and prattling with an open-hearted frankness to the country lads who assembled at evening in the shop to enjoy a little gentle gossiping. For, be it known to my London readers, that the shoemakers in a country village is now what according to tradition and the old novels the barbers used to be, the resort of all the male newsmongers, especially the young. Then she talked to these visitors gaily and openly, sang and laughed and ran in and out, and took no more thought of a young man than of a gozzling. Then she was only fourteen. Now she wears gowns and aprons, puts her hair in paper, has left off singing, talks, has left off running, and walks, nurses the infants with a grave solemn grace, and has entirely cut her former playmate Mayflower, who tosses her pretty head as much as to say, who cares, and has nearly renounced all acquaintance with the visitors of the shop, who are by no means disposed to take matters so quietly. There she stands on the threshold, shy and demure, just vouchsafing a formal nod or a faint smile as they pass, and if she in her turn be compelled to pass the open door of their newsroom, for the working apartment is separate from the house, edges along as slightly and mincingly as if there were no such beings as young men in the world. Exquisite coquette. I think, while she is my opposite neighbour and I have a right to watch her doings, the right of retaliation, I think there is one youth particularly distinguished by her non-notice, one whom she never will see or speak to, who stands a very fair chance to carry her off. He is called Gem Tanner, and is a fine lad, with an open, ruddy countenance, a clear blue eye, and curling hair of that tint which the poets are pleased to denominate Golden. Though not one of our eleven, he was a promising cricketer. We have missed him lately on the green at the Sunday evening game, and I find an inquiry that he now frequents a chapel about a mile off, where he is the best male singer, as our nymph of the shoe shop is incomparably the best female. I am not fond of betting, but I would venture the lowest stake of gentility, silver threatens, that before the winter ends, a wedding will be the result of these weekly meetings at the chapel. In the long dark evenings, when the father has enough to do in piloting the mother with conjugal gallantry through the dirty lanes, think of the opportunity that Gem will have to escort the daughter. A little difficulty he may have to encounter, the lass will be coy for a while, and the mother will talk of their youth, the father of their finances, but the marriage I doubt not will ensue. Next in order, on the other side of the street, is the blacksmith's house. Change has been busy here in a different and more awful form. Our sometime constable, the tipsiest of parish officers, of blacksmiths and of men, is dead. Returning from a revel with a companion as full of beer as himself, one or the other, or both, can try to overset the cart in a ditch. The living scapegraces please to lay the blame of the mishap on the horse, but that is contrary to all probability, this respectable quadruped being a water-drinker. And inward bruises, acting on inflamed blood and an impaired constitution, carried him off in a very short time, leaving an ailing wife and eight children, the eldest of whom is only fourteen years of age. This sounds like a very tragic story, yet perhaps because the loss of a drunken husband is not quite so great a calamity as the loss of a sober one, the effect of the event is not altogether so melancholy as might be expected. The widow, when she was a wife, had a complaining broken spirited air, a peevish manner and whining voice, a dismal countenance, and a person so neglected and slovenly that it was difficult to believe that she had once been remarkably handsome. She is now quite another woman. The very first Sunday she put on her weeds, we all observed how tidy and comfortable she looked, how much her countenance, in spite of a decent show of tears, was improved, and how completely, through all her sayings, her tone had lost its peevishness. I have never seen her out of spirits or out of humour since. She talks and laughs and bustles about, managing her journeymen and scolding her children as notably as any dame in the parish. The very house looks more cheerful. She has cut down the old willow trees that stood in the court and let in the light, and now the sun glances brightly from the casement windows and plays amidst the vine-leaves and the clusters of grapes which cover the walls. The door is newly painted and shines like the face of its mistress. Even the forge has lost half its dinginess. Everything smiles. She indeed talks by fits of poor George, especially when any allusion to her old enemy, mine host of the rose, brings the deceased to her memory. Then she bewails, as is proper, her dear husband and her desolate condition calls herself a lone widow. Sighs over her eight children and complains of the troubles of business, and tries to persuade herself and others that she is as wretched as a good wife ought to be. But this will not do. She is a happier woman than she has been any time these fifteen years, and she knows it. My dear village husbands, if you have a mind that your wise should be really sorry when you die, whether by a fall from a cart or otherwise, keep from the ale house. Next comes a tall thin red house that ought to boast gentiler inmates than its short fat mistress, its children, its pigs, and its quantity of noise, happiness and vulgarity. The din is greater than ever. The husband, a merry jolly tar with a voice that sounds as if issuing from a speaking trumpet, is returned from a voyage to India, and another little one, a chubby, roaring boy, has added his lusty cries to the family concert. This door, blockaded by huge bales of goods and half darkened by that moving mountain, the tilted wagon of the S. Mill, which stands before it, belongs to the village shop. Increase has been here too in every shape. Within fourteen months two pretty little quiet girls have come into the world. Before Fanny could well manage to totter across the road to her good friend the nymph of the shoe shop, Margaret made her appearance, and poor Fanny, discarded at once from the maid's arm and her mother's knee, degraded from the ranks and privileges of the baby, for at that age precedence is strangely reversed, would have had a premature foretaste of the instability of human felicity had she not taken refuge with that best of nurses, a fond father. Everything thrives about the shop, from the rosy children to the neat maid and the smart apprentice. No room now for lodgers, and no need. The young Mantua making school mistresses, the old inmates, are gone. One of them not very far. She grew tired of scolding little boys and girls about their ABC, and of being scolded in her turn by their sisters and mothers about polices and gowns. So she gave up both trades almost a year ago, and has been ever since our pretty Harriet. I do not think she has ever repented of the exchange, though it might not perhaps have been made so soon, had not her elder sister, who had been long engaged to an attendant at one of the colleges of Oxford, thought herself on the points of marriage just as our housemaid left us. Poor Betsy. She had shared the fate of many a prouder maiden, wearing out her youth in expectation of the promotion that was to authorise her union with the man of her heart. Many a year had she waited in smiling constancy, fond of William in no common measure, and proud of him as she well might be. For when the vacation so far lessened his duties as to render a short absence practicable, and he stole up here for a few days to enjoy her company, it was difficult to distinguish him in air and manner as he sauntered about in elegant indolence with his fishing rod and his flute from the young oxonians his masters. At last promotion came, and Betsy, apprised of it by an affectionate and congratulatory letter from his sister, prepared her wedding clothes, and looked hourly for the bridegroom. No bridegroom came. A second letter announced with regret and indignation that William had made another choice, and was to be married early in the ensuing month. Poor Betsy. We were alarmed for her health almost for her life. She wept incessantly, took no food, wandered recklessly about from morning till night, lost her natural rest, her flesh and her colour, and in less than a week she was so altered that no one would have known her. Consolation and remonstrance were alike rejected, till at last Harriet happened to strike the right chord by telling her that she wondered at her want of spirit. This was touching her on the point of honour. She had always been remarkably high-spirited, and could as little brook the imputation as a soldier or a gentleman. This lucky suggestion gave an immediate turn to her feelings. Anger and scorn succeeded to grief. She wiped her eyes, hemmed away a sigh, and began to scold most manfully. She did still better. She recalled an old admirer who in spite of repeated rejections had remained constant in his attachment, and made such good speed that she was actually married the day before her faithless lover, and is now the happy wife of a very respectable tradesman. Ah, the in-and-out cottage, the dear, dear home! No weddings there, no changes. Except that the white kitten who sits purring at the window under the great myrtle has succeeded to his lamented grandfather, our beautiful Persian cat, I cannot find one alteration to talk about. The wall of the court indeed, but that will be mended to-morrow. Here is the new sign, the well-frequented rose in. Plenty of changes there. Our landlord is always improving, if it be only a pigsty or a watering trough. Plenty of changes, and one splendid wedding. Miss Phoebe is married, not to her old lover, the recruiting sergeant, for he had one wife already, and probably more, but to a pattern-maker, as aren't a dandy as ever wore mustachios. How Phoebe could abase her eyes from the stately sergeant to this youth, half a foot shorter than herself, whose waist would go into Ernie Alderman's thumb-ring! Might, if the final choice of a coquette had ever been a matter of wonder, of occasion some speculation. But our pattern-maker is a man of spirit, and the wedding was of extraordinary splendour. Three gigs, each containing four persons, graced the procession, besides numerous carts and innumerable pedestrians. The bride was equipped in muslin and satin, and really looked very pretty with her black sparkling eyes, her clear brown complexion, her blushes and her smiles. The bride maidens were only less smart than the bride, and the bridegroom was point-device in his accoutrements, and as munificent as a nae-bob. Cakes flew about the village, plum puddings were abundant, and strong beer, I even mine host Best Double X, was profusely distributed. There was all manner of eating and drinking, with singing, fiddling and dancing between, and in the evening, to crown all, there was Mr Moon the conjurer. Think of that stroke of good fortune! Mr Moon, the very pearl of all conjurers, who had the honour of puzzling and delighting their late majesties, with his wonderful and pleasing exhibition of Thomatergic's tachyagraphy, mathematical operations and magical deceptions, happened to arrive about an hour before dinner, and commenced his ingenious deceptions very unintentionally at our house. Calling to apply for permission to perform in the village, being equipped in a gay scarlet coat, and having something smart and sportsman-like in his appearance, he was announced by Harriet as one of the gentlemen of the sea-hunt, and taken, mistaken, I should have said, by the whole family, for a certain captain newly arrived in the neighbourhood. That misunderstanding, which must I think have retaliated on Mr Moon a little of the puzzlement that he inflicts on others, vanished, of course, at the production of his bill of fare, and the requested permission was instantly given. Never could he have arrived in a happier hour. Never were spectators more gratified or more scared. All the tricks prospered. The cock-crew after his head was cut off, and half-crowns and sovereigns flew about, sift-winged. The very wedding-ring could not escape Mr Moon's incantations. We heard of nothing else for a week. From the bridegroom, an esprit-fall, who defied all manner of conjuration and diablory, down to my Lizzie, whose boundless faith swallows the Arabian tales, all believed and trembled. So thoroughly were men, women and children, impressed with the idea of the worthy conjurers dealings with the devil, that when he had occasion to go to be, not a soul would give him a cart from pure awe, and if it had not been for our Ponyche's poor Mr Moon must have walked. I hope he is really a prophet, for he foretold all happiness to the new married pair. So this pretty white house with the lime-trees before it, which has been under repair for these three years, is on the point of being finished. The vicar has taken it, as the vicarage house is not yet fit for his reception. He has sent before him a neat, modest maid-servant, whose respectable appearance gives a character to her master and mistress, a hamper full of flower-roots, sundry boxes of books, a piano forte, and some simple useful furniture. Well, we shall certainly have neighbours, and I have a presentiment that we shall find friends. Lizzie, you may now come along with me round the corner and up the lane, just to the end of the Wheeler's shop, and then we shall go home. It's high time. What is this a fish in the parlor window? Apartments to let inquire within. These are certainly the curate's lodgings. Is he going away? I suppose a new vicar will do his own duty. Yet, however well he may do it, rich and poor will regret the departure of Mr. B. Well, I hope that he may soon get a good living. Lodgings to let. Who ever thought of seeing such a placard here about? The lodgings, indeed, are very convenient for a single gentleman, a man and his wife, or two sisters, as the newspapers say. Comfortable apartments, neat and tasty with all, and the civilest of all civil treatment from the host and hostess. But who ever would have dreamt of such a notice? Lodgings to let in our village. End of Chapter 31. End of Volume 1 of Our Village by Mary Russell Midford