 Chapter 2 Part 6 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. Walks in the country, Part 6, Nothing. September 26. One of those delicious autumnal days, when the air, the sky and the earth seem lulled into a universal calm, softer and milder even than May. We salad forth for a walk, in a mood congenial to the weather and the season, avoiding by mutual consent the bright and sunny common and the gay high road, and stealing through shady, unfrequented lanes, where we were not likely to meet any one, not even the pretty family procession which in other years were used to contemplate with so much interest, the father, mother and children returning from the wheat-field, the little ones laden with bristling, close-tied bunches of wheat-ears, their own gleaning, or a bottle and a basket which had contained their frugal dinner, whilst the mother would carry her babe, hushing and lulling it, and the father and an elder child trudged after with the cradle, all seeming weary and all happy. We shall not see such a procession as this to-day, for the harvest is nearly over, the fields are deserted, and the silence may almost be felt. Except the wintery notes of the red breast, nature herself is mute, but how beautiful, how gentle, how harmonious, and how rich! The rain has preserved to the herbage all the freshness and verger of spring, and the world of leaves has lost nothing of its mid-summer brightness, and the hair-bell is on the banks, and the wood-bine in the hedges, and the low furs which the lambs cropped in the spring has burst again into its golden blossoms. All is beautiful that the eye can see, perhaps the more beautiful for being shut in with a forest-like closeness. We have no prospect in this labyrinth of lanes, cross-roads, mere cartways, leading to the innumerable little farms into which this part of the parish is divided. Up hill or down, these quiet, woody lanes scarcely give us a peep at the world, except when leaning over a gate we look into one of the small enclosures hemmed in with head-rows, so closely set with growing timber that the meady opening looks almost like a glade in a wood, or when some cottage planted at a corner of one of the little greens formed by the meeting of these cross-ways almost startles us by the unexpected sight of the dwellings of men in such a solitude. But that we have more of hill and dale, and that our cross-roads are excellent in their kind, this side of our parish would resemble the description given of Lavendet in Madame La Roche Jacqueline's most interesting book, The Footnote, an almost equally interesting account of that very peculiar and interesting scenery may be found in The Maid of Lavendet, an English novel remarkable for its simplicity and truth of painting, written by Mrs. Lenoir, the daughter of Christopher Smart, and in heritrix of much of his talent. Her works deserve to be better known. End of Footnote I am sure if wood can entitle a country to be called Le Bocage, none can have a better right to the name. Even this pretty snug farmhouse on the hillside, with its front covered with the rich vine, which goes wreathing up to the very top of the cluster chimney, and its sloping orchard full of fruit, even this pretty quiet nest can hardly peep out of its leaves. Ah! they are gathering in the orchard harvest. Look at that young rogue in the old mossy apple tree, that great tree bending with the weight of its golden wrenets. See how he pelts his little sister beneath, with apples as red and as round as her own cheeks, while she, with her outstretched frock, is trying to catch them and laughing and offering to pelt again as often as one bobs against her. And look at that still-younger imp, that grave as a judge, is creeping on hands and knees under the tree, picking up the apples as they fall, so deedily, and depositing them so honestly in the great basket on the grass, already fixed so firmly and opened so widely, and filled almost to overflowing by the brown, rough fruitage of the golden wrenets' next neighbour, the russeting. The Footnote Deedily I am not quite sure that this word is good English, but it is genuine Hampshire, and is used by the most correct of female writers, Miss Austen. It means, and it is no small merit, that it has no exact synonym, anything done with a profound and plodding attention, an action which engrosses all the powers of mind and body. End of Footnote So back to the harvest. And see that smallest urchin of all, seated apart in infantine state on the turfy bank, with that toothsome piece of deformity, a crumpling in each hand, now biting from one sweet, hard, juicy morsel, and now from another. Is not that a pretty English picture? And then farther up the orchard, that bold, hardy lad, the eldest born, who has scaled, heaven knows how, the tall, straight upper branch of that great pear tree, and is sitting there as securely and as fearlessly, in as much real safety and apparent danger as a sailor on the top mast. Now he shakes the tree with a mighty swing that brings down a pelting shower of stony bergamuts, which the father gathers rapidly up, whilst the mother can hardly assist for her motherly fear, a fear which only spurs the spirited boy to bold adventures. Is not that a pretty picture? And they are such a handsome family too, the brookers. I do not know that there is any gypsy blood, but there is the true gypsy complexion, richly brown, with cheeks and lips so red, black hair curling close to their heads in short, crisp rings, white shining teeth, and such ice. That sort of beauty entirely eclipses your mere roses and lilies, even Lizzie, the prettiest of fair children, would look poor and watery by the side of Willie Brooker, the sober little personage who is picking up the apples with his small, chubby hands, and filling the basket so orderly, next to his father, the most useful man in the field. Willie! he hears without seeing, for we are quite hidden by the high bank and a spreading hawthorn bush that over-tops it, though between the lower branches and the grass we have found a convenient peep-hole. Willie! the voice sounds to him like some fairy dream, and the black eyes are raised from the ground with sudden wonder. The long, silky eyelashes thrown back till they rest on the delicate brow, and a deeper blush is burning on those dark cheeks and a smile is dimpling about those scarlet lips. But the voice is silent now, and the little quiet boy after a moment's pause is gone coolly to work again. He is indeed a most lovely child. I think some day or other he must marry Lizzie. I shall propose a match to their respective mammas. At present the parties are rather too young for a wedding, the intended bridegroom being as I should judge six or there about, and the fair bride barely five. But at least we might have a betrothment after the royal fashion. There could be no harm in that. Miss Lizzie, I have no doubt, would be as demure and coquettish as if ten winters more had gone over her head, and poor Willie would open his innocent black eyes and wonder what was going forward. They would be the very Oberon and Titania of the village, the very king and queen. Ah, here is the hedge along which the periwinkle wreaths and twine so profusely, with its evergreen leaves shining like the myrtle and its starry blue flowers. It is seldom found wild in this part of England, but when we do meet with it it is so abundant and so welcome, the very robin-red breast of flowers, a winter friend. Unless in those unfrequent frosts which destroy all vegetation it blossoms from September to June, surviving the last lingering cranes-bill forrunning the earliest primrose, hardier even than the mountain daisy, peeping out from beneath the snow, looking at itself in the ice, smiling through the tempests of life and yet welcoming and enjoying the sunbeams. Oh, to be like that flower! The little spring that has been bubbling under the hedge all along the hillside begins now that we have mounted the eminence and are imperceptibly descending to deviate into a capricious variety of clear, deep pools and channels so narrow and so choked with weeds that a child might overstep them. The hedge has also changed its character. It is no longer the close, compact vegetable wall of hawthorn and maple and brier roses intertwined with bramble and woodbine and crowned with large elms or thickly set saplings. No, the pretty meadow which rises high above us, backed and almost surrounded by a tall copis needs no defence on our side but its own steep bank, garnished with tufts of broom, with pollard oaks wreathed with ivy and here and there with long patches of hazel overhanging the water. Ah, there are still nuts on that bow! And in an instant my dear companion, active and eager and delighted as a boy, has hooked down with his walking stick one of the lissom hazel stalks and cleared it of its tawny clusters and in another moment he has mounted the bank and is in the midst of the nuttery transferring the spoil from the lower branches into that vast variety of pockets which gentlemen carry about them, now bending the tall tops into the lane, holding them down by main force so that I might reach them and enjoy the pleasure of collecting some of the plunder myself. A very great pleasure he knew it would be. I doft my shawl, tucked up my flounces, turned my straw bonnet into a basket and began gathering and scrambling, for manage it how you may, nothing is scrambling work. Those bows, however tightly you may grasp them by the young, fragrant twigs and the bright green leaves, will recoil and burst away, but there is a pleasure even in that. And so on we go, scrambling and gathering with all our might and all our glee. What an enjoyment! All my life long I have had a passion for that sort of seeking which implies finding, the secret I believe of the love of field sports which is in man's mind a natural impulse. Therefore I love violating and therefore when we had a fine garden I used to love to gather strawberries and cut asparagus and above all to collect the filbits from the shrubberies, but this hedgerow nutting beats that sport all to nothing. That was a make-believe thing compared with this. There was no surprise, no suspense, no unexpectedness. It was as inferior to this wild nutting as the turning out of a bag-fox's to unearthing the fellow in the eyes of a staunch fox-hunter. Oh! what enjoyment this nut-gathering is! They're in such abundance that it seems as if there were not a boy in the parish nor a young man nor a young woman for a basket of nuts is the universal tribute of country gallantry. Our pretty downzel Harriet has had at least half a dozen this season, but no one has found out these. And they are so full, too. We lose half of them from overripe-ness. They drop from the socket at the slightest motion. If we lose, there is one who finds. May is as fond of nuts as a squirrel and cracks the shell and extracts the kernel with equal dexterity. Her white glossy head is upturned now to watch them as they fall. See how her neck is thrown back like that of a swan, and how beautifully her folded ears quiver with expectation. And how her quick eye follows the rustling noise and her light feet dance and pat the ground and leap up with eagerness, seeming almost sustained in the air. Just as I have seen her when brush is beating a hedgerow and she knows from his questing that there is a hair afoot. See, she has caught that nut just before it touched the water. But the water would have been no defence. She fishes them from the bottom. She delves after them amongst the matted grass, even my bonnet. How beggingly she looks at that. Oh, what a pleasure nutting is! Is it not, May? But the pockets are almost full and so is the basket bonnet and that bright watch the sun says it is late. And after all it is wrong to rob the poor boys. Is it not, May? May shakes her graceful head denyingly as if she understood the question. And we must go home now, must we not? But we will come nutting again some time or other, shall we not, my May? A lovely autumnal day. The air soft, barmy and genial. The sky of that softened and delicate blue upon which the eye loves to rest. The blue which gives such relief to the rich beauty of the earth all around glowing in the ripe and mellow tints of the most gorgeous of the seasons. Really such an autumn may well compensate our English climate for the fine spring of the south, that spring of which the poets talk but which we so seldom enjoy. Such an autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening. It's the very sunset of the year and I have been tempted forth into a wider range of enjoyment than usual. This walk, if I may use the Irish figure of speech called a bull, will be a ride. A very dear friend has beguiled me into accompanying her in her pretty ecupage to her beautiful home four miles off and having sent forward in the style of a running footman the servant who had driven her she assumes the reins and off we set. My fair companion is a person whom nature and fortune would have spoiled if they could. She is one of those striking women whom a stranger cannot pass without turning to look again. Tall and finely proportioned with a bold Roman contour of figure and feature, a vivid English complexion and an air of distinction all together her own. Her beauty is duchess-like. She seems born to wear feathers and diamonds and to form the grace and ornament of a court and the noble frankness and simplicity of her countenance and manner confirm the impression. Destiny has, however, dealt more kindly by her. She is the wife of a rich country gentlemen of high descent and higher attainments to whom she is most devotedly attached, the mother of a little girl as lovely as herself and the delight of all who have the happiness of her acquaintance to whom she is endeared not merely by her remarkable sweetness of temper and kindness of heart but by the singular ingenuousness and openness of character which communicates an indescribable charm to her conversation. She is as transparent as water. You may see every colour and every shade of a mind as lofty and beautiful as her person. Talking with her is like being in the Palace of Truth described by Madame de Jean-Ly and yet so kindly are her feelings so great her indulgence to the little failings and foibles of our common nature so intense her sympathy with the wants, the wishes, the sorrows and the happiness of her fellow-creatures that with all her frank speaking I never knew her make an enemy or lose a friend. But we must get on. What would she say if she knew I was putting her into print? We must get on up the hill. Oh, that's precisely what we are not likely to do. This horse, this beautiful and high-bred horse, well-fed and fat and glossy who stood prancing at our gate like an Arabian, has suddenly turned sulky. He does not indeed stand quite still, but his way of moving is little better, the slowest and most sullen of all walks. Even they who ply the hearse at funerals, sad-looking beasts who totter under black feathers go faster. It's of no use to admonish him by whip or rain or word. The rogue has found out that it is a weak and tender hand that guides him now. For one pull, one stroke of his old driver, the groom, how he would fly. But there is the groom half a mile before us, out of earshot, clearing the ground at a capital rate and beating us hollow. He has just turned the top of the hill, and in a moment, oh, now, he is out of sight, and will undoubtedly so continue till he meets us at the lawn gate. Well, there is no great harm. It's only prolonging the pleasure of enjoying together this charming scenery in this fine weather. If, once we make up our minds not to care how slowly our steed goes, not to fret ourselves by vain exertions, it's no matter what his pace may be. There is little doubt of his getting home by sunset, and that will content us. He is, after all, a fine, noble animal, and perhaps when he finds that we are determined to give him his way, he may relent and give us ours. All his sex are sticklers for dominion, though when it is undisputed some of them are generous enough to abandon it. Two or three of the most discreet wives of my acquaintance contrive to manage their husband sufficiently with no better secret than this seeming submission. And in our case the example has the more weight since we have no possible way of helping ourselves. Thus philosophizing we reach the top of the hill and viewed with reverted eyes the beautiful prospect that lay bathed in golden sunshine behind us. Cooper says with that boldness of expressing in poetry the commonest and simplest feelings which is perhaps one great secret of his originality, scenes must be beautiful which daily scene please daily and whose novelty survives long knowledge and the scrutiny of years. Every day I walk up this hill. Every day I pause at the top to admire the broad winding road with the green waste on each side uniting it with the thickly timbered hedgerows, the two pretty cottages at unequal distances placed so as to mark the bends, the village beyond with its mass of roofs and clustered chimneys peeping through the trees and the rich distance where cottages, mansions, churches and towns seem empowered in some wide forest and shut in by blue shadowy hills. Every day I admire this most beautiful landscape yet never did it seem to me so fine or so glowing as now. All the tints of the glorious autumn tawny yellow and red are poured in profusion among the bright greens of the meadows and turnip fields till the eyes are satiated with colour and then before us we had the common with its picturesque roughness of surface tufted with cottages dappled with water edging off on one side into fields and farms and orchards and terminated on the other by the princely oak avenue. What a richness and variety this broken ground gives to the luxuriant cultivation of the rest of the landscape. Cooper has described it for me how perpetually as we walk in the country his vivid pictures recur to the memory. Here is his common and mine. The common overgrown with fern and rough with prickly gorse that shapeless and deformed and dangerous to the touch has yet its bloom there the turf smells fresh and rich in odouriferous herbs and fungus fruits of earth regales the sense with luxury of unexpected sweets. The description is exact there too to the left is my cricket ground Cooper's common wanted that finishing grace and there stands one solitary urchin as if in contemplation of its past and future glories for alas cricket is over for the season. Ah! it's Ben Kirby next brother to Joe king of the youngsters and probably his successor for this Mikkelmus has cost us Joe. He is promoted from the farm to the mansion house two miles off. There he cleans shoes rubs knives and runs on errands and is as his mother expresses it a sort of prentice to the footman. I should not wonder if Joe someday or other should overtop the footman and rise to be butler and his splendid prospects must be our consolation for the loss of this great favourite. In the meantime we have Ben. Ben Kirby is a year younger than Joe and the school fellow and rival of Gem Euston to be sure his abilities lie in rather a different line. Gem is a scholar and Ben is a wag. Gem is great in figures and writing Ben in faces and mischief. His master says of him that if there were two such in the school he must resign his office and as far as my observation goes the worthy pedagogue is right. Ben is it must be confessed a great corruptor of gravity. He hath an exceeding aversion to authority and decorum of wonderful boldness and dexterity in overthrowing the one and puzzling the other. His contortions of visage are astounding. His power over his own muscles and those of other people is almost equal to that of Liston. And indeed the original face flat and square and Chinese in its shape of a fine tan complexion with a snub nose and a slit for a mouth is equal as that matchless performers. When aided by Ben's singular mobility of feature his knowing winks and grins and shrugs and nods together with a certain dry shrewdness a habit of saying sharp things and a marvellous gift of impudence it forms as fine a specimen as possible of a humorous country boy an oddity in embryo. Everybody likes Ben except his butts which may perhaps comprise half his acquaintance and of them no one so thoroughly hates and dreads him as our parish schoolmaster a most worthy king log whom Ben dumbfound twenty times a day. He's a great ornament of the cricket ground has a real genius for the game and displays it after a very original manner under the disguise of awkwardness as the clown shows off his agility in a pantomime. Nothing comes amiss to him by the by he would have been the very lad for us in our present dilemma not a horse in England could master Ben Kirby but we're too far from him now perhaps it is as well that we are so I believe the rogue has a kindness for me in remembrance of certain apples and nuts which my usual companion who delights in his wit is accustomed to dole out to him but it is a robin good fellow nevertheless a perfect puck that loves nothing on earth so well as mischief perhaps the horse may be the safer conductor of the two the avenue is quite alive today old women are picking up twigs and acorns and pigs of all sizes doing their utmost to spare them the latter part of the trouble boys and girls groping peach nuts under yonder clump and a group of younger elves collecting as many dead leaves as they can find to feed the bonfire which is smoking away so briskly amongst the trees a sort of rehearsal of the grand bonfire nine days hence of the loyal conflagration of the arch trader Guy Forks which is annually solemnised in the avenue accompanied with as much of squibbery and crackery as our boys can beg to borrow not to say steal Ben Kirby is a great man on the fifth of November all the savings of a month the hoarded halfpence the new farthings the very luck penny go off in fumo on that night for my part I like this daylight mockery better there is no gunpowder odious gunpowder no noise but the merry shouts the cry so shrill and happy and the calling of the rooks who are wheeling in large circles overhead and wondering what is going forward in their territory seeming in their loud clamour to ask what that light smoke may mean that curls so prettily amongst their old oaks towering as if to meet the clouds there is something very intelligent in the ways of that black people the rooks particularly in their wonder I suppose it results from their numbers and their unity of purpose a sort of collective and corporate wisdom yet geese congregate also and geese never by any chance look wise but then geese are a domestic fowl we've spoiled them and rooks are free commoners of nature who use the habitations we provide for them tenant our groves and our avenues but never dream of becoming our subjects what a labyrinth of a road this is I do think there are four turnings in the short half mile between the avenue and the mill and what a pity as my companion observes not that our good and jolly miller the very representative of the old english omenry should be so rich but the one consequence of his riches should be the pulling down of the prettiest old mill with the picturesque low browed irregular cottage which stood with its light pointed roof its clustered chimneys and its ever open door looking like the real abode of comfort and hospitality to build this huge staring frightful red brick mill as ugly as a manufactory and this great square house ugly and red to match just behind the old buildings always used to remind me of wallets beautiful engraving of a scene in the maid of the mill it will be long before any artist will make a drawing of this only think of this redness in a picture this boiled lobster of a house false dafts description of bar dolfs nose would look pale in the comparison here is that monstrous machine of a tilted wagon with its load of flower and its four fat horses I wonder whether our horse will have the decent city get out of the way if he does not I'm sure we cannot make him and that enormous ship upon wheels that arc on dry land would roll over us like the car of juggernaut really oh no there is no danger now I should have remembered that it's my friend Samuel Long of the mill team he'll take care of us thank you Samuel and Samuel has put us on our way steered us safely past his wagon escorted us over the bridge and now having seen us through our immediate difficulties has parted from us with a very civil bow and good-humoured smile as one who is always civil and good-humoured but with a certain triumphant masterful look in his eyes which I have noted in men even the best of them when a woman gets into straights by attempting manly employments he has done us a great good though and maybe allowed his little feeling of superiority the parting salute he bestowed on our steed in the shape of an astounding crack of his huge whip has put that refractory animal on his metal on we go his pretty house with its porch and its filbert walk along the narrow lane bordered with elms whose fallen leaves have made the road one yellow past that little farmhouse with the horse chestnut trees before glowing like oranges past the whitewash school on the other side gay with October roses past the park and the lodge and the mansion where once dwelt the great Earl of Clarendon and now the rascal has begun to discover that Samuel Long and his whip are a mile off and that his mistress is driving him and he slackens his pace accordingly perhaps he feels the beauty of the road just here and goes slowly to enjoy it very beautiful it certainly is the park paling forms the boundary on one side with fine clumps of oak and deer in all attitudes the water tufted with alders moving along on the other another turn and the water winds away succeeded by a low hedge and a sweep of green meadows whilst the park and its palings are replaced by a steep bank on which stands a small quiet village ale house and higher up embosomed in wood is the little country church with its sloping churchyard and its low white steeple peeping out from amongst magnificent yew trees and a quote from Wordsworth huge trunks and each particular trunk a growth of intertwisted fibres serpentine upcoiling and inveterately convolved no village church was ever more happily placed it is the very image of the peace and humbleness inculcated within its walls here is a higher hill rising before us almost like a mountain how grandly the view opens as we ascend over that wild bank overgrown with fern and heath and gorse and between those tall hollies glowing with their coral berries what an ex-bance but we have little time to gaze at present for that piece of perversity our horse, who has walked over so much level ground has now, inspired I presume to revisit his stable taken it into that unaccountable noddle of his to trot up this the very steepest hill in the county here we are at the top and in five minutes we have reached the lawn gate and are in the very midst of that beautiful piece of art or nature I do not know to which class it belongs the pleasure ground of F Hill never was the prophetic eye of taste exerted with more magical skill than in these plantations thirty years ago this place had no existence it was a mere undistinguished tract of field and meadow and common land now it's a mimic forest delighting the eye with the finest combinations of trees and shrubs the rarest effects of form and foliage and bewildering the mind shades and impervious recesses and apparently interminable extent it is a triumph of landscape gardening and never more beautiful than in this autumn sunset lighting up the ruddy beach and the spotted sycamore and gilding the shining fur cones that hang so thickly amongst the dark pines the robins are singing around us as if they too felt the magic of the hour gracefully the road winds through the leafy labyrinth leading imperceptibly to the more ornamented sweep here we are at the door amidst uraniums and carnations and jasmine still in flower oh here is a flower sweeter than all a bird gayer than the robin the little bird that chirps to the tune of mama mama the bright faced fairy tiny feet come pattering along making a merry music mama's own francis and following her guidance here we are in the deer round room time enough to catch the last rays of the sun as they light the noble landscape which lies like a panorama around us lingering longest on that long island of old thorns and stunted oaks the oasis of bee heath and then vanishing in a succession of gorgeous clouds October 28th another soft and brilliant morning but the pleasures of today must be written in shorthand I've left myself no room for notes of admiration first we drove about the coppice an extensive wood of oak and elm and beech chiefly the former which adjoins the park paling of f. hill of which demean indeed forms one of the most delightful parts the roads through the coppice are studiously wild so that they have the appearance of mere cart tracks and the manner in which the ground is tumbled about the steep declivities the sunny slopes the sudden swells and falls now a close narrow valley then a sharp ascent to an eminence commanding an immense extent of prospect have a striking air of natural beauty developed and heightened by the perfection of art all this indeed was familiar to me the colouring only was new I had been there in early spring when the fragrant palms were on the willow and the yellow tassels on the hazel and every twig was swelling with renewed life and I had been there again and again in the green leafiness of mid-summer but never as now when the dark verdure of the fur plantations hanging over the picturesque and unequal paling partly covered with moss and ivy contrast so remarkably with the shining orange leaves of the beach already half fallen the pale yellow of the scattering elm the deeper and richer tints of the oak and the glossy stems of the lady of the woods the delicate weeping birch the underwood is no less picturesque the red spotted leaves and redder berries of the old thorns the scarlet festoons of the bramble the tall fern of every hue seem to vie with the brilliant mosaic of the ground now covered with dead leaves and strewn with fur cones now where a little glade intervenes gay with various mosses and splendid fungi how beautiful is this coppice today especially where the little spring as clear as crystal comes bubbling out from the old fantastic beech root and trickles over the grass bright and silent as the dew in a May morning the wood pigeons who are just returned from their summer migration and are cropping the ivy berries add their low cooings the very note of love to the slight fluttering of the falling leaves in the quiet air giving a voice to the sunshine and the beauty this coppice is a place to live and die in but we must go and how fine is the ascent which leads us again into the world past those cottages hidden as in a pit and by that hanging orchard and that rough heathy bank the scenery in this one spot has a wildness and a brupness of rise and fall rare in any part of England rare above all in this rich and lovely but monotonous county it's Switzerland in miniature and now we cross the hill to pay a morning visit to the family at the great house another fine place commanding another fine sweep of country the park studied with old trees and sinking gently into a valley rich in wood and water is in the best style of ornamental landscape though more according to the common routine of gentlemen's seats than the singularly original place which we have just left there is however one distinctive beauty in the grounds of the great house the magnificent furs which shade the terraces and surround the sweep giving out in summer and now in this low autumn sun producing an effect almost magical as the huge red trunks garlanded with ivy stand out from the deep shadows like an army of giants indoors oh I mustn't take my readers indoors or we shall never get away indoors the sunshine is brighter still for there in a lofty lightsome room satadams all fair and arch one whom Titian or Velasquez should be born again to paint leaning over an instrument sparkling and fanciful as herself the Dytal harp singing pretty French romances and Scottish Jacobite songs and all sorts of graceful and airy droolies picked up I know not where an English improvisatrice a gaye and not Lyle while her sister of a higher order of beauty with an earnest kindness in her smile that deepens its power lends to the piano as her father to the violin an expression, a sensibility a spirit, an eloquence almost superhuman almost divine all to hear those two instruments accompanying my dear companion I forgot to say that she is a singer worthy to be so accompanied in Haydn's exquisite cancine she never told her love to hear her voice with all its power its sweetness its gush of sound so sustained and assisted by modulations that rivaled its intensity of expression to hear at one such poetry such music such execution is a pleasure never to be forgotten or mixed with meaner things I seem to hear it still and a poem as in the bursting springtime or the eye of one who haunts the fields fair visions creep beneath the closed lids a four doll's sleep dims the quick fancy of sweet flowers that lie on grassy banks ox lip of orient dye and palest primrose and blue violet all in their fresh and dewy beauty set pictured within the sense and will not fly near resounds and lives again one mingled melody a voice, a pair of instruments most voice-like of the air rather than of the earth seems that high strain a spirit's song and worthy of the train that soothed old Prospero with music rare End of Chapter 2 Part 7 Chapter 2 Part 8 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 walks in the country Part 8 The Cops April 18th sad wintry weather a north-east wind a sun that puts out one's eyes without affording the slightest warmth dryness that chaps lips and hands like a frost in December rain that comes chilly and arrowy like hail in January nature at a dead pause no seeds up in the garden no leaves out in the hedge-rows no cow-slips swinging their pretty bells in the fields no nightingales in the dingles no swallows skimming round the great pond no cuckoos whatever I should miss that rascally sonateer in any part nevertheless there is something of a charm in this wintry spring this putting back of the seasons if the flower-clock must stand still for a month or two could it choose a better time than that of the prim-roses and violets I never remember and for such gourds my memory if not very good for ought of wise or useful may be trusted such an affluence of the one or such a duration of the other prim-rosy is the epithet which this year will retain in my recollection hedge, ditch, meadow and field even the very paths and highways are set with them but their chief habitat is a certain cops about a mile off where they are spread like a carpet and where I go to visit them rather often than quite comports with the dignity of a lady of mature age I'm going thither this very afternoon and May and her company are going too this May flower of mine is a strange animal instinct and imitation making her an approach to reason which is sometimes almost startling she mimics all that she sees us do with the dexterity of a monkey and far more of gravity and apparent purpose cracks nuts and eats them gathers currents and severs them from the stalk with the most delicate nicety filters and munches apples and pears is as dangerous in an orchard as a schoolboy smells to flowers smiles at meeting answers in a pretty lively voice when spoken to sad pity that the language should be unknown and has greatly the advantage of us in a conversation in as much as our meaning is certainly clear to her all this and a thousand amusing prettinesses to say nothing of her canine feet of bringing her game straight to her muster's feet and refusing to resign it to any hand but his does my beautiful greyhound perform untaught by the mere effect of imitation and sagacity well May at the end of the coursing season having lost brush our old spaniel her great friend and the blue greyhound mariette her comrade and rival both of which four footed worthies were sent out to keep for the summer began to find solitude a weary condition and to look abroad for company now it so happened that the same suspension of sport which had reduced our little establishment from three dogs to one had also dispersed the splendid kennel of a celebrated courser in our neighbourhood three of whose finest young dogs came home to their walk as the sporting phrase goes at the column makers in our village May accordingly on the first morning of her solitude she'd never taken the slightest notice of her neighbours before although they had sojourned in our street upwards of a fortnight bethought herself of the timely resource offered to her by the vicinity of these canine bow and went up boldly and knocked at their stable door which was already very commodiously on the half latch the three dogs came out with much alertness and gallantry and May declining apparently to enter their territories brought them off to her own this manoeuvre has been repeated every day with one variation of the three dogs, the first a brindle, the second a yellow and the third a black the two first only are now allowed to walk or consort with her and the last poor fellow for no fault that I can discover except May's Caprice is driven away not only by the fair lady but even by his old companions is so to say sent to Coventry of her two permitted followers the yellow gentleman, Saladin by name is decidedly the favourite he is indeed May's shadow and will walk with me whether I choose or not it's quite impossible to get rid of him unless by discarding Miss May also and to accomplish a walk in the country without her would be like an adventure of Don Quixote without his faithful squire Sancho so forth we set May and I and Saladin and the brindle May and myself walking with the sedateness and decorum befitting our sex and age she is five years old this grass rising six the young things for the Sultan and the brindle are not meaning any disrespect little better than puppies frisking and frolicking as best pleased them our route lay for the first part along the sheltered quiet lanes which lead to our old habitation away never trodden by me without peculiar and home-like feelings full of the recollections the pains and pleasures of other days but we're not to talk sentiment now even May would not understand that maudlin language we must get on what a wintry hedgerow this is for the 18th of April prim rosy to be sure abundantly spangled with those stars of the earth but so bare so leafless and so cold the wind whistles through the brown boughs as in winter even the early elder shoots which do make an approach to springiness look brown and the small leaves of the woodbine which have also ventured to peep forth are of a sad purple frost-bitten like a dairy-maid's elbows on a snowy morning the very birds in this season of pairing and building look chilly and uncomfortable and their nests oh Saladin come away from the hedge don't you see that what puzzles you and makes you leap up in the air is a red-breast nest don't you see the pretty speckled eggs don't you hear the poor hen calling as it were for help come hear this moment sir and by good luck Saladin who for a pain him has tolerable qualities comes before he has touched the nest or before his playmate the Brindle the less manageable of the two has aspired it now we go round the corner and cross the bridge where the common with its clear stream winding between clumps of elms assumes so park like an appearance who's this approaching so slowly and majestically this square bundle of petticoat and cloak and a wagon of a woman it is oh it must be mrs. sali miring the completer specimen within my knowledge of farmer s's may I be allowed that innovation in language as they were it can be nobody else mrs. sali miring when I first became acquainted with her occupied together with her father a superannuated man of 90 a large farm very near our former habitation it had been anciently a great mana farm or courthouse and was still a stately substantial building whose lofty halls and spacious chambers gave an air of grandeur to the common offices to which they were applied traces of gilding might yet be seen on the panels which covered the walls and on the huge carved chimney pieces which rose almost to the ceilings and the marble tables and the inlaid oak staircase still spoke of the former grandeur of the court mrs. sali corresponded well with the date of her mansion although she troubled herself little with its dignity she was thoroughly of the old school and had a most comfortable contempt for the new rose at four in winter and summer breakfast did at six dined at eleven in the four noon subbed at five and was regularly in bed before eight except when the hay time or the harvest up till sunset a necessity to which she submitted with no very good grace to a deviation from these hours and to the modern iniquities of white aprons cotton stockings and muslin handkerchiefs mrs. sali herself always wore check black worsted and a sort of yellow compound which she was won't to call susie together with the invention of drill plow and thrashing machines and other agricultural novelties she failed not to attribute all the mishaps or misdoings of the whole parish the last mention discovery especially a router indignation to hear her desk and on the merits of the flail wielded by a stout right arm such as she had known in her youth for by her account there was as great a deterioration in bones and sinews as in the other implements of husbandry was enough to make the very renter break his machine she would even take up her favorite instrument and thrashed the air herself by way of illustrating her argument and to say truth a few men in these degenerate days could have matched the stout brawny muscular limb which mrs. sali displayed at 65 in spite of this contumatious rejection of agricultural improvements the world went well with her at court farm a good landlord an easy rent incessant labor unremitting frugality and excellent times ensured a regular though moderate profit and she lived on grumbling and prospering flourishing and complaining till two misfortunes befell her at once her father died and her lease expired the loss of her father although a bedridden man turned of 90 who could not in the course of being expected to live long was a terrible shock to the daughter who was not so much younger as to be without fears for her own life and who had besides been so used to nursing the good old man and looking to his little comforts that she missed him as a mother would miss an ailing child the expiration of the lease was a grievance and a puzzle of a different nature her landlord would have willingly retained his excellent tenant but not on the terms which she then held the land which hadn't varied for 50 years so that poor Mrs. Sally had the misfortune to find rent rising and prices sinking both at the same moment a terrible solicism in political economy even this however I believe she would have endured rather than have quitted the house where she was born and to which all her ways and notions were adapted had not a priggish steward as much addicted to improvement of reform as she was to precedent and established usages insisted on binding her by lease to spread a certain number of loads of chalk on every field this tremendous innovation for never had that novelty in manure whitened the crops and pitels of court farm decided her at once she threw the proposals into the fire and left the place in a week her choice of a habitation occasioned some wonder and much amusement in our village world to be sure upon the verge of 70 an old maid may be permitted to dispense with the more rigid punctilio of her class but Mrs. Sally had always been so tenacious on the score of character so very approved so determined an avoider of the menfolk as she was won't contemptuously to call them that we were all conscious of something like astonishment on finding that she and her little handmaid had taken up their abode in one end of a spacious farmhouse belonging to the bluff old bachelor George Robinson of the Lee now Farmer Robinson was quite as notorious for his aversion to petticoated things as Mrs. Sally for her hatred to the unfethered bipeds who wear doublet and hoes so that there was a little astonishment in that quarter too and plenty of jests which the honest farmer speedily silenced by telling all who joked on the subject that he had given his lodge a fair warning that let people say what they would he was quite determined not to marry her so that if she had any views that way it would be better for her to go elsewhere this declaration which must be admitted to have been more remarkable for frankness than civility made however no ill impression on Mrs. Sally to the farmers she went and at his house she lived still with her little maid her tabby cat a decrepit sheep dog and much of the lumber of Court Farm which she could not find in her heart to part from there she follows her old ways and her old hours of money and unassailed as far as I hear by love all by scandal with no other grievance than an occasional dearth of employment for herself and her young lass even pewter dishes do not always want scouring and now and then a twinge of the rheumatism so here she is that good relic of the olden time for in spite of her whims and prejudices a better and kinder woman never lived here she is with the hood of her red cloak pulled over her close black bonnet of that silk which once it may be presumed was fashionable since it is still called mode and her whole stout figure huddled up in a miscellaneous and most substantial covering of thick petticoats, gowns aprons, shawls and cloaks a weight which it requires the strength of a thrasher to walk under here she is with her square honest visage and her loud frank voice and we hold a pleasant disjointed chat of rheumatisms and early chickens bad weather and hats with feathers in them the last exceedingly sore subject being introduced by poor Jane Davies a cousin of Mrs. Sally who passing us in a beaver bonnet on her road from school stopped to drop her little curtsy and was soundly scolded for her civility Jane who is a gentle humble and smiling lass about twelve years old received so many rebukes from her worthy relative and bears them so meekly that I shouldn't wonder if they were to be followed by a legacy I sincerely wish they may be well at last we said goodbye went on inquiring my destination and hearing that I was bent to the ten acre cops part of the farm which she had ruled so long she stopped to tell me a dismal story of two sheep stealers who sixty years ago were found hidden in that cops and only taken after great difficulty and resistance and the maiming of a peace officer oh pray don't go there miss for mercy's sake don't be so venturesome think if they should kill you were the last words of Mrs. Sally many thanks for her care and kindness without being at all foolhardy in general I have no great fear of the sheep stealers of sixty years ago even if they escaped hanging for that exploit I should greatly doubt their being in case to attempt another so on we go down the short shady lane and out onto the pretty retired green shut in by fields and hedgerows which we must cross to reach the cops how lively this green look is today half covered with cows and horses and sheep and how glad these frolics and greyhounds are to exchange the hard gravel of the high road for this pleasant short turf which seems made for their gambles how beautifully they are at play chasing each other round and round in lessening circles darting off at all kinds of angles crossing and recrossing may and trying to win her sedateness into a game at romps turning round on each other with gay defiance pursuing the cows and the coats leaping up as if to catch the crows in their flight all in their harmless and innocent old wretches villains and rascals full footed mischiefs canine plagues saladin, brindle thereafter the sheep saladin I say they have actually singled out that pretty spotted lamb brutes if I catch you saladin, brindle we shall be taken up for sheep stealing presently ourselves they have chased the poor little lamb into a ditch and are mounting guard over it standing at bay oh wretches I have you now for shame saladin get away brindle see how good may is off with you brutes for shame for shame and brandishing a handkerchief which could hardly be an efficient instrument of correction I succeeded in driving away the two poppies who after all meant nothing more than play although it was somewhat rough and rather too much in the style of the old fable of the boys and the frogs may is gone after them perhaps to scold them for she has been as grave as a judge during the whole proceeding keeping ostentatiously close to me and taking no part whatever in the mischief the poor little pretty lamb here it lies on the bank quite motionless frightened I believe to death for certainly those villains never touched it it doesn't stir does it breathe oh yes it does it is alive and safe enough look it opens its eyes and finding the coast clear and its enemies far away it springs up in a moment and gallops to its dam who has stood bleeding the whole time at a most respectful distance who would suspect a lamb of so much simple cunning I really thought the pretty thing was dead and now how glad the U is to recover her curling spotted little one how fluttered they look well this adventure has flurried me too between fright and running I warrant you my heart beats as fast as the lambs oh here is the shameless villain Saladin the cause of the commotion thrusting his slender nose into my hand to beg pardon and make up the wickedest of soldons most iniquitous pagan soul of a Turk but there's no resisting the good human creatures penitence I must pat him there now we'll go to the cops I'm sure we'll find no worse malefactors than ourselves shall we may and the sooner we get out of sight of sheep the better for Brindle seems meditating another attack hello Monsieur over this gate and across this meadow and here is the cops how boggly that superb ashtray with its fine silver bark rises from the bank the fine entrance it makes with a holly beside it which also deserves to be called a tree but here we are in the cops ah only one half of the underwood was cut last year and the other is at its full growth hazel, briar, woodbine and bramble forming one impenetrable thicket and almost uniting with the lower branches of the elms and oaks and beaches which rise at regular distances overhead the foot can penetrate that dense and thorny entanglement but there is a walk all round by the side of the wide sloping bank walk and bank and cops carpeted with prim roses whose fresh and barmy odour impregnates the very air oh how exquisitely beautiful and it is not the prim roses only those gems of flowers but the natural mosaic of which they form a part that network of ground ivy with its lilac blossoms and the subdued tint of its purplish leaves those rich mosses those enameled wild hyacinths those spotted arums and above all those wreaths of ivy linking all those flowers together with chains of leaves more beautiful than blossoms whose white veins seem swelling amid the deep green or splendid brown it is the whole earth that is so beautiful never surely were prim roses so richly set and never did prim roses better deserve such a setting there they are of their own lovely yellow the hue to which they have given a name the exact tint of the butterfly that overhangs them the first I've seen this year can spring really becoming at last sprinkled here and there with tufts of a reddish purple with the purest white a some accident of soil affects that strange and inscrutable operation of nature the colouring of flowers oh how fragrant they are and how pleasant it is to sit in this sheltered cops listening to the fine creaking of the wind amongst the branches the most unearthly of sounds with this gay tapestry under our feet and the wood pigeons flitting from tree to tree and mixing the deep note of love with the elemental music yes spring is coming wood pigeons, butterflies and sweet flowers all give token of the sweetest of the seasons spring is coming the hazel stalks are swelling and putting forth their pale tassels the satin palms with their honeyed odours are out on the willow and the last lingering winter berries come from the hawthorn and making way for the bright and blossomy leaves end of chapter 2 part 8 chapter 2 part 9 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 walks in the country part 9 the wood April 20 spring is actually come now with the fullness and almost the suddenness of a northern summer today is completely April clouds and sunshine wind and showers blossoms on the trees grass in the fields and swallows by the pond snakes in the hedgerows nightingales in the thickets and cuckoos everywhere my young friend LNG is going with me this evening to gather wood sorrel she never saw that most elegant plant and is so delicate an artist that the introduction will be a mutual benefit Ellen will gain a subject worthy of her pencil and the pretty weed will live no small favour to a flower almost as transitory as the gum sisters duration is the only charm which it wants and that Ellen will give it the weather is to be sure a little threatening but we are not people to mind the weather when we have an object in view we shall certainly go in quest of the wood sorrel and we'll take May provided we can escape May's followers for since the adventure of the lamb Saladin has had an affair with a gander furious in defence of his gozlings in which Ron Contre the gander came off Conqueror and as geese abound in the wood to which we are going by the country people the pinch and the victory may not always incline to the right side I should be very sorry to lead the saldan to fight his battles over again we will take nobody but May so saying we proceeded on our way through winding lanes between hedgerows tenderly green till we reached the hatch gate with the white cottage beside it embosomed in fruit trees which forms the entrance to the pinch the moment the whole scene was before our eyes is not this beautiful Ellen? the answer could hardly be other than a glowing rapid yes a wood is generally a pretty place but this wood imagine a smaller forest full of glades and sheep walks surrounded by irregular cottages with their blooming orchards a clear stream winding about the breaks and a road intersecting it and giving light and life to the picture and you will have a faint idea of the pinch every step was opening a new point of view a fresh combination of glade and path and thicket the accessories too were changing every moment ducks, geese, pigs and children giving way as we advanced into the wood to sheep and forest ponies and they again disappearing as we became more entangled in its mazes till we heard nothing but the song of the nightingale and saw only the silent flowers what a piece of fairyland the tall elms overhead just bursting into tender vivid leaf with here and there a hoary oak or a silver barked beech every twig swelling with the brown buds and yet not quite stripped of the tawny foliage of autumn tall hollies and hawthorn beneath with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with the white blossoms of the slow and woven together with garlands of woodbinds and wild briars what a fairyland primroses, kaoslips, pansies and the regular open-eyed white blossom of the wooden enemy or to use the more elegant Hampshire name the windflower were set under our feet as thick as daisies in a meadow but the pretty weed that we came to seek and Ellen began to fear that we had mistaken the place or the season at last she had herself the pleasure of finding it under a break of holly oh look I'm sure that this is the wood sorrel look at the pendant white flower shaped like a snow drop and veined with purple streaks and the beautiful trefoil leaves folded like a heart some the young ones so vividly and yet tenderly green that the foliage of the elm and the hawthorn would show dully at their side others of a deeper tint and lined as it were with a rich and changeful purple don't you see them pursued my dear young friend who is a delightful piece of life and sunshine and was half inclined to scold me for the calmness with which amused by her enthusiasm I stood listening to her ardent exclamations don't you see them oh how beautiful and in what quantity what profusion see how the dark shade of the holly sets off the light and delicate colouring of the flower and see that other bed of them springing from the rich moss in the roots of that old beech tree pray let us gather some here are baskets so quickly and carefully we began gathering mushrooms, roots and all for the plant is so fragile that it will not brook separation quickly and carefully we gathered encountering divers petty misfortunes in spite of all our care now caught by the veil in a holly bush now hitching our shawls in a bramble still gathering on in spite of scratched fingers till we had nearly filled our baskets and began to talk of our departure but where is May May not going home without her May here she comes galloping of the beauty Ellen is almost as fond of May as I am what has she got in her mouth that rough round brown substance which she touches so tenderly what can it be a bird's nest naughty May no as I live a hedgehog oh look Ellen how it has coiled itself into a thorny ball off with it May don't bring it to me and May somewhat reluctant to part with her prickly prize however troublesome of carriage whose change of shape seemed to me to have puzzled her sagacity more than any event I ever witnessed for in general she has perfectly the air of understanding all that is going forward May at last dropped the hedgehog continuing however to pat it with her delicate cat-like paw cautiously and daintily applied and caught back suddenly and rapidly after every touch as if her poor captive had been a red hot coal finding that these pats entirely failed in solving the riddle for the hedgehog shamed dead like the lamb the other day and appeared entirely motionless she gave him so spirited and nudged with her pretty black nose not only turned him over but sent him rolling some little way along the turfy path an operation which that sagacious quadruped endured with the most perfect passiveness the most admirable non-resistance no wonder that May's discernment was at fault I myself if I had not been aware of the trick should have said that the ugly rough thing which she was trundling along like a bowl or a cricket ball an inanimate substance something devoid of sensation and of will at last my poor pet thoroughly perplexed and tired out fairly relinquished the contest and came slowly away and turning back once or twice to look at the object of her curiosity as if half inclined to return and try the event of another shove the sudden flight of a wood-pigeon effectually diverted her attention and Ellen amused herself by fancying how the hedgehog was scuttling away till our notice was also attracted by a very different object we had nearly threaded the wood and were approaching an open grove of magnificent oaks on the other side when sounds other than that of nightingales burst on our ear the deep and frequent strokes of the woodman's axe and emerging from the pinch we discovered the havoc which had committed above twenty of the finest trees lay stretched on the velvet turf there they lay in every shape and form of devastation some bare trunks stripped ready for the timber carriage with the bark built up in long piles at the side some with the spoilers busy about them stripping, hacking and hewing others with their noble branches their brown and fragrant shoots all fresh as if they were alive majestic courses the slain of today the grove was like a field of battle the young lads who were stripping the bark the very children who were picking up the chips seemed awed and silent as if conscious that death was around them the nightingales sang faintly and interruptedly a few low frightened notes like a requiem here we are here we are at the very scene of murder the very tree that they are felling they have just hewn round the trunk with those slaughtering axes and are about to saw it asunder after all it is a fine and thrilling operation as the work of death usually is into how grand an attitude was that young man thrown as he gave the final strokes around the root and how wonderful is the effect of that supple and apparently powerless saw bending like a ribbon and yet over mastering the giant of the woods conquering and overthrowing that thing of life now it has passed half through the trunk and the woodman has begun to calculate which way the tree will fall he drives a wedge to direct its course now a few more movements of the noiseless saw and then a larger wedge see how the branches tremble hark how the trunk begins to crack another stroke of the huge hammer on the wedge and the tree quivers as with mortal agony shakes, reels and falls how slow and solemn and awful it is how like to death to human death in its grandest form Caesar in the capital Seneca in the bath could not fall more sublimely than that oak even the heavens seem to sympathise with the devastation the clouds have gathered into one thick low canopy dark and vapoury as the smoke which overhangs London the setting sun is just gleaming underneath with a dim and bloody glare and the crimson rays spreading upward with a lurid and portentous grandeur a subdued and dusky glow like the light reflected on the sky from some vast conflagration the deep flush fades away and the rain begins to descend and we hurry home would rapidly, yet sadly forgetful alike of the flowers the hedgehog and the wetting thinking and talking only of the fallen tree End of Chapter 2 Part 9 Chapter 2 Part 10 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 walks in the country Part 10 The Dell May 2nd a delicious evening bright sunshine light summer air a sky almost cloudless and a fresh yet delicate verger on the hedges and in the fields an evening that seems made newly discovered haunt the Mossy Dell one of the most beautiful spots in the neighbourhood which after passing times out of number the field which it terminates we found out about two months ago from the accident of May's killing a rabbit there May has had a fancy for the place ever since and so have I thither recording we bend our way through the village up the hill and along the common pass the avenue across the bridge and by the hill how deserted the road is to-night we have not seen a single acquaintance except poor blind Robert laden with his sack of grass plucked from the hedges and the little boy that leads him a singular division of labour little gem guides Robert to the spots where the long grass grows and tells him where it's most plentiful and then the old man cuts it close to the roots between them they fill the sack and sell the contents in the village half the cows in the street for our baker our wheelwright and our shoemaker each has his oldenie oh the best part of their maintenance to blind Robert's industry here we are at the entrance of the cornfield which leads to the Dell and which commands so fine a view of the laden the mill and the great farm with its picturesque outbuildings and woody hills beyond it is impossible not to pause a moment at that gate the landscape always beautiful is so suited to the season and the hour so bright and gay and spring-like but May who has the chance of another rabbit in her pretty head has galloped forward to the dingle and poor May who follows me so faithfully in all my wanderings has a right to a little indulgence in hers so to the dingle we go at the end of the field which when seen from the road seems terminated by a thick dark coppice we come suddenly to the edge of a ravine on one side fringed with a low growth of older birch and willow and on the other mossy turf and bear or only broken by bright tufts of blossomed broom one or two old pollards almost conceal the winding road that leads down the descent by the side of which a spring as bright as crystal runs gurgling along the dell itself is an irregular piece of broken ground in some parts very deep intersected by two or three high banks of equal irregularity now abrupt and bare and rock-like now crowned with tufts of the feathery willow or magnificent old thorns everywhere the earth is covered by short fine turf mixed with mosses soft beautiful and various and embossed with the speckled leaves and lilac flowers of the arum the paler blossoms of the common orcus the enameled blue of the wild hyacinth so splendid in this evening light and large tufts of ox lips and cow slips rising like nose gaze from the short turf the ground on the other side of the dell is much lower than the field through which we came so that it is mainly to the labyrinthine intricacy of these high banks that it owes its singular character of wildness and variety now we seem hemmed in by those green cliffs shut out from all the world with nothing visible but those verdant mounds and the deep blue sky now by some sudden turn we get a peep at an adjoining meadow where the sheep are lying dappling its sloping surface like the small clouds on the summer heaven poor harmless quiet creatures how still they are some socially lying side by side some grouped in threes and fours some quite apart ah there are lambs amongst them pretty pretty lambs nestled in by their mothers soft quiet sleepy things not all so quiet though there is a party of these young lambs as wide awake as heart can desire half a dozen of them playing together frisking, dancing leaping, butting and crying in the young voice which is so pretty a diminutive of the full grown bleat how beautiful they are with their innocent spotted faces their mottled feet their long curly tails light flexible forms frolicking like so many kittens but with a gentleness an assurance of sweetness and innocence which no kitten nothing that ever is to be a cat can have how complete and perfect is their enjoyment of existence oh little rogues your play has been too noisy you've awakened your mammas and two or three of the old yous are getting up and one of them marching gravely to the troop of lambs has selected her own given her a gentle butt and trotted off the poor rebuked lamb following meekly but every now and then stopping and casting a longing looked its playmates who after a moment's odd pause had resumed their gambles whilst this daily dame every now and then looked back in her turn to see that her little one was following at last she lay down and the lamb by her side I never saw so pretty a pastoral scene in my life I have seen one which affected me much more walking in the church lane with one of the young ladies of the vicarage we met a large flock of sheep with the usual retinue of shepherds and dogs lingering after them and almost out of sight we encountered a straggling you now trotting along now walking and every now and then stopping to look back and bleeding a little behind her came a lame lamb bleeding occasionally as if in answer to its dame and doing its very best to keep up with her it was a lameness of both the four feet the knees were bent and it seemed to walk on the very edge of the hoof on tiptoe if I may venture such an expression my young friend thought that the lameness proceeded from original malformation I am rather of the opinion that it was accidental and that the poor creature was wretchedly foot sore however that might be the pain and difficulty with which it took every step were not to be mistaken and the distress and fondness of the mother her perplexity as the flock passed gradually out of sight the effort with which the poor lamb contrived to keep up a sort of trot and their mutual calls and lamentations were really so affecting that Ellen and I although not at all lacrimose sort of people had much ado not to cry we could not find a boy to carry the lamb which was too big for us to manage but I was quite sure that the you would not desert it and as the dark was coming on we both trusted that the shepherds unfolding their flock would miss them and return for them and so I am happy to say it proved another turning of the dell gives a glimpse of the dark coppice by which it is backed and from which we are separated by some marshy rushy ground where the springs have formed into a pool and where the moorhen loves to build her nest there's one scutting away now I can hear her plash into the water and the rustling of her wings among the rushes this is the deepest part of the wild dingle how uneven the ground is surely these excavations now so thoroughly clothed with vegetation must originally have been huge gravel pits there is no other way of accounting for the labyrinth for they do dig gravel in such capricious meanders but the quantity seems incredible well there's no end of guessing we're getting amongst the springs and must turn back round this corner where on ledges like fairy terraces the orcuses and irons grow and we emerge suddenly on a new side of the dell just fronting the small homestead of our good neighbour, Farmer Allen this rustic dwelling belongs to what used to be called in this part of the country a little bargain to make us perhaps of arable land which the owner and his sons cultivated themselves while the wife and daughters assisted in the husbandry and eaked out the slender earnings by the produce of the dairy the poultry yard and the orchard an order of cultivators now passing rapidly away but in which much of the best part of the English character its industry, its frugality and its sound sense and its kindness might be found Farmer Allen himself is an excellent specimen the cheerful venerable old man with his long white hair and his bright grey eye and his wife is a still finer they have had a hard struggle to win through the world and keep their little property undivided but good management and good principles and the assistants afforded them by an admirable son who left our village a poor apprentice boy and is now a partner in a great house in London have enabled them to overcome all the difficulties of these trying times and they are now enjoying the peaceful evenings of a well spent life as free from care and anxiety as their best friends could desire ah there's Mr Allen in the orchard the beautiful orchard with its glorious gardens of pink and white its pearly pear blossoms and coral apple buds what a flush of bloom it is how brightly delicate it appears thrown into strong relief by the dark house and the weather-stained barn in this soft evening light the very grass is strewn with the snowy petals of the pear and the cherry and there sits Mrs Allen feeding her poultry with her three little granddaughters from London pretty fairies from three years old to five only two and twenty months elapsed between the birth of the eldest and the youngest playing around her feet Mrs Allen my dear Mrs Allen has been that rare thing a beauty and although she'd been now an old woman I had almost said that she is so still why should I not say so nobleness of feature and sweetness of expression are surely as delightful in age as in youth her face and figure are much like those which are stamped indelibly on the memory of everyone who ever saw that grand specimen woman Mrs Siddons the outline of Mrs Allen's face is exactly the same but there is more softness more gentleness a more feminine composure in the eye and in the smile Mrs Allen never played Lady Macbeth her hair almost as black as at twenty is parted on her large fair forehead and combed under her exquisitely neat and snowy cap a muslin neckerchief a grey stuff gown and a white apron complete the picture there she sits under an old elder tree which flings its branches over her like a canopy whilst the setting sun illumines her venerable figure and touches the leaves with an emerald light there she sits placid and smiling with her spectacles in her hand and a measure of barley on her lap into which the little girls are dipping and scattering the corn amongst the ducks and chickens with unspeakable glee but those ingrates the poultry don't seem so pleased and thankful as they ought to be they mistrust their young feeders all domestic animals dislike children partly from an instinctive fear of their tricks and thoughtlessnesses partly I suspect from jealousy jealousy seems a strange tragic passion which attributes the inmates of the basacore but only look at that strutting fellow of her bantam cock evidently a favourite who sidles up to his old mistress with an air half affronted and half tender turning so scornfully from the barley-corns which Annie is flinging towards him and say if he be not as jealous as Othello nothing can pacify him but Mrs. Allen's notice and a doll from her hand can see she's calling to him and feeding him and now how he swells out his feathers and flutters his wings and erects his glossy neck and struts and crows and pecks proudest and happiest of bantams the pet and glory of the poultry yard in the meantime my own pet, May who has all this while been peeping into every hole and penetrating every nook and winding in hopes to find another rabbit has returned to my side and is sliding her snake-like head into my hand at once to invite the caress which she likes so well and to intimate with all due respect that it's time to go home the setting sun gives the same warning and in a moment we are through the dell the field and the gate pass the farm and the mill and hanging over the bridge and the northern river what a sunset how golden how beautiful the sun just disappearing and the narrow, liney clouds which a few minutes ago lay like soft, vapoury streaks along the horizon light it up with a golden splendour that the eye can scarcely endure and though still softer clouds which floated above them wreathing and curling into a thousand forms as thin and changeful as summer smoke now defined and deepened into grandeur and edged with ineffable insufferable light another minute and the brilliant orb totally disappears and the sky above grows every moment more varied and more beautiful as the dazzling golden lines are mixed with glowing red and gorgeous purple dabbled with small dark specks and mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge sparrow to look up at that glorious sky and then to see that magnificent picture reflected in the clear and lovely modern water is a pleasure never to be described and never forgotten my heart swells and my eyes fill as I write of it and think of the immeasurable majesty of nature and the unspeakable goodness of God he had an enjoyment so pure so peaceful and so intense before the meanest and lowliest of his creatures End of Chapter 2 Part 10 Chapter 2 Part 11 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 walks in the country Part 11 The Old House at Aberleigh June 25th What a glowing glorious day Summer in its richest prime noon in its most sparkling brightness little white clouds dappling the deep blue sky and the sun now partially veiled and now bursting through them with an intensity of light it wouldn't do to walk today professedly to walk we should be frightened at the very sound and yet it is probable that we may be beguiled into a pretty long stroll before we return home we're going to drive to the old house at Aberleigh to spend the morning under the shade of those barmy furs and among those luxuriant rose-trees and by the side of that brimming lotten river do not expect us before six o'clock said I as I left the house six at soonest added my charming companion and off we drove in our little pony shays drawn by our old mare and with the good-humoured urchin Henry's successor a sort of younger scrub who takes care of horse and shays and cow and garden for our charioteer my comrade in this homely equipage was a young lady of high family and higher endowments to whom the novelty of the thing and her own naturalness of character and simplicity of taste gave an unspeakable enjoyment she danced the little shays up and down as she got into it and laughed for very glee like a child Lizzie herself could not have been more delighted she praised the horse and the driver and the roads and the scenery and gave herself fully up to the enchantment of a rural excursion in the sweetest weather this sweet season I enjoyed all this too for the road was pleasant to every sense winding through narrow lanes under high elms and between hedges garlanded with wood-bine and rose-trees while the air was scented with the delicious fragrance of blossomed beans I enjoyed it all but I believe my principal pleasure was derived from my companion herself Emily I a person whom it is a privilege to know she's quite like a creation of the older poets and might pass for one of Shakespeare's or Fletcher's women stepped into life just as tender as playful as gentle and as kind she is clever too and has all the knowledge and accomplishments that a carefully conducted education acting on a mind of singular clearness and ductility matured and improved by the very best company can bestow but one never thinks of her requirements it is the charming artless character the bewitching sweetness of manner the real and universal sympathy the quick taste and the ardent feeling that one loves in Emily she is Irish by birth and has in perfection the melting voice and soft caressing accent by which her fair country women are distinguished moreover she is pretty I think her beautiful and so do all who have heard as well as seen her but pretty, very pretty all the world must confess and perhaps that is a distinction more enviable because less envied than the palmy state of beauty her prettiness is of the prettiest kind that of which the chief character is youthfulness a short but pleasing figure all grace and symmetry fair blooming face beaming with intelligence and good humor the prettiest little feet and the whitest hands in the world such is Emily I she resides with her maternal grandmother a venerable old lady slightly shaken with the palsy and when together and they are so fondly attached to each other that they are seldom parted it is one of the loveliest combinations of youth and age ever witnessed there's no seeing them without feeling an increase of respect and affection for both grandmother and granddaughter always one of the tenderest and most beautiful of natural connections as Richardson knew when he made such an exquisite use of it in his matchless book I fancy that Grandma Marshaily must have been just such another venerable lady as Mrs. S. and our sweet Emily oh no Harriet Byron is not half good enough for her there is nothing like her in the whole seven volumes but here we are at the bridge here we must delight this is the Lodden Emily is it not a beautiful river rising level with its banks so clear and smooth and peaceful giving back the verdant landscape and the bright blue sky and bearing on its palucid stream the snowy water lily the purest of flowers which sits enthroned on its own cool leaves looking just a tea itself like the lady in Comus that queenly flower becomes the water and so do the stately swans who are sailing so majestically down the stream like those who on St. Mary's Lake float double swan and shadow we must dismount here Richard to take care of our equipage under the shade of these trees while we walk up to the house see there it is we must cross this style there is no other way now and crossing the style we were immediately in what had been a drive round a spacious park and still retain something of the character though the park itself had long been broken into arable fields and in full view of the great house a beautiful structure of James the first time whose glassless windows and dilapidated doors form a melancholy contrast with the strength and entierness of the rich and massive front the story of that ruin for such it is is always to me singularly affecting it is that of the decay of an ancient and distinguished family gradually reduced from the highest wealth and station to actual poverty the house and park and a small estate around it were entailed on a distant cousin and could not be alienated and the late owner the last of his name and lineage after long struggling with debt and difficulty farming his own lands and clinging to his magnificent home with a love of place almost as tenacious as that of the younger Foscari was at last forced to abandon it retired to a poultry lodging in a poultry town and there died about twenty years ago broken hearted his successor bound by no ties of association to the spot and rightly judging the residents to be much too large for the diminished estate immediately sold the superb fixtures and would have entirely taken down the house if on making the attempt the masonry had not been found so solid that the materials were not worth the labour a great part however of one side is laid open and the splendid chambers with their carving and gilding are exposed to the wind and rain sad memorials of past grandeur the grounds have been left in merciful neglect the park indeed is broken up the lawn mown twice a year like a common hayfield the grotto mouldering into ruin and the fish pond choked with rushes and aquatic plants but the shrubs and flowering trees are undistroyed and have grown into a magnificence of size and wildness of beauty such as we may imagine them to attain in their native forests nothing can exceed their luxuriance especially in the spring when the lilac and labyrinum and double cherry put forth gorgeous blossoms there's a sweet sadness in the sight of such floweriness amid such desolation it seems the triumph of nature over the destructive power of man the whole place in that season more particularly is full of a soft and soothing melancholy reminding me I scarcely know why of some of the descriptions of natural scenery in the novels of Charlotte Smith which I read when a girl and which perhaps for that reason hang on my memory but here we are in the smooth grassy ride on the top of a steep turfy slope descending to the river crowned with enormous furs and limes of equal growth looking across the winding waters into a sweet peaceful landscape of quiet meadows shut in by distant woods what a fragrance is in the air from the barmy fir trees and the limes what an intensity of odour and what a murmur of bees in the lime trees what a coil those little winged people make over our heads and what a pleasant sound it is the pleasantest of busy sounds that which comes associated with all that is good and beautiful industry and forecast and sunshine and flowers surely these lime trees might store a hundred hives but the very odour is of a honeyed richness cloying, satiating Emily exclaimed in admiration as we stood under the deep strong leafy shadow and still more when honeysuckles trailed their untrimmed profusion in our path and roses, really trees almost intercepted our passage On Emily, farther yet force your way by that jessamine it will yield take care of this stubborn white rose-bow oh take care of yourself pray take care said my fairest friend let me hold back the branches after we had won our way through the straight at some expense of veils and flounces she stopped to contemplate and admire the tall graceful shrub whose long thorny stems spreading in every direction had opposed our progress and now waved their delicate clusters over our heads Did I ever think, exclaim she, of standing under the shadow of a white rose-tree what an exquisite fragrance and what a beautiful flower so pale and white and tender and the petals thin and smooth as silk what rose is it? oh don't you know did you never see it before it is rare now I believe and it seems rarer than it is because it only blossoms in very hot summers but this Emily is the musk rose that very musk rose of which Titania talks and which is worthy of Shakespeare and of her is it not oh no do not smell to it it is less sweet so than other roses but one cluster in avars or even that bunch in your bosom will perfume a large room as it does the summer air oh we will take 20 clusters said Emily I wish Grandma Ma were here she talks so often of a musk rose tree that grew against one end of her father's house I wish she were here to see this echoing her wish and well laden with musk roses planted perhaps in the days of Shakespeare we reach the steps that led to a square summer house overhanging the river the under part was a boathouse whose projecting roof as well as the walls and the very top of the little tower was covered with ivy and woodbine and surmounted by tufted barberries, bird cherries acacias covered with their snowy chains and other pendant and flowering trees beyond rose two poplars of unrivaled magnitude towering like stately columns over the dark tall furs and giving a sort of pillard and architectural grandeur to the scene we were now close to the mansion but it looked sad and desolate and the entrance choked with brambles and nettles seemed almost to repel our steps the summer house, the beautiful summer house, was free and open and inviting commanding from the unglazed windows which hung high above the water a reach of the river emanated by a rustic mill there we sat emptying our little basket of fruit and country cakes till Emily was seized with the desire of viewing from the other side of the the scenery which had so much enchanted her I must, said she take a sketch of the ivied boathouse and of this sweet room and this pleasant window Grandmama would never be able to walk from the road to the place itself but she must see its likeness so forth we salad not forgetting the dear musk roses we had no way of reaching the desired spot but by retracing our steps a mile during the heat of the hottest hour of the day and then following the course of the river to an equal distance on the other side nor had we any materials for sketching except the rumpled paper passed and a pencil without a point which I happen to have about me but the small difficulties are pleasures to gay and happy youth regardless of such obstacles the sweet Emily bounded on like a fawn and I followed delighting in her delight the sun went in and the walk was delicious a reviving coolness seemed to breathe over the water wafting the barmy scent of the furs we found a point of view presenting the boat house the water, the poplars and the mill in a most felicitous combination the little straw fruit basket made a capital table and refreshed and sharpened and pointed by our trusty lackey's excellent knife your country boy is never without a good knife it is his prime treasure the pencil did double duty first in the skillful hands of Emily this faithful and spirited sketch does equal honour to the scene and to the artist and then in the humbler office of attempting a faint transcript of my own impressions in the following sonnet it was an hour of calm as noon at day of ripe as summer all the deep blue sky white speckled clouds came sailing peacefully half shrouding in a checkered veil the ray of the sun we lay by the smooth laden opposite the high steep bank which as a coronet gloriously wore its rich crest of furs and lime trees gay with their pale tassels while from out about of ivy where those columned poplars rear their heads the ruined boat house like a tower flung its deep shadow on the water's clear my Emily forget not that car mower nor that fair scene by thee made doubly dear