To gather May baskets, and smelling briere;
And home they hasten, the postes to dight
With hawthorne buds, and sweet eglantine,
And girlonds of roses, and soppes in wine.
The scene is laid in the woods at Witley.
CHAPTER VI
THE WOODS, THE LANES, AND THE FIELDS
They are in blossom now, and the country is all like a garden;
Thinking of lanes and of fields, and the song of the lark and the linnet.
When Mrs. Allingham finally, I will not say determined to cut herself away from figure painting, but by the influence of her surroundings drifted away from it, she did not, as so many do, become the delineator of a single phase of landscape art. Her journeyings in search of subjects for some years were neither many nor extensive, for a paintress with a family growing up around her has not the same opportunities as a painter. He can leave his incumbrances in charge of his wife, and his work will probably benefit by an occasional flitting from home surroundings. But a mother’s work would not thrive away from her children even if absence was possible, which it probably was not in Mrs. Allingham’s case. Hence we find that the ground she has covered has been almost entirely confined to what are termed the Home Counties, with an occasional diversion to the Isle of Wight, Dorsetshire, Gloucestershire, and Cheshire. In the Home Counties, Surrey and Kent have furnished most of her material, the former naturally being oftenest drawn upon during her life at Witley, and the latter since she lived in London, whither she returned in the year 1888. This inability to roam about whither she chose was doubtless helpful in compelling her to vary her subjects, for she would of necessity have to paint whatever came within her reach. But her energy also had its share, for it enabled her to search the whole countryside wherever she was, and gather in a dozen suitable scenes where another might only discover one.
As evidence of this we may instance the case of the corner of Kent whither she has gone again and again of late, and where in the present year she has still been able to find ample material to her liking. A visit to this somewhat out-of-the-way spot, which lies in Kent in an almost identically similar position to that which Witley does in Surrey, namely, in the extreme south-west corner, shows how she has found material everywhere. In the mile that separates the station from the farmhouse where she encamps, she shows a cottage that she has painted from every side, a brick kiln that she has her eye on, an old yew, and a clump of elms that has been most serviceable. Arriving at the farm-gate she points to the modest floral display in front that has sufficed for “In the Farmhouse Garden” (Plate 2), whilst over the way are the buildings of “A Kentish Farmyard” (Plate 58). Entering the house the visitor may not be much impressed with the view from her sitting-room window, but under the artist’s hands it has become the silvern sheet of daisies reproduced in Plate 38. “On the Pilgrims’ Way” (Plate 41) is a field or so away, whilst a short walk up the downs behind the house finds us in the presence of the originals of Plates 32 and 36. A drive across the vale and we have Crockham Hill, whence comes Plate 40, and Ide Hill, Plate 55.
A ramble round these scenes, whilst a most enjoyable matter to any one born to an appreciation of the country, was in truth not the inspiration that would be imagined to the writer of the text, for he had seen, for instance, the daintily conceived water-colour of “Ox-eye Daisies” (Plate 38), painted a year ago, and he arrived at the field to find this year’s crop a failure, and on a day in which the distant woods were hardly visible; the scene of the “Foxgloves” had all the underwood grown up, and only a stray spike suggestive of the glory of past years; gipsy tramps on the road to “berrying” (strawberry gathering) conjured up no visions of the tenant of Mrs. Allingham’s “Spring on the Kentish Downs,” but only a horrible thought of the strawberries defiled by being picked by their hands.
This description of the variety of the artist’s work within a single small area will show that it is somewhat difficult to classify it for consideration. However, one or two arrangements and rearrangements of the drawings which illustrate these phases of the artist’s output seem to bring them best into the following divisions: woods, lanes, and fields; cottages; and gardens. These we shall therefore consider in this and the following chapters, dealing here with the first of them.
Midway in her life at Witley, The Fine Art Society induced Mrs. Allingham to undertake, as the subject for an Exhibition, the portrayal of the countryside under its four seasonal aspects of spring, summer, autumn, and winter. She completed her task, and the result was shown in 1886 in an Exhibition, but a glance at the catalogue shows in which direction her preference lay; for whilst spring and summer between them accounted for more than fifty pictures, only seven answered for autumn, and six, of which one half were interiors, illustrated winter. These proportions may not perhaps have represented the ratio of her affections, but of her physical ability to portray each of the seasons. Autumn leaves and tints no doubt appealed to her artistic eye as much as spring or summer hues, but for some reason, perhaps that of health, illustrations were few and far between of the time of year
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In so selecting she differed from Mr. Ruskin, who has laid it down that “a tree is never meant to be drawn with all its leaves on, any more than a day when its sun is at noon. One draws the day in its morning or eventide, the tree in its spring or autumn dress.” This naturally exaggerated dictum is the contrary of Mrs. Allingham’s practice. She almost invariably waits for the trees until they have completely donned their spring garb, and leaves them ere they doff their summer dress.
The drawings of the woods, lanes, and fields which Mrs. Allingham has selected for illustration here comprise six of spring, three of summer, and two of autumn, winter being unrepresented. They are culled as to seven from Kent, three from Surrey, and a single one from Hertfordshire.
Taking them in their seasonal order we may discuss them as follows:—
32. SPRING ON THE KENTISH DOWNS
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Beddington.
Painted 1900.
With spring to-day!
Where copses tufted with primrose
Give one repose.
That the joy of spring is a never-failing subject for poets, any one may see who turns over the pages of the numerous compilations which now treat of Nature. I doubt, however, whether they receive a higher pleasure from it than does the townsman who can only walk afield at rare intervals, and whose first visit to the country each year is taken at Eastertide. He probably has no eye save for the contrasts which he experiences to his daily life, of scene, air, and vitality, but these will certainly infect him with a healthier love of life than is enjoyed by those who live amongst them and see them come and go.
Fortunate is the man who can visit these Kentish downs at a time when the breath of spring is touching everything, when the eastern air makes one appreciate the shelter that the hazel copses fringing their sides afford, an appreciation which is shared by the firs which hug their southern slopes.
It is very early spring in this drawing. The highest trees show no sign of it save at their outermost edges. Hazels alone, and they only in the shelter, have shed their flowery tassels, and assumed a leafage which is still immature in colour. The sprawling trails of the traveller’s joy, which rioted over everything last autumn, are still without any trace of returning vitality.
33. TIG BRIDGE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. E. S. Curwen.
Painted 1887.
Wood-sorrel, and the varnish’d buttercup;
And primrose in its purfled green swathed up,
Pallid and sweet round every budding thorn.
This little sequestered bridge would hardly seem to be of sufficient importance to deserve a name, nor for the matter of that the streamlet, the Tigbourne, which runs beneath it, but on the Hindhead slope streams of any size are scarce, and therefore call for notice. Bridges resemble stiles in being enforced loitering places, for whilst there is no effort which compels a halt in crossing bridges, as there is with stiles, there is the sense of mystery which underlies them, and expectancy as to what the water may contain. Especially is this so for youth; and so here we have boy and girl who pause on their way from bluebell gathering, whilst the former makes belief of fishing with the thread of twine which youngsters of his age always find to hand in one or other of their pockets.
34. SPRING IN THE OAKWOOD
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1903.
We have elsewhere remarked on the rare occasions on which Mrs. Allingham utilises sunlight and shadow. Here, however, is one of them, and one which shows that it is from no incapacity to do so, for it is now introduced with a difficult effect, namely, blue flowers under a low raking light. The artist’s eye was doubtless attracted by the unusual visitation of a bright warm sun on a spring day, and determined to perpetuate it.
The wood in which the scene is laid is on the Kentish Downs, where, as the distorted boughs show, the winds are always in evidence.
The juxtaposition of the two primaries, blue and yellow, is always a happy one in nature, but specially is it so when we have such a mass of sapphire blue.
Married to green in all the sweetest flowers—
Forget-me-not, the bluebell, and that queen
Of secrecy the violet.
35. THE CUCKOO
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. A. Hugh Thompson.
Painted about 1887.
In a recent “One Man Exhibition” by that refined artist Mr. Eyre Walker, there was a very unusual drawing entitled “Beauty for Ashes.” The entire foreground was occupied with a luxuriant growth of purple willow loosestrife, intermixed with the silvery white balls of down from seeding nipplewort. Standing gaunt from this intermingling, luxuriant crop, were the charred stems of burnt fir trees, whilst the living mass of their fellows formed an agreeable background. The subject must have attracted many travellers on the South-Western Railway as they passed Byfleet; it did so in Mr. Walker’s case to the extent that he stayed his journey and painted it.
In that case this beautiful display had, as the title to the picture hints, arisen from the ashes of a forest. A spark from a train had set fire to the wood, and had apparently destroyed every living thing in its course. But such is Nature that out of death sprang life. So it has been with the coppice here, and in the oakwood scene which preceded it. The cutting down and clearing of the wood has brought sun, air, and rain to the soil, and as a consequence have followed the
That seem the heavens upbreaking thro’ the earth.
The drawing takes its name from the cuckoo whose note has arrested the children’s attention.
36. THE OLD YEW TREE
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1903.
One of many that are dotted about the southern slopes of the Westerham Downs, and that, not only here but all along the line of the Pilgrims’ Way, are regarded as having their origin in these devotees. The drawing was made in the early part of the present year, when the primroses and violets were out, but before there was anything else, save the blossom of the willow, to show that
Slowly, slowly!
To give the world high holiday.
37. THE HAWTHORN VALLEY, BROCKET
From the Water-colour in the possession of Lord Mount-Stephen.
Painted 1898.
It is somewhat remarkable that the most impressive flower-show that Nature presents to our notice, namely, when, as May passes into June, the whole countryside is decked with a bridal array of pure white, should have taken hold of but few of our poets.
Shakespeare, of course, recognised it in lines which make one smile at the idea that they could ever have been composed by a town-bred poet:—
Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroidered canopy
To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery.
Another, in the person of Mrs. Allingham’s husband, penned a sonnet upon it containing the following happy description:—
And broideries of white bloom.
The scene of this drawing is laid in the park at Brocket Hall, to which reference is made in connection with a subsequent illustration (Plate 65). The park is full of ancient timber, one great oak on the border of the two counties (Herts and Beds) being mentioned in Doomsday Book, and another going by the name of Queen Elizabeth’s oak, from the tradition that the Princess was sitting under it when the news reached her that she was Queen of England.10 The Hawthorn Valley runs for nearly a mile from one of the park entrances towards the more woodland part of the estate, and was formerly used as a private race-course.
The artist has treated a very difficult subject with success, as any one, especially an amateur, who has tried to portray masses of hawthorn blossom will readily admit. Any attempt to draw the flowers and fill in the foliage is hopeless, and it can only be done, as in this case, by erasure. Hardly less difficult to accomplish are the delicate fronds of the young bracken, unfolding upwards by inches a day, which can only be treated suggestively. In the original, which is on a somewhat large scale, the middle distance is enlivened with browsing rabbits, but the very considerable reduction of the drawing has reduced these to a size which renders them hardly distinguishable.
38. OX-EYE DAISIES, NEAR WESTERHAM, KENT
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.
Whilst no Exhibition passes nowadays which has not one or more representations of the “blithe populace” of daisies, the fashion has only come in of late years. Even the Flemings, who were so partial to the flowers of the field, seem to have considered it beneath their notice—a strange occurrence, because one can hardly turn over the pages of any missal of a corresponding epoch without coming upon many a faithful representation of the rose-encircled orb.
Chaucer extolled it
Then love I most these flow’res white and red,
Such that men callen daisies in our town.
And much content it gave him
When it upriseth early by the morrow
That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow.
He recognised its name of “day’s eye,” because it opens and closes its flower with the daylight, in the lines—
The emprise and the floure of floures alle.
In fact it was a favourite with English poets long before it came under the notice of English painters. Witness Milton’s well-known line—
It was not until the epoch of the pre-Raphaelite brethren that the daisies which pie the meadows seemed worthy of perpetuation, and it was reserved to Frederick Walker, in his “Harbour of Refuge,” to limn them on a lawn falling beneath the scythe.
The flower that Mrs. Allingham has painted with so much skill—for it is a very difficult undertaking to suggest a mass of daisies without too much individualising—is not, of course, the field daisy (bellis perennis) but the ox-eye, or moon daisy, which is really a chrysanthemum (chrysanthemum leucanthemum), a plant which seems to have increased very much of late years, especially on railway embankments, maybe because it has come into vogue, and actually been advanced to a flower worthy of gathering and using as a table decoration, an honour that would never have been bestowed on it a quarter of a century ago.
The drawing was made from the window of the farmhouse in Kent, to which, as we have said, Mrs. Allingham runs down at all seasons. It was evidently made on a glorious summer day, when every flower had expanded to its utmost under the delicious heat of a ripening sun. The bulbous cloudlet which floats in front of the whiter strata, and the blueness of the distant woods may augur rain in the near future, but for the moment everything appears to be in a serenely happy condition, except perhaps the farmer, who would fain see a crop in which there was less flower and more grass.
39. FOXGLOVES
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. C. A. Barton.
Painted 1898.
Foxgloves have appealed to Mrs. Allingham for portrayal in more than one locality in England, but never in greater luxuriance than on this Kentish woodside, where their spikes overtop the sweet little sixteen-year-old faggot-carrier. It happens to be another instance of a magnificent crop springing up the first year after a growth of saplings have been cleared away, and not to be repeated even in this year of grace (1903) when the newspapers have been full of descriptions of the unwonted displays of foxgloves everywhere, and have been taunting the gardeners upon their poor results in comparison with Nature’s.
40. HEATHER ON CROCKHAM HILL, KENT
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.
It is perhaps a fallacy, or at least heresy, to assert that English heather bears away the palm for beauty over that of the country with which it is more popularly associated. But many, I am sure, will agree with me that nowhere in Scotland is any stretch of heather to be found which can eclipse in its magnificence of colour that which extends for mile after mile over Surrey and Kentish commonland in mid August. In the summer in which this drawing was painted it was especially noticeable as being in more perfect bloom than it had been known to be for many seasons.
41. ON THE PILGRIMS’ WAY
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.
I was taken to task by Mrs. Allingham a while ago for saying that her affections were not so set upon the delineation of harvesting as were those of most landscapists, and she stated that she had painted the sheafed fields again and again. But I held to my assertion, and proof comes in this drawing just handed to me. Not one artist in ten would, I am certain, have sat down to his subject on this side of the hedge, but would have been over the stile, and made his foreground of the shorn field and stacked sheaves, breaking their monotony of form and colour by the waggon and its attendant labourers. But Mrs. Allingham could not pass the harvest of the hedge, and was satisfied with just a peep of the corn through the gap formed by the stile. It is not surprising, for who that is fond of flowers could pass such a gladsome sight as the display which Nature has so lavishly offered month after month the summer through to those who cared to notice it. In May the hedge was white with hawthorn, in June gay with dog-roses and white briar, in July with convolvuli and woodbine, and now again in August comes the clematis and the blackberry flower.
42. NIGHT-JAR LANE, WITLEY
From the Drawing in the possession of Mr. E. S. Curwen.
Painted 1887.
One of those steep self-made roads which the passage of the seasons rather than of man has furrowed and deepened in “the flow of the deep still wood,” a lodgment for the leaves from whose depths that charming lament of the dying may well have arisen,—
“I toss alone on a forsaken tree,
It rocks and cracks with every gust that rocks
Its straining bulk: say! how is it with thee?”
“A heavy foot went by, an hour ago;
Crush’d into clay, I stain the way;
The loud wind calls me, and I cannot go.”
The name “Night-Jar,” by which this lane is known, is unusual, and probably points to its having been a favourite hunting-ground for a seldom-seen visitant, for which it seems well-fitted. The name may well date back to White of Selborne’s time, who lived not far away, and termed the bird “a wonderful and curious creature,” which it must be if, as he records, it commences its jar, or note, every evening so exactly at the close of day that it coincided to a second with the report—which he could distinguish in summer—of the Portsmouth evening gun.
Night-jars are most deceptive in their flight, one or two giving an illusion of many by their extremely rapid movements and turns; and they may well have been very noticeable to persons in the confined space of this gully, especially as the observer in his evening stroll would probably stir up the moths, which are the bird’s favourite food, and which would attract it into his immediate vicinity. How much interest would be added to a countryside were the lanes all fitted with titles such as this.
CHAPTER VII
COTTAGES AND HOMESTEADS
The ancient haunts of men have numberless tongues for those who know how to hear them speak.
It was not until some fifteen years of Mrs. Allingham’s career as a painter in water-colour had been accomplished that she found the subject with which her name has since been so inseparably linked. Looking through the ranks of her associates in the Art it is in rare instances that we encounter so complete a departure out of a long-practised groove, or one which has been so amply justified. But in selecting English Cottages and Homesteads, and peopling them with a comely tenantry, she happened upon a theme that was certain not only to obtain the suffrages of the ordinary exhibition visitors, but of those who add to seeing, admiration and acquisition. Thus it has come to pass that in the other fifteen years which have elapsed since she first began to paint them, “Mrs. Allingham’s Cottages” have become a household word amongst connoisseurs of English water-colours, and no representative collection has been deemed to be complete without an example of them.
This appreciation is very assuredly a sound one, as the value of these pictures does not consist solely in their beauty as works of Art, but in their recording in line and colour a most interesting but unfortunately vanishing phase of English domestic architecture. For the cottages are almost without exception veritable portraits, the artist (whilst naturally selecting those best suited to her purpose) having felt it a duty to present them with an accuracy of structural feature which is not always the case in creations of this kind, where the painter has had other views, and considered that he could improve his picture by an addition here and an omission there.
So many of Mrs. Allingham’s drawings of cottages have been taken from the counties of Surrey and Sussex, that it may interest not only the owners of those here reproduced, but others who possess similar subjects, to read a short description of the features that distinguish the buildings in these districts.
One is perhaps too apt to pass these lowlier habitations of our fellow-men, whether we see them in reality or in their counterfeits, without a thought as to their structure, or an idea that it is an evolution which has grown on very marked lines from primitive types, and which in almost every instance has been influenced by local surroundings.
In the early days of housebuilding the use of local materials was naturally a distinctive feature of dwellings of every kind, but more especially in those where expenditure had to be kept within narrow limits. But even in such a case the style of architecture affected in the better built houses influenced and may be traced in the more humble ones. Change amongst our forefathers was even less hastily assumed than in these days, and a style which experience had proved to be convenient was persevered in for generation after generation, individuality seldom having any play, although a necessary adaptation to the site gave to most buildings a distinction of their own. One of the earliest forms, and one still to be found even in buildings which have now descended to the use of yeomen’s dwellings, was that of a large central room having on one side of it the smaller living and sleeping rooms, and on the other the kitchens and servants’ apartments, the wings projecting sometimes both to back and front, sometimes only to the latter. In later times, as such a house fell into less well-to-do hands, necessity usually compelled the splitting-up of the house into various tenements, in which event the central room was generally divided into compartments, often into a complete dwelling. Types of this kind may be found in most villages in the south-eastern counties, and examples will be seen in “The Six Bells” (Plate 57) and the house at West Tarring, near Worthing (Plate 51), where the central portion falls back from the gabled ends. This arrangement of a central hall used for a living room, after going out of favour for some centuries, is curiously enough once more coming into fashion.
Local materials having, as we have said, much to do with the structure, the type of dwelling that we may expect to find in counties where wood was plentiful, and the cost of preparing and putting it on the ground less than that of quarrying, shaping, and carrying stone, is the picturesque, timber-formed cottage. Those interested in the plan of construction, which was always simple, of these will find full details in Mr. Guy Dawber’s Introduction to Old Cottages and Farm Houses in Kent and Sussex, as well as many illustrations of examples that occur in these counties.
The materials other than wood used for the framework, and which were necessary to fill up the interstices, were, in the better class of dwellings, bricks; in others, a consistency formed of chopped straw and clay, an outward symmetry of appearance being gained by a covering of plaster where it was not deemed advisable to protect the woodwork, and of boarding or tiles where the whole surface called for protection. Several of the cottages illustrated in this volume have been protected by these tilings on some part or another, perhaps only on a gable end, most often on the upper story, sometimes over the whole building, but of course, principally, where it was most exposed to the weather (see Cherry-Tree Cottage, Plate 43; Chiddingfold, Plate 44; Shottermill, Plate 49; and Valewood Farm, Plate 50). This purpose of the tile in the old houses, and its use only for protection, distinguishes them from the modern erections, where it is oftentimes affixed in the most haphazard style, and clearly without any idea of fitting it where it will be most serviceable.
The space in the interior was very irregularly apportioned, whilst the cubic space allotted to living rooms, both on the ground and first floors, was singularly insufficient for modern hygienic views. A reason for the small size of the rooms may have been that it enabled them to be more readily warmed, either by the heat given off by the closely-packed indwellers, or by the small wood fires which alone could be indulged in. Little use was made of the large space in the roof, but this omission adds much to the picturesqueness of the exterior, for the roofs gain in simplicity by their unbroken surface and treatment. It is somewhat astonishing that the old builders did not recognise this costly disregard of space.
The roofs, like the framework, testify to the geological formation and agricultural conditions of the district.
The roof-tree was always of hand-hewn oak, and this it was, according to Birket Foster, which gave to many of the old roofs their pleasant curves away from the central chimney. The ordinary unseasoned sawn deal of the modern roof may swag in any direction.
The roof-covering where the land was chiefly arable, or the distance from market considerable, was usually wheaten thatch, which was certainly the most comfortable, being warm in winter and cool in summer, just the reverse of the tiles or slates that have practically supplanted it.11 In other districts the cottages are covered with what are known as stone slates, thick and heavy. Roofs to carry the weight of these had always to be flattened, with the result that they require mortaring to keep out the wet. The West Tarring cottage (Plate 51) is an instance of a stone roofing.
The red tiles, which were used for the most part, are certainly the most agreeable to the artistic eye, for their seemingly haphazard setting, due in part to the builder and in part to nature, affords that pleasure which always arises from an unstudied irregularity of line. Roof tiles were made thicker and less carefully in the old days, and our artist’s truth in delineation may be detected in almost any drawing by examining where the weight has swagged away the tiles between the main roof beams.
Unlike chimneys erected by our cottage builders of to-day, which appear to issue out of a single mould, those of the untutored architects of the past present every variety of treatment and appearance.
The old solidly built chimney seen in many of Mrs. Allingham’s cottages (Chiddingfold, Plate 44) is worthy of note as a type of many sturdy fellows which have resisted the ravages of time, and have stood for centuries almost without need of repair. In old days the chimney was regarded not only as a special feature but as an ornament, and not as a necessary but ugly excrescence. Although probably it only served for one room in the house, that service was an important one, and so materials were liberally used in its construction.
In Kent and Sussex many of the chimneys are of brick, although the house and the base of the chimney-stack are of stone. This arose from the stone not lending itself to thin slabs, and consequently being altogether too cumbrous and bulky.
The windows in the old cottages were naturally small when glass was a luxury, and became fewer in number when a tax upon light was one of the means for carrying on the country’s wars. They were usually filled with the smallest panes, fitted into lead lattice, so that breakages might be reduced to the smallest area. Not much of this remains, but a specimen of it is to be seen in the Old Buckinghamshire House (Plate 52). One of the few alterations that Mrs. Allingham allows herself is the substitution of these diamond lattices throughout a house where she finds a single example in any of the lights, or if, as she has on more than one occasion found, that they have been replaced by others, and are themselves stacked up as rubbish. She has in her studio some that have been served in this way, and which have now become useful models.
It would be imagined that the sense of pride in these, the last traces of their village ancestors, would have prompted their descendants, whether of the same kin or not, to deal reverently with them, and endeavour to hand on as long as possible these silent witnesses to the honest workmanship of their forbears. Such, unfortunately, is but seldom the case. If any one will visit Witley with this book in his hand, and compare the present state of the few examples given there, not twenty years after they were painted, he will see what is taking place not only in this little village but through the length and breadth of England. It is not always wilful on the part of the landlord, but arises from either his lack of sympathy, time, or interest.
He probably has a sense of his duty to “keep up” things, and so sends his agent to go round with an architect and settle a general plan for doing up the old places (usually described as “tumbling down” or “falling to pieces”). Thereupon a village builder makes an estimate and sends in a scratch pack of masons and joiners, and between them they often supplant fine old work, most of it as firm as a rock, with poor materials and careless labour, and rub out a piece of old England, irrecoverable henceforth by all the genius in the world and all the money in the bank. The drainage and water supply, points where improvement is often desirable, may be left unattended to. But whatever else is decided on, no uneven tiled roofs, with moss and houseleek, must remain; no thatch on any pretence, nor ivy on the wall, nor vine along the eaves. The cherry or apple tree, that pushed its blossoms almost into a lattice, will probably be cut down, and the wild rose and honeysuckle hedge be replaced by a row of pales or wires. The leaden lattice itself and all its fellows, however perfect, must inevitably give place to a set of mean little square windows of unseasoned wood, though perhaps on the very next property an architect is building imitation old cottages with lattices! With the needful small repairs, most of the real old cottages would have lasted for many generations to come, to the satisfaction of their inhabitants and the delight of all who can feel the charm of beauty combined with ancientness—a charm once lost, lost for ever. And unquestionably the well-repaired old cottages would generally be more comfortable than the new or the done-up ones, to say nothing of the “sentiment” of the cottager. An old man, who was in a temporary lodging during the doing-up of his cottage, being asked, “When shall you get back to your house?” answered, “In about a month, they tells me; but it won’t be like going home.” At the same time it is fair to add that many of the “doings-up” in Mrs. Allingham’s country are of good intention and less ruthless execution than may be seen elsewhere, and that certain owners show a real feeling of wise conservatism. It would perhaps be a low estimate, however, to say that a thousand ancient cottages are now disappearing in England every twelvemonth, without trace or record left—many that Shakespeare might have seen, some Chaucer; while the number “done up” is beyond computation.
The baronial halls have had abundant recognition and laudation at the hands of the historian and the painter; the numerous manor-houses, less pretentious, often more lovely, very little; the old cottages next to none, even the local chronicler running his spectacles over them without a pause.
It really looks as if we were, one and all, constituted as a poet has seen us:—
First when we see them painted, things we have passed
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;
And so they are better, painted—better to us,
Which is the same thing. Art was given for that—
God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our minds out.
Had Mrs. Allingham done nothing else for her country, she has justified her career as a recorder of this altogether overlooked phase of English architecture—a phase which will soon be a thing of the past.
I remember once being accosted by a bystander in Angers, as I was wrestling with the perspective of a beautiful old house, with the remark, “Ah, you had better hurry more than you are doing and finish the roof of that house, for it will be off to-morrow and the whole down in three days.” That has often been the case with Mrs. Allingham. More than once a cottage limned one summer has disappeared before the drawing was exhibited the following spring. Year in and year out the process has been at work during the quarter of a century during which the artist has been garnering, and it has almost come to be a joke that were she to paint as long again as she has, she might have to cease from actual lack of material.
Our illustrations of cottages divide themselves into, first the examples in the immediate neighbourhood of Sandhills; and secondly, those farther afield in Kent, Buckingham, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, and Cheshire.
Those near Sandhills form points in the circumference of a circle of which it is the centre, the most southern being Chiddingfold, where we start on our survey.
43. CHERRY-TREE COTTAGE, CHIDDINGFOLD
From the Water-colour in the possession of the
Lord Chief Justice of England.
Painted 1885.
The old hamlet of Chiddingfold lies about as far to the south as Witley does to the north of the station on the London and South-Western Railway which bears their joint names. It boasts of a very ancient inn, “The Crown,”—formed, it is said, in part out of a monastic building,—and a large village green. Cherry-Tree Cottage is, as will be seen, the milk shop of the place, and, if we may judge from the coming and going in Mrs. Allingham’s picture, carries on an animated, prosperous trade at certain times of the day.