A Dream of England. Peter Milward
Outside in the small garden there was an old yew-tree with a seat in its shade – no doubt the seat on which Jane herself would often sit (though I failed to verify this important point). Only, there wasn’t any summer-house with memories of literary composition. Instead, I rejoiced in the sight of a lovely rose-garden between the yew-tree and the road, such a garden as one may see in any English home, however small or insignificant. On the other side of the road, beyond the passing traffic, I could make out among the trees the thatched roofs of several cottages belonging to the villagers. It was, I felt, a view which marked a change from the middle to the lower class of domestic architecture, and at the same time from the plain and sedate to the cosy and the picturesque.
This was also the change that came into view in a small village called Upper, or Higher, Bockhampton far beyond Winchester. In fact, this village could hardly be included in “the home counties”, lying as it did on the further side of Salisbury Plain in the county of Dorset, or rather in that district of “Wessex” which is so familiar to the readers of Hardy’s novels. Still, there is something very homely about this village, and something even more homely about a certain cottage which was the home of Thomas Hardy himself.
Unlike the house of Henry James in Rye, or Jane Austen’s home on the road to Winchester, Hardy’s cottage was unusually difficult to find, partly because of its location outside “the home counties”, partly because it is outside one of two villages named Bockhampton. Nor is it so clearly marked on the path that leads to its entrance, a lonely country lane with a field on one side and an apple-orchard on the other. Eventually one comes to a small gate in the fence marked “Hardy’s Cottage”, and on passing through it, one faces what looks like a charming little doll’s house. It really looked like one, as from the outside I could lift up my hand and almost touch the upper-floor windows. Yet it was, I understand, just the right size for Thomas Hardy, who was the little old man in that little old house.
In front of the house there were many different kinds of flowers growing in ragged profusion. Together they were set in a frame of apple-trees, which gave a fruity, domestic touch to the picture. Even more charming than the tiny proportions of the house was the thatch of its roof, which made it look so quaint and traditional – so English in fact, yet (to my mind) so Japanese. After all, peasants, like children, are much the same the world over, and Thomas Hardy was of peasant stock, a man of the people, who was able, as few authors have been able, to speak the language of his people and to utter the thoughts of their hearts.
Thus I have descended in the social scale from the heights to the depths, from the distinguished Henry James, the aristocrat of the modern literary world, past the domestic – I refuse to say “bourgeois” – Jane Austen, who wrote of the county gentry from her middle-class viewpoint, to Thomas Hardy, the man of the people. At the same time, in making this descent, I feel myself coming closer to the real homeliness of the English people of all classes. The rich, yes, even the rich, are homely at heart, though they may have erected barriers between their homeliness and themselves. But it is in the simple houses of the poor, especially the country poor, that the true homeliness of the English character is to be found – as well as the friendliness that goes with the homeliness.
The Heart of England
The Englishman is at heart, if not a countryman, at least a lover of the country. The town may be his place of business, a necessary evil, but the country is his place of relaxation and repose. He may slave in the town for six days out of seven – though today it is more likely to be five days out of seven. But for the week-end – if only he is blessed with fair weather – he chooses the country with its peace and freedom.
Thus it is that the country is getting less and less peaceful, at least on sunny week-ends in the warm season of the year. The towns are emptied and the countryside hums with activity, particularly on main roads and around beauty spots. In the past this wasn’t the case. Though the Englishman has always been a lover of the country, it is only in recent times that he has had the leisure (with a longer week-end) and the means (with a family car) to satisfy his love. Now, however, such is the intensity with which he is pursuing his love that he is, as we say, killing the country with too much kindness. The outcome is only to transfer the noise and bustle of the town to the country every week-end, provided the sun is shining, and those who prefer the peace of a country life find it quieter to stay in their town house.
Today one of the worst places in this respect is, sadly enough, the country home of William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. Once upon a time, as we say in fairy stories, this region may well have been granted the title of “the Heart of England”. That was indeed the case in Shakespeare’s time, and Shakespeare himself was a perfect example of the Englishman who goes up to London for business, while leaving his heart behind him in the country. Most of his plays were composed and performed in London, but we never think of Shakespeare as a Londoner, nor has he left behind him any tangible associations in London. His heart was always in Stratford, where he was born and grew up to manhood, and where he spent the last years of his life, before he died and was buried in the parish church there – leaving a curse on anyone who might have the effrontery to disturb his bones.
Not only was the countryside round Stratford “the Heart of England” for Shakespeare. Its scenery is also in many ways typical of the English Midlands. Situated just between the flatlands of the East and the hills of the West, it combines the beauty of both regions, with ups and downs that are neither too up nor too down. Through the midst of this lovely countryside moves the river Avon, flowing spaciously and majestically past Clopton Bridge and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and past the church of the Holy Trinity whose pointed spire rises above the willows behind a bend in the river.
Today this might still be called “the Heart of England”, but its beauty has been irreparably spoilt by the very people who go in search of it with all its literary associations. Today Stratford thrives on what is known as “the Shakespeare industry”, and on hardly anything else, but it has been ruined by this very industry, no less surely than other towns have been ruined by industries of a cruder, more materialistic kind. Stratford, together with the countryside round Stratford, has been ruined by what Virgil calls “the accursed thirst for gold”.
Today, alas, the streets of Stratford are hardly less crowded with buyers and passers-by than Oxford Street in London. The spots sacred to Shakespeare’s memory – his birthplace, Anne Hathaway’s cottage, the garden of New Place, Hall’s Croft, even the church of the Holy Trinity – are all thronged with inquisitive sight-seers. There is no time to pause and reflect and take in the deep meaning of it all. Nothing there leaves an impression on the mind, except the house of Shakespeare’s mother Mary Arden, which is fortunately four miles out of Stratford and overlooked by the majority of day trippers.
Instead of Stratford, therefore, I would award the title of “the Heart of England” to another, less frequented spot further to the East, a spot made famous not by its literary but by its pictorial associations. This is the region by the banks of the river Stour, between the counties of Essex and Suffolk, known as “the Constable country”. Here lived the greatest of English landscape painters, John Constable, and here he painted many of his most famous landscapes. In his paintings he succeeded in bringing out, as no other painter or even poet has done, the heart and essence of England. It is thanks to his memory that this region has remained more or less as he saw it some two centuries ago.
At the heart of this “Constable country” is the village of East Bergholt. From there one takes a country lane leading past fields of wheat and barley down to the river Stour and Flatford Mill, where Constable had his home and studio for many years. Inevitably, the Mill, too, has become the centre of a “Constable industry”, but unlike that of Shakespeare, this industry remains within modest limits. Visitors come here from afar, but not in such great numbers, to pay their respects to the great painter. At the same time, there is here a more noticeable air of domesticity than at Stratford. The river is smaller than the Avon and is inhabited by ducks and moorhens rather than by swans, and children are more in evidence than adults.
In fact, on arriving here one finds more people enjoying themselves feeding the ducks or boating on the river than looking round Flatford Mill – which is just what Constable