Loitering in Pleasant Paths. Marion Harland
this scene the chief sound that arrested attention was the bell tolling for the funeral of the ‘Dairyman’s Daughter.’ ”
“A picture by Claude!” commented Caput as the reader paused.
“A draught of old wine that has made the voyage to India and back!” said Dux, our blue-eyed college-boy.
These were the hills that had echoed the funeral psalm; these the cottages in whose doors stood those “whose countenances proclaimed their regard for the departed young woman.” Red brick “cottages,” the little gardens between them and the road crowded with larkspurs, pinks, roses, lavender, and southernwood. They were generally built in solid rows under one roof, the yards separated by palings. There were no basements, the paved floors being laid directly upon the ground. Two rooms upon this floor, and one above in a steep-roofed attic, was the prevailing plan of the tenements. The doors were open, and we could observe, at a passing glance, that some were clean and bright, others squalid, within. All, mean and neat, had flowers in the windows. The Dairyman’s cottage stands detached from other houses with what the neighbors would term “a goodish bit of ground” about it. To the original dwelling that Legh Richmond saw has been joined a two-story wing, also of brick. Beside it the cottage with its thatched roof is a very humble affair. The lane, “quite overshaded with trees and high hedges,” and “the suitable gloom of such an approach to the house of mourning,” are gone, with “the great elm-trees which stood near the house.” The rustling of these—as he rode by them to see Elizabeth die—the imagination of the unconscious poet and true child of Nature “indulged itself in thinking were plaintive sighs of sorrow.”
But we saw the upper room with its sloping ceiling, and the window-seat in which “her sister-in-law sat weeping with a child in her lap,” while Elizabeth lay dying upon the bed drawn into the middle of the floor to give her air.
The glory of the sunsetting was over sea and land, painting the sails rose-pink; purpling the lofty downs and mellowing into delicious vagueness the skyey distances—the pathways into the world beyond this island-gem—when we drove into Ventnor. The grounds of the Royal Hotel are high and spacious, with turfy banks rolling from the cliff-brow down to the road, divided by walks laid in snowy shells gathered from the shore. From a tall flag-staff set on the crown of the hill streamed out, proud and straight in the strong sea-breeze—the Stars and Stripes!
We did not cheer it, except in spirit, but the gentlemen waved their hats and the ladies kissed their hands to the grand old standard, and all responded “Amen!” to the deep voice that said, “God bless it, forever!” And with the quick heart-bound that sent smiles to the lips and moisture to the eyes, with longings for the Land always and everywhere dearest to us, came kindlier thoughts than we were wont to indulge of the “Old Home,” which, in the clearer light of a broadening Christian civilization, can, with us, rejoice in the anniversary of a Nation’s Birthday.
CHAPTER V.
Prince Guy.
LEAMINGTON is in, and of itself, the pleasantest and stupidest town in England. It is a good place in which to sleep and eat and leave the children when the older members of the party desire to make all-day excursions. It is pretty, quiet, healthy, with clean, broad “parades” and shaded parks wherein perambulators are safe from runaway horses and reckless driving. There are countless shops for the sale of expensive fancy articles, notably china and embroidery; more lodging-houses than private dwellings and shops put together. There is a chabybeate spring—fabled to have tasted properly, i.e., chemically, “nasty,” once upon a time—enclosed in a pump-room. Hence “Leamington Spa,” one of the names of the town. And through the Jephson Gardens (supposed to be the Enchanted Ground whereupon Tennyson dreamed out his “Lotos-eaters”) flows the “high-complectioned Leam,” the sleepiest river that ever pretended to go through the motions of running at all. Hawthorne defines the “complexion” to be a “greenish, goose-puddly hue,” but, “disagreeable neither to taste nor smell.” We used to saunter in the gardens after dinner on fine evenings, to promote quiet digestion and drowsiness, and can recommend the prescription. There are churches in Leamington, “high” and “low,” or, as the two factions prefer to call themselves, “Anglican” and “Evangelical;” Nonconformist meeting-houses—Congregational, Wesleyan and Baptist; there are two good circulating libraries, and there is a tradition to the effect that living in hotels and lodgings here was formerly cheap. One fares tolerably there now—and pays for it.
We made Leamington our headquarters for six weeks, Warwickshire being a very mine of historic show-places, and the sleepy Spa easy of access from London, Oxford, Birmingham, and dozens of other cities we must see, while at varying distances of one, five, and ten miles lie Warwick Castle, Kenilworth, Stratford-on-Avon, Charlecote, the home of Sir Thomas Lucy (Justice Shallow), Stoneleigh Abbey—one of the finest country-seats in Great Britain—and Coventry.
The age of Warwick Castle is a mooted point. “Cæsar’s Tower,” ruder in construction than the remainder of the stupendous pile, is said to be eight hundred years old. It looks likely to last eight hundred more. The outer gate is less imposing than the entrance to some barn-yards I have seen, A double-leaved door, neither clean nor massive, was unbolted at our ring by a young girl, who told us that the “H’Earl was sick,” therefore, visitors were not admitted “h’arfter ’arf parst ten.” Once in the grounds, “they might stay so long h’as they were dispoged.”
It is impossible to caricature the dialect of the lower classes of the Mother Country. Even substantial tradesmen, retired merchants and their families who are living—and traveling—upon their money are, by turns, prodigal and niggardly in the use of the unfortunate aspirate that falls naturally into place with us; while servants who have lived for years in the “best families” appear to pride themselves upon the liberties they take with their h’s, mouthing the mutilated words with pomp that is irresistibly comic. We delighted to lay traps for our guides and coachmen, and the yeomen we encountered in walks and drives, by asking information on the subject of Abbeys, Inns, Earls, Horses, Halls, and Ages. In every instance they came gallantly up to our expectations, often transcended our most daring hopes. But we seldom met with a more satisfactory specimen in this line than the antique servitor that kept the lodge of Warwick Castle. She wore a black gown, short-waisted and short-skirted, a large cape of the same stuff, and what Dickens had taught us to call a “mortified” black bonnet of an exaggerated type. The cap-frill within flapped about a face that reminded us of Miss Cushman’s Meg Merrilies. Entering the lodge hastily, after the young woman who had admitted us had begun cataloguing the curiosities collected there, she put her aside with a sweep of her bony arm and an angry, guttural “Ach!” and began the solemnly circumstantial relation she must have rehearsed thousands of times. We beheld “H’earl Guy’s” breast-plate, his sword and battle-axe, the “ ’orn” of a dun cow slain by him, and divers other bits of old iron, scraps of pottery, etc. But the chef d’œuvre of the custodian was the oration above Sir Guy’s porridge-pot, a monstrous iron vessel set in the centre of the square chamber. Standing over it, a long poker poised in her hand, she enumerated with glowing gusto the ingredients of the punch brewed in the big kettle “when the present H’earl came h’of h’age,” glaring at us from the double pent-house of frill and bonnet. I forget the exact proportions, but they were somewhat in this order:
“H’eighteen gallons o’ rum. Fifteen gallons o’ brandy”—tremendous stress upon each liquor—“One ’undred pounds o’ loaf sugar. H’eleven ’undred lemmings, h’and fifty gallons h’of ’ot water! This h’identikle pot was filled h’and h’emptied, three times that day! H’I myself saw h’it!”
Her greedy gloating upon the minutest elements of the potent compound was elfish and almost terrible. It was like—
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,”—
the