44. COTTAGE AT CHIDDINGFOLD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. H. L. Florence.
Painted 1889.
We have here a March day, or rather one of the type associated with that month, but which usually visits us with increasing severity as April and May and the summer progress. Wind in the east, with the sky a cold, steely blue in the zenith, greying even the young elm shoots a stone’s-throw distant. The cottage almanack, Old Moore’s, will foretell that night frosts will prevail, and the cottager will be fearsome of its effect upon his apple crop, always so promising in its blossom, so scanty in its fulfilment. Splendid weather for the full-blooded lassies, who can tarry to gossip without fear of chills, and also for drying clothes on the hedgerow, but nipping for the old beldame who tends them, and who has to wrap up against it with shawl and cap.
Laburnum, rich
In streaming gold,
competes in colour with the spikes of the broom, which the artist must have been thankful to the hedgecutter for sparing as he passed his shears along its surface when last he trimmed it. For some reason the broom bears an ill repute hereabouts as bringing bad luck, although in early times it was put to a desirable use, as Gerard tells us that “that worthy Prince of famous memory, Henry VIII. of England, was wont to drink the distilled water of Broome floures.” Wordsworth also gives it[12] a special word in his lines—
Am I not
In truth a favour’d plant?
On me such bounty summer showers,
That I am cover’d o’er with flowers;
And when the frost is in the sky,
My branches are so fresh and gay,
That you might look on me and say—
“This plant can never die.”
The cottage contains a typical example of the massive central chimney, and also an end one, which it is unusual to find in company with the other in so small a dwelling. Note also the weather tiling round the gable end and the upper story.
45. A COTTAGE AT HAMBLEDON
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. F. Pennington.
Painted 1888.
For those who read between the lines there are plenty of pretty allegories connected with these drawings. This, for instance, might well be termed “Youth and Age.” The venerable cottage in its declining years, so appropriately set in a framework of autumn tints and flowers, supported on its colder side by the tendrils of ivy, almost of its own age, but on its warmer side maturing a fruitful vine, emblem of the mother and child which gather at the gate, and of the brood of fowls which busily search the wayside.