Happy England

by Marcus B. Huish

46. IN WORMLEY WOOD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Le Poer Trench.
Painted 1886.

Half a century ago most of the old dwellings on the Surrey border were thatched with good wheaten straw from the Weald of Sussex, but thatch will soon be a thing of the past, partly for the reason that there are no thatchers (or “thackers” as they are called in local midland dialect) left, principally because the straw, of which they consumed a good deal, and which used to be a cheap commodity and not very realisable, in villages whose access to market was difficult, now finds a ready sale. Locomotion has also enabled slates to be conveyed from hundreds of miles away, and placed on the ground at a less rate than straw.

Thus the old order changeth, and without any regard to the comfort of the tenant, whose roof, as I have already said, instead of consisting of a covering which was warm in winter and cool in summer, is now one which is practically the reverse. Strawen roofs are easy of repair or renewal, and look very trim and cosy when kept in condition.

At the time when this drawing was painted this cottage, lying snugly in the recesses of Wormley Wood (whose pines always attract the attention as the train passes them just before Witley station is reached), was the last specimen of thatch in the neighbourhood, and it only continued so to be through the intervention of a well-known artist who lived not far off. That artist is dead, and probably in the score of years which have since elapsed the thatch has gone the way of the rest, and the harmony of yellowish greys which existed between it and its background have given way to a gaudy contrast of unweathered red tiles or cold unsympathetic blue slates.

The cottage itself may well date back to Tudor times, and the sweetwilliams, pansies, and lavender which border the path leading to it may be the descendants of far-away progenitors, culled by a long-forgotten labourer in his master’s “nosegay garden,” which at that time was a luxury of the well-to-do only.

Many of the flowers found in this plot of ground were in early days conserved in the gardens of the simple folk rather for their medicinal use than their decorative qualities. Such was certainly the case with lavender. “The floures of lavender do cure the beating of the harte,” says one contemporary herbal; and another written in Commonwealth times says, “They are very pleasing and delightful to the brain, which is much refreshed with their sweetness.” It was always found in the garden of women who pretended to good housewifery, not only because the heads of the flowers were used for “nosegays and posies,” but for putting into “linen and apparel.”

47. THE ELDER BUSH, BROOK LANE, WITLEY
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Marcus Huish.
Painted 1887.

Those who are ingenious enough to see the inspiration of another hand in every work that an artist produces would probably raise an outcry against anybody infringing the copyright which they consider that Collins secured more than half a century ago for the children swinging on a gate in his “Happy as a King.” But who that examines with any interest or care the figures in this water-colour could for a moment believe that Mrs. Allingham had ever had Collins even unconsciously in her mind when she put in these happy little mortals as adjuncts to her landscape. Having enjoyed at ages such as theirs a swing on many a gate, one can testify that these children must have been seen, studied, and put in from the life and on the spot. See how the elder girl leans over the gate, with perfect self-assurance, directing the boy as to how far back the gate may go; how the younger one has to climb a rung higher than her sister in order to obtain the necessary purchase with her arms, and even then she can only do so with a strain and with a certain nervousness as to the result of the jar when the gate reaches the post on its return. Again, some one has to do the swinging, and Mrs. Allingham has given the proper touch of gallantry by making the second in age of the party, a boy, the first to undertake this part of the business. The excitement of the moment has communicated itself to the youngest of the family, who raises his stick to cheer as the gate swings to. Although painted within thirty miles of London, the age of cheap rickety perambulators had not reached the countryside when this drawing was made nearly twenty years ago, and so we see the youngest in a sturdy, hand-made go-cart.