The country folk who passed the artist when she was making this drawing wondered doubtless at her selection of a point of sight where practically nothing but roof and wall of the building were visible, when a few steps farther on its front door and windows might have made a picture; but the charm of the drawing exists in this simplicity of subject, the greatest pleasure being procurable from the least important features, such, for instance, as the lichen-covered and leek-topped wall, and the untended, buttercup-flecked bank on which it stands. The locality of the drawing is Brook Lane, near Witley, and the drawing was an almost exact portrait of the cottage as it stood in 1886, but since then it has been modernised like the majority of its fellows, and though the oak-timbered walls, tiled roof, and massive chimney still stand, the old curves of the roof-tree have gone, and American windows have replaced the old lattices. The other side of the house, as it then appeared, has been preserved to us in the next picture.
48. THE BASKET WOMAN
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Backhouse.
Painted 1887.
The art critic of The Times, in speaking of the Exhibition where this drawing was exhibited, singled it out as “taking rank amongst the very best of Mrs. Allingham’s work, and the very model of what an English water-colour should be, with its woodside cottage, its tangled hedges, its background of sombre fir trees, and figures of the girl with basket, and of the cottagers to whom she is offering her wares, showing as it does intense love for our beautiful south country landscape, with the power of seizing its most picturesque aspects with truth of eye and delicacy of hand.”
To my mind the most remarkable feature of the drawing is the way in which the long stretch of hedge has been managed. In most hands it would either be a monotonous and uninteresting feature or an absolute failure, for the difficulty of lending variety of surface and texture to so large a mass is only known to those who have attempted it; it could only be effected by painting it entirely from nature and on the spot, as was the case here. Many would have been tempted to break it up by varieties of garden blooms, but Mrs. Allingham has only relieved it by a st/ray spray or two of wild honeysuckle, which never flowers in masses, and a few white convolvuli.
That we are not far removed from the small hop district which is to be found west and northward of this part is evidenced by the hops which the old woman was in course of plucking from the pole when her attention was arrested by the wandering pedlar. This and the apples ripening on the straggling apple tree show the season to be early autumn, whereas the elder bush in the companion drawing puts its season as June.
49. COTTAGE AT SHOTTERMILL, NEAR HASLEMERE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. W. D. Houghton.
Painted 1891.
Each of three counties may practically claim this cottage for one of its types, for it lies absolutely at the junction of Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire.
For a single tenement it is particularly roomy, and a comfortable one to boot, for its screen of tiles is carried so low down.