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.