The Ground-Ash

by Mary Russell Mitford

THE GROUND-ASH

By Mary Russell Mitford

Amongst the many pleasant circumstances attendant on a love of flowers—that sort of love which leads us into the woods for the earliest primrose, or to the river side for the latest forget-me-not, and carries us to the parching heath or the watery mere to procure for the cultivated, or, if I may use the expression, the tame beauties of the parterre, the soil that they love; amongst the many gratifications which such pursuits bring with them, such as seeing in the seasons in which it shows best, the prettiest, coyest, most unhackneyed scenery, and taking, with just motive enough for stimulus and for reward, drives and walks which approach to fatigue, without being fatiguing; amongst all the delights consequent on a love of flowers, I know none greater than the half unconscious and wholly unintended manner in which such expeditions make us acquainted with the peasant children of remote and out-of-the-way regions, the inhabitants of the wild woodlands and still wilder commons of the hilly part of the north of Hampshire, which forms so strong a contrast with this sunny and populous county of Berks, whose very fields are gay and neat as gardens, and whose roads are as level and even as a gravel-walk.

Two of the most interesting of these flower-formed acquaintances, were my little friends Harry and Bessy Leigh.

Every year I go to the Everley woods to gather wild lilies of the valley. It is one of the delights that May—the charming, ay, and the merry month of May, which I love as fondly as ever that bright and joyous season was loved by our older poets—regularly brings in her train; one of those rational pleasures in which (and it is the great point of superiority over pleasures that are artificial and worldly) there is no disappointment. About four years ago, I made such a visit. The day was glorious, and we had driven through lanes perfumed by the fresh green birch, with its bark silvery and many-tinted, and over commons where the very air was loaded with the heavy fragrance of the furze, an odour resembling in richness its golden blossoms, just as the scent of the birch is cool, refreshing, and penetrating, like the exquisite colour of its young leaves, until we reached the top of the hill, where, on one side, the enclosed wood, where the lilies grow, sank gradually, in an amphitheatre of natural terraces, to a piece of water at the bottom; whilst on the other, the wild open heath formed a sort of promontory overhanging a steep ravine, through which a slow and sluggish stream crept along amongst stunted alders, until it was lost in the deep recesses of Lidhurst Forest, over the tall trees of which we literally looked down. We had come without a servant; and on arriving at the gate of the wood with neither human figure nor human habitation in sight, and a high-blooded and high-spirited horse in the phaeton, we began to feel all the awkwardness of our situation. My companion, however, at length espied a thin wreath of smoke issuing from a small clay-built hut thatched with furze, built against the steepest part of the hill, of which it seemed a mere excrescence, about half way down the declivity; and, on calling aloud, two children, who had been picking up dry stumps of heath and gorse, and collecting them in a heap for fuel at the door of their hovel, first carefully deposited their little load, and then came running to know what we wanted.

If we had wondered to see human beings living in a habitation, which, both for space and appearance, would have been despised by a pig of any pretension, as too small and too mean for his accommodation, so we were again surprised at the strange union of poverty and content evinced by the apparel and countenances of its young inmates. The children, bareheaded and barefooted, and with little more clothing than one shabby-looking garment, were yet as fine, sturdy, hardy, ruddy, sunburnt urchins, as one should see on a summer day. They were clean, too: the stunted bit of raiment was patched, but not ragged; and when the girl, (for, although it was rather difficult to distinguish between the brother and sister, the pair were of different sexes,) when the bright-eyed, square-made, upright little damsel clasped her two brown hands together, on the top of her head, pressed down her thick curls, looking at us and listening to us with an air of the most intelligent attention that returned our curiosity with interest; and when the boy, in answer to our inquiry if he could hold a horse, clutched the reins with his small fingers, and planted himself beside our high-mettled steed with an air of firm determination, that seemed to say, "I'm your master! Run away if you dare!" we both of us felt that they were subjects for a picture, and that, though Sir Joshua might not have painted them, Gainsborough and our own Collins would.

But besides their exceeding picturesqueness, the evident content, and helpfulness, and industry of these little creatures, was delightful to look at and to think of. In conversation they were at once very civil and respectful (Bessy dropping her little curtsy, and Harry putting his hand to the lock of hair where the hat should have been, at every sentence they uttered) and perfectly frank and unfearing. In answer to our questions, they told us that "Father was a broom-maker, from the low country; that he had come to these parts and married mother, and built their cottage, because houses were so scarce hereabouts, and because of its convenience to the heath; that they had done very well till the last winter, when poor father had had the fever for five months, and they had had much ado to get on; but that father was brave again now, and was building another house (house!!) larger and finer, upon Squire Benson's lands: the squire had promised them a garden from the waste, and mother hoped to keep a pig. They were trying to get all the money they could to buy the pig; and what his honour had promised them for holding the horse, was all to be given to mother for that purpose."

It was impossible not to be charmed with these children. We went again and again to the Everley wood, partly to gather lilies, partly to rejoice in the trees with their young leaves so beautiful in texture as well as in colour, but chiefly to indulge ourselves in the pleasure of talking to the children, of adding something to their scanty stock of clothing, (Bessy ran as fast as her feet could carry her to the clear pool at the bottom of the wood, to look at herself in her new bonnet,) and of assisting in the accumulations of the Grand Pig Savings' Bank, by engaging Harry to hold the horse, and Bessy to help fill the lily basket.

This employment, by showing that the lilies had a money value, put a new branch of traffic into the heads of these thoughtful children, already accustomed to gather heath for their father's brooms, and to collect the dead furze which served as fuel to the family. After gaining permission of the farmer who rented the wood, and ascertaining that we had no objection, they set about making nosegays of the flowers, and collecting the roots for sale, and actually stood two Saturdays in Belford market (the smallest merchants of a surety that ever appeared in that rural Exchange) to dispose of their wares; having obtained a cast in a waggon there and back, and carrying home faithfully every penny of their gainings, to deposit in the common stock.