The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End, or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire, a farm-house, delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of my sister, who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End,—kindred or strange folk,—we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore.
We made an excursion to this place a few summers ago. By a somewhat circuitous route, taking the noble park at Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to that which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!
Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the "heart of June," and I could say with the poet,—
But thou, that didst appear so fair
To fond imagination,
Dost rival in the light of day
Her delicate creation!
Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with which I had been impressed in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.
The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand, indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to—an antiquity.
I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had stood the great gates? What bounded the court-yard? Whereabout did the outhouses begin? A few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious.
Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of destruction, I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me,—it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a panel of the yellow-room.
Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it! The tapestried bedrooms,—tapestry so much better than painting,—not adorning merely, but peopling, the wainscots, at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring back in return.
Then, that haunted room in which old Mrs. Brattle died, whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, with a passion of fear; and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the past. How shall they build it up again?