Now, is not a large estate a living picture? Or rather, is it not formed of a hundred living pictures? So beautiful it looks, its hills, its ripe wheat, its red-roofed farmhouses, and acres upon acres of oaks; so beautiful, it must be valuable; most valuable; it is visible, tangible wealth. It is difficult to disabuse any one’s mind of that idea; yet, as we have seen, with all the skill, science, and expenditure Thardover could bring to bear upon it, all his personal effort was in vain. It was a possession, not a profit. Had not James Thardover’s ancestors invested their wealth in building streets of villas in the outskirts of a great city, he could not have done one-fifth what he had. Men who had made their fortunes in factories—the noisy factories of the present century—paid him high rents for these residences; and thus it was that the labour and time of the many-handed operatives in mill, factory, and workshop really went to aid in maintaining these living pictures. Without that outside income the Squire could not have reduced the rents of his tenants so that they could push through the depression; without that outside income he could not have drained the lands; put up those good buildings; assisted the school, and in a hundred ways helped the people. Those who watched the polished machinery under the revolving shaft, and tended the loom, really helped to keep the beauties of South Wood, the grain-grown hills, the flower-strewn meadows. These were so beautiful, it seemed as if they must represent money—riches; but they did not. They had a value much higher than that. As the spring rises in the valley at the foot of the hills and slowly increases till it forms a river, to which ships resort, so these fields and woods, meads and brooks, were the source from which the city was derived. If the operative in the factory, or tending the loom, had traced his descent, he would have found that his grandfather, or some scarcely more remote ancestor, was a man of the land. He followed the plough, or tended the cattle, and his children went forth to earn higher wages in the town. For the hamlet and the outlying cottage are the springs whence the sinew and muscle of populous cities are derived. The land is the fountainhead from which the spring of life flows, widening into a river. The river at its broad mouth disdains the spring; the city in its immensity disdains the hamlet and the ploughman. Yet if the spring ceased, the ships could not frequent the river; if the hamlet and the ploughman were wiped out by degrees, the city must run dry of life. Therefore the South Wood and the park, the hamlet and the fields, had a value no one can tell how many times above the actual money rental, and the money earned by the operatives in factory and workshop could not have been better expended than in supporting it.
But it had another value still—which they too helped to sustain—the value of beauty. Parliament has several times intervened to save the Lake district from the desecrating intrusion of useless railways. So too, the beauty of these woods, and grain-grown hills, of the very common, is worth preservation at the hands and votes of the operatives in factory and mill. If a man loves the brick walls of his narrow dwelling in a close-built city, and the flowers which he has trained with care in the window; how much more would he love the hundred living pictures like those round about Thardover House. After any artificer had once seen such an oak and rested under it, if any threatened to cut it down, he would feel as if a blow had been delivered at his heart. His efforts, therefore, should be not to destroy these pictures but to preserve them. All the help that they can give is needed to assist a King of Acres in his struggle, and the struggle of the farmers and labourers—equally involved—against the adverse influences which press so heavily on English agriculture.
MRS SHAW: THE LATE PRINCE IMPERIAL’S NURSE.
Visitors to Paris during the meretricious glories of the Second Empire may possibly recall to mind that amidst the glare and glitter of that feverish epoch, one wholesome and interesting sight was constantly to be seen in the Tuileries gardens when the court was in residence at the palace—a bright-looking child playing with his English nurse; and the spectators were particularly attracted by the devoted attachment that appeared to exist between them. The child was the Prince Imperial of France; and his attendant, the pleasant-looking Yorkshire woman, was known in Paris as Mrs Shaw. A curious history is connected with her entrance into the imperial household, the story of which the writer obtained from what she believes to be a well-authenticated source.
Mrs Shaw was a valued nurse in a family where she had lived for some time, when one morning she startled her mistress with the announcement that she had dreamt she was destined to have the charge of the future Prince Imperial of France, and must leave her place at once. Although the expected event was causing the greatest excitement in Paris, it seems unlikely that it should have created much interest in a quiet English establishment, and naturally enough, her inspiration was treated as an unreasonable and inconvenient delusion. But no persuasions or arguments could induce her to remain, or remove what appeared to be an aberration of mind. Off she set, back to her Yorkshire village, and sought an interview with the clergyman of the parish, who appears to have been one of those worthy souls to whom his parishioners could resort as to a father-confessor; and struck with her determination and energy, he promised, after some expostulation, to assist her to the best of his power, though holding out no hope of success. He happened to have a slight acquaintance with the eminent London physician who had been honoured by Her Imperial Majesty with instructions to select a certain number of nurses, from whom she herself would choose the one that seemed most fitting for the post. Although besieged with applications, he consented to place Mrs Shaw on his list of candidates, and to grant her an interview, which resulted in his sending her with five others to Paris for the Empress’s approval, who at once chose her; and her dream was fulfilled!
The strength of character that had carried her to this triumphant issue, by no means deserted her in this new position. Amusing anecdotes reached us from time to time of the way in which the sensible, homely Yorkshire woman carried all before her in the imperial nurseries; would have no foreign ways or interference from court dames or lady-superintendents, or allow her small charge to be harassed with tedious toilets and fatiguing ceremonials; and finally gained her point, after personally appealing to the Emperor, who was only too glad to have the child brought up in the healthy English fashion; and fully appreciating her fidelity, gave orders that she was to rule alone, without let or hindrance; and always treated her with the greatest kindness and consideration.
And is it not possible that the true and perfect knight the Prince in after-years became, may have been owing in some measure to this early training in English ways and English thoughts, which made us look upon him as the child of our adoption when in exile among us, and take a mournful pride in his heroic martyrdom?
At the end of seven years, rumours of another tug of war reached us from the nursery domain. Mrs Shaw was to retire with a pension, and the Prince transferred to tutors and governors, as befitted his exalted prospects. But she absolutely refused to go and break her heart and the child’s too; and again gaining her point, was transformed into a sort of Madame la Gouvernante, and allowed to retain her apartments in the Tuileries; and a pleasant retreat they must have been for the poor Prince, when bored and wearied with lessons and precepts and all the miseries attendant upon high education, which seem to be inflicted in a more burdensome form upon royal pupils than on their subjects, perhaps because it is conducted on the solitary confinement fashion, without the competition and other natural excitements of a public school. The writer believes she afterwards married an officer in the Imperial Guard, so that her fortunes were still more closely bound up with those whom she loved and served so well; and we often wondered what became of her in the dark days of Sedan and the downfall of their race, and whether she lived to join them in exile, and share the last crushing sorrow with the beloved and bereaved Empress.