A visit to the parish church is an ordinary recreation on the first morning of a guest’s stay at a country-house, after which there will very likely be croquet, that eminently modern and English contrivance which is pretty enough if one could only make up one’s mind to consider men and women nothing more than grown-up children. A great deal of care is often expended on the croquet lawn, and ladies are even careful in the choice of a croquet costume. A lounge through the grounds, admiring the host’s specimen trees—the Wellingtonia is generally the chief attraction—and sauntering through the hot-houses, occupies the time till luncheon. Most Englishmen have a passion for rare trees and shrubs, and often carry home from distant countries seeds and cones for their grounds at home. We have seen a lovely Ravenna pine, grown from a cone picked up in the celebrated forest of Ravenna; every other shrub of its kind perished from the effects of the climate, while this solitary one throve well, and filled a considerable space in the garden. The copperbeech is a very favorite specimen tree in England, and looks beautiful among the shaded greens of limes, foreign oaks, and fir-trees. It is generally the ladies of a household to whose share fall the hot-houses and the flower-garden, but in one place in Cheshire, where the visitor is unfailingly taken through miles of glass, the whole thing is under the special supervision of the master of the house. Lord E—— of T—— is an old man, and not very active, on account of his impaired health; but, being passionately fond of horticulture, he spends half his day in his hot-houses. The orchid-houses, particularly, are a perfect marvel; there are eighteen or twenty species of these lovely flowers in bloom at all times of the year, and the conservatory into which some of these glass passages lead is a palace of camellias, azalias, and other rare and delicate flowers. The garden and grounds are mostly a wilderness of rhododendrons, of which magnificent, far-spreading bushes cover even the islets of the artificial lakes. But the most beautiful of Lord E——’s floral possessions is the fernery, where seven or eight New Zealand arborescent ferns spread their palmlike branches overhead, hiding the glass roof above them, and suggesting the earthly paradise to the least impressionable mind. The ground at their base is covered with rock-work overgrown with mosses and ferns of various sorts, and water trickles hiddenly in the tangle, its very sound denoting coolness and repose.
In the autumn and winter, the men of the party disappear after breakfast, and return, tired with sport or laden with game, about five o’clock; but in summer, during the brief interval between the London season and the 1st of September, the pleasures of the ladies are shared with their knights. A picnic is often the most amusing resource for a day, and it would be needless to describe it; but what is not so common an occurrence in the country is a breakfast, that is, a two o’clock reception in the open air, and a magnificent spread of cold chefs-d’œuvre of the culinary art. Let us suppose the locale to be this: a pretty piece of water running here and there into creeks fringed with bulrushes and water-lilies, and a queer little erection of no classifiable style of architecture, neither pavilion nor villa, but very convenient and even sufficiently picturesque. Clematis and honeysuckle climb over its walls, and to the front is a rather irregular lawn which is partly carpeted for the occasion. In England, we are never quite sure of not getting our feet damp, and the flimsy summer toilets appropriate to this social festivity would be but a slender protection against wet weather. All the county, far and near, is asked—brides just returned from their honeymoon trip; old stay-at-home fogies, childlike in the pleasure they exhibit on this novel occasion; merry young people bent on enjoying themselves to the utmost. One old lady has confidentially informed her best friend about a wonderful new bonnet she has bought on purpose, and which turns out to be something “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It is curious to see the many different kinds of vehicles that draw up at the door of “Fort Henry.” Old chaises driven by the most ancient (and delightfully tyrannical) of family coachmen; queer little low cars, called by the complacent owner “Norwegian cars,” drawn by a diminutive pony resembling a Shetland; hired flies from the country town; open barouches of unimpeachable make, but painfully, suggestive of the “shop”; two-wheeled dog-carts, the prettiest carriage for the country, driven by young unmarried land-owners whose arrival causes a stir among the “merry maidens,” as Sir Gawain called his pretty companions in Tennyson’s Holy Grail; lastly, a large “brake,” or capacious car, filled with cross-seats, on which a whole party from some neighboring mansion is comfortably and amicably packed; for not only are neighbors, friends, and acquaintances asked, but any visitors they may happen to have staying with them. When all are gathered, the luncheon begins; and certainly the table is a masterpiece of floral decoration. The cook, too, has surpassed himself, and the rarest wines and fruits are lavishly added to the more substantial hospitality. The ladies’ dresses are a parterre in themselves; the prettiest things that taste can dictate are worn for this fête, and the beautiful peacocks that range the banks of the lake must find themselves rivalled for once in their own domain. How different is this from a London “breakfast”! Here we have no simulated ennui, no cadaverous looks resulting from sleepless nights and constant dissipation, no hurry to get away, no empty forms of hypocritical civility. It is almost a family gathering. After luncheon, the boats are ready. Large and small—the largest manned by four stalwart “keepers,” hereditary retainers of the family—these boats are quickly filled; and, while the “state barge” (so to speak) solemnly carries the elders of the party around the pretty lake, the smaller skiffs, rowed by amateur oarsmen, and filled with a laughing freight of girls, go off to try the famous echo, or to sing glees near the old bridge at the lower end. This is not all the music, however; a band is stationed in a boat that follows the grand barge, or sometimes stops to let the guests hear the echo of a few loud notes sounded on the horn. The effect of the music, the echo, the gaily ringing laughter of the younger guests as they row swiftly from place to place, is like a reminiscence of the days of Paul Veronese and his pleasure-loving Venetian companions. At one end of the lake there is an old horse-chestnut, whose branches stretch far out over the water, and then droop into it, forming a green vault over a shady little nook. It is difficult to steer a boat well in; therefore no boat passes by without trying. At the other end, the water is choked with weeds and tall bulrushes, and the plantation slopes to the brink, with beautiful sunset lights playing on its Scotch firs, and bringing out the blue green of their foliage in peculiar contrast with their dinted, reddish stems; now and then a peacock’s harsh cry is heard, or the water-fowl take a swift, low rush over the surface of the water, while the swans move about as undisturbedly as if the scene were to them an everyday occurrence. Presently the sun sets; the boats unload, and the carriages begin to get ready again. A few stragglers, probably the host’s own visitors, who have not far to go home, take a stroll up to the graceful bark temple raised on the hillock opposite the lake; the view is pretty from there, and the whole thing looks like an animated English water-color.
But this is not all the pleasure that a country visit affords: a great resource lies in tableaux vivans. Very little trouble is necessary; in some houses, a small stage is kept in readiness, or can be extemporized in an hour, just when the performance is agreed upon. Pictures and poems are laid under contribution; sometimes a particular garment evidently suggests such and such a use, and a suitable tableau is got up to exhibit it; and some costumes are so very easy of arrangement that they are naturally chosen. The “Huguenot Lover,” by Millais, is a very favorite scene, so is “Titian’s Daughter”; and there are “Faith, Hope, and Charity,” or other allegorical figures, always at hand to fill up any gap in the inventive genius of the performers. But the best series we can think of is one—not a little ambitious—representing dramatically the story embodied in Tennyson’s song, “Home they brought her Warrior dead.” How often we have listened to those words, so mournfully sung! The first tableau is very rich in details; the year-old bride, in the gorgeous white and gold embroidered robe which she had donned to meet her husband, sits tearless and pale in the centre, her dark hair escaping from the jewelled fillet, her white hands hard pressed together. The body of her husband lies at her feet covered with a dark cloak, his pallid face just revealed, and the four men who have borne him in stand in sorrowful silence in the background, while the attendant maidens press round their mistress, each dressed in some graceful, flowing costume. Any amount of ornamentation, such as tapestry, vases, porcelain, jewellery, would be in keeping with the tableau and enhance its beauty. The second scene (the curtain being dropped for a moment) is the same, with the addition of a hoary old nurse placing her child in the widowed mother’s arms, while the bereaved one herself turns on the babe a look of passionate and agonized yearning. The child is not a very easy part of the tableau to manage, and it might, strictly speaking, be left out; still, the story is more completely told thus, and its representation considerably improved.
These are only a few of the numerous and variable pleasures to be enjoyed by a large gathering of friends: the winter brings others peculiar to itself.
A meet is a very pretty sight, but never more so than when it takes place in front of an old manor where the hunting-breakfast is going on. This carries one back to the days of our grandfathers, and gives to the sport of fox-hunting a certain traditional air of poetry. The servants, whose livery is almost a costume in itself, carry trays of substantial refreshments and foaming tankards of old ale among the farmers and professional sportsmen, while the friends and county neighbors of the host circulate through the house, lighting up our XIXth century dead-level of dress by their scarlet, or, to speak more technically, their pink coats. This word is used to denote the color the coat ought to have after a good sporting season; for it is as inglorious in a true sportsmen to wear a new and undiscolored garment as it would be for a soldier to bear an unharmed standard or unbroken weapon out of the battle. In many counties, the full dress for dinner of those who are known as sportsmen is a scarlet coat, the rest of the dress being the ordinary costume of our day; and very gratifying it is to see the old custom kept up by the gentlemen of the midland counties, where fox-hunting is in its glory. At the meet, not a few ladies appear, some on horseback, devoted followers of their brothers and husbands in the chase, some in carriages, with their little children prettily dressed in red, or otherwise suggestively clad. The host’s wife or daughters come out among the hounds, perhaps in the graceful riding-habit, or more often in jaunty little cloth suits, with red feathers coquettishly peeping out of a sealskin cap. The hounds are all collected in front of the hall-steps, and answer whenever called by name by the huntsmen. At last the cavalcade is off, and winds past the margin of the park and grounds, till the sound of the horn and the crack of the whip die away in the distance, to be heard again a few hours later, when the whole field, after making a circuit of, say, ten miles, returns to some cover near the house, where the unhappy fox is caught at last. Boys follow the hounds as soon as they can ride, and, indeed, sometimes perform feats that make them heroes in a small way in the eyes of their companions. A few years ago, the youngest son of the chief land-owner of the Cotswold Hills in Gloucestershire, distinguished himself in this way, and, upon a tiny gray pony, Asperne by name, kept so close to the huntsmen that he was always first in at the death, and many a time was the first to break a gap through a hedge or a stone wall, through which the whole field would follow him. He often brought home “the brush” (a fox’s tail), and the sportsmen from the opposite side of the county used to ride ten or twelve miles to the next meet to see the wonderful boy whose exploits and reckless daring were in every one’s mouth.
The early autumn, before the fox-hunting has regularly begun, brings its own pleasures with it, one of which is a nutting expedition. This generally involves a tea-picnic—a far more amusing affair than the conventional mid-day meal known by that name, and devoted to the consumption of sandwiches, cold meat, salad, and soda-water. This tea-picnic has often occupied a pleasant afternoon within our own recollection, especially when a very informal party of young foreign guests was gathered at E—— House. There was a representative of Germany, a young man high in office at the former Hanoverian court, who bore a remarkable likeness to Prince Albert, and to whom the queen even spoke of this, to her, touching fact. Very fresh and childlike was this young Prince S——, and very different from certain of his English contemporaries, who, at eighteen, declare that life is a bore, and amusement a sham. These are the men who discredit our century, and belie nature herself. They affect to have no faith in woman and no hope in religion. We have known one of these when he first began to go into society. He was fresh and charming, said the most innocent, boyish things in a fearless, truthful way that was especially winning. He excelled in all social pursuits, and rejoiced in all healthy amusements. Add to this that he was uncommonly good-looking, with dark hair and eyes such as are not often met with in England, and was an only son, heir to a fine Northern property, part of the family house dating as far back as the XIIth century. We met him two seasons later, and he was hardly recognizable. The same handsome features, but with a wearied, listless air marring them; in his voice no animation, in his manner not a trace of that early frankness that was his greatest charm. He used to seem like a girl of seventeen; now he was, morally speaking, a misanthrope of five and thirty! He owned himself that all amusements, even dancing (which was a special accomplishment of his), bored him, and that there was nothing but pigeon-shooting that excited him! Even during the famous matches at Hurlingham (a villa near London where the pigeon-shooting is done, and which has become of late one of the most recherché haunts of fashionable idlers, and a field for the display of the loveliest toilets), this young victim of ennui hardly vouchsafed to seem interested; yet beneath all this was a soul worthy of great things; a will that, guided aright, might achieve much good to society or even to the country; and a personality eminently fitted for moral and intellectual success. And this energy was being thus wasted by day, while, according to his own confession, billiards occupied the greater part of his nights! Poor England, indeed, when her manliness is thus thrown away! Who would not look back with pride and regret to the days of the “good old English gentleman,” with his boisterous and rough pursuits, his fox-hunting and his farming, but, withal, his healthful vitality and his active usefulness?
Besides the young German, so pleasant a contrast to the blasé youth of London drawing-rooms, there was round the gypsy kettle in the woods of E—— a Spaniard as good-natured as he was stately; and, strange to say, here was another royal likeness! Many might have mistaken him for the Prince of Wales. Other Spaniards, too, there were, more lively and not less good-natured, one with a smile that was irresistibly comic, the other with the profile of a S. Ignatius, and principles and habits that well suited his appearance. The English girls of the party were well matched with their companions, and looked very picturesque as they toasted immense slices of bread at the end of forked sticks at least a yard and a half long! The tawny golden hair of one, the willow-like figure and gravely childish glee of another, the restless activity of a third, as they all joined in the search for dry fire-wood, made a pretty subject for an artist; and, in the midst of the bustle, the father, enjoying the young people’s fun, gave a touch of pathos that much enhanced the beauty of the rustic scene.
A drive home through the tall bracken, and along the grassy roads of the numerous plantations, perhaps a rapid visit to deserted “Fort Henry,” and a row to the Echo, sufficed to fill up the evening, and a project for paying a visit to an old Quaker tenant on the morrow would perhaps be discussed during dinner.
It is no wonder that foreigners grow enthusiastic over this side of English life; the pity is that so many rush to England and leave it again before they have a chance of seeing a family gathering in the country; those who have not seen it know little more of English society than we do of the fruits of the West Indies after we have tasted them in the shape of candied peel and preserved jellies. Drawing-room life is the same in Paris, St. Petersburg, or New York; individualism thrives only in the country, and it is there the character of a nation should be studied.