A Traveller in Little Things

by W. H. Hudson

To return to the little ones; it was too near Bath for such a custom to survive among them, and it is the same pretty well everywhere; you must go to a distance of ten or twenty miles from any large town, or a big station, to meet with curtseying children. Even in villages at a distance from towns and railroads, in purely agricultural districts, the custom is dying out, if, for some reason, strangers are often seen in the place. Such a village is Selborne, and an amusing experience I met with there some time ago serves to show that the old rustic simplicity of its inhabitants is now undergoing a change.

I was walking in the village street with a lady friend when we noticed four little girls coming towards us with arms linked. As they came near they suddenly stopped and curtseyed all together in an exaggerated manner, dropping till their knees touched the ground, then springing to their feet they walked rapidly away. From the bold, free, easy way in which the thing was done it was plain to see that they had been practising the art in something of a histrionic spirit for the benefit of the pilgrims and strangers frequently seen in the village, and for their own amusement. As the little Selbornians walked off they glanced back at us over their shoulders, exhibiting four roguish smiles on their four faces. The incident greatly amused us, but I am not sure that the Reverend Gilbert White would have regarded it in the same humorous light.

Occasionally one even finds a village where strangers are not often seen, which has yet outlived the curtsey. Such a place, I take it, is Alvediston, the small downland village on the upper waters of the Ebble, in southern Wiltshire. One day last summer I was loitering near the churchyard, when a little girl, aged about eight, came from an adjoining copse with some wild flowers in her hand. She was singing as she walked and looked admiringly at the flowers she carried; but she could see me watching her out of the corners of her eyes.

"Good morning," said I. "It is nice to be out gathering flowers on such a day, but why are you not in school?"

"Why am I not in school?" in a tone of surprise. "Because the holidays are not over. On Monday we open."

"How delighted you will be."

"Oh no, I don't think I shall be delighted," she returned. Then I asked her for a flower, and apparently much amused she presented me with a water forget-me-not, then she sauntered on to a small cottage close by. Arrived there, she turned round and faced me, her hand on the gate, and after gazing steadily for some moments exclaimed, "Delighted at going back to school—who ever heard such a thing?" and, bursting into a peal of musical child-laughter, she went into the cottage.

One would look for curtseys in the Flower Walk in Kensington Gardens as soon as in the hamlet of this remarkably self-possessed little maid. Her manner was exceptional; but, if we must lose the curtsey, and the rural little ones cease to mimic that pretty drooping motion of the nightingale, the kitty wren, and wheatear, cannot our village pastors and masters teach them some less startling and offensive form of salutation than the loud "Hullo!" with which they are accustomed to greet the stranger within their gates?

I shall finish with another story which might be entitled "The Democrat against Curtseying." The scene was a rustic village, a good many miles from any railroad station, in the south of England. Here I made the acquaintance and was much in the society of a man who was not a native of the place, but had lived several years in it. Although only a working man, he had, by sheer force of character, made himself a power in the village. A total abstainer and non-smoker, a Dissenter in religion and lay-preacher where Dissent had never found a foothold until his coming, and an extreme Radical in politics, he was naturally something of a thorn in the side of the vicar and of the neighbouring gentry.

But in spite of his extreme views and opposition to old cherished ideas and conventions, he was so liberal-minded, so genial in temper, so human, that he was very much liked even by those who were his enemies on principle; and they were occasionally glad to have his help and to work with him in any matter that concerned the welfare of the very poor in the village.