The old Wheelwright’s Shop at “Our Village,” in 1913.
As far as it goes, and based on so slight an acquaintance, the portrait is not much short of the truth, as witness Macready’s own diaries wherein, strong man that he was, he set down all his faults and failings. But he was a much-provoked man, the reason being that he never did, or could, descend to the low level of his tormentors. As for his being, or not being, a great actor, Miss Mitford must be forgiven her hasty judgment; posterity rightly disagrees with her.
Spring was just merging into summer and the thoughts of jaded and satiated townfolk were turning to the consideration of green fields and smiling meadows when the first modest little volume of Our Village issued shyly forth from George Whittaker’s office. “Cause it to be asked for at the circulating libraries,” urged the designing author of all her friends.
The book caught on; its pages were redolent of the country; its colour was true and vivid; it told of simple delights and did for Berkshire what no author had ever previously done for any place. Charles Lamb, then in the full enjoyment of his fame as Elia, said that nothing so fresh and characteristic had appeared for a long time. Sir William Elford was delighted but ventured the suggestion that the sketches would have been better if written in the form of letters, but this the author denied by reminding him that the pieces were too long, and too connected, for real correspondence; “and as to anything make-believe, it has been my business to keep that out of sight as much as possible. Besides which, we are free and easy in these days, and talk to the public as a friend. Read Elia, or the Sketch Book, or Hazlitt’s Table-Talk, or any popular book of the new school, and you will find that we have turned over the Johnsonian periods and the Blair-ian formality to keep company with the wigs and hoops, the stiff curtseys and low bows of our ancestors. ‘Are the characters and descriptions true?’ you ask. Yes! yes! yes! As true as is well possible. You, as a great landscape painter, know that in painting a favourite scene you do a little embellish, and can’t help it; you avail yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere, and if anything be ugly, you strike it out, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still the picture is a likeness; and that this is a very faithful one, you will judge when I tell you that a worthy neighbour of ours, a post captain, who has been in every quarter of the globe, and is equally distinguished for the sharp look-out and bonhomie of his profession, accused me most seriously of carelessness in putting The Rose for The Swan as the sign of our next door neighbour; and was no less disconcerted at the misprint (as he called it) of B for R in the name of our next town. A cela près, he declares the picture to be exact. Nevertheless I do not expect to be poisoned. Why should I? I have said no harm of my neighbours, have I? The great danger would be that my dear friend Joel might be spoilt; but I take care to keep the book out of our pretty Harriette’s way; and so I hope that that prime ornament of our village will escape the snare for his vanity which the seeing so exact a portrait of himself in a printed book might occasion. By the way, the names of the villagers are true—of the higher sketches they are feigned, of course.”
The sales were beyond the wildest dreams of the author and publisher, for it was well reviewed in all the literary papers and discussed in all the literary circles. “Where is Our Village?” was the question folk were asking each other, and when the secret leaked out, there was a constant stream of traffic from here, there and everywhere to the quiet village of Three Mile Cross, whose inhabitants were the last of all to discover that they had been “put into a book.” What a theme for the cobbler over the way! How he must have neglected his work to watch the congratulating visitors who thronged the cottage opposite, all asking the beaming and delighted author “How she thought of it?” and “Why she did it?” And when, at length, a copy of the book itself found its way to the parlour of the George and Dragon and the cobbler saw himself as “the shoemaker opposite,” we can almost fancy we catch the gratified light in his eye and hear his astonished—“Well! I’ll be jiggered!”
And since no letter to any of her numerous correspondents ever contained so charming a description, here let us quote from Our Village its author’s picture of her own dwelling:—“A cottage—no—a miniature house, with many additions, little odds and ends of places, pantries, and what-nots; all angles, and of a charming in-and-out-ness; a little bricked court before one half, and a little flower-yard before the other; the walls, old and weather-stained, covered with hollyhocks, roses, honeysuckles, and a great apricot tree; the casements full of geraniums (ah! there is our superb white cat peeping out from among them); the closets (our landlord has the assurance to call them rooms) full of contrivances and corner-cupboards; and the little garden behind full of common flowers, tulips, pinks, larkspurs, peonies, stocks, and carnations, with an arbour of privet, not unlike a sentry-box, where one lives in a delicious green light, and looks out on the gayest of all gay flower-beds. That house was built on purpose to show in what an exceeding small compass comfort may be packed.”
That is Miss Mitford’s miniature of her village home. Seeking it to-day, the literary pilgrim would be sadly disappointed if he carried this description in his mind. The walls have been stuccoed—that ugliest of make-believes—and a wooden sign The Mitford springs from between the windows in an attempt—honest enough, no doubt—to compete with its neighbour The Swan, the sign of which swings all a-creak over the garden-wall. It has lost its cottage aspect, the windows are modern and even the chimney-pots have been replaced by up-to-date pottery contrivances and a zinc contraption which tries to look ornamental but is not—in striking contrast to the village shop next door which is still the village shop as described by Miss Mitford, “multifarious as a bazaar; a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribands, and bacon”; full of that delightfully mixed odour, a pot-pourri of eatables and wearables, which always characterizes such establishments; proudly ruled by a Brownlow, one of a line of Brownlows unbroken from long before Miss Mitford’s day.
Inside, The Mitford is less of a disappointment, for most of the rooms remain unchanged, and one quickly sees how truly its delighted owner limned it when she wrote of its angles and in-and-out-ness. Unhappily the garden behind has been spoiled by the erection of a large hall wherein the gospel is preached, light refreshments may be partaken of, and the youth of the village assemble o’ nights to tighten their muscles on trapeze and horizontal bar. In Miss Mitford’s day they achieved this end by following the plough—but other times other manners, and we are not for blaming them altogether. The pity is—and it is our only grumble—that when that truly noble philanthropist, William Isaac Palmer, conceived the notion of honouring Miss Mitford’s memory by preserving her residence, he did not insist on a restoration which would have perpetuated the external, as well as the internal, features of the cottage.
