COUNTRY LIFE IN ENGLAND.BY AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC.The“intelligent foreigner,” that convenient critic whom Englishmen are so fond of using as a mouthpiece for their own often just criticisms, is supposed to have seen little or nothing of England unless he has visited the country mansions for which our island is famous. And this is very true, even if he have been touring in the Lake country, taking notes in the “Black Country” around Wolverhampton, inspecting cotton-mills in the North, or admiring the gigantic human engine called the “City” in London. All these are phases of English life, yet none is so distinctively English as life in agricultural neighborhoods. After all, social life is the most visible test of difference of nationality, and although the uniformity of the XIXth century seems to have fallen like snow upon the world, covering its hedges and fields, levelling its hillocks with its valleys, and hiding alike its various flowers and different weeds, yet here and there some landmarks of the old social systems still hold their heads above this uninteresting pall of sameness. The English are traditionally tenacious of their individuality; gracefully so at home, boastfully, and, at times rather absurdly so, abroad. But the indomitable “British tourist” is too well known to claim much attention; his personality is better expressed by caricature than by sober description.Country life is often imitated abroad, but the copy is at best but a sorry caricature, for this institution of social England cannot be transplanted, as is evident by a very simple reason. It has its roots in the whole moral, political, and physical system of the Saxon race; it comes of mediæval and feudal feeling; it is bound up with the territorial traditions that hitherto have been England’sbulwarks as much and more than her navy, her insular position, or her parliamentary institutions. It is worth notice that in France the beginning of the great Revolution was the centralization of all social interests in Paris and its court. Landed proprietors envied the court office-holders; they contrasted their “dull” existence with the brilliant and meretricious pageantry that framed the lives of their luckier friends, and, hurrying to join in the profitless triumphs or even the disgraceful successes of certain courtiers, they became absentees, spent more than their mortgaged and encumbered lands would yield, had recourse to money-lenders, lost all hold on the sympathy of their tenants, and finally incurred the hatred of some and the contempt of all. The only nobles who, during the Revolution, could count on a guard of faithful defenders and practical adherents, were those of Brittany—the rugged country gentlemen whose lives were spent among the tenantry, and whose knowledge of farming and hunting made them the daily companions of the class whom they headed. When the storm burst, the peasants of La Vendée alone were faithful to those who had ever been faithful to them, while the court favorites were betrayed by the very servants whose truculence they had mistaken for attachment.This unfortunate system of neglect never prevailed in England to the same extent as it did in France, though, during the brilliant reign of Charles II., some poison of this kind began to creep into the habits of the landed gentry. Upon the whole, the English lords of the soil have justly and generously livedforas well asupontheir possessions, and, if we have not had a “Reign of Terror,” this is one of the chief reasons. The great land-owners of a county (we speak specifically of the midland counties) divide among them the municipal and political offices; the Lord-Lieutenant, the High Sheriff, the M. P., the local magistrates, are all gentlemen and property-holders, and personally interested in the individual progress of the county. Each manor-house is a petty court of justice, and offenders of a minor sort, such as poachers, window-breakers, and the like, are tried and sentenced with exemplary despatch as well as impartiality by the squires of the neighborhood. There is generally a yearly agricultural show, and as almost all the gentlemen are cattle-breeders, or keep studs for hunting or racing purposes, and all the ladies are more or less poultry-fanciers, the whole community meets with equally eager pleasure upon common ground. The yeomanry and militia, which answer to the rural national guard in other European countries, are formed of well-to-do young farmers whose pride in their accoutrements or horses is a healthy token of sound national feeling; the officers are the gentlemen of the county, the same who sit upon the bench, and who entertain their military tenants at the annual rent-dinner. As for this gathering, it has no ominous meaning for the thriving men who attend it; the meeting is signalized by an unlimited flow of good spirits, of kindly feeling, and, occasionally, of local and rural wit. True, the speechifying is at times prolix, and the number of toasts alarmingly great; the smoke of the farmers’ pipes becomes sometimes rather dense, and the wit turns to pleasantry which has a slightly “heady” flavor like the wine, no doubt; but, for all that, there is nothing more reassuring in a political point of view than such a gathering, and nothing more charming to animaginative mind than this unfeigned hospitality and baronial good-fellowship.It might be said, speaking broadly, that, “next to a gentleman, there is nothing like a farmer.”The farmer has his pride of caste and descent as eminently as any child of Saxon earls or of Norman barons; his family have often lived on the same land, under the same roof, and owned the same allegiance to a long uninterrupted line of noble landlords for centuries back. Of nothing is he prouder than of this, and when, as is often the case, he entertains the family of his lord, nothing can be simpler, grander, and more utterly gentleman-like than his conduct. No straining after effect, but homely and lavish abundance; no attempt at fine speeches, but cordial and undisguised rejoicing; respect that is not the contrary to independence, but the very assertion and expression of it. In one estate, it happened, perhaps about a hundred or more years ago, that an Earl of G—— wooed and married the pretty daughter of one of his chief tenants; both families are living now on the same lands, and, when the farmer looks towards the chancel of the parish church from his capacious pew in the nave, he sees the marble monument of his beautiful ancestress, who was twice the wife of a man distinguished by noble birth, and generally beloved for his goodness. (After the death of her first husband, she married his Cousin Tom, the great local sportsman of his times.) Her portrait, in her countess’ robes and ermine-lined coronet, hangs conspicuously in the dining-room of the family mansion, while her two successive husbands are represented not far from her, the one in the gorgeous court dress of a peer, the other in the familiar green velvet hunting-coat, with a fox-hound by his side.The farmers of the midland counties are often land-owners on their own account, and, far from being indifferent or adverse to sport, they are its chief encouragers. Fox-hunting is an instinct with them—another likeness they bear to their landlords. You never hear a complaint of fields ridden over, or crops injured; the owner will gallop over his own furrows, or break through his own fences, utterly reckless of anything but the pursuit of the fox. Meanness is a thing unknown to them, and yet you will hardly meet many who are extravagant. There is a broadness of character, an incapacity for doing or thinking anything petty, a love of Old-World customs and hereditary modes of thought, that seem to keep them out of the selfish narrowness born of modern commerce, and, while it makes them less sharp, less peculating, makes them also incomparably more lovable.Surrounded by such people, of whom they are the pets and the pride, the children of the landlords cannot fail to grow up healthy in mind and body, full of fun and frankness, loving country sports and pastimes, learning early how to manage land and crops, entering heartily into the feelings and wishes of those they will one day be called upon to rule, noting the idiosyncrasies and carefully handling the prejudices of their early comrades and future co-laborers. A bond of union, friendship, and help is thus formed which grows stronger every year, and stronger still with each succeeding generation. The old men and women, whose place is by the capacious hearth, seem to live just long enough to tell their master’s grandchildren how they danced at his “coming of age” fifty years ago, while their own little grandchildrenlaugh as they think that, in a few years more, there will be another “coming of age,” and that they, too, will dance at the old hall, and taste the wonderful ale their father told them of when they passed the ghostly stairs leading down to the great cellar.Then come the weddings of the daughters of the house, and, as they have been familiarly known in the village nearest their home by all the poorer cottage tenants and the Sunday-school children, the young brides find the whole population personally enthusiastic over each detail of the ceremony. Young men and girls have seen the ladies of the “house” bringing cordials and delicacies to their poor dying parents, and strewing costly flowers over their plain coffins in the churchyard; and they remember this as the same fair girl whom they saw minister to them in their sorrow, takes upon herself another and a lifelong ministry with the hopeful trust of youth and the holy certainty of love. Again, as the bride comes forth, the children remember the feasts in the grounds, the armful of buns and cakes thrown into their pinafores at leaving, the delightful romps on the lawn, the adventurous row round the pond which their imagination magnified into a stormy sea—all the pleasures, out-doors and indoors, which were associated with the sight and presence of that slender, white-robed, and white-crowned figure. Thus, while there are class distinctions in rural England, there are no classdivisions, and servants and masters, landlords and tenants, form, as it were, one clan with common interests and reciprocal sympathies.Then, life in the country is so much more individual than in town. All tastes are there easily gratified; books and magazines are constantly pouring down from London; guests, not compulsory, as is the genus “morning caller” in town, who lounges in utterly exhausted, and asks languidly whether “Lady So-and-so’s ball last night was not perfectly delightful?” while his general air of boredom proclaims that he is surfeited with all mundanedelights—guests not such as this inane specimen of humanity, but chosen friends, gay, witty, brilliant, are at hand at the shortest notice for those whose life is cut out for society; morning rambles for the solitary; moonlight effects for the romantic; hours of leisure for the studious; a wide field of usefulness for the charitable; a matchless opportunity for indulging in the woman-gossip, without which that essentially English institution, five o’clock tea, would be “flat, stale, and unprofitable”; and last, not least, the best chances for marriage that any sort of social intercourse can afford.The only drawback to this state of things is that it sometimes becomes a little too artificial. Even rusticity may be aped, and, indeed, this is the tendency of the day, as it was the tendency in former days also, when shepherdesses were represented by ladies of fashion in silk skirts, beribboned crooks, and high-heeled shoes. But this pseudo-rusticity spoils the real, tangible pleasures of life in the country. Studied simplicity is worse than studied art. Young ladies “got up” like Dresden china are not peasants, and have neither the charms nor the merits of peasants. They are probablyblasées, and so miss the freshness symbolized by their costume; and they are incapable of work, and so miss the usefulness also distantly suggested by their dress. In one expressive word, they are asham.There are many houses, however, where healthful pleasure is dominant,and no fine-ladyism finds favor—houses where the chapel is not far from the drawing-room, and where masters and servants, guests and hosts, meet silently to greet their Maker before they enjoy his gifts for the day. Then comes the ten o’clock gathering round the breakfast table—a picture in itself, with bright flame-colored flowers amid the delicate white glass and china, and pretty faces joyously eager for the day’s programme of amusements. Perhaps there are ruins to be seen—a great resource in country visiting—at all events, there is a church. The churches are certainly one of the proudest inheritances of the old land, and the way in which they have been preserved speaks well for the naturally reverential turn of the Saxon mind. In every county, some distinctive feature is visible; in Kent, hardly anything is used in churches but flint, and the bells are generally hung in a square massive tower instead of a steeple. In the midland counties, on the contrary, steeples are a great feature; there is one at a little village called Ketton, which is peculiarly fine, though it certainly looks too heavy for the church it crowns. Wicliffe’s church, at Lutterworth, is a standard sight for the guests of a large old family mansion near by; you are shown the pulpit said to be Wicliffe’s own, and, in one of the aisles, his tomb, with a long Latin epitaph sufficiently bombastic and untruthful, as it states that, despite of monks and bishops, he instructed the populace in plain Gospel truth, and was the first to translate the Bible into the vernacular! But Lutterworth church has for us of the old faith a more interesting memorial of the “good old days.” This consists in a very primitive fresco representing the resurrection of the dead. The colors are not much varied, and the draperies are quaintly angular; yet this early effort of art is far more simply and honestly Christian than many of those skilful productions of later periods, when the painter thought more of the fame his execution of a subject might bring him than of the solemn truth contained in the subject itself. Here we see Our Lord seated on some very solid-looking clouds, while below, on the right side, the angels are helping the good out of their sepulchres, and, on the left, the devils doing the same service to the wicked. Some of the tombs are open, as if burst asunder by an explosion, and the skeletons stand bolt upright; some are half closed, and their occupants creeping quietly out; while in others the disjointed bones are seen, not yet rebuilt into human shape, or a skeleton is detected half clothed with flesh, and some bones still protruding in their original bareness. Much the same scene is portrayed on the left side, but the expressions even in the skeletons are very different; the attitudes are distorted, and the impish figures of the demons prominently drawn. If there is a lack of harmony and beauty in the whole composition, it is quite compensated for by the evident earnestness of the artist, the gravity of the angels’ demeanor, and the reverent intention which animates the grotesqueensemble. As an archæological memorial, it is invaluable, as very few such specimens of Catholic art of so early a date (certainly no later than the XIIIth century) are in existence in England.Some of the country churches are beautifully restored according to old Catholic models, and, with the restoration of the ancient worship, might again become what they were at the time they were christened by those suggestive names, All Hallows’, S.Mary’s, S. Chad’s. Others, however are terribly neglected, though this is a fault fast disappearing, together with the fox-hunting, easy-going parsons of the Georgian era, and all other laxities of an unusually stagnant age. The music in these country churches is not always equal to the imposing exterior, a harmonium in the choir being sometimes all there is wherewith to guide and sustain the voices. Still, this is a step in the right direction, as formerly the utmost a village church could boast of was an orchestra composed of the local shoemaker with a dilapidated fiddle and the smith with a bass-viol out of tune. Any self-elected, occasional amateur with a strong or a thrilling voice would be, of course, a welcome addition, but the instrumental groundwork might be always depended upon. Most churches near family seats have remarkable monuments, some of the ancient Elizabethan style, with rows of decorous sons and daughters praying in bas-relief at the feet of their dead parents, their quaint costume, heavy-folded robes, and immense ruffles seeming marvellously to suit the immobility of the material in which they are sculptured; some, again, dating back to the times of the Crusaders, but many, unfortunately, of the pseudo-Grecian Renaissance, which to a Catholic mind seem both irreverent and absurd. Fancy a Cupid with eyes bandaged and torch inverted as an emblem of that sacred grief for the dead which is inseparably mingled with the steadfast hope of the Christian for the day of resurrection! Or again, as we once heard a sarcastic friend aptly express it, a woman crying over a tea-urn! Really, some of these monuments are no better than that, and deserve no other description. How much more dignified are those ancient Gothic tombs where the quiet, stately figures of a knight and his wife, a bishop, a magistrate, lie as on a bed, in the sleep of expectation, not in a ridiculous simulation of life, nor symbolized by some vulgar heathen myth.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, beingpassionately 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 coldchefs-d’œuvreof the culinary art. Let us suppose thelocaleto 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’sHoly 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 allare 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 aparterrein themselves; the prettiest things that taste can dictate are worn for thisfête, 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 simulatedennui, 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 intableaux 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’ssong, “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.Ameetis 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 coatoughtto 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 performfeats 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 abore, 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),boredhim, 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 mostrecherchéhaunts of fashionable idlers, and a field for the display of the loveliest toilets), this young victim ofennuihardly 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 andregret 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 theblaséyouth 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.
COUNTRY LIFE IN ENGLAND.BY AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC.The“intelligent foreigner,” that convenient critic whom Englishmen are so fond of using as a mouthpiece for their own often just criticisms, is supposed to have seen little or nothing of England unless he has visited the country mansions for which our island is famous. And this is very true, even if he have been touring in the Lake country, taking notes in the “Black Country” around Wolverhampton, inspecting cotton-mills in the North, or admiring the gigantic human engine called the “City” in London. All these are phases of English life, yet none is so distinctively English as life in agricultural neighborhoods. After all, social life is the most visible test of difference of nationality, and although the uniformity of the XIXth century seems to have fallen like snow upon the world, covering its hedges and fields, levelling its hillocks with its valleys, and hiding alike its various flowers and different weeds, yet here and there some landmarks of the old social systems still hold their heads above this uninteresting pall of sameness. The English are traditionally tenacious of their individuality; gracefully so at home, boastfully, and, at times rather absurdly so, abroad. But the indomitable “British tourist” is too well known to claim much attention; his personality is better expressed by caricature than by sober description.Country life is often imitated abroad, but the copy is at best but a sorry caricature, for this institution of social England cannot be transplanted, as is evident by a very simple reason. It has its roots in the whole moral, political, and physical system of the Saxon race; it comes of mediæval and feudal feeling; it is bound up with the territorial traditions that hitherto have been England’sbulwarks as much and more than her navy, her insular position, or her parliamentary institutions. It is worth notice that in France the beginning of the great Revolution was the centralization of all social interests in Paris and its court. Landed proprietors envied the court office-holders; they contrasted their “dull” existence with the brilliant and meretricious pageantry that framed the lives of their luckier friends, and, hurrying to join in the profitless triumphs or even the disgraceful successes of certain courtiers, they became absentees, spent more than their mortgaged and encumbered lands would yield, had recourse to money-lenders, lost all hold on the sympathy of their tenants, and finally incurred the hatred of some and the contempt of all. The only nobles who, during the Revolution, could count on a guard of faithful defenders and practical adherents, were those of Brittany—the rugged country gentlemen whose lives were spent among the tenantry, and whose knowledge of farming and hunting made them the daily companions of the class whom they headed. When the storm burst, the peasants of La Vendée alone were faithful to those who had ever been faithful to them, while the court favorites were betrayed by the very servants whose truculence they had mistaken for attachment.This unfortunate system of neglect never prevailed in England to the same extent as it did in France, though, during the brilliant reign of Charles II., some poison of this kind began to creep into the habits of the landed gentry. Upon the whole, the English lords of the soil have justly and generously livedforas well asupontheir possessions, and, if we have not had a “Reign of Terror,” this is one of the chief reasons. The great land-owners of a county (we speak specifically of the midland counties) divide among them the municipal and political offices; the Lord-Lieutenant, the High Sheriff, the M. P., the local magistrates, are all gentlemen and property-holders, and personally interested in the individual progress of the county. Each manor-house is a petty court of justice, and offenders of a minor sort, such as poachers, window-breakers, and the like, are tried and sentenced with exemplary despatch as well as impartiality by the squires of the neighborhood. There is generally a yearly agricultural show, and as almost all the gentlemen are cattle-breeders, or keep studs for hunting or racing purposes, and all the ladies are more or less poultry-fanciers, the whole community meets with equally eager pleasure upon common ground. The yeomanry and militia, which answer to the rural national guard in other European countries, are formed of well-to-do young farmers whose pride in their accoutrements or horses is a healthy token of sound national feeling; the officers are the gentlemen of the county, the same who sit upon the bench, and who entertain their military tenants at the annual rent-dinner. As for this gathering, it has no ominous meaning for the thriving men who attend it; the meeting is signalized by an unlimited flow of good spirits, of kindly feeling, and, occasionally, of local and rural wit. True, the speechifying is at times prolix, and the number of toasts alarmingly great; the smoke of the farmers’ pipes becomes sometimes rather dense, and the wit turns to pleasantry which has a slightly “heady” flavor like the wine, no doubt; but, for all that, there is nothing more reassuring in a political point of view than such a gathering, and nothing more charming to animaginative mind than this unfeigned hospitality and baronial good-fellowship.It might be said, speaking broadly, that, “next to a gentleman, there is nothing like a farmer.”The farmer has his pride of caste and descent as eminently as any child of Saxon earls or of Norman barons; his family have often lived on the same land, under the same roof, and owned the same allegiance to a long uninterrupted line of noble landlords for centuries back. Of nothing is he prouder than of this, and when, as is often the case, he entertains the family of his lord, nothing can be simpler, grander, and more utterly gentleman-like than his conduct. No straining after effect, but homely and lavish abundance; no attempt at fine speeches, but cordial and undisguised rejoicing; respect that is not the contrary to independence, but the very assertion and expression of it. In one estate, it happened, perhaps about a hundred or more years ago, that an Earl of G—— wooed and married the pretty daughter of one of his chief tenants; both families are living now on the same lands, and, when the farmer looks towards the chancel of the parish church from his capacious pew in the nave, he sees the marble monument of his beautiful ancestress, who was twice the wife of a man distinguished by noble birth, and generally beloved for his goodness. (After the death of her first husband, she married his Cousin Tom, the great local sportsman of his times.) Her portrait, in her countess’ robes and ermine-lined coronet, hangs conspicuously in the dining-room of the family mansion, while her two successive husbands are represented not far from her, the one in the gorgeous court dress of a peer, the other in the familiar green velvet hunting-coat, with a fox-hound by his side.The farmers of the midland counties are often land-owners on their own account, and, far from being indifferent or adverse to sport, they are its chief encouragers. Fox-hunting is an instinct with them—another likeness they bear to their landlords. You never hear a complaint of fields ridden over, or crops injured; the owner will gallop over his own furrows, or break through his own fences, utterly reckless of anything but the pursuit of the fox. Meanness is a thing unknown to them, and yet you will hardly meet many who are extravagant. There is a broadness of character, an incapacity for doing or thinking anything petty, a love of Old-World customs and hereditary modes of thought, that seem to keep them out of the selfish narrowness born of modern commerce, and, while it makes them less sharp, less peculating, makes them also incomparably more lovable.Surrounded by such people, of whom they are the pets and the pride, the children of the landlords cannot fail to grow up healthy in mind and body, full of fun and frankness, loving country sports and pastimes, learning early how to manage land and crops, entering heartily into the feelings and wishes of those they will one day be called upon to rule, noting the idiosyncrasies and carefully handling the prejudices of their early comrades and future co-laborers. A bond of union, friendship, and help is thus formed which grows stronger every year, and stronger still with each succeeding generation. The old men and women, whose place is by the capacious hearth, seem to live just long enough to tell their master’s grandchildren how they danced at his “coming of age” fifty years ago, while their own little grandchildrenlaugh as they think that, in a few years more, there will be another “coming of age,” and that they, too, will dance at the old hall, and taste the wonderful ale their father told them of when they passed the ghostly stairs leading down to the great cellar.Then come the weddings of the daughters of the house, and, as they have been familiarly known in the village nearest their home by all the poorer cottage tenants and the Sunday-school children, the young brides find the whole population personally enthusiastic over each detail of the ceremony. Young men and girls have seen the ladies of the “house” bringing cordials and delicacies to their poor dying parents, and strewing costly flowers over their plain coffins in the churchyard; and they remember this as the same fair girl whom they saw minister to them in their sorrow, takes upon herself another and a lifelong ministry with the hopeful trust of youth and the holy certainty of love. Again, as the bride comes forth, the children remember the feasts in the grounds, the armful of buns and cakes thrown into their pinafores at leaving, the delightful romps on the lawn, the adventurous row round the pond which their imagination magnified into a stormy sea—all the pleasures, out-doors and indoors, which were associated with the sight and presence of that slender, white-robed, and white-crowned figure. Thus, while there are class distinctions in rural England, there are no classdivisions, and servants and masters, landlords and tenants, form, as it were, one clan with common interests and reciprocal sympathies.Then, life in the country is so much more individual than in town. All tastes are there easily gratified; books and magazines are constantly pouring down from London; guests, not compulsory, as is the genus “morning caller” in town, who lounges in utterly exhausted, and asks languidly whether “Lady So-and-so’s ball last night was not perfectly delightful?” while his general air of boredom proclaims that he is surfeited with all mundanedelights—guests not such as this inane specimen of humanity, but chosen friends, gay, witty, brilliant, are at hand at the shortest notice for those whose life is cut out for society; morning rambles for the solitary; moonlight effects for the romantic; hours of leisure for the studious; a wide field of usefulness for the charitable; a matchless opportunity for indulging in the woman-gossip, without which that essentially English institution, five o’clock tea, would be “flat, stale, and unprofitable”; and last, not least, the best chances for marriage that any sort of social intercourse can afford.The only drawback to this state of things is that it sometimes becomes a little too artificial. Even rusticity may be aped, and, indeed, this is the tendency of the day, as it was the tendency in former days also, when shepherdesses were represented by ladies of fashion in silk skirts, beribboned crooks, and high-heeled shoes. But this pseudo-rusticity spoils the real, tangible pleasures of life in the country. Studied simplicity is worse than studied art. Young ladies “got up” like Dresden china are not peasants, and have neither the charms nor the merits of peasants. They are probablyblasées, and so miss the freshness symbolized by their costume; and they are incapable of work, and so miss the usefulness also distantly suggested by their dress. In one expressive word, they are asham.There are many houses, however, where healthful pleasure is dominant,and no fine-ladyism finds favor—houses where the chapel is not far from the drawing-room, and where masters and servants, guests and hosts, meet silently to greet their Maker before they enjoy his gifts for the day. Then comes the ten o’clock gathering round the breakfast table—a picture in itself, with bright flame-colored flowers amid the delicate white glass and china, and pretty faces joyously eager for the day’s programme of amusements. Perhaps there are ruins to be seen—a great resource in country visiting—at all events, there is a church. The churches are certainly one of the proudest inheritances of the old land, and the way in which they have been preserved speaks well for the naturally reverential turn of the Saxon mind. In every county, some distinctive feature is visible; in Kent, hardly anything is used in churches but flint, and the bells are generally hung in a square massive tower instead of a steeple. In the midland counties, on the contrary, steeples are a great feature; there is one at a little village called Ketton, which is peculiarly fine, though it certainly looks too heavy for the church it crowns. Wicliffe’s church, at Lutterworth, is a standard sight for the guests of a large old family mansion near by; you are shown the pulpit said to be Wicliffe’s own, and, in one of the aisles, his tomb, with a long Latin epitaph sufficiently bombastic and untruthful, as it states that, despite of monks and bishops, he instructed the populace in plain Gospel truth, and was the first to translate the Bible into the vernacular! But Lutterworth church has for us of the old faith a more interesting memorial of the “good old days.” This consists in a very primitive fresco representing the resurrection of the dead. The colors are not much varied, and the draperies are quaintly angular; yet this early effort of art is far more simply and honestly Christian than many of those skilful productions of later periods, when the painter thought more of the fame his execution of a subject might bring him than of the solemn truth contained in the subject itself. Here we see Our Lord seated on some very solid-looking clouds, while below, on the right side, the angels are helping the good out of their sepulchres, and, on the left, the devils doing the same service to the wicked. Some of the tombs are open, as if burst asunder by an explosion, and the skeletons stand bolt upright; some are half closed, and their occupants creeping quietly out; while in others the disjointed bones are seen, not yet rebuilt into human shape, or a skeleton is detected half clothed with flesh, and some bones still protruding in their original bareness. Much the same scene is portrayed on the left side, but the expressions even in the skeletons are very different; the attitudes are distorted, and the impish figures of the demons prominently drawn. If there is a lack of harmony and beauty in the whole composition, it is quite compensated for by the evident earnestness of the artist, the gravity of the angels’ demeanor, and the reverent intention which animates the grotesqueensemble. As an archæological memorial, it is invaluable, as very few such specimens of Catholic art of so early a date (certainly no later than the XIIIth century) are in existence in England.Some of the country churches are beautifully restored according to old Catholic models, and, with the restoration of the ancient worship, might again become what they were at the time they were christened by those suggestive names, All Hallows’, S.Mary’s, S. Chad’s. Others, however are terribly neglected, though this is a fault fast disappearing, together with the fox-hunting, easy-going parsons of the Georgian era, and all other laxities of an unusually stagnant age. The music in these country churches is not always equal to the imposing exterior, a harmonium in the choir being sometimes all there is wherewith to guide and sustain the voices. Still, this is a step in the right direction, as formerly the utmost a village church could boast of was an orchestra composed of the local shoemaker with a dilapidated fiddle and the smith with a bass-viol out of tune. Any self-elected, occasional amateur with a strong or a thrilling voice would be, of course, a welcome addition, but the instrumental groundwork might be always depended upon. Most churches near family seats have remarkable monuments, some of the ancient Elizabethan style, with rows of decorous sons and daughters praying in bas-relief at the feet of their dead parents, their quaint costume, heavy-folded robes, and immense ruffles seeming marvellously to suit the immobility of the material in which they are sculptured; some, again, dating back to the times of the Crusaders, but many, unfortunately, of the pseudo-Grecian Renaissance, which to a Catholic mind seem both irreverent and absurd. Fancy a Cupid with eyes bandaged and torch inverted as an emblem of that sacred grief for the dead which is inseparably mingled with the steadfast hope of the Christian for the day of resurrection! Or again, as we once heard a sarcastic friend aptly express it, a woman crying over a tea-urn! Really, some of these monuments are no better than that, and deserve no other description. How much more dignified are those ancient Gothic tombs where the quiet, stately figures of a knight and his wife, a bishop, a magistrate, lie as on a bed, in the sleep of expectation, not in a ridiculous simulation of life, nor symbolized by some vulgar heathen myth.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, beingpassionately 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 coldchefs-d’œuvreof the culinary art. Let us suppose thelocaleto 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’sHoly 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 allare 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 aparterrein themselves; the prettiest things that taste can dictate are worn for thisfête, 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 simulatedennui, 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 intableaux 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’ssong, “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.Ameetis 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 coatoughtto 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 performfeats 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 abore, 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),boredhim, 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 mostrecherchéhaunts of fashionable idlers, and a field for the display of the loveliest toilets), this young victim ofennuihardly 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 andregret 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 theblaséyouth 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.
BY AN ENGLISH CATHOLIC.
The“intelligent foreigner,” that convenient critic whom Englishmen are so fond of using as a mouthpiece for their own often just criticisms, is supposed to have seen little or nothing of England unless he has visited the country mansions for which our island is famous. And this is very true, even if he have been touring in the Lake country, taking notes in the “Black Country” around Wolverhampton, inspecting cotton-mills in the North, or admiring the gigantic human engine called the “City” in London. All these are phases of English life, yet none is so distinctively English as life in agricultural neighborhoods. After all, social life is the most visible test of difference of nationality, and although the uniformity of the XIXth century seems to have fallen like snow upon the world, covering its hedges and fields, levelling its hillocks with its valleys, and hiding alike its various flowers and different weeds, yet here and there some landmarks of the old social systems still hold their heads above this uninteresting pall of sameness. The English are traditionally tenacious of their individuality; gracefully so at home, boastfully, and, at times rather absurdly so, abroad. But the indomitable “British tourist” is too well known to claim much attention; his personality is better expressed by caricature than by sober description.
Country life is often imitated abroad, but the copy is at best but a sorry caricature, for this institution of social England cannot be transplanted, as is evident by a very simple reason. It has its roots in the whole moral, political, and physical system of the Saxon race; it comes of mediæval and feudal feeling; it is bound up with the territorial traditions that hitherto have been England’sbulwarks as much and more than her navy, her insular position, or her parliamentary institutions. It is worth notice that in France the beginning of the great Revolution was the centralization of all social interests in Paris and its court. Landed proprietors envied the court office-holders; they contrasted their “dull” existence with the brilliant and meretricious pageantry that framed the lives of their luckier friends, and, hurrying to join in the profitless triumphs or even the disgraceful successes of certain courtiers, they became absentees, spent more than their mortgaged and encumbered lands would yield, had recourse to money-lenders, lost all hold on the sympathy of their tenants, and finally incurred the hatred of some and the contempt of all. The only nobles who, during the Revolution, could count on a guard of faithful defenders and practical adherents, were those of Brittany—the rugged country gentlemen whose lives were spent among the tenantry, and whose knowledge of farming and hunting made them the daily companions of the class whom they headed. When the storm burst, the peasants of La Vendée alone were faithful to those who had ever been faithful to them, while the court favorites were betrayed by the very servants whose truculence they had mistaken for attachment.
This unfortunate system of neglect never prevailed in England to the same extent as it did in France, though, during the brilliant reign of Charles II., some poison of this kind began to creep into the habits of the landed gentry. Upon the whole, the English lords of the soil have justly and generously livedforas well asupontheir possessions, and, if we have not had a “Reign of Terror,” this is one of the chief reasons. The great land-owners of a county (we speak specifically of the midland counties) divide among them the municipal and political offices; the Lord-Lieutenant, the High Sheriff, the M. P., the local magistrates, are all gentlemen and property-holders, and personally interested in the individual progress of the county. Each manor-house is a petty court of justice, and offenders of a minor sort, such as poachers, window-breakers, and the like, are tried and sentenced with exemplary despatch as well as impartiality by the squires of the neighborhood. There is generally a yearly agricultural show, and as almost all the gentlemen are cattle-breeders, or keep studs for hunting or racing purposes, and all the ladies are more or less poultry-fanciers, the whole community meets with equally eager pleasure upon common ground. The yeomanry and militia, which answer to the rural national guard in other European countries, are formed of well-to-do young farmers whose pride in their accoutrements or horses is a healthy token of sound national feeling; the officers are the gentlemen of the county, the same who sit upon the bench, and who entertain their military tenants at the annual rent-dinner. As for this gathering, it has no ominous meaning for the thriving men who attend it; the meeting is signalized by an unlimited flow of good spirits, of kindly feeling, and, occasionally, of local and rural wit. True, the speechifying is at times prolix, and the number of toasts alarmingly great; the smoke of the farmers’ pipes becomes sometimes rather dense, and the wit turns to pleasantry which has a slightly “heady” flavor like the wine, no doubt; but, for all that, there is nothing more reassuring in a political point of view than such a gathering, and nothing more charming to animaginative mind than this unfeigned hospitality and baronial good-fellowship.
It might be said, speaking broadly, that, “next to a gentleman, there is nothing like a farmer.”
The farmer has his pride of caste and descent as eminently as any child of Saxon earls or of Norman barons; his family have often lived on the same land, under the same roof, and owned the same allegiance to a long uninterrupted line of noble landlords for centuries back. Of nothing is he prouder than of this, and when, as is often the case, he entertains the family of his lord, nothing can be simpler, grander, and more utterly gentleman-like than his conduct. No straining after effect, but homely and lavish abundance; no attempt at fine speeches, but cordial and undisguised rejoicing; respect that is not the contrary to independence, but the very assertion and expression of it. In one estate, it happened, perhaps about a hundred or more years ago, that an Earl of G—— wooed and married the pretty daughter of one of his chief tenants; both families are living now on the same lands, and, when the farmer looks towards the chancel of the parish church from his capacious pew in the nave, he sees the marble monument of his beautiful ancestress, who was twice the wife of a man distinguished by noble birth, and generally beloved for his goodness. (After the death of her first husband, she married his Cousin Tom, the great local sportsman of his times.) Her portrait, in her countess’ robes and ermine-lined coronet, hangs conspicuously in the dining-room of the family mansion, while her two successive husbands are represented not far from her, the one in the gorgeous court dress of a peer, the other in the familiar green velvet hunting-coat, with a fox-hound by his side.
The farmers of the midland counties are often land-owners on their own account, and, far from being indifferent or adverse to sport, they are its chief encouragers. Fox-hunting is an instinct with them—another likeness they bear to their landlords. You never hear a complaint of fields ridden over, or crops injured; the owner will gallop over his own furrows, or break through his own fences, utterly reckless of anything but the pursuit of the fox. Meanness is a thing unknown to them, and yet you will hardly meet many who are extravagant. There is a broadness of character, an incapacity for doing or thinking anything petty, a love of Old-World customs and hereditary modes of thought, that seem to keep them out of the selfish narrowness born of modern commerce, and, while it makes them less sharp, less peculating, makes them also incomparably more lovable.
Surrounded by such people, of whom they are the pets and the pride, the children of the landlords cannot fail to grow up healthy in mind and body, full of fun and frankness, loving country sports and pastimes, learning early how to manage land and crops, entering heartily into the feelings and wishes of those they will one day be called upon to rule, noting the idiosyncrasies and carefully handling the prejudices of their early comrades and future co-laborers. A bond of union, friendship, and help is thus formed which grows stronger every year, and stronger still with each succeeding generation. The old men and women, whose place is by the capacious hearth, seem to live just long enough to tell their master’s grandchildren how they danced at his “coming of age” fifty years ago, while their own little grandchildrenlaugh as they think that, in a few years more, there will be another “coming of age,” and that they, too, will dance at the old hall, and taste the wonderful ale their father told them of when they passed the ghostly stairs leading down to the great cellar.
Then come the weddings of the daughters of the house, and, as they have been familiarly known in the village nearest their home by all the poorer cottage tenants and the Sunday-school children, the young brides find the whole population personally enthusiastic over each detail of the ceremony. Young men and girls have seen the ladies of the “house” bringing cordials and delicacies to their poor dying parents, and strewing costly flowers over their plain coffins in the churchyard; and they remember this as the same fair girl whom they saw minister to them in their sorrow, takes upon herself another and a lifelong ministry with the hopeful trust of youth and the holy certainty of love. Again, as the bride comes forth, the children remember the feasts in the grounds, the armful of buns and cakes thrown into their pinafores at leaving, the delightful romps on the lawn, the adventurous row round the pond which their imagination magnified into a stormy sea—all the pleasures, out-doors and indoors, which were associated with the sight and presence of that slender, white-robed, and white-crowned figure. Thus, while there are class distinctions in rural England, there are no classdivisions, and servants and masters, landlords and tenants, form, as it were, one clan with common interests and reciprocal sympathies.
Then, life in the country is so much more individual than in town. All tastes are there easily gratified; books and magazines are constantly pouring down from London; guests, not compulsory, as is the genus “morning caller” in town, who lounges in utterly exhausted, and asks languidly whether “Lady So-and-so’s ball last night was not perfectly delightful?” while his general air of boredom proclaims that he is surfeited with all mundanedelights—guests not such as this inane specimen of humanity, but chosen friends, gay, witty, brilliant, are at hand at the shortest notice for those whose life is cut out for society; morning rambles for the solitary; moonlight effects for the romantic; hours of leisure for the studious; a wide field of usefulness for the charitable; a matchless opportunity for indulging in the woman-gossip, without which that essentially English institution, five o’clock tea, would be “flat, stale, and unprofitable”; and last, not least, the best chances for marriage that any sort of social intercourse can afford.
The only drawback to this state of things is that it sometimes becomes a little too artificial. Even rusticity may be aped, and, indeed, this is the tendency of the day, as it was the tendency in former days also, when shepherdesses were represented by ladies of fashion in silk skirts, beribboned crooks, and high-heeled shoes. But this pseudo-rusticity spoils the real, tangible pleasures of life in the country. Studied simplicity is worse than studied art. Young ladies “got up” like Dresden china are not peasants, and have neither the charms nor the merits of peasants. They are probablyblasées, and so miss the freshness symbolized by their costume; and they are incapable of work, and so miss the usefulness also distantly suggested by their dress. In one expressive word, they are asham.
There are many houses, however, where healthful pleasure is dominant,and no fine-ladyism finds favor—houses where the chapel is not far from the drawing-room, and where masters and servants, guests and hosts, meet silently to greet their Maker before they enjoy his gifts for the day. Then comes the ten o’clock gathering round the breakfast table—a picture in itself, with bright flame-colored flowers amid the delicate white glass and china, and pretty faces joyously eager for the day’s programme of amusements. Perhaps there are ruins to be seen—a great resource in country visiting—at all events, there is a church. The churches are certainly one of the proudest inheritances of the old land, and the way in which they have been preserved speaks well for the naturally reverential turn of the Saxon mind. In every county, some distinctive feature is visible; in Kent, hardly anything is used in churches but flint, and the bells are generally hung in a square massive tower instead of a steeple. In the midland counties, on the contrary, steeples are a great feature; there is one at a little village called Ketton, which is peculiarly fine, though it certainly looks too heavy for the church it crowns. Wicliffe’s church, at Lutterworth, is a standard sight for the guests of a large old family mansion near by; you are shown the pulpit said to be Wicliffe’s own, and, in one of the aisles, his tomb, with a long Latin epitaph sufficiently bombastic and untruthful, as it states that, despite of monks and bishops, he instructed the populace in plain Gospel truth, and was the first to translate the Bible into the vernacular! But Lutterworth church has for us of the old faith a more interesting memorial of the “good old days.” This consists in a very primitive fresco representing the resurrection of the dead. The colors are not much varied, and the draperies are quaintly angular; yet this early effort of art is far more simply and honestly Christian than many of those skilful productions of later periods, when the painter thought more of the fame his execution of a subject might bring him than of the solemn truth contained in the subject itself. Here we see Our Lord seated on some very solid-looking clouds, while below, on the right side, the angels are helping the good out of their sepulchres, and, on the left, the devils doing the same service to the wicked. Some of the tombs are open, as if burst asunder by an explosion, and the skeletons stand bolt upright; some are half closed, and their occupants creeping quietly out; while in others the disjointed bones are seen, not yet rebuilt into human shape, or a skeleton is detected half clothed with flesh, and some bones still protruding in their original bareness. Much the same scene is portrayed on the left side, but the expressions even in the skeletons are very different; the attitudes are distorted, and the impish figures of the demons prominently drawn. If there is a lack of harmony and beauty in the whole composition, it is quite compensated for by the evident earnestness of the artist, the gravity of the angels’ demeanor, and the reverent intention which animates the grotesqueensemble. As an archæological memorial, it is invaluable, as very few such specimens of Catholic art of so early a date (certainly no later than the XIIIth century) are in existence in England.
Some of the country churches are beautifully restored according to old Catholic models, and, with the restoration of the ancient worship, might again become what they were at the time they were christened by those suggestive names, All Hallows’, S.Mary’s, S. Chad’s. Others, however are terribly neglected, though this is a fault fast disappearing, together with the fox-hunting, easy-going parsons of the Georgian era, and all other laxities of an unusually stagnant age. The music in these country churches is not always equal to the imposing exterior, a harmonium in the choir being sometimes all there is wherewith to guide and sustain the voices. Still, this is a step in the right direction, as formerly the utmost a village church could boast of was an orchestra composed of the local shoemaker with a dilapidated fiddle and the smith with a bass-viol out of tune. Any self-elected, occasional amateur with a strong or a thrilling voice would be, of course, a welcome addition, but the instrumental groundwork might be always depended upon. Most churches near family seats have remarkable monuments, some of the ancient Elizabethan style, with rows of decorous sons and daughters praying in bas-relief at the feet of their dead parents, their quaint costume, heavy-folded robes, and immense ruffles seeming marvellously to suit the immobility of the material in which they are sculptured; some, again, dating back to the times of the Crusaders, but many, unfortunately, of the pseudo-Grecian Renaissance, which to a Catholic mind seem both irreverent and absurd. Fancy a Cupid with eyes bandaged and torch inverted as an emblem of that sacred grief for the dead which is inseparably mingled with the steadfast hope of the Christian for the day of resurrection! Or again, as we once heard a sarcastic friend aptly express it, a woman crying over a tea-urn! Really, some of these monuments are no better than that, and deserve no other description. How much more dignified are those ancient Gothic tombs where the quiet, stately figures of a knight and his wife, a bishop, a magistrate, lie as on a bed, in the sleep of expectation, not in a ridiculous simulation of life, nor symbolized by some vulgar heathen myth.
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, beingpassionately 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 coldchefs-d’œuvreof the culinary art. Let us suppose thelocaleto 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’sHoly 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 allare 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 aparterrein themselves; the prettiest things that taste can dictate are worn for thisfête, 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 simulatedennui, 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 intableaux 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’ssong, “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.
Ameetis 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 coatoughtto 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 performfeats 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 abore, 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),boredhim, 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 mostrecherchéhaunts of fashionable idlers, and a field for the display of the loveliest toilets), this young victim ofennuihardly 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 andregret 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 theblaséyouth 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.