CHAPTER I

AN AUTHOR’S BIRTHPLACE

In a sunny corner of Hampshire there lies the tiny historic town of Alresford on the gentle slopes of a hill, at whose feet flows the little river Arle which gives its name to the place. “A town so small that but for an ancient market very slenderly attended, nobody would have dreamt of calling it anything but a village.” And yet, oddly enough, in this same place great dignity was united with rustic simplicity, for the living of “Old” Alresford was one of the richest in England, and was held by the Bishop of Exeter in conjunction with his very poor see. The Post Office was formerly installed in a very small room with nothing but a letter-box in the window; still, it had its importance, being at the head of many others scattered over the country-side.

Alresford was the birthplace of one who loved nature as few have loved her, and whose writings “breathe the air of the hay-fields and the scent of the hawthorn boughs,” and seem to waft to us “the sweet breezes that blow over ripened, cornfields or daisied meadows.”

The name of Mary Russell Mitford—the author of _Our Village_—is dear to thousands of readers, both English and American, for she has enabled them to see nature with her eyes and to enter into the very spirit of rural life.

Alresford is built on the plan of the letter T, at the top of which stands the old church; Broad Street being the perpendicular stem, traversed by East Street and West Street, which form the cross-bar.

Supposing that we are coming up from the valley below where we have left behind us the winding river with its old mill, we enter the lower end of Broad Street—that picturesque street with its raised footpaths on either side bordered by trees, and its low, irregular houses, dominated at the upper end by the grey tower of the old church. That dignified looking house on the right-hand side, with its hooded doorway and its tall windows, belonged to Dr. Mitford.

Here it was that the doctor started a practice soon after his marriage with Miss Russell, the only child and heiress of the late Dr. Russell, Rector of Ashe, and here, on the 16th December, 1787, Mary, also an only child, was born.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE IN BROAD STREET]

“A pleasant house in truth it was,” she writes. “The breakfast-room ... was a lofty and spacious apartment literally lined with books, which, with its Turkey carpet, its glowing fire, its sofas and its easy-chairs, seemed, what indeed it was, a very nest of English comfort. The windows opened on a large old-fashioned garden, full of old-fashioned flowers—stocks, roses, honeysuckles and pinks; and that again led into a grassy orchard, abounding with fruit trees....

“What a playground was that orchard! and what playfellows were mine! My maid Nancy with her trim prettiness, my own dear father, handsomest and cheerfullest of men, and the great Newfoundland dog Coe, who used to lie down at my feet as if to invite me to mount him, and then to prance off with his burthen, as if he enjoyed the fun as much as we did!... How well I remember my father’s carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding fast my little three-year-old feet, whilst the little hands hung on to his pig-tail, which I called my bridle; hung so fast, and tugged so heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would come off between my fingers and send his hair floating and the powder flying down his back!... Happy, happy days! It is good to have the memory of such a childhood!”

Miss Mitford writes on another occasion:—

“In common with many only children, I learnt to read at a very early age. My father would perch me on the breakfast-table to exhibit my only accomplishment to some admiring guest, who admired all the more [from my being] a small puny child, gifted with an affluence of curls [who] might have passed for the twin sister of my own great doll. On the table was I perched to read some Foxite newspaper, _Courier_ or _Morning Chronicle_, the Whiggish oracles of the day.... I read leading articles to please the company; and my dear mother recited ‘The Children in the Wood’ to please me. This was my reward, and I looked for my favourite ballad after every performance, just as the piping bull-finch that hung in the window looked for his lump of sugar after going through ‘God save the King.’ The two cases were exactly parallel.”

We have sat in the very room where this scene took place. Little is changed there, and we stepped from its windows “opening down to the ground” into the garden. A narrow footpath, bordered by greensward, led to a small flagged courtyard, flanked on one side by a quaint old brew-house, with its red-tiled roof and peaked windowed centre. Then, passing through a wicket-gate, we found ourselves in the “large old-fashioned garden,” itself gay with flowers as of yore.

An adjoining house has arisen, since the Mitfords lived in their house more than a hundred years ago, but this building has in its turn grown old, so that it does not mar the character of the place.

Beyond the garden lay the orchard, now used as a tennis lawn, but still happily surrounded by trees, through whose boughs peeps of the sweet surrounding country can be seen. Indeed Alresford is entirely encircled by the country, and its three only streets—Broad Street, East Street, and West Street—lead straight into it. Miss Mitford, describing the views on either side of their grounds, says that to the south rose the “picturesque church with its yews and lindens, and beyond it a down as smooth as velvet, dotted with rich islands of coppice, hazel, woodbine and hawthorn”; while down in the valley “gleamed a bright, clear lakelet radiant with swans and water-lilies, which the simple townsfolk were content to call the ‘Great Pond.’”

Dr. Mitford’s house must indeed have been a “pleasant home” for a child, with its garden and orchard for a playground behind the house, and, in front, its cheerful view of the village street with its ever-changing scenes of passing horsemen and carts, or of herds of sheep and cattle driven to market.

Here Mary first learnt, though unconsciously, to enjoy the beauties of nature and to enter into the simple pleasures of village life.

[Illustration]