CHAPTER XXX
A FURTHER GLANCE AT OUR VILLAGE
Miss Mitford writes in 1830:—
“Our village continues to stand pretty much where it did, and has undergone as little change in the last two years as any hamlet of its inches in the county.... I have hinted that it had a trick of standing still, of remaining stationary, unchanged and unimproved in this most changeable and improving world.... There it stands, the same long straggling street of pretty cottages divided by pretty gardens, wholly unchanged in size or appearance, unincreased and undiminished by a single brick.
“Ah, the in-and-out cottage! the dear, dear home!... No changes there! except that the white kitten who sits purring at the window under the great myrtle has succeeded to his lamented grandfather, our beautiful Persian cat. I cannot find an alteration. To be sure, yesterday evening a slight misfortune happened to our goodly tenement, occasioned by the unlucky diligence which, under the conduct of a sleepy coachman and a restive horse, contrived to knock down and demolish the wall of our court, and fairly to drive through the front garden, thereby destroying sundry curious stocks, carnations and geraniums. It is a mercy that the unruly steed was content with battering the wall.... There was quite din enough without any addition. The three insides (ladies) squalling from the interior of that commodious vehicle; the outsides (gentlemen) swearing on the roof; the coachman still half asleep, but unconsciously blowing his horn; we in the house screaming and scolding; the passers-by shouting and hallooing; May, who little brooked such an invasion of her territories, barking in her tremendous lion note, and putting down the other noises like a clap of thunder. The passengers, coachman, horses and spectators all righted at last, and no harm done but to my flowers and to the wall. May, however, stands bewailing the ruins, for that low wall was her favourite haunt; she used to parade backwards and forwards on the top of it as if to show herself, just after the manner of a peacock on the top of a house. But the wall is to be rebuilt to-morrow with old weather-stained bricks—no patchwork! exactly in the same form; May herself will not find out the difference, so that in the way of alteration this little misfortune will pass for nothing. Neither have we any improvements worth calling such, except that the wheeler’s green door has been retouched out of the same pot (as I judge from the tint) with which he furbished up our new-old pony-chaise; that the shop window of our neighbour, the universal dealer Bromley’s, hath been beautified, and his name and calling splendidly set forth in yellow letters on a black ground; and that our landlord of the ‘Rose’ has hoisted a new sign of unparalleled splendour.”
Miss Mitford happened to possess an “historic staff” which she greatly valued, and which had been handed down from one relative to another from its former owner—that Duchess of Athol and Lady of Man of whom mention has been made in an earlier chapter.
At the period we are writing of Miss Mitford used the staff rather as an ornament than otherwise, being then, as she says, “the best walker of her years for a dozen miles round”; but in later life she was glad of its support. “Now this staff,” she writes, “one of the oldest friends I have in the world, is pretty nearly as well known as myself in our Berkshire village.”
One day the stick was not to be found in its usual place in the hall, “it was missing, was gone, was lost!” A great search was made for it far and wide. “Really, ma’am,” quoth her faithful maid, “there is some comfort in the interest the people take in the stick! If it were anything alive—the pony, or Fanchon, or ourselves—they could not be more sorry. Master Brent, ma’am, at the top of the street, he promises to speak to everybody, so does William Wheeler, who goes everywhere, and Mrs. Bromley at the shop; and the carrier and the postman. I daresay the whole parish knows it by this time! I have not been outside the gate to-day, but a dozen people have asked me if we had heard of _our_ stick!”
The bustle of the village and the anxiety of Mary were, however, soon to be allayed. “At ten o’clock one evening a rustling of the front door latch was heard, together with a pattering of little feet, then the little feet advanced into the house and some little tongues gained courage to tell their good news—the stick was found!
An intimate friend of Miss Mitford’s, a certain Miss James, of Binfield Park, had been staying for a short time at the inn hard by, on which occasion Mary addressed the following lines to her:—
“The village inn! The wood-fire burning bright, The solitary taper’s flickering light! The lowly couch! the casement swinging free! My noblest friend, was this a place for thee? Yet in that humble room, from all apart, We poured forth mind for mind and heart for heart, Ranging from idlest words and tales of mirth To the deep mysteries of heaven and earth.
* * * * *
No fitting place; yet (inconsistent strain And selfish) come, I prythee! come again.”
* * * * *
In a story entitled _The Black Velvet Bag_ Miss Mitford has given an amusing account of some of her shopping experiences in “Belford Regis,” her name for Reading, where the various purchases for the small household of Three Mile Cross were usually made.
“Last Friday fortnight,” she writes, “was one of those anomalies in the weather with which we English people are visited for our sins; a day of intolerable wind and insupportable dust, an equinoctial gale out of season, a piece of March unnaturally foisted into the very heart of May.... On that day did I set forth to the good town of B—— on the feminine errand called shopping. I am a true daughter of Eve, a dear lover of bargains and bright colours, and, knowing this, have generally been wise enough to keep as much as I can out of temptation. At last a sort of necessity arose for some slight purchases. The shopping was inevitable, and I undertook the whole concern at once, most heroically resolving to spend just so much and no more, and half comforting myself that I had a full morning’s work of indispensables and should have no time for extraneous extravagances.
“There was to be sure a prodigious accumulation of errands and wants. The evening before they had been set down in great form on a slip of paper headed thus—‘things wanted.’ To how many and various catalogues that title would apply—from him who wants a blue riband to him who wants bread and cheese! My list was astounding. It was written in double columns in an invisible hand.... In good open printing it would have cut a respectable figure as a catalogue and filled a decent number of pages—a priced catalogue too, for as I had a given sum to carry to market I amused myself with calculating the proper and probable cost of every article, in which process I most egregiously cheated the shop-keeper and myself by copying with the credulity of hope from the puffs of newspapers, and expecting to buy fine solid wearable goods at advertising prices. In this way I stretched my money a good deal further than it would go, and swelled my catalogue, so that at last, in spite of compression, I had no room for another word, and was obliged to crowd several small but important articles such as cotton, laces, pins, needles, shoe-strings, etc., into that very irregular and disorderly store-house—that place where most things deposited are lost—_my memory_, by courtesy so called.
“The written list was safely consigned, with a well-filled purse, to my usual repository, a black velvet bag, and the next morning I and my bag, with its nicely balanced contents of wants and money, were safely convoyed in a little open carriage to the good town of B——. There I dismounted and began to bargain most vigorously, visiting the cheapest shops, cheapening the cheapest articles, yet wisely buying the strongest and the best, a little astonished at first to find everything so much dearer than I had set it down, yet soon reconciled to this misfortune by the magical influence which shopping possesses over a woman’s fancy—all the sooner reconciled as the monetary list lay unlooked at and unthought of in its grave receptacle, the black velvet bag.
“On I went with an air of cheerful business, of happy importance, till my money began to wax small. Certain small aberrations had occurred, too, in my economy. One article that had happened, by rare accident, to be below my calculation, and indeed below any calculation—calico at ninepence, fine, thick, strong, wide calico at ninepence absolutely enchanted me and I took the whole piece; then after buying M. [material for] a gown according to order, I saw one that I liked better and bought that too. Then I fell in love, was actually captivated by a sky-blue sash and handkerchief,—not the poor, thin greeny colour which usually passes under that dishonoured name, but the rich full tint of the noonday sky, and a cap riband really pink that might have vied with the inside leaves of a moss-rose. Then in hunting after cheapness I got into obscure shops where, not finding what I asked for, I was fain to take something that they had, purely to make a compensation for the trouble of lugging out drawers and answering questions. Lastly I was fairly coaxed into some articles by the irresistibility of the sellers, [in one case] by the fluent impudence of a lying shopman who, under cover of a well-darkened window, affirmed on his honour that his brown satin was a perfect match to my green pattern, and forced the said satin down my throat accordingly. With these helps my money melted all too fast; at half-past five my purse was entirely empty, and as shopping with an empty purse has by no means the relish of shopping with a full one I was quite willing and ready to go home to dinner, pleased as a child with my purchases and wholly unsuspecting the sins of omission, the errands unperformed, which were the natural result of my unconsulted _memoranda_ and my treacherous memory.
“Home I returned a happy and proud woman, wise in my own conceit, a thrifty fashion-monger, laden like a pedlar, with huge packages in stout brown holland tied up with whipcord, and genteel little parcels papered and pack-threaded in shopman-like style. At last we were safely stowed in the pony-chaise, which had much ado to hold us, my little black bag as usual in my lap. When we ascended the steep hill out of B—— a sudden puff of wind took at once my cottage-bonnet and my large cloak, blew the bonnet off my head so that it hung behind me, suspended by the riband, and fairly snapped the string of the cloak, which flew away much in the style of John Gilpin’s renowned in story. My companion, pitying my plight, exerted himself manfully to regain the fly-away garments, shoved the head into the bonnet, or the bonnet over the head (I do not know which phrase best describes the manœuvre), with one hand and recovered the refractory cloak with the other. It was wonderful what a tug he was forced to give before that obstinate cloak could be brought round; it was swelled with the wind like a bladder, animated, so to say, like a living thing, and threatened to carry pony and chaise and riders and packages backward down the hill, as if it had been a sail of a ship. At last the contumacious garment was mastered. We righted, and by dint of sitting sideways and turning my back on my kind comrade, I got home without any further damage than the loss of my bag, which, though not missed before the chaise had been unladen, had undoubtedly gone by the board in the gale, and I lamented my trusty companion without in the least foreseeing the use it would probably be of to my reputation.
“Immediately after dinner I produced my purchases. They were much admired, and the quantity when spread out in our little room being altogether dazzling, and the quality satisfactory, the cheapness was never doubted. Nobody calculated, and the bills being really lost in the lost bag, and the particular prices just as much lost in memory (the ninepenny calico was the only article whose cost occurred to me), I passed, without telling anything like a fib, merely by a discreet silence, for the best and thriftiest bargainer that ever went shopping. After some time spent very pleasantly in admiration on one side and display on the other we were interrupted by the demand for some of the little articles which I had forgotten.
“‘The sewing-silk, please, ma’am.’
“‘Sewing-silk! I don’t know—look about.’
“Ah! she might look long enough! no sewing-silk was there. ‘Very strange.’
“Presently came other enquiries. ‘Where’s the tape?’ ‘The tape!’
“‘Yes, my dear; and the needles, pins, cotton, stay-laces, boot-laces.’
“‘The bobbin, the ferret, shirt buttons, shoe-strings?’ quoth she of the sewing-silk, taking up the cry, and forthwith began a search.... At last she suddenly desisted from her rummage.
“‘Without doubt, ma’am, they are in the reticule, and all lost,’ said she in a very pathetic tone.
“‘Really,’ said I, a little conscious stricken, ‘I don’t recollect, perhaps I might forget.’
“‘But you never could forget so many things; besides, you wrote them down.’
“‘I don’t know. I am not sure.’ But I was not listened to; Harriet’s conjecture had been metamorphosed into a certainty; all my sins of omission were stowed in the reticule, and before bed-time the little black bag held forgotten things enough to fill a sack.
“Never was reticule so lamented by all but its owner; a boy was immediately dispatched to look for it, and on his returning empty-handed there was even a talk of having it cried. My care, on the other hand, was all directed to prevent its being found. I had had the good luck to lose it in a suburb of B—— renowned for filching, and I remembered that the street was at that moment full of people ... so I went to bed in the comfortable assurance that it was gone for ever.
“But there is nothing certain in this world—not even a thief’s dishonesty. Two old women, who had pounced at once on my valuable property, quarrelled about the plunder, and one of them in a fit of resentment at being cheated of her share went to the mayor of B—— and informed against her companion. The mayor, an intelligent and active magistrate, immediately took the disputed bag and all its contents into his own possession, and as he is also a man of great politeness he restored it as soon as possible to the right owner. The very first thing that saluted my eyes when I awoke in the morning was a note from Mr. Mayor with a sealed packet. The fatal truth was visible. There it lay, that identical black bag, with its name-tickets, its cambric handkerchief, its unconsulted list and its thirteen bills.... I had recovered my reticule and lost my reputation!”