CHAPTER XXXII

THE MAY-HOUSES

Miss Mitford delighted in all the simple pleasures of country life, and entered into them with the enthusiasm of youth.

On a certain morning in spring-time she and her father set out in their pony-chaise to attend the “Maying” at Bramley.

“Never was a day more congenial to a happy purpose,” she writes. “It was a day made for country weddings and dances on the green—a day of dazzling light, of ardent sunshine falling on hedgerows and meadows fresh with spring showers.... We passed through the well-known and beautiful scenery of W——[14] Park and the pretty village of M——[15] with a feeling of new admiration, as if we had never before felt their charms.... On we passed gaily and happily as far as we knew our way, perhaps a little further, for the place of our destination was new to both of us, when we had the luck, good or bad, to meet with a director in the person of the butcher of M——. He soon gave us the customary and unintelligible directions as to lanes and turnings, first to the right, then to the left, etc....

[Footnote 14: Wokefield Park.]

[Footnote 15: Mortimer.]

“On we went, twisting and turning through a labyrinth of lanes ... till we came suddenly on a solitary farm-house which had one solitary inmate, a smiling, middle-aged woman, who came to us and offered her services with the most alert civility.

“All her boys and girls were gone to the Maying, she said, and she remained to keep house.

“‘The Maying! We are near Bramley then? Is there no carriage road? Where are we?’

“‘At Silchester, close to the walls, only half a mile from the church.’

“‘At Silchester!’ and in ten minutes we had said a thankful farewell to our kind informant, had retraced our steps a little, had turned up another lane, and found ourselves at the foot of that commanding spot which antiquaries call the amphitheatre, close under the walls of the Roman city.”

Miss Mitford has written the following lines on this striking scene:—

“Firm as rocks thy ruins stand And hem around thy fertile land; That land where once a city fair Flourished and pour’d her thousands there: Where now the waving cornfields glow And trace thy wide streets as they grow. Ah! chronicle of ages gone, Thou dwellest in thy pride alone.”

“Under the walls,” she continues, “I [met] an old acquaintance, the schoolmaster of Silchester, who happened to be there in his full glory, playing the part of cicerone to a party of ladies, and explaining far more than he knows, or than anyone knows of streets and gates and sites of temples, which, by the way, the worthy pedagogue usually calls parish churches. I never was so glad to see him in my life, never thought he could have spoken with so much sense and eloquence as were comprised in the two words ‘straight forward,’ by which he answered our enquiry as to the road to Bramley.

“And forward we went by a way beautiful beyond description, and left the venerable walls behind us.... But I must loiter on the road no longer. Our various delays of a broken bridge—a bog—another wrong turning—and a meeting with a loaded waggon in a lane too narrow to pass—all this must remain untold.

“At last we reached a large farm-house at Bramley; another mile remained to the Green, but that was impassable. Nobody thinks of riding at Bramley.... We must walk, but the appearance of gay crowds of rustics, all passing along one path, gave assurance that this time we should not lose our way.... Cross two fields more and up a quiet lane and we are at the Maying, announced afar off by the merry sound of music and the merrier clatter of childish voices. Here we are at the Green, a little turfy spot where three roads meet, close, shut in by hedgerows, with a pretty white cottage and its long slip of a garden at one angle.... In the midst grows a superb horse-chestnut in the full glory of its flowery pyramids, and from the trunk of this chestnut the May-houses commence. They are covered alleys built of green boughs, decorated with garlands and great bunches of flowers—the gayest that blow—lilacs, guelder roses, peonies, tulips, stocks—hanging down like chandeliers among the dancers; for of dancers, gay, dark-eyed young girls in straw bonnets and white gowns, and their lovers in their Sunday attire, the May-houses were full. The girls had mostly the look of extreme youth, and danced well and quietly like ladies—too much so.... Outside was the fun. It is the outside, the upper gallery of the world that has that good thing. There were children laughing, eating, trying to cheat and being cheated round an ancient and practised vender of oranges and ginger-bread; and on the other side of the tree lay a merry group of old men.... That group would have suited Teniers; it smoked and drank a little, but it laughed a great deal more. There were ... young mothers strolling about with infants in their arms, and ragged boys peeping through the boughs at the dancers, and the bright sun shining gloriously on all this innocent happiness. Oh, what a pretty sight it was—worth losing our way for!”

We hear of another Maying which took place in a neighbouring hamlet of “Our Village,” which Miss Mitford calls Whitley Wood, into which narrative is interwoven an amusing account of the love affairs of mine host of the “Rose”—the village inn hard by the Mitfords’ cottage.

“Landlord Sims, the master of the revels,” writes Miss Mitford, “and our very good neighbour, is a portly, bustling man of five-and-forty or thereabout, with a hale, jovial visage, a merry eye, a pleasant smile and a general air of good-fellowship.... There is not a better companion or a more judicious listener in the county.... No one can wonder at Master Sim’s popularity.

“After his good wife’s death this popularity began to extend itself in a remarkable manner amongst the females of the neighbourhood. [His] Betsy and Letty were good little girls, quick, civil and active, yet, poor things, what could such young girls know of a house like the ‘Rose’? All would go to rack and ruin without the eye of a mistress! Master Sims must look out for a wife. So thought the whole female world, and apparently Master Sims began to think so himself.

[Illustration: OLD SHOEING FORGE]

“The first fair one to whom his attention was directed was a rosy, pretty widow, a pastry-cook of the next town who arrived in our village on a visit to her cousin the baker for the purpose of giving confectionery lessons to his wife. Nothing was ever so hot as that courtship. During the week that the lady of pie-crust stayed, her lover almost lived in the oven.... It would be a most suitable match, as all the parish agreed.... And when our landlord carried her back to B—— in his new-painted green cart all the village agreed that they were gone to be married, and the ringers were just setting up a peal when Master Sims returned alone, single, crestfallen, dejected; the bells stopped of themselves, and we heard no more of the pretty pastry-cook. For three months after that rebuff mine host, albeit not addicted to assertions, testified an equal dislike to women and tartlets, widows and plum-cake....

“The fit, however, wore off in time, and he began again to follow the advice of his neighbours and to look out for a wife, up street and down street.... The down-street lady was a widow also, the portly, comely relict of our drunken village blacksmith, who began to find her shop, her journeymen and her eight children ... rather more than a lone woman could manage, and to sigh for a helpmate to ease her of her cares.... Master Sims was the coadjutor on whom she had inwardly pitched, and accordingly she threw out broad hints to that effect every time she encountered him ... and Mr. Sims was far too gallant and too much in the habit of assenting to listen unmoved ... and the whispers and smiles and hand-pressings were becoming very tender.... This was his down-street flame.

“The rival lady was Miss Lydia Day, the carpenter’s sister, a slim, upright maiden, not remarkable for beauty and not quite so young as she had been, who, on inheriting a small annuity from the mistress with whom she had spent the best of her days, retired to her native village to live on her means. A genteel, demure, quiet personage was Miss Lydia Day, much addicted to snuff and green tea, and not averse to a little gentle scandal—for the rest a good sort of woman and _un très bon parti_ for Master Sims, who ... made love to her whenever she came into his head.... Remiss as he was, he had no lack of encouragement to complain of—for she ... put on her best silk, and her best simper, and lighted up her faded complexion into something approaching a blush whenever he came to visit her. And this was Master Sims’ up-street love.

“So stood affairs at the ‘Rose’ when the day of the Maying arrived, and the double flirtation ... proved on this occasion extremely useful. Each of the ladies contributed her aid to the festival, Miss Lydia by tying up sentimental garlands for the May-house ... the widow by giving her whole bevy of boys and girls a holiday and turning them loose in the neighbourhood to collect flowers as they could. Very useful auxiliaries were these eight foragers; they scoured the country far and near—irresistible mendicants, pardonable thieves!

“... By the time a cricket match [which opened proceedings] was over the world began to be gay at Whitley Wood. Carts and gigs and horses and carriages and people of all sorts arrived from all quarters.... Fiddlers, ballad-singers, cake, baskets—Punch—Master Frost crying cherries—a Frenchman with dancing dogs—a Bavarian woman selling brooms—half a dozen stalls with fruit and frippery—and twenty noisy games of quoits and bowls and ninepins gave to the assemblage the bustle, clatter and gaiety of a Dutch fair. Plenty of eating in the booths ... and landlord Sims bustling everywhere, assisted by the little light-footed maidens, his daughters, all smiles and curtsies, and by a pretty black-eyed young woman—name unknown—with whom, even in the midst of his hurry, he found time, as it seemed to me, for a little philandering. What would the widow and Miss Lydia have said? But they remained in happy ignorance—the one drinking tea in most decorous primness in a distant marquee, the other in full chase after the most unlucky of all her urchins.

“Meanwhile the band struck up in the Mayhouse, and the dance, after a little dinner, was fairly set afloat—an honest English country dance—with ladies and gentlemen at the top and country lads and lassies at the bottom; a happy mixture of cordial kindness on the one hand and pleased respect on the other. It was droll though to see the beplumed and beflowered French hats, the silks and the furbelows sailing and rustling amidst the straw bonnets and cotton gowns of the humbler dancers.

“Well! the dance finished, the sun went down, and we departed. The Maying is over, the booths carried away and the May-house demolished. Everything has fallen into its old position except the love affairs of landlord Sims. The pretty lass with the black eyes, who first made her appearance at Whitley Wood, is actually staying at the Rose Inn on a visit to his daughters, and the village talk goes that she is to be the mistress of that thriving hostelry and the wife of its master.... Nobody knows exactly who the black-eyed damsel may be—but she’s young and pretty and civil and modest, and without intending to depreciate the merits of either of her competitors, I cannot help thinking that our good neighbour has shown his taste.”