Chapter V: The Marriage (1)

Fontanel received a considerable party of guests for the marriage. Miss Laura and Miss Lydia, who were to be at the head of affairs while the new Mrs Summerhayes was absent on her wedding tour, arrived two days before, that they might get into the ways of the place, and know what was required of them, which was not very much, for Mary was but a languid housekeeper. Then there were two aunts, an uncle, and some cousins of Mrs Clifford, none of whom in the least approved of the match, though decorum and curiosity and kindness prompted them to countenance poor Mary in her foolishness, notwithstanding their general surprise, like Miss Harwood, that she had not the sense to know when she was well off. Then there was Charley from Eton, who had grown so much lately, that his mother blushed more than ever when he kissed her and said something kind about her marriage. These were not pleasant days for poor Mrs Clifford. She knew in her heart that nobody particularly approved of her, not even Tom’s sisters—that people were saying it was just what was to be expected, and that a woman left at her age with so much property in her hands was sure to make a fool of herself. She knew that the ladies when they got together had little conversations over her—that one wondered why she could not make herself happy with these dear children, and another with this fine place—and that a third mused what poor Mr Clifford would have said could he have known. Poor Mary was very thankful when the day dawned on her wedding-morning—she was glad, as brides seldom are, of the arrival of the fated moment which was to place things beyond the reach of censure or criticism, and relieve her from her purgatory. The Rector of Summerhayes had not been called on to do that piece of duty. The bridegroom luckily had a friend whose privilege it was; and still more luckily there was a little old disused church within the grounds of Fontanel in which the ceremony was to be performed, without the necessity of encountering the gaze and remarks of the village. It was not intended to be a pretty wedding or to put on those colours of joy which become the espousals of youth. Mingled and complicated, as are the thoughts of middle age, were the feelings of the two who stood side by side before the bare rural altar. The bridegroom was slight and tall in figure, with a careless languid air, through which occasionally a little gleam of excitement sparkled. If you watched him closely you could see that his mind was no way absorbed in the ceremonial of his marriage. The quick sudden glance here and there under his eyelids, of those cold but clear grey eyes, turned inquiringly to everything within his range. He read in the looks of the clergyman, even while he pronounced the nuptial blessing, what his opinion was of the entire transaction. He penetrated the mask of propriety in which the bride’s relations concealed their feelings—he investigated with oft-repeated momentary glances the face of Charley, who stood in his Etonian certainty of manhood, premature but not precocious, near his mother’s side. Mr Summerhayes even scanned, when all was over, the downcast countenance of Loo, who stood behind, watching with stout endurance, and resolute not to cry during the entire ceremony. What was the meaning which lay in those quick furtive darts of the bridegroom’s eye it was impossible to say; his closest friend could not have elucidated this strange secret by-play, of which nobody in the company was conscious, except, perhaps, one child; but one thing it proved at any rate, that his heart at this special moment was not engrossed, to the exclusion of everything else, by his bride.

Mary was much less mistress of herself. She cried quietly under her veil as she stood and listened to the familiar words. She repeated those that fell to her with a little shiver. In her heart she could not but feel what a terrible act she was completing as she vowed her love and obedience over again, and separated her future from her past. But Mary, with her downcast eyes, was insensible to everybody’s opinion at that moment. Had she been standing in a wilderness she could not have felt more isolated. She was conscious only of her new husband by her side—of an indistinct figure before her—of God above and around, a kind of awful shadow looking on. Mr Summerhayes was aware of her tears, and they moved him so that his colour heightened involuntarily, and he pressed her hand with a warning pressure when it came to that part of the ceremony. But Mary herself was not aware that she was crying till she felt this touch of remonstrance, which startled her back into consciousness. Such was this marriage, at which, as at other marriages, people looked on with various shades of sympathy and criticism, and which, with all its concealed terrors and outward rejoicing, was the free act of hearts uncoerced and acting only at their own pleasure—a free act, suggested by no third party, unless, perhaps, it might happen to be a certain grim inflexible Fate who, if the reins are but yielded to her for a moment, pursues her victim through a throng of inevitable consequences. But perhaps, when a woman is being married like Mary Clifford, it is a kind of comfort to her to feel as if she could not help herself, rather than to know that she is entering all these new dangers voluntarily, and in obedience to nobody’s will but her own.

“Well, I am sure, I wish them every comfort in life,” said Miss Harwood, as she stood leaning on her brother’s arm at the hall door of Fontanel, watching the carriage drive off which contained the happy pair. “She can’t feel much like a bride, poor thing, leaving all these children behind her. I am sure I wish her every happiness. I hope she’ll never live to repent it,” said Miss Harwood, with a sigh.

“Don’t be spiteful,” said the Rector. “This is not a time for such ill-omened wishes. It’s a very suitable match, and I wish them joy.”

“Oh, Mr Harwood,” said Miss Laura, taking up her position at the Rector’s other side, thus effecting a natural separation from Mary’s relations, who were comparing sentiments a little apart from the Summerhayes party—“a suitable match! when dear Tom is well known to represent the oldest family in the county, and might have married anybody—not to say a word against dear Mary, who is our sister now, and such a sweet creature. But oh, Mr Harwood,” cried Miss Lydia, who had interposed, as usual, “to talk of a suitable match!”

“There are no suitable matches nowadays. I don’t believe in ’em, by Jove!” said Major Aldborough, who, with eyes slightly reddened by champagne, was watching the carriage just then disappearing down the avenue.

“But there might be, Major,” said Miss Lydia, so softly that her sister could not take up the meek remark.

The Major only answered “By Jove!” under his breath. He was startled by the close vicinity—the gentle look—the mild suggestion. He moved a little away in a momentary panic. There was never any telling, as he said to himself, what these women might mean.

“It is so strange to be left in charge of the house,” said Miss Laura, “it gives one such a funny feeling. I don’t know how in the world we shall do with all the responsibility; but dear Mary insisted upon it, you know—though I am sure Mrs Tansey would have been much more suitable for the head of the table than one of us, who are so inexperienced,” cried Miss Lydia; “but dear Mary thought it best for the children’s sake. I hope, dear Mrs Tansey, you don’t mind being our guest,” proceeded the sisterly duet; “dear Mary thought it of such importance that the children should get used to us—though they know us perfectly well, still things are all so different; though otherwise, of course, she would so much have preferred you.”

“Oh, pray, don’t think it necessary to apologise for my niece to me, Miss Summerhayes,” said the offended aunt. “Mary has consulted her own inclinations, and so long as she is happy, that is all _we_ can _possibly_ want of her. I think she is _quite_ right to make friends, if she can, in her new family. She knows she can always calculate upon _us_ if she ever wants any service,” added the bride’s relation, with a slight heightening of colour and the ghost of a curtsy. The Miss Summerhayes were not unequal to the emergency.

“We all know how much poor dear Mary is liked among her own friends,” cried Miss Lydia. “Your dear girls were so fond of her last year when they spent such a long time at Fontanel; and dear Mary has such a taste in presents,” said Miss Laura, coming in so eagerly that she began out of breath. “We have gone shopping with her often when she was buying her little souvenirs. I hope you don’t think it will make any difference now she is married again. She is _so_ affectionate; but as for wanting services from anybody, that is very unlikely,” resumed the elder sister, “now she has dear Tom. Dear Tom is so very devoted,” said Miss Laura, breaking in headlong. “You would think she was only eighteen to see all the attention he pays her. It is quite sweet to see them, like two turtle-doves.”

Such being the conversation that succeeded immediately upon the departure of the bridal pair, it is not to be supposed that the dinner-table was spread with a very joyful feast, or that the evening was spent in much happiness. Mary’s relations, who had up to this time felt themselves much at ease at Fontanel, kept greatly by themselves during the remainder of the wedding-day. Their occasional minglings with the Summerhayes party called forth bursts of smart dialogue, more exciting than amiable, and the opposing sides contended much for the notice of Loo and the other children, when they came down-stairs in their new dresses after dinner. It made little Loo’s heart sick to feel herself enfolded in the embraces of Miss Lydia and Laura on one side, and then to be talked to and admonished by Aunt Tansey on the other, who hoped she would be a good girl, and a great comfort to her poor mother. The children could not tell what to make of the aspect of affairs. Mamma gone, who was the sun and centre of the domestic world, and already a new rule and vague possibilities of change in the startled house. Down-stairs among the servants, though the means of merry-making were plentiful, this threatening cloud was even more apparent. A new master, known to like “his own way,” was an alarming shadow impending over the little community hitherto mildly and liberally governed by the mistress, whom her servants could scarcely forgive for the step she had taken. “With five lovely children and every blessin’ as this world could afford,” as the housekeeper said, shaking her troubled head. The new husband by no means ranked among the blessings of Providence to the mistress of Fontanel in anybody’s judgment, and nowhere was Mary’s rash act resented more warmly than in the servants’ hall.

“But, Loo,” said Etonian Charley, next morning, when Aunt Tansey and all her belongings had left Fontanel, and everything had fallen under the restless sway of the Miss Summerhayes, “I’m not going to put up with all this. You said we were to stand up for mamma; you mean we are only to pretend to stand up for mamma, you little humbug. Now that’s not my meaning,” said the heir of Fontanel. “I’m not going to make-believe that I think she’s done right, when I don’t. I am going to swallow cousin Tom right out,” cried the boy, not without a little flush on his face. “It’s a little awkward, to be sure, to know what to call him—but look here, Loo—I mean to stand by my mother without any humbug. I mean to think she’s done the very best for us all, and for herself too; and if she don’t think the same when she comes back, I’ll try to make her; and if you look black, as you’re looking, you are not the little brick I took you for, and I won’t have anything more to do with you, Loo.”

“Oh, Charley, I am not half so good as you are,” cried the admiring little sister, looking up to him with tearful eyes. Charley’s resolution acted like a charm upon the house in general; and so, with a gradually improving temper, though much pressed and fretted by Miss Laura and Miss Lydia, the nursery and the servants’ hall, and all the dependencies of Fontanel, waited for the advent of the new master and the return of Mrs Summerhayes.

AN ENGLISH VILLAGE—IN FRENCH.[1]

The old pictures of village life in England will hardly suit for these modern times. The pleasant little social circle which either existed, or more often was imagined to exist, as in Miss Austen’s charming fictions, in the large well-to-do country village, is to be found there no longer. No one condescends in these days to live in the country, unless he can either do so, or affect to do so, more or less _en grand seigneur_. A change has passed over ‘Our Village,’ even since Mary Russell Mitford so admirably sketched it. The half-pay naval lieutenant or army captain (if any such survive) has retired into the back street of a cheap watering-place, not to the improvement either of his position or his happiness. The village surgeon is no longer an oracle; railways have brought “the first advice” (at any rate, in the county town) within the reach of almost all his patients; and he has either disappeared altogether, or, if he still exists as the “Union Doctor,” badly paid and little respected, he is seldom now a gentleman. Village lawyers—happily or unhappily—are become things unknown: and as for any gentleman’s family of independent but moderate means condescending to that kind of rural seclusion, it is unheard of. If there is any educated resident in any country village not fixed there by some local interest or occupation, he is apt to have something suspicious about his character or antecedents—to be a refugee from his lawful creditors, or his lawful wife, or something of that sort.

So that English village life now resolves itself mainly into that of the parson; for the squire, even if he be resident, scarcely forms part of the same social circle. And as to the rest, between the university graduate, of more or less refinement and education, and the opulent farmer such as he is at present, there lies a gulf which no fancy can exaggerate, and which the best intentions on both sides fail to bridge over. Where village spires stand thick together, where the majority of the rectors or vicars are men of the same way of thinking, and where it is the fashion of the country to be social, there is a good deal of pleasant intercourse, no doubt, between the parsons’ families, and as much “society,” in the real if not in the conventional sense, as is needful to keep the higher elements of humanity from stagnating; but where parishes spread far and wide over a poor or thinly-populated district, or, worse still, where religious sectarianism reckons its clergy into “High” and “Low,” and the Rector of A. shakes his head and lifts his eyebrows when any allusion is made to the Vicar of B.—there, the man whose lot has been cast in a country parsonage had need have abundant resources within himself, and be supremely indifferent to the stir of human interests without. He will, in many cases, have almost as far to ride in search of a congenial neighbour as though he were in the bush of Australia; he will find something like the solitude of the old monastery, without the chance of its peace and quietness.

Not that such a life is dull or uninteresting, by any means, unless in the unfortunate case of the man finding no interest in his duties. One of this world’s many compensations is, that the busy man, be he what else he may, is never dull, and seldom discontented. So it is, almost always, in the country parsonage; without claiming any high standard of zeal or self-devotion for its occupants, there is probably at least as much quiet enjoyment, and as little idle melancholy or fretful discontent, to be found among them, as among any other class of educated men.

Still, it is a life which it would be very difficult for a foreigner to appreciate or understand. The relation of the English country rector to his villagers is totally unlike that of the Lutheran or Roman Catholic priest. Not claiming—or at least not being in a position to maintain—anything like the amount of spiritual authority which is exercised by the pastor under both these other systems, he wields, in point of fact, an amount of influence superior to either. He cannot command the servile and terrified obedience in externals which is often paid by the Irish and Italian peasant to his spiritual guide; but he holds a moral power over his parishioners—even over those who professedly decline his ministrations—of the extent of which neither he nor they are always conscious, but to the reality of which the enemies of the Established Church in England are beginning to awake.

The reading world has perhaps been rather over-supplied, of late years, with novelettes in which the village parson, with some of the very white or very black sheep of his flock, have been made to walk and talk more or less naturally for their amusement and edification; but the sight of a little French book on the subject struck us as something new. It is very desirable that our good friends across the Channel should know something about our ways of going on at home; and that not only in the public life of large towns, or on the highways of travel and commerce, but in our country villages and rural districts. But French attempts at English domestic sketches have not, on the whole, been successful. It is, indeed, most difficult for a foreign visitor to draw pictures of society in any country which would pass muster under the critical examination of a native. We took up this ‘Vie de Village en Angleterre’ with some notion of being amused by so familiar a subject treated by a Frenchman; but we soon found we were in very safe hands. The writer knows us well, and describes us admirably, very much as we are; the foreign element is just strong enough to be occasionally amusing, but never in any way ridiculous; and we should be as much surprised at the correctness of the writer’s observation as charmed with the candour and good taste of the little volume, if we had not heard it credibly whispered that, although written for French readers (and in undeniable French), it may be claimed as the production of an English pen.

Whatever may be the secret of the authorship, the little book will repay the reader of either nation. It is written in the person of a political refugee, who, armed with one or two good introductions, comes to pass a period of exile in England. While previously travelling in Switzerland, he has made acquaintance with a Mr Norris, an energetic country parson of the modern “muscular” type. He it is who persuades the wanderer to study in detail, by personal observation, that “inner life” of England which, he has already learnt to believe, and rightly, forms and shapes, more than anything else, her national and political character. Hitherto, as he confesses to his new acquaintance, the coldness and reserve of such English as he has met with have rather frightened him; yet he has always admired in them that _solidarité_—which we will not attempt to translate. The hostility between the labouring classes in France and those above them has always appeared to him the great knot of political difficulties in that country—a source of more danger to real liberty and security than any other national evil.

He determines, therefore, to see and study this domestic character of England for himself—“not in her political institutions, which we Frenchmen have been too much accused of wishing to copy, but in that social life which may very possibly explain the secret of her strength and her liberty.”—(P. 22.)

It was not his first visit to London; and, arriving in the month of March, he finds the climate as bad, and the great city as dingy and dirty, as ever. He does not appear to have noticed our painful efforts to consume our own smoke, or our ambitious designs in modern street architecture. On the other hand, he mercifully ignores—if he saw it—our Great Exhibition. The crowded gin-palaces, and the state of the Haymarket by night, disgust him, as well they might; and he escapes from the murky Babylon, as soon as he has taken a few lessons to improve his colloquial English, to pay the promised visit to his friend Mr Norris at his parsonage at Kingsford; stopping on his way to deliver a letter of introduction to an English countess, an old friend of his family, who has a seat close to Lynmere, a sort of pet village, where the ornamented cottages form a portion of the park scenery.

In his walk from the station, he makes the acquaintance of a “Madame Jones,” whose cottage, with its wooden paling and scarlet geraniums, abutting on the pleasant common, has its door invitingly open. He pauses to admire the little English picture as he passes by. Good Mrs Jones observes him, and begs him to walk in; partly, we must hope (and we trust all foreign readers will believe), out of genuine English hospitality—though we doubt if all village dames in Surrey would take kindly to a Frenchman on the tramp—partly, it must be confessed, with the British female’s natural eye to business. “Perhaps Monsieur was looking out for a ‘_petit logement_?’” For Mrs Jones has two rooms to let; and even a foreigner’s money, paid punctually, is not to be despised. Monsieur was looking out for nothing of the kind, but he takes the rooms forthwith; and indeed any modest-minded gentleman, French or English, who wanted country board and lodging on a breezy common in Surrey, could not have done better. Here is what our traveller gets for twenty-two shillings a-week; we only hope it will stop the mouths of all foreigners who rail at the dearness of English living, when they read here the terms on which a _petit logement_ may be found in a pleasant situation in the home counties—two rooms, “fresh and clean,” comfortably furnished (with a picture of the Queen and a pot of musk into the bargain), and board as follows:—

“For breakfast she gave me tea with good milk, excellent
bread-and-butter, accompanied either by a rasher of broiled bacon or
fresh eggs. For dinner there were often ‘_ragouts avec force oignons_’
(Irish stew?), boiled mutton, or sometimes a beef-steak ‘_très-dur_,’
potatoes and boiled cabbage, with a glass of good beer and a bit of
cheese. No dessert, but occasionally a pudding. On Sundays, roast-beef
and plum-pudding were apparently the rule without exception, for they
never failed to appear. The tea in the evening was much the same as
the breakfast. If I had wished for supper, I might have had cold meat,
bread, a lettuce, and a glass of beer.”

If Mrs Jones be not as entirely fictitious as Mrs Harris, and would enclose us a few cards, we think we could undertake that her lodgings (with a countess and a pet village, too, close by) should not be untenanted for a week in summertime. We feel sure, however, that the good lady is _not_ a creature of mere imagination: when we read the description of her, we recall her as an old acquaintance, though we cannot remember her address:—

“As for this good woman’s personal appearance, she had nothing
attractive about her except her scrupulous cleanliness. Her age
belonged to that mysterious epoch comprised between forty and sixty.
She had an intelligent countenance; but what was most marked about her
was a slightly military air, and a black silk bonnet which, planted on
the top of her head, tilted forward over her face, and usually
concealed half of it. The two strings were carefully pinned back over
the brim, and the ends fluttered on each side the bonnet, like the
plume of a _chasseur de Vincennes_. That bonnet, she never left it off
for a moment; and my indiscreet imagination went so far as to
speculate what could possibly become of it at night.... Though I had
begged her to consider herself absolute mistress in all domestic
matters—and though, moreover, I should have found considerable
difficulty in ordering my own dinner—she never failed to come in every
morning at breakfast-time ‘for orders,’ as she called it. It was a
little ruse of hers to secure a moment for the active exercise of her
somewhat gossiping tongue. I was enabled to endure the torrent of
words of which good Mrs Jones disburdened herself on such occasions
the more philosophically, inasmuch as she was nowise exacting in the
matter of an answer, and now and then gave me some interesting bits of
information.”

The contrast which follows is drawn from a shrewd observation of national characteristics on both sides of the Channel:—

“This respectable dame possessed in a high degree the good qualities
and the defects of her class of Englishwomen. In France, the manners
of women of her order are full of expansion and sympathy; and a small
farmer’s wife, however ignorant she may be, will always find means to
interest you in her affairs, and to enter into yours. In England, on
the contrary, with all her gossiping upon trifling subjects, she will
maintain the strictest reserve, so far as you are concerned, upon
matters of any importance. She serves you much better than a
Frenchwoman would, because she looks upon you in the light of a
master—a guest whose rank and character she makes the most of, because
that rank and character raise her in her own estimation; but it is
only in some very exceptional case that she will talk to you about
anything which touches her personally, or that she will venture to
confess that she is thinking about your concerns—that would be, in her
eyes, a breach of proper respect.

“This is the peculiar feature in the relations between the different
classes of society in England. Society there is profoundly
aristocratic; there is no tradesman, be he ever so professed a
Radical, who does not become a greater man in his own eyes by
receiving the most commonplace act of courtesy from a lord; no servant
who does not feel an additional satisfaction in waiting on a master
whose manners have a touch of haughtiness, because such manners strike
him as a mark of superiority. It is just as Rousseau says: ‘Clara
consoles herself for being thought less of than Julia, from the
consideration that, without Julia, she would be thought even less of
than she is.’ The singular feature is, that this kind of humility,
which would seem revolting to us in France, is met with in England
amongst precisely those persons who are remarkable for their moral
qualities and for their self-respect. It is because in them this
deference becomes a sort of courtesy, a social tact, of which only a
gentleman can understand all the niceties—which, besides, implies in
their case nothing like servility—the respect paid to superiors in
rank is kept within the limits of the respect due to themselves. This
peculiarity in English manners struck me the more forcibly, because it
offers such a remarkable contrast to what goes on among ourselves.”

There follows, at some length, a truthful and well-written exposition of the healthful influence exercised upon a nation by an aristocracy like that of England—which we must not stop to quote. ‘_Revenons_‘—as the author writes, asking pardon for so long a digression—‘_Revenons à Madame Jones_.’

That excellent landlady is careful not only of the diet and other creature-comforts of her new lodger, but of his moral and religious wellbeing also. A week of wet weather—which the foreign visitor finds sufficiently _triste_—is succeeded by a lovely Sunday morning. The Frenchman sallies out after breakfast for a morning walk, with his book under his arm—we are sorry to say it was a ‘Tacitus’—with the intention, we are left to suppose, of worshipping nature on the common. But Mrs Jones, though totally innocent as to her lodger’s heretical intentions, takes care to lead him in the way that he should go.

“‘Church is at eleven,’ Mrs Jones called out to me, not doubting for
an instant that I should go there. I went out; she followed me close,
locked all the doors, and, stopping for a moment at the cottage next
door to call for a neighbour, continued her way. I was taking another
path, but was very soon arrested by the hurried approach of Mrs Jones,
who, fancying I had mistaken my way, came after me to show me the road
to church. Such perseverance on her part made it evident that I should
risk the loss of her good opinion if I did not profit by her
instructions; so I walked down the hill with her by a road which wound
between broad verges of green turf overshadowed by lofty trees.”

Thus fairly captured and led to church in triumph, his behaviour there was on the whole very decorous. The impression likely to be made on the mind of an intelligent and well-disposed foreigner by the simple and yet impressive service in a well-ordered village church is very nicely described. It is true that Mrs Jones’s prisoner, according to his own account, mingles with the very proper reflections natural to such a place “those inspired by the volume of Tacitus which he held open before him for decency’s sake” (and which, we fear, must have imposed itself upon the good lady as a French prayer-book); a little touch which, whether written by a Frenchman or not, and whether meant for truth or satire, is very French indeed. He finds time also to notice the features of the building itself, and its arrangements. The “tribune” in the gallery where the Countess performs her devotions, and the high enclosure with drawn curtains—“a sort of _petit salon_”—which protects the family of Mr Mason, the squire, from the more vulgar worshippers, do not strike the visitor, we rejoice to say, as happy illustrations of the aristocratic feeling in Englishmen; and it is evidently with a quiet satisfaction that he learns subsequently that “_puséisme_” is trying to do away with such distinctions.

An invitation to dinner from the Countess gives him at once the _entrée_ to the best society in Lynmere and its neighbourhood. He finds his first English dinner-party a very dull affair; but he was surely peculiarly unfortunate in his company, if we are to take his account of the after-dinner conversation amongst the gentlemen: “At the end of a short time, two of the guests were asleep, and I would willingly have followed their example.” The remarks which follow, however, touch with more truth upon one of the defects in our social intercourse:—

“These dinners of ceremony (and there are scarcely any other kind of
entertainments in the country amongst the higher classes) take place
between neighbours, usually about twice in the year: scarcely any one
except the clergyman enjoys the privilege of being received with less
of etiquette. It follows that it is very possible to pass one’s life
for ten years in the same spot, without having any really intimate
association with any one of one’s neighbours. There are very few
English people who do not regret it. Yet such is the despotism of
custom, that it is rare to find any family which dreams of freeing
itself from the trammels of this etiquette.”

Here and there, of late, the links of this social despotism, under which we have groaned so long, show symptoms of giving way. The advance of fashion has done good service in one respect, that the modern service _à la Russe_, adopted in all good houses, has struck a decisive blow at the old English heavy dinner; and just as the fashion has long died out of pressing one’s guests to eat more than they wish, so the fashion is coming in of not thinking it necessary to put upon the table three times more than can by any possibility be eaten. When small dinners become “the thing” even amongst the great people, there is hope that their lesser imitators will follow the example. And whenever the mistresses of small families will learn that good and careful cookery is quite as cheap as bad, and much more wholesome, and will condescend to go back not only to their great-grandmothers’ hoops, but to their household receipt-books, they may venture to invite their personal friends without compunction to a pleasant family-dinner, to the great furtherance of real sociability, and get rid for ever of those annual or biennial festivals which are a burden to the weary souls of guests and entertainers.

The foreign visitor becomes, in a very short time, established on a footing of intimacy with the family of Mr Mason, a magistrate and landed proprietor residing in the parish, in whose household Mrs Jones has formerly lived as nurse. The introduction through the Countess on the one part, and on the other the warm eulogies of good Mrs Jones (who is never tired of sounding the praises of her old master and the young ladies whom she has brought up), may serve in some degree to explain the somewhat rapid adoption of “Monsieur” as a family friend into the thrice-guarded circle of an English household. On his part, indeed, we soon discover quite a sufficient attraction. There is a pale pensive sentimental “Miss Mary,” quite the sort of young lady, we should say, to take the fancy of a romantic Frenchman in exile; but as she does not happen to take ours especially, we confess to have found no particular interest in this new version of ‘Love in a Village,’ and shall leave our younger readers to enjoy the romance of the little book for themselves, without forestalling, even by a single hint, its course or its conclusion. So far as relates to Monsieur himself, we repeat, we can quite understand how readily he responded to the warm adoption of his new English friends.

“Mr Mason consulted me about his son’s studies, Mrs Mason confided to
me her anxieties as the mother of a family; and Mary—whose ardent and
poetic soul felt the need of an intellectual sympathy which failed her
in her own family—threw into her conversation with me an openness and
vivacity which surprised her relatives.”

Nothing of the sort surprises us. What we were rather surprised at was, that Mr Mason _père_, a grave county dignitary and practical man of business, should have taken to his bosom, in this ardent and gushing fashion, the most agreeable, most intellectual, and most amiable foreigner that ever lived. At first we thought it a mistake—a patent defect and improbability in an otherwise sensible and natural book. The author’s casual attempt to account for it by the fact that Mr Mason was fond of billiards and of backgammon, and found in his new acquaintance an idle man generally ready to play a game, does not in the least harmonise with the usual character and habits of country gentlemen past sixty, or of Mr Mason in particular. But when we read that this excellent individual, like so many others of his class, has gone largely into turnips—and that his French visitor, wishing to know all about English country life, and knowing that such a life is nothing without turnips, determined, amongst his other travelling studies, to study an English model farm, and, when his host proposed a visit to that beloved establishment, accepted the invitation with “_empressement_,” and listened for hours to bucolic talk with “_un grand interest_,”—then we no longer wonder for an instant at the eternal friendship which the English member of the “Royal Agricultural” suddenly and silently vowed to his guest. Long and painful experience of visits paid to these excellent people in the country—reminiscences of the inevitable walk over ploughed fields—the plunging into long dark galleries where unfortunate beasts were immured for life to be turned into beef, a process which should be mercifully hidden from the eyes of every good Christian—the yawns unsuccessfully stifled—the remarks answered at random—the senseless questions desperately volunteered out of politeness on the visitor’s part, betraying the depth of his incapacity and ignorance;—these must rise before many a reader’s mind as well as our own, and make them feel what a treasure the scientific agriculturist had found in the inquiring Frenchman, who walked and talked and listened, not only without a complaint or a yawn, but positively because he liked it. Enterprising foreigners have been said to have tried to make their way into English country society, before now, through the introduction of the hunting-field, not always with success; perhaps they may be inclined to take a hint from this little book, and, in quiet family cases, try the turnips.

The visits to Mr Mason’s farm-cottages give the traveller the opportunity of drawing a contrast between the habits and aspirations of agricultural labourers in the two countries:—

“That passion for becoming proprietors, so widely spread in our own
country districts, is unknown, and probably will long continue so,
amongst the agricultural classes in England. The example of Ireland
[it might have been added, of Wales], where the land has been very
much subdivided, and where the population which maintains itself on it
has become excessive, has strengthened the opinion amongst large
landed proprietors in England as to the evil effects of small
holdings. I think I scarcely exaggerate when I say that certainly, in
the southern counties of England, a peasant possessing an acre of land
would be a rarity. Probably it is to this impossibility of becoming
small proprietors that we must attribute the taste which the labouring
classes in England show for ornamenting their houses. If a working man
has saved any money, he will employ it in buying a set of furniture,
and making his cottage look gay; whereas, in France, he would have
laid it aside in the hope of acquiring a bit of land; so that nothing
can be more different than the wretched cabins of our own rural
districts and the cottage of an English labourer, with its many little
appliances of comfort and even luxury. In general the English peasant
lives much less sparingly, and spends upon his meal twice as much as
the French: it is true that the climate requires a more substantial
style of diet.”

These observations would have been more strictly true if they had been made a few years ago. Within that time the passion for property has sprung up not only amongst those who call themselves “operatives” (journeymen weavers, shoemakers, &c.), but even, to a certain extent, amongst farm-labourers. Recent alterations in the laws of partnership have encouraged what are called “co-operative societies,” who not only open “stores” for the sale of all the necessaries of life, on the joint-stock principle of division of profits, but build cottages which, by certain arrangements, may become the property of the tenant. A whole village has just been built in Yorkshire, on this principle of the tenants becoming eventually the landlords. Not only this, but the same desire for independence—an excellent feeling in itself—is leading the same class to purchase cottage property whenever it comes into the market. If this ambition to become a purchaser were confined to a desire upon every man’s part to feel himself absolute master of the home he lived in, then, whatever large proprietors or able political economists might have to say, it would be an object which would deserve the very highest respect. But, unfortunately, the feeling is not altogether that of desiring to live in peace under one’s own vine and fig-tree: it is the wish to have a tenement to let out to others. It is comparatively seldom that a small piece of land, suited to the sum at such a purchaser’s command, is thrown into the market. Cottages, on the other hand, are continually advertised for sale; the working-man, eager to secure his bit of real property, gives for them a sum far beyond their value—a sum which the capitalist or large proprietor will not give; and in order to make his purchase pay, he either proceeds at once to divide a comfortable dwelling into two, or raises the rent upon his more needy tenant. The evil consequences are twofold; the neighbouring landowner, who ought to have the cottages for his own labourers, who would keep them in good repair, and let them at moderate rents, has been driven out of the market; and either a lower class of tenant, continually changing and being “sold up,” is introduced; or the honest labourer is compelled to pay to this new landlord of his own class a rent out of all proportion to the accommodation supplied him.

It is to be hoped that this growing evil (for evil it is) may be met by the increased liberality of landed proprietors in building good and sufficient cottages for the labourers on their own estates. In the case of the humbler artisans, in towns especially, one does not see the remedy except in the questionable shape of legislative restrictions.

But we have almost forgotten our foreign exile’s travelling acquaintance, Mr Norris, the hearty and genial English clergyman at whose invitation he first set himself to study English life. Before finally taking up his quarters at Lynmere, he has paid the promised visit to his friend in his parsonage at Kingsford; “a pretty Gothic _chateau_,” furnished with the taste of a gentleman and a scholar; a residence whose somewhat luxurious belongings, its ample library, and the well-chosen prints which grace its walls, when contrasted in the writer’s mind with the humble abode of the French village _curé_, give rise to reflections “not wholly to the disadvantage of the latter.” We, on the other hand, must warn any foreign reader who may draw the contrast for himself, that Kingsford Parsonage is a very exceptional case indeed. Mr Norris is discovered, somewhat to his French visitor’s surprise, clad in “a strange costume of white flannel,” not altogether sacerdotal; “_Je suis habillé en cricketer_,” is the parson’s explanation. The fact is, he has just been playing cricket with his pupils, half-a-dozen young men in preparation for the Universities. The simple and orderly habits of the household, the breakfast at eight, the dinner at one, the kindly intercourse between the tutor and his pupils, and the prosperity of a well-ordered village under an energetic pastor, are well described, and will give our French neighbours a very fair idea of such a life. A little, a very little “_triste_,” our visitor finds it, this English rural life, with its rich green meadows and grey sky, and slowly-winding river, half hidden by its banks. One needs, he considers, in order to find happiness in such scenes, a hearty love for simple nature, and a heart “warmed with the sentiment of duty fulfilled;” in short, he is of Dr Johnson’s opinion, though he puts it into much more complimentary language—that “those who are fond of the country are fit to live in the country.”

But if we cannot allow our French friends to imagine that all English country clergymen have their lot cast in the pleasant places of Kingsford and Lynmere, still less, we fear, must they consider them (or their wives) such wonderful economists as, like Mr Norris, to maintain all the quiet elegancies of a gentleman’s establishment in a handsome Gothic chateau (and to travel in Switzerland besides), upon an ecclesiastical income scarcely exceeding, after all necessary deductions, two hundred pounds a-year. True, Mr Norris takes pupils and writes for reviews—highly respectable vocations, and profitable enough in some hands, but scarcely open to the majority of his brethren, and not safe to be depended upon, as a supplementary income, by young clergymen on small preferments who may feel no vocation for celibacy. Mr Norris, indeed, is peculiarly favoured in many respects as regards money matters; for he has been fortunate enough to have enjoyed an exhibition at Oxford in days when the word “exhibition” (as we are informed in a note) meant “a gratuitous admission to the University.” Here we are certainly stepping out of the ground of real English life, where the writer has so pleasantly guided us, into a highly imaginative state of things. It would have been a noble boast, indeed, for us to have made to foreigners, if it could have been made truly, that Oxford, out of her splendid endowments, offered, even occasionally, “gratuitous admissions” to poor and deserving scholars. It was what the best of her founders and benefactors intended and desired—what they thought they had secured for ever by the most stringent and solemn enactments; but what, unhappily, the calm wisdom of the University itself has been as far from carrying out as the busy sweeping of a Reform Commission.

The foreign visitor is naturally very much impressed by an English cricket-match. The puzzled admiration which possesses him on the occasion of his “assisting” at a “_fête du cricket_” is very amusingly expressed. Throughout all his honest admiration of the English character, there peeps out a confession that this one peculiar habit of the animal is what he has failed to account for or comprehend. He tries to philosophise on the thing; and, like other philosophical inquirers when they get hold of facts which puzzle them, he feels bound to present his readers with a theory of cause and effect which is evidently as unsatisfactory to himself as to them. He falls back for an explanation on that tendency to “solidarity” in the English temperament which he has admired before.

“The explanation of the great popularity of the game of cricket is
that, being always a challenge between two rival bodies, it produces
emulation and excites that spirit of party which, say what we will, is
one of the essential stimulants of public life, since in order to
identify one’s self with one’s party one must make a sacrifice to a
certain extent of one’s individuality. The game of cricket requires
eleven persons on each side, and each of the players feels that he is
consolidated (_solidaire_) with his comrades, in defeat as well as in
victory.... That which makes the charm of the game is, above all, the
_solidarity_ which exists between the players.”

This is a very pretty theory, but scarcely the true one. In the public-school matches, no doubt, and in some matches between neighbouring villages, the _esprit de corps_ goes for much; but, as a rule, we fear the cricketer is a much more selfish animal. His ambition is above all things to make a good score, and to appear in ‘Bell’s Life’ with a double figure to his name. Just as the hunting man, so that he himself can get “a good place,” cares exceedingly little for the general result of the day’s sport; so the batsman at Lord’s, so long as he makes a good innings, or the bowler so long as he “takes wickets” enough to make a respectable figure on the score, thinks extremely little, we are sorry to say, of “solidarity.” Whether the match is won or lost is of as little comparative importance as whether the fox is killed or gets away. We notice the difference, because it is a great pity it should be so. The Frenchman’s principle is by far the finer one; and the gradual increase of this intense self-interest in the cricket-field is going far to nullify the other good effects of the game as a national amusement. One reason why the matches between the public schools are watched with such interest by all spectators is, that the boys do really feel and show that identification of one’s self with one’s party which the author so much respects; the Harrow captain is really much more anxious that Harrow should beat Eton, than that he himself should get a higher score than Jones or Thompson of his own eleven; and the enthusiastic chairing of the hero of the day is not, as he knows, a personal ovation to the player, as to a mere exhibition of personal skill, but to his having maintained the honour of the school.

Our national ardour for this game seems always incomprehensible to a Frenchman. There is a little trashy, conceited book now before us, in which a French writer, professing to enlighten his countrymen upon English life, dismisses this mysterious amusement in a definition, the point and elegance of which it would be a pity to spoil by translation—“_un exercice consistant à se fatiguer et à donner d’autant plus de plaisir qu’il avait fait répandre d’autant plus de sueur_.”[2] He is careful, at the same time, to suggest that even cricket is probably borrowed from his own nation—the “_jeu de paume_” of the days of the Grand Monarque. But the inability of so shrewd and intelligent an observer, as the foreign spectator with whom we have to do at present, to comprehend the real points of the game, is an additional testimony to its entirely English character. The Etonian’s mamma, who, as he relates with a sort of quiet wonder, sat for five hours on two days successively on a bench under a hot sun, to watch the match between her son’s eleven and Harrow, would have given a much better account of the game. The admiring visitor does not pretend, as he observes, to go into the details of a game which has thirty-eight rules; but he endeavours to give his French readers some general idea of the thing, which may suffice for unprofessional lookers-on. It is unnecessary to say that the idea is very general indeed. The “consecrated” ground on which the “_barrières_” are erected, and where the “_courses_” take place, are a thoroughly French version of the affair. The “ten fieldsmen precipitating themselves in pursuit of the ball when struck” would be ludicrous enough to a cricketer’s imagination, if the thought of the probable consequences were not too horrible. Even such headlong zeal on the part of two fieldsmen only, with their eye on the same ball, has resulted, before now, in a collision entailing the loss of half-a-dozen front teeth and other disfigurements. It was unnecessary to exaggerate the perils of a game which, as our author observes, has its dangers; and if the fieldsmen at Lynmere conducted themselves after this headlong fashion when he was watching them, we can quite understand his surprise that, when the day concludes with the inevitable English dinner, men who had spent the whole day “in running, striking, and receiving blows from the ball to the bruising of their limbs” (and precipitating themselves against each other) should still show themselves disposed to drink toasts and make speeches for the rest of the evening. The conversation which he has with the parish schoolmaster, an enthusiastic cricketer, is good in its way:—

“‘I hope you have enjoyed the day?’ said he to me. ‘You have had an
opportunity of seeing what cricket is. It’s a noble game, is it not?’

“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘it is a fine exercise; and I think highly of those
amusements which bring all classes together under the influence of a
common feeling.’

“‘It is not only that,’ replied the excellent man: ‘but nothing
moralises men like cricket.’

“‘How?’ said I, rather astonished to hear him take such high ground.

“‘Look here,’ he replied; ‘a good cricketer is bound to be sober and
not frequent the public-house, to accustom himself to obey, to
exercise restraint upon himself; besides, he is obliged to have a
great deal of patience, a great deal of activity; and to receive those
blows of the ball without shrinking, requires, I assure you, some
degree of courage.’”

We suspect that these remarks belong of right at least as much to the French philosopher as to the English national schoolmaster; but they bring forward in an amusing way the tendency of one-ideaed philanthropists, which the author elsewhere notices, to attribute to their own favourite hobby the only possible moral regeneration of society: