The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
arranged that they should ride by turns and the eldest should ride
first.
Off they set at last, one on the pony, with the dog bounding and barking
before him, and the others holding John’s hands, both talking at
once and overpowering him with questions about home and with school
anecdotes. I looked after them with a feeling in which I do not know
whether pleasure or melancholy predominated; for I was reminded of those
days when, like them, I had known neither care nor sorrow and a holiday
was the summit of earthly felicity. We stopped a few moments afterwards
to water the horses, and on resuming our route a turn of the road
brought us in sight of a neat country-seat. I could just distinguish the
forms of a lady and two young girls in the portico, and I saw my
little comrades, with Bantam, Carlo, and old John, trooping along the
carriage-road. I leaned out of the coach-window, in hopes of witnessing
the happy meeting, but a grove of trees shut it from my sight.
In the evening we reached a village where I had determined to pass the
night. As we drove into the great gateway of the inn, I saw on one side
the light of a rousing kitchen-fire beaming through a window. I entered,
and admired, for the hundredth time, that picture of convenience,
neatness, and broad honest enjoyment, the kitchen of an English inn.
It was of spacious dimensions, hung round with copper and tin vessels
highly polished, and decorated here and there with a Christmas green.
Hams, tongues, and flitches of bacon were suspended from the ceiling; a
smoke-jack made its ceaseless clanking beside the fireplace, and a clock
ticked in one corner. A well-scoured deal table extended along one side
of the kitchen, with a cold round of beef and other hearty viands
upon it, over which two foaming tankards of ale seemed mounting guard.
Travellers of inferior order were preparing to attack this stout repast,
while others sat smoking and gossiping over their ale on two high-backed
oaken settles beside the fire. Trim housemaids were hurrying backwards
and forwards under the directions of a fresh bustling landlady, but
still seizing an occasional moment to exchange a flippant word and have
a rallying laugh with the group round the fire. The scene completely
realized Poor Robin’s humble idea of the comforts of midwinter:
Now trees their leafy hats do bare
To reverence Winter’s silver hair;
A handsome hostess, merry host,
A pot of ale now and a toast,
Tobacco and a good coal fire,
Are things this season doth require.*
* Poor Robin’s Almanack, 1684.
I had not been long at the inn when a post-chaise drove up to the door.
A young gentleman stept out, and by the light of the lamps I caught a
glimpse of a countenance which I thought I knew. I moved forward to
get a nearer view, when his eye caught mine. I was not mistaken; it was
Frank Bracebridge, a sprightly, good-humored young fellow with whom I
had once travelled on the Continent. Our meeting was extremely cordial,
for the countenance of an old fellow-traveller always brings up
the recollection of a thousand pleasant scenes, odd adventures, and
excellent jokes. To discuss all these in a transient interview at an
inn was impossible; and, finding that I was not pressed for time and was
merely making a tour of observation, he insisted that I should give him
a day or two at his father’s country-seat, to which he was going to pass
the holidays and which lay at a few miles’ distance. “It is better
than eating a solitary Christmas dinner at an inn,” said he, “and I can
assure you of a hearty welcome in something of the old-fashioned style.”
His reasoning was cogent, and I must confess the preparation I had seen
for universal festivity and social enjoyment had made me feel a little
impatient of my loneliness. I closed, therefore, at once with his
invitation; the chaise drove up to the door, and in a few moments I was
on my way to the family mansion of the Bracebridges.
CHRISTMAS EVE.
Saint Francis and Saint Benedight
Blesse this house from wicked wight;
From the night-mare and the goblin,
That is hight good fellow Robin;
Keep it from all evil spirits,
Fairies, weezels, rats, and ferrets:
From curfew time
To the next prime.
CARTWRIGHT.
IT was a brilliant moonlight night, but extremely cold; our chaise
whirled rapidly over the frozen ground; the postboy smacked his whip
incessantly, and a part of the time his horses were on a gallop. “He
knows where he is going,” said my companion, laughing, “and is eager to
arrive in time for some of the merriment and good cheer of the servants’
hall. My father, you must know, is a bigoted devotee of the old school,
and prides himself upon keeping up something of old English hospitality.
He is a tolerable specimen of what you will rarely meet with nowadays
in its purity, the old English country gentleman; for our men of fortune
spend so much of their time in town, and fashion is carried so much into
the country, that the strong rich peculiarities of ancient rural life
are almost polished away. My father, however, from early years, took
honest Peacham* for his textbook, instead of Chesterfield; he determined
in his own mind that there was no condition more truly honorable and
enviable than that of a country gentleman on his paternal lands, and
therefore passes the whole of his time on his estate. He is a strenuous
advocate for the revival of the old rural games and holiday observances,
and is deeply read in the writers, ancient and modern, who have treated
on the subject. Indeed, his favorite range of reading is among the
authors who flourished at least two centuries since, who, he insists,
wrote and thought more like true Englishmen than any of their
successors. He even regrets sometimes that he had not been born a few
centuries earlier, when England was itself and had its peculiar manners
and customs. As he lives at some distance from the main road, in rather
a lonely part of the country, without any rival gentry near him, he has
that most enviable of all blessings to an Englishman--an opportunity
of indulging the bent of his own humor without molestation. Being
representative of the oldest family in the neighborhood, and a great
part of the peasantry being his tenants, he is much looked up to, and
in general is known simply by the appellation of ‘The Squire’--a title
which has been accorded to the head of the family since time immemorial.
I think it best to give you these hints about my worthy old father, to
prepare you for any eccentricities that might otherwise appear absurd.”
* Peacham’s Complete Gentleman, 1622.
We had passed for some time along the wall of a park, and at length the
chaise stopped at the gate. It was in a heavy, magnificent old style,
of iron bars fancifully wrought at top into flourishes and flowers.
The huge square columns that supported the gate were surmounted by the
family crest. Close adjoining was the porter’s lodge, sheltered under
dark fir trees and almost buried in shrubbery.
The postboy rang a large porter’s bell, which resounded though the still
frosty air, and was answered by the distant barking of dogs, with which
the mansion-house seemed garrisoned. An old woman immediately appeared
at the gate. As the moonlight fell strongly upon her, I had a full view
of a little primitive dame, dressed very much in the antique taste, with
a neat kerchief and stomacher, and her silver hair peeping from under a
cap of snowy whiteness. She came curtseying forth, with many expressions
of simple joy at seeing her young master. Her husband, it seemed, was up
at the house keeping Christmas Eve in the servants’ hall; they could
not do without him, as he was the best hand at a song and story in the
household.
My friend proposed that we should alight and walk through the park to
the hall, which was at no great distance, while the chaise should follow
on. Our road wound through a noble avenue of trees, among the naked
branches of which the moon glittered as she rolled through the deep
vault of a cloudless sky. The lawn beyond was sheeted with a slight
covering of snow, which here and there sparkled as the moonbeams caught
a frosty crystal, and at a distance might be seen a thin transparent
vapor stealing up from the low grounds and threatening gradually to
shroud the landscape.
My companion looked around him with transport. “How often,” said he,
“have I scampered up this avenue on returning home on school vacations!
How often have I played under these trees when a boy! I feel a degree of
filial reverence for them, as we look up to those who have cherished us
in childhood. My father was always scrupulous in exacting our holidays
and having us around him on family festivals. He used to direct and
superintend our games with the strictness that some parents do the
studies of their children. He was very particular that we should play
the old English games according to their original form, and consulted
old books for precedent and authority for every ‘merrie disport;’ yet I
assure you there never was pedantry so delightful. It was the policy
of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the
happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home-feeling as
one of the choicest gifts a parent could bestow.”
We were interrupted by the clamor of a troop of dogs of all sorts and
sizes, “mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, and curs of lower degree,”
that disturbed by the ring of the porter’s bell and the rattling of the
chaise, came bounding, open-mouthed, across the lawn.
“‘----The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch,
and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me!’”
cried Bracebridge, laughing. At the sound of his voice the bark was
changed into a yelp of delight, and in a moment he was surrounded and
almost overpowered by the caresses of the faithful animals.
We had now come in full view of the old family mansion, partly thrown in
deep shadow and partly lit up by the cold moonshine. It was an irregular
building of some magnitude, and seemed to be of the architecture of
different periods. One wing was evidently very ancient, with heavy
stone-shafted bow windows jutting out and overrun with ivy, from among
the foliage of which the small diamond-shaped panes of glass glittered
with the moonbeams. The rest of the house was in the French taste of
Charles the Second’s time, having been repaired and altered, as my
friend told me, by one of his ancestors who returned with that monarch
at the Restoration. The grounds about the house were laid out in the
old formal manner of artificial flower-beds, clipped shrubberies, raised
terraces, and heavy stone balustrades, ornamented with urns, a leaden
statue or two, and a jet of water. The old gentleman, I was told, was
extremely careful to preserve this obsolete finery in all its
original state. He admired this fashion in gardening; it had an air
of magnificence, was courtly and noble, and befitting good old family
style. The boasted imitation of Nature in modern gardening had sprung
up with modern republican notions, but did not suit a monarchical
government; it smacked of the leveling system. I could not help smiling
at this introduction of politics into gardening, though I expressed some
apprehension that I should find the old gentleman rather intolerant
in his creed. Frank assured me, however, that it was almost the only
instance in which he had ever heard his father meddle with politics; and
he believed that he had got this notion from a member of Parliament who
once passed a few weeks with him. The squire was glad of any argument
to defend his clipped yew trees and formal terraces, which had been
occasionally attacked by modern landscape gardeners.