CHAPTER VII

COTTAGES AND HOMESTEADS

The ancient haunts of men have numberless tongues for those who know how to hear them speak.

It was not until some fifteen years of Mrs. Allingham's career as a painter in water-colour had been accomplished that she found the subject with which her name has since been so inseparably linked. Looking through the ranks of her associates in the Art it is in rare instances that we encounter so complete a departure out of a long-practised groove, or one which has been so amply justified. But in selecting English Cottages and Homesteads, and peopling them with a comely tenantry, she happened upon a theme that was certain not only to obtain the suffrages of the ordinary exhibition visitors, but of those who add to seeing, admiration and acquisition. Thus it has come to pass that in the other fifteen years which have elapsed since she first began to paint them, "Mrs. Allingham's Cottages" have become a household word amongst connoisseurs of English water-colours, and no representative collection has been deemed to be complete without an example of them.

This appreciation is very assuredly a sound one, as the value of these pictures does not consist solely in their beauty as works of Art, but in their recording in line and colour a most interesting but unfortunately vanishing phase of English domestic architecture. For the cottages are almost without exception veritable portraits, the artist (whilst naturally selecting those best suited to her purpose) having felt it a duty to present them with an accuracy of structural feature which is not always the case in creations of this kind, where the painter has had other views, and considered that he could improve his picture by an addition here and an omission there.

So many of Mrs. Allingham's drawings of cottages have been taken from the counties of Surrey and Sussex, that it may interest not only the owners of those here reproduced, but others who possess similar subjects, to read a short description of the features that distinguish the buildings in these districts.

One is perhaps too apt to pass these lowlier habitations of our fellow-men, whether we see them in reality or in their counterfeits, without a thought as to their structure, or an idea that it is an evolution which has grown on very marked lines from primitive types, and which in almost every instance has been influenced by local surroundings.

In the early days of housebuilding the use of local materials was naturally a distinctive feature of dwellings of every kind, but more especially in those where expenditure had to be kept within narrow limits. But even in such a case the style of architecture affected in the better built houses influenced and may be traced in the more humble ones. Change amongst our forefathers was even less hastily assumed than in these days, and a style which experience had proved to be convenient was persevered in for generation after generation, individuality seldom having any play, although a necessary adaptation to the site gave to most buildings a distinction of their own. One of the earliest forms, and one still to be found even in buildings which have now descended to the use of yeomen's dwellings, was that of a large central room having on one side of it the smaller living and sleeping rooms, and on the other the kitchens and servants' apartments, the wings projecting sometimes both to back and front, sometimes only to the latter. In later times, as such a house fell into less well-to-do hands, necessity usually compelled the splitting-up of the house into various tenements, in which event the central room was generally divided into compartments, often into a complete dwelling. Types of this kind may be found in most villages in the south-eastern counties, and examples will be seen in "The Six Bells" (Plate 57) and the house at West Tarring, near Worthing (Plate 51), where the central portion falls back from the gabled ends. This arrangement of a central hall used for a living room, after going out of favour for some centuries, is curiously enough once more coming into fashion.

Local materials having, as we have said, much to do with the structure, the type of dwelling that we may expect to find in counties where wood was plentiful, and the cost of preparing and putting it on the ground less than that of quarrying, shaping, and carrying stone, is the picturesque, timber-formed cottage. Those interested in the plan of construction, which was always simple, of these will find full details in Mr. Guy Dawber's Introduction to _Old Cottages and Farm Houses in Kent and Sussex_, as well as many illustrations of examples that occur in these counties.

The materials other than wood used for the framework, and which were necessary to fill up the interstices, were, in the better class of dwellings, bricks; in others, a consistency formed of chopped straw and clay, an outward symmetry of appearance being gained by a covering of plaster where it was not deemed advisable to protect the woodwork, and of boarding or tiles where the whole surface called for protection. Several of the cottages illustrated in this volume have been protected by these tilings on some part or another, perhaps only on a gable end, most often on the upper story, sometimes over the whole building, but of course, principally, where it was most exposed to the weather (see Cherry-Tree Cottage, Plate 43; Chiddingfold, Plate 44; Shottermill, Plate 49; and Valewood Farm, Plate 50). This purpose of the tile in the old houses, and its use only for protection, distinguishes them from the modern erections, where it is oftentimes affixed in the most haphazard style, and clearly without any idea of fitting it where it will be most serviceable.

The space in the interior was very irregularly apportioned, whilst the cubic space allotted to living rooms, both on the ground and first floors, was singularly insufficient for modern hygienic views. A reason for the small size of the rooms may have been that it enabled them to be more readily warmed, either by the heat given off by the closely-packed indwellers, or by the small wood fires which alone could be indulged in. Little use was made of the large space in the roof, but this omission adds much to the picturesqueness of the exterior, for the roofs gain in simplicity by their unbroken surface and treatment. It is somewhat astonishing that the old builders did not recognise this costly disregard of space.

The roofs, like the framework, testify to the geological formation and agricultural conditions of the district.

The roof-tree was always of hand-hewn oak, and this it was, according to Birket Foster, which gave to many of the old roofs their pleasant curves away from the central chimney. The ordinary unseasoned sawn deal of the modern roof may swag in any direction.

The roof-covering where the land was chiefly arable, or the distance from market considerable, was usually wheaten thatch, which was certainly the most comfortable, being warm in winter and cool in summer, just the reverse of the tiles or slates that have practically supplanted it.[11] In other districts the cottages are covered with what are known as stone slates, thick and heavy. Roofs to carry the weight of these had always to be flattened, with the result that they require mortaring to keep out the wet. The West Tarring cottage (Plate 51) is an instance of a stone roofing.

The red tiles, which were used for the most part, are certainly the most agreeable to the artistic eye, for their seemingly haphazard setting, due in part to the builder and in part to nature, affords that pleasure which always arises from an unstudied irregularity of line. Roof tiles were made thicker and less carefully in the old days, and our artist's truth in delineation may be detected in almost any drawing by examining where the weight has swagged away the tiles between the main roof beams.

Unlike chimneys erected by our cottage builders of to-day, which appear to issue out of a single mould, those of the untutored architects of the past present every variety of treatment and appearance.

The old solidly built chimney seen in many of Mrs. Allingham's cottages (Chiddingfold, Plate 44) is worthy of note as a type of many sturdy fellows which have resisted the ravages of time, and have stood for centuries almost without need of repair. In old days the chimney was regarded not only as a special feature but as an ornament, and not as a necessary but ugly excrescence. Although probably it only served for one room in the house, that service was an important one, and so materials were liberally used in its construction.

In Kent and Sussex many of the chimneys are of brick, although the house and the base of the chimney-stack are of stone. This arose from the stone not lending itself to thin slabs, and consequently being altogether too cumbrous and bulky.

The windows in the old cottages were naturally small when glass was a luxury, and became fewer in number when a tax upon light was one of the means for carrying on the country's wars. They were usually filled with the smallest panes, fitted into lead lattice, so that breakages might be reduced to the smallest area. Not much of this remains, but a specimen of it is to be seen in the Old Buckinghamshire House (Plate 52). One of the few alterations that Mrs. Allingham allows herself is the substitution of these diamond lattices throughout a house where she finds a single example in any of the lights, or if, as she has on more than one occasion found, that they have been replaced by others, and are themselves stacked up as rubbish. She has in her studio some that have been served in this way, and which have now become useful models.

It would be imagined that the sense of pride in these, the last traces of their village ancestors, would have prompted their descendants, whether of the same kin or not, to deal reverently with them, and endeavour to hand on as long as possible these silent witnesses to the honest workmanship of their forbears. Such, unfortunately, is but seldom the case. If any one will visit Witley with this book in his hand, and compare the present state of the few examples given there, not twenty years after they were painted, he will see what is taking place not only in this little village but through the length and breadth of England. It is not always wilful on the part of the landlord, but arises from either his lack of sympathy, time, or interest.

He probably has a sense of his duty to "keep up" things, and so sends his agent to go round with an architect and settle a general plan for doing up the old places (usually described as "tumbling down" or "falling to pieces"). Thereupon a village builder makes an estimate and sends in a scratch pack of masons and joiners, and between them they often supplant fine old work, most of it as firm as a rock, with poor materials and careless labour, and rub out a piece of old England, irrecoverable henceforth by all the genius in the world and all the money in the bank. The drainage and water supply, points where improvement is often desirable, may be left unattended to. But whatever else is decided on, no uneven tiled roofs, with moss and houseleek, must remain; no thatch on any pretence, nor ivy on the wall, nor vine along the eaves. The cherry or apple tree, that pushed its blossoms almost into a lattice, will probably be cut down, and the wild rose and honeysuckle hedge be replaced by a row of pales or wires. The leaden lattice itself and all its fellows, however perfect, must inevitably give place to a set of mean little square windows of unseasoned wood, though perhaps on the very next property an architect is building imitation old cottages with lattices! With the needful small repairs, most of the real old cottages would have lasted for many generations to come, to the satisfaction of their inhabitants and the delight of all who can feel the charm of beauty combined with ancientness--a charm once lost, lost for ever. And unquestionably the well-repaired old cottages would generally be more comfortable than the new or the done-up ones, to say nothing of the "sentiment" of the cottager. An old man, who was in a temporary lodging during the doing-up of his cottage, being asked, "When shall you get back to your house?" answered, "In about a month, they tells me; but it won't be like going home." At the same time it is fair to add that many of the "doings-up" in Mrs. Allingham's country are of good intention and less ruthless execution than may be seen elsewhere, and that certain owners show a real feeling of wise conservatism. It would perhaps be a low estimate, however, to say that a thousand ancient cottages are now disappearing in England every twelvemonth, without trace or record left--many that Shakespeare might have seen, some Chaucer; while the number "done up" is beyond computation.

The baronial halls have had abundant recognition and laudation at the hands of the historian and the painter; the numerous manor-houses, less pretentious, often more lovely, very little; the old cottages next to none, even the local chronicler running his spectacles over them without a pause.

It really looks as if we were, one and all, constituted as a poet has seen us:--

For, don't you mark, we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted--better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that-- God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out.

Had Mrs. Allingham done nothing else for her country, she has justified her career as a recorder of this altogether overlooked phase of English architecture--a phase which will soon be a thing of the past.

I remember once being accosted by a bystander in Angers, as I was wrestling with the perspective of a beautiful old house, with the remark, "Ah, you had better hurry more than you are doing and finish the roof of that house, for it will be off to-morrow and the whole down in three days." That has often been the case with Mrs. Allingham. More than once a cottage limned one summer has disappeared before the drawing was exhibited the following spring. Year in and year out the process has been at work during the quarter of a century during which the artist has been garnering, and it has almost come to be a joke that were she to paint as long again as she has, she might have to cease from actual lack of material.

* * * * *

Our illustrations of cottages divide themselves into, first the examples in the immediate neighbourhood of Sandhills; and secondly, those farther afield in Kent, Buckingham, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, and Cheshire.

Those near Sandhills form points in the circumference of a circle of which it is the centre, the most southern being Chiddingfold, where we start on our survey.

The old hamlet of Chiddingfold lies about as far to the south as Witley does to the north of the station on the London and South-Western Railway which bears their joint names. It boasts of a very ancient inn, "The Crown,"--formed, it is said, in part out of a monastic building,--and a large village green. Cherry-Tree Cottage is, as will be seen, the milk shop of the place, and, if we may judge from the coming and going in Mrs. Allingham's picture, carries on an animated, prosperous trade at certain times of the day.

We have here a March day, or rather one of the type associated with that month, but which usually visits us with increasing severity as April and May and the summer progress. Wind in the east, with the sky a cold, steely blue in the zenith, greying even the young elm shoots a stone's-throw distant. The cottage almanack, Old Moore's, will foretell that night frosts will prevail, and the cottager will be fearsome of its effect upon his apple crop, always so promising in its blossom, so scanty in its fulfilment. Splendid weather for the full-blooded lassies, who can tarry to gossip without fear of chills, and also for drying clothes on the hedgerow, but nipping for the old beldame who tends them, and who has to wrap up against it with shawl and cap.

Laburnum, rich In streaming gold,

competes in colour with the spikes of the broom, which the artist must have been thankful to the hedgecutter for sparing as he passed his shears along its surface when last he trimmed it. For some reason the broom bears an ill repute hereabouts as bringing bad luck, although in early times it was put to a desirable use, as Gerard tells us that "that worthy Prince of famous memory, Henry VIII. of England, was wont to drink the distilled water of Broome floures." Wordsworth also gives it[12] a special word in his lines--

Am I not In truth a favour'd plant? On me such bounty summer showers, That I am cover'd o'er with flowers; And when the frost is in the sky, My branches are so fresh and gay, That you might look on me and say-- "This plant can never die."

The cottage contains a typical example of the massive central chimney, and also an end one, which it is unusual to find in company with the other in so small a dwelling. Note also the weather tiling round the gable end and the upper story.

For those who read between the lines there are plenty of pretty allegories connected with these drawings. This, for instance, might well be termed "Youth and Age." The venerable cottage in its declining years, so appropriately set in a framework of autumn tints and flowers, supported on its colder side by the tendrils of ivy, almost of its own age, but on its warmer side maturing a fruitful vine, emblem of the mother and child which gather at the gate, and of the brood of fowls which busily search the wayside.

Half a century ago most of the old dwellings on the Surrey border were thatched with good wheaten straw from the Weald of Sussex, but thatch will soon be a thing of the past, partly for the reason that there are no thatchers (or "thackers" as they are called in local midland dialect) left, principally because the straw, of which they consumed a good deal, and which used to be a cheap commodity and not very realisable, in villages whose access to market was difficult, now finds a ready sale. Locomotion has also enabled slates to be conveyed from hundreds of miles away, and placed on the ground at a less rate than straw.

Thus the old order changeth, and without any regard to the comfort of the tenant, whose roof, as I have already said, instead of consisting of a covering which was warm in winter and cool in summer, is now one which is practically the reverse. Strawen roofs are easy of repair or renewal, and look very trim and cosy when kept in condition.

At the time when this drawing was painted this cottage, lying snugly in the recesses of Wormley Wood (whose pines always attract the attention as the train passes them just before Witley station is reached), was the last specimen of thatch in the neighbourhood, and it only continued so to be through the intervention of a well-known artist who lived not far off. That artist is dead, and probably in the score of years which have since elapsed the thatch has gone the way of the rest, and the harmony of yellowish greys which existed between it and its background have given way to a gaudy contrast of unweathered red tiles or cold unsympathetic blue slates.

The cottage itself may well date back to Tudor times, and the sweetwilliams, pansies, and lavender which border the path leading to it may be the descendants of far-away progenitors, culled by a long-forgotten labourer in his master's "nosegay garden," which at that time was a luxury of the well-to-do only.

Many of the flowers found in this plot of ground were in early days conserved in the gardens of the simple folk rather for their medicinal use than their decorative qualities. Such was certainly the case with lavender. "The floures of lavender do cure the beating of the harte," says one contemporary herbal; and another written in Commonwealth times says, "They are very pleasing and delightful to the brain, which is much refreshed with their sweetness." It was always found in the garden of women who pretended to good housewifery, not only because the heads of the flowers were used for "nosegays and posies," but for putting into "linen and apparel."

Those who are ingenious enough to see the inspiration of another hand in every work that an artist produces would probably raise an outcry against anybody infringing the copyright which they consider that Collins secured more than half a century ago for the children swinging on a gate in his "Happy as a King." But who that examines with any interest or care the figures in this water-colour could for a moment believe that Mrs. Allingham had ever had Collins even unconsciously in her mind when she put in these happy little mortals as adjuncts to her landscape. Having enjoyed at ages such as theirs a swing on many a gate, one can testify that these children must have been seen, studied, and put in from the life and on the spot. See how the elder girl leans over the gate, with perfect self-assurance, directing the boy as to how far back the gate may go; how the younger one has to climb a rung higher than her sister in order to obtain the necessary purchase with her arms, and even then she can only do so with a strain and with a certain nervousness as to the result of the jar when the gate reaches the post on its return. Again, some one has to do the swinging, and Mrs. Allingham has given the proper touch of gallantry by making the second in age of the party, a boy, the first to undertake this part of the business. The excitement of the moment has communicated itself to the youngest of the family, who raises his stick to cheer as the gate swings to. Although painted within thirty miles of London, the age of cheap rickety perambulators had not reached the countryside when this drawing was made nearly twenty years ago, and so we see the youngest in a sturdy, hand-made go-cart.

The country folk who passed the artist when she was making this drawing wondered doubtless at her selection of a point of sight where practically nothing but roof and wall of the building were visible, when a few steps farther on its front door and windows might have made a picture; but the charm of the drawing exists in this simplicity of subject, the greatest pleasure being procurable from the least important features, such, for instance, as the lichen-covered and leek-topped wall, and the untended, buttercup-flecked bank on which it stands. The locality of the drawing is Brook Lane, near Witley, and the drawing was an almost exact portrait of the cottage as it stood in 1886, but since then it has been modernised like the majority of its fellows, and though the oak-timbered walls, tiled roof, and massive chimney still stand, the old curves of the roof-tree have gone, and American windows have replaced the old lattices. The other side of the house, as it then appeared, has been preserved to us in the next picture.

The art critic of _The Times_, in speaking of the Exhibition where this drawing was exhibited, singled it out as "taking rank amongst the very best of Mrs. Allingham's work, and the very model of what an English water-colour should be, with its woodside cottage, its tangled hedges, its background of sombre fir trees, and figures of the girl with basket, and of the cottagers to whom she is offering her wares, showing as it does intense love for our beautiful south country landscape, with the power of seizing its most picturesque aspects with truth of eye and delicacy of hand."

To my mind the most remarkable feature of the drawing is the way in which the long stretch of hedge has been managed. In most hands it would either be a monotonous and uninteresting feature or an absolute failure, for the difficulty of lending variety of surface and texture to so large a mass is only known to those who have attempted it; it could only be effected by painting it entirely from nature and on the spot, as was the case here. Many would have been tempted to break it up by varieties of garden blooms, but Mrs. Allingham has only relieved it by a stray spray or two of wild honeysuckle, which never flowers in masses, and a few white convolvuli.

That we are not far removed from the small hop district which is to be found west and northward of this part is evidenced by the hops which the old woman was in course of plucking from the pole when her attention was arrested by the wandering pedlar. This and the apples ripening on the straggling apple tree show the season to be early autumn, whereas the elder bush in the companion drawing puts its season as June.

Each of three counties may practically claim this cottage for one of its types, for it lies absolutely at the junction of Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire.

For a single tenement it is particularly roomy, and a comfortable one to boot, for its screen of tiles is carried so low down.

It was a curious mood of the artist's to sit down square in front of it and paint its paling paralleling across the picture, a somewhat daring stroke of composition to carry on the line of white tiling with one of white clothes. The sky displays an unusual departure from the artist's custom, as the whole length of it is banked up with banks of cumuli.

The figures and the empty basket point to a little domestic episode. Boy and girl have been sent on an errand, but have not got beyond the farther side of the gate before they betake themselves to a loll on the grass, which has lengthened out to such an extent that the old grand-dame comes to the cottage door to look for their return, little witting that they are quietly crouched within a few feet of her, hidden behind the paling, over which lavender, sweet-pea, roses, peonies, and hollyhocks nod at them. They are even less conscious of wrong-doing and of impending scoldings than the cat, which sneaks homewards after a lengthened absence on a poaching expedition.

Valewood is over the ridge which protects Haslemere on the south, and is a very pretty vale of sloping meadows fringed with wood, all under the shadow of Blackdown, to which it belongs. This is distinguished from most houses hereabouts in boasting a stream, the headwater of a string of ponds, whence starts the river Wey northwards on its tortuous journey round the western slopes of Hindhead. When Mrs. Allingham painted the house, which was inhabited by well-to-do yeomen from Devonshire, the dairying and the milking were still conducted by desirable hands, namely, those of milkmaids.

Worthing has been termed "a dull and dreary place, the only relief to which is its suburb of West Tarring." This happening to have been one of the "peculiars" of the Archbishops of Canterbury, has buildings and objects of considerable antiquarian interest. The cottages which Mrs. Allingham selected for her drawing may be classed amongst them, for they are a type, as good as any in this volume, of the well-built, substantial dwelling-house of our progenitors of many centuries ago--one in which all the features that we have pointed out are to be found. The house has in course of time clearly become too big for its situation, and has consequently been parcelled out into cottages; this has necessitated some alteration of the front of the lower story, but otherwise it is an exceptionally well-preserved specimen. Long may it remain so.

This is a somewhat rare instance of the artist selecting for portraiture a house of larger dimensions than a cottage. It is a singular trait, perhaps a womanly trait, that we never find her choice falling upon the country gentleman's seat, although their formal gardening and parterres of flowers must oftentimes have tempted her. Her selection, in fact, never rises beyond the wayside tenement, which in that before us no doubt once housed a well-to-do yeoman, but was, when Mrs. Allingham limned it, only tenanted in part by a small farmer and in part by a butcher. But it is planned and fashioned on the old English lines to which we have referred, and which in the days when it was built governed those of the dwelling of every well-to-do person.

The trend of the trees indicates that this scene is laid where the winds are not only strong, but blow most frequently from one particular quarter. It is, in fact, on the coast of Dorset, at Burton, a little seaside resort of the inhabitants of Bridport, when they want a change from their own water-side town. The English Channel comes up to one side of the buttercup-clad field, and was behind the artist as she sat to paint the carrier's cottage, a man of some local celebrity, who took the artist to task for not painting his home from a particular point of view, saying, "I've had it painted many a time, and theyse always took it from there." He was a man accustomed to boss the village in a kindly but firm way, never allowing any controversy concerning his charges, which were, however, always reasonable. Hence he had come to be nicknamed "The Duke," and as such did not understand Mrs. Allingham's declining at once to recommence her sketch at the spot he indicated.

The Dorsetshire cottages, for the most part, differ altogether from their fellows in Surrey and Sussex, for their walls are made of what would seem to be the flimsiest and clumsiest materials,--dried mud, intermixed with straw to give it consistency, entering mainly into their composition. Many are not far removed from the Irish cabins, of which we see an example in Plate 78.

In speaking of Duke's Cottage, I dwelt upon the poor materials of which it and its Dorsetshire fellows were made, and this, coupled with Mrs. Allingham presenting a picture of one that is too decayed to live in, may raise a suggestion as to their instability. But such is not the case. The lack of substance in the material is made up by increased thickness, and the cottage before us has stood the wear and tear of several hundred years, and now only lacks a tenant through its insanitary condition. A robin greeted the artist from the topmost of the grass-grown steps, glad no doubt to see some one about the place once more.

Ide Hill is to be found in Kent, on the south side of the Westerham Valley, and the old cottage is the last survival of a type, every one of which has given place to the newly built and commonplace.[13] The view from hereabouts is very fine--so fine, indeed, that Miss Octavia Hill has, for some time, been endeavouring, and at last with success, to preserve a point for the use of the public whence the best can be seen.

The almost invariable rule of the south, that cottages are formed out of the local material that is nearest to hand, is clearly not practised farther north, to judge by this example of a typical Cheshire cottage.

Stone is apparently so ready to hand that not only is the roadway paved with it, but even the approach to the cottage, whilst the large blocks seen elsewhere in the picture show that it is not limited in size. Yet the only portion of the building that is constructed of stone, so far as we can see, is the lean-to shed.

The cottage itself differs in many respects from those we have been used to in Surrey and Sussex. The roof is utilised, in fact the level of the first floor is on a line almost with its eaves, and a large bay window in the centre, and one at the end, show that it is well lighted. Heavy barge-boards are affixed to the gables, which is by no means always the case down south, and the wooden framework has at one time been blackened in consonance with a custom prevalent in Cheshire and Lancashire, but which is probably only of comparatively recent date; for gas-tar, which is used, was not invented a hundred years ago, and there seems no sense in a preservative for oak beams which usually are almost too hard to drive a nail into. The fashion is probably due to the substitution of unseasoned timber for oak.

This beautiful old specimen of a timbered house was discovered by Mrs. Allingham by accident when staying with some artistic friends at Bearsted, in Kent, who were unaware of its existence. Although the weather was very cold and the season late, she lost no time in painting it, as its inmates said that it would be pulled down directly its owner, an old lady of ninety-two, who was very ill, died. Having spent a long day absorbed in putting down on paper its intricate details, she went into the house for a little warmth and a cup of tea, only to find a single fire, by which sat a labourer with his pot of warmed ale on the hob. Asking whether she could not go to some other fire, she was assured that nowhere else in the house could one be lit, as water lay below all the floors, and a fire caused this to evaporate and fill the rooms with steam.

As we have said, Mrs. Allingham alters her compositions as little as possible when painting from Nature, but in this case she has omitted a church tower that stood just to the right of the inn, and added the tall trees behind it. The omission was due to a feeling that the house itself was the point, and a quite sufficient point of interest, that would only be lessened by a competing one. The addition of the trees was made in order to give value to the grey of the house-side, which would have been considerably diminished by a broad expanse of sky.

Farmyards are out of fashion nowadays, and a Royal Water-Colour Society's Exhibition, which in the days of Prout and William Hunt probably contained a dozen of them, will now find place for a single example only from the hand of Mr. Wilmot Pilsbury, who alone faithfully records for us the range of straw-thatched buildings sheltering an array of picturesque waggons and obsolete farming implements. But this "stead" is just opposite to the farm in which Mrs. Allingham stays, and it has often attracted her on damp days by its looking like "a blaze of raw sienna." We can understand the tiled expanse of steep-pitched, moss-covered roof affording her some of that material on which her heart delights, and which she has felt it a duty to hand down to posterity before it gives place to some corrugated iron structure which must, ere long, supplant this old timber-built barn.

What was originally a study has been transformed by her, through the human incidents, into a picture: the milkmaid carrying the laden pail from the byre; the cock on the dunghill, seemingly amazed that his wives are too busily engaged on its contents to admire him; the lily-white ducks waddling to the pool to indulge in a drink, the gusto of which seems to increase in proportion to the questionableness of its quality.