"I'm
the Poet of White Horse Vale,
Sir,
With liberal notions under my
cap." - Ballad
The Browns have become illustrious
by the pen of Thackeray and the
pencil of Doyle, within the memory
of the young gentlemen who are
now matriculating at the universities.
Notwithstanding the well-merited
but late fame which has now fallen
upon them, any one at all acquainted
with the family must feel that
much has yet to be written and
said before the British nation
will be properly sensible of
how much of its greatness it
owes to the Browns. For centuries,
in their quiet, dogged, homespun
way, they have been subduing
the earth in most English counties,
and leaving their mark in American
forests and Australian uplands.
Wherever the fleets and armies
of England have won renown, there
stalwart sons of the Browns have
done yeomen's work. With the
yew bow and cloth-yard shaft
at Cressy and Agincourt - with
the brown bill and pike under
the brave Lord Willoughby - with
culverin and demi-culverin against
Spaniards and Dutchmen - with
hand-grenade and sabre, and musket
and bayonet, under Rodney and
St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore,
Nelson and Wellington, they have
carried their lives in their
hands, getting hard knocks and
hard work in plenty - which was
on the whole what they looked
for, and the best thing for them
- and little praise or pudding,
which indeed they, and most of
us, are better without. Talbots
and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and
such-like folk, have led armies
and made laws time out of mind;
but those noble families would
be somewhat astounded - if the
accounts ever came to be fairly
taken - to find how small their
work for England has been by
the side of that of the Browns.
These latter, indeed, have,
until the present generation,
rarely been sung by poet, or
chronicled by sage. They have
wanted their sacer vates, having
been too solid to rise to the
top by themselves, and not having
been largely gifted with the
talent of catching hold of, and
holding on tight to, whatever
good things happened to be going
- the foundation of the fortunes
of so many noble families. But
the world goes on its way, and
the wheel turns, and the wrongs
of the Browns, like other wrongs,
seem in a fair way to get righted.
And this present writer, having
for many years of his life been
a devout Brown-worshipper, and,
moreover, having the honour of
being nearly connected with an
eminently respectable branch
of the great Brown family, is
anxious, so far as in him lies,
to help the wheel over, and throw
his stone on to the pile.
However, gentle reader, or simple
reader, whichever you may be,
lest you should be led to waste
your precious time upon these
pages, I make so bold as at once
to tell you the sort of folk
you'll have to meet and put up
with, if you and I are to jog
on comfortably together. You
shall hear at once what sort
of folk the Browns are - at least
my branch of them; and then,
if you don't like the sort, why,
cut the concern at once, and
let you and I cry quits before
either of us can grumble at the
other.
In the first
place, the Browns are a fighting
family. One may
question their wisdom, or wit,
or beauty, but about their fight
there can be no question. Wherever
hard knocks of any kind, visible
or invisible, are going; there
the Brown who is nearest must
shove in his carcass. And these
carcasses, for the most part,
answer very well to the characteristic
propensity: they are a squareheaded
and snake-necked generation,
broad in the shoulder, deep in
the chest, and thin in the flank,
carrying no lumber. Then for
clanship, they are as bad as
Highlanders; it is amazing the
belief they have in one another.
With them there is nothing like
the Browns, to the third and
fourth generation. "Blood
is thicker than water," is
one of their pet sayings. They
can't be happy unless they are
always meeting one another. Never
were such people for family gatherings;
which, were you a stranger, or
sensitive, you might think had
better not have been gathered
together. For during the whole
time of their being together
they luxuriate in telling one
another their minds on whatever
subject turns up; and their minds
are wonderfully antagonistic,
and all their opinions are downright
beliefs. Till you've been among
them some time and understand
them, you can't think but that
they are quarrelling. Not a bit
of it. They love and respect
one another ten times the more
after a good set family arguing
bout, and go back, one to his
curacy, another to his chambers,
and another to his regiment,
freshened for work, and more
than ever convinced that the
Browns are the height of company.
This family training, too, combined
with their turn for combativeness,
makes them eminently quixotic.
They can't let anything alone
which they think going wrong.
They must speak their mind about
it, annoying all easy-going folk,
and spend their time and money
in having a tinker at it, however
hopeless the job. It is an impossibility
to a Brown to leave the most
disreputable lame dog on the
other side of a stile. Most other
folk get tired of such work.
The old Browns, with red faces,
white whiskers, and bald heads,
go on believing and fighting
to a green old age. They have
always a crotchet going, till
the old man with the scythe reaps
and garners them away for troublesome
old boys as they are.
And the most provoking thing
is, that no failures knock them
up, or make them hold their hands,
or think you, or me, or other
sane people in the right. Failures
slide off them like July rain
off a duck's back feathers. Jem
and his whole family turn out
bad, and cheat them one week,
and the next they are doing the
same thing for Jack; and when
he goes to the treadmill, and
his wife and children to the
workhouse, they will be on the
lookout for Bill to take his
place.
However, it is time for us to
get from the general to the particular;
so, leaving the great army of
Browns, who are scattered over
the whole empire on which the
sun never sets, and whose general
diffusion I take to be the chief
cause of that empire's stability;
let us at once fix our attention
upon the small nest of Browns
in which our hero was hatched,
and which dwelt in that portion
of the royal county of Berks
which is called the Vale of White
Horse.
Most of you have probably travelled
down the Great Western Railway
as far as Swindon. Those of you
who did so with their eyes open
have been aware, soon after leaving
the Didcot station, of a fine
range of chalk hills running
parallel with the railway on
the left-hand side as you go
down, and distant some two or
three miles, more or less, from
the line. The highest point in
the range is the White Horse
Hill, which you come in front
of just before you stop at the
Shrivenham station. If you love
English scenery, and have a few
hours to spare, you can't do
better, the next time you pass,
than stop at the Farringdon Road
or Shrivenham station, and make
your way to that highest point.
And those who care for the vague
old stories that haunt country-sides
all about England, will not,
if they are wise, be content
with only a few hours' stay;
for, glorious as the view is,
the neighbourhood is yet more
interesting for its relics of
bygone times. I only know two
English neighbourhoods thoroughly,
and in each, within a circle
of five miles, there is enough
of interest and beauty to last
any reasonable man his life.
I believe this to be the case
almost throughout the country,
but each has a special attraction,
and none can be richer than the
one I am speaking of and going
to introduce you to very particularly,
for on this subject I must be
prosy; so those that don't care
for England in detail may skip
the chapter.
O young England! young England!
you who are born into these racing
railroad times, when there's
a Great Exhibition, or some monster
sight, every year, and you can
get over a couple of thousand
miles of ground for three pound
ten in a five-weeks' holiday,
why don't you know more of your
own birthplaces? You're all in
the ends of the earth, it seems
to me, as soon as you get your
necks out of the educational
collar, for midsummer holidays,
long vacations, or what not -
going round Ireland, with a return
ticket, in a fortnight; dropping
your copies of Tennyson on the
tops of Swiss mountains; or pulling
down the Danube in Oxford racing
boats. And when you get home
for a quiet fortnight, you turn
the steam off, and lie on your
backs in the paternal garden,
surrounded by the last batch
of books from Mudie's library,
and half bored to death. Well,
well! I know it has its good
side. You all patter French more
or less, and perhaps German;
you have seen men and cities,
no doubt, and have your opinions,
such as they are, about schools
of painting, high art, and all
that; have seen the pictures
of Dresden and the Louvre, and
know the taste of sour krout.
All I say is, you don't know
your own lanes and woods and
fields. Though you may be choke-full
of science, not one in twenty
of you knows where to find the
wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis, which
grow in the next wood, or on
the down three miles off, or
what the bog-bean and wood-sage
are good for. And as for the
country legends, the stories
of the old gable-ended farmhouses,
the place where the last skirmish
was fought in the civil wars,
where the parish butts stood,
where the last highwayman turned
to bay, where the last ghost
was laid by the parson, they're
gone out of date altogether.
Now, in my time,
when we got home by the old
coach, which
put us down at the cross-roads
with our boxes, the first day
of the holidays, and had been
driven off by the family coachman,
singing "Dulce Domum" at
the top of our voices, there
we were, fixtures, till black
Monday came round. We had to
cut out our own amusements within
a walk or a ride of home. And
so we got to know all the country
folk and their ways and songs
and stories by heart, and went
over the fields and woods and
hills, again and again, till
we made friends of them all.
We were Berkshire, or Gloucestershire,
or Yorkshire boys; and you're
young cosmopolites, belonging
to all countries and no countries.
No doubt it's all right; I dare
say it is. This is the day of
large views, and glorious humanity,
and all that; but I wish back-sword
play hadn't gone out in the Vale
of White Horse, and that that
confounded Great Western hadn't
carried away Alfred's Hill to
make an embankment.
But to return to the said Vale
of White Horse, the country in
which the first scenes of this
true and interesting story are
laid. As I said, the Great Western
now runs right through it, and
it is a land of large, rich pastures
bounded by ox-fences, and covered
with fine hedgerow timber, with
here and there a nice little
gorse or spinney, where abideth
poor Charley, having no other
cover to which to betake himself
for miles and miles, when pushed
out some fine November morning
by the old Berkshire. Those who
have been there, and well mounted,
only know how he and the stanch
little pack who dash after him
- heads high and sterns low,
with a breast-high scent - can
consume the ground at such times.
There being little ploughland,
and few woods, the Vale is only
an average sporting country,
except for hunting. The villages
are straggling, queer, old-fashioned
places, the houses being dropped
down without the least regularity,
in nooks and out-of-the-way corners,
by the sides of shadowy lanes
and footpaths, each with its
patch of garden. They are built
chiefly of good gray stone, and
thatched; though I see that within
the last year or two the red-brick
cottages are multiplying, for
the Vale is beginning to manufacture
largely both bricks and tiles.
There are lots of waste ground
by the side of the roads in every
village, amounting often to village
greens, where feed the pigs and
ganders of the people; and these
roads are old-fashioned, homely
roads, very dirty and badly made,
and hardly endurable in winter,
but still pleasant jog- trot
roads running through the great
pasture-lands, dotted here and
there with little clumps of thorns,
where the sleek kine are feeding,
with no fence on either side
of them, and a gate at the end
of each field, which makes you
get out of your gig (if you keep
one), and gives you a chance
of looking about you every quarter
of a mile.
One of the moralists
whom we sat under in our youth
- was
it the great Richard Swiveller,
or Mr. Stiggins - says, "We
are born in a vale, and must
take the consequences of being
found in such a situation." These
consequences I, for one, am ready
to encounter. I pity people who
weren't born in a vale. I don't
mean a flat country; but a vale
- that is, a flat country bounded
by hills. The having your hill
always in view if you choose
to turn towards him - that's
the essence of a vale. There
he is for ever in the distance,
your friend and companion. You
never lose him as you do in hilly
districts.
And then what
a hill is the White Horse Hill!
There it stands
right up above all the rest,
nine hundred feet above the sea,
and the boldest, bravest shape
for a chalk hill that you ever
saw. Let us go up to the top
of him, and see what is to be
found there. Ay, you may well
wonder and think it odd you never
heard of this before; but wonder
or not, as you please, there
are hundreds of such things lying
about England, which wiser folk
than you know nothing of, and
care nothing for. Yes, it's a
magnificent Roman camp, and no
mistake, with gates and ditch
and mounds, all as complete as
it was twenty years after the
strong old rogues left it. Here,
right up on the highest point,
from which they say you can see
eleven counties, they trenched
round all the table-land, some
twelve or fourteen acres, as
was their custom, for they couldn't
bear anybody to overlook them,
and made their eyrie. The ground
falls away rapidly on all sides.
Was there ever such turf in the
whole world? You sink up to your
ankles at every step, and yet
the spring of it is delicious.
There is always a breeze in the "camp," as
it is called; and here it lies,
just as the Romans left it, except
that cairn on the east side,
left by her Majesty's corps of
sappers and miners the other
day, when they and the engineer
officer had finished their sojourn
there, and their surveys for
the ordnance map of Berkshire.
It is altogether a place that
you won't forget, a place to
open a man's soul, and make him
prophesy, as he looks down on
that great Vale spread out as
the garden of the Lord before
him, and wave on wave of the
mysterious downs behind, and
to the right and left the chalk
hills running away into the distance,
along which he can trace for
miles the old Roman road, "the
Ridgeway" ("the Rudge," as
the country folk call it), keeping
straight along the highest back
of the hills - such a place as
Balak brought Balaam to, and
told him to prophesy against
the people in the valley beneath.
And he could not, neither shall
you, for they are a people of
the Lord who abide there.
And now we leave
the camp, and descend towards
the west, and
are on the Ashdown. We are treading
on heroes. It is sacred ground
for Englishmen - more sacred
than all but one or two fields
where their bones lie whitening.
For this is the actual place
where our Alfred won his great
battle, the battle of Ashdown
("Aescendum" in the
chroniclers), which broke the
Danish power, and made England
a Christian land. The Danes held
the camp and the slope where
we are standing - the whole crown
of the hill, in fact. "The
heathen had beforehand seized
the higher ground," as old
Asser says, having wasted everything
behind them from London, and
being just ready to burst down
on the fair Vale, Alfred's own
birthplace and heritage. And
up the heights came the Saxons,
as they did at the Alma. "The
Christians led up their line
from the lower ground. There
stood also on that same spot
a single thorn-tree, marvellous
stumpy (which we ourselves with
our very own eyes have seen)." Bless
the old chronicler! Does he think
nobody ever saw the "single
thorn-tree" but himself?
Why, there it stands to this
very day, just on the edge of
the slope, and I saw it not three
weeks since - an old single thorn-tree, "marvellous
stumpy." At least, if it
isn't the same tree it ought
to have been, for it's just in
the place where the battle must
have been won or lost - "around
which, as I was saying, the two
lines of foemen came together
in battle with a huge shout.
And in this place one of the
two kings of the heathen and
five of his earls fell down and
died, and many thousands of the
heathen side in the same place." *
After which crowning mercy, the
pious king, that there might
never be wanting a sign and a
memorial to the country-side,
carved out on the northern side
of the chalk hill, under the
camp, where it is almost precipitous,
the great Saxon White Horse,
which he who will may see from
the railway, and which gives
its name to the Vale, over which
it has looked these thousand
years and more.
* "Pagani editiorem
Iocum praeoccupaverant. Christiani
ab inferiori loco aciem dirigebant.
Erat quoque in eodem loco unica
spinosa arbor, brevis admodum
(quam nos ipsi nostris propriis
oculis vidimus). Circa quam ergo
hostiles inter se acies cum ingenti
clamore hostiliter conveniunt.
Quo in loco alter de duobus Paganorum
regibus et quinque comites occisi
occubuerunt, et multa millia
Paganae partis in eodem loco.
Cecidit illic ergo Boegsceg Rex,
et Sidroc ille senex comes, et
Sidroc Junior comes, et Obsbern
comes," etc. —Annales
Rerum Gestarum AElfredi Magni,
Auctore Asserio. Recensuit Franciscus
Wise. Oxford, 1722, p.23.
Right down below
the White Horse is a curious
deep and broad gully
called "the Manger," into
one side of which the hills fall
with a series of the most lovely
sweeping curves, known as "the
Giant's Stairs." They are
not a bit like stairs, but I
never saw anything like them
anywhere else, with their short
green turf, and tender bluebells,
and gossamer and thistle-down
gleaming in the sun and the sheep-paths
running along their sides like
ruled lines.
The other side of the Manger
is formed by the Dragon's Hill,
a curious little round self-confident
fellow, thrown forward from the
range, utterly unlike everything
round him. On this hill some
deliverer of mankind - St. George,
the country folk used to tell
me - killed a dragon. Whether
it were St. George, I cannot
say; but surely a dragon was
killed there, for you may see
the marks yet where his blood
ran down, and more by token the
place where it ran down is the
easiest way up the hillside.
Passing along
the Ridgeway to the west for
about a mile, we
come to a little clump of young
beech and firs, with a growth
of thorn and privet underwood.
Here you may find nests of the
strong down partridge and peewit,
but take care that the keeper
isn't down upon you; and in the
middle of it is an old cromlech,
a huge flat stone raised on seven
or eight others, and led up to
by a path, with large single
stones set up on each side. This
is Wayland Smith's cave, a place
of classic fame now; but as Sir
Walter has touched it, I may
as well let it alone, and refer
you to "Kenilworth" for
the legend.
The thick, deep wood which you
see in the hollow, about a mile
off, surrounds Ashdown Park,
built by Inigo Jones. Four broad
alleys are cut through the wood
from circumference to centre,
and each leads to one face of
the house. The mystery of the
downs hangs about house and wood,
as they stand there alone, so
unlike all around, with the green
slopes studded with great stones
just about this part, stretching
away on all sides. It was a wise
Lord Craven, I think, who pitched
his tent there.
Passing along
the Ridgeway to the east, we
soon come to cultivated
land. The downs, strictly so
called, are no more. Lincolnshire
farmers have been imported, and
the long, fresh slopes are sheep-walks
no more, but grow famous turnips
and barley. One of these improvers
lives over there at the "Seven
Barrows" farm, another mystery
of the great downs. There are
the barrows still, solemn and
silent, like ships in the calm
sea, the sepulchres of some sons
of men. But of whom? It is three
miles from the White Horse -
too far for the slain of Ashdown
to be buried there. Who shall
say what heroes are waiting there?
But we must get down into the
Vale again, and so away by the
Great Western Railway to town,
for time and the printer's devil
press, and it is a terrible long
and slippery descent, and a shocking
bad road. At the bottom, however,
there is a pleasant public; whereat
we must really take a modest
quencher, for the down air is
provocative of thirst. So we
pull up under an old oak which
stands before the door.
"What is
the name of your hill, landlord?"
"Blawing
STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure."
[READER. "Stuym?"
AUTHOR: "Stone, stupid
- the Blowing Stone."]
"And of
your house? I can't make out
the sign."
"Blawing Stwun, sir," says
the landlord, pouring out his
old ale from a Toby Philpot jug,
with a melodious crash, into
the long- necked glass.
"What queer names!" say
we, sighing at the end of our
draught, and holding out the
glass to be replenished.
"Bean't queer at all, as
I can see, sir," says mine
host, handing back our glass, "seeing
as this here is the Blawing Stwun,
his self," putting his hand
on a square lump of stone, some
three feet and a half high, perforated
with two or three queer holes,
like petrified antediluvian rat-holes,
which lies there close under
the oak, under our very nose.
We are more than ever puzzled,
and drink our second glass of
ale, wondering what will come
next. "Like to hear un,
sir?" says mine host, setting
down Toby Philpot on the tray,
and resting both hands on the "Stwun." We
are ready for anything; and he,
without waiting for a reply,
applies his mouth to one of the
ratholes. Something must come
of it, if he doesn't burst. Good
heavens! I hope he has no apoplectic
tendencies. Yes, here it comes,
sure enough, a gruesome sound
between a moan and a roar, and
spreads itself away over the
valley, and up the hillside,
and into the woods at the back
of the house, a ghost-like, awful
voice. "Um do say, sir," says
mine host, rising purple-faced,
while the moan is still coming
out of the Stwun, "as they
used in old times to warn the
country-side by blawing the Stwun
when the enemy was a-comin',
and as how folks could make un
heered then for seven mile round;
leastways, so I've heered Lawyer
Smith say, and he knows a smart
sight about them old times." We
can hardly swallow Lawyer Smith's
seven miles; but could the blowing
of the stone have been a summons,
a sort of sending the fiery cross
round the neighbourhood in the
old times? What old times? Who
knows? We pay for our beer, and
are thankful.
"And what's
the name of the village just
below, landlord?"
"Kingstone
Lisle, sir."
"Fine plantations
you've got here?"
"Yes, sir;
the Squire's 'mazing fond of
trees and such
like."
"No wonder.
He's got some real beauties
to be fond of.
Good- day, landlord."
"Good-day,
sir, and a pleasant ride to
'ee."
And now, my
boys, you whom I want to get
for readers, have
you had enough? Will you give
in at once, and say you're convinced,
and let me begin my story, or
will you have more of it? Remember,
I've only been over a little
bit of the hillside yet - what
you could ride round easily on
your ponies in an hour. I'm only
just come down into the Vale,
by Blowing Stone Hill; and if
I once begin about the Vale,
what's to stop me? You'll have
to hear all about Wantage, the
birthplace of Alfred, and Farringdon,
which held out so long for Charles
the First (the Vale was near
Oxford, and dreadfully malignant
- full of Throgmortons, Puseys,
and Pyes, and such like; and
their brawny retainers). Did
you ever read Thomas Ingoldsby's "Legend
of Hamilton Tighe"? If you
haven't, you ought to have. Well,
Farringdon is where he lived,
before he went to sea; his real
name was Hamden Pye, and the
Pyes were the great folk at Farringdon.
Then there's Pusey. You've heard
of the Pusey horn, which King
Canute gave to the Puseys of
that day, and which the gallant
old squire, lately gone to his
rest (whom Berkshire freeholders
turned out of last Parliament,
to their eternal disgrace, for
voting according to his conscience),
used to bring out on high days,
holidays, and bonfire nights.
And the splendid old cross church
at Uffington, the Uffingas town.
How the whole countryside teems
with Saxon names and memories!
And the old moated grange at
Compton, nestled close under
the hillside, where twenty Marianas
may have lived, with its bright
water-lilies in the moat, and
its yew walk, "the cloister
walk," and its peerless
terraced gardens. There they
all are, and twenty things beside,
for those who care about them,
and have eyes. And these are
the sort of things you may find,
I believe, every one of you,
in any common English country
neighbourhood.
Will you look
for them under your own noses,
or will you not?
Well, well, I've done what I
can to make you; and if you will
go gadding over half Europe now,
every holidays, I can't help
it. I was born and bred a west-country
man, thank God! a Wessex man,
a citizen of the noblest Saxon
kingdom of Wessex, a regular "Angular
Saxon," the very soul of
me adscriptus glebae. There's
nothing like the old country-side
for me, and no music like the
twang of the real old Saxon tongue,
as one gets it fresh from the
veritable chaw in the White Horse
Vale; and I say with "Gaarge
Ridler," the old west-country
yeoman, -
"Throo
aall the waarld owld Gaarge
would bwoast,
Commend me to merry owld England mwoast;
While vools gwoes prating vur and nigh,
We stwops at whum, my dog and I."
Here, at any
rate, lived and stopped at
home Squire Brown,
J.P. for the county of Berks,
in a village near the foot of
the White Horse range. And here
he dealt out justice and mercy
in a rough way, and begat sons
and daughters, and hunted the
fox, and grumbled at the badness
of the roads and the times. And
his wife dealt out stockings,
and calico shirts, and smock
frocks, and comforting drinks
to the old folks with the "rheumatiz," and
good counsel to all; and kept
the coal and clothes' clubs going,
for yule-tide, when the bands
of mummers came round, dressed
out in ribbons and coloured paper
caps, and stamped round the Squire's
kitchen, repeating in true sing-song
vernacular the legend of St.
George and his fight, and the
ten-pound doctor, who plays his
part at healing the Saint - a
relic, I believe, of the old
Middle-age mysteries. It was
the first dramatic representation
which greeted the eyes of little
Tom, who was brought down into
the kitchen by his nurse to witness
it, at the mature age of three
years. Tom was the eldest child
of his parents, and from his
earliest babyhood exhibited the
family characteristics in great
strength. He was a hearty, strong
boy from the first, given to
fighting with and escaping from
his nurse, and fraternizing with
all the village boys, with whom
he made expeditions all round
the neighbourhood. And here,
in the quiet old-fashioned country
village, under the shadow of
the everlasting hills, Tom Brown
was reared, and never left it
till he went first to school,
when nearly eight years of age,
for in those days change of air
twice a year was not thought
absolutely necessary for the
health of all her Majesty's lieges.
I have been
credibly informed, and am inclined
to believe, that
the various boards of directors
of railway companies, those gigantic
jobbers and bribers, while quarrelling
about everything else, agreed
together some ten years back
to buy up the learned profession
of medicine, body and soul. To
this end they set apart several
millions of money, which they
continually distribute judiciously
among the doctors, stipulating
only this one thing, that they
shall prescribe change of air
to every patient who can pay,
or borrow money to pay, a railway
fare, and see their prescription
carried out. If it be not for
this, why is it that none of
us can be well at home for a
year together? It wasn't so twenty
years ago, not a bit of it. The
Browns didn't go out of the country
once in five years. A visit to
Reading or Abingdon twice a year,
at assizes or quarter sessions,
which the Squire made on his
horse with a pair of saddle-bags
containing his wardrobe, a stay
of a day or two at some country
neighbour's, or an expedition
to a county ball or the yeomanry
review, made up the sum of the
Brown locomotion in most years.
A stray Brown from some distant
county dropped in every now and
then; or from Oxford, on grave
nag, an old don, contemporary
of the Squire; and were looked
upon by the Brown household and
the villagers with the same sort
of feeling with which we now
regard a man who has crossed
the Rocky Mountains, or launched
a boat on the Great Lake in Central
Africa. The White Horse Vale,
remember, was traversed by no
great road - nothing but country
parish roads, and these very
bad. Only one coach ran there,
and this one only from Wantage
to London, so that the western
part of the Vale was without
regular means of moving on, and
certainly didn't seem to want
them. There was the canal, by
the way, which supplied the country-side
with coal, and up and down which
continually went the long barges,
with the big black men lounging
by the side of the horses along
the towing-path, and the women
in bright-coloured handkerchiefs
standing in the sterns steering.
Standing I say, but you could
never see whether they were standing
or sitting, all but their heads
and shoulders being out of sight
in the cozy little cabins which
occupied some eight feet of the
stern, and which Tom Brown pictured
to himself as the most desirable
of residences. His nurse told
him that those good-natured-looking
women were in the constant habit
of enticing children into the
barges, and taking them up to
London and selling them, which
Tom wouldn't believe, and which
made him resolve as soon as possible
to accept the oft-proffered invitation
of these sirens to "young
master" to come in and have
a ride. But as yet the nurse
was too much for Tom.
Yet why should I, after all,
abuse the gadabout propensities
of my countrymen? We are a vagabond
nation now, that's certain, for
better for worse. I am a vagabond;
I have been away from home no
less than five distinct times
in the last year. The Queen sets
us the example: we are moving
on from top to bottom. Little
dirty Jack, who abides in Clement's
Inn gateway, and blacks my boots
for a penny, takes his month's
hop-picking every year as a matter
of course. Why shouldn't he?
I'm delighted at it. I love vagabonds,
only I prefer poor to rich ones.
Couriers and ladies'-maids, imperials
and travelling carriages, are
an abomination unto me; I cannot
away with them. But for dirty
Jack, and every good fellow who,
in the words of the capital French
song, moves about,
"Comme
le limacon,
Portant tout son bagage,
Ses meubles, sa maison,"
on his own back,
why, good luck to them, and
many a merry roadside
adventure, and steaming supper
in the chimney corners of roadside
inns, Swiss chalets, Hottentot
kraals, or wherever else they
like to go. So, having succeeded
in contradicting myself in my
first chapter (which gives me
great hopes that you will all
go on, and think me a good fellow
notwithstanding my crotchets),
I shall here shut up for the
present, and consider my ways;
having resolved to "sar'
it out," as we say in the
Vale, "holus bolus" just
as it comes, and then you'll
probably get the truth out of
me.
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