Northwest enterprise. [volume] (Anacortes, Wash. Ter.) 1882-1887, 1884-02-23
RURAL ENGLAND.
Hearty Old Fashioned Politeness
and Fresh Unaffected Country
Girls
[London Letter in New York Sun. |

London Letter in New York Sun
Almost the first thing you are told when
you take up your temporary residence In
Blankshire, is that your comments must be
guarded and your conversation diplomatic,
as all the families within visiting radius Of
twenty miles are related to each other. And
30 they are, for death puts all the country
side in mourning, while wedding calls out
universal sympathy. Along the route Of the
bridal cortege, every cottage or farm house
hangs out its little decoration, and In the
town every tradesman has his flag, his bunch
Of flowers, or his bit of bunting, for has he
not catered for the wants Of the young couple
from their christening upwardl
Visitors and invitations promptly flow In
upon the new conner with a hearty old-fash-
ioned politeness. Dinner parties are not pop
ular. In the summer other gatherings are
preferred; and ip winter or autumn the male
portion of the community, the men who have
been shooting and hunting for seven or eight
hours, refuse to don the tail coat and white
tie and drive ten miles for a ceremonious
meal. Moreover, coachmen and grooms,
hard worked by their attendance on the ex-
acting hunter tmeaning the quadruped). turn
crusty at being kept out till the small hours
for social duties, although they are ever
ready to turn out at 1 a m. when 1t is ne
cessary to ride eighteen miles to be at meet
for club hunting at 8 In the morning.
The girls-the strong, fresh, healthy, un-
affected girls of Blankshire-s to exist
on lawn tennis, with an occasional trial at
cricket, in which manly sport they are no
mean adopts. But tennis Is the inevitable,
the universal, the all-engrossing game. In
front Of the low, broad, many -windowed.
creeper-grown houses Of the gentry, spread
the well-kept lawns, smooth as carpets, soft
and springy as moss, and across their green
expanse are stretched as many nets as the
accurate measurement Of the courts will
allow. There from morning till sunset the
balls fly, sent over by strong, supple wrists,
while the air echoes to reiterations of the
tennis slang The men Of all ages and de-
nominations are clad In their fiannels, and,
like. the girls, wear the fiat India rubber
soled shoe, for on no account must the ad-
mirably kept turf be cut up. While the
game progresses the strangers and the non-
players are piled with tea and the thi2nest Of
bread and butter.
At no hour between 3 and can you pay q
visit in the country without the neat silver
service being brought in, and the rites Of 5
o'clock tea complied with Then you are
shown over the house by the kind hostess,
and gladden. her soul by genuine admiration
OF the rare bits of china, the quaintcarved
balusters Of oaken staircases, odd recesses,
curious old engravings, older and more
curious books in gigantic bindings and
colossal type. Among these. in strange dis
sonance, and yet unmistakably tho index to
the keynote Of courtly minds, shines the red
binding of all the peerages and volumes ded-
icated by Burke, Debret and others to the
nobility and gentry. Some are in three
volumes, others fat and voluminous like q
commercial directory, others only pocket
editions of the same. Each family knows its
own lineage and descent Of every other.
What the New Testament was to the old Gov
enanters, the printed record Of his ancestors
is to the British landowner-his wade mecum,
his guide, his fundamental dogma. Some
times Of two brothers one only figures in the
Landed Gentry" The other has lost his
claims to appear In the "Livre dor" for he
has embraced trade and become broker or
brewer.