The record-union., 1893-04-22
Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION. Copyright. 1891

Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION. Copyright. 1891
LONDON, April 10, 1893
In my preceding article on English
villages and their folk, 1 gave some ac-
count of seven English villages, and these
in merest outline. Seven hundred is
truly nearer the number 1 have person
ally visited. Each one could furnish,
through leisurely study, for brush or
pen, abundant material for winsome
volume.
Some writers would have US believe
that English villages were things of the
past; that rural England had completely
gone to decay; that the smoke of factory
stacks hung like pail over the remains
of all that is mellow and old and good;
that the thunders of the mills had
drowned all the dear old country sounds;
that commercial England with hard and
cruel hand had effaced almost the last
Yestige OF the erst sweet and charming
countrysides. and that brick and iron,
stone and steel. coal and Brummagem,
varied now and then by nobleman's de-
mense or gentleman's seat, were the
characteristic features of an English
landscape.
AS goodly a proportion of English as
American people have come to accept
this as true. But it is astoundingly false,
as any one who will really saunter, not
rush, about England may know. Books
are largely responsible for this. English
fiction, like American fiction, of from q
hali-century to century ago, was replete
with pictures of village life and character
When Charlotte Bronte laid down her
pen, and the labor of George Eliot-who
was to the early Victorian age, at least in
degree, what Shakespeare was to the
Elizabethan-wa done, mastership in
this school of delineation seemed to cease.
Neither America nor England has since
produced a lasting work OF fiction upon
rural scenes and lowly folk. Novelists
have wallowed in altruism, psychological
phenomena, subtletieS of crime and its
detection, hideous salaciousness, positive
and comparative religion, the heroics of
agnosticism and intidelity and in the
shredded and bedraggled warp and wool
OF ultra intense metropolitan life. So
those who rely on intelligent fiction to
reflect reality, have felt that the Eng
lish village and its folk had surely passed
away.
Again, the great world of activities has
come constantly to intelligent attention,
through the press, the reviews and thor
ough statistical volumes, largely to the
exclusion of the great underlying world
of fact and sentiment. In America the
stupendous affairs and progress of our
great cities have almost obliterated the
memory of some of the sweetest old hooks
in all the world-the historic and beauti-
full hamlets of New England, of the East
ern and even of the Southern and Middle
States. Yet they are all just as they once
were, prettier and tenderer for their PEN
siveness and increasing age. Here, SINH
or I'M Il / / aAA,
mingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Hull
and that host of practically new manu-
featuring towns and cities of Y Yorkshire
and Lancashire.
The American commercial mind and
the English commercial mind have heard
for a quarter of a century of naught else
than their ingots and spindles, pottery
and looms, fabrics and ships, lockouts
and walkouts, depression and expansion
and their tremendous trade superlatives
of every hard and harassing description
But the material and literary fact still!
remains that all the thousands of ancient
English villages, and with not halt
hundred exceptions, are here just as they
were at the beginning of the century, and
lust as we have poured over them in the
best old works of English fiction. n OF
only this, but hundreds of modern vii
lagos with winsome olden architecture in
the habilament of Elizabethan and even
earlier Tudor times, enriched with luxu-
rious parking and intelligent Horticulture,
and windows filled with ruddy Eng
fish faces, have been added to the mossier
olden stock.
Even in the congested districts of Lam
cashire, Yorkshire, northern Warwick
shire, Statfordshire and Shropshire,
not an ancient village has passed from
sight, save where town or city has
grown within or around il, and where
factory towns are so thick that clusters
of chimney stacks crowd every acre of
the horizon like giant spears above some
mighty encircling camp, there between
still stand the ancient hamlets more
witching for the grimy fellowship of
trade, an endless solace TO eye and heart
of those who ceaseless toll.
Therefore when the lively American
who does England in a week tells us
that the rural England of literature is mo
more he tells us what, perhaps some
Hyde Park orator, railway station por-
ter or travelling salesman has told him,
but still something which he does not
know, and when the London literary di-
lettante falls upon and disposes of rural
England in single breezy magazine arti-
Gle or smart review, he commits for a
needed stipend of ten or twenty pounds
little short of literary crime.
Such as these, and better still, all those
who love the truly beautiful and win
somely picturesque in any land, without
seeking tlulXotlc quests among political
and social problems, should certainly
pass at least one summer among English
villages. Hundreds can be found even
along the linesof railway. Leaving these
at any station by coach, by trap, upon
bicycle, or more advantageously and fuller
of elation than all, on your own legs.
every fire old hedge bordered highway
will fuaniSh you an astounding revelation
in every halt-day's drive or walk.
What wondrous journeyings into the
past are thus afforded. What splendid
pages OF history are thus reopened, for il
has been in and about English villages
rather than in towns that English history
has been made. What challenges are
prompted To the great and the immortal
to come from their wraithlands and walk
beside you where they once dwelt And
how you find that all you knew OF
books has inexpressibly lacked in the
true color and feeling until you thus wed