Читать книгу Happy England - Marcus B. Huish - Страница 6

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Berkshire, in spite of its notable places and situation, does not boast of much in the way of county chronicles, and little can be learnt by one whose sole resource is a Murray’s Guide concerning the interesting village where the scene of this drawing is laid, for it is there dismissed in a couple of lines.

Hagbourne, or Hagborne, is one of the many “bornes” which (in the counties bordering on the Thames, as elsewhere) takes its Saxon affix from one of the burns or brooks which find their way from thence into the neighbouring river. It lies off the Great Western main line, and its fine church may be seen a mile away to the southward just before arriving at Didcot. This proximity to a considerable railway junction has not disturbed much of its old-world character.

The buildings and the Cross, which make a delightful harmony in greys, probably looked much the same when Cavalier and Puritan harried this district in the Civil War, for with Newbury on one side and Oxford on the other, they must oftentimes have been up and down this, the main street of the village. The Cross has long since lost its meaning. The folk from the countryside no longer bring their butter, eggs, and farm produce for local sale. The villagers have to be content with margarine, French eggs, and other foreign commodities from the local “stores,” and the Cross steps are now only of use for infant energies to practise their powers of jumping from. So, too, the sun-dial on the top, which does not appear to have ever been surmounted by a cross, is now useless, for everybody either has a watch or is sufficiently notified as to meal times by a “buzzer” at the railway works hard by.

Mrs. Allingham says that most of her drawings are marked in her memory by some local comment concerning them. In this case a bystander sympathetically remarked that it seemed “a mighty tedious job,” in that of “Milton’s House” that “it was a foolish little thing when you began”—the most favourable criticism she ever encountered only amounting to “Why, it’s almost worth framing!”

4. THE ROBIN