The Cottage Is In No Wise Remarkable In Itself; But I Regarded It With
Reverence, For It Had Been The Asylum Of A Persecuted Author.
Hither
poor Steele had retreated and lain perdue when persecuted by creditors
and bailiffs; those immemorial plagues of authors and free-spirited
gentlemen; and here he had written many numbers of the Spectator.
It
was from hence, too, that he had despatched those little notes to his
lady, so full of affection and whimsicality; in which the fond husband,
the careless gentleman, and the shifting spendthrift, were so oddly
blended. I thought, as I first eyed the window, of his apartment, that
I could sit within it and write volumes.
No such thing! It was haymaking season, and, as ill luck would have it,
immediately opposite the cottage was a little alehouse with the sign of
the load of hay. Whether it was there in Steele's time or not I cannot
say; but it set all attempt at conception or inspiration at defiance.
It was the resort of all the Irish haymakers who mow the broad fields
in the neighborhood; and of drovers and teamsters who travel that road.
Here would they gather in the endless summer twilight, or by the light
of the harvest moon, and sit round a table at the door; and tipple, and
laugh, and quarrel, and fight, and sing drowsy songs, and dawdle away
the hours until the deep solemn notes of St. Paul's clock would warn
the varlets home.
In the day-time I was still less able to write. It was broad summer. The
haymakers were at work in the fields, and the perfume of the new-mown
hay brought with it the recollection of my native fields. So instead of
remaining in my room to write, I went wandering about Primrose Hill and
Hempstead Heights and Shepherd's Field, and all those Arcadian scenes
so celebrated by London bards. I cannot tell you how many delicious
hours I have passed lying on the cocks of new-mown hay, on the pleasant
slopes of some of those hills, inhaling the fragrance of the fields,
while the summer fly buzzed above me, or the grasshopper leaped into my
bosom, and how I have gazed with half-shut eye upon the smoky mass of
London, and listened to the distant sound of its population, and pitied
the poor sons of earth toiling in its bowels, like Gnomes in "the dark
gold mine."
People may say what they please about Cockney pastorals; but after all,
there is a vast deal of rural beauty about the western vicinity of
London; and any one that has looked down upon the valley of Westend,
with its soft bosom of green pasturage, lying open to the south, and
dotted with cattle; the steeple of Hempstead rising among rich groves
on the brow of the hill, and the learned height of Harrow in the
distance; will confess that never has he seen a more absolutely rural
landscape in the vicinity of a great metropolis.
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