In a Green Shade

In a Green Shade

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Title: In a Green Shade A Country Commentary
Author: Maurice Hewlett
Release Date: March 29, 2005 [EBook #15495]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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In a Green Shade.
A Country Commentary.
By Maurice Hewlett.
London G. Bell and Sons 1920

G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, LONDON, W.C. 2.

NOTE
All of these Essays, with two exceptions, have been published periodically. All, without exception, have been revised and corrected. My thanks for hospitality afforded to them en route are due to the Westminster Gazette, Daily News, and _Daily Chronicle_; to the _New Statesman_; to the Cornhill Magazine, Fortnightly Review, _Anglo-French Review_, and London Mercury.
BROADCHALKE, _22 Jan. 1920._

CONTENTS
PAGE NOTE v ROUND ABOUT A PREFACE ix CHANGE AND THE PEASANTRY 1 A HERMITAGE IN SIGHT 6 DORIAN MODES 11 CHURCH AND THE MAN 16 BESSY MOORE 20 THE MAIDS 31 POETRY AND THE MODE 35 POLYOLBION 45 THE WELTER 50 CATNACHERY 54 LANDNAMA 60 "WORKS AND DAYS" 64 THE ENGLISH HESIOD 72 FLOWER OF THE FIELD 83 UNDER THE HARVEST MOON 87 LA PETITE PERSONNE 91 A FOOL OF QUALITY 99 SHERIDAN AS MANIAC 105 A FOOTNOTE TO COLERIDGE 119 THE CRYSTAL VASE 132 _NOCTES AMBROSIAN?_ 147 SKELETONS AT A FEAST 151 A COMMENTARY UPON BUTLER 156 THE COMMEMORATION 164 THE QUAKER EIRENICON 168

IN A GREEN SHADE
ROUND ABOUT A PREFACE
The title has become equivocal, since there are more green shades in employment now than were dreamed of by Andrew Marvell. Science is a great maker of homophones, without respect for the poets. There is, for instance, the demilune of lined buckram borne by the weak-eyed on their foreheads, the phylactery of the have-beens--I lay myself open to be believed a cripple, or to look an old fool. A vivacious reviewer in _Punch's_ "Booking Office," will have a vision of me as a babbling elder peering at society from below a green pent. However--I must risk it. It says exactly what I mean; and what I have written I have written.
The point is that, having worked hard for a good many years, I can now consider my latter end under conditions favourable to leisurely and extended thought, sometimes in a garden made, if rightly made, in my own image, sometimes in a house which was built aforetime, in a day when men wrought for posterity as well as for themselves. In such seed-plots it is impossible that one's thoughts should not take colour as they rise. Whithersoever I look I see as much permanency as is good for any sojourner upon earth; I see embodied tradition, respect for Nature's laws, attention to beauty, subservience to use; all this within doors. Outside, the trees, the flowers are my calendar; the birds chime the hours; periodically the church-bell calls the travellers home. Between all these friendly monitors it is hard if one cannot keep the mean. If the passing-bell tempts me to moralise overmuch I may turn to the creatures, and learn to live for the moment. I should be slow to confess how much worldly wisdom I have won from what we choose to call the lower orders of creation, because nobody willingly betrays the whereabouts of his buried treasure, or the amount of it. Mr. Pepys, I remember, forgot both on a certain occasion, and had a devil of a time until he recovered his hoard. But my wealth was not made with hands, or not with my hands.
My house is fortunately placed, too, in the village street, so that I am in touch with my neighbours and their daily concerns, which I make mine so far as they are pleased to allow it. I am aware of them all day long by half a hundred signs; I know the trot of their horses, the horns of their motor-cars--that shows that there are not too many of them--the voices of their children, the death-shrieks of their pigs, the barking of their dogs. Not a day passes but one or other is in, to have some paper signed, to air a grievance, or to ask advice. The vicar and the minister are my good friends, and, I am glad to say, each other's. The farmers understand my ways (it is as much as I can expect of them), and the labourers like them. All this keeps the pores of the mind open; you cannot stagnate if you are useful to other people. Nor--unless