A Mere Accident

A Mere Accident, by George
Moore

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Title: A Mere Accident
Author: George Moore
Release Date: March 28, 2004 [eBook #11733]
Language: English
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A MERE ACCIDENT.
BY

GEORGE MOORE
AUTHOR OF "A MUMMER'S WIFE," "A MODERN LOVER," "A
DRAMA IN MUSLIN," "SPRING DAYS," ETC.
Fifth Edition

TO
My Friends at Buckingham.
Nearly twenty years have gone since first we met, dear friends; time
has but strengthened our early affections, so for love token, for sign of
the years, I bring you this book--these views of your beautiful house
and hills where I have spent so many happy days, these last perhaps the
happiest of all.
G. M.
CHAPTER I.
Three hundred yards of smooth, broad, white road leading from
Henfield, a small town in Sussex. The grasses are lush, and the hedges
are tall and luxuriant. Restless boys scramble to and fro, quiet
nursemaids loiter, and a vagrant has sat down to rest though the bank is
dripping with autumn rain. How fair a prospect of southern England!
Land of exquisite homeliness and order; land of town that is country, of
country that is town; land of a hundred classes all deftly interwoven
and all waxing to one class--England. Land encrowned with the gifts of
peaceful days--days that live in thy face and the faces of thy children.
See it. The outlying villas with their porches and laurels, the red tiled
farm houses, and the brown barns, clustering beneath the wings of
beautiful trees--elm trees; see the flat plots of ground of the market
gardens, with figures bending over baskets of roots; see the factory
chimney; there are trees and gables everywhere; see the end of the
terrace, the gleam of glass, the flower vase, the flitting white of the

tennis players; see the long fields with the long team ploughing, see the
parish church, see the embowering woods, see the squire's house, see
everything and love it, for everything here is England.
* * * * *
Three hundred yards of smooth, broad, white road, leading from
Henfield, a small town in Sussex. It disappears in the woods which lean
across the fields towards the downs. The great bluff heights can be seen,
and at the point where the roads cross, where the tall trunks are listed
with golden light, stands a large wooden gate and a small box-like
lodge. A lonely place in a densely-populated county. The gatekeeper is
blind, and his flute sounds doleful and strange, and the leaves are
falling.
The private road is short and stony. Apparently space was found for it
with difficulty, and it got wedged between an enormous holly hedge
and a stiff wooden paling. But overhead the great branches fight
upwards through a tortuous growth to the sky, and, as you advance,
Thornby Place continues to puzzle you with its medley of curious and
contradictory aspects. For as the second gate, which is in iron, is
approached, your thoughts of rural things are rudely scattered by sight
of what seems a London mews. Reason with yourself. This very urban
feature is occasioned by the high brick wall which runs parallel with
the stables, and this, as you pass round to the front of the house, is
hidden in the clothing foliage of a line of evergreen oaks; continuing
along the lawn, the trees bend about the house--a wash of
Naples-yellow, a few sharp Italian lines and angles. To complete the
sketch, indicate the wings of the blown rooks on the sullen sky.
But our purpose lies deeper than that which inspires a water-colour
sketch. We must learn when and why that house was built; we must see
how the facts reconcile its somewhat tawdry, its somewhat suburban
aspect, with the richer and more romantic aspects of the park. The park
is even now, though it be the middle of autumn, full of blowing green,
and the brown circling woods, full of England and English home life.
That single tree in the foreground is a lime; what a splendour of leafage
it will be in the summer! Those four on the right are chestnuts, and

those far away, lying between us and the imperial downs, are elms;
through that vista you can see the grand line, the abrupt hollows, and
the bit of chalk road cut zig-zag out of the