Country Lodgings

Country Lodgings, by Mary
Russell Mitford

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Title: Country Lodgings
Author: Mary Russell Mitford
Release Date: October 2, 2007 [EBook #22838]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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LODGINGS ***

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COUNTRY LODGINGS
By Mary Russell Mitford
Between two and three years ago, the following pithy advertisement

appeared in several of the London papers:--
"Country Lodgings.--Apartments to let in a large farm-house, situate in
a cheap and pleasant village, about forty miles from London. Apply (if
by letter post-paid) to A. B., No. 7, Salisbury-street, Strand."
Little did I think, whilst admiring in the broad page of the Morning
Chronicle the compendious brevity of this announcement, that the
pleasant village referred to was our own dear Aberleigh; and that the
first tenant of those apartments should be a lady whose family I had
long known, and in whose fortunes and destiny I took a more than
common interest!
Upton Court was a manor-house of considerable extent, which had in
former times been the residence of a distinguished Catholic family, but
which, in the changes of property incident to our fluctuating
neighbourhood, was now "fallen from its high estate," and degraded
into the homestead of a farm so small, that the tenant, a yeoman of the
poorest class, was fain to eke out his rent by entering into an agreement
with a speculating Belford upholsterer, and letting off a part of the fine
old mansion in the shape of furnished lodgings.
Nothing could be finer than the situation of Upton, placed on the
summit of a steep acclivity, looking over a rich and fertile valley to a
range of woody hills; nothing more beautiful than the approach from
Belford, the road leading across a common between a double row of
noble oaks, the ground on one side sinking with the abruptness of a
north-country burn, whilst a clear spring, bursting from the hill side,
made its way to the bottom between patches of shaggy underwood and
a grove of smaller trees; a vine-covered cottage just peeping between
the foliage, and the picturesque outline of the Court, with its
old-fashioned porch, its long windows, and its tall, clustered chimneys
towering in the distance. It was the prettiest prospect in all Aberleigh.
The house itself retained strong marks of former stateliness, especially
in one projecting wing, too remote from the yard to be devoted to the
domestic purposes of the farmer's family. The fine proportions of the
lofty and spacious apartments, the rich mouldings of the ceilings, the

carved chimney-pieces, and the panelled walls, all attested the former
grandeur of the mansion; whilst the fragments of stained glass in the
windows of the great gallery, the half-effaced coats of arms over the
door-way, the faded family portraits, grim black-visaged knights, and
pale shadowy ladies, or the reliques of mouldering tapestry that
fluttered against the walls, and, above all, the secret chamber
constructed for the priest's hiding-place in days of Protestant
persecution, for in darker ages neither of the dominant churches was
free from that foul stain,--each of these vestiges of the manners and the
history of times long gone by appealed to the imagination, and
conspired to give a Mrs. Radcliffe-like, Castle-of-Udolpho-sort of
romance to the manor-house. Really, when the wind swept through the
overgrown espaliers of that neglected but luxuriant wilderness, the
terraced garden; when the screech-owl shrieked from the ivy which
clustered up one side of the walls, and "rats and mice, and such small
deer," were playing their pranks behind the wainscot, it would have
formed as pretty a locality for a supernatural adventure, as ever
decayed hunting lodge in the recesses of the Hartz, or ruined fortress on
the castled Rhine. Nothing was wanting but the ghost, and a ghost of
any taste would have been proud of such a habitation.
Less like a ghost than the inhabitant who did arrive, no human being
well could be.
Mrs. Cameron was a young widow. Her father, a Scotch officer,
well-born, sickly, and poor, had been but too happy to bestow the hand
of his only child upon an old friend and fellow-countryman, the
principal clerk in a government office, whose respectable station, easy
fortune, excellent sense, and super-excellent character, were, as he
thought, and as fathers, right or wrong, are apt to think, advantages
more than sufficient to counterbalance a disparity of years and
appearance, which some daughters might have thought startling,--the
bride being a