The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green | Page 4

Cuthbert Bede
Manor Green was situated in one of the loveliest spots in all
Warwickshire; a county so rich in all that constitutes the
[10 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]
picturesqueness of a true English landscape. Looking from the
drawing-room windows of the house, you saw in the near foreground
the pretty French garden, with its fantastic particoloured beds, and its
broad gravelled walks and terrace; proudly promenading which, or
perched on the stone balustrade might be seen perchance a peacock
flaunting his beauties in the sun. Then came the carefully kept gardens,
bounded on the one side by the Long Walk and a grove of shrubs and
oaks; and on the other side by a double avenue of stately elms, that led
through velvet turf of brightest green, down past a little rustic lodge, to
a gently sloping valley, where were white walls and rose-clustered
gables of cottages peeping out from the embosoming trees, that
betrayed the village beauties they seemed loth to hide. Then came the

grey church-tower, dark with shrouding ivy; then another clump of
stately elms, tenanted by cawing rooks; then a yellow stretch of bright
meadow-land, dappled over with browsing kine knee-deep in grass and
flowers; then a deep pool that mirrored all, and shone like silver; then
more trees with floating shade, and homesteads rich in wheat-stacks;
then a willowy brook that sparkled on merrily to an old mill-wheel,
whose slippery stairs it lazily got down, and sank to quiet rest in the
stream below; then came, crowding in rich profusion, wide-spreading
woods and antlered oaks; and golden gorse and purple heather; and
sunny orchards, with their dark-green waves that in Spring foamed
white with blossoms; and then gently swelling hills that rose to close
the scene and frame the picture.
Such was the view from the Manor Green. And full of inspiration as
such a scene was, yet Mr. Verdant Green never accomplished (as far as
poetical inspiration was concerned) more than an "Address to the
Moon," which he could just as well have written in any other part of the
country, and which, commencing with the noble aspiration,
"O moon, that shinest in the heaven so blue, I only wish that I could
shine like you!"
and terminating with one of those fine touches of nature which rise
superior to the trammels of ordinary versification,
"But I to bed must be going soon, So I will not address thee more, O
moon!"
will no doubt go down to posterity in the Album of his sister Mary.
For the first fourteen years of his life, the education of Mr. Verdant
Green was conducted wholly under the shadow of his paternal roof,
upon principles fondly imagined to be the soundest and purest for the
formation of his character. Mrs. Green, who was as good and motherly
a soul as ever lived,
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 11]

was yet (as we have shown) one of the Sappeys of Sapcot, a family that
were not renowned either for common sense or worldly wisdom, and
her notions of a boy's education were of that kind laid down by her
favourite poet, Cowper, in his "Tirocinium" that we are
"Well-tutor'd ~only~ while we share A mother's lectures and a nurse's
care;"
and in her horror of all other kinds of instruction (not that she admitted
Mrs. Toosypegs to her counsels), she fondly kept Master Verdant at her
own apron-strings. The task of teaching his young idea how to shoot
was committed chiefly to his sisters' governess, and he regularly took
his place with them in the school-room. These daily exercises and
mental drillings were subject to the inspection of their maiden-aunt,
Miss Virginia Verdant, a first cousin of Mr. Green's, who had come to
visit at the Manor during Master Verdant's infancy, and had remained
there ever since; and this generalship was crowned with such success,
that her nephew grew up the girlish companion of his sisters, with no
knowledge of boyish sports, and no desire for them.
The motherly and spinsterial views regarding his education were
favoured by the fact that he had no playmates of his own sex and age;
and since his father was an only child, and his mother's brothers had
died in their infancy, there were no cousins to initiate him into the
mysteries of boyish games and feelings. Mr. Green was a man who
only cared to live a quiet easy-going life, and would have troubled
himself but little about his neighbours, if he had had any; but the Manor
Green lay in an agricultural district, and, saving the Rectory, there was
no other large house for miles around. The rector's wife, Mrs. Larkyns,
had died shortly after the birth of her first child, a son, who was being
educated at a public school; and this was
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