The Small House at Allington: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Squire of Allington

Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should
there have been a Small House? Our story will, as its name imports,
have its closest relations with those who lived in the less dignified
domicile of the two; but it will have close relations also with
the more dignified, and it may be well that I should, in the first
instance, say a few words as to the Great House and its owner.

The squires of Allington had been squires of Allington since squires,
such as squires are now, were first known in England. From father
to son, and from uncle to nephew, and, in one instance, from second
cousin to second cousin, the sceptre had descended in the family of
the Dales; and the acres had remained intact, growing in value and
not decreasing in number, though guarded by no entail and protected
by no wonderful amount of prudence or wisdom. The estate of Dale of
Allington had been coterminous with the parish of Allington for some
hundreds of years; and though, as I have said, the race of squires
had possessed nothing of superhuman discretion, and had perhaps been
guided in their walks through life by no very distinct principles,
still there had been with them so much of adherence to a sacred law,
that no acre of the property had ever been parted from the hands of
the existing squire. Some futile attempts had been made to increase
the territory, as indeed had been done by Kit Dale, the father of
Christopher Dale, who will appear as our squire of Allington when the
persons of our drama are introduced. Old Kit Dale, who had married
money, had bought outlying farms,--a bit of ground here and a bit
there,--talking, as he did so, much of political influence and of
the good old Tory cause. But these farms and bits of ground had gone
again before our time. To them had been attached no religion. When
old Kit had found himself pressed in that matter of the majority
of the Nineteenth Dragoons, in which crack regiment his second son
made for himself quite a career, he found it easier to sell than
to save--seeing that that which he sold was his own and not the
patrimony of the Dales. At his death the remainder of these purchases
had gone. Family arrangements required completion, and Christopher
Dale required ready money. The outlying farms flew away, as such
new purchases had flown before; but the old patrimony of the Dales
remained untouched, as it had ever remained.

It had been a religion among them; and seeing that the worship had
been carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone
down upon the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had
walked their ways without high principle. To this religion they had
all adhered, and the new heir had ever entered in upon his domain
without other encumbrances than those with which he himself was then
already burdened. And yet there had been no entail. The idea of an
entail was not in accordance with the peculiarities of the Dale mind.
It was necessary to the Dale religion that each squire should have
the power of wasting the acres of Allington,--and that he should
abstain from wasting them. I remember to have dined at a house, the
whole glory and fortune of which depended on the safety of a glass
goblet. We all know the story. If the luck of Edenhall should be
shattered, the doom of the family would be sealed. Nevertheless I was
bidden to drink out of the fatal glass, as were all guests in that
house. It would not have contented the chivalrous mind of the master
to protect his doom by lock and key and padded chest. And so it was
with the Dales of Allington. To them an entail would have been a
lock and key and a padded chest; but the old chivalry of their house
denied to them the use of such protection.

I have spoken something slightingly of the acquirements and doings
of the family; and indeed their acquirements had been few and their
doings little. At Allington, Dale of Allington had always been
known as a king. At Guestwick, the neighbouring market town, he was
a great man--to be seen frequently on Saturdays, standing in the
market-place, and laying down the law as to barley and oxen among
men who knew usually more about barley and oxen than did he. At
Hamersham, the assize town, he was generally in some repute, being
a constant grand juror for the county, and a man who paid his way.
But even at Hamersham the glory of the Dales had, at most periods,
begun to pale, for they had seldom been widely conspicuous in the
county, and had earned no great reputation by their knowledge of
jurisprudence in the grand jury room. Beyond Hamersham their fame
had not spread itself.

They had been men generally built in the same mould, inheriting each
from his father the same virtues and the same vices,--men who would
have lived, each, as his father had lived before him, had not the new
ways of the world gradually drawn away with them, by an invisible
magnetism, the upcoming Dale of the day,--not indeed in any case so
moving him as to bring him up to the spirit of the age in which he
lived, but dragging him forward to a line in advance of that on
which his father had trodden. They had been obstinate men; believing
much in themselves; just according to their ideas of justice; hard
to their tenants but not known to be hard even by the tenants
themselves, for the rules followed had ever been the rules on
the Allington estate; imperious to their wives and children, but
imperious within bounds, so that no Mrs Dale had fled from her lord's
roof, and no loud scandals had existed between father and sons;
exacting in their ideas as to money, expecting that they were to
receive much and to give little, and yet not thought to be mean,
for they paid their way, and gave money in parish charity and in
county charity. They had ever been steady supporters of the Church,
graciously receiving into their parish such new vicars as, from time
to time, were sent to them from King's College, Cambridge, to which
establishment the gift of the living belonged,--but, nevertheless,
the Dales had ever carried on some unpronounced warfare against the
clergyman, so that the intercourse between the lay family and the
clerical had seldom been in all respects pleasant.

Such had been the Dales of Allington, time out of mind, and such in
all respects would have been the Christopher Dale of our time, had he
not suffered two accidents in his youth. He had fallen in love with
a lady who obstinately refused his hand, and on her account he had
remained single; that was his first accident. The second had fallen
upon him with reference to his father's assumed wealth. He had
supposed himself to be richer than other Dales of Allington when
coming in upon his property, and had consequently entertained an
idea of sitting in Parliament for his county. In order that he might
attain this honour he had allowed himself to be talked by the men
of Hamersham and Guestwick out of his old family politics, and had
declared himself a Liberal. He had never gone to the poll, and,
indeed, had never actually stood for the seat. But he had come
forward as a liberal politician, and had failed; and, although it
was well known to all around that Christopher Dale was in heart as
thoroughly conservative as any of his forefathers, this accident had
made him sour and silent on the subject of politics, and had somewhat
estranged him from his brother squires.

In other respects our Christopher Dale was, if anything, superior to
the average of the family. Those whom he did love he loved dearly.
Those whom he hated he did not ill-use beyond the limits of justice.
He was close in small matters of money, and yet in certain family
arrangements he was, as we shall see, capable of much liberality. He
endeavoured to do his duty in accordance with his lights, and had
succeeded in weaning himself from personal indulgences, to which
during the early days of his high hopes he had become accustomed. And
in that matter of his unrequited love he had been true throughout.
In his hard, dry, unpleasant way he had loved the woman; and when at
least he learned to know that she would not have his love, he had
been unable to transfer his heart to another. This had happened
just at the period of his father's death, and he had endeavoured to
console himself with politics, with what fate we have already seen. A
constant, upright, and by no means insincere man was our Christopher
Dale,--thin and meagre in his mental attributes, by no means even
understanding the fullness of a full man, with power of eye-sight
very limited in seeing aught which was above him, but yet worthy of
regard in that he had realised a path of duty and did endeavour to
walk therein. And, moreover, our Mr Christopher Dale was a gentleman.

Such in character was the squire of Allington, the only regular
inhabitant of the Great House. In person, he was a plain, dry man,
with short grizzled hair and thick grizzled eyebrows. Of beard, he
had very little, carrying the smallest possible grey whiskers, which
hardly fell below the points of his ears. His eyes were sharp and
expressive, and his nose was straight and well formed,--as was also
his chin. But the nobility of his face was destroyed by a mean mouth
with thin lips; and his forehead, which was high and narrow, though
it forbad you to take Mr Dale for a fool, forbad you also to take
him for a man of great parts, or of a wide capacity. In height, he
was about five feet ten; and at the time of our story was as near to
seventy as he was to sixty. But years had treated him very lightly,
and he bore few signs of age. Such in person was Christopher Dale,
Esq., the squire of Allington, and owner of some three thousand a
year, all of which proceeded from the lands of that parish.

And now I will speak of the Great House of Allington. After all, it
was not very great; nor was it surrounded by much of that exquisite
nobility of park appurtenance which graces the habitations of most of
our old landed proprietors. But the house itself was very graceful.
It had been built in the days of the early Stuarts, in that style of
architecture to which we give the name of the Tudors. On its front it
showed three pointed roofs, or gables, as I believe they should be
called; and between each gable a thin tall chimney stood, the two
chimneys thus raising themselves just above the three peaks I have
mentioned. I think that the beauty of the house depended much on
those two chimneys; on them, and on the mullioned windows with which
the front of the house was closely filled. The door, with its jutting
porch, was by no means in the centre of the house. As you entered,
there was but one window on your right hand, while on your left there
were three. And over these there was a line of five windows, one
taking its place above the porch. We all know the beautiful old
Tudor window, with its stout stone mullions and its stone transoms,
crossing from side to side at a point much nearer to the top than
to the bottom. Of all windows ever invented it is the sweetest. And
here, at Allington, I think their beauty was enhanced by the fact
that they were not regular in their shape. Some of these windows were
long windows, while some of them were high. That to the right of the
door, and that at the other extremity of the house, were among the
former. But the others had been put in without regard to uniformity,
a long window here, and a high window there, with a general effect
which could hardly have been improved. Then above, in the three
gables, were three other smaller apertures. But these also were
mullioned, and the entire frontage of the house was uniform in its
style.

Round the house there were trim gardens, not very large, but worthy
of much note in that they were so trim,--gardens with broad gravel
paths, with one walk running in front of the house so broad as to
be fitly called a terrace. But this, though in front of the house,
was sufficiently removed from it to allow of a coach-road running
inside it to the front door. The Dales of Allington had always been
gardeners, and their garden was perhaps more noted in the county than
any other of their properties. But outside the gardens no pretensions
had been made to the grandeur of a domain. The pastures round the
house were but pretty fields, in which timber was abundant. There was
no deer-park at Allington; and though the Allington woods were well
known, they formed no portion of a whole of which the house was a
part. They lay away, out of sight, a full mile from the back of
the house; but not on that account of less avail for the fitting
preservation of foxes.

And the house stood much too near the road for purposes of grandeur,
had such purposes ever swelled the breast of any of the squires of
Allington. But I fancy that our ideas of rural grandeur have altered
since many of our older country seats were built. To be near the
village, so as in some way to afford comfort, protection, and
patronage, and perhaps also with some view to the pleasantness of
neighbourhood for its own inmates, seemed to be the object of a
gentleman when building his house in the old days. A solitude in the
centre of a wide park is now the only site that can be recognised as
eligible. No cottage must be seen, unless the cottage _orn�_ of the
gardener. The village, if it cannot be abolished, must be got out of
sight. The sound of the church bells is not desirable, and the road
on which the profane vulgar travel by their own right must be at a
distance. When some old Dale of Allington built his house, he thought
differently. There stood the church and there the village, and,
pleased with such vicinity, he sat himself down close to his God and
to his tenants.

As you pass along the road from Guestwick into the village you see
the church near to you on your left hand; but the house is hidden
from the road. As you approach the church, reaching the gate of it
which is not above two hundred yards from the high road, you see the
full front of the Great House. Perhaps the best view of it is from
the churchyard. The lane leading up to the church ends in a gate,
which is the entrance into Mr Dale's place. There is no lodge there,
and the gate generally stands open,--indeed, always does so, unless
some need of cattle grazing within requires that it should be closed.
But there is an inner gate, leading from the home paddock through
the gardens to the house, and another inner gate, some thirty yards
farther on, which will take you into the farmyard. Perhaps it is a
defect at Allington that the farmyard is very close to the house. But
the stables, and the straw-yards, and the unwashed carts, and the
lazy lingering cattle of the homestead, are screened off by a row of
chestnuts, which, when in its glory of flower, in the early days of
May, no other row in England can surpass in beauty. Had any one told
Dale of Allington,--this Dale or any former Dale,--that his place
wanted wood, he would have pointed with mingled pride and disdain to
his belt of chestnuts.

Of the church itself I will say the fewest possible number of
words. It was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in
England--low, incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often
pervious to the wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too,
according to great rules of architecture. It was built with a nave
and aisles, visibly in the form of a cross, though with its arms
clipped down to the trunk, with a separate chancel, with a large
square short tower, and with a bell-shaped spire, covered with lead
and irregular in its proportions. Who does not know the low porch,
the perpendicular Gothic window, the flat-roofed aisles, and the
noble old grey tower of such a church as this? As regards its
interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with high-backed ugly pews;
the gallery in which the children sat at the end of the church, and
in which two ancient musicians blew their bassoons, was all awry,
and looked as though it would fall; the pulpit was an ugly useless
edifice, as high nearly as the roof would allow, and the reading-desk
under it hardly permitted the parson to keep his head free from the
dangling tassels of the cushion above him. A clerk also was there
beneath him, holding a third position somewhat elevated; and upon
the whole things there were not quite as I would have had them. But,
nevertheless, the place looked like a church, and I can hardly say
so much for all the modern edifices which have been built in my days
towards the glory of God. It looked like a church, and not the less
so because in walking up the passage between the pews the visitor
trod upon the brass plates which dignified the resting-places of the
departed Dales of old.

Below the church, and between that and the village, stood the
vicarage, in such position that the small garden of the vicarage
stretched from the churchyard down to the backs of the village
cottages. This was a pleasant residence, newly built within the last
thirty years, and creditable to the ideas of comfort entertained by
the rich collegiate body from which the vicars of Allington always
came. Doubtless we shall in the course of our sojourn at Allington
visit the vicarage now and then, but I do not know that any further
detailed account of its comforts will be necessary to us.

Passing by the lane leading to the vicarage, the church, and to the
house, the high road descends rapidly to a little brook which runs
through the village. On the right as you descend you will have seen
the "Red Lion," and will have seen no other house conspicuous in any
way. At the bottom, close to the brook, is the post-office, kept
surely by the crossest old woman in all those parts. Here the road
passes through the water, the accommodation of a narrow wooden bridge
having been afforded for those on foot. But before passing the
stream, you will see a cross street, running to the left, as had run
that other lane leading to the house. Here, as this cross street
rises the hill, are the best houses in the village. The baker lives
here, and that respectable woman, Mrs Frummage, who sells ribbons,
and toys, and soap, and straw bonnets, with many other things too
long to mention. Here, too, lives an apothecary, whom the veneration
of this and neighbouring parishes has raised to the dignity of a
doctor. And here also, in the smallest but prettiest cottage that can
be imagined, lives Mrs Hearn, the widow of a former vicar, on terms,
however, with her neighbour the squire which I regret to say are not
as friendly as they should be. Beyond this lady's modest residence,
Allington Street, for so the road is called, turns suddenly round
towards the church, and at the point of the turn is a pretty low iron
railing with a gate, and with a covered way, which leads up to the
front door of the house which stands there, I will only say here, at
this fag end of a chapter, that it is the Small House at Allington.
Allington Street, as I have said, turns short round towards the
church at this point, and there ends at a white gate, leading into
the churchyard by a second entrance.

So much it was needful that I should say of Allington Great House,
of the Squire, and of the village. Of the Small House, I will speak
separately in a further chapter.

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