Afoot in England: Chapter 14

Chapter 14

The Return of the Native

That "going back" about which I wrote in the second chapter to
a place where an unexpected beauty or charm has revealed
itself, and has made its image a lasting and prized possession
of the mind, is not the same thing as the revisiting a famous
town or city, rich in many beauties and old memories, such as
Bath or Wells, for instance. Such centres have a permanent
attraction, and one who is a rover in the land must return to
them again and again, nor does he fail on each successive
visit to find some fresh charm or interest. The sadness of
such returns, after a long interval, is only, as I have said,
when we start "looking up" those with whom we had formed
pleasant friendly relations. And all because of the illusion
that we shall see them as they were--that Time has stood still
waiting for our return, and by and by, to our surprise and
grief, we discover that it is not so; that the dear friends of
other days, long unvisited but unforgotten, have become
strangers. This human loss is felt even more in the case of a
return to some small centre, a village or hamlet where we knew
every one, and our intimacy with the people has produced the
sense of being one in blood with them. It is greatest of all
when we return to a childhood's or boyhood's home. Many
writers have occupied themselves with this mournful theme, and
I imagine that a person of the proper Amiel-like tender and
melancholy moralizing type of mind, by using his own and his
friends' experiences, could write a charmingly sad and pretty
book on the subject.

The really happy returns of this kind must be exceedingly
rare. I am almost surprised to think that I am able to recall
as many as two, but they hardly count, as in both instances
the departure or exile from home happens at so early a time of
life that no recollections of the people survived--nothing, in
fact, but a vague mental picture of the place. One was of a
business man I knew in London, who lost his early home in a
village in the Midlands, as a boy of eight or nine years of
age, through the sale of the place by his father, who had
become impoverished. The boy was trained to business in
London, and when a middle-aged man, wishing to retire and
spend the rest of his life in the country, he revisited his
native village for the first time, and dicovered to his joy
that he could buy back the old home. He was, when I last saw
him, very happy in its possession.

The other case I will relate more fully, as it is a very
curious one, and came to my knowledge in a singular way.

At a small station near Eastleigh a man wearing a highly
pleased expression on his face entered the smoking-carriage in
which I was travelling to London. Putting his bag on the
rack, he pulled out his pipe and threw himself back in his
seat with a satisfied air; then, looking at me and catching my
eye, he at once started talking. I had my newspaper, but
seeing him in that overflowing mood I responded readily
enough, for I was curious to know why he appeared so happy and
who and what he was. Not a tradesman nor a bagman, and not a
farmer, though he looked like an open-air man; nor could I
form a guess from his speech and manner as to his native
place. A robust man of thirty-eight or forty, with blue eyes
and a Saxon face, he looked a thorough Englishman, and yet he
struck me as most un-English in his lively, almost eager
manner, his freedom with a stranger, and something, too, in
his speech. From time to time his face lighted up, when,
looking to the window, his eyes rested on some pretty scene--a
glimpse of stately old elm trees in a field where cattle were
grazing, of the vivid green valley of a chalk stream, the
paler hills beyond, the grey church tower or spire of some
tree-hidden village. When he discovered that these hills and
streams and rustic villages had as great a charm for me as for
himself, that I knew and loved the two or three places he
named in a questioning way, he opened his heart and the secret
of his present happiness.

He was a native of the district, born at a farmhouse of which
his father in succession to his grandfather had been the
tenant. It was a small farm of only eighty-five acres, and as
his father could make no more than a bare livelihood out of
it, he eventually gave it up when my informant was but three
years old, and selling all he had, emigrated to Australia.
Nine years later he died, leaving a numerous family poorly
provided for; the home was broken up and boys and girls had to
go out and face the world. They had somehow all got on very
well, and his brothers and sisters were happy enough out
there, Australians in mind, thoroughly persuaded that theirs
was the better land, the best country in the world, and with
no desire to visit England. He had never felt like that;
somehow his father's feeling about the old country had taken
such a hold of him that he never outlived it--never felt at
home in Australia, however successful he was in his affairs.
The home feeling had been very strong in his father; his
greatest delight was to sit of an evening with his children
round him and tell them of the farm and the old farm-house
where he was born and had lived so many years, and where some
of them too had been born. He was never tired of talking of
it, of taking them by the hand, as it were, and leading them
from place to place, to the stream, the village, the old stone
church, the meadows and fields and hedges, the deep shady
lanes, and, above all, to the dear old ivied house with its
gables and tall chimneys. So many times had his father
described it that the old place was printed like a map on his
mind, and was like a picture which kept its brightness even
after the image of his boyhood's home in Australia had become
faded and pale. With that mental picture to guide him he
believed that he could go to that angle by the porch where the
flycatchers bred every year and find their nest; where in the
hedge the blackberries were most abundant; where the elders
grew by the stream from which he could watch the moorhens and
watervoles; that he knew every fence, gate, and outhouse,
every room and passage in the old house. Through all his busy
years that picture never grew less beautiful, never ceased its
call, and at last, possessed of sufficient capital to yield
him a modest income for the rest of his life, he came home.
What he was going to do in England he did not consider. He
only knew that until he had satisfied the chief desire of his
heart and had looked upon the original of the picture he had
borne so long in his mind he could not rest nor make any plans
for the future.

He came first to London and found, on examining the map of
Hampshire, that the village of Thorpe (I will call it), where
he was born, is three miles from the nearest station, in the
southern part of the county. Undoubtedly it was Thorpe; that
was one of the few names of places his father had mentioned
which remained in his memory always associated with that vivid
image of the farm in his mind. To Thorpe he accordingly went
--as pretty a rustic village as he had hoped to find it. He
took a room at the inn and went out for a long walk--"just to
see the place," he said to the landlord. He would make no
inquiries; he would find his home for himself; how could he
fail to recognize it? But he walked for hours in a widening
circle and saw no farm or other house, and no ground that
corresponded to the picture in his brain.

Troubled at his failure, he went back and questioned his
landlord, and, naturally, was asked for the name of the farm
he was seeking. He had forgotten the name--he even doubted
that he had ever heard it. But there was his family name to
go by--Dyson; did any one remember a farmer Dyson in the
village? He was told that it was not an uncommon name in that
part of the country. There were no Dysons now in Thorpe, but
some fifteen or twenty years ago one of that name had been the
tenant of Long Meadow Farm in the parish. The name of the
farm was unfamiliar, and when he visited the place he found it
was not the one he sought.

It was a grievous disappointment. A new sense of loneliness
oppressed him; for that bright image in his mind, with the
feeling about his home, had been a secret source of comfort
and happiness, and was like a companion, a dear human friend,
and now he appeared to be on the point of losing it. Could it
be that all that mental picture, with the details that seemed
so true to life, was purely imaginary? He could not believe
it; the old house had probably been pulled down, the big trees
felled, orchard and hedges grabbed up--all the old features
obliterated--and the land thrown into some larger neighbouring
farm. It was dreadful to think that such devastating changes
had been made, but it had certainly existed as he saw it in
his mind, and he would inquire of some of the old men in the
place, who would perhaps be able to tell him where his home
had stood thirty years ago.

At once he set about interviewing all the old men he came upon
in his rounds, describing to them the farm tenanted by a man
named Dyson about forty years ago, and by and by he got hold
of one who knew. He listened for a few minutes to the
oft-repeated story, then exclaimed, "Why, sir, 'tis surely
Woodyates you be talking about!"

"That's the name! That's the name," he cried. "Woodyyates-
how did I ever forget it! You knew it then--where was it?"

"I'll just show you," said the old man, proud at having
guessed rightly, and turning started slowly hobbling along
till he got to the end of the lane.

There was an opening there and a view of the valley with
trees, blue in the distance, at the furthest visible point.
"Do you see them trees?" he said. "That's where Harping is;
'tis two miles or, perhaps, a little more from Thorpe.
There's a church tower among them trees, but you can't see it
because 'tis hid. You go by the road till you comes to the
church, then you go on by the water, maybe a quarter of a
mile, and you comes to Woodyates. You won't see no difference
in it; I've knowed it since I were a boy, but 'tis in Harping
parish, not in Thorpe."

Now he remembered the name--Harping, near Thorpe--only Thorpe
was the more important village where the inn was and the
shops.

In less than an hour after leaving his informant he was at
Woodyates, feasting his eyes on the old house of his dreams
and of his exiled father's before him, inexpressibly glad to
recognize it as the very house he had loved so long--that he
had been deceived by no false image.

For some days he haunted the spot, then became a lodger at the
farm-house, and now after making some inquiries he had found
that the owner was willing to sell the place for something
more than its market value, and he was going up to London
about it.

At Waterloo I wished him happiness in his old home found again
after so many years, then watched him as he walked briskly
away--as commonplace-looking a man as could be seen on that
busy crowded platform, in his suit of rough grey tweeds, thick
boots, and bowler hat. Yet one whose fortune might be envied
by many even among the successful--one who had cherished a
secret thought and feeling, which had been to him like the
shadow of a rock and like a cool spring in a dry and thirsty
land.

And in that host of undistinguished Colonials and others of
British race from all regions of the earth, who annually visit
these shores on business or for pleasure or some other object,
how many there must be who come with some such memory or dream
or aspiration in their hearts! A greater number probably than
we imagine. For most of them there is doubtless
disappointment and disillusion: it is a matter of the heart, a
sentiment about which some are not given to speak. He too, my
fellow-passenger, would no doubt have held his peace had his
dream not met with so perfect a fulfilment. As it was he had
to tell his joy to some one, though it were to a stranger.

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