RELATING HOW I DROVE THROUGH THE VILLAGE OF GYLINGDEN WITH MARK WYLDER'S
LETTER IN MY VALISE.
It was late in the autumn, and I was skimming along, through a rich
English county, in a postchaise, among tall hedgerows gilded, like all
the landscape, with the slanting beams of sunset. The road makes a long
and easy descent into the little town of Gylingden, and down this we were
going at an exhilarating pace, and the jingle of the vehicle sounded like
sledge-bells in my ears, and its swaying and jerking were pleasant and
life-like. I fancy I was in one of those moods which, under similar
circumstances, I sometimes experience still—a semi-narcotic excitement, silent but delightful.
An undulating landscape, with a homely farmstead here and there, and
plenty of old English timber scattered grandly over it, extended mistily
to my right; on the left the road is overtopped by masses of noble
forest. The old park of Brandon lies there, more than four miles from end
to end. These masses of solemn and discoloured verdure, the faint but
splendid lights, and long filmy shadows, the slopes and hollows—my eyes
wandered over them all with that strange sense of unreality, and that
mingling of sweet and bitter fancy, with which we revisit a scene
familiar in very remote and early childhood, and which has haunted a long
interval of maturity and absence, like a romantic reverie.
As I looked through the chaise-windows, every moment presented some
group, or outline, or homely object, for years forgotten; and now, with a
strange surprise how vividly remembered and how affectionately greeted! We drove by the small old house at the left, with its double gable and pretty grass garden, and trim yews and modern lilacs and laburnums, backed by the grand timber of the park. It was the parsonage, and old bachelor Doctor Crewe, the rector, in my nonage, still stood, in memory, at the door, in his black shorts and gaiters, with his hands in his pockets, and a puckered smile on his hard ruddy countenance, as I approached. He smiled little on others I believe, but always kindly upon me. This general liking for children and instinct of smiling on them is one source of the delightful illusions which make the remembrance of early days so like a dream of Paradise, and give us, at starting, such false notions of our value.
There was a little fair-haired child playing on the ground before the
steps as I whirled by. The old rector had long passed away; the shorts, gaiters, and smile—a phantom; and nature, who had gathered in the past, was providing for the future.
The pretty mill-road, running up through Redman's Dell, dank and dark
with tall romantic trees, was left behind in another moment; and we were
now traversing the homely and antique street of the little town, with its
queer shops and solid steep-roofed residences. Up Church-street I
contrived a peep at the old gray tower where the chimes hung; and as we
turned the corner a glance at the 'Brandon Arms.' How very small and low
that palatial hostelry of my earlier recollections had grown! There were
new faces at the door. It was only two-and-twenty years ago, and I was
then but eleven years old. A retrospect of a score of years or so, at
three-and-thirty, is a much vaster affair than a much longer one at
fifty.
The whole thing seemed like yesterday; and as I write, I open my eyes and
start and cry, 'can it be twenty, five-and-twenty, aye, by Jove! five-and-thirty, years since then?' How my days have flown! And I think when another such yesterday shall have arrived, where shall I be?
The first ten years of my life were longer than all the rest put
together, and I think would continue to be so were my future extended to
an ante-Noachian span. It is the first ten that emerge from nothing, and
commencing in a point, it is during them that consciousness, memory—all
the faculties grow, and the experience of sense is so novel, crowded, and
astounding. It is this beginning at a point, and expanding to the immense
disk of our present range of sensuous experience, that gives to them so
prodigious an illusory perspective, and makes us in childhood, measuring
futurity by them, form so wild and exaggerated an estimate of the
duration of human life. But, I beg your pardon.