"Do you call this a cottage?" I said to the
woman when she came in with tea. "No, I have it as a cottage,
but it is an old farm-house called the Rookery," she returned.
Then, for the first time, I remembered Rural Rides. "This
then is the very house where William Cobbett used to stay
seventy or eighty years ago," I said. She had never heard of
William Cobbett; she only knew that at that date it had been
tenanted by a farmer named Blount, a Roman Catholic, who had
some curious ideas about the land.
That settled it. Blount was the name of Cobbett's friend, and
I had come to the very house where Cobbett was accustomed to
stay. But how odd that my first thought of the man should
have come to me when sitting by the fire where Cobbett himself
had sat on many a cold evening! And this was November the
second, the very day eighty-odd years ago when he paid his
first visit to the Rookery; at all events, it is the first
date he gives in Rural Rides. And he too had been delighted
with the place and the beauty of the surrounding country with
the trees in their late autumn colours. Writing on November
2nd, 1821, he says: "The place is commonly called Uphusband,
which is, I think, as decent a corruption of names as one
could wish to meet with. However, Uphusband the people will
have it, and Uphusband it shall be for me." That is indeed
how he names it all through his book, after explaining that
"husband" is a corruption of Hurstbourne, and that there are
two Hurstbournes, this being the upper one.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121