Cottager

“ But it may be brought to a close, and is now being brought to a close in scores of American watering-places, by the appearance of the cottager, who has become to the boarder what the red squirrel is to the gray, a ruthless invader and exterminator. The first cottager is almost always a boarder, so that there is no means of discovering his approach and resisting his advances. In nine cases out of ten he is a simple guest at the farm-house or the hotel, without any discoverable airs or pretensions, on whom the scenery has made such an impression that he quietly buys a lot with a fine view. ”

“ Rare and costly plants are not required, and indeed, are hardly in place in the grounds of an ordinary cottage, unless occupied by the professional gardener. They denote expense, which the laboring cottager cannot afford; and besides that, they detract from the simplicity of the life and purpose which not only the cottage itself, but everything around it, should express. ”

“ The one great desire of the cottager’s heart—after his garden—is plenty of sheds and outhouses in which to store wood, vegetables, and lumber of all kinds. This trait is quite forgotten as a rule by those who design ‘improved’ cottages for gentlemen anxious to see the labourers on their estates well lodged; and consequently the new buildings do not give so much satisfaction as might be expected. It is only natural that to a man whose possessions are limited, things like potatoes, logs of wood, chips, odds and ends should assume a value beyond the appreciation of the well-to-do. ”

“ The squatters, though they are often spoken of as cottagers, must be distinguished from the cottager in regard to their legal and historical position. They were in a sense outside the original village economy. The cottager was, so to speak, an aboriginal poor man: the squatter a poor alien. He [103] settled on a waste, built a cottage, and got together a few geese or sheep, perhaps even a horse or a cow, and proceeded to cultivate the ground.
The treatment of encroachments seems to have varied very greatly, as the cases analysed in the Appendix show, and there was no settled rule. ”

“ They leave the cottage. Mr. Ev. Well, Charles, what do you think of our visit?
260Ch. I am highly pleased with it, sir. I shall have a better opinion of a poor cottager as long as I live.
Mr. Ev. I am glad of it. You see when we compare ourselves with this weaver, all the advantage is not on our side. He is possessed of an art, the utility of which secures him a livelihood, whatever may be the changes of the times. All his family are brought up to industry, and show no small ingenuity in their several occupations. ”

“ Here, singly or in pairs, are scattered cottages, which bespeak a comfort and a rural luxury, less often than our poets have described the characteristics of the English peasantry. It has been observed, and there is a world of homely, ay, and of legislative knowledge in the observation, that wherever you see a flower in a cottage garden, or a bird-cage at the window, you may feel sure that the cottagers are better and wiser than their neighbours ”

“ Upon those northern and eastern slopes of the Hill a few venturesome cottagers had built their nests. The cottages were indeed nestlike: they were so small, so compact, so cosy, so overrun with vines and flowering foliage. Usually of one story, or of a story and a half at most, they clung to the hillside facing the water, and looking out upon its noble expanse from tiny balconies as delicate and dainty as toys. Their garden-plots were set on end; they must needs adapt themselves to the angle of demarkation; they loomed above their front-yards while their back-yards lorded it over their roofs. ”

“ The interior of the cottage was perfectly neat and clean, as might have been anticipated from the style and appearance of the old man; but there was in it more than neatness—there were symptoms that its present tenants had seen better days. There were several articles of furniture and embellishment which cottagers have neither means nor inclination to purchase. Symptoms indeed of better days are to be continually met with in many humble, even in many miserable dwellings ”

“ The cottagers always attend sales like this, and occasionally get hold of good bargains, and so it is that really good substantial furniture may often be found in the possession of the better class of labourers. The old people accumulate these things, and when their sons or daughters marry, can generally spare a few chairs, a bedstead and bed, and with a little crockery from other relations, and a few utensils bought in the adjacent town, the cottage is furnished sufficiently well for a couple whose habits are necessarily simple. ”

“ Two cottagers, husband and wife, were sitting by their cheerful peat-fire one winter evening, in a small lonely hut on the edge of a wide moor, at some miles’ distance from any other habitation. There had been, at one time, several huts of the same kind erected close together, and inhabited by families of the poorest class of day-labourers, who found work among the distant farms, and at night returned to dwellings which were rent-free, with their little gardens won from the waste. ”

“ Lord Coke calls them “boors, holding a little house, with some land of husbandry, bigger than a cottage.” [I-615,
I-616] Some have considered them as cottagers, taking their name from living on the borders of a village or manor; but this is sufficiently refuted by Doomsday itself, where we find them not only mentioned generally among the agricultural occupiers of land, but in one instance as “circa aulam manentes,” dwelling near the manor-house; and even residing in some of the larger towns. Boꞃð, bishop Kennett notices, was a cottage. ”

“ These cottagers work at a certain price (tenpence per day) for the farmers on whose ground they live, and they have spare time enough to cultivate their own land and lay in a store of fish for the winter. The wives and daughters spin and the husbands and sons weave, so that they may fairly be reckoned independent, having also a little money in hand to buy coffee, brandy and some other superfluities. ”

“ At the foot of the stooping crags, bowing to each other across the stream, lie masses that have broken from above, and atop and behind these is to be seen a string of cottages built into the rock, taking advantage of the overarching stratum of hard chalk; and cutting into it are russet, tiled roofs, where the cottagers have sought to expand beyond the natural shelter: they are in an intermediate position. ”

“ So a number of cottagers, for the greater part they were elderly women past the fiercer rush 185and hurry of life, grandmothers and ancient dames or wives at leisure with their children away at the Council schools, had a caller that afternoon. Cottages are such lonely places in the daytime that even district visitors and canvassers are godsends and only tramps ill received. Captain Douglas ranked high in the scale of visitors. ”

“ I do not doubt of there being suffering and misery in the agricultural population of England, but still there are multitudes of cottages which are really very pleasant objects, as were all these. The cottagers had that bright, rosy look of health which we seldom see in America, and appeared to be both polite and self-respecting. ”

“ A single boarding-house gathers about it half a dozen dependent cottages which it cares for, and feeds at its table; and even where the cottages have kitchens and all the housekeeping facilities, their inmates sometimes prefer to dine at the hotels. By far the greater number of cottagers, however, keep house, bringing their service with them from the cities, and settling in their summer homes for three or four or five months. ”

“ Two or three long rows of low thatched-covered cottages—the thatch green with weeds—of one or two rooms each, with sagging doors and tiny windows, make up the village. The interior of the huts is the plainest imaginable; earthen floors, rough stone walls and open roof under the rotting thatch. The cottages surround a weed-grown common where the domestic animals roam at will. A native approaches us, a man of fair intelligence, who talks freely of the wretched condition of the people. ”

“ It is on the point, and mainly short of its wooded extremity, that the cottages of our settlement are dropped, as near the ocean as may be, and with as little order as birds' nests in the grass, among the sweet-fern, laurel, bay, wild raspberries, and dog-roses, which it is the ideal to leave as untouched as possible. Wheel-worn lanes that twist about among the hollows find the cottages from the highway, but foot-paths approach one cottage from another, and people walk rather than drive to each other's doors. ”

“ Whether it be a canoe, a knockabout, a gun, or a fishing-line, the life outside the cottage will be a reflection of that within and your enjoyment will come from the facility with which you manage the essentials of simple living. And so after you have enjoyed your day in the open, you will return to the cottage and discover that the simple comforts which it offers, while perhaps lacking the luxury of your daily routine at home, will be enjoyed with a relish far beyond that existence in a brick block, amid a mass of bric-à-brac and surrounded by servants. ”

“ The contrast between the new and the old is indeed deplorable. The old cottage is a thing of beauty. Its odd, irregular form and various harmonious colouring, the effects of weather, time, and accident, environed with smiling verdure and sweet old-fashioned garden flowers, its thatched roof, high gabled front, inviting porch overgrown with creepers, and casement windows, all combine to form a fair and beautiful home. And then look at the modern cottage with its glaring brick walls, slate roof, ungainly stunted chimney, and note the difference. ”

“ Feeling fatigued, however, I was mad enough to risk this great and imminent danger, thinking a good night’s rest would refresh me for the scrutiny. I accordingly went to bed at once, slept soundly till the morning, and then examined my cottage with a minuteness I will not describe here. Suffice it to say, it consisted of four small rooms, all neatly furnished and in an excellent state of repair. The scenery of the place was bold and striking. A noisy brook on one hand, the sea, like a thread of silver, in the remote distance, blue hills in every direction, fields and meadows. ”

“ No one lives in the cottage now. It is looked after by a gardener and his wife. Mrs. Gregory, who owns it still, has had it, at her son's request, rebuilt and kept in perfect order, but she lives herself in the fine house, built, as all the neighbourhood knows, after her son's design, on the high ground above the river. Folks say that she likes the cottage better than the mansion. Often, in the evening, when the weather is soft and mild, she comes down to the little place to see if her orders are being carried out. ”

“ Well, I told you just now that there is a cottage not far from our house. There is just a field between us, but to reach it you have to go along the road and then turn down a lane. Just beyond it is a nice little grove of Scotch firs, and I used to be very fond of strolling down there, for trees are always a neighborly kind of things. The cottage had been standing empty this eight months, and it was a pity, for it was a pretty two-storied place, with an old-fashioned porch and honeysuckle about it. ”

“ Solitary and lifeless, summer and winter, it looks silently down like a wall-eyed ghost over the waste of rocks and sea.
Below the house and close down by the seashore, is a low, thatched cottage, built against the rock, which forms its back wall, and on to which the rough granite blocks of which the cottage is constructed are rudely cemented with earth and clay; the floor also consists of the living rock, not levelled, but just as the foot of the wanderer had trodden it under the winds of heaven for ages before the cottage was built. ”

“ A lawn runs about the house, and the lawn is in its turn surrounded by a system of little five-roomed cottages, each with a veranda and a weedy palm before the door. Some of the cottages are let to residents, and these are wreathed in flowers. The rest are occupied by ordinary visitors to the hotel; and a very pleasant way this is, by which you have a little country cottage of your own, without domestic burthens, and by the day or week. ”

“ Now you know about the pond you may be interested in the cottage, which is reached by a private winding road through the woods after leaving the highway, or by a long flight of easy steps from the little wharf. A clearing was made large enough for the cottage, which is simple in construction, but all a true camper could wish in comfort and convenience. There is one large room, and [175] a smaller room back for a kitchen, which furnishes ample opportunity for as many to lend a hand as chance to be in camp, for co-operation is specially adapted to such life. ”

“ But it is a wonderful landscape that, on every side of the little house which skaters on this part of the marshes use as their headquarters, lies glistening in the sunshine. A few old alder trees and storm-beaten Scotch firs shelter the cottage a little from the wind. And its all too scanty stacks and its picturesque sheds and outbuildings, whose [Pg 190] roof of tiles are weathered to every imaginable shade of red and brown, help to give an air of warmth and comfort. A primitive place. ”