  There are few fairer counties in England than Surrey, and of Surrey the fairest portion is admittedly the extreme south-western edge which skirts Sussex to the south and Hampshire to the west. Travellers from London to Portsmouth by the London and South-Western Railway on leaving Guildford pass through the middle of the right angle which this corner makes, and cut the corner two miles beyond Haslemere almost exactly at the point where the three counties meet. As the steep rise of nearly 300 feet which has to be surmounted in the six miles which divide Witley from Haslemere is being negotiated by the train, the most unobservant passenger must be struck by the singularly beautiful wooded character of the country on either side, and by the far-extended It was to Sandhills, near Witley, that Mrs. Allingham came to live in 1881 with her growing family, and it was in this corner of Surrey that she found ample material for almost all her work during the next few years; and it is there that she has returned at intervals for the majority of those cottage subjects which the public has called for, ever since her first portrayal of them shortly after her commencement of landscape painting in these parts. Witley consists of groups of irregularly-dotted-about houses, which hardly constitute a village, and would perhaps be better designated by the proper name—Witley Street. A few years ago every one of the houses counted their ages by centuries, and were fitting companions of the ancient oaks and elms that shaded them. Some few are left, but the majority are gone, many so long before the term of their natural existence had run that it was a troublesome piece of work to destroy them. There is also an old “Domesday Book” Church. Drawings of almost all of the cottages, from the hand of Mrs. Allingham, are in existence somewhere or other, but she never seems to have painted this Sandhills, where our artist lived, is on the Haslemere side of Witley, on a sloping common of heather and gorse, topped with fir trees. From thence the view, looking southwards, extends far and wide over the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, Hindhead, a mountain-like hill rising behind, and Blackdown, a spur stretching out on to the Sussex Valley to the right. In the distance are to be seen the rising grounds near Midhurst and Petworth, Chanctonbury Ring with its tuft of trees, called locally “The Squire’s Hunting Cap,” and on a clear day the downs as far as Brighton and Lewes. It is indeed a healthy and bracing spot, and one calculated to induce a painter to energetic work, and a delight in doing it. Subjects lay close at hand, the Sandhills garden furnishing many a one. “Master Hardy’s,” a charming cottage tenanted by a charming old man, was within a stone’s throw, and received attention inside and out. Of the The neighbourhood round is, or perhaps we should say was, also prolific in subjects—Haslemere, four miles south-west, with its pleasant wide old streets, and with fields tilted up at the end of it, furnished its Fish-Shop, and other thoroughly English village scenes. Some two miles south of Haslemere was Aldworth, Lord Tennyson’s house, a mile over the Sussex border, although always spoken of as his “Surrey” residence. To Mrs. Allingham’s work there we shall have occasion to refer later on. The varied summits of Hindhead (painted a century earlier by Turner and Rowlandson, and at that time adorned with a gibbet for the benefit of the highwaymen who infested the Portsmouth Road, which passes over it), in one place bare moor, in another crested with fir trees, lay some distance northward of Haslemere; but our artist did not often depict them, although they presented themselves under many a charming aspect, and To the southward of Sandhills stretches, as we have said, the Weald. To this district Mrs. Allingham made frequent excursions, not only for cottages, which she found at Hambledon, Chiddingfold, and Wisborough, but for spring and autumn subjects in the oak woods and copses which to this day probably bear much the same aspect as did the ancient Forest of Anderida (whose site they occupy) in the time of the Heptarchy. Oak is the tree of the wealden clay on the lower levels, but elms grow to a grand size on the higher ground, where ashes are also numerous. Spanish chestnuts “encamp in state” on certain slopes, and many of the hills are “fringed and pillared” with pines. The interminable hazel copses are interspersed with long labyrinthine paths, the intricacies of which are only known to the countryside folk. Not so long ago the cutting down at intervals of the young wood for the purposes of hop poles, hurdles, and kindling, brought in a handsome revenue to the owners; but of late years wire has taken the place of wood for the two first of these In the spring the country round is decked with primroses, bluebells, and cowslips in the woods, hedgerows, and fields, being fortunately outside the range of the marauders from London; and it is indeed pleasurable to ramble from copse to field, and back again. But in autumn and winter the deep clay soil makes it heavy travelling in the deep-cut roads and lanes, cumbered with the redolent decay of the leafage from the trees. The cottars were, when the majority of these drawings were made, rural and old-fashioned, and many had lived hereabouts through numerous generations. A quiet, taciturn folk, contented with moderate comforts, on good terms with their wealthier neighbours, not often feeling the pinch of poverty. Maybe all are not so good-looking as Mrs. Allingham has depicted them, but they vary much, As will be seen, they have a taste and enjoyment for colour, if not for change, in the gardens with which their cottages are fairly well supplied. These are bright at one or other season of the year with snowdrop, crocus, and daffodil, lilac, sweetwilliam, and pink, sunflower, Michaelmas daisy, and chrysanthemum. The following drawings have been selected as illustrating the neighbourhood of Mrs. Allingham’s home at Sandhills:— 18. A WITLEY LANE It is very seldom that we encounter a drawing of Mrs. Allingham that deals with Nature in winter’s garb. In this respect she differs from Birket Foster, who rightly considered that trees Nor is it often that we see Mrs. Allingham afield so early in the spring as in this lane scene, where the elms are clothed only in their “ruddy hearted blossom flakes.”8 Perhaps this absence is due to prudential reasons, to avoid the rheumatism which appears to be the only ailment which the landscapist runs against in his healthy outdoor profession. Those who have seen the woods of Surrey and Sussex at this time of year know what a lovely colour they assume in the budding stage, a colour that makes the view over the Weald from such a vantage-ground as Blackdown a sea of ravishing violet hues, almost equalling that of the oak forests as seen in February from the Terrace at Pau, which stretch away to the snow-clad range of the Pyrenees—perhaps the most delicately perfect view in Europe. But the day selected for this sketch was evidently a warm one for the time of year, or we The flowering whin is no index to the season, for we know the old adage— When the whin’s in bloom, my love’s in tune. But the catkins on the hazel, and the primroses on the banks, must place it round that elastic date, Eastertide. These wayside primroses remind one of a strongly expressed opinion of Mrs. Allingham’s, that wayside flowers should never be gathered, but left for the enjoyment of the passers-by—a liberal one, which was first instilled into her by her husband, who wrote verses upon it, from which I cull the following lines:— Pluck not the wayside flower, It is the traveller’s dower; A thousand passers-by Its beauties may espy. A spot of sunshine dwells, And cheerful message tells. It is the traveller’s dower. 19. HINDHEAD FROM WITLEY COMMON When this drawing appeared in the Exhibition of 1889 there were some who called in question the truthfulness of the colour of distant Hindhead, affirming that it was too blue. But when the air comes up in August from the southward, laden with a salty moisture, and the shadows are cast by hurrying clouds over the distance, it is altogether and exactly of the hue set down here. Had the effect been incorrect it would hardly have been acquired by so critical a collector as Lord Alverstone, nor would it have been hung in his Surrey home, where it invites daily comparison with Nature under similar aspects. The drawing was painted on the spot, from just behind the artist’s house, and is one of the few instances where she has added to the charm of her work by a sky of some intricacy. In her cottage and other drawings, where buildings or other landscape objects are of primary importance, she has felt that the simpler the treatment of the sky the better, and with good reason. Here, Mrs. Allingham’s house at Sandhills was below the foreground slope, to the right of the cottages whose roofs rise from the ling. The highest point of Hindhead seen here is Hurt Hill, some nine hundred feet above sea-level, a name which Mr. Allingham always held to be a corruption of Whort Hill, from the whortleberries with which its slopes are covered, and which in these, as in other parts are called “wurts.” 20. IN WITLEY VILLAGE This drawing was in The Fine Art Society’s Exhibition in 1886, the catalogue stating that the cottage had disappeared in the spring of 1885. It was pulled down by its owner to be replaced by buildings whose monotonous symmetry, to his eye no doubt, appeared in better taste. The cottage was still far from the natural term of its existence, as evidenced by the troublesome piece The blackening elms, and the ripe bracken carried home by the cottar, show that the time when this picturesque dwelling was painted was late summer, probably that of 1884. Mrs. Allingham was clearly then not of Ruskin’s opinion concerning the wrongness of painting trees in full leaf, for she found the blue-black of the trees a harmonious background to her red and russet roof. The work throughout shows a loving fidelity to Nature, as if the artist had felt that she was looking upon the likeness of an old friend for the last time, and wished to perpetuate every lineament and feature. 21. BLACKDOWN FROM WITLEY COMMON This view is taken from the same bridle-path as is seen in Lord Alverstone’s “Hindhead,” but at a 22. THE FISH-SHOP, HASLEMERE One can well understand the local builder in his daily round past this picturesque little tenement casting longing eyes upon its uneven roof, its diamond-paned lattices, its projecting shop front, and its spoutless eaves, which allowed the damp to rise up from the foundations and the green lichen to grow upon its walls, and that he rested not until he had set hands upon it, and taken one more old-world feature from the main thoroughfare |
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