The Diary of a Goose Girl(牧鹅女日记)

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The Diary of a Goose Girl

The Diary of a Goose

Girl

by Kate Douglas Wiggin

The Diary of a Goose Girl

THORNYCROFT FARM, near

Barbury Green, July 1, 190-.

In alluding to myself as a Goose Girl, I am using only the most modest

of my titles; for I am also a poultry-maid, a tender of Belgian hares and

rabbits, and a shepherdess; but I particularly fancy the role of Goose Girl,

because it recalls the German fairy tales of my early youth, when I always

yearned, but never hoped, to be precisely what I now am.

As I was jolting along these charming Sussex roads the other day, a fat

buff pony and a tippy cart being my manner of progression, I chanced

upon the village of Barbury Green.

One glance was enough for any woman, who, having eyes to see,

could see with them; but I made assurance doubly sure by driving about a

little, struggling to conceal my new-born passion from the stable- boy who

was my escort. Then, it being high noon of a cloudless day, I descended

from the trap and said to the astonished yokel: "You may go back to the

Hydropathic; I am spending a month or two here. Wait a moment--I'll

send a message, please!"

I then scribbled a word or two to those having me in custody.

"I am very tired of people," the note ran, "and want to rest myself by

living a while with things. Address me (if you must) at Barbury Green

post-office, or at all events send me a box of simple clothing there--

nothing but shirts and skirts, please. I cannot forget that I am only

twenty miles from Oxenbridge (though it might be one hundred and

twenty, which is the reason I adore it), but I rely upon you to keep an

honourable distance yourselves, and not to divulge my place of retreat to

others, especially to--you know whom! Do not pursue me. I will never

be taken alive!"

Having cut, thus, the cable that bound me to civilisation, and having

seen the buff pony and the dazed yokel disappear in a cloud of dust, I

looked about me with what Stevenson calls a "fine, dizzy, muddle-headed

joy," the joy of a successful rebel or a liberated serf. Plenty of money in

The Diary of a Goose Girl

my purse--that was unromantic, of course, but it simplified matters--and

nine hours of daylight remaining in which to find a lodging.

The village is one of the oldest, and I am sure it must be one of the

quaintest, in England. It is too small to be printed on the map (an honour

that has spoiled more than one Arcadia), so pray do not look there, but just

believe in it, and some day you may be rewarded by driving into it by

chance, as I did, and feel the same Columbus thrill running, like an electric

current, through your veins. I withhold specific geographical

information in order that you may not miss that Columbus thrill, which

comes too seldom in a world of railroads.

The Green is in the very centre of Barbury village, and all civic,

political, family, and social life converges there, just at the public duck-

pond--a wee, sleepy lake with a slope of grass-covered stones by which

the ducks descend for their swim.

The houses are set about the Green like those in a toy village. They are

of old brick, with crumpled, up-and-down roofs of deep- toned red, and

tufts of stonecrop growing from the eaves. Diamond- paned windows,

half open, admit the sweet summer air; and as for the gardens in front, it

would seem as if the inhabitants had nothing to do but work in them, there

is such a riotous profusion of colour and bloom. To add to the effect,

there are always pots of flowers hanging from the trees, blue flax and

yellow myrtle; and cages of Java sparrows and canaries singing joyously,

as well they may in such a paradise.

The shops are idyllic, too, as if Nature had seized even the man of

trade and made him subservient to her designs. The general draper's,

where I fitted myself out for a day or two quite easily, is set back in a

tangle of poppies and sweet peas, Madonna lilies and Canterbury bells.

The shop itself has a gay awning, and what do you think the draper has

suspended from it, just as a picturesque suggestion to the passer-by?

Suggestion I call it, because I should blush to use the word advertisement

in describing anything so dainty and decorative. Well, then, garlands of

shoes, if you please! Baby bootlets of bronze; tiny ankle-ties in yellow,

blue, and scarlet kid; glossy patent-leather pumps shining in the sun, with

festoons of slippers at the corners, flowery slippers in imitation Berlin

The Diary of a Goose Girl

wool-work. If you make this picture in your mind's-eye, just add a

window above the awning, and over the fringe of marigolds in the

window-box put the draper's wife dancing a rosy-cheeked baby. Alas!

my words are only black and white, I fear, and this picture needs a palette

drenched in primary colours.

Along the street, a short distance, is the old watchmaker's. Set in the

hedge at the gate is a glass case with Multum in Parvo painted on the

woodwork. Within, a little stand of trinkets revolves slowly; as slowly, I

imagine, as the current of business in that quiet street. The house stands

a trifle back and is covered thickly with ivy, while over the entrance-door

of the shop is a great round clock set in a green frame of clustering vine.

The hands pointed to one when I passed the watchmaker's garden with its

thicket of fragrant lavender and its murmuring bees; so I went in to the

sign of the "Strong i' the Arm" for some cold luncheon, determining to

patronise "The Running Footman" at the very next opportunity. Neither

of these inns is starred by Baedeker, and this fact adds the last touch of

enchantment to the picture.

The landlady at the "Strong i' the Arm" stabbed me in the heart by

telling me that there were no apartments to let in the village, and that she

had no private sitting-room in the inn; but she speedily healed the wound

by saying that I might be accommodated at one of the farm-houses in the

vicinity. Did I object to a farm-'ouse? Then she could cheerfully

recommend the Evan's farm, only 'alf a mile away. She 'ad understood

from Miss Phoebe Evan, who sold her poultry, that they would take one

lady lodger if she didn't wish much waiting upon.

In my present mood I was in search of the strenuous life, and eager to

wait, rather than to be waited upon; so I walked along the edge of the

Green, wishing that some mentally unbalanced householder would take a

sudden fancy to me and ask me to come in and lodge awhile. I suppose

these families live under their roofs of peach- blow tiles, in the midst of

their blooming gardens, for a guinea a week or thereabouts; yet if they

"undertook" me (to use their own phrase), the bill for my humble meals

and bed would be at least double that. I don't know that I blame them;

one should have proper compensation for admitting a world-stained lodger

The Diary of a Goose Girl

into such an Eden.

When I was searching for rooms a week ago, I chanced upon a pretty

cottage where the woman had sometimes let apartments. She showed me

the premises and asked me if I would mind taking my meals in her own

dining-room, where I could be served privately at certain hours: and,

since she had but the one sitting-room, would I allow her to go on using it

occasionally? also, if I had no special preference, would I take the second-

sized bedroom and leave her in possession of the largest one, which

permitted her to have the baby's crib by her bedside? She thought I

should be quite as comfortable, and it was her opinion that in making

arrangements with lodgers, it was a good plan not to "bryke up the 'ome

any more than was necessary."

"Bryke up the 'ome!" That is seemingly the malignant purpose with

which I entered Barbury Green.

The Diary of a Goose Girl

CHAPTER II

July 4th.

Enter the family of Thornycroft Farm, of which I am already a

member in good and regular standing.

I introduce Mrs. Heaven first, for she is a self-saturated person who

would never forgive the insult should she receive any lower place.

She welcomed me with the statement: "We do not take lodgers here,

nor boarders; no lodgers, nor boarders, but we do occasionally admit

paying guests, those who look as if they would appreciate the quietude of

the plyce and be willing as you might say to remunerate according."

I did not mind at this particular juncture what I was called, so long as

the epithet was comparatively unobjectionable, so I am a paying guest,

therefore, and I expect to pay handsomely for the handsome appellation.

Mrs. Heaven is short and fat; she fills her dress as a pin-cushion fills its

cover; she wears a cap and apron, and she is so full of platitudes that she

would have burst had I not appeared as a providential outlet for them.

Her accent is not of the farm, but of the town, and smacks wholly of the

marts of trade. She is repetitious, too, as well as platitudinous. "I 'ope

if there's anythink you require you will let us know, let us know," she says

several times each day; and whenever she enters my sitting-room she

prefaces her conversation with the remark: "I trust you are finding it

quiet here, miss? It's the quietude of the plyce that is its charm, yes, the

quietude. And yet" (she dribbles on) "it wears on a body after a while,

miss. I often go into Woodmucket to visit one of my sons just for the

noise, simply for the noise, miss, for nothink else in the world but the

noise. There's nothink like noise for soothing nerves that is worn

threadbare with the quietude, miss, or at least that's my experience; and

yet to a strynger the quietude of the plyce is its charm, undoubtedly its

chief charm; and that is what our paying guests always say, although our

charges are somewhat higher than other plyces. If there's anythink you

require, miss, I 'ope you'll mention it. There is not a commodious

assortment in Barbury Green, but we can always send the pony to

The Diary of a Goose Girl

Woodmucket in case of urgency. Our paying guest last summer was a Mrs.

Pollock, and she was by way of having sudden fancies. Young and

unmarried though you are, miss, I think you will tyke my meaning without

my speaking plyner? Well, at six o'clock of a rainy afternoon, she was

seized with an unaccountable desire for vegetable marrows, and Mr.

'Eaven put the pony in the cart and went to Woodmucket for them, which

is a great advantage to be so near a town and yet 'ave the quietude."

Mr. Heaven is merged, like Mr. Jellyby, in the more shining qualities

of his wife. A line of description is too long for him. Indeed, I can think

of no single word brief enough, at least in English. The Latin "nil" will

do, since no language is rich in words of less than three letters. He is

nice, kind, bald, timid, thin, and so colourless that he can scarcely be

discerned save in a strong light. When Mrs. Heaven goes out into the

orchard in search of him, I can hardly help calling from my window, "Bear

a trifle to the right, Mrs. Heaven--now to the left--just in front of you now-

- if you put out your hands you will touch him."

Phoebe, aged seventeen, is the daughter of the house. She is virtuous,

industrious, conscientious, and singularly destitute of physical charm.

She is more than plain; she looks as if she had been planned without any

definite purpose in view, made of the wrong materials, been badly put

together, and never properly finished off; but "plain" after all is a relative

word. Many a plain girl has been married for her beauty; and now and

then a beauty, falling under a cold eye, has been thought plain.

Phoebe has her compensations, for she is beloved by, and reciprocates

the passion of, the Woodmancote carrier, Woodmucket being the English

manner of pronouncing the place of his abode. If he "carries" as

energetically for the great public as he fetches for Phoebe, then he must be

a rising and a prosperous man. He brings her daily, wild strawberries,

cherries, birds' nests, peacock feathers, sea-shells, green hazel-nuts,

samples of hens' food, or bouquets of wilted field flowers tied together

tightly and held with a large, moist, loving hand. He has fine curly hair

of sandy hue, which forms an aureole on his brow, and a reddish beard,

which makes another inverted aureole to match, round his chin. One

cannot look at him, especially when the sun shines through him, without

The Diary of a Goose Girl

thinking how lovely he would be if stuffed and set on wheels, with a little

string to drag him about.

Phoebe confided to me that she was on the eve of loving the postman

when the carrier came across her horizon.

"It doesn't do to be too hysty, does it, miss?" she asked me as we were

weeding the onion bed. "I was to give the postman his answer on the

Monday night, and it was on the Monday morning that Mr. Gladwish

made his first trip here as carrier. I may say I never wyvered from that

moment, and no more did he. When I think how near I came to

promising the postman it gives me a turn." (I can understand that, for I

once met the man I nearly promised years before to marry, and we both

experienced such a sense of relief at being free instead of bound that we

came near falling in love for sheer joy.)

The last and most important member of the household is the Square

Baby. His name is Albert Edward, and he is really five years old and no

baby at all; but his appearance on this planet was in the nature of a

complete surprise to all parties concerned, and he is spoiled accordingly.

He has a square head and jaw, square shoulders, square hands and feet.

He is red and white and solid and stolid and slow-witted, as the young of

his class commonly are, and will make a bulwark of the nation in course

of time, I should think; for England has to produce a few thousand such

square babies every year for use in the colonies and in the standing army.

Albert Edward has already a military gait, and when he has acquired a

habit of obedience at all comparable with his power of command, he will

be able to take up the white man's burden with distinguished success.

Meantime I can never look at him without marvelling how the English

climate can transmute bacon and eggs, tea and the solid household loaf

into such radiant roses and lilies as bloom upon his cheeks and lips.

The Diary of a Goose Girl

CHAPTER III

July 8th.

Thornycroft is by way of being a small poultry farm.

In reaching it from Barbury Green, you take the first left-hand road, go

till you drop, and there you are.

It reminds me of my "grandmother's farm at Older." Did you know

the song when you were a child? -

My grandmother had a very fine farm 'Way down in the fields of

Older. With a cluck-cluck here, And a cluck-cluck there, Here and there a

cluck-cluck, Cluck-cluck here and there, Down in the fields at Older.

It goes on for ever by the simple subterfuge of changing a few words

in each verse.

My grandmother had a very fine farm 'Way down in the fields of

Older. With a quack-quack here, And a quack-quack there, Here and there

a quack-quack, Quack-quack here and there, Down in the fields at Older.

This is followed by the gobble-gobble, moo-moo, baa-baa, etc., as

long as the laureate's imagination and the infant's breath hold good. The

tune is pretty, and I do not know, or did not, when I was young, a more

fascinating lyric.

Thornycroft House must have belonged to a country gentleman once

upon a time, or to more than one; men who built on a bit here and there

once in a hundred years, until finally we have this charmingly irregular

and dilapidated whole. You go up three steps into Mrs. Heaven's room,

down two into mine, while Phoebe's is up in a sort of turret with long,

narrow lattices opening into the creepers. There are crooked little stair-

cases, passages that branch off into other passages and lead nowhere in

particular; I can't think of a better house in which to play hide and seek on

a wet day. In front, what was once, doubtless, a green, is cut up into

greens; to wit, a vegetable garden, where the onions, turnips, and potatoes

grow cosily up to the very door-sill; the utilitarian aspect of it all being

varied by some scarlet-runners and a scattering of poppies on either side of

the path.

The Diary of a Goose Girl

The Belgian hares have their habitation in a corner fifty feet distant;

one large enclosure for poultry lies just outside the sweetbrier hedge; the

others, with all the houses and coops, are in the meadow at the back,

where also our tumbler pigeons are kept.

Phoebe attends to the poultry; it is her department. Mr. Heaven has

neither the force nor the finesse required, and the gentle reader who thinks

these qualities unneeded in so humble a calling has only to spend a few

days at Thornycroft to be convinced. Mrs. Heaven would be of use, but

she is dressing the Square Baby in the morning and putting him to bed at

night just at the hours when the feathered young things are undergoing the

same operation.

A Goose Girl, like a poet, is sometimes born, sometimes otherwise. I

am of the born variety. No training was necessary; I put my head on my

pillow as a complicated product of modern civilisation on a Tuesday night,

and on a Wednesday morning I awoke as a Goose Girl.

My destiny slumbered during the day, but at eight o'clock I heard a

terrific squawking in the direction of the duck-ponds, and, aimlessly

drifting in that direction, I came upon Phoebe trying to induce ducks and

drakes, geese and ganders, to retire for the night. They have to be driven

into enclosures behind fences of wire netting, fastened into little rat-proof

boxes, or shut into separate coops, so as to be safe from their natural

enemies, the rats and foxes; which, obeying, I suppose, the law of supply

and demand, abound in this neighbourhood. The old ganders are allowed

their liberty, being of such age, discretion, sagacity, and pugnacity that

they can be trusted to fight their own battles.

The intelligence of hens, though modest, is of such an order that it

prompts them to go to bed at a virtuous hour of their own accord; but

ducks and geese have to be materially assisted, or I believe they would

roam till morning. Never did small boy detest and resist being carried off

to his nursery as these dullards, young and old, detest and resist being

driven to theirs. Whether they suffer from insomnia, or nightmare, or

whether they simply prefer the sweet air of liberty (and death) to the odour

of captivity and the coop, I have no means of knowing.

Phoebe stood by one of the duck-ponds, a long pole in her hand, and a

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TheDiaryofaGooseGirl1TheDiaryofaGooseGirlbyKateDouglasWigginTheDiaryofaGooseGirl2THORNYCROFTFARM,nearBarburyGreen,July1,190-.InalludingtomyselfasaGooseGirl,Iamusingonlythemostmodestofmytitles;forIamalsoapoultry-maid,atenderofBelgianharesandrabbits,andashepherdess;butIparticularlyfancytheroleofGooseG...

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