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Updated: May 10, 2025
It was a bright cool afternoon about the middle of August, and we proceeded in high spirits towards our destination, talking, as, we went, of the excellence and agreeableness of our delightful friends, and anticipating the high intellectual pleasure, the gratification to the taste and the affections, which our renewed intercourse with persons so accomplished and so amiable, could not fail to afford; both agreeing that Hatherden was the very place we wanted, the very situation, the very distance, the very size.
Home we went, adding at every step a fresh story to our Castle in the Air, anticipating happy mornings and joyous evenings at dear Hatherden; in love with the place and all about it, and quite convinced that the hill was nothing, the distance nothing, and the walk by far the prettiest in the neighbourhood. Home we came, and there we found two letters: one from Mr.
"Lanton Abbey?" "Too low; grievously damp." By this time, however, we had arrived at the end of our list; nobody could remember another place to be let, or likely to be let, and confessing ourselves too fastidious, we went again over our catalogue raisonée with expectations much sobered, and objections much modified, and were beginning to find out that Cranley Hall was not so very large, nor Lanton Abbey so exceedingly damp, when one of our party exclaimed suddenly, "We never thought of Hatherden Hill! surely that is small enough and dry enough!" and it being immediately recollected that Hatherden was only a mile off, we lost sight of all faults in this great recommendation, and wrote immediately to the lawyer who had the charge of letting the place, whilst I myself and my most efficient assistant, sallied forth to survey it on the instant.
Camden, sent per coach, to say that he found they must go abroad immediately, and that they could not therefore think of coming into Berkshire for a year or more; one from the lawyer, left in charge of Hatherden, to say, that we could not have the place, as the Norrises were returning to their old house forthwith.
In agreeing with me, however, my companion could not help reminding me rather maliciously how very much, in our late worthy neighbours, the Norrises' time, I had been used to hate and shun this paragon of places; how frequently I had declared Hatherden too distant for a walk, and too near for a drive; how constantly I had complained of fatigue in mounting the hill, and of cold in crossing the common; and how, finally, my half yearly visits of civility had dwindled first into annual, then into biennial calls, and would doubtless have extended themselves into triennial marks of remembrance, if our neighbours had but remained long enough.
And my Castle is knocked down, blown up which is the right word for the demolishing such airy edifices? And Hatherden is as far-off, and the hill as steep, and the common as dreary as ever. We have already quoted the most striking of the poetical pieces, at page 283. Allan Cunningham has some spirited lines, My Native Vale; and the Ettrick Shepherd, a touching Lay of the Martyrs.
Hatherden was just the place to like or not to like, according to the feeling of the hour; a respectable, comfortable country house, with a lawn before, a paddock on one side, a shrubbery on the other; offices and a kitchen garden behind, and the usual ornaments of villas and advertisements, a greenhouse and a veranda. Now my thoughts were couleur de rose, and Hatherden was charming.
Art and literature, and wisdom and wit, adorning with a wreathy and garlandy splendour all that is noblest in mind and purest in heart! What wonder that Hatherden became more and more interesting in its anticipated charms, and that I went gaily about the place, taking note of all that could contribute to the comfort of its future inhabitants.
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