In Constable's Country T HE Constable country is almost quieter to-day
than it was a century ago. The River Stour, dividing the green uplands of Essex and Suffolk, was in Constable's own time a navigable river, along which barges main- tained a thriving trade between Manningtree and Sud- bury. Boat-building was also carried on ; while Dedham —still a dignified village, with its large church and many old houses—was a centre of the cloth-making industry. But Manningtree to-day, with its timber wharves and its weed-strewn estuary, wears a deserted appearance. Like many of the once prosperous East Anglian river ports, it declined when steam navigation became general. As for Dedham, not only did the introduction. of mechanical weaving silence its hand-looms, but the railways passed it by, leaving it to dream quietly of its former glory. • The heart of the Constable country has, indeed, no railways at all. Private motor cars and a feW charabancs make their way into it. But even they cannot penetrate its recesses, whose beauty and peace arc preserved for the pedestrian. The explorer on foot should leave the train at Manningtree, on the main ling, from London to Ipswich. Thom there it is some three miles to East Bergholt, where Constable was born in 1776. The " substantial red-brick house " that was his early home has been demolished, but the old-world garden remains. The church, with its quaint porch, which figures in one of Constable's best pictures, stands in the centre of the village. There is a legend that the Devil frustrated a scheme for rebuilding the tower in the sixteenth century, so that some bells, intended for the belfry, are placed in a wooden cage in the churchyard. The village itself, which has grown little larger since Constable lived in it, 44 seems," - painted—half the cottages are so picturesque 'that it is difficult to believe that to look so is not the sole object of their existence. Nestling in fragrant flower-gardens, and says one writer, " to have been built to be with woodbine-garlanded porches, they suggest those picture-book cottages so pleasant to imagine and hard to find." From several points of vantage near East Bergholt, which stands high, good views of Dedham Vale, with a distant glimpse of the sea, may be obtained.
There is, of course, nothing majestic in the prospect. But its pastoral and wooded charm is characteristically and satisfyingly English. The little Stour flashes, a winding ribbon of blue, in the sunlight. On either side lie the meadow-flats, with their pollard trees and grazing cattle ; and beyond, upon the gently rising uplands, with their more luxuriant timber, there nestle occasional farms and homesteads, each in itself a delight to the eye. The landscape is dappled with ever-changing light and shade as the clouds sail through the sky ; while the square tower of Dedham Church, so familiar a landmark to Constable, giveS a touch of holiness to a scene that is one of quintessential peace.
A mile's walk from East Bergholt—the latter part of it down a steep lane that in summer is a veritable arbour of foliage—brings us to the river at Flatford Mill. This is one of the four mills—two driven by wind, and two by water—which belonged to Golding Constable, the artist's father. The other mills have gone, but the one at Flatford, except for its tall chimney, has changed little since it was so lovingly painted by Constable. Mr. E. V. Lucas has called Golding Constable " one of the good fathers of history." But we should rejoice that he was not indulgent at first, and that for some years the budding artist had to toil as a miller. If from the start Constable had been allowed to follow his own bent—if he had been sent to study art on the Continent—the chances are that he would have become an imitator. As it was, working at different times at two of his father's mills, where it was part of his duty to watch the sky for signs of wind. he brought his own eyes to the observation of sky and weather, and became our first " natural painter." Land- scape had, of course, been painted before his time. But it had been used only as the background for the repre- sentation upon canvas of other subjects, and it had been treated artificially, according to various conventions and traditions. Constable was the first artist to paint Nature as it is, to put a few square miles of actual meadow and sky within a gold frame, and to bring English people face to face with the " fresh, rainy, blowy " beauty of their native land. But so far were his contemporaries from appreciating the revelation that, like most pioneers, he remained till the end comparatively neglected. It is difficult to realize that love of the countryside is of relatively recent growth. But such is the fact.
A footpath—so little used that it is much overgrown in places—runs alongside the Stour from Flatford Mill to Dedham. Walking there recently, I saw scattered parties of hay-makers at work, but actually met only one person—an angler. As I sauntered along, sheer by the water's edge, I wondered at what spot it was that Constable the boy once lay so still, watching the clouds, that a mouse was found in his pocket. No wonder that lie was able later to represent so faithfully in his pictures those spacious, wind-swept skies which'in East Anglia atone so abundantly for the lack of the more dramatic type of scenery sought by the average tourist. Constable knew and loved every yard of the riverside between Flatford and Dedham, and, even after LOndon and Paris had brought him some tardy recognition, his imagination never ceased to hover around his native Vale. " I associate," he said, " my careless boyhood With all that lies along the Stour ; those scenes made 'the a painter." To Dedham Vale he 'often returned for inspiration, and there. in 1887, lie died, As I travelled later in the day from Dedham to Colchester, in a 'bus full of gossiping market-women, I thought how fitting it was that our first " natural painter " should have been born, not amid grand surroundings, but among scenes of placid and gentle charm. Ruskin, who worshipped Turner, and could only appreciate one thing at a time, called Constable's subjects " low." If he had said " homely " he would have been right, though even then he would have erred in his implied denunciation of the ordinary. None would claim for Constable the imagination of Turner, who saw the light that never was on land or sea. But we cannot habitually live upon the heights ; and it was, after all, the crowning merit of Constable that he realized the loveliness of the common- place. He showed us that we need not search afar for beauty, but that we may find it at our very door.
GILBERT THOMAS.
Previous page
