N PRAISE OF "DUCKINGS"]

It was of Duckings, the beautiful timbered farmhouse of which Withyham
is justly proud, that Jefferies thus wrote, in his essay on "Buckhurst
Park": "Our modern architects try to make their rooms mathematically
square, a series of brick boxes, one on the other like pigeon-holes in a
bureau, with flat ceilings and right angles in the corners, and are said
to go through a profound education before they can produce these
wonderful specimens of art. If our old English folk could not get an
arched roof, then they loved to have it pointed, with polished timber
beams in which the eye rested as in looking upwards through a tree.
Their rooms they liked of many shapes, and not at right angles in the
corners, nor all on the same dead level of flooring. You had to go up a
step into one, and down a step into another, and along a winding passage
into a third, so that each part of the house had its individuality. To
these houses life fitted itself and grew to them; they were not mere
walls, but became part of existence. A man's house was not only his
castle, a man's house was himself. He could not tear himself away from
his house, it was like tearing up the shrieking mandrake by the root,
almost death itself. Now we walk in and out of our brick boxes
unconcerned whether we live in this villa or that, here or yonder. Dark
beams inlaid in the walls support the gables; heavier timber, placed
horizontally, forms, as it were, the foundation of the first floor. This
horizontal beam has warped a little in the course of time, the
alternate heat and cold of summers and winters that make centuries. Up
to this beam the lower wall is built of brick set to curve of the
timber, from which circumstance it would appear to be a modern
insertion. The beam, we may be sure, was straight originally, and the
bricks have been fitted to the curve which it subsequently took. Time,
no doubt, ate away the lower work of wood, and necessitated the
insertion of new materials. The slight curve of the great beam adds, I
think, to the interest of the old place, for it is a curve that has
grown and was not premeditated; it has grown like the bough of a tree,
not from any set human design. This, too, is the character of the house.
It is not large, nor overburdened with gables, not ornamental, nor what
is called striking, in any way, but simply an old English house, genuine
and true. The warm sunlight falls on the old red tiles, the dark beams
l