Read it through once

That is Miss Mitford’s miniature of her village home. Seeking it to-day, the literary pilgrim would be sadly disappointed if he carried this description in his mind. The walls have been stuccoed—that ugliest of make-believes—and a wooden sign THE MITFORD springs from between the windows in an attempt—honest enough, no doubt—to compete with its neighbour THE SWAN, the sign of which swings all a-creak over the garden-wall. It has lost its cottage aspect, the windows are modern and even the chimney-pots have been replaced by up-to-date pottery contrivances and a zinc contraption which tries to look ornamental but is not—in striking contrast to the village shop next door which is still the village shop as described by Miss Mitford, “multifarious as a bazaar; a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribands, and bacon”; full of that delightfully mixed odour, a pot-pourri of eatables and wearables, which always characterizes such establishments; proudly ruled by a Brownlow, one of a line of Brownlows unbroken from long before Miss Mitford’s day.