Another
thing in his favour was, that in either case, the very definite, and not
very complex types surrendered themselves readily to artistic
embodiment. "It almost illustrated itself,"--he told an interviewer
concerning _Cranford_; "the characters were so exquisitely and
distinctly realised." Every one has known some like them; and the
delightful Knutsford ladies (for "Cranford" was "Knutsford"), the
"Boz"--loving Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook, Peter and his father, and
even Martha the maid, with their _mise en scene_ of card-tables and
crackle-china, and pattens and reticules, are part of the memories of
our childhood. The same may be said of _Our Village_, except that the
breath of Nature blows more freely through it than through the quiet
Cheshire market-town; and there is a larger preponderance of those
"charming glimpses of rural life" of which Lady Ritchie speaks
admiringly in her sympathetic preface. And with regard to the "bits of
scenery"--as Mr. Thomson himself calls them--it may be noted that one of
the Manchester papers, speaking of _Cranford_, praised the artist's
intimate knowledge of the locality,--a locality he had never seen. Most
of his backgrounds were from sketches made on Wimbledon Common, near
which--until he moved for a space to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford
in Sussex--he lived for the first years of his London life.
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