Life of Frances Power Cobbe

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XI. Bristol.?The Sick In Workhouses. My new life on Durdham Down, though solitary, was a very happy one. I had two nice rooms in Belgrave House (then the last house on the road opening on the beautiful Downs from the Redland side), wherein a bright, excellent, pretty widow, Mrs. Stone, kept several...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XI. Bristol.?The Sick In Workhouses. My new life on Durdham Down, though solitary, was a very happy one. I had two nice rooms in Belgrave House (then the last house on the road opening on the beautiful Downs from the Redland side), wherein a bright, excellent, pretty widow, Mrs. Stone, kept several suites of lodgings. It is not often, alas that the relations of lodger and landlady are altogether pleasant, but in my case they were eminently so, and resulted in cordial and permanent mutual regard. My little bedroom opened by a French window on a balcony leading to a small garden, and beyond it I had an immense view of Bristol and the surrounding country, over the smoke of which the rising sun often made Turneresque pictures. My sitting room had a front and a corner view of the delightful Downs as far as Cook's Folly and the Nightingale Valley; and often, over the Sea Wall, the setting sun went down in great glory. I walked down every week-day into Bristol (of course I needed more than ever to economise, and even the omnibus fare had to be considered), and went about my various avocations in the schools and work- honse till I could do no more, when I made my way home as cheaply as I could contrive, to dinner. I had my dear dog Hajjin, a lovely mouse-coloured Pomeranian, for companion at all times, and on Sundays we generally treated ourselves to a good ramble over the Downs and beyond them, perhaps as far as Kings'-Weston. The whole district is dear to me still. The return to fresh air and to something like country life was delightful. It had been, I must avow, an immensestrain on my resolution to live in Bristol among all the sordid surroundings of Miss Carpenter's house; and when once in a way in those days I left them and caught a glimpse of the country, th...