TALES FROM THE HILLS

(Ashmansworth and Crux Easton)

The Three Sisters in Chekhov’s play lived in such a remote corner of Russia they were afraid that, unless they could move to Moscow, they would live and die unknown and forgotten. “People won’t even remember there were three of us!” they said.

At Crux Easton we still remember our local heroines: the Lisle sisters, even though they lived in this remote corner over three hundred years ago.

They didn’t have to move to London, either. They achieved their lasting fame by building a grotto in the countryside, created with such art that London came to them. Even Alexander Pope, an invalid since childhood, struggled down here, and wrote two poems about them. These poems celebrate not just the sisters’ creative effort, but their personal charm and their rural seclusion, even to calling Crux Easton a desert; and he says there were nine of them!

“Here shunning idleness at once and praise,

This radiant pile nine rural sisters raise ..

But fate disposed them in this humble sort

And held in deserts what could charm a court.”

A local poet, the Honourable Nicholas Herbert, confessed that, though he liked their grotto, he rather preferred the girls, though that might be just the fashionable gallantry of the time.

“So much the building entertains my sight

 Nought but the builders can give more delight.

In them the masterpiece of Nature’s shown.

In this I see Art’s masterpiece in stone.

O Nature, Nature thou hast conquered Art.

Art charms the sight alone, but you the heart!”

The grotto itself has gone, but the sisters’ fame lives on in these poems, with an added brilliance. There’s nothing like a poem if you want your fame to last.

It’s the same old story: the girls have created a work of art, but the men can’t resist admiring the girls. No doubt they liked being called gifted and charming; who wouldn’t?  However, they might also have protested quite reasonably, “Please concentrate a little less on us, and more on what we’ve done!”

But ‘twas ever thus.

Agricola, October 2022