Rural Retreat

In a corner of the gloriously rural Ruritania region on Littlefield Grid, is a beautiful old barn, converted by sim owner  Xi Shi into an airy art gallery,

It's a perfect little jewel set in a many faceted 4x4 VAR build that celebrates so many aspects of England that is will take you hours visiting and contemplating in order to take in all the delightful details, as it draws you back to another time, not just in the style of the vehicles and the road signs, which belong to the era of Dr Who's TARDIS, but also in the allusions and references to UK film and television, gently reminding you of classics like Brief Encounter, and the Two Ronnies discussing fork handles - or should that be four candles - to mention only two of the dozens of 3D throwbacks... make sure you have your wits about you, or you'll miss a lot of the fun. The HG Address is, of course, at the end of the post.

This idyllic farm is a perfect rural retreat

The build is interconnected by all kinds of forms of transport. It's eminently walkable along pleasant lanes , but there's also an extensive train route through the hills and dales. 

A vast lake and a series of waterways also allow you to enjoy the countryside by boat, and it's never a long wait until a classic double decker bus comes by.

The landscape is layered, and endlessly photogenic. Like this view, which features a medieval ruin in the foreground, then a canal or river, where narrowboats sail serenely by every few minutes. A road separates the water from the barn, and on the ridge beyond, an manor house seals the deal, all framed by foliage.

All of which brings us to the paintings.

Xi Shi's barn is home to a collection of watercolors by Helen Allingham. Born Helen Paterson, a name she sometimes used professionally, she grew up in Central England, her formative years spent in Cheshire and Birmingham. But the paintings she is best known from date from a time when she lived in Surrey, and later London. 

Helen moved to Witley, Surrey with her young family in 1881 and within  few years, was exhibiting collections of paintings under titles such as 'Surrey Cottages' and 'In the Country'. These gained her enough praise for  the Royal Watercolour Society to elect her as a full member in 1890 - the first woman to receive this distinction. And yes, if you were wondering, she was just 8 years younger than Monet, and all those spidey feelings you're getting do make sense.

Xi's favorite picture

Traveller's Joy, A Surrey Hedgerow is Xi's favourite painting from the collection. Why this one?
Xi Shi:  It brings back memories of my mother's rose garden, and lanes in my part of the world still look this way. It's a little different from others in the collection as it is more of an 'action shot'.

Speaking of action, Helen Allingham's paintings represent an alarm call, regarding a concern that was front of mind for many in the 1800's and one that many of us can relate to today - change, coming fast, furious, and with irremediable consequences, force-fed modernization at all costs, and always presented as the best and only choice for everyone who doesn't want to be labeled as a reactionary. 

They're a reminder that to retreat is not always to lose the battle, and are a meditation on imperfection - the beauty of chaos in a world insisting a little too much on symmetry and clean lines. Virtual freedom from the strains of modern life.

Rural arcadia seen through Xi Shi's eyes, on sim Ruritania

Among the group of friends that Helen and her husband made in Surrey were the poet Tennyson, the gardener Gertrude Jekyll, and the parents of Aldous Huxley; it would be foolish to imagine for one minute that the subject matter of  Helen's paintings were just airheaded happenstance. But it might not wholly be an alarm call. It might be the illustrated expression of what is arguably a far more nuanced and deep seated emotion than alarm - yearning.  But as you enjoy them, please do remember that the country mums you see in the doorways were paid models, and many of the picturesque thatched roofs are pure imagination.  NPCs, if you like.

Allingham eventually moved to London, but she continued to visit friends in the area, and at age 78 she died in their country house, while on holiday. It's almost poetic.

Xi Shi's gallery is not without modern touches, like a lift that takes you to the upper gallery.

Or is it a call to arms to preserve, or remember a more peace-loving, socially stable time or state of mind. far from the noise and mess of the industrial age, or the pushing excesses of a belligerent and burgeoning economy,  This is a very old theme, you find it in the Boccaccio and Aristophanes, that vacation of the soul where you play along with the idea that you long for all that is pure and belongs to the rural, while your workaday duty keeps you in the plaguey city-bred rat race. Definitely pre-chocolate box. 

Allingham is kind of subverting it, though, because she is emphatically not the antediluvian lady of the manor, delicately indulging in painting as a pastime. She was a professionally trained, working artist and an illustrator on the staff of The Graphic, a weekly newspaper that specialized in illustrated articles long before the era of newsphotos. Interestingly, one of the people who saw and admired her work was Vincent Van Gogh; some say, she was an inspiration for him. In a letter written in 1883 to his brother Theo, he talks about one of  engravings created to illustrate part of Victor Hugo's' final novel, Quatre-vingt-treize, set during the French revolution. The picture in question, the figure of a desperate woman, impoverished and abandoned on the road, has so much despairing passion that it's disconcerting and seems utterly distant from Allingham's rural 'chocolate box' art. She could do both.

Today, Allingham's original watercolors sell for anything from a couple of hundred dollars to a few thousand. And yes, greetings cards and chocolate boxes,  probably vintage ones. They are domestic and humble scenes, worlds away from the ordered, mannered landscapes of classicism, or the hustling, bustling city. They're a hideaway. The paintings invite you to concede that if the rambling rose rambles a bit further than one might want, it's because the householder gets home tired from work, and where's the harm, or the need to be so uptight about it. It's a pre-industrial landscape, a virtual, mostly feminine paradise where nobody has heard of the Crimea, or Afghanistan, or the boom in corruption and conspicuous consumption among the country's elite. A commentary, or a fantasy, like the articles in The Graphic, on what the world would be like, if we all got enough fresh air and a good nights sleep after an honest day's work. Food for thought.

I would argue that this collection of art and this region come together as one of the most perfect examples of the rhetoric of  retreat that is possible in the virtual world. In both, there is an intelligent reaching back, a gentle reminder of the need to preserve the quintessence of the landscape as it reflects a culture, a way of life, that are as powerful and comforting as they are illusory. The name of the sim tells you that before you arrive, of course; there is no such place, and yet it is all the more real for that.  

Xi Shi's skills as a builder are matched by the choices made in shaping the narrative, of combing the nostalgia into a perfect braid of reminiscence and amusement in which no previous knowledge is essential, but, if you are lucky enough to be old enough, a background in yearning will certainly make the whole build bloom for you.  

Allingham would be proud.

HG Address: lfgrid.com:8002:Ruritania