From Dover to Chestre goth Watlyn-Street,
is the village of Polesworth. My attention was especially called to its picturesque and suggestive aspect, because I happened to visit the place just when I was within reach of the opportunity of inspecting some of the manuscripts of that prince of archæologists, Sir William Dugdale. The historian of Warwickshire remarks that “for Antiquitie and venerable esteem,” the village of Polesworth “needs not to give Precedence to any in the Countie;” and indeed there is a charming impression of age and quiet dignity in its remains of old walls, its remains of old trees, its church, and its open common. Not far off, on an eminence commanding a delightful view, is Pooley Hall, the Lord of which “by Reason of the Floods at some time, especially in Winter, which hindered his Accesse to the Mother Church,” obtained a license from Pope Urban IV. to build a chapel within the precincts of his lordship. And here, in the garden of this modest hall, is a little chapel of comparatively late architecture, but doubtless built on the site of the old one; and here, full in view, on the level ground below, with the village beyond, is the river, evidently liable to floods. I give this scene merely as a specimen of the wealth that our English counties contain for the historian who is also an artist.
The other county of which I am thinking is Bedfordshire. Of course Mr. Rimmer does not fail to take notice of the town of Bedford, and its neighbouring village of Elstow, and their still visible associations with John Bunyan; but there still remain some things to be added to those which he has so well described. I fear it must be admitted that the prison, in which the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress spent those days and nights that have enriched the world, was not on the bridge over the Ouse, but in another part of Bedford. The jailor’s door, by a most curious accident, survives, built into the wall of a granary, and with quite enough of character to deserve an engraving on descriptive pages. As regards the village of Elstow, there is abundant material of this kind in the isolated church tower, containing the very bells in the ringing of which Bunyan rejoiced and afterwards trembled; in the curious building, undoubtedly contemporary, upon the green where he danced; and, above all, I must mention what appears till recently to have escaped attention. The “wicket-gate” of the Pilgrim’s Progress is commonly represented as a garden-gate or a turnpike-gate; but really the term denotes a small doorway, cut out of a large door; and concealed behind a tree at the west end of Elstow Church, is just such a small doorway in the broad wooden surface of the great door. Through this lowly opening Bunyan must often have passed when a boy; and if it were simply drawn and engraved, I believe we should have a correct picture of that which was before his imagination when he described the early steps of Christian’s pilgrimage.
It is natural to both Mr. Rimmer and myself, with such thoughts in our minds, that we should make much of the ancient and striking city where we happen to dwell. He begins with Chester: and I will end with some words concerning it by a recent American traveller. Those who come for the first time from the United States to Europe frequently hasten to Chester with a feeling of extraordinary interest, partly because it is the nearest cathedral city, partly because it is a walled city. This writer is describing the walls. “Chester has everywhere,” he says, “a rugged outer parapet, and a broad hollow flagging, wide enough for two strollers abreast. Thus equipped, it wanders through its adventurous circuit; now sloping, now bending, now broadening into a terrace, now narrowing into an alley, now swelling into an arch, now dipping into steps, now passing some thorn-screened garden, and now reminding you that it was once a more serious matter than all this, by the occurrence of a rugged ivy-smothered tower. Every few steps as you go you see some little court or alley boring toward it through the close-pressed houses. It is full of that delightful element of the crooked, the accidental, the unforeseen, which to American eyes, accustomed to our eternal straight lines and right angles, is the striking feature of European street scenery. An American strolling in the Chester streets finds a perfect feast of crookedness—of those random corners, projections, and recesses, odd domestic interspaces charmingly saved or lost, those innumerable architectural surprises and caprices and fantasies, which offer such a delicious holiday to a vision nourished upon brown stone fronts.”
The pleasure which I feel in having anything to do with a book like this is very much increased by the reflection that American readers are likely to take the warmest interest in the visible reminiscences of history, in which the country that they recognise as their mother-land still abounds.
J. S. H.
The Deanery, Chester,
October 6, 1876.
