Leaving Chenies, and regaining the highway to Amersham, we wheel along until, passing under the Metropolitan Railway at Chalfont Road Station, we take the second turning to the left, leading to Chalfont St. Giles. These three miles form the most exquisite part of the whole tour, from the purely rustic point of view; for they lead down through sweet-scented woodlands where the perfume of the pines and the heavy scent of the bracken (strongly resembling that of ripe strawberries) mingle with the refreshing odour of the soil itself. Nothing breaks the stillness in the daytime save the hoarse “crock-crock” of the pheasants, and, when night comes, the feathered choir from the well-named neighbouring Nightingale Woods tunes up.
MILTON’S COTTAGE, CHALFONT ST. GILES.
Chalfont St. Giles lies down in the valley of the Misbourne, across the high road which runs left and right, and past the Pheasant Inn. It is a place made famous by Milton’s residence here, when he fled London and the Great Plague. The cottage—the “pretty cot,” as he aptly calls it, taken for him by Thomas Ellwood, the Quaker—is still standing, and is the last house on the left-hand side of the long village street. The poet could only have known it to be a “pretty cot” by repute, for he was blind.
Americans, perhaps more than Englishmen, make this a place of pilgrimage; and serious offers were made, not so long since, to purchase the little gabled brick and half-timbered dwelling, and to transport it to the United States. Happily, all fears of such a fate are now at an end; for the parish has purchased the freehold, and has made the cottage a museum, where the literary pilgrim can see the veritable low-browed room where Paradise Lost was written and Paradise Regained suggested, together with the actual writing-table the poet worked at. An interesting collection of early and later editions is to be seen, with Milton portraits, and cannon-balls found in the neighbourhood. No one will grudge the modest sixpence charged for admission by the parish authorities to all who are not parishioners.
The parish church still remains interesting, although three successive restoring architects have been let loose upon it; and there are some really exquisite modern stained-glass windows, as well as some very detestable ones. Their close companionship renders the good an excellent service, but has a very sorry effect on the bad. Notice the very beautiful carved-oak communion rails, which came from one of the side chapels of St. Paul’s Cathedral, given by Francis Hare, Bishop of Chichester and Dean of St. Paul’s. This spoiler of the metropolitan Cathedral is buried here, and a tablet records his dignities. Among other posts, he held that of Chaplain to the great Duke of Marlborough, whose courier, Timothy Lovett, by the way, who died in 1728, aged seventy years, lies in the churchyard, beneath the curious epitaph—
“Italy and Spain
Germany and France
have been on Earth
my weary Dance.
So that I own
Ye Graves my greatest Friend
That to my Travels
all has put an end.”
Timothy, it is evident, was not of the touring kind by choice.