Summer Days in Shakespeare Land

by Charles G. Harper

The view through the gates, flanked with imposing masonry piers crested with what the country folk call “gentility balls,” shows a delightful picture of old-world stateliness. Time within this enclosure seems to have stood still. You can imagine people living here who still take “a dish of tay,” who are “vastly obleeged” when you ask them how they do, and protest they are “mighty well,” or have “the vapours,” as the case may be, instead of being, as they would be in other surroundings and in the vile phrases of to-day, “awfully fit,” or “feeling rotten.”

You can imagine, I say, the owners of this fine old manor-house drinking their dish of tay out of fine old “chancy,” as they used to call it; still speaking in the fashion that went out of date with the death of the great Duke of Wellington, who was among the last, I believe, to say “obleeged” and to call a chair a “cheer.” Now only the most rustic of rustics talk in this manner, and when they say “cowcumber,” and “laylock,” and speak of “going fust” they are thought vulgar and reproved by their children. But such was the pronunciation used by the best in the land in years gone by.

There are the loveliest gardens in the rear of this old manor-house, with orchards of apples and pears and wall-fruit beyond, and an older wing by a century or so.

The main road goes straight ahead for some miles, with Long Marston rather more than a mile on the right. It is fully described in these pages, in the first of the two chapters on the “Eight Villages.” On the left is the old farm-house which is all that is left of the hamlet of Wincot, the place where “Marian Hacket, the fat alewife,” mentioned by Christopher Sly in the induction to the Taming of the Shrew, had her alehouse, at which that drunken tinker had run up a score. Many of the hamlets round about are “cotts,” “cotes,” or “cots”; Grimscote, Foxcote, Hidcote, Idlicote, Darlingscott, and others. Wincot as a hamlet of Quinton finds mention in the registers of that church, and in them, November 21st, 1591, is still to be found the entry recording the baptism of Sara Hacket, daughter of Robert Hacket. The fat Marian, therefore, who allowed drunken undesirables to run up scores, was probably a real person.

As we make for Quinton the tree-crowned height of Meon Hill, an outpost of the Cotswolds, forms a striking landmark in this vale. It is, according to the Ordnance Survey, 637 feet high, and its position gives it an appearance of even greater eminence. At its foothills lies the village of Quinton, in a district very little disturbed by strangers, and in summer days one of quiet delights. Coming over to Quinton one afternoon, from a day of hospitable entertainment at King’s Lodge, Long Marston, I cycled along the quiet sunlit road, past the old tollhouse with its little strip of wayside garden, and silently came upon a black cat, appreciatively and with much evident enjoyment smelling the wall-flowers growing there. One never before credited cats with a liking for sweet scents.

Only one event during the year disturbs the serenity of Quinton. At other times it drowses, like all its fellow villages of the vale; but this one occasion is like that in Tennyson’s May Queen, the “maddest, merriest day.” It is the day when Quinton Club holds high revel. I do not know what is the purpose of Quinton Club, but the occasion of its merry-making is like that of a village fair, and all those travelling proprietors of steam roundabouts, cocoa-nut shies, shooting-galleries and popular entertainments of that kind who attend fairs make a point of visiting this celebration. And indeed I do not know what Quinton would do without them and the many stall-keepers who come in their train.

To say merely that Quinton is not a large place would be to leave some sort of impression that, if not a little town, it was at least a considerable village. It is, as a matter of fact, a very small one, but to it on this day of days resort the people of those neighbouring places unfortunate enough to have neither club nor fair of their own, and you may see them trudging from all directions; driving in on farm-wagons seated with kitchen-chairs for this purpose, or cycling. Towards evening, when most of the countryside has arrived, the strident tones of the steam organ that forms not the least important part of the roundabout, the thuds of the heavy mallets on the “try-your-strength” machines, the shouting of the cocoa-nut shy proprietors, and the general hum and buzz of the fair astonish the stranger afar off. Near at hand, the scent of fried fish is heavy on the air and gingerbread is hot i’ the mouth, and in the centre of the hurly-burly the steam roundabout blares and glares, presided over by a very highly-coloured full-length portrait of no less a person than Lord Roberts, in the full equipment of Field Marshal; the surest test of a soldier’s popularity. Lord Kitchener has never yet become the presiding hero over the galloping horses of the steam roundabout: he is perhaps something too grim for these occasions.

I think, beneath the pictured face of Lord Roberts there lurks the countenance of he who was the popular favourite immediately before him; Lord Wolseley, who for twenty years or more was in the shrewd opinion of the showmen, the most attractive personality to preside over the steam-trumpets, the odious “kist o’ whustles,” the mirrors and the circulating wooden horses. The showmen know best, they are in touch with popular sentiment; and be sure that if you scraped off Lord Roberts, you would find the face of Lord Wolseley there. Indeed, the possibility of a real stratum of military heroes is only limited by the age of the machine itself; and if it were only old enough one might penetrate beyond Lord Wolseley to Lord Raglan, and even back to that ancient hero of the inn signs, the Marquis of Granby.

The fine church of Quinton looks across the road to the village inn, the “College Arms.” The arms are those of Magdalen College, Oxford, owner of the manor.

The church is a Decorated building, with fine spire, and contains some interesting monuments; chief among them an altar-tomb with a very fine brass to Joan Clopton, widow of Sir William Clopton, who died in 1419. An effigy, on another altar-tomb, seen in the church, is said by some to be that of her husband; others declare it to be that of one Thomas le Roos. She survived her husband several years, dying about 1430, in the habit of a religious recluse, or “vowess.” She lived probably in a cell or anchoress’s hold built on to the church and commanding a view of the altar, and must have had a singularly poor time of it in all those eleven years. No trace remains of her uncomfortable and singularly dull habitation. This misguided lady was by birth a Besford of Besford in Worcestershire, and her coat of arms, displayed separately and also impaled with that of her husband, has six golden pears on a red ground, by way of a painfully farfetched pun on “Besford.” Not even the most desolating punster of our own time could or would torture “Besford” into “Pearsford,” but our remote ancestors were capable of the greatest enormities in this way.