A ruined windmill of strange design, perched on the hillside road behind the village, is the best point whence to gain an idea of the country in midst of which Aberford is set. It is boldly undulating country, hiding in the folds of its hills many old-world villages. Chief among them, two miles off the road, is Barwick-in-Elmete—i.e. in the elm country—with its prehistoric mounds and the modern successor of an ancient maypole, set up in the village street by the cross, presented in May 1898 by Major-General Gascoigne, of Parlington Park.
The road two miles out of Aberford reaches that home of howling winds, that most uncomfortable and undesirable place, Bramham Moor. Here, where the Bramham Moor inn stands at the crossing of the Leeds and York road, a considerable traffic enlivened the way until eighty years ago. Since that time the broad roadways in either direction have been empty, except when the hounds meet here in the hunting season, when, for a brief hour, old times seem come again. It was along this cross-road that “Nimrod,” that classic coaching authority, travelled in 1827, his eagle eye engaged in criticism of the Yorkshire provincial coaches.
The rustical driver of the Leeds to York stage, happily, did not know who his passenger was. Let us hope he never saw the criticism of himself, his coach and horses, and everything that was his, which appeared shortly afterwards in the Sporting Magazine. Everything, says “Nimrod,” was inferior. The man who drove (he scorns, you see, to call him a coachman) was more like a Welsh drover than anything else. The day was cold, but he had neither gloves, boots, nor gaiters. However, he conducted the coach only a ten miles’ stage, and made up with copious libations of gin for the lack of warm clothing. On the way he fell to bragging with his box-seat passenger of the hair’s-breadth escapes he had experienced when driving one of the Leeds to London opposition coaches; and “Nimrod,” complimenting him on the skill he must have shown on those occasions, he proceeded to give a taste of his quality, which resulted in his getting the reins clubbed and a narrow escape from being overturned. “Nimrod” soon had enough of it, and at the first opportunity pretended to be ill and went inside, as being the least dangerous place. Arriving at Tadcaster, ten miles from York, the door was opened, and “Please to remember the coachman” tingled in the ears of the passengers. “What now,” asked “Nimrod,” “are you going no farther?” “No, sir, but ah’s goes back at night,” was the Yorkshireman’s answer. “Then you follow some trade here, of course?” continued the great coaching expert. “No, sir,” said a bystander, “he has got his horses to clean.” Fancy a coachman, even if only of that inferior kind, who could not be called anything better than “the man who drove,”—fancy a coachman seeing to his own horses. “Nimrod” was properly shocked at this, and with memories of coaching nearer London, with stables and yards full of ostlers and helpers, and the coachmen, their drinking done, flirting with the Hebes of the bar, could only say, with a gasp, “Oh! that’s the way your Yorkshire coaching is done, is it?”
He then saw his fellow-passengers pull out sixpence each and give it to the driver, who was not only satisfied, but thankful. This also was a novelty. Coachmen were, in his experience, tipped with florins and half-crowns, nor even then did they exhibit symptoms of thankfulness, but took the coin as of right. “What am I to do?” “Nimrod” asked himself; “I never gave a coachman sixpence yet, and I shall not begin that game to-day.” So he “chucked” him a “bob,” which brought the fellow’s hat down to the box of the fore-wheel in gratitude.
With a fresh team and another driver the journey was continued to York. About half-way, the coach stopped at a public-house, in the old style; the driver got down, the gin bottle was produced, and, looking out of the window, “Nimrod” was surprised to see the man whom he had thought was left behind at Tadcaster. “What, are you here?” he asked. “Why, yes,” answered the man; “’tis market-day at York, and ah’s wants to buy a goose or two.” “Ah,” observed “Nimrod,” “I thought you were a little in the huckstering line.”
XV
Bramham Moor leads down into Bramham village, past the Park, where a ruined manor-house, destroyed by fire, stands amid formal gardens and looks tragical. The place wears the aspect of romance, and seems an ideal home for the ideal Wicked Squire of Early Victorian novels. Lord Bingley, who built it and laid out the grounds in the time of Queen Anne, was not more wicked than the generality of his contemporaries, but here are all the “properties” with which those novelists surrounded the cynical deceivers of innocence, who stalked in inky cloaks, curly hats, and tasselled riding-boots through their gory pages. Here is Lord Bingley’s Walk, an avenue of gigantic beeches where he did not meet the trustful village maiden, as he ought to have done, by all the rules; here also is the obelisk at the suggestively named Blackfen, whence twelve avenues diverge—where no tattered witch ever cursed him, so far as can be ascertained. Lord Bingley evidently did not live up to the possibilities of the place, or of his station, nor did those who came after him, for no horrid legend is narrated with bated breath in Bramham village, which lies huddled together in the hollow below the park, the world forgetting, and by the world forgot, ever since that leap year, 1408, when on the 29th of February the Earl of Northumberland, rebelling against Henry the Fourth, was defeated and slain by Sir Thomas Rokeby at the battle of Bramham Moor.
