There’s big trout I hear in Edno,
Likewise in Gwynant lake,
And the governor and black alder
Are the flies that they will take,
Also the cockabondy,
But I can only say,
If you think to catch big fishes,
I only hope you may!
T. T.
I have come in for more of mountain gloom
Than mountain glory,
But I’ve seen old Snowdon rear his head
With storm-toss’d mist-wreaths hoary
I stood in the fight of mountain winds
Upon Bwlch-cwm-y-llan,
And I go back an unsketching
But a better-minded man.
C. K.
And I, too, have another debt
To pay another way,
For kindness shown by these good souls
To one who’s far away,
Even to this old colley dog,
Who tracked the mountains o’er,
For one who seeks strange birds and flowers
On far Australia’s shore.
Enough; quantum sufficit!
It was for lack of that natural outlet, the Visitors’ Book, that many old-time guests had recourse to the window-pane. Unfortunately—or should it not perhaps rather be a fortunate circumstance?—while pen and ink were at command of every one, only a diamond ring would serve on glass; and not every guest was so luxuriously equipped.
The classic instance of a window-pane at an inn being thus inscribed is, of course, that of Shenstone’s writing the last stanza of his lines on “Freedom” upon the window of an inn—generally said to be the “Red Lion” at Henley-on-Thames. But who shall decide?
If we are to believe the account of Richard Graves, who knew the poet well, and published Recollections of Some Particulars in the Life of the Late William Shenstone, Esq., in 1788, the lines were first written in an arbour of what used to be the “Sunrising” inn, on the crest of Edge Hill, a house long since become a private residence.
According to Graves, Shenstone, about 1750, visited a friend, one Mr. Whistler, in the southernmost part of Oxfordshire, and did not particularly enjoy his visit, Mr. Whistler sending the poet’s servant off to stay at an inn, in order that the man and the domestics of his own house should not gossip together. Shenstone himself seems to have been a very unamiable guest, and one better suited to an inn than to the house of a friend; for he grew disagreeable over being expected to play “Pope Joan” in the evening with his friend’s children, and sulked when he lost a trifle at cards. Then he would not dress himself tidily for dinner, and snuffed and slouched to the inconvenience of every one, so that it is not surprising to read of a coolness, and then quarrels, coming to estrange the pair, resulting in Shenstone abruptly cutting short his visit. He lay, overnight, on his journey home, at the “Sunrising” inn, and the next morning, in an arbour, inscribed the famous lines which now form the last stanza of “Freedom.”