Uphill to Alderbury I walked, looking back south-eastward along the four-mile wall of Dean Hill which I had quitted a mile behind. Alderbury, its “Green Dragon,” its public seat and foursquare fountain of good water for man and beast (erected by Jacob, sixth Earl of Radnor), is on a hilltop overlooking the Avon, and immediately on leaving it I began to descend and to slant nearer and nearer the river. The hedges of the road guided my eyes straight to the cathedral spire of Salisbury, two or three miles off beneath me. On the right the sward and oaks of Ivychurch came down to the road: below on the left the sward was wider, the oaks were fewer, and many cows were feeding. A long cleft of rushy turf and oaks, then a broad ploughland succeeded the Ivychurch oaks, and the ploughland rose up into a round summit crested by a clump of pines and beeches. I remember seeing this field when it was being ploughed by two horses, and the ploughman’s white dog was exploring on one side or another across the slopes.
Over beyond the river the land swelled up into chalk hills, here smooth and green, with a clump on the ridge, and there wooded. The railway was now approaching the road from the right, and the narrow strip between road and railway was occupied by an old orchard and a large green chestnut tree. In the branches of the chestnut sang a chaffinch, while a boy was trimming swedes underneath. I was now at the suburban edge of Salisbury, the villas looking out of their trees and lemon-coloured barberry at the double stream of Avon, at the willowy marshland, the cathedral, and the Harnham Down racecourse above.
I crossed over Harnham bridge where the tiled roofs are so mossy, and went up under that bank of sombre-shimmering ivy just to look from where the roads branch to Downton, Blandford, and Odstock. Southward nothing is to be seen except the workhouse and the many miles of bare down and sheepfolds. Northward the cathedral spire soars out of a city without a hill, dominated on the right or east by Burroughs Hill, a low but decided bluff, behind which are the broad woods of Clarendon. The road was deserted. It was on a Tuesday evening, after market, that I had last been there, when clergy with wives and daughters were cycling out past a wagon for Downton drawn by horses with red and blue plumelets; motor cyclists were tearing in; a tramp or two trudged down towards the bridge. In the city itself the cattle were being driven to the slaughter-house or out to the country, a spotted calf was prancing on the pavement, one was departing for Wilton in a crowded motor bus, a wet, new-born one stood in a cart with its mother, a cow with udders wagging was being hustled up the Exeter road by motor cars and pursued at a distance by a man who called to it affectionately as a last resource; another calf was being held outside a pub while the farmer drank; black and white pigs were steered cautiously past plate glass; and in the market-place Sidney Herbert and Henry Fawcett on their pedestals were looking out over the dark, wet square at the last drovers and men in gaiters leaving it, and ordinary passengers crossing it, and a few sheep still bleating in a pen. And the green river meadows and their elms and willows chilled and darkened as the gold sun sank without staining the high, pale-washed sky, and the cathedral clock nervously and quietly said, “One-two, one-two, one-two” for the third quarter before dark.
But this was Sunday morning, and still early. I ate breakfast to the tune of the “Marseillaise,” sung slowly and softly to a child as a lullaby, and was soon out again, this time amidst jackdaws, rooks, clergy, and the black-dressed Sunday procession, diversified by women in violet, green, and curry colour. The streets, being shuttered and curtained, robbed of the crowd shopping, were cold and naked; even the inns of Salisbury, whose names are so genial and succulent—“Haunch of Venison,” “Round of Beef,” “Ox,” “Royal George,” “Roebuck,” “Wool Pack”—were as near as possible dismal. Their names were as meaningless as those of the dead Browns, Dowdings, Burtons, Burdens, and Fullfords in St. Edmund’s Churchyard. If it had not been for the women it would have been a city of the dead or a city of birds. The people kept to the paths of the close. The lawns and trees were given over exclusively to the birds, especially those that are black, such as the rook and blackbird. Those that were not matrimonially engaged on the grass were cawing in the elms, beeches, and chestnuts of the cathedral. Missel-thrushes were singing across the close as if it had been empty. A lark from the fields without drifted singing over the city. The stockdoves cooed among the carved saints. There were more birds than men in Salisbury. Never had I seen the cathedral more beautiful. The simple form of the whole must have been struck out of glaucous rock at one divine stroke. It seemed to belong to the birds that flew about it and lodged so naturally in the high places. The men who crawled in at the doors, as into mines, could not be the masters of such a vision.
Nevertheless, I took the liberty of entering myself, chiefly to look again for those figures of Death and a Traveller, where the Traveller says,—
“Alas, Death, alas, a blissful thing that were
If thou wouldst spare us in our lustiness
And come to wretches that be so of heavy cheer.” ...
and Death retorts,—