Ewelme Cow Common.
My road dipped down through the village, and to the left by the “Greyhound” and up between steep banks under larch trees. On the right a few yards up that road a footpath used to go for two miles towards Wallingford, but it was covered by corn for the first part, and I kept to the road. I was soon going past the Ewelme cow common again, but along the opposite side; and there were cows among its thorns. For a few yards, after crossing the Benson and Dorchester road at Gypsies’ Corner, I was in the Upper Icknield Way again, but turned to the right, due west, leaving Clack’s Farm on the south instead of the west. I was then going down towards the green-striped cornland, the clustered trees of the Thames Valley, and the pale spire and tower of Wallingford rising out of it. The low, long curves of land meeting or intersecting a little above the river were like those of a brier with nothing to climb. In the hedges there were wild roses and masses of traveller’s joy, with all its grey-green buds very large. Instead of following the road round its bend to the south-west, I turned just past the bend into a green lane to the right, which made straight for Wallingford spire; and into this lane presently came the footpath from Ewelme and a parallel old lane. However, I had to turn sharp to the left to reach Crowmarsh Gifford and Wallingford. Crowmarsh is a wide street of old cottages leading to Wallingford bridge. Wallingford climbs the right bank up from the bridge, and out of its crowded brick rise the tower and the spire of two churches, and the ivied tower of a castle, of the kind that looks as if it had been ready-made ruinous and ivied, with a flagstaff on top. I crossed the bridge to the town, and went up the narrow, old street, past an inn called “The Shakespeare,” to the small square of small shops, where red and blue implements of farming stood by the pillared town hall and the sun poured on them. I went into the “private bar” of an inn, but hearing only a blue-bottle and seeing little but a polished table, and smelling nothing else, I went out and round the corner to the taproom of the same inn. Here there were men, politics, crops, beer, and shag tobacco.
Wallingford Bridge.
This contrast between the “private bar” and the taproom round the corner reminded me of another town which illustrates it perfectly. At the edge of the town, its large front windows looking up the principal street, its small back windows over a windy common to noble hills, is a public house called “The Jolly Drover.” The tap of “The Jolly Drover” is the one blot upon the face of Coldiston. The town is clean and demure from the decent old houses of the market-place to the brand-new cottages, more like conservatories than dwellings, on the outskirts. The magistrates are busy week after week in sentencing men and women of all ages for begging, asking for hot water to make tea, sleeping under hedges or in barns, for being unseemly in act or speech; if possible, nothing offensive must happen in the streets. A market is held once a week and is a byword in the county. Any animal can be offered for sale there; the drover creeps along behind a beast that attracts as much attention as a menagerie in the wayside villages; they know where it is going; they have seen a pig resembling a greyhound, except that it had not the strength to stand up, sold there for a shilling. Three or four times a year a builder and contractor of Coldiston is sold up, because he has been trying to get work by doing it for nothing, and these sales are the chief diversion of the neighbourhood. The town is a model of neatness and respectability, as if created by a shop-window decorator; and of all the public-houses—all named hotels—“The Jolly Drover” is the neatest and most respectable outside, and the most expensive inside. It is painted white at short intervals. The chief barmaid is a Londoner, white-faced and coral-lipped, with a love-lock over her marble brow; and her way is brisk and knowing, and her speech more than equal to the demands made upon it of an evening by the tradesmen who will come until they are rich enough to quit the town for ever. Every form of invitation adorns the exterior.
But round the corner, towards the common, “The Jolly Drover” is white no longer. It has no pavement outside, but a space of bare earth overshadowed by an enormous elm’s last two living branches and roughened by its wide-spreading roots. There is no invitation to enter here, but simply the words upon a low lamp, “The Jolly Drover Tap.” No invitation is needed, for the windows are not curtained and the passer-by cannot fail to see the contented backs of drinkers and the long tiers of bottles. At night almost as much can be seen through the yellow blinds. The door stands open opposite the old tree, and through it the eye finds the bar, the plain country barmaid, the lamp, and the bright bottles. A mongrel dog or two and a gypsy’s broken-down cart and wild-eyed horse are usually outside, or a tramp’s woman waiting, or a group of men talking quietly before going in or after coming out. Here “The Jolly Drover” answers to its name. It is a hedge public house of old red brick and tiles, joined, nevertheless, to the white-fronted hotel and connected with it in the proprietor’s accounts. It is noisy. They sing there. No plain man is afraid to go in who has the price of half a pint in his pocket. In the summer benches are set outside, and men can sit and see the discreet going to and fro of the town life a few yards away.
Old Jack Runaway (who will borrow sixpence and then lose half a year’s custom in watercress for fear of showing his face again) has lost six heifers that he was taking to the fair over the hill, but he has a pint inside and a pint before him—the clock stands still—and as the people go by he comments to himself:—
“My young Lord Drapery, may he go to gaol for being a poor beggar before he’s forty. A brood mare; what with living between a policeman and a postman, with a registrar in front and a minister behind, her children ought to be tin soldiers. Now I wonder what’s he worth? But if I was coined into golden sovereigns I wouldn’t have married his missus when I was twenty, no, I wouldn’t. Pretty Miss Ladybird, Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away from home; you’re a tantalizer for a fine day, to be out with a young chap drinking a glass of six and nobody looking. What we do lose by being old, to be sure, more than by being poor! What a clean, white beard, now, that Mr. Welcome has got, like an angel. Eh, old Colonel High and Mighty, there’s doctors for sciatica and gout, but there’s something we have both got by being sixty that they won’t cure, not if your purse is as long as your two legs. How much do you weigh, bombarrel? They don’t allow a carriage and pair in Kingdom Come. Now, that young fellow could break a good few stones on a summer’s day; kind, too, and don’t his heels kick the pavement proud; but mind the women don’t bend your back for you, or you might as well be dust to dust any day. That’s what I call a good piece, neat and not too stuck up, not so young as she was, keeps the house tidy, and knows where they sell the best things cheap; now, I’d like to walk into your parlour and have a cup of tea, missus, after wiping my feet on the mat and hanging up my hat; and then that little ladybird of a nursemaid brings in the baby, and we feed it on cake and weak tea; it must be weak, or it’s bad for the health ...; and wouldn’t I be proud to have you brushing my coat as I goes out of a morning, a black coat, and putting a rose in my button-hole, and kissing me before all the street—ha, ha! dirty Jack Runaway. How they do dress up the youngsters these days, like little angels; hark at them talking, and when the mother whispers to them and they run over as if you dropped it and give you a penny, you might think it would turn into a flower in their hands, and they give you a kind of look as much as to say, ‘God is feeding His sparrows,’ and then they run away without a word, and you look at the price of half a pint, and either you bless them or else you curse them. You, Reverend Sir, would give me a cold in the head if you were to talk; then you’d give me sixpence; if you go to heaven, there’s a bit of luck left for those who don’t, you freezing point, you Monday’s loaf, you black-and-white undertaker’s friend. Oh, this town! it’s rotten without stinking, gilt without gingerbread. Look at them staring at us as if we were wild beasts taking an airing outside the cage....”