Very lonely, very winding and narrow were the lanes we got on, but if you travel far enough you are sure to arrive somewhere, so we arrived at Stanton Harcourt, a well-known spot to Oxford men, and where the old home of the Harcourts stands with its ancient and chimneyless kitchen, a building apart from the house with a pyramidical roof having a louvre at the top, out of which the smoke escapes as it can. This curious detached kitchen closely resembles the famous one at Glastonbury Abbey, so at least I thought from a passing glance at it. If there was an inn at Stanton Harcourt we missed it, and so we drove on, and shortly came to Eynsham, where I noticed its medieval stone cross in the street by the side of the church. Finding no inn to my liking, I consulted my map and discovered that Woodstock was not far off. Now at Woodstock I knew there was a good inn of the old-fashioned sort, so to Woodstock we went; and so in the gloaming, with the soft light of declining day giving all the landscape a mysterious look, we sped on the few miles to "The Bear" at that town.
The great stableyard of "The Bear" is a graphic reminder of the spacious inns of the coaching era of which it has been said, "A regiment of cavalry might have been housed in them, and good wine could be had for the ordering." You may order good wine now at country inns, and pay the price of it, but if you think to get good wine I can only say, I hope you may. Though I do know one or two old inns whose cellars contain some rare old port that has lain in them for years; in one case, the worthy landlord told me, "since the last coach took its last change here," which may be but pleasant fiction, I cannot say; still, in truth, the wine is very old, very rare and good. I have sampled it, and hope to sample it again as long as the bin lasts, for such wine is not to be had every day, not even for money.
There were only two other guests at "The Bear" that night; they came from Yorkshire, they said—I did not ask them—and the only thing they talked about was horses. They even dated their remarks from the day, or year, a certain horse won the Derby, or some other horse that had won some other race. I stood it for an hour or two, then called for my candle, as travellers did in the days before gas or electricity, and "to bed," as Pepys has it.
I did not visit the show-house of Blenheim, for I had seen it before; moreover, show-houses are not to my mind. It may, however, be interesting to call attention to the conditions on which the Blenheim estate is held, which estate was granted by a grateful nation to the first Duke of Marlborough and his heirs in recognition of the famous victory of Blenheim, in Bavaria, on 2nd August 1704. "A representative of the family has once a year to convey to Windsor Castle an embroidered flag, which is placed in the Guards' Chamber. There it remains for a twelvemonth, till the next rental for holding the palace and the estate falls due. It is the only return the family have to make for the property they enjoy."
Next morning, on strolling round the town, I saw in a shop window a picture postcard, and on it a photograph of "The Manor-House Farm, birthplace of the Black Prince, Woodstock." It came as a surprise to me to learn that the Black Prince, "that mirror of knighthood and the greatest of heroes," was born there; so I gleaned, as I travelled on, many a forgotten historical happening. To take a schoolboy a trip through England in a motor-car would be an excellent way of increasing his knowledge of its history. The manor-house is very old, though I take it, except perhaps in parts, little of the original structure can be left. The house has a pleasant look, and possesses a curious old chimney consisting of a stone shaft having a conical roof, the shaft being pierced on all sides at its top with lancet openings for the smoke to escape. The chimney looks as though it ought not to smoke whatever the way of the wind, and that with it a down draught should be an impossibility; it is a picturesque device that might be worth trying in place of the ugly cowls. Finding nothing further to interest me in the sunny and sleepy little town, I took my early departure whilst yet the day was fresh and cool.
Out of Woodstock I found myself on the old highway leading to Oxford, but I did not travel it far, taking a lane to the left with a view of exploring that rather remote and out-of-the-way district lying in a rough square between Oxford and Bicester, Aylesbury and Thame—at least it looked out of the way on my map, only served by narrow roads; and on my map I noticed a vacant place marked "Ot Moor," an odd name, with "Joseph's Stone" also marked in the centre of the moor. I wondered what that stone could be so plainly shown there, some "Druidical Standing Stone" perhaps; it aroused my curiosity; and beyond these, in the direction I was going, "Boarstall Tower" was inscribed in bold lettering, also the forsaken little town of Brill. I felt in an exploring mood that day, and here was an odd corner of the land inviting me to explore it. First I came to Islip, a bleak-looking and tiny town of stone houses, yet a town of some importance in its day; but that was a long time ago, when King Ethelred had his palace there, in which his son Edward the Confessor was born, he who founded Westminster Abbey. Shortly afterwards our road led us across lonely Ot Moor, and through the quaint village of Oddington, quaint as becomes its quaint name. Here I inquired about Joseph's Stone, and was told that a big stone of that name once stood on the moor, but "it has been broken up"; nothing further of its history could I glean, nor found I any mention of it in any guide-book I afterwards consulted, nor in any other likely work, nor did any of my antiquarian friends know anything about it. I was disappointed. As the stone is not now there, has not been there, except in bits, for long years, why do they still mark it on the map? It is so provoking to see places marked on the map, and conspicuously marked, that arouse your curiosity, only to find they do not exist. It was the same on Salisbury Plain; there at a spot by the roadside between Wylye and Devizes was printed plainly on my map "St. John á Gores Cross." I believe that a wayside stone cross once stood there, but when that was no one seems to know. Now there is no vestige of it, not even its stump in the ground. Possibly it was destroyed by the Puritans. Now, trusting to my map, I went miles out of my way purposely to see it. I look upon a map as a faithful friend, and one does not like to find a friend at fault.
Now succeeded a level stretch of lowland country that had a look of Holland, excepting that the cottage homes by the way were distinctly not Dutch. A land where the eye had freedom to rove over wide spaces of green right away to a circling horizon of blue, and a wild wind swept over it, fresh, cool, and laden with the pungent scent of marsh flowers—as fresh and cool as the wind that sweeps over the sea, only without its salt savour. The wind was making holiday; it tossed the long grasses and reeds about, it bent down the hedges before it, it made mimic waves and Lilliputian tempests on the ponds that we passed. It is wind that gives life to a scene, and the strife of it stirred the blood in our veins. We rejoiced in the wind, for it came from the west, with just a suspicion of keenness, but no harshness, of greeting.
In spite of the wind and the sur, sur, sur of it, the whole countryside gave me the impression of great quietude. I could allow for the wind—it would not blow so every day; few people were in the fields, and those few seemed to be taking life easy, contentedly doing little; the hedges were delightfully tangled, a disgrace to good farming it may be, but that is a matter apart. Perhaps they needed some pruning, but they best pleased my eye just wild as they were, growing as Nature would have them. It was a land to laze in, to do nothing in haste; only the wind stirred it up to a semblance of passion. There was no flow in the streams that one could perceive; it was a relief to come to a land that suggested nothing but rest. The interfering political economist might well shake his head at all this, but I was out for my pleasure, without a thought of what he might say. It was so peace-bestowing, and that was its charm. It was a land of health rather than a land of wealth—and who shall say that health is not the better thing?—a land that conformed to no canon of beauty, but none the less pleasing to me. I will wager that no one grew prematurely old from overwork in it: why should he? Mere money-making is the bane of the age; it gives a man no time to call his soul his own. "If a person," says Stevenson, "cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept." It is. I do not go so far. I only protest against money-making at the price of much leisure, the making of money for money's sake only. I knew a man who toiled hard all the week at his desk in a stuffy city office at the cost of his health, and what for?—to keep up a needlessly pretentious home with gardeners and carriage. One day, he confessed to me, the folly of all this forcibly struck him; he had so little leisure to enjoy his family or home. He thought the matter carefully over and for long, and he came to the conclusion that by working half the time he should lose half his income; on the other hand, he would have half the week to himself that he could devote to his wife and the pleasures of home. So he gave up his large house, he dismissed his gardeners, he did away with his carriage, and took a pretty little cottage where, on his reduced income, he could live in comfort, though without the luxuries of gardeners and carriage; and his wife, too, had less cares in the management of a smaller home. So happy was he and every one in the new conditions that, though his partners laughed at him and deemed him a fool, he declared to me that nothing would induce him to return to his former slavery, as he called it. He was an infinitely happier man, his family were happier too, and he enjoyed such health as he had never known since he was a schoolboy free from all but fancied care.
From this leisured land a stiff climb brought us on to high ground and into a lighter, more exciting air. On the lowland we were content to laze along, and desired to laze so; here we must needs speed for a while, for the country was open and things not seen in detail; for there is a pace at which you can best enjoy and appreciate the type of country passed through: here, not the foreground but the distance allured us. When you see far ahead, and all is revealed before you, as in a stretch of open road over a wide moorland, your eye is ever on the horizon that beckons you on to explore the unknown, and you cannot, if human, resist its attraction. That is the magic of distance.
At a turn in the road, in a lonely spot, we caught a glimpse through branching trees of the grey old tower of Boarstall: no longer the distance held us in thrall; its power was gone. Boarstall, with its four flanking and embattled towers, is all that remains of a once fortified house. There are narrow arrow-slits in the towers that show their ancientness, but the large front and mullioned side windows do not suggest so early a date or a place of much defensive strength; doubtless they were added in later years under a feeling of greater security. The house that stood in the moat-enclosed ground beyond has now wholly disappeared. Boarstall, however, was strengthened during the Civil Wars, well garrisoned, and held for the king. Lord Clarendon in his History of the Rebellion says: "Fairfax attempted to take a poor house near Boarstall, and was beaten from thence with considerable loss, so that he drew off his men, little to his credit." Before the siege the following correspondence took place between the commanders of the besiegers and the besieged:—