The topographical surveys and books of reference will tell on that it is a "chapelry, in the parish of Broadwell, Union of Faringdon, hundred of Bampton, county of Oxford;" that it is "two miles east of Lechlade and contains 179 inhabitants;" and that "by measurement it contains 1,020 acres, of which 876 are arable and 153 meadow and pasture." It is unlikely that the population has increased since the above description; the best authority claims that it has actually decreased, like so many of the small towns and villages of the countryside in England.
Kelmscott Manor House was advertised for sale in 1871, a fact which Morris discovered quite by accident. Writing to his friend Faulkner he says:
"I have been looking about for a house... my eye is turned now to Kelmscott, a little village two miles above Radcott Bridge—a Heaven on earth."
The house is thirty miles or more from Oxford, by water, approached by a lane which leads from Lechlade just over St. John's Bridge, by the "Trout Inn." The railway now reaches Lechlade but this was not the case when Morris first found this "Heaven." Most likely he reached it by carriage from Faringdon, "by the grand approach over the hills of Berkshire."
We regained the Bath road at Marlborough, after our excursion into the realms of Utopia, intending to reach Bath for lunch. The best laid plans of mice and mere motor-men ofttimes go awry, and we did not get to Bath until well on into the night. There was really no reason for this except an obstinate bougie (beg pardon, sparking-plug in English) which sparked beautyfully in the open air, but which refused positively to give a glimmer when put in its proper place. We did not know this, or even suspect it at first, but this was what delayed us four hours, just before we reached Chippenham, where we stopped and lunched, through no choice of our own, for it was a bad lunch in every particular, and cost three shillings and sixpence a head. To add to the indignity, the local policemen came along and said we were making an obstruction, and insisted that we push the machine into the stable-yard, as if we were committing a breach of the law, when really it was only an opportunity for a "bobby" to show his authority. Happy England!
All the morning we had been running over typical English roads and running well. There is absolutely no question but that the countryside of England is unequalled for that unique variety of picturesqueness which is characteristic of the land, but it lacks the grandeur that one finds in France, or indeed in most countries of Continental Europe.
Crossing England thus, one gets the full force of Rider Haggard's remarks about the small farmer; how, because he cannot get a small holding, that can be farmed profitably, for his very own, he becomes a tenant, or remains always a labourer, never rising in the social scale.
The peasant of Continental Europe may be poor and impoverished, may eat largely of bread instead of meat, and be forced to drink "thin wine" instead of body-building beer,—as the economists in England put it,—but he has much to be thankful for, nevertheless.
We stopped just before Beckhampton, at a puzzling crossroads, and asked a labourer of the fields if we were "right" for Chippenham. He stared blankly, doffed his hat with humility, but for a time answered never a word. He knew Calne, a town half a dozen miles away, for he occasionally, walked in there for a drinking-bout on a heavier brand of beer than he could buy locally, but, though he had always heard of Chippenham, he did not know whether it lay north, east, south, or west. This is deplorable, of course, for it was within a twenty-mile radius, but it is astonishing the frequency with which one meets this blankness in England when looking for information. There are tens of thousands like this poor fellow, and one may well defy Rider Haggard to make a "landed proprietor" out of such poor stuff.
You do not always get what you ask for in France, but the peasant at least knows enough to tell you, "Oh! that's down in the Eure" or "Plus loin, par là," and at any rate, you feel that he is a broad-gauge Frenchman through and through, whereas the English labourer of the fields is a very "little Englander" indeed.