Our run from Nottingham to Oxford was uneventful, for we roved rather at random for the day through the delightful Midland country. At Nottingham one will find the Victoria is quite up to the standard of station-hotel excellence in England and the rates refreshingly low. The city itself will not detain one long, for the great wave of modern progress that has inundated it has swept away most of its ancient landmarks. The old castle, once the key to the Northlands, has been superseded by a palatial structure which now serves as museum and art gallery. Unless one would see factories, machine shops and lace-making works, there will be little to keep him in Nottingham.
We follow the well-surfaced road to the southeast, and though steep in places, its hills afford splendid views of the landscape. The rain interferes much with the prospect, but in the lulls we catch glimpses of long reaches of meadowland dotted with solitary trees, rich with the emerald greenness that follows summer rain in England.
Melton Mowbray has a proud distinction, for does not the infallible Baedeker accord it the honor of being the “hunting capital of the Midlands?” And the assertion that it is famous for its pork pies very appropriately follows, a matter of cause and effect, perhaps, for the horde of hungry huntsmen who congregate in the town would hardly be satisfied with anything less substantial than an English pork pie. Melton Mowbray has a competitor in Market Harborough, some twenty miles farther, where we stopped for luncheon at a pleasant wayside inn. Each of these towns has a population of about seven thousand, chiefly dependent upon the hunting industry—if I may use such a term—and certain it is that fox hunting is about the only vocation toward which many of the Midland squires are at all industriously inclined. One is simply astounded at the hold the sport has in England and the amount of time and money devoted to it; a leading authority estimates that not less than nine million pounds is spent yearly by the hunters. In a summer tour one sees comparatively little of it, but in the autumn and winter these towns doubtless exhibit great activity, and their streets, crowded with red-coated huntsmen and packs of yelping dogs, must be decidedly picturesque.
From Market Harborough a straight, narrow road carried us swiftly southward toward Northampton and we passed through the Bringtons, of whose memories of the Washingtons I have written in an earlier chapter. The rain, which had been falling fitfully during the day, ceased and the sun came out with a brilliancy that completely transformed the landscape. All about us was the dense green of the trees and meadowlands, bejeweled with sparkling raindrops and dashed with the gold of the ripening grain, stretching away until lost in the purple mist of the distance. Even the roadside pools glowed crimson and gold, and altogether the scene was one of transcendent beauty and freshness. It was exhilarating indeed as our open car swept over the fine Oxford road, passing through the ancient towns of Towcester, Buckingham and Bicester. There is no more beautiful or fertile country in the Island than that around Oxford, and it was a welcome change to see it basking in the sunshine after our dull days on the Yorkshire moors.
One never wearies of Oxford, and the Randolph Hotel is worth a run of many miles to reach at nightfall. Aristocratic, spacious and quiet, with an indefinable atmosphere of the great universities about it, it appeals to both the bodily and aesthetic senses of the wayfarer—but Oxford, with all its interest and charm, has no place in this chronicle, and we leave it, however loath, in the early morning. We hasten over the Berkshire Hills through Abingdon into Wiltshire, where there is much to engage our attention.
Swindon, the first town we encounter after passing the border, is an up-to-date city of fifty thousand people and the newness everywhere apparent, the asphalt pavement and the numerous tram lines impress one with its similarity to live American towns. We learn that it is practically a creation of the Great Western Railway, whose shops give employment to a large proportion of the population. Clearly, there is nothing for us in Swindon and we hasten on to Chippenham, which has the traditions which Swindon so wofully lacks. It is a staid old town of six thousand and was important in Saxon times, having frequent mention in the chronicles of Alfred’s wars with the Danes. Strange indeed the mutations of time—strange it seems that the now decadent and negligible Denmark once sent her “fair-haired despots of the sea” into this remote section of the present mistress of the seas. The town is full of odd old houses and it is the center of one of the most interesting spots in England, as I hope to be able to show. But its hotel would hardly invite a long sojourn; we stop for luncheon at the Angel, and are placed at a large table with several rather red-faced gentlemen who discuss horses and hunting dogs as vigorously as a lively onslaught on the host’s vintage and good cheer permits.
Lacock is only four miles away and they tell us that we should see the abbey; but they do not tell us that the village itself is worth a day’s journey and that the abbey is only secondary. They do not tell us this, because no one about Lacock knows it. The utter unconsciousness and genuineness of the village is not its least charm. Lacock never dreams of being a show place or tourist resort; but despite its unconsciousness, anyone who has seen England as we have seen it will know that Lacock is not easily matched for its wealth of old stone and timber houses and its quaint, genuine antiquity. It is perhaps a trifle severe and its picturesqueness is of a melancholy and somber kind—thatched roofs are few, ivy-clad walls and flower gardens are wanting; there is little color save an occasional red roof to relieve the all-pervading gray monotone. Its timbered houses are not the imitations one sees so often, even in England, or the modernized old buildings shining in black and white paint, but the genuine article, with weathered oak timbers and lichen-covered brick. There are many projecting upper stories and sharp gables with casement windows of diamond panes set in rusty iron frames. The Lacock of today is truly a voice from the past. It must have been practically the same two or three hundred years ago. Its houses, its streets, its church and its very atmosphere carry one back to the England of Shakespeare.
Such a village seems a fitting introduction to the abbey at whose gates it sits; and the abbey itself, gray and ancient like the village, is one of the most perfect monastic buildings in England. Nowhere else did we see what seemed to us a more appropriate home for romance than this great rambling pile of towered and gabled buildings, with a hundred odd nooks and corners, each of which might well have a story of its own. It is opened freely to visitors by its owner, Mr. Talbot, himself an antiquarian of note, who is glad to share his unbounded delight in the old place with anyone who may care to come. We were shown in detail the parts of the abbey that have a special historic and architectural interest. It is guarded carefully and the atmosphere of antiquity jealously preserved. Even the stone steps of the main entrance are grass-grown and moss-covered—“and he wont let us clean them up,” said our guide.