Inside there are many fine apartments and notable relics. The arched cloisters, the chapter house, the refectory and other haunts of the nuns, are in quite the original state. The immense stone fishtank from a solid block sixteen feet long and the great bronze cauldron show that good cheer was quite as acceptable to the nuns as to their brethren. But the exterior of the abbey and the beautiful grounds surrounding it impressed us most. All about were splendid trees and plots of shrubbery, and the Bristol Avon flows through the park. We heard what we thought the rush of its waters, but our guide told us that it was the quaking aspens which fringe the river banks, keeping up their age-long sigh that their species had supplied the wood for the cross. No day is so still that you do not hear them in summer time. We passed around the building to note from different viewpoints its quaint outlines and its great rambling facades with crowded, queerly assorted gables, battlemented towers and turrets, and mysterious corners, all combining to make it the very ideal of the abbey of romance. How easy, when contemplating it in the dim twilight or by the light of a full moon, for the imagination to re-people it with its old-time habitants; and surely, if the ghosts of the gray nuns ever return to their earthly haunts, Lacock Abbey must have such visitants.
LACOCK ABBEY.
But enough of these vagaries—one might yield himself up to them for days in such surroundings. I will not mar them with sober history, in any event, though Lacock has quite enough of that. The guide-book which you may get at the abbey lodge for two-pence tells its story and I have tried to tell only what we saw and felt.
At the postcard shop, where we buy a few pictures and souvenirs of Lacock, the young woman tells us of other Wiltshire nooks that we should see. Do we know of Sloperton Cottage, of Bromham Church, of Corsham, of Yatton Keynell and Castle Combe? These are only a few, in fact, but they are the ones that strike our fancy most and we thank our informant, who follows us to point out the roads. And never had we more need of such assistance, for our search for Sloperton Cottage involves us in a maze of unmarked byways that wind between tall hedges and overarching trees.
And what of Sloperton Cottage? Are you, dear reader, so ignorant as we were, not to know that Tom Moore, the darling poet of Erin, lived in Sloperton Cottage with his beloved Bessie for a third of a century and that both are buried at Bromham Church near at hand? One had surely thought to find his grave in the “ould sod” rather than in the very heart of rural England; but so it is; and after much inquiry we enter the lonely lane that leads to Sloperton Cottage and pause before the long low building, heavily mantled with ivy and roses, though almost hidden from the road by the tall hedge in front. We had been told that it is the private home of two ladies, sisters of the owner, and we have no thought of intruding in such a case—but a neat maid appears at the gateway as we look, no doubt rather longingly, at the house.
“Miss ——,” said she, “would be pleased to have you come in and see the cottage.”
Here is unexpected good fortune, and coming voluntarily to us, we feel free to accept the invitation. We see the cottage and gardens, which are much the same as when occupied by the poet, though some of the furniture has been replaced. The garden to the rear, sweet with old-fashioned flowers, we are told was a favorite resort of the author of “Lalla Rookh” and that he composed much of his verse here, lying on his back and gazing at the sky through over-arching branches. The cottage is quite unpretentious and the whole place is so cozy and secluded as to be an ideal retreat for the muses, and as an English writer has observed: