Transcriber's Note:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistent hyphenation. Some changes have been made. They are listed at the end of the text.

Illustrations and maps have been moved.

Larger versions of the maps may be seen by clicking on the names of the countires in the captions.

IN UNFAMILIAR ENGLAND

SULGRAVE MANOR, THE CRADLE OF THE WASHINGTONS.
Painted especially for the author by Daniel Sherrin.

Copyright, 1910
By L. C. Page & Company
(INCORPORATED)

All rights reserved

First Impression, January, 1910

TO MY WIFE

THE CONSTANT
COMPANION OF
MY WANDERINGS

[PREFACE]

It may seem that there is little excuse for a new book on English travel, since works covering the beaten path in the British Isles fairly teem from the press. But as a record of pilgrimages to the unfamiliar shrines and to the odd corners all over the United Kingdom this book may have its value. My reference to the tourist-frequented spots has been only incidental, and I think I can claim to have found much of interest not elsewhere described. And this I put forth as my chief excuse for adding one more to the already long list of British travel books.

But in my illustrations I have another, and perhaps to many a better, excuse for my venture on such well-trodden ground. I believe that few books of travel have come from the press that can justly claim a higher rank in this particular. The sixteen color plates reproduce the work of some of the most noted contemporary artists, and the duogravures are the most perfect English photographs—no country on earth surpasses England in photography—perfectly reproduced.

I trust that these features may give a real value to the book and make it acceptable to the large and increasing number of those readers and travelers abroad who are interested in the Motherland.

T. D. M.

[CONTENTS]

[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]

WARWICK CASTLE FROM THE AVON.
Original Painting by Daniel Sherrin.

[In Unfamiliar England]

[I]
SOME NOOKS ABOUT LONDON

When Washington Irving made his first journey to England, he declared the three or four weeks on the ocean to be the best possible preparation for a visit to the mother country. The voyage, said he, was as a blank page in one’s existence, and the mind, by its utter severance from the busy world, was best fitted to receive impressions of a new and strange environment. And it was no doubt so in the slow ocean voyages of olden time; but today it is more as if one stayed within his palatial hotel for a few days, at no time losing touch with the civilized world. Every day of our passage the engines of our ocean greyhound reeled off distances—five or six hundred nautical miles—that Irving’s vessel would have required nearly a week to cover, and daily the condensed news of the world was flashed to us through the “viewless air.” Of all our modern miracles, certainly none would have been more difficult to predict than this—how like a sheer impossibility it would have seemed! Indeed, to such an extent has modern science thrown its safeguards around the voyager that “those in peril on the sea” are rather less so than those on land, and the ocean liners make trips month after month and year after year without the loss of a single life. And with the disappearance of its mystery and terror, the sea has lost much of its romance. No longer does the bold buccaneer lie in wait for the treasure-laden galleons of Spain and the Netherlands; no longer may the picturesque pirate sail the seas unhindered in his quest for ill-gotten gold. Indeed, when one thinks of the capital and equipment a modern pirate on the high seas would require, there is no wonder that the good old trade is obsolete.

But the sea is still as beautiful in its thousand moods of clouds and sunshine, of storm and calm, as it ever was ere its distances were annihilated and its romance dispelled. Our voyage was nearly perfect; the water was smooth and the days mild and clear. From sunrise to sunset the great ship plowed her way through a sea of pale emerald flecked with frosted silver, and at night she swept along beneath a starlit sky. So favorable was her progress that early on the sixth day she paused in Plymouth harbor.

If in Washington Irving’s day the long sea voyage was the best preparation for enjoying the beauties of England, it is hardly so now. Be that as it may, there is possibly nothing that could make one more keenly appreciate the joys of motoring than the run from Plymouth to London by the Great Western’s “train de luxe.” The grime and smoke that envelop everything about the train, the crash and shriek of the wheels, the trembling and groaning of the frail carriages hurled onward at a terrific speed, to say nothing of the never-to-be-forgotten service—does it deserve such a term—of the dining-car, will all seem like a nightmare when one glides along beneath the silvery English skies, through the untainted country air, and pauses for an excellent, cleanly served luncheon at some well-ordered wayside inn.

London itself is so vast, and so crowded are its environs with places that may well engage the attention of the tourist, that it would be hard to guess how much time one might devote with pleasure and profit to the teeming circle within twenty-five miles of Charing Cross. Many of the most charming spots about the metropolis have had scant mention in the literature of travel, and even now many of the ancient and picturesque villages are in process of metamorphosis. The steady encroachments of the great city have already transformed more than one retired hamlet into a suburban residence town, and historic landmarks have suffered not a little. The advent of the railroad, always hailed with joy from a mere material standpoint, is often death to the atmosphere that attracts the painter and the poet. A run to Chorley Wood to visit the studio of a well-known English artist, one of whose pictures graces this book, brought to our minds with peculiar force the condition of things just outlined.

Chorley Wood but recently was one of the quaintest and most unspoiled of the Hertfordshire villages. Here stands the old King farmhouse where in 1672 William Penn married Gulilema Springett, whose graces and perfections have been so dwelt upon by the chroniclers. And there are other old and interesting structures, but crowding them closely and elbowing them out of existence are the more modern villas of Londoners whom the railroad has brought within easy reach of this pleasant spot. Not all of the newer houses were constructed with the consummate taste of that of our artist friend, whose studio-residence seemed entirely at home among the quaint old houses of the town. As usual with English houses, the garden side was most attractive, and a wide veranda—not a common thing in England—fronted on the well-kept lawn. From this there was a splendid view of the distant Hertfordshire landscape, which on this particular June day was glorious with such variations of green as can be seen only in England, broken here and there by the intense yellow of the gorse and fading away into a blue haze that half hid the forest-covered hills in the distance. I could not help suggesting that this view itself would make a delightful picture, but the artist, who is noted for his fondness for low tones, demurred—the gorse was too harsh and jarring. So, after all, Dame Nature isn’t much of a colorist! She mingles the intensest greens and blues and dashes them with the fiercest of yellows!

It is not strange that Hertfordshire is favored by the artists, especially those whose success has been such as to enable them to maintain country homes. I had the pleasure of calling on another successful young painter in the adjacent village of Harpenden and on inquiring for his studio we were given the unique direction to “follow the road along the common until you come to a new house that looks like an old one.” And the description was apt, indeed, for we did not see elsewhere the half-timber frame-work with herring-bone masonry, the studded oak doors with monstrous, straggling wrought-iron hinges, the open beams, wide carved mantels, the mullioned windows with diamond panes set in iron casements—all reproduced with the perfect spirit of the Elizabethan builder.

Near by is Rickmansworth, an ancient and yet unspoiled town where Penn lived for five years after his marriage with “Guli,” as she was called. These years were largely occupied in writing theological works and in public religious disputations. In fact, no name is more identified with Hertfordshire than Penn’s, its only rival being that of Francis Bacon. In later years Penn removed to Sussex, where he had inherited an estate, but his final resting-place is at Jordans, Hertfordshire.

We left Chorley Wood through meandering byways, and threading our way among the Burnham beeches, soon came into the main Oxford road. It would be difficult, indeed, to describe the sylvan loveliness of the country through which we passed. The great trees overarched the narrow winding lanes, which were bordered with tall ferns in places, and often a clear rivulet ran alongside. The somber yew, the stately oak and the graceful birches were interspersed here with a bit of lawn and there with a tangle of flowering shrubs. Out of this we came into the main road, broad and white, and teeming with vehicles—the first hint that London with its ceaseless turmoil is only twenty miles away.

Farther on the road toward the city we came to Uxbridge, another town where the new is crowding the old. Fortunately, the famous Treaty Inn has escaped. Here the emissaries of Charles I. met the representatives of Parliament in a vain effort to compromise the dispute that had plunged the nation into civil war. The room where the commissioners met, with its paneling reaching to the ceiling and its wealth of antique carving, is little changed, though it has been divided by a partition into a writing- and a dining-room. The excellent luncheon served was one of the surprises often met in these dilapidated and often unprepossessing old hostelries. In the time of the Parliamentary unpleasantness, this hotel was known as the “Crown,” and among its relics is an immense crown of solid oak weighing two or three hundred pounds, which was engaging the attention of an English party, one of whom ironically asked if this were the identical crown worn by Charles at the council. “Indeed it was,” replied another humorist in the party, “and thus originated the expression, ‘Uneasy lies the head which wears a crown.’”

Near Uxbridge, but lying a quarter of a mile off the main road, is the village of Denham. Here we came one fine Sunday afternoon, following the recommendation of an English friend. The village has no historic attraction and no famous man’s name has ever been associated with it. Neither has it mention in the books. Yet Denham is a delight—a sequestered little place nestling under a group of towering trees just far enough from the highroad to miss the dust and noise. The ancient half-timbered houses which border the street are redolent with the spirit of old-time England. The fine unrestored old church stands at the head of the street and the churchyard about it shows evidence of painstaking care. What a delight, it seemed to us, it would be to live in Denham—at least in English June time. One would have rural quiet, even somnolence, and might lie for hours on the turf under the great trees, meditating and looking at the sky; and if he should weary of so secluded and eventless a life, London, with all its mystery and charm, is less than an hour away—London, the most fascinating city in the world, despite its preponderance of bad weather and its world-famed fogs.

Charles Lamb delighted in Hertfordshire and spent much of his time at the Four Swans Inn at Waltham, a quaint old building just opposite Waltham Cross. We made several pilgrimages here; nor did the abbey grow less interesting upon repeated visits. From here it is only a little distance to St. Albans, a city proud of its great cathedral, whose hoary tower dominates the town. Quite different from the ordinary caretaker was the young clergyman, whose refined, classic face bespoke his intelligence and who showed us every detail of the great church, dwelling upon its many ancient and often unique features. Nor did he omit to call our attention to an epitaph of a very frank citizen of St. Albans, who, after sleeping three hundred years under the marble slab in the nave, still complains of his unhappy fate:

“Great was my grief—I could not rest;
God called me hence—He thought it best.
Unhappy marriage was my fate—
I did repent when ’twas too late.”

St. Albans is rich in antiquities. Indeed, you can still trace fragments of the Roman wall which surrounded the place when Albanus met his fate, and down near the river at the foot of cathedral hill is another “oldest house” in England. It is a quaint round structure, built, they say, more than a thousand years ago as a fishing-lodge for the monks, for it stands hard by a lakelike dam in the river. But today it has degenerated into a public house, and the broad-shouldered, black-bearded Irishman who kept the bar was well posted on St. Albans’ antiquities. He showed us the little house and garden and pointed out the Roman earthworks. Nor did he seem in the least disappointed that our patronage was limited to a few post card pictures, and, strange to say, he declined a gratuity. We returned to the George Inn, which enjoyed great prosperity in the coaching days, being on the main road to Holyhead. For four hundred years it had cheered the passing guest and its excellent dinner belied its generally dilapidated appearance. Its proprietors were just removing to the new and pretentious Red Lion over the way, but we did not learn whether this meant the final abandonment of the George.

It was with some difficulty that we located Rye House, which we supposed to be within Broxborne, but which really lies on a byroad two or three miles away. Though in a more or less secluded location, it is apparently the goal of innumerable pilgrims on gala days in the summer, especially Sundays. On the day of our arrival, the grounds were quite deserted and an appropriate quietude hovered over the old manor. Alas, though, we found it shorn of much of its picturesqueness, for it had fallen into the clutches of a large brewer, who was using it as an adjunct to dispose of his product—in fact, the mansion and its beautiful grounds have become little else than a summer beer garden.

Rye House figures in history as the seat of a plot, which contemporaries describe as “horrid,” to kill King Charles II. as he returned from a race meeting in Newmarket in 1683. Unfortunately, perhaps, the plot failed, owing to the king’s return a week earlier than expected, and there was no telephone to advise the Rye House assassins of the change of plan. A penny guide-book gives what purports to be the history of the crime, though I fear most of the romantic features are mythical. It relates how Ruth, the daughter of Rumsey, who devised the plot, listened at the door and learned the plan of the conspirators. Between her father and the king this devoted maiden never hesitated a minute, but hustled her lover away to Newmarket to warn Charles of his impending danger. After great difficulty the youth gained an audience with the king, and it is recorded that Charles only laughed at his story. Here, at least, is a touch of probability—Charles laughed at everything. Finding himself discredited, the lover became desperate; in his loyal zeal “he secretly set fire to the house in which the king resided in two or three places.” Our chronicler, having thus unceremoniously ousted his royal majesty from his comfortable quarters, has him proceed “in disguise” to London, stopping at Rye House, where he confronted and confounded his enemies and bestowed “substantial marks of his favor” upon Ruth Rumsey and her lover. What these substantial marks were our chronicler declareth not—better left to the imagination, anyway, for it would be far more in keeping with the character of Charles to say that he promised substantial marks of his favor and forgot all about it.

So much for Rye House legend. The facts are that the conspirators were apprehended and executed, and quite in accordance with his usual practices, the king made the circumstance an excuse for the removal of numerous of his enemies among the nobility who had nothing whatever to do with the plot. However, Rye House is quiet enough today and its only plots are the innocuous ones hatched over pots of beer in the minds of the trippers who throng it on Sundays and holidays.

The conspirators did not meet at the inn itself, but in the castellated manor house just across the byroad. Of this only a fragment remains, but fortunately this fragment contains the “conspirators’ room,” as might be expected. The enterprising brewer has put this in good repair and has placed on view a number of relics of greater or less degree of merit. Among these is a pair of stupendous jack-boots, which our voluble guide assured us were the “hidentical boots what Holiver Cromwell wore” during a battle in which, as usual, he worsted the Royalists; but the placard above the relics was more modest in its claims, for it only stated that the boots were found on the battlefield. However, if the redoubtable “Holiver” wore these boots or anything like unto them when he met the enemy, one phase of his career may be accounted for—why he never ran away. Among the other curiosities with a real interest is the “Great Bed of Ware,” so famous in its day that Shakespeare immortalized it in his “Twelfth Night.” It is certainly a marvelous creation, some sixteen feet square, with enormous carved posts supporting an imposing canopy. Our guide asserted that in its early days no fewer than twenty-four men had slept in it at one time, and recited, in painful detail, the history of the bed. We inconsiderately interrupted him in the midst of his declamation and he had to start all over again, to his manifest annoyance. Even then he failed to finish, for the shadows were lengthening, and terminating his flow of eloquence with a shilling or two, we were soon speeding swiftly over the beautiful Chigwell road to London.

[II]
WANDERINGS IN EAST ANGLIA

Despite the fascination that London always has and the fact that one could scarcely exhaust her attractions in years, it was with impatience that we endured the delay imposed by business matters and preparations for a period of two months or more on the road. We were impatient, surely, or we should hardly have left our hotel at six o’clock in the evening, in the face of a driving rain. Ordinarily, two or three hours would have brought us to Cambridge, only fifty miles away; but we could not depend on this with the caution necessary on the slippery streets in getting out of London.

Once clear of the city there was little to hamper us on the fine Cambridge road and we counted on easily reaching the university town before lamplighting. The rain had nearly ceased, but the downpour had been tremendous, and in three successive valleys we forded floods, each one deeper than the preceding. Almost before we knew it—for in the gas lamps’ glare the rain-soaked road looked little different from the yellow water—we were axle-deep in a fourth torrent and were deluged with a dirty spray from the engine fly-wheel. Manifestly we were not to reach Cambridge that night and we reluctantly turned about to seek shelter somewhere else.

It was only a little way to the village of Buntingford, where we found clean though very unpretentious and not altogether comfortable accommodations at the George, a rambling old relic of coaching days. Our late dinner was fair and our rooms good-sized and neat, though dimly lit with tallow candles; but the ancient feather beds, our greatest terror in the smaller and a few of the larger towns, caused a well-nigh sleepless night. Morning revealed a little straggling gray-stone and slate village, unchanged to all appearances from the days of the coach-and-four. Our inn was a weather-beaten structure, and its facilities for dispensing liquor appeared by odds greater than its accommodation for non-bibulous travelers. Still, it was clean and homelike, in spots at least, and our hostess, who personally looked after our needs, was all kindness and sympathetic attention. Altogether, we had little complaint to lodge against the George, though greatly different from the really admirable University Arms at Cambridge, where we had planned to stop. We were early on the road, from which nearly all trace of the floods of the previous evening had vanished, and before long we were threading the familiar streets of Cambridge, where everything appeared to be in a bustle of preparation—at least so far as such a state of affairs could be in a staid English town—for the closing of the University year on the following week.

There is no finer road in England than that leading from Cambridge to Newmarket. It is nearly level, and having been newly surfaced with yellow gravel, it stretches before us like a long golden ribbon in the sunshine. It leads through wide meadow-lands and at times runs straight away as an arrow’s flight—truly a tempting highway for the light-footed motor car.

Beyond Newmarket the road to Bury St. Edmunds is quite as fine, and no doubt this splendid highway is largely responsible for the intense antipathy to the motor car in the former town. However, one would hardly expect Newmarket to be wildly enthusiastic over the horseless carriage, for this ancient burg contests with Epsom for the position of chief horse-racing town in England—a proud distinction it had held for some centuries before the motor snorted through its streets. Another cause for the grief of the townsmen was the complaint of owners of high-bred horses that the motors jarred upon the nerves of the spirited animals to their great detriment, and naturally enough the citizens sympathized with their patron saint, the horse, against his petrol-driven rival. And thus it was that when we entered Newmarket we were met by the Motor Union scout, who cautioned us to observe rigidly the ten-mile limit or we would more than likely share the fate of a half dozen of our brethren the day before—a journey to police headquarters. Two months afterwards, when we again passed through the town, the war was still on, and it was some months later that I read in the daily papers that after great bitterness on both sides a truce had finally been reached.

Despite its unfriendliness toward our ilk, we must admit that Newmarket is quite a modern-looking town, clean and attractive, with many fine buildings and excellent hotels. It lies in the midst of wide meadow-lands, much used for horseback sports such as polo and racing. Royal visits, so dear to the average Britisher, are a frequent event, and here it is that the King, usually in some new style of hat or cut of trousers, appears, to set the world of fashion agog.

Well clear of Newmarket and its birds of prey, the most glorious of roads brought us quickly into the fine old town of Bury St. Edmunds—and none other in East Anglia has been celebrated by greater pens; for Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle sojourned at Bury and left us vigorous records of their impressions. The former set them down in the story of the trials and wanderings of Mr. Pickwick, and that honest old gentleman’s comment on the town and its famous Angel Inn was altogether commendatory. It was later—in 1878—when Carlyle visited Bury, and the description he gave it then is quite applicable today. He saw “a prosperous, brisk town looking out right pleasantly from the hill-slope toward the rising sun, and on the eastern edge still runs, long, black and massive, a maze of monastic ruins.” The “Angel” we found still deserving of the encomiums bestowed by Mr. Pickwick, a delightfully clean and quiet old inn fronting directly on the abbey gardens and presided over by a suave and very accommodating landlord. We were given spacious and well-lighted quarters—we may dwell on “well-lighted,” since we could hardly apply this description, so far as artificial light is concerned, to more than two or three of the hundreds of hotels we visited.

The most impressive feature of the abbey ruin is the massive square tower of the gateway, which stands intact, its ancient state almost undiminished. The abbey has a long history, for Edmund, King of East Anglia, was slain near at hand by the Danes in 870—legend says because he refused to abjure Christianity, and it was this that won his canonization as St. Edmund. To the time of the Dissolution the abbey was by far the greatest in East Anglia, and its ruins, though fragmentary, are quite sufficient to indicate its once vast extent. Near by stand the churches of St. James and St. Mary’s, both rather ill-proportioned for lack of towers—a deficiency due, it is said, to the old-time abbots’ fear that if these churches should be thus ornamented they would overshadow the abbey church, now entirely vanished. Good authorities state that St. Mary’s has the finest open roof in England. It is supported on slender columns and covers a well-proportioned nave. In the church is the tomb of Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. and wife first of Louis XII. of France and afterwards of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.

There is not much of historic interest in Bury aside from its abbey and churches. One may occupy a pleasant hour or two in walking about the town, which, despite its antiquity, has a prosperous and up-to-date appearance. Twice in the course of our rambles we visited it and on both occasions our route led to Ipswich, though over different roads—first due south through Lavenham and Hadleigh and later by the way of Stowmarket. The former route is mainly through the retired Suffolk byways, not in the best condition, but bordered by charming country. Nowhere did we see a more delightful brick-and-timber house than the old manor at Brent Eleigh, though it has degenerated into a mere farm tenement rather better cared for than usual. What a world of quaint and ancient beauty there is in its many red-tiled gables surmounted by great clustered chimneys, its double mullioned windows and its black-oak and red-brick walls, splashed here and there with clinging masses of ivy. Our illustration only half tells the story, for it does not give the color or the most picturesque view of the house. We also came across Bildeston, a little out-of-the-way hamlet lost in the hills, which has many old houses not as yet fallen into the clutches of the restorer. This is also true of Hadleigh, a little farther on the road, which is rich in seventeenth century houses with fronts of ornamental plaster and carved oaken beams. Among the very oddest of these is the guildhall, standing quite apart in a graveyard thickly set with weather-worn headstones.

OLD MANOR HOUSE, BRENT ELEIGH.

We reached Ipswich after a half day of slow progress, for signboards were often missing and the winding lanes bordered by high hedges made cautious driving imperative. Later we followed the road by Stowmarket, a much easier though less interesting route. Stowmarket, aside from its old-world streets and its huge church with an odd wooden spire, had nothing to detain us, for one would hardly care to linger at the gun-cotton factory, which is the most distinctive feature of the village.

Little provision was made by the burghers who centuries ago platted the streets of Ipswich, for the coming of the motor or electric tram, and it was with difficulty that our car was able to thread its way through the narrow, crowded main street. It goes without saying that the objective of the pilgrim on entering the city will be the Great White Horse, the scene of some of Mr. Pickwick’s most noted adventures, nor are we deterred by any recollection of his decidedly unpleasant experiences with the inn people. Like many of the incidents in his writings, it was the personal experience of Dickens that called forth the rather uncomplimentary remarks set down against the ancient hostelry; but the very fact that Charles Dickens had stopped there and written—no matter what—of the Great White Horse—is that not enough? And we could not forget if we wished that an exact replica of the Great White Horse was exhibited at the Chicago Fair as typical of the old-time English inn, for the fact is blazoned forth by a large placard in the hall. We were offered the spacious room, with its imposing, tall-posted beds, traditionally occupied by Mr. Pickwick. The Great White Horse, like many other institutions that felt the scourge of the caustic pen of Dickens, has changed; no better ordered, more comfortable and attentive hostelry did we find elsewhere, and we felt that it had outlived the bad reputation the great author gave it, even as America lived down the bitter scourging of the “American Notes,” beneath which our fellow-countrymen writhed at the time. And perhaps we still think of the “Notes” and “Martin Chuzzlewit” with a twinge of bitterness, forgetting that the ridicule which Dickens indulged in concerning America was hardly comparable to the sharp castigations he administered to his own countrymen. His work was productive of good in both countries, and most of the evils he so scathingly rebuked no longer exist.

Ipswich, though a city of some seventy thousand people and of considerable activity, is by no means shorn of its old-time interest and picturesqueness. There are many crooked old-world streets where the soft, time-mellowed tones of the gray walls and antique gables are diversified by carved beams, plaster fronts and diamond-paned windows, each of which has its box of brightly colored flowers. The most notable of the old houses and one of the noblest specimens of Tudor architecture in the Kingdom is “Ye Ancient House,” with its odd dormer windows and richly decorated plaster front, situated near the Butter Market. The interior, now occupied by a bookshop and public library, is as unique and pleasing as the outside. There are paneled rooms, odd passages and corners, and a very quaint though rude chapel directly beneath the heavy arched timber roof. Of course such a striking old house must have its legend of royalty, and tradition has it that Charles II. was hidden in the chapel when seeking passage to France after the battle of Worcester.

But the charm of Ipswich may serve no longer as an excuse to linger. We bid regretful farewell to the Great White Horse and are soon following the King’s highway to the northward. It was a lowering day, with frequent dashes of rain and glints of sun breaking from a sky as blue as one may see in our own prairie states in June time. The road is winding and hilly for East Anglia, which is so generally level, but it passes through a fine country with many retired, old-world villages. Lowestoft we find another of the numerous seaside resorts that dot the southeastern coast. It has figured little in history and doubtless the most notable event in its career was its prompt surrender to Colonel Cromwell in 1642.

It was gray and chilly when we entered Great Yarmouth, where we found a leaden-colored ocean thundering on the finest beach in the Kingdom. Yarmouth is popular as a resort town, though more widely known for its fisheries. Its characteristic feature is its “rows,” a series of very narrow alleys, mostly bordered with shops and opening into the main street, forming, as Dickens puts it, “one vast gridiron of which the bars are represented by the rows.” And one will notice that Dickens is much in evidence in East Anglia. Who can ever forget the freshness of the description of Yarmouth in “David Copperfield”? The hotels, as might be expected, are many, and some of them excellent; nowhere did we have better service than at the Victoria, though cheapness is not one of its attractions.

Historic ruins, as a rule, are now carefully maintained in England and often made a feature of parks and pleasure grounds. But there are exceptions, where the onslaughts of decay are not withstood and where, unhindered, green ruin creeps steadily on. Such we found Caister Castle, four miles to the north of Yarmouth. We were attracted by its imposing appearance at some distance from the main road, and the byway into which we turned led into an ill-kept farmyard. Here stands the impressive ruin, with the stagnant waters of its old-time moat still surrounding the towering keep and shattered walls. It was quite deserted, apparently serving the neighboring farmer as a hen-roost. We learned little of its history, but the mystery, due to our very ignorance, together with the sad abandon of Caister Castle, makes it appeal to our imagination more strongly than many a well-cared-for ruin whose story has become commonplace.

A broad, level road leads to Norwich and we ran through the flat fen country, dotted here and there with the Norfolk Broads. These pretty inland lakes lay dull and motionless under a leaden sky, but we could imagine them very picturesque on bright days, rippling in the sun and gleaming with white sails. The hour was late, but our flight was a rapid one, soon bringing us to the East Anglian metropolis, where we forthwith sought the Maid’s Head Hotel.

On the following morning we set out to explore the northern coast of Norfolk and our route led us through many byways and over much bad road. The day was clear and cool and the fine level country was in the full glory of June verdure. Everything seemed to indicate that the East Anglian farmer is contented and prosperous in the small way that prosperity comes to the common people of England. The countryside had a well-groomed appearance and the houses were better than the average. We proceeded almost due north to Mundesley, a mean, bleak little coast town with a single crooked street, its straggling cottages contrasting sharply with the palatial hotel in the midst of lawns and gardens on the hill overlooking the sea.

Eastward from Mundesley we ran directly along the ocean, which is visible most of the time; the road is stony and steep in places—altogether the worst we had yet traversed. The coast country is decidedly different from the fertile and pleasant fields of the interior. It is bleak and drab-colored; there are vast stretches of sand dunes bordered with stony hills whose dull colorings are relieved by patches of yellow gorse and groups of stunted trees. The villages are in keeping with the country. The houses are of gray stone and broken flints and roofed with slate or dull-red tiles; the lines are square and harsh and there are no touches of ornament. Even the numerous churches partake of these characteristics; they are huge in bulk, with little or no attempt at artistic effect, often crowning some hilltop and looking as if they had defied the wild sea winds for ages. One we especially noted, standing quite apart on a hill overlooking the ocean—a vast weather-worn church with a square-topped tower in front and a queer little minaret to the rear—altogether an imposing and unusual structure. It completely dominates the poverty-stricken country and the mean little villages, the nearest of which is a half-mile away.

The principal resource of the towns of the north Norfolk coast is resort hotels and boarding-houses. We saw them without number at Mundesley, Hunstanton, Cromer, Well-Next-the-Sea, and at solitary points along the road. The fine beach in many places, the rough but picturesque country and the unusual quiet of the surroundings no doubt prove attractive to many seeking rest. At Wells-Next-the-Sea we were glad indeed to forsake the wretched coast road for the broad white highway that leads by the way of Fakenham to Norwich.

A few miles out of Norwich on the Newmarket road is Wymondham, noted for its odd timber cross and its ancient priory church with octagonal towers, which give it, from a distance, a rather unchurchlike appearance. The extent of the ruins still remaining is sufficient evidence that at one time Wymondham Priory was of no little importance. Most remarkable is the open roof, the oaken timbers of which were removed at the Dissolution, and after being stored away for ages, were again put in place at the recent restoration. The caretaker showed us about with the pride so common to his calling; but he heaved a sigh as he pointed out many costly features of restoration, such as the great screen, the massive bronze chandeliers and many elaborate carvings and furnishings.

“Ah, sir,” he said, “these were all donated by the late vicar; he carried out and paid for a large part of the restoration—but he’s gone now!”

“Dead?” we sympathetically asked.

“No, indeed! It was all the fault of his landlady, who became displeased with him somehow and gave him notice.”

“Trouble about the rent?” we suggested.

“Not a bit of it,” was the indignant reply. “The rent was nothing to him. He is the youngest brother of the Duke of W——, and is very wealthy, with a large following. There is only one house to let in the parish that could accommodate him at all; and so he had to leave; yes, he had to leave, for one day he says to me, ‘Did you ever hear of a minister getting the sack?’ And he told me how badly his landlady had treated him and that he had to go. It was a sad day for Wymondham, sir. He had spent ten times his salary on the church and there were many other things he was about to do.”

“How much is the salary?” we asked.

“Six hundred pounds. It is a large parish, covering thirty-five square miles.”

We gave the old man his expected fee and thought it strange to learn of a minister who had restored a great church from his private fortune and then had to give up his charge because there was only one available house to accommodate him and he couldn’t have that. Surely the captious landlady must be execrated by the good members of the Priory Church of Wymondham.

A STREET CORNER, EARLS COLNE, ESSEX.

It may seem a far cry from Wymondham, with its ecclesiastical traditions, to Thetford, the birthplace of that arch-heretic, Thomas Paine; yet it is only a few miles over the finest of roads. The village still preserves its old-world atmosphere and the house where Paine was born still stands, and is frequented, we learned, by many pilgrims. The old Bell Inn, the oddest of hostelries, looked cozy and restful, though we did not seek its hospitality. We hastened onward, leaving the Newmarket highway for Mildenhall, a quiet, unprogressive little village with an interesting manor house. This we did not see after all, for it chanced that it was closed during preparations for an open-air Shakespearean play in the park that afternoon. We paused in the market square and were accosted by a friendly disposed native who thought us at a loss for the road. We thanked him and asked him what there might be of interest in Mildenhall. He scratched his head reflectively and finally said:

“Nothin, sir! Hi ’ave lived in Mildenhall for forty years and never saw anything of hinterest.”

Discouraging, indeed! but we dissented, for there is much in the little town to please one in whom familiarity has not bred contempt. The huge, rambling Bell Inn seemed wonderfully attractive, though quite out of proportion to the village at present. Facing the inn is the church, remarkable for its Early English windows and fine open hammer-beam, carved-oak roof, supported from corbels of angel figures with extended wings. Quite as unusual is the hexagonal market cross, built of heavy oak timbers, gracefully carved, which support the leaden roof. Besides these ancient landmarks, there is much else pleasing in Mildenhall. The thatched cottages, brilliant flower gardens and narrow streets, all combine to make it a snug, charming place where one might quite forget the workaday world without.

Later in our wanderings we made another incursion into East Anglia, and retraced our route over many of its fine highways. We paused at Colchester and sought out some of the odd corners we missed before. On leaving the old city we wandered from the London road into quiet byways in search of Layer Marney, of whose stupendous ruined towers we had read years ago. After no end of inquiry, we came in sight of these, only to learn that the ruin had been incorporated into a modern mansion by a London gentleman and was no longer accessible to visitors. Still, we were able to come quite close and found work still in progress—a number of men laying out formal gardens about the house. The interest centers in the gate towers built four hundred years ago by Lord Marney, who planned to erect a mansion to correspond with his exalted station. But his unfinished work stands as a monument to his blighted hopes, for he died before his task was well begun and his only son followed him a year later. The structure is strikingly original in style; the entrance flanked by great octagonal towers eight stories high, with two immense windows—a network of stone mullions—just above the gateway. It was one of the earliest buildings since Roman times to be constructed of brick, and most unusual are the terra cotta moldings, which have a classic touch, due to Italian workmen brought to England by Lord Marney.

MARNEY TOWERS, ESSEX.

The little church near by, of earlier date than the towers, is also built of brick and has so far escaped the ravages of the restorer. It has three black marble tombs of old-time Marneys and one of these must be older than the church, for it bears the mail-clad effigy of a crusader who died in 1414. The interior has scarcely been altered in the four hundred years of its existence; and we hardly saw another to match it in genuine spirit of the olden time. The roof of the nave had been repaired out of sheer necessity, but the dark, sagging beams of the chapel had never been molested. Over the door a black letter inscription, with initial and decorations in still brilliant red, is devoted to a scathing denunciation of “ye riche,” so fierce as to seem almost modern. Perhaps the Marneys viewed it with the more complacency from the fact that their worldly possessions hardly accorded with their high station. One of the oddest features of the interior is the carved oaken effigies of four little monkeys perched on tall posts at either end of the family pews, and an ape is shown on the Marney arms. All because, tradition declares, a pet monkey snatched a prehistoric Marney while an infant from a burning mansion and lost its life to save the child.

[III]
SOME MIDLAND NOOKS AND THE WASHINGTON COUNTRY

It was not easy to get rooms at the University Arms, even though we had applied the week before. It was the close of the university year, for which event, the manageress assured us, many people had engaged rooms a full year in advance. We were late applicants, to be sure. However, we had the advantage of a previous acquaintance—a thing that counts for much in the English hotel—and, since nowhere else would do, we were soon comfortably established at the University Arms.

A stop of a day or two gives us the opportunity of seeing much of the gala life of the town, including the hotly contested boat races on the Cam. There are many events not directly connected with the university, among them the cart-horse parade, which includes hundreds of gaily decked work-horses, splendid fellows, and it is doubtful if any American town of twice the size of Cambridge could make anything like such a showing, all points of equine excellence considered. One sees very few poor-looking horses in England, anyway—outside of London. But what have we to do with horses? We are again on the road at the earliest opportunity, following the splendid highway to Huntingdon. The countryside through which we pass is crowded with memories of the Great Protector, but we shall give it no place in this chronicle of unfamiliar England.

The old Bell Inn at Stilton, on the Great North Road fourteen miles above Huntingdon, will arrest the attention of any one who has learned to discriminate. It is a relic of the time when this road was one of the busiest in all England—the coaching traffic between London, York and Edinburgh plying over it. The inn fronts directly on the street—a long, rambling building, with many gables, stone-mullioned windows and huge, square, clustered chimneys. It is built of sandstone, weatherworn to a soft, yellowish brown, and once rich in mouldings and carvings which are now barely discernible. Now only about half of the house is occupied and the stables have fallen in ruin. The village of Stilton is one of the sleepiest and most rural type. What a contrast the good old days must have presented when six and thirty coaches-and-four pulled up daily at the Bell and its hostlers led nearly one hundred horses to its capacious stables!

We saw much of rural England in threading our way from Stilton through a maze of narrow byroads to Oundle, which caught our eye as one of the quaintest of the old-world inland villages. Many are the pleasant vistas down its streets, each with its array of buildings in soft-gray and red tones, the sagging roofs surmounted by odd gables and huge chimneys. But most interesting are the old inns, the Turk’s Head and the Talbot. The first is an imposing Jacobean structure with many gables and deep-set stone-mullioned windows. The Talbot is quite as fine in exterior, and though we could not remain as guests, the landlord apparently took pleasure in showing us about, manifesting a genuine pride in his establishment, which was further evidenced by its well-kept appearance. Even the court was flower-bordered and there was a flourishing greenhouse. Inside there are rooms with much antique paneling and solid oaken beams which support the ceilings. But most notable are the relics of Fotheringhay Castle incorporated into the Talbot. The winding black-oak staircase is the one which Mary descended on the mournful morning of her execution, and among the mullioned casement windows are doubtless some through which the fair captive often gazed during the long, weary days of her imprisonment.

CROSS ROADS NEAR OUNDLE.

There are few places in the average village where the tourist can gain local information so easily as at a picture postcard shop. The keeper is sure to call your attention to everything of interest and is equally sure to be well posted on the history and traditions of the locality. Such a shop we found at Oundle, and the pictures of Deane House and Church and Kirby Hall soon engaged our attention. “Do not miss them,” said the genial shopkeeper, and he gave us accurate directions as to the roads—not easy to follow from the confusing streets of Oundle into another tangle of byways.

Deane House, the fine Tudor residence of the Earls of Cardigan, is a few miles to the northwest. It is not shown to visitors, but its battlemented towers, odd turrets and heavily buttressed walls are plainly visible from the road. Near it stands Deane Church, whose fine open-timbered roof is supported by slender oaken columns—quite unusual, indeed. There is a beautiful sixteenth century tomb, its details almost perfect, with the effigies of the first earl and his two wives placed impartially on either side. But nowhere else did we see an altar-tomb so chaste and artistic as that erected to the late earl, who died in 1868. It is wrought in purest alabaster, and beside the figure of the earl, represented as a tall, handsome man in full military dress, is the effigy of his widow, not interred with her husband as yet, but living at the age of eighty-four. Evidently the lady desires that future ages shall remember her at her best, for the effigy represents a transcendently beautiful young woman of about twenty, lying calmly in sleep, her head resting on a gracefully rounded arm and her face turned toward her mate. Every detail is delicately and correctly done and the whole work is redolent of beauty and sentiment. Will it ever see such cataclysms as swept over its companion tomb? May no iconoclastic vandal ever shatter those slenderly wrought hands or carve his churlish name on the stately figure of the earl—and yet how often such desecrations have occurred in England in the not very distant past!

“There are absolutely no restrictions on visitors at Kirby Hall,” we were informed at Oundle, and it might have been added that no effort is made to direct one thither. We passed unwittingly and were compelled to turn about to find the common-looking farm gate that opened through the hedgerow into the rough, stone-strewn bit of road leading to the dismantled palace. So uninviting was the neglected lane that two or three English motorists who arrived about the same time left their cars and walked the mile or so to the Hall. It was not our wont to be so cautious, and we drove directly to the stately though crumbling gateway. As we rounded a group of trees and caught a full view of the splendid facade of Kirby Hall, we could not repress an exclamation of surprise. Beautiful and imposing, indeed, despite long years of neglect and decay, is this magnificent Tudor mansion! It is built of white stone, its long walls pierced by a multitude of graceful windows and surmounted by great grouped chimneys and richly carved and pinnacled gables. Passing the imposing entrance, we found ourselves in a wide, grass-grown court, which the mansion surrounds in quadrangular form. The architecture of the court is graceful in the extreme—fluted and carved marble pilasters running the full height between the windows, which have a distinctly classic touch on the entrance side. On the three remaining sides there are great clustered windows, no less than twenty in one of the groups, separated by slender stone mullions. Most of the glass has disappeared or clings to the casements in shattered fragments, though in a small, still-inhabited corner the windows are entire. We wander at will through the once splendid apartments, now in pitiable decay and ruin. In the banqueting hall—a vast apartment with high open-beamed roof and minstrel gallery—a washerwoman is heating her water-pots, and piles of wool are stored in the Hall of State. But from the far greater number of the rooms the roof has wholly or partially disappeared and the rooks scold each other in the chimneys or caw hungrily among the sagging rafters. The room once used for the library is less ruinous and its two immense circular bay windows overlook a beautiful stretch of country. But, altogether, the house is more of a ruin than we anticipated at first glance. Restoration would be expensive and difficult. The walls in many places lean far from the vertical and are intersected by cracks and rents. Columns and pilasters are broken and sprung and in many windows the mullions are gone or twisted awry. The staircases are gone and the halls and passageways piled deep with debris. Yet such is the charm of the place that only recently an American negotiated with its owner, the Earl of Winchelsea, with a view to purchase and restoration, but through inability to clear the title, the deal was never consummated. Kirby Hall has been in the possession of the Winchelsea family ever since it was built by Elizabeth’s favorite, Sir Christopher Hatton, after plans by the master architects, John Thorpe and Inigo Jones. Reverses compelled its gradual abandonment, though it was inhabited by the owner as late as 1830. But we did not inquire closely into the history of Kirby Hall, nor do we care to do so. We prefer to think of it as more or less a mystery—an enchanted palace whose weird beauty is not destroyed but only rendered pathetic by the decay and desolation that has fallen upon it as it stands alone in the wide stretches of forest-dotted meadowland.

It was near the end of a strenuous day when we cast a regretful glance at the great chimneys and graceful pinnacles silhouetted against the evening sky—but there are no accommodations for travelers at Kirby Hall. No place near at hand appealed to us. Coventry and its comfortable King’s Head Hotel was not out of reach and attracted us as it did more than once in our journeyings. The fifty miles we covered easily before lamplighting time.

KIRBY HALL.

Although we had visited Coventry before—and, as it chanced, re-visited it many times later—we did not find our interest in the charming old city lessen, and it occurs to us more than ever as the best center for Warwickshire. Kenilworth is only five miles, Warwick twice as far, and Stratford eight miles farther. At Coventry one may be thoroughly comfortable, which can hardly be said of the inns at Warwick or Stratford. Americans always seek the Red Horse at the latter place because of its associations with Irving; but there is little more than the room our gentle traveler occupied, the chair he sat in and the “scepter” wherewith he was wont to stir up a cheerful fire in his grate, to induce one to return. But in Coventry, at the ancient though much re-modeled King’s Head, one strikes the happy medium of English hotels. It has the homelikeness and freedom of the smaller country inns without their discomforts, and it does not force upon one the painful formalities of the resort hotels, with their terrible English table d’hote dinners. So when we were established at the King’s Head, in spacious rooms, with plenty of tables and chairs—articles uncommon enough to merit special mention—there was always a temptation to linger.

Of the many thousands of Americans who throng to Stratford every year, perhaps only a small number are aware that the ancestral homes of the Washingtons are only a few miles away. Still smaller is the number who make a pilgrimage to Sulgrave or to Brington, ten miles farther, though the memories and traditions of these places are so closely connected with the ancestors of the Father of His Country. True, his stately home by the Potomac is not neglected by his countrymen, but every American should be deeply interested in the English forefathers of the man who more than any other freed them from the “rule of kings.”

SULGRAVE CHURCH AND VILLAGE.
Laurence, the ancestor of George Washington, is buried in this church. From Original Painting by Daniel Sherrin.

We thought it a favorable omen to see the gray sky which had drenched Coventry since dawn break into fleecy clouds as we started over the Banbury road for Sulgrave. The hedges and trees skirting the road were washed clean of their coating of dust and the whole countryside gleamed like an emerald in the yellow flood of the afternoon sunshine. Our car seemed to catch the spirit of delight that pervaded everything and sprang away airily and noiselessly over the fine highway. Fifteen miles to the south we turned into a narrow byway leading to Wormleighton, in whose ancient church there are records chronicling the marriage of Robert Washington in 1565 and the birth of his son George in 1608, antedating his famous namesake in America by more than a century. It would even now be hard to follow on the map this maze of byroads which we threaded, winding between the hawthorne hedges or gliding beneath the over-arching branches of ancient elms; passing snug farmhouses and cottages brilliant with rose vines and creepers and fairly embowered in old-fashioned flowers; and leading through villages the very embodiment of quiet and repose. And Sulgrave, the cradle of the Washingtons, seemed the sleepiest and loneliest of them all—a gray, straggling hamlet with only here and there a dash of color from flower-beds or ivied walls, looking much as it must have looked when the last Washington was Lord of the Manor, more than three hundred years ago. It rather lacks the neat, trim appearance of the average Midland village. Its streets are grass-grown and strewn with stones. Many of the cottages are surrounded by tumble-down stone walls, and the small church with huge embattled tower, the product of a recent restoration, crowns the hill in a wide, uncared-for graveyard.

A little to one side of the village they pointed out the “Washington House,” and we followed a stony path leading into the farmyard, where the good man was just stabling his horses. A typical country woman—of the tenant class—warmly welcomed us at Sulgrave Manor. Clearly they are glad to see Americans here; visitors are not the tolerated intruders that they are in so many historic places. We learned that we should even be welcome to a clean, neatly furnished room had we desired to pass the night beneath the roof. We were shown every nook and corner of the curious old house—not an extensive or imposing one, but three hundred years ago domestic accommodations were not elaborate even in the homes of the nobility, and while the Washingtons ranked high among the gentry, they did not possess a title. The house has not been greatly altered, in outward appearance, at least, and is kept in scant repair by the owner, a Devonshire gentleman; fortunately, the thick stone wall and heavy oaken beams yield but slowly to time’s ravages. The most imposing feature is the solid black-oak staircase with its curiously twisted banisters. The interior has been altered from the original plan—just how much it is difficult to ascertain. Nothing, however, impresses the American visitor so much as the Washington coat-of-arms, executed in plaster on one of the gables by the ancient owner. This had suffered much from the weather, but has lately been protected by a glass covering. The outer walls were originally covered with plaster, but this has fallen away in many places, showing the rough stone underneath; and elsewhere masses of ivy half hide the small, square-paned windows. Very faithful in detail and sentiment is Mr. Sherrin’s picture, painted at my request—the artist gaining his inspiration by a week under the old roof while employed in his task. The picture shows the old house much as we saw it, standing against a rich sunset sky, its harsh outlines softened by a little distance. The picture of the village and church was done by the artist at the same time, though for effect the church is shown rather as it appeared before it was restored. We followed the rough cobblestone walk to the church door, but could not gain admittance until the caretaker was found, for Sulgrave Church has been kept strictly under lock and key ever since one of the Washington brasses was stolen—by an American, of course—a few years ago. It is a small, rough, lichen-covered building, much restored, even to the stolen brass tablet to the memory of the first Laurence Washington. The engraving of this, on another page, shows how certainly the Washington coat-of-arms must have suggested the motif for the American flag and the great seal of the United States. The church is very ancient and there is in the choir a small “Lepers’ Door,” unique as one of three or four in England. Here in olden time the lepers might approach for alms or to hear the sermon, but dared not enter the church.

WASHINGTON BRASS, SULGRAVE CHURCH.

It is not the purpose of this book of random wanderings to deal much with sober history, but the story of Sulgrave’s connection with the Washingtons is not common and a short sketch may not be amiss. In the reign of Henry VIII., Laurence Washington was Mayor of Northampton and a gentleman of consequence. Sulgrave was among the confiscated church lands that the King was offering at bargain prices, and Washington purchased it for three hundred pounds. A tradition that these alienated church lands would bring evil fortune to the owner does not seem to have deterred him, though when his grandson, another Laurence Washington, was forced by adverse circumstances to sell the estate, the old superstition might seem to have been verified. This grandson, with a large family, removed about 1606—the exact date is doubtful—to Little Brington, some ten miles to the northeast of Sulgrave, where he was given a house, it is thought, by the Earl of Spencer, to which noble family the Washingtons were related by marriage. The Laurence Washington who is buried in Great Brington Church was the great-great-grandfather of the “first American.”

Later in our wanderings we visited the Bringtons, which lie only a short distance from Northampton and may be reached by excellent roads running through some of the most beautiful Midland country. We paused in the midst of a heavy shower near the village cross under the gigantic elm that stands in front of Great Brington Church, to which we gained admission with but little delay. The Brington villages are on the estate of the Spencers, one of the wealthiest and most ancient families of the English nobility, and the church is an imposing one, kept in perfect repair. The chief Washington memorials are the brasses—the inscription and coat-of-arms—over the grave of Laurence Washington of Sulgrave and Brington, and these have been sunk deep in the stone slab and are guarded by lock and key. In the chapel are some of the most elaborate memorials we saw—altar tombs bearing the sculptured effigies and ancient arms and armor of the Spencers; and yet how all this splendid state, all the wealth of carving, arms and effigies, shrink into insignificance beside the august name on the plain slab in the aisle, and how all the trappings of heraldry and the chronicles of all the line of Spencers fade into nothingness over against that tiny sunken tablet with its stars and bars!

Half a mile from Great Brington is Little Brington, where we saw the Washington house referred to previously, with only a few touches, mullioned windows and carvings, to distinguish it from the cottages of the village tenantry. There is a world of pathos in the inscription cut in the stone tablet above the doorway, “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord,” which may refer to the loss of Sulgrave and the death of a young son shortly after the Washingtons reached Brington. Inside, the house, transformed into a laborer’s cottage, has been altered out of all semblance to its former self.

But the rain was still coming down in torrents from the leaden skies and hiding the beauties of the Bringtons. It took another visit on a perfect August day to fix the impression which we still retain of the romantic beauty of the little towns, and it is only by such a comparison that one can judge how much we lost on account of the many days of dark, foggy weather that prevail during the summer in Britain. Under the more pleasant conditions we could but feel that, aside from the memories of the Washingtons which hover over the Bringtons, these delightful Midland villages might well engage the admiration of the wayfarer. One may well pause in his flight through the hawthorne-bordered byways to view the prospect that greets the eye from Great Brington churchyard. The church occupies slightly rising ground, from which in almost every direction one may behold stretches of some of the most charming rural country in England; and the church itself, with the old village cross beneath the monster elm tree, is not the least picturesque feature of the landscape. The village which fronts it, clean, cozy and comfortable-looking, its gray walls dashed with ivy and relieved by the rich color of rose vines and old-time flowers, is as lovely and peaceful a hamlet as one will find, even in England. Not less pleasing is the surrounding country—“pastoral” describes it—with its long reaches of meadowland, broken by hedgerows and lordly trees. To the right is Althorpe House, the stately home of the Spencers, with its vast, well-kept park, where the huge old oaks shimmer in the hazy midsummer afternoon. Amidst all this quiet and beauty one forgets the dark problems that threaten England and thinks only of her ineffable charm. Little Brington is not less attractive than its neighbor—the thatched structure above the well in the village green and the two hoary firs overshadowing it forming a picture as quaint as pleasing. We leave the lovely villages regretfully, and winding out of the maze of byroads, take the highway that leads toward the ancient city of Northampton, whose chief distinction should be that a Washington was once its Lord Mayor.

THE WASHINGTON CHURCH, TOWN CROSS AND ELM, GREAT BRINGTON.

[IV]
MEANDERINGS FROM COVENTRY TO EXETER

Despite our numerous visits to Coventry, each one had some new delight in store; some bit of curious antiquity that had previously escaped us was sure to turn up, and once in the heart of the old-world town, one easily forgets the modern manufacturing city that has grown up around it. In the immediate vicinity of the famous three spires there clusters much to detain one and which may well make Coventry the shrine of a far greater number of pilgrims than it now is. If we enter the grand old church of St. Michael’s, whose slender spire rises three hundred feet into the blue heavens—for the heavens are blue and cloudless after the rain of yesterday—we shall be confronted by the noblest interior of any parish church in England. Its unhampered expanse and lightness of design intensify its splendid proportions. The fine lancet windows gleam like clustered jewels, for modern glass of unusually good taste is intermingled with much dating from Tudor times, which, fortunately, escaped the wrath of the fanatics. The old caretaker tells us that the church is “soon to be a cathedral,” and if so, it will wear its distinction fitly indeed.

Near by the church is the guildhall, deservedly known as one of the finest bits of medieval England now extant. One may not undertake to catalog its glories, but its contents, as well as its architecture, will interest even the layman. In its muniment room is a collection of eleven thousand books and manuscripts of great value, and many rare old paintings grace the walls of the banqueting hall, which has an unrivaled open-timber roof. In the oriel window at the head of the stairs, in the softened light of the antique glass, stands Coventry’s patron saint, Lady Godiva, her shrinking figure beautifully wrought in white marble. Old arms and armor are scattered about the halls and the whole atmosphere of the place is that of three hundred years ago.

To be sure, Elizabeth visited the guildhall. That rare royal traveler did not neglect the opportunity for entertainment and display offered her by her loyal subjects of Coventry. Nor is the tradition of a certain exchange of compliment between the men of the old town and their royal mistress without a touch of realism in its portrayal of the sharp sting of Elizabeth’s wit, not infrequently felt by those who, knowing her vanity, undertook to flatter her too grossly. For it is recorded that the citizens of Coventry greeted her majesty in an address done into doggerel in this wise:

“Wee men of Coventree
Are very glad to see
Yr gracious majestie!
Good Lord, how fair ye bee!”

To which she instantly responded:

“Our gracious majesty
Is very glad to see
Ye men of Coventree.
Good Lord, what fools ye bee!”

But we may not linger in Coventry, and after a hasty glance at the almshouses—whose brick-and-timber front, with richly carved black-oak beams, rivals Leicester’s Hospital at Warwick—we are again on the King’s highway. And it is a highway fit for a king, this broad sweeping road that leads from Coventry through Kenilworth and Warwick to Stratford-upon-Avon. There are few more picturesque runs in Britain and few that take one past so many spots of literary and historic interest. Only the fact that we have been over this route several times before offers excuse for covering the twenty miles in less than an hour. As we flit along we catch glimpses of the fragments of Kenilworth, of Guy’s Cliff, of the old mill; and cautiously thread our way through the cramped streets of Warwick, which we leave, not without admiring glances at the Castle, the splendid tower of St. Mary’s Church, and the fine facade of Leicester’s Hospital. Passing the confines of the ancient gate, we soon come into the open road, smooth and gently undulating, and a few minutes lands us in Shakespeare’s Stratford.

It would be hard to follow in sequence our wanderings from Stratford to Cheltenham, mainly through country lanes often hidden between tall hedges and leading over steep, rough hills, as we sought quaint and historic bits of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Just beyond Shipston-on-Stour we paused before a Jacobean manor house, a slight opening in the high hedge permitting a glimpse of the gray gables and mullioned windows from the road. A farmer’s wife, who saw us stop, called to us and offered to conduct us through the quaint sixteenth century building, Little Woolford Manor, as it is known. The hall, with open-timber roof, paneled walls and minstrel gallery, lighted by tall windows still rich with ancient glass, is an apartment to delight any lover of the old-time domicile. This has been adapted to a schoolroom and the remainder of the house divided into farm tenements. It is full of odd corners and weird passageways and very appropriately has its ghost, a certain “White Ladye,” who walks the scene of her earthly misfortunes at midnight. None of the occupants had ever seen her or knew anything of the tradition, but no one could dispute the good taste of a ghost who should choose Little Woolford Manor as a residence. Nor could such a fine old house properly be without its legend of Charles the Wanderer, and our guide showed us a small secret chamber behind an oven where with a few retainers it is said the king hid and was nearly roasted by a rousing fire built in the grate by the pursuing Cromwellians.

There are other traditions and relics of the royal fugitive in the vicinity, for we passed Little Compton Manor, plainly visible from the road, which was once the home of Bishop Juxon, the bosom friend of King Charles. Here for many years was preserved the block upon which the King’s head was severed, and also his favorite chair; but these disappeared shortly after the Bishop’s death.

A few miles farther, just off the upland road from Little Compton to Moreton-in-the-Marsh, one may see the Rollright Stones, a druidical circle; and tradition declares that these stones were once Danish invaders who were thus metamorphosed for some presumptuous act.

Descending a long and dangerously steep hill sloping from the upland, we came into Chipping Campden, and, possibly excepting Broadway, it has hardly an equal in a section famous for picturesque towns and villages. A wide street between a long array of gray gables with many time-worn carvings, odd signs and frequent sun-dials, leads from one end of the town, marked by a huge oak, to the other, where a giant chestnut stands sentinel. Here again the almshouses attract attention. They are built of soft-toned brown stone and the walls are surmounted by pointed gables and clustered chimneys. Near by rises the graceful church tower, overshadowing a building whose vast proportions seem to ill accord with the decayed little town about it. But we learn that it was built when Chipping Campden was the greatest wool market in the country, and a brass tablet of 1401 commemorates one of the ancient benefactors of the church as the “flower of all wool merchants in England.” We found inside some of the most perfect brasses that we had seen, but a general restoration had quite robbed the church of its greatest charm. The large pillared cross in the wool market and the massive proportions of the courthouse, with its heavily buttressed walls, testify mutely of the time when Chipping Campden was a place of much greater importance than it is today.

Broadway is already famous. Its “discovery” is attributed to Americans, and several American artists of note—among them Mr. F. D. Millet, who occupies the ancient manor house of the Abbot of Pershore—have been included in the foreign contingent. Its name is derived from the broad London and Worcester road which passes in a long sweeping curve between rows of fine Tudor and Jacobean houses with many fanciful gables and massive stone chimneys. In the coaching days Broadway was of great importance and then were built the fine inns and business houses. A period of decadence followed, during which it gradually sank into a neglected country village, from which oblivion the old-world charm of its very decay finally rescued it. It shows quite markedly the influx of outsiders and the trail of the tourist; in this regard it is inferior to the as yet undiscovered and unspoiled town of Chipping Campden. But while there is a touch of newness in the outskirts and while the antique buildings show traces of returning prosperity, there is still much in Broadway to please the eye and delight the artistic sense. Few indeed of the old-time inns have the charm of the Lygon Arms, where we paused for our afternoon tea. (Afternoon tea—so far have the customs of the land of our sojourn corrupted us!) It is a many-gabled building of soft sandstone, rich with browns verging into reds and dashed here and there with masses of ivy which half hide the deep-set stone-mullioned windows. To the rear its glass-roofed garage with cement floor and modern accessories tells plainly of one source of returning prosperity. Everywhere about the inn is cleanliness, and the charm of the antique is combined with modern comfort. The interior is quite as unspoiled as the outside, and nothing could be more redolent of old-time England than the immense fireplace in the ingle nook of the hall. Here, too, linger legends of King Charles, and there is one great paneled room with huge fireplace and Tudor furniture that claims the honor of association with the sterner name of Cromwell. Perhaps the least pleasing feature of our pilgrimage was the necessity that often forced us to hasten by places like the Lygon Arms—but one could scarce exhaust Britain’s attractions in a lifetime should he pause as long and as often as he might wish.

LYGON ARMS, BROADWAY.

Evesham we passed in the rain and gathering twilight. We reached Tewkesbury at nightfall, but its inns did not strike our fancy, and we hastened to Cheltenham, leaving the fine old towns for a later visit. At the Victoria in Cheltenham we found things much more to our liking.

We followed a main road almost due south from Cheltenham through Painswick, Stroud and Nailsworth, gray old towns lying deep in the hills. At Painswick is a fine Perpendicular church, so much restored as to present a rather new appearance. The churchyard has a wonderful array of carefully clipped yew trees, perhaps a hundred in all, though no one, says local tradition, can count them twice the same—a peculiarity also ascribed to the monoliths at Stonehenge. Close to the church walls are the ancient stocks, in this case forged from heavy iron bars and presenting an air of staunch security that must have struck terror to the hearts of old-time culprits; and the rough stone slab upon which the offenders were seated still remains in place.

Stroud is a larger and better-appearing town, whose ten thousand inhabitants depend mainly upon the manufacture of English broadcloths. The whole section, in fact, was once the center of cloth manufacture, but the advent of the steam engine and more modern methods superseded the watermills. All about are half-ruined factory buildings, some of them once of vast extent, with shattered windows and sagging roofs. Here and there one has survived in a small way or has been adapted to some other industry. In the neighborhood are many country houses, once the residences of wealthy cloth-makers, but now either deserted or turned into farm tenements.

The country is hilly and wooded, and we had few points of vantage that afforded views more picturesque and far-reaching than from some of the upland roads overlooking these Gloucestershire landscapes. The road sweeps around the hills, rising at times far above the valleys, affording a panorama of the Avon gleaming through the dense green foliage that half conceals it. The vale presents the most charming characteristics of rural England. One sees the irregular patchwork of the little fields, the great parks with their sunny meadowlands and groups of ancient trees, the villages lying in the valleys or clinging to the hillsides, and the gray church towers that lend a touch of majesty and solemn sentiment to almost every glimpse of Britain.

We missed the main road from Bath to Wells, wandering through a maze of unmarked byroads, and were able to proceed only by frequent inquiry. We did not regain the highway until just entering the town and had been a comparatively long time in going a short distance. After a few minutes’ pause to admire the marvelous west front of the cathedral, with its endless array of crumbling prophets, saints and kings, weatherworn to a soft-gray blur, we were away on the highroad leading across the wold to Cheddar, famed for its stupendous cliffs, its caverns—and its cheese. The caverns and cliffs are there, but little cheese now comes from Cheddar, even though it bears the name. As we ascended the exceedingly steep and winding road we were astonished—overwhelmed. We had not expected to find natural scenery upon such an amazing scale in the heart of England—gray pinnacled cliffs rising, almost sheer, five hundred feet into the sky. Not often may British scenery be styled imposing, but the towering cliffs of Cheddar surely merit such description. In the midst of the gorge between the great cliffs there are two prehistoric caverns extending far into the earth. We entered one of them, now a mere passageway, now a spacious cavern whose domelike roof glistens with translucent stalactites. Here we pass a still, mirrorlike pool, and there a deep fissure from which comes the gurgle of a subterranean river. Altogether, there is much that is interesting and impressive. Perhaps it all seems a little gaudy and unnatural because of the advertising methods and specious claims of the owner and alleged discoverer, but none the less a visit is worth while. The museum of relics found in the cavern contains a remarkable prehistoric skull, with low, thick frontal bone and heavy square jaw, but its queerest feature is little spurlike projections of the temporal bone just above the ear. It is estimated by archaeologists that the possessor of this curious skull had lived at least forty thousand years ago and mayhap had made his dwelling-place in the Cheddar Caves. We were assured that an offer from the British Museum of five thousand pounds for the relic had been refused.

The sun was low when we left Cheddar, and Taunton seemed the nearest place where we might be sure of good accommodations. We soon reached Axbridge, a gray little market town, so ancient that a hunting-lodge built by King John still stands on the market square. Near Bridgewater, a few miles farther, is the Isle of Athelney—once an island in a marsh, perhaps—where King Alfred made his last desperate stand against the Danish invaders, defeating them and finally expelling them from Britain. Not less in interest, though perhaps less important in its issues, was the Battle of Sedgemoor, fought here in 1685, when the Duke of Monmouth was disastrously defeated by the Royal Army—the last battle worthy of the name to be waged on English soil.

But we were to learn more of Monmouth at Taunton and to have again impressed upon us how easy it is in Britain for one to hasten through places of the deepest historic interest quite unaware of their tragic story. We had passed through Taunton before, seeing little but a staid old country town with a church tower of unmatched gracefulness and dignified proportions; but Taunton’s tragic part in the parliamentary wars and her fatal connection with “King Monmouth” never occurred to us, if, indeed, we knew of it at all. Taunton was strongly for the Parliament, but it was a storm center and was taken and retaken until the iron hand of Fairfax crushed the Royalists before its walls. Its record stood against it when the King “came into his own again.” Its walls were leveled to the ground, its charter taken away and many of its citizens thrown into prison. Discontent and hatred of the Stuarts were so rampant that any movement against their rule was welcomed by the Taunton Whigs, though it is hard to see any consistency in the unreasoning support they gave to the Duke of Monmouth—the son of Charles II. and one of his many mistresses—in his pretensions to the throne occupied by James II. Monmouth entered Taunton amidst the wildest acclamations, and it was from the market square of the rebellious town that he issued his proclamation assuming the title of King. He was followed by an ill-organized and poorly equipped army of seven thousand men, who were defeated by four thousand Royal Troops. Then followed a reign of terror in Taunton. The commander of the King’s forces hanged, without pretense of trial, many of his prisoners, using the sign of the old White Hart Inn as a gallows. Then came the Bloody Assizes, held by Jeffreys of infamous memory, in the great hall of the castle. After trials no more than travesties of brutal jests and savage cruelty, more than three hundred Somersetshire men were sentenced, according to the terrible customs of the time, to be “hanged, drawn and quartered,” and a thousand were doomed to transportation. Here the active history of Taunton may be said to have ended.

But Taunton has little to remind us of these dark and bloody times as we glide through her fine old streets and draw up in front of the London Hotel, where the host himself in evening dress welcomes us at the door. Every attention is given us and The London certainly deserves its official appointment by the Royal Automobile Club as well as the double distinction accorded it by the infallible Baedeker. It is one of the charming old-fashioned inns, such as perhaps inspired the poet Shenstone with the sentiment expressed in his well-known quatrain:

“Whoe’er has traveled life’s dull round,
Whate’er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think that he has found
His warmest welcome at an inn.”

Modern Taunton is a city of some twenty thousand people, and being the county town, with some manufactories, it enjoys a quiet prosperity. Of its ancient landmarks, the castle, dating from the eleventh century, is the most notable and has appropriately been turned into a museum. Here one may enter the hall where Jeffreys held his court. Though two centuries or more have elapsed, the “horror of blood” seems still to linger in the gloomy apartment. The market-place retains its old-time characteristics, and though the house occupied by Jeffreys has disappeared, the White Hart Inn still stands. But the glory of Taunton is St. Mary’s Church, one of the most graceful examples of the Perpendicular period in England. The splendid tower seems almost frail in its airy lightness—and perhaps it is, for it is a recent restoration, or rather replacement, of the older one, which had become insecure.

Sherborne Abbey we had missed in our former wanderings, though once very near it, and we felt that we must make amends though it cost us a detour of sixty miles. And yet, what hardship is it to go out of one’s way in Britain? Indeed, can one ever go out of his way in rural England? Scarcely, from the point of view of such nomads as ourselves.

The great tower of Curry Rivell Church dominates in such a lordly manner the village straggling up the hill toward it that we were tempted to look inside, and a mild curiosity was aroused, from which we have never yet been able to rid ourselves. For, chained to one of the iron railings of a sixteenth century tomb, is a queer little iron-bound oaken cabinet. It is scarcely more than a foot in length, the wood is worm-eaten and the massive lock and heavy hinges are red with rust. What mystery does it contain and why did it escape the church-looters of Puritan times? The church is rich in antique carvings, among them a delicately wrought screen and fine fifteenth century bench ends. The tomb to which the coffer is chained is a very unusual one. It bears on its altar the effigies of two mail-clad warriors, while at either side kneel figures of their wives over two tiny cribs with several gnomelike children tucked in each. Overhead, borne by four pillars, is a domed canopy upon which are painted four sprawling cherubs. All very quaint and strange and illustrative of the queer mortuary ideas of the medieval period.

We followed the winding, hilly and often indifferent road that leads through Somerton, Ilchester and Yeovil to Sherborne, and while our lunch was preparing at the slow-moving Antelope—there is little in a name, in this instance—we wandered down old-world streets to the abbey, the goal of all pilgrims to Sherborne. It seemed odd to find the old town crowded with rural visitors all agape at a fantastic circus parade that was winding along the crooked streets, but Sherborne is fond of parades and pageants, for we were assured that the historical pageant now the rage in the older towns of England was originated in Sherborne. The town itself is a charming place—I borrow the words of an enthusiastic admirer whose picture may be better than I can paint:

“It is a bright town, prim and old-fashioned, and unsullied by the aggressive villas and red brick terraces of the modern suburb. Although a small place, it is yet of much dignity. Here are timber-faced dwellings, where the upper story overhangs the lower, and where the roof breaks out into irrelevant gables; houses with the stone-mullioned casements of Tudor days or the round bow window of the Georgian period; houses with gateways under them leading into courtyards; humble buildings fashioned out of stone filched from a church; cottages with the arched doorways of a convent or with buttresses worthy of a chapel; pieces of old wall and other miscellaneous fragments which the town with its love for the past has never had the heart to cast aside. Over the grey roofs can be seen the trees upon the hilltop, while over many a crumbling wall comes the fragrance of garden or orchard.”

But as we rounded a corner and came upon a full view of the abbey church, we felt that it had rightly been styled the “glory of Sherborne.” Perhaps its low tower gives an impression of incompleteness and lack of proportion—but it seemed to accentuate the mighty proportions of the church itself and it was with a feeling almost verging upon awe that we entered the majestic portals. And we learned it as we know only few historic churches in England, for the gem of all vergers is at Sherborne. To him his work is a labor of love, not the usual perfunctory performance in hope of a fee. He had made discoveries of importance himself in whiling away his time in the abbey and had located and uncovered an ancient effigy that had been inconsiderately built into the walls in earlier days. He told us of the checkered history of the abbey, of the wars of the monks and citizens, as a result of which the church suffered from a great fire, the marks of which still remain in the red stains on the soft yellow stone, of the Dissolution and the cavalier manner in which Henry the Wrecker bestowed the abbey on one of his friends, who in turn sold it to the parish for two hundred and fifty pounds—all of which would be too long to record in detail in this crowded chronicle. But the interior of Sherborne Abbey—where is there another like it? Not in all England; probably not in the world. It lacks the “dim religious light” that pervades, like a soft-toned mist, most of the great church buildings; the windows flood the yellow stone with many-colored beams and lighten the splendors of the golden fan vault with its rich bosses and heraldic devices until every detail comes out clearly to the beholder below.

But we are lingering too long at the abbey; we were to return to the Antelope in half an hour, and thrice that period has elapsed. We hie back to our inn and do not complain of our cold repast. “It is ten minutes’ walk to the castle,” said our host. Then why take the car? A ten minutes’ walk will give us a little of the exercise we need. We start under the sweltering sun—it is a hot day, even as we reckon it—and follow the crooked streets. Here is a high wall—it must be the castle. No, the castle is farther on; and we repeat the wearisome experience until half an hour has elapsed and we are only at the entrance gate of the park. We are almost exhausted, for our long tramp on the “abbey stones” did not especially invigorate us, but we will go on after having come so far.

It was hardly worth while—Cromwell had left very little of Sherborne Castle. It seemed melancholy, indeed, that the riddled gateway and the straggling pieces of wall should be all that remains of such a lordly building. We were interested to know that it had been granted to Sir Walter Raleigh “forever” in 1597—but only six years later the knightly founder of Virginia was indicted for treason and fell a victim to the cowardly malice of King James, and Sherborne Castle reverted to the crown. It was less than half a century later that Fairfax received its surrender in the name of the Parliament, and when the gunpowder mines were fired the active days of the fortress were at an end.

We retrace our steps to the Antelope, thinking mournfully of the car, which would have made such short and easy work of our weary trip, and we heave a sigh of relief when once more, having donned our “seven-league boots,” we hear the soft purr of the motor and enjoy the rush of the cool, sweet air—after our “ten minutes’ walk.”

It grows late and Exeter is far away, but we are sure of comfort at the Rougemont and we give the car rein. How she sweeps over the sunset hills and glides along the cool valleys, pausing cautiously to pass some rose-embowered village, now gathering speed again for another rush over the fine road! She is ahead of schedule at Honiton, and one of our party remembers that the Honiton lace is famous. It is an expensive bit of recollection, but all things go in a motor tour. After a half-hour’s pause, we are away again, and before long catch sight of the huge bulk of Exeter Cathedral looming above the old city against the twilight sky.

[V]
RAMBLES IN THE WEST COUNTRY

“Through the heart of Dartmoor forest” may bring up many fascinating, even weird associations, but on our map we regarded the thin red line of our road rather dubiously. It runs almost straight from Exeter to Prince Town—the prison town of the moor—and on either side for many miles lies a waste country, apparently quite devoid of villages and even of roads. The road as shown on the map is thickly studded with arrow heads, denoting dangerous hills, and the description in the road-book is far from alluring. But we were not to be deterred from exploring Dartmoor, as we had been on a previous occasion, though indeed we found the first few miles between Exeter and Moreton Hampstead trying and almost terrifying in places. The hills offered little impediment to our motor, but for all that one has a rather eery feeling when clinging to a precipitous incline. If something should let loose! But nothing did.

Moreton Hampstead is a bleak, lonely little town set well into the western edge of the moor and surrounded by rugged tors on every hand. It is not without a bit of antiquity, for it has a sixteenth century building, called the Arcade, whose Moorish touches are decidedly picturesque. It is like a bit of Spain in the hills of Dartmoor and seems strangely out of place. Only three miles from Moreton Hampstead, lying in a secluded valley, is Chagford, famous for its quaint old inn and wild surroundings.

Once out of Moreton Hampstead and away on the yellow highway that bisects the moor, we found ourselves in a country as barren as any we had seen in England. The road, though winding and steep, is generally visible for some distance ahead, and we found little hindrance to a swift, steady flight that carried us over the long hills far more quickly than we anticipated. The day, which had begun in mist and rain, became lighter and a rapidly clearing sky gave us the opportunity of seeing the wild beauty of the moor at its best. Despite its loneliness and cheerlessness, there was a wonderful play of color: the reds and browns of the broken granite, the purple blaze of the heather, the vivid yellow of the gorse and the metallic green of the whortle, all intensified by golden sunshine, have marvelously transformed the somber tone of the moorland of scarce an hour before. But where is the “forest”? Only stunted trees appear here and there, or a fringe of woods along the clear streams; we learn that “forest” once meant a waste, uncultivated tract of land, and in later days has been applied to woodlands alone. We run for miles with no human habitation in sight save an occasional cottage in a small, barren field surrounded by stone walls. We come upon a large, attractive-looking inn unexpectedly—though it ought not to be unexpected to find an inn anywhere in England—the Two Bridges, situated near the head waters of the Dart, here no more than a brawling streamlet. We leave the car by the roadside and enter the homelike hall, where an array of fishing-tackle makes clear the excuse for this pleasant hotel in the moor. The day has been chilly and, strange to say, a fire flickers in the grate. We are just in time for luncheon and a goodly number of guests respond to the vigorous beating of the gong—that almost universal abomination of the provincial English hotel. It appears that the quiet and seclusion of Dartmoor is not without its attractions to many people. We ourselves leave the pleasant inn with regret; we should have liked a day’s rest in the cozy ingle-nook.

IN SUNNY DEVON.
A view of the old town of Totnes from the upland road. Original Painting by George Bowman, 1908 Royal Academy.

The walls and battlements of Prince Town Prison soon loom in sight. This was established in 1800 as a military prison for French soldiers, and a few Americans were confined here in 1812. It then fell into disuse until 1850, but for the half-century since it has served its present purpose as a penal institution and has been greatly added to from time to time.

An English writer says: “Dartmoor is so huge that one must be born and spend a lifetime near it to really know it, and the visitor can merely endeavour to see typical examples of its granite tors, its peaty streams, its great stretches of boulder-strewn heather, and its isolated villages.” Evidently he must mean that it is huge in its mysteries and its moods, for it is really only fourteen by twenty-two miles—perhaps half as large as the average county in the United States.

At Tavistock we are well beyond the confines of the moor and follow a fine road to Launceston, where we glance at the huge circular keep of the castle and look longingly at the White Hart, which recalls only pleasant memories. But we are bound for an enchanted land and, like many a gallant knight of yore, we would hasten past “many-towered Camelot” to the castle of the blameless king. The declining sun, toward which we rapidly course, seems to flash across the Cornish hills the roselight of the old Arthurian romance, and the stately measures of the “Idyls of the King” come unbidden to our minds. But we soon have something less romantic to think of, for in attempting a short cut to Tintagel without going to Camelford, we run into a series of the crookedest, roughest lanes we found in all England. These appear to have been quite abandoned; in places mere ravines with myriads of sharp loose stones and many long steep hills. But we push on and almost ere we are aware, find ourselves in Tintagel village, which with its long rows of boarding-houses hardly accords with one’s preconceived romantic notions. Then we catch a glimpse of the ocean out beyond the headland, upon which is perched a huge, square-towered building—King Arthur’s Castle Hotel, they tell us—and thither we hasten. This hotel, only recently completed, is built on a most liberal scale, though it can hardly accommodate many guests at a time. The public rooms are most elaborately furnished and of enormous size. The great round table in the reading room is a replica of the original at Shrewsbury, at which, declares tradition, King Arthur sat with his fifty knights. The guest rooms are on an equally generous scale and so arranged that every one fronts on the sea. The rates are not low by any means, yet it is hard to conceive how such a hotel can be a paying investment.

After we reached the hotel, the long twilight still gave time to contemplate the weird beauty of the surroundings and to explore the ruins of the castle so famed in song and story. We scrambled down the high headland, upon which the hotel stands, to the level of the blue inlet of the sea, depicted in such a masterly manner in the painting by Mr. Moran, the towering cliffs crowned by the fragmentary ruins looming far above us. A path cut in the edge of the cliff leads to a precarious-looking foot-bridge across the chasm and a still narrower and steeper path hugs the face of the precipice on the opposite side until a heavy oaken door is reached. This door, to which the old caretaker in the cottage below had given me the key, opens into the supposed site of King Arthur’s castle. Only a few scattered bits of masonry remain and these are probably of a later time than that of the early Briton.

KING ARTHUR’S CASTLE, OFF TINTAGEL HEAD, CORNWALL.
From Original Painting by Thos. Moran, N. A.

The spot is lonely and quite barren save a few patches of greensward upon which were peacefully grazing a flock of sheep—one finds them everywhere in Britain. I was quite alone—there were no other visitors at that late hour and my companions had given up the dizzy ascent before it was fairly begun—and I strove to reconstruct in imagination the castle as it stood in the days of the blameless king. How the wild old stories crowded upon me in that lonely twilight hour! Here, legend declares—and I care not if it be dim indeed and questioned by the wiseacres—was once the court of the wise and faultless Arthur, who gathered to himself the flower of knighthood of Christendom and was invincible to all attacks from without, but whose dominion crumbled away before the faithlessness and dishonor of his own followers. Here, perchance, the faithless Guinevere pined and sighed for her forsworn lover and gazed on the sea, calm and radiant as it is even now, or saw it lash itself into unspeakable fury upon the frowning bastions of the coast. But, alas! how dim and uncertain is all that is left, and how the tales vary save that they all center in the king! Little remains in local tradition of all the vanished splendors of those ancient days save that the king did not die; that in the form of a chough he haunts the scenes of his glory and his downfall, and that he will come again—

But I am quite forgetting the flight of time, and with a lingering look at the storied spot, I slowly descend. Then I climb to the more extensive ruin on the landward side, much shattered but grim and massive in decay. There must have been a connection between the castles on either side of the great ravine, though it is hardly apparent how this could have been. Perhaps the gap has widened much in the long course of time. It is dusk when we return to the hotel and sit long on the open terrace fronting the sea, contemplating the beauty of the scene.

Never have I beheld a more glorious sunset than that which lightened the wild Cornish coast and ocean on that particular evening. A dark band of cloud lay low along the western horizon, with a clear, opalescent sky above, and below a thin strip of lucent gold with silvery clouds floating in it like fairy ships. Suddenly the sun dropped from behind the cloud, which had obscured his full splendor, into the resplendent zone beneath, flooding the sea, into which he slowly sank, with a marvelous though evanescent glory. Then followed all the indescribable color changes and combinations, which varied momentarily until they faded into the dusky hues of a moonlit night. It marked the close of a perfect day—clear and cool, with sky of untainted blue and ocean as still and glassy as a quiet inland lake.

Not less inspiring was the scene that greeted us through our open lattices in the morning—a sea steely blue in the distance, rippling into bars of frosted silver near the shore, while the stern outlines of the headlands were softened by a clinging blue haze. We lingered on the legend-haunted ground until nearly noon and it was with keen regret that we glided away from the pleasant hostelry back to the village and past the old church on the headland, whose bells tolled without mortal hands on the far-off day when the body of King Arthur was borne away to sepulture in Glastonbury Abbey.

A fine upland road led us nearly due north from Camelford through long stretches of moorland—or country almost as sterile as the moors—diversified with great patches of gorse and scattered groups of stunted trees. We encountered scarcely a village for a distance of twenty-five miles, for we did not turn aside for Bude or for Stratton, just opposite on each side of the road. The latter is said to be one of the most unspoiled and genuinely ancient of the smaller Cornish villages. At times we were within a mile or two of the ocean and caught fugitive glimpses of blue expanses of quiet sea. Then the road sweeps farther inland and the country improves in appearance, though it is still Cornwall and Devon and far different from the sleek, prosperous beauty of the Midlands.

OFF THE COAST OF DEVON.
From Original Painting by A. J. Warne-Browne.

“The most exquisite town in England,” writes an enthusiast of Clovelly, but Clovelly’s very quaintness has made it so widely known that it hardly has a place in a chronicle that seeks rather the untrodden ways. It is not possible for a motor or any other vehicle to descend the steep, stone-paved streets, and about a quarter of a mile above the town we left the car in an exceedingly prosperous-looking stable-yard filled to overflowing with motors, carriages and chars-a-bancs.

Clovelly well deserves its reputation for the picturesque qualities that have transformed it from an unpretentious fishing village, lost among the clifflike hills, into a thronged tourist resort. Fortunately, as yet there has been no attempt to modernize; no stucco-and-timber hotel detracts from the antique flavor; the people who come to Clovelly do not as a rule stay long. Large excursion steamers, usually crowded, ply from Ilfracombe, and coaches and chars-a-bancs from Hartland and Barnstaple bring troops of visitors. Coaching parties come from Tintagel (round trip eighty miles) and one is sure to find Clovelly crowded in season, especially if the day is fine. And so we found it, literally thronged, a huge excursion steamer lying at anchor in the harbor. There was a little disarray and confusion at the pleasant New Inn—new in name only—evidently due to more patronage than could easily be taken care of. As we waited for luncheon we looked about at the collection of antique brass, copper, china and pottery that almost covered the walls and crowded the mantelpieces and odd corners about the inn. We were told that the landlady is a famous collector and that many of the pieces are rare and valuable. A more amusing if not less interesting feature of the house is the sentiment expressed in halting doggerel, emblazoned in large red letters on the walls and ceiling of the dining-room. It is good only from the standpoint of exceeding badness, and its general tenor is to flatter Americans, who no doubt constitute a large proportion of the guests.

The old, time-worn churches of England are past numbering and they came to have an almost weird fascination for us. The tombs, ranging from the artistic to the ghastly or grotesque, the old stones with their often queer or even ridiculous epitaphs, the sculptures, the bosses, the frescoes, the stained windows, the gargoyles and the oftentimes strange history or still stranger legends connected with nearly every one—but why prolong the list of curious attractions of these ancient fanes, often quite peculiar in each case? Just before we entered Barnstaple we turned into a byroad, and dropping down a hill of appalling steepness and length, came to Tawstock Church, famed as the finest country church in Devon—the “Westminster of the West Country,” some enthusiast has styled it. Though hardly deserving such a dignified characterization as this, Tawstock Church is well worth a visit. Besides some remarkable tombs and fine Elizabethan pews, it has a peculiar gallery curiously wrought in vine and leaf pattern from black oak, and now used by the bell-ringers to reach the tower. Tawstock Mansion, near by, appears rather modern—a large building shining in a fresh coat of yellow paint that gave it much the appearance of a summer hotel. The house and church are located in a deep wooded valley and the towers of the ancient gateway lend a touch of much-needed antiquity to the scene.

TAWSTOCK CHURCH, DEVONSHIRE.

Barnstaple, like Bideford, while a very old town, has few old-time relics now left. It has become a manufacturing town, its chief product being Barum ware, an inexpensive grade of pottery. The Golden Lion Inn, once a residence of the Earl of Bath, is famed as a place of solid comfort, and still retains much of the gorgeous decorations done by its former occupant. The poet Shelley had an odd association with Barnstaple. When living at Lynton, after his marriage with Harriet Westbrook, he came to Barnstaple and spent some time in bringing out a pamphlet scurrilously attacking the chief justice who had sentenced to prison the publisher of the works of Thomas Paine. One of the poet’s associates, who distributed the pamphlets, was sentenced to six months in jail, and Shelley narrowly escaped by hastily leaving the town.

The road from Bideford through Barnstaple and Ilfracombe is rather uninteresting, save the last few miles, which pass through wooded hills and along deep verdant valleys. Ilfracombe is a resort town, pure and simple, and we found few hotels on a grander scale than the Ilfracombe, standing in beautiful grounds facing the sea, which murmured almost directly beneath our open windows. It was a beautiful evening; the tide was just receding from the jutting rocks scattered along the coast, whereon the sea, even in its mildest moods, chafes into foam; and one can easily imagine a most awe-inspiring scene when the angry ocean, driven by a westerly wind, assails these bold, angular rocks. After having visited every resort town of note in England, our recollection is that of all, Ilfracombe is the most strikingly situated; nor do any of them command views of a coast line more rugged and picturesque.

The rain was falling heavily when we came to Dunster on the following day and the abbey church was gloomy indeed. And what can be gloomier than an old church on a gray day, when the rain pours from the low-hung clouds and sweeps in fitful gusts against the mossy gravestones and crumbling, ivy-clad walls? A scene that renders one solemn and thoughtful on almost any occasion becomes positively depressing under such conditions. And though we recall Dunster Church with associations not unpleasing in perspective, the surroundings were not altogether pleasing at the time. We found the caretaker, a bent old woman, in the church, but she informed us that there were really two churches and that she had jurisdiction over only one of them. However, she conducted us about the dimly lighted building, gloomy indeed from the lowering skies without, and our recollection of her story of the quarrel that resulted in the partition of the church has faded quite away. But we do remember the rood screen which has fourteen separate openings, no two wrought in the same pattern and altogether as marvelous a piece of black-oak carving as we saw in England.

Aside from the abbey church, there are other things of interest in Dunster, especially the market cross and the castle. The latter overlooks the town from a neighboring hill and is one of the lordliest fortresses in the West Country. The town lies in one of the loveliest vales in Somersetshire and is famed for its beautiful surroundings. This section of Somerset and Devon is rich in literary associations; at Nether Stowey we pass the square, uncomfortable-looking house, close to the roadside, where Coleridge lived for three years, beginning in 1797. Indeed, it was in the autumn of that year that he made the excursion with Wordsworth and Dorothy, during which the plan of the “Ancient Mariner” was conceived. A few months before, while in a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Lynton, he had the dream which he started to record in “Kubla Khan.” This poem he had composed in his dream, but while writing it down on awakening, a “person from Porlock” interrupted, and when the poet essayed to write, not only the words but the images of the vision had faded away, and the fragment of “Kubla Khan” remains like a shattered gem. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came a little later to Alfoxden House, standing in a pleasant park in the parish of Halford, and here the literary association between Coleridge and Wordsworth became intimate and the little volume of “Lyrical Ballads” was published jointly by them in 1798. Southey, while storm-stayed by “an unwelcome summer rain” at the Ship Inn in Porlock, wrote a sonnet in praise of the hills and glens. Hazlitt and Charles Lamb at times joined their friends here for pedestrian excursions among the hills. Nor can we forget Blackmore, whose “Lorna Doone” turned the eyes of the English-speaking world toward the Exmoor wastes. Shelley’s escapade at Barnstaple we have already mentioned and the cottage he occupied at Lynton still stands. No doubt much of the weird beauty that pervades his work entered his soul amidst the glorious surroundings—the sea, the hills and the vales—of the West Country.

EVENING ON THE CORNISH COAST.
From Original Painting by A. J. Warne-Browne.

A pause at Cleeve Abbey near at hand gave us perhaps a better idea of the life of monastic days than any other we visited—and we saw all the greater abbeys of Britain. In the majority of cases the abbey proper had been destroyed, but the church escaped, often through purchase by the citizens. At Cleeve the reverse has happened; the church has totally disappeared, but the abbey buildings are nearly intact. As a well-informed writer puts it:

“The whole life of the society can be lived over again with but little demands on the imagination. We can see the dormitories in which they slept, the refectory where they fed, the abbot’s particular parlour and the room for accounts, the kitchen, and even the archway through which their bodies went out to the grave. The church suffered from despoilers more than any other part of the abbey, and great is the loss to architecture. Otherwise we get a community of the Middle Ages preserved in all its essential surroundings, the refectory being in particular a grand fifteenth-century hall.” The ceiling of this great apartment is of the hammer-beam pattern, the beams richly carved, and, springing from oaken corbels, figures of angels with expanded wings.

It brings one near indeed to the spirit of monastic days—this gray old ruin, through which sweep the wind and rain and where under foot the grass grows lush and green as it grows only in England—the spirit which the Latin legend over the gatehouse so vividly expresses, quaintly rendered thus:

“Gate Open be
To honest folk as free.”

And the gray-whiskered custodian, so rheumatic and feeble that his daughter, a husky peasant woman, guides visitors about the abbey, warmed up to us as we were about to leave and opened his heart about the ruin in which he dwelt and which he seemed to love. He told us its story in the broad West Country dialect and pointed out to us many things of curious interest that we otherwise should have overlooked.

The sky is clearing; the low sun flashes along the hill-crests and floods the Somerset landscape with ethereal beauty, which we drink in as we skim swiftly along the smooth, wet road. We catch a final gleam of the ocean at Weston-super-Mare and pass a long row of imposing hotels. Then we are away for Bristol, the Queen City of the West Country.

[VI]
ODD CORNERS OF THE WELSH BORDER

There are few English castles where the spirit of medievalism lingers as at Berkeley and few that have darker deeds recorded in their long annals of crime. It has had a strange fascination for me ever since I read its story in my boyhood days, and the verse of the poet Gray had given the castle a weird association in my mind:

“Mark the year and mark the night
When Severn shall echo with affright;
When shrieks of death through Berkeley’s roofs shall ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king.”

It was therefore a keen disappointment to learn on arriving in the quiet Gloucestershire town that it was not a day when the castle was open to visitors. However, we do not regret this so much in retrospect. The castle, grim, many-towered, ivy-clad, the very embodiment of the days of chivalry, still lingers in memory, with nothing to disenchant its mystery and romance. The old keeper at the imposing entrance was evidently sincere in his regret that the rule might not be suspended for our benefit—for indeed we had found such regulations not as the laws of the Medes and Persians, but there was no such good fortune here. “But do not fail,” said he, “to view the castle from the meadows, for no finer sight will you find in England.”

If there be finer views of other English castles—a mere matter of opinion, after all—there can hardly be a better viewpoint than the Berkeley Meadows. It is a wide expanse of lawnlike meadowland lying alongside the castle, which stretches out its battlemented and turreted length against a background of majestic trees; from these rises the square church-tower in stern outline against the bluest of English June skies. The scene indeed savors more of enchantment than reality, and the environment seems fitting to the historic pile where a king was done to death and which Shakespeare mentions more than once. The present owner is the twenty-seventh in direct descent from Robert Fitzhardinge, to whom the manor was originally granted and who built a large part of the present castle in the tenth century.

The view from the castle keep is described by one who has written much of its legends and history: “Northwards and southwards the broad Vale of Berkeley, rich with verdure of pasture and woodland, runs on into the far distance. To the east and southeast are the Cotswolds, rising abruptly here and there into bold, bare masses whose sides are clothed with beech woods, and anon retiring into lovely valleys which seem to invite the eye to range their recesses. On the west flows the broad estuary of the Severn, studded with many a white sail; beyond it are the dark wooded hills of the Forest of Dean, veiled by the smoke of its iron-works and collieries. Under the walls of the castle, on the north and west sides, the little town seems to nestle, as though seeking shelter and protection from the grim old fortress, which was probably its origin and has been its stay and support through so many generations.”

BERKELEY CASTLE.

Berkeley has another claim to distinction aside from its castle, for here is the cottage where lived Jenner, whose discovery of vaccination placed under control the scourge that devastated Europe until quite recent times. The famous physician is buried in the churchyard. The church is of imposing dimensions, with stained glass better than the average and elaborate tombs of the Lords of Berkeley Castle. The bell tower is detached, standing some distance from the main structure.

The highway from Bristol to Gloucester is one of the finest in the Kingdom, and we soon resumed our flight over it after the short detour to Berkeley. At the Bell Hotel in Gloucester we found mild excitement prevailing among the guests and servants, some of the latter standing about in brilliant liveries and powdered wigs. The manageress explained that the high sheriff and county judge were about to leave the hotel and that the gaudy attire we beheld disguised only the porter and head waiter, who had been fitted out in this manner to give due state to the occasion. During the delay in the departure of the distinguished guests we had the services of one of the gorgeous gentlemen at our luncheon. Finally the dignitaries descended the stair, the bedecked servants bowed them solemnly into a carriage, and the porter in all his glory rode away beside the driver. I dwell on this incident, trifling in itself, to illustrate the different status of such officials in England as compared with our own country. In America a dozen county judges and sheriffs might be at a hotel in a city the size of Gloucester without attracting much attention. In some respects the English way is preferable, since it invests the representatives of the law with a dignity quite lacking in the States. And in this connection we might notice that county judges in England receive salaries from three to five times as great as are paid to corresponding officials on our side, thus commanding a high average of legal talent for the bench.

The half-dozen miles between Gloucester and Tewkesbury are quickly done and we halt in front of a wide green, studded with gigantic trees, amidst which rises the huge bulk of a church almost as imposing as the cathedral that has barely faded from our view. But it lacks the gracefulness and perfect proportion of the Gloucester church and perhaps its most striking exterior feature is the arch over the western windows, so high and majestic as to remind one of Peterborough. The interior is mainly ponderous Norman—rows of heavy pillars flanking the long nave and supporting massive rounded arches. The windows, however, are the lighter and more graceful creations of the Decorated Period, though the glass is mostly modern. Among the tombs is that of Prince Edward, son of Henry VI., who was cruelly slain in the battle of Tewkesbury, so fatal to the Lancastrian cause. Here, too, lies the “false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,” of Shakespeare; and Somerset, executed by his captors after the battle. The abbey was marked for destruction by Henry VIII., who was deterred from his purpose by a public subscription. Tewkesbury is rather decadent, and has many houses in brick and timber as yet quite unspoiled by modern improvement. It is pleasantly situated on the banks of the classic Avon near its junction with the Severn, and the many-arched stone bridge over the former river is unusually picturesque. Half a mile farther a second bridge crosses the Severn, which lies in broad, still reaches dotted with small craft of every description.

Over these bridges we hastened away toward Hereford, following a level though sinuous road. The old-world quaintness of Ledbury attracted our attention. Its rectangular timber market cross, supported on a colonnade of wooden pillars, is unusual indeed. And nowhere else did we find finer specimens of Elizabethan half-timbered houses, though some of them were rather tawdry in recent applications of black and white paint. Such houses have become quite the rage and some owners have gone so far as to paint black stripes on common brick to represent the timbers. However, no such travesty as this is necessary in Ledbury—the town is overflowing with the genuine article—genuine though disfigured in some cases by the bad taste of the man with the paint pot. Church Lane, leading from the main street up a gentle slope to the church, is bordered with splendid examples of Elizabethan houses, quite unaltered since they left the builders’ hands. At the end of the lane one sees a graceful spire standing apart from the church, which is quite unique in design. It has four sharply pitched roofs running parallel, with odd little minarets between them. The interior has the newness of recent restoration and shows traces of different styles, from Norman to Perpendicular. Ledbury has an institute which commemorates its association with Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who passed her girlhood near the town.

At Hereford we sought the cathedral, having missed the interior during a former visit. A small, bare-headed boy in a red sweater saw us pause before the close and marked us as his legitimate prey. “I’ll take you into the Bishop’s Palace,” he said in such a matter-of-fact way that it disarmed our suspicions and we followed the youngster meekly enough, for with all our doing of cathedrals we had caught only glimpses of bishops’ palaces, usually embowered in gardens and apparently quite inaccessible. We had no opportunity to question our small guide as he rapidly led us through the palace grounds, but when he unhesitatingly rang at the door, we insisted on an explanation and learned that the bishop and his family were in London. During their absence the palace was thrown open to the public and our small friend was doubtless improving the opportunity to put cathedral visitors under obligations to himself.

We were admitted and wandered about at will. It is a rambling old house and indicates that a bishop occupies about the same plane in his domestic appointments as a prosperous member of the nobility, among whom, in fact, he takes a high rank. The house was sumptuously furnished and had several great rooms with high decorated ceilings and windows that looked out on the pleasant grounds, bright with flowers and shrubbery. The study pleased us most, with its high bookshelves about the walls and tall mullioned bow windows which open almost directly on the Wye. It was easy to see why the English bishops nearly all complain that their salaries, though apparently large, are hardly adequate to the state they are expected to maintain; and why, as in the case of an American ambassador, a private fortune is often necessary to enable the recipient of such an honor to pay the legitimate expenses. Our picture will show, perhaps better than any description, the beauty of the river front of the palace, with the fine trees and cathedral tower in the background. We had only a moment to look about the cathedral, since the closing hour was nearly at hand. However, we missed little, for Hereford Cathedral has few historic associations and recent restoration gives it an almost new appearance. It is built of red sandstone, which gives the interior a rather warm tone, accentuated by highly-colored modern windows.

BISHOP’S PALACE, HEREFORD.

A pause for the night at Ludlow, where we arrived after a run of an hour or two through the rich pasture lands along the Welsh Border, gave us an opportunity of renewing our pleasant associations with that fine old town. But as we were to visit Ludlow thrice before the close of our pilgrimage, I shall leave our impressions and discoveries for later consideration.

The road from Ludlow to Bridgnorth is—or rather was—not a first-class one. Road conditions in Britain change so rapidly since the advent of the motor that one can scarcely speak of them in the present tense. As we found it, poorly surfaced, narrow and winding, it was not to be compared with the highway along the border. Bridgnorth is an ancient market town, famous for its cattle fair, which has been held yearly since 1226. The service at the Crown Inn, where we stopped for luncheon, was excellent, and the moderate charge proved Bridgnorth off the beaten tourist track, a special rate not yet being established for the infrequent motorists. It was market day and the town was crowded with country people. The ample market square was filled with booths, and goods of every description were offered for sale. A socialist orator—a common nuisance in England—was haranguing the people, who crowded the streets so closely that we could get through only with difficulty. That motors are not so common in Bridgnorth was apparent, and a crowd collected about the car in the hotel stableyard. The general expression was hostile, and many instances were related where “one of the things” had worked disaster with skittish horses.

We made our escape without entering into the discussion and dropped down the almost precipitous hill to the Severn bridge. The road is a charming one, with wooded hills rising sharply on one hand and the broad Severn lying far beneath on the other. At Shifnal a policeman, in response to our inquiry, directed us to the byway leading to the village of Tong, some three miles distant. Here, according to one well qualified to judge, is the “most interesting example of early Perpendicular architecture in Shropshire—a section famous for interesting churches.” But it is better known through its association with Little Nell in “Old Curiosity Shop,” and Dickens’ description shows that the appearance of the church before its restoration was quite different from today:

“The church was old and grey, with ivy clinging to the walls and round the porch. It was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks, who had built their nests among the branches of some tall trees. It was a very aged, ghostly place. The church had been built many hundreds of years ago and once had a convent or monastery attached; for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls were yet standing.” It is still old and gray, but no longer ghostly and ruinous. It was far from lonely, for a crowd of trippers was being shown about by the caretaker when we arrived.

The tombs of Tong Church, with their effigies and brasses, are remarkably perfect, and one of them must be very ancient, for it bears the figure of a crusader in chain mail. The images escaped destruction, it is said, because of the friendship of Cromwell for the Stanleys, who were adherents of the Parliament. In the church are buried several of the Vernons, whom the madcap Dorothy gave to eternal fame, for they had little else to rescue them from the oblivion that overwhelmed such a host of unremembered squires and knights. Dorothy’s sister, Margaret, is buried with her husband, Sir Edward Stanley, who came into possession of Tong Castle through his wife. The church also has a remarkable library of black-letter books, some of them almost as old as the church itself, and a stupendous bell, weighing two tons, hangs in its tower.

TONG VILLAGE, SHROPSHIRE.

The village well accords with the church—a quiet place half hidden by trees and shrubbery, while the ivy and blooming vines give a touch of color to the gray walls. The tiny gardens are brilliant with old-fashioned flowers and the air is laden with their sweetness. Amidst such surroundings are scattered the pleasant old timbered cottages, with thatched roofs and diamond-paned lattice windows. The original castle has disappeared and has been replaced by a large Georgian house—a Moorish-looking mansion with domed roofs and pinnacles, yet rather picturesque, despite the fact that it outrages good architectural taste. It is in ill accord with the unspoiled little village; for altogether, Tong, with its church and associations, is one of the most delightful nooks and thoroughly typical of rural England at its best.

There are other associations in the neighborhood of Tong that may attract anyone especially interested in curious bits of English history, for near at hand is Boscobel House and its Royal Oak. In my youthful days, I read in one of the old-fashioned Sunday school books—many of which were then imported from England and were written by orthodox royalists—the story of the miraculous escape of His Gracious Majesty Charles II. from the wicked rebels who sought to lay violent hands on the “Lord’s Anointed.” I looked on the honest country people of Boscobel as direct instruments of Providence in preserving the sacred life of the king, and fairly held my breath with fear and excitement when I read that the Puritan troopers rode beneath the very tree in which the monarch was concealed. Even when sadly disenchanted by the knowledge that if ever rascal escaped his due it was when Charles Stuart dodged his pursuers, the romance of the old story lingered and I always had a desire to see Boscobel House and the Royal Oak.

BOSCOBEL HOUSE, SHROPSHIRE.

After leaving Tong we were only a few minutes in the shady lanes until we drew up in front of the ancient manor and found it a shrine for the English tripper, though the name of no American had been registered in its visitors’ book. The house is quite unaltered and of itself would be worth a visit as an unusually good specimen of early English domestic architecture, for it dates from 1540. The walls are stuccoed between heavy oaken posts at the corners and beams at the line of the floors. The huge chimney, mullioned windows and other touches indicate that it was a gentleman’s residence. Inside there are several fine rooms, with much oak carving and paneling, though in the dining-room, rather the best of all, the oak has been painted. There are a good many portraits and relics of the king, more or less authentic, which are shown with a proper degree of reverence. In the attic floor is the entrance to a small secret chamber reputed as one of the hiding-places of the king, though no doubt originally planned for a “priest hole,” as the Puritans called such places of concealment.

The farm-wife who cared for the house, and who was glad to see visitors, had come to reverence the king as the saint that the old chronicles picture him and had a full stock of the traditions of the place. She pointed out the identical tree which sheltered his Sacred Majesty, though the prosaic and unimpressionable Baedeker declares that it vanished long ago—which we ventured to hint, only to be met with proper scorn. To impress us with the goodness and generosity of the king, she related that the pension he settled on his preservers and their heirs forever is still paid to the descendants of the Penderels by an assessment on the parish—characteristic indeed of Charles, who always rewarded services if he could do so at the expense of some one else. We purchased a quaint book at the house—a facsimile reprint of an account of the events at Boscobel, published after the Restoration and dedicated to the king. As a curious example of the depraved lickspittle attitude of his flatterers toward the person of the monarch—a spirit not altogether extinct today, for that matter—I give a few sentences from the author’s dedication:

“I humbly beg your Majesties pardon, being conscious to myself of my utter incapacity to express, either your unparallel’d valour in the day of contending, or (which is a vertue far less usual for Kings) your strong and even mind in the time of your sufferings. From which sublime endowments of Your Most Heroick Majesty I derive these comforts to my self, That whoever undertakes to reach at your perfections, must fall short as well as I, though not so much. And now, on my bended knees, let me joyfully congratulate his restored Majesty, and humbly offer him this short and hearty wish, O KING, LIVE FOR EVER.”

Bidding Boscobel Manor farewell, we pause for a hasty glance at the scant ruin of White Ladies, an old-time nunnery standing quite apart in a field near by; then we retrace our way to the main road leading through Tong to Newmarket and Market Drayton. The latter town should be of considerable interest to an Englishman, since here was the home of Robert Clive, who, according to a well-known historian, “will ever be remembered as the man who laid deeply the foundations of our Indian Empire and who at a time of national despondency restored the tarnished honor of British arms.” Aside from this, there is little to interest the wayfarer save several fine Elizabethan houses and a mighty church that quite overshadows the town and country.

We are soon away for Shrewsbury, the ever charming county town of Shropshire, fleeting over as fine a road as ever tempted the winged wheels of a motor car. It is nearly deserted, straight, broad and level, and it is quite too late to fear the minions of the law—but this is not a record of miles per hour. Suffice it to say that very shortly we stop at the sign of the Raven in Old Salop.

One could never grow weary of the old town, and we saw another phase in its life and activity on a Saturday evening. The whole population seemed to have turned loose, and the brilliantly lighted main street was quite metropolitan. The quaint old fronts had a rather odd and out-of-place look in the glare of the electric light; the narrow, dimly lit side streets were more in accord with the spirit of the place. The shops were crowded and on the whole seemed surprisingly up to date and well stocked for a town of thirty thousand.

The Sunday following was as quiet as the evening before had been animated, and was as perfect as an English June day can be. In the afternoon we were off for a run, with scarcely any definite point in view, though a jaunt of an hour or two brought us in front of Lichfield Cathedral just as the afternoon service was beginning. We joined the rather diminutive body of worshippers who occupied but a small part of the great church. We were perhaps quite as intent on the interior—a very epic in warm red sandstone—as upon the dreary chant of the litany. A thorough restoration has been made recently and an air of newness prevails, but no one interested in cathedral architecture will miss Lichfield—in some respects the most harmonious and best proportioned of them all. We have seen the town before, but not the large square house before which we pause, for a moment, and which bears a bronze tablet to the memory of its one-time occupant, Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin.

Our route to Shrewsbury was over one of the Roman Watling streets, straight as an arrow’s flight much of the way and often bordered by giant trees. Never did the English countryside appear more charming in all our wanderings through it. There was a continual succession of green fields, vast parks, clear streams and wooded hills, with an occasional retired village—for on our return we avoided Wolverhampton with its rough streets and trams—to lend variety to the rural beauty through which we passed until we again skirted the Severn and re-entered the town.

[VII]
A WEEK IN SOUTH WALES

We leave Shrewsbury by the Welsh bridge for a week among the rugged hills and valleys of Southern Wales, a country rich in relics of antiquity and romantic associations. We sweep along the fine highway to Welshpool and from thence, a little farther, to Montgomery, a decayed, out-of-the-way town in the hills. A fragment of its castle is perched high on the precipitous hill commanding the town and looking far over the vale of the serpentine Severn. The Severn, like the Wye, is the most sinuous of rivers, and there are few more inspiring prospects than its long shining folds winding through the verdant valley as seen from the castle walls. Montgomery, quiet and unheroic as it is today, has a stirring past. It took its name from Roger de Montgomerie, “Second in command in the army of his kinsman, William of Normandy,” though the grim, almost inaccessible castle antedated his possession of the town. Fierce indeed was the strife between the Normans and the wild Welsh tribes, and the fair vale of the Severn was the scene of many a bloody conflict. The castle, though with varying owners and fortunes, continued a stronghold to the day of its surrender to the soldiers of the Commonwealth; after which nothing remained but blackened walls—another added to the long list of feudal fortresses “destroyed by Cromwell.”

The road southward from Newtown leads through as wild a tract of country as we saw in Britain. Not the Scotch Highlands or the hills at the headwaters of the Welsh Wye equal it in loneliness and seeming remoteness. But it is more picturesque than the localities just named, for the hills are mostly wooded, and the shallow, sparkling river which we followed—though usually far above it—runs through a narrow valley diversified in spots with trees and bits of meadow land. For eight miles out of Newtown we encountered a continually rising grade, which brought us to a narrow upland road running along the hillsides, which drop in almost precipitous slopes to the river far below. The road twists along the edge of the hills, at times in almost circular curves, and too close to the sharp declivity at its side for one’s ease of mind. At Llandrindod Wells we had passed the wildest part of the road and we noted with surprise the handsome houses and palatial hotels of a town we had scarcely heard of before, but which has recently become the queen of Welsh inland resorts. The declining sun shot his rays along the purple hilltops that encircle the place and the shadows were already long in the pine-clad valleys. It was growing late, but after a hurried consultation we decided against the pretentious hotels of Llandrindod Wells.

We dashed across the arched stone bridge over the Wye at Builth Wells and brought sharply up in front of the Lion Hotel, which, standing squarely across the way, seemed to bar farther progress, and we had little choice but to stop for the night. The Lion’s accommodations are not elaborate by any means, but it was quite too late to go farther. Though Builth has mineral wells and a “pump house,” a mile from the town, there is nothing of the resort hotel about the Lion; on the contrary, it is the plainest of old-country inns, apparently a haven for fishermen rather than health seekers. Its walls were covered with the antique hand-colored prints so characteristic of English inns; its mantels were loaded with queer pieces of bric-a-brac; tallow candles lighted the bedrooms. The electric push-button had not superseded the tasseled rope by the bedside, with which one jangles a bell hung on a coiled spring in the hallway. But it is spacious and has an air of old-world comfort about it—little modern except its motor garage.

After all, we were fortunate in our pause at Builth, for we beheld the most glorious of sunsets on the long reaches of the Wye as it enters the town from the west. The river dances down the valley in a series of broad, shallow rapids, resting itself here and there in a quiet lakelike pool. The sunset hues were subdued rather than brilliant; pink and salmon tints were reflected in the stream as we stood on the bridge and looked up the quiet valley, and these faded into hazy amethyst as the twilight advanced. It was a scene of quiet, pastoral beauty amidst surroundings that do not lack for legend and antiquity, and altogether left a pleasing recollection of an unattractive Welsh town which in itself has little of the picturesque.

We were away early in the morning following the Wye Valley road, with its vistas of hill and river, as far as Llyswen, where we crossed the hills to Brecon. Our stop here was short, as our route was to bring us again to this interesting old town in a few days. We did not often find a more delightful road than that down the Usk Valley to Crickhowell, Abergavenny and Caerleon. Its excellent surface and long sweeping grades might be a temptation to speed, but it is quite neutralized by the constant beauty of the scenery and interest of the country. On either hand are the low Welsh mountains, wooded to the very crest, and at times far below we caught the gleam of the river—though so shrunken as to scarcely deserve the name—leaping and flashing over its stone-strewn bed. Here and there a quiet village nestled unobtrusively by the roadside; at Crickhowell we found a larger but somnolent town whose huge church is crowded with memorials of the old Welsh warriors. Even larger and more impressive is the great Priory Church at Abergavenny, whose square battlemented tower one might think had been built to withstand the sieges of the devil, even as the Welsh castles were made almost impregnable against the attack of man. No quainter town did we pass than Usk; it must have been much the same when the Conqueror sent his legions to overawe the Welsh tribes, save that its castle, then no doubt a lordly fortress, is now a decayed ivy-mantled ruin. Its greater importance in years gone by is attested by its mighty priory church, ill in keeping with the hamlet that clusters about it today. According to tradition, two kings of England were born in Usk—Richard III. and Edward IV.—and Roman remains indicate an important station on the spot almost at the dawn of the Christian Era.

But what shall one say of Caerleon, farther down the valley, now practically a suburb of Newport, where dim legends still linger to the effect that it was once King Arthur’s capital and that here was the castle

“From whose high towers they say
Men saw the goodly hills of Somerset,
And white sails flying o’er a yellow sea.”

A prosaic historian, however, declares that in all likelihood the King Arthur legend sprang from Roman ruins which some hundreds of years ago existed in Caerleon in great magnificence. At any rate, modern Caerleon has no trace of the regal capital of the early king—a bald, unattractive town close upon the Usk, now broadened into a considerable stream, dull with the taint from the manufactories on its banks.

At Newport we are entering a different order of things, brought about by the great industrial development in South Wales due to the coal and iron mines and large shipping interests. In the last century the population of the town has grown from one to seventy thousand. The old order is indeed dead here. There is no effort to attract the tourist, and the castle, almost the sole relic of antiquity, is crumbling into unhindered ruin as it sits far above the drear expanse of mud left by the receding tide. We hasten through the town—we may see a hundred such at home—and seek from a friendly policeman the road to Caerphilly, a village off in the hills which we know has no new-world counterpart.

For ten miles from Newport we wend our way over a dusty, ill-kept byroad with sharp turns and steep grades, and before we come to the village we see from some distance the broken towers and battlements of Caerphilly Castle. We pass through the gateway in the straggling walls and the scene of desolation and massive ruin that lies before us is hardly paralleled in impressiveness among British castles, unless it be by Corfe in Dorset. A great round tower, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, with walls ten feet thick, split as by a thunder stroke, greets our eyes. Half of it is still standing, though leaning many feet from the vertical, and the other half lies in mighty fragments of masonry at its base. There had been four such towers, but only one is comparatively entire. The walls, though much shattered in places, still serve to give an idea of the vast extent of the ancient castle. The huge banqueting hall has been roofed and recalls in a rather pathetic way the rude magnificence of its feudal state.

CAERPHILLY CASTLE, SOUTH WALES.

But words quite fail to describe Caerphilly—such a maze of grim walls and towers, such a network of ruinous apartments, piled deep with debris, overawe and confuse one. Only the antiquarian may painfully decipher the plan of the castle and in imagination reconstruct it as it was when it stood a bulwark between warring nations. But to the ordinary beholder it will remain a mystery set in the midst of the barren hills, and he will hardly care to resolve the impressive pile into its original parts. It will seem an entity to him—it is hard to think it otherwise than it appears today. Its romance is deepened by the obscurity of its history—for the story of Caerphilly has many blanks and breaks. There is no record of when it was first begun and there is doubt as to when it was finally destroyed. Some say the ruin is the work of Cromwell, and it surely seems worthy of that master of the art of wrecking castles; others declare that it was abandoned at the time of the Commonwealth, having been destroyed by Shakespeare’s “Wild irregular Glendower,” in his endless conflicts with the English.

But after all, does it not savor even more of romance that mystery enshrouds the past of the stupendous structure whose scanty remnants encircle us? Why call upon prosaic history to dispel the charm that emanates from the gray ruin, half hidden by its mantle of ivy and dashed here and there with the purple valerian and yellow wall-flower? Such would be folly indeed as we sit on the soft green turf of the court and contemplate the fantastic outlines in the glow of the sunset; when all is silence save for the angry brawls of the rooks, which have entered into full possession—reincarnations, perhaps, of the erstwhile contentious owners.

But the spell of Caerphilly dissolves and a different world surrounds us as we enter the broad modern streets of Cardiff and pause before the American-looking Park Hotel. Cardiff as a village antedates the Conquest, but as a metropolis of two hundred thousand, it is quite recent. One hundred years ago it had a population of a thousand; in 1837, of ten thousand; and it is easy to see that the traces of antiquity in such a city must be few. Its future was assured when the first Marquis of Bute hazarded his entire fortune in the construction of the extensive docks from which shipments of coal and iron are now made. It was a lucky throw of the die for the nobleman, for today his grandson owns the greater part of Cardiff and is one of the wealthiest men in the Kingdom.

Cardiff Castle—forever associated with the dark fate of Prince Robert—has been replaced by a Moorish palace—or rather, an incongruous mixture in which the Moorish predominates. It is easy to gain admittance to this imposing palace, where art has been entirely unhampered by cost, and if garishness and incongruity sometimes prevail, interest is nevertheless continual. There is a fragment of the keep of the old castle in the grounds and Duke Robert’s dungeon is incorporated into the new structure—a dark, vaultlike cavity in the walls where for thirty years the unfortunate prince, the direct heir to the throne of the Conqueror, was kept a close prisoner by his brother Henry. Legend has it that his eyes were put out because of an attempt to escape and that he died in the dungeon at the age of eighty years.

CARDIFF CASTLE.

Cardiff’s municipal buildings are a delight; white stone palaces standing in ample grounds with wide pleasant approaches—altogether models of what civic structures ought to be. Immense and busy as it is, there is little in Cardiff to detain one on such a pilgrimage as ours, and we were away before noon on the Swansea road.

Llandaff is but three miles from Cardiff, and we reached it by a short detour. Its cathedral, recently restored, is probably the most interesting of Welsh churches excepting St. David’s. The site has been occupied by a church ever since the year 600, though the present structure dates from early Norman times. It fell into complete ruin after the time of the Commonwealth. One chronicler declares that “Cromwell’s men turned the nave into an ale house, penned calves in the choir and fed pigs at the font,” though they must have been rather unorthodox Puritans to countenance the ale house. No attempt was made to preserve the fine church from decay until about two hundred years later, and so deplorable was its condition that the task of restoration seemed a well-nigh impossible one. Still, after much difficulty, the work was happily carried out, and the twin towers—one a slender spire and its companion square-topped with Gothic finials—present a very unusual though not unpleasant effect. Inside there is a mixture of Norman and early English styles, and some beautiful Decorated work. There are three paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti that arrest attention at once—done in that artist’s best style long ere he was known to fame. The windows, though modern, are of unusual excellence, having been designed by Burne-Jones and other notable artists. Near by are the ruins of the bishop’s palace, whose fortresslike walls tell of a time when the churchman and the warrior went hand in hand. Its destruction some six hundred years ago is attributed to Owen Glendwr, whose record for castle-smashing in Wales is second only to that of Cromwell. The village of Llandaff is still rural and pretty; it is quite clear of the skirts of Cardiff, being separated from the city by the River Taff. The old stone cross still stands in front of the palace and there is now little to remind one of the big modern city near at hand, which may one day absorb its ancient but diminutive neighbor.

The Swansea road looks well enough on the map, but our recollections of it are far from pleasing. Dusty and rough, and crowded with traffic and tram lines in many places, it wends through a cheerless and often uninteresting country. It passes frequent mining towns straggling along for considerable distances and there were many drunken men reeling on the streets. It was market day at Cowbridge and the village was filled with countrymen, many of whom treated our right to the road with supreme indifference. One fellow in a broad-brimmed slouch hat that made him look like an American cowboy, and who was carrying a black bottle that might hold a gallon, saluted us with owl-like gravity and brought the car to a sharp stop by standing directly in our way.

While getting rid of our would-be acquaintance, we cast about to find a place for luncheon and soon lighted on the sign of the Bear, the sole inn, according to Baedeker. It was some distance to the next town and we decided to patronize the Bear, though its outer appearance filled us with misgivings. But if its outward aspect inspired doubt, words fail in speaking of the inside. The handbook of the Royal Automobile Club in setting forth the delights of a tour in America pays its compliments to our rural Bonifaces in this wise: “The hotel accommodation in country districts is often very poor and dirty,” all of which may be painfully true. But in competition for distinction in these particulars, the Bear would certainly not be distanced by any American rival. Perhaps the confusion and disarray was partly due to the market-day rush, but the grime and dirt that prevailed everywhere seemed as ancient as the ramshackle old house itself. The dining-room was a large apartment with many long tables of boards laid on trestles—an arrangement, no doubt, to accommodate the patronage of market day—and the remnants of the dinner were still heaped upon them in dire confusion. A glance at the meal placed before us and at the dirty hands of the waiting-girl was enough—we left the provender untouched and summarily departed from the table. With difficulty we got the attention of the barmaid, who also acted as cashier, settled our score, and sallied forth dinnerless upon the King’s highway.

Threading our way carefully through the streets of Neath, several miles farther on, with little thought save to get away from the bad road and unpleasant surroundings, we caught a glimpse, down a side street, of an ivy-clad ruin of great extent. We followed the rough rubbish-covered lane that leads directly to the entrance gate of Neath Abbey, as it proved to be. There was no caretaker in charge, but two or three workmen were engaged in cleaning away the debris, which was several feet deep in many of the roofless apartments. Everything indicated that once the abbey had stood in the pleasantest of valleys on the bank of a clear, placid little river; but the coaling industry, which flings its pall over everything in Southern Wales, had played sad havoc with the sylvan retreat of the old Cistercian monks. Heaps of rubbish dotted the uncared-for green about the place. Coal trains rattled on the railroad near at hand. The spot where the abbey now stands so forlornly is the heart of the suburban slums of Neath, and so isolated and forgotten is it that few pilgrims come to view its melancholy beauty. For it is beautiful—does not our picture tell the story?—the mouldering walls hung with masses of ivy, the fine doorways, the great groups of mullioned windows and the high chimneys, green to the very tops, all combine to charm the beholder despite the unlovely surroundings. The workmen told us that the abbey belonged to Lord Somebody—we have quite forgotten—and that he was going to clean up the premises and make necessary repairs. The craze now so prevalent in Britain for preserving every ancient ruin had extended even to Neath Abbey and perchance its titled owner will beautify the surroundings and the fine ruin may yet become a shrine for pilgrims—that the motor-car will bring.

NEATH ABBEY, SOUTH WALES.