y.']:.\ SSS^mMm^^ III U O >'<.» iLM SHACRLETON 35Ucu^^^ub^^tu^CJbi^ ^m^ ^^obic ■iM< M i m TOURING GREAT BRITAIN i- / TOURING GREAT BRITAIN / BY ROBERT SHACKLETON Author of " Unvisited Places of Old Europe," "The Book of Boston," "The Book of New York," Etc. Illustrated with Photographs taken on the Tour i-y* ■^i^. ■m,. ^r^^r \ THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 1920 Copyright 1914 Hearst's International Library Co., Inc. Copyright 1917 The Penn Publishing Company CONTENTS CHAPTER page I What We Did 1 II The Start 6 III Into Wales 15 IV Wending a Welsh Way 30 V On to Harlech 41 VI Through Shrewsbury 50 VII The Way to Worcester 62 VIII By Tewkesbury 75 IX The Valley of the Wye 83 X The Watery Cities of Bath and Wells 97 XI The Coast of Somerset and Devon 108 XII Clovelly and Tintagel .... . 119 XIII Eastward Ho ! . 127 XIV Into the South Downs .... . 137 XV The Ride to Winchester . 145 XVI On the Route of the Conqueror . . 155 XVII A New Canterbury Pilgrimage . 168 XVIII The Valley of the Thames . . 181 XIX Remote from Towns . 191 XX The Heart of England .... . 199 XXI To Famous Places . 210 XXII To Fotheringay and the Fens . 221 XXIII Through the North Country V . 234 VI CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXIV Northumberland and the Roman Wall . 247 XXV Melrose to Tantallon . 256 XXVI The Lowlands of Scotland . 265 XXVII The Highlands of Scotland . . 276 XXVIII Among the Scottish Lakes . 289 XXIX By Afton Water and Gretna Green . 298 XXX The English Lakes . 310 XXXI On the Yorkshire Moors . 320 XXXII Sherwood Forest and Haddon Hall . 332 Index . 343 ILLUSTRATIONS The stairway street of Clovelly Frontispiece FACING PAGK Map, showing the route of the Four xi A delightful halt beside a Border castle At an ideal inn of Elizabethan days 8 Half-timbered cottages in Darkness Lane The sundial of Cranford churchyard 16 The ancient Rows of Chester A sheep blockade in a walled lane 24 The main street of Conway The striking towers of Conway Castle 33 Within the bare shell of Carnarvon A mountain road under Snowdon 40 A lonely Welsh cottage Harlech Castle 41 Deer photographed from the motor, in a castle park A winding street in ancient Shrewsbury 48 A little drizzle in Bridgnorth marketplace Old black-and-white houses, with passion flowers, at Ormsley . . 72 An ancient town-cross The Norman tower of Tewkesbury BO The window of Geoffrey of Monmouth Red-coated soldiers going to church at Monmouth .... 84 Tintern Abbey The roadside inn at Alveston 85 The deserted arcades of Bath The squarish facade of Wells 100 The beautiful coast of Devon A typical old inn coachyard 108 vii viii ILLUSTRATIONS FACING Yankees at King Arthur's Castle paob The rocky approach to Tintagel 1:^0 Cheddar cows by the waterside Mudwalled cottages of Sampford Courtney 138 The bishop's garden at Salisbury Invading the solitude of Stonehenge 136 The Itchen, a river of Izaak Walton Where Franklin wrote most of his Autobiography; at Twyford . 144 Brighton by the sea Bathing machines on the shingle, at Brighton Kipling's close-gated home at Rottingdean Poetic Pevensey; the spot where William the Conqueror landed . 156 A Norman porch at Canterbury Two of the chateau-like hoptowers of Kent 172 The ancient Norman castle at Rochester Chiselhurst, where Napoleon III died 173 The old Dutch garden at Hampton Court The level plain of Runnimede 180 The scene of Gray's Elegy In the heart of the Burnham Beeches 196 William Penn's grave at Jordans Milton's cottage at Chalfont St. Giles 197 The High Street of Oxford In a quiet Broadway 200 Stratford from the riverside Where Shakespeare went to school Our motor-<'ar picture of Ann Hathaway's cottage Guy's Cliff e: a great mansion near Warwick 208 A Warwick peacock strutting beside peacocks of box The part of Kenilworth associated with Queen Elizabeth . 209 The cricket-field at Rugby A remarkable wrought-iron inn sign The old building into which nmch of Fotheringay was built The site of Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded 230 ILLUSTRATIONS ix FACING The ruins of Fountains Abbey paus Coxhoe Hall, the birthplace of Mrs. Browning The entrance of Durham CasLit; The cathedral of Durham 248 Beside the ancient Roman Wall The town-gate of dismal Alnwick 256 The sweeping stretch of Flodden Field The stone guardsmen on Alnwick Castle walls The Till by Twizel Bridge Kirk Yetholm, the mountain village of the old-time gjpsies . . 257 The ancient peel tower at Melrose A garden by a lonely tower 264 The tower of Smailholm Grim old Tantallon 265 The sunny ruins of Craigmillar The St. Andrews golf links 273 Rose-bowered Scotch cottages The Birnam Wood of Macbeth 280 At the Roman camp near FortJngal A Highland cottage with one thatched chimney 288 The banks and braes of bonnie Doon "Flow gently, sweet Afton " 308 JIaxwellton House, the home of Annie Laurie The old toll-house, Gretna Green, at the Scotch-English border line 309 Looking across Thirlmere at Helvellyn The home of John Ruskin on Coniston Water 324 The home of the Brontes, beside the Haworth churchyard The moorland vale of Alcomdene 328 Under the oaks of Sherwood Forest A part of the Duke of Portland's palace, where a garden masks subterranean rooms 336 The home of the famous Bess of Hardwick A place which remains a wistful memory: Haddon Hall . . . 337 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN CHAPTER I WHAT WE DID WE had anticipated much, but it was so infi- nitely beyond anticipation! For it was a royal summer. It was six weeks of superb liberty, six weeks of kaleidoscopic paradise. Each day was a dream that every day proved true. And it was all so feasible, so practicable, so easily done. It was six weeks of motoring, and of so motoring as to get at the very heart and essence of England and Scotland and Wales. It would have been easy to go at random, but it was not difficult so to arrange as to secure maximum of interest with minimum of distance and expense. We planned for a total of almost three thousand miles, with an average of seventy-five miles a day, and in those three thousand miles we obtained as much as could have come from any random five thou- sand miles or even ten, for in the three were included every variety of scenery, every variety of castled and churchly charm, the towers, the cottages, the stately homes, the places of historical and literary note. And all was done so reasonably, with entire absence of pro- hibitive expense. We tasted the full flavor of all three lands. There was no waste of time, nor was there omission of anything essential. Nor was there undue haste. At some places, such 2 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN as Oxford and Melrose, there was leisurely lingering, and always there were stops where there was some special view to enjoy, some special castle or tower or battlefield to see; and alternating with these pauses, packed full as they were of the glory of history or of nature, were long and steady flights beside quiet rivers and through long valleys, and past great farms and hills and meadows, and across great moors. And there were times when, instead of pausing, we went on past some mighty castle, some rock-perched tower, some shimmering stretch of beauty, gaining in those swift moments a superb vision that would remain a glorious memory forever. And for the practical detail of arrangement we hit upon a new and ideal way. We had found that to rent a car would cost twenty dollars a day; and that to ship our own, even though it was but a small-size touring-car, would cost two hundred and fifty dollars for ocean freight alone, even without any shipment by rail; or that, if the sum were to be shaded at all, it could only be by an impossible personal supervision of handling and crating. And then came the solution; and it was the idea of both buying and selling a car in England. An English house was written and prices learned, and next and naturally came the simple American expedient of advertising. A little notice that a car, new except for a three thousand miles' run, would be ready to turn over to someone in Liverpool about July 15, secured a number of replies, and an arrange- ment was readily made. And instead of assuming all the trouble and risk and expense of shipping, and then having the wear and tear upon our own car and its tires, our car was left at home, and a new car was bought and was delivered to us upon our arrival in England in May, ready for the tour. WHAT WE DID We in turn were to resign it to the new purchaser, in July, " in such condition as would naturally be expected after a trip of three thousand miles," as the agreement expressed it, with a provision to cover any accident that meant wreckage; and we were to be paid within one hundred and seventy-five dollars of the initial purchase price. Thus the car was both bought and sold before we saw it; before we even left our home! We were a party of four, for companionship, help- fulness and division of expense ; and we found at the end of the tour that the total travehng expenses, beginning with the one hundred and seventy-five dollars and adding for gasoline and oil, were just about equal to what the expenses of the same dis- tance would have been for four people by rail, by the cheapest of third class, and very much less than the distance would have cost by railway traveling at anything better than the uncomfortable and almost impossible third class, even without adding the neces- sary frequent items of cabs and porterage. And how infinitely more was seen! For by motor car we went to many and many a point that no rail- way reaches, and every day the motor made us a hundredfold richer than the train could have done, in positive happiness, in the joy of life, in the pleas- ure and profit of it all. For there were no long rides, cooped up in little compartments, to reach objective points — for every moment we were at an objective point! There was no hurrying away unsatisfied to catch a train, nor was there ever an enforced waiting when curiosity was exhausted. We stopped where we wished and went on when we chose. We were literally masters of time. The license for the car, and the individual licenses to run a car, so that the two men of the party could relieve each other at the wheel, were arranged for 4 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN in advance, by mail, readily and without delay. For England welcomes Americans, and whatever path is chosen ma-kes that path easy. All possible difficulties vanished into nothingness when approached. A membership was taken out, for a nominal sum, in one of the great British automobile clubs, and it more than repaid in actual service and vastly more in the sense of potential security that it gave. And we and the car were insured, and at a reasonable cost, and that too was a bulwark behind us. From Manchester into North Wales, then back into western England, always aiming for the scenes of greatest note or beauty — thus the delightful jour- ney delightfully began. Through Devon, and enough to the far westward to taste of the charm of Cornwall we motored on, and thence swept, by splendid zigzags, from point to point across southern England to dis- tant Canterbury, whence we turned toward London. From London we went by way of Hampton Court and Windsor to Oxford and Stratford, thence swimg over to old Peterborough and there turned north- ward again to Boston and York and Durham and on through the castled bleakness of Northimiberland. Into Scotland next, and to regally placed Edin- burgh, and up through the very heart of the High- lands, with lochs and mountains and narrow passes and stern and splendid beauty. Through Glasgow and down into England again to taste of the fine beauty and memorable charm of the Lake Country — ^ thence to the mighty moors of Yorkshire — and then, and finally, a dip down to the Dukeries and to Had- don Hall, marvelous in its age and its beauty and its perennial charm, and thence to Liverpool and the end. The success of the entire tour, a success complete in every detail, was due in the first place to a careful planning; and yet a planning neither rigid nor in- WHAT WE DID 5 flexible; and, in the second place, to the constant recognition of the very simple fact that we were motoring to see Great Britain and not to compare Great Britain with America. Now and then some- what of comparison was inevitable, but it did not mat- ter to us in the least that the Thames is not so wide as the Mississippi or that the Eildons are not so lofty as Pike's Peak ; it was enough that the Thames flows out of illimitable liistory and that the splendid Eildons brood over a region of immortal romance. We had been much in England before and this as- sisted us greatly in planning our route to the best advantage, but day by day in the course of our jour- neyings we realized how slight is even a very con- siderable knowledge of a country compared with the both broad and intimate knowledge that comes to those who go by motor car. But we never let the fact that we had already seen a place keep us away from it on the motor tour, if it were a place that deserved to be included. And when the six weeks were over we looked back, in vivid memory, over long, long rides under the summer sun, and hours of mist and rain, through which towers and hills loomed in vague and indis- tinct allurement, and morning starts while still the dew lay thick on the lush grass, and of going on and on into long and lingering twilights, of stopping by the wayside to talk with some cottager or in ancient towns to see the glories of some venerable cathedral, or turning down some mysterious lane to follow the lure of exploration or of sheer adventure. CHAPTER II THE START WE like to think that we began at Cranford, for Cranford was so near the actual begin- ning of the tour and is so full of interest as the town in which is located one of the finest of all English stories. One can never forget the sweet charm of Miss Matty, one can never for- get her sister and all the other Cranford ladies, and therefore it is that such interest attaches to the town itself in being Cranford — although it may be well to say that it is not set down as Cranford in the gaz- etteers, but as Knutsford; which is obviously unwise, for the association of the IVIiss Jenkyns's, Mrs. Jamie- son and Miss Pole with the place is of far more importance than the visionary connection with the past which makes it Canute's Ford, that is to say, Knutsford, because that king once crossed the river here! Typical, this, of the devotion of the English to royalty and even to distant royalty. A king, many centuries ago, crossed a river and therefore the place where he crossed must forever be Knutsford! But Mrs. Gaskell knew better than that and gave it the name of Cranford, and as Cranford it will forever be remembered by all who love sweetness and charm and clear and kindly visualization of character and life. And so we like to think that we began at Knuts- ford. But strict literalness reminds us that we actu- ally began at a less interesting place, Manchester; and, if ill-natured about it, we might suggest that, after all, the place of beginning is the place to get 6 THE START quickly away from and leave farther and farther be- hind; and yet we do not feel that way about Man- chester, for although it is not attractive from a tourist standpoint, it is interesting in that it is one of the few great British cities. Yet here, again, one meets with surprises, for, although London itself is so immensely large, Manchester has not much over seven hundred thousand population, and Liverpool is not much larger, and Glasgow, which comes next to London, is also under the eight hundred thousand! But Manchester has really a very considerable de- gree of interest to an American, for her growth has been like that of an American citv. Her seven hun- dred thousand people were less than ten thousand two centuries ago and barely a single hundred thousand just a century ago. Manufacturing, and in particu- lar cotton manufacturing, in JManchester itself and the tributary neighborhood round about, has done this thing; and an English city that can grow with the swiftness of one of America assuredly possesses claims to observation. Great, black, sooty place that it is, with an aston- ishing congestedness of population, its streets are thronged with people and vehicles, and there are even enormous clumsy tandem traction-engines, with enor- mous trailers, weaving their ruthless and sluggish way through the narrowest and busiest streets. And there are great tandem teams threading through the traffic, and there are motor cars moving with a swift- ness that seems quite disregardful of pedestrians, and even of passengers alighting from stopped tram-cars, there being no kindly rule as to not passing cars while passengers are getting off. In fact, one comes to learn, in England, that the rights of the individual mean those of the individual who motors or drives, when there is any conflict between his rights and those of the people who walk. But we were given a 8 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN friendly warning that an exception might be made when the driver happened to be an American and that it therefore behooved any American motoring to go with especial care. The best thing about Manchester is its air of self- respect and prosperity; and, as one learns later that this aspect is not customary in the large cities of England, it is well to remember that Manchester is the center of Lancashire, and that Lancashire, of all the counties of England, distributes its land among the greatest proportionate number of owners ; an im- portant thing, this, as one comes in time to realize. Manchester folk are proud of the appellation *' Manchester man," which was long ago used by Liv- erpool rather contemptuously in contrast with " Liv- erpool gentleman"; and they are proud of their big town-hall, expensive and ornate as it is, in that stjde, beloved of the modern English, which may be termed Victorian- Gothic. And this town-hall represents all the good old English ideas, including that of the lavish hospitality of the lord mayor's banquets, served with wealth of civic silver: solid silver platters, huge and plethoric, and endless entree dishes, and silver epergnes in numberless quantity for decorating the great tables in the great town-hall banqueting hall, to which the liveried waiters proudly bear the steam- ing viands from the great town-hall kitchens. You see, municipal government is taken seriously in Manchester ! A great deal of business is done there, and done profitably, and yet the telephone service (govern- ment owned!) is so poor that we found, and this is literal and not a jest, that time was saved by hanging up the receiver and getting a cab or tram. And we were even told that the banks, for all their huge busi- ness, do not use adding machines : " If any of us used such a thing," said a business man, in all seriousness. _ ^Si A DELIGHTFUL HALT BESIDE A BoRDER CASTLE At an ideal inx of Elizabethan days THE START 9 " we should have the columns footed up afterwards with a pencil to see if they were right." Even in modern Manchester there is something of the old; and first there is the cathedral; an excellent structure, though far from being of the first order of cathedral beauty ; and yet, as we entered, we realized a fine and unusual charm in the coloring of the inte- rior, for wood and stone and the very shadows were all in a softness of nutty brown ; it was all in the col- ors of an etching. And we were shown the build- ing by one of the clergy, who imparted his appre- ciative knowledge of it in such a way as to make the place very distinctly worth while; for ever}^ traveler comes to realize that a place of lesser interest may be so seen as to make it surpass the place of greater interest in keenness of pleasure and vividness of impression. In the very shadow of the cathedral, in the very heart of the city's murk and soot and beside a black little river, is one of the most quaintly interesting old buildings, or rather set of buildings, in all England. For you are down in the busiest part of the city, with only the hemmed-in and murk-darkened cathedral to remind you that there could be anything there not connected with the thunder and congestion of trade, and you open a door in a high wall that seems to inclose some factory; and you have felicitously opened into past centuries. For here is an ancient school, retaining its setting of charm, seclusion, de- lightfulness, beauty. Two and a half centuries ago the school was founded, and it was established in buildings which even at that time were two hundred and fifty years old; an ancient ecclesiastical foundation; and there are rambling old passages and enchanting casement windows, diamond-paned and leaded, and a beauti- ful ancient library, in polished and age-black oak, 10 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" with fascinating nooks and corners and delightful outlooks into interior courts; and the rooms and courts and passages are sparely pervaded by blue- coat boys, inheritors of the shadows and seclusion and learning of that ancient school; and how many generations there have been of frank-faced boys clad in the quaint, long-coated suits of blue broadcloth and with silver buckles on their shoes! The place is one of peculiar interest, for the charm of the unexpected adds itself to the charm intrinsic. We looked over Manchester while the very neces- sary speedometer was being attached and the motor run with the car at a standstill for two hours with the intent of relieving the stiffness sure to be in any new motor, and while the luggage carrier, which had been ordered by letter and was ready for putting on at the back, was adjusted, to hold our American motor rain- proof trunk, inclosing two broad suitcases — much larger and lighter than ordinary suitcases — which could be withdrawn nightly without disturbing the black, patent-leather, rainproof trunk-shell. Besides these we had two leather bags, which were carried with us in the car in the seat or at our feet; there being just room for them; and two umbrellas, which we never once opened ! — but that was only good fortune. For London needs we sent somewhat of luggage in advance to meet us, and from time to time sent laundry in advance to be ready and waiting for us at some point where we knew we should stop. We even sent our steamer clothes in leather bags, to be held at the railway station at the port of departure, and got a receipt for them! — a feat not easy to ac- complish in England. One result of having a baggage carrier at the back — or perhaps we should adhere to the words " lug- gage carrier," and be English while in England — was that it Dut us from the chance of carrying even a THE START 11 single extra tire where an extra tire would naturally be fastened on, for it was not a car that would lend itself with readiness to having a tire at the side. We hesitated a little; but needs must when lack of space drives; and so it was decided to start off on our jaunt without a spare tire, for it seemed likely that, should we need one, we should never, after all, be at a very great distance from some source of supply. We risked somewhat of delay and inconvenience rather than overcrowd ourselves. With the tools vmder the seat, we carried two extra inner tubes, but even this precaution, so it turned out, was unnecessary, for when the entire journey was at an end we had never found any necessity for either of these tubes, nor had we needed an extra tire. Luck was a factor, and care, but principally it was the perfection of the English roads. A gallon can of lubricating oil found a wood- wedged abiding-place under the hood beside the mo- tor, where it could besmirch no clothes. And so, late in a late May afternoon, we spun out of Manchester along an octopus-tentacle sort of high- road that dangled off for miles, and we finally got clear of the city and were in the country roads and headed for Cranford; the air was a caress; and we ran by stone walls, and hawthorn hedges with blos- soms pink or white, and great fine trees and little villages. It was eight miles to Altrincham; it was five miles more to Mere Corner, where, so the map showed, we were to leave the main road and turn to the left — and it was pleasant to feel that we were to have such a quaint-named turning-point on our very first run. Our first night was to be at Cranford, and this brief late-afternoon run was but preliminary. For we were really to begin at Cranford, and there was piquancy in the prospect! And there was piquancy in the realization. For 12 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN Cranford is still a delightful old place, set agreeably on a riverside with bits of the water glimpsed down the narrow cross-streets, and it has much of the pleas- ant old-fashioned simplicity which made it, in a book, a town to love. There are still the little houses, and the little bowed windows, and the lupines and the wall-fiowers in the gardens ; there are still the gently- winding narrow streets and lanes, there are peacef ul- ness and a general quietness of atmosphere and the people are still busy with petty things; there is still the sound of clogs upon the stone-paved ways ; there are still the tiny little shops, comfit shops and green- grocer shops, and flower and seed shops, and little pork shops where the bacon hangs in halves from head to hind hoof; there are still the little two- wheeled • delivery carts; there are still the old court- yards and passages, and you still may see tidy, little old ladies come stepping out over their tidy, little sunken doormats. And if you see a chimney-sweep going to work, proverbially black, with black and sooty clothes and tools — we saw one in the early morning, giving thus an impression of not having abandoned his blackness even on the preceding night ! — if you see a chimney-sweep going to work, it is another of the old-time survivals, and if he goes to work riding on a bicycle, as this one did, it is but one of the cases in which modern improvement makes for swifter progress; and it is gently amusing. Mrs. Gaskell would have put such a chimney-sweep into her book. And there is here and there a doorway or vdndow or gabled corner of real charm and beauty; on the way to Darkness Lane one passes a little row of tiny, ancient white-and-black-f routed houses; and there are also old-fashioned inns, including the very one at which Lord Mauleverer aristocratically stayed, and it stands right upon the street, with the cobble- THE START 13 stones coming to its very door ; an inn where there are excellent service and immaculate cleanliness, an inn with beamed ceilings, with little spraddly bouquets of old-fashioned flowers placed upon the little tables in the dining-room, an inn where there is still a " boots " in his green apron and where they will serve you chops an inch thick, with green peas; a posting inn, this, with a good old courtyard in behind, coming down from posting and coaching days; a courtyard doubt- less easy for horses, but offering certain difficulties in the manipulation of a motor car into shelter, it being necessary to make numerous turnings through attenuated passages and around short bends; an inn itself full of passageways and stairways in inex- tricable convolutions; an inn of peacefulness, where in the evening you are given a private sitting-room with a blazing coal fire, very attractive and comfort- able toward the end of May, and where you wake in the morning and look down over the flower boxes on the window-sill into the narrow street and see little girls going to the little comfit shops with their pen- nies. That is one thing about Cranford — you get a general impression that things are little! Cranford itself — that is to say, the people of Cran- ford — take their fame as the home of Miss Matty and her friends with a calm that is almost indiffer- ence ; in fact, they seldom think of those most precise and pleasant ladies and frankly are but little inter- ested. Were it otherwise, they would be spoiled by overconsciousness, they would lose their artless sim- plicity and the place would become a village devoted to Mrs. Gaskell instead of to her immortal creations. And so it is better as it is, for the town remains unspoiled Cranford. And the fine old church of mellowed brick, with trimmings of time-grayed stone, still stands, in its setting between the two long streets of the town, on 14 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN a level with one and perched attractively above the other; a church with ivy and clipped holly massed green against its sides, and with a low, square tower, and with a grassy graveyard beside it that is dotted everywhere with daffodils and whose paths are all a-blossom with iris and wall-flowers, and with an ancient urn-shaped sundial set in the middle of the graves as if futilely to mark the passing time for the forever quiet sleepers round about. We motored quietly about the long but little town ; somehow, everything is still done quietly and deco- rously in Cranford; and at one end of the town we found a great private park, typically lovely, entered through a beautiful classic gateway, and at the oppo- site end of the town, on a gentle slope, an ivy-clad building, hawthorn shaded and romantic, with ex- quisite latticed windows, and with soft, yellow laburnum-trees lushly in bloom all about it. A little chapel this, although it does not look like a chapel, and on the hillside, beside it, among other flat and sun-warmed stones, all covered with moss and shaded by flowers and shrubs, we saw the stone that marks the lonely resting-place of the woman who wrote the story of Cranford. And we were glad that we had chosen such a town as the place to call our starting-point, and from Cran- ford we went forth to the exploration of England, with every mile and every moment of our journey opening up new horizons. CHAPTER III INTO WALES WE started late, for we were not eager to leave Knutsford too soon, and we went on under the cool, clear sky of a cool, clear day. We lunched in a shady spot by the roadside, the first of a long, long line of lovely luncheons out of doors; and again we went on our way. We passed motorcycles, many of them with side cars for a second passenger, and we passed a dean, as fat and solemn as a butler, cycling in a flat silk hat; and there were birds sing- ing in the great oaks and elms and in the green and mossy-boled beeches, and there were estates lined by walls or hedges and one had a wall fully eight feet high running for miles. We were on our way to Chester, and for the first few miles we followed a short-cut road out of Knuts- ford that was so bad from an English standpoint that our motor map did not even mark it! But we felt our way experimentally into it and found it of a smooth excellence. We came up with one of the automobile associa- tion patrol, bicycle mounted and uniformed in mus- tard and blue, with bedford-cord breeches and natty puttees and the " AA " brass emblem on his sleeve. We carried the " A A " emblem on the front of our car, and it is customary and advisable to do this, so that any one of the patrol, who are scattered all over Great Britain, can see that a member's car is ap- proaching and warn him of speed traps, fresh-tarred roads or any other danger or inconvenience. 15 16 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" We were on our way to Chester, because that city lay on the route to northern Wales, and we went there, although it is one of the places to which all tourists tend. For from the first, while feeling to the full the privilege of finding the places that are little visited, the stretches of countryside that are un- known to tourists, the villages and streams and hills and towers that are never seen by those who go by ordinary rail, we would not avoid the interesting places wliich are widely known. We were to explore a comprehensive England, and Chester has so much of interest that we would not willingly have missed it even had it not been so directly on our road. The people of Chester so take it for granted that ^asitors will go there, and have always gone there, that it is matter of firm belief, or at least they make themselves believe that they believe it, that King Harold was not actually killed at the Battle of Hast- ings, but, realizing that he was hopelessly defeated, fled from the field and to Chester and stayed there in retirement till death. For where, they would ask, could he find a more restful and delightful place of sojourn? It rather militates against the story of Harold, however, that there has always been satisfac- tory evidence of his death in battle, and that nothing is more certain than that William the Conqueror would definitely see that he was dead. But such a story cannot have and does not demand verification; the very existence of such immemorial traditions shows that some very great mysterious stranger really did come incognito to Chester, and his actual identity long ago became naturally a matter for romance. Chester still possesses its ancient walls, with memo- ries stretching back as far as Roman days, for some of the sections are built upon Roman foundations ; but the place has long outgrown these walls and they run principally through the present city instead of around Half-timbered cottages ix Darkness Lane The sundial of Ckanfohd churchyard INTO WALES 17 it. It is pleasant to go motoring through an ancient gateway, and to stop the car and climb the steps to the battlements, and get unexpected views into de- lightful gardens, where there is exquisite turf, and vines thick with innumerable flowers, yellow and white and pink, and where the vicar's daughter is playing tennis with a curate; and then, for contrast, to look down into the busily thronged streets. And the wall is of particular interest through being rich in homely memories pointing out that the great days of the past were not alone of knights and nobles, for the bakers, the saddlers and other town guilds had their appointed places on the towers and on the walls, and always guarded them. The age of chivalry included, in Chester, all classes, and the forms of ancient chivalry came down to almost modern days, for one of the prisoners cap- tured at a battle fought within sight of these very walls, in the Cromwell war, was a captain of the Queen's Troop, and, just as if from the pages of a novel instead of in grim fact, he was wearing a scarf that the queen had personally given him that he might wear her colors. There is a cathedral of Chester; a structure that would seem extraordinary if there were not so many cathedrals even more beautiful. And one of the things which each traveler must settle for himself is, to what class of things he will devote his time and how much of his time. A motorist finds that appre- ciation is possible and delightful without minutiae of inspection and also where to economize in mental superlatives. There are more than thirty cathedrals in Great Britain; thirty-four seems to be the precise number, but even high English authorities differ, which is certainly diverting enough; and to devote a long time to each cathedral would make it impossible to devote time to anything else; to study the thirty- 18 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN four would alone be a long summer's occupation! And so we decided to economize somewhat with cathedrals. But we endeavored not to pass anything of par- ticular interest or import; and so here in Chester Cathedral we followed an official guide — one ought always to take a guide at a cathedral, for he can open the otherwise unopenable and point out many things that a visitor could not but miss, and a good guide is far above rubies — but our guide here at Ches- ter could scarcely be described as being more than a garnet. However, we tramped about and in and out with him, through aisles and cloisters, and looked at a curious gallery under the clerestory that fronted into the cathedral nave through a low series of quatre- foils, " where monks used to stand during the serv- ice," as we were told was the tradition of its use. But the most interesting things, to us, in shadowy Chester Cathedral, for we knew we were to see other cathedrals still more rich in beauty, were two tattered and time-faded battle-flags that went up Bunker Hill against the deadly American fire, and they thrilled us as mementos of that great day on which the honors were with the losers. And after the garnet had left us we saw another American memorial, a tablet, called to our attention by a Welsh visitor who saw we were Americans, and it commemorates, in sim- ple and dignified words, the domestic and religious virtues of Frederick Philipse, and his devotion to his country and his king in opposing, at the peril of his life, " the late rebellion in North America," in conse- quence of which his estates were confiscated and he himself was compelled to flee; and the picture came to us of the Philipse manor house at Yonkers, over- looking the Hudson, and of the beautiful sister of this loyalist, whom Washington, years before the Revolution, would have married had she not chosen INTO WALES 19 instead an officer who afterwards fought against Washington in the war. How one country interlocks with another! — and all this from a forgotten tahlet on a pillar in this ancient English cathedral. We saw delightful old houses as we motored through Chester, half-timbered as the charming ancient style is termed, with projecting stories, and rich in carving and ornamentation, and such houses give a fine impression of the quaint and curious skill of old-time workers; and most interesting of all are the ancient Rows, houses with footways running on top of the first story and taking the place of what would be the front room of the second floor, making thus a second-story public passageway, pillared in front and with the third floor roofing it over, and witli this passageway giving access to the most at- tractive and gay little shops in town, facing upon them. We did not motor up and down Chester, but merely in at one side and out at the other, for it is impossible to do pleasant sightseeing while guiding a car through streets as crowded as these ; and so while we did most of our looking around we left the car in a garage. The problem of what to do with the car while ex- ploring the interiors of cathedrals and prowling through quaint passageways and walking on city walls is ever before the motorist on tour, for all his bags and rugs and coats, to say nothing of lamps and other detachables, not to speak of the very car itself, cannot be casually left on city streets; and at this garage we had a queerer experience than came any- where else on the journey, for, returning for the car sooner than expected, it was found removed to a remote corner, with our bags and coats laid in a heap in the bottom of it, " so as not to attract attention," we were told. It made us a little uneasy at the mo- ment, but everything seemed to be there — raincoats, 20 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN tools, rugs and trunk on the back. And we were many miles on the route, with darkness coming on, before we found that the lock on the outer case of the trunk had been torn off by a chisel and that we must have returned at just the vital moment, for the bags inside had not been opened. This was an uncanny beginning — but the only incident of the kind on the entire trip. But motorists are eager to get away from any city; it is not alone the call of the road, in the sense that it is the call for the exhilaration of movement, but it is a restless yearning that represents the restless longing of mankind for fields and sky and air and liberty. And so we stayed in Chester only long enough to see it briefly, and then with eager happi- ness and larger anticipation turned our faces west- ward. For us it was Westward Ho! over splendid highways to nearby Wales. And as we left the city we turned first down an attractive road to visit Eaton Hall, the seat of one of the wealthiest of English peers, the Duke of West- minster. It was a trifle annoying to find that motors were not allowed beyond the lodge gates, for, although it was cool when motoring, we found that the day had turned quite warm when we began to walk, and it was a walk of a mile and a half; but it was a fine walk through a superb park. In the notice at the entrance gate the building itself, the residence of the duke, is modestly referred to as the " house," but it is in reality a huge and homely pile of so-called Gothic. One sees that there has been effort to copy the towered and terraced effect of Westminster in London, as if remindful that it is from vast real- estate holdings in that city that this peer obtains the greatest part of his wealth. But his estate here is itself a thing of vastness; so many square miles, so many miles long — the duke even has coal mines of INTO WALES 21^ his own, with a private railway hne inside of the es- tate boundaries for carrying the coal. We were to see other great estates in the course of our journey, but none more strongly illustrative of the striking features of land tenure. Yet the duke does not attempt to hold stubbornly to all the square miles of his tract; no, he is reasonable; he does not wish to sell, indeed, but there are some outlying corners of the estate that he is willing to part with — on leases, so a signboard has it, of nine hundred and ninety-nine years. And we are once more on the highroad and feel that we have been going great distances because, be- ginning in England, we have already reached Wales ; whereas we have not really crossed the line, for, though Chester was once a part of Wales and is often looked upon as Welsh, it is really in cat-famous Cheshire and thus in England; and as to distance — well, a glimpse at the record shows that we have been going but slowly. Not that we were in a hurry, but that we have gone a much shorter distance than we had expected, for the car, being new, had been run- ning stiffly and with now and then a little difficulty. But we were glad to have a new car rather than a thoroughly broken-in one, feeling safer as to engine and brakes and tires, and confident that with a little patience the smoothness of running would come. On toward Hawarden! And the wheels seem musically to hum, and the wind comes fresh and clear, and a line of distant mountains looms, vaguely dis- tant, in a long gray line in the softly-graying after- noon. And we pass over a railroad grade crossing! and then another! — and thus are legends shattered, for we thought there were none in this land, for on no point is the average Englishman more insistent than in claiming that there are no railway grade crossings in Great Britain ; — and, with the realization 22 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN that this boast is based on error, we find ourselves passing over the boundary into Wales. And so the car is nursed carefully up the long hill that is topped by Hawarden village. And here is the shop to which Gladstone, the Great Commoner, used solemnly to carry his own shoes for their cobbling — for odd things must the politician do if by politics he would thrive, whether in England or in America, and it was by such devices as this that Gladstone strove to take the i^eople's minds from the fact that he was in reality living in a fine, great, exclusive, walled-in park, just as if he were not the Great Com- moner, but one of the titled Uncommoners; indeed, the park which he owned — or was it his wife? — has within it not only an ancient castle ruin, but the great imposing modern mansion in which he lived. Twice favored, he! And, as at some other great estates, the rule is against the entry of motor cars; reasonably enough, perhaps, but you begin to think that motoring in England is going to include much walking; and, al- though in theory we ought to enjoy a walk in such a park, and although we ordinarily should do so, we are all amused to find ourselves, like other motorists, positively aggrieved at what all at once seems a hard- ship. But you come to find that there is not to be much walking, after all. The park itself, with its great trees, is mostly rather rough and unkempt, and except for its finished roads it would seem much like a bit of attractive country pasture and woodland, but there is a wonderful gar- den, geometrically planned and edged delightfully with box, near the house, and separated from the park by a ha-ha, the diverting but serious name for a sunken walled ditch. And from great part of the long walk through the park there is a fine, broad sweep of landscape. INTO WALES 23 Thus far we had marveled at the small amount of plowed land seen along the roadsides, and this place is but another of those that show how much more charming a park may look than a plowed field and of how much less practical use it is to the countryside. And yet, it may be added, this particular park is so hidden from the public road behind a high, bleak stone wall that perhaps a stretch of arable land would look better, after all. A tiny cluttered village is Hawarden, and at its very edge was a gypsy camp, with village boys vainly trying to ride g>'psy donkeys bareback — a diversion as old as Time! The villagers that one meets are of a fine and simple type and the influence of Glad- stone and his shoes was probably excellent, one thinks! The car is in some straits again after its climb and everyone is unobtrusively willing to be helpful. A man lends his bicycle so that one of us may go in search of an expert mechanic, and the mechanic comes back in his motor repair car, carry- ing bicycle and rider with him, and arrives in the center of the village in a flurry of local excitement. A necessary adjustment is made and we are off on the road, down a long hill, in the cool of approach- ing evening, and out upon broad levels, and then we unexpectedly run into a series of manufacturing towns just where we are expecting open country — towns dreary in themselves, but with the faces of the people bright and not too tired. Men and women and children are thronging about, for work has ceased and they are out for an hour or so in the long and lingering light. We drive cautiously, for one must from the first realize that the people of Britain love to walk in the middle of the road; is it a survival of the time when there was safety only in the middle? And we go slowly also, because the placards are frequent that hold 24 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN the motorist to the ahiiost unattainable minimum of five miles an hour, and we do not know how par- ticular or how disagreeable a policeman or a magis- trate might be. There were plenty of policemen in sight, keeping a sharp eye on the factory throngs and giving an impression that trouble is repressed in its inception; and the officers look at us with an air of knowing that we are strangers and express by cour- teous waves of the arm that they are ready to be of help. We come up slowly behind a band; it is mill men earnestly blowing and thumping as they march proudly on, but attracting little attention, except from a following — no small exception! — of the en- tire small population of the neighborhood, with not a head of this following above the waistbands of the band! — giving a queer effect, as we look ahead and down a little slope, as of tall men and a thousand twinkling legs ! And all, bandsmen and children, tall men and legs, alike made courteous way for us and the players smiled with conscious pride as we thanked them and gave an impression as of praising their efforts. The line of dreary towns was left behind us — dreary, but with an impression of cheerful folk and a great deal of music, for there were two or three other bands, also passed, not to speak of a few hand organs! — and at one side of our road, as we went on in the now swift-gathering dusk, were great sweeps of yellowish brown, the sands of the estuary of the Dee. And how vividly and almost with a start came the memory of " Oh, Mary, call the cattle home, across the sands of Dee!" The tide was out, leav- ing the immense stretches bare, and right to the edge of the great sands, across the water from these dreary towns, came down green fields and garden walls and cottages. > - CO J • M PI ►d r. u M , o o ^ W > g ? 1/ M !z! > ^ > * l-i 1-1 *t M O « 1 ' ^'■;'- M ■-y.-^ < I INTO WALES 25 The sun set in a great round ball, and twilight came in earnest, and there was another long and crowded street and then, with unexpectedness, a delightful change to romance and solitary beauty, with hills and ravines and broken country and widening views that were very soft and lovely in that half light, and we came to a wonderful road, twisting up and ever up, with rocky banks rising above and rocky banks dropping far below, a road of sweet wildness, and as we reached the top, approaching Holywell, there was really a roadside well, with a group of pretty Welsh girls gathered about, each with one or two buckets for the evening supply of water; we came upon them unexpectedly, around a bend, and they were softly singing together an old-time part-song. It was all wonderfully effective there in the falling twilight, and the sound of their voices was very sweet and low. And we halted for a while, for the radiator had begim to boil and we needed water for it and a little time for the cooling of it, and our stop was lengthened perforce by a little more trouble in starting the car again — almost the last such trouble, this — and at our request, and with pretty shyness, the girls sang on, rendering old Welsh songs with a simple natural- ness. And close beside one of the older of the group stood a child, to whom its sister said, " Come, Jenny." "No!" " Come, Jenny! " with a soft urgency. " No! " with a firm and not disagreeable determi- nation ; not obstinacy, the differentiation lying in the fact that the child was attractive looking and that its voice was pleasantly full of a sort of curiosity. " She's two years and nine months old," said the sister, as if in patient explanation; and, "Come, Jenny," again she softly urged. 26 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" " No." And then, from the lips of this child of less than three years, and in clear tones, came the sen- tence, amazing for such an age: " I will wait; I want to see the motor go! " " And she'll wait! " said the sister resignedly. And she did. But it was not long. At the next cranking the engine rallied, and we were on the way again, and left behind us, on that wonderful road in the dim- ming light, the group of softly-singing girls. It was eight o'clock when we got to the town of Holywell ; we had loitered in Cranf ord and walked in long-avenued parks, and the motor had delayed us, but, although we had had some rather vague idea of getting to Conway that night, it did not bother us that we had gone only forty-nine miles, for every- thing had been so delightful. And from the begin- ning, although we knew that there was an expected total distance to cover within a definite time, we were not going to worry and hurry ourselves away from pleasant places. To see Great Britain thoroughly was our object, but it was even more our object to see it with perfect enjoyment. And, as it turned out, we saw it with both the thoroughness and the enjoyment. Our motor guide-books and road-books said noth- ing whatever of any hotel at Holywell, though Baedeker named two, but we soon espied these two, both good-looking, and chose one of them and drove up to the door quite ready for dinner and rooms. Our arrival put the place in a turmoil. It seemed as if the whole town was in a flutter, as if all the neighbors had to be gathered in for consultation or assistance. We could not in the least understand it, and in fact we do not understand it even yet, except tliat, in course of time, we gradually came to learn how unexpected visitors may be at many of the inns INTO WALES 27 of Great Britain. The taproom is sure to be open and busy, but as to visitors for meals and overnight, even in many a large hotel, there is quite often no anticipation, quite often no supply of food! But at any rate everyone here was in a pleasant flutter; the nominal head of the house, the man (who is never the actual head of a British inn), as well as his wife and his daughter and the man-servant and the maid-servants and the town. After many whisperings we were shown our rooms ; there were six well-ordered rooms to choose from, and we found them pleasant and clean, with much of old-time furniture and a vast ai'ray of white crocheted mats upon the toilet stands, and we were given hot water after more fluttering and told that a late sup- per would soon be made ready for us. "And what should you like?" was the solicitous inquiry. Full of thoughts of our inn of the night previous, we suggested chops, and there was instant acquies- cence, but with the acquiescence we noticed an in- creased flutter, and then followed much scurrying down corridors and shutting of doors in the distance, but we did not understand what it portended until, three-quarters of an hour later, we were told that not a chop was to be found in all Holywell! " So won't you choose something else? " We were really hungry. It was now half-past nine. And we felt that it would be the part of policy to let the choice rest with them. "Then bacon and eggs?" They and many an- other keeper of inns can utter these words and put such a beam of delight into their eyes as they say the formula, so we came to learn, that ideas of chicken or cold roast beef or the porterhouse steaks of home have to fall before its necessity. We were hungry. This was not precisely what we should have chosen, 28 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" but we promptly agreed, whereupon there was more flutter, more running here and there, more opening and shutting of doors and bobbing about, and mean- while we alternated between our rooms and the series of pleasant sitting-rooms and little lairs and dens provided for the accommodation of the visiting public, of which rooms there is always a disproportionately large number at an English inn. It was well after ten o'clock when the bacon and eggs, with great piled plates of buttered but delicious bread, with hot tea, was served ; we had suggested coffee, but had at once seen that coffee was quite beyond them. On the whole, we spent a pleasant night; assur- edly there could not have been more earnest desire to please. And when they asked, in all soberness, as we went to bed, what we should like for breakfast, we fully realized that it was a matter not of choice, but of what there might be. " Then bacon and eggs? " — this with an alert brightness as of discovery, as if bacon and eggs had never before been thought of for a visitor's delectation. We agreed ; there was nothing else to do ; but we bespoke a pot of coffee with earnest firmness. And all this was the more surprising, because Holy- well is an ancient town and has long been a place of considerable manufacturing, although we happened upon an approach by so attractive and lonely a road ; so old a town that people have been going there since before the time of William the Conqueror, he him- self having been one of the many who have stayed in the place — not in the inn where we were, however! For not only is Holywell a manufacturing center, but its holy well has for centuries drawn pilgrims thither — even James the Second pilgrimaged here to ask for the heir that afterwards came, although, so his enemies claimed (and surely as an odd reward of prayer), in a warming-pan! INTO WALES 29 At first we naturally supposed that where the girls were gathered singing was the famous well, but the holy well is really a spring, of enormous flow, quite on the other side of the town, and is surmounted by an ancient and really fine bit of stonework. But it does not, in our memories, in spite of William the Conqueror and James the Second, match the well where we halted the car and listened to the Welsh girls' songs. CHAPTER IV WENDING A WELSH WAY FROM the very first day the motorist begins to realize, and with every day the more deeply realizes, the delightful difference between starting at what moment he chooses and by what route he chooses and over the splendid open roads, rather than to be tied to railway time-tables and to views from the car windows. At Holj^well, all that we were to do was to start when we were ready, across country, with our next objective tiny St. Asaph and its tiny cathedral. We went out of ancient Holywell, up and up a very long hill, by a white road of limestone whiteness — odd, how many towns you leave by a long hill! — and the car climbed valiantly, and again the radiator boiled; but it is not wise, if one has regard for his radiator, to fill it with hard limestone water, and so an effort was made to obtain rainwater, but it was a difficult effort and it taught us always to carry a couple of quart bottles of good water in the car. We have waited till fairly on our way to say that there was no difficulty about observing the different rule of the road in England, the passing other vehi- cles on the left instead of the right; we had supposed that it would be a hard matter for at least some davs and that it would require very great caution, and it did require caution and concentration, but as any motorist at all times must give caution and concentra- tion to his work if he would be safe, there was little extra difficulty involved. For one thing, the driver 30 WENDING A WELSH WAY 31 is always helped by the fact that the motor that is coming toward him is turning properly, so that, with a little of extra caution, the entire matter is simple, and soon the turning to the left becomes almost auto- matic. It is rather odd, though, that it seems harder to remember to pass a vehicle properly that is going in the same direction than properly to pass one going in the opposite direction; to pass it on the right, that is, instead of the American left; and perhaps the ex- planation is that here there is no suggestion from the action of the other motor. But even this is too light a matter to make any trouble, and what threatened to be a serious inconvenience and possible danger van- ished into almost nothing. It was under a warm sun that we started on our way after our first night in Wales, and before long we reached a point from which there was a great view of the distant sea — a distant shimmering, noble and unexpected — and then we were off among the hills again, on a lofty road that was mainly level, and great mountains rose on the left, in the near distance, and between the road and the mountains were broad, smooth fields, furze-covered in a glory of bright yel- low, and at our right were groves of fir and larch. For miles in front of us the road went stretching on, a line of marvelous white. At the summit of a long hill there came another halt for engine cooling; and where could a more charming spot be chosen! For a while the car was determined not to start, no matter what was done in adjusting and turning; it seemed almost human in its perverseness ; we were miles from any possible aid, and then, in that lonely region, along came two Italians, wheeling their street-piano from one town to another, and at a word they stopped for us and began to play their tunes, and there on that level road be- tween great trees and the fields of furze we danced 32 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN and we laughed, and we forgot as we danced and we laughed that a motor car could be troublesome ! The Italians, in this strange land, were ecstatic at hearing a word or two of their own tongue and we said " Grazia " and " Buon giorno! " to them and they to us, all strangers far from home. After this gay, little rest on the highroad, we essayed to start the car again, and in an instant all its ill-temper had vanished and it started — and never again on the entire journey did it trouble us, but went steadily better and better and more and more smoothly day by day until the finish at Liverpool. It would probably not be best to rec- ommend dancing to enthusiastic Italian music on a lonely road as a remedy for a car that will not go, but it certainly worked well with us, and with light hearts we went on into the unknown. For it was all the unknown! There was never a moment when we did not feel that we were coming upon the unex- pected. We were always having some new experience or finding some unexpected view. The clouds and shadows chased each other across the wind-swept yellow fields, and lights and shadows flickered beneath the trees as the sunlight sifted through the swaying branches. And a great valley opened up, and down and down a long road we went, coasting for two miles — and in such glorious air there is a peculiar exhilaration in coasting, even more than in straight going under power — and then we were on a level stretch, and at length a tower, low and square and of stone, the tower of ancient St. Asaph's, smallest of all the cathedrals of Great Britain, came in the distance into view. In the midst of a little town, tiny and quiet, stands the tiny cathedral itself, in its quintessence of quiet. An American once remarked, after having been led to one after another of the mammoth cathedrals of Great Britain, and searching for the right descriptive The 3IAIX STREET OF CoNWAY ^'■■ •^S-f^ The striking towers of Conway Castle WENDING A WELSH WAY 33 word, that they were capacious! But this cathedral of St. Asaph's is far from capacious! In fact, the Lilliputian building is but 182 feet in length, as com- pared with the 584 feet of the new Liverpool cathe- dral or the 560 of ancient Winchester. St. Asaph's is noteworthy not only for this mat- ter of size, or rather lack of size, but in that it was used to keep cattle and pigs in, in the time of Crom- well, just as we were to learn later that Gloucester Cathedral was used for horses ; it was clearly the de- liberate intent of the highly religious men of the Com- monwealth to degrade cathedrals. And this cathe- dral seemed also noteworthy to us because among its monuments is one to the memory of Mrs. Hemans, an almost forgotten name, but one that ought to be re- membered, for a woman who could put into English literature three poems that are familiar to every per- son of even moderate education and knowledge has performed an achievement: the three being, " The Stately Homes of England," which splendidly ex- presses the English country landscape, " Casabi- anca," which is spirited and full of feeling, and " The Breaking Waves Dashed High," which every Amer- ican honors and loves, because she felt what she wrote and was herself thrilled by it and her lines splendidly express the brave spirit of the Pilgrims, even though the coast is not stern or rockbound; and if it be added that, in spite of putting up a monument here in the cathedral to her memory, she is really buried in Dub- lin, it is only to suggest that there may be Welsh bulls as well as Irish. St. Asaph's — which is pronounced San Tassaph's, just as up in Scotland they pronounce St. Andrew's San Tandrews — is really an interesting specimen among the thirty-four varieties. Length of building, it may be remarked, has no bearing upon size of income, for the bishopric of 182 feet receives pre- 34 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN cisely the same as does the bishopric of 584 feet, twenty-one thousand dollars! And of the two forces upon which England chiefly rehes for safety — her fleet and her church — she pays more to the bishops than to the admirals. But no consideration of the Established Church and its expensiveness to the people disturbed us as Americans or in any degree lessened our apprecia- tion of the supreme peacefulness of this little cathe- dral and its immediate surroundings. The little town was drowsing through its mid-day warmth; a few children went quietl}^ home from school, a few cattle wandered thoughtfully down the street, the tinkle, tinkle of a distant blacksmith's hammer came very softly and was scarcely louder than the wind in the great beech-trees that shaded the cathedral and the daisied turf and the massed laburnum that drooped yellow over the old stone walls. But even a quiet little cathedral and a little town must not too long detain us, and we are on our way again, following devious turns, and, as we paused for a few moments to let a flock of sheep maneuver through the tight-walled road to safety, a man came hurrying toward us. " You are from my own coun- try!" he cried joyfully. He did not look like an American, as he stood by us in his knee-long walking trousers. However, we supposed he must be, since he said so. But in a mo- ment, " You are from Devon! " he exclaimed. In a sense we were from Devon, for our car, sup- plied to us in Manchester, had been bought through a Devon agent, who had secured the license and plates for us, and the plates showed a " T " before the car number, each county having its own arbitrary initial to designate the cars hcensed by it. The man was disappointed to find we were not from Devon. " I have been looking at every motor car WENDING A WELSH WAY 35 since I came to Wales," he said. He was far from home, he went on, up here, and then he smiled, it coming to him that the distance could not very well seem great to us. But the greater part of English folk travel but little; the sons of the well-to-do still like to take a European journey, the equivalent of the " grand tour " of the past, and the rest of the na- tion go about sparingly, except on short bank-holiday trips and, every summer, to the particular resort to which all their lives they have been accustomed to go. — And yet, after all, some Englishmen learn to travel, for Henry M. Stanley was born less than ten miles from that very spot! The English travel pro- saically or else go very far afield, indeed. The Devon man, finding us strangers, though not Devonians, at once exerted himself to be of assist- ance and he pointed out, across a sweep of fields, a ruin standing grimly beneath the shadow of a distant mountain. " That is Rhuddlan," he said, and in its distant vague and shadowy dignity it seemed to be telling vaguely of the stories that have linked it with the names of the sovereigns of eight centuries and with many a siege and battle. And again we realized the privileges of motoring, in coming upon the fas- cinating and the seldom-visited away from the line of railroad travel. We were aiming, by a diagonal cross-country road, for Abergele and the coast and we passed a very fine, modern gateway built quite successfully in the style of the old, the gate to the park of the castle of Dun- donald. And we motored by a high hill road to where we suddenly had a great view of the sea stretching off superbly in a lovely blue under the bright sun and the brightest of bright blue skies. It was Colwyn Bay, and it curved sweepingly to the right, to where, far off, it was edged with white lines of sand with mountain heights rising beyond, while at the left there 36 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN was a mighty headland, Great Orme's Head, rismg high and jutting far, and from our lofty road there was a steep dropping down into the sea, and behind us was a hedge of hawthorn and ivy with hills rising steeply, and in the hedges the cuckoos were flitting about. We went on by that wonderful road with its great views from our height and — how often we were to notice such differences! — with the railroad far below us, where little could be seen. There were rocks and mountains, headland after headland, the ever blue sea far below, and the road, ever turning and bending but holding to this lofty height above the water, was often a narrow line between hedges or walls and often ran beside private parks of dewy, leafy greenness with their great trees. And we stopped at a particu- larly beautiful point to eat our luncheon; often and often we were to enjoy these impromptu luncheons, with strawberries or apricots or cherries — there were never any other possibilities of edible fruit to the American taste — and always with zest and enjoy- ment at precisely the spots where we could lingeringly enjoy some fine flavor of scenery or countryside. And we made a point of preparing for these delight- ful al fresco affairs by purchases at some time in the forenoon, at the likeliest-looking place possible, rather than to wait and delay for luncheon at some inn, where the hour of our arrival and the hour at which they saw fit to serve a luncheon were impos- sible to harmonize. Thus we had the middle of the day thoroughly in our own control rather than at the mercy of the innkeepers. This plan also left us free and ready to indulge in afternoon tea at the tea- shops or tea gardens as we came to them, in the course of the afternoon, for at such places the service is prompt. And we left the sea and the heights, and descended WENDING A WELSH WAY 37 to an immaculately clean and new-looking watering- place named from the bay, Colwyn Bay, where no one seemed to be doing anything in particular, but where everyone seemed to be having a satisfactorily good time, and soon we were passing over beauti- fully widening Conway River, by a sort of causeway bridge, and went through a gate in the town wall, a gate so narrow that not only could two motors not pass, but it seemed as if even a very thin man and the motor could not pass, and we were inside an- other of the few walled towns of Great Britain and beside a castle of huge immensity. The old man who took our threepence each for en- trance was eager to watch the car while we were inside, and we remember looking down from the bat- tlements a little later and seeing him standing ear- nestly, leaning on his cane, the very picture of a faithful watchman ; and from the battlements we saw much more than a faithful watchman, for we saw the picturesque streets and the ancient homes and we saw the river and its broadened bay. The walls of the castle, from twelve to fifteen feet thick, the eight massive round towers, the great halls of the interior, the stupendousness of it all, are tre- mendously effective There was the old High Street to motor through, and the oldest house to be glanced at, and an ancient and well-preserved town house, with wonderful ceil- ings, to be seen before continuing on our road; and a splendidly delightful road it was, now running won- derfully through a narrow valley set low among great heights and now rounding out upon an open stretch of water, and climbing higher and higher to give us the view. Blue water set with islands; glori- ous and exhilarating whirling around headlands and gliding along at the very edge of the water and at the very base of cliffs that rise far above, and pass- 38 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN ing slate quarries high up on the great cliffs; the largest slate quarries in the world being hereabouts, and with the aspect now and then of whole mountains removed, not bj^ faith but slate; and with mountains of debris. And thus to Bangor, fourteen miles from Conway, fourteen miles of splendid pleasure and with an added sense of the great horizons of motoring! — the ever-changing horizons that are such a keen and constant delight. A quiet place is Bangor, but it was there that we somehow came to an impression of Wales as a na- tion by itself, a people with earnest self-centered in- terests and affairs; and a very practical folk in worldly affairs, yet at the same time a people who still honor their poets and singers, and particularly the poets ; and at Bangor they were preparing a great structure for a coming Eisteddfod (to pronounce this word just as the Welsh do, and without apparent effort, makes a stranger free of the best the land can offer!), the Eisteddfod being the recurrent festival of poets and minstrels and musicians, and attracting thousands upon thousands of Welsh to these week- long gatherings. We glanced at the cathedral, notable in that it is perhaps the plainest and most unattractive of them all, and at white-clad men playing cricket in a green field near by, and went along by the sand-bordered INIenai Straits and looked at the tubular bridge, once world-famous, leading over to the island of Anglesey, and wondered who went over to that big and prac- tically forgotten island; and we remembered, before leaving Bangor, that its name is commemorated by its faithful sons in the slate districts of both Maine and Pennsylvania. A few miles beyond Bangor we passed road re- pairers elaborately at work ; first we came to a stretch of wet tar, and next to a pebbled stretch, this giving WENDING A WELSH WAY 39^ the tires an artistic pebble-dash effect ; and, if we have not said anything thus far about the roads, it has not been because they are not worth writing about, but to see first how well they maintained their average. And they are wonderful roads! Smooth, without holes and free from little stones — motoring in Great Britain is like motoring on a never-ending series of smooth floors. And this is because, in the first place, the roads are splendidly built; and, in the second place, because they are kept in repair with never- ceasing vigilance. And we speak of the roads just now because it was a few miles out of Bangor that we noticed for the first time on the trip broken glass on the road; a broken bottle it was, and it was an experience so seldom repeated as to be notable. It was evening, but still it was light. In a fine run of ten miles, past many a great walled estate with its great park and its great trees around a great house, we came to Carnarvon, a busy, clean town, with the streets thronged with people and the air full of a chirring hum of talk ; which talk, as we were to dis- cover, was mostly Welsh! It was a modern-seeming street down which we went to our hotel, and twisting, as we should expect it to do in an ancient town. Old- fashioned folk did not like the street called Straight! At the hotel, a once-while coaching inn which com- bines an old-time air with modern conveniences, we had a delightful dinner. We even achieved the fa- mous pink salmon and green cucumber on a white plate! There was a quaint little bar with rows of shining brass and copper measures and a pretty, modest-looking barmaid, and little square smoking- room with red-leather settees, and cupboards of old china for upper-hall decoration and a garage with high-walled inclosures, topped with spikes and broken glass. 40 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN But all the time we felt that the town was curi- ously not coming up to expectations. Here it was, bright, prosperous, busy, mostly modern, and yet we had gone to Carnarvon solely because of there being at that place one of the greatest castled ruins of the world. And we have seen no castle! After dinner, it being light though very late, we strolled out, and went farther down the busy, modern street, our won- der increasing; then suddenly, as we turned a corner, across an open square and right in front of us, there stood an enormous castle! It was all so unexpected! There was no gradual leading up to it with ancient houses ; nothing to tell that the castle was right there till the very corner was turned. Carnarvon is a place for an impression. I WiTIITX THE BARE SHELL OF CARNARVON io>^^m^'^^4i ^M, A MOUNTAIN KOAl) UNDER SnOWDON A LoxEi.v W'ki.sh cdttage Haulecii Castle CHAPTER V ON TO HARLECH WE did not try really to see Carnarvon Castle, except to get a sense of its exterior, until the next morning. And one does not wish for many statistics about such a structure; one does not care just how many centuries it stood, or how many sieges it sustained, or just how large it is; it is the tremendous size and strength of it, the tremen- dous impression of feudahsm, that count. But there are some details that are really neces- sary to an adequate comprehension of such a place, and that the banquet hall has the noble length of one hundred feet and is forty-four feet wide, with a splen- did height of forty, is one of them ; and even the most unimaginative cannot but realize what scenes there must have been in that magnificent room, now a bare stone shell. By contrast, it may be said that the room in which the first English Prince of Wales was born is of the tiny dimensions of onh'^ twelve feet by eight ! A comfortable room it must have been, though, with its still existent fireplace and the hangings and floor coverings which long since disappeared. For it is a great mistake to think of the people of the Middle Ages as living in rooms of cold, bare stone. That im- pression naturally comes because we see the buildings of the feudal times dismantled and bare, but when these buildings were used they were lived in with great comfort, not only by rough soldiers, but by ladies who wore superb gowns and jewels and knew how to keep warm. Of course they did not have 41 42 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN American steam heat, nor did they have the equiva- lent of it, but so far as that is concerned they do not have it in England even yet. Now, we do not mean that the feudal times gave comforts equal to those of to-day, but that they did really give a great deal of coziness and comfort, and that this particular little room would be very cozy, indeed. Edward the First, by the way, great fighter that he was, is seldom thought of as a humorist, yet he seems to have had something of the humorist in him, after all. After having the last Welsh Prince of Wales rather summarily disposed of, he tried to ap- pease the Welsh people by promising them a prince who should be born in their own country and who could not speak a word of English, and one can imagine with what delight this promise was received. Well, when his son was born at Carnarvon, he had him at once shown to the people and promptly and publicly proclaimed as Prince of Wales; and the son and heir certainly fulfilled both of the promised con- ditions! And at the death of Edward the First his own statue — and this must have been by his personal order — was placed over Carnarvon Castle entrance, and it represented him with his sword half drawn. At once the Welsh were in a fury: " King Edward is drawing his sword upon us even when dead! " they cried; whereupon, " No," was the quieting response, " he is simply sheathing it! " And as the Welsh did not know which way was really meant, and they couldn't settle it, they let it quietly go at that, and let the statue stand. The little rooms and big; the elaborate ancient wa- ter supply, and the deep wells with pipes of lead or stone running here and there; the many towers, not round like those of Conway, but pentagonal, hex- agonal, octagonal; the intricate passages, the huge- ness and impressiveness of it all, the walls of the ON TO HARLECH 43 thickness of fifteen feet, unite to arouse a tremendous picture of the tremendous past. And striking things may be done in such a castle even in these modern days; for it was as recentl}'^ as 1911 that the present Prince of Wales was given his formal investiture there — oddly enough, in view of the history of the castle, the first such investiture in history — and at that time seventeen thousand people were gathered inside of the walls. When we were there repairs were in progress, neces- sitating the putting in of new beams, and beams for the purpose had been brought from Canada, beams of oak, one of them weighing — at least so the fore- man said, but he may have been under the influence of the memory of Edward the Joker — eight and three-quarter tons; and it certainly was the biggest beam that either of us ever saw. The thousands of men who worked in building this great structure received two pennies apiece a day. That the labor was compulsory and that there was no striking for higher wages may well be believed; a strike on the part of the workmen would have made the soldiers strike them, as one of the party remarked ; but the architect was given the princely remuneration of twelve shillings a week. And the way in which he provided places for the ingenious downpouring of melted lead and clever apertures for crossbow shoot- ing, to welcome the coming and speed the parting guests, are alone sufficient to show that he well earned his salary. From Carnarvon we turned southward, and we went up a long, long hill — some three miles of climb- ing — and then, looking back, there was a magnificent sweep of view, and in front of us were towering twin and purple peaks that guarded a pass. And a winding road led us through this pass, with great bare mountains on either side and a swirling 44 TOURING GREAT BRITAUST stream beside us; and when we stopped for a few moments in the midst of that loneliness, there was not a sound but the cawing of a few rooks and the distant intermittent bleating of a few sheep. Snow- don, the highest of all the Welsh mountains, loomed in front of us, lofty and grand. Narrow and fre- quently twisting, the road led on, with steep grades up or down, Avith rocky gorges beside us, thick with bluebells and fern, and ^vith rarely a solitary house to be seen ; and near one such solitary little house we lunched, beside a rocky pool near the road, where the stream expanded in deep green breadth and where precipitous heights and hoary-looking woods were all about us. In front of the lonely little cottage was a tiny sign, " Tea and Hot Water " ; a characteristic sign, this, of picturesque places in Great Britain, and meant to show that hot water will be furnished to those whose taste demands that they carry their own tea rather than trust to cottage quality. The roof of the cot- tage was entirely covered with ivy so ancient that its stems were enormous in thickness, and it lay there in a mass fully two feet deep, and beside the cot- tage there grew bush fuchsias in plants rising eight feet high and bearing showers of magenta blossoms. The living greenery effaced the cottage and made it look like a wild habitation. The interior of this tiny cottage, with its thick stone walls, was just two tiny little rooms, and there was an old Welsh dresser of oak on the stone floor, and a disproportionately big, dark fireplace, with the tiniest of fires glowing in its depths to boil the water, and tiny little windows with tiny diamond panes of greenish glass. And there were literally flies in that scenic oint- ment; they were on a few cattle which came wander- ing up to the pool to drink, and they thick-covered them and tortured them worse than we had ever seen ON TO HARLECH 45 fly-torture in America ; but the cattle, with their flies, wandered off after a little, and again we were in solitariness among the mountains, except for the widow effaced behind her fuchsias. And then we were surprised to notice an artist hard at work on a jut- ting rock, and quite astonished when, in a woodland path on the other side of the stream, there came into view a couple of lovers, short-skirted and knicker- bockered (if one may use a Washington Irving word about an Englishman on a holiday in Wales) ; and we were positively amazed when, around a curve in the road, there came into view two banting and panting women armed with walking-sticks and ^\4th pedome- ters audibly ticking. The call of the car, the eternal lure of the highway, had been upon us even before we were thus forced to realize that our supposedly solitary paradise was in reality near some mountain hotel; and again we started off, and in a little while we came to the hotel itself, all wistaria covered and shaded by trees, and with immense delight we found it to be "The Royal Goat"; Use majeste, if there ever was! And we found not only the Royal Goat, but a vil- lage, a beautifully located little place, bearing the name of Beddgelert. And in a world which offers so many places named from varied degrees of man- kind, it is refreshing to find at least one place, and so beautiful a place, named from a faithful dog, and in remembrance of a national hero's cruel hastiness! • — for here the famous Llewelyn one day left his child in charge of his dog Gelert and, returning, met Gelert all covered with blood and instantly killed him, thinking he had killed the child, only to find, a few moments too late, that Gelert had killed a wolf at the child's very side. The very spot where Gelert was buried is still pointed out. The road led us superbly on, and a little to the 46 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN south we came to the wonderful pass of Aberglasllyn, with its tremendous walls of rock, with its rushing river and its mighty trees, all overhung by a sky most brilliantly blue. And there was such delight in the splendid mountain air and in the wonderful exhila- ration of it all ! And we went on, following the twist- ings and turnings of the road, with a curious sense as of turning the elbows of mountains. A few miles more of winding, with a constant im- pression of retaining walls, and of heights and depths, and of streams hurrying in their rocky beds, and of all the glory and freedom of the mountains, and of grades that were long and easy and of roads that were marvelously smooth (as well made, those roads, and as well kept, in that lonely and sparsely settled region, as they could be in a region of private parks and wealthy living!), and all at once we came to an- other town, by a precipitous drop of the road through a narrow street, with close-built houses up to its very edge; our first experience of the sharp descents in British roads, where the grades of ancient pack-horse days remain; and we went on through a town that was dozing in a mid-day rest; a town inhabited, but with a positively ghostly effect as of enchantment, for there was not a soul to be seen nor a voice to be heard. And we reached a long bridge, a toll bridge, and we asked the name of the water, imposing in its tidal width, over which the long bridge stretched, and in reply came consonants in such a sibilant ripple as showed us practically that Welsh is still a spoken tongue. We were approaching Harlech; a name that had always gone marching stirringly through our minds, although neither of us has any portion of Welsh blood. And we were newly stirred, as we went on, not only by the fact that we were actually approach- ing Harlech, but by the practical realization that it ON TO HARLECH 47 is an actual and existent place and not merely a name in a battle song. We had come down into a region of miles and miles of sweeping yellow sand, and of great salt-water meadows that stretched away interminably, for the sea was now at hand. And then the road became a long, arcaded way, with branches meeting overhead of beech and larch trees, with ivy covering their trunks and ferns growing thick in the shadows. And the road emerged from the tree-made tunnel, and beside it were hundreds of hawthorns and rhodo- dendrons in bloom; and whirling around a corner came an Englishman in an automobile at fifty miles an hour, and he neither slowed nor moved to one side, but left us to dodge him as best we might. And the road led up a long and sweeping grade and we were in Harlech, the very town of the " Men of Harlech"! A village old and poor it is, but with bravery of aspect; a village rather bleak, and with a sort of swept-bare look ; even three hundred years ago an old record set down that it was " a very poore towne, having no trade or traphicke"; a village without present-day trade or manufactures, and entirely with- out the bright new villas that would be fatal to the looks of a place with such a reputation; — and the roadway was full of httle children playing games in Welsh. Beside the village is the ancient castle, and it was standing here when the forever-stirring marching song was written. It rises in isolated dignity, from its jutting headland of rock. Its noble entrance-way leads between round towers, and, once inside, it is as if one were back again in the heart of the Middle Ages. Its somber, splendid, massive dignity makes it, standing four-square upon its noble outlook, a castle of one's dreams. And you hear nothing but the 48 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN screaming cries of the seabirds that, disturbed by the intrusion of the twentieth century, go circling about the towered ruin or diving through impossible cran- nies to their nests; nothing but the cries of the birds and a sullen booming undertone of sound which is the voice of the sea, telling what the Harlech song- maker had in mind when he wrote of the " sound like rushing billows," and " the surge on surge that rush- ing follow, battle's distant sound " ; and here at Har- lech the sounds of the sea and of battle have sternly commingled. Over yonder is the sea, and you see it ripphng against the shore in long white-crested lines. It has a brave old history, this castle, and its great inner courtyard was in olden days very different from its present aspect, thick grown as it now is with grass with daisies pied; a piquant contrast, this, to what must have been its fiercely martial aspect when it was the last castle in England or Wales to hold out for the House of Lancaster and the last in Wales to hold out for Charles the First. Perhaps its finest story is that, told in ancient chronicles, of a siege far back in the 1400's, when it was held by a certain David ap levan ap Eignion against Sir Richard Herbert. Herbert summoned David to surrender, but David, who had served a great deal in the wars in France, quaintly replied that, as he had once held a French fortress long enough to make all the old women in Wales talk about him, he thought he ought now to hold this Welsh fortress long enough for all the old women in France to begin talking about him. But in spite of quaintly brave words and a defense that was even braver, surrender was necessary after all, but Sir Richard, mightily impressed by the sturdy qualities of David with the two aps, promised to use all pos- sible influence with the king to save his life; it being h.,^^ T<^m» DlAin I'lKiTiH.liAl'lltD FROM THE MOTOR, IN A CASTLE PARK A WINDIXG STREET IX ANCIENT SHREWSBURY ON TO HARLECH 49 the agreeable custom of those days to kill captives who had shown special warlike qualities. But the king (it was Edward the Fourth) demurred to the appeal, whereupon Sir Richard demanded either that the king take his, Sir Richard's, life, in lieu of the life of David, or else, better still, that he put David back again within the walls of Harlech and set some- one else to take him out ! And to such an alternative of demand the king, himself a good fighting man, with good humor yielded, and David's life was saved. From the dizzy wall at the precipice edge, Harlech Castle looks over great reaches of level plain, far below, and across the great sand dunes to the sea that goes stretching gloriously to the far horizon; and away off to the right there rises a long and mighty line of mountains, with summits crenelated against the sky. And not far away, on a little hillock in view from the castle, is an old-looking house which was the house of a certain Wynne, a poet who flourished about the year 1700, and the people of the town will tell you, with enthusiasm, that he was the author of a book renowned in literature, " The Vision of the Sleeping Bard," or, as they express it — and by this you will again feel sure that you are really among the men of Harlech — " Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsg"! But at any rate, as one of us said, our car was cer- tainly not a sleeping bard; and soon we were on our way again, soon we were again responding to the never-ceasing lure of distances. And we bore with us from Harlech an ineffaceable memory. CHAPTER VI THROUGH SHREWSBUKY WE were to aim, in a general way, through the very heart of Wales and back into England by way of Shrewsbury; and we remem- bered that it was in this northern portion of Wales that Lloyd George was born, and it was interesting to notice the absolute devotion with which most of the people spoke of him and the malevolence of the smaller number who as frankly and as absolutely hated him. And as one should always be willing to believe an excellent story without too suspiciously questioning its details, we were quite willing to be- lieve the genial Welshman who said to us that when he told an old man, his neighbor, that King Edward the Seventh was dead, the old man asked, " Then who'll be the new king?" To which our genial ac- quaintance of course replied, " George," whereat the old man nodded wisely and said: " I'm not surprised; no, I'm not surprised; I've watched him ever since he was a small boy here and I'm not surprised." And now there came the matter of a few very pleasant miles along a coastwise road, but the road was so narrow and so confined and had such sudden and often hairpin curves, in unbelievable number that, with the stone walls close on either side, it was really very dangerous. And the sea slipped by us on the right and the great hills slipped by us on the left, and there were ruins and peasants' cottages, and numberless rhododendrons on numberless banks — but never on a poor man's bank! — and we were in Bar- 50 THROUGH SHREWSBURY 51 mouth, a town that rises, tier above tier, in tall houses all clean and bright, a town looking out over the sea and curious in having nothing whatever of landward view. Barmouth is a watering-place and its houses did not grow there, but were built for seaside visitors — a condition that precludes the romantic and, though it should not, even the beautiful. Barmouth is a study in contentment; it is a place without piquancy, a place where nothing is going on, where nothing has ever gone on ; a place where old ladies and gentlemen go about with infinite sedateness and where there is a general atmosphere of little walks taken very seri- ously, of afternoon teas at inviolable hours and of interminable knitting. It is a place where there is nothing to do and where the sojourners take delight- ful comfort in doing it. Everybod)'' seems so peace- fully content that it might well be a town of pussy- cats basking in the sun, but it gives positive pleasure to the casual American in showing as it does that it is possible for the older people to be of consequence and that the younger folk and their affairs may well be secondary. At the edge of Barmouth is a great basin, the widened mouth of a tidal river, and we turn our backs to the afternoon sun and follow a road beside the stream, silvered as it is in the sunlight, that winds for miles between broad levels of yellow sand that go stretching far off to mountains that are green right down to where the yellow sand comes up to them. Up in these blue and green mountains we came to Dolgelly, an unattractive and bare town in the heart of a fascinating region, and all about were lush growth and splendid heights that were beautifully effective in outline; not like the Rockies in height, not even equal to the White ^lountains, but rising so quickly from sea level as to have a tremendous effect 52 TOURIXG GREAT BRITAIN of far more than their actual altitude. After all, Snowdon itself, with its great reputation as a high mountain, tlie highest south of the Scottish line, rises only to 3,560 feet! We say an unattractive town, and yet Dolgelly is a place of individuality, a place that is Welsh for the Welsh and not for the English visitor; a place w^here the men walk in heavy-shoed, sober-clad aus- terit}'' and where the shovel-hatted clergyman bows and is saluted by every passer-by and where the market-place is sibilant and murmurous with " ll's," this double consonant being pronounced in Welsh by beginning as if to pronounce a single " 1 " and turn- ing it into a sound as if blowing on hot soup. It is a town where Welsh is still a familiar language, and yet in this remote Welsh place there is a well- imiformed policeman at the end of the market-place from whom the stranger may ask questions as to roads and be set on his way. Not far beyond Dolgelly we were to make a turn toward a pass, at Cross Foxes ; — how important these catch-points are for the hour! — and we inquired from hard-to-find and hard-to-talk-to laborers who could only speak Welsh, and we looked and we worried for Cross Foxes — the cross-Fox-River-when-we-come-to- it buzzing in our minds. And finally we found it, a quiet, very remote inn at a road junction of obscure directions which did not fit either the map or the policeman's route, but Dinas INIawddwy was our destination on the Shrewsbury road. Beyond Dol- gelly we had begun to climb, by long sweeps that alternated with levels, and it seemed as if we should never reach the top. We did not at first realize that we were probably climbing the backbone of Wales and we certainly learned that Wales had plenty of backbone. The water in the radiator would persist in boiling now and then as we climbed, and there were THROUGH SHREWSBURY 53 stops for seeking for brooks and springs for refilling — as the car panteth after the water brooks, so to speak — and each stop gave us occasion and excuse to take another long look at the ever-widening view. The solitude of the road was very marked; not only were there no houses, but there seemed to be few travelers. We kept seeing the blue and chair-shaped summit of Cader Idris from different points of view — the special mountain of this region, as Snowdon is the special one of farther north. And we learned in this climb a point of much practical importance, which was always to keep the bottles of water full, for very often in Great Britain water is surprisingly hard to find and too often hard when you find it! Too often it is undesirable on account of limy qual- ity or else is full of peaty or grassy sediment. The wayside watering trough for horses is not a British institution. The car climbed admirably and ever the reward was greater and greater in increasing greatness of view, until the summit, known as Cold Door Pass or Bwich Oerddrws (we chose to call it " Cold Door"!), was reached and we looked over miles of glory in a glitter of bright sunlight. And then came the descent. The ascent had been gradual, with its long levels alternating with the ris- ing grades, and had been a rise spread over miles and always along a two-sided road. But the descent was immediate, one-sided, steep; it was a constant and steep curving downward on an unprotected road and always with the possibility of tumbling far down if control of the car should be momentarily lost at one of the unexpected curves. The first downward curve would have meant a drop of a thousand feet. But it was all so glorious! It was rugged and wild and of fascinating dreariness, with sweeping views along a lovely valley opening in front, and with now and then 54 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN an aeroplanish view of a house nooked solitary, far below. Night was coming on. We could see the dusky twilight gathering in uncanny shadows down in the valley and the air was growing chill and we were frankly hungry. That road was perhaps two miles of unbroken de- scent; the trouble is that the explorer never starts to measure with the speedometer at the beginning of such a road, for at the beginning he does not know that he is to be interested in the record. But the floor of the valley was safely reached at last, by careful driving under compression, and we emerged in a region rich in cultivated greenery and in striking con- trast with the stern bareness of the summit and with the lean pasturage of the descent. It was late. It was even late for a land of long- lingering twihght, and the dark was rapidly gather- ing about us in the valley, and therefore we were on the lookout for an attractive inn, but we passed at least one which did not measure up externally to our ideas of a stopping-place romantic enough for such a region. And that is a great advantage of be- ing in a motor car; it so annihilates distance that you feel supremely independent as to going on to where it pleases you to stop. And we finally came to such a place, a tiny wayside and waterside inn of charm. But our apparent necessity was strong; the cold, the closing in of darkness, a sparsely-settled and still more sparsely-inned region in our front — and so the highest London prices were promptly quoted us, for that little, simple country inn and its simple accom- modation. It reminded us of a sign approaching a popular resort, at home, announcing that no advantage would be taken of motorists more than of other guests! Without replying, we started on and left the man THROUGH SHREWSBURY 55^ in his doorway gazing after us with open mouth. And if, after a run of miles down the valley, past now and then some old yew-shaded church with gleaming gravestones, but seldom seeing anywhere a sign of Efe, we had not chanced upon an inn, we might have regretted scorning the hospitahty of the man who had tried to take advantage of our need, for it was after nine o'clock when we ran into the quiet street of little Cemmaes and to our disappointment saw not a sign of an inn — ^literally not a sign. But at the end of a length of garden wall was a house built at the very sidewalk edge, whose doorway was covered by a little stone shelter projecting out- ward. There was a light inside, and the door stood open. It had a homey, pleasant look as we passed it in the deepening dusk and, as we now saw we were at the end of the village, it occurred to us that it might really be an inn, in spite of its showing no sign. One of us went back and found that it really was. And, although this was only our fourth night out, and very manj^ inns, large and small and most of them extremely pleasant, were to follow, the great number of pleasant inn experiences has not clouded the mem- ory of that inn at Cemmaes. As we went in we all felt the sense of relief that comes to any belated traveler on finding shelter. There was an excellent locked garage ; a fire flickered up in the grate of the sitting-room ; the bedrooms were fresh and cozy, with high-piled beds that promised restful slumber; there was hot water brought us in shining brass pots. Naturally, no meal was ready at the moment, but we were told it would be ready soon, and it was. There was a picturesque little bar fronted ^vith bowed glass in tiny panes, and the bar looked so small that we measured it and found it only five feet by five, 56 TOURING GREAT BRITAHNJ- and it was pleasant to look upon, with its shin- ing glasses and brasses and its tankards of pewter. And there was a stone-paved taproom with a fireplace and a great semicircular settle of oak, old, high- backed, paneled and wax-polished. On the stairs ticked an old-time grandfather's clock; and the late supper was in a low-set room, entered by a doorway behind the tall taproom settle; a cozy room, which we found, in the morning at break- fast, opened out with glass doors into an adorable walled garden. The cooking was simple and excellent; the little maid was neat and brisk and cheerful. The coffee was good — an unexpected touch, this last — and the name of the landlady was a delight, for it was Pru- dence Jones! And she was all that the possessor of such a name ought to be. It interested us, in talking with some Cemmaes people, to learn that the region through which we had just passed was at one time so infested with red- haired robbers that the quiet people of Cemmaes used to build scythes in their chimneys to prevent the rob- bers from coming down in the night. Whereupon we pleased ourselves vastly by thinking that we remem- bered that a certain disappointed man had red hair. We may as well confess that we did not know until next morning where we were. We heard the name of the village, but the Welsh have a habit of not pro- nouncing as well as they spell! They spell elabo- rately and beautifully! And in the morning we copied the name from the postoffice sign — Cemmaes — and reconciled it to the pronunciation, which was remindful of an apothecary's shop! Shortly after we left, the next morning, a light drizzling of rain came on, but it is not entirely a joke to say that an ordinary rain is not so wet in England as it is in America, for there really is no other way THROUGH SHREWSBURY 57 to express it; and women were scrubbing the stone walks in front of their cottages in the rain, stone cot- tages that solitarily dotted the roadside, cottages casement-windowed, and of a wonderful whiteness that contrasted markedly with the deep green of the fields in which they were set. We were on the point of stopping to put up the top of the car when the drizzle ceased, and we went on over a low, bleak pass and emerged upon a great and hill-encircled plain, and came to Newtown, a little manufacturing place for fine flannel, really new about a hundred years ago. Shortly beyond Newtown is the Severn River, a gentle stream flowing through a broad and pleasant valley with hills rising in slow slopes; and the road of tar-macadam, level as a board and literally swept with brooms, even far out in the country, led for miles between low hedges of blooming hawthorn and wild roses and beside great fields yellow with buttercups and with fine clumps of trees. Welshpool was the next town, a busy, pleasant place, and leading right off the busy main street we found a lane leading into the park of Powis Castle. It was all so simple; there was not even a lodge, but an old man ran to open the gate of the park. We had been told by a policeman, always the reliable dis- penser of local facts, that the park was freely open to the public even with motor cars. It was a wonderful ride of a mile from the busy town street to the old Powis Castle. We passed a pool filled with pond lilies, and ponds with curious waterfowl; there were thrushes singing joyously, and mighty oak trees, and charming glades where scores of exquisite deer, with their horns in the velvet stage, were lying down or wandering about. It was so mar- velous, all this, so sweetly sylvan so near a busy town, and it was clear that motor cars were not common 58 TOURING GREAT BRITAI:N" there, for the deer hardly noticed our presence; but we did, indeed, go through the park very slowly and quietly, appreciating the absolute peace and beauty of it all. We came in front of the great red stone castle — a castle stately and fine, dating back for a satisfac- tory number of centuries, still lived in, richly kept up and with marvelous terraced gardens round about, terraced gardens dropping away from the castle-knoll in line after line of beauty. There were stately peacocks, there were trees trim- clipped into cones with geometrical care, there were masses of yew and there were wonderful areas of bright-green box with tops trimmed actually to the smoothness of a lawn ; and one great triangle in par- ticular, one hundred feet long on each of its sides, was a solid mass of turf-smooth box, kept clipped by men on boards. Beyond Welshpool the Severn Valley broadens and we pass the border line back into England and are in Shropshire. A striking mountain that has been seen for miles takes possession of the landscape and dominates it. We reached the mountain and rounded its point and glided by its base and were out into a great plain and on toward Shrewsbury. Above the plain arose a low-lying hill and it was topped with trees, and above the trees arose a tall and narrow spire which marked the city. We approached Shrewsbury through a rich and lovely land, passing many an estate of richness; and there are so very, very many in England! Now and then we passed a little cottage with thatched roof weathered by age, and there were thick-wheeled wagons on the country road, and soon we were run- ning up Shrewsbury hill, bending our way past old houses whose projecting stories doddered over the street; old, old half-timbered houses, with their THROUGH SHREWSBURY 59 ancient fronting beams vividly black and white in lozenges, crosses and squares. In Shrewsbury, no- table as it is with such old houses, one readily sees why the English term that ancient style of architec- ture " black and white." We went by the stately old castle, now become shabby and out of place through its railway-station surroundings, and we stopped for a little at the busi- est corner, for there once stood the high cross of the city, at which spot the dead body of the famous Hotspur, Harry Percy, after he was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury, was exposed to the public view between two millstones to show that both the insur- rection and its leader were crushed. It was here, too, at this now extremely thronged and busy corner that the last Welsh Prince of Wales was beheaded after being captured and it was this particular happening in Shrewsbury that gave a chance for Edward's jest about the new Prince of Wales who could speak not a word of English. Perhaps in those days millstones themselves were a sort of jest, too. Near this spot is a particularly interesting row of the old black-and-white buildings; Butchers' Row, it is called, but without any reference to such little incidents of feudal life as have just been mentioned. We all of us wanted to taste the Shrewsbury cakes, such being the influence of reputation, but like many another reputation we found it ill-deserved, for the present-day cakes are only common, white, sugar cookies, too sweet, large-sized and not good. If they did not bear the magic name of Shrewsbury cakes, they would sell, like other little cakes in England, at six for threepence, but as it is they sell at six for a shilling, sealed in a round pasteboard box. Shrewsbury, although at the very edge of Wales, is not popular with the Welsh, who hold a grudge against it, but not because of the Shrewsbury ending 60 TOURING GREAT BRITAUST of the last Welsh Prince of Wales, for that was long ago forgotten. It seems that Shrewsbury long since became an active center for Welsh trade and that it was a favorite place for the marketing of Welsh flan- nel, which was all measured by the buyers at the old market house, still standing, of Elizabethan days, around a drum just one yard in circumference, so that each revolution was exactly a yard; and it was long before the Welsh discovered that, although the first revolution was a yard, each succeeding revolu- tion was more than a yard and so on increasingly; and thej^ were so angry when they came to realize this that they drew away their flannel trade and their friendship ! There are excellent old churches in Shrewsbury, but one most notices the one whose tall spire is such a landmark, St. Mary's, with its exquisite window over the altar. There is an Edward the Sixth gram- mar school in the city, and wherever there is an Ed- ward the Sixth grammar school one expects to find English celebrities connected with it, and here both Darwin and Sir Philip Sidney were pupils, and the reflection comes that Sidney, in that bit of dying courtesy on the battlefield, was of more good to the world in his example of unselfishness than was Dar- win with all his wisdom. It is odd, too, that Judge Jeffreys was educated here; clearly, schools know no distinction between the famous and the infamous. We spent in the city more than Falstaff's " hour by Shrewsbury clock," for we lunched there at an esthetic little restaurant overlooking the river, which made specialties of " chips and peas " and " fish snacks " ; and they cut our salmon from a lordly fish. We entered the city over a bridge and we went out over another bridge, for the Severn almost encircles Shrewsbury ; and we noticed as we motored away that THROUGH SHREWSBURY 61 this city, with so much of the medieval, has even medieval debris, for we passed by an ancient stone pulpit, of admirable design and workmanship as well as of great age, that stands out, bare and abandoned, in its original position, although the church of which it was part has long since absolutely disappeared and left it there, and a coal yard occupies the churchly site and surrounds the pulpit with heaps of coal ! CHAPTER VII THE WAY TO WORCESTER WE crossed the Severn on a beautiful stone bridge, a bow-curved bridge of seven arches, and we went on into a charming region, and there were rabbits hopping across the fields and l^heasants flitting and hunters or gamekeepers with their guns and there were cattle wading in the streams and there was a succession of wide and beautiful views over an idyllic countryside. The Severn coquettishl}^ continued with us, now tantalizing from a distance and now coming coyly up, and suddenly there was an enchanting surprise, for on the other side of the stream there appeared a beau- tiful ruin; the ruin of an ancient abbey almost hid- den among vines and trees, and what we could see was a long row of low-pillared arches and a fragmen- tary square tower. We stopped the car, and looked across the river with a great deal of joy. There was no bridge, but we did not wish for a bridge; although there are times when one wishes to wander through every part of a ruin, there are other times when there is sheer delight in a provocative vision. That abbey ruin, sltyly hiding among glorious elms beside the copious river, was a delight. It was a region of ancient farmhouses and of cot- tages with roofs so oddly thatched, in curves over the second-story windows, as to look precisely like eye- brows over eyes; and there were roses trained on the cottage fronts thick with blossoms of pale yellow and blushing pink; and many humble cottages had 62 THE WAY TO WORCESTER 63 trees trimmed intricately, a favorite diversion of the countryside being to take a cone-shaped yew and trim it into alternate layers of slice and space till it looks like a series of great disks threaded on the trunk ; and sets of trees so trimmed are frequently seen in cottage dooryards. And then we came into a manu- facturing district and there was a queer-looking iron bridge, high in the middle, stretching across the val- ley; and the town beside the bridge we found to be named Iron Bridge, in the bridge's honor, because this was the first successful bridge of iron ever built. And it seemed typical of England that it should re- main there, still standing and still used after these many years, and it will probably still be standing and used after many another year, for it has obtained a sort of prescriptive right to existence. In some other parts of the world it would long ago have been re- placed by a newer and better bridge, but perhaps there is a great deal of good sense, after all, in the saving of needless expense. There is much of hilly country hereabouts, making long and steady climbs, and we began to realize, much to our astonishment, that England is not a level coun- try, but a hilly country. We expected Wales to be hilly, but not such parts of England as this. The grades, although not difficult, were frequently quite long enough for a mountainous country. And we noticed, here in this manufacturing dis- trict, that the towns are close-packed and that the houses of the working folk cling to steep banks like birds'-nests huddled close and tight; and that on the level ground round about, and right up to the tight- huddled houses, were the smiling estates of the wealthy; one does not see natural development, in a healthful, long stretching-off from towns in lines of suburban cottages and gardens. It is a region of mines and porcelain-makers here- 64 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN abouts ; and we are still in Shropshire — still in Salop, as the people absurdly call it, although why they call it Salop they do not know; in fact, they seem never to have thought of it ; their parents and grandparents called Shropshire Salop and so Salop it is. And to find porcelain-makers here is remindful of porcelain collectors at home who, when shown some piece not marked and not clearly assignable as to class, look wise and say, delighting in the mystifying name: " Oh! it is probably Salopian! " We entered again into a fine rural region, for the system that keeps people in the towns does at least keep the country beautiful. And, although we knew we were now approaching another town of consider- able size, with mills and slag and mine refuse like those of Iron Bridge and vicinity, it was as if they had never existed, for we were in the midst of sweet loveliness, and the road swept by a bordering of red- rock cliff, and over our heads great beeches arched, and then we were in Bridgnorth. If we were to describe Bridgnorth in proper order, we ought to begin with the date of its founding and then go on in regular sequence ; but we begin with the fact that at eleven o'clock in our inn, the closing hour, two cats and two dogs came up and began to wander about the corridors and stairways with all the solem- nity of a medieval watch. And we next come to the " boots," for " boots " was a joy! in waistcoat of bril- liant yellow-and-black such as Sam Weller himself might have worn. Having mentioned the dogs and the cats and the " boots," we may now add that the inn had attractive features, such as ancient beamed ceilings and an oriel window and a window-seat in the dining-room which makes anyone who sees it wish to go home and build one like it. Bridgnorth is one of the overlooked towns of Eng- THE WAY TO WORCESTER 65 land. And as a matter of fact there are a high town and a low town, and one precisely overlooks the other so delightfully that Charles the First remarked, of the walk along the upper edge, that it was the finest walk in the Kingdom; and even if he never said pre- cisely that, or if he said it only as a pleasant bit of flattery, a walk which gives rise to such a story must needs be remarkable ; and it is. The high town and low town are divided by a river and a bridge, and the low town is the place, for very practical reasons, for motorists to stop, for the easiest way to see the high town is to leave your motor car below and go up yourself by an inclined road which is run by the simple principle of the weight of one car balancing the other. And to the query, " When does it go? " the answer is, such being the delightful oblig- ingness of the people, " Whenever you are ready." — And the round trip costs, for one person, just a penny and a half! Many of the streets are mere narrow stone walks or stairways, and everywhere there is an exquisite cleanliness, and there are numerous old houses, in- cluding the house in which lived good old Percy of Percy's " Reliques." — And somehow it pleases us to see such a sign as " Horse Repository " and the de- lightful incongruity of " Fish, Fruit and Rabbits." As Rridgnorth cannot boast an Edward the Sixth grammar school, it triumphantly boasts of one ante- dating the time of the Sixth Edward. And this city thinks quite as much of its mayoresses, as it calls them, as it does of its mayors; and if you are shown the town regalia — and they love to show it! — there is not only, as part of it, a mayor's chain with the names of successional mayors engraved upon it, but also the mayoresses' chain, with the names of successional mayoresses. All of which adds to the gayety of Salop. And it is delightful too to find that the maces 66 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN of the regalia are, for civic banquets, transformed into loving cups, and that the ancient building of Eliza- bethan days, in the center of the main street of the upper town, was originally a barn, moved there two and a half centuries ago and transformed into a town- hall. Clearly, a clever folk these, and adaptable. And the superb walk of Charles the First leads be- side all that is left of the ancient castle; a castle of almost the time of William the Conqueror; once a tremendous old place, but with nothing now left but a huge fragment, fascinating in its tippable interest, for in the matter of leaning it out-Pisas Pisa. But the motorist leaves a new-discovered old city behind just as he leaves everything else behind; for- ever the call is onward; and we pass road traction- engines hauling merchandise from town to town, their ambition seeming to be to haul bigger loads than do the tiny little boxes on wheels that are the railroad freight cars of England. Always, in England, a railroad freight train looks like something from a Swiss toy-shop. So great a feature are the traction freight caravans on the highroads of England that every bridge is marked with the number of tons that may be handled in one transit. And we find steam rollers for road repair frequent, as everywhere thus far, with road repair material left in large piles by the roadside for laborers to hammer by hand into fragments, and frequently there is the man himself, astride the pile, hammering. It is pos- sible that there are steam-crushers in England, but labor is cheap, and this fact fosters the belief that hand-broken stone lasts better than machine broken. Past ivy-covered mansions, past Tudor chimneys, past moss-roofed cottages, past peacocks clipped from yew with great spread of tail and paired across gate- ways! — maybe these were gardeners' homes or those oi professional hedge-cutters, but the peacocks were THE WAY TO WORCESTER 67 superbly ornamental — and we pass a wayside inn with the diverting sign, as if in defiance of proverbial philosophy, of " Beer and Skittles." Then we spin easily into prosperous Kidderminster with almost an unformed expectation of seeing car- pets on either side; and, practical city that it is, it has a very-practically-put-up monument to the origi- nator of the Penny Post; and, more unexpectedly, the author of Baxter's " Saints' Rest " stands in full robes of white marble, blessing the traffic in a curved place delightfully named the Bull Ring; but Kidder- minster, though it may be saintl}^ is far from being a saints' rest, with its busy streets crowded with huge drays laden with linen warp and wool sacks, and thickly thronged not only with vehicles but peo- ple. A market-woman at one end of the seat of a high-perched, two-wheeled cart, her husband at the other and three children in between, farm wagons piled high with wicker baskets or alive with lively chickens held in by the excellent expedient of rope nets — and suddenly we saw a small lump of coal drop from a coal cart, whereupon a little, old woman, im- maculately^ neat and decently and cleanly dressed, darted out into the midst of the busy traffic ; it was a miracle she was not run over; seized the coal, which was so little that she picked up all its four fragments in one hand, dropped them into her little shopping satchel and went quickly back to the sidewalk. Eng- land has certainly learned frugality. A compact town is Kidderminster, like practically every other town in Great Britain, with extension into the country so grudgingly barred by the land- owners that almost with phantasmagoric swiftness we were past some great factories and across the river Stour and were in an enchanting country of great, green regions, with seldom a house, with few people, with the impression of almost a deserted land, but 68 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN beautifully hedged and splendidly roaded and with miles and miles of grazing country or private parks. Seldom are farmers seen cultivating a field ; in this the general English countryside being very different not only from that of America, but that of conti- nental Europe. The plowing, when you do see it, is likely to be uneconomically done with three horses abreast, but the same farmer, if you meet him hauling a load to town, is behind two horses tandem, and the wagon itself is a tremendous weight to pull even when unloaded, the English not having yet found out that lightness may be strength. It is a great grazing country hereabouts, and the beef and pork and mutton of the countryside travel to town on foot, drovers' time being cheaper than rail- road charges. A constant feature of motoring in England is the passing of market-driven animals on the road. And old men sweeping the country roads and men with short-handled sickles cutting the grass along the wayside are familiar sights — and we haven't yet seen a single scythe. We pass into Worcestershire and are in a region more attractive and more parklike than before; not that we knew precisely when we left one shire for the other, because few maps show a shire or county line, and few of the English themselves know much about them, but we knew that we had been in Shropshire and that after a while we were in Worcestershire and we knew just about where the division line lay. That some of the county names end in " shire," and some do not, is because some of the counties, such as Essex and Kent, still mark the limits of ancient king- doms, whereas others have been " shired " or sheared off; Worcestershire; for example, was shired from ancient Mercia. And another interesting thing about counties is that, as the word came from France, the THE WAY TO WORCESTER 69 title of " count " meant naturally the ruler of a county in early times, but that England positively would not permanently adopt " count," although willing to re- tain " county," and still holds the ruler of a county to be an earl ; but that the wives of the earls, probably from feminine love for things French, hold to the title " countess " — all of which seems delightfully in- consistent for a people who above all things pride themselves on consistency. Worcestershire is a sweet and smiling county ; there are great levels and rich farms, and magnificent es- tates and hedges, and great homes and thatched cot- tages, and geraniums thick in the windows, and mighty orchards with the trees whitewashed up to their very branches; one remembers that the Crom- wellian soldiers from London wrote home with aston- ishment about the fruit trees full of fruit, even over- hanging the roads. And one sees an astonishing number of elms ; indeed, the elm is so common as to be called the weed of Worcestershire; but it is not the graceful wineglass elm of America, but the stocky, good-looking English elm with which we are familiar on Boston Common. Worcestershire seems to be dominated by a delight- ful green, for it is all of a peculiar delicate green loveliness; it is thus we remember that softly beau- tiful region, with its green hedging, its church spires reaching through the thick massed green of trees, its old cottages with green shrubs all about, its clipped green peacocks looking at us across entrance-gates and its great green fields in softly sweeping undula- tions. But not everything is green, for there are often, in cottage gardens, tree roses and Oriental pop- pies fit for palaces. There are little villages, such as Ormsley, with the general impression of nothing but ancient black-and- wliite half-timbered houses; and some of the houses 70 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN are not timbered but only of brick, but the brick has been whitened and black bars and braces have been painted on, to give the appearance of timber. On the country road you meet women driving high- set market carts, and you meet an astonishing num- ber of well-dressed girls, in green jerseys, pegging along, cane in hand, enjoying the national exercise. The sleek cats are a feature of Worcestershire vil- lages, and are everywhere drowsing in doorways or on window-sills, unless they are hazardously crossing the road immediately in front of your motor car. And it may be remarked that the county is not named after the sauce ! — and that, incredible as it may seem, we saw quite as much of an American brand of Worcestershire sauce in Worcestershire as we did of the English brand in Worcestershire. But there is a section of the city of Worcester that is quite redolent of the pungent spicy smell. We reached the city of Worcester and motored through its streets with the restful impression that, although it was busy, it was not too hurriedly busy; it somehow gave an impression of being busy, in an old-fashioned way, with affairs of importance; and, after all, through its world-famous establishments for making sauce, gloves and porcelain, it maintains a prominent position. It was Saturday morning, and so we motored first to the famous porcelain factory, for the motor trav- eler, with his limited time for each place, must learn to watch for the closing of Saturday afternoon and Sunday and even of those mysterious English orgies known as bank holidays, and must try so to manage his schedule as not to let these times make him miss things of importance. We were told that we could have a special guide through the factory in an hour or so, whereupon we went to the cathedral, a noble structure, huge and no- THE WAY TO WORCESTER 71 tably beautiful, the finest cathedral thus far on our journey, a cathedral with a fine exterior and with an interior that is really imposing and grand, with mighty pillars and a superb length of vista. There was scarcely a particle of old glass or brass left by the Reformation in this cathedral, for, in the old days, to reform meant too often to destroy; one really wonders why, when they destroyed so much, they left standing the great religious buildings them- selves. Even worse than breaking the glass and tearing away the brass was the plastering and whitewashing of the great interior of this cathedral; except that this pernicious white could be cleaned off, and it has been. But what an enormous work it was, putting it all on! And the most curious thing is that anyone should go to such trouble to plaster and whitewash. And, al- though extensive cleaning off has been done, the ef- fects of the pernicious white are still in some places to be seen. It interested us, among the monuments of this cathedral, to find one which proudly boasted, of an entire family of the early 1600's, that they were " Here born, here bred, here buried " ; a typically in- sular boast, this, of the English before their days of empire-building. On the whole, much though we admired the cathe- dral, we got a very great proportion of our pleasure from the verger who showed us about, he being a very jewel of a guide. He was never weary of describing, and was disappointed if we did not wish to see every- thing — and he was such a conscientious man! He showed an effigy, in gilded stone, of King John, the oldest royal effigy remaining in Great Britain and in marvelously perfect condition through having been long out of sight ; in fact, it required an act of Parlia- ment to have it brought out to its present place; and 72 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN it being so fresh looking, the verger was asked if the efiigy was made at the time of King John's death. "Oh! quite so; — or, no — let me see — no, sir," — a distinct note of disappointment in his voice : " Eang John died in 1214, sir, and this effigy was not made until 1216." The effigy shows the king with his nose a little rubbed and with a queer beast, in stone, at his feet that is neither lion nor griffin nor armadillo, but a little like each, and it holds the tip of John's sword in its mouth. The verger spoke so frequently of the condition of various parts of the cathedral " before the fire " that we asked solicitouslv after a while, " When was this fire?" only to find that he referred to a fire in the year 1208. Verily a thousand years are but as yester- day to a verger! He wandered back again to the subject of King John and said that he could not even write his own name, or at least that he did not when he signed the Magna Charta; " he made his cross," he said. It was suggested that he probably made his cross because it expressed the way he felt; but one should never offer even a mild pleasantry to an English verger. The tomb of the widow of Izaak Walton is here, with the inscription that Izaak himself sadly wrote: " Alas, she is dead ! A woman of remarkable pru- dence and of the primitive piety," so he declared, " adorned with true humility and blessed with Chris- tian meekness. Study to be like her " — an admoni- tion not likely to be taken with great seriousness by the sufi^ragettes of to-day. We thought, as we looked up at the cathedral from the outside, of that most interesting of all the events that had ever happened here ; for Charles the Second watched the Battle of Worcester from the cathedral tower. Few men have the experience of looking idly - Ml A LITTLE DRIZZLE IN BllIDGXORTH MARKETPLACE Old black-and-white houses, with passion flowers, at Ormsley THE WAY TO WORCESTER 73 on while others fight and die for them. But he amply rewarded Worcester — or at least he thought that he did — for he gave to the city, after he finally came to his throne, a motto to put upon the city arms. Our incomparable verger, hearing one of us say that we were going back to the china factory from the cathedral, gave us a final pleasurable experience, for he borrowed from another verger a key and led us through a long and fascinating cloistered, shadowy path, at the end of which he opened an iron grill and let us out to reach the factory by a very short cut. The great porcelain factory of Worcester is really of more intrinsic importance than the cathedral, for the factory, in its notable artistic history, stands at the head of all the porcelain factories of England, whereas the cathedral, beautiful as it is, is not of the very first importance. While we were in the cathe- dral we had, at the suggestion of the factory manager, who said it would be carefully looked after, left our car in the courtj^ard of the works, a shrub-bordered and pleasant place, with notices everywhere that the employees were absolutely forbidden to accept gratuities. To go to a factory where famous old porcelain was made in the periods most highly regarded by col- lectors, and where fine porcelain is still made, is the last word in the study of that ware. The factory has a show-room for the new and a museum with per- fectly arranged examples, in periods, of all their manufactures. There is no vagueness; there are no doubts — they know whereof they speak and the tradi- tions of the factory are a matter of pride. In addi- tion they most courteously show all the processes of manufacture, and it is interesting to see that, except in the mills and mixing rooms, there is not the hustle and bustle of machiner}^ but the unexpected order- liness and quiet of handwork. But that it would be 74 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN impossible to do everything by hand may be inferred from the fact that the grinding of the different mate- rials varies from twelve hours to ten days, after which they are passed through silk lawn with about ten thou- sand meshes to the square inch ; or at least so we were told. It w^as interesting, in these works, to notice that women, except those of the art-student type who do some decorating, are employed at tasks requiring nothing more than automatic skill, the better work being given over to the men ; the master- workmen be- ing mostly sallow, round-shouldered, mustached, ca- pable and very quiet, but not particularly alert of aspect. It was very interesting indeed to see how much is trusted to the eye and hand in these days of machin- ery, and that machinery cannot take the place of the finest machine of all, the human hand. When one at length leaves the factory it is with a strong impres- sion of the individuality of both old and new Worces- ter porcelain; and Doctor Wall and the Chamber- lains, the old-time makers, now seem like old friends. With a final glance at the great cathedral, with a final sniff of the aromatic and spicy air of genuine Worcestershire, we go whirling again on our way. And, leaving the old city, we go past a soldier with red-striped trousers teaching a pretty maid how to ride her bicycle and seeming not at all displeased with the job, past donkey carts, past houses of beehive windows and old houses of ancient brick, and avenues of tremendous elms; and we remembered having somewhere heard that one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, after being condemned to death, was re- prieved on condition of going to Worcestershire and never leaving there, and that he lived for forty years thereafter within that county. We thought it was no wonder! CHAPTER VIII BY TEWKESBURY WE came to a river where young men in cap and gown were looking on at other young men, without cap and gown, who were pre- paring for boat-racing practice. The caps and gowns, and also the extremely sketchy costumes, if they could fairly be called costumes, all seemed a natural part of the landscape of a country where schools and sports are among the most prominent features. Coaches, male not mail, megaphones in hand, looked very stilted and stiff and important be- cause of a number of pretty girls that looked on big-eyed. Across the river beyond the broad meadows arose a massive tower, and we knew that it was the tower of Tewkesbury Abbey and that the town on the other side was Tewkesbury itself. We went up a street extremely broad, consid- ering that it was the main street of an ancient town, and it was bordered with low houses on either side and, naturally enough, with a noticeable sprinkling of ancient and interesting inns; we say naturally enough because it was at one of these Tewkesbury inns that Mr. Pickwick spent an exceedingly pleas- ant time, according to Mr. Pickwick's chronicler, in the course of which there was served, among other things, " more bottled ale, with some more Madeira and some port besides " ; also that " the case-bottle was replenished for the fourth time," under the influ- ence of which combined stimulants " Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Ben Allen fell fast asleep for thirty miles, while Bob and Mr. Weller sang duets in the dickey." 75 76 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN It was at the very edge of this ancient town that the Battle of Tewkesbury was fought; one of the greatest struggles in that random round of fighting known as the Wars of the Roses ; a battle deemed of tremendous importance at the time, but which has probably left no more definite memory than that of the lines, themselves of no particular importance, but which remain persistently in one's memory as Shake- speare's even ordinary lines have such a habit of doing, about the " false, fleeting, perjured Clarence that stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury." And it is one of the curious things that the body of Clar- ence should have been brought to Tewkesbury for burial; and how little anj^one could have imagined that, instead of the lengthy and laudatory drawn-out inscription telling of titles and honors, placed upon that tomb, the world remembers only these few con- demnatory words. There are other memorials more important and interesting than that of Clarence, particularly the beautiful piece of work which has come to be called, through the irony of time, the Warwick Chapel; for this was built five hundred years ago by the widowed countess of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Aber- gavenny, and she spared no care and expense in beautifying it with lacework in stone and tender coloring; and the irony comes from the fact that the work was not quite completed when the sorrow- ing Isabelle married her late husband's cousin, the Earl of Warwick, who not only gave the widow his name, but gave name to the very memorial itself! — which really seems to have been rather hard on the first husband, who could not even call his grave his own. But here again we see that we do not talk of our travels in an orthodox and time-honored way, for we are actually discussing the tombs of the abbey of BY TEWKESBURY 77 Tewkesbury before we come to the abbey itself. But it is not in the least in disregard of the abbey, which, standing at the farther end of the town and shaded by enormous blossoming horse-chestnut trees so thick and so big as to give the interior a twilight gloom even in the bright sun, is one of the most important churclily edifices in all England. This is indeed a noble building, with the splendid massiveness of the very best of the ancient Norman style; it is not only massive but beautiful, and not only beautiful but of superb impressiveness. That much of the stone used in building was actually car- ried here from Normandy may have subtly aided in giving it the Norman air and the Norman feeling. The enormous square tower, rising with magnifi- cent dignity, and the splendid interior of the abbey, with its huge plain columns, its somberness, its dig- nity, are never to be forgotten for stern and inflexible effectiveness. We did not stay long in Tewkesbury. We felt to the full the tremendous impressiveness of the abbey with its superb tower and its wonderfully arched front and its great pillars all looking just as they did to the Normans of so many centuries ago; but we wished to leave with that impression unforget- table. The abbey is one of the buildings whose mem- ory is never blurringly confused in even the slightest degree with the memory of any other abbey or cathe- dral. It stands all bv itself. Yet Tewkesbury is another of the overlooked places of England, and this is because it is a little off the main line of railway and is reached only by a branch, which thus keeps it off the natural list of stopping-places of tourists who are tied to tourists' schedules. Our \asit to Tewkesbury was one of the most striking examples of the opportmiities that open to those who go by motor. 78 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN Before leaving the place it is worth while sayino-, for it is an admirable point, that ancient as Tewkes- bury Abbey is, it is thoroughly up to date and busi- nesslike in its reception of such visitors as go there. There are four set hours each dav at which a salaried verger shows visitors through the abbey without gratuity, and those who wish to go at any other hour may engage him for a small fee or go through by themselves and read the cards descriptively placed on the tombs and in the chapels. And it is an agreeable point for the motorist that there is at the abbey entrance-gate an official attendant who will watch a motor car, while the visitors are in the abbev. for what is certainly the modest sum of one penny. Thus there is a varietv of reasons whv no motorist should allow Tewkesbury to remain an unvisited place! Wliile we were at Tewkesburv we knew that our route was planned to bring us very near this place on our north-bound distance, manv davs later, and we could not but wonder what Fate had in store for us in the many intervening miles over which we were to go; and it is pleasantly anticipating a little to say that when we did pass near here again it was after experiences even more delightful and a journeying even more successful than we could possibly have hoped. We left Tewkesburv without a long stav, not onlv because, as we have said, we wished a brief and vivid impression that could by no possibility be lessened, but because of another reason which would have hur- ried our departure in any case; and this was that Gloucester, which was our next objective point, was where all of us were to receive mail, and that as it was a Saturday we must get there before the noon closing. And this experience warned us not to have mail forwarded in care of banks, but to have it sent in care of the paste restante of postoffices, for this EY TEWKESBURY 79 would give us the opportunity of getting mail even in the early morning or the early evening, as well as to some extent on Sundays, instead of holding us in any degree to banking hours. As to the banks and the getting of money, we carried ^nth us checks of a kind that were cashable practically anywhere, even at the hotels. It was an eleven-miles' run to Gloucester, follow- ing the ever-broadening Severn, and for part of the distance we motored along a low-rising ridge that gave us pleasant, sweeping views of the regulated landscape; and that is really the only expression for it, for it seemed really a regulated landscape, as do the landscapes of the greater part of England : there is a certain orderliness, as of their having had the care of many centuries, which is apparent even in almost the wildest regions. Again we were passing cot- tages with splendid roses upon their fronts, and again we were passing the half-timbered black-and-white houses — and these should be admired not only for their own dehghtful sake, but because this part of England is their stronghold, and after a while we were to miss their crisscrossings. their color contrasts, their quaintly simple intricacy of design. Yet al- ways through England there is something of interest to fill their place. Gloucester is a modestiv and earnestlv busv place, with a fine air of civic dignitv. The crreat cathedral, which has dominated the city for miles as we ap- proached it, seems to have hidden coyly away, now that we have actually entered the town, and the route to it must be searched for; but the English police- man, at no matter how busy a crossing, is never too busy to answer questions. The cathedral is one of exceeding beauty, although its original Xorman characteristics were largely al- tered some centuries ago to another style of archi- 80 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN tecture, and on top of this came a great deal of fussing in the past centuries in the way of those al- terations that are mistakenly called restorations. In- stead of being a Norman cathedral, as it should be, it is really of the Perpendicular style — a style which makers of English guide-books who are destitute of humor love to abbreviate to " Perp." Most of Gloucester Cathedral is still so fine and imposing as to show how difficult it is to spoil entirely the superb creations of the early architects. And even yet much of the interior of the cathedral is strictly Norman; and it may be added that there is an ancient chill within the building which has certainly come down from Norman days. When you come, in this cathedral, to the tomb of the eldest son of the Conqueror, the entire past comes back with vividness and you feel as if this is all that is needed to give a final touch of verisimilitude. One of the windows of this cathedral, the great east window, is among the glories of England, for it is the largest stained-glass window in the country and among the few largest of the world. You are told with an amusing earnestness — everything is earnest in Gloucester — that, whereas York Minster's greatest window contains 2,574 square feet of glass, this window contains 2,736 square feet ; but one need not at all concern himself with such detail, for its grandeur, immensity and general effectiveness are what are important; and it brings closely back to us the great days of the past when we realize that this was a memorial window to the Battle of Crecy and that of the many armorial shields inserted beside it quite a number of these identical shields still remain- ing were put in by the very survivors of the battle. When we went into the cathedral the choir were singing, somewhere out of sight, and the organ was softly playing, and all was sweetly and gently im- BY TEWKESBURY 81 pressive; and then the impression was added to by a long line of surpliced men and choir-boys slowly filing out. Then we went into the cloisters ; and such cloisters ! — for they are marvelously and extravagantly beau- tiful in their carving of stone, their roof of stone lace, their exquisite fan tracery and in the wonderful beauty of it all even to the smallest detail; and with the beauty there is at the same time a fine nobility and dignity. And all this is such a tremendous con- trast to the plain and severe interior of the cathedral itself. We wandered about for quite a while, alone, in these cloisters, for such a place is not one for leav- ing hurriedly, and the soft sound of the cathedral chimes came like music in a romantic dream. And then a door opened and a dean came walking through, with black gaiters buttoned tight from knee to foot, and with black coat with queer up-standing collar, and with white collar buttoned at the back, and with a strange-structured hat, which he put on as he emerged from the church into the cloisters. A very solemn figure he; no one could really be half so sol- emn as he looked as he paced along in the slowest of slow dignity. Then the door from the church opened again and there came bursting out a bevy of wrig- gling, giggling, nudging, whispering choir-boys. But all their wriggling never carried even the boldest of them within twenty feet of that dean ! He had an aura, that man! And then the preposterous dean vanished and the boys vanished and we were alone again and the chimes continued, more sweet and calm and restful than before. We did not go about in the city of Gloucester to any extent; we saw it well enough as we rode along its well-paved streets in necessarily passing through the place, and as a city it gave a pleasant eff'ect, but 82 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN not one specially to be remembered. Among the spots held in particular remembrance b}^ the towns- folk is the church where Whitefield preached, and this reminded us that Americans should not slight their own places of interest, for within a mile of our own home is an unmarked place where Whitefield preached. From Gloucester we turned our car toward a region that had long fascinated us, the region of Tintern Abbey and the Wye. CHAPTER IX THE VALLEY OF THE WYE WE came to the forest of Dean, one of the great royal forests of the past, but now rather more a forest in name than in fact, although there are still great areas of it in a wood- land landscape of beeches and oaks ; but though there are some monarchs among the trees (as befits a royal forest!) most are mere saplings, for the forest has been severely used. The forest is to a great extent now a mining district, and the only villages are min- ing villages, and yet, although there are only poor little houses, we found greenery and not desolation and for much of the distance there was a wide space of green turf, with sheep freely grazing upon it, be- tween the road and the forest. The villages are few and there are few scattered houses and we are entirely away from the region of great private estates, but the road is marvelously well made and well kept; and then we catch sight of a cute baby donkey beside its mother, a little thing three feet high not counting the ears, which extended upward for a foot or so more; and the horn was honked suddenly, whereat the little donkey kicked and jumped in hilarious excitement while its mother looked on quite placid, pleased and proud; and a solemn old countryman who was passing dropped the solemnity from his visage and laughed until we could see far down his throat, and it was like looking down into a great red hole surrounded by yellow ivory. Going through this rather prosaic forest was an- 83 84 TOURING GREAT BRITAIIN^ other example of the satisfaction that comes from mo- toring, for to go through such a region slowly would be rather tiresome, whereas to go rapidly through it in a motor car, with swift and constant change of scene, and with every moment coming upon some- thing new, made the journey, although not nearly so interesting as through most parts of England, a pleas- urable experience. We left the forest and entered another fine and pleasant region, and finalty motored down and down a tremendously long and easy road, with curve after curve constantly opening upon new attractiveness, and came into Monmouth, a town nestled in a hol- low among hills and itself standing on a slightly- rising bit of lower-rising ground along the river Wye. We entered through narrow, twisty streets, and emerged upon a little open space which bears the proud name of Agincourt Square; and naturally enough, for it was here in Monmouth that Henry the Fifth, who won the famous Battle of Agincourt, was born. An inclosed old-time coach-yard answered for the garage, and from this we entered the old hotel — so many of the hotels are old over here! — through a stone-paved, stone-arched entrance passage beside a gloomy room in which were dimly-gleaming copper pans and those silver domes that the English people so love to put over serving dishes that they are likely to put a very big one over a very small egg. There was just light enough to see that there was not a modern utensil in the kitchen; and the range itself was almost as primitive as an open fireplace, and the pots were right upon the coals, and the kitchen alto- gether seemed to be almost as primitive as those of the monks of the Middle Ages; one is often forced to wonder why the keeping of the old is allowed to mean the keeping also of the inconveniences and ^i4 -^"i Tut wiNUow OF Geoffrey of Monmou TH Red-coated soldiers going to church at Monsiouth TiNTERN Abbey f?^ The roadside inn ai \i,\eston THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 85 shortcomings of the old. Most Americans love the old, but they want facilities and conveniences also, whereas most of the people of England do not love the old, yet hold obstinately to all its inconveniences. We saw here, as in other inns in England, the ex- planation of the length of time so generally required to serve meals, for here a maid would necessarily have a long walk with every trayful. Finding the kitchen old-fashioned, we naturally found the rest of the place equally old-fashioned, and it was rich in stone pavements and unexpected corners. It had been the intention to vdre this evening to the railway station at the end of Severn Tunnel to arrange for passing through with the car late the next afternoon. The Severn rapidly widens into a long and broad bay, and the tunnel makes a short cut, if one wishes to cross to Bristol. The expense is not very much, but, -vvith European love of detail, it va- ries very much according to the kind of the car and how it is shipped and whether it is insured; all the gasoline, or petrol as it is universally known in Eng- land, is drawn out and the motor is placed upon a flat car for the tunnel journey, and the owner of the car is given a slip showing precisely how much has been taken out, and at the other end of the tunnel pre- cisely the same amount is put back, free of charge. But we missed this tunnel experience from the absurd fact that after dinner there was absolutely no way to telegraph; the government-owned system having shut down about six or seven o'clock, not to reopen that evening and to give only a brief hour the next day, Sunday. And Sunday would not do, for the tunnel will not take a car unless notification is given on at least one day previous to the passage, and Sun- day was to be our day for crossing. We had planned a trip going down one side of the bay and then cross- ing by tunnel, but by our enforced new plan we had 86 TQURIXG GREAT BRITAIIS- a vastly pleasanter experience than going through a smoky tunnel and we avoided all the risk of the un- usual in tunnel transit — had we lost the car, of course the insurance would have repaid us a certain sum, but it could not have recompensed us for the break- ing up of arrangements and the stoppage of the journey. As it was, we had an exceedingly beautiful ride back to the head of the bay and thence along the other side; and it did give us an idea of government ownersliip to find that even if one's necessity were very great it would be impossible to send a telegram in the evening in a town the size of Monmouth. It was Saturday evening and the streets were thronged with a Saturday-evening crowd, and dark- ness did not decrease the number, and a humming chir of sound came up to the hotel windows. Then suddenly there fell a silence, and there came a woman's voice, of exceeding depth and softness, that rose and fell in solemn singing cadences. It was all perhaps quite commonplace enough; it was only a Salvation Army girl; but it was thrilling, and not only impressed us, but it absolutely silenced and stilled the hundreds of people who had been walking up and down, laughing and talking. The voice ceased, and there followed a very Boanerges of a preacher, whose tremendous voice was of so little impressiveness that it was almost instantly drowned by a recurrence of the noises of the all-at-once- indifferent crowd. The morning was as quiet as an English Sunday morning can be, and through the silence there came now and then the vague sound of choir-boys singing, and there softly came the lovely chiming of the ancient church bells ; and there seemed to be an added loveliness of sound when we realized that we were listening to the very chimes brought from Calais, in THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 87 the long, long ago by Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare's Prince Hal. We motored quietly about, and first went down to a picturesque bridge of old red-stone arches across the Monnow, which here flows into the Wye, and we drove through a highly pictorial ancient gateway, with curious angles and curves, in the center of the bridge. Thence we motored back to a higher part of the town into a road from where we looked across level meadows in the foreground of a very lovely view, and on the other side of the road stood an old build- ing that had in its second story an oriel, mullioned stone window of remarkable distinction and beauty, and it pleased us to learn that this was called the window of Geoffrey of Monmouth, for he is so de- lightfully kept in memory by his chronicles that it was good to know that his memory is also kept in mind by such a window; and ever afterwards, when- ever we come across his name or his writings, we shall be sure to form a picture of him sitting at work at this window overlooking the river and the meadows. Just around the corner is the ancient church of the town ; a church which is indeed unusually ancient, but which does not look so, for it has been so altered and restored as to suggest nothing of the decrepitude or ruin of ancient architecture, and it is delightfully usable after all these centuries. Beside it is an old- time churchyard house, bowered in jessamine and roses, and all about are flowered paths and pleasant shade, and all looks quite pleasant and attractive. Up a narrow street toward the church came the beat of drum and blare of trumpets, and it was six hundred soldiers from the garrison being led quick- steppingly to church, and as they came in sight they were a blaze, a very conflagration, of scarlet, led by their scarlet band. 88 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN The bandsmen laid the drums on flat gravestones beside the church entrance ; and they observed the in- junction to watch and pray by going inside to pray and leaving just a sentry outside to watch the boys of the town; and one small boy came and stood en- tranced beside the big drum and almost touched its two sticks, laid cross-wise, and beat it softly in imagi- nation, his hands making the motions, while the sentry looked tolerantly on; perhaps we were looking at a prospective Drum of the Fore and Aft. Immediately after the arrival of the soldiers there came up from the opposite direction two officers, in a particularly resplendent motor car painted in yel- low and black, with the chauffeur a soldier in uni- form. The officers got out and stood stiffly waiting while the soldier took up their swords, which had been unbelted and laid alongside of the emergency brake, and put them in their scabbards, and the offi- cers meanwhile so held their arms out of the way as to look like women at the dressmaker's. And the whole effect was as that of a nurse with children ; you expected to see the chauffeur fasten a last stray button and straighten their hair and kiss them good-by and send them into church. They went in; and in a little while we heard the six hundred voices joining tremendously in " God Save the King!" When, in motoring farther about the town, we went past the barracks, we noticed within an in- closure a building of the style of Louis the Four- teenth, which seemed such an unusual thing to see in such a town that the sentry was asked to tell us about it. " Oh, that is the officers' quarters," he said; and he continued, without any prompting or questioning and with an amusingly deprecatory realization that Americans love to see the old: " It's only new, sir! You can see the date upon it, 1687." And how such THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 89 a building came to be built there in the long ago was thus to remain a matter for curious speculation. We left Monmouth in its Sunday peacefulness and motored off down a sweetly feUcitous valley and faintly the sounds of the ancient chimes came to us again and one of us softly quoted, " Solemn, yet sweet, the church bells' chime floats through the woods at noon" — for it was noon as we left Mon^- mouth and started down the valley of the Wye to"'- ward Tintern Abbey. It was a beautiful drive, and we felt that we wert again in Wales; for all of this used to be Wales and was only arbitrarily made a part of England. There were enormous hedges and great growths of ivy that lay thick carpeted under the trees or clam- bered over the high walls that alternated with the hedges, and there were endless lines of avenued firs greened to their very bases, and from time to time there were glimpses of the river shimmering through the trees or curving around delightful bends. We finally drifted down a long avenue beneath arching beech and birch trees, the most charming road that we had thus far seen, and came to Tintern Abbey. Tintern Abbey, with its associated monkish build- ings, is now but a cluster of roofless ruins, with a tremendous profusion of jacks and braces arranged in the interior in a desperate effort to prevent further falling, for so much has already tumbled or crumbled and disappeared. The ruins are nooked in a bend of the ever-bend- ing Wye, with hills, thick-wooded to their summits, rising all around ; Tintern is in the center of a green- hilled amphitheater. The beautifully pillared in- terior, the great lovely window-tracery of stone — everywhere there is charm. And when, realizing the extreme beauty of it all, we remember that this was a monastery of the Cistercians, it seems very curious 90 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN indeed, for their rules as to simplicity were very strict ; there were to be no stone arches on their buildings, there was to be no colored glass in their windows (glass of any sort long disappeared from this ruin of Tintern), they were to have no sculpture or pic- tiu'es, there were to be no chimes and only one bell should be struck at one time, their altars were to have only one candlestick and this was to be of iron — with such rules, and more of the same character, one would expect to find an extreme degi-ee of severity in any Cistercian building, but Tintern Abbey is a fine example of what artistic instinct could achieve even when restrained. Restraint is one of the chief distinctions of Tintern and with that restraint are breadth of design and nobility of proportion. There is music in the very name of Tintern Abbey. " What's in a name? " was long ago asked; but there is often a great deal in a name, for one that is musical to such a degree as this certainly gives an added sense of beauty and interest. The name of Tintern Abbey is familiar to a great number of people, with the sense of its being a place of unusual interest, because Wordsworth wrote some lines and put in their title that they were written near Tintern Abbey; and although, as a matter of fact, the lines have no reference to Tintern and Tintern was not even mentioned in them, the fact that the famous Wordsworth used the name in his title helped materially to make the abbey famous; its name is far more famous, for this reason, than is the still more beautiful Fountains Abbey, which we were later to see, for Fountains has never had any great novelist or poet put it into literature. We had tea in the shadow of Tintern, at a little inn incongruously named The Anchor, a delightful little inn in the midst of a garden rich with gloire de Dijons and with wonderful violas that have as many THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 91 as sixty blossoms on a single plant. It was a most at- tractive experience, for we sat at a little table in the garden, and a maid who was as pretty as English maids can sometimes be, had a voice that, when she even said such a small thing as, " You shall have it," was softly agreeable and somehow suggestive of the English plays that have lately been coming to Amer- ica; and the whole thing seemed almost as unreal as a stage setting, with the beautiful ruin beside us and the flowers all around and mine host cutting bunches of roses for us and pointing out his strawberry beds and a monster ruin of an oak traditionally going back to the days of the monks themselves. Thus delightful may be the taking of tea in England. We left Tintern by an easily-rising road, giving view after view of sheer loveliness, and under one of those avenues which we have come to know as typi- cal of England, with trees beautifully arching their branches over our heads; and this time the trees are elms, such being the agreeable variety of these noble avenues. England has very few trees according to forestry reports, in comparison with the trees of other lands, and we presume that these reports are correct, yet how delightfully such trees as the country has are placed just where they are most attractive and beau- tiful! Thus far we have assuredly noticed no short- age of trees in England and nothing could be more attractive than the way they are alternated with the stretches of open green. The day was a day of uncertain glory, with part sun, part cloud, part dashes of rain which now and then gave a pleasant dampness but not enough to put up the top of the car. At the mouth of the Wye we came to Chepstow, with its stately old castle splendidly rising on the edge of a cliff beside the river. Chepstow is another 92 TOURING GREAT ERITAIlSr of the long list of English overlooked towns, and though not so full of interest as some, it is an exceed- ingly attractive old place, with its many Lombardy poplars and with the entire town giving an impres- sion of being bowered among fine roses. We remember the place in particular, such being the arbitrariness of travelers' impressions, by the fact that there were two small boys standing in perfect quiet at one side of the road as we entered the town, when suddenh% moved by some ever-to-be-unguess- able impulse, the elder, a boy of six, threw down his little fat brother of four and madly dragged him across the road immediately in front of the car. Well, nothing happened ; but it was one of the manj^ arguments for always being sure that your brakes are in good working condition, for there are so many little fat toddlers in England; the cottages are full of them and one can never know just when he is go- ing to see them in front of the car instead of in front of the cottage. The castle, looking as imposing and interesting as it does, ought really to have richness of association, but it really does not have, as its most interesting memory is that for twenty years one of the Regicides was imprisoned there, and the little cell in which he died is still shown. Americans have a general im- pression that all of the Regicides were killed by Charles the Second and this is largely because of the relentless pursuit in America of two who escaped there and helped to add a picturesqueness to the stories of early American days, as, of the story of Hadley church; but in reality the lives of quite a number of the Regicides were spared, thus forming an illustration of what English historians call " un- exampled lenity," — it being lenity to let them wear away their lives in narrow stone and iron quarters! Chepstow marked the farthest point of our advance THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 93 in this direction, and from here we turned northward along the bank of the Severn estuary, to reach a crossing place. We came to Lydney, in the center of which we saw a really splendid ancient town-cross of the fourteenth century, with eight long steps lead- ing up on each of the four sides to a stone cross in the middle. Ancient crosses have disappeared from the market-places and squares of so many of the English towns that it is a pleasure to come across those that exist and we found this to be a region in which quite a number of the towns still possess these interesting memorials of the past. And we found, too, even along the Severn's side, tl)at England is not a level country but as a matter of fact is quite hilly. At Lydney there is a ferry over which one may cross to the other side, but it is a ferry only to be used on week-days, and so we went farther on our way until we came to little Newnham, where there is also a ferry, and this ferry runs on Sundays as well as on week-days and, as we were to find, by night as well as by day. On looking for the ferry and the ferryman, a griz- zled, slow of speech, slow-voiced, hairy-faced sailor was found, and he was quite willing to cross but said that he could not do so until high tide. "And when will that be?" " At one in the morning," he answered, gravely matter-of-fact. We pictured ourselves waiting until that hour from five in the afternoon! It had not occuiTed to the ferryman that, if he was willing to take us over at one in the morning there could be any objection to waiting, on the part of his would-be pas- sengers ; but it now slowly dawned upon him that one o'clock in the morning might possibly be inconvenient and so he added, in his grave and matter-of-fact way, " Or at one o'clock to-morrow afternoon." 94 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN And he pointed out the boat. We had been told that there were primitive boats hke those of the early- Britons still used on the Severn, and in a general way we had been on the lookout for them, and now we saw the boat which apparently had given rise to the story, for the ferryboat, although not, indeed, so early as the British coracle, long antedated these pres- ent years and was an old-fashioned keel rowboat upon which it seemed absolutely impossible to carry a motor car. " I lay long planks across that boat to hold the car," said the ferryman. And we pictured ourselves out in mid-stream in the middle of the night on the teetering planks; surely nothing could seem more hazardous, and it did not seem possible that the man meant anything but a joke; but, curious to know his ideas more fully, we asked, " How long a passage would it be? " He drawled, " Well, maybe an hour," and added, under impulse of truthfulness, that his last passage had taken him four hours. We wondered why that motorist could have been so desperately eager to cross, especially when, after all, it was only a dozen miles from this point on to Gloucester by a pleasant road. At any rate, there was no temptation to wait for hours even had the ferryboat been safe, and so we ran on to Gloucester, passed once more through the center of that earnest city, and turned down the other side of the Severn on the road to Bristol. The road was pleasant with pleasant homes, but we passed one tragic little village beside the great estate of the lord of the manor, and there was a large brimming pond just inside of the stone wall, and the great brick entrance-post was topped with huge pineapples, and there was a long stone-edged ornamental sort of canal much like a Versailles waterway on a small scale, and THE VALLEY OF THE \^^^E 95 it had an edge of molded stone and its water was right at the level of the grass, with rhododendrons and other lovely growths, and a peacock strutting about. The contrast between these manor grounds and the forlorn village was very great ; the " lord of the manor " means a great deal in England, and the very village itself is often owned in entirety by the aristo- crat who lives adjacent. It came on to rain, and quite hard enough for us to use the car-top for a little while — the first time thus far — and one of the very few times that we had the top up in the course of the entire tour; we may add that never in the entire tour did we even get out the side-curtains, for the rain in England is seldom a hard downpour and never a deluge, but the drops seem leisurely to seep through the atmosphere. Probably no country but England ever counts rain as in itself a pleasurable incident; and its most fa- mous fisherman expressed quaintly that he gave thanks to " Him that made sun and us, and still pro- tects us, and gives us flowers, and showers, and con- tent and leisure to go a-fishing." Well, we were not going a-fishing but we were going a-motoring and we could practically see how the English country folk regard rain, for we not only remembered that Walton speaks of waiting under a honeysuckle hedge or a sycamore when it showered a little harder than ordinary, but here on this road below Bristol we noticed numerous people waiting patiently under thick-leafed trees in perfect dryness and in the calm certainty that the rain would stop before it had time to soak through the leaves. And so it did stop; it just came down in drops for a while, without driving or coming on a slant, and then the sun was out again. But the storm clouds remained beautifully massed on the other side of the Severn, and there were superb, wide-sweeping views through the rain-washed air and 96 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN across the gi'eat river to the distant hills, black or of deep violet-blue, and to horizon lines of pale buff in the setting sun — a sort of American Revolution effect in buff and blue. From jNIonmouth to Chepstow and back to Glouces- ter we had measured forty-seven miles for the day, and now we were approaching seventy; not a long run, but we had realized that it was getting dark and were aiming to go on until we reached an inn of which we had heard, some score of miles below Gloucester; and a man of whom, in the gathering gloom, we asked the road directions, said, after giving them: " Where are you from? " " We came from America," was the reply. " In a motor car! Good Lord!" And as we went on we heard his voice still trailing on in the darkness, "G-o-o-d L-o-r-d!" CHAPTER X THE WATERY CITIES OF BATH AND WELLS WE reached the inn and found it an old one. Very generally the small inns throughout England are old, and have thereby more attractiveness than thev would have if new, for old inns seem somehow to give the idea of offering the gathered hospitality of many generations. This par- ticular inn was the Ship Inn and the very name shows that it must have been established by some re- tired old sailor. The room in which we ate was up half a flight of stairs and was a tidy, compact little ship's cabin; and a fire burned in the little fireplace, for although this was the last day of May the even- ing was very cool ; and a round table was attractively set, and Dickens prints, in scarlet and black and white, were arranged around the grass-green walls, and there was clear, sheer muslin at the windows, tied in the middle of each window with green, and curtains of bright blue were drawn for the night; and " the lydies send me flowers for the table," said the hostess. The room presented a peculiarly bold and extremely effective type of decoration and we were surprised to find it in this little wayside place. Little stairs ran queerly in every direction and an old hayloft had been turned into a charming ball- room, reached by a glass-inclosed stone stair, and we were to find in the morning that there was a little garden in which to eat strawberries and cream (and it was really cream), and there was a little box- bordered green lawn that had been made by lifting 97 98 TOUEIXG GEEAT BRITAIX the sod from the old field beside the house, and there were roses clustered along the high stone wall which shut out the road. The inn stood right on the main road, and it and its every outbuilding were painted white with brilliant green trimmings, and all of the window-sills of the inn were agleam with flowers. At this inn we made our first acquaintance ^nth the pinafore for gi'own persons, for the woman who waited upon us wore an unbelted pinafore of white, reaching from her shoulders to her feet, a garment very general in rural England, as we found. This inn, so it appeared, was owned by a trust. A principal business of England is innkeeping; and bicycles, motorcycles and motor cars have given re- newed importance to the imis of the countryside; wherefore the capitalization of the innkeeping in- dustry has been a natural development, and on the whole probably an excellent one. The passing of the old-time imikeeper is at hand, and an efi'ort is being made to preserve the charm of the old-time inns while putting them in charge of a new kind of innkeeper. There are several companies that operate a number of hotels and inns throughout the country ; the general method being to secure long-established inns, send down decorations and picturesquely suit- able furniture from London, put in plumbing, select a good type of manager, and preserve as much as possible the old-time atmosphere ^^•ith modern con- veniences. One of these hotel trusts is headed bv five lord lieutenants of counties with whom are asso- ciated, according to the prospectus, a few earls and a scattering of admirals, and they give their hotel manacrers not onlv a salarv but a commission on the CD *. » total receipts exclusive of those for drink. The old- time inns, no matter how attractive they may be, have based their importance mainly upon the receipts of the taproom; but the new type, although not doing THE WATERY CITIES 99 away -^-ith the taproom, tends rather to discourage and minimize it: at such imis coffee is served as a matter of course after dinner, and it is possible to get a drink of water without turning the house upside down. At the ordinary old-time inn, water and coffee are almost ungettable luxuries. It may be added, so that one need not attach too much importance to mere titles, that the great folk of England let their names be used for advertising purposes with astonishing readiness, and that al- though England pretends to scorn money-making, the EngHsh people of title are seldom averse to earn- ing a few pounds by letting their names be used to add supposed distinction to business enterprise. In this particular case, however, it seems to be an excel- lent tiling. The tide rises high in Bristol Channel and as we approached that city, after our night at the Ship Inn, we saw great bare stretches, for it was then low tide, and there were stout little steamboats stranded in the mud. Bristol itself is a large and interesting city and possesses a beautiful cathedral in which beautiful music was going on as we entered: but it occurred to us that too much importance need not be attached, from any but an esthetic standpoint, to gentle music heard in the twilight of an old cathedral, for music just as fine and quiet as this sounded here when Bristol was the center of the slave trade of the world. In an unexpected position out in front of the cathedral is a splendid Xorman arch, preserved with remarkable detail, and the public way goes under it and there is a smaller arch beside it, and the two to- gether are irresistibly remindful of Mrs. Washing- ton's large hole for the cat and the smaller one for the kittens. From a distance Bristol gives the eff'ect as of an entire city with red-tiled roofs, and the place is so built close around its harbor that big ships may 100 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN sail up into the very heart of the city. And they still have in Bristol the cigar-store Indian who long ago vanished to the happy hunting grounds from America; for over here one finds him still preserved, only, although an Indian with a tomahawk, he is labeled " Demarara negro"! Quite away from the center of the city is the church of St. Mary Redcliffe which, although smaller and less elaborate than the cathedral, manages to give the impression of being more distinguished ; and after coming to such a conclusion it is naturally pleasant to have one's judgment royally confirmed by being told that Queen Elizabeth said of this church that it was the finest parish church in England. And up above the porch you are shown the old muniment room, in which Chatterton reveled in ancient records and dreamed the poetic dreams that made him memo- rable. But the American thinks this church especially in- teresting because here the father of William Penn is buried. His armor still hangs high on the church wall, with a lengthy inscription beneath it giving title after title that he had won, for he was a great com- mander of the English fleet, and ending quaintly: " & with a Gentle & Even Gale In much Peace arived and Ancord In his Last and Best Port." One does not wonder that Admiral William Penn looms very much higher in the English mind than does his son William, who merely founded a great commonwealth. We found the church still thickly strewn with green rushes and sweet as with the smell of new-mown hay, for this was the day following Whit Sunday, and on every Whit Sunday for many centuries past this church is thus strewn and the mayor and his alder- men come here in state. Things like this make for the fascination of England, and as you walk over the rushes that have been strewn over the ancient stone The deserted arcades of Bath r^-iinj/fs ,,|i , l-Hffl ■■^>^-mm mpmt liih MjiAiii>ii i A(j \i)h ()^ W'kiis THE WATERY CITIES 101 floor in carrying out an ancient custom, you seem to hear in the soft rustle the awakening of the centuries ; and when the organ softly plays you realize that, in an English church, someone always seems to be play- ing the organ just when you wish an effect to com- plete some impression. Bristol streets were full of a Whit Monday crowd and it was interesting to see the people thronging by the ancient *' nails "; round metal tables looking like capstans, and still standing, as they have for centuries, right out at the curb-Hne in the heart of the business center; for these tables used to be used in the actual paying-over of money and gave rise to the expression of " paying on the nail." The people everywhere showed a persistent desire to be run down, but we managed with some difficulty not to oblige them and got away for a run of a dozen agreeable miles to Bath, a little city peculiarly full of associations of the famous folk of England, for it was long the most fashionable of resorts and its waters not only attracted people there but also drew writers to describe the place and its life. The Bath bun is still there, but it is another idol fallen, for although it is edible it is only a rather ordinarj^ doughy, eggy, yeasty, curranty sort of thing; and the Bath chair is still there, but it is only an amusing baby-carriage for the old, pushed by a man — it is really what the English call a " pram " — and the old-time pronunciation of the city's name is still there, Bath being pronounced in a long-drawn- out way with the " a " impossibly broad. And every- where in Bath there are fascinating memories of the celebrities of the past. The famous pump-room is preserved and used, and from the description of Dickens you would think it a " spacious saloon, ornamented with Corinthian pil- lars, and a music gallery," but in reality it is neither 102 TOURING GREAT BRITAIIS' II I II 1 I -* large nor beautiful and its walls are of stucco, cov- ered with a cream-colored paint. The bar with " the marble vase at which the pumper gets the water and the yellow-looking tumblers out of which the visitors get it " are still there, and for a drink of the water you pay two-pence but would gladly pay a great deal more than two shillings to be rid of the nauseating taste of the lukewarm stuff, which tastes like very bad bath-water, indeed, and that it could ever have been fashionable shows to what lengths fashion can make people go. For example, the good Mr. Pick- wick, who was never ill in his life, went there and regularly, " drank a quarter of a pint before break- fast, and then walked up a hill ; and another quarter of a pint after breakfast, and then walked down a hill." Underneath a great part of the city are astonishing Roman remains, for those particularly sturdy old- timers built great baths there, which have been largely excavated in modern times; and it was a curious bringing together of the ancient and the modern days to notice that right over the Roman remains were a group of Whit Monday holiday-makers tangoing to a street piano's music. The dancing was vulgarly done and a policeman, with an air of detached aloof- ness, pushed his way through the giggling crowd and, seeming not to see the dancers, tapped the music- maker on the shoulder. " That's enough, my man," he said curtly, and the music stopped and the crowd melted and the policeman went slowly away with his fine air of detachment and aloofness. He had managed it admirably — and an English holiday crowd is not very nice to manage. In the very center of the city still stand the build- ings and the pillared colonnades of the time of Beau Nash and his followers, and they are highly pictorial and very effective, and nothing could more strangely THE WATERY CITIES 103 mark the difference between the Bath of the past and of the present, than that in the old-time days of Bath these arcades were always thronged, whereas when we saw the place there was literally not a soul to be seen there, although within a stone's-throw were the great jostling crowds of people out seeking amuse- ment. We motored about a little in Bath through the residential streets, because of their being so full of associations, and we found them very charming streets indeed, of wonderfully uniform design in the classic- worshiping taste of the eighteenth century; and among the streets are great curved spaces called " circuses," also lined with houses in classic taste, and the circus in which Lord Clive and other celebrities had their homes has thirty-six houses to a quadrant, with classic pillars fronting the buildings, which are three stories in height, with deep moat-like basements be- tween the houses and the sidewalk. It was curious to notice that, for these houses, instead of the classic pineapple ornamentation which the designer had in- tended, the English builders had managed to make representations of English acorns. We went out of Bath up an interminably long hill, realizing again what a mistake it is to think of Eng- land as a level country, and from the summit we found a widespread but rather featureless view. Then, having reached the top of the hill, we went down and down a long descent — what the English call a stiffish bit — noticing, as we passed, some typical trampers of the British countryside, a man and woman in the shade of a hedge. Over and over again we have noticed in England, not only that the country is tramp-infested but that the ancient dictum that " it is not good that the man should be alone " is taken by the tramps with personal application. And here is a curious thing; the trampers in England are 104 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN English, whereas the tramps of America are seldom American. We are on our way to another old-time watering- place, this next one with the watery name of Wells, and the road, although very hilly, is less picturesque than we have for some miles been having. The little newish houses are built tight together and each has a little stone-walled garden in front; at one, tea is offered with a phonograph for attraction; at another we noticed a woman in a mutch; we passed a great load of long logs drawn by four horses tandem; we passed a gypsy caravan of seven wagons; we passed a woods of so deep a black that even in the glow of the sun we could scarcely see into it ; and thus we got to Wells. The cathedral of Wells is dignified and beautiful, with great open spaces in front of it, and is easily remembered by its squarish facade, which looks out across a great open space which adds much to the gen- eral impressiveness. The interior gives a curiously w^hite impression as if all the stone had recently been scrubbed clean, and in its center is an aggressive in- verted arch effect which is not attractive, these in- verted arches, with criss-cross curves, having been put up only five or six centuries ago, as a bracing for the central tower, and they give an air as of a sort of modern improvement. Remembering that we were not to spend too much time with the minor cathedrals, we did not stay long at Wells: quite a number of visitors were there, it being a holiday, and every single one spent most of his time in front of a wonderful old clock which has a half-dozen or more little knights on horseback that go galloping madly round and round and in and out as it strikes; but no matter how wonderfully made, it is only a medieval plaything, after all, and seems to be out of place in a building of such dignit}''. THE WATERY CITIES 105 The little knights have been galloping in just that way for centuries, and no doubt the pilgrims to the cathedral have for centuries spent their time watching the evolutions or waiting for them to begin. We looked too! If one were to make a gastronomic map of Eng- land one would follow the Bath bun country with the country of Cheddar cheese; and of course we ate the cheese, and in this found nothing of disappointment. It is a run of only five miles from Wells to Glaston- bury, so thick crowded are the places of interest in England. At times one almost believes that he can scarcely motor for the sights, for they do demand so much attention! Glastonbury is one of the unusually famous names, because it was for so many centuries one of the greatest points of religious pilgrimage, but there are now at the place only scattered ruins. It may fairly be said that Glastonbury is a poor little town li\"ing upon its ruins. It is peculiarly a place of old mullioned-windowed ancient houses, used for shops and inns. Our attention was attracted, as we motored into the town, by what seemed to us the rather odd signs of " Bespoke Tailor," " Photographic Chemist," "Bespoke Shoes," "Jobmaster," "Tea Experts"; and the local name for their own upper town is " Bove Hill," with not a thought or need of an apostrophe. We spent the night at an ancient pilgrim inn which was built before the time when Columbus made his voyage of discovery; — always, in England, we keep coming upon such marvelous things as this — and we found it a very comfortable inn indeed. Nothing opens early in England, but Glastonbury is even slower than the slowest, and it is impossible to get anything before 9.30 in the morning. We wanted not only to buy some things but of course 106 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN to see the famous abbey ruins, but as the ruins were not open we could only wander through an ecclesias- tical gate and a tidy passage till we came to a row of cottages, each with a tiny garden of mingled pota- toes, roses and fox-gloves, and to a little chapel of the old abbey, with some villagers eating their break- fast and ha-ha-ing inside of it, and from this vantage point we had a good look at the ruined abbey and its arches, over a low stone wall. At the cottage doors was the only sign of active life in the place, for old women stood there working at making gloves, like " Hannah at the window binding shoes." The most complete relic of the past in Glastonbury is the abbot's kitchen, which stands off in a cow-field, and is a large square building with a tall octagonal stone roof surmounted by a sort of stone tower. We were able to rouse the keeper of the key of the cow- field and so saw this best feature of all the ruins, al- though it was so early as nine in the morning ! We entered the kitchen itself through a doorway and found it a large square room with four fire- places in the corners and with ingenious air-holes up above for carrying away the smoke. Altogether it was a fascinating relic of the homely life of the past. Close beside Glastonbury is a conical hill, some hundreds of feet high, called the Tor, and a little tower on this hill can be seen for many miles in every direction. We remembered, as we motored past it, the dramatic tragedy that occurred here, for Henry the Eighth, bound as he was to make himself supreme head of the church, found himself opposed by the Ab- bot of Glastonbury ; and, immensely powerful though the abbot was — in fact, because of his very power and prominence, so that he might be the most striking of examples — he was promptly tried for treason and hanged upon the top of this high hill so that all Eng- land literally might see that Henry was in earnest. THE WATERY CITIES 107 Perhaps it need not be added that it was not neces- sary to hang any more abbots, for if any of them had opinions they promptly forgot them. We left a just-awakening town as we motored out of Glastonbury, and a clump of two-horse tandem carts in front of a wayside tavern at the edge of the town showed how half a dozen drivers were also awakening. On we went, past roofs of tile, weathered and mossed and lichened in yellows and browns and reds and greens, on past a village of roofs of thatch — and all was old and all was picturesque and all was interesting; even a humorous pig reflectively rubbing his side on a gray-boled beech while he looked at us, humorously askant, was interesting — for this was England! CHAPTER XI THE COAST OF SOMERSET AND DEVON JUST a few miles out of Glastonbury we reached a ridge-road which led us for miles between sweeping views over levels, and we knew that a bit of green richness not very far off on our left was the scene of Sedgemoor, where the thousands of brave rustics under Monmouth, with their scythes fastened to poles (and they were probably sickles, which are all that one sees in this country!), went down in defeat before the regulars of King James; they had no chance, poor fellows, even had not the second in command of the King James army been one of the greatest of soldiers, destined to become world- famous under the name of the Duke of Marlborough. All is peaceful enough now. We pass a flock of sheep with a dog and a shepherd, and all the sheep have been sheared and it gives them a queerly long- legged effect; there are neither high walls nor high hedges to shut in the views; we see an unknown ruin on a distant height; we see a fascinating line of ragged pines; we see a great pasture thickly dotted ^^ith sheep and cattle and with little black piglets to add color contrast and pink piglets for piquancy; we pass a butcher-boy, long-aproned, on his bicycle, and a bicycled parcel-postman, and we go through Bridgwater, an ancient and interesting-looking town, and we do not stop except to glance for a mo- ment at the house where the sturdy Admiral Blake was born and at a little statue which has been put up in his honor — and it is often the case that a small 108 The beautiful coast of Devon A TVriCAL OLD INN COACH YARD SOMERSET AND DEVON 109 statue put up by local pride means more than would some huge ostentatious memorial. We get beyond Bridgwater, and we pass a stage-coach full of pas- sengers driving to town — driving out of the ancient past! — and we pass traction-engines towing little cars of coal or brick or road material as if to show that, after all, we are still in the present, and we pass telegraph poles topped with little sheet-iron hats, and traveling venders' carts full of shelves of dishes, and we glide through a fascinating village with its ancient square-towered church and age-colored houses of brick and with little pony-carts driven sedately about. Flocks of sheep are grazing in the fields and other sheep go wandering along the roadside. We whirl by a field ablaze with poppies and we run beside low- edged hills which gradually rise on our left, and in front of us we see great trees that bend forward over the road. There are hedges again, low hedges, and the grass is thick with buttercups, and pink campions grow between the hedges and the road. We pass a 'busload of " camp-fire girls," all in blue, and they cheerfully wave at us and every one of them is smiling, bappj^ pretty and alert. We run into the plain little village of Nether Stowey, and here we pause for a few minutes to look at the house where Coleridge wrote the " Ancient Mariner," for assuredly such a house is a place of a great achievement. It surprises us that Coleridge could have chosen to live in such a very plain house, on this very unattractive street, for the house has always been plain and the street has always been un- attractive; it could not have been the low rent which attracted him, for he could have got a prettier place, elsewhere, for less. Perhaps he taught near this cot- tage; but it is for his use of words and not for his choice of home surroundings that the world remem- 110 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN bers him; perhaps at severely plain Nether Stowey he was able to put into his " Ancient Mariner " a cer- tain grimness that he could not have achieved in, for example, the charming Lake Country. Leaving the town, we are at once at the foot of a hill, and on into the open country again, and there are wood-cutters, and women stooping along the road under great bundles of fagots, and we follow a red shale road beneath green hedges, and we are looking for the sea, for we know we are nearing it, and in a little while, over to our right, just a few miles away, comes a sudden glimpse of the broad and glimmering Bristol Channel, and a great headland rises abrupt and grand, and with this headland in view and the wide hills about us, we stop for another of our al fresco luncheons. We go on, up a road which looks out over a splen- did expanse of the sea; a road that is now high above the bordering greenery and now goes dropping down below some undulation, and the hedges often top ridges of earth that border the road; and now and then there is a group of farm buildings, nestled away from the sea, and great moors sweep slowly upward. Everything is beautiful and everything is glorious, the hills, the headlands and the water, and we feel how wonderfully much of beauty can be put within a short space of a few hours. And the road narrows, and there we dip between stone walls and meet in this cut fully a hundred and fifty sheep, with two dogs and two shepherds, and although we almost stop the car to let them all pass there is much trouble and agitation among the flock, but their agitation cannot be compared with that of the dogs, who find themselves thus facing a great emergency but who just glance at the shepherds as if to say, " Don't worry, we will see to this " ; and they do see to it, capably, swiftly and efficiently. SOMERSET AND DEVON m It is a region of casement windows and scarlet poppies and hawthorn still in bloom but fading, and in one place there are myriad fallen blossoms of horse- chestnut flowers carpeting the ground in pink beauty. A man goes by jauntily danghng a rabbit; and horses are tugging a huge log; there are shirt-sleeved farm laborers in waistcoats of green-and-yellow velveteen, and there are white-whiskered men driving little two- wheeled carts behind fat little white ponies, and you cannot imagine any such ponies with different kinds of men or any such men with different kinds of carts or ponies, for all must have originated together; it all seems so perfectly natural. We come to a stone building with its front covered with the most remarkable roses we have ever seen, in a glory of white and red along the entire face of the building. And we particularly notice the exquisite La Marque rose with fully a thousand blossoms in ex- quisite white, and there is also a " Glory of Die John," as the sole inhabitant of the building tells us; at least, the sole inhabitant that we can find, when he is finally discovered; and the difficulty of finding any- one, and the wonder of such superb flowers at the place (for there are not only the roses but a garden rich in other flowers of red and orange and white and blue), seem still more astonishing when we find that this is a country police station. We find, too, that these flowers are not only the pride of the police but of the entire countryside, and the solitary policeman whom we have found explains that the delicate La Marque vine, which is many years old and has a stem that is thick at the ground, has always been pruned in the summer and that its roots are protected by coming from under the house, for thus they resist the winter cold. But there really cannot be real cold here, for we see many hedges planted on top of narrow earth- 112 TOURING GREAT BRITAIX walls, which quite evidently are never heaved by the frost. We swing a little away from the sea and we pass little old women forever sunning themselves at little cottage doors beside scarlet poppies. And we most unexpectedly see a pretty nun, clearly out of some medieval convent! — but she shrieks quite a pretty little modern shriek and hurriedly crosses herself and runs to one side as she hears the honk. And we run through a constantly rolling bit of country ; and little and bridgeless brooks go lilting across the road, and ever-gathering moors are more and more rising in great sweeps. We pass the ever-recurrent tramp with a woman, and the ever-recurrent itinerant show, and the ever-recurrent van with its traveling family — how strange a life, especially for the children, always to travel and never to get to the end! There are more deep green hedges on top of multi- colored stone-and-earth walls, and on these walls are also great quantities of little white flowers. And we make a turn that is particularly sharp even for Eng- land, frequent though hidden and dangerous turns are over there, and go down a steep hill into Porlock, a village set in a bight among the mountains, a place which strikes you as the sign and symbol of livable loveliness, with roses, thatch, quaint windows and casements, and little noses of thatch at the ends of the ridgepoles, and with each house prettier than its neighbor. Surely, one may suggest that to live in this delightful place would be to take time by the Porlock. Then up an interminable hill, by a private toll road, to escape a grade almost impossible: and if the Eng- lish admit a road to be steep the motorist had better pay attention! For a time the road goes through dense woods of Druid-like, gray-mossed trees and solid thickets of small oaks and of larger holly trees of SOIMERSET AND DEVOy 113 extremely dark green ; such a thicket, this, as it would not be humanly possible to walk through. The road mounts above these dense woods and goes on and on ever higher and higher and higher round the shoulder of the mountainside ; by far the longest climb that our motor has made. It is really an unforgivably long hill, the builders having evidently seen the distant top and determined to go right over it ; though, really, it is a well-graded road and in no place too steep. We saw far below us, as we began the ascent, a motor aiming for the hill that we had avoided and we almost envied the other people except that we were getting magnificent views; but after a while we saw that the motor had turned back, balked, and it fol- lowed us up our long grade after all. And such a succession of changing views as that road with its twists and turns presents! — views of the brilhant sea in splendid gleaming sweeps, of cliffs and sand, of heights thick-covered with trees or rich in bracken and in foxglove in bloom, while, lining the road close beside us, are myriad bluebells and yellow-flowering whin bushes. The opposite side of the Bristol Chan- nel, fifteen miles or so away, shows as a white line, long and faint. In a little cleft below we saw a tiny nestle of cot- tages with thatched roofs mustard-colored with moss ; and pheasants were flitting across the road ; and at the summit we looked off at the blue sea and the blue sky and could scarcely tell where one merged into the other. And the air was of unimaginable fineness. And we halted there for a little to gain a fuller and deeper impression of the wonder and the beautj'^ of it afl. From a great high level at the summit a gently- rolling road led us unexpectedly away from the sea for a space and into an immense expanse of moorland; 114 TOURING GREAT BRITAi:^" all at once we get a sweep of Exmoor, magnificent in impressiveness and in immensity of effect; stupen- dous, bare, bleak, even monstrous is the roll of the awe-inspiring moors. The road is lined with stone walls that bulk thick and high from the gathered earth and shrubs and grass of centuries, for these are very old walls, and these are very steep hills, the roads being made for the days of pack-saddles and for Exmoor ponies that start up steepnesses on a gallop. It is on this high lonely land that we leave Somer- set and enter Devon. We have but a brief experi- ence of this vastly undulating desolateness, and we know that somewhere in the heart of that high deso- lateness is the Doone valley, the home of Lorna Doone; and then we descend to little Lynmouth. The final descent into that place is down a narrow cut, remarkably steep, and it was in bad condi- tion through being wet and sHmy from a rain that had not dried. For some reason quite a num- ber of vehicles had been stalled in a line at the top of this drop and when the line started we all came down into Lynmouth one after another with great swiftness in a slipping and dropping effect. Immediately behind us was an enormous forty-pas- senger motor excursion 'bus, painted scarlet, whose passengers got out in fright and walked. With us it was a matter of mild speculation what would happen if that mighty scarlet engine of destruction should take a notion to go faster than we, in that slit of a pass! It is a curious thing about motor guide-books in England, that although they carefully point out warnings of grades that are one in ten or so, they quite omit any mention whatever of what seem like one in five! And after all, nothing did happen to any of the vehicles, although that drop suggested a SOMERSET AND DEVON 115 ride on a roller-coaster or " rapid the descent to Avernus." Lynmouth is a wonderfully pretty and romantically set town, with mountains closely hemming it in and the broad sea stretching away immediately in front, and a delightfully wild mountain stream, in rocky and unspoiled condition, dashing right through the place. It is thick with little hotels and tea-rooms and everything is nestled in flowers, and all is fresh and fair in a way characteristic of Devon. At the end of this roadway, by the ocean edge, on a picturesque old stone pier, is a little lighthouse on which is an old cresset — an open-work iron basket, for beacon fires. How to get out of Lynmouth was a proposition, for there was no low road out of the place and in either one direction or another one must climb, but we were told by local authorities, as a happy solution, to take a funicular railway which had been built, for motors, to meet this very difficulty. But perhaps we really should have followed a road up the stream for a distance to where there was a new-built road with a grade not quite impossibly steep, instead of taking the funicular as we did, for the platform to hold the car was, with a carelessness of construction and opera- tion that would not be permitted in countries where personal rights are better safeguarded (and this is said in all seriousness), operated with no proper pre- caution against the slipping back of the car, which would really have been an unpleasant matter, for it would have meant a descent of several hundred feet to the rocks and the sea; and at the top they were quite unable to bring the level of the platform flush with the level of the landing-stage, thus making a particularly dangerous condition. It required four men and the power of the engine to lift the car over at the top of the abyss — and we paid half a sovereign for the experience! 116 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN But we were now in perched Lynton, with its perched hotels; one of which gave us an attractive and attracting sight with a fine American flag flying over its high-set tea-garden, on the steep mountain- side; and we left by an exceedingly twisting and agreeable road, and in the course of a few miles sud- denly found the road almost slipping away from under us as we went down into a village ; and the worst of this road was that as we approached the steeper part of the declivity, at the bottom, we had to dodge in and out in the narrow road among little cottages built to the very road's edge, all this forming a steep, deep, tangled little place called Parracombe. The chief industry or at least the principal occupation of the men of Parracombe seems to be to stand oafishly and watch in agreeable anticipation for some car to come disastrously down their hill. It looked as difficult to get out of Parracombe as to get out of Lynmouth for the road led up with aston- ishing steepness, but fortunately we had been told, some miles back, how to avoid this, by turning into a lane at the foot of a hill to the right, past the Fox and Geese Inn and away from the men watching for disaster, and afterwards taking the first turn back to the left, to the main road. But although we speak critically now and then of the steepness and curves and narrowness of English roads, we cannot too strongly say that we do not in the slightest degree regret having gone over even the most difficult, for with care and good fortune nothing happened to us even on these steep roads of Devon; at the same time, it is undeniable that many of the English roads must be seriously attended to before the time that motor cars become as much a feature of the roads as in America; but we enjoyed our joumeyings so infinitely that we cannot regret having followed our course nor could we think of SOMERSET AND DEVON 117 advising others not to do so. Quite probably, too, the absolute unexpectedness of the ascents and drops and bad curves made them appreciably worse than they would have appeared if we had known of them. But, as we have already remarked, the motor-maps and guides are strangely silent as to things of danger, although places that are not in the least difficult are formally spoken of. We spent the night at Combe Martin, one of those old English towns with an inimitably long-drawn-out single street. It really seemed as if we should never come to our inn, but we came to it at last and, asking if there were a garage, the answer was ; " Yes, sir. We put it in the town-hall. Yes, sir, thank you ; " that eternal and meaningless *' Thank you," with its rising inflection, following even such an amusing statement as this ; but it was meant as very literal and not amusing, for the car was really locked up for the night in the basement of the town-hall. With the morning we started for Ilfracombe, along a cliff road, through superbness of heights and depths, and we found that with all the grandeur and stu- pendousness, there was also the wonder of rich green- ery, close to the very ocean though it is. Enormous ferns line the road. The hedges are of deep green and mostly of beech and holly stunted by many years of hacking and clipping, and grow upon stone walls covered with earth and thick with grass and mosses. Numberless rhododendrons in bloom overhang the road; they tell you that a bit of rhododendron stuck into the ground will grow as a bush! And oaks and pines and firs and beeches thickly border the way. Often the hedges are so high as to shut off the ocean, and the next moment they are lower, and perhaps you will see rocky coves, with fishing-boats, far below, or a schooner with sails all set, sailing close inshore. It was a morning of cool gray mist; white waves 118 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN were softly breaking against the cliff; the fishing- boats had white or ochre sails; other ships lay in the dim-seen distance and all was a misty and glamorous glory ; we could see the level water of the windless day and the black reefs and the cliffs and the mountains, and then the swaying mist would softly shut them in. Yesterday was a day of brilliant blue water and blue sky, but to-day is a day of soft gi*ay water and soft gray sky ; and the seagulls go flying and scream- ing around the cliffs. We pass a little village with vegetable gardens divided by little hedges that go running up almost perpendicular hills, and a little later the car rolls into Ilfracombe, a city of hotels and boarding-houses and tourists' shops, beautifully facing out over rocks and sea. It is a modern place, a gentle peaceful seaside re- sort; the English do take their seaside so pleasantly and placidly! Villas perch along the edges of the town, each with its rosebushes; and white-capped old ladies are clipping rosebushes and little old men are clipping rosebushes and young women are clip- ping rosebushes. Other people are riding in great motor-charabancs or in funny bath-chair baby- carriages drawn here by ponies instead of by hand as in Bath itself. And everybody else is just looking out over the sea and thinking — or just looking out over the sea. CHAPTER XII CLOYELLY AND TINTAGEL WE chose, out of Ilfracombe, a fine cross- country road that led us easily to Barn- staple, an ancient town that scarcely looks it, with a very interesting sixteen-arched stone bridge, seven centuries old, which has necessarily been widened with ironwork. Barnstaple is called Barum, just as later we are to find Salisbury called Sarum — each of them an eminently respectable place to have an alias! Beyond Barnstaple it was a pleasant run, past hedges blossoming with honeysuckle and eglantine, to busy Bideford, the busiest manufacturing place we saw in Devonshire, and it was a surprise to find so large and busy a place, for we had thought of it only as the town of Westward Ho! Past Bideford it was less than a dozen miles to Clovelly, and we felt disappointed after the recent magnificent scenery, for the road became rather ordi- nary. We had heard of Clovelly as a place of unusual beauty but in its approach there was no indication of it. We left the main highway and motored along a short branch-road with masses of fuchsia growing profusely over its bordering walls, and came to a place where our motor car could be left and cared for, and proceeded on foot down a steep, narrow lane with views in front, across intervening greenery, of miles of tall-rising cliffs with the water breaking at their feet. And all at once the scene changes; we turn a cor- 119 120 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN ner: we no longer see cliffs or beach or water; in- stead we see in front of us a street, a street so narrow that you may shake hands across it, a street of cobble- stones the width of the narrow way and of steep stone-paved descents, a street where either side is an irregular wavering indented line of little houses, of casement windows, of dormered roofs, of diamond panes, of little balconies, of ships' masts for flag- poles. This street is Clovelly: and it is a fetching street, a charming street, a street of white and green, a street of the most brilliant white and the most brilliant green: a street of ancientness, of beauty, of cleanli- ness, even of immaculateness. The women are all white-aproned and the men are clad in the blue jerseys of the sea. Down and down we go. Probably no horse has ever walked down this street; certainly no vehicle ever passed up or down; but there are little skids which are slid and dragged by hand over the polished little cobbles and steps, and there are a few panniered donkeys used for burdens and now and then for some visitor. At the bottom of the descent and in sight of the sea the street sweeps and turns and turns again and passes directly through an old white house and opens upon a curving stone quay, shaped like a fish-hook, and a great, sweeping high-cliffed bay. On the broad shingle beach a fleet of little boats is moored by long brown chains, waiting for the tide to float them, and other boats of the village dot the sea, and looking back from the quay there are tall cliffs of greenery and a few white houses and no sign whatever of the wonderful street down which we have just come! A friendly, helpful, soft-voiced, happy folk are these of Clovelly. When boats put out together for passengers from a visiting local steamer, the boatman ■.:yM ff,<-^»;r-M _ ;«: Yankees at Kinc; Aicnii k s Castii The rocky ai'imioacii to Ti.\i\(.i; CLOVELLY AND TINTAGEL 121 who gets but one passenger does as well as the man who gets many, for the money is equally divided; when a fisherman is sick his fellow-villagers divide with him until he is able once more to put to sea. This very ancient village is an excellent example of good results from a system that must needs in itself be evil. For every particle of land is owned, and always has been owned, by the lord of the manor; or the lady of the manor, as it is at present, who holds everyone in the village in the grip of a short lease in place of the leases for three lives, of the past ; and that the present owner is a beneficent despot who appreciates the value of retaining the old-time charm and quaintness does not assure the future of Clovelly. Vines cling to the house-fronts. At cottage doors, in cottage windows, in miraculously tiny cottage gar- dens there are masses of geranium positively mar- velous in scarlet bloom, and there are roses, there are glorious peonies in a precious bit of ground that is but six inches wide, there is the fair white stock, sweet-smelling like cloves, there are wall-flowers in their shadings of brown or yellow, and up a little path- way there are tree fuchsias, thick with thousands of blossoms on branches that are fifteen feet in length, and all this on that little ancient street climbing up from the sea. Clovelly is fortunately not to be reached by rail, so only the people get here who really wish to see it. For them it is easily reachable, and in mid-season it is thronged by visitors who come by charabanc or boat and for the greater part stay but through the mid-day hours. In early June there are not many vis- itors, and as evening came on not a single one was to be seen, all having gone to their rooms or returned to other towns. Then the village became its natural self ; some of the women taking in their tiny tea signs 122 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN and sitting out on their tiny little terraced balconies and quietly greeting neighbors on the opposite side of the narrow way, and a knot of blue-jerseyed men gathered at a little outlook point and looked quietly out over the bay and the shadowy cliffs and the dis- tant light on Bideford bar, and at the mist that was slowly dimming the water and the headlands, even though the moon was rising over the wooded cliffs. And how often the moon comes on one's travels just lo add a touch of magic to a place of beauty! The folk of Clovelly are a silent folk, but one old sailor was moved to unwonted talk of his sea voy- ages, and especially of sailing as one of a crew on a yacht to the Mediterranean. He liked the towns at the base of the Italian cliffs and remembered them all by name; but they were not clean enough for him. The temples at Psstum did not greatly interest him, for they had no windows and the roofs were off! Venice he liked least of all : " There was no proper place to walk; I could only walk around their bit of a square " : and this from a man of the perpendicular street of Clovelly! The village grows strangely silent. And there are distant footsteps on the cobble-stones and distant snatches of song and a distant hail, and a sibilant murmuring from the mostly monosyllabic men — and then, as old Pepys said, " and then to bed." We were awakened by the crying of the seabirds that flew past our windows, and then came the clat- ter of the skids with the morning bread and butter and eggs and clotted cream for the village, and then the clattering feet of a little donkey led by a uni- formed postman bringing the day's mail; and we walked down again to the lookout, and jackdaws and milk-white seagulls and puffins were flying about or resting on the rocks; and fluttering near the shore were the chaffinch and the jet-black jackdaw, and the CLOVELLY AND TINTAGEL 123 linnet with its red breast and the bright white on its wings. After breakfast at the pleasant little place where we had stayed, we were asked to write in the guest- book, and on the previous page we noticed a most de- lightful appreciation of the house signed A. Conan Doyle. He spoke of the agreeable treatment given him and said that the hostess was one of the few in England who could rise to the height of a seven- thirty breakfast; and it amused us to find that the hostess herself had no idea that Doctor Doyle was anything of a celebrity. It is well for Clovelly that the physical characteris- tics of its surroundings make it impossible for it to expand; so that, although it is so many centuries old — it is mentioned in Domesday Book — it is small for its age. A most attractive and final impression of the place, and as unexpected as it is delightful, comes from entering a private road of the lady of the manor — the public are allowed to enter it — which skirts the edge of the cliff above the village, for there is a glory of trees in oak and beech and ash that are green to their bases with lichen and ivy, and there are shrubs and flowers and enormous fern and bracken, and through the greenery there are glimpses of the roofs far below, or of the cliffs, or of the sea, or of long and distant stretches of white sand, and ever the blue sky merges into the blue sea and the blue sea merges into the blue sky and all is loveliness. Leaving Clovelly behind, there are miles and miles of smiling desolation, with seldom a house to be seen, a rolling country with sweeping views, and with sel- dom a tree, and with hedges checkering and criss- crossing in every direction; and we remembered that Mrs. Browning somewhere speaks of some part of England as " tied up fast with hedges," and it seems as if such a description would here apply. 124 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN^ We passed a party of camping trampers ; two fami- lies, with poor and ragged tents and the children well- spoken, though in ragged clothes. These were not begging trampers, but an industrious group; they even had a horse, and it was philosophically cropping the roadside grass; the elders, both men and women, were off on some temporary work, and a pile of tent pegs pointed out one of the kinds of work done by the children. As we went on we noticed that the chaffinch and the linnet were often seen, and one chaffinch was so tame that it actually lighted upon the wind-shield for a few moments as if to give us a friendly greeting into Cornwall — for we were passing the Cornwall line and we were bound for the ancient castle which more than any other is connected with King Arthur, ancient Tintagel — and we were going to King Ar- thur's castle in a motor car! Stretches of illimitable moor, bleak and brownish green and bare of trees, seldom a solitary house in sight for miles, and miles, a drear immensity of space — and we barely noticed little old Stratton as we passed swiftly through it and again out into the loneliness, nor did we pause for pretty Boscastle, tucked down as it is in a great hollow and proud of its reputation of being the prettiest village in Corn- wall. We felt the drear immensities of that drear coast — for the Atlantic Ocean was never far awav, although out of sight from the road — as a fit spot for tremendous and lost history, and our minds were full of Tintagel and Arthur. For there can be no doubt that King Arthur ex- isted; the immemorial and unbroken tradition, the fixed belief of the people, the church bells of sunken Lyonesse still faintly ringing, as the dim old fancy has it, underneath the Cornish sea — how can even the soberest-minded doubt! There is no fixed and pro- CLOVELLY AND TINTAGEL 125 saic history of King Arthur, hut there is something infinitely better, for there is that at which history aims in vain: a tremendous impression. We had had a rapid run of over thirty miles from Clovelly and we had gone up a great, long hill, and high, high up we came suddenly and unexpectedly upon a village which has been given the name of Tintagel; and we felt the intensest shock of disap- pointment. For it is a village which, although it has a few old-time houses, is a modern and unattractive place for summer trippers, and on a treeless cliff nearby is a big modern hotel. We noticed signs of " Land for Sale," one of the few places in England where we have seen any such signs, and this was ap- parently the explanation of the unattractive modern homes, and we realized again that there are strong advantages, from a picturesque standpoint, in the system by which land is held by great proprietors, whatever criticisms may fairly be made from other standpoints. But in a few minutes the village and the hotel are forgotten and the impressions of tremendousness re- turn even intenser and stronger than before, for we have left the car and gone down a winding path and have come to where the mighty Atlantic stretches off into dim distances and where we mount upward in our approach to the castle of Tintagel and are faced by a cliff stupendously black and stern. As we cross a narrow causeway a tremendous wind blows through the narrow gap and lifts the seabirds as they try to dive, and there is a long line of rocky cliffs on either side and on either side of us the break- ers are dashing in in angry white. We go up and up steps that are chopped out of the solid stone and we reach an old wooden door in the ancient gateway of the castle and we unlock the door and enter and lock ourselves inside — we have been given the key by 126 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN the custodian, who, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, lives in a Httle house quite out of sight, back toward the village — and we feel to the full the splen- did impressiveness of it all. Few fragments of the castle remain, but they are enough to show what it must have been in ancient days, standing there on its ocean-girdled promontory overhanging the sea. It is all glorious and terrible, and thoughts come thronging of Arthur the King and of the Knights of the Table Round, and we feel a vivid sense of the long-past time. How lonely and impressive it all seems, here above the roaring ocean, and how mighty and impregnable must it all have been ! — and yet all has vanished as a tale that is told ; a tale that is only mistily told — and we walk softly over ground that is all glowing with the flowering seapink. Tintagel had been our ultimate western aim, and so here we turned our back to the setting sun and swung to the eastward. CHAPTER XIII EASTWARD Ho! AS we left Tintagel we ran into great moors, stem, dour, solemn, in sweeps of lonely gran- deur, and they begin to be depressive and they make for sadness; and then, suddenly, we are in a lush green England again, with trees and vines and bushes and flowers and grass; a wonderful and al- most instantaneous change into a rich and beautiful country. We go on through Launceston, a pleasant and modern-looking place on a hillside, with a gloomy old castle that has looked down frowningly upon it since Norman days; and we pass through the town and go out through an ancient gateway that spans the public street — a felicitous gateway, felicitously used — and with little windows, diamond-paned, in the rooms above the gate. Not far beyond Launceston we were perilously near a tragedy. We were coasting slowly down a road cut straight and narrow between close-bordering stone walls, and it was fortunate that the power was shut off and the car under quiet control, for a two- wheeled cart was coming up the hill toward us with a woman and a baby and two girls, and in an instant, just as it was passing us and without the slightest warning, the horse, which until then had given not the slightest indication of fright, suddenly whirled and backed the cart directly in front of our wheels, closing the entire road. For a moment it seemed as if collision was inevitable and it would have been seri- ous indeed to overturn a cart with such a load, but 127 128 TOURING GREAT ERITAIX fortunately the car was stopped, although within an inch of collision, and at the same time one of us jumped out and caught the horse by the bridle, and all was safe, and the horse was led up the hill and the part\^ went on their way. But it was a proof, had any proof been needed, that vigilance can never be relaxed. We went motoring through an unusually beautiful stretch of countryside, and the road had notably broadened, and nearing Okehampton veritable moun- tains of moorland came in sight, lofty and dreary. Okehampton itself did not detain us, and from that place to Exeter we made a detour, as we were warned of a torn-up road ; and, as it turned out, we were glad of this detour, for it took us through a charming country and into a little village, Sampford Courtney, in the middle of which we forded a little stream that rambled across the road; and there were white cot- tages and dark thatched roofs and green hedges and red roses and gray walls and brown roads and white and pink flowers, and baby yellow ducks on the green water with a mothering black hen a-flutter with anxiety and anxiously calling out little warning calls; and in this little village we had one of those unexpectedly pleasant experiences which may hap- pen at any time in England, for we stopped to ask a question at a little cottage and we were asked to come in, and there was a yellow cat lying on the stone floor near the fireplace, which was the cook- stove of the house, and in the little front room was an ancient oak dresser quite full of interesting old blue-and-white china and luster ware, and the dresser itself belonged to the old grandfather of eighty-two, who mumbled that it was very old when he was a boy. The cottage had such astonishingly thick walls of plaster-covered clay mixed with straw as to make the rooms almost impossibly tiny. It was, in all, not Cheiidar cows by the waterside MUDWAI.LED COTTAGES OF SaJII'FOUI) CoURTNEY EASTWARD HO t 129 much more than a glimpse into a cottager's home, but it left such a pleasant impression ! As we went on we noticed that there were other cottages built of clay and straw. And the road led narrowing between tall banks, and through villages, with lofty stretches of Dartmoor from time to time in towering heights on our right; and there were many thatched cottages, and even the hay-ricks were thatched, and the hedges were aglow with campions or yellow with buttercups, and there were pleasant white cottages with trellised arches of roses over their doors and with fruit trees and trained flowers against the cottage walls. There were long lines of big beech- trees growing on the very tops of the stone-and-earth walls, and views alternately wide and restricted, and ever and anon there would again come wide-sweeping views of the miles of distant purple moorland. We passed tandem teams with two or three or even four horses, we passed sleek brown cattle lying in the midst of a great field of yellow buttercups, we passed gardens rich with enormous strawberries, we passed through gloomy roads canyoned with huge stone walls, and right into a village of vividest white, Crediton, a little place with an interesting town cross and a stately old church. But we did not go into the church, for one early learns that to go into every in- teresting old church in England would demand hfe- times. We crossed a brimming river — how one comes to realize that in those delightful words of Tennyson, " brimming river," he described a frequently recur- rent feature of the finest of English landscapes! — and then we are in Exeter. Few of all the towns or cities of England are so satisfactory, so attractive, so agreeable as Exeter. It is not only that it is old and that it was old even so long ago as when the mother of King Harold escaped through a town gate ( still partially preserved even in 130 TOURING GREAT BRITAIX this twentieth century) when Wilham the Conqueror entered the place, for other cities of England are also old, but that the city is of an individual attractiveness, largely owing, apparentlj^ to the fine type of people who make up its population — at least this was the im- pression that we came to feel there. The men are alert and the women are smartly dressed and there is a general air of exquisite, quiet living in the resi- dential streets and the " circuses." It is a fair city — indeed, it is a city of savoir faire. Exeter is a place of fine modernity, but at the same time it keeps closely in touch with the past; for ex- ample, one of the citizens still receives two pennies a year for permitting a beam to rest in his wall just because that beam has paid two pennies a year for some six centuries. The easy talk of the people in general is of some King This or Queen That of the past. When, many j^ears ago, the then King wrote — Edward the First or Third or something — directing that the local guilds give a certain citizen a permit to do business in the city without paying a big fee, for the man was rich and powerful and had interested the King in his behalf, the guilds refused and successfully persisted in their refusal : and the people are as proud of the achievement as if it were only of yesterday. There is a beautiful grayish-black cathedral in Exeter and it is set a few feet below the level of a broad, open space adjoining the main part of the city and just off at one side from it. It is curiously buttressed in such a way that one may walk along outside beneath the buttresses, and there is a splendid dignity about two old towers of which the citj'^ feels mildly proud, for one is at each end of the transept, and this is the only cathedral in England with such a feature. In the interior of the cathedral there is a curiously interesting minstrels' gallery, with figures of angels EASTWARD HO! 131 playing on cittern and clarion, psaltery and bag- pipe, sackbut and timbrel and cymbals. But we were still more interested in an inscription under a great stained-glass window which said that it w^as affection- ately " dedicated to the memory of the men of Devon who died in the service of their country during the war in South Africa, 1899-1902," and we were equally interested in another inscription to the men of the region who died in India, and we were inter- ested in the battle-flags that are preserved there. Soldiers are buried in this cathedral who have fought in every war from the Conquest down to the present time, and there will undoubtedly be some great and solemn memorial to the men who have died in the lat- est war of all in France. Close beside an ancient stone effigy there ticks, in plain sight, the great pendulum of the cathedral clock, marking the ticking off of the centuries of inexorable time. A cathedral, this, with a general effect of sweet and agreeable intimacy; you love it, not that it is so grand as some, not that it is so large as some, but that it is altogether fine and of a delightful mellowness — as indeed the entire town is. In Exeter we noticed fine evidences of great and justifiable civic pride, and, as a perfect indication of this, there is preserved in Hisrh Street, in the very cen- ter of the city, an ancient guild-hall, a really beautiful building, projecting over the sidewalk and resting on fine stone pillars that rise from the curb. We en- tered by a remarkable Renaissance door, a positively adorable door, and the interior of the building was shown to us by a man deliciously full of the feeling of Exeter. First, there is the almost chapel-like guild- room, paneled, and with a groined roof; but even more interesting than the guild-room is the mayor's chamber over the sidewalk, furnished with admirable 132 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN' old furniture of various periods, not as a museum, but as a room for every-day use ; it is the mayor's own parlor and it is finely paneled with oak, and there are interesting paintings on the wall, including the portrait of Princess Henrietta, the daughter of Charles the First, who was born in Exeter in the troublous times of 1644. The infamous Jeffrej^s is remembered here with present-day hatred, for at one crossroads just out- side of the town he had eighty-four men of Exeter and its neighborhood hanged in one week. " It was a bad job," said a citizen, with concern and heavy anger, as if it were all of last week. But there was at least one period when there was no hanging in Exeter, for they still tell that, four or five hundred years ago, the guild-hall needed a new roof and of how the city built a beautiful one by fining, for one year, every person convicted of any crime, instead of hang- ing anybody — this being back in the delightful old days when England hanged for pretty nearly every offense, little or big. Within the town there is a beautiful park, with an exquisite lawn and huge trees, and here the beautiful and fragmentary remains of old Rougemont Castle are hidden among masses of ivy; and this brought to mind Shakespeare's reference to Exeter, showing as it does that Exeter has always been a pleasant city to visit and that the mayor has always been a man of importance; and also it forever fixes Rougemont Castle in the memory; for Richard the Third is made to say: *' When last I was at Exeter, The Mayor in courtesy show'd me the castle, And call'd it Rougemont." As we were about ready to leave Exeter we saw people eagerly pushing into a door in an eager, jos- EASTWARD HO ! 133 tling rush, and as it was under the sign " Restau- rant " we joined the rush, and found the most promi- nent sign inside to be " American Iced Drinks." It was a positively delightful restaurant and they gave us coffee deliciously American made and, better than all, huge, delicious strawberries of the countryside, served with delicious Devon cream; clotted cream, they call it, although it is not really clotted at all, but delightfully smooth; and it is only fair, in jus- tice to Devonshire, to say that we had been intermit- tently feasting on strawberries almost, if not quite as good, as these, and upon Devon cream, ever since en- tering the county; and we left the cream-pots of Devon with regret. We swung out of Exeter, detouring for Honiton under arcaded trees, past little carts, vari-colored, remindful of the little carts of Sicily, past dark woods distantly massed, past ducks waddling in yellow fuzz across the road, past goose girls driving their flocks homeward — only they were ducks and not geese, but one really cannot say " duckgirl," although, such be- ing among the oddities of language, there might be reference to one as " ducky "; and here the girls cer- tainly added a picturesque touch. We met helmeted and goggled motorcyclists, heads low down, coats inflated, giving the impression of coming charging at us like sea-divers, we noticed hedge clippings frugally tied up in bundles to be carried to cottages as fuel, we noticed two men stand- ing on a big, specially-made platform to saw huge logs longitudinally, such slow hand-work methods being proudly deemed conservative over here; and thus into the broad street of little Honiton. Some- thing in its appearance quite astonished us and in a moment we noticed what it was : it was the first Eng- lish town we had seen, exclusive of cities, ^vnthout greenery, and even the streets of the cities had some- 134 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN how managed to give a greener effect than this. It is a town of yellow bareness. Down the main street a tiny donkey was drawing a tiny cart in which, high-perched, sat a grizzled, white-whiskered old farmer in bright blue coat and yellow corduroys ; indeed, we came to notice that yel- low corduroys are somewhat of a favorite hereabouts. A few red-coated soldiers brightened the sallow town, giving touches of color, but not a glare, and a little band of street musicians were playing oddly excellent music with piccolos and banjo. If one were giving a formal description of this place, the beginning would be not with the yellow coloring and the donkey carts and the soldiers, which are the things that mainly struck us, but with the making of Honiton lace; and this is really a very interesting matter, for it is the only English-made bobbin-lace; the manu- facture of it was established here perhaps some two and a half centuries ago by refugees from Holland, and it is still being made in the old-fashioned way; and of course there are little places to buy it and little upstairs rooms where you will be shown little old women doing miracles with fingers jingling bobbins, over the pins on their pillows. We went on through a beautiful country and came to Axminster, a famous name in the making of car- pets, although they have not been made here, the people will tell you, for the last hundred years, as the secret died with the original discoverer of the Axminster method. They point out the old stone building where he lived and worked; and the reflec- tion comes that, although a man of personality may not always be able to hand down his own name to posterity, he may be able to hand down that of his town, as has this carpet-maker, and that the high- est aim of all may not be personal fame. English towns feel a great local pride in their local EASTWARD HO ! 135 mottoes; a point which is seldom of interest to vis- itors, though after we had left Axminster we won- dered that we could have done so without thinking to inquire what its particular motto was ; for at least, as one of us suggested, the Axminsterites would not care to have such a motto as that proud one of our own Pine Tree flag, " Don't tread on me." None of us could quite say why, but we all felt vaguely stirred by feeling that we were approaching that great stretch of southern England named, with- out any definite boundaries, the South Downs: we all thought at first that we knew all about the South Downs and that they somehow represented English history and greatness, but when we tried a mutual analysis we discovered that " Southdown mutton " marked the extent of our definite ideas. But soon there was something that did definitely thrill us, for as we motored along high-lying roads of rich and lovely views alternately to right and left, we now and then caught distant and sparkling views of the English Channel to the southward — and the Channel thrilled us. Our road tunneled through a hill; an unexpected thing, this up-to-date novelty in road-making and suggestive of the old tunneled road at Posilipo; and we climbed long, slow, easy slopes, and w^e coasted easily down long and gliding sweeps, with cattle graz- ing peacefully along the roadside. Thus far we have said nothing about the national plant of England. It has been so astonishing, so amazing, that we have wanted to see if there could be any place without it. But it really grows every- where. And it is the stinging nettle! Every day we have seen it and seen it freely, in the corners of fields, in the hedges, along the gardens, beside clumps of trees, beside the shrubs; the noxious thing grows everywhere; and it grows thickly. Yet we do not 136 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN remember ever having heard or read of the nettle as a frequent growth in England! Such things as the primrose and the hawthorn are emphasized, and prop- erly enough so, but it is certainly strange, this silence in regard to the nettle on the part of natives and vis- itors alike. The bishop's garden at Salisbury Invading the solitude of Stoneiienge CHAPTER XIV INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS AFTER a run of sixty-seven miles, for our stay- in Exeter had pleasantly shortened our run- ning time, we came in the early twilight to clean and prosperous-looking Bridport, and we casually noticed that there were things in the shop windows as well as in the hotels that were from Cleveland and from Pittsburgh! We were struck, in this town, by the numerous curved, old-fashioned big-bowed windows, giving a distinct impression as of a sailor town; although it did not seem precisely clear why this should be so, and it may have been only from some fancied re- semblance to the picturesque cabin-windowed sterns of old-fashioned sailing ships. And it is really a sailor-town, and, although the sea is not actually visible, it is at least not far away, and the town is given a port name because it is really a port, with a stream leading up from the Channel. Bridport, we were surprised to find, is really a place of note; one cannot always tell about a town any more than about a person whether or not it is famous, or, if famous, precisely what for, and the distinction of Bridport we found to be that it is, or at least was, a world-manufacturing place of fish-nets and tennis-nets. Some time ago, also, it actually held the monopoly of making the rope for the British navy — and probably enough it made a great deal for an- other purpose not so much a feature of present-day English life as it was not so very long ago. 137 138 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN We went on towards Dorchester through the cool forenoon air; a hilly run of some fifteen miles past many hedges white with elderflower; and into one we see a weasel go darting, with its sharp little scream. We breathe with delight the fine exhila- rating air, and we see great stretches of the cool gray sea under a white and cloudy sky; and the road- builders, as we have noticed in other places, seem to have picked the highest pieces of land in sight and then run their roads right over them, thus giving splendid expanses of view. A bleakness comes over the countryside, and the few houses that one sees on the Downs are tucked deep in protective valleys. A white road winds nar- rowly on between green banks and a cool wind comes sweeping in and tosses and sways the now blossom- less tall hawthorns that thicken the hedges on the windy heights; and there are great fields of coarse, yellow-blossoming gorse. We pass a beautiful stone lodge at the entrance to a private estate; the only rich-looking private estate that we have seen for a long time, although for so much of our journey heretofore rich private estates have been omnipresent. We sweep quietly into a little village of trim-built stone cottages, with a brook beside the road, and the women come running to their doors for mail as we honk. The country, as in most of England, is well sign- posted at the crossroads, but there is a great per- verseness about it, for the four signs could be put one above the other, instead of all at one height, and would thus be vastly more advantageous, for the blanketing method of these posts often makes trav- elers, because they cannot soon enough read the looked-for name, run forward on the wrong road, only to back off again. But we forget such things as we notice a passing girl carrying two large tin pails INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS 139 labeled plainly with the name of a brand of Chicago lardl We pass extraordinarily fat, brown cattle on their way to market, each with a man on horseback or in a cart overseeing a single man on foot; and it all seems economically wrong, except that we realize that men's labor, after all, is cheap in England, even though in the towns and cities the labor unions are raising the pay of mechanics, and thus making men more worth while. Across a great bare stretch we see miles away the spires of a city; and, such being the influence of a man who is a classic in his own lifetime, we think of this distant place as being not so much Dorchester as Hardy's town, Casterbridge. Our final approach to Casterbridge is through a mighty colonnade of elms, with branches overarching and interlacing across the road ; quite the most strik- ing of any of the similar road-arched avenues that we have yet seen. The name of Dorchester is at once remindful of New England, and indeed many early New England settlers and sailors went from this vicinity. In fact, all this part of England, so we noticed, seems full of a subtle and intangible sense of the closeness of America, and it pleased us that a delightful Eng- lishman in Dorchester told us that a memorial had been unveiled only a few weeks before in a town less than ten miles from here, in honor of that Endicott who was such a figure in early New England history ; and it pleased us that the Englishman could quote these American lines on Endicott : A grave, strong man, who knew no peer In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear Of God, not man, and for good or ill, Held his trust with an iron will. " 140 TOURING GREAT BRITAIIST Entering the little city we passed by a barracks where a regiment of regulars in yellowish green were earnestly drilling, not thinking that in a few weeks they would be at something very much more than drilling on the other side of the Channel. We turned aside to a huge Roman amphitheater, much the most remarkable of all the Roman remains of this region, rich as it is in various mementos of this sort. It is a large circular, or rather oval, earth- work which would pass at home for excellent work of the INIound Builders, and the great banks are about thirty-five feet high. Boys were playing cricket in the interior of the amphitheater and modern and un- attractive little houses have been built close about, outside. In the days of Roman dominion the Ro- mans used to gather here for the amusement of seeing Britons kill wild animals, or each other, and the Eng- lish followed this more or less laudable example by making the amphitheater a place for public execu- tion up to quite recent years; and the people here will tell you with a sort of pride that some twelve thousand spectators would gather for such an event. Without insisting too much upon such tilings as these, it is well to remember how very near civilization is to barbarism. An exceedingly interesting looking place is Dor- chester; and it has a pleasant sort of character with- out possessing any particularly notable features. It really seems, here, as if the interest in Hardy lessens one's interest in other things, and one retains a vivid impression of such an intrinsically ordinary scene as that of half a dozen heavy grain wagons grouped to- gether, each with three horses, just because the mayor of Casterbridge was a dealer in grain. We were not satisfied until we had identified the window of the second- story room of the inn where he was given a great dinner. INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS i£l Instantly upon leaving Dorchester we were run- ning through a rich parklike, farm-land country: these two contradictory phrases both being ap- plicable ; and everywhere we noticed many cattle and so very many sheep that we were not only quite ready to believe the local assertion that there are over three- quarters of a million sheep around Dorchester, but also felt that all the mutton-chops of England were quite accounted for — and we wondered why so often there could be only bacon and eggs or 'am! It is one of life's mysteries. It would seem as if the people of these downs (the contour of the land is such as to justify the phrase, these ups and downs) must have quite a love for color, for we pass a green-bloused girl on a blue bicycle, an orange-capped girl walldng to school, pur- ple schoolbag in hand, and a wagon all blue and red and brown and white, with dappled horses wearing little white, red-tasseled caps above their ears. We enter a little village with pretty blue flowers grow- ing in thick clusters beside the doorsteps and with gardens a brilliant red with big red poppies, and with wattles tied in big bundles beside cottages, and we come to Blandford. Now, we had anticipated nothing of interest in Blandford, and had expected to pass through with- out stopping, but, such being the pleasant unexpect- edness of travel, it became to us much more than a mere catchpoint on a map. In the first place, there was a particularly charm- ing entrance to the town, past a little stream which attractively broadens and is full of waterlilies ; and at one side is a line of ancient dormer-windowed houses and at the other a beautiful entrance to a beau- tiful estate ; and great trees stand shadingly, in a cen- tral cluster. Spots like this are fascinating just be- cause of their mere existence. Travelers cannot ask U2 TOI^lUXa GREAT ERITAIX evervwhere for definite historic interest. Beauty is its owii excuse for being. Blandford is a town of red-tiled roofs, mossy-toned by age: one thinks of Ruskin's phrase about English towns " dressed in red-tiled roofs as our old women in red cloaks." The people will tell you that every house used to be thatched, but that there were so many fires in the to-^-n that quite recently, which you find to mean two hundred years ago. Parhament for- bade Blandford having any thatched roofs. ^ Par- liament even to this day meddles in all sorts of Eng- lish little affairs, such as are left m other comitries to local authorities, "i For our own part we have thus far on this entire journey seen no more than three buildings that have been burnt within the past two hundred vears. and each of them was a garage I A pleasant feature of Blandford is its numerous ancient and venerable charities: it has quaint alms- houses fomided over two centuries ago by charitable individuals; other individuals long ago left money to provide for apprenticing yomig lads to fishermen, or for '■ binding out '" poor girls, or for clotliing reputa- ble old men and women who have never received parish rehef and who " are of sober fife and conver- sation, and constant in attendance at church.'" But most interesting of all is an ancient blue-coat school, founded by a certain Archbishop Wake back in the seventeenth century, who provided means for edu- cating twelve poor boys, who should be taught to read, to write and cast accounts, and to receive in- struction in the Protestant religion, and who should be dressed in the manner of the " blue-coat schools m London." For so small a number, twelve boys really give quite an air to the place, with their quaintly- fasliioned, romid. blue-tasseled caps, their white- rabat ties, their mustard-colored stockings, their blue INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS 143 coats coming down to their ankles and their silver bnttons, on each of which are the words " Archbishop Wake's Charity"; and the boys themselves are a frank-faced, manly-looking set. All about Blandford is extremely pretty country, and as we left the town we were at first misdirected for half a mile or so, but it was a delightful misdi- rection, for it took us past adorable stretches of a great private park, with scores of deer and of little dappled fa^^^ls, graceful and sweet and ^^'ild, scat- tered among the huge trees and over the smooth green turf. Not every town has both its entrances and its exits so felicitous! And now we are off for Salisbury, twenty-five miles awav, and we mount a hill, and ui front of us a great long-eared hare dashes across the road, and unexpectedly great views open for miles and miles, with fields curiously crossed by Hues of trees, and in all these wide-sweeping miles not a single house to be seen, although we find as we go onward that a few are nooked away in little hollows. Only two miles out of Blandford we run through tiny Pimperne ; the unexpectedness of interest of this little place being that its manorial rights were granted by Henry the Eighth to Catherine Howard and aft- erward to Katherine Parr, and in each case, so the phrase had it — a sinister phrase, considering who was the King — the grant was made to the Kmgs wife "for life"! We passed a wagon heavily loaded with wattle- fence made with sharp-pointed stakes, for posts, ready to stick in the ground; we passed bleak open spaces, unhedged and unwalled from the road, but not entirely unusable land like much of tlie open moorland that we have seen, for here and there we noticed flocks of sheep grazing. Beautifully crested birds and great black-and-white magpies fly here and 144 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN there, and we meet a bright blue wagon with yellow cloth ears on the horses, and we smile as we see sign- posts marked " Sarum," for they expect even stran- gers to know that it means Salisbury. We go on and on through the quiet bleakness, and with the curiously continued absence of both hedges and roadside w^alls; and the land stretches off level on either side of the road and distant heights rise here and there; and frequently one sees some ancient pre- historic tumulus and not infrequently there are ancient earth rings of a history forever to remain unknown. We look far ahead and for miles see the road undulating like a white chalk mark across the vast bleakness, and after a while we come to where there are some farms dotted among the uncultivated stretches, and we see a marvelous field with literally thousands and thousands of scarlet poppies mingled with thousands and thousands of flowers tinv and white; a wonderful thing to see. And suddenly we see, very far away, what seems to be a little spire sticking up through a hole in the downs. The Itciien, a river of Izaak Walton Where Franklin wrote most of his Autobiography; at Twvford CHAPTER XV THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER BUT it was not a little spire; on the contrary, it was the very tallest spire in all England. And it did not come up from a hole in the downs, but rose above Salisbury Cathedral, the city of Salis- bury standing on a level much lower than that of the road over which we were advancing. We turned down a valley road, passing clumps of large trees and a few farmers stolidly stooping to their work. And we ran into the tiny village of Coombe Bassett and the very unexpectedness of the place added vastly to its charm. It is a little village of ancient houses, weathered to soft colorings, with little stone bridges crossing a little stream in little arching leaps, and the little stream itself broadening out with ducks ideally floating: a village where is the very ecstasy of thatched roofing, for even a long stone wall is thatched and there is a most immense extent of thatched roofed barn. Ancient entrance gates, with lichened-stone lions couchant upon the tops of ancient lichened-stone posts, lead into an ancient private estate, and close beside, as if to add a final touch of color, is a great field that is an unbroken glow of acres of turnip seed in brightest yellow. And from here it was a short run into Salisbury. Our first impression of Salisbury was of an inn, for it was past luncheon-time when we arrived in the city, and we came upon an attractive-looking restaurant as we motored in, and we stopped, and found the 145 146 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN most excellent service, with everything clean and ex- quisite. In England it is always difficult to get away from historical and literary associations, and so we found that in this very inn Dickens did some of his writing and that Henry Laurens, President of the Continental Congress, rested here on his way to Lon- don in 1780 — where he was promptly put in the Tower and kept there for fifteen months. We entered the cathedral grounds through an ancient gateway, from the inner side of which there was recently taken down a Stuart stone effigy to be replaced by one of Edward the Seventh ; a rather in- congruous and modern touch, but the Stuart effigy was also quite out of keeping with this extremely beautiful ancient gate, and as the centuries merge vaguely together Edward will not seem any worse than Charles would have done. After going through the gate, we pass along a narrow way with ancient houses close to the side- walks, and thence step out into an open space — and such an open space! For there are enormous elms (it took all four of us to span one, fingers to fingers!) and ancient great cedars of Lebanon; and there is splendid greenery all around the great space and there are beautiful old houses with walls and gates and ivy, making the very perfection of sheltered pa- trician living. Age and culture and history and quiet all are here, and in the center of this great space is the beautiful cathedral. Yet, although undeniabh'' beautiful, you feel that it is not so adorable as is its superb setting of great greenery and old buildings and perfect gardens. And then, after a while, you realize, with some surprise, that your love for the exterior of the cathedral is immensely growing upon you. Our strongest single impression is not of the cathe- dral itself, but of the exquisite beauty, the perfect THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 147 repose, the seclusion, of the bishop's private garden and home — a very marvel of attractiveness. The exterior of Salisbury Cathedral is softened to a color of greenish gray, and the fine length of the interior is not destroyed by screen or ill-placed organ, as is unhappily usual with English cathedrals. A cathedral-in-a-hurry, this, for it was all built within the space of forty years or so, instead of, as with most cathedrals, growing gradually through many generations or even centuries. And yet, as one of the clergy carefully pointed out to us, it was really not all built within forty years, for the spire was not built for seventy years! A most agreeal3le town is Salisbury, with delight- ful glimpses everywhere through gates and passages and into closes ; more than any other, this seems to us to be the typical Enghsh cathedral town. And it seems to grow a kind of sweet-faced young English girl that is altogether fine and characteristic. Following Salisbury, our next objective was Stone- henge, and the road to Stonehenge Avas a great sur- prise; we expected bleakness, but found instead a lushness even more than usually rich. Nowhere are cattle more sleek ; nowhere do grass and hedges grow more full and green; nowhere are there more beau- tiful thatched roofs; nowhere is there a more happy country; nowhere are there prettier lanes. The pros- perous farms and farmers, the fat chickens, the sleek kittens, the great vegetables, the splendid roses, the genial well-fed dogs, all unite to mark the contrast with the expected bleakness — expected because there was so much of bleakness in approaching Salisbury, and because Stonehenge itself looms in the fancy as the most grim and solemn memorial of ancient days in all England. It is only ten miles to Stonehenge, and nine and a half of the miles are such as we have just described. 148 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN And then comes that last half mile, and suddenly there opens out a great drear plain, almost level, but with low-rising sweeps. It marks the extreme of desolateness, especially in the twilight, with the dis- tances growing vaguely dim. The plain is dotted with mounds, ancient tumuli, marking where were Druid circles ; and there in front of us, under a heavy, black and cloudy sky, is Stonehenge. A cold dreary wind was blowing; the sun was set- ting; it is at such a time that Stonehenge should be seen and not in the bright sunlight. Far over on the distant right were lines and lines of tents, for regi- ments were camping there, but so far away that we could scarcely pick out in the gathering gloom their pickets and sentries. No one has the slightest idea, any more than the merest guess, of what Stonehenge means. That it antedates all history and that it is supposed to have been set up by the Druids is all. But what a stu- pendous vagueness this means! And in what a set- ting do the stones stand! They are huge monoliths, but they seem little in that immensity of bare plain, but when j^ou go close to them you find that the largest stone stands twenty-two feet in height. A few are still topped by other stones as huge, balanced horizontal^, high in the air. From time to time in the course of the centuries some of the stones have fallen, and the last, by a remarkable chance, tumbled on the first day of this twentieth century. One receives at Stonehenge the overtopping im- pression of the extent of English history and tradi- tion. As one travels up and down the land he finds the things of the present day, of the Stuarts and Tudors, of the Normans, the Saxons, the early British, the Romans ; and here he reaches back to the time of the Druids and the vaguest mystery. As we finally left Stonehenge the plain was grow- THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 149 ing more dim and more dark, and thus it remains in our memory; and we went on our way to Andover, where we were to spend the night, busied with thoughts of the dim, dim past. A good New Eng- land name is Andover; and, indeed, there are many good New England names all about, such as Stock- bridge, Amesbury and Newton. Next morning, and never was there a finer and sweeter morning air, we motored on, in the cool forenoon, to ancient Winchester. The cathedral of Winchester is tucked away with quite an effect of casualness, as if the city had tucked it into an inside pocket; and it is often referred to as a cathedral built by William of Wykeham, although in reality he spent infinite and well-meaning pains in spoiling it. But there is enough left in odd corners of the interior to show the noble grandeur of the original Norman style. Of course it is beautiful, although its dignity has been so tampered with ; and, after all, such things must be all a matter of com- parison; for, as Henry James expressed it, when de- scribing slightingly one of the English cathedrals, there was so much of beauty in it that if it were in America instead of in England, where so many beau- tiful cathedrals exist, we should all pilgrimage to it on our hands and knees. The most interesting memories in Winchester clus- ter about the site of William the Conqueror's castle, where now there stands an ancient house on the main street, bearing the peaceful sign " Tea Room " ; and nothing could be less expressive of a great tragedy of love that turned to hate. The wife of William the Conqueror, Matilda of Flanders, long before he mar- ried her, wished to marry a young English nobleman, who, as ambassador from Edward the Confessor to her father's court, made love to her and then jilted her. Years afterward, when she was William's wife 150 TOURING GREAT BRITAIl^^ and William had conquered England, she led him to confiscate her perfidious lover's lands and have him seized and placed in a dungeon in the castle of Win- chester; after which, no place in England was such a favorite resort for the fierce INIatilda, who loved to have great dinners and receive ambassadors and listen to minstrels and gossip with the courtiers right over the dungeon where her former lover was immured. And of course he stayed there till he died, for it was seldom in the good old days that the quality of mercy was mercifully strained. It amused us to see, in Winchester, young women motoring in yellow jackets and long trailing purple veils, and to notice a shop with the sign " Bootmakers to the Gentlemen Commoners of Winchester Col- lege " (which, by the way, is really a preparatory school), and to see, on this Sunday afternoon, how the college boys permeated the walks in their frock coats and tall silk hats, and how little boys of some other school went about with Eton jackets, big white collars, white straw hats with long l3lack strings, and very long trousers, and how other young men, in high silk hats and cut-away coats and white waistcoats, walked by the river's edge. It is difficult to take with entire seriousness an ecclesiastical city which both casually and calmly refers to a principal inn as the " God Begot House." The citizens have been doing it for so many genera- tions that they have lost all sense of the meaning of the words; as a matter of fact, the inn has a very ancient lettering over its door, " Ye olde Hostel of God Begot " ; and we found it an excellent place for luncheon, and we noticed that an amusing and very definite desire on the part of the management, to manage the guests as well as to manage the inn, did not prevent it from being crowded. At the edge of Winchester is a fascinating sur- THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 151 vival, an ancient charity still maintained in ancient buildings. Far back in 1136 — and how far away that is! — provision was made for the complete mainte- nance of thirteen poor men and for giving a daily dole of ale and bread to wayfarers. And here the charity is still continued. Far from the main highway we passed through a great gate into a quadrangle and on through an ancient gatehouse into another quadrangle, delight- fully grassy, and one side of this second quadrangle is faced with a row of thirteen old houses, each with its individual living-rooms, its individual chimney and its individual old man. Such picturesque old houses, such picturesque old chimneys, such picturesque old men! And on the other side of the quadrangle is the church of St. Cross, built for the old charity. The church was built six hundred and fifty years ago, and its marvelous old, round Norman pillars are notable for being over three feet more in circumference than in height of shaft. Though fresh from our luncheon at the Begot Hostel, as genuine wayfarers we looked for the dole, the horn of ale and the bread, but found that, al- though it has been given regularly for eight hundred years and is still given, it always skips Sundays, on which day it is not dispensed, but dispensed with. We were taken about by Brother Gardner, Num- ber 12, dressed in ancient costume of long, black, full-sleeved cloak and puffy black cloth hat, and then the governor of the place took us into his own private garden, a high-walled garden, where there were myriad and marvelous flowers and a great pool with trout and with calla lilies blossoming abundantly, with ten flowers to a plant. It ought to be added that the old brothers are par- ticularly proud of the large silver crosses that they wear upon their cloaks. Three or four of these 152 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN crosses, that of Brother Gardner among them, are the very crosses that have come down, from one pen- sioner to another, since the twelfth century. To handle such a cross puts one literally in touch with the past. After going about as we have in England it seems odd to hear people say that there is a lack of uniforms and costume there! For here in Winchester alone there are a number of distinctive kinds, including those of the army, of nurses in blue, of smart maids in white at brass-knockered green doors, of queer-hatted police, of vergers, of the jacketed schoolboys and the tall-hatted youths of the college, of the many clerics fluttering about the cathedral close, and of these old pensioners, and an order of old men with cloaks of garnet — nor does this fully exhaust the Winchester list. On the whole, it seems as if there cannot be a more satisfactory, mellow and altogether delightful bit of the ancient past than is here at St. Cross, so finely preserved and kept in wise and daily use since within less than a centur}^ of William the Conqueror. Leaving old St. Cross, we were on the road again — all Winchester seemed to be out this way taking long, Sunday-afternoon strolls — and soon came to the River Itchen, a stream deepish, broad, swift-running, bordered by rushy banks and so distinctly a brimming river that there is not an inch of bank above the level of the water. We paused on the bridge and looked at this river, so gentle in spite of its volume and swift- ness, as it came on past a house and beautiful gardens and through a placid region of trees and meadows and sunlight, and we looked down into its clear depths to its white-chalk bottom and at the water plants waving their fernlike leaves below the surface — and we were immensely pleased that we actually saw fish ! For old, perennially young Izaak Walton loved this THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 153 river when he lived in Winchester; that wise and genial philosopher, the contemporary of Pepys, who loved to gaze at " meadows and flower}^ meads and primrose banks " and who could quaintly set down that he did not envy the man who had more money than himself and finer food and finer clothes, but " only the man who caught more fish." After all, his book holds an imperishable popularity after all these years, and so this sweet full river, so near his home, seems full of a sort of philosophic interest. Only two or three miles away is Twyford, a sedate Httle village, very attractive and agreeable, ap- proached by an attractive and agreeable road ; usually sedate, we should say, and usually very quiet in its Sabbath calm, but only a moment before we got there two motors had tried to pass in the crossroads at the village center, in an attempt, apparently, to prove that two things could be in the same place at the same time, with highly disastrous results to the cars, though fortunately not to the individuals, and with a com- plete breaking of the usual village quietness. We were looking for a house in which, for a time, there had lived a far greater philosopher and greater man than the great Izaak: we were looking, in fact, for a house where Benjamin Franklin lived for a time as an honored guest and in which he wrote most of his " Autobiography "; and a house connected with such a book and with such an American was cer- tainly well worth looking for. And it would be very interesting to see at what kind of house he was vis- iting, so as to judge as to what kind of intimate Eng- lish friends he had made. But it was very difficult to find the house ; although there could not be a better opportunity' to inquire, for the entire population had gathered around the dam- aged cars. The schoolmaster had never heard of Franklin's 154 TOURING GKEAT BRITAIN having been at Twyford; the lord of the manor (at least we thought of him as that, for he was the chief man of the place, to whom they all gave deference) had also never heard of our compatriot's having been there; others shook their heads dubiously and were inclined to think that we were looking for some present-day American printer in hiding, and would have drawn suspiciously away had it not been for the evident concern of their chief man. But at length our query was answered, for the lady of the manor, appealed to by her husband, promptly pointed out the house at the top of the slope down which we had just come. " Benjamin Franklin? Oh, yes; he was here in Twyford; and that is the house, up there! " Directly facing the house, across the narrow road, we noticed a great double aisle of huge horse- chestnuts casting a romantic and positively awesome shade, so dense as to make a darkness beneath the trees even in mid-afternoon ; but the house where Franklin stayed is as bright and cheerful as the facing wood is somber. This house would alone show that Franklin did credit to himself and his country in making friends abroad, for it is a fine, rich and mellow build- ing of Georgian brick, with its front delightfully faced with ivy and flowering roses. The house is really a mansion, with a fine classic doorway, and stands inside of an iron gate, nearer the road than is usual with such places in England. And we wished that Franklin had recorded his impressions of this house and of his visit to it; for we found that it was the summer home of one of the bishops of the Eng- lish Church, Bishop Shipley, who admired Frankhn so much that he invited him to be his house guest here. E CHAPTER XVI ON THE ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR NTERING a little village in this region, we noticed a sign at the side of the road which read, a Please Slow for School," and on leaving the village we were amused to notice another sign, reading with cheerful courtesy: " Here You Are Thank You." Leaving Twyford we aimed again for the Channel coast, and we followed little-traveled roads through charming country, choosing these roads for the sake of shortening the distance and at the same time for the sheer joy of discovery; they were marked on the maps as being of only second- and third-rate quality, but from an American standpoint they were perfect; one cannot speak too highly of English roads, and one wonders why no English poet has grown lyrical over them. We went through Wickham, a village with a great rectangular space that they call their green — only there was no green upon it — and after a while we came to Bishop's Waltham, where a huge old ruin stands beside a sweet little lake and the highway ; an- other of the many New England names, this, and we risked a small jest on the intelligent policeman of whom we asked a question as to route. We merely 155 156 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN asked if he were the original Waltham watch; but really one should not risk even the mildest pleasantry on an Englishman ; he takes it too seriously. " Yes, sir," said the policeman, puzzled but courteous. " Yes, sir; thank you very much, sir." We merely skirted Portsmouth, for we knew that no visitors would be allowed within the naval inclosures and that the city has very little to attract strangers, except from this standpoint, but it was interesting to go on under modern fortifications that frowned down from a low hillside and in sight of innumerable wireless poles, battleships, hoists, a great area of tide-water flats and a huge, old medieval castle on an apparent island, standing as a striking contrast to the warlike paraphernalia of to-day, and as we went on we were constantly meeting and pass- ing walkers, for it was Sunday afternoon and the army and the navy were out -wdth their sweethearts. Wherever we asked as to the road we were told, " Stryte on," but never were there more mysterious bendings and turnings in what was supposed to be a straight road to Chichester. Chichester we found to be rather a nice little place, with a pile of churchly buildings along the main street of the town. Churches and cathedrals that are not ruins and are still used are open at almost any time to the public, but, although this was toward the end of a Sunday afternoon, the cathedral was closed, but we readily contented ourselves with looking at the isolated bell tower, a structure of much dignity, and were vastly more interested in a splendidly im- pressive old-time town-cross, which is really a series of arches raised like a chapter-house in miniature, upon a central pillar; and, a very modern touch, a policeman stands beside the old cross to wave motor- ists in safety around it, and a Salvation Army band was playing in its shadow. l^- f ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 157 In a dozen miles we were at the close-built hillside town of Arundel, where stands a huge semi-modern castle, the seat of the Roman Catholic Duke of Nor- folk, and in the town is a modern Roman Catholic church built by the duke as if to show that some- thing can still be done by a sect from which all the great cathedrals were taken ; and it was certainly curi- ous to realize that on this very Sunday we had been at a service in Winchester Cathedral where there was so pitiful a handful of service-goers as to seem fewer in number than the clergy in evidence, and we had been at Chichester Cathedral, which was closed, and now we were at the Arundel church and it was crowded to the doors. There was still plenty of daylight and we thought we could still make Brighton, but in a few miles a heavy twihght that was almost darkness suddenly fell. Every pair of lovers in southern England must have been walking in the middle of that road, and its twists and corners became more numerous than ever. Then came real darkness and the tail-light of the car would not burn; it was a new lamp and the oil seemed to have been shaken out; and we crossed over a bridge and were chased by a man for sixpence, not having noticed in the dark that it was a toll-bridge, and the man went back, panting, with his bit of silver, and a policeman called out a friendly warning about our light, and a cyclist wheeled by and, leaning his hand on the car, friendlily told us that our light was out, and friendly voices came from friendly lovers to tell us that the light was out; and it was after a day's run of just eighty miles that we slipped into crowded Shoreham and had to go to hotel after hotel before we could find one that had rooms. It was an English Sunday night and drinking was going busily on all over the town, and in every case 158 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN the drink was served across the bars by young women. Even fathers with young daughters went right into the drinking shops, and there were more mysterious- seeming rooms and entrances than would be deemed respectable in America. Our own hotel was just like the rest, and the landlady herself helped the young woman at the bar, for business was so brisk. But next morning the hotel and the landlady and everytliing seemed ultra-quiet and respectable. After all, travelers must be ready to make allowances; for, other countries, other manners, and it is quite likely that things were not nearly so bad as they seemed; although such a system cannot exist all over a coun- try without being quite bad enough. Next morning it was a pleasant little run along the coast to Brighton. Brighton greatl}^ surprised us. We had antici- pated a place of noisy cockneyism, but found it all quite reserved and agreeable, with comfortable and dignified living in blocks of spacious houses facing seaward, and with the great shingly and gravelly but sandless beach lined with the funny little bathing wagons in which England loves to be wheeled into the water, and the water itself gay with little row- boats and fishing smacks. The town seems all cream- white, as to its buildings, owing largely to the natu- ral color of the prevalent building stone and largely to paint — and painters are a very real thing in Brigh- ton, for leaning against many of the houses we saw painters' ladders fully five stories in height, the long- est ladders we have ever seen, very slender, and bow- ing in the middle by their own weight. There are attractive public piers and there are superb roads along the waterfront and a long cement walk instead of one of boards, and behind the sea-facing houses is a great tangle of streets, where there are excellent shops for flowers and lace and silver and antiques, ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 159 and where one sees hustling householders and women of landlady types busily buying attractive-looking food. Xowhere was there anything unpleasant or noisy, nowhere did there seem to be meagerness of living, everywhere there was absence of nerve-rack; and dowagers were placidly looking at the ocean and chil- dren with buckets were pleasantly playing along the beach and everybody seemed to be happy, although nobody seemed to be doing anything in particular; and there was now and then the red flash of a sol- dier's coat — and red does always look so well beside the sea! The buildings in Brighton are not very old, but it is pleasant to think that large part of them are suffi- ciently so to make the place essentially much the same Brighton as the Brighton of " The Newcomes " and of other well-known English books. One of the curious things in England is the way in which it loves to attach queer names to decent places, and this reflection comes as we motor on and into the little seaside village of Rottingdean, where Kipling so long lived; and we find his house unex- pectedly far back from the sea, with a view into an unkempt green, a bare, dirty duck-pond which is really an enlarged puddle, and a graveyard. And the front gate of the once- while Kipling house was boarded tight, because people used to stand and look in. A much prettier sight than that of his home was that of a cluster of little children doing out-of-door wand exercises in the yard of the Rottingdean school- house. One wonders how Kipling could have been content in such a place after knowing so many places more beautiful (including, may Americans be per- mitted to say, Vermont?), but the neighborhood does have compensations, for in a moment after leaving the village a great view of the sea comes in sight and 160 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN I of fine cliffs, grassed to their edges, which go drop- ping down, all white, to the sea at their base. And one remembers that it is Kipling who somewhere sings : " Nor I don't know which I love the most, The Weald, the Marsh, or the White Chalk Coast." There are great, bare, hilly downs back of the white cliffs, and we went over them in miles of sweeping rolls, and we mounted and mounted behind the great promontory of Beachy Head up an ascent ex- tremely long and solitary, and far down at the left, in a hollow in the downs, and set in the middle of a sheep farm, was a mullion-windowed house with its roofs most picturesquely yellowed with lichens, and through a cleft that looked far down on the other side was the red city of Eastbourne, set in a low-lying plain. We noticed as we went through this town a tre- mendous number of nurses in costumes; surely enough to care for all the sick in England! and we saw them always in couples and they all were dressed in blue capes to their feet and they all wore blue bon- nets with little string-ties. We came afterwards to know that such costumed nurses are scattered through all England, although not in such profusion as here, and have almost wondered whether all of them were really nurses or if a good many young women do not choose the costume for its fetchingness. For where in this healthy-seeming England could so many nurses find their sick! A traveler is apt to feel, when approaching a spot where some tremendous event took place, that there should be indications of the tremendous in the land- scape and the surroundings, and as we go on to Pevensey, the landing-place of William the Con- ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 161 queror, only five miles from Eastbourne, we feel that, although there is nothing quite tremendous enough to fit such an event, the approach is rather satisfactory after all, for as we pass over a long stretch of marshy level bordering the sea there come into sight six ancient martello towers, all standing detached, and all most pictorially to be seen at the same time. Pevensey Castle, which marks the place where he and his army landed, is now some distance back from the waterside, for the sea has widely receded in the centuries; it is a great strong- walled ruin, with a space of nine acres within its inclosures and with tre- mendous walls that are twenty feet in thickness. Shortly after landing, William built a castle here, using largely the foundations and walls of a Roman castle built on the same spot many centuries before his time. Some of William's massive towers still remain, and the ruin is bordered by a moat that is still full of water, which is thick with rushes and bor- dered b}^ lush grass. There is a little village of Pevensey, hidden clusteringly against the walls and the towers, and there is an ancient and much-used right-of-way straight through the castle-ruin. Nothing could be more effective, as a final touch before we left Pevensey and turned our faces toward the battlefield where Normans and Saxons met, than to see a noble blue heron rise from beside the moated walls and fly, slow, stately and beautiful, across the ruins and out over the martello-towered flats. The Battle of Hastings was not fought beside the ancient little town of Hastings, which is just a few miles east of Pevensey, but at a place, known ever since that time as Battle, which is sometliing less than ten miles in from the seashore. We left Pevensey by the long flats over which Wil- liam and his army marched in long lines. There seems to be a rather general impression that he was 162 TOURING GREAT BRITAUST merely a sort of Norman pirate with a handful of men who fought with a smallish body of Saxons, but he was really a powerful ruler when he sailed to con- quer England and his force numbered well over sixty thousand and at the ensuing battle fully thirty thou- sand, of both sides, were left dead on the field. Leaving the flats we entered a rolling country ; and there were scattered houses with roofs of thatch or tile, amid great masses of shrubs and greenery and mighty trees. We found it a peculiarly rich and pic- turesque region; and many of the lichened, mossy houses have windows diamond-paned in lead, and there seem to be miles of rhododendrons, and there are houses clapboarded in wood such as we have seen nowhere else in England, such houses as these evi- dently having been the pattern from which the early clapboarded houses of America were built. We passed a private estate at the edge of which several large trees had just been cut down and, al- though our minds were full of the thoughts of the past, we could not but be interested in the frugality and skill of present-day forestry, for the wood was all carefully piled according to different sizes, large, medium and small, and even to the fagots and the bark. Approaching more nearly to Battle, the trees be- came great masses, parklike in character, indicating what must have been the general nature of this coun- try at the time of the Norman Conquest. Unexpectedly we find that the land has been gradu- ally rising and that we are now at a very consid- erable height, for we suddenly come to a ridge from which we can see, eight miles away, the gleaming water of the Channel and we know that this is the spot where William the Conqueror paused to look back at his hundreds of ships dotting the water. But we also know that he looked at his ships and thought ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 163 of Normandy for only a brief moment, because in front of him was a sight still more profoundly interesting. What we see, looking ahead from this height, is a great valleylike depression, fertile, and now sweet and peaceful in the extreme. The Conqueror (but he was not, thus far, the Conqueror!) saw this same great hollowlike expanse and beyond it he caught sight of the troops of Harold, who had hastened from their battle with the Danes to meet this Norman in- vasion; and he caught through the trees the glinting of their armor and arms. William had his troops thoroughly in hand and promptly descended and attacked the Saxons and the Battle of Hastings began. It does not seem to have been much of a planned battle, but doubtless such a trained soldier as William, a " conqueror born," handled his troops with order and care and made it much more than a mere onslaught. The prosperous little village of Battle arose close to the battle-ground. It is a broad and single- streeted village which gives suggestions of delightful gardens behind its closely-built houses ; and beside the village and approached by a spacious esplanade which leads to ancient towered entrance gates so admirable that one feels that they must really be the most satis- factory and adequate entrance gates in England, is the place (now a park that is privately owned) where the fiercest of the struggle raged and where stands as much as Time and restoration have left of the great abbey that was built by William the Conqueror himself to mark the very spot where King Harold was killed. " This his w'are the harrow 'it 'Arold bin the hye " — as it was put to us by a man who was eager to show his local knowledge and did so with an astonishing displacement of " h's." 164 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" The grounds are exquisitely kept and the old abbey has been swept and garnished and rebuilt into a usable mansion of the present day. The old gate- house is fascinating, with its great groined arch and its gloomy little rooms lit by the cheerful glowing fire of the neat courtesying custodian who is not in the least depressed by the prison room in this gate-house, but on the contrary shows it with pride, as well as a hook on which unfortunates used to be pendulously suspended. We had a particularly charming and very short cross-country run of a few miles, picking the country lanes almost at random, to ancient Winchelsea. And Winchelsea is an adorable town. It is also what the English call a " decayed " town, which does not mean something disagreeable, but a town intensely pic- turesque. It is supposed to have six hundred in- habitants, but the inhabitants themselves assure you that this is impossible and that it does not have nearly so many; yet it is officially a city, with a mayor and corporation. This once-while seaport has gone through many vicissitudes; it has had hundreds of houses sink into the sea, it has had the sea recede, leaving a great green plain ; and across this plain we looked, from an ancient high-set city gate; for Win- chelsea is perched on a hill. We arrived at Winchelsea well on in the afternoon, with the full expectation of going on farther after seeing it. But it so fascinated us that we decided to stay overnight; we ordered our dinner at an ex- tremely adequate inn and took a leisurely ramble, and we rambled about again after dinner and went to bed after seeing the fitful flashing of distant Dungeness light, and we rambled about again in the morning, for it is a town that grows on one. It has all the charm of the ancient, with nothing of the dis- agreeable, the dilapidated or the squalid. Its ancient ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 165 houses are exquisitely felicitous and the miracle has been achieved by newcomers, who have felt bound to live here and could not find old houses to buy or rent, of building a few delightful modern houses which can scarcely be told from the old. The few people who get acquainted with this forgotten place love to come and live here ; Ellen Terry lived here for years in a quaintly ancient house beside the town gate that looks off toward the sea. The general tone of the place is one of spacious- ness, peace and comfort to a degree unusual in Eng- lish towns, and perhaps it should be added that it is quiet, well ordered and restful, with nothing what- ever of the bustle of town life. It is essentially an aristocratic tovni. In whichever direction one walks or wherever one looks there is something of picturesqueness or en- chantment, and a number of old houses are of the wooden clapboards already noticed in this general neighborhood; and when we looked at the old brick houses we had an odd sensation as of being in Wil- liamsburgh, Virginia, and when we looked at the wooden ones we thought of Deerfield, Massachusetts, the unexpectedly wide and grass-bordered streets of Winchelsea aiding much in giving such impressions of our own old towns. We see anew in Winchelsea that England has color. A house of 1720, for example, is of dull red brick with black headers, and is built directly on a gray sidewalk bordered by a brown road; it has a white doorstep and an exquisite white door-frame and its window casings are white and there are soft-blowing white curtains at the open windows ; an ancient black lantern projects from the dark-red brick of a corner and the walls of the house are a mellow glory with hundreds of roses, white and yellow and red, trained close to the wall. Another house has its lower half 166 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN a mass of pale green ivy, and its upper half stuccoed a pale cream, and its roof of tile has been lichened to a blackish red. Everywhere there is so much of the picturesque. You see old-time clothes-presses worked with their wooden screws ; you see rows of old copper in the clean kitchens; you see an old woman tending her little shop, just one solitarj^ candle flame lighting up her face with Rembrandt-like effect in the darkness; and you see a tiny shop (and this behind the prosaical sign of " General Stores ") with moss and flowers all over its ancient roof, and with little diamond- paned casement windows, and with little dormers and long-weathered tile fronting the entire second story around little square panes of leaded glass; — and as we look back, in memory, at the place we do not re- member seeing another shop there! The ancient roofed-in fragment of a church is here, which, like the Cathedral of Siena, never was com- pleted, and the incompleteness of this church indicates the catastrophe of the end of prosperity; and along the side of the interior lie stone Crusaders sleeping through the centuries under ancient fretted canopies of stone. We have seen few church interiors more impressive. The door is left open — no one does wrong in Win- chelsea! — and so the church is yours. But you have printed permission to drop a coin in a box to aid in the care of the building and you are trusted to leave a penny or so to pay for the little descriptive leaflet of the church. This is the only church we have seen in which still stands the "family pew"; a paneled-oak pew, shoulder-high in front, higher at the back, set against the wall and entered through a high tight door; it is lined inside with baize, and has kneeling-chairs and footstools and a long seat and, around the inner side ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 167 of it, a bench. It is a place in which the " family " have been set apart for generations. Park gates at the upper end of the town, with per- fection of care as to grounds and trees, indicate that *' families " are still here, and indeed all the land around Winchelsea is owned by rich folk who have agreed among themselves to buy any land within the town that comes upon the market rather than to admit any who might spoil the place. For others as well as we have felt the charm of this delectable place. CHAPTER XVII A NEW CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE AT picturesque Winchelsea we did a very prac- tical thing, for all four of us, in the secluded 'yard of the inn, busied ourselves with pen- knives in picking out pieces of flint from the tires ; we picked out over thirty and filled the little sharp gashes with cement. The roads through this chalk region are all of flint, hard but sharp as well, and lack of attention would mean ruin for the tires. Descending the hill from Winchelsea, always asso- ciated in the imagination with the Cinque Ports, we motored across two miles of level country that once was sea to ancient Rye, which actually was one of the Cinque Ports and which is even more a hill town than Winchelsea; for Rye stands upon an isolated cone- shaped hill to which, as to the hill of Winchelsea, the sea used to come up. Rye still has much of its old towers, old gates, old houses remaining, and many such houses cuddle around the base of the rocky height, as well as line the important upper streets. Some of the streets are so steep as to be mere passage- ways of stone steps, and from one of the low-town house-roofs we noticed a literal ladder going straight up to the high street of the town! Rye just occupies the hill and a skirtlike ruffle around its base. Almost immediately after leaving Rye we ran into what was called a military road, with frequent toll- gates set across it as if to prove that there are actu- ally toll-roads in England; we passed three gates, each charging a sixpence, in three miles, and the road 168 CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 169 was not particularly good, nor had there been diffi- culties in construction. It amused us, too, that with a marked distrust of human nature each keeper kept his gate actually locked until the money was paid, although one keeper did say, in a sort of ashamed aside, that his gate was kept locked only to check " blawsted motorcycles," but we knew that he " blawsted " the motors when the cyclists were there. This was the only public road with toll-gates that we found in Great Britain, though frequently we found toll-bridges and now and then a private toll-road. Beyond Rye there are great level farms and pas- tures, with only scattered homes and very little of either fencing or hedging. Right across these levels runs the level road. The sea breeze comes in fresh and clear. There are sheep and cattle grazing. There are chickens far from their homes and convoys of little ducks. There are dykes and watery ditches. And all this is the Walland Marshes. Shortly after leaving the Walland Marshes we came to a comfortable farmhouse, square-fronted, hip-roofed, dormer-windowed, with a garden in front inclosed by one of those rare things in England, a wooden picket fence, and this place remains in our memory as more than merely an old and agreeable- looking farmhouse, for it marked the precise point at which our speedometer registered one thousand miles of run. Now and then there was a cluster of houses, and a very occasional parish church ; there were broad fields that were a sheen of yellow from the blossoms of tur- nips that are grown for the sake of their seeds, which are used in whiskey making; there were strange conical-topped, round towers looking like extin- guishers, and they were weather-blurred into beauty, and of sufficiently fetching shape, if far enough away, to be suggestive of French chateaux, but in reahty 170 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN they were only the typical hop-drying towers of this region. We passed pollarded willows, and houses and barns with queer-framed roofs of thatch or tile, and we came to a little village with a mossy old church and the queerest of queer windmills ; for wind- mills have gradually become a feature of the land- scape. We are in Kent, and are running through a happy region, with picturesqueness, but no misery; we are running along a perfect and almost level road, through a country extremely rich, and full of the memories of those generations of men who made the phrase " men of Kent " a synonym for bravery. Kent, as one likes to remember, even held sternly against the Conqueror for some time after Hastings, and it is pleasant to know that one of the towns of New England was settled by " three hundred men of Kent." The houses are attractive and comfortably built, and of large size, and we pass one which is particu- larly attractive because of the fact that it is still sur- rounded by its moat, and it delightfully brings to mind the Shakespearean felicity of the " moated grange." And all at once distant towers, miles away, glori- ously show in the morning sun, and they are noble and dominating towers, and we know that we are looking at the superb towers of Canterbury Cathedral ! Beside us runs a brimming river; a phrase that has come to fascinate us by its charm and by its perfect descriptiveness, and like many another of the brim- ming rivers in England it looks as if it would surely overflow its banks if there were the slightest shower; we pass through great hop fields with myriads of hop vines on poles and strings, so contrived as to give the vine the full benefit of the sun; but hop fields, CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 171 river, trees, houses and even the city of Canterbury itself when we finally come to it, all sink into insig- nificance under the dominating influence of the tow- ers, which are not only splendid and impressive in themselves, but have all the dignity and mystery of time and age. Close at hand you begin to gather the immensity of the mighty structure, one of the greatest and most magnificent, as it is, of all the English cathedrals, and you marvel at the immense splendor of the carved detail and at the same time the might, the majesty, the immensity of the building itself, and you wander slowly around it, stopping to view it now from this point and now from that, and you wander on into fascinating cloisters and among ancient buildings and gardens and past a particularly fascinating Norman porch that is many centuries old, and there comes a profound impression of beauty and sweetness as well as of the splendid strength that has lasted for ages. We are not seeing the cathedral in a hurried and formal way, and it is pleasant to wander around in- definitely for a time, drinking in to the full the mag- nificence of the mighty structure and the fine charm of its surroundings, and when we finally come back toward the main entrance we notice a point about the cathedral which had vaguely impressed us at our first nearby glimpse of it, and that is that its general color is a sort of rich dull yellow. It is one of the curious things about cathedrals that they so differ from one another in general coloring, although all are of simi- larly time-weathered stone. There is nothing in all England that so merges and at the same time differentiates the centuries of Eng- lish history as does Canterbury Cathedral, and as one steps into the twilight of its interior and goes slowly up and down its solemn aisles, the impression comes of all the centuries united in one grand sweep, and at 172 TOURING GREAT ERITAiy the same time of a long, long line of individual kings and archbishops and of their separate times. How vivid become some distant great events that have almost seemed to be mere figments of fancy. Here is the tomb of the archbishop who took the lead in raising the huge ransom demanded to free the cap- tive Richard Coeur de Lion ; and how it brings up the perfect story of Blondel, the faithful minstrel, wan- dering through Europe until he found the prison place of his master and getting into communication with him by means of a familiar song! And here is the tomb of the great and noble archbishop who, fired by the wrongs of the people, took the part of the ill- fated Wat Tyler and, as a consequence of thus stand- ing bravely against tyranny in tyrannical days, lost his head. The majesty of the interior of the cathedral is con- siderably lessened by the huge stone screen which belittles the vista by cutting it in two; but, even while regretting this loss of full glory, no one can avoid feeling the impressiveness and beauty and majesty of it even as it is. Everywhere there is not only beauty, there is not only the awesome strength and impressiveness, but there is also the constant personal touch which makes history alive. Here is even the tomb of the Black Prince! And there is scarcel}^ a more impressive thing in England. Above it hangs the very helmet that he wore, still wnth the long-tailed leopard on its top; here is his painted shield, a thing of fascination; here are the very gauntlets that he drew upon his hands as he advanced upon the field at Poictiers. Nothing more marvelous can be imagined in its vivid realization, in its vivid making alive of a figure that has always seemed part of a misty dream of chivalry. How it summons up remembrance of things past! A Xo!i.-\rAx poRCir at Cante unuRY Two OF THE CHATEAU-I.IKE HOPTOWERS OF KENT ThK ANCIKNT NoiOIAX CASTLE AT ROCHESTER Chislehukst, where Napoleon III died CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 173 Notably, in this cathedral, one over and over again feels himself in touch with the vivid happenings of the ages. It is not merely a mighty place of carved and built-up stone, but it is full of the personal life of the great events of the past. Why, here is even the very spot where Thomas a Becket was murdered ; it is not only that one is told that this is the cathedral where he met his- death, but that, after all these cen- turies, you may walk through the very doorway where he walked to his death : — you hear the frightened dis- suasions of his monks, and you see him go proudly and boldly on, and you stand on the spot where he fell. All this is more than history; it is the visualization of history. Far up on the ceiling, above the altar, is a golden crescent; a little thing, not often noticed; that tantalizes and fascinates the imagination. For no record tells when it was put there, or why, or even by whom. But the vague tradition is undoubtedly true which links it with Becket as a reminder of his Saracen blood and it was doubtless put there by the mighty archbishop himself, for none else would have dared to place a Saracen symbol honorably over this Christian altar. For Becket was the son of a Nor- man Crusader who won the love of the daughter of a Saracen prince, but she was hidden away from him and he returned heartbroken to England, and she es- caped and followed him and reached England, know- ing only the two words " Becket " and " London "; and it all ended romantically just as a fine, old love story ought to end. And how vivid and real it all seems in this cathedral, thus forever associated with the son of the Saracen woman! It is the unhappy fashion of the present time to discourage belief in any romantic old tale; it is the unhappy fashion to assert that nothing but the barest and driest happenings of history could possibly be 174 TOURING GREAT BRITAI:N^ true; forgetting that life has been rich in romance ever since the world was young. The crypt of the cathedral is a magnificent maze of low dark arches and pillars, and there is a chapel in this crypt in which services are still regularly held by the descendants of the Huguenots who fled from France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and found an asylum here and were given this chapel to be forever used by them and their descendants. Canterbury is a positively marvelous place in itself, holding together within its ancient city walls such a vast variety of things of interest; and nothing could be said more expressive of the dominating power of the cathedral than that it so dwarfs everything else that a visitor is likely to leave Canterbury with the idea that there really is nothing besides the cathedral that is particularly worth while, whereas in reality there are charm and interest on every hand. The town walls and gates would in themselves draw at- tention to any other city; and there are fascinating corners, and ancient buildings, and survivals of old- time crafts such as that of the Canterbury weavers, and there is a baptistry that is itself of sufficient beauty to attract visitors from all England, and there are even literary associations of unusual interest, for Dickens located some of his best scenes in this ancient place, and one should never forget that this was the town of the author of those fine old lines, " To Lu- casta, on going to the wars," ending with that bril- liant flash of bravery and sentiment : " I could not love thee. Dear, so much, loved I not Honor more." Canterbury has all the air of a show place, as if the people are not living their own natural lives, as in such cathedral towns as Salisbury and Worces- ter, but are living lives for visitors; but in spite of this one cannot but get a very fine and most satis- factory impression of the town, and certainly there CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 175 are ample reason and excuse, if excuse were deemed necessary, for this attitude on the part of the people, for Canterbury has been a point of pilgrimage for countless thousands, during the centuries when every- one pilgrimaged, as did Chaucer's immortal creations, to worship at the tomb of Becket, and during these more recent generations when people have pil- grimaged there on account of historical and archi- tectural interest. But even in such a place as Canterbury motorists cannot remain forever, nor even for an entire sum- mer; and perhaps a long and continued familiarity would begin to weaken the vividly splendid impres- sion that comes from a visit of a few hours; and so we start on our way again, heading toward London, for this is our farthest point east for the entire journey. We reached Rochester after twenty-five miles of a run that is rather featureless, but which is lightened and brightened by occasional glimpses of the water of the North Sea and of the waters of the Swale. In Rochester we scarcely looked at the cathedral, for even though we had not just left Canterbury it would really demand very Uttle attention. Far more im- pressive is the mighty castle ruin, of great extent and height, which frowns over the city with immense dig- nity; it is really a most satisfactory ruin in its gen- eral effectiveness, especially when one realizes that it carries the weight of eight hundred years. The city of Rochester bought this ruin from its owner and preserves it in the center of a public park, where babies and seagulls are always walking in the paths. The city has also purchased, and preserves as a most charming local museum, the old-time Elizabethan house which figures as the Nuns' House in " Edmn Drood." A particular charm of this house is that, although it is not palatial and not depressingly large, 176 TOURIXG GREAT BRITAIN it is at the same time distinctly not humble; this was the fine, large town-house of some well-to-do towns- man of the past; there are very few houses like it in England and it has a thorough aspect of livability; it could be comfortably lived in to-day, with its waxed floors, its little window-seats, its paneling, and with its inimberless little features of interest it is a very delightful place, indeed. Two miles or so outside of Rochester, and ap- proached by a highly unattractive and even de- pressing road that leads up a bare black hill and then on through a monotonous district, is Gad's Hill, fa- mous through its associations with Falstaff and Prince Hal, and also famous through Dickens hav- ing chosen the spot for his home for the last dozen vears of his life. Facing the brick house which Dickens bought to live in, the " grave red-brick house," as he himself describes it, and which he supposed to be of the time of George the First, is a very unattractive ale-house with the very attractive title of the " Sir John Fal- staff " ; and, astonishing though it seems, this inn was here long before Dickens located at the place, be- cause he refers to it himself in describing to a friend the home he had bought. Clipped lime trees stand before the house, and it is separated from the road by a ditch and a high- spiked wall with a solid gate. The house is not alto- gether unattractive, even though, as Dickens himself expresses it, he added to and stuck bits upon it in all sorts of ways, and at least it has a hospitable- looking entrance and there is somewhat of a pleasant impression of elms and corn-fields and greenery in the open spaces behind it. But that Dickens, when a rich man, able to live practically where he pleased, should deliberately choose a place approached by a disagreeable road, CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 177 directly in front of an ale-house, seems to indicate the possession of qualities that explain why, in spite of his marvelous genius, he never attracted the per- sonal liking of the people whose personal liking was most worth while. It is very surprising indeed that this is neither London, that he loved, nor the country, of which he always felt the charm, nor the seashore, that never ceased to appeal to him. That he wrote, while here, a book titled by a name almost identical with that of the keeper of the Falstaff Inn, Edwin Trood, is remindful that he established rather confidential rela- tions between his own house and this inn and regu- lated the consumption of beer by his servants on a plan that was all his own. After a run of four or five miles from Gad's Hill, we came to Gravesend, on the Thames, the famous port of London, a busy place, with Lascars and sol- diers giving touches of interest to the prosaic streets. We stayed there all night, and from our hotel win- dows watched the blue dusk creep over the ship-dotted water and red and white and green lights go gleam- ing about in the later darkness, and we listened to the low swashing of the rising tide; receiving thus a quiet sort of an impression for such a bus}" place, but it was probably because we were in the mood for a quiet impression, for Gravesend means to Americans the place where Pocahontas died. And the broad Thames brought memories of the far broader and more glorious sweeps of the James, and we remembered the place where she and Rolfe had made their home. And how far away must all that have seemed to poor Pocahontas, dying here in Gravesend; and how she must have longed for the wild freedom of it all! She was about to sail from Gravesend when she fell sick and died, and she was buried under the 178 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" chancel of an old church to which we motored in the morning. The church stands in the midst of a com- monplace and even highly unattractive part of the town, and has been so altered as to give outwardly little promise of interest, but the interior is plain and dignified, and locked in a safe in the church wall is kept an old vellum book wrapped in oil-skin, and it is reverently taken out and shown to us, and it is the original church record of the 1600's; and we looked with profound interest at the entry, in old-fashioned textlike writing, made at the time of the burial, set- ting forth that " Rebecca Wrolfe, wyffe of Thomas Wrolfe, a Virginia lady borne," was buried " in ye chauncell " on March 21, 1616. We followed the road a few miles farther in the direction of London and it became so much more an unpleasant and uninteresting road as to be worth while seeing for the sake of learning how uninter- esting London suburban living can be made. And this seemed the more surprising because this road that we had followed for miles is Watling Street, one of the most famous roads in all the world ; a road built by the Romans ; a road over which practically every- body has traveled: — Julius Csesar himself, the Em- peror Hadrian who built the famous Villa, Arthur and his knights. King Alfred, William the Conqueror, and a long, long line of the great and humble. It gives one a curious feeling to think of traveling along a road like this, that has been traveled over for so many, many centuries, for it so marvelously repre- sents antiquity and historical associations. Reaching Dartford, which was the home of Wat Tyler, we aimed in a general southern way, in a line of most agreeable zigzags, through a country rich in gardens and in villas, in beautiful contrast to what we had just been seeing. We went past the spacious, modern home of Chislehurst, where the Emperor CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE m Napoleon the Third died, and where the Empress Eugenie hved for many years, and finally came to the little village of Sevenoaks (one really cannot help thinking of Bret Harte's irreverent " Seven Oaks, and then Sennoak, lastly Snook"). Here we mo- tored up the long and quiet street and turned off at an almost unnoticeable entrance just between two village houses, and after a short run down this lane came to the entrance gate of Knole House and drove through its splendid park, noticing as we passed the largest beech in England, the " King Beech," with its wonderful twenty-nine feet of circumference, and stopped at the front of the superb mansion. Rich as England is in noble and stately homes, none is superior to Knole. It is the noblest baronial house in England; not a fortified or castlelike place, but a noble home standing almost unchanged since the times of the early Stuarts, and lived in uninter- ruptedly to the present day. It is waxed and pol- ished and in perfect condition, and furnished with priceless portraits of old-time masters of the place, by old-time masters of painting such as Van Dyck and Lely and Holbein, and it is superb in glorious silver and tapestry and furniture of the past. There are four acres of house. The building is set extraor- dinarily close to the ground, and, although of great area, it is of low and felicitous height. The halls, the galleries, the bedrooms are models of stately com- fort and are exquisite in charm. No other house seems to us to express so finely the grand scale of English aristocratic living, and at the same time to do this with likeableness and lack of ostentation; for it has nothing whatever of the arrogance of mere wealth, but with quiet restraint and distinction shows such things as only wealth can build and gather. It is really wonderful that the owner of such a noble home and of the exquisite things which it con- 180 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN tains permits the public, three days in the week, for the payment of only such a small fee as keeps out the merely curious, to walk through these noble rooms and halls. From Knole House we went by indirect roads, through a region of charming villas, to Bromley in the close outskirts of London, and there the car was left at a garage, whose address had been given us some time before, for overhauling and the clean- ing out of carbon ; and we took a train for London. For it was never part of our intention to motor up and down in London. We merely wished to spend a few pleasant days there, and we knew that the taxi- cab, the motor-bus and the Underground would take us about the crowded streets of the crowded city, without possible trouble or worry, and with vastly more satisfaction than could possibly be attained with one's own car. Thus far we had been extremely fortunate, in hav- ing neither accidents nor delays, and, as one of us remarked, we could understand the feelings of the man who, falling from a high building, called out to a friend at a window that he was " all right so far." The olj Dutch gakden at Hajiiiun ( >urt Lf^^^ia The level i'laix of Kunnimede CHAPTER XVIII THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES WE found to our astonishment that we were, within a very few days, willing to leave London; that indeed we were glad to leave London! It was not that we undervalued its im- portance, its greatness, its various and varied inter- ests ; it was not that we really wearied of its shops, its theaters, its restaurants; nor was it merely because we already knew London fairly well, for when one comes to know a fine city he is likely to love it the more on better and better acquaintance. But we were eager to go away from London, because of the insistent call of the road, and we found ourselves longing again for the fresh, keen air, the bright sun- shine, the countrj^ lanes and homes, the swift, fine motion of travel. And so we took train again to Bromley and found the car washed and polished and shining like new, and the cylinders cleaned, and everything ready for us to start, and we spread our rugs and settled our feet beside the bags and drew great breaths of contentment to be our own masters again and once more on our way. The car gave us the feeling as of getting back home! From the first moment after leaving Bromley all was a pleasure, for we were at once in a region of pleasant homes and pleasant living; but it rather amused us that for a long time we seemed to be pur- sued on our right by the looming glitter of that big Crystal Palace, at Sydenham, which was erected over a half a century ago and dominates all this section 181 182 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN^ of suburban London as a glassy example of bad taste. We were aiming for Kingston, to cross the river there for Hampton Court and Windsor before swing- ing northward into splendid central England, and there was necessarily a good deal of zigzagging as to roads, and more or less of rather ordinary suburban life alternating with the finer kind. We passed through Wimbledon and just skirted Wimbledon Common, which is strangely remindful of fine Long Island living — and we gained the im- pression that it is much better form to live on the Common than in plain Wimbledon — and we came to Kingston-on-the-Thames, with its ancient king's stone which out-claims that of Scone as to antiquity of Idng-crowning ; and we found Kingston an asfree- able place, with a very great deal of the very old, but most of it was so fresh with paint and prosperity as to seem pretty and new, and we found passageways with queer, quaint gables, and in a draper's shop, and in constant daily use, we came upon an ancient and beautiful oak staircase really fit for a palace, and we happened upon an " odditorium," a delightful name adopted by a very shabby shop in a very narrow lane where we found some very attractive bits of old silver and china, and we came into a market-square, quaintly built about, and notably pretty with masses of flow- ers and little baskets of strawberries and green, clean vegetables, and so alive with market women and girls, as rosy and blossoming as their wares, that marketing at such a market could not but be pleasurable. For a mile or so we motored along a road, high- walled on both sides, to the Lion Gate of Hampton Court, and we looked for a place to leave the car, and there was no garage in sight, but a friendly po- liceman offered to " put an eye on it " for a consid- eration accepted but in no way suggested. And THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 183 through the Lion Gate we entered the grounds of Hampton Court, and went on by a pleasant walk through a remarkable maze, and between avenued yews that are huge, fine and venerable. There are acres and acres of blooming flowers, in every imaginable color and glory, and mighty trees carpeted underneath with the greenest of ivy instead of with grass, and great stretches of lawn; and near- ing the old brick palace are gardens of peculiar per- fection, gardens that are the pride and glory of a nation of flower lovers, and vistaed avenues stretch nobly away from the front of the palace. Planned by William and INIary's Dutch gardeners, these ave- nues stretch away in the form of a mighty " W," and there comes the suggestion that, if we could view these from the other direction, we should see them as the initial " M." The front of the palace, itself built by William, is of a soft-colored rosy brick and a buff-gray stone; it is of much dignity, but the extensive remains of the earlier Tudor portion of Henry the Eighth and Wol- sey, also of soft-colored brick and with black headers, shows how glorious a brick palace may be when its architect is a very artist in building. The interior of the palace leaves an impression of great courts, of grand staircases, of rooms of oak, of Grinling Gibbons festoons, of the grand great halls, of the little Wolsey closet with its linen-pattern panels, and of myriad paintings of court beauties, of maids of honor and maids of dishonor, forever smiling and simpering and gay on the walls as they were smiling and gay and simpering in these very halls and rooms, and there are portraits of royalties, courtiers, statesmen, lordly nobles and beautiful ladies who lived and loved and planned and hoped and in- trigued and gossiped in this very palace generations ago. The many portraits of the people so associated 184 TOURIXG GREAT BRITAIN with this very building and with English history give a vividly human touch to it all. It ceases to be merely a show-place, with a great extent of rooms open to the public, and becomes a veritable bit of the past, filled once more with currents of swift-pulsing human life. And this vivid impression of the past is delight- fully added to by seeing veritable old Delft and veritable old tapestry and beds and clocks and mir- rors still kept in the various rooms in this largest of English palaces ; not gathered here for show, all these things now so preciously old, but kept in the very rooms in which they were placed so long ago, direct from the hands of their makers. We went through Hampton Court with a friend who, living but a few miles away, has come to know every nook and corner in the course of years of lov- ing visits here, and every bit of its romance and his- tory, and with such a companion the entire place became vivified indeed. But the motorist cannot re- main forever even in such a place of fascination as this, and so with a final glance at the charming Tudor exterior and a final look at the greenery and a glimpse into an odd, little sunken garden which is not Italian but Dutch and has little fat Cupids — little Dutch loves! — in lead, and birds of clipped box, and a little fountain, and a marble lady placed at the far end as if to show that even the Dutch could not have a sunken garden without something Italian, we are on our way again. The entrance of a great park known as Bushy Park faces the Lion Gate of Hampton Court, and this park is open to motors, and it was most agreeable to drive in and circle about there for a little, for the avenues have been so planned as to make great vistas in the manner of France, and there are deer loitering sedately about that are surely the tamest deer in all THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 185 the world, and there is a general agreeable impres- sion of water and greenery. Leaving Bushy Park and Hampton Court, we fol- lowed a road along the Thames and soon our minds were busied with one of the greatest happenings of all history, for we were on our way to where the Magna Charta was signed; we were on our way to Runnimede. But there was no indication in the land- scape itself that we were approaching the place where one of the most important events in history took place; on the contrary, it was a landscape wonder- fully charming and sweet, as if this had always been only a land of beauty and romance. And so, as we went on our way to Runnimede, the sun was gleam- ing upon the water and there were boats in innumer- able profusion, and there was the fluttering of gay streamers, and overlooking the river there were bal- conied houses painted in the gaj^est of colors, and houseboats bright with flowers, and there were gay parties out on the water or gathered in groups be- neath the trees, and life seemed all joyousness and gayety and beauty and charm. We came to Runnimede. We tried to visualize the scene as it was so many centuries ago, on that June day of 1215, when the King and the mighty nobles, with their splendid retinues, and the thousands of knights and men-at-arms, with all their banners bravely spread and all their armor flashing high, were here; we tried to picture what a day of pomp and glory it was; what a marvelous hour of crowded life when these lonelj^ meadows were literally crowded with all that is great and distinguished and powerful in England; but the quiet silver river and the sweet beauty of the scene made visualization difficult indeed. Runnimede Is a great level along the riverside, a region of sweeping meadows that stretch in their rich 186 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN greenery off to low-rising hills and to woods that go gradually thickening into the distances. Here and there, almost hidden among the trees and the wild, free shrubbery is a pleasure-house by the riverside, and an island lies out in the stream. Real living has not yet come to Runnimede in all these seven hun- dred years ; we see no farmers, no cottagers, but only the great level plain, and the river and the bordering trees, and hills and sweetness and restfulness and charm. Few visitors go to Runnimede, because it has not been a readily reachable place by rail, and, even more than this, it offers no definite sights to see for those (and they are the majority of travelers) who must be shown an actual city or palace or ruin, or at least a fragmentary wall or a gravestone. Now, cities and palaces and ruins and walls and even gravestones are often extremely worth seeing, but so is the actual scene of any great event, and especially when the event is very important indeed and when the setting is one of beauty and solitude and charm. And we marveled anew, as over and over we mar- vel, at realizing how much a motorist can see, and see easily and adequately, in a single day. To-day is to be a very short run indeed, measured in miles, but it is a day that in reality carries us through many, many centuries and through a vast variety of inter- est, for although we started late, through having first to get from London back to where the car was wait- ing for us, we have since seen the London suburbs, and Kingston and Hampton, and now we are at Run- nimede, and we are to reach Windsor to spend the night; and the delight, the sense of achievement and of well-spent time, come not only from the ease and swiftness of motion, but because of the utilization of every moment; there is no waste of time waiting for trains; w^e stay at a place precisely as long as we THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 187 wish and then, at that very moment, we are off into new fields of discovery. We suppose that everyone ought to think of Wind- sor only as of a great old castle ; and indeed the castle is extremely impressive, and especially so when seen from the river ; but here at Windsor we noticed again that a traveler must needs be at the mercy of his own impressions, and so, without either forgetting or belittling architecture and history, we shall set down that we remember the many beautiful cats of Windsor, which probably attracted our attention in particular because they have such frequent oppor- tunities to look at a king ; and we were hugely pleased with the sight of a fine little fox-terrier waiting at the lord chamberlain's door — a very attractive gentleman-in-waiting indeed! And we remember how pleasantly we were impressed by a long, quiet stairway of a hundred steps, leading down from the castle to a quiet outer postern-door opening in a quiet corner of the town, for it gave such a delightful impression of the possibilities of old-time romance; it was more romantic, so far as that alone was con- cerned, than the great open front of the castle could possibly be. And it interested us very much, not far from the mysterious postern-door, to come upon a tablet marking the house where was born Robert Keayne, the founder and captain of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, the oldest military organization in the United States. And that he was born in 1595 is remindful that, in spite of the general impression that America is a new country, we really ought to consider it an old country, for certainly things or persons that date back in England as far as 1595 are considered to be of quite an age! It surprised us to find that Windsor is quite a rough place in the evening, for roughish men and brawlers then congregate at the corners and hilarious 188 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN dance-music and dancing and drinking are quite in evidence as to sound. We should not much notice such things in an ordinary town, but here one ex- pects something quite different, in the shadow of this immense and ancient and royal castle, still kept up, as it is, as a present-day home of royalty. Most interesting of the vast and varied buildings within the castle walls is ancient St. George's Chapel, and it is of very great beauty and impressiveness ; its splendid interior, with its fan-shaped vaulting, has been unspoiled by time or restoration; and most im- pressive of all are the stalls of the ICnights of the Order of the Garter, with their coats-of-arms and banners. We felt a personal interest in the construc- tion work in St. George's Chapel because a certain Geoffrey Chaucer was appointed by Richard the Second to look after this work, and the result of it all seems to prove that a poet may understand the poetry of architecture. There is a most fascinating quadrangle of ancient red-brick half-timbered houses, also within the in- closing walls of the castle, which are of much pic- torial interest, and fine views of the winding river valley may be had from the commanding walls and battlements. On the whole, much though one admires abstractly the dignity and immensity of Windsor Castle, most of it is markedly lacking in atmosphere, owing largely to the tremendous amount of thoroughgoing restora- tion that has been done here, which gives an incon- gruous and unseemly look of modernity to it. But there is splendid and unspoiled impressive- ness in the view of the towers and battlements as seen from the river; indeed, it is from a boat on the water that the best views are to be had. After dinner we strolled down to the riverside, and took a rowboat, with loose oarlocks and two sets of spoon-oars, and THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 189 went slowly up the stream in an adorable evening light. There are giant elms, and one riverside gar- den after another, with stone balustrades, as if from a dream or an opera, and with little water-gates; and shady willows drooping down over the water, to half screen the boats of lovers, of whom there seem to be scores out upon tliis river — and all is quiet and happy; it is all of an unreal beauty, with roses and white swans and the soft-gleaming water. An eight- oared Eton shell, with an anxious, little agitated cox- swain in the stern and a bicycle-mounted coach glid- ing by on the bank — there is a path on one side — seem somehow to be part of the stage-setting of the scene ; and just as unreal seem the long one-man shells, slender as toothpicks, that skim about like water- spiders in the half dusk. Slender girls, poling their boats, stand gracefully like gondoliers; and these, with the lovers, and the many, many white swans, all seem set out upon this watery stage for our delecta- tion. Never was a river so satisfactorily used as is the Thames; but we realize that thus to use a river requires temperament and long twilights. Next morning it was cold; one marvels how very cold it can be in England in rose-bowered June — but it quickly grew warmer under a hot sun. We went up to the castle and watched the Coldstream Guards come out and drill under the King's win- dows, but, though the drill began with snap, it daw- dled off into dullness, and more than anything else developed into a matter of highly-tailored officers walking two by two while the men waited for the next orders. " Seems to be a long operation," was the watch-snapping remark of a Colonial beside us; but the scarlet coats, the blue trousers, red at the seams, the great brass chains under the chins, the monstrous brown-black shakos, were very pictorial on the great green and against the cold gray of the castle. The 190 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN King did not look out at the drill — he had seen such drills before. This happened to be the day when the King and Queen were to drive in Ascot state to the races, and we went around to the long Virginia Walk, which is an interminable distance of drive, bordered by trees and grass, where a scattering of people had gathered to see royalty. There was a mild flutter as the royal carriage was seen advancing from the castle; and we saw that " Ascot state " was something very simple indeed. The Queen was in white, with her usual make of white hat, and the King looked very proper. There were four horses to the royal carriage, and two footmen up behind as well as postilions riding in front, and several high-hatted horsemen rode along foUowingly. Both the King and the Queen had the look such as actors have, as of hoping and looking for applause; and their faces gleamed with genuine delight when there was a faint cheering. There was a general look about it all, which irresistibly reminded us of the jibe about George the Fifth and Mary the other four- fifths. CHAPTER XIX REMOTE FROM TOWNS WE motored out of Windsor with a final re- minder of romance as we passed the postern- gate, and a final touch of beauty as we crossed the bridge and took an an revoir glimpse of the Thames going on its silver winding way, and we went right through long-hatted and short- jacketed Eton, a clean and pleasant old place, and passed by the famous school, not particularly impressive, and were quickly out in the open country. It was a region of charming country lanes and lonely, bushy greenery, and we followed a few curves and turns through this region of shaded beauty, and passed a twin-lodged entrance with little classic pillars mak- ing a perfect and highly agreeable little impression, and stopped near a solitary mossy-bricked cottage with Tudor-hke chimneys, and followed a footpath — for there is no motor or carriage approach whatever — through a lych-gate of oak, into the quietest, gen- tlest old sleeping God's Acre, lying beside a mossy old church of irregular form ; and we are at the church of the Elegy, the little country churchyard which Gray made immortal. Church and churchyard alike are fittingly in the midst of a great loneliness. All is so absolutely silent that you scarcely hear the twitter of a bird or the soft rustle of the wind in the trees that grow thickly round about. There are enormous, ancient, dark and gloomy yews : indeed, as one looks about, he sees with what perfection of itemized detail the poet described 191 192 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN the spot, for the yew-tree's shade, the turf heaving in many a moldering heap, the elms, the ivied tower — all is here, and all is as impressive as his words; and all the air a solemn stillness holds. Most of the graves are little mimarked mounds; ** for the people are mostly too poor for stones," says a countryman who has unobtrusively appeared out of nowhere. And these stoneless graves where the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep have been crowded thick and close by the centuries. Gray himself lies with his forefathers, close to the walls of the old church, in a brick, stone-covered tomb of table shape, amid the peace and beauty that in his lifetime so appealed to him; with the world forgot- ten by him, but never by the world to be forgot. It is a simple church, without the long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults of greater structures ; the walls are of brick and rubble-stone, covered with plaster which is picturesquely flaking away, and the church has an ancient tile roof. That it also has a little spire, mis- takenly added to its ivy-mantled tower and deplored by every lover of the Elegy and of good looks, is something that could be remedied in half a day — by taking it off! Why, in this lovely place, has it not been done? — for there is none so poor in taste to do it reverence. Close beside the graveyard is a field that is an un- broken glow of scarlet poppies, and adjoining that field is one which is all a shimmer of white with daisies ; and at some little distance is a huge cenotaph, put up by admirers of Gray who wished to build this ostentatious memorial but fortunately were not per- mitted to do so near the church. This country churchyard seems, in its retired lone- liness, to be so very far away from everything that it seems incredible, when actually at the spot, to realize that it is so close to Windsor and only a few RE]MOTE FROM TOWNS 193 miles from London. And this striking effect of iso- lation is the most interesting and vital of the features of Stoke Poges. From the churchyard, even the cot- tage which we passed on approaching is not to be seen, nor is any other habitation of any kind what- ever. Gray died in 1771; his poem has already lived longer than the United States of America; and one cannot but wonder what governments will rise and fall while men still murmur his lines. Leaving Stoke Poges, we had another rural run through narrow leafy lanes; through a sweet, old- fashioned England; and at a little cottage in the woods we stopped, for there was a little sign of tea, and a decent, elderly cottage-woman curtsied a welcome and made us tea and brought it out with bread and butter. It was a little red-brick cottage by the roadside, damp and low-set, but extremely pretty, and there was a little white donkey in front, upon which the woman's husband was just fastening a high saddle, but before he rode away he gravely showed us, as we admired his cute little donkey, a dark cross-mark upon its back and said, with simple and earnest faith, that, " as Scripture teaches," all white donkeys have borne such a cross on their backs since Christ chose a white donkey upon which to ride into Jerusalem. We are to-day going along pleasant, shaded high- ways as we aim here and there for interesting locali- ties that are scarcely reachable except by motor car; and the car does make so simple what were the ardu- ous expeditions of other days ; and we come to Burn- ham Beeches. We knew them to be the finest beeches in England, and expected to see perhaps a dozen or so, in a park, and we were therefore not at all prepared to find that they cover a great area and are an ancient beech forest. There are hundreds of trees 194 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN that are positively immense in size ; ancient,misshapen, crooked, gnarled, with now and then a hollow, ancient shell that is still alive; and many a small beech-tree is growing up among and between the old ones, so that, centuries hence, there will still be a great forest of Burnham Beeches when the present huge and fan- tastic monarchs have fallen. There are miles of beautiful roadway leading through the shady, shimmering glory of magic green, and all the earth beneath the trees is covered with emerald moss. All about us in the distances is a dusky green darkling as if for Druids and dryads — both of which, usually so impossible of conception, all at once seem alike in being the natural denizens of such a wood. It is noteworthy, and something fine and broad, that the corporation of London has acquired these marvelous woods to safeguard them for the future, and maintain them " for the benefit of the people," as it is finely worded on a notice that we see at one of the forest crossroads. From the beech forest we followed indirectly me- andering roads, and went down a hillside between masses of rhododendron, in full bloom, of so unusual a size that they towered for a long distance twenty or thirty feet in height above us. We swept through broad sweet glades, we rode between immense carpets of acres and acres of rich ferns, with now and then a cottage or mansion peep- ing among the trees, but seldom even so much as this of a sign of human life. We came to Beaconsfield, reminiscent of Disraeli's title, a little place of little houses that seem smaller than they really are through the width of the street and of the immense open space in the middle of the village, and we sped on into more sweeping glades, and passed fields yellow and scarlet and white with REMOTE FROM TOWNS 195 flowers, and went beside long hedges thick with wild roses or glowing with white elder flowers. We went through a tangle of the narrowest imaginable lanes, so narrow as scarcely to give sufficient width for even a walker to pass us, and at length we came to a lonely- little meeting-house at a lonely corner of a lonely road. And the place was Jordans. But the building does not look in the least like a meeting-house; it looks like an ancient, lonely farm- house with its family graveyard. This appearance is increased by the little wooden fence in front of the building, by the muslin at one of the windows, by flowers along the wall and by smoke coming out of the chimney. And the building was really in the very long ago a farmhouse, and its interior was opened up into a space for meetings, and there are plain wooden benches for the worshipers and there is a tiny gal- lery, arranged with slides, and the sexton has quaint rooms in one end of the building. This old Friends' meeting-house, the most famous meeting-house of the sect, is a low-built, square-front building of dulled red brick, and its broad hip roof is covered with dull red tile, and the simple, little gravestones just over the fronting fence are mainly those of one of the most distinguished men in Ameri- can history and members of his family; for William Penn is here, and his two wives are here, and quite a number of his sons and daughters, including his daughter Letitia, who is still remembered in Phila- delphia by the name Letitia Street. There are great trees close beside the meeting- house and the graves; it is peculiarly a place of re- pose, of restfulness, of that peace that the Quakers so love; and a charming touch is added to it all by the flowers that grow closely about ; the honeysuckle, the white roses, the fragrant stock. Jordans is peculiarly a bygone place that has re- 196 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN tained to the full its spirit and its atmosphere. Buried here in this green region of loneliness, the simple grave of William Penn, the courtier, the man ^of place and power, the wise and liberal and far- seeing founder of the great commonwealth that per- petuates his name, is impressive in its austerity. There was another interesting place to be searched for hereabouts, and that was the cottage in which Milton finished " Paradise Lost " and began " Pai'a- dise Regained." And the going about in this out- of-the-way region, quite away from the main-traveled roads, through these rural lanes, unchanged in ap- pearance for many generations, choosing our own turnings, and finding delight in every road, and com- ing happil}^ to the places that we sought, was a series of experiences full of a pleasure that would have been vastly lessened had we merely been driven prosaically by someone who knew the roads. And, we may add, short stretches of road through some of this little- traveled region have been quite below the usual Eng- lish standard; yet this is not set down as criticism, but only as a reminder that the road surfaces are nearly everywhere of such a superlative quality, even through lonely Devon and North Wales, that even a brief lapse toward what we are accustomed to at home is noticeable. Milton left London on account of the Great Plague, and this house was described to him as " a pretty box " by the friend who found it for him — a curious point of attraction to describe to a man who had been blind for a dozen years. So Milton himself never saw this little brick cottage, with the diamond panes in its little windows; he never saw the long, straggling village twisting down its long, easy slope to his cottage door. The garden beside the cottage is now filled with the greatest imaginable enormous Oriental poppies, but this is a kind of flower that has The scene of Gray's Elegy In rm: iii,\i;i (ji iiii: Imkniia.m 1 Iiia iii;s William Pexn's grave at Joudans Milton's cottage at Ciiai.iont St. Giles REMOTE FROM TOWNS 197 come in since JMilton's time. To this very cottage doubtless was sent the five pounds which was the con- tract price for which " Paradise Lost " was written. The village has lost the rustic quahty which it doubtless once possessed; but the little, pretty cot- tage, with an outside chimney oddly built against the front, and a queer little lean-to against the farther front corner, and a roof of wavering tile, is as pretty as one could anticipate from the romantic- seeming name of the place, Chalfont St. Giles. From here we ran to Great Missenden and thence by a minor but excellent cross-country road through a rich farming countrj' and, with one of those fre- quent delightful contrasts of the English landscape, passed unexpectedly into a woodland with dark and profound shade and then suddenly out upon a sunny widespread and sweeping view; and before us was the market-town of Prince's Risborough, the town of the Black Prince. We motored entireh^ about the place, looking for its charm, for we had made quite a detour to come here because Frank R. Stockton used to consider this the most delightful place, in appearance, in England. But, though it has a great deal of quaintness, and an agreeable mellow old-time air, we see quite clearly that if motors had been used in Stockton's time he would have found, as we have done, many towns more picturesque. Still, it seemed almost worth while to come to this village of small, dull quaintness for the sake of seeing the sign of a " Baker and Fly Proprietor." A really fascinating feature of this vicinity is a great white cross, cut in the brilliant grass of a white- chalk hill overlooking Prince's Risborough, for it not only keeps in mind a great battle between the Danes and the Saxons, somewhere vaguely in the dark back- ward of time, but it delighted us to think that men 198 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN could go out with shovels and make a strikins^ and permanent monument by so simple a means as cut- ting off the turf. Just a few miles farther along these untraveled ways, and we come to the forgotten town of Thame, a rather tired-out old village with some interesting bits of the sixteenth century; and one likes to re- member that this is the village to which Hampden rode wounded from the skirmish field of Chalgrove, to die, and there is an ancient square-towered church, looking as if out of a story-book, with a tilleul path, heavy shaded, about it, that must have looked just as it does now when this village and the nation were in a fever of excitement over Hampden's death. From Thame it is a dozen miles or so to Oxford, and the old university city is approached through a series of rather unattractive modern suburbs that give no promise of the fascinating beauty of the ancient place. CHAPTER XX THE HEART OF ENGLAND OXFORD is a city of silvery-gray. It is a city of buildings fascinating in their beauty and with their outlines softly blurred with man- tling ivy; a city that gives definite and unforget- table recollections of things of serene beauty that will remain in the memory as joys forever; a city that gives sweetly vague impressions of a broad agglom- eration of age and charm. We entered the city by the High Street; a street of distinction, a street from which one gets enchant- ing glimpses of suggested beauty, a famous street, a venerable street, a broad street, a street with the eye-satisfying, dominating tower of Magdalen at one end and a succession of towers and gables and glorious fa9ades as we go on to the center of the city. We sought to renew a delightful impression of years ago by living in English lodgings, for Oxford is full of them, and we made our way to a secluded square and knocked at the door of the house where we had lived before. Every house in the square, and indeed every house we passed in getting there, seemed given over to quiet young men seated on cushions on the window-sills, with knees drawn up and deco- rously reading in the soft evening light, or if per- chance there was one sill without its student, his cush- ion was there! By good chance we found we could stay at the old place again and we tasted once more the pleasures of immaculate perfection of service in 199 200 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN this Oxford lodging and we thought how shabby would be the same place in America after years of student boarding. We lingered in Oxford, for we loved the place, and we went about renewing former experiences and find- ing new ones. Perhaps the most representative of all the Oxford buildings are those of the college of Christ Church, with its historical foundation by Cardinal Wolsey, with its prodigious bell, Old Tom, which booms sono- rously its one hundred and one strokes every even- ing at five minutes after nine, with its imposing quad- rangle, with its superb fan-vaulted entrance and staircase, with its fascinating old kitchen, still used, and redolent of roast-beef, and with its ancient oak- ceilinged hall, where the students still dine, with distinguished Christ Church collegians of the past looking down imperturbably from paintings along the wall. And this points out what makes, after all, the prin- cipal interest of Oxford; that, with its beauty, serenity and age, it is a city of colleges whose rooms and halls continue to be in daily use just as they have been in use for centuries. Most beautiful of all in Oxford is Magdalen; and its surroundings and quadrangle remain a fine mem- ory, and we found ourselves returning once and again for the sheer pleasure of walking through its cloistered passages and across its fine greenery and in looking again at the wonderful beauty of its build- ings and its tower. There are two green walks in Oxford that are su- premely lovely. And one of these is the quiet walk beside the Cherwell, and there we saw across the little stream a few deer gently browsing, with the tiniest of slender-legged, dappled little fawns beside them. And the other is the walk through Christ Church The High Street of Oxford In a QriET Broadway THE HEART OF ENGLAND 201 meadows, a great level green along which there is an avenue of ancient and tremendous elms. With all the sweet and shaded seclusion of Ox- ford, and the restfulness that has come with the ages, it should be remembered that close against this sweep- ing green with its avenued elms, but walled away from it so as to be seen only by going down an out- side street, is a slum apparently so bad and miserable that it would be condemned instantly in any city with proper governmental ideas. Looking at this queen among college cities, one thinks of the lines so long ago applied to another beautiful queen ; that age cannot wither her nor cus- tom stale her infinite variety. And perhaps we thought of these lines on a queen because of seeing, as we drew up in front of Magdalen tower, the Prince of Wales just going away in his touring-car; he being a student of Magdalen. " In fact," as one of the proctors said as he walked along with us under the beautiful tower, " everybody is educated at Oxford — or, at least either here or at Cambridge," he added; and this led us to make a mental inventory, and it seemed to show the astonishing fact that practically none of the great names which more than any others make up the list of gi-eat Englishmen in the minds of Americans were educated at either of the great universities. Shakespeare, Dickens, Wellington, the Marlborough who was first of the name, Scott, Burns, Joshua Reynolds, Wedgwood — the list could ^ go lengthily on; and point is added to it by the fact that Thackeray began at Oxford, but left, and Shel- ley began at Cambridge and was expelled. But no such reflections could spoil the splendid outward im- pressiveness of these old Gothic buildings, nor take away from the splendid scholastic air of the place. A striking feature of the Oxford of to-day, in marked contrast to what it was only a few years 202 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN ago, is the number who are there who are not Eng- lishmen; for students are there from many countries, including numerous East Indians, and markedly the numerous Rhodes scholars from the English Colo- nies and from the United States ; and it was interest- ing to meet several of the Rhodes scholars, in blazers of brilliant hue that bore the arms of their particular college, the most fetching being the insignia of Pem- broke; and w^e saw others dashing about the streets of the city in hip-length gowns of black mohair thrown on, not worn, over their other clothes, just like the English. But Oxford is far from being an ill-tailored city, and we came to know as a common sight what we called the trouser- wagons, which were wagons that were solidly loaded at the college doors with col- legiate trousers to be taken away to be pressed; and as we wandered at will, for many of the passages are freely opened to the public, through some of the colleges in the early morning — which merely means between nine and ten o'clock, which seemed to be a very early hour indeed for Oxford students — it amused us to see rows of morning-polished shoes waiting at their doorways, and we passed a room, that was really a sort of cell, where the shoe-blacker of that college was still busily at work at his morning task, surrounded by a shoal of shoes. For our final survey of Oxford, for a final and farewell impression, we took a comprehensive run throughout the entire city: a review of its fetching glimpses, its broad views, its waterside and its boat- ing, its towers and college fronts and churches, the general aspect of Brasenose, Christ Church, Magda- len, Pembroke and Corpus Christi, and as we started off on our onward journey we were by the vision splendid on our way attended. We first made a short run to Blenheim, and our THE HEART OF ENGLAND 203 most vivid impression of that place is of poor old v^^omen creeping miserably along the park roads, not even raising their eyes from the ground, and of one huddling in her arms a meager bundle of fagots. The palace of Blenheim is enormous and ostenta- tious, but it is not quite beautiful, not quite stately, and in color it is an unfortunate dark gray. It stands in the midst of a huge park, containing enormous elms and great stretches of rough grass, and grass is growing in the very avenue in front of the main entrance of the palace; in fact, there is a general air of neglect about the entire place. The palace is not open to visitors as it used to be, nor are motors al- lowed within the park gates, and as it was a hot day this meant what turned out to be a blistering walk, bare of shade, of a mile or so before we reached the palace front. But there is a great deal of beauti- ful water in the park, with pictorial swans and an old stone bridge, and the memories of Sweet Rosa- mond and Woodstock and Walter Scott add their charm; and beside the palace is a sunken garden which is the very perfection of clipped garden, with its clipped peacocks of golden yew and its clipped and pillarlike yew bushes and in all a rich effective- ness of golden yew and deep-green box, with massed roses and hydrangeas in brilliant pinks. The village of Woodstock, at the palace gates, a long, stone, ancient village, wears a general air of depression. It is indeed a village of brooding silence, for the shutting of the palace to visitors and its prac- tical disuse of late years has stopped the stream of travel, and all this seems largely to have done away, for the time, with the prosperity of the place. At Woodstock we were faced with the question — and similar choices frequently faced us, for England is so impossibly rich in places of interest — of going either to Sulgrave to the northward or Broadway 204 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN much farther to the west. It did not seem possible, viewing the entire route, to take in both, and so we decided for Broadway, which we had for years wished to see, instead of for the place associated with the forbears of Washington. We should much have liked to see Sulgrave ]Manor, but we remembered that, after all, Washington himself had neither known nor cared about the place and had answered, when written to by Garter King-at-Arms in regard to his ancestry, that the first of his family in Virginia had possibl}'' come from Yorkshire or Lancashire, or even farther north ; and this partly reconciled us to not see- ing Sulgrave. And so we chose Broadway. " Broadway " al- ways has a good sound to an American! It was something like twenty miles away, and we began with a superb run, over superb roads, through the richest farming country that we have yet seen; a rolling country so gently rolling as to be almost level; but, in spite of its being so rich a farmland, nettles were growing as elsewhere along the roadsides and in the corners. We passed through a village with the fascinating name of Chipping Norton, but with nothing note- worthy to remember it by, but, chancing to see that the inns of the place were not only a White Hart but an impossible Blue Boar, we hopefully looked for the Purple Cow! Now we go into slightly hilly country and find it is a fox-hunting region, and we pass a large pack of hounds by the roadside and find that they are the hounds of the Warwickshire Hunt. A few miles beyond Chipping Norton we stalled near the foot of a hill — and found that it was because of an inexcusable forgetting of s^asoline! — something bound to happen once. And with the knowledge that we were really stalled there came a vivid realiza- THE HEART OF ENGLAND 205 tion of what we had been frequently noticing, but which until now had had nothing of personal appli- cation : the fact that one may be very lonely and very far, apparently, from human habitation on an Eng- lish country road. There was enough gasoline to run the car if there were a level road to keep the supply level in the tank, but in this lonely valley, with a hill in front and one behind, we were helpless. A half mile up the hill a couple with motorcycle and side basket had come to a halt and we wondered if they, too, were halted for the same reason as we; but at least they would probably know how near and in which direction was the nearest source of supply. The two were a thoroughly delightful young Eng- lishman and his remarkably pretty wife, and it appeared that they had merely stopped for the tight- ening of a loosened chain, and instantly the younf^ man volunteered to run back the few miles to Chip- ping Norton and get gasoline for us — it is sold all over England in sealed two-gallon tin cans — and he offered this so instantly and cordially that we ac- cepted his ready courtesy, and he left his vdfe 'vvith us while he was away, and he came back, in a won- derfully short time, waving his hand in triumph as he approached. Never was help more opportune; here was literally a god from the machine! Tea was all ready by the roadside, for we had with us our tiny spirit-lamp and some American dainties which we had kept in stock for an emergency from a steamer basket. We had a gay little tea-party together — and not until we were through did we realize that, as true English, they had never before tasted clear tea without cream. Not until we were parting from our new friends did it develop, with some little shy- ness, that they were on their wedding journey by motorcycle and sidecar. From where we were, they 206 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN were now going on their way to Tewkesbury, and this reminded us of the time, which seemed so distant, although it was onlj'^ about two weeks ago, when we had ourselves been at Tewkesbury and, knowing that we were to be very near it on our northward run, had wondered what would happen in between; and of the many pleasant things that actually happened in the intervening time, this meeting with the delightful newly-weds was among the pleasantest. Our road led us on our way through towns so delightfully named as Moreton-in-the-Marsh and Barton-on-the-Heath — both of these old names being descriptive, for Barton-on-the-Heath is literally set on a heath and Moreton-in-the-iMarsh is a very low- set town standing on a dead level surrounded by what was a great marsh ; and Moreton has a rather curious arcaded market-j)lace, which however did not de- tain us. In a wooded, secluded spot, as we went on, we saw a towering Georgian pillar, and it was so unexpected in such a place and so suggestive of mystery that we backed the car to investigate, and found it was a four-shirestone, for it marked the meeting-point of Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. And, like the many states shown you from the top of Lookout Mountain, you really could not tell one from another, they all looked so alike; — and a brown weasel, a stoat as the English would call it, that darted away from behind the stone evidently did not care in the least in which shire he found shelter! We climbed up a long hill through a stone-built village with mullion windows, where flowers were hanging from hilly gardens down over the roadside walls, for the cottages were high above the road; it was a memorably long hill of little houses and it seems to us that this was the first village in which THE HEART OF ENGLAND 207 we climbed up a long hill, it seeming as if all our other experiences with village hills were in connection with dodging villagers as we went down. And now we followed for a few miles along a su- perb road, and then swung down a long, long curving highway, looking over miles of country that was haz- ily veiled with pale, low-hanging mist. There was a skurry of rabbits darting off into holes or hedges, and the view over the misted country was every mo- ment changing, and the hill kept on pleasantly lengthening beneath us, and toward its bottom we caught a glimpse of white stone houses with red roofs among green trees, on a green, green plain; and that was Broadway. Broadway is famous as being the home of famous people who have lived in it for its loveliness and seclusion. Poets have chosen it, and artists have loved its roof lines and its fascinating stone gables and the embowering effects of ivy, yews and roses, and actors have spent their months of restfulness here. And it is peculiarly a satisfying place, not only because it contains so much of the positively pic- turesque and beautiful, but also because it contains nothing of the ugly or disagreeable. And, although some of the houses are simple cottages, others, al- though just as unobtrusive, are places of well-to-do and comfortable living. A few Americans, in par- ticular Mary Anderson and the painter Abbey, long lived here, and their love for the place would alone make it of interest to their compatriots. Of course, we dined on Broadway! Such an op- portunity was not lightly to be missed; and we re- member that we had strawberries and cream, which completed the eflPect of an excellent dinner as the fact of our dining on Broadway completed the effect of our visit. We left Broadway by way of little nearby Wil- 208 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN lersley, a hamlet with a horse-pond; a httle village, most agreeable, with the same kind of old houses and old windows and great roses that we have been ad- miring in Broadway, but as yet unappropriated by artistic fashion and very evidently in need of pre- liminary cleaning and furbishing before it could be- gin to match the immaculateness of Broadway. But it pleased us to pick out, in fancy, the house that would make the most beautiful home. We went on, over a stone-walled road, past iso- lated houses with mullioned windows, past a frag- ment of a village still retaining its ancient town- cross, past exquisite gardens of June flowers, past little cottages, as well as the comfortable homes of unextravagant prosperity; — and even the little cot- tages along this road were seldom poor, but almost always not only lovable but livable. There were great apple orchards, there were thatched roofs with captivating front lines, there was a fine, yellow-fronted Georgian house with a notable oval-rayed window, there were many cattle and sheep, there were delightful hedges and great haystacks, there was many and many a pollarded willow, there were splendid market-gardens with huge hampers of willow to bear the products to market, in a field men were shearing sheep in the twilight, and at a cottage door a young father was cutting his boy's hair with all the delightful simplicity of the round-and-round principle. We came to where there was a short tearing up of the road for repair work, and red flags were out at quite a distance from each end of the dig-up, and several big, red lanterns were about to be lit for the near-coming darkness, and a watchman in a shelter was ready for an all-night vigil. And there was a tack from a rustic's shoe on this road that gave us a puncture, easily repaired; and it A Wakwick peacock struttim. lusiui: pkacocks of box Tllh I'Alil I'l Kt.MI.WOUTH ASSOCIATED WITH QuEEN ELIZABETH THE HEART OF ENGLAND 209 was noteworthy to us as being the very first punc- ture on our many hundreds of miles thus far. We were close to Stratf ord-on- Avon ; and all at once a slender spire appeared as if it had suddenly shot up among the trees — and it was the spire of Shakespeare's church. And by a bridge over a placid stream we motored into the town. CHAPTER XXI TO FAMOUS PLACES WE woke up in the morning in Stratford in a room with a wavering oak-pohshed floor and a dear old window with flowers on the sill, and went down a stairway with an old tall clock at its foot, and had breakfast in an old oak-paneled room with beamed ceiling, which we had all to our- selves — and a very good breakfast it was — and we saw dear little schoolboys, each, with satchel and shin- ing morning face, creeping like snail unwiUingly to school — only, to be accurate, these were hurrj^ing brightly along — and we noticed that they all turned in through the passageway of an old black-and-white building diagonally across from us, which was their school: and it came with almost a shock of realiza- tion that this was the very building, the very school, to which little Will Shakespeare carried his own satchel of books, long ago. It is remarkable that in regard to a man of whose personal life so little is known there should be pre- served such memorials of personal interest as are in Stratford. The house in which he was born has been most resonantly — there is really no other word — re- stored, and you follow a resonant voice through the rooms. It is rather hard to picture this as the real house, and one finds himself almost envying Wash- ington Irving, who humorously tells of finding the house rather a shabby sort of place, but rich in veritable relics, such as the gun with which Shake- speare actually shot the deer, the sword he wore when 210 TO FAMOUS PLACES 211 he played Hamlet — or was it the Ghost? — and the lantern carried by the real Friar Laurence into the tomb of Romeo and Juliet. The old half-timbered Edward the Sixth Grammar School, where Shakespeare went to school, is a place with the genuine spirit of Shakespeare's time. The rooms are beamed and braced and primitive, and the boys are still taught in the same old rooms, and we are told to peek through a little shutter, made for visitors, so that their Latin verbs and their mathe- matical struggles shall not be disturbed. The very hall in which Shakespeare saw his first play is in this building; his own father, who was a man of affairs in Stratford, is said to have arranged for a band of strolling players to come here; and when we passed, on our way out to Ann Hathaway's cottage, a stroll- ing band of eight musicians, we could almost picture ourselves as being in the Stratford of Shakespeare's day. And, indeed, the countrj'' hereabouts is almost altogether just as it was in Shakespeare's time. It is the sweet and happy England that he knew. We see the same rich fields that he saw, and buttercups and daisies still paint the meadows with delight. Nothing could be more satisfactorily preserved than the cottage of Ann Hathaway; the thatched roofed house with tiny dormer windows, and thinnish crisscrossing of half-timbering, and adequate, old- fashioned garden, full of towering old-fashioned flowers and with pathways bordered by low-clij)ped box. The cottage, however, is rated somewhat too ex- travagantly high, and we understand from our own experience just how naturally this has come about, for on our former visits to England we found that the traveler who goes up and down the country by rail, stopping at the various famous places, gets the impression that Ann Hathaway's cottage is almost 212 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN^ the sole sur\dval of the ancient, picturesque cottages, whereas, on a motor tour through the country, one sees hundreds of such cottages and becomes a con- noisseur of their beauty. All of which does make us more content to remember that Shakespeare was a youth under age when he married the mature Ann. When we were about to take a picture of the gar- den and liouse, a pound was immediately demanded — or, to be precise, a guinea — for the privilege, and we are glad to be able to say that a much more sat- isfactory picture than could possibly have been taken from within the palings was taken by standing up on the seat of the car out in the public road. Most important of all the mementos of Shake- speare is the church, a large, old, important build- ing; not merely a little country church, as one is so apt to imagine it; set beside the broad and beauti- ful Avon, within the quiet silence of an old and ancient churchyard — silence; for one does not deem the silence broken by the sweet twittering of thrush and blackbird, or even by the pleasant cawing of a couple of rooks, and most assuredly not by what seemed — but the idea appeared incredible — the notes of a nightingale : yet the verger, when asked about it, listens, and says, yes, that it is a nightingale, for now and then they sometimes sing by daylight here, in the latter half of June. And we were glad that we were there at so fortunate a time. Shakespeare rests so near the altar of the old church because he was, by purchase, one of the lay rectors of the church, and within the altar-rail because the rail was moved outward to preserve his grave from being worn by millions of footsteps; and the bust above it is within a glass case because it was not long ago discovered that it was set so loosely against the wall that any vandal could have lassoed it off. The church is of a dignified and solemn interior, TO FAMOUS PLACES 213 and across the river from it are great level stretches of meadow; and we gained the most satisfactory view of all by looking back at it from a point on the same side of the river, a short distance away; for the soft- moving stream, the bordering meadows and the trees dipping their branches in the water, all were so peace- ful and agreeable, and the church spire showed so sweetly in the watery sunshine — for it had tried to rain a little and the air was lightly touched with a glimmering mist — that all seemed somehow to be subtly suggestive of the best of Shakespeare and of the best of all England. Through a soft-hued bosky country we went on toward Warwick, eight miles away, appreciating to the full the rich beauty of the landscape and the charm of the green and grassy-bordered highway, and the thick clumps of elderflower, and the proces- sional elms, with here and there a fine old house; such as one, in particular, that we noticed, timbered and of soft yellow brick, with an old garden-wall bor- dered with foxgloves; and in passing this house we caught, through the open window of a room near the road, a glimpse of a luncheon table spread with old silver dishes and a Georgian silver tea-urn. Warwick, the town itself, we found to be quite a large place, with houses in themselves of consider- able interest and with the long main street lined al- most solidly with antique shops and tea-rooms, which, although placed in very ancient buildings, did man- age to take away from the naturalness of the place. We found the town gayly alive with children, for it was what they called a " Sunday-school treat " day, and numberless charabancs packed with children and alive with streamers thronged the flag-hung streets, all of which gave a very bright and pleasant air to the ancient place. One of the old town gates is preserved, islandlike, 214 TOURIXG GREAT BRITAIN" in the heart of main-street traffic, and of course we went to see the doddering old houses of the Leicester pensioners; quaint-cloaked old men who are pictures in themselves and who still inhabit these projecting storied houses which seem on the very point of top- phng out into the street. But one goes to Warwick for Warwick Castle; a noble old structure which rises proudly from the river, a castle still complete, a castle which is at the same time a palace rich in superb masterpieces of painting and tapestry and furniture, a castle which is still a home that is adequately lived in. Tucked away among the noble rooms of this noble place is a decorous, ancient private chapel which, so they tell j^ou, is the only private chapel still in use in England with complement of private chaplain and service. One leaves Warwick with memories of grandeur and great gardens, of mighty halls, of majestic tow- ers, of splendid memorials of art and history, of the world-famed Warwick vase, that marvelous-shaped piece of white marble of Bacchanalian glory, and of live peacocks that go strutting beside peacocks clipped from box. And for a final impression we motored to an old stone bridge, with notably beautiful stone balustrades, and from this point looked do^yn the brimming Avon and past the great trees, whose shadows go reaching down into the water, to the splendid castle towers that lift their heads so proudly above the greenery, defiant of time. In this kind of travel one is always coming upon the delightfully unexpected and worth while, and in motoring the short five miles from Warwick to Kenilworth we came to a great mansion, seen across a great pond, and beside the pond was an ancient stone flour mill, with its ancient water-wheel still clacking and grinding wheat. And here again there TO FAIMOUS PLACES 215 is thus the dehghtful idea of an ancient place still in use and not merely kept as a relic. Our approach to Kenilworth led us across an un- bridged brook that rippled across the road, and one gains a delightful impression of old-time days by fording a stream on the way to such an ancient place ; and it did seem odd to ford a Kenilworth stream with a motor car. We have found that there are two kinds of places particularly worth seeing — the places where every- body goes and those where nobody goes: it is ex- ceedingly worth while to go to the places where no other travelers go, because there is the pleasure of novelty and discovery, and to those where everybody goes so as not to miss the localities that have been famous for generations. Kenilworth is one of the worth-while places where everybody goes, and we approached the entrance through a deferential dou- ble line of self-offering guides and of vendors of guide-books and picture postcards, and there was seated a little away from these on the green a verita- ble Goody-Two-Shoes in red cloak, weathered like a tile roof, and a scoop bonnet, and she was surrounded with a semicircle of little flat baskets full of straw- berries piled in little piles; and just such a cottage goody doubtless sat there in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Kenilworth, long one of the mightiest castles of England, still shows ruins of immense extent, and the stupendous Norman portion, the oldest of all, is still the strongest of all. We think of what literature may do for a place; for Scott so peopled this castle with human hfe that every visitor goes about speculating just where Queen Elizabeth walked, where Amy Robsart was hidden away, where Leicester and all the others feasted and intrigued. 216 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN There were only a few people inside the castle ruins, not so many in number as the vendors at the gate, and each of the few seemed to be plucking a sprig of Kenilworth ivy to take home to grow; no doubt pretty nearly every visitor has been doing this for generations, but still there is enough ivy to hold up the walls! Everyone who would tour by motor with satisfac- tion must learn always to feel a sense of rest, Avhether going rapidly over roads or attentively visiting a ruin; he must never let a sense of haste disturb him, or considerations of how many miles he must still make that day, for thus the principal advantages and the keenest pleasures of his travel would be lost : and here at Kenilworth, though our stay was not long, we found the time adequate to lose ourselves in im- pressions of the beauty, the dignity, the grim gran- deur, the romance, of these noble square-windowed fragments of pale-red stone in their deep-green drap- ery. We went down into dungeons, we twisted up spiral stairs into towers, we went through great halls and pleasant little rooms that must have been delight- ful to live in, and we walked over the cushiony turf and watched the sheep in the Norman keep. Ajid we went out past the stately Tudor Gatehouse b}^ which we had entered, and thought that it was exactly what the Earl of Leicester's part of Kenilworth must have looked like. Our road onward led us past a picturesque row of little old houses, and looking back we saw, what we had not before realized, that the castle was built on a height. The road from Kenilworth to Coventry is said by the English to be one of the two finest roads in England, and with typical English humor they follow this with the statement that the next best is the road from Coventrj^ to Kenilworth! Well, it is an extremely fine five-mile stretch, but no better than TO FAMOUS PLACES 217 many other stretches that we have found; however, it is much wider than most, and is bordered, as Coventry is approached, by superb rows of parallel- ing trees. Even if Tennyson had not spoken of the three spires as marking Coventry, everyone would remem- ber the city in just that way. The three old churches stand astonishingly near together and one wonders why three parish churches could ever have been built thus touching each other's elbows. Down in the shadow of them is an ancient school where you see as pretty a touch of costume as there is in all Eng- land ; it is a school for little orphan girls, who are clad in a costume of Queen Anne's time: in their bright- blue gowns, their long mustard-colored mitts, their white chip hats tied under their chins, their little white kerchiefs and their silver-buckled shoes, they seem to have walked, two and two, from some fascinating old print and out under the trees of Coventry. There are many narrow old streets in Coventry, with quite a number of shabby, ancient houses, but it has become quite a manufacturing center and is prosperous, and it illustrates the grim truth that pros- perity always has poverty in its train, for one sees much of dreariness and misery. We have so often felt in veritable touch with the past, in various places that we have seen, that when we entered Coventry and drove down its main street and past its notable old guild-hall, we could almost believe that we were back in the time of Godiva, for every business front was shuttered tight! But the Godiva-like shuttering was only, after all, the effect of a Thursday-afternoon closing. Going on, out of Coventry, we dipped a little south- ward by the London road so as to pass through Rugby, and we think this was more for the sake of " Tom Brown's School Days " than for the sake of 218 TOURIXG GREAT BRITAIN the school itself; and as we started on our way we noticed with interest that there were great fields, divided into tiny patches for vegetable gardens, for the poor people of Coventry, and it was clear that the patches were indefatigably cultivated. The London road was another broad highway, and such roads are easy to travel by contrast with the prevalent narrow, twisting, high-hedged, dangerous, altogether charm- ing roads of which we have had so many, many de- lightful miles. As the days go by each seems more full of inter- est than any day before, and we feel that we have be- come systematic campaigners. We start as early in the morning as we can get breakfast, which is sel- dom early, we look forward with anticipation to what the day is to bring forth, and when evening ap- proaches find that it has always been opulent of experiences. We remember, as we go on toward Rugby, that this is a hunting district, and we notice not only the broad road, but the broad spaces of grass between the roadway and the hedges and are told that this is a peculiarly desirable condition for the hunters and horses; and for long distances there was seldom a house to be seen, and then it was usually a comfort- able and prosperous one, but not extravagantly so. Rugby itself is a place with fine, modern school buildings, and but little atmosphere, and the typical caps of the students are almost foolishly faddish ; but it was quite Tom Brownish to see some of the lads on the crick«t-field, and they were a very wholesome set of youth and we liked them better than those of Win- chester, and on the whole we went out of Rugby with a rather pleasant impression in our minds and the sound of some particularly fine-toned chimes in our ears. From here to Market Harborough we had a choice TO FAMOUS PLACES 219 of roads; one we were told was hilly and twisty and the other longer but more level, and that it was a case of the longer being the shorter, and so we took the longer. Hereabouts the roadside and fields are much more like those of America than any we have seen so far, even to the sight of the chopping up of quite a number of large trees. Nearing a little place called Lutterworth, we swung for a short distance through an avenue that was superbly beautiful with overarching trees, and we caught glimpses of the mansion of the Earl of Denbigh, and then we went on through plainer re- gions, with great open fields and with hedges un- usually low, and we passed another pack of hounds, these in course of being trained and exercised by their liveried keepers, and it was interesting to note the leashed puppies, their feet still much too big for them, supernaturally big-eyed and eager. All this is still hunting country, and indeed a fox could be seen over these fields for a very long distance. We passed one estate whose road fencing was all white with every post humorously painted red. And over yonder, but a few miles away, was the spot where the Cavaliers fought so gallantly but vainly at Naseby. The rare villages grow comparatively unattractive and bare, and at length toward evening we motor into a plain and pleasant, thrifty little place called Market Harborough, and go up its broad street of little, quiet shops, past an exceptional^ attractive, ancient, little arcaded market-place in the market square, and stop at an inn with a remarkably large and beautiful old swan sign projecting beyond the rows of little bowed windows and out even beyond the sidewalk. We so fell in love with this old wrought- iron sign that we naturally expressed our admiration to the innkeeper, whereupon we learned that local 220 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN pride has it that it is the finest old wrought-iron sign in England! And this inn had, as we noticed, what we have so often noticed to be a feature of old inns of England, for it had within it a large quantity of antique furni- ture, really in daily use as furniture and not put there for show. It would be amazing if a full inventory could be taken of the old tables and chairs and tall clocks and chests of drawers and settees and side- boards and china and tea-urns and wine-coolers of even such old inns as we have already been in on this journey, for the total would furnish forth the cargo of many a Mayfloxioer, even if each one carried as much old furniture as that single ship did if every- thing known as a Mayflower relic were veritable. The coach-yard of the inn was cobble-stoned and lined with brick walls with entrances that seemed to lead into all sorts of coach houses, stables and serv- ants' quarters ; a long and narrow yard it was, with its entrance under the building itself, and far off at the other end a gateway into a surprising walled garden, where potatoes and asparagus were growing thick and rich, bordered round and round by profusely growing wall-roses, which made what would have been a prosaic garden into a veritable place of beauty. And in the morning, after the very reason- able bill had been presented and we were ready to start, a pretty maid handed to each of us a bunch of exquisite roses. CHAPTER XXII TO FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS AS we went off through a pleasant rolling coun- try, a silvery mist lay lightly on the nearby fields and delicately hid the distances. We went through a charming little thatch-roofed village with all the thatch silvered mistily, and here and there, as we went farther on, a silver spire showed dimly. We passed a solitary yellow house, with its front remarkably espaliered with abundant white roses, and went on over a high and almost level road through fields and trees gi'ouped casually but as if with park-planned effect. A colt was prancing be- side its mother. A clump of deer ran in delicate un- expectedness across a delicate glade, appearing out of mystery and instantly vanishing into mystery again. There came a fine fresh breeze that curiously did not blow away the mist. We passed by stone walls gray with mosses, and hedges that were all of a wild-rose glow, and a village was casually seen, that was almost hidden in the curious English fashion that so often puts towns and villages quite away from the highways. It was odd, hereabouts, to see farm- ers plowing with two horses tandem and harrowing with three horses tandem; and it was pretty to see blood-red poppies scattered over fields of grain. Then with entire unexpectedness a blast furnace was in view, with fire flaming up and the smoke rising high and straight in tall columns, and yet we were now in a village that still had many a thatched roof and many a flower-garden and blossoming rose. In 221 222 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN all, the experience made a striking contrast between lonely attractiveness and conspicuous industry. In the village were little shops with signs of " Penny Monster," which, we may remark, is only a sweetie for children, and there were boj^s and girls doing gymnastic exercises outdoors under their teacher, and in a few minutes we were out in the country again and running through a fine farmland, with now and then sheep or cattle or a man driving a two- wheeled cart, or a youth on a bicycle — although it would be just about as likely in England to be an old man on a bicycle as a j'^outh. We continued through miles of rural picturesque- ness and we came to a positively magnificent double avenue of trees leading to some great house ; " Biggin 'All " we were told it was, by a man with a high- heaped load of wood drawn by horses with enormous feet and a bushel of shag at each fetlock, a type of draught-horse that is very common in England. We came to little Oundle, one of the host of overlooked and interesting little places, a fine little town, with houses of old gray stone and roofs of stone slabs that were a little darker, and some of the houses were extremely attractive. And there was a curious old inn here, the Talbot, built when King James ordered the castle of Fotheringay razed, and largely constructed out of Fotheringay material. The windows of the ban- queting hall are here, and two stories of a superb old stairway of black oak, up and down which Mary Queen of Scots must have walked, and there is also paneling from Fotheringay, and tradition has it, and there is nothing unlikely about it, that a swinging gate in the balusters at the head of the stair was walked through by the ill-fated Mary on her way to execution. It is a most curious thing that so much of van- FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 223 ished Fotheringay is thus preserved in this hotel, and it was by the merest chance that we heard of it. Less than four niiles away we found the site of Fotheringay; the place where came to an end the career of one of the most beautiful and attractive women of history; a queen whose memory is cher- ished with romantic interest by the world; and never was there a more complete destruction than that wreaked by James on the place where his mother was executed. Literally not one stone remains upon an- other ; more than this, literally only one stone remains at all, and that is inclosed within an iron rail to mark the very spot of Mary's death. An abrupt knoll by the side of a quiet stream, with densely verdant meadows stretching off on the farther side, is where the castle stood. A queer, little yellow flower, locally named eggs-and-bacon and remindful of our own butter-and-eggs, grows freely on the knoll; and we disturbed a colony of enormous bees there; and the only forget-me-nots that we have so far noticed growing wild in England were growing by the waterside; and wild ducks were swimming about and there were elderflowers and enormous old thorn trees, and great rushes swayed gently at the edge of the stream ; and there was a sense of complete isolation, of loneliness, although we saw the peace- ful little village of Fotheringay near by with its roofs showing among the trees, and although a little above the roofs rose the tower of a large and extremely beautiful church, which was old even when Queen Mary was here, and from the top of which there used nightly to shine a lantern to guide travelers througli the defiles of an enormous forest that was hereabouts. It is not altogether fancy that a sense of tragedy pervades the whole place, village and all. Mary was allowed to go out at times under guard, and she must certainly have crossed an arching old 224 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN bridge that we see from the castle site, and one fan- cies that it was there that Queen Elizabeth watched her; for an old tradition, firmly believed, has it that Elizabeth wished to see personally her royal rival, at length in her power, and went in disguise and waited on a roadside not far from Fotheringay to see ]\Iary pass. Leaving Fotheringay, we followed roads that showed us we were in a once marshy region, and we noticed a long footpath causeway for fiood-time and then were off for Peterborough, on the road over which Queen Mary must have been carried for her burial there, to remain until her son became king and carried her body to Westminster. We entered the city of Peterborough over a grade crossing, the seventh grade crossing we have crossed to-day, into an unattractive part of the city, and went on into an ordinary every-day part, with no sign of age or beauty or interest; so far it was a less than ordinary modern town ; and then we came to an open square, on one side of which was an ancient little market building with open arches, and facing it was an ancient gateway of crumbling stone, and we drove through this narrow ancient gateway and were at the front of a superb cathedral, with three great recessed arches across its squarish front and little pointed towers above. Unexpected, after such a facade, was the effect of the Norman rounded arches in the interior; and it impressed us as a cathedral of great dignity, although it possesses a timber roof. Katherine of Aragon, after her divorce, lived out her life near Peterborough, and is buried in this cathedral, but her monument is interesting rather than historic, as it was built long after her day by contributions from all the Katherines in England. We left Peterborough across great levels of ditches and drained farmland, with now and then a pictur- FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 225 esque home surrounded by tall trees, and came to Crowland, another example of the interest that may be found in places one never heard of. In the center of the unprosperous, shrunken little place is a most remarkable bridge, to which the word " unique " most certainly applies. It is a triangular bridge, and has three fronts, and three ways over it, and three ways under it. Originally, water ran be- neath, but now there is dry roadway there. It is a curious bridge, and a thousand years old, they say, and the three roads that rise to a height in the center are to such an extent just stone stairs that the local belief is strong that only foot passengers could ever have crossed. It seemed to us, however, that an agile saddle-horse or pack-horse would be quite equal to it. Israel Putnam would certainly not have balked at it! Now, sitting there in the middle of the dry highway with its three separate roads meeting at the top of it, the bridge is a most astonishing and mys- terious thing. Away up, quite at the far end of the place, is the very ancient Abbey of Crowland, facing down the road back into the village. The abbey has sadly fallen to decay, and the sinking of the fenny ground beneath it makes it tip threateningly toward one side; and in niches upon its tipping, ruinous facade little ancient stone saints still stand with a very tragic and saddening effect. Several dry-looking and very ancient old men, each with a fringe of white whiskers, were leaning on their sticks and intently watching us. Their age and de- crepitude seemed characteristic of the village, and it was a pleasure to see how readily they responded to an invitation to step inside of the building against which they were sunning themselves as they watched us. " We are all over seventy-six," said one, his hand shaking as he lifted his glass; and the tavern-keeper 226 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN joined in with: " If you'd only let me know, I'd 'ave 'ad twentj^-five of 'em in 'ere, all over eighty! " Leaving Crowland, we ran for twenty-five miles over a level land, much of the time on a dykelike road and with neither fences nor hedges but with ditches instead, and with the fields dotted with cattle, for this is all a fen country and much of it has been re- claimed from the sea; the great North Sea inlet known as the Wash cutting into the country on our right. We noticed that the region was much like Holland, and naturally enough, for Hollanders long ago drained these fens; and then we thought of America when we saw women and girls wearing close- fitting white sunbonnets such as were assuredly the originals of the sunbonnets of New England; and we went through Pinchbeck, which looked plain and substantial and not at all as if justifying its name! — and through little Surfleet, noticeable only for an amazingly out-of-perpendicular church tower: "but the foundations stopped settling hundreds of years ago," said a villager contentedly. On this fen-land run we saw so many old churches of a type that would go fittingly in American cities, admirable and even beautiful churches, quite possible in size and cost for reproduction, that it seemed a pity that American architects do not oftener follow them; and at length, rising high over the fen coim- try, there came in sight a tall and beautiful tower, and we could not but feel thrilled, as Americans, for we were looking at the tower of Boston, the home of the Pilgrim Fathers. We came to the edge of the city by crossing our fourteenth railroad grade crossing for the day's run of just over seventy miles ("no grade crossings in England!"), and went into Boston, naturally enough, past a sort of Back Bay, with boats that were stranded in the mud ; a tidal river runs through FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 227 Boston and the tide rises very high and runs out very low. And we found an excellent hotel, with a view of river and church; and it is reall}^ worth while say- ing that we had an adequate and complete dinner, with no makesliif t of ham or even chop ! We walked about Boston in the evening; it is al- ways such a pleasure to gain one's impression of a place on the evening of arrival ; and we had the curi- ous feeling of having been there before or at least as if the city belonged to us. Service was going on in the old church, St. Botolph's, and the dim lights and the organ music and the sing- ing were finely effective. We stood beneath the high- groined roof of the tower, which rose one hundred and forty feet sheer above us, and, although in that light we could not see details, there was a curiously strong impression of age and extreme beauty in the towered dimness. We spent the next forenoon in Boston and found it, naturally, a place full of interest, although most of the very old buildings have gone. The beautiful church tower, strongly remindful of that of Antwerp, dominates everything; and how the Pilgrims must have realized what they were giving up as they left behind them what was even then a flourishing city and caught the last glimpse of this old tower! Al- though the early leaders went first to Holland and thence to America, at least nine hundred in all went directly from this city, and the old place must have sorely felt the drain. Next to the church, the most interesting old build- ing is the guild-hall, a fascinating old building with some exquisite remains of linen-pattern doors and paneling, and with a fine hall, and the great old-time kitchens with ancient fireplaces and great iron kettles and iron trivets; and we see the very room in which some of the Pilgrim Fathers were tried and the dark 228 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN cells in which they were imprisoned. One under- stands why these men led a pilgrimage to found a newer Boston! It is a city of fascinating impressions for any American. It is now a very quiet place, and the very warehouses along the waterfront — the city be- ing four or five miles from the Wash — are suggestive of New England ; and down in tliis warehouse district is the home of Jean Ingelow, a large Georgian house with squat dormers; and one suddenly realizes that this is the Boston of her verse, and that the soft-toned bells to which we have listened are the bells that rang the " Brides of Enderby " in that terrible time of flood when the seawall broke. In the pleasant, open market-place of Boston, bright with flowers and fresh fruits — good markets are a tradition of the American Boston! — we had our only collision of the entire journey; and it was not precisely a collision at that; for our car was stand- ing still, when an English motorist rounded a market wagon, in that swift and careless way that we have noticed with so many English motorists, and rammed in under our mudguard and then quickly backed off and tried to run away, but the indignant market peo- ple and a friendly policeman stopped him and he re- turned, crestfallen, and fortunately it appeared that he had all the damage, to the great glee of the by- standers and ourselves! We went on over miles of fenny levels, past wind- mills and long dykes and canals and meadows, and through Swineshead, a trifling cluster of little houses, but notable as the place where King John, whom everybody hated, was poisoned by a monk; the grim, old local story has it that the King cruelly boasted that he would raise the price of bread, whereupon the monk told the abbot that, for the sake of his coun- trymen, he would give the King such a wassail that The cricket-field at Rugby A REMARKABLE WROUGHT-IRON ThE OLD BUILDING INTO WHICH INN SIGN MUCH OF FoTHERINGAY WAS BUILT The site of Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 229 all England should be glad, and set about giving it to him. The story is full of grim details of a toad and a tankard of ale, and we thought of it again when, a little farther on, we reached Sleaford, which King John was able to reach before he died. But there is no indication now, hereabouts, of old- time tragedy. There are little cottages with clothes drying on the hedges, and pinafored women at their doors, and we notice a great windmill with the as- tonishing number of eight arms, and a young woman passes us bicycling to market with her basket on her arm, without a hat and in her long, unbelted apron. And just when we begin to think that any more fen- land might be monotonous, the fens cease and we enter a rolling country of superb great farms, su- perbly cultivated. And we pass close to the road- side an enormous pillar a hundred or more feet high, which looks as if it must commemorate some great event, and of course we must stop and investigate, and we find that it had been put up in the long ago on a wager, just to prove that a lofty column could be built on a prescribed narrow base, and that, once up, it was long used as a beacon light to guide people over the heath and fens, and that finally a George the Third statue was put there to make what the English would call real use of it; all of wliich struck us as beautifully absurd. Thirty-six miles out of Boston we motored into Lincoln, and made our way to the cathedral; a splen- did towered and towering mass of yellow and gray on the top of a steep hill that was all red and green with brick houses and trees ; and it is a cathedral that fills the eye and the imagination. Lincoln is a large, compact and busy city, and we found the narrow streets congested; but it was of more importance, after threading these streets for quite a distance, to find that the final climbing was 230 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN much too nearly perpendicular to attempt, even though we found a hill street without the barring posts that forbid driving; and for the last part of the ascent we walked up a stairwayed passageway called a street. Because of the very magnificence of the cathedral and the general prosperity of the city we could not but notice the poverty and squalor that had crept close to this mighty structure in the poor little homes of the narrow hill-streets leading up to it as if in- deed reaching up in heartbreak toward all this mag- nificence at the top. But when one looks at the square-towered, mar- velous-fronted cathedral itself all thoughts vanish, except those that come from the splendor, the gran- deur, the nobility of it; and the interior is almost equally striking in its perfection and dignity. This is one of the most noble cathedrals of England, and one lingers in it and beside it, fascinated by the glory of it all. It does not have nearly so many personal asso- ciations as numbers of the minor cathedrals have, but here one does not miss such things; Lincoln Cathedral is so great, and so full of the sense of its centuries of age, and so nobly situated, that one feels no shortcoming in the absence of the usual personal memories, for such a cathedral is above persons. Leaving Lincoln, as in entering it, we passed through one of the ancient town gates — an old town gate seems forever to frame any town in the memory ! — and we were off in the country again, and for some time ran once more into fen-land, and we drove for miles on top of a Roman dyke along an ancient canal of the Romans called the Foss-way, where the silver green water lay charmingly between lush green banks shaded by trees of a still darker green, and here and there was to be seen a green-roofed house of FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 231 white. And we crossed the Trent, and it was pleas- ant to remember that the river was long ago given its name from the thirty (trente) kinds of fish found in it. It was a peaceful, slow-moving, warm and linger- ing afternoon, and we left the fens and at length swung into the famous Great North Road, and a new and eager zest came upon all of us with the fascina- tion of this old-time name. It is a splendid road, broad and level, with low hedges, and it runs through great stretches of cheerful and pleasant country, though by no means so fine a country as much that we have seen ; but we feel that there must be a happier condition here, for the fairly well-to-do homes seem to prove it, than in the richer regions of high- walled private parks and very humble cottages. We were hungry, and we drew up at a huge inn, and we went in with pleasant anticipations of solids and salads, and, though we did not quite say it, it seemed as if an English inn such as this on the old North Road ought to furnish forth the good old Shakespearean enumeration of " some pigeons, a couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton and pretty, little tiny kickshaws." But what was our amazement to find that there was no food getable and that the dour proprietor was seUing only drinks! But a few miles farther we came to an inn, the old Bell, which was worthy of the old road. How they did take care of us, with comfort and fireplaces, and most excellent service! We found this to be an inn where the English like to stop, and no wonder, when touring to or from Scotland; and a couple of big limousines were here with promiscuous, fashion- able luggage piled high on the tops and covered with the big, loose tarpaulins such as we afterwards came to know as typical of English travelers, for now and again on our journeyings we would catch sight of 232 TOURING GREAT BPtlTAIN such tarpaulins flapping in the wind (they always flapped!) as some big Enghsh car sped on. A few miles farther along the Great North Road we came to Scrooby, a rambling little village of little houses of brick, with little lanes leading aimlessly hei'e and there, and on the farther side of the village we motored away from the road and through a gate and across a grassy field and stopped at an old, low- set house of whitened brick which had once been a moated grange; and even now there is the line of the moat, and a little stream within it, at one end of the house. This was the house of that William Brewster who is so famous in Massachusetts annals, and the walls of the old house are of great thickness. It has been considerably modernized, but a Gothic window is still in place and much of the interior is unchanged; and it was a matter for curious speculation that, on the open green pasture over which we had just motored, there once stood a now completely vanished oak- timbered palace, built by Wolsey when he was Arch- bishop of York. Again we were off on the Great North Road, and there came over us more and more a vague sense of charm, with the thought that everybody has been over this road, from kings to highwaymen; or from high- waymen to kings, if one should prefer to put it that way, for there certainly have been some princely rob- bers and just as certainly some robber princes. In a way, we felt this road to be even more interesting than ancient Watling Street, and this was probably be- cause the surroundings of tliis northern road are still so natural and unspoiled. Going on northward, we reached Doncaster, pass- ing its empty racecourse, and finding its streets filled with the usual Saturday night throngs and the music of the Salvation Army band. We spent the night at FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 233 Doncaster; and realized that we were on a line prac- tically due east from Manchester, our starting-point, only some fifty miles away; and we thought of the great distances we had traveled and the experiences we had had and the places we had seen since the be- ginning of our journey, that seemed so long ago. But this only made our minds even more busily en- gaged with the possibilities that lay before us. CHAPTER XXIII THROUGH THE NORTH COUNTRY IN the morning we followed the Great North Road for some miles beyond Doncaster, and then left it, as we turned to the right in the general direction of York. And it was interesting to see, on our way out of Doncaster, a large model mining village, where the workmen are given good homes to live in, and little gardens, instead of the ancient hov- els typical of the usual English mining village. It was a delightful Sunday morning run of less than forty miles to York, through an open and highly cultivated country, without the rich beauty of the southern counties, but with clumps of elderberry giving color to the hedges and with a general bright greenery of crops and growing hay and with not in- frequently the sturdy homes of yeomen adjoining their old stone bams; indeed, the distances average more homes than we have become accustomed to in England. Now and then we saw horses asleep in the fields at full length with their heads down, some- thing we did not remember ever having seen in our lives before; and it would seem that the raising of draught horses is quite a picturesque feature of the region, for we get the impression of seeing at least one colt beside its mother at each farm. We reached York and motored through its nar- row streets to the front of its tremendous cathedral, and from the first moment felt a profound sense of its immensity, and the feeling increased as we mo- tored slowly along the splendid length of side and 234 THE NORTH COUNTRY 235 rounded the altar end of the cathedral and came back on the other side, where there is a tangle of little passageways and churchly buildings and deans' homes or whatever they may have been. The exterior of the cathedral, magnificently im- pressive though it is, is not quite so beautiful, so far as beauty alone is concerned, as that of two or three of the other English cathedrals, nor do its surround- ings increase its beauty with exquisite greenery, as with Salisbury and Wells; and that the front door is permanently closed cannot but cool one's enthusiasm a little; and so does the disagreeable manner of the custodians (this was the only church or cathedral where there was anything of this manner) , who acted as if they wished the cathedral entirely to themselves, and who almost realized that wish even when a regu- lar service began, and who used their most disagree- able manner in announcing that we must walk to a little shop some distance away, on a side street, and deposit there every umbrella, woman's purse, guide- book, camera, in fact every possible detachable; not that we object to the rule, if they really find it neces- sary on account of the suffragettes, but only to their entire manner, which must necessarily represent the state of mind of some sinecurist higher up. But even this repellent atmosphere does not check or disturb the feeling of positive awe and admiration with which we enter the interior and go up and down its tremen- dous length of aisles. In all, the memory of York remains with us as that of the finest and most impressive of all the Eng- lish cathedrals; the one which comes nearest to the ideal of so impressing the individual as to make the thought of the church itself absolutely supreme; and this effectiveness is much more due to the interior of the building than the exterior; and it is not a mat- ter of beauty alone, of dignity alone, of size alone. 236 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN of impressiveness alone, but the splendid combina- tion of all. The view which one longs to have inside of the cathedral is of the full, immense length of it all, and this is checked by the unfortunate placing of the organ, but, by going a little to one side at the begin- ning of the nave of the cathedral, one may see beyond the organ to the very end, and thus obtain the effect of the full length of the interior, although without the full grandeur of the central sweep ; and the splen- did towering heights of the interior are superb. Tliis cathedral is remarkably rich in stained glass, and the most notably beautiful window of all is the one made up of the five long lancets, some fifty feet in height, known as the Five Sisters of York; and this window or cluster of windows still retains its original stained glass, hundreds of years old, as also do other of the ancient windows of this wonderful cathedral. We looked with interest for the huge win- dow which rivals in size the largest window in Eng- land, the one that we saw in Gloucester, and found this of York to be a glory of color. If antique Per- sian rugs were translucent, the most glorious of them would express the color of such glorious glass. We remember, too, the wonderful octagonal chapter-house of this cathedral, marvelously built, and without a central pillar; and when we left the cathedral, after a long stay in the twilight gloom of its immensity, we went quietly out, for some half dozen or half score of people were coming in to attend the regular afternoon service, which doubtless would be conducted by more than that number of clerg\\ An immense cathedral, like an immense castle, is apt so to dwarf its surroundings as to make even im- portant things of negligible interest, but there is in the city of York quite a good deal that is well worth while. There are rows of fascinating, old timber THE NORTH COUNTRY 287 houses, and there are ancient projecting stories nod- .ding over narrow ways; quite old enough, some of these old houses, for the time of Isaac of York him- self; and there are city walls and city gates and even a portcullis. But, although we look at such things with interest, the entire impression of York is domi- nated, just as the entire city is dominated, by the cathedral. We left York by a splendid road through rich and level country, and within a few miles turned down a lovers' lane, clearly popular with bicycling couples, and went past the little station of Marston Moor — how odd it seemed to have a railway station of that name! — and a mile farther stopped at an isolated farmhouse and inquired for the site of the famous fight. Whereupon the daughter of the house led us through a gate and across several moorlike fields and out into the heart of the very scene, to where the relative positions of Cavaliers and Roundheads could clearly be made out; for over on one side was the low ridge, and on the other the little stream and some woodland. It was all so unchanged that the fight might have been yesterday; and scarlet poppies were scattered about the field like drops of blood. All was a loneliness which was accented by the darting of a yellow fox to a hedge of thorn, in which he disap- peared. These many hedges, indeed, of blackthorn and hawthorn, are the one thing which mark a change from the days of Cromwell, for at the time of the battle they were not there. There have been efforts to plow this dreary land and make it into farms, but the daughter told us it was " too hard on horseflesh " and therefore was " laid down in grass." It was a hot day, and we were all thirsty, and this seemed an ideal place to drink well-water, and when we returned to the farmhouse a jug of it was 238 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN brought, and it was so sparkling and cold that we drank and drank again; something which for pre- caution's sake we had not heretofore allowed our- selves to do; and when one of us returned the jug, with a few words of appreciation, the well was proudly shown — and it was in the very drainage center of a barnyard! Replete but repentant, we went on our way toward Ripon, through a region whose houses and country- side continued to be of not the most picturesque qual- ity; this pointing out the double fact, familiar to every motorist, that it is delightful to motor through a fascinating country, because every moment of a long day is full of beauty and interest, but also that there is no hardship in motoring through a less fas- cinating country, because there are always the fine air, the swift motion and the constant sense of discov- ery, with the certainty that something of much inter- est is sure to be reached ; and even here, although the country was not beautiful, there was a constant im- pression of agreeable comfort. And it was somewhere along this part of the jour- ney that it came to us, with an amused wonder that it had not occurred to us a day or so sooner, that one strong reason why the country-side and villages did not seem so attractive was because we had ceased to see, in this region, the dormer-windows that farther south added so much to picturesqueness. As we neared Ripon a tremendous lowering yel- low storm was approaching, and we felt the high wind and put on new speed and were so fortunate as to get up the sharp ascent and into the stone- flagged square of old Ripon and to the shelter of the inn just before the storm broke. We ordered our dinner for seven, and watched the heavy storm from the windows, and soon it was over, and we walked down to the cathedral, an at- THE NORTH COUNTRY 239 tractive but not notable building, but the best used of any cathedral we have seen. And we were so cordially ushered down the center aisle and placed so directly under the dean's eye that when we found we were in for a lengthy service, with dinner waiting, and with quite a massing of townspeople behind us, it was a bitter struggle between hunger and appearances ! Perhaps even more than with any other of the ex- cellent inns of our journey, does the memory remain with us of the well-ordered inn facing out on the square in Ripon, for it appealed esthetically to every sense. In the center of that square stands a tall stone shaft, and facing it is the town-hall, bearing the ancient municipal motto: " Except ye Lord keep ye cittie ye Wakeman waketh in vain." And the city still has its wakeman! And at nine o'clock we saw him appear beside this stone shaft, just as the wake- man has appeared beside that shaft, or the town- cross that preceded it, on every night for a thousand years, no matter what the weather! The wakeman wore a three-cornered hat and a long-tailed coat with brass buttons, and on the instant of the first stroke of nine he raised the great ox-horn to his lips and blew a long-sustained blast of fifty- eight seconds without pause or waver. A second blast came, and this of fifty-seven seconds, and then the third and the fourth. He used to hope, he says, with a sort of proud deprecation, to blow it for sixty seconds, but has regretfully given up the hope, as he is getting older, as he says, instead of younger. He has been the wakeman for ten and a half years and receives twelve pounds a year for his nightly service, but, as he puts it, with a suggestion of grievance in his voice, he must walk without pay in every civic procession I •240 TOUKIXG GREAT BKITAIX The custom originated with the setting of the watch, and it has not lost its mterest for the townsfolk themselves, for some of them gather to listen and watch and time him. The ancient custom is taken seri- ously, but with not too much of seriousness, and it is delightful to tind a custom so extremely ancient kept up in such a simple and matter-of-fact way. Ripon. though it holds to the ancient, is full of fine modern ideas, for the municipality ha^ acquired well- equipped sulphur baths and spa waters and its o^^n water system, so as to attract strangers and perma- nent residents here as a health resort; and in all it seems an admirable city. And it is noticeable in Ripon. as in other cities of England, what an amazing development of trusts has come about, for there are four separate banks here, which are branches of four London institutions that have similar branches scattered in dozens or scores of towns throughout the country; and the chemist shop is one of a line, under a central management, which also scatters its branches throughout England. We had come to Ripon because of Fountains Ab- bev. some three miles awav. and it is the most beau- tiful ecclesiastic ruin in Great Britain. The abbey is in the center of a great private park, which is en- tered through immense park gates and thence past cattle and deer scattered pictorially among the gentle glades. Before long we came to an inner park gate, and there the car had to be left, and we walked on along a path with a great hedge of trimmed yew, fifteen feet high, on one side, and on the opposite side sloping banks that were solid with rhododen- drons, but not in blossom; and we came to an opening in the hedge, and there was suddenly a splendid effect of water, with a bank rising abruptly behind it, and with trees and an octagron tower at the top: it was water set m a close-clipped lawn, and there were THE NORTH COUXTRY 24_1 circles and rectangles in water and grass, and the wa- ter was on the ver\' level of the grass. A little farther and there was an even more beautiful view, with a little pillared classic temple, soft yellow in color amid the soft green: there were waterfalls and exquisitely disposed siatuar}'. and overhanging trees, and in every direction entrancing vistas and views. And all this was but an introduction to the abbey . All these were the private grounds of the Marquis of Ripon, who owns everything hereabouts, including the ruins. It was the perfection of landscape gar- dening, and of gaining amazing results by simple means. We climbed a hTl, and we walked on under oats, copper beeches, yews, elms, spruce trees two hundred years old and oaks vastly older, and came at length to where, from a low cliff, there opened a vista of sheer loveliness: an extraordinary view of the great romantic ruin, set in the distance on a lawn beside a running stream, with trees massed solidly behind, with banks rising green on either side, and in front the long-reaching, level greensward hemmed in by trees and flowers and the green-clad banks. We descended from the hill, and approached the ruins by a level walk beside the stream, and there was vast pleasure in walking through one after an- other of what were once hucre monastic buil'liugs. The great Xorman nave of the abbey sull stands, majestic though roofless; the great main tower is suH there and the central arch, and there are ruined win- dows ; there is a marvelous cryptHke series of subter- ranean chambers, of great extent and with groined roofs: and we find that the stream itself still runs in conduits, beneath some of the ruined buildings that still remain. In all, we found it a place of wonder- ful beauty and interest. The return, by another path, was almost as lovely 242 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN as the approach, and at a final turn we looked back for a last and long look at this beautiful gray ghost of a vanished time. It added keenly to the pleasure of Fountains Ab- bey that we had it all to ourselves, though others were coming in as we left ; and that after the long walk we w^ere at liberty to sit down at the park gates, in a stone-balustraded garden, beside the stream which had rippled down with us from the ruins we had just left, and enjoy a delightful tea, served from the gate- keeper's house. On leaving Ripon and going on northward, there shortly came a striking example of how, at any mo- ment, in motoring through England, one may hap- pen upon some fascinating memento of the past ; and that one never knows whether it is to be of a century or ten centuries ago does add so much to the fascina- tion — for as we go on, along the road which leads us through Northallerton, through a fresh open coun- try and between fields of very sweet-smelling white clover, and with great wide hilly horizons to the northwest, we notice by the roadside a plain stone obelisk and, stopping the car to see what it means, we see that it marks where the Battle of the Standard was fought in 1138. Well, Stephen was king then, and on this very spot a Scotch king was taken pris- oner — how strange it is to try to visualize it all, and how it seems at the same time so very far away and yet so very, very near! Again we are on for the northward, and we are aiming for Durham, and miles before we reach it we see a distant, square and shadowy block of stone through a cleft in the hills and we wonder if that can be Durham Cathedral, and we almost decide that it cannot be, but we are later to find that it is. A few miles before getting into Durham we de- toured to the light and followed one devious turn THE NORTH COUNTRY 243 after another, and passed through several very black and ill-built colliery towns and a desperately bare and uninteresting neighborhood; an overworked and underfed sort of neighborhood. We were looking for the birthplace of Mrs. Browning, which we natu- rally supposed would be known in its very vicinity. We understood it was at Coxhoe, but neither post- masters, schoolteachers, letter-carriers, nor vicar's daughter nearby had ever heard of Mrs. Browning in connection with that neighborhood. We knew that for some unexplained reason there had always been great mystery thrown about the birthplace of Mrs. Browning and that the highest English books of ref- erence have differed as to what ought to be such a very simple matter; but it was astonishing to find that the vagueness persisted to the very doors of the house. The delightful vicar's daughter was increas- ingly concerned and interested; "Was Mrs. Brown- ing really born near here? " — and she warned us, as we went on, that the road was very dangerous; " There are children in the roads," she added, explanatorily. A little girl of twelve finally directed us to what, when we came to the house, we found to be the right place. Out of a dull colliery street we entered, by lodge gates, along a poetic and leafy drive and past a fine machicolated garden-wall and found the house, Coxhoe Hall, to be quite large, good-looking and homelike, with exquisite lawn and great stone dove- cote and huge stables beliind. It was but a short distance from here to ancient Durham, and we wound up an abrupt hill, through the town, to a great open space beside the cathedral. And it is a cathedral of stern stupendousness. The towered front of the cathedral is on a cliff overlooking the river, so we first see the side of the building, and we see it in all its great and unbroken 2U TOURING GKEAT BRITAIN and impressive length. And what first and last and most forcibly impressed us about the cathedral was its bleak grandeur; it is a fit cathedral for this bleak northern England; it gives the impression of great, bare strength ; and one remembers that the bishops of Durham were in the old days fighting bishops and held their hill half for the glory of God and half in defense against the Scotch. And the cathedral has age, for much of it was built as far back as in the ten hundreds. Inside and out it is rugged, bleak, powerful, with far less of carving and ornament than many another cathedral, but with huge Norman arches and enormous pillars and stately and almost imbroken length of interior. It is a gloomy cathedral, or at least so dark and stern as almost to be gloomy, and yet it is at the same time of a grave restfulness. We went to this cathedral before dinner, and after dinner, and twice in the following forenoon, for it continually drew us. At first the feeling was that it should be deemed the most adequate and impressive of all the English cathedrals; and yet, while not in any degree losing our sense of its almost overpower- ing grandeur, we did come to realize its lack of in- terior height as a drawback, and from the first we knew that the geometrical cuttings on some of the huge pillars were a blunder of centuries ago never to be remedied. But, although it may after all be second to York in complete impressiveness and beauty, it stands at the head of all in grandeur of effect and fit surroundings. The most noble view is from across the river, for thus it is seen splendidly rising above the water and above the trees. Much of the space beside the cathe- dral is rough-grassed, and boys decorously play there, as boys have played there for centuries, for this space and this privilege were granted as a right to the chil- THE NORTH COUNTRY 245 dren of the town many, many centuries ago. And to realize all this gives one a pleasant glow. Another ancient right is still definitely remem- bered, for there is a huge bronze knocker on the main door of the cathedral, a glorious specimen of twelfth- century metal work, and to those who in the old days came and swung this great knocker, sanctuary was given at any hour of the day or night. Nowhere does there come a deeper impressiveness than with the falling of the dusk inside of this huge old pile, and the ghostly sense of it all becomes the deeper when one remembers that great numbers of Scotch prisoners, penned here by Cromwell, died piti- fully within these very walls. We found that all of Durham, whether in the cathe- dral, the castle or the town, make strangers welcome with a pleasant courtesy and an unwearied desire to show whatever is of interest; for they love the place themselves and desire that all should come to love it. The castle is likely to be overlooked, for it is now used for college purposes, and we even dreaded to go inside of its ancient walls from fear of disillusion- ment. But we did go in, through its beautiful Nor- man arched gateway, and were amply repaid. The ancient castle teems with the present-day life of pro- fessors and students, in a comfortable and busy way, and j^ou see serv-ants flitting about and you find de- lightfully cozy nooks and are shown the fascinating, ancient castle kitchen, huge fireplaced, still used for the cooking of to-day, and you feel the wonder of the tiny old Norman castle chapel and the dignity of tapestry-hung old corridors and of the great halls. We were shown about by a capable maid as guide, and then one of the professors himself went about with us. He was pleased that we hugely admired a magnificent old staircase of the blackest of black oak; " But it is not black with age," he said, sadly; " old 246 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN oak ought never to be black. Blackness comes only from the vandahsm of linseed oil, and time ought to give to oak only a silvery gray; " and he led us to an ancient carved choir-stall to show this color. " Noth- ing wrong has ever touched this," he exclaimed, and he ascetically and esthetically shuddered when asked what he thought of the warm brown tones of old oak such as at Knole House: "Ah! That has been waxed! " It was delightful thus to get the viewpoint of such a man as to old oak of the warm browns and blacks that everybody loves. CHAPTER XXIV NORTHUMBERLAND AND THE ROMAN WALL WE aim from Durham into a rarely visited England, for we are aiming for what looms vaguely but almost mythically in the imagi- nation, the Roman Wall. We follow what seem al- most random roads and swing through Witton Gil- bert and mount among rising sweeps, with little col- lieries with their lofty wheels over the pit mouths, and black little villages, now near at hand and now show- ing in the distance; a region without flowers, this seems to be; with sweeping views of bareness and a splendid sweeping wind, and we reach an attractive region with meadows and rich fields, but still with only a few flowers and but a scattering of trees, and here and there again in the distance are the great black heaps and high-hung wheels that mean pros- perity and poverty; all this being a region which literally sends its coals to Newcastle. We mount higher and higher and pass through the dull street of a town of discomfort called Black Hill and notice a pawnshop with its doorway fairly greasy with mis- ery and use, and from here go down a long hill and across the Derwent — how one is always coming upon these long-known names as real ! — at Shotley Bridge, by a romantically placed old stone bridge, and go on, again mounting into great, high, bare rolling coun- try, with ever a cold wind coming full and free and now and then a dash of wind-driven rain. And we pass through a region with trees once more about us, and suddenly there opens before us a ' 247 248 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN spreading view of broadly open country, and we breathe deep with the sheer joy of it all and we know that we are looking across into Northumberland and there is magic in the name. And we swing down a long close- wooded road into Riding Mill, a little stone-house Tyneside village in reds and grays and yellows massed among trees and shrubs and flowers, and there the Tyne flows between steepish banks and we follow up the stream to Hex- ham, where North Tyne and South Tyne and Tyne make literally a three-tined fork. From this bright, animated, clean, ancient but not very ancient-looking market-town we crossed on a long, old stone bridge, abruptly descended to from the town, and ran beside the North Tj^ne a half-dozen miles to ChoUerford, where there are the remains of a great Roman camp and where a wonderful amount of Roman weapons, ornaments and utensils have been excavated and preserved. And, with walls and guard-houses and forum whose hnes are still pre- served, we noticed, in a bit of Roman cement floor, the print of a dog's paw, and it pointed out the ironies possible to Time and Fame, that there could thus be stamped for eternity the casual footstep of a careless dog who put his paw heedlessly down upon the Ro- man workman's cement while it was still wet — a.d. 125 or so! This camp was a great station on the old Roman Wall, but here the wall itself has disappeared. One comes to wonder, later, that any of the wall remains anywhere, for its block-stones have been used for all these centuries as a supply for the building of roads, castles, churches, walls and homes. We turn to the westward along what is known as General Wade's Road, and go mounting up and up through an immense lonehness and with a sense as if getting to the top of the world, and at length we come NORTHUMBERLAND 249 upon a long section of the ancient wall. And there could not be a more imposing place to discover such a relic of the tremendous past, for there is a marvelous and solitary view for miles and miles in every direc- tion from tliis height to which the road has mounted with us. There are really two walls and two great ditches running parallel with each other entirely across the country; and antiquarians are still vainly disput- ing about them. The principal wall, which ran orig- inally clear across Great Britain, between where are now Newcastle on the east and Carlisle on the west, apparently following a bee-line and alternately dip- ping through valleys and clambering over heights, still stands, to a considerable degree intact, for a long distance here where we found it, and it is masonry, now five feet high, of squared-stone blocks. It is positively tremendous in its effect, here on these lonely hills, and we felt as if, had the motor tour done nothing more than lead us to such marvelous impres- siveness as this, it would for that alone have been thoroughly worth while. This great wall, built to hold back the Scotch, was probably made by that wonderful Emperor Hadrian, whose tomb and villa are still among the glories of Italy ; and it adds startlingly to this scene of supreme loneliness to know that, so it has been estimated, there were here, in the time of the Romans, fully one hun- dred thousand people, officers, soldiers, wives, camp followers and furnishers of supplies, living along the line of this wall; and ancient records show that the legions in that empire-building time of Rome were not all from Italy, but that at least some were Span- iards and Belgians. We had rather expected to nm from here to New- castle and thence up the coast, but it occurred to us that it ought to be very much more interesting and 250 TOURING GREAT BRITAI]^^ beautiful to go diagonally to the northward and thus explore some scarcely traveled Northumberland roads; and we did this and were delighted that we did, for it led us through a sweet and romantic coun- try, not in the least bleak, as we had expected, and yet with but very few houses in this entire cross- country region, and with not only a sweet wildness of roadside growth and yellowing gorse, but with late- blossoming laburnums near the few homes. And now and then to the northward there were charming glimpses of the deep, dark-blue Cheviots. We came to the North Sea, spreading before us, a great sweep of water, in the cool evening light, and we followed a splendid coastwise road, and stopped at Alnwick, after a delightful run for the day of eighty-seven miles and a total for the tour thus far of sixteen hundred and eighty-four. At Alnwick is a castle, built on a princely vastness of scale ; but the warders on these turrets high are not moving athwart the .evening sky, for these are but stone figures giving a factitious effect of watchful- ness! We walked out in the evening, through the desolate-seeming, duke-owned town; indeed, this great county of Northumberland is divided among fewer proportionate owners than is any other county in England, and some of the individual holdings are of immensity; we walked out, and it was half-past nine when we left the hotel, and the long and linger- ing twilight was so tempting that we went on across the river, passing a parapet-poised lion with a funny, straight tail — the Percy Lion — and we wandered on through the meadows, looking across at the great castle and gaining thus an excellent idea of its vast extent. The claim is that it is the largest building in the world owned by a subject; and back in the vil- lage they tell us that the Duke of Northumberland NORTHUMBERLAND 251 owns towns, villages, farms, waste-land and every- thing within a radius of forty miles, besides having exclusive rights in coastwise fishery! Next morning we were shown about through much of the huge pile, and it was curious to realize that one Scotch king was killed in besieging this castle and that another was taken prisoner here; but it was of very much more interest to us to see mementos of a battle many hundreds of years more recent and hun- dreds of times more important to us, for we discov- ered that Bunker Hill guns and shot are preserved here, with other mementos of that Lord Percy, son of the house and afterwards Duke of Northumber- land, who figured not only at Bunker Hill but at Lexington, where he brought up help for the re- treating British ; a fact commemorated, as we remem- bered, by a stone cannon set beside the Boston and Lexington Road. It gave a sense of surprise, too, to realize what must have been the importance of our war to the British themselves, and what it must have meant to them to have the heir of the best part of a county walk up Bunker Hill against the rifles of our shirt-sleeved farmers. Alnwick Castle, though huge, is restored out of old-time atmosphere, and its barbicans and towers fail to stir one; there is really more atmosphere in a remaining drear city gate, and very much more in a plot of land near the town that is still used as a com- mon because King John, seven hundred years ago, gave it to the townsfolk as a reward for their aid in extricating him from a bog into which liis horse had stumbled. From Alnwick we had a fine coastwise run of thirty miles, against a finely exhilarating sea breeze, with the sea for much of the time in sight, and we saw in the distance Holy Island, and had a distant sight of the great expanse of over-restored Bamburgh Castle, 252 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN and thus on to the Tweed and over the bridge into rock-perched Berwick. On account of its reputation and its Border- guarding fame, we motored up and down consider- ably through the dark-stone streets of Berwick, but found it rather a rough-seeming place, and disap- pointing as to interest; and we returned over the bridge and followed up the valley of the Tweed, a river whose very name brings up fascinating sugges- tions of romance and history. And history and romance soon appear following the suggestions, for we follow the picturesque river road for only a few miles before we turn in through a narrow, leafy lane and are facing the great ruin of the great castle of Norham, a castle memorable in itself and even more memorable through the superb opening lines of " Marmion." The ruin is now not much more than a shell; and we went about it with deep interest, and then had tea served romantically in its very shadow by the wife of the caretaker, whose home is a snuggery in the outer wall of the castle. From here we went through nearby Norham vil- lage, which lies on the level of the Tweed, and thence on through thick-wooded country, and crossed the sinister Till by Twizel Bridge, the same arching and ancient stone bridge over which the English troops marched to the field of Flodden. And thence up the delightful and romantic Till valley we went, and turned finally into the still tiny village of Branxton Moor, at the very edge of which the famous battle of Flodden was fought. There are still ancient, little, flower-bowered, thatched-roofed cottages in this village which were here at the time of the battle, and the queer, desolate-looking old church is here; really the same church, though changed some- what, of Flodden time; and many of the slain were ^ ISrORTHUMBERLAND 253 buried close about, and ditches full of skulls and bones are still at times come upon. " An' some visitors wanted to gi me a poond for a skull," said an old countryman; but he would not sell. " For it wad no be decent," he said, with much of rustic dignity, " to sell the skull o' a man that fowt for his country." Then, after a pause: " But I wadna say they didna get some teeth," he added, cannily and slyly. The Battle of Flodden, fought in 1513, is remem- bered in Scotland as vividly as if it were fought last year. It is still looked upon as a national disaster, and we had not long before read in a newspaper that, in a recent address at Selkirk, Lord Rosebery had said that every man, woman and child in Scotland knows every detail of Flodden; and an uncle of a Scotch friend of ours, an old man who died only last year, always hoisted his flag at half-mast on that day. The main portion of the battlefield is a long slope that is now a series of grainfields leading up to a tree-sprinkled hill ; and where the fiercest of the bat- tle finally centered, where the English steel-clad horsemen charged and charged again where still the " Scots, around their king, unbroken, fought in des- perate ring," is where the battlefield narrows between the main hillside and a knoll that is now covered with grain, and on the summit of which has been placed a huge stone cross with the noble inscription, " To the Brave of Both Nations." The battlefield is in the midst of a wide-stretching scene of beauty, and the region, almost solitary save for the tiny old village, has no more inhabitants than it had four hundred years ago. We drove about in this now so quiet country to ruined Etal, and to ancient Ford Castle in its flower- ing gardens, a castle now much modernized, but still preserving the very bedroom in which the Scottish 254 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN king slept before the battle; and we left the battle "vicinity by way of Coldstream, on the Tweed, a town which gave name to Guards more famous than its own quiet self; and we noticed in Coldstream a police placard that would seem incredible if we had not be- come accustomed to the long British twilights, for it read, "Motor lamps must be lit to-night at 9.44"! And what an exactness, too! Thence we went to a place whose name had long fascinated us, but which is quite away from anything but motor approach. Kirk Yetholm. For this Httle village was long the headquarters of the gypsies of Great Britain and they kept up a sort of central authority, and here was their ruler's home. The village lies bleakty against a line of bleak- rising hills, and, though a poor little place, gives a powerful sense of isolation and aloofness. There are dark-eyed descendants of the gypsies still living here, though they no longer have a king or ruler of their own or an organization; and the place gives us, in leaving, a certain sense of sorrowful and romantic dignitj^ sitting up there bare and lonely, against those bare and lonely hills. From Kirk Yetholm we had a short run of a few miles, over roads that were richly picturesque, to ancient Kelso, with its ruined abbey set right upon a main and busy thoroughfare, like a town posses- sion to be enjoyed in its ruined beauty everj'' day; and we drove out to nearby Floors Castle, the seat of the Duke of Roxburgh, a huge, modern-looking, over- grown-looking structure set in a marvelous park of wonderfully magnificent beeches which is inclosed by miles of the mightiest and most forbidding stone park wall that we have seen; and on a little knoll rising from a river meadow within the park of Floors we saw the fragmentary but finely-set ruins of ancient Roxburgh Castle; and from Kelso we followed along NORTHUMBERLAND 255 the Tweed, in the cool of the evening, through a fas- cinating country as thick with greenery as if it were in southern England, with now and then a shimmer- ing ghmpse of the beauty of the river, and views of the towering Eildons, triple landmarks of distinction, and thus by sweeps and bends of beauty came to that place whose very name suggests romance illimitable — Melrose. CHAPTER XXV MELROSE TO TANTALLON TO those who come to know and to love Mel- rose — and the words are synonymous — no words of appreciation can seem too high. For Melrose is so charming in itself and so delightfully stands for the best of Scotland and of Sir Walter Scott. The glamor thrown over the entire vicinity by the loving enthusiasm of Scott has, naturally, very much to do with it; but the important thing is that the enthusiasm is justified and that the visitor from across the sea comes so readily to regard the neigh- borhood with affection. Nor is it that there is any stupendous ruin here, any mighty cathedral or superb palace, or that here was the making of mighty history. A long since for- gotten skirmish was the nearest approach to a battle, and the nearest approach to a palace is Abbotsford, and the nearest approach to a mighty cathedral or a stupendous ruin is the small, sweet ruin of Melrose Abbey. But all the vicinity of JMelrose is full of a most attractive restfulness and of a charm that is half suggestion. And the abbey is itself a delight, set aside as it is from the very center of the town, in its beauty of soft, yellowish gray. Much of the loving detail of the long-ago builders is still preserved, and there is about the building a fine air of seclusion as it stands there in the midst of its time-stained gravestones. At the other end of the town is an admirable peel-tower, al- most the only habitable example remaining in Scot- 256 -- .V »2.^ ?^/ i>hMI)l, IJli; A>CII,N'I [{o.AlAN W ALL The town-gati; m dismal Alnwick B.'f« ..^JWfK The sweepixg stretch of Floddex Field t 'lllU SKKSi; GUAHUSMEN ON" Al.X- wiCK Castle walls The Till by Tu izll Bkiuge Klltiv YeTHOLM, the mountain- village of the OLD-TniE GYPSIES MELROSE TO TANTALLON 257 land of the fortified dwelling-house of a few hundred years ago as distinguished from a castle. Melrose itself is an attractive town, a mellow town, a town of amenities, a town that makes felicitous use of its riverside. We stayed at a delightful hotel a mile from the center of the place, with spacious grounds running down to the Tweed, and we spent our stay of three days in strolls and motor-drives ; in delightful excursions in every direction, for every- where we found interest. Of course we went to Abbotsf ord ; but Abbotsf ord is something of a disappointment. One strongly feels, here in Melrose, how Scott has impressed him- self upon Scotland, but one feels it the more strongly by not thinking of this home that he built, for it does not adequately represent him. It is neither as beauti- ful nor as fitting as we had anticipated; yet, once within the walls of his library, one cannot but feel keenly the sense of liis greatness and of his person- ality. And there is not a more striking sight in Great Britain than the steady procession of carriages and omnibuses that roll back and forth between the rail- way station and Abbotsford, filled with people who come from every quarter of the world to do honor to this wonderful Scotchman's memory. We went in the afternoon to Smailholm Tower, motoring to it over a road with a succession of beau- tiful views, and notably a view from where the road mounted after passing through the ancient hamlet of Newstead, where lived the masons who built Melrose Abbey (what a touch of the olden time!) and we found the view in looking back up the green and glim- mering valley of the Tweed, which was a scene of wistful beauty in a mild glitter of sunlight. We crossed the Tweed by a stone-arched bridge and mounted a long and lonely road beyond it, and motored up a private lane and across a field and came 258 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN to Smailholm; a square tower which stands superbly on the summit of a rocky height, dominating and watching over the country for miles around. And when we remembered that Scott as a boy was sent to live near this tower, and that he loved to wander about the ruin and the hilltop, it seemed all clear how the glory of the ancient days became part of the very fiber of his being. Black rocks are all about, and there are yellow gorse and heather growing thick, and high up in a hollow against the rocks is a reedy pool upon which two swans are superbly floating. We have seldom felt so keen or vivid an impression as beside this superbly-set and lonely tower. And when we went through its ancient iron gate and mounted its ancient stone spiral and came out upon its battlements there was a feeling as if all Scotland lay before us. That gray-walled tower on its windy height is one of the superb things of Scotland. We returned to jNIelrose by way of Bemerside and Dryburgh, the beautiful ancient abbey w^here Scott chose to be buried, and as we walked about through the ruined cloisters and passageways, his presence seemed to be everywhere. Another and briefer motor expedition was to where three ancient separate towers were built near to each other at a crossroads in a high valley. We went there over a road which gave us captivating views of Scottish countryside and frequent glimpses of the striking Eildons, which always, when in view, make themselves in so distinguished a fashion the center of the view. It was not that there was anything in par- ticular associated with these three towers, l3ut that, grouped so strikingly, they gave such an air of ro- mantic flavor. And here we learned how very beau- tiful a Scotch garden may be, for at one of these ruins, Langshaw, the old earl who owns it has had his MELROSE TO TANTALLON 259 gardener make it a glory and a delight with flowers of every precious color. We motored from Melrose, for the sake of both Wordsworth and Scott, and also to get in fuller touch with the fine spirit of this Borderland, to St. Mary's Loch; starting off along the Tweed, and thence to Selkirk, and thence into the valley of Yarrow; and as we drove into the market-square of Selkirk it was worth while to remember that it was into this square that the town clerk of Selkirk, a shoemaker who had been knighted for bravery, came riding back wounded from Flodden Field, the sole survivor of the Selkirk men, and he bore a banner that he had captured, and he told to the frightened townsfolk who gathered about him of the dreadful defeat of the Scotch; and the Selkirk folk, sturd}^ and prideful and full of local feeling as they are, still venerate an ancient banner of greenish silk which they firmly believe is the veritable banner of that long-past day. As we went to Yarrow, we saw across the river the ruins of Newark Castle rising with a grim sturdiness ; and the views, continuing, were alternately of sheer wildness and, to use that finely descriptive expres- sion of Wordsworth's, full of the pomp of cultivated nature. St. Mary's Lake is itself a long and narrow body of water, lying in the midst of bare, bare hills. And it is hard, at first, for the American in Scotland to ap- preciate to the full the beauty of the Scotch bare hills ; but he soon comes to see that they do not mean woodland devastation, and that there may be great distinction in their contour, and positive beauty in the blended coloring of their mossy rocks and green- ery of grass and flowerins^ furze and heather. And in this drive we saw myriads of tall flowering spikes of foxgloves. And we saw a shepherd carrying a lit- tle lamb upon his shoulder nooked in a corner of his 260 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN plaid. And everywhere and always was a sense of fascination. There was a chill somberness about the lake itself, and a rainstorm came sweeping across it with a very dramatic effectiveness, and we took shelter in the Httle inn of Tibbie Shiels, where Scott was accustomed to go and where he led Wordsworth; and when they showed the huge drinking vessel which they said these distinguished visitors used, it seemed inevitable, even if irreverent, to suggest to each other that now we could understand how Wordsworth saw liis " swan on still St. Mary's Lake float double." We returned to Melrose by a circuitous and more lonely course, and marveled that there could be such miles of such lone- liness here. When we almost reluctantly left Melrose, and tiu-ned still farther to the north, it was with a sense that we had been staying in a region of tranquil and singular charm. Instead of taking the main road from Melrose to Edinburgh, we went off through pleasant Earlston, an ancient little weaving village, and on through Lauderdale by a marvelous road which led us up and up with a sense of never descending, but always with an admirable surface to the road and always with the easiest of grades, so that it was an easy matter to take the entire drive of miles on " high." It was superb. Through Lauderdale we swept upward by the same marvelous road into the hills of Lammer- moor and felt again the mighty impression of Scott — for the mere word " Lammermoor " seems to mean only Scott! Now and then, but rarely, we passed some village, for it was mostly a region of wild soli- tariness, of dreary heights tremendous in their sweep- ing dreariness, of great immensity of bare levels, with views of miles and miles across the far-flung moors, MELROSE TO TANTALLON 261 and always there was the splendid exhilaration of the rushing wind. There were tall posts at intervals to mark the road in winter- time when deep snow falls! — There were no fences, no walls, no hedges; there was just the bare open country. We passed a couple of young men on a pedestrian tour, but except for that, in this great solitude, there was rarely a sign of hfe, except for scattered sheep which, unsheared although it was the very end of June, looked, as they moved about with their long wool even hiding their feet, like httle mov- ing hay-stacks. At length we descended, by long, long slopes, and passed through several dreary little villages — and Scotch villages, although not as a rule so bare as these, average far less of attractiveness than the Eng- lish — and went motoring off to the northeast for Tantallon, by way of Haddington. Haddington is a thrifty, orderly-built, common- place, deadish, stone-house town, with an open square and the ancient ruin of a red-stone church ; this town was the home of that Jane Welsh Carlyle whose do- mestic affairs have been given volumes of exploita- tion, and it was interesting to see what kind of a town she left to share, with the irritable Thomas, the de- lightful place in delightful Chelsea upon which so much of sympathy has been wasted. Haddington shows also the ruin of the castle of that Earl of Both well who married Mary Queen of Scots, a man generally supposed to have been a mere violent nobody, but who, as we are reminded by the remains of his castle, was really among the most pow- erful nobles of Scotland before he married Mary, and at the same time a man of travel and of un- doubted bravery. It surprised us in approaching Tantallon to find ourselves once more running over attractive sylvan 262 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN roads through a fine farming region proudly showing rich crops of hay; but it was not pleasant to see women working as laborers in the fields ; and at length there came glimpses of the sea, and we found that we were near the ancient castle, and we left our motor at a farmhouse and walked down a path of foot- breaking round stones to a bare, flat, smooth, green promontory jutting out upon a lofty cliff into the bluest of sea water under the bluest of sky, with the Bass Rock rising white and green in the distance, and with, far off, a silvery shore marking the farther side of the bay; and about us white sea-birds were curving and screaming; and immediately in front of us was something which peremptorily and insistently made rocks and sea and birds and everything else, by comparison, seem negligible — for it was Tantallon itself, it was the great old castle, rising in terrible dignity above the sea. Tantallon, the mightiest stronghold of the Doug- lases, is one of the overlooked castles, because of the difficulty of getting there except by motor. And in its extent of ruins, its splendid location, its massive- ness, its memories, notably those of Scott, for never did a man impress his personality on so many places, it is most noteworthy and fascinating. The tremendous walls rise grimly, with three sides encompassed by the sea, which thunders at the foot of the perpendicular cliffs one hundred feet in height; and on the one landward side is a great, straight tur- reted wall, ditched and moated and drawbridged to invulnerability. To " ding down Tantallon " has proverbially, for ages, expressed the Scotch idea of impossibility. The sea frets or roars or dashes forever against the foot of the rocks, and slides over dangerous green shallows and half reveals the reefs that are gray and black and sinister; and the wind seems forever to be MELROSE TO TANTALLON 263 blowing. " It's eerie here, when the wind souffles through," says the old caretaker, who walks here every morning from his distant home and who is as keen about the keys of the castle and about locking and unlocking the door as could be any warder of old. He takes us down into a deep, dark dungeon; " the grandest in Scotland." he tells us, proudly; and we descend, candle-led, through dark passages, step by step down into the heart of the cliff, and finally enter the dungeon itself, through a narrow arched door- way once fastened with iron grate and mighty bolts which fitted in the holes still pointed out. The old man, in that grim, faint-lit dungeon, ram- bles on ceaselessly about famous dungeon occupants of the past, and it seemed to him fitting, for he chuc- kled over it, that some by-everybody-else-forgotten Duchess of Albany — this word pronounced with the " a " even broader than in America, in contrast with the very sharp " a " of the Albany of London — was immured here for a year " for dinging her tongue " ; and he mentioned as rather a light matter that the heads of her husband and all her male relatives were shoved in to the wretched woman while she was here ; for some reason " dinging her tongue " seemed the one thing inexcusable, and the punishment a matter rather fitting. It was in climbing up to the battlements, six stories up (we say six from counting the fireplaces on the way) — it was in climbing by ancient stone stairways running through the very heart of the walls, and in the tremendous impressions that came from walking these lofty battlements and mounting upon the lofty turrets, that we found the chief glory of the place; and its tremendousness is unforgettable. Leaving Tantallon, majestic in its ruin, we jour- neyed rapidly for twenty-five miles along the Firth of Forth, passing under lofty, sudden, sugar-loafed 264 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN Berwick Law, identifying castles, villages and bat- tlefields with the stirring names of Scottish history, passing hundreds of golfers on rough-shorn links close to the waterside, and through, finally, some miles of close-built, tram-carred suburbs and at length into Edinburgh. lilh A.NLil.NT I'EEI, TOWER AT MeI.ROSE 'im- A GARDEX hy a i.onei.y tower ^ / r The tower of Smaii.iioim LiKl.M OLD TaNTAI.LON CHAPTER XXVI THE LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND EDINBURGH is peculiarly one of the cities that tell their tale to the imagination; and there is not only an old Edinburgh, but a new Edin- burgh — but even the new Edinburgh is a century old and is year by year gaining more of mellowness and dignity. Between the old city and the new is a great gulf fixed; a valley through which runs the railway, but the railway is entirely masked by a fine public park which fills the valley, and this park is fronted by Princes Street, quite one of the finest streets in the world. Edinburgh is a city to be loved ; a city to be stayed in; but it is not too busy a city for agreeable motor- ing and it is fine to swing down the long cobbled slope of High Street and the Canongate from the Castle to Holyrood — a trip impossible by tram-car, for no tram-cars run that way, and very tiresome on foot. It is delightful to go quietly along the superb line of Princes Street and to look across at the fetching gray masses of the old town, with its variedly picturesque gables and its crenelated skj^'-line, or to go into one of the fine Edinburgh shops, or to sit out on the up- per balcony of one of the ideal tea-rooms, with the high-set houses of the ancient town right across the valley and with the superbly placed castle topping its rocky height and with Arthur's Seat looming su- perbly on the left and with all the sparkle and life and gayety of Princes Street at our very feet. At one of these tea-rooms we spoke of some ex- 265 266 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN quisite little cakes that were served, and we said that they reminded us of some cakes with which we had become familiar on the Rue Roy ale of Tours; whereat the pleased proprietor said that it had al- ways been traditional!}^ believed that the recipe for these characteristic Edinburgh cakes was brought over from Touraine by the French cooks of Mary Queen of Scots. The towering ancient houses of Edinburgh, houses of great height, with story above story, houses filled with smells as evil as they are medieval, are steadily disappearing; and the castle has lost much of its old- time grandeur through huge, ill-looking boxlike ex- crescences built upon it in place of fine old battle- ments; but the view of the old town has still a vast picturesqueness. And there are many individual things of interest to see. The ancient crown jewels of Scotland, preserved in the castle, are particularly worth while, for they show so admirably the old-time jewelers' work, which the English crown jewels, al- though much more valuable, do not do, as they have been so tinkered up for each ensuing coronation as to lose their original character. A feature of much interest in connection with this castle is that, almost always, it is garrisoned by troops in the brilliantly picturesque Highland costume, and the fortunate visitor will see these troops parading on the esplanade in front of the gate. And there are old houses worth seeing, along the High Street, and it is extremely interesting to pick out the one which was the veritable home of grim John Knox and fas- cinating to look into the ancient close of the inn where the officers of Prince Charlie made their headquarters, and still more fascinating to go about ancient Holy- rood, with its rooms and passages full of the memo- ries of Mary Queen of Scots, and with its veritable, ancient Stuart furniture, made for these very rooms. LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 267 and with its ancient portraits of the old-time people whose lives were associated with this place — but this does not refer to the long line of made-to-order kings hanging in frames along both sides of the great ban- queting hall! And even the comparatively meager remains of the ancient Abbey of Holyrood are of interest, although we have been seeing so many finer and greater ecclesiastical ruins. In a little graveyard, walled in and almost forgot- ten, in the newer part of the city, it was curious to come upon the unexpectedness of a monument in memory of the Scotchmen who died in our Civil War; "to preserve the jewel of liberty and the framework of freedom," as the noble inscription, quoted from Lincoln, reads. There is no finer example than the new town of Edinburgh, with its dignified streets and crescents, of admirable and adequate town-house architecture. But neither the fine-looking present-day homes nor the houses of ancient days are of strong enough ap- peal to keep the motorist within the limits of even an Edinburgh, when he is at liberty to respond to the call of the country and of the free fresh air. The insistent lure of the road ever leads onward. But before leaving Edinburgh we took an evening run down to Leith, the ancient port of the city, through stone-block-paved streets, close-lined with high-set stone tenements; and at Leith we found the little fishing boats tucked away for the night in stone basins, and the fishermen chatting and smoking con- fabulatively as they sat on the stone ledges, and there was about these men a certain suggestion of Holland in their costume. The fishwives were even more Dutch in appearance, with their heavy woolen stock- ings, their full skirts almost twelve inches from the ground, and their short sleeves that stopped within two inches of the elbow and turned back in a cuff 268 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN; of white muslin to the shoulder. Every fishwife seemed to be standing in her doorway, knitting, and on every doorstep were the waiting fish-creels which the women next morning were to carry on their backs through the streets of Edinburgh, calling out their high-pitched wailing call of " Caller herrin'." Next morning we ended our delightful and restful stay in Edinburgh, and headed our motor onward, and first in the direction of the castle of Craigmillar. There are so many places connected with the un- happiness of the career of Queen Mary that it is a pleasure to find at least one that is associated with the brief time preceding the beginning of tragedy. The castle of Craigmillar, reached by a short but devious ride out of Edinburgh, is of great extent, and, although the building is a ruin, there are many rooms through which one may still wander ; and from the particular room which history or tradition asso- ciates with Queen Mary herself, the window does not open toward distant Edinburgh, which is in view from much of the castle and where her enemies were in force, but out over sweet meadows and woodlands to the glory of far-away hills toward the sunny southward. The attitude of an excellent custodian of any old place is always keenly against restorations, and here at Craigmillar the admirable guardian was no excep- tion. " Much of the stone roof is new; a great mis- take," he said sadly. On the whole, we found Craig- millar highly worth while. Through a rather bare and disagreeable stretch we made a short run to Roslyn Chapel and Roslyn Castle, but found them of rather feeble interest after the many noble things we had been seeing, and they do not at all measure up to the ideas evoked by " the lordly line of high St. Clair." However, Roslyn Chapel is an elaboration of detail, and is a finished, LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 269 indeed almost over-finished, fragment of a church that was never built. From Roslyn, rather than return prosaically by the way we had come, to Edinburgh, and thence go on, we aimed diagonally for the Forth Bridge, which we wished to look at; and it was a ride well worth while to round under the shadow of the Braid Hills, piling up against the sky, and motor forward through a pleasant and varied country thick with the invariable golf links — golf links seem to be underfoot all the time in Scotland ! — with now and then unusual views of Edinburgh, with its neighboring Salisbury Crags, its superbly cliffed castle, and the great perspective of the city itself, spreading out toward the sea. We reached the Forth down a road from which we had a splendid view of the Forth Bridge, a struc- ture which stands preeminent of its kind; and when a train went over it, with engine and cars seeming not much bigger than flies crawhng between the huge cantilevers, we had some idea of how big the bridge really is. From here we motored up the southern side of the Forth, with a long range of mountains in the dis- tance and in front of us some positively stupendous artificial mountains, formed of refuse from shale-oil mines, so large and so many as to impose their lofty truncated characteristic upon the landscape. Passing this region, the road led us pleasantly to Linlithgow, that ancient palace of Scotch royalty, still remaining in complete extent, though in ruinous condition, where Queen Mary was born. And it was curious to think that we were really at the very place where that strange career began which led Mary to be Queen of France and Queen of Scotland and finally the victim of the Queen of England. Linlithgow is still a fair and stately palace, built in the form of a great hollow square, and it stands 270 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN in a sweet, fair bit of countryside on a slightly-rising knoll above a pretty loch, at the very edge of a bare, leather- working old town. As we go on our way toward Stirling there comes a cold and dreary rain, and under a hedge we see a pair of trampers, a man and woman, shivering away from the chilling wind and wetness; and we wonder what the great army of similar trampers throughout Great Britain do when the nights are wet and cold. Tall trees border the road, and across the Forth are misty masses of hills, and in the fields some farm- ers are plowing, and we meet a farmer driving with horses abreast — for horses hitched tandem is not the custom in this northern part of the country. The road is of extraordinarily good quality, the best thus far of the excellent roads of Scotland. There are sweet pools tucked among low hills, delightful glades, a stately gate opening into an avenue that doubtless leads to some stately hidden house, and ever and anon the greenery is brightened with brilliant yellow gorse. We passed through Falkirk and remembered that beside this town there came a gleam of glory to the retreating army of Prince Charlie ; and Prince Char- lie does so connect what seem the Stuarts of history with our own time, for both Washington and Frank- lin must have received the news of Falkirk and the other fights of that brief uprising as contemporary events of great interest. The valley broadens, there are tall chimneys send- ing up smoke and fire, a purple line of hills becomes more deeply empurpled, the rain ceases but the diminishing day becomes colder and gloomier, the pur- ple hills creep nearer to us; and suddenly we see rock-perched Stirling Castle rising nobly in the distance. Before reaching Stirling, we turned aside a little LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 271 to visit one of the most romantic and famous of bat- tlefields, that of Bannockburn. And here, on a com- manding knoll, they still preserve the ancient bored stone in which Robert Bruce placed his standard on that famous day, six hundred years ago, and from this spot the course of the battle may still be under- stood. A rolling country is all about, with fields and farmland, and here and there a pleasant home; and a Scotchman, driving by in his two- wheeled gig, draws up, seeing that we are strangers, and explains all about Bannockburn with wealth of intricate local detail; for Scotchmen remember Bannockburn with immense pride after ail these centuries. We go on to the city of Stirling, clustered as it is at the base and up one side of the towering rock on which Stirling Castle lifts its ancient walls; and after dinner we climb the long, long slope, up through the streets of the town, and through an interesting broadening, far up, into a sort of market-place lined with old-time houses; and we go higher than all this, past some ruined once-while mansions of centuries ago, to the old castle on the very top. But we go on foot, for it does not seem a mo- torable hill, and we find, as we climb far up, that there is an additional reason why this road is not very motorable, for streets and sidewalks alike, along the steep road, literally swarm with children who are sprawling, crawling, walking or playing, the swarms being interspersed with mothers holding babies by plaids folded long and tied against the shoulder in such a way as to leave the arms of the mothers free; and every woman is knitting, her needles flying steadily and her eyes not watching the work. Reaching the top and the castle, we wandered about the battlements in the long, late twilight, and looked off at the gi'eat broad levels far below us, where the mazy Forth unravels in one great, slow- 2T2 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN curving bend after another — and an amazing series of river-bends it is. Even more interesting than the picturesque bit of antiquity on the top of this height are the wide- spreading views ; and from a corner of the castle wall we had a more superb effect of simset and landscape than anywhere else on our entire journey. It had been storming, and the clouds still hung in scattered masses along the horizon ; it was nine o'clock, and the sun itself, out of sight from where we were standing, had thrown a superb yellow luster over the entire land- scape; and then, as a dramatic surprise, it laid an immense band of gold across miles and miles of slopes and meadows, and threw showers of gold on the clouds; and off at the northward the heights of the Highlands stood in lines of royal purple, and all the scene was a glory of purple and gold. Next morning we left Stirling, crossing the Forth on a bridge beside an ancient arched stone bridge long disused, and past a towering monument to that Wal- lace who looms so toweringly in Scotch history, and we remembered that here he fought one of his brave fights; and we go on through Alloa and toward Dunfermline. We had been noticing, on some of our days of late, a shortage of flowers, and we had feared that the shortage would increase, but on this road there were many, many flowers, and especially roses; little cot- tages seemed to have a veritable rivalry in roses, in great bushes and vines, and there were long stretches of wild roses, pink and white, along the roadsides. Flowering foxgloves grew thick and wild, and in all it was a beautiful road through a beautiful country; and a line of lofty mountains went marching along on our left. We passed a caravan of three little wagons, with low, rounded cloth tops ; but these were English folk The sunny ruins of Craigmillar w -"-^^^^^-^^Safc^ '"■; .*, :spfi^' '"^ry^h^ -•^i'.' ^i^^'^ The St. Andrews golf links LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 273 and not gj^psies, and the children peered curiously out at us ; we passed a herd of cattle that blocked the road for some minutes; we passed children just out of school, with all the boys and many of the girls barefooted; a cold rain came on, but we barely more than got the top up than the rain stopped and all was clear again; we went past a cluster of white cottages with roofs of red tile, and through rich farmland and pastures, with fat cattle and fat horses grazing; and cart-horses that we met on the road had collars rising high, in points of black leather ornamented with brass or nickle circles or with bunches of ribbons or tall and slender feathers. And we came to Dunfermline, where there are some ancient ruins of minor importance that are readily to be seen from a main road, and among them is an ancient palace ruin which is of interest as being the birthplace of the ill-fated Charles the First; and the city is also the birthplace of one the very reverse of ill-fated, for there is here the simple little cottage, which looks like so many other little Scotch cottages, where first saw the light the American man of many libraries! Dunfermline is an old linen-weaving cen- ter, and has been heavily endowed and aided, and gives an impression of being a sort of personally con- ducted town ; and in all is a place neither picturesque nor attractive. For a time there are bare country and poor vil- lages, and then villages and countryside grow more attractive again, and before long we come to the ex- ceedingly long town of Kirkcaldy, stretched out along beside the Forth, and then we follow a road that rolls us on through rolling country, past now and then a town among the hills; and clouds and rain gather over the water, and through a cleft we catch an un- expected sight of towering Edinburgh Castle, far off on the farther side of the Forth, for we are going 274 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN^ in an easterly direction and practically paralleling our course from Tantallon westward. And all this here- abouts is in fascinating Fife — the ancient " King- dom of Fife." Past Kirkcaldy we notice frequent orchards, and there is considerable manufacturing, with trim and rather commonplace villages, and we make a detour of three miles to the left and come, in a lovely bit of old Scotland, to the ancient Scotch palace of Falk- land; a long-corridored, attractive old place, some- how suggestive of the Touraine countrj^ and thus remindful of the great amount of French influence in Scotland. Much of the palace is preserved, though very much has vanished, and there is still a fine old gateway, and there is still one of those grim prison rooms known as bottle-dungeons, with its ceiling curv^ing in and down and away from its only entrance, which is a hole in the center of its top. In one of the dungeons of this palace, but with its identity lost, the Duke of Rothesay, the eldest son of the King of Scotland, was starved to death, as described in the " Fair Maid of Perth," five hundred years ago — how the centuries do merge so readily into one another! — and it is curious that the title of Duke of Rothesay is still borne by the eldest son of the King of Great Britain. We swing back to the main road to the eastward, and pass through a little village whose front gardens are a glow of tall, dainty delphiniums, or a blaze of yellow nasturtiums, or rich in white pinks and in orange lilies. We pass through Cupar — a pleasant, busy, clean place — and then once more through a beautiful countrj^ past a village whose little front gardens are marvels of glow with great masses of snapdragon, with walls reddish pink with perennial pea, with numberless blossoms of the white candy- tuft, with bushes of rosemary and of golden box. LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 275 Through alternate hedges and low stone walls we faintly see lines of mist-dimmed hills, and it is fine farming country, with rows of orderly haystacks each looking exactly like a monster charlotte russe under a woven cap of hay; and thus we come to St. Andrews. CHAPTER XXVII THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND THE last part of the run to St. Andrews was half a dozen level miles along the North Sea road, for here we have come to the sea again. St. Andrews has ancient ruins, though in rather frag- mentary condition — a cathedral and a castle and a high tower, that were built in exceedingly effective positions overhanging the sea, and they are of dig- nity and importance in Scottish annals. These ruins of St. Andrews, however, are not of the first order of interest, but its golf links and its sea-bathing are extremely interesting — at least, the sea-bathing was on the day we were there. St. An- drews is the fashionable resort of Scotland, and the bathing is fashionably done; or at least exclusively; so exclusively, indeed, that the women bathe in rocky pools entirely by themselves — but in full view of the cliff top, where are a promenade and seats for towns- folk and visitors! And it was mildly astonishing to see, in this fashionable, ecclesiastical old town, what may be called untrammeledness as to costume, and as to mermaidlike posing among the rocks. The golf links, the most famous in the world, are distinctly disappointing in appearance, hemmed in as they are by railway sheds and a line of railway track. But there is a fine beach on the farther side and a beautiful surf, and in spite of the look of the links, un- couth to anyone accustomed to bright, green, smooth turf on golf links, we were quite ready to believe these to be of supremely good quality, and it was inter- 276 HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 277 esting to learn that for the payment of a small fee visitors are at liberty to play there. " And so very much depends," as a Scotch pla5''er put it to us, " upon the kind of golf ball one uses. For myself, I use the very best kind made in Great Britain." And he showed one; and it was stamped with the name of the London agent of an American factory! And we thought we now saw a reason why a very large area of red, white and blue should be gayly flying on the best hotel of the several close by! Late in the afternoon we ran on to the north and came to the River Tay and found an admirable steam ferry, which was entered on one side and left on the other side, instead of being entered and left by oppo- site ends. The Tay is very broad here, and is really an arm of the sea; and we looked with interest at the new railroad bridge above us, which has replaced the one which went down with such dramatic disaster one stormy night some years ago. We landed in Dun- dee and ran through the broad streets of this fine, busy, self-respecting city to our hotel. To-day was the first day in Scotland on which we had counted the railroad grade crossings that we came to, and the total was nine ; and we noticed, at the one or two where we had to wait for trains, that the same practice prevails that we notice in England; for, the gates are shut exactly at the moment at which the train is scheduled (always pronounced " sheduled " on this side of the ocean) to approach and that then, no matter how many minutes late the train may be, everybody must wait. And sometimes the wait is long and patience-trying and there is always still more exasperation in the creeping leisureliness with which the gatekeeper opens, by hand, the roadway after the train has passed. 278 TOURING GREAT BRITAIK We liked Dundee, for it seems so genial and en- terprising, but it really has no sights to detain one; and yet it does have one delightful sight, after all, for along the whole length of its main street it has great balls of flowers in bloom, in great ball-baskets on the trolley poles that run down the middle of the road, and these flowers are a very pretty sight, indeed. We ran next morning, from Dundee to Perth, for a trifle over twenty miles through what is called the Carse of Gowrie, a level plain, an extremely rich farming region, with villages of stone cottages, gayly bedecked with flowers and with mossy roofs of tile or slate or even of thatch prettily mossed in many shades. And we noticed a sight which at once aroused our sympathy: a fine dog, a collie, barking dolorously, tied underneath a wagon marked in great letters, *' D. C." — which of course meant "Dog Catcher"; but when the driver stopped in front of a cottage and opened the doors of the wagon, at the back, we saw that our sympathy was wasted, for it was a bread wagon and the letters were a company name ; another of the myriad bread wagons that we have been see- ing in Scotland, not only in towns, but on the coun- try roads, and especially north of the Forth; and, even if the Scotch folk exemplify the old phrase and live by bread alone, they could hardly eat up as much as we have seen! Perth is an ancient city with its ancient landmarks gone; but it is a charming little city, a beautifully situated city, and there are some attractive and al- most old, narrow passages, called " vennels," that pic- turesquely attract and which are likely to yield antique treasures from their tiny little shops. A clean, bright city this is, and of course one's fancy pictures the " fair maid of Perth " here. Directly HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 279 on the riverside there is still the great level Inch, where the terrible clan battle was fought out so grimly so long, long ago ; for it was a very real con- flict that Scott puts into his pages. And it may be mentioned that the Inch, being an inch, takes a mile or so of river-front. At one end of the Inch there is a monument to the men of a regiment of Cam- eronians, and we noticed with interest that the regi- ment saw service not only in India, South Africa and in Crimea, but in America in 1814. Accompanied by friends in their own motor who wished to show us an unusual road, we motored out of Perth for the Devil's Elbow. It was a sapphire morning; and soon there were mountains all around us, and other and loftier mountains in blue undula- tions on the horizon. We went by way of Blair- gowrie, and all around us in that vicinity were enor- mous acreages of red-raspberry bushes, and we found that they were cultivated here for jam factories. In this vicinity, too, we passed a wonderful hedge of old towering beech-trees, which were planted many years ago, very close together, and now reached to the height of well over a hundred feet. They form a marvelous hedge and are clipped in perpendicular smoothness as high up as ladders can with ingenuity be raised for the clippers. We come to the Bridge of Cally, and here the road forks and we take the wilder fork of the two toward the right and it leads us up a wonderfully pictur- esque road, ever more and more beautiful, through alternating richness and bareness and among great heights and solitudes, for we are mounting through the great pass of Glen Shee. On one side, down be- low us, is a mountain stream in a prodigious hurry, and valley and mountains are alike a faint glory of heather in its early lavender tint. The road is not nearly so good as we have been 280 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN accustomed to, but it is wonderful that such a road as this is kept up through this region of utter wild- ness; and on this road, for the first time in Great Britain, there is a considerable scattering of loose stones. On the somewhat easier slopes on our left we gradually came to realize that lines of great stone walls had in places a curious resemblance to the shapes of houses, though at first we did not take them really to be houses; but houses they were — houses they had once been — for this valley, now so desolate, was once thinly inhabited by cottagers, shepherds, and weavers, each cottage having its hand-loom; but the coming in of machinery killed the hand-loom in- dustry and brought poverty, and rich men wanted the region for grouse-shooting, and the population were induced and compelled to leave and their little houses were dismantled. They were small, little places, huddled against the mountain-side from the storms, and to take off the roofs was almost all that was necessary to make their fronts look like parts of an ordinary field wall; and these ghosts of homes add to the tragic loneliness of the valley. From what is called the Spital of Glen Shee, a tiny little whitewashed inn, the road passes on to a still greater loneliness, and here and there in hollows and on the mountain-tops the snow has still remained. And at length we came to the Devil's Elbow, fit- tingly named as it is from its dangerous curve, as if the devil had twisted his hand back to his shoul- der to make the elbow-angle sharp and savage. Still, with care, this bend was safely manipulated; and in fact it was not really so dangerous, though it gave the impression of being so among those grim sur- roundings, as one or two other places where we had already been on this trip. We continued for a distance beyond Devil's El- bow and rose to a sort of watershed height, where HOSE-BOVVERED ScOTCH COTTAGES The BiRNAM Wood oi Maciiktii HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND ^ 281 views tremendously grand included heights over heights in all directions. And here in this superb spot, with mountains of stern and solemn beauty stretching off in every direction, was our Farthest North! A curious thing is that these mountains, although they have so towering an effect, are actually, even the highest, barely more than four thousand feet in alti- tude. But that they do reallj^ have all the effect of being of tremendous height is the important point, after all, and such an effect they do certainly have. From here we might have gone on farther to the northward, but that farther region would have been not only practically without historical interest, but also without scenic interest as compared with what we have been seeing in Scotland and what we are going to see within the next few days. And here in this wild spot we are not only so far to the northward, and not only among impressive mountains, but are on a road which itself climbs to a height of two thou- sand feet above the sea — which is very high indeed for any road of Great Britain — and so sudden has been the rise that since leaving the Spital of Glen Shee we have climbed about nine hundred feet. From here we retraced our way, with somewhat of variation as to road, to Perth, where we spent the night. There, our room looked out toward the broad, swift River Tay and we went to sleep to the sound of its soft roaring under the stone-arched bridge, and we awoke now and then in the night and ever was that soft, fascinating sound; and to us the memory of Perth is of the long sandy Inch and of the softly- sounding river. Perth is the gateway of the Highlands; and here at the gate, both in the gardens of the city and in the countryside around about, we notice again what a glory there is of flowers and of what a wide variety 282 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN of kind and color; whole gardens azure blue with delphiniums and anchusa, whole cottage fronts a bril- liant velvety scarlet with a little vine called tropeo- lum, growing with such great success only here in Perthshire. At the hotel in Perth we found, as in so many places, that there was no encouragement to the Ameri- can to ask for coffee for breakfast, and we noticed that the guests who wished tea were given individual teapots and silver jugs of water, but that the out- landers that wished coffee had it poured gingerly by a waiter who tried to make it half milk. They sim- ply do not understand coffee, and the question, " White coffee or black? " is a very customary one all over Great Britain, and the general idea is to have the coffee poor to begin with and then make it as much like white milk as possible. And all this, not that they are inhospitable to strangers, but that few of them have any comprehension of what good coffee means. We left Perth in the glory of another perfect morning; it had rained while we breakfasted, but the sky had cleared and the air was enchantingly pure. We struck out for the northward, but a little more to the northwest than the road to the Devil's Elbow, for this morning we are following the valley of the Tay ; and our minds are so filled with the grim glories of yesterday that we are anticipating other sternly beautiful views — and so it is with pleasurable sur- prise that we find ourselves running on among moun- tains purple and green, ever luring and alluring, over a level road lovely in the extreme, with beeches on the hillside as if in parks and among them a dreamy, ferny undergrowth in pale-green light; and when bare hills come into view they are richly covered with heather and with great masses of foxgloves, very tall and slender, waving in the breeze. It is a beau- HIGHLAXDS OF SCOTLAND 283 tifiil road, in trees and stream and hedges and hills and rocks, and the very bareness which alternates with the rich greenery adds to the fascination of it. And we noticed that, as if forgetting that this is a road up into the Highlands, there are great numbers of roses in bloom, and we observed in particular the old- fashioned yellow rose which at home we know by the name of the Harrison rose, from its coming from the Harrisons of Virginia, but here it is distinctively termed the " Scotch rose." Just before crossing the Tay into Dunkeld we passed through a wood with the fascinating name of Birnam, at the base of a hill, beside a little town; and it is indeed the very Birnam Wood of Shake- speare's " Macbeth." Even Dunsinane (pronounced in this countryside, in defiance of Shakespeare, *' Dunsinnun," with the accent on the second sylla- ble) is not so very far away, it being only some ten miles in an air line, but quite too far for the tree- carrying episode. Birnam Wood is still a charming bit of woodland which is reputed to have been a great oak forest ; but not many of the oaks remain ; in fact, perhaps not more than one or two of the mighty mon- archs of the past. At Dunkeld we did not go to see the slender sights of the place, which consist of a park, a bit of an old cathedral, a hermitage and a considerable number of old larch trees, although we should have been per- mitted to enter and see all this on payment of a shill- ing apiece to an agent of John James Hugh Henry Stewart-Murray, K.T., Duke of Atholl and Earl Strange. We were inclined to do this, but we had been paying levies to so many dukes — including the bill at our hotel in London, which was owned by a duke — that we had to draw the line somewhere. (Down in Melrose we had paid sixpence to the Duke of Buccleuch every time we wanted to look at the 284 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN abbey, but we did not in the least object to that, for such a famous place, but it surprised us to find that any of the townsfolk in Melrose who wished to visit the graves of their own ancestors in the abbey grounds had similarly to pay this price.) We run through Dunkeld, which is just an ordi- narj'-, pleasant town, and the road, which has been practically level along the riverside, now begins to climb, and as it does it becomes more and more beau- tiful. There are rocks which rise abruptly, alter- nating with slopes climbing in slow dignity, and the road becomes superbly wooded, with heights in the far distance, somber and dark blue, and we keep catching glimpses of the gleaming water far below our sinuous road. We have found that there is a " Caledonia, stern and wdld," but we have also learned that there is a Caledonia which is the very reverse of stern and wild, and the combination and alternation are very fas- cinating, indeed; and we are finding to-day, as we go on farther into the Highland country, that the roads average quite as high a degree of excellence as thej^ do in most other parts not only of Scotland, but of England. We had anticipated that to travel in the Highlands w^ould mean a great deal of rough, irregular road; and there is really some of that kind of road; but, on the other hand, one may travel for days through the most beautiful and grand High- land country and find roads that are practically per- fection, for they are mainly built through mountain passes or by the sides of the lochs and streams. And many Highland roads average much more of level- ness than do the roads in most parts of supposedly level England! We found it somewhat colder in Scotland than in England, but there was really not a great amount of difference in the countries in this respect; in both HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 285 it was quite necessary to have overcoats and rugs with us; and this showed us, too, that it would have been a mistake to begin our tour earlier in May than we did, for it would probably have been too cold for real comfort. As it was, we never had a particle of real discomfort from cold, but we were properly pre- pared with wraps. We go on through a magnificent beech woods rich with splendid fields of fern, with ever the river glint- ing far below and with ever the heights rising splen- didly above us, and then the road goes dropping down to the very level of the river and continues in wooded beauty through not only the characteristic beeches, but past great numbers of oaks, birches, pines and rowans. The Tay swings to the west, but we are to run for a few miles to the northward and shall then come back and again follow its course; and the road leads us along the hurrying Tummel, and far up here we run into the attractive, up-to-date mountain resort of Pitlochry, and here the gasoline supply is replenished, and we anticipate much higher prices up here in the Highlands, but are surprised to find that it is only a few cents more a gallon than elsewhere. The entire matter of handling gasoline is another striking example of the power of trusts in Great Britain, for the prices are practically fixed through- out the country; gasoline is sold in two grades, No. 1 and No. 2, but it is a mistake to use the second grade, which is only four cents a gallon cheaper; the better grade, which is cleaner and also gives more mileage, ranging from thirty-nine to forty-one cents a gallon, or, in distant places like Pitlochry, about forty-five cents. The English gallon, however, is a little larger than the American, but even so it makes gasoline cost about thirty-three or thirty-five cents a gallon by our measure 286 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN The main consideration is, however, that the roads and grades are so excellent throughout Great Britain that they not only save expense in tires, but also save materially in the amount of gasoline con- sumed. Gasoline is sold in sealed cans, which are paid for if for any reason one wishes to carry a can with him, but the cans are redeemable at the fixed price paid for them at any one of the myriad gaso- line stations at Great Britain; and it is really an astonishingly good system. Beyond Pitlochry the road goes steadily climbing higher, and the mountains become wilder and more grand ; we leave the car at the Tummel and follow a footpath beside another stream through a gorge that every moment becomes wilder and more beautiful — and this is the famous pass of Killiecrankie. The stream swirls by us in a strange brownness, for it is brown where it goes smoothly in treacherous glides, and its foam is brown where it breaks over the rocks, and it flows, a brown and crumpled band, between steep, high banks that are thick with trees and shrubs. On a high bit of land far in front of us, but for a long time invisible, is the spot where Dundee, more famous under the once-dreaded name of Claverhouse, waited for the English soldiers to appear; and when we approach the spot we climb steeply upward and great mountains tower superbly immediately behind his position, and everywhere are splendid masses of pinkish heather; for up here on this lofty land above the pass there is bareness of trees, and the scene be- comes one of grim beauty and loneliness. How vividly the picture of this battle, so famous in Scottish history, comes to us, as we look down into the beautiful and lonely pass hemmed in by these great mountains; and then the thought comes of how old America is, after all ! — for at the time this HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 287 battle was fought, which seems so long ago, the Way- side Inn was standing, and used as an inn, just out- side of Boston! From here we retrace our way to the little hamlet of Ballinluig, where we again follow up the valley of the Tay, which turns here to the westward and opens out into a sweet, broad loveliness with splendid peaks rising in the central distance. It is a level road through a splendid parklike coun- try. Here and there is a glimpse of a mansion ; here and there is a park gate and an avenue leading in by long lines of trees and indicating a mansion hidden with that comfortable skill and completeness that mark the ability of the British to hide their homes when they wish to, as they so often do. Seldom do we see a humble home. It is a region that is remind- ful of riches. The broad river is full of fish that must not be caught; grouse and long-tailed pheasants that must not be shot fly across the fields ; rabbits that must not be killed are running about by scores and scores with impunity; the hillsides and fields are rich with trees that indicate shelter and firewood; now and then are seen sleek cattle; and once a liveried servant passes us, leading a fine pet dog; — then suddenly, around a bend, we come upon some more of the homeless folk who are scattered in such numbers over the roads of Great Britain. We have seen homeless men be- fore; even more frequently we have seen men and women, and once in a while a man and woman with one or two children ; but this time we meet a man and a woman with a family of half a dozen. They travel, they tell us, on some days fourteen or fifteen miles; their two-wheeled cart is for the littlest or the weary; the man is a laborer and so is his eldest boy, and the mother also works when she gets the chance; often, so they say with eager faces, they are able to stay in a 288 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN place for two or three days at a time! They are brave, these people ; they are not of the trampers who will not work, nor do they beg. But their faces brighten as a little silver is given to the children, and we leave them with the feeling that all they need is a chance. Across the water we see little Aberfeldy, where a double row of Lombardy poplars stretches com- pletely across the level valley, and we are approach- ing Loch Tay, and one road leads to the left along the southern side of the loch and one to the right along the northern, and we choose the northern side, and on we go^ with purple mountains rising in great peaks in the distance and with broad slopes mount- ing gradually on either side. The valley broadens into a great, green, treeless level and great bare heights confrontingly stand in our way, and we drive through a road, unexpectedly tunneled with greenery, and are at tiny Fortingal. At the Rojian camp near Fortingal '^'f^'-^ '■''-'*' iijff, • 5' X^^ A Highland cottage witji one thatched chi.-mney CHAPTER XXVIII AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES LITTLE Fortingal, tucked against its great J mountain-side, is so clean and bright and new that it seems almost odd to associate it with age, in spite of the thatched roofs above the pretty fronts of most of its half a dozen or so houses. And it is another example of the many places that possess unexpected interest. Nor do we merely mean such things as its ancient bell, which is known to be six centuries old, nor its stone font, as ancient as Chris- tianity in Britain, nor even that in the little grave- yard of the little, modern church is one of the most ancient of trees; a yew-tree estimated by naturalists to be three thousand years old; a tree which, though now dying, is dying slowly and each year continues to put forth fresh green tips. For most interesting of all is the legendary connection of Fortingal with Rome and with Christianity. In the reign of Augustus Csesar ambassadors were sent to many a distant region of the world to dis- cuss world-peace, and, so ancient stories have for cen- turies told, one embassy of noble Romans who took their wives with them for the pleasant jaunt in dis- tant regions, went to Scotland, and finding that the king, Metallanus, was absent hunting in the north, they followed him and found him on Loch Tay; and here, so the story has it, a son was born to the wife of one of the ambassadors — a son who was to grow up and have a great deal to do with the Christian Era, which began when the old yew-tree here was one 289 290 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN thousand years old ; for this child of a distant Roman was Pontius Pilate. Such a story cannot, of course, be proven. But likewise it cannot be denied. We set it down as an interesting centuries-old legend. But it certainly is very curious to think of the possibility of Pilate hav- ing opened his eyes upon the world here beside the Tay, with these brooding mountains rising so steep and high and bare. A little beyond Fortingal is the site of an ancient Roman camp — what wonderful people those Romans were, to come with their camps and their legions so far up here as these Scotch mountains ! — and trenches and pretorium are still clearly marked, and flowers in great variety of kind and color grow all over the field. But this camp has nothing to do with the Pilate legend, as it is in date some two hundred years later than that time. We continue along the river and in a few miles come to where it widens into a loch; a beautiful stretch of water, nestling among mountains; a long and sinuous lake twisting on among the heights for miles ; and we run beside it with ever-changing views of beauty and of grandeur. At length, toward the end of the lake, we see mountains grouped formidably in our path, and we pass cottages with not only thatched roofs, but even with the verj^ chimneys thatched! — and the smoke coming out shows that these ancient thatched chim- neys are actually used! And the road makes final twists and turns and deviousnesses of beauty, and we stop for the night, for we find a little inn here at the head of the lake. It is late, but it does not seem so, for it is still daylight, and after dinner we start out for a daylight stroll, although it is ten o'clock at night; and at eleven o'clock it is still light, but be- ginning to darken. AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 291 Dawn comes early here ; but, although the inn peo- ple went to bed last night in daylight, while we were out walking, there is no thought of breakfast before the customary British half-past eight. Although there are not so many wayside flowers hereabouts, the village gardens are a revel of glory with honeysuckle, larkspurs, roses and orange lilies. We leave Loch Tay through the little village of Killin, over a bridge across the Dochart, and the water of the narrow river goes surging over ledges of rocks, and pine trees hang pictorially over the wa- ter, and a line of white cottages, set flush with the road, add to the view, and marvelously beautiful mountains rise close at hand, and as we leave we look back in admiration at this superb line of heights ; and we go on by the side of the river, which has become suddenly quiet and peaceful above the rocks, and in front of us rise other splendid towering heights. No- where on the journey thus far have we been in such a lovely spot, and it is pleasant to think that we are in such splendid beauty on the Fourth of July! Far in the distance rises Ben More, lofty and som- ber and proud and with snow-touched summit. We go on through a region of wild, bare, treeless gran- deur; and we see great horned Highland cattle star- ing at us from unfenced fields, and once in a while we come to a blackened stone cottage with thatched roof and again with one of those surprising thatched chimneys, and one cottager, who asks us in, shows us that his thatch-topped chimney is actually lined with wood. The only possible explanation that oc- curs to us of how these buildings escape fire for gen- erations is that this is a peat-burning country; but even that does not do away with the danger and the wonder of it. At length we come to the foot of towering Ben More, and on a bit of level not far above the road 292 TOURING GREAT BRITAHS- there still stands, in absolute solitude, a fragment of stone cottage; a gable end, a couple of rude fire- places, a trifle of ruined wall ; and the interior of the cottage is one solid mass of nettles. In this cottage lived for a time the famous Rob Roy MacGregor, head of a ferociously proscribed and persecuted clan, and he fled from here and his cottage was burned, but the scattered inhabitants still know it as Rob Roy's home. A pair of curlews fly up from their nest within it as we approach and scream wildly over our heads; a tiny mountain brook ripples close by; and all else is great, bleak immensity. Here the solitude and the beauty so tempt us that we lie down for a while in the bright sun on the soft, springy, fragrant heather and look up at the tall mountains rising in the sky and off at the sweeping views; but soon we are on our way again, and now it is through sweetness as well as grandeur, and we come to Crianlarich, a little village and railroad sta- tion set here as if to show that a place may be unat- tractive even in the midst of grandeur and beauty. From here the road forks, one branch going to the westward and the other south toward Loch Lomond, and we chose the southern branch, and it leads us be- tween splendid heights for miles and miles, with slopes and valleys rich with heather and with tufts of yellow gorse, and with little rivulets rushing wildly down the mountainsides and often tumbling in white, dashing waterfalls that make foamy streaks among the rocks and heather — it is a wonderfully beautiful road, and never could there be finer, cleaner and more bracing air. We pass a field covered thick with white sea- gulls, although we are far from the sea; and in a little while Loch Lomond comes into view, a beauti- ful length of water lying superbly among superb mountains. AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 293 We stop at Ardlui, at the head of the lake, where there is a good hotel, and we have luncheon here and leave the car in the garage and go aboard a little steamer — not large enough for a motor itself, and so no motors can cross Loch Lomond — and we take a ride on the lake, and a delightful and superb ride it is, with the great heights holding the winding wa- ter in their hollow. We get off at Inversnaid, and here we are in the thick of Highland tourist travel, in contrast to the miles of lonely mountain road over which we have just come, and here we take one of several coaches filling up to drive to Loch Katrine, five miles away; a little lake of sheer loveliness, all greens and blues and purples in the midst of its beautiful heather-covered mountains. It makes a delightful interlude, this boating and coaching to a place beautiful in itself and noteworthy as the scene of " The Lady of the Lake " ; and we realize, too, one of the changes that have come with motor cars, and that is, that in the past coaches with their scarlet-coated drivers have stood for luxury and charm of travel, but that now they seem very slow even for going through a beautiful country, and that one misses not only the swiftness of the motor car but its smoothness and ease. We returned to Inversnaid, a place curiously Swiss in aspect, with its mountain hotel and thronging tour- ists, and we had tea there, with the bright, gossipy, eager, largely American throng; and it was pleasant to meet pleasant Americans on the Fourth. Very few of either the English or Americans were going to the north of the lake, as this is an hour's stopping- point almost altogether for travelers on rapid trips between Glasgow and Edinburgh. We returned to Ardlui, and the car was taken from the garage, and we turned our faces south- ward for a drive of twenty-five miles along the en- 294 TOURING GREAT BRITAI]^ tire length of Loch Lomond, the largest of British lakes. That ride remains in our memory as one of the supreme impressions of the tour. We found, almost from the beginning of it, that, as Loch Katrine is a little lake of supreme lovehness, so Loch Lomond is a large lake of supreme loveliness; and the loveliness is ever changing in character. This road down the western side of the lake — there is no road down the other side — is in itself a perfect piece of road-making, cut as it is out of the very rock, just above the surface of the water, so that always the water goes shimmering away from our very wheels or else is close at hand and seen through wav- ing bracken or shrubs, and always great heights go towering, with their rocks and solitudes, immediately from our side, and always, across the widening and narrowing lake, is another line of splendid moun- tains. Ben Lomond (a name vaguely rich in the vaguest of memories) rises majestically, with mist hovering vaguely around its summit, and our road goes on, with infinite roundings and bendings which follow the bendings and windings of the shore as it curves at the foot of the mountains ; and once it bends with a bending beach away, and once — and it seems more impressive than as if this had happened many times — a splendid wild bird, huge and brown, with feathered feet (it seemed to fit the name of ptarmi- gan, but perhaps it was not one), mounted swiftly from the waterside in a long-slanting flight as if aim- ing at one of the summits. It was typical of the wild fascination of it all. \ It is a ride of lonely grandeur, of inexhaustible beauty; rarely is there a house of any sort and seldom do we even pass a motor car and never a horse; and toward the end the lake goes broadening out in a de- lightful conglomeration of water and dotted islands, AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 295 with the great mountains sinking into finely rounded hills. From here we go southward into a region sprin- kled with beautiful private estates, and thus on through a lowland country to Dumbarton, still frowned over by its great Clyde-set castled rock. It is a crowded city, and gives an impression of uneasy discomfort. It was Saturday evening, and crowds, as is usual in Britain, were thronging roadway and sidewalk alike; and we noticed quite a sprinkling of white-coated soldiers who were both in tartans and intoxicated — that is, they were all in tartans and quite a number were intoxicated. It was still so light and Dumbarton was so unat- tractive that we ran on to Glasgow, reaching that city after nine o'clock through a long manufacturing and ship-building series of suburbs. We noticed, as we approached the city, by far the largest manufactur- ing establishment we had seen anywhere in Great Britain, and not until we had commented on this fact did we see in the twilight that it had on it the name of an American sewing machine! Although it was late, the Glasgow streets were crowded with humming, buzzing, moving masses of people. There were street preachers; there were young men singing and dancing; there was a great deal of drinking; there were many women carrying babies; there were young men and their sweethearts going into cheap and respectable little restaurants; there were numerous drunken men; and the police- men, of whom there were many to be seen, went always in pairs or even three together, which grimly showed what dangers were seething beneath the surface. There were corporation-owned tram-cars, double- deckers, and it amused us hugely to notice on their fronts such signs as " Gang warily " and " Always 296 TOURING GREAT BRITAITsT Face Forward : Proverbs 3d Chapter, 23d Verse " — and the Scotch, supposedly a Bible-reading folk, are expected to know that this means : " Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stum- ble." We looked this up ourselves in the Bible sup- plied to each room in the hotel, for, though they expect their own people to know the Bible, perhaps they do not expect that knowledge from visitors. As we motored about the city the next morning, we found ourselves forced most carefully to follow the " gang warily " admonition, for the streets were littered with fragments of broken bottles; a Sunday- morning comment on a Glasgow Saturday night. But the city distinctly gives the impression of a pros- perous and busy place. There are extensive university buildings and art galleries, which do not particularly attract in appear- ance; and we took a look at the altered and "re- stored " cathedral, which is a striking example of what can be done if a city is determined to take the beauty from an old building; for there is now such a mixture of poor architecture showing as makes the name of the patron saint, St. Mungo, seem vaguely to fit the general aspect. Without feeling frivolous, as all Glasgow was go- ing to church, it did mildly amuse us to read a sign, " Teeth stopped and scaled " ; and of course we mo- tored to the waterside and along by the whai'ves and the shipbuilding yards, and then, in a gray forenoon, with a drizzly rain threatening but not fulfilling its threat, we were across the Clyde and into a bold, bare, rolling, morasslike, boggy, featureless country over which it was a pleasure to go quickly; and perhaps the overcast sky did add to the effect of dreariness. At one spot we did stop, however, and this was because, off in a lonely bog, or moss as it would here be called, stood a solitary monument which demanded AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 297 investigation. By bog-trotting warily the monument was reached with dry feet, but it was only to find that the shaft had been raised to the memory of the wife of a member of Parliament who had wished for burial here; and as this was stated on the monument, in- cluding the fact of the husband's being a Parliament man, it was not unkind to think that the wife had chosen loneliness even in death rather than speeches. By tliis road we reached Ejlmarnock and found not a willow in the place. But we did find a most excel- lent Sunday-noon dinner, just as ready as if we had ordered it for that particular time. In the dozen miles from Kilmarnock to Ayr the country changes its uninteresting character and be- comes delightful, and the roadbed itself, which has been not quite up to the average, becomes smooth and excellent; and there are rich farms with large clusters of well-kept farm buildings around the farm- houses, and there are great pastures dotted with white and brown-red cattle, beasts with very large faces, which we take to be the famous Ayrshires; and by fair woodland and hedges and now and then a shin- ing glimpse of the sea we come to Ayr. CHAPTER XXIX BY AFTON WATER AND GRETNA GREEN AYR itself is a plain and ordinary town, through which we pass without stopping, and soon we 'enter a superb avenue of old beeches with branches so thickly crossing and interlacing overhead as distinctly to give a twilight effect to the road even in mid-day, and as Tarn o' Shanter is supposed to have gone through this road on his famous fateful night, it is small wonder that he was ready for experiences. Emerging from this shaded stretch, we are quickly in the little village of Alloway, where Burns was born, and where the cottage itself is still standing; a plain, humble little place of plastered clay with a thatched roof; now newly plastered and revamped, and piously closed for Sunday. How this would have amused Burns! But beyond being interested in seeing this humble place and thereby understanding how very far Burns mounted to his fame, we are interested in him en- tirely in his out-of-door aspect, for the only Burns of importance is the out-of-door Burns. Near his home is the ruined little Alloway Kirk, its crumbling walls so hung with ivy and jessamine, so moldering in its heavy green shade, and with its close-packed old gravestones so covered thick with moss, as to seem a ghostly place even in daylight and to be worthy of better ghosts than his unimpressive witches. But almost immediately beyond this we come upon one of the places that stand for the greatness of Burns, for here we come to the Doon. 298 BY AFTON WATER 299 The greatness of Burns is in his songs; from his boyhood he conned and crooned the ancient and al- most forgotten tunes of Scotland and his passionate love for those wild, sweet airs was the sole sincerity of his life. He had genius for writing songs and he wrote them to lilt to those vanishing airs of the past. He has so set forth such things as the banks and braes of bonnie Doon, and the gently-flowing Afton, as to make them loved and remembered forever by the world. And so it was beside the Doon and the Afton that we looked for Burns. The Doon is really so lovely! And we like Burns the better that he immortalized a stream that is so near the bare baldness of his birthplace and village. An old stone bridge arches itself across the water, and beneath the bridge goes softly rippling the stream into whose name he has forever put music. It is a lovely spot, and trees grow thickly and lean far for- ward over the very water itself. The fair-blooming banks of the poet's time are just as fair to-day; and that one side of the river, immediately below the bridge, is a park, and that it is a favorite Sunday- afternoon resort for the people of Ayr, has not taken away the delicate beauty of the scene. From the banks of the Doon we ran back two or three miles to much-monumented Ayr and, without going through the center of the town, struck to the eastward by a fine road through a charming land, a rich grazing country, with farm buildings clustered prosperously. On the whole, this is the most level countryside that we have found in Scotland, but even this is far from being really level, for it is softly rolling and now and again offers the unexpectedness of a really widespread view of miles, to low hills dim in the distant haze. A drizzle comes on, but soon stops, and we go on with a cold wind and under a sunless sky, but still with a sense of going through 300 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN a cheerful country; and again and again there is the effect of cottages whitewashed to brilliancy set in the midst of very green fields. Thus we come in sixteen miles to Cumnock, and here we swing southeast and in five miles more reach New Cumnock, and at New Cumnock is the Afton, for it flows through the edge of the town. But we do not need to remember the Afton by its village aspect; for beside the stream at the village edge we met the delightful wife of the village doctor, and she loved the Afton, flowing as it did past her own dooryard, and she was delightedly interested to find that her Afton was famous — we were the only strangers she had ever heard of who had sought for the Afton — and, understanding that we wanted to see it in more than village surroundings, she pointed out a road by which we could come upon its course in perfect wildness; and two or three miles from the village we had the joy of discovering the river where it looked as it looked when Burns sang of it. Here Afton Water is a murmuring stream of love- liness, flowing through a tiny glen thick-sheltered with close-growing trees and flowing out from among bare-topped rounding hills. It is a stream of alter- nate smoothness and rock-filled shallows, but it is always a stream of gentleness. Its pleasant banks, its green valle}^ even the wild-whistling blackbirds in their thorny den — here it is just as Burns saw it; and we know how beautifully a little earlier in the spring the poet's primroses were blossoming wild in these woodlands. It is a place to rest by; and never was the spirit of a spot more adequately expressed than by the words of " Sweet Afton." Nowhere in Scot- land have we seen the grass so long, the clover so thick, the fields more beautiful with wild flowers or more beautifully bordered by trees. Leaving New Cumnock and the vale of Afton be- BY AFTON WATER 301 hind us, we strike into the valley of the river Nith, and follow a winding road that follows the broad and pleasant windings of the stream. In a few miles we come to Sanquhar, a plain and ordinary town, but a monument which stands where once stood the town cross commemorates events that make this ordinary- sfeeming place one of brave importance to the Scotch themselves ; for this town is in the heart of the region that was the center of the deadly religious persecu- tion of the Covenanters not much over two centuries ago, and the monument keeps in mind that two dif- ferent declarations were published here, in " the kill- ing time," as the inscription, with grim simplicity, has it. And unexpectedly, after passing through this now humdrum place, there comes into sight, not far away, the ruin of a stately castle built in the long ago to watch here in Nithdale; and we do not need to know its history; it is enough that it rises up for us out of the distant past and sinks vaguely into the past again. By an attractive road we continue down the val- ley, which holds and increases its pleasant charm as it broadens gently in its mildly twisting course. It was a run of a dozen miles or more from gloomy Sanquhar to Thornhill, where we planned to spend the night; a dozen miles of picturesque motoring be- side the Nith as it went wandering onward with a sort of careless grace. The ever-changing landscape was ever sweet in its pictorially pastoral attractive- ness. The mellowness of late afternoon lay over the hushed valley. The air came mild and sweet. In all, Nithdale showed itself to us as one of the most softly beautiful valleys in Great Britain. Approaching Thornhill, we turned aside before entering the village, to run through an estate of the Duke of Buccleuch. It is not his most important 302 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN^ place; he may possibly come here for a couple of months in the shooting season; he owns here, as we are told, a trifle of land some twenty-six miles long and from four to six miles wide, including of course the very river itself and any houses or villages that may happen to come within this scope; and he freely permits strangers to drive for miles through even this private park, and we take a look at the huge and costly pile, standing in square and tower-cornered impressiveness, built two centuries ago by a preced- ing ducal owner; and we find it not particularly fine in spite of its dignity of size and the great name of its designer, Inigo Jones. We were agreeably astonished, in little Thornhill, far up there in an out-of-the-way and very sparsely settled corner of the world, to find a delightful and picturesquely furnished inn, equipped with gas and telegraph and telephone and plumbing. They gave us French bread for dinner and even a wood-pigeon pasty. And this pasty was out of the land of romance — it was baked in a rectangular deep dish two feet long and more than a foot in width and it seemed as if there were as many wood pigeons in its depths as there were in the great rhyme-famous pie of the blackbirds; and the explanation of all this is that this is a shooting district and that all those who secure the privilege to shoot are not house- guests of the duke, so that a good inn has a natural place here. In the morning, this entire region being one of song inspiration, we could not go southward without first going to the home of one in honor of whose charms was composed a song so sweet and so famous that all the world knows her name; for the name is Annie Laurie. So we took a side road leading off to Maxwellton; which is not at all the jNIaxwelltown near Dumfries, BY AFTON WATER 303 some fifteen miles to the southward; and the road led for five miles through the heart of a delightful region to Maxwellton House; a fine old place, long ago burned and partly rebuilt; a largish white house of many gables, looking down into a charmingly grassed and wooded and flowered swale. Within the house the very room of Annie Laurie is still preserved, and among the old and interest- ing portraits of admirals and generals of the Laurie family, on the walls of this older portion of the house, is a two-centuries-old painting which is supposed to be that of Annie Laurie herself, in all the sweetness of her beautj^ We were delightfully received here. The master of the house, a Laurie, is ninety-two years old, but he sent word to show us everything, with his regrets that his blindness made it impossi- ble to receive us in person. — And when his end comes Death will have a gentleman for a companion. We motored about this immediate country for quite a number of miles, for the song is right in its declaration that Maxwellton's braes are bonnie. It is everywhere a charming neighborhood, and even the little viUage of ]Moniave, set among the hills not far away, has a quaint, flower-bedecked, thrifty, little charm of its own; this jVIoniave being the village of the ugly named farm of Craigenputtock, up a very rough stone road, where Carlyle for a time lived and where our own Emerson visited him and where Jane Welsh Carlyle lamented for the world the unpleas- antness of it all. It is curious thus to notice what differences come from different attitudes of mind and different possibilities of enjoyment, and that braes may be bonnie or the reverse, according to the indi- vidual; and in all of our journeying we have seldom been more pleased than in finding, in this thoroughly delightful region, the home and the room and the portrait of the heroine of one of the sweetest oj^ld 304 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN songs, and also in finding that it is under her own name that Annie Laurie is immortalized and that her memory is still vividly cherished here. We had hoped, when at Afton Water, to see the " green-crested lapwing," because to Burns it meant part of this countryside, and we actually see it here at Maxwellton in the same general region; a slender- legged bird, high crested and bluey-gray in general color, rising from the clipped laurestines of Maxwell- ton House. But even a charming region like this could not continue to hold us, and we took up our journey southward. There are fine private estates hereabouts ; it is all a parklike country even when it is but rich pasture land, with Ayrshire cattle picturesquely speckling the fields; but in a few miles after regain- ing the main road we are in a barer region, and we turn up a narrow lane for some two miles and come to the ruined tower of Lag, dismally notorious on account of Covenanting cruelties and famous through being the scene of " Wandering Willie's Tale " ; that grim bit out of Scott's imagination which seems to have been suggestive of Hawthorne's grim story of " Young Goodman Brown." The tower is a stone shell standing on a little knoll above a farmstead, and is entirely hidden by dark trees. Again we go motoring southward, still following the river Nith, and come to the old town of Dum- fries; a busy but rather ordinary sort of place; and over in a narrow street in the poorer quarter of the town is the depressing little house where Burns spent his last years. His was not much of a rise in worldly circumstance; his life reached from one little cottage to another little cottage strangely like it; it was but a span from poverty to poverty. But between those cottages he conquered the world. Burns is buried near this Dumfries cottage in a BY AFTON WATER 305 crowded churchyard surrounded close by humble homes, and in a part of the graveyard where the stones are proudly marked " mason," " spirit mer- chant," "baker," "carpenter" and so on; and there has been erected for him there a tomb that is large and ornate. From Dumfries we ran by a cross road, through pleasant country, toward the eastward, and just as we were saying to ourselves that this , was an en- tirely featureless tract we came to the stern ruin of an ancient castle — we did not stop to find what it was — and the road opened upon a sweeping view, with mountains standing high in the distance, and we came to an agreeable little lake with an agreeable little town beside it, whose people had recentlj'' put up both a statue of Bruce and a pubhc fountain; and it was a pleasure to see that a community could be at the same time so practical as to build a fountain and so sentimental as to put up a statue to a hero of six centuries ago. We reach Lockerbie and here turn southward and in a few miles are in Ecclefechan, a bare little town of bare little stone houses without dooryards. In one of the few streets a dirty little stream runs by the side of the road, as far as possible a contrast to what a little Scotch stream may be, and looking across this is the bare, dirty-white, two-family cottage where Thomas Carlyle was born ; a dour, fierce man coming naturally out of this dour, bare village. Like Burns, he climbed high from poverty, but unlike Burns he gained friends and station; but he was brought back to this bare little place to be buried in a desolate graveyard whose forbidding wall is stuck with bills and which is centered by a dismal, dull-red church; and on the big, plain, brown stone under which he rests is the word " Humihtate " — the strangest of words to apply to a man who of all things never knew 306 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN humility. Or does it mean that it took death to hum- ble him? We remembered, as we motored out of Eccle- fechan, one of the oddest of literary coincidences, which was that Burns was in Ecclefechan in the very same year in which Carlyle was born there, and that he wrote of the town as " the unfortunate, wicked little village of Ecclefechan." From here we go on with the pleasantest antici- pation, for we are running to Gretna Green, and as we go spinning along we feel a salt wind which comes stinging into our faces and we catch glimpses of gleaming Solway Firth and we thrill to remember that into that water John Paul Jones sailed with his American ships far back in the brave Revolution- ary days. A bright and pleasant but modern-looking little place is Gretna Green, and humdrum even without thinking of its own contrast with its mass of romance. Within the village we find amusing internecine war- fare; it is a village divided against itself, for each house seems to claim against every other house that it alone was the original marrying spot, and before long the visitor is reduced to fixing upon the one he would have fancied for himself or else to thinking that there were so many romantic marriages there that they just divided them up generally among the houses. The claim made for one house particularly interested us: " It was just runaway royalties that was married here; and of course it was only foreign royalties " — and we shall never know just what for- eign royalties fled to Gretna Green! The house which interested us most was a once- while toll-house, an old white house, than which noth- ing could be more glaringly white; in fact, the dif- ference between the country cottages of this entire region has been that, whereas some are whitewashed BY AFTON WATER 307 impossibly white, the others are whitewashed still whiter ! Close beside this once-while toll-house is a httle stream, crossed by a stone bridge against which stands a clump of trees, and in the middle of the bridge our car was halted with the front seat in England and the rear seat in Scotland! But this international separation did not long continue, and we went on with the blue water of Solway close on our right and broad white sands of the Solway stretching into the distance, and we saw clouds of light yellow dust blown away from the lonely sands. And now the road ran on through a dreary heath covered with faint blossoming heather and with blue- berries, except for the places where peat is dug and stacked; for much of the heath is a dryish bog from which peat is cut for fuel ; and the few scattered trees are white birches. It did not seem, however, as if we were really in England until we had gone eight or nine miles farther and reached Carlisle ; for one alwaj^s thinks of Carlisle as being literally on the border line. We approached this city with a great deal of interest, on account of its very ancient memories, but found it to be a city of memories alone, except for its castle, which is to a great extent modernized and is a bar- racks for soldiers, and its cathedral, which has been so altered as to look neither old nor interesting, and a few old houses alongside of a few built in an un- successful effort to look old; but there was an at- tractive approach to the city and the place itself struck us as businesslike; and the soldiers of the garrison pleasantly brighten the streets. It was in- teresting to walk along the old battlements of the castle, and to look from these battlements far across the plain; and as we left the castle the evening fan- fare was sounded to mark the closing hour, and there 308 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN was a clanking of arms as the night guard was set, and we felt vaguely the fascination of the Carhsle of our fancy; but we looked about us and saw that the old Carlisle had really gone, and thereupon we motored on still farther into England. It is a perfect road for the eighteen miles to Penrith, through a country of rising hills; and we are in Cumberland. A line of mountains marches into view on the western horizon. It is after seven o'clock and the air is of a fine mellow clearness. The mountains assume a finer and more beautiful aspect and rise more nobly against the sky as we watch them from our road, which runs along a high level, with a great sweeping valley down below. Penrith is itself a rather modern-seeming town which gives an impression of being all hotels; but curiously tucked out of sight at the very edge of the single busy street is a picturesque old church, and behind the line of buildings on the other side of the street are the ruins of the ancient red castle. We had noticed, motoring into Penrith, a little broken glass in the roadway; one of the not over half a dozen times in the entire three thousand miles, with the exception of the city of Glasgow; and we had come to realize that the glassless roads were due in the first place to the thriftiness of the British in not throwing away bottles and then to the patrol service of the great automobile clubs, and very much indeed to the fact that the glass milk bottles which so litter our own roads seem to be unknown in Eng- land, the entire country having its milk unsanitarily handled through brass faucets from metal tanks, and finally to the fact that the roads of England run to so great an extent through uninhabited country that there are no people there to scatter debris of any kind. That the roads themselves are so uniformly good The banks and braes of boxnie Doon " Flow gently, sweet Afton " Maxwelltox House, the home of Anxie Laviue The olo toll-house, Gretna Greex, at the Scotch-English bordek line BY AFTON WATER 309 is due to careful making, to the cheapness of hand labor, to the use of tar as a binder (and this is to a great extent coming in) and to the fact that they have no intense heaving frosts, almost never a tor- rential rain and never that destructive condition, a prolonged drought. Also, the roads are kept neatly mended in the spots where they wear through and their drainage is watched and seen to, and when it is added to all this that they have been building these roads for a great many years and that there is noth- ing like the automobile traffic or traffic of any kind that American macadam roads bear, it will be some- what understood why the British roads are so fine. Although the use of motor cars is increasing over there, they are not gaining anything like the vogue of America; not only do they pay exorbitantly for gasoline and for lubricating oil, but the cars them- selves are much more expensive for makes which, as acknowledged by the English themselves, are of no better quality. One popular-price car sells for one- third more in England than it does in the United States. In addition, each owner of a car in Great Britain is taxed from thirty to two hundred and ten dollars a year, according to horsepower. We, as vis- itors, temporary sojourners, had no tax to pay. One good point about motors in England is that almost all hotels outside the large cities give garage shelter for the cars of their guests overnight free of charge, and in the few places where there is a charge it is only a shilling. Washing and cleaning the cars, however, is likely to be a little dearer than in Amer- ica ; they are very slow about washing a car and have poor facilities for it. CHAPTER XXX THE ENGLISH L^iKES WE went to Penrith as the best place from which to enter the Lake Country from the north; and it was not the broken glass we had noticed on entering the to^\7i that made us, be- fore going to the lakes, first take a short run to Eden Hall, that place of a poetically shattered goblet: poetically only, for in spite of the poets it is under- stood to be still intact. Searching for Eden Hall and its goblet, we asked our way of a well-set-up young Englishman who came on horseback out of his park gates. He was politely curious as to what could have brought Ameri- cans in this direction from Penrith and to his o^vn door. For it was not merely that we were travelers; he himself had been in India, as an officer with his regiment, as he put it; but, reallv, what was there at Eden Hall? " Why, the Luck of Eden Hall." " Oh! — Yes — I think I have heard something about that ; — an old keepsake, isn't it ? But is it really famous? " Whereupon we told him that it was a very old crA^stai goblet, that had for generations been pre- ciously preserved by the Eden family because of its being bound up by tradition with their prosperity. And we knew of this old goblet, made in Venice and kept as an English heirloom, because it was written about by a German poet whose poem was translated by an American. '*FaA\Ticy!" And he repeated under his breath: 310 THE ENGLISH LAKES 311 " Venice, England, Germany, America — and right here!" And he pointed out the road and we soon came to Eden Hall, and found it to be a square- fronted mansion, somewhat Italian of aspect, and facing out over an Italian terrace with a big Italian- like garden; a fitting place for the housing of a pre- cious Italian goblet. The family were away ; the house was occupied by strangers; the goblet itself was locked in a safe of unusual strength: but even when the family are here it is very rarely indeed that it is shown. One ancient servitor of the family said that he had never seen it himself, but that he had always been told that his father had once had a glimpse of it, and another equally ancient family servitor said that it had never been shown since Queen Victoria had visited the place three-quarters of a century ago when she was Princess Victoria. In all, it was one of those curious experiences that give so much of interest, and in the course of the experience we had seen another unknown countryside. And from Eden Hall we did not immediately swing toward the lakes, but went on through a succession of narrow, twisting English lanes and lovely little hamlets, past high-set hedges or beside bordering banks and walls, and up and up our road gradually led us till we came out on a level summit, where we could look far off in all directions, except that on one side, two miles or so away, rose a solemn line of hills so dark blue as almost to be black. And where we had mounted by a final lane is a level field in which stands an enormous circle of Druid stones of varied sizes; smaller stones, these, than those of Stonehenge, though many of them are huge. The imagination cannot repeople this height; it has nothing to go by; it has just age and immensity of impression; it is one of those cases in which, as the ^ 312 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN old lines aptly have it, " antiquity appears to have begun long after their primeval race was run." There are over sixty of these supposedly Druid stones still here, but it is evident from the spaces that there were originally even more ; and at one side there is the expected solitary monolith. There was still another place to go before respond- ing to the fascination of the nearby lakes, and this was the ruins of Brougham Castle; a ruin of great extent, a mass of red building on a low green knoll, which rises from beside a river of amber, speckled with white foam. The castle has a brave and distin- guished history and is still a brave and distinguished- looking ruin. The splendor falls on castle walls all over Great Britain, and it often seems a wonder that so many have been preserved. From here we are off, with the keenest expecta- tions, toward the English Lakes, and we just skirt Penrith in aiming for Ullswater, and we make a turn at a crossroads where the little village of Eamont Bridge has set up a monument which is unique among monuments, for it sets forth that four men of this hamlet, giving their names, went to the South Afri- can War, and that two of these men, naming them, were killed; and it thus gives as much glory to the two who risked their lives and were ready to be killed for their country as to the two who died. It was but a short run, through a delightful rolling country, be- fore we were at Ullswater, a beautiful stretch of water with mountains rising in a dark-blue group beyond it. We went on by a superb road beside the beautiful lake; a road of loveliness; and we found the lake itself characteristic of all this group of lakes, in that it is practically without flat levels between the edge of the water and the rising heights; that is to say, the lakes are literally held in the hollow of the mountains. THE ENGLISH LAKES 313 We ran the entire length of the lake to Patterdale, and then back a few miles to the north to where the romantic little waterfall of Aira Force comes leaping down the mountainside, a white streak against the blackness of the rocks. But here we were even more interested in daffodils than in a fine waterfall, for it was at the very edge of the lake, at this spot, that the daffodils grew of which Wordsworth wrote his well-known and much-loved lines; it was right here that he saw the crowd, the host of golden daffodils, beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and danc- ing in the breeze. But there was no sign of even a single daffodil. We were a little bit too late for them. And we saw not even one of their shrunken leaves to tell us where they grew. Whereupon an old road-mender, who was fortunately at that very spot, was asked if there were not in springtime many daffodils thereabouts. His old face brightened. "Yes, yes!" he ex- claimed, eagerly; "they grow everywhere"; and he waved his arm comprehensively. Then of course he could show us precisely where some plants grew? And again came his eager assent, whereupon we were vastly i^leased, and we all got out of the car, ready, with tire-irons and screwdriver, to assist the old man with his shovel in digging Wordsworth daffodils from Wordsworth's very spot; for the old man himself was readily enlisted. It all seemed delightful, for the spot precisely fitted Wordsworth's lines in being not only beside the lake but beneath the trees. But, alas ! although we dug and delved and delved and dug at spot after spot pointed out by the opti- mistic old man, we found not a single bulb; it was a case, as another poet almost expressed it, where we found not a plant nor discovered a bulb, so we left them alone in their glory. 3U TOURING GREAT BRITAIN At this point, where a large tract has been secured for the permanent use and delight of the people, we left Ullswater, by a long mountain road of easy grades, with fine views of water and of heights, and then we went for miles across a mighty rolling coun- try, over a high road up among the mountains, with fields of buttercups and English daisies often beside us, and broad stretches of heather and moor and now and then a little walled farmlet and at times pretty hedges of wild rose, and then we would come to where there were no hedges at all, but only green pastures that swept away from the roadside to the mountains that rose above our lofty road. And thus we came to Keswick, but found it not only a crowded place, but one of far from attractive atmosphere ; but we were not in any way tied to Kes- wick and therein, as we have so often realized, lies one of the great advantages of motoring, for it was a mere matter of glancing rapidly at the place and at once leaving it; and close at hand was Derwent- water, for which we had come. The ride beside little Derwentwater was three miles of beauty; and there was grandeur, too, for there were some tremendous rocky cliffs rising nobly above the road; and we reached Lodore, and found it a pleasant little waterfall; although it must be admit- ted that Southey did exaggerate somewhat about it. But it is easily seen, just off the roadside, in the gar- den of a hotel where we sat at a little outdoor table and enjoyed a pleasantly served little feast as we looked back, sitting there, up the little lake and at its mountains and their reflections. While we ate near the foot of the fall one of us remarked that Southey's lines on Lodore were probably exag- gerated in an effort to excel the unknown poet, quoted by Samuel Rogers, whose delightful lines on the Falls of Lanark, with their " roaring and grum- THE ENGLISH LAKES 315 bling and leaping and tumbling, and hopping and skipping and foaming and dripping," Southey so closely followed. We returned the short distance to Kes\\dck, and left that place by a short but winding and very steep ascent which developed into a long and steady pull, and as the top was gained there was a splendid view of mountain peaks, massed and clustered, and par- ticularly notable and even distinguished were the lines of the bare, treeless mountain-tops serrated sharply against the sky. Amid mountain and cliff effects which became magnificent, we reached another of this delightful group of mountain-set lakes, and this was Thirlmere, a very lonely-set lake, and we chose a recently-built road down its western bank, understanding it to be a road with even more superb views than those from the road down its eastern shore ; and as we passed the fork we met a four-horse touring coach, with red- coated coachman and guard, northward bound to Keswick, and it added a touch of gayety and bright- ness to the beautiful but otherwise lonely scene. It is interesting to know that this little lake, absolutely unspoiled in itself and its surroundings, is the water supply for the city of Manchester, ninety-six miles awav in an air line; and that citv has built the perfectly-made and surfaced road over which we mo- tored beside the lake. It is a glorious ride and Helvellj^n rises superbly from the water's edge. And, even though we cannot help remembering the absurdity of the great poet who made Helvellyn rhyme with " the eagle was yelling," that little absurdity served only to make the mountain seem a sort of friendly possession and did not in the slightest degree detract from the superb, bare dignity. Another few miles of glory and we are at the tiny 316 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN village of Grasmere, where the valley broadens out just before reaching the delightful little bit of water from which the town takes its name. We stayed here all night, and after dinner we walked out in the perfect evening light, following little paths that led up toward the towering mountains and feeling fascinated by the peaceful beauty of the scenes, the livable and lovable quality of it all *, it is a place to be buried in as well as to live in, and here beside little Grasmere Church is the grave of Wordsworth, the man more associated than any other with the fame of the Lake Country. We wandered slowly beside the shore of Grasmere, and, as we turned back, the long light no longer trembled across the lake, for the sun had just disap- peared behind the mountains in splendor, leaving the sky a glory of crimson clouds with stretches of pearly green between, and beneath were the great mountains, bare on their summits and fir-clad below, all heavily marked with shadows of purple, and in front of us was the shimmering water, reflecting the deep dark mountains, reflecting the beauty of the skj'-, reflecting the crimson glory of the clouds. And from far off came voices, sounding vague and sweet, and the distant plash of oars, and a wild duck with neck outstretched flashed by above us, and all was loneliness and beauty and peace. And as we went on toward the inn, lights began to twinkle through the trees from scattered cottages under the mountain- side, for though it would be daylight for two hours on the heights, darkness had now fallen in the shad- owed valley depths. In the morning we went on the short distance to Rydal Water; a lakelet of loveliness, with mountains rising all about and peeping over each other's shoul- ders, and the tiny lake has tiny little tree-massed islets. A few charming homes and cottages make up THE ENGLISH LAKES 317 the little village of Rydal, beside this water, and around these little homes are masses and masses of blooming flowers: lilies, delphiniums, rhododendrons, sweet Williams, roses and, especially at this season, Canterbury bells. The houses are delightful with their diamond panes and casement windows, and the road is bordered by splendid hedges or by ancient stone walls gray with mosses. The place is simple in its loveliness; and we go up a steep road, past a grove of magnificent beech- trees, and come to where stands the house, almost hidden among trees and shrubs and flowers on this steep hillside, where Wordsworth lived for the long period of thirty-seven years. The house is not open to strangers, but the real Wordsworth is seen in the neighboring beauty of water and trees and flowers and mountains. Although these are very old roads hereabouts through these valleys, the railroads have not even yet entered the region, but touch it only on its edges, leaving this whole Lake Country in unspoiled beauty. Leaving adorable Rydal, we motored to Ambleside, a town at the head of Windermere, and here, with- out immediately seeing more of Windermere than lovely glimpses from its head, we ran through wind- ing and wandering roads among lovely hills to Conis- ton Water, one of the little-known lakes of the district. And we were glad, when we came to Coniston Wa- ter, that the day had become misty, with gusts of rain, for we had been seeing sunny lakes bordered by sunny mountains and here there was all the beauty of a lake shyly hiding among mists and bordered by mist-veiled mountains, and at times the mists would go scurrying over the surface of the water and the mountain clouds would shift and change. Here in Coniston Water, even now a lonely lake 318 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN in a lonely region, lived John Ruskin ; and we looked forward with keenest interest to see in what kind of home this man chose to live who criticised every- thing which claimed to be art. And his house is curiously what one would not expect. In the first place, one would expect Ruskin to live in the midst of an old civilization; perhaps on some Italian lake or in the Grand Canal or perhaps even in London, but certainly not in this wild and lonely spot, which we approach by a series of steep woodland descents as we come from Windermere. And the house itself is very different from what we expected. We had wondered whether we should find a cottage or a pal- ace; but it is neither. Standing but a little above the lake, massed among extremely thick trees at the foot of a hillside, it does not represent the classic beauty which Ruskin admired, but is a long, ram- bling house of pale-yellow stucco; an extremely at- tractive and comfortable place, but one which follows neither epoch nor style. It is neither English nor Italian; nor, although Ruskin built it, is it Ruskin. Looking across its narrow terrace, there is a beauti- ful hill and water view, though he could have got better views without going so far. A little pebbled path leads in front of the house, and is bordered by exquisite rose trellises, each one framing a picture of the lake — a fascinating idea. We entered the dining-room from this path and found that it fronts out over the lake, and that at one side is a great bank of narrow windows, in almost Venetian style, with stone mullions and Gothic tops; but they are not just right, and one wonders that he of all men should have tolerated them. And all this is what he himself designed, for he took a little cot- tage and made it into this large house. The furniture, and we are assured it was his own choosing, is of reddish mahogany and of solid, plain THE ENGLISH LAKES 319 round-cornered type ; it is not only far different from what one would expect from a lover of the glorious old-time designs, but is not good from the standards of to-day. Ruskin did not express his personality in his home, which is merely good and solid and com- fortable, but without beauty or distinction. But there is one exception, and it is an exception, indeed. For on these pea-green walls, among paint- ings of Ruskin himself as a child and of his parents, are paintings that he personally chose for his home; such as a Doge of Venice, by Titian, and a notable Botticelli, and paintings by Turner and Reynolds. His library is as he left it, and has a bowed-glass window so simple and so fascinating as one looks out of it through the roses and at the view that one al- most forgives him for his little Victorian fireplace! The house, perhaps it should be added, is not shown unless one has an introduction. As we motored away from the spot we noticed, growing wild in a meadow some distance from the house, a great quantity of yellow iris, which in Eng- land is a wild flower, and we eagerly said that, if we could not have the Wordsworth daffodils, we would at least have the Ruskin iris ! And we at once dug up some roots and carried them with us to take home to plant in our garden. From here we swing by splendid hilly and devious roads back to Windermere and, rounding the south- ern end of this largest lake in England, run north- ward over a road along the shore, a road of con- stant interest and beauty, with somewhat of homes and hamlets ; and come to the pleasant town of Win- dermere and at this point bid farewell to the Lake Country, and turn to the southeastward, out of Westmorland and in the direction of central England. CHAPTER XXXI ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS WE went on by splendid roads, through sweep- ing views, past pleasant homes, past hay- makers in the fields; for we are quickly away from the wildness of the Lakes and into simple, rural beauty. The drizzle of the morning has left us; and ancient homes, old churches, walls topped with golden privet, views alternately wide stretching and delicately circumscribed, all are of fascination in the bright sunlight. Then comes an almost dramatic change, for a great storm approaches, coming swiftly out of nowhere and of intense blackness, and we see haymakers madly rushing to save their crops. We are nowhere near a town, but watch for a shelter and then the storm is upon us — but we are fortunate, for it merely draws its wet edge over our car and we see the center of it crossing the road through a valley in front, and it flings itself against a great hill, which it entirely en- velops in absolute blackness. It is all so black and swift as to be almost terrible in its grandeur. Thus missing the storm, we go on under a sky that now is grayl}^ overcast, and through the cool of evening our motor is eating up the miles, and we pass ancient arching stone bridges over ancient running streams — and it occurs to us that these ever-new streams are of themselves of the ancient things of England. In one of the little towns we passed an inn on whose front was the naive sign " The Naked Man." 320 ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 321 We had had " The Old Tumbling Sailor," " The Merchant of Aleppo," "The Eagle and Child," " The Loyal Trooper," " Old First and Last," " The Mare and Colt " and " The Ship Aground," but this outdid them all. It was clear that the name came from a very old stone figure built into the wall of the building; a figure which was, to say the least, indicative of the name. It was a long and splendid flight, and we thought again, as we have so often thought on our journey, of how different from each other the different parts of Great Britain are, and how these different char- acteristics make for such ever-changing variety. It was well on in the evening when we reached the town of Skipton, through an extremely narrow approach into the town, and then on through the town by a great widening that is half street and half market- place, and drew up at a hotel where we found we could not stay, because it was to be sold under fore- closure next morning. So we went to another, pass- ing a thronged corner where a nervous and officious policeman was issuing contradictory commands. But he was easily managed by the simple question, " Now, just where do you want us to go? " And we went. There is an ancient church here in Skipton which still rings the curfew at eight o'clock, but that no- body pays any attention to it does at least take away from its importance. The church is an effective square-towered old building, with stately monuments to the Cliffords, for this is the center of the Clifford country, and near the church is the superb towered gateway which leads from the street of the almost sordid town into the grounds of the mighty castle, the old-time seat of the powerful Cliffords, one of the great family names of English history. Even now, after the numberless things we have seen on our long journey, we still find that we can 322 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN be enthusiastic in regard to an old castle, and espe- cially such an old castle as this. We go through the gateway in the bright morning sunlight, and find that a great part of the great structure is practically modern and that it is lived in, but also that a very great extent is very old and unused and entirely un- changed. We enter an inner courtyard, a lovely place which was a century old at the time when that famous Clifford known as the Shepherd Earl, the son of Shakespeare's " black-faced Clifford," led his great following to Flodden ; and so we take it that the great yew-tree in the center of this court is probably five hundred years old ; and it so spreads out its umbrella- like branches as to roof over the entire courtyard and give to it all a deep-green, ghostly gloom; and yet, though it is gloom, it is a pleasant gloom, dimly sug- gestive of centuries of happiness. Fair Rosamond was born in this castle, though not perhaps in any part now preserved, and perhaps some sense of her beauty lingers vaguely about the old pile; and an- other beautiful woman was here, Mary Stuart, when a prisoner. Ancient stone coats-of-arms, almost obliterated by Time, range around the yew-tree's base. The tree itself is mossed to the very top of its trunk, and moss touches lightly the red stone of the courtyard walls, the lovely, narrow mullioned windows and the pro- jecting oriels. It is an intimate little courtyard, sug- gestive of romance and sweet mystery and not in the least of the grimness and sternness of the past; and from here we go wandering through a labyrinth of ancient, empty rooms, and once we walk up ancient steps that were built in the time of William the Con- queror; for we are walking through the centuries, here in this great ancient portion of the castle, and come to nothing less ancient than hundreds of years ago. ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 323 Doors open fascinatingly into ancient little rooms or great halls and apartments, and there is an ancient kitchen with its great fireplaces for many generations cold; there are ancient empty bedrooms whose cap- tivating windows are what we have been admiring from the courtyard; many of the labyrinthine pas- sages are dark and gloomy and a winding dark stair leads us down to what no house of the good old times was really complete without, an absolutely dark dungeon ; and we mount to the very roof, all of stone and seamed with lead, and from here there are fine views over the hills and moors, and we see, what is now hidden from the town approach, the stream that made the ancient moat winding around the castle base. And it may be added that the so-called new part of the castle was built two hundred years ago. We had often heard that on some of the old castles and mansions of Yorkshire, and we are now in York- shire, there was open stone lettering of family mot- toes along the tops of parapets, and here we saw, most effectively lettered against the sky, over the ancient gateway, in open letters, Desormais^ that stand-forever motto of the Cliffords, Henceforth. And yet the memory of the mighty Cliffords has gone ; the family glory glimmers through the dreams of things that w^ere. And this is remindful of an amazing discovery that we have made in England. We had taken it for granted that not only are castles old, but that the peerage is old ; that not only are the rights and the wealth of the peers immense, but that all this has been inherited prescriptively through cen- turies from the time of the Norman Conquest. So it amazed us to find, gradually, that of the many dukedoms the very oldest was created in 1398, that thirteen were created in the eighteenth century and six even as late as in the nineteenth; that no mar- quis' title is older than 1551, that twenty marquisates 324 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN are of the nineteenth century and that three are even of the present twentieth ; and so it goes on even more surprisingly with the lower peerage ranks. The ancient families have dwindled in importance or dis- appeared, and the devotion and subservience of the people have been transferred to these upstarts, men of wealth, brewers and distillers, soapmakers and dry- cleaners, or their descendants, with quite a number, among the most prominent and wealthy of all, de- scendants of women who gave questionable service to royalty, and with a sprinkling of men famous in the law and of others who have won their country's battles. Such thoughts naturally come at this ancient stronghold of the Cliffords; and from this castle we go on our way to another interesting memento of ancient times but of different character, for five miles from Skipton Castle are the ruins of Bolton Abbey. Bolton Abbey is a beautiful ruin set in alluring environment ; and how the old-time monks did choose beauty spots! — as at Tintern, at Fountains and here. We enter the broad abbey grounds literally through a hole that was long ago broken through the wall and which is still used as the main entrance. It is curi- ous, too, that this is one of the few places in Eng- land where there is no admission charge; and yet it is owned by one of the dukes. The abbey is on a low-set peninsula and a river bends sweetly and restfuUy by, and there is a wide stretch of meadow and of easy, grassy slopes, and far away rise low cliffs ; it is peculiarly a place of peace- fulness, even the great woolly cattle with their curv- ing horns that come up to us, come peacefully; and a positively captivating bit is an ancient series of stepping-stones, fifty-eight in number, set firmly in the riverbed. We crossed from side to side of the stream on these stones just as the monks themselves Looking across Thirlmehe at Helvellyn The home of Joiix IIlskin on (Jonistox Water ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 325 used to cross — and rescued, or at least helped to safety, three Englishwomen who got part way and were only able to scream, each on her individual stone. As we went off through the hole in the wall, there was an invasion of boy scouts, who have become a marked and frequent feature of the English land- scape. From here w^e aim still farther into York- shire, swinging for a short time through a comfort- able and prosperous country, but soon mounting high among bare hills and going on through bareness to- ward Keighley; a place which is pronounced Keeth- ley! Approaching Keighley we had crossed the river Aire, and when we saw the familiar-looking dogs, rangy, alert, rough-coated, we recognized them as Airedales, and it was pleasant to think that we had been running through the region where this dog has long been raised. Keighley is a modern, prosperous-looking, manu- facturing place, and at a corner in the center of the town in front of a public building we saw some half- dozen pohcemen looking intently and watchfully at nothing, and standing in immovable silence, and fac- ing them were several hundred men ranked with almost military precision away from the center of the road, and these men also stood in immovable silence, and each of these, hundreds of men had his eyes fixed upon the entrance of the building. It was an uncanny scene, in the threatening tenseness of it. It appeared that a strike was on in the town and that one of the leaders had been violently arrested, and that all of these men, his friends, were standing here in mute protest waiting for liim to appear on his way to court. From Keighley we turn off into a great moor coun- try, a stern region of bare and sweeping land, high and bleak, and we go through a series of unhappy- 326 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN looking villages and come to a largish town, from which we can look far up to a cluster of houses on a moorland hilltop; and a low tower that is in that cluster we know to be Haworth church, of which the father of the Bronte sisters was rector. But how to get there seems a trifle difficult; by going down still deeper and then climbing up a great steepness of road seems to be the only way; and again wonder comes that anybody could have deemed England to be a level country ! — and there comes the further and never-to-be-answered question of why people have built villages on such inaccessible and utterly unde- sirable heights. But before we essaj^ the steepness with our car, a policeman's wife, whom we find in sole charge of the police station — how delightfully they do some things over here! — lets us have water for the boiling radiator and at the same time points out a private toll-road, and we find it a queer and primi- tive little road, but it does let us into an easier ap- proach to the hilltop and to the bare little village of Haworth. Looking off from this drear hilltop, the outlook is over miles and miles of saddening bleakness, with the immediate air blackened with smoke from the fac- tories in the valley. About us, in the little village we have reached, on the top of this height, are tight- built, unhappy-looking little houses suggestive of poor living and of a narrow outlook not to be re- lieved by literal breadth of view; and in the center of the huddle is the little church and beside it is a large gloomy graveyard huddled thick with standing and lying stones. The graveyard is dismally shaded, and over a low wall which hems it in is the largish front of an old stone house, and this was the home of the Brontes. No wonder those three sisters wrote grimly! Nor is there much relief on the other side of the house, for the windows open out upon a great ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 327 stretch of desolation, and, gloomy though it is, the house does not look quite so grim as when the Brontes lived here, for the windows of its front have been widened. We left the little perched hamlet and went down the steep road which we had avoided in going up, for it would make a very material shortening of our onward distance; and there was no trouble whatever, for with a little care we managed to go easily down. Soon we had to swing up again, up long, long stretches of climbing roads, and we went for miles across a summit-land of moors. And here the un- happy aspect so noticeable where the moors are dotted with unhappy villages disappeared, and, in this immensity of bleakness and loneliness, with horizons illimitable, with houses rarely to be seen, there is a general aspect of stern grandeur and not infrequentlj^ much of a certain grim beauty. The seldom-seen houses are of heavy stone, with windows heavily mul- lioned, and are of a gravity and sternness befitting the sternly grave moors. All this is in the West Riding of Yorkshire; and for centuries the men hereabouts have been known as dalesmen, because they grouped their homes and farms for shelter in the deep and often abrupt val- leys which, just out of sight in the general views, intersect the moors. At length we come to the ne- cessit}^ of descending from the moors and we drop down into the busy little center of Hebden Bridge, a place with the reputation of making the best woolen cloth in England, and from here we climb again; and it is the hardest climb on our entire journey. We were to mount to tiny Heptonstall, perched far above us, and we were told that the road was very steep but good, and that it had been used in road- climbing contests, which did not sound altogether promising for people who were traveling for pleasure 328 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN alone and not for endurance; but it was suggested that at a point quite a distance up we should turn to the right at a chapel and complete the climb by a way comparatively easy. We started and went up interminably, the road getting steeper and steeper, and we looked vainly for the chapel and the turn. We did at length come to where there was a turn, but there was no sight of a chapel, and the turn was a dip down the hill, making an apparently absurd place to stop our climbing, for the road was particu- larly steep there and in addition was narrowed by some piles of repair material, and if we had stopped we should very likely not have been able to gain mo- mentum again. But it was the turn that we should have taken, after all, though we had not been told that the turn began with a downward dip, and the chapel was a building we had noticed that looked absolutely unlike a chapel and onh^ like a kind of shop or mill. And so we kept on climbing, and to- ward the summit the road became all cobbles; almost a cobbled stair; so that our progress was materially checked by the roughness as well as by the steepness ; but we kept on — it was not a place to stop even to lighten the load — and we finally mounted what the inhabitants expressively call the Buttress, and were at Heptonstall. It is a hill town curiously suggestive of the hill towns of Italy; and we found that long ago the Romans had a station here and that later the Nor- mans came; and now it is a compactly-built little place of old stone houses, stone-roofed, and in its cen- ter is a close-packed churchyard full of the mingled graves of mingled centuries; and there are two churches within the churchyard, one new, but the other a roofless but still towered ruin which dates from over six hundred years ago. Great solitary roads stretch off from here, and The home of the Brontes, beside the Haworth churchyard The moorland vai.k ok Alcomdene ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 329 deep valleys drop abruptly down, and we follow on some of the roads through a wild and glorious region and through now and then a bleak stone village and past solitary muUion-windowed farmhouses, and we come, in the midst of the stern glory of it all, to the sunny, captivating valley of Alcomdene, with a stream rippling brightly through it, and a few scat- tered ancient houses sheltered here from the great winds of the moor and each one shaded by a few dark trees. We felt the fascination of it all; and, although we were now at a place but three or four miles across the moors from Haworth, we had been compelled to detour some twenty-five miles in motoring to get there, on account of the deep hidden dales. All about Alcomdene, on the great moors that stretch off from this valley, are grandeur and beauty and loneliness without unhappiness, and we found the people in all this entire region a silent, sturdy and vigorous folk, with a certain aspect as of moun- taineers. We stayed for the night at an old house, half home and half an inn for grouse hunters — this being a won- derful grouse-shooting region — and under the morn- ing sun we looked out over the bleak country and the splendid dignity of moor and valley, and then went on our way. Before long we are out of this region and reach a region that leads us on for miles and miles through a succession of manufacturing towns; the towns all bare and unlovely and the intermittent landscape also bare and unlovely; there is a striking absence of the happiness and brightness of aspect that we should like to associate with prosperous manufacturing places. We go through Halifax; and how strange a city it seems for the writing of " Robinson Crusoe," of all books! And one realizes that this general moor coim- 330 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN try inspires books which are at least out of the com- mon line, such as " Wuthering Heights," " Jane Eyre," " The Secret Garden " and " Robinson Cru- soe." For we are still in a general moor region, but a moor region that has been turned into a manufac- turing region. We go rapidly on over slopes and through val- leys and finally approach the old manufacturing city of Sheffield, still famous for its cutlery, and we go into the city by a long, long road of houses of an unattractiveness which seems bordering on misery, and in the center of the city we see evident indica- tions that it is a wealth-producing place, but are also reminded of a statement that we have somewhere heard (but which is not true of a city like Manchester, though it may be true of this) that one never sees a man walking with a smile on his face in an English city. And we at least did not see smiles in Sheffield. We gain an impression, too, as of a city that is lack- ing in civic pride. And it is certainly a point of interest in regard to Sheffield that a great portion of the city is the personal property of the Duke of Norfolk. Worksop was our next objective point, less than twenty miles farther to the eastward, and we ap- proached it through a countryside whose beauty has largely disappeared, defaced as it is by collieries and their debris, and by brick works and factories. There is such a vast quantity of wonderfully picturesque countryside in England that it is well to realize that there is some small proportion of countryside that is spoiled. We arrived at Worksop late and spent the night there, at a thoroughly good inn, and it was curious to realize that we had come at this point to within eight miles of where we were on our northern jour- ney, when on the way to Scrooby. Worksop is en- ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 831 tirely a duke-owned town, famous for its ale, it being a possession of the Duke of Newcastle; a bare, brick, lord-owned town with only one lordly thing within it, an ancient priory gate, and even this is bare and bald in its setting. But there was one other pleasant thing in Work- sop after all, for there was a market with little fishes curled up to bite their own tails and big ones ar- ranged in geometric patterns, in the open air — of course, without ice or screens, for they would not be English! — and there was poultry, each chicken hav- ing a little snuft of feathers left on its tail to show its color and breed and with its feet curiously crossed like those of a Crusader on a monument. Inci- dentally, too, we noticed that meat and meat bones for the poorest folk could be bought for three or four cents a pound, although the best cuts were well over thirty cents a pound. In a little shop in Worksop an Englishwoman, standing beside one of us, was looking at umbrellas, and asked, dubiously, " But will this wear? " Where- upon the dealer replied, with a smile that only half bid the insolence of the cleverness — and one does so often notice a quarrelsome attitude in the British salesman! — "Can you expect eternity for five shillings? " / CHAPTER XXXII SHERWOOD FOREST AND HADDON HALL "¥ ^ TE had come to the lord-owned place with the Y ^ unlordly name of Worksop as the point from which to enter the lordly Dukeries; a name which has come to be applied to a remarkable group of ducal estates near here ; and first we motor through miles of Clumber Park and, as motors are forbidden by the direct road, we reach it b}^ a longer permissible way and enter through park gates into an avenue, three miles long, of lime-trees in a double row on each side ; and the shadows of the trees lie like castellations on the long white road. Thinnish woods, largely of white birch but also of the larch, the spruce, the pine, the fir, stretch off into the distances, and many pheasants with their little ones are cowering in the grass, and gorgeous male pheas- ants are stalking under the very tall bracken which is like a green veil spread high over the ground. And all this woodland arouses delightful memories, for all this is Sherwood Forest, so rich in romantic memories of Robin Hood. There are some enormous oaks along these forest roads which may well go back to the romantic days of the famous outlaw, and the forest is dotted with open glades: a veritable " forest ancient as the hills, inclosing sunny spots of greenery." Clumber House, which has given a name to a little kind of spaniel once raised here which, unlike other spaniels, hunts silently, is itself an immense and im- posing edifice, a little lonely and closed-up in appear- 333 HADDON HALL 333 ance, sitting low on the ground, fronted by pleasant pleasure grounds and terraces and looking out over a great sheet of water with which it is almost on a level. It is the seat of the Duke of Newcastle. A short and agreeable run takes us to Welbeck Abbey, which is not in any sense an abbey, but is the enormous mansion of the Duke of Portland. We had had romantic Sherwood Forest and Clumber all to ourselves without meeting or seeing a single other visitor, but at Welbeck there is the greatest imagi- nable contrast, for there are throngs, veritable hordes, of English visitors; almost all men — "trippers" from Leeds, Sheffield and such nearby cities, it being a Saturday afternoon — with the wives left at home; and we see not an American there but ourselves. Welbeck has a vast extent of underground rooms and passages, and the crowds go through in care of guides, with a hundred or more in each party. They go through with a careless swaggering, with a sort of admiring contempt in which the contempt is stronger than the admiration — and a certain furtive jealousy is evidently, with many, stronger than either. All visitors who wish to enter at all, and who get started on the way, are compelled to do a tremen- dous amount of walking before the guide finishes his course; and in passing between buildings we notice that a number of the men pluck garden flowers and baldly make a show of them, and in the great under- ground rooms we notice that some of them, from bravado and contempt, sit down and sprawl in valu- able chairs not supposed to be even touched. It was impossible to see these men carelessly mobbing through, without thinking what might some day hap- pen if the lure of loot and liberty were offered them. And it was interesting to hear a quiet English- man, looking with disapproval on all this, say: " I would rather have laws made by a crazy duke than by 334 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN a workingman's member of parliament." But all dukes are not crazy, although the one who built this vast underground expensiveness may well have been, nor fortunately are all British workingmen like these, who evidently come from such unhappy and unfor- tunate surroundings as we have been seeing on our way here. We expected something at least mysterious in the Welbeck subterraneanism, but it represents nothing whatever but extravagant folly and f reakishness ; and much of it is nothing more than concrete passage- ways such as might connect one warehouse with an- other; there are literally miles of imderground and semi-underground construction of one kind or an- other, although visitors are not piloted through all of it. There is a huge ballroom beautifully floored, whose glassed ceiling is on a level with the flower- beds outside, and this room has considerable ex- pensive furniture, and its walls are lined by a large number of notable paintings by Raphael, Van Dyke, Tintoretto, Rubens and others — the list is long — and, instead of this underground housing, such paintings certainly deserve to be placed in the tremendous man- sion, with its myriad rooms, above ground. They are too precious for a cellar. Everything at Welbeck is vast, and it might al- most be said that nothing is in good taste or beau- tiful, except that there must needs be considerable beauty in the flowers and trees of the vast extent of park and gardens. We leave Welbeck gladly, yet glad to have seen a place of which the world hears so much ; and strike off through a pleasant country, with ever the road wind- ing on through narrow green lanes, and passing from time to time through a little village and finally, just a few miles northwest of Mansfield, we enter a long park drive and motor on, past beautiful open glades. HADDON HALL 335 bordered by great trees, past deer that dot the green- ery and to the front of Hardwick Hall. Hardwick Hall, built in the time of Queen Eliza- beth by that famous Countess of Shrewsbury who is known to this day as Bess of Hardwick, is not only a building of superb size and beauty, but stands com- plete, unspoiled and untouched, as a building of the Elizabethan era. In the lofty open stonework, topping each corner at the front, are the stone letters " E. S.," for Eliza- beth of Shrewsbury — which nobody ever calls her! The people of the house refer to her respectfully as Elizabeth of Hardwick, and the world in general uses Hardwick with the Bess. In spite of putting on speed, we arrived here after the closing hour for visitors, which on Saturdays is one o'clock, but it merely needed a few words of explanation, and we were cheerfully shown through the entire mansion; one of the most satisfactory and interesting places in all Great Britain. There are rooms palatial in extent and in furnish- ings, and there is a wonderful collection of old-time paintings that are portraits of contemporaries of Bess of Hardwick and Queen Elizabeth ; — truly a time of imperious women, that, for Bess of Hardwick is re- puted to have been one of the most imperious that ever lived, and Queen Elizabeth was certainlj^ more imperious still. There are great, lofty, sunny rooms and galleries; there are rooms of intimate delightf ulness ; there are one or two rooms particularly associated with INIary Stuart, who spent some of her years of imprisonment in Bess of Hardwick's charge, and there are personal mementos preserved here of that unfortunate Queen, such as the bed in which she slept and the embroi- deries which she wrought. This building was never in anj" sense a castle; it 336 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" was always a palace; nor is it yet in any degree a ruin. It is a beautiful place, beautifully preserved; one remembers the old-time story that its builder, when young, was told by a fortune-teller that she would never die so long as she continued to build; whereupon the passion of her life became that of building, and she constructed other notable buildings besides this, and was never wear}'' of adding details to keep away Death; but in the bitter winter of 1607 it became so cold that her workmen had to stop — and then passed away the famous Bess of Hardwick. Hardwick Hall is one of the places particularly worth the seeing, so full is it of beauty and of inter- est; and as we motor away we take a long last look at it, standing there with such dignity on a great natural terrace above the stream, and the sun glints from its many windows, reminding us of the rhyme, contemporary with its building, of " Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall," so many thousands of glass window-panes did Bess of Hardwick put in. There was still another great mansion that we wished to see; Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire; and we reached it by running north- ward and through the aristocratically named little city of Chesterfield, which is dominated by the most grotesque thing in England, a tall, old, twisted church-spire ; not crooked, not bent, but literally and incredibly twisted. Literalists try to explain that this came gradually through a curious warping of its lead and timber construction, but those who know insist that the devil seized the spire in his hands and twisted it, a hundred years or so ago; and of course it is perfectly obvious, as a policeman squinting up at it with us said, that it has the very devil of a twist. From Chesterfield, a run of a few miles to the westward took us through pleasant little Baslow to Chatsworth Park. The immense buff-colored man- UXDER THE OAKS OF ShERWOOD FoREST A PART OF THE DUKE OF PoRTI.ANd's I'AI.ACE, WHERE A GARUEX MASKS SI' DTK It HAN KAN HOOMS The home of the famous Bess of Hi\R)\vicK" A PLACE WHICH REMAINS A WISTFUL MEMORY: HAOnON HaLL HADDON HALL 337 sion — we are told that it is five hundred and sixty feet long, and it is broad and high in proportion — is not open to visitors, nor are the roads that run near to it, but anyone is permitted to drive through the park and to view it in its distant immensity of bulk across the valley on the opposite side of the river. There are many deer in Chatsworth Park, and they are very tame, indeed, and we saw a number of sheep, plainly lettered on their sides " D. D." — which cleri- cal designation means Duke of Devonshire. Chatsworth is but a trifle over two hundred years old; but a few miles away, near tiny little Rowsley, is a building very much older and vastly more beau- tiful— Haddon Hall. All about Haddon Hall is a country of exquisite loveliness, a country of streams and meadows and flowers and scattered trees and gently- rising hills; and the name of one of these hills, tree-topped as it was, appealed to us from its aptness, for it is the Hunter's Cap. On the whole, we were glad to see Haddon Hall so near the end of our journey, for it remains in our memory as the very poetry of building, as the most lovable of all the homes of England. It was built long ago ; much of it is over five hundred ^''ears old, much of it four hundred, some of it not much over three hundred, but it is all harmoniously perfect. It is not now either lived in or furnished, but the rooms and the roof, the walls and the windows, are intact. It is everywhere a place of fascination, of delightf ulness ; nowhere in England does the man- thng ivy cover walls and corners and projections more delectably. It is a house poetically located, on a w^ooded hillside a little above a soft-flowing and alder-bordered stream. Room after room is a place of beauty; and from 338 TOURING GREAT BRITAI:N' the old ballroom, with its ancient paneling and carv- ing, we look out through little diamond-panes at a garden glimpse of captivating loveliness; and just out there — and how a good old love story helps a place! — is the very terrace over which Dorothy Ver- non slipped away, centuries ago, to meet her lover; and it might have been yesterday, for the very yews that we look at shadowed her as she fled. The low castellated walls of Haddon Hall, its fine inner courtyard, its paneled rooms, its terraces, its lovely gardens, its position above the buttercupped meadows and the bending stream, unite to make it a wistful memor}^ We had a rather early dinner, ordered as we went by to Haddon Hall, at the ancient Peacock Inn at nearby Rowsley, an inn of the days of Queen Eliza- beth, and it was delightful that we could dine so anciently and admirably immediately after leaving Haddon Hall, and then we started off for a long ride toward Liverpool, not expecting to find much of in- terest on the way, except in passing through Cran- ford again. We ran rapidly, by a highly picturesque hill and valley road, through Bakewell and up through a long, narrow ravine to Buxton, a place said to be the highest-located town in England; a large and popu- lar resort with hot springs. It was getting dusk when we reached there, but we decided to go farther before stopping for the night, and so we passed on, but we did take a look, in passing, at a hospital dome with the reputation of being the dome of greatest diameter in all Europe — a startling claim to make, and it does not look the part, but the claim is made in all seriousness and the figure of one hundred and fifty-four feet is offered, which is certainly a little larger diameter than that of the dome of St. Peter's or even of the Pantheon. HADDON HALL 339 Leaving Buxton and this astonishing hump, we went on. The map showed we were approaching a hill, but we had no thought that there would be mountain climbing to do on the way to Liverpool. But soon we struck into a lonely district, up from which led a road which mounted steadily in lengthy sweeps, and so easily that the gear did not need to be shifted. We are afraid to say how long that up- ward climb was, for we might exaggerate, but we went on and on until, as we found later, we were at the altitude of one thousand six hundred and eighty feet, and far up there we went on through an immense and sweeping stretch of miles of bareness and loneli- ness, with the ghostly dusk creeping at us over the moor. And in that desolateness it was chill and cold. We were in another world from that of the beautiful halls we had so recently left. We passed a bare tavern up there in the lofty solitude, the Cat and Fiddle; and either this loft)^ road, one of the few highest in Great Britain, is named after the tavern or the tavern is named for the road. There was a vast impressiveness about that cold and high and darkening road; and after a while we began to go down, by long and gradual descents, and it was dark when, finishing a day's run of eighty-two miles, we ran into Macclesfield, and went up the brilliantly lighted hill, and past the busy street-market and along the streets that were thick with people; and a band was playing and it was a general Saturda}^- night jolhfication. And here, on our last night before reaching Liver- pool, it was natural to talk over our experiences and estimate how we stood. The car and its engine were apparently in perfect condition; we had not even scraped paint; the original tires, of American make, though sold to us in England, with whicli we had be- gun three thousand miles before, were in excellent 340 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN* condition, and just one was beginning to show some signs of wear; the inner tubes were practically per- fect and the two extras that we carried had never been unpacked; and we had had no accidents. For ourselves, we were all in fine physical trim and feeling vastly benefited by the long outdoor life of the journey and the splendid air; we had carried goggles, but not one of us had ever felt any need to use a pair; we had learned that in the damp cli- mate of England and in its air, so free from dust, there need be no disagreeable consequences from lengthy exposure, if simple precautions are taken, and so we were neither tanned nor sunburned, though we had rarely had the top of the car up for even half an hour at a time. Our expense for gasoline had been nine pounds, fifteen shilling and threepence, for a total distance (adding to-morrow's final run to Liverpool) of two thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven miles: a cost of barely one cent and a half a mile, even at the rather high price of gasoline (petrol) in Great Britain. It would have been a little less had we from the first used No. 1 petrol, slightly more ex- pensive but more powerful, instead of No. 2 : but we had mistakenly tried No. 2 for a while on the advice of the car manufacturers themselves ; one of the many examples that we noticed of a British frugahty which is the opposite of economy. Lubricating oil for the tour cost twenty shillings, and there had been also a couple of cans of cup grease to buy. We went to bed with the feeling that much was to go out of our lives on the morrow: and with the thoughts of seriousness and of things of beauty, of long, long rides through the marvelous English coun- tryside, of towers and cathedrals, of delightful out- door luncheons at places of delightful charm, of the wonder and exhilaration of it all, there came also HADDON HALL 341_ thoughts less serious, of the weight of copper money that would no more need to be borne about, of the little brass pots of hot bath water that would no more be carried into our rooms, of the red threads that we should cease to find on our handkerchiefs, of the laundry that would no longer be (to use their own word, and it is a descriptive one) that would no longer be " mangled "; and we realized that we should soon be away from a country where the people can- not count their own money — a feat quite impossible, we had literally found, with the greater part of the English. And with all this medley of thoughts, of things serious and the reverse, we w^nt to sleep for our last night, in a very comfortable inn, before end- ing the tour. Next morning we started again on our way, and crossed our early route at that most satisfactory place, drowsy Cranford, and we lunched there at the same little inn where we had dined and slept at the very beginning of the journe}^ — and how strange it all seemed! And from here it was a run of thirty miles to Liverpool, and the end, for there the car was turned over to the purchaser and we assembled our belongings and prepared for the steamer and for home. And it was strange to feel that it was all over: that no more were we to arise in the morning with glad anticipation of the discoveries into which the wheels were to whirl us. It was all over; and others even had our very car and were off with it, enjoy- ing experiences such as we had for so many days enjoyed. And that is precisely the important part of it: that what we did was nothing difficult, nothing hard for others to accomplish and enjoy; and the reason for writing this narrative is not merely to point out where we went, or to describe what we did as being any- 342 TOURING GREAT BRITAIN" thing of personal achievement, but to show how easily any motorist may do likewise. For our course need not be precisely followed. Where we took one road, another motorist may take another road; where we went to one ruin or abbey or town or place of note, another motorist may pre- fer to see some other ruin or abbey or town or place of note. Certain places must needs be seen by all, but England is so rich in the worth-while that as to other places there may be variety of taste and fancy, as well as variations dependent on a longer or a shorter length of tour. We had had marvelous experiences. We had got at the very heart of the country. We had had six weeks of glorious gliding through scenes of beauty and interest. All had been fascination. We had tried to see Great Britain adequately, happily, inex- pensively; and we had succeeded. In planning the tour we had anticipated much, but the result was so infinitely beyond anticipation! And it was all so reasonable, so feasible, so practicable! INDEX Abbey: Battle, 163, 164; Bolton, 324 ; Crowland, 225 ; Dryburgh, 258 ; Fountains, 240-242 ; Glas- tonbury, 106 : Kelso, 254 ; Mel- rose. 256, 257, 283 ; Tewkesbury, 75-78 ; Tintern, 89-91 Abbotsford, 257 Aberfeldy, 288 Aberglasllyn, Pass of, 46 Afton Water, 300 Aira Force, 313 Airedales, 325 Alcomdene, 329 Allowav, 298 Alnwick, 250, 251 Ambleside. 317 Ancient and Honorable Artillery, 187 Andover. 149 Ardlui, 293 Arthur, King, 124, 126 Arundel, 157 Ascot state, 190 Atholl, Duke of. 283 Automobile Club, 4, 15 Automobile ; see Motor Car Axminster, 134 Ayr, 298 Ayrsbires, 297, 304 Blairgowrie, 279 Blandford, 141-143 Blenheim, 202, 203 Bolton Abbey, 324 Boscastle. 124 Boston, 226-228 Bothwell, Earl of, 261 Braid Hills. 269 Branxton Moor, 252 Brewster, William, 232 Bridges : Cally, 279 ; Forth, 269 ; Tay, 277 ; Triangular, 225 : Twizel, 252 Bridgnorth, 64-66 Bridport, 137 Brighton, 158 Bristol, 99-101 Bristol Channel, 110, 113 Broadway, 204-207 Bromley, 180, 181 Bronte home, 326 Brougham Castle, 312 Browning, Mrs., birthplace of, 243 Buccleuch, Duke of, 283, 301 Burnham Beeches, 193 Burns, 298, 300, 304, 306 Bushy Park, 184 Buxton, 338 Baggage, how carried, 10 Bangor, 38 Bannockburn, 271 Barmouth, 51 Barnstaple, 119 Barton-on-the-Heath, 206 Barum, 119 Bass Rock, 262 Bath, 101-103 Battle village, 163 Battlefields : Bannockburn, 271 ; Flodden, 252-254 ; Hastings, 163 ; Killiecrankie, 286 ; Sedgemoor, 108 ; the Standard, 242 ; Tewkes- bury, 76 Beaconsfield village, 194 Becket, Thomas a, 173 Beddgelert, 45 Beech-tree hedge, 279 Ben Lomond. 294 Ben More. 291 Berwick, 252 Berwick Law, 264 Bess of Hardwlck, 335, 336 Bideford, 119 Birnam Wood, 283 Black-and-white architecture, 59, 69 Black Prince, 172 343 Cader Idrls, 53 Cally, Bridge of, 279 Canterbury, 170-175 Carlisle, 307 Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 261, 303 Carlyle, Thomas. 261, 303, 305 Carnarvon, 39-43 Carnegie, Andrew, 273 Carse o' Gowrie, 278 Casterbridge, 139 Cat and Fiddle, 339 Cathedrals : Bangor. 38 ; Bristol, 99 ; Canterbury, 170-174 ; Carlisle, 307; Chester. 17, 19; Chichester. 156 ; Durham, 242-245 ; Exeter, 130 ; Glasgow, 296 ; Gloucester, 79-81 ; Lincoln, 229, 230 ; Man- chester, 9 ; Peterborough, 224 ; Ripon, 238 ; Rochester, 175 ; Salisbury, 146 ; St. Andrew's, 276 ; St. Asaph's, 32-34 ; Wells, 104 ; Winchester, 149 ; Worces- ter, 71-73; York, 234-236; total In England, 17, 18 Cemmaes, 55-56 Chalfont St. Giles, 196-197 Charles the First, 65, 273 Charles the Second, 72 Charlie, Prince, 266, 270 844 INDEX Chatsworth, 336, 337 Chatterton, 100 Chaucer. 188 Chepstow, 91-92 Chester, 16-20 Chesterfield, 336 Cheviots. 250 Chichester. 156 Chipping Norton, 204 Chisleburst, 178 Chollerford. 248 Clovelly, 119-123 Clumber House, 332 Clumber spaniel, 332 Cold Door Pass, 53 Coldstream Guards, 189, 254 Coleridge, 109 Colwyn Ba.v, 35, 36 ; town of, 37 Combe Martin. 117 Coniston Water, 317, 318 Conway. 37 Cornwall, 124 Coventry, 217 Coxhoe, 243 Craigenputtoek, 303 Craigmillar Castle. 268 Cranford, 6, 11-14, 341 Crediton. 129 Crianlarich, 292 Crosses, Town : at Lydney, 93 ; at Crediton. 129 Crowland. 225 Crystal Palace, 181 Cumberland, 308 Cupar, 274 D Daffodils. 313 Dartford, 178 Dartmoor, 129 Dean, Forest of. 83-84 Dee. Sands of, 24 Deer : at Blandford, 143 ; Bnshy Park, 187; Chatsworth, 337; Fotheringay, 221 ; Fountains Abbey, 240 ; Oxford, 200 ; Powis, 57 Derwent, the, 247 Derwentwater, 314 Devil's Elbow, 279, 280 Devon. 114-124. 133 Dickens, home of, 176 Dochart, the, 291 Dolgelly. 51. 52 Dome, the greatest, 338 Doncaster, 232 Doon, Bonnie, 299 Doone Valley, 114 Dorchester, 139-141 Doyle, A. Conan, 123 Drinking. Sunday. 157-158 Druid stones, 147. 311 Dryburgh Abbev, 258 Dukeries. the. 332-337 Dumbarton. 295 Dumfries, 304 Dundee. 277-278 Dundonald, 35 Dunfermline, 273 Dunkeld. 283. 284 Dunsinane, 2R3 Durham, 242-246 E Eamont Bridge, 312 Earlston, 260 Eastbourne, 160 Eaton Hall, 20 Ecclefechan, 305 Eden Hall, Luck of, 310, 311 Edinburgh, 265-268 Edward the First, 42 Eildons, 255. 258 Eisteddfod, 38 Elizabeth, Queen, 100, 215, 225 Elms, 69 Eton school, 191 Exeter, 129-133 Exmoor, 114 Expenses, 340 P Falkirk, 270 Falkland, 274 Farmers, 68 Fens. 226. 228, 229, 230 Ferries : Newnham, 93 ; Tay, 277 Fife, 274 Flags from Bunker Hill, 18 Flodden, 252, 254, 259 Floors Castle, 254 Ford Castle, 253 Forest : of Dean, 83, 84 ; Sherwood, 332-333 Forth Bridge, 269 Portingal, 289-290 Foss-way, 230 Fotheringay, 222-224 Fountains Abbey, 240-242 Four-shirestone, 206 Franklin, Benjamin, 153, 154 Funicular for motor car, 115 G Gad's Hill, 176 Garage charges, 309 Gasoline, 285-286, 340 Geoflfrey of Monmouth, 87 George, Lloyd, 50 George the Fifth, 190 Gladstone, 22 Glasgow, 295, 296 Glass in the roads, 296, 308 Glastonbury. 105-107 Glen Shee, 279. 280 Gloucester, 79-82. 94 God Begot House. 150 Grade crossings. 21, 224, 226, 277 Grasmere, 316 Gravesend, 177 Gray's Elegy, 191-193 Great Orme's Head, 36 Gretna Green, 306 Gypsies, 254 H Haddington, 261 Haddon Hall, 337, 338 Ha-ha; a ditch, 22 Halifax, 329 Hampden, .John, 196 Hampton Court, 183-185 INDEX 345 Hardwick Hall, 335. 336 Hardy, Thomas, 139, 140 Harlech. 46-49 Harold, King, 16, 163 Hastings, 161 Hawarden, 22-24 Haworth, 326, 329 Hebden Bridge, 327 Helvellyn, 315 Hemans, Mrs., 33 Henry the Fifth, Prince Hal, 84, 87, i76 Henry the Eighth, 107, 143, 183 Heptonstall, 327 Hexham, 248 Hilly roads, 63, 93, 112, 327 Holywell, 25-29 Honiton, 133 Hotspur, 59 Ilfracombe, 118 Ingelow, Jean. 228 Inns : at Bridgnorth, 64 ; Carnarvon, 39 ; Cemmaes, 55 ; Clovelly, 123 ; Cranford, 12 : Glastonbury, 105 ; on Great North Road, 231 ; at Holywell. 26; Market Har- borough, 219, 220 ; Monmouth, 84 ; Oundle, 222 ; near Haddon Hall, 338; the Royal Goat, 45; at Salisbury. 146: Ship, 97; at Thornhill. 302; Winchester, 150 Inn names, 45, 150, 320, 321 Inns, owned by trusts, 98 Insurance for tour, 4 Inversnaid, 293 Iron Bridge, 63 Itchen, the, 152 Jeffreys, Judge, 60, 132 John, King, 72. 185, 228, 251 Jones, Inigo. 302 Jones, John Paul, 306 Jordans, 195 Kathcrine of Arason, 224 Katrine, Loch, 293 Keighley, 325 Kelso, 254 Kenilworth, 215-216 Kent. 170 Keswick, 314 Kidderminster, 67 Killiecrankie, 286 Killin, 291 Kilmarnock, 297 Kingston, 182 Kipling, home of, 159 Kirkcaldy, 273 Kirk Yetholm, 254 Knole House, 179 Knutsford, 6, 11-14, 341 Langshaw, tower of, 258 Lauderdale, 260 Launceston, 127 Laundry, how arranged, 10 Laurie, Annie, 302 Leith, 267 Lincoln, 229, 230 Linlithgow, 269 Liverpool, 341 Lodore, 314 Lomond, Loch, 292-295 London, ISO, 181 Lord of the Manor, 121 Luggage carrier, 10 Luncheons out of doors, 15, 36, 110 Lydney, 93 Lynmouth, 114, 115 Lynton, 116 M Macclesfield, 339 Manchester. 6-11 Market Harborough, 219, 220 Marston Moor, 237 Marv Queen of Scots, 222-224, 261, "266, 268. 269 Maxwellton's braes, 302, 303, 304 Melrose. 256-259. 283 Menai Straits, 38 Milton, 196 Moniave. 303 Monmouth, 84-g9 Moreton-in-the-Marsh, 206 Motor-car : cost of renting and ship- ping. 2 ; buying and selling in England, 2-3 ; dear in England, 309; Motoring : the tour. 1 ; daily aver- age. 1 ; expenses, 3, 340 ; going without haste, 216 ; resume of tour, 340 N Naseby, 219 Nether Stowey, 109 Nettles, 135 New Cumnock, 300 Newark Castle, 259 Newnham, 93 Newtown, 57 Nith. the, 301, 304 Nithdale, 301 Norham Castle, 252 Northumberland. 248-251 Northumberland, Duke of, 250 O Oak, black, brown, or gray, 245 Oil, lubricating, 340 ; how carried, 11 Ormsley, 69 Oundle, 222 Oxford, 199-202 Lag, tower of. 304 Lammermoor, 260 Parracombe. 116 Patterdale, 313 Peerage, the, 323 346 INDEX Penn, William, burial place, 195 ; father of, 100 Penrith, 308, 310 Percy, Harry, 59 Percy, Lord, 251 Percy's Reliques, 65 Perth, 278-282 Peterborough, 224 Pevensey, 160, 161 I'hilipse, Frederick, 18 Pickwick at Bath, 102 ; at Tewkes- bury, 75 Pilgrim Fathers, 226-227 Pimperne, 143 Pinchbeck. 226 Pitlochry, 285 Pocahontas, 177 Pontius Pilate, 289, 290 I'orcelain works, 73 Porlock, 112 Portland, Duke of, 333 Portsmouth, 156 Powis Castle, 57-58 Prince's Risborough, 197 R Rain, 56, 95 Rhuddlan, 35 Richard Cceur de Lion, 172 Riding Mill, 248 Ripon, 238-240 Road, Great North, 231, 232, 234 Roads : character of, 39 ; flint, 168 ; funicular, 115 ; hand-broken stone, 66; hilly, 63, 112, 114, 116, 327, 328; steam-rollers on, 66 Roads, reasons for excellence, 308, 300 Roads, rules of the, 30 Robin Hood, 332 Rob Roy cottage, 292 Rochester, 175 Roman camps: at Chollersford, 248; at Fortingal, 290 Roman Wall, 247-249 Rose, the Flarrison, 283 Roslyn, 268 Rottingdean, 159 Rougemont Castle, 132 Rowsley, 337 Roxburgh Castle, 254 Rugby, 218 Runnimede, 185-186 Ruskin, home of, 318 Rvdal Water, 316, 317 Rye, 168 St. Andrew's, 276, 277 St. Asaph's, 32-34 St. Cross, 151 St. Mary's Loch, 259 Salisbury, 145-147 Salop, 64 Sampford Courtney, 128 Sanquhar, 301 Sarum, 144 Schools, ancient : Blandford, 142 ; Bridgnorth. 65 ; Coventry, 217 ; Eton, 191 ; Manchester, 9-10 ; Rugby, 218; Shrewsbury, 60; Stratford, 211 Scott, 203, 215, 252, 256, 260, 262, 274, 278, 293 Scrooby, 232 Selkirk, 259 Sevenoaks, 179 Severn, the, 57, 58, 60, 62, 79, 93, 95 Severn tunnel, 85 Shakespeare, 210-213, 283 Sheffield, 330 Sherwood Forest, 332 Shire, meaning of word, 68 Shoreham, 157, 158 Shrewsbury, 58-61 Shropshire, 58-64 Sidney, Sir Philip, 60 Sign, old wrought-iron, 219 Skipton, 321-323 Smailholm Tower, 257 Snowdon, 44, 52 Solway Firth, 306, 307 South Downs, 135, 138, 141, 144, 160 Stanley, Henry M., 35 Stirling, 270-272 Stoke Poges, 191-193 Stonehenge, 147, 148 Stratford, 209-213 Sulgrave Manor, 204 Surfleet, 226 Swineshead, 228 T Tantallon, 261-264 Tay, Loch, 290 Tay, the, 277, 281, 282. 285, 287 Tea : near Chipping Norton, 205 ; at Edinburgh, 265 ; Fountains, 242; Norham, 252; Tintern, 90 Tewkesburv, 75-78 Thame, 198 Thames, boating on the, 188 Thirlmere, 315 Thornhill, 301-302 Till, the, 252 Tintagel, 124-126 Tintern Abbey, 89-91 Tire, doing without an extra, 11 Tires, condition at end of tour, 339- 340 Toll-gates, 168 Tour, outline of, 4 ; summing up of, 339-340 Towns, close-built, 63, 67 Tramps, 103, 112, 124, 270, 287 Trent, the, 231 Trusts, 240 Tummel, the, 285 Tweed, the, 252, 255, 257 Twilight, lingering, 254, 290 Twizel Bridge, 252 Twyford, 153 Tyler, Wat, 172, 178 Tyne, the, 248 U Ullswater, 312, 313 Underground rooms at Welbeck, 333, 334 INDEX 347 w Wakeman, at Rlpon, 239 Wales : first English Prince of, 41, 42, 59 ; last Welsh prince of, 42, 59; the backbone of, 52 Walland Marshes, 169 Waltham, Bishop's, 155 Walton, Izaak, 72, 95, 152 Warwick, 213, 214 Water for motor, 52, 53 Watling Street, 178 Welbeck Abbey, 333-334 Wells, 104, 105 Welshpool, 57 Westminster, Duke of, 20 Westward Ho! 119 Wickham, 155 Willersley, 207 William and Mary, 183 William the Conqueror, 130, 149, 150, 160-163 William of Wykeham, 149 Wimbledon, 182 Winchelsea, 164-167 Winchester, 149, 150 Windermere, 317, 319 Windsor, 187-190 Wolsey, Cardinal, 183, 200, 232 Woodstock, 203 Worcester, 70-74 Worcestershire, 68-74 Wordsworth, 90, 259, 260, 313, 316, 317 Worksop, 330 Wye, Valley of the, 89-91 Yarrow, the, 259 Yews, trimmed, 63 York, 234-237 Yorkshire Moors, 327-329 Yorkshire, West Riding of, 327 THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. Series 9482 3 1205 00489 ""oo ft A 000 330 628 9 i^^^iiil^^^P^i^^^M