E-text prepared by Giovanni Fini, Clarity, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made
available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
(https://archive.org/details/americana)

      See 45712-h.htm or 45712-h.zip:
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45712/45712-h/45712-h.htm)
      or
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45712/45712-h.zip)

      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
      https://archive.org/details/leisurelytourine00hiss

A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  THE CHARM OF THE ROAD.
      _England and Wales._

  AN ENGLISH HOLIDAY.

  UNTRAVELLED ENGLAND.

  OVER FEN AND WOLD.
      _London to Lincolnshire and Back._

  ON SOUTHERN ENGLISH ROADS.

  THROUGH TEN ENGLISH COUNTIES.

  ACROSS ENGLAND IN A DOG-CART.
      _London to St. Davids and Back._

  A TOUR IN A PHAETON.
      _Through the Eastern Counties._

  A HOLIDAY ON THE ROAD.
      _Kent, Sussex, and Surrey._

  ON THE BOX SEAT.
      _London to Land's End and Back._

  A DRIVE THROUGH ENGLAND.
      _London to Scotland and Back._

  AN OLD-FASHIONED JOURNEY.

  With T. HUSON, R.I., R.P.E.

      ROUND ABOUT SNOWDON.

A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO

[Illustration: _See page 312._

  A MOATED MANOR-HOUSE.

  "The place is silent and aware;
    It has had its scenes, its joys and crimes,
  But that is its own affair."]

A LEISURELY TOUR IN ENGLAND

by

JAMES JOHN HISSEY

Author of
'The Charm of the Road,' 'On the Box Seat,'
'An English Holiday,' 'Over Fen and Wold,' etc.

With Thirty Full-Page Illustrations (and Four Smaller
Ones) from Drawings and Photographs by the Author
Also a Map

Macmillan and Co., Limited
St. Martin's Street, London
1913

Copyright

                                  TO
                              MY DAUGHTER
                          MRS. HERBERT MALPAS

PREFACE

Stevenson once took a journey with a donkey, which animal gave him much
trouble. I took my journey in a reliable little motor-car that happily
gave me none. Though I went by car I went leisurely, stopping often
by the way, for full well I realise the reward of loitering, and, as
all wise wanderers can testify, there is such a thing as profitably
loitering, and a joy in it. Had they been of his day Carlyle would
probably have declared that motor-cars "are mostly employed for the
transport of fools best left at home," at least he said so of railways.
With a car, however, you can control the pace, and can stop at your
pleasure; it is an excellent servant, though in truth a bad master.

I went "in search of the picturesque" and I found it, also of the
unfamiliar in a familiar land. If I came to an interesting place, or
happened upon some curious character steeped in the traditions of the
countryside, whose speech was perchance racy of the soil, the matter
of time did not trouble me. Why should it? The day was mine and the
promise of it, my object was not to cover so many miles and make them
meaningless by undue haste, but to linger long enough in pleasant
places, the more remote the more to my mind, so that they could make
their appeal to me and I could gather something of the spirit of
them--a something beyond what the eye merely sees.

"Wise men," says Kingsley, "go a-fishing"; they also go a-travelling,
and I can imagine no touring ground--I write this having wandered far
and wide in foreign lands--more delightful than rural England, away
from the ugliness of modern cities and all that has to do with them. By
not confining myself to the high-road but by seeking the byway and the
lane I got right into the heart of the real, unspoilt country, where
pleasant pastoral scenery, time-honoured homes, quiet farmsteads, old
coaching inns (I hope I have not talked too much of them), peaceful
villages, each with their ancient churches, quaint little market-towns
picturesquely unprogressive, and here and there a ruined abbey or
crumbling castle, grey with years, gladden the eye of the pilgrim.
Places and scenes to be remembered.

Neither speed, by which we miss much, nor reliance on guide-books
formed any part of my programme, for, as Sir Arthur Helps says,
"in travel it is remarkable how much more pleasure we obtain from
unexpected incidents than from deliberate sightseeing." I set forth
for Anywhere by any roads, trusting to fortune for what I might see,
content to know that I should arrive at a good many places.

One confession, perhaps, I may make. My book was mainly written at odd
times and in varying moods during the journey, when the impressions of
people I came across, of places and scenes, were fresh upon me. It is
a first-hand, unvarnished record of experiences, but little altered
or mended since, and I have been minded to leave it so, for the like
reason that I generally prefer an artist's rough sketch and the spirit
of it to his finished picture--for polish is not always an improvement,
sometimes it is but mere gloss.

The route that eventually evolved itself is but roughly indicated in my
Sketch Map, for I found it impossible, on a map of so small a scale, to
trace all our devious wanderings, or to note more than a few of the
many places visited. As to the illustrations, in a few cases where my
photographs unfortunately proved failures I have ventured to replace
them with my own drawings; for these--they are but mere brush notes--I
crave a kind indulgence.

If I missed anything worth seeing on the way, I can only plead with
Plato of old that "as it is the commendation of a good huntsman to find
game in a wide wood, so it is no imputation if he hath not caught all."

  J. J. HISSEY.

  TREVIN TOWERS,
  EASTBOURNE.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

Different methods of travel--The old coaching days--Maps _versus_
guide-books--The fortune of the road--The South Downs--Hilly roads--The
price of beauty--The sentimental traveller--A lonely farmstead--Oxen at
work--A quaint old-world village                                      1

CHAPTER II

A quiet valley--The importance of the unimportant--Moated and haunted
houses--Romances in stone--A farmhouse holiday--A picture-book
village--A matter of Fate--The tomb of Gibbon the historian--A gruesome
happening--Upright burials--An interesting church--A curious epitaph 17

An old coaching inn--The resurrection of the road--Far from
anywhere--The charm of the unexpected--A historic milestone--"Mine
host" of past days--Our port-wine drinking ancestors--The lure of the
lane--Village life--Miniature effigy of a knight--The tomb of "the good
Archbishop Leighton"--A church clerk's story                         40

CHAPTER IV

Dane Hill--Epitaphs--A wild bit of country--Ashdown
Forest--Exploring--The use of maps--Curious inn signs--A
Tudor home--The Devil's door--A medieval priest and guest
house--Old-fashioned flowers--An ancient interior--Curious
carvings--Roads in the old times--The window and hearth tax          59

CHAPTER V

"Great-upon-Little"--The woods of Sussex--A maze of lanes--Frensham
Pond--A holiday haunt--The legend of the shivering reeds--Rural
inns--Roughing it(?)--Waverley Abbey--The monks of old--The sites
of abbeys--Quiet country towns--Stocks and whipping-post--A curious
font--"A haven of rest"                                              80

CHAPTER VI

"Mine ease in mine inn"--King John's Castle--Greywell--Country
odours--Hidden beauty-spots--The valley of the Kennett--A remote
spot--Our picturesque villages--The charm of ancientness--Solitude and
genius--Coate--Richard Jefferies' birthplace                        100

CHAPTER VII

Wootton Bassett--A quaint market-hall--Old towns--A Roman
road--The spirit of the past--A pre-Elizabethan gate-house--The
Royal Agricultural College--Chat with an antiquary--Norman
doorways--Second-hand book catalogues--Syde--Cotswold houses--Over the
Cotswolds--At a Jacobean inn                                        121

CHAPTER VIII

The Vale of Evesham--A stormy drive--An angler's inn--A big
fish--Dating from "the flood"!--Fishermen's tales--The joys of "the
gentle craft"--Hotel visitors' books--A "quiet day"--Burford church
and its monuments--The golden age of travel--A fine old half-timber
inn--Ludlow--A Saxon doorway                                        141

CHAPTER IX

Place names--Bell ringing for lost travellers--A Robber's Grave
and its story--Wild Wales--A picturesque interior--The fascination
of the moors--Machynlleth--A Royal and ancient house--Ten miles of
beauty--Aberdovey--Tramps and their ways--The poetical tramp        161

CHAPTER X

Mallwyd--Falling waters--Dinas Mawddwy--Amongst the moors and
mountains--A wild drive--A farmer's logic--A famous old inn--A
fisherman's tale--A Roman inscribed stone--Brass to old Thomas Parr--A
cruel sport--Wem and its story--A chat with "mine host"--Hawkestone and
its wonders                                                         182

CHAPTER XI

Red Castle--A stately ruin--Old houses and new owners--The joy of
discovery--High Ercall and its story--Mills and millers--The life of
a stone-breaker--Old folk-songs--Haughmond Abbey--Ancient tombs--A
peaceful spot--A place for a pilgrimage                             203

CHAPTER XII

An angler's haunt--Ferries and stepping-stones--Curious old
stained-glass window--The ruins of Uriconium--Watling Street--The
Wrekin--Richard Baxter's old home--A Cabinet minister's story--A pretty
village--Buildwas Abbey--Ironbridge--The "Methodists' Mecca"        221

CHAPTER XIII

Madeley Court--Chat with a collier--The miner's rule of life--Charles
II. in hiding--The building of Boscobel--The story of a moated house--A
stirring episode--A startling discovery--A curious planetarium--A
wishing-well--Lilleshall Abbey--"The Westminster Abbey of
Shropshire"--A freak in architecture--Tong Castle--Church clerk-hunting
                                                                    234

CHAPTER XIV

A wonderful collection of tombs--A tombstone inscription
by Shakespeare--A leper's door--Relics--Manufacturing the
antique--Curiosity shops--The Golden Chapel--"The Great Bell of
Tong"--White Ladies Nunnery--The grave of Dame Joan--Boscobel and its
story--A tradition about The "Royal Oak"                            253

CHAPTER XV

A town with two names--An amusing mistake--Abbot's Bromley
and its quaint horn dance--Dr. Johnson doing penance at
Uttoxeter--Burton-on-Trent--The "Hundreds All" milestone--Indoor
wind-dials--Stone-milled flour--The old Globe Room at Banbury--Dick
Turpin's pistol--A strange find                                     272

CHAPTER XVI

A gruesome carving--Architectural tit-bits--An ancient and
historic hostelry--Chipping Norton--Wychwood--A parson's
story--"Timothying"--Shipton-under-Wychwood--On the Cotswolds--"The
grey old town" of Burford--Two old manor-houses--A new
profession--Highworth--Church relics                                293

CHAPTER XVII

Little country towns--The romance of the ferry--"The Bear" at
Woodstock--Curious conditions of tenure--Where the Black Prince
was born--Islip--The mystery of Joseph's Stone--An English
Holland--Boarstall Tower--The ancient town of Brill--"Acres for
Aeroplanes"--Stokenchurch--A quaint hiring fair                     316

CHAPTER XVIII

An inn of the old-fashioned sort--A chat with "mine host"--A weird
experience--Ghost stories--An ancient rectory house--A quaint
interior--A haunted passage--Lost in a fog--The game of bowls--An old
posting bill--The siege of Alton church--Ants as weather prophets   334

CHAPTER XIX

The Meon Valley--Warnford--A hidden church--A house "a million years
old"!--A Saxon sun-dial--A ruined home--Corhampton and its Saxon
church--A modern "Naboth's Vineyard"--An out-of-the-world village--A
curious story--Quaint carvings and their legend--A church tower built
by servants                                                         349

CHAPTER XX

A tramp's story--A relic of a famous sea-fight--A tame road--Inn
gardens--New landlords and old traditions--Chichester market-cross--A
wind-swept land--"Dull and dreary Bognor"--A forgotten
poet--Littlehampton--Country sights and sounds--A lulling landscape 363

CHAPTER XXI

Travel in the old days--Sequestered Sussex--Country homes--A mellow
land--A gibbet post and its story--Chiddingly and its church--The
Pelham buckle--Wayside crosses--St. Dunstan's tongs and his anvil--A
curious brass--Iron Stocks--Home again                              379

INDEX                                                               397

ILLUSTRATIONS

        PAGE

  A MOATED MANOR-HOUSE                         _Frontispiece_

  HAUNTED!                                                  20

  A SUSSEX FARMSTEAD                                        24

  OLD COACHING HOSTELRY, SHEFFIELD PARK, SUSSEX             42

  AN ANGLER'S MODEST INN                                    42

  AN OLD TUDOR HOME, WEST HOATHLY                           67

  A PRE-REFORMATION PRIEST-HOUSE, WEST HOATHLY              72

  "A GOOD HONEST ALEHOUSE"                                  87

  AT "THE QUEEN'S HEAD"                                     96

  AN OLD MILL                                              108

  OLD TOLL-HOUSE ON BATH ROAD                              111

  THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE                                  116

  SYDE CHURCH                                              133

  GATEHOUSE, STANWAY                                       138

  SAXON DOORWAY, STANTON LACY CHURCH                       159

  A BIT OF WILD WALES                                      170

  WELSH MOUNTAINS AND MOORLANDS                            186

  THE RUINED HALL OF MORETON CORBET                        208

  HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHURCH DOORWAY                          217

  HAUGHMOND ABBEY, CHAPTER-HOUSE                           218

  BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING EAST                             229

  BUILDWAS ABBEY, LOOKING WEST                             230

  MADELEY COURT                                            236

  MADELEY COURT, GATEHOUSE                                 239

  LILLESHALL ABBEY                                         250

  FIGURE OF SIR ARTHUR VERNON, TONG CHURCH                 257

  BOSCOBEL                                                 257

  THE PRIEST'S DOORWAY                                     296

  DOORWAY OF THE CROWN INN, SHIPTON-UNDER-WYCHWOOD         303

  BABLOCKHYTHE FERRY                                       318

  BOARSTALL TOWER FROM THE MOAT                            328

  A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOORWAY                             344

  AN OLD-TIME HOME                                         367

  A JACOBEAN DOORWAY                                       383

A LEISURELY TOUR IN

ENGLAND

CHAPTER I

 Different methods of travel--The old coaching days--Maps _versus_
 guide-books--The fortune of the road--The South Downs--Hilly
 roads--The price of beauty--The sentimental traveller--A lonely
 farmstead--Oxen at work--A quaint old-world village.

There are many ways of exploring the country: one may walk, cycle, ride
horseback, or drive a horse in some conveyance, go by crawling caravan
or speedy motor-car--each to his fancy or opportunity. Perhaps there is
no best way of travel. I say this after having sampled all the methods
mentioned, excepting caravanning, for I have tramped it knapsack on
back, and enjoyed the tramping, through Switzerland, Scotland, the Lake
District, Wales, Cornwall, and Devon; I have taken long cycling tours;
I have driven in a phaeton and dogcart from one end of our land to
another; I have ridden about country on horseback with a pack; I have
driven my own motor-car for more miles than I can remember, and without
mishap--so I know, or ought to know, something about the subject, but
I will not venture to lay down any dictum, for "What's one man's meat
is another man's poison." The thing is to see the country, but what is
worth seeing cannot be seen in a hurry.

Walking enthusiasts declare that walking is the only way, and certainly
the pace that binds the pedestrian permits of leisured observation,
almost compels it indeed: therein much virtue lies. Still there are
other ways, and the convenience of a conveyance is not to be despised,
for there are born wanderers, like myself, who have grown old at
the game, and have come to that time of life when they prefer to be
comfortably carried than to carry a load. Then there is the further
comfort of not being unduly stinted in the matter of luggage, for given
a conveyance, even sundry luxuries such as a luncheon-basket, camera,
rugs, sketching materials, fishing-tackle (should an opportunity for
sport occur), a book or two to while away a possibly dull evening, and
a plentiful supply of maps may be taken without inconvenience. To foot
it does not enhance the scenic charms of the way.

Stevenson, who was a great walker, confesses: "It must not be imagined
that a walking tour, as some would have us fancy, is merely a better
or worse way of seeing the country. There are many ways of seeing
landscape quite as good." I am glad to quote Stevenson in this respect,
for I have had it so frequently dinned into me that the only way really
to see the country is afoot. Now I went not afoot, but travelled in my
reliable little motor-car, conveniently little for exploring narrow
lanes and crooked byways; and though I went by car I went leisurely.

Truly there is no poetry about a motor-car; it has not existed long
enough to have gained the halo of romance, so to write of a motor tour
makes any appeal to sentiment impossible. This is a handicap; for
sentiment does count, even in this matter-of-fact world, let wiseacres
say what they will.

Possibly our ancestors saw little romance in the stage-coach or
postchaise; to them they were commonplace affairs; indeed they often
complained bitterly about the former, the misery of the outside seats
in stormy weather and in winter time; moreover, the inside passengers
were generally sadly cramped for want of room; then the coaches
sometimes overturned, and were frequently uncomfortably crowded. We
view those days through rose-coloured spectacles--Time is the romancer.
I wonder whether our descendants in the far future will ever look back
longingly and lovingly to "the good old motoring days"? Granted that
many motorists rush through the country gathering but "hurrygraphs" on
the way--that is the fault of the man, not the car. It is unfortunate
that at the very beginning of the chronicle of my tour I should feel
a need, perhaps a fanciful one, to make excuse for the mode of taking
it. The car was but a means to an end; let us forget all about it and
consider only the journey wherein my pleasure lay.

I had no programme, no previously prepared plan of route to follow, so
happily escaped the tiresomeness of keeping or endeavouring to keep
to one. All roads are good roads to me, provided they lead through
a pleasant country, and so to enjoyment begotten of contentment:
"I travel not to go anywhere but to go." In a definite itinerary I
find no attraction. Freedom is the essence of a real holiday, and I
would be as free to veer about as a weather-vane that the wind plays
on, free to change my course at the call of any inviting byway or
lane, the beckoning of a beautiful distance, or at any other passing
prompting, or even at the unaccountable mood of the moment; and this
without any feeling of reproach. As to guide-book compulsion to see
this or that, I would have none of it. I took a supply of Bartholomew's
Reduced Ordnance Survey Maps with me on a scale of four miles to the
inch, covering all England and Wales, and these were all the guides
I troubled about: unlike some guides they were reliable, I could do
my own romancing. Thus provided I wandered careless of direction or
destination; these and the distance done each day were but trivial
details unworthy of consideration--the joy of the journey was the thing.

I never knew when I started forth in the morning where the evening
would find me, nor had I any concern so long as the needful inn for
the night materialised; and if the first inn I came to was not to my
liking, with a tireless car, being master of my Fate, I was enabled
to drive on to another more to my mind. That is certainly one of the
advantages of travelling by machine instead of by muscle.

I trusted, as I travelled on, wholly to the fortune of the road,
letting, so to say, the good things come to me, I did not go in search
of them--a delightfully simple method of touring, but it served my
purpose well and saved much map-consulting and asking of the way,
and the vexation of sometimes losing it. My only care was, as far as
possible, to find fresh roads to explore and taverns new wherein to
take my ease.

Certain motorists there be to whom speed and long distances
accomplished alone appeal; these need a whole continent to travel over,
whilst a modest portion of old England, with a bit of wild Wales thrown
in for the sake of varying the scenery, sufficed me. Humboldt once
remarked of a great wanderer that he had "travelled further and seen
less than any one he knew." Now I trust to make clear that though I did
not travel far, I saw a great deal.

I was prepared for any adventures should Fortune so favour me, but
adventures are hardly to be expected in settled lands, beyond, perhaps,
the remote possibility of the motor breaking down at nightfall on
some lonely moor far from human habitation; but nothing of the
kind happened, for my car gave no sort of trouble--not even tyre
trouble--from the start to the finish of the journey. But then it was
driven at a moderate pace, and carefully. The journey was void of
excitement: happily so, for though I have suffered sundry adventures in
my life, I realise they are more enjoyable in the telling than in the
experiencing.

Says Hazlitt, "One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a
journey." There I am wholly with him, but not when he adds, "I like
to go by myself." I am afraid Hazlitt was a selfish man. Then he
continues: "I can enjoy society in a room, but out of doors Nature
is company enough for me.... Instead of a friend in a postchaise, or
in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale
topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence."
As to going alone, surely a sympathetic companion by your side, even
though not a word be said at times, only a presence felt, can in no way
lessen the joys of a journey? A companion does away with any sense of
loneliness that is apt at times to come over the solitary wanderer like
a cloud over the bright sunshine; for after all, in spite of certain
philosophers, man is a communicative being. A beautiful scene, or an
interesting place, doubly appeals to me when I have some one near by
to express and share my delight in it. But, in truth, a sympathetic
companion is not always to be had. Now it happened that my wife was
prevented from taking her place in the car--"Excepto quod non simul
esses, caetera laetus," I could only say. No one else was at the moment
available; so perforce I had to take my journey companionless or forgo
it to an indefinite future. The latter alternative was unthinkable; a
lost opportunity is not always recoverable; I trust no future. "Elapsum
semel non ipse possit Jupiter reprehendere," said Phaedrus a long while
ago, to quote the ancients again, and a truth is a truth for all time.

After all I did not go alone, for I took my faithful fox-terrier with
me. A dog is the best substitute for a human companion; indeed, I
would prefer to travel with a dog of the right sort to venturing with
an untried human companion any day--at least you cannot fall out with
a dog by the way. A dog never worries you with senseless prattle; he
need never be entertained; he never complains of waiting; his patience
is inexhaustible. On the other hand, he is ever ready and only too
delighted to accompany you at any moment on a ramble afoot, or he will
keep faithful guard over your car should you leave it alone by the
wayside; and he will not grumble about his food or his quarters. I took
dog-biscuits with me for my terrier in case of need, but generally
the crumbs that fell from his master's table sufficed him. A dog is
a most unselfish creature; a kind word or a pat perhaps now and then
he craves, and how easily and gladly these are bestowed. One cannot
ever be dull with a dog as companion; so with my dog I started on
my journey. Now, to avoid the too frequent use of the personal and
irritating "I," I crave permission at times to employ the less personal
"we," even if I have to include the dog and the car to justify that
term, or to do so forgetfully without.

It was early one sunshiny morning towards the end of May, with the
pleasant month of June to follow and the promise of it, that I mounted
my car and was off without more ado. I had carefully packed it
overnight to avoid any possible delay, and that nothing needful should
be forgotten in the haste of departure. With my holiday only just
begun, with the little world of all England before me, free to wander
wherever I would, my mind full of anticipated pleasures, I fared forth
in the most enviable of moods. From my home at the foot of the South
Downs I climbed to their breezy summit, taking the old road that leads
westwards over them, having the rolling green downs on one side, and
the glittering sea visible, but a little way off, on the other. Here
one breathes a lighter, purer air, so that the mere fact of breathing
becomes a pleasure.

My journey had a good beginning! By climbing the downs I had raised
my horizon and looked down upon the world, not with a sensation of
superiority, but with a sensation of relief, being lifted for a time
above all its tiresome trivialities and commonplace conventions. I
found myself alone with earth, and sky, and sea, rejoicing in my
loneliness, and I felt the sense of spaciousness of the wide, bright,
overarching sky, of the boundless waters, and of the vast panorama of
rounded hills reaching far away into the dim and dreamy distance, where
the solid land looked as unsubstantial as a cloud.

  Broad and bare to the skies
  The great Down-country lies,
  Green in the glance of the sun,
    Fresh with the clean salt air.

My road led me a little inland, for I avoided the tourist-haunted one
that winds over Beachy Head, that grand headland that rises so sheer,
white, and commandingly above the sounding sea. Would one could behold
it in its ancient seclusion! Such spots demand solitude, or they cease
to be impressive. "The fatal gift of fame" has been the headland's
undoing, aided by its proximity to a fashionable watering-place, and
the crowd it attracts from early morning till the sun is setting. They
even sell picture post-cards there and bottled ginger-beer! Need more
be said? Yet I recently read an article in a London paper upon "The
Pleasant Solitude of Beachy Head." Was it written in Fleet Street, I
wonder?

All the roads over the downs are hilly ones; they are for ever either
ascending or descending; their gradients are generally fairly severe,
and their surfaces none of the best. Now and then you come upon a
comparatively level stretch, but not for long. So we soon began a
long descent, only to climb steeply again and to find ourselves on a
wind-swept height with a tiny flint-built church crowning the topmost
ridge of it. Friston church it was marked on our map--an unpretending
building, yet not wanting in dignity, and simple dignity is a rare
quality, as delightful as it is rare. Even some city-surrounded
cathedrals do not attain it. Doubtless its elevated and lonely position
gave the humble little fane a certain poetic charm, for it is not only
the building but its place in the prospect that affects the observer.
Stonehenge in a farm field, away from the wild and open plain that
surrounds it, would lose much of its impressiveness; it has lost some
of it already by being railed in. A castle in a hollow, as many were
built to secure the services of a moat, is not the same to the eye
as a castle boldly dominating the landscape from some overhanging
crag. Bodiam's ruined Castle, set in a wooded valley, is beautiful
but not impressive; on the other hand, Carreg Cennin Castle in South
Wales, though inferior in size and much poorer a ruin, is singularly
impressive, standing as it does isolated on the top of a perpendicular
precipice of rock. That is the sort of castle I pictured to myself and
used to draw in fancy when I was a boy.

Facing the primitive church, with our road and a pond between, we
noticed, what is fast becoming a thing of the past, an old wooden
windmill, its sails hurtling round apace in the brisk breeze. The
miller, white with flour dust, gazed lazily at us from out a window of
his aged and picturesque mill: the wind was his willing slave doing
his work for him and working hard that day, why therefore should he
not laze and rejoice? The hum of his mill wheels grinding their best
must have been as music to his ears. All winds that blow are good
for the miller; the sailor is not so fortunate, but to the miller it
matters not from what quarter the breezes come, so long as they come.
I have been told by a meteorological authority that the wind average
for England is eight hours out of the twenty-four. I should imagine
that the winds upon the open downs greatly exceed that, and a good,
refreshing, salt savour they bring with them, and so a sentiment of the
sea and its mystery.

The wide and restful greenery of the downs appeals to and gratifies the
eye. In a less moist climate than ours the downs would be but parched
and barren ground: blame our climate as we may, and the frequent rains
that the prevailing west winds bring, it is these frequent rains that
give our homeland its rich verdure and charming mellowness which so
attracts the foreigner from sunnier climes. Beauty demands its price,
and considering the wealth of beauty granted us I hardly think we ought
greatly to begrudge the price of it.

On the downs the eye is free to rove unchecked over miles and miles of
this greenery even to the most distant horizon; that is another delight
of them. Their rolling masses, no height being much greater than
another, might be likened to some gigantic ocean suddenly arrested in a
mighty storm and converted, by some magic, into good dry land, and here
and there the white chalk showing might serve for the foam of crested
waves arrested also: at least such a fancy came to me as I looked over
their sloping sides, their gentle rises and falls, billowy down beyond
billowy down in an apparently endless succession. The very green of
them, though not translucent, distantly reminded me of the green of the
mid-Atlantic rollers raised by a gale that for some time had ceased to
blow so that their surface is comparatively smooth and not fretted by
wind-driven lines. There is an indescribable vacancy about the downs
that suggests the impressive vacancy of the sea, the boundlessness of
it. But each man sees things with his own eyes, and to some my fancies
may seem far-fetched; they were, but still they pleased me, for I am a
sentimental traveller.

From our elevated road, some distance on, the curious little village of
West Dean was revealed to us, a huddle of roofs and a tiny fane hidden
in a hollow of the hills--"a cup full of beauty." We looked right down
upon it and over its grey church tower and over the lichen-laden uneven
roofs of its few dwellings--roofs all covered with golden lichen,
gloriously golden in the bright sunshine; I have never seen roofs so
completely thus covered before, and then I realised what a beautifier,
even on a large scale, the lowly lichen can be. The village had the
rare look of remoteness, so detached was it from the outer world by
the wide and folding downs, so far from rail and frequented road. We
determined to visit it when we reached the valley by the long descent
which followed and idle there a time.

At the foot of the descent we found a large and lone old-fashioned
farmstead surrounded by a colony of flint-built barns and out-houses;
the little slothful river Cuckmere seeking its way to the sea,
with many windings, ran close by. The grey old farmstead with its
weather-stained walls, the tranquil, reedy river below, the bare and
silent downs beyond, struck a note of intense quietness. A peacefulness
profound brooded over this out-of-the-world spot: it might have been
a hundred miles from anywhere. A picture, too, it made, effective in
its breadth and simplicity. There we rested for an hour or more, just
because it pleased us so to do. We travelled in search of peace and
found it in a land

  Where little lost Down churches praise
    The God who made the hills.

Near to the old farm we noticed a yoke of black, long-horned, but
meek-eyed oxen slowly drawing a waggon up the steep slope of the
hillside.

  The slow, black oxen toiling through the day
      Tireless, impassive still,
      From dawning dusk and chill
  To twilight grey.

You seldom see such a sight nowadays, and only rarely on the South
Downs or the lonely Cotswolds. Presently the oxen stopped for the
waggon to be loaded, and we took the opportunity of having a chat with
their driver, a sunburnt man clad in a faded grey suit, and having the
soft speech and courteous manner that so often marks the Sussex folk.
"Oxen," said he, "beat horses at work any day on these hills. I would
not care to drive horses if I could drive oxen; they are a bit slow
perhaps, but not lazy; they don't want so much urging as horses; I
never has any trouble with them, I have just to give them a reminder
with my stick now and then and that is all; you don't need a whip
with oxen." I noticed that the stick he held was a long one of hazel,
just a thin stick and nothing more, and I noticed that the yokes were
fashioned of wood with a heavy cross-bar at the top, and these joined
each pair of oxen together, being kept in position by a slight rounded
wooden collar below.[1]

[1] Since writing the above I noted the following paragraph in my
morning paper: "A team of draught oxen in Sussex was disposed of near
Lewes. The wooden yoke was purchased by the Mayor of Brighton for
presentation to the Brighton Museum." A future generation may need
the aid of a Commentator to understand the agricultural operations of
to-day and the recent past.

Oxen, the driver explained to me, pull from the top of their necks and
not by the collar as horses do; yet on lifting a yoke I saw no signs of
worn hair, only a smoothness where the yoke touched. Oxen, I learnt,
were broken in to draught work at two years old and kept at it from
five to six years, after which they were fattened for the market. Their
beef was somewhat tough, as might be expected, and chiefly bought by
certain institutions. Oxen, I further learnt, were cheaper to keep than
horses, as they were fed mainly on hay, chaff, and roots; whilst horses
needed oats. So I travelled and picked up odd bits of information.

Then we sought out West Dean, prepared to tramp there if no road were
available, for West Dean we were determined to see. Unexpectedly
we discovered a narrow lane that led to it, the downs rising sheer
above on either hand, leaving just room for the lane and a little
clear-running stream which we followed up to the village.

A quaint village it proved to be, to use a term too often misapplied,
one that surely has no counterpart in all the land. Picturesque it
could hardly be called; but though I prize both the picturesque and
quaint, the quaint pleases me the better because it is so much the rarer.
Its tiny church has an uncommon tower--a strong structure, well suited
to its purpose, but devoid of disturbing decoration that too often
fails to decorate and serves but to vex the eye; otherwise, though
ancient enough, the church is not noteworthy; still the simple shapely
tower gives it a certain charm and character; and character, whether in
man or building, is a thing to be desired.

Facing the churchyard we discovered a most interesting relic of past
times when religion was more to the fore than it is to-day. This was a
pre-Reformation priest-house of the fourteenth century or thereabouts,
an austere building of thick rough masonry, deep and narrow arched
windows, and a great chimney-stack at one end, a building probably
erected in this remote spot by the travelling monks who had not to
live in it. I have, here and there, come upon an ancient fourteenth or
fifteenth-century priest-house, for they have not all been improved
away. There is one at Alfriston, another at West Hoathly--both in
Sussex,--and another at Muchelney in Somerset, but these are all
half-timbered buildings fairly lighted, and have not the solid, gloomy
look of the prison-like structure at West Dean, the windows of which
were originally probably of horn, or even possibly mere open spaces
with shutters.

One would imagine, being so close to the sea with the river
conveniently at hand, that West Dean must have its smuggling
traditions: those free traders of old would hardly have overlooked so
handy a spot; but if such traditions there be, we could glean nothing
about them, for we saw not a soul in the place to speak to; the only
living thing we observed was a chicken that apparently had lost itself.
Never before have I been in a village with such a forgotten look; there
the changeful centuries bring no change. Our car stood unnoticed by the
side of a tall and broken flint wall that enclosed a weed-grown garden,
wherein stood a great, round, and roofless pigeon-cote; not a face at a
window did we see. West Dean took no note of our coming or our going.
We drove into, and drove out of, a village asleep, and not even the hum
of our engines or the sound of our horn awoke it. There brooded over
all a sense of silence and solitude like that of the central sea.

CHAPTER II

 A quiet valley--The importance of the unimportant--Moated and haunted
 houses--Romances in stone--A farmhouse holiday--A picture-book
 village--A matter of Fate--The tomb of Gibbon the historian--A
 gruesome happening--Upright burials--An interesting church--A curious
 epitaph.

Leaving West Dean we drove up the narrow and quiet Cuckmere valley,
the smooth green hills rising steeply on either side and so preserving
its seclusion to this present day. So quiet the valley seemed that the
throbbing of our engines sounded reproachfully in our ears, as though
a motor-car had no business to disturb its slumbrous tranquillity. We
felt like trespassers! A snug and friendly little valley it is, through
which the road and river run in close company. The Cuckmere is but a
toy river; I should not have called it a river but that it is so marked
on my map, and on its banks I saw a man with a gun shooting into the
water. He was shooting fish, he said! I have never seen such sport
before.

Passing the hamlet of Litlington we caught a glimpse, on the other side
of the valley, of ancient Alfriston, a little village that calls itself
"the capital of the downs," and its modest flint-built church "the
cathedral of the downs." So, by title, the unimportant assumes the
rôle of the important. A village becomes a capital, a country church a
cathedral, and a stream a river. One might imagine this was the land of
Lilliput!

Of Alfriston a halting couplet runs:

  Poor parson, poor people,
  Sold their bells to repair their steeple.

But that, I take it, was a long while ago--if it ever was, for I have
heard similar couplets of many other places; a few may possibly have
some foundation in fact, but I doubt the rest, and in some, alas, the
word "drunken" is substituted for "poor"! After the Alfriston people
had sold their bells, tradition, that unreliable jade, avers that the
bell of a ship, wrecked on the coast, was purchased to take the place
of the lost peal, and by the side of the ancient pilgrims' hostel in
the same village stands a ship's figure-head in the shape of a boldly
carved lion, fierce of countenance, said to have come from the same
ship that provided the bell; this, as long as the oldest inhabitant can
remember--and what memories these oldest inhabitants have--has rejoiced
in a coat of brilliant vermilion, hence the local saying, apropos of
what I know not, "As red as the Alfriston lion." Such, at least, were
the tales told to me, and many were the tales I heard as I travelled on.

Leaving the valley and the lonely downs regretfully behind, we entered
upon a level country, and crossing the main Lewes road we proceeded
straight forward into a tame land of flat fields. The scenery was
featureless and void of interest, but I was in search of a moated
house, so the quality of the scenery was a detail. A friend had told
me of this house just before I started on the journey, and had kindly
given me a written introduction to its owner, who by happy chance I
found at home. So, learning from my map that I was passing close to
the place, I determined to see it, if possible. Even with the aid of
my map I had some difficulty in discovering the object of my search.
Claverham, to give the moated home its title, stands within a few
hundred yards of the road, yet so hidden by trees that no casual
passer-by would dream of its existence. Thus many good things, though
close to his way, may be missed by even the keenest observer, unless he
has some hint of them and their whereabouts. I had gone this stretch
of road once before and with open eyes, and yet had not discovered
Claverham.

A moated house is a graphic reminder of old times when every
Englishman's house was in reality, not in words, his castle. Early in
the seventeenth century Sir Edward Coke laid down the dictum that "the
house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress," a dictum
that passed into a law proverb, "Jura publica privata domus." In
those benighted days there were no land taxers, or sanitary or other
inspectors to demand entry into an Englishman's home. What, I wonder,
in olden times would the master of his house have said to a sanitary
inspector who demanded admission thereto? Perhaps it would not so much
have mattered what he would have said as what he would have done to
him--with a deep moat so handy.

The very sound of the words "moated" or "haunted house" was as romance
to my ears when I was a youth, and the sound has lost little of its
glamour and suggestion of mystery since that long ago, for over such
ancient homes there always seems to brood an abiding air of mystery. In
my search after moated and haunted houses, many a ballad in building,
many a romance in stone, seeming more like an artist's or a poet's
dream than a happy reality, and many a legended home in remote places
have I discovered--for a romantic spot is the mother of legends. In the
troublesome days gone by the dwellers in a moated house must have felt
a delightful sense of security with the drawbridge up and the outer
windows iron-barred. Even to-day, when staying in a moated house, have
I felt the sense of security that a moat affords. So much for sentiment.

Claverham disappointed me, though the fault was mine in expecting
too much. To cherish an ideal and trusting to find it is to court
disillusion, and a seasoned traveller like myself should not have
fallen into this error. The unexpected always charms, when it has the
power to charm, more than the expected. "Oft expectation fails, and
most oft there where most it promises," says Shakespeare, whom it is
the privilege of all Englishmen to quote. The chief delight of travel
lies in the surprise of the unforeseen, and the discoveries we make
for ourselves of interesting places and beauty-spots: being unprepared
beforehand for such revelations, no ideals have been formed. So the
unknown attracts and becomes oftentimes memorable.

[Illustration: HAUNTED!]

I always picture a moated house as a building grey with years, perhaps
in parts a little ruinous and creeper overgrown, with ivied casements,
a bent and mossy or lichen-laden roof, and with oftentimes a ghost
thrown in. Such a house without its ghost seems incomplete to me.
Now Claverham, excepting for one possibly original chimney and a
lichen-laden roof, conformed in no way to my picture, for the house
has been so altered and rebuilt that the greater part of it, though
not of to-day, is comparatively of yesterday and not of centuries ago.
The wide and weedy moat, enclosing nearly an acre of ground, is there
as of yore, but the chief interest of the place is in its history.
Still Claverham is picturesque: a pleasant, retired, and wholly
delightful abode in the summer-time; in the winter--well, it was not
winter-time then. Portions of the interior are quaint, especially the
black oak-beamed and plastered hall that with its ingle-nook gives
one a genuine old-world greeting. The beams of the hall are of the
original building, and so, we were told, was the wide ingle-nook of
the dining-room; the crane, fire-back, and andirons of this fireplace,
though ancient, are doubtless of more recent date.

This is the history of Claverham in brief as told me by its present
possessor. The house was originally built in 1307; according to Volume
XIV. of the Sussex Archaeological Society, the manor of Claverham
"in 12 Edward II. was in the possession of Nicholas de la Beche. This
personage appears to be identical with the Sir Nicholas de Beche who,
according to a wardrobe account dated 27th March, 1311, participated
with Sir Humphery de Littlebury and Sir Thomas le Latimer in the reward
of twenty pounds for the singular service of _dragging the King out
of bed on Easter Monday_." So at any rate my visit there unearthed
a curious bit of ancient history. The manor shortly afterwards came
into the possession of a member of the then famous Fiennes family, a
descendant of one of the Norman warriors who had come over with the
Conqueror. A successor of his afterwards built Hurstmonceux Castle and
went to live there in 1422, but Claverham was retained by the Fiennes
until about 1600. My host told me that his father remembered when
there was still a drawbridge over the moat; now where the bridge was
is an embanked approach to the house, doubtless more convenient, but
infinitely less romantic. So, here and there, these picturesque relics
of the past disappear. A portion of the building was so old that it
tumbled down some few years back. My host considered that the house was
never really fortified in the sense of being able to resist a regular
siege, but was rather intended to withstand a raid, or a sudden attack
by the robber bands which infested the country; the moat, too, served
the further useful purpose as a protection against wolves and other
wild animals which at the time had free range over the unenclosed
and wooded country around. To-day it serves as a fence to keep out
straying sheep and cattle from the fields, so that the tree-shaded and
pleasant garden it encloses can be enjoyed in as much peace and privacy
as though it were walled about; at the same time the moat does not
interrupt what view there is.

Leaving Claverham we drove along a narrow lane that ended in a fair
main road, and this took us for a space alongside of the wide Laughton
Level, over which sea of waving grasses, once mere marshland, is to
be had perhaps the best and most comprehensive panorama of the South
Downs, ranging as it does almost from Beachy Head to close upon Lewes.
There before us they stretched, bare and rounded to the sky, in their
long and lordly array of golden greenery fading into grey: miles
and miles of glorious greenery as beheld under the summer sunshine,
only broken here and there below by the pale-blue shadows of their
shallow recesses. From that distance and point of view, the downs
that day looked almost mountainous; it was this view that caused
Gilbert White to describe the South Downs as "that majestic chain of
mountains"--perhaps a somewhat exaggerated description, but serving
to show how impressive the downs may appear under certain conditions,
for Gilbert White was not given to employ grandiloquent language. It
is the impression that a scene makes upon the traveller that profits,
not the vulgar record of mere height, for there is a grandeur of form
and colour as well as of size, and for grandeur of rolling form I know
nothing to compare with the South Downs seen from afar.

Then, rounding a spur of the hills, we descended into ancient and
homely Lewes, "sweetly environ'd by the daisied downs": a town,
according to Cobbett, of "clean windows and pretty faces" (I am glad
that Cobbett found something during his Rural Rides to admire in his
own country, for he was generally on the grumble). We left Lewes by a
main road leading northwards: hemmed in as the town is by the downs,
there was no other road to take except the one to Brighton, and to
Brighton we were not minded to go. Presently we struck a byway to our
right which brought us to Barcombe, a village of no interest; after
this we found ourselves in a tree-bordered lane of the delightful Devon
type, and this we followed for several winding miles.

At one spot we dropped down to a sheltered and wooded hollow where
we espied a lonely, half-timbered, and rambling farmstead, such as
painters put in their pictures--pictures that the wealthy man of taste
hangs on the walls of his mansion purely for the pleasure of looking at
them, though I am afraid few men realise the subtle charm of such old
buildings until an artist has translated it on paper or canvas. They
see their beauties through other eyes, for there is an art in seeing
and discovering beauty not cultivated by the many. I was tempted to
take a photograph of this ancient farmhouse, but could only secure a
poor end view owing to the slope of the ground and obstructing trees.
It would have made a delightful water-colour sketch, only had I stopped
to sketch every pleasing spot by the way, my journey might have been
prolonged to the winter. I had no trouble in finding subjects for the
brush or camera; I came upon them in endless succession. So does rural
England abound in beauty. My trouble was what to select out of the
profusion of good things presented to me. I felt like one going through
a vast picture-gallery of lovely landscapes, only the landscapes were
real and living, and so the more delightful.

[Illustration: A SUSSEX FARMSTEAD.]

The old-fashioned, age-mellowed farmsteads built in the spacious
days gone by, when every yard of ground and inch of space was not
considered, what pleasantly familiar features they form in the
landscape, with their suggestion of contentment, and you come upon them
everywhere. Familiar, and essentially English, but how unobtrusive they
are, they seem like a natural growth and truly to belong to the soil;
remove them from the countryside, and the eye, perhaps hardly knowing
why, would feel that there was something missing. Times of late years
have not been prosperous for the agriculturist, and I noticed during
the journey at more than one picturesque and pleasantly situated old
farmhouse a board displayed with "Apartments to let" thereon. From a
passing glance they appeared very desirable quarters for those who love
retirement, quietude, and purely rural surroundings.

"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." Probably in more prosperous
times farmers would not dream of letting lodgings, but now here is
an opportunity offering for hard-worked paterfamilias (whose purse
is limited, and who is in search of pure air, change of scene, and
fresh surroundings for his youngsters) to spend his holiday in the
real country far from crowds, where the children are free to wander
over the fields, romp in the meadows, climb trees, play at haymaking,
go a-blackberrying, a-bird-nesting, or whatever rural doing may at the
moment take their fancy, when not intent upon watching the constant,
interesting, and varied life about a farmstead.

A holiday in a farmhouse, how delightful and restful is the thought
of it to the town-tired man; what a refreshing and complete change it
spells from the usually dull and dear seaside apartments, with the
everlasting pier, the noisy band, or the inevitable nigger minstrels
on the beach by way of insistent entertainment! At a farmhouse of
the right and good old-fashioned sort you may obtain fresh fruits
and vegetables from the garden, milk direct from the cow, real thick
country cream, butter that you may see churned, home-cured bacon
and perchance hams, to say nothing of newly-laid eggs, such as are
unobtainable in cities. This is no fancy statement; I write from
actual experience. The thing is, of course, to find the right sort
of farmhouse and the farmer willing to take in lodgers, for though
existing they naturally require discovering, or recommending by
those who know them. For the busy man this detail of discovery does
present a difficulty; to me driving haphazard about the country it
presented none, as such desirable quarters, situated in pleasant spots,
discovered themselves from time to time as the journey progressed.

Once I tried the experiment of spending a month in a farmhouse with my
wife and child, and it proved an unqualified success. In the matter of
cost it was the cheapest holiday I ever took, and no holiday has given
me more real pleasure, or lingers more delightfully in my memory. The
farmhouse in question (I came upon it during a driving tour, and there
I stayed instead of touring further) was situated in wild Wales and
surrounded by beautiful scenery; there were wide and open moors at the
back of it to ramble over, and mountains on the other side to climb,
and not far away was a playful, tumbling little river that provided me
with trout fishing.

  Much for my sport I cannot say,
    Though, mind, I like the fun;
  There have I been the livelong day
    Without extracting one.

Still, it was ever an excuse for a delightful ramble alongside the
companionable river, for in the plashing and gurgling of its waters
it almost seemed a living thing. At any unoccupied moment I could
sally forth with my rod by its rocky banks, just as readily as I could
start for a stroll with my stick, though sketching from nature was my
favourite pastime when in a less lazy mood. So time never hung heavily.

Still, perhaps a word of caution may be given: however otherwise
desirable, farmhouse apartments in a purely agricultural country are
apt to prove a disillusion to the elders if they have no resources in
themselves, owing to the want of something more exciting to do than to
watch the slow movements of farming operations. Pleasant surroundings
are an essential, so a hilly country is to be desired; then places of
interest in the neighbourhood may be made the excuse for occasional
excursions, and there are few neighbourhoods where these may not be
found.

The farmer whose apartments I took let them every year, he told me; an
artist and his family had taken them after my term was over, and from
what I gathered the different lodgers practically paid the farmer's
rent--a roundabout way of meeting agricultural depression. Though but
a detail, the farmer sold us what little produce of his we consumed
at full market value or over, yet this was considerably less than the
usual tradesmen's charges, and every little helps. Besides fruit,
vegetables, milk, butter, bacon, home-made jams, and countless eggs,
we purchased fowls in quantities, and occasionally ducks. On fowls,
indeed, we chiefly relied for the table, butcher's meat being difficult
to obtain, and, truth to tell, tough when obtained. The fowls were not
over-plump, not being especially fattened--or crammed, is it? Barn-door
fowls, the farmer called them, as they picked up a good deal of their
substance from the grain scattered about the outbuildings and ricks; so
their food was varied, consequently their flesh, if there was not much
of it, was tender and delicate of flavour.

We had to rely upon ourselves for society, though we did get acquainted
with one stranger, an artist, who had taken up his abode at a homely
little inn some two miles away--an inn that had its uses in that it
provided us with the bottled ale of Bass. We led a self-contained life
and gloried in it. Our bread was home-baked, and I still pleasantly
remember how excellent that bread was, though it had not the white
colour one is accustomed to in the town variety. We had only one baking
a week, but the bread kept sweet and palatable for the whole of that
time; it did not dry hard on the cut surface as bought bread does; it
was made from home-grown wheat ground at a water-mill near by, whose
wheel was turned by the little, useful river--there was the romance of
it. Great long loaves they were, with a generous allowance of crisp,
rocky crust to crumb--loaves to be remembered.

We stepped at once from the door of the house into the country, and
that was the charm of it. Our water came direct from the lonely moors
above, and was beyond suspicion pure and in superabundant supply;
indeed at one end of the large kitchen there was a stone trough for
washing purposes, and along this the water ran day and night; no tap
was ever turned on--there was no tap to turn. Perhaps I was fortunate
in finding such desirable quarters, but on comparing notes with an
artist friend, who took farmhouse apartments in Cumberland, I found he
fared as well as we did. A change in the method of taking a holiday
lends an added zest to it, and those who are tired of expensive
hotels, seaside lodgings, or constant travelling, with the everlasting
packing and squeezing of the sponge, might do worse than try farmhouse
apartments in some pleasant country. If rest be needed I cannot imagine
a more restful form of holiday.

Besides being a good cook our farmer's wife was skilled in the making
of sundry jams, jellies, ginger-beer, and elderberry wine; of the
last she was very proud, and mulled some for us to bring out its full
flavour--I did not sample it a second time: such wine maketh the heart
sad. One of her concoctions, however, commended itself to me, namely,
a home-made kind of liquor that was fresh and pleasant to my palate
which she called, curiously enough, "Job's Comforter." Who would have
expected such a thing in a remote farmhouse? This is the recipe for
the making of it as given to me: "Get a wide-mouthed stone jar and put
in it as many good lemons as you can; stick as many cloves as possible
into the skin of the lemons, pressing them well in, then place the
prepared lemons in the jar and fill up with unsweetened gin; let the
lemons remain in the gin for two or three days, after this strain the
liquid off, add honey and a little sugar-candy to sweeten according to
taste and to give a smoothness to the liquor, then bottle it." I give
the recipe exactly as given to me. I had some trouble to obtain it,
and should prefer more precise details as to quantities, but these old
housewives are jealous of giving their recipes away. I took a bottle
of this "Job's Comforter" home with me and friends of mine pronounced
it excellent--"as good as Chartreuse" they declared, but perhaps
this estimate was owing to the novelty of the thing. Still, it was
undoubtedly good.

Resuming our journey we followed the lonely lane for a long way without
arriving anywhere, but "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive,"
and we were in no hurry. Still, the longest lane has ending, and ours
ended at a wide, open, elevated space marked Pit Down on the map; this
spot, I afterwards discovered, earned its title from the fact that
there in pits were hastily buried the victims of the plague that once
devastated the villages around, and in one of these villages, Fletching
by name, we shortly afterwards found ourselves. A pretty village it
proved to be of the picture-book sort, as clean and neat as though
it were a Kate Greenaway's drawing materialised. The ancient church
stands in precisely the right spot, around which are grouped, as an
artist might group them, the many gabled houses of the village; the
one thing wanting to perfect the picture was the village green, but
"fortune seldom comes with both hands full." Fletching lies well out
of the beaten track and is only to be reached by winding lanes, so
that I should imagine a motorist is seldom seen there, unless he has
fortunately lost his way to the finding of the village. Even then some
motorists might not realise their good fortune.

I stopped the car in the shade of one of its attractive houses,
when a man approached me, evidently imagining I had come to see the
church, and, desiring to be of service, exclaimed, "The rector will be
delighted to show you over the church; there are a lot of curious old
tombs inside that are well worth seeing. The rectory is just over the
way"--pointing to it--"and I know the rector's at home." I explained
that I had not come to see the church but had merely driven into the
village accidentally. "But you really ought to see it now you are
here," he continued; "the rector takes a great interest in it, and is
always so pleased to show it to any stranger." Fate had brought me to
Fletching, and Fate appeared determined I should see the church. Fate
was kinder than I knew. The man stood there watching me, and after
his civility I felt it would seem ungracious to disappoint him. So to
the rectory I went, though somewhat reluctantly, for it was a fine,
out-of-door day, but I did not wish to hurt the man's feelings.

The grey-haired parson received me most cordially; I might have been a
welcome guest instead of a stranger seeking a favour, but I have always
found that in pleasant places you meet with pleasant people. Pleasant
surroundings surely, to a certain extent, influence the temperament of
man? They affect me, I know, and strongly. "Delighted to show you over
our church," said the parson; "it possesses many features of interest
that you might miss if you went alone." So I put myself under his
guidance, for who should take a more intelligent interest in, or know
more about, a church than its parson? He even appeared very desirous to
show it. A parson's life in a village is often a dull one, and possibly
the occasional meeting with a sympathetic stranger comes as a welcome
relief to his round of monotonous days.

Before entering the building I noticed a little "low-side" or "leper
window" on the left of the porch. The purport of these so-called
"leper windows," so frequently to be found in country churches, has
perplexed many a learned archaeologist, and it seems passing strange to
me why a window so usual should be a subject of such mystery. The once
generally accepted theory was that they were provided for lepers, that
those so unfortunately afflicted might view, from outside the church
and safely apart from the congregation, the elevation of the Host, and
thus participate, to some extent, in the service. But in the case of
Fletching church, and many others, these peculiar windows are so placed
that no one could possibly see the altar from them; moreover, as the
rector remarked, lepers were never admitted into churchyards. So the
leper theory fails. My personal impression is that these windows were
never intended for looking into, but for looking out of the building,
and for this purpose such a small window sufficed. From the number of
leper windows I have inspected, and writing from recollection, I should
imagine that the majority of them are suitably placed for watching the
congregation entering the church, and so might be of service to the
bell-ringers; but that, I take it, would be a secondary consideration
and not the main object of them.

On entering Fletching church my attention was called to the Norman
arches under the tower showing that the building had been originally
Norman. Now, owing to rebuildings and restorations, it is mainly Early
English--the Early English of the Victorian era! On the west wall
is a curious and well-preserved little brass, doubtless formerly on
the floor. The inscription on this, beautifully cut, runs briefly as
follows:

  Hic jacet Petrus Denot, glover:
  Cujus aie ppicietur Deus. Amen.

The brass is manifestly an ancient one, and the absence of a date is
notable; there is plenty of space for it. Two gloves, crossed, are
shown below. The English word "glover" looks strangely out of place
in the midst of the Latin. Presumably the carver of the inscription,
though doubtless familiar from frequent usage with the usual Latin
employed on the memorials to the dead, its _Hic jacets_, its _Obiits_,
and the rest that goes between, was in a quandary how to render
"glover" in the classic tongue; his limited learning failing him, he
boldly inserted it in English. At least I arrived at that conclusion.
Who was this Petrus Denot, I wondered? The rector knew his story in
part and enlightened me. He was an inhabitant of Fletching, a glover
by trade, and was one of the unfortunates who took a part in the Cade
rebellion; he was captured and hanged, but his body was recovered
by his relations and was buried in the church. I query if that is
the whole of the story, for it seems strange that a tradesman of the
period, to say nothing of his being hanged for treason, should have the
much-sought-for privilege of being buried within the church's hallowed
walls, and honoured with a brass besides. Does the brass being dateless
point to anything? I fancy that there is more in the simple terse
inscription than meets the eye. At one time it appears Fletching was
famous for its gloves made from hogs' skins imported from Holland, and
it is supposed that the plague was conveyed to the village by these
skins, and that brought the industry to an end, and the village nearly
too.

During one of the restorations, when the flooring of the church was
removed, many skeletons were discovered beneath, all in an upright
position--"pointing to Saxon burial," I was told. It may, however, be
remembered that Wordsworth in "The White Doe of Rylstone" alludes to
bodies in after-Saxon days being so buried in a vault at Bolton Priory:

  Pass, pass who will yon chantry door,
  And through the chink in the fractured floor
  Look down and see a grisly sight:
  A vault where the bodies are buried upright!
  There, face by face, and hand by hand,
  The Claphams and Mauleverers stand.

"Possibly you are aware," exclaimed my parson guide, "that Gibbon the
historian rests here in the Sheffield chapel amid the Sheffield family
deceased, for the first earl was a great friend of his." I was not
aware of the fact, but with Cicero I could say, "Non me pudet fateri
nescire quod nesciam." The number of world-famous men is so large, and
grows ever larger as the years roll on, that it is quite impossible
to remember where but a scant few of the more famous of them were
born, or died, or lie buried. What matters it? These details belong to
Fate, not to genius; no genius can command them. So we went to the
Sheffield chapel, which is approached by a narrow passage; facing this
is a plain marble wall impressively devoid of any ornament, but covered
with epitaphs to members of the Sheffield family; in the centre of
these is one, in Latin, to Gibbon. He alone has the honour of Latin,
the rest being in plain English. "Now," said the rector, "I have a
gruesome revelation to make. One evening when at her devotions in the
church a nurse was startled by a loud report coming from the Sheffield
chapel; she fled the building in terror: it afterwards turned out
that the coffin in which Gibbon was laid to rest had burst and a new
coffin had to be made. But this is not a lively subject; let me call
your attention to those stained-glass windows. The glass of these was
removed and buried in the churchyard for preservation during the period
of the Puritan fury; some years ago it was unearthed and now is in its
old place again. So Time brings about its revenge; what one generation
would destroy another would preserve, only the glass being much broken,
the pieces have got sadly mixed so as to resemble a mosaic, but not an
unpleasing mosaic, revealing little of the old design, yet sufficient
to show that the windows were to a royal personage, presumably the Duke
of Lancaster."

Next a well-preserved piscina was pointed out to me, having a bracket
on the top presumably to support an image, "in which respect this
piscina is almost, if not quite, unique in England." Then in turn
we inspected some of the ancient monuments; reclining on the first
altar tomb were two recumbent alabaster effigies side by side, one
of a beruffled man in armour and warlike of countenance, the other
of his wife. The inscription below runs: "Here lyeth buried the body
of Richard Lache. Coming out of his office of High Sheriff for the
counties of Sussex and Surrey, having no issue of his body living, he
gave all his lands in the county of Sussex unto Catherine his wife,
and made her sole executoress of his last will. In regard whereof
... she of her own account caused this monument to be made, and
herself living, to be pictured lying by him, as you see." Yet this
disconsolate widow consoled herself the next year by marrying the Earl
of Nottingham and lies buried elsewhere! Inconstant woman! Another
fine altar tomb, though minus inscription, is supposed by the coat of
arms remaining on it to be that of Sir Edward Dalyngruge, "who having
amassed a large fortune by war, marriage, and court patronage, obtained
the royal license to build upon the hereditary estate of his wife
the castle of Bodiam." There were also other ancient tombs of lesser
interest, one mutilated but apparently to a crusader and his wife; and
a thirteenth-century slab with only the matrix of its brass remaining.
In the transept I noticed, hung against the wall, two crested helmets,
gilt and coloured, the gilding and colours being much age-dimmed,
with rusty spurs and gauntlets suspended just below: the crests were
those of the Abergavenny family. There were also other features of
interest in the church--a penitent's window, a holy water stoup, and
at a late restoration I learnt that one of the pillars by the chancel
was found to be hollow and to contain the old steps intact leading to
the rood-loft, and at the top of the steps an ancient green chasuble
was discovered, left there in some haste or for concealment, it may be
imagined.

On leaving I asked the rector if he knew of any curious epitaph in the
churchyard. Time, alas! has robbed us of many a one, and worse still,
to my knowledge, certain men placed "in a little brief authority,"
not approving of such levity on sacred ground, have deliberately
obliterated others. "But," said the rector, "if I cannot show you any
quaint epitaph, I can tell you of a singular one I came upon some time
ago in ancient St. Mary's churchyard at Eastbourne; it ran, 'A virtuous
woman is 5/- to her husband.' This puzzled me at first, then I came to
the conclusion that it should read, 'A virtuous woman is a crown to
her husband.' Possibly the carver was an illiterate man, and, being
apparently short of space, substituted 5/- for crown, deeming them
synonymous. But whatever the explanation, that is how the epitaph read."

Fletching church was one of the happy discoveries of the journey;
though much restored it is of more than ordinary interest. There are,
indeed, but few churches of ancient date that have not something
noteworthy to reveal to the traveller; truly they are chapters of
history in stone, and some of them are, in a sense, museums. It is
well worth a wanderer's while to step aside now and then to inspect
carefully and leisurely a country church (carefully, or he may miss
much), especially those in remote spots where a want of pence has
happily restrained the restorer's hand: blessed be their poverty,
I say, for owing to it only needful reparation has been done, so
ancient tombs and brasses have remained undisturbed, and the medieval
craftsman's handiwork has not been improved away, to the joy of every
lover of the never-returning and picturesque past.

 An old coaching inn--The resurrection of the road--Far from
 anywhere--The charm of the unexpected--A historic milestone--"Mine
 host" of past days--Our port-wine drinking ancestors--The lure of the
 lane--Village life--Miniature effigy of a knight--The tomb of "the
 good Archbishop Leighton"--A church clerk's story.

Leaving Fletching by a leafy lane, we shortly came to a grass-margined
highway, and where the lane and highway met, stood, somewhat back
from the road, a lonely old inn--"The Sheffield Arms" to wit--a
well-preserved example of a modest country hostelry of the easy-going
Georgian era; one that externally shows no signs of alteration since
it first was built, and few are the inns of the period that have not
suffered some change during those changeful years. As our posting and
coach-travelling forefathers saw "The Sheffield Arms" with its long
range of stabling on one side, so it looks to-day, only a little more
time-toned and weather-stained, with less life about it and, what life
there is, less picturesque.

There was no other building in sight on the long, straight, but
undulating stretch of tree-bordered road fronting the inn, excepting
one or two lowly cottages half hidden in woods, so out of direct
observation that they did not lessen the impression of loneliness and
the illusion of remoteness that the place gave. "Miles from Anywhere.
No Hurry," is the legend displayed on the gable of another lonely inn
at Upware in the Fens; it might as well be written on the signboard of
"The Sheffield Arms."

An ancient coaching hostelry of some pretence, that has seen better
days and other ways, that has not been modernised, standing forlorn
by the roadside, but still appearing too proud to mourn its long-lost
prosperity, always makes its appeal to me, for it strikes a pathetic
note. I do not need the building to be picturesque, though I would
prefer it thus, so long as it be not too much decayed, only that it
possess the glamour of age, has entertained travellers of the long ago,
and so made its little history. Then I humour my fancy. Many an old inn
of this kind has a sort of magnetic attraction for the few who indulge
in that despised article, sentiment: Stevenson confessed that he could
never get over his hankering after a room in a wayside tavern in which
to start his tale. There is romance about a lonely and once flourishing
inn, however plain that inn may be--romance that clings to it as surely
as ivy clings to a crumbling ruin. I feel that, in the days gone by,
some eventful happening only waiting to be revealed must have taken
place within the walls of such a one, some romance unrecorded yet.
For real romance lingered long into the coaching age, but steam and
electricity have killed it. Now

  Romance beside his unstrung lute,
      Lies stricken mute.

Had "The Sheffield Arms" a tale to tell? To me it looked as though it
had, but then it must be remembered the poetry of a place lies as much
in the eyes of the beholder as in the place itself; what is a romance
in building to one is but bricks and mortar to another. We do not all
see alike; a Turner, a David Cox, a Constable would each render the
same landscape differently. Once when admiring an old ivy-covered Tudor
manor-house I ventured to remark to a native on the beauty of it; he
scornfully rejoined, "I see nought in it, it wants pulling down." The
eye is but a lens; it is the mind that really sees and interprets.

"The Sheffield Arms" is well retired from the highway by a wide space
of grassy ground whereon grows a flourishing clump of trees; on the
roadside of this clump stands a large, two-pillared, crossed-top
signpost; from this depends a swinging sign, in the good old-fashioned
way as an inn-sign should--a sign that boldly proclaims the business
of the house, so that even the rushing motorist could hardly pass it
unheeded by. Without the needful sign one would hardly guess that
the shy building was an inn, so little otherwise does it assert its
purpose--and modesty becomes even a building!

There I pulled up beneath the welcome shade of the trees, sought the
cool interior of the hostel and called for a glass of ale, for the day
was hot, and mortal man is sometimes thirsty. The ale was good, and
brought to mind the poet's query:

  Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
  Or why was Burton built on Trent?

Why, to provide good ale, of course, such as I sampled there that
day. Then I got a-chatting with the landlord in hopes of gleaning
something of the old inn's past story. I found much civility, but to my
disappointment the landlord (whose name of Weller, by the way, was a
reminder of Dickens) had scant information of the kind I sought. Truly
he said it once had been a coaching house: I could have told him that.

[Illustration: OLD COACHING HOSTELRY, SHEFFIELD PARK, SUSSEX.]

[Illustration: AN ANGLER'S MODEST INN.]

The inn, I imagine, after the coming of the railway suffered from long
neglect, left stranded high and dry, as it was, on a travel-forsaken
road, its profitable posting and coaching custom gone, and with little
else to depend upon: how it existed at all during that stagnant period
is a wonder. Who would ever then have dreamt of the resurrection of the
road that the motor-car has brought about? How the landlords of the
half-forsaken country inns must have rubbed their hands with glee to
find custom, and profitable custom too, come again their way. It was a
miracle; so they refurbished their ancient houses and blessed the car
that others cursed. In this respect, at any rate, the motor has done
good service, for a quiet country inn is a boon to the traveller who
does not always care to seek his rest in crowded noisy towns. There was
a long time, after the coaches had disappeared, when it was the rarest
thing to find a decent rural inn, and the best of these existed for the
sake of fishermen; they were unfortunately few, but mostly excellent,
for the fisherman loves good cheer--so does his fellow-sportsman the
motorist.

At the first glance the interior of the ancient hostelry did not appear
inviting. I found my way into a large, cheerless apartment, erst, I
imagined, the coffee-room; truly there were flowers on the table,
and a door stood open wide on to a little garden where sweet-scented
roses grew whose perfume was wafted into the chamber, but there was
no carpet on the floor, and bare boards, though clean and stained a
warm hue, are noisy to the tread and comfortless to the eye. I was
not impressed, for though one despises luxury, one looks for comfort.
Then I jokingly asked the maid, who put in a sudden appearance on the
scene, if they ever had any visitors stopping there: thought I, it is
a needless query. To my surprise she replied, "We often have motoring
parties for the night, and sometimes they stay a day or two; would you
like to see our rooms?" I thought I would; I expected to find musty
chambers, four-poster beds, and forbidding antiquated furniture, but I
found bedrooms scrupulously clean, neat, and simply but sufficiently
furnished; I have slept in rooms less comfortable and less clean at
expensive town hotels. There was, too, a large but cosy sitting-room
supplied with really easy chairs, and--who would have thought it?--a
good bathroom! Upstairs the old inn was clean and comfortable, and the
not-too-exacting traveller might take his ease there with much content:
indeed I almost wished I had been belated and compelled to do so.

It is always a delight to me to stay at a real old-fashioned country
inn, far from anywhere: I love the peace of it. The country is as
tranquil as ever, but the towns are, alas! more noisy. Would Dr.
Johnson care to "walk down" his beloved Fleet Street to-day, I wonder,
with all the twentieth-century bustle of it? De Quincey, too, dearly
loved the quiet country inn; writing in 1802, of a walking tour he
took, he remarks, "Happier life I cannot imagine than this vagrancy
... and towards evening a courteous welcome in a rustic inn. It has
often struck me that a world-wearied man, who sought for the peace of
monasteries separated from their gloomy captivity--peace and silence
such as theirs combined with the large liberty of nature--could not do
better than revolve amongst these modest inns."

At the rear of "The Sheffield Arms" the country looked inviting with
its green meadows and big branching trees, and noticing a footpath
I was tempted to take a stroll. I had not wandered far when to my
surprise I came upon a deep, rock-girt, and shady glen of much charm;
at the head of this I caught a glimpse of a large still sheet of
silvery water, a lake in miniature, for it was perhaps a quarter of
a mile in length or more, of generous width also, and from its sides
rose, steeply and abruptly, hills, wooded to the skyline--wooded hills
that doubled themselves on its mirror-like surface. I have seldom come
so suddenly upon so lovely a spot without a hint of what was to be
revealed; in truth the scenery gave no suggestion of this, and, as a
rule, Sussex lacks the enlivening presence of water. There was a joy in
the discovery of that beauty-spot; nothing more delicious of the kind
have I ever seen.

  Good things that come of course far less do please
  Than those that come by sweet contingencies.

Possibly this sheet of water was artificial, though it had purely a
natural look, for it may have been one of the numerous "hammer-ponds"
constructed long ago for the service of an iron mill or mills in
the now almost forgotten days when Sussex was the Black Country of
England, when the present peaceful and pastoral land, as Camden says,
"resounded with the noise of busy hammer-mills beating upon the iron,"
and its pure air was polluted with the smoke of many furnaces and
forges of which Sheffield possessed its share. Sussex wood-smelted
iron was reckoned the toughest in the world, and iron ore still
abounds in the county; it was the failure of fuel for smelting, owing
to the exhaustion of the forests and the near proximity of iron and
coal in the North, that caused the decay of the extensive Sussex iron
industry, not the lack of ore--a fortunate happening as far as the
beauty of the land is concerned. Reminders of the period may be found
in the many place-names on the map, such as "Steelforgeland," "Furnace
Farm," "Cinder Hill," "Hammerfield," and numerous others of a similar
nature. Those ancient iron-masters have left their gracious mark in
the land by the many beautiful homes, standing yet, that they built
for their convenience and enjoyment in the days of their prosperity:
they built not only houses, they built pictures in stone, in brick, in
half-timber, delightful to look upon; perhaps "they built better than
they knew." Amongst the many in half-timber Middle House at Mayfield is
a good example, and of those in stone Batemans, near Burwash, the home
of Rudyard Kipling, is another.

At the end of the lakelet I discovered a picturesque water-mill--grey
and old, with a weatherboard upper story, and a red-tiled,
lichen-laden, uneven roof, silvery and golden--its dark green wheel
revolving round in a leisurely fashion to the droning of the ancient
machinery within, and the quiet splash of water without. A ready-made
picture awaiting the artist to paint it, if he has not already done
so. Somehow the sounds of water and wind-driven machinery seem to me
to be different in quality to that of steam-driven machinery with
its insistent noise: water and wind are natural powers, and both
water-mills and windmills with their adjuncts are picturesque objects
to the eye, but I know no steam-mill that is not ugly. In the days
before steam became the almost universal power, and the modern builder
and engineer had not disfigured the country with their assertive
erections, how doubly beautiful England must have been! Would that
photography had been invented ages ago, then we might possibly have had
photographs of Elizabethan England preserved to us, so that we might
better judge of its picturesqueness than by descriptions and drawings
not always to be trusted.

I know of no other pleasanter stretch of highway in all England than
those few miles on either hand of "The Sheffield Arms"; on both
sides of it are spacious grassy margins left to nature, and they
extend as far as the eye can see, and the sum of them would come to
a considerable acreage. On these wide wastes grow big oaks and other
trees; especially noticeable are numerous clumps of Scotch firs that,
with their tall red trunks and twisted branches high above, give quite
a character to the roadscape, if I may employ so odd a term; besides
which brambles, heather, bracken, gorse, and other wild growing things
flourish on them at their own sweet will. An ideal spot for a wayside
picnic, where one might choose a secluded nook near to the road, yet
hidden from it. Here at least no "hungry nobility have swallowed up all
the land except the King's Highway." There was not a soul in sight; the
vacant road impressed me with the same sense of loneliness as does a
house deserted, for I looked for life and found none.

On a slight rise, a little away from the road and not far from the inn,
I espied a tall, shapely, solitary stone pillar, weather-stained and
worn, backed by a tangle of greenery. This aroused my curiosity, so
off I set to solve its purport--and discovered a glorified milestone,
manifestly erected in days somewhat remote; the lettering on it was, in
parts, wasted away and so difficult to decipher, but I managed to make
out certain of the names and figures, and this is what I noted:

                        Miles.

  Westminster Bridge      39
  East Grinstead          10
  Lewes                   10
  Brighthelmstone         17

There were further inscriptions, but these were all I copied. Brighton
being given as Brighthelmstone shows how far back the stone was
placed there--those were the days when people directed their letters
"Brighthelmstone, near Lewes." I learnt afterwards that this milestone
was erected by a former Earl Sheffield in order to settle the frequent
disputes that arose with the postboys as to distances to his park and
the inn. "Private travellers," as those who posted about country were
called, had need of well-filled purses, for in addition to the charge
for posting that ranged, according to Leigh's _Road Book_ (sixth
edition of 1837), from 1s. to 1s. 9d. per mile, the postillion expected
and demanded a further 3d. a mile for himself, and more if he could
extort it; besides which the traveller frequently felt under the moral
compunction "to take something for the good of the house" during the
delay of changing horses.

On the arrival and departure of the postchaise the old-fashioned
landlord was always in polite evidence, willing to drink the
traveller's health at the traveller's expense--it was the custom of the
age. What constitutions the men of those days must have had, whether
of high or low degree! Men then there were who could drink their two,
or even three, bottles of port at night, and rise the next morning
apparently none the worse for it. When I was a youth I visited a
country squire, one of the last of the old race, and I well remember
that after dinner he drank his two bottles of port, excepting a glass
that was given to me; at the finish he was "as sober as a judge," and
the next morning, early, he was out with the hounds.

Leaving the old inn we took a narrow lane opposite to it, for it had
a pleasant look; the highway too was pleasant enough, but we thought
the lane the more likely to lead to some out-of-the-way spot and have
more picturesque possibilities: the highways serve the towns, the
byways the villages and the countryside, so always take to a lane when
you can if you desire to discover the secreted beauty of the land.
Our lane led us through a green and old-world country with no hint of
modern ugliness or aught but tranquillity about it, a tranquillity that
hardly seemed of our bustling day. The lane was long, but not too long
for us, and very winding; possibly our lanes follow the old primitive
tracks of past days when the early inhabitants, to avoid a swamp, soft
ground, or a wood, simply deviated this way and that in search of
firmer footing; even, it may be, these early inhabitants followed on
the earlier track of wild animals. Small wonder our lanes are often
so wandering--delightfully wandering, for therein lies their special
charm: who can tell what a lane may do, or what surprise each bend of
it may have in store for the traveller? Then a crooked lane controls
the pace, you cannot go fast on it, so time is compulsorily afforded to
see and absorb all that is worth seeing; the lane is for the loiterer,
though few there be who care to loiter nowadays, so the lane is almost
forsaken except by country folk and rural lovers. Some one somewhere
says, who or where I cannot now remember, nor am I sure if I have the
quotation right, but this is the drift of it, "The lane is a work of
genius, the highway that of the engineer." The lane is to the highway
as old wine is to new; there is a finer flavour about it, a rarer
charm; it leads to half-forgotten places and quiet scenes--

  Where the wheels of Life swing slow,
  And over all there broods the peace
            Of centuries ago.

At last, after many windings and some climbings, our lane brought us
to the remote and pleasant village of Horsted Keynes, set on a hill
and surrounded by woods. If one goes in search of these out-of-the-way
spots they are apt to escape one; it is the good fortune of the true
wanderer to discover them--that is the reward of desultory travel.
Stopping the car in the wide village street, a goodly portion of the
youthful population promptly surrounded it. "A motor-car, a motor-car,"
I heard them call out to each other, as though the sight of one was
somewhat rare; perhaps but few motorists find, or lose, their way
there. To travel and escape other cars and the morning paper is a
feat even in rural England. Then apropos of nothing one of the boys
explained, "That's the way to the church, down that narrow road." "I
did not ask the way to the church," I responded; "why did you point it
out?" "Well, I thought as how you came to see it; there's nothing else
to see here." There was not, except one or two rather pretty cottages.

There before us, a little down a narrow road, stood the ancient church
with its tall shingle steeple, curiously slight. I strolled up to the
silent fane of Sunday devotion for the sake of a walk and to get a
better glimpse of the old-fashioned cottages on the way, each with
its little garden gay with flowers. Then I glanced inside the church.
I had not been there more than a minute or two before the clerk made
his appearance, somewhat out of breath in his haste to discover me
before I departed. "I saw as how you were a stranger," said he, "and
thought perhaps you would like me to show you over the church." So are
strangers' movements noted in quiet places. In many an out-of-the-world
village the coming of a stranger arouses an astonishing amount of
interest; his coming, his movements, his business, his going, are
subjects of discussion and watching. How uneventful and unexciting
must the lives of the sleepy villagers be that so small a matter
should claim their special attention; little wonder that the younger
generation among them seeks the town as a relief from the dull monotony
of its existence. How to make village life attractive is the problem,
and a pretty stiff problem too. Village halls and reading-rooms do not
solve it--the average villager scorns them; he, or she, much prefers
to idle out-of-doors doing nothing, contentedly or discontentedly,
varied by an occasional visit to the public-house. It is not an ideal
existence. What the villager needs is a wider interest in life. "Back
to the land" is a vain cry till country life is made less dull and
more desirable; but if the country in the winter-time is dull to some,
is not the town also dreary to others with its yellow fogs and muddy
streets? I am writing of the poor man who throngs the town where labour
is over-supplied and leaves the country where it is required. So the
shires are deserted and the slums crowded. I am no politician, I detest
politics as I do the devil--if they are not one and the same thing--but
from what I have seen and heard, from the many talks I have had with
the countryman lowest down in the social scale, I do feel that only
the pride of possession of his freehold cottage with a little garden
attached, or some small holding, will ever attract him back from the
town to the land. A garden to tend keeps a man's idle hours pleasantly
employed, and keeps him too away from the public-house. In the same way
I still more strongly feel that the loss of the sturdy yeoman farmer,
tilling his own little freehold, on which son succeeded father in the
good old days, is a disaster to the country. To do "yeoman's service"
had a pregnant meaning once; now it has none, for the yeoman has gone,
gone to other lands to forward their prosperity. He was foremost in the
fight on many a hard-fought field: he it was who helped to turn the
scale at Crecy and Agincourt, and his reward has been to be improved
(!) out of existence.

But I have forgotten I was with the clerk in the church. I am afraid
that at first I rather resented his intrusion, but after all he
turned out an obliging fellow, amusing too without the thought of
such a thing, so I forgave him. "It's an interesting old church," he
exclaimed. How familiar I am with that phrase, so often have I heard
it; it is the stock phrase of most clerks by which he introduces
himself to you, with the inevitable tip in view. But there he was, not
to be disregarded, and with a smile on his face; he might have looked
more serious, I thought, for I fancy he was sexton too. I don't know
why, but his smile annoyed me; however, I let him have his way. "It's a
very old church," he went on, "but it has been restored." "Do you know,
I've already discovered that," I retorted. "'Deed, sir, then I suppose
you be one of those learned antiquated gentlemen who understands
architecture. Now I think I can show you something that will interest
you. I likes to meet learned antiquities; I'm a bit of an antiquity
myself." He was!

Then he led the way to the chancel, and there he pointed out to me on
the north wall under a small canopied recess the miniature effigy of a
cross-legged Knight-Templar, with his foot resting on the usual lion
in miniature too--a very curious and interesting monument, the like
of which I have not seen before; the recumbent figure is beautifully
carved and in a good state of preservation. But why so brave and bold
a knight--it is a matter of faith with me that those knights of old
were all both brave and bold--should have such a miniature monument I
could not conceive. It perplexed even the learned clerk to account for
this strange departure from the usual life-sized effigies of warriors
who are supposed to sleep peacefully below their "stone pictures."
It could not have been want of pence, for the carving was too well
done; it could hardly have been want of space. Why, then? There was,
unfortunately, no inscription on the monument, so what the knight's
name was, or what daring deeds he may have done, or when he died, I
cannot say, but I guessed that the tomb was of about the time of Edward
I. Then the clerk told me the tale of a learned "antiquity" who had
come from afar especially to inspect this monument (so the fame of it
has spread abroad, though I had never heard of it before), and this
learned authority had declared, after carefully examining the belt
of the effigy, that the date of the monument was 1227. How he could
arrive at so exact a date I could not imagine, for after hearing this
statement I critically examined the belt but could discover no figures
thereon; and the carving in itself is surely not enough to go by. Still
my guide stuck to his story.

There were other things of minor interest the clerk pointed out to
me--the headless brass to a woman, once on the floor but now on the
wall; an old stone slab with a finely carved and raised cross, without
inscription, also built into the wall; and a number of nail holes in
the fine oak roof, showing where laths had at one period been nailed
to it to support a plaster ceiling! But I discovered for myself a
mural tablet on the chancel wall to a Mrs. Sapphira Lightmaker, "a
devout woman and a mother in Israel, widow indeed, who notwithstanding
sollicitations to a 2nd marriage, lived to 44 years." What was the
import of this? Are unsought-for "sollicitations to a 2nd marriage"
likely to shorten life?

Then the clerk asked if I knew that "the good Archbishop Leighton
is buried here?" I was not aware of it; the clerk knew more than I
did, and the fact appeared to please him. "I thought perhaps I could
tell you something you didn't know," said he. I felt complimented,
for his remark showed that in his opinion I possibly was not wholly
ignorant about other things. "Where is his tomb?" I asked. "Out in the
churchyard," was the reply; "but it was not always out in the cold;
at one time the ground was covered by a chapel, but the chapel either
fell or was pulled down." Wherever you go in England you come upon
history: at Fletching I came upon the tomb of Gibbon; here, on that
of Archbishop Leighton, and both in remote out-of-the-world villages
reached only by devious lanes.

We went without to see the tomb, a portion of the epitaph on which
runs, "In an age of religious strife he adorned the doctrine of God."
But the saintly Archbishop has a second, and an older, monument (it is
not often, indeed I do not remember such a thing before, that one finds
two monuments of different ages close together to the same person). The
older monument is in the shape of a slab set against the chancel wall,
and bears the following Latin inscription:

          Depositum
      Roberti Leightvn
  Archiepiscopi Glasguensis
          Apud Scotas
    Qui Obij xxv. die Junij
      Anno Dmi 1684.
      Aetatis suae 74.

"Do you know," exclaimed the clerk, "I was showing this monument to
an old lady one day who appeared to take a great interest in it, for
she told me she had been recently reading about the Archbishop; then
suddenly she said, 'I suppose you knew him well, being the clerk here.
Do tell me exactly what he was like.' Now that's a true story." "What
reply did you make?" queried I. "'Madam,' I said, 'do I really look
over two hundred years old?'"

It may be remembered that the Archbishop used often to say that he
thought "an inn the fittest place to die in, it looking like a pilgrim
going home, to whom the whole world was an inn, and who was weary of
the noise and the confusion of it." And he had his wish, for he died at
the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane, London. Curiously enough, Cicero, centuries
before, expressed himself much in the same way, for thus he wrote: "Ex
vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo."

As I was leaving, the clerk told me that about a mile away, in a wild
and wooded country, was Broadhurst, where the good Archbishop spent
the last years of his life. "It's a funny tumble-down old building,"
he said, "and it used to have a moat right round it, but that's filled
up; the road to it is very rough and rutty; a farmer has it now." I
know not how it was, but though an ancient and picturesque home has an
unfailing attraction for me, yet in this case I somehow neglected going
just that little out of my way to see what I understood to be one.
Truly "a very rough and rutty road" is not good for tyres, or car, but
I could have walked it: why this did not occur to me at the time now
passes my comprehension; it must have been a temporary lapse of sanity.
Even geniuses have such lapses, for it is recorded of Sir Isaac Newton
that he cut two holes in his study door, a large and a small one, for a
favourite cat and her kitten to enter by! As to Broadhurst, I can only
console myself that possibly (as Dr. Johnson once remarked of a place)
"it is worth seeing, but not going to see."

CHAPTER IV

 Dane Hill--Epitaphs--A wild bit of country--Ashdown
 Forest--Exploring--The use of maps--Curious inn signs--A
 Tudor home--The Devil's door--A medieval priest and guest
 house--Old-fashioned flowers--An ancient interior--Curious
 carvings--Roads in the old times--The window and hearth tax.

Out of Horsted Keynes we followed a friendly lane that quickly dipped
down into a deep and wooded valley and then rose steeply to Dane Hill,
an elevated spot that probably derives its name from an early Danish
camp, or from some forgotten battle taking place there during the
Danish occupation; its commanding situation suggests it may have been a
fortified post. Place-names, preserved through generations, often mark
spots where some far-off and unrecorded event has taken place, and I am
inclined to think Dane Hill is one of these. I hunted through several
volumes of general and local history, but failed to find any mention
of a battle there; sometimes, however, tradition is founded on fact,
though one cannot accept any tradition as trustworthy; still, where
probability and tradition go hand in hand, I am inclined to give ear to
tradition. Some day perhaps some Archaeological Society may go digging
about Dane Hill and make discoveries.

Dane Hill is crowned by a fine, large church, not ancient, nor yet
quite of recent days, for its stones have grown grey with years,
however many or few those years may be. Access is afforded to the
churchyard by some steps, and at the side of these stands a modern,
tall-pillared, canopied cross; the carving and shaft of this are
beautifully neat, a careful copy of old work, yet without even a
hint of its spirit or vigour, it being all scraped and smoothed to a
meaningless finish, as though any mark of handiwork was a thing to be
ashamed of; the old monkish craftsmen knew their art better, for it is
the human touch revealed upon it that gives meaning to the meaningless
stone. There is no soul behind the modern workman's tool: how can we
expect it when for long years we have been making a human machine of
him? Look at his lifeless productions, however painstakingly carved,
and compare them with the grotesque gargoyles that verily seem to
breathe and to struggle of the medieval sculptor, or any other like
work of his hands; the latter too was a creator, not a mere copyist.
His creatures resemble nothing on earth or in water that has been as
far as I know, yet they look like things that could live.

Somehow the large churchyard looked strange to me, and for the moment
I could not reason why; then suddenly I realised it was because there
was not a gravestone in it, not even a grass-grown mound: did the
people of the small hamlet never die? The harvest gathered in God's
acre is generally so plentiful. Then I solved the mystery; on the
opposite side of the road I discovered a little cemetery hidden by
trees and where the gravestones were many, each with its loving tribute
to the underlying dead. To judge by the tombstone inscriptions in our
churchyards, what paragons of perfection lie sleeping there, what
saintly virtues they possessed! Would that I had met them in the flesh!
Why always of yesterday and not of to-day? Small wonder that a little
girl who had been reading similar eulogies asked her father, "Where
are all the bad people buried?" Only once have I come upon an epitaph
that might possibly bear an unkind interpretation, and this read,
"He was ...," leaving the rest to be filled in by the imagination.
Solon, the great Athenian ruler, according to Plutarch, "laid down
a justly commended law that no man must speak ill of the dead," and
wisely ordered, for the dead cannot defend themselves nor can have any
say upon what is inscribed above their dust, excepting in those few
instances when the living have written their own epitaphs, not always
laudatory by the way, and one cannot but admire their candour. For
example, there is the much-quoted one that Dr. Lloyd, a dean of St.
Asaph (deceased 1663), wrote for himself, and it will bear quoting
again:

  This is the epitaph
  Of the Dean of St. Asaph,
  Who, by keeping a table
  Better than he was able,
  Ran much into debt
  Which is not paid yet.

At Dane Hill we came upon a good main road that led us to a wild, open
upland reaching far on either hand, a delightful bit of unsophisticated
nature where the land is poor as land well can be, so poor that
according to a local expression "it would make a crow cry to fly over
it," yet beautiful in colour to look upon. A glorious stretch of wide
and wild country bare to the sky and swept by all the winds that blow,
and the absence of any bounding hedges or fences left the eye at
liberty to rove over it unchecked to the furthermost horizon of distant
hills "rolling in the blue," and to the fir-fringed heights ahead of
Ashdown Forest darkly outlined against the sky. Glorious in colour
with its masses of purple heather and golden gorse, and sweet was the
odour of the gorse that came wafted to us on the soft west wind. All
England is not tamed or cultivated, and I am thankful, in a scenic
sense, that some portions of it, such as the moors and heaths, still
resist the dominion of man, as they have done for ages past. Not so
Cobbett, for thus he writes apparently of this very spot in his _Rural
Rides_: "You cross Ashdown Forest ... verily the most villainously ugly
spot I ever saw in England ... getting, if possible, uglier and uglier
all the way, till at last you see some rising spots which instead of
trees present you with some ragged, hideous rocks." But no land was
beautiful in Cobbett's view, I take it, unless it would grow good
wheat; he notices the rocks, "hideous" in his eyes, though romantic
in others, but has not a word for the glowing gorse or purple heather
that I presumed flourished there in his day, as now. What was gorse or
heather or their rich colours to him? You cannot eat gorse or heather;
mere beauty he considered not, but a well-grown field of turnips sent
him into raptures. Ashdown Forest climbing the hillside, though it
only grows trees, is to me with its green glades, its groves of pine
and their dim pillared recesses, as delightfully shady and as silent a
retreat as the heart of man could desire, yet Cobbett deems it a "most
villainously ugly spot." Let no one trust Cobbett's _Rural Rides_ as
a touring guide. Nor by his own showing does he appear to have been a
very gracious traveller, for thus he writes of one inn where he stopped
the night and left the next morning early: "By making a great stir in
rousing waiters and boots and maids, and leaving behind me the name of
a 'noisy troublesome fellow,' I got clear." I read Cobbett's _Rural
Rides_ in the hopes of gaining some information about scenery--and the
only information I could gain was about the qualities, good or bad,
of agricultural land. Now the title _Rural Rides_ suggests pleasant
rovings, not lectures upon land and upon politics.

We drove on to a spot right on the top of a hill overlooking Ashdown
Forest, and there the road began a long and gradual descent, out of the
sunshine into the green gloom of the woods. This descent we should have
taken had we not espied a lonely byway to our left that appeared to
keep on the high and open ground, so we chose the sunshine, the breezy
upland, and the byway: a solitary signpost pointed down this with
"West Hoathly" boldly displayed on its extended arm. Now West Hoathly
was but a name to us, but to West Hoathly we would go; we might make
discoveries there--which we did.

Writing of signposts reminds me that when touring in Somerset some
years ago I asked my way of a man by the roadside, and he said to me,
"Go straight on to the next parson; he will direct you." "The next
parson," I exclaimed in astonishment; "whatever do you mean? I may not
meet a parson for miles, or at all." "I see you don't understand," was
the reply, "but us calls direction-posts parsons in these parts." "How
is that?" I queried. "Well, I don't exactly know why, but us do." As
I could glean nothing further I sought information elsewhere, and was
fortunate enough to find a man who explained to me that "Some folks
hereabouts calls direction-posts parsons, because they point the right
way but don't go it. It's quite an old joke in these parts;" and he
grinned as he repeated the joke to me. Old though it was I had not
heard it before, though a Somerset clergyman to whom I told the story
often had.

A glance at our map showed that the byway would probably take us
into a remote corner of the land, far from travelled ways and into
a country of woods and wildness, for beyond West Hoathly, marked on
the map, were Worth, Tilgate, and St. Leonard's forests, close upon
each other and altogether of considerable extent, with narrow lanes
winding through and round about them. There surely we should be well
out of the beaten track. That is one profitable use and pleasure of a
map, to trace, now and then, a rough course upon it remote from town
or rail. Many a delightful hour have I spent with a map before me,
travelling in imagination by its aid when the winter storms and snow
forbade road wandering for pleasure: so I would go up hill and down
dale, now following the course of a river for miles, now coming to a
ferry across it, now to a ford, now to a mill, now to a bridge by which
I reached the other side and climbed up to a wild moorland solitude;
then I would descend to the lowlands and make my way by somnolent
villages, by shady woods and pleasant parks; then I would come to a
ruined abbey, anon to an ancient castle, then to an old battlefield, a
prehistoric camp, and occasionally to a Druids' circle, and all this
whilst seated comfortably in my arm-chair before a blazing log fire. I
think it was Sir Thomas Browne who said, though I am not quite sure of
my authority, that to travel with a book was "the pleasantest way of
all of travelling"; but I prefer a map, then in fancy I can go where
I like, not where others take me. To show how useful a map may be to
the discovering of interesting places that have not, generally, found
their way into a guide-book, and to specialise in moated houses, I have
now before me the Ordnance Survey Sheet of Stratford-on-Avon, No. 200,
covering no great breadth of country, and I have just counted nine
moated houses marked upon it, or "moats" at any rate; and these are
they, being at, or close to, Inkberrow, Rose Lench, Wickhamford, Broom,
Broad Marston, Clifford Chambers, and three around Throgmorton.

Proceeding along the byway, at first we crossed a wild heath, a perfect
sea of heather, gorse, brambles, and bracken, islanded here and there
by dark clumps of pines, their tops being tossed about by the brisk
breeze, a breeze that bent the bracken below and harassed and hurried
along the white clouds above. There was movement everywhere; great
gleams of golden sunshine and patches of grey shadow chased one another
over the land and raked the distant hills, then, as our eyes followed
them, lost themselves in space. We rejoiced in the open-air confusion
and in the clearness of the wind-swept atmosphere that caused all
objects in the view to be free from any obstructing haze or mist, and,
to the vision, brought the distance so near.

So, keeping still on the ridge of the hill, we came to West Hoathly
standing high above the country around. Here we pulled up under the
shelter of a yew-tree overhanging the churchyard, and opposite to a
clean and creeper-covered little inn curiously entitled "The Cat";
and this reminds me that we observed some singular inn signs during
the journey, and here are samples of a few of them: "The World turned
upside Down," but unfortunately there were only those words on the
signboard; I should have liked to see a pictured representation of
the world shown thus. Then there was "The Devil's Elbow"--how did
that originate, I wonder?--and "The Merry Mouth," showing a big mouth
smiling a welcome on the sign; "The Labour in Vain" had pictured two
white men endeavouring to scrub a black man white, truly a quaint idea.
In Wales I noticed "The Aleppo Merchant," a sign I had not seen before,
and of its significance I know nothing. "The End of the World" was
realised by the world in flames; and there were others.

[Illustration: AN OLD TUDOR HOME, WEST HOATHLY.]

Strolling about the ancient village, I espied, on the further side of
the churchyard, a grey old home of the Tudor time, so substantially
built those long years ago that to-day it looks, but for the
time-toning of its stones and the slight crumbling of one here and
there, almost as perfect as when first finished. Its mullion windows
are without the usual transomes, and do not seem to need them; their
leaden lattice-panes gleamed, just then, cheerfully in the light.
Windows are the eyes of a house, in their way as expressive as those of
a human being. I like to see a clear eye and a bright window. The old
home was retired behind a high and buttressed wall, and in the centre
of the wall was an arched outer doorway.

  Somewhat back from the village street
  Stands the old-fashioned country seat.

Its roof is of stone slates, the most lasting and the most lovely kind
of roof imaginable, beautiful when new, and yet more beautiful when
old; the stone slates in this case, as in every other I know, being
carefully "sized down, the smaller ones to the top and the bigger
towards the eaves, which gives one the same sort of pleasure in their
orderly beauty as a fish's scales or a bird's feathers." There is no
ornamentation at all about the building except some restrained carving
at the top of the arched doorway in the garden wall; the charm of the
building lies in its simplicity and goodly proportions, perhaps also
in the feeling of lastingness in that it seems fitted to still stand
unhurt, as in the past, all the winds and storms of heaven for years
uncounted, without a thought of repairs. A modern builder's "desirable
residence" never gives me such an impression--indeed, it does not
appear to me even "desirable." We seem to have lost all love of
building simply, let alone honestly. We too often seek after striking
effect and even quaintness, so as to challenge attention, if not
admiration, to the loss of all repose and the sentiment of home; for a
man's dwelling-place should be first of all to him a home.

Once I knew a country squire who desired to build himself a house on a
fresh and more healthy site than that in which he lived, so he employed
an up-to-date architect, full of ideas, to design him one. In due
course the architect placed the elevation of the proposed house before
the squire. It was a most unrestful production of needless gables
for the sake of gables, tortured stone, and meaningless carvings, in
all styles and no style at all, but intended to be impressive and to
please. The architect said he thought it original and that it would
"look well in stone." "Good gracious," exclaimed the squire, "do you
think I am going to take a chair and sit out-of-doors and look at my
house? I want one to live in." "Those are the very words I said to
him," the squire told me, adding, "I asked for a home, and he produced
a nightmare!"

Modest in size though that old Tudor home at West Hoathly is, yet it
suggests a certain sense of importance, just because it is so well
built, with no pretence about it; and what a charm those two words,
"no pretence," in an age of pretence and shams, convey. Pretence is an
undesirable quality that threatens to submerge us all some day unless
we cast it off, realising the utter nonsense and snobbishness of it.
Modesty is a thing above most others to be desired, though a famous
American once declared that "in our free country a man can get on very
well without it." I quite believe that. But you cannot, architecturally
speaking, in an ancient land "put new wine into old wine skins"
successfully, or with any sense of artistic fitness--the new wine
of novelty, I mean; that is best left for fresh lands that have no
traditions.

I took a photograph of the old Tudor house from the churchyard, and
there I got a-chatting with a man in a faded tweed suit who had watched
my proceedings with apparent interest. I took him to be a local
inhabitant, but to use an antiquary's favourite expression, "I could
not quite sum him up," nor did he enlighten me as to who or what he
was; but, after all, it was no affair of mine. At first he talked about
the weather, by way of introduction, I presume, for it is a topic that
never fails amongst country folk. I really do not know what they would
do in dull places without the weather to praise or abuse; even the
tramp, whose sole object is to beg, invariably first starts upon the
weather, and so he feels his way.

"If you are interested in old places," said the stranger, "you should
see the ancient priest-house a little lower down the road," pointing
indefinitely into space. "It's well worth seeing; and you might like
to take a glance at the church, it's very old too." I thanked him for
the information. Then he led me to the porch and pointed out the oak
door there that was grey, not dark, with age, begging me to notice the
date upon it, marked in big studded nails, "March 31, 1626." "There's
a Devil's door in the north wall; you might take a look at that now
you're here, but it's built up," remarked my companion. "The Devil's
door!" I exclaimed. "I never heard of such a thing. Surely the Devil
does not go to church?" I was puzzled; I asked for enlightenment.
"Well, you see," came the reply, "it's certainly not everybody nowadays
who is aware of the fact, but in past times there used to be a small
doorway on the north side of churches to let the Devil out when a
child was baptized, and it was always kept open on such an occasion;
but that's an ancient superstition." I was anxious to learn more about
it. The stranger had become interesting, and I wished to chat longer
with him; but he suddenly exclaimed, "I must be really getting home
or the missus will wonder whatever has become of me. I promised to be
home ten minutes ago; it don't do to offend my missus"--and I thought
he laid a special and meaning emphasis on "my"; so he bade me a polite
good-day and hurried off. He was a meek-looking man. I hope he did
not get a scolding for the time he took talking to me. I wished his
missus had been away from home that day, for I was anxious to learn
more about the Devil's door; my curiosity was aroused. That call of
the missus was most provoking. I nearly followed the stranger home
to glean what further information on the way I could, but I thought
he might not care for my company under the circumstances. Thus the
traveller in out-of-the-way places picks up forgotten facts or fables,
surprising traditions, and odd bits of local lore; but the chaff has to
be winnowed from the corn.

On my return home I hunted in every likely book for any information
upon the Devil's doorway, but found no allusion to the subject. I
sought out several parsons, presuming that one of them would surely be
able to throw some light on the matter; but they all declared that they
had never heard of such a thing, so I began to think that the stranger
had made a fool of me, and that I was myself a fool to be so easily
taken in. Yet when I recalled the stranger's face, it had an honest
look; he seemed hardly a man to invent so poor a joke, and, provided it
was a joke, I failed to see the humour of it. Then one day afterwards,
when chatting with a learned antiquary, I suddenly remembered about
the Devil's door; so I mentioned the tale about it I had been told,
and he confirmed the truth of it. "Such doors in churches were quite
common, if not universal, long ago," he said; "they were always on the
north or Devil's side of the church, and may still be found in many
churches, though their purport has long been forgotten. I even remember
a certain parson who, only twenty odd years past, insisted on having
this door kept wide open during a christening, so as to afford a ready
escape for the Devil, who was supposed to be driven out of the child."
Curiously enough, after making so many vain inquiries on the subject, I
found friends to whom the former existence and use of the Devil's door
was quite well known.

Leaving the church I went down the village street to inspect the
ancient priest-house. This proved to be a long, low, half-timber
building; its roof was of stone slates, as most roofs of the period
were; the house has manifestly been restored at some recent time,
though carefully restored backwards, as far as I could judge, to the
intention of the original builder. Unfortunately my photograph, here
reproduced, gives no hint of the bloom of age that is upon it, or of
the subtle curves of the weather-bleached timber caused by the stress
of time. I have found in photographing many an ancient building,
unless its walls are actually broken and decayed away, how little the
photograph realises its antiquity. In my photograph of Boarstall Tower
(that we shall come to later on), in spite of the years the tower has
stood, and in spite of the battering of two sieges it has undergone,
the ancient structure, hoary with the antiquity of over five centuries,
looks almost as though the builder had but lately completed his work.

The approach to the priest-house was by a stone-flagged footway across
a garden gay and sweet-scented with old-fashioned flowers. "Scents are
the souls of flowers," says an old writer whose name I have forgotten:
if only these hardy, old-fashioned flowers were rare and difficult to
grow, how we should prize them for their charm of colour and their
sweetness, both so happily combined! But the modern highly-paid
gardener despises them as common: well, the uncultivated foxglove is
common enough flourishing in neglected spots, yet no pampered hothouse
flower seems half so graceful, stately, or pleasing to my eye.

[Illustration: A PRE-REFORMATION PRIEST-HOUSE, WEST HOATHLY.]

The door of the house was of oak and nail-studded, and there was a
quaintly-shaped iron knocker on it of some antiquity; a gentle tap or
two of this brought an old woman to me. "Could I see the house?" I
queried. "Why, certainly," she replied; "that's what I be here for, to
show it to any one, and to take care of it. I'm only too pleased to
see a visitor, I don't see many; it be a bit dull living here alone,
it makes me feel almost silly like at times. Come in, please." Fortune
was kind; I hardly expected to see over the place, and I found not
only ready admission but a guide at my service. The old body proved
intelligent but talkative; she told me one thing after another about
the place and its history in such breathless succession that I scarce
could follow her; I begged for a little time just to jot down a note
or two, but as soon as I started to do this she recommenced prattling
harder than ever. I think I never before met a woman capable of getting
in so many words to the minute, though I have met many very capable
ones in that respect. The worst of it was, she had really much of
interest to relate, but so eager and in so much haste was she to
relate it that I could only secure stray items out of her hurricane
of abundance. She had the history of the old place by heart, and was
learnedly--would only that she had been leisurely--informative about
its contents.

First I was shown the living-room, or ancient kitchen, a picturesquely
antique apartment with its low black-beamed ceiling, its red brick
floor, its recessed lattice window, its door that opened with a wooden
latch, its wide stone hearth fireplace, with andirons in position and
logs of wood laid between them ready for the burning, not to forget the
chimney crane with an iron pot suspended from it, nor the brick oven
by the side for the baking of bread--and what superlatively excellent
bread those old brick ovens produced! In some things we have progressed
backwards, and one of these is the making and baking of bread. The
iron fire-back, I noticed, had the royal arms cast in bold relief upon
it, but in place of the unicorn was the Elizabethan griffin, and on
the quarterings of the shield (I believe that is the correct heraldic
expression) were only the three lions of England and the fleurs-de-lis
of France, each repeated diagonally. On the big oak beam above the
fireplace were carved sundry curious devices; they were but meaningless
hieroglyphics to me, and the old body confessed that no one had been
able to make anything of them; possibly they were "invented out of the
carver's brain," with no other thought than to while away a dull hour
or two.

A good deal of what the old body told me might have been told to the
winds for aught I could remember or make note of; even an American
tourist devoting ten whole days "to do" England in somehow, and
allowing out of this twenty minutes for Westminster Abbey, could not
have complained of such a guide delaying him. Not that all, or even
the majority of Americans are like this, for I have met many cultured
Americans seeing the old country every whit as leisurely as I. Indeed,
I knew an American party who came over to take a motoring tour through
England, and were so fascinated by a remote English village they
chanced upon, besides finding there a really comfortable, old-fashioned
inn, that the party, with one consent, stopped a whole week in that
village, contentedly exploring the country around; and one of the party
wrote me afterwards that she had never spent such a pleasant or a
profitable week in her life, and she thought she might safely say the
same of the rest.

Of the hurried notes I managed to make about the priest-house at the
time, and those I set down from memory afterwards, I gathered that it
was built not later than 1350, possibly earlier. Originally there was
a large hall heated by a fire on a raised stone set in the centre, the
smoke of which escaped through a hole in the roof, and the old plaster
of the roof still shows the blackening caused by the smoke. At either
end of the hall were doors leading to offices, the sleeping-rooms being
above these. Such was its simple plan. About 1522 the present chimney
was built on the site of the ancient open fire, and the hall divided
into two compartments "as you now see it." "And how do you know all
this?" queried I, when I could get a word in. "Well, you see, sir, at
different times members of Archaeological Societies have been over to
examine the building, and I always went over with them, and so I learnt
a lot about it. The house was originally built by the Prior of Lewes
as a hospital for invalid priests, and it also served the purpose of a
guest-house for stray travellers; the roads in these parts were then
but rough tracks through wild forests, full of wild beasts, they tell
me. In the chimney a hiding hole was discovered, but it was only three
feet square, and as a man could not get into it, it is supposed it was
for hiding treasures, or perhaps books."

The old house was full of ancient furniture and of odds and ends of
curious things that served our ancestors. I remember there was a
steel striker and a flint with a tinder-box; I tried my prentice hand
with these, and after several attempts at last obtained a light, but
with difficulty; it must have been trying and tedious work using this
steel, flint, and tinder-box on a cold winter's morning. Little wonder
so many houses in past times had their fires piled up at night so