Cathedral Days. A tour through Southern England ... Illustrated, etc

Preface

AND A DEDICATION. T TNTIL 6*ne has finished a book, it is impossible to divine the joy which comes to an author with the writing of that one word " Preface." It stands to him as the visible sign and seal of the end of his labors ; it is the moment when he ex periences the enjoyment of an after-dinner glow of satisfaction and a corresponding exuberance of feeling, — when he deems himself on sufficiently intimate terms with his readers to treat them as old friends, in whose ear he may whisper a word or two in strict confidence, under the ban of secrecy. To start forth upon a journey with three is, I know, always a more or less perilous undertak ing. To invite whoever will, to join a company of travellers, proves a degree of either such hardihood or inexperience as should bring the dire punishment of disaster to the projector of so wild A

PREFACE.

AND A DEDICATION. a scheme. Yet I am emboldened to hope that those who follow to their close the adventures that befell us on our charming journey, may pardon the presumption of so universal an invi tation, in view of the really honest desire which suggested the thought of enlarging our party, — the hope of inducing those who can and will, to take in sober earnest the same journey again, in more serious and enlightened company. The book, therefore, it need not be added, has been written with the sole purpose of benefiting the world. But if I only dared to be as frank with myreaders as I already feel warmly towards them, I would venture to whisper in each separate ear that, in truth, my little volume has been written not so much for the world as for one, — for a certain gentleman who shall be nameless, yet who, after the publication of these pages, will not, I hope, be wholly unknown, and to whom I dedicate this book, as my tribute of affection and love.

A. B. D. 417 Madison Avenue, New York. CONTENTS. Chapteb Page I. The Project 7 II. Arundel 13 III. Slindon axd Bognor 47 IV. Chichester 68 V. Goodwood 94 VI. Fareham. — Waliham. — The Valley of the Itchen 110 VII. Winchester 135 VIII. A College and an Almshouse .... 161 IX. Hursley and Romsey Abbey 190 X. Salisbury 214 XI. Stonehenge. — Warminster. — Longleat. — Frome 247 XII. Bath 274 XIII. The Drive to Wells. —An Enchanted Night 298 XIV. Wells, an Enchanted City 314 XV. To Glastonbury 344 XVI. To Exeter 360 XVII. Farewell to Ballad ILLUSTRATIONS. Salisbury Frontispiece Arundel Castle 14 Old Parochial Church, Arundel 34 Chichester Cross 74 Chichester Cathedral 82 Old Sculptures, Chichester 90 Old Houses in Close, Winchester 142 Winchester Cathedral 144 Chantries, Winchester 156 St. Cross Hospital 180 Romsey Abbey, Transept and Nave 206 Nuns' Door, Romsey Abbey 210 Salisbury Cathedral, from the Cloister . . 232 Gateway to Cathedral Close, Salisbury . . 244 Stonehenge 254 Longleat House 262 Old Roman Baths, Bath 292 Bishop's Palace, Wells Cathedral 332 Wells Cathedral, from Moat 338 Wells Cathedral, from the Wells 342 Arch, Glastonbury 357 Tithe Barn, Glastonbury 364 Exeter Guildhall 377 The Nave, Exeter Cathedral

Chapter I. The Project

/^VNE night in London, in the crowded latter end of June, a small number of us were sitting under the quiet stars, in a certain friend's charming garden, after a long evening of pleasure. There had been music and talk and laughter, into the small hours, in the great studio, from whose open windows a few of us had stepped forth, at the bidding of our host, into the coolness and fragrance of the night. We sat under the trees near a trickling fountain, whose liquid voice at first was the only one which filled the sweet night air; but soon, through puffs of smoke, others joined in its babble. The talk drifted into that closer, more intimate form of conversation which midnight and summer in conjunction so often in duce. It was an hour for confidences. Caught in this embrace of night, with London hushed and still, and only nature stirring in mysterious whispers, each of us in turn had been involuntarily betrayed into an avowal of his personal plans or desires.

The talk, in a word, had come to have something of the charm and something also of the intimacy of the confessional. One had proclaimed his approaching nuptials ; another her forthcoming book, — almost as great a venture ; a third had expressed his secret desire to run away from life and hide himself behind the Rockies or under the shadow of the Pyramids ; and still a fourth confessed to his having only recently signed a Mephistophelian bond to do that very thing, to go forth into the Great Desert and to bring back something of its desolation and its grandeur in verse. Boston and I, having some years ago settled our mutual destiny, having no book in view and no tragic sense of unrest, could only add the comparatively tame and commonplace avowal of our modest purpose to run away from the world, but only so far as English lanes and by-paths.

This announcement was the signal for a simultaneous attack, for an explosion of advice. If there is THE PROJECT. 9 any one thing a friend thinks he can interfere with righteously, it is another man's plans, — after they have all been settled and made. " Of course you '11 coach it," briskly said the nearest man, in a tone as if to settle the matter. " Go alone ? Just two of you ! Absurd ! You '11 die of ennui. Make up a party." " Only, whoever you ask, don't make it a party of more than six, and don't take more than two ladies," — this from a deeper tone amid the shadows of the foliage. " You are entirely right," cried a third, under one of the farther palms. " I never knew more than six to get through a trip without trouble. One can get along with two women, but more — " Then a little laugh went round, which died into the trickle of the splashing fountain.

Suddenly some one else puffed out a great volley of smoke, and began again. " And don't take luggage. Send it on by train. It's a wretched nuisance, always slipping about, and it fags the horses." " Why go in for England ? " broke in a new voice ; " it 's beastly tame. The Tyrol 's the best driving, and you get at least a bit of drama in your scenery, — peasants in costume, and all that. England has n't any scenery." " It has cathedrals," I ventured to suggest, " Oh ! cathedrals — well, so has France. Now, there's Normandy and Brittany. No one's done that yet on four wheels, and it 's crammed full of architecture." " Horrible waste of time, — England ! " Whereupon Boston assured the little company, that, not being an Englishman, he found it im possible to agree with them; that at least before condemning the country, he proposed to know something of its beauties and defects, and further courageously avowed our intention of " doing it " in a much humbler fashion than from the throne like elevation of a coach.

And would it be best to hire or buy our modest little trap ? Whereupon there was a chorus of disapproving comments. " Oh, you'll have to buy, out and out." "Horse '11 go lame, sure to, if you have only one." " If you don't take a servant, who is to look out for you, — for your horse and your luggage ? Oh no, the thing is n't feasible. Coaching 's the THE PROJECT. only safe or comfortable way. Now, I know a man — " And the voice went on, with admirable zeal and kindliness, to dilate on the advantages to be derived from an acquaintance with this latter individual. But better even than this kindly meant zeal was an invitation from one of the older gentlemen to run down to his country-house in Kent on the com ing Sunday, and talk the thing over quietly. The subject was canvassed to such purpose that we ended by putting ourselves completely in our wise friend's hands.

He decided that we were to depend on local traps, taking a horse and carriage from one town to another. The inns all along our proposed route, which was to include the southern cathedral towns, were admirable, and the roads were perfect. As for scenery, while lacking perhaps the wider horizons and the romantic character of the Northlands, Southern England was delightfully diversified along the coast by sea and land views, and the towns were charmingly- picturesque. Altogether, our friend having travelled over his own country, knew it and loved it. He bade us God-speed with a smile prophetic of our coming enjoyment. We were to go by train CATHEDRALL DAYS. from London to Arundel ; and thence, from that most beautiful of the Sussex towns, we were to start forth on our six weeks' drivingtour. Inside of twenty-four hours we were on our way to the Sussex Downs. ARUNDEL. 13

Chapter II. Arundel

A RUNDEL might be, and doubtless was, the most beautiful of the Sussex towns ; but as we had confided to each other before starting from London, we should only stop there long enough to hire a horse and trap. It would be a capital place from which to start. But Arundel itself had decided quite differently. It was a charming little town, — a fact of which it appeared to be almost humanly cognizant. Like all beauties, conscious of its attractions it resented being used for purposes of mere utility. Was Arundel, forsooth, with its grassy banks and its lovely river, its fascinating old Elizabethan streets, its splendid castle, and its bran-new cathedral, to be thus snubbed by two impertinent transatlantic travellers ? Was it to be debased to the level of a livery-stable ? Arundel, fortunately, was a thousand years older than these young American CATHEDRAL DAYS. i upstarts.

She knew a trick or two. She had not gone on fascinating all England for centu ries past, without having learned every art that belongs to a consummate coquette. As for these young Americans, she would make short work of them. And she did. First, she presented us at the railway-station with ? huge bouquet. We could even have our choice of three. There were the masses of poppies, dyeing the meadows with their scarlet flames ; there were the fragrant trim hedge rows, as odorous as a bride's garland; and there were also the low, sweet-flowering river-banks. These floral offerings were accompanied by a smile. She leaned over the hill, and shot it down at us over the thick-clustering roofs and chimneys, from the very citadel of the huge and noble castle itself. Alighting at the neat, bright little Arundel station was, in a word, like being dropped into the midst of a blooming garden.

What with the odors and honeysuckle perfume, the dashing sparkling river, the town running up the steep hill to the castle's turreted walls, the rustic setting of the outlying farms, the velvety hills covered with Auundel Castle. Page 14. ARUNDEL. browsing sheep and brilliant-skinned cattle, an enchanting vision of summer and of picturesque beauty appeared to have stepped forth to greet us. " I think, perhaps, Boston, we might stop over one day," I remarked, as we drove through the streets of the town to our inn. " Yes ; it would be a pity to miss seeing the place, now w-e are here. There seems to be a good deal in it, after all," Boston replied, quite as if we had arranged it with our imaginations to find it inter esting from the outset. The glimpses which we caught of the town on our drive up the steep High Street were of the fragmentary, incomplete order peculiar to such ap proaches.

We had a confused sense of meadows, of houses closely packed together, of distant vistas of a vast park with the downs beyond as a back ground, and of the great castle's turrets, these latter making admirable bits in perspective along the crest of the hillside. Our experiences with the true life of the little town began with the entrance into our inn. Quite as a matter of course, we had our choice of two. To have only one inn in a town, and that one good, would make the path of the traveller too smooth. A rival establishment is always started, apparently on the principle that one's enjoyment in this world must be made as difficult and as com plex as possible. Equally, of course, there being two inns, whichever one we chose it would follow that we would regret our choice and repentingly wish we had gone to the other.

The Bridges Inn — which we had decided against, moved by the higher sounding Norfolk Arms' title — presented, we found as we passed it, an alluring combination of charms. It stood in an attitude of bewitching grace on the river-bank, looking out upon the meadows, the cas tle, and the downs through windows embowered in blooming vines. But once inside of the Norfolk Arms, we knew that happily our first choice had been the right one. The chiefest among the excellences of the Arms was that it stood in the very centre of the little town, on High Street. The neighbor hood was of the most distinguished, as only a Frenchman knows how to say it. We discovered at once that the Norfolk Arms was nothing if not an aristocrat. In assuming the name of the famous family whose castle walls almost adjoined those of its ambitious namesake, the Arms had ARUNDEL. evidently made up its mind to maintain the family reputation for dignity and virtue.

It announced, at the very outset, a high-bred indifference to or nament which was too obvious to be unintentional. Its external austere simplicity was the protest of the aristocrat against the plebeian aids of picturesque accessories. A single large golden clus ter of grapes hung, it is true, from the sign-board ; but this was the only concession to the popular but vulgar demand for symbolic parade. The in terior of this most self-respecting inn was in keeping with its outward meagreness of decora tive embellishment. The rooms were large and spacious, but not luxuriously furnished. There was a conscious air of respectability about the tall beds, the stiff upright buffets, and the erect dining room chairs, as if to assure the inmates of these dignified apartments that they were in the very best society.

We discovered that the epitome of the conscious air of aristocratic rectitude which pervaded this ad mirable inn was embodied in our waiter. He was more than a person, — he was a personage. He appeared to be an individual of high-rank antecedents. From the first he gave us to understand, by a number of disdainful little ways, that his being a provincial at all was purely a matter of accident. This transition had evidently not been effected without disastrous results on his character : it had made him a pessimist. He took the darkest pos sible views of life in general, and of the travelling public in particular. He appeared, from the start, to have taken a melancholy view of us and of our luggage. The compactness and limited number of our boxes seemed to afflict him with dim forebod ings both of the transiency of our stay and of the limitations of our purse.

At the end of the second day, however, we noticed that he had become more cheerful. " It must have been the dinner we ordered last evening," said Boston. "If a little thing like that can raise his spirits, why, we will keep it up. But he is a gloomy specimen, is n't he ? " The gloom settled down upon him later the same evening. It was occasioned by a little obtuseness on Boston's part. Under the impulse of the knowledge that there were a number of interesting places about and in Arundel which must be visited in the next few days, and not having as yet either guide book or map at hand, Boston sought to extract a ARUNDEL. little useful information from Walters. Boston was too true an American not to see in every other man a being born for the express purpose of answering questions. " Walters, when is the castle open ?

" " The castle, sir, his never hopen to visitors. Honly the dairy and the keep, sir, hare hopen. The tickets can be 'ad 'ere, sir." This was deliv ered with a commendable alacrity of utterance. The succeeding questions were, however, answered with less and less readiness. Later there came a perceptible deepening of the gloom under which Walters appeared habitually to endure existence. Then came a pause all at once in both questions and answers. During the pause Walters gave Bos ton's pocket a pregnant glance. "Oh!" said Boston in an undertone, his fingers obeying mechanically the meaning conveyed in this portentous look. He took out a silver coin. After its contact with Walters' palm the cloud of his melancholy appeared to lift for a few seconds. "What nonsense, Boston, to have tipped him!

" I protested as he left the room. " Can't one ask a question in England without having to pay for it?" " It appears not. You saw that I only did what was expected of me." " That 's because we are Americans. An Eng lishman would n't have given him a penny." " It is Englishmen who taught him the habit, not Americans. Tipping is a national product. Every one is tipped in England, from the lord to the beggar. Only, when it gets into the upper circles it goes by another name." I noticed, however, that in spite of Boston's philosophic acceptance of this national custom, conversation with Walters, even of the most So cratian order of dialogue, having been found to be expensive, became more and more feeble. On the following morning we saw such a spectacle in tbe courtyard as made us still more sensible that certain customs in England are tena ciously rooted.

The cook and two assistants were busily handling a number of huge joints, which were suspended on hooks from the inner archway. This archway was the only mode of egress or in gress from the inn-door to the street without. The meats were hanging in full view under the brick arch, as if it had been a butcher's stall instead of the neat approach to an inn. I can- ARUNDEL. not say that there was any dripping of gore, but there was an unpleasant suggestion of recent bleed ing under the knife. " The courtyard apparently is the inn's open-air ice-chest," I remarked to Boston, after our first start of amazement. " No ; it is an original and altogether inexpensive method of announcing the day's menu" Boston replied to my suggestion. Subsequent experiences resulted in our forming even less favorable opin ions of the innkeeper's designs upon his guests.

The next morning we noticed that the huge quarter of lamb had disappeared. " We had best order the beef to-day, or to-morrow we shall wish that we had." " It is altogether the most ingenious method of enforcing speedy consumption of viands that was ever invented. Talk of Yankee ingenuity, indeed ! " answered Boston, in a semi-burst of indignation. There was, in truth, no escape from the fate which would befall us in case of a too prolonged indifference to these mute but terrible appeals to our sense of economy. There came upon us, at the last, the grewsome habit of fascinated calculation, as we CATHEDRmAL DAYS. eyed the meats day after day. We could not help conjecturing how the dampness of one day or the heat of another would affect their complexions, and then critically surveying them to see whether their pink and white had suffered.

This was not the only proof we encountered that the sensibility of English stomachs is of a different order from that of American organs. No one else but ourselves appeared even so much as to glance at the pendent carnivorous array. Our large sitting-room window opened directly on the town's main thoroughfare. One little street, at right angles Avith the larger broader High Street, seemed to have stepped into our windows, so close did its houses appear. Our sitting-room windows, we declared, were thus as good as a stage-box. All the life and the picturesqueness of the town could be enjoyed without stirring from the depths of our easy-chairs. The stage, we discovered on the second day of our arrival, was charmingly set. The brooding quiet had given place to lively activity. The streets were full of noise and bustle, of a true holiday clatter and buzz.

It was Saturday, — market-day ; and from early morning carts and wagons had been standing about in the open square. ARUNDEL. Wagoners and teamsters were soon out shopping. The tiny shops in a half-hour were so full that they were spilling over, country-people swarming out into the open streets and over the narrow sidewalks. The charming old Elizabethan houses, with the rich shadows beneath their deep project ing eaves, the quaint signs, the diamond-shaped panes, needed just this mass of rustic life moving beneath the window-ledges to give to this pictur esque frontage this last touch of completeness. The street itself could hardly have happened twice, I think, even in England. It began its existence, as we discovered later, with the bridge which crosses the Arun. Its progress up the hillside had that wandering, straying irregularity peculiar to old streets which have grown up independent of muni cipal intention.

It ended, at the summit of the hill, with some towers and turrets which lanced their crenellated tops among the trees, — these towers and turrets being only a portion of the vast corona which adorned the castle's fortified walls. "We were about to start forth on a visit to the castle when the sound came up to us from the street, through the open sitting-room window, of the scraping of a fiddle. A moment later, snatches of song broke forth from a low window directly opposite. We stopped to listen. There was a moment of hesitation before the song came full and clear ; for voices, like soldiers, must be thoroughly drilled to fall directly into rhythmic accord. Then the song burst out, firm and swelling with the might of the strong male voices. It was a lovely bit of part-singing, with sweet minor changes and full deep bass harmonies in it.

Then, after a little, there were pausings and haltings. The singers ap parently were at something else besides their sing ing. We could see, as we leaned out, a group of men in the house opposite, sitting about a long table. They were playing cards, and there was a huge tankard of beer at each man's elbow. I de voutly prayed that the depth of the tankard might prolong the length of the song ; but in a few minutes the song was done. The men came out, twenty or more in number, — strong, lusty-looking fellows, with the sun's red seal burnt upon their faces. They climbed into one of the big wagons, gave a deep-throated cheer to their hostess, and were off. The landlady stood looking after them, with both hands in her pockets, smiling a broad farewell. Then the little door swallowed her up. ARUNDEL.

" What was that singing over the way ? " I asked tho chambermaid as we passed her on the stairs. The previous answers of this neat and most re spectful of her sex to my questions had not im pressed me with the belief that she also was infected with the British habit of turning a passing dialogue into a financial speculation. She had never failed to enliven her civility with a smile. " It's a bean feast, mum." " A bean feast ? And what is that ? " " It 's the workingmen's outings, mum, — a kind of harvest feast, mum." So rural England still played and sang a little ! There was a time, I know, when she sang better than any one else, — when she could beat the world in her own line. In the old madrigal days Eng land was a nest of singing-birds. But I had sup posed that the cruel fate which overtakes all great singers had come to her : I understood that she had lost her voice.

It was pleasant to know that her method had been so good it had survived till now among its grain and bean fields, if abandoned by the great. What was not so pleasant was the braying of a horrible assemblage of instruments called a band. This latter was attached to a trick and monkey show which had taken its place, early on this holi day Saturday, at the bottom of High Street. Its hideous blare of sound had kept the village astir and abroad for five long hours. Where the crowds came from that kept the dogs performing and the monkeys playing their monotonous tricks, and how an otherwise sane and sensible English village could endure having its peace and quiet disturbed by such a roar and din as issued from the cracked trumpet and the squeaky fiddle, surpassed comprehension. The band and its torturing music had the perva siveness of all vulgarity ; it filled the village like an intolerable presence.

We shut the windows ; but the discords, like jubilant furies, screamed at us through the key-hole. We sought refuge in the graveyard at the top of the street, ■ — this at ten at night, when fatigue and desperation had turned us loose upon the world, seeking where we might hide our tortured ears ; but through the darkness of the night came the blare of that terrible trum pet, like a yell of some devil cheated out of his prey. At eleven, finally, the last villager had seen the last trick, and silence fell like a great peace on the still air. The next morning the great hideous ARUNDEL. 27 cart had disappeared. It had doubtless moved on to another suffering village. " Do you suppose it has gone to Chichester ? " I asked, in despair, of Boston. " I presume it has. It 's probably doing the towns, — it is taking its summer tour, as we are," was Boston's comforting answer.

" Then I stay where 1 am." I take pleasure in warning any unwary traveller against a similar fate. The name of that trick and monkey show was Whitcomb's. Whenever he meets Mr. Whitcomb I advise him to take the next train — if it be for Hades. It was owing to these and other adventures with the more homely features of Arundel's town-life, that we found ourselves too late that afternoon for a visit to the castle. But the hour was perfect for an inspection of its battlemented walls. To escape them, in whatever direction one turned in the town, would have been difficult. Such a vast architectu ral mass as Arundel Castle, implanted in Saxon, Roman, and feudal military necessities, strikes its roots deep and wide. The town appeared, in com parison, to be but an accidental projection on the hillside.

The walls grow out of the town as the trunks of a great tree shoot forth from the ground, — of a different growth, but an integral part of it. Topographically, Arundel has only a few features, yet they are fine enough to form a rich ensemble. There is the castle, huge, splendid, impressive, set like a great gray pearl on the crown of the hill. On one side spreads the town ; on the other, the tall trees of the castle park begirt its towers and battlements. At the foot of the hill runs the river, — a beautiful sinuous stream, which curves its course between the Down hillsides out through the plains to the sea. Whatever may have been the fate of the town in former times, held perhaps at a distance far below in the valley, during troublous times when the castle must be free for the more serious work of assault or defence, it no longer lies at the foot of its great protector.

In friendly confi dence it seems to sit, if not within its arms, at least beside its knee. But in spite of these changed re lations, all the good old prejudices, I fancy, are not done away with. In spite of certain excited statements from our socialistic brotherhood, the castle and the village are hardly as yet on visit ing terms. Nothing appears easier than the fulfil ment of these and other specious prophecies, away ARUNDEL. from the proofs. But somehow, when one looks up at such a vast and splendid castle as this, im pregnable as its walls, and contrasts the simple bourgeois little town beside it, one's belief in the glorious principle of the equality of men dwindles into pitiful conjecture. One wonders whether, after all, the castle will not survive these and other agi tations and agitators, as its very existence is proof of its power to resist far more formidable sieges.

There is no escaping the conclusion that a duke, when one is confronted with his castle, does seem an awfully real being. The noise and the clatter of the main thorough fare, and even the long stretch of the castle walls, we had soon passed, in our walk that afternoon, reaching the quiet of its upper streets. The principal dwelling-streets of the pretty town run laterally across the hillside, as if for once even a village house-builder could prove he knew best how to stand when he wished to look out upon a picture. Beneath us, swimming in light, stretched the great canvas of the open country. Through doorways and open windows there were enchanting views framed in old casements and Tudor pilasters. The eye swept past open doorways into broad halls, with their quaint old-time furniture of high-shouldered chairs and carved settle, straight out to the lovely Sussex valley, which stretched itself out to the horizon like an endless carpet, with its inwrought pattern of waving grain, oaks, and hayricks.