Our Cycling Tour in England ... Illustrated

Front matter

OUR CYCLING TOUR IN ENGLAND WEST GATE AND FALSTAFF INN, CANTERBURY OUR CYCLING TOUR IN ENGLAND FROM CANTERBURY TO DARTMOOR FOREST, AND BACK BY WAY OF BATH, OXFORD AND THE THAMES VALLEY BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES , SECRETARY OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN, AUTHOR OF "THE COLONIES, 1492-1750," "HISTORIC WATERWAYS" " THE STORY OF WISCONSIN," ETC. 3slIu6tratcTi CHICAGO A. C McCLURG AND COMPANY Copyright By Reuben Gold Thwaites a.d. Co mp -f-Hotljer This little journal of vacation ramblings in her native land is fondly inscribed.

Preface

. T HAVE not sought to make a guide-book ■*■ of this journal of our little tour through southern England ; there are an abundance of such already, and very good ones. But having taken a somewhat novel trip, both as to route and conveyances, and seen some phases of the country and people at closer range than, unfortunately, the majority of our fellow-countrymen abroad have the opportunity for, I thought a recital of our experiences might not be altogether lacking in interest. We had no exciting adventures, wife and I ; life went smoothly with us the six weeks we were in the saddle, coursing along English highways and byways, and lovingly touching elbows with English rural life ; there is little in this matter-of-fact record of our daily goings and Preface. VIII doings that can be called exhilarating, and yet we have never had another tour so replete with pleasure.

A canoe ties one down to a restricted and secluded path ; riding or driving on a foreign tour has practical drawbacks, and is expensive ; a tricycle is a weary grind ; a bicycle alone gives one the best imaginable exercise, outruns canoe or horse, involves no cost of keep, enables one to meander at will, to linger or to fly as fancy dictates. By no other conveyance is one so independent in action, so free from care, or so thoroughly in communion with folk and Nature. I have sought to be a faithful reporter of what we saw and heard ; but the passing traveller in any land can do nothing more than record surface indications that to the native may not seem fairly typical. American books about England are apt to be quite as amusing to Englishmen as their books about America are to us. This is inevitable; and yet I fancy the foreigner may often be nearer the mark than the native in picturing national character istics.

Preface. IX The greater part of chapter vi. is em braced in my article in "The New England Magazine" for May, 1892, entitled "Village Life in Old England." I am under obliga tions to the publishers of that magazine for permission to reproduce it in this volume. REUBEN GOLD THWAITES. Madison, Wis , September, 1892. CONTENTS. chapter page I. In Kent 15 II. In the Heart of the South Downs . 27 III. Chichester, Goodwood, and Midhurst 51 IV. With Hampshire Folk 72 V. Winchester, and the Isle of Wight . 86 VI. Village Life no VII. Wiltshire Downs and Salisbury Plain 134 VIII. In the New Forest 153 IX. Across Dorset 174 X. The Hills of Devon 194 XI. From Dartmoor to the Sea . . . 211 XII. On the North Devon Coast . . . 225 XIII. Somerset, and the Valley of the Wye 239 XIV. From Bath to Oxford, by the White Horse Vale 264 XV.

The Thames Valley 284 Index LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. West Gate, and Falstaff Inn, Canterbury Frontispiece. Ruins of Battle Abbey Facing page 32 Shanklin Village, Isle of Wight " 96 Rural England " 178 Market-Place, Wells " 246 Bath, with Abbey at the Left . . " OUR CYCLING TOUR IN ENGLAND

Chapter I. In Kent

-OATERHAM, Surrey, Monday, May iS, 1891. We have been in England for a month, W and I, visiting friends in London and in suburban Surrey. It is most delightful, this inspection of English men and English women at close range, this enjoyment of their charming hospitality ; but the summer is now at hand, and it is necessary that we bestir ourselves from delicious idling if we are to carry out our programme of cycling through the southern and middle counties. Cmstterbury, Tuesday, iglh. "You excitable Amer icans, you know, are always on the go, tearing up and down our little island, and we suppose there is no use at all of trying to induce you to stay quiet and enjoy yourselves." With such kind protests against our C/fr Cycling Tour in England. transatlantic views of tourists' duty, we were bidden Godspeed.

Our cycling muscles are weak after a winter of disuse, and it is always good policy to begin a wheeling tour cautiously. The Surrey hills are rather steep even for practised legs, and so we have come down here by train, to get an easy start over the Kentish plain. Canterbury, Thursday, 21st. In spite of all we had read about Canterbury, it was a surprise to find it so interestingly quaint. The city is literally filled with old timbered shops and dwellings, their pro jecting upper stories and doorposts and floors sadly out of plumb and level. Tavern-signs which smack of Elizabethan times abound on every hand, and the courtyards of some of the inns cannot have been materially altered since Shakespeare was in the flesh. So much of the olden architecture remains that in some of the blocks a modern building is no ticeable from its rarity.

The cathedral, St. Martin's Church, St. Dunstan's Church, St. Augustine's Mon astery, St. Bartholomew's Hospital, West Gate, Fal staff Inn, — such a cloud of antiquities and stirring memories here envelops one that it requires but slight effort of the imagination to repeople these narrow streets and darkling lanes with the throngs which sought Becket's shrine, and of whom Chaucer so merrily sung. Had we needed inspiration for the enjoyment of things enduringly English, we should certainly have gained it here. We have been busy packing to-night. Our cabin trunk goes by "goods train" to Alton, over in Hamp shire, where we anticipate spending four or five days In Kent. 17 with friends ; by sending it on ahead of us from time to time, we shall hope to get at its contents about every ten days. A stout canvas bag we book as a "train parcel" to Hastings; as it contains changes of linen, our aim is to reach it perhaps twice each week.

Upon our machines we shall carry luggage enough for immediate need. W , on her Ameri can lady's-safety, has improvised a carrier just behind the saddle, which supports a goodly bundle carefully wrapped in a square of mackintosh ; and to her care, as well, falls the lunch-basket, also encased in rubber cloth, for one must prepare for possible daily showers while in the United Kingdom. On my own safety, purchased the other day from a Coventry maker, I have at front a newly devised cyclist's satchel, which is the best and most capacious luggage-carrier I have yet seen. Our two umbrellas are strapped length wise on either side of the saddle, after the fashion of carbine-carriers on the English army cycles, while our mackintosh coats and leggings and my photograph camera are conveniently at hand.

Our outfit is rather formidable, I admit ; but as we are to be nearly two months away from our base of supplies, and must make ready for all manner of weather, ther mometrically and barometrically, and with costumes adapted, as occasion demands, both to visiting and wheeling, I cannot see that we can well do with less. As I passed through the courtyard just now in the twilight, to arrange with the smiling bar-maid for an early breakfast, the ostler was rubbing down and oiling our steeds in a box stall, while the chamber-maid and " Boots" looked admiringly on over the half-door. " 'Pears to me, Joe," said Boots, " as 'ow the lyedy an' gent 's a roonawye coople, an' 's carr'n' their 'ouse 'long wi' 'em." " Thee 's a born ijit, Dyve, thee be's," responded the ostler, contemptuously, as with a rheumatic sigh he arose and wiped his perspiring brow with the back of his shirt-sleeve ; " they 's reg'l'r nufs, but I heer'n Bill, the waiter, a-tell'n' o' Cook as 'ow he know'd 'em for 'Mericans immedjate, for the young missus ordered on a pitcher o' cold wahter at breakfas', — and that 's 'Merican every time, he says ; and he owght to know, as he 's served towrists oop in Wyles, where they set a joog o' wahter on every mornin' for breakfas', there 's so many 'Mericans as comes that wye.

They drinks wahter wi' their victuals, and says ' pitcher ' w'en they means ' joog,' an' all that wye o' talkin' an' do'n', you know, though I un'erstan' as 'ow they pertends to talk English o'er there in 'Merica, but I be blymed if I can un'erstan' 'em mysel' soomtoimes. No, they 's 'Mericans, stryte 'noof, joost a-towerin' the coontry, loike ; an' 't 's moighty soon they '11 give it oop too, a-cartin' all this stoof areound." Ashford, Friday, 22d. The sun was shining brightly through our ancient latticed window when the maid aroused us this morning at Canterbury. The crackling fire on the coffee-room hearth was most cheering, for there had been frost in the air over night. It was comfortable to toast one's feet on the iron dogs, and coffee and chops were the more grateful because pip ing hot from the kitchen range.

We were in proper mood to start upon our quest of the old and the beautiful. They saw us off at the archway of the inn with much In Kent. 19 good-humored curiosity and many hearty well-wishes, — the landlady in front, in immaculate cap and all bows and smiles, bringing out the visitors' book at the last moment, to receive our autographic commenda tions of her establishment ; by her side the blushing bar-maid, capped and aproned, red-cheeked and frizzle-haired, her buxom arms akimbo ; the side whiskered head waiter, in a greasy, shiny dress-suit, that had apparently done duty these many long years of service, a towel over his left arm, and rub bing his hands in gleeful remembrance of our tip • the chamber-maid and cook, on tiptoes, overlooking the heads of the others, and modestly expectant of lar gess ; while Joe, the ostler, and Dave, the boots, bravely held the machines for us to mount, and seemed proud to have the last word with the departing guests.

It is only in England that May mornings are as soft and balmy as this on which we wheeled out of Canter bury to the southwest. We were sadly out of practice on our machines, and having no knowledge of what topographical difficulties we might meet, were uncer tain and indeed indifferent as to where the night of our first day on wheels might overtake us. Going forth in true gypsying spirit, we struck out up the broad valley of the Great Stour, and in a quarter of an hour from our inn were beyond the city walls and encompassed by fields. For the first few miles of the tortuous highway, which was as smooth as an asphalt walk, we had, over the hedge-rows, charming retrospective views of the cathedral, its square gray tower and western spires, rising far above the solid bank of neighboring red tiled roofs.

To the right, and sometimes to the left, the Stour, spanned by graceful bridges of stone and brick, wound blithely through green meadows, from which skylarks rose in quick succession as we whizzed along, and losing themselves in the azure, poured down upon us floods of bewitching melody. Much of the country is devoted to hop-gardens. The tops of the poles are often tied together with cords to keep them upright in wind-storms, and the effect is as if a gigantic cobweb covered the plantation ; while down below, groups of women, girls, and boys are busy weeding the young vines, now a foot in height, and giving them a preliminary twist about the poles. Square and circular drying-kilns, with conical iron ventilators at the top, twirled by the wind, are frequent. Hedges everywhere abound, — great solid, interminable banks of green, which cut the country up into a sort of gigantic checker-board, with the various enclosures all imaginable shapes, from round to square. l Every field, large or small, has its particular name, and has doubtless borne that name and been of that shape for hundreds of years, — some of them since Domesday Book.

May seems to be the chief hedge-plant hereabout ; and the season being late, it is just coming into bloom, the emerald background being in spots splashed with great masses of white flowers, which load the air with delicate per fume, while the grassy bank below is spangled with white and purple blossoms, chiefly daisies and mint. By and by we begin to mount the upland, and have a comprehensive panorama at our feet, — wide stretching meadows, vividly green, on which horses 1 An English agricultural friend writes me that " these curious-shaped fields contain uniform soil." In Kent. 21 and cattle are peacefully grazing, as well as great flocks of sheep as yet unshorn, and bearing upon their burly backs rude stripes of red ochre, the brand of their owner ; gracefully outlined, sombre wooded hills, divided by vales, deep down in whose peaceful depths course feeders to the ocean-bound Stour, which sluggishly glistens upon the horizon of the lower level ; white footpaths wind through the broad meadows up to where rises the curling smoke of forest hamlets, each with its square Norman tower lifting its hoary head above the tree-tops.

We pass farm buildings, broad-spreading and prosperous in appearance, and groups of laborers' cottages, often whitewashed, each with its front yard gay with flowers, and with roses luxuriantly clambering over the doors and windows. We spin through villages, — Than ington, Milton, Chartham, Kennington, — each with its one long straggling street, cottages and shops com mingled, flanked by the smithy's forge and the public house. The neat appearance of the villages is their most striking feature in the eyes of Americans. Nearly every building is the cottage of a farm laborer or a mechanic. The yards are scrupulously kept free from litter; the wealth of vegetation in this moist climate soon hides from view whatever needs be hidden. In place of our crude American fences and buildings of wood, that, neglected, soon tumble into unsightly ruin, the English use brick and stone, which endure for centuries, and grow more beautiful with the passing years.

Each village is a most charming study in red and green, — red brick, red chimney-pots, red tiles, red lichens carpeting the light-gray stone, and everywhere these masses of glowing red embowered in greenery, moss on the roofs and ivy on the walls. In the villages, or in front of the places of the wealthy, great stone boundary walls, seven, eight, and ten feet in height, often take the place of hedges ; they are of dressed flints and red brick, and among the forbidding masses of broken glass which are em bedded in mortar on the top, dandelions and daisies frequently have found lodgement, like garlands in the hat of the sentinel. Now and then we meet a flock of sheep shuffling up a dense cloud of dust, and dismount to let them pass, for one might as well attempt to wheel through a stone wall as a drove of Southdowns ; while the shepherd, plodding stolidly behind, cries out a cheery but muffled " Thankee, sir ! thankee !

" from amid the stifling fog. At the numerous forks and cross-roads — for our invaluable ordnance-survey map presents a perfect tangle of highways — the finger-posts interest us, with their references to quaintly named hamlets off our path, — " Penny Pot " was one, for instance, and " Old Wives " another. It was half-past five in the afternoon, and time for dinner, when at last we wheeled through the inviting archway of the inn at Ashford. We have made only seventeen miles from Canterbury ; but it is our first day out, and we stopped to take our lunch by the wayside, to talk with the people, and leisurely to enjoy the country. We are not at all anxious to break the cycling record ; that is not what we came out for. Northiam, Sussex, Saturday, 23d. Ashford (ten thousand inhabitants) has a few very old timbered In Kent. 23 houses and a rather fine parish church with a Per pendicular tower ; but the prevailing odor is of rail way shops, not antiquity, the Southeastern Company's extensive works being located there.

We made thirty-six and a half miles to-day, and had an abundance of time to study both country and people. On our road from Ashford to here lay the villages — mere hamlets, some of them — of Great Chart, Bethersden, High Halden, Tenterden, Rol venden, and Newenden. Laborers' and mechanics' cottages prevail. They are charming little pictures without, with their sash curtains, trim gardens, and wealth of climbers over wall and roof. Not all are so pleasant within. We stopped for water at one of them this afternoon, right thirsty from toiling in the blazing sunshine. Unlike the majority, which are in blocks of from two to a dozen, under one long roof, the eaves to the road, this cottage, with its wealth of yellow thatch, stood alone in the midst of perhaps a quarter of an acre of land. There were to the front fruit-trees in blossom, and little box hedges checkering the dainty flower garden ; while to the rear were a vegetable patch, a poultry-yard, a half-dozen conical straw beehives, and a stone cowhouse, gray with mosses.

It seemed safe enough to seek refreshment in so tasteful a bower. In response to our raps, a black-eyed, sharp-nosed little woman in a white cap and apron came around the corner of the house to look us over, and then disappearing to the back, soon unbolted and unchained the front door from within, and with much courtesying and rubbing of hands ushered us into the general living-room. There was a quaint deep-set fireplace, within which hung an iron pot on a formidable iron crane. An old tall clock ticked softly on one side of the hearth, and on the other a rude settle stood at right angles with the wall. There were, besides, a cheap modern table spread with white oil-cloth, three or four high-backed chairs that might have come down from the days of Cromwell ; on the low grimy wall, a set of hanging shelves for crockery and pewter ; a black and bulky chest of drawers, which possibly came long ago from some auction sale of "quality" furniture, — all picturesque enough in their place, but here only heightening the prevailing aspect of damp, dingy, dirty gloom.

The water, brought in a rude earthen jug, was streaked white and green with motes and vegetable matter ; it came from the pond behind the house, the woman said. We had seen ducks swim ming in the little brackish pool as we came in, and but made a pretence of drinking. Is it any wonder that these people drink beer, and marvel at our request for water? The Chequers Inn,1 at High Halden, is one of the most charming old hostelries to the outer view that we have yet seen in England. Set back from the high way, with a broad gravelled drive leading to its door, roses and ivy clinging profusely to its white stone walls, a line of lead-glazed lattice windows indicating the bar, and by the great square entrance a shaded bench on which carters were resting over their tankards, it was indeed a picturesque bit, such as we were glad we had come across seas to contemplate. 1 Two hundred years ago taverns were indicated by a post in front, painted in a red and white checker pattern.

This is why so many English inns still bear the name of The Chequers. In Kent. 25 Along the road to-day, we encountered numerous strings of great black and bay " shire " horses, — always a groom on the front animal, the others following a lescalier, tied together by both neck and tail. They are evidently going to a fair. It is the law of the road for cyclists to " give audible and sufficient warning of approach," when overtaking cavalcades of this character. At the gentle tinkle of our bells, the horses would rear a little fore and aft, and lightly snort as we went cautiously by their quivering hulks, the groom touching his cap in that silent, deferential way so characteristic of the working classes in rural England. What fine horses we see everywhere on our journey ! At the plough, the cart, or the carriage, it is all the same, — fine, glossy, large, well-bred beasts, never in a great hurry, but solid and sure, like the British themselves.

Tenterden is a long, straggling, pretty village, evidently with something of a market. The market place, like that of many of the villages we pass through, is the " high street " spread out to about the width of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, — a good shouting distance across. We pass the fine old parish church to our left, as we emerge from the place, its Perpendicular spire springing high above the sur rounding trees. It has for centuries been a saying among common Kentish folk that " Tenterden steeple was the cause of Goodwin Sands." Monkish tradition has it that these dangerous sandbanks off the eastern coast of Kent were once an island belonging to the great Earl Goodwin. The countrymen say that cer tain funds designed for a sea-wall for the island were expended by the monks in building this steeple on the mainland, and that later, for want of this wall, the island was the victim of a " sodaine and mighty inundation of the sea."

There has, however, been another version, to the effect that the steeple is responsible in this same fashion for the filling up of Sandwich Haven. In the dialogues of Sir Thomas More, at an assembly of" old folk of the cuntre," one "good old father" is telling of the baneful effect of Tenterden steeple. " ' Why hath the stepell hurt the haven, good father?' quod they. ' Nay, by 'r Lady, Maysters,' quod he, ' ych cannot tell you why, but chote well yt hath ; for by , I knew that a good haven tyll the stepell was bylded, and by the Mary masse, cha marked yt never throve synnys.' " Our road to-day was over undulating country, — a good many long walks up hill, but also quite as many jolly spins down. At four o'clock in the afternoon, taking a sudden dip, we came upon the broad green meadows of the river Rother, — an insignificant stream that in broader lands would be styled a creek.

Sweep ing through the rather untidy little hamlet of Newen den on the Kentish side, we passed over a narrow bridge of brick and stone into Sussex. A hill or two more to climb, and three miles beyond the border we bowled into Northiam, where the Six Bells proved an ideal inn for tired travellers on a Saturday night.

Chapter II. In The Heart Of The South Downs

VJORTHIAM, Sussex, Sunday, 24th. This is a ~ thoroughly characteristic little English village. The parish church is of the rugged Norman type, like most of its kind in the southeastern counties. On the green is a giant oak, full twelve feet in diameter at the base. There is a tradition that under this sprawling forest monarch, Queen Elizabeth ate her breakfast one morning in the long ago, and for this reason it is most carefully preserved by the loyal villagers. The great rents in its trunks are filled with bricks and mortar, while a network of heavy chains prevents its monster arms from parting company. To the east, on a gentle slope, is the rather fine " big house " of the squire, who owns the neighboring country, hill and valley, copse, field, and meadow. His well-wooded grounds, beautifully kept, sweep down to the village green.

Along his boundary wall stretches the one irregular street. Here and there, prominent among the lowly cottages and shops, is a timbered house, left over from the Elizabethan age, out of whose picturesque lattices most likely idle villagers stared at the gay court of the Virgin Queen while she broke her fast yonder, just as their de scendants stared at us of common clay, as we wheeled along beneath their windows last evening. It is not daily that the Six Bells has guests to sleep in its an cient four-poster. The smock-frocks are not all gone from England. I had supposed they were, for we are constantly be ing told in books of travel that this cradle of our an cestors has been so modernized that the old dress and customs are no longer to be found here, and that Merry England is simply humdrum, nineteenth-century England, with the poetry all out of it, — " Ameri canized," I think one of our globe-trotting com patriots has said.

Possibly the tourist centres have been " Americanized," — certainly one may say this of some of the hotels there, — but I venture to say that rural England is pretty much the same sort of country as that through which the elder Weller drove his coach, and in which Tom Brown was reared. We have frequently, in our journey, met elderly farm laborers shuffling along in their neat white smocks with open yokes, and they all look as though they had stepped out of some of Abbey's pictures. To-day the old fellows have been numerous enough. A group of them in the rear seats at church, as they stood shyly twirling their hats in their hands, like water-wheels, when the squire and his lady entered, presented an edifying spectacle. Battle, Monday, 25 M. We had been having good weather from Canterbury to Northiam, — good weather for England ; an occasional brief shower only, in which we would lay to beside an overarching hedge and raise our umbrellas.

This morning, how ever, black clouds poured sheets of water upon Northiam, and we were imprisoned with mine host until noon. During lunch the clouds thinned, and through jagged rents were seen great patches of ether, vividly blue. As we sallied forth, the atmos phere was soft and balmy with the odor of wild flowers. The subdued light rendered more brilliant the red of the buildings and the green of the hedges and the fields. At first our route out of Northiam was largely up hill, over a roughly metalled road, the hedges, glistening from raindrops, often nearly meeting over the narrow, crooked, deep-sunken way. From the sum mit of the first hill the backward view of the village and the intervening valley was most enchanting. We are touring through dream-land. Buttercups, vividly yellow, and kissed by the rain, thickly stud the hedge-banks.

The yellow primroses, with which Surrey copse-corners were so delicately gay a week or so ago, have now nearly departed. White stitchwort gleams, star-like, in the luxuriant grass ; another familiar wayside flower is a tiny blue bird's-eye ; and to-day we have wild blue hyacinths in such great profusion that W , who has a botanist's sympathy for growing blossoms, and seldom gathers such when scarce, plucked a corsage bouquet of them. Thus bedecked, we wheeled along gayly amid the sweet songs of ethereal larks, the chatter of startled thrushes, and afar off the monotonous plaint of cuckoos. Emerging at last from these obscure by-roads upon the broader and smoother highway, we follow the crest of a ridge, — the watershed between the Rother and one of its tributaries. On either hand are wide, far-stretching valleys, with hedge-streaked meadows, woods, and thatched cottages lowly nestled by the side of brooks.

The direction to the first village, Staple Cross, as given us by two peasant women, one of them with a hoe over her shoulder, and the other pushing a fat and dirty baby in a rude perambula tor, was simple : " Foller the telergraph loine." Thus instructed, we did not lose sight of the wire which stretches overland from Northiam to the post-office at Staple Cross ; and it led us thither through many a maze of cross-roads, along the ridge and through the meadows. At Staple Cross there is a small brewery, several shops, and the usual cottages of laborers. Crispe's Corner, a quarter of an hour farther on, is a rather dreary hamlet of a dozen cottages and a small public house ; but the view from Crispe's is exquisite. On the left we have the finest panorama we have yet laid eyes on in southern Britain.

Forest-trees — oaks and beeches chiefly — quite fill the lower reaches of the shapely valley, whose outlet fades from view upon the horizon ; on either side, the hill-slope fields, oddly shaped, are alternating splashes of chocolate brown or vivid green, according to whether freshly planted or choked with springing grain. On the brow of the overtopping hill beyond, commanding a wider range of view, we have successions of valleys, woods, and fields, with here and there the lofty spire of a par ish church, and smoke rising lazily from cotters' chimneys. At Whallington we cross the river Brede, over whose low banks the tall grass bends and quite hides the little winding stream from sight until one is close upon it. Then we go whizzing beneath a railway arch, and after a long tug uphill with our well-loaded machines are in Battle at five p. m. Nature is now in her prettiest garb.