Cathedral days, a tour through southern England

Front matter

^ ' » • ' 1 bV

A Tour through Southern England

ANNA BOWMAN DODD

Contents

Chapter Page

I. The Project . . ; 7

II. Arundel 13

Chapter I. The Project

/^NE 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 induce. It was an hour for confidences. Caught in this embrace €Df 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 ±he confessional. One had proclaimed his approaching nuptials ; another lier forthcoming book, — almost as great a venture ; a third had expressed his secret desire to run away from life and hide himself t)ehind 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 impossible 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 '11 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. 11

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 coming 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 from London to Arundel ; and thence, from that most beautiful of the Sussex towns, we were to start forth on our six weeks' driving-tour.

Inside of twenty-four hours we were on our way to the Sussex Downs.

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 upstarts. She knew a trick or two. She had not gone on fascinating all England for centuries 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 a 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

1^ 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 we 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 interesting 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 approaches. 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 background, 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 complex 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 highersounding 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 castle, 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 neighborhood 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 tlie famous family whose castle walls almost adjoined those of its ambitious namesake, the Arms had 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 ornament 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 cluster 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 interior of this most self-respecting inn was in keeping with its outward meagreness of decorative 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 admirable 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 possible 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 forebodings 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 lil^e 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 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 liopen to visitors. Honly the dairy and the keep, sir, hare hopen. The tickets can be 'ad 'ere, sir." This was delivered with a commendable alaci'ity 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 Boston'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 Englishman 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 Socratian order of dialogue, having been found to be expensive, became more and more feeble.

On the following morning we saw such a spectacle in the 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 ingress 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 cannot say that there was any dripping of gore, but there was an unpleasant suggestion of recent bleeding under the knife.

" Tlie 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 weww," Boston replied to my suggestion. Subsequent experiences resulted in our forming even less favorable opinions 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 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 with 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.

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 projecting eaves, the quaint signs, the diamond-shaped panes, needed just this mass of rustic life moving beneath the window-ledges to give to this picturesque 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 municipal 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 b]'oke 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 baitings. The singers apparently were at something else besides their singing. 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 devoutly 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.

" What was that singhig over the way ? " I asked the chambermaid as we passed her on the stairs. The previous answers of this neat and most respectfid of lier sex to my questions had not impressed 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 England was a nest of singing-birds. But I had supposed 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 assemblao;e of instruments called a band.

This latter was attached to a trick and monkey show which had taken its place, early on this holiday 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 pervasiveness 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 trumpet, 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 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.

" 1 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 I 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 architectural mass as Arundel Castle, implanted in Saxon, Roman, and feudal military necessities, strikes its roots deep and wide. The town appeared, in comparison, 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 mtegral part of it.

Topographically, Arundel has only a few features, yet they are fine enough to form a rich ensemble. Tbcre 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 confidence it seems to sit, if not within its arms, at least beside its knee. But in spite of these changed relations, 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 visiting terms. Nothing appears easier than the fulfilment of these and other specious prophecies, away from the proofs. But somehow, when one looks up at such a vast and splendid castle as this, impregnable 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 agitations 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 thoroughfare, 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 oM-time furniture of high-shouldered chairs and carved settle, straight out to the lovel7 Sussex valley, which stretched itself out to the horizon like an endless carpet, with its inwrought pattern of waving grain, oaks, and hayricks. With such pictures to gain, even our best manners were not proof against the temptation presented by the tiny diamond-shaped open lattices. The houses seemed in conspiracy with our impertinence, some of them standing boldly out on the sidewalk, as if bent on looking up and down the street. Others more modest, whose deprecating air of shyness we respected, retreated behind with demurely drawn shutters, — timid creatures holding fans before their pretty faces. There were ancient and modern styles apparent, in the architectural fashions we passed in review, the gable-roofed Elizabethan and the broad low Georgian being the most noticeable. There were also modern reproductions of both, — very precise and perfect reproductions, which imposed on no one.

What pleased us even better than the houses was the human life that they sheltered, and which looked out at us through the old windows. There were some fresh, fair faces, that only needed ruffs and stomacliers to be in admirable keeping with the ancient architectural setting. Fine last-century figures, strong-featured, with gentle eyes, ceased their knitting to glance up, over silver-rimmed spectacles, at the sound of our voices.

One face we met, which seemed strangely out of keeping with such surroundings. It was a curiously un-English face. It belonged to a man who was hurrying past us, with a book in his hand, on the cover of which there was a large gilt cross. The face was long and dark, clean-shaven, with deep-set wary eyes, and a sly curve on the full lips. It needed neither the abbe's long fluttering coat nor its purple lining to tell us it was the face of a priest. As he neared the great castle gateway, I saw it open, the keeper within bowing as the abbd passed beyond.

I remembered then that the castle was a great Catholic stronghold, the Dukes of Norfolk being among the few great families which have remained faithful, since the Conquest, to the See of Rome. The present Duke of Norfolk, by reason of the fervor of his piety, his untiring zeal and magnificent generosity, is recognized as the head of the Catholic party in England. To learn that he was

CATHEDRAL DAYS.

at present on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and that such was his yearly custom, seemed to shorten distance for us. It made the old — its beliefs, its superstitions, its unquestioning ardor of faith — strangely new. It invested the castle, which appealed to our consciousness as something remote and alien, with the reality of its relation to mediaeval life and manners.

The little cathedral which crowns the hill — the most prominent object for miles about, after the castle — is the gift of the present Duke. It is a pretty structure, pointed Gothic in style, conscientiously reproduced witli all the aids of flying buttresses, niches, pinnacles, and arches. It was doubtless a splendid gift. Perhaps in the twentyfirst century, when the weather has done its architectural work on the exterior, and when the interior has been finely dimmed with burnt incense, when stained glass and sculptured effigies of saints have been donated by future dukes, it will be a very imposing edifice indeed.