An English honeymoon

Front matter

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By Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

Italian Days and Ways. Decorated title and 8 illustrations, izmo. Cloth, extra, ^1.50 ntt.

Contents

I PAGE

WEDDING BELLS AND CANTERBURY BELLS 9

II A MOTOR FLIGHT INTO THE PAST 37

II A Motor Flight Into The Past

God Begot House^

Winchester^ July 15th.

We were up with the lark this morning and off before wind and sun had swept the dew from the grass. Our way was by Hobbledown, Chaucer's

"little town, Which that ycleped is Bob up and down, Under the Blee in Canterbury way."

Before going through what is left of the forest Blee, or Blean, we had our last and most glorious view of the great Cathedral from Hobbledown Hill, its great tower and airy pinnacles silhouetted against a clear blue sky. Yes, English skies can be blue at times, almost as blue as those of Italy and America. We passed by Lanfranc's ancient leper hospital, where was preserved the slipper of St. Thomas which so excited the anger of Dean Colet, when he came here with Erasmus, that he exclaimed angrily,

*'Do these asses expect us to kiss the shoes of every good man who ever lived ? ' ^

In a field beyond is a little spring with a stone arch above it, and, in proof of its claim to be called the Black Princess Well, his three feathers adorn the keystone of the arch. The waters of this spring are said to possess curative properties, and, although we were none of us ailing, and indeed felt particularly well and happy, we drank some of the water in memory of the Black Prince, hoping with Miss Cassandra that it would not give us any of the maladies it claims to cure. This is the last of the waterings of St. Thomas. We saw the fine park of Leeds Castle from the highway and so went speeding on to Maidstone, situated on both banks of the Medway, the ancient capital of Kent, which Samuel Pepys found ^*as pretty as most towns and people of fashion in if Whether or not Maidstone is fashionable, it is now a prosperous-looking place, full of breweries and nursery gardens. In the old part of the town we saw the Bell Inn on Week Street, and regretted that it was too early for us to lunch there and try the cheer that Pepys found so good. It was Walter and I who regretted; Miss Cassandra had no regrets at not being able to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Pepys, as he happens to be one of her pet aversions. ^'Does n't thee know,'' she said, in something as near a tone of reproach as her amiability would permit, — doesn't thee know, dear, that Samuel Pepys misrepresented William Penn and his family and even called his mother, Lady Penn, a ^well looked, fat, short, old Dutch-woman'?"

*^She was Dutch," said Walter, ^*and there was nothing to be ashamed of in that; and the Pepyses and Penns seem to have had a jolly enough time together, racketing about at evening parties with cards, suppers, and dances, and all that sort of thing."

**Yes, if thee can believe what he says. Why, he didn't even know how to spell Sir William's name, and although fair to his face and pretending great friendship, Pepys was eaten up with jealousy on account of Sir William's favor at Court, calling him in one place *the falsest rascal there ever was in the world.' I can show thee the passage."

^*Aunt Cassie is on her favorite subject," said Lydia, who was chatting away gaily with Archie on the front seat. ^ ' Do not let old Pepys and his gossip spoil this beautiful day for thee, Aunt Cassie."

**No, child, thee is quite right," said Miss Cassandra, smothering her indignation and turning to Archie to ask Mm some question about the country through which we were passing.

Nothing that we have seen in England suggests peace and plenty as does this Kentish land, with its rich meadows embroidered with scarlet poppies over which innumerable sheep and cattle are grazing, its great fields of yellow grain, its orchards of apple, plum and cherry, and above all acres and acres of hop-vines on all sides. These vines, with their exquisite heads of blossom swinging from pole to pole, remind us of the immense hop farms in Otsego County, near Eichfield Springs. Like, and yet with a difference, as there is something quite entirely English about this countryside, and the comfortable farm-houses with the picturesque red-tiled roofs and machicolated gables, and odd conical-shaped barns, are like nothing we have seen elsewhere.

After we left Maidstone, our chauffeur begged to be allowed to change his route from the pilgrims' way, as we had planned, for another which he said was shorter and over better roads — but still Eoman roads, he assured us.

Whether he knows anything about it or not, Walter says that many of the roads are probably Eoman, as roads once made are not usually given up. To be motoring over Constantine's roads seems sufficiently incongruous, but to be going at a breakneck speed is absolutely indecorous, and Archie, at my request, in his own language told the chauffeur ^^to slow up," as we were not running a race, or on schedule time, even if we were Americans ; we were out for pleasure, and it made little difference when we reached Winchester.

We certainly have an air of enjoyment. Lydia Mott has about her all the crispness and freshness of the morning. She seems never to get a speck of dust upon her smart blue serge suit, or a strand of her hair out of place, even in the high gale of an automobile, and with no end of little locks curling themselves around her forehead and neck, her face framed in by her blue veil, she is quite a picture of youthful prettiness. I do not wonder that Archie likes to talk to her, and although she is so quiet usually, she seems to have plenty to say to him to-day. Walter and Miss Cassandra and I, on the back seat, have given up all idea of conversation and simply enjoy the beauty of the scene and the freshness of the air, which has such a soothing eifect upon the lady that she is soon sound asleep. Walter reminds me that this is the first time we have motored over the country roads since our famous ride from Como to Varese, when we found Allan awaiting us at Villa D^Este, — as if I needed to be reminded of that fateful ride! Absorbed in pleasant memories, and in a sense of hien etre that only comes to us when we are happy and the world is at its best, we flew along through a bit of Sussex and on into Hampshire, until Lydia broke in upon our reveries by pointing out the tower of Winchester Cathedral. It is rather disappointing at a first view, as you may remember, — less stately than Canterbury, and lacking the exquisite grace with which Salisbury's lofty spire rises into the blue.

I need not tell you what Winchester looks like, as it is quite unchanged since you and I were here, except that the statue of King Alfred has been unveiled. It is a fine, noble statue, upon a base of rough hewn stone, but after the Angelos and Donatellos that we have seen one is not easily satisfied. To my thinking Donatello 's St. George gives a better idea of Alfred the Great than this statue; something of the force and dignity of the primitive man, which we naturally attribute to Alfred, is in that wonderful face and figure.

They tell us that King Alfred was buried over on Jewry Street in Hyde Abbey, part of which is now a barn. It seems strange that his ashes were not placed, with the other great ones, in the Cathedral. You remember how interested we were in the richly-decorated mortuary chests of the Saxon kings, in their niches high up on the side screens of the choir. The remains within must be almost infinitesimal, as the tombs have been broken open during several wars and the dust and bones considerably scattered and mixed. But this is their shrine, and here the names and memories of Edred and Edmund and Ethelwulf and of some of the Danish kings are preserved, and we feel that the remains of the great Alfred should be in this goodly company.

I am more than ever impressed by the beauty of the tombs, monuments, and chantries, some of which are much more noble and dignified than many of those in Westminster Abbey, as Bishop Langdon's chantry, and that of William of Wykeham, placed in the part of the Cathedral where he loved to pray when a boy, as the verger told us.

*'How different from other boys!'' exclaimed Walter, which levity so shocked the verger's reverent soul that we all hastened to make amends by our warmly-expressed admiration for the chantry, and for the noble reclining figure with the strange inscription:

"Here, overthrown by death lies William, sumamed Wykeham."

You surely remember it, and the dear little praying monks, with their innocent old faces and clasped hands, sitting at the feet of the proud churchman whom only death could overthrow. We had an hour in the Cathedral this afternoon, which only gave us time for a general view of its vastness, the nave the longest in England, and for a glance at the rich decorations of the great screen, and the wonderful carvings on the choir stalls, with the impish little faces looking out from the tracery of leaves and flowers, as odd and unexpected as is the Lincoln imp gazing down from his perch in that great Cathedral. The exquisite fan tracery in wood, on some of the vaultings, is said to have been designed by William of Wykeham himself.

Walter was as much pleased when he came across the tablet of Izaak Walton as if he had met a friend. We have been laughing at him for getting so much pleasure out of a tomb ; but I must confess that I had much the same feeling when I saw the tablet in memory of dear Jane

Austen, and near it that of Mrs. Montagu, *^the Queen of the Blue Stockings'' and, better still, as the tablet records, '^the Chimney Sweepers' Friend.''

We wandered afterwards through the entrance to the Deanery, with its three pointed arches, hoping to see Izaak Walton's house, which once stood in the garden. We were told that it had been pulled down, but to make amends for our disappointment we were shown some *^ absolutely authentic Druidical stones," which interested the men of the party very much, as did a bit of Eoman pavement. It appears that Philip of Spain stopped at this famous old Deanery the night before his marriage to Queen Mary. We had just seen the chapel in the Cathedral where her portrait is preserved, and the chair in which she sat during the ceremony. Even in her gorgeous costume, blazing with jewels and her mantle of cloth of gold, Mary could never have been anything but plain and unlovely, and small reason as we have to admire Philip, when we looked at her hard, unsympathetic face we could almost find it in our hearts to excuse him for his cruel indifference. Mary Tudor certainly had enough sorrow in her young life to turn sweet to bitter! From being the idol of the court and her parents, their ^^most precious possession,'' as Henry was wont to call her when her hand was sought by foreign princes, to be set aside in turn by the daughter of Anne Boleyn, and the son of Jane Seymour, was quite enough indignity to have written hard lines upon the face of Catherine of Aragon's proud daughter. Among many memorials of the Winchester pilgrims we saw the gate made of four pieces of fine grill-work, before which they stood and gazed at the shrine of St. Swithin. This reminded us that we had not yet been shown the place where St. Ursula and her virgins, and her very submissive lover, set forth upon their pilgrimage to Rome. No person here seems to know anything about St. Ursula, except that she was the daughter of the King of Wessex, of which kingdom Winchester was the capital; but Archie's Canterbury antiquarian gave him an interesting bit of information. He says that the legend of the eleven thousand virgins grew out of a mistake made by an early copyist who freely rendered the entry ' ^ Ursula et XI M. V. " as *^ Ursula and 11,000 virgins," reading the M. as millia instead of *' martyred." I wonder if a great many incredible tales could not be thus explained! It is really a great comfort to me to have the frightful slaughter of virgins diminished; but, as Archie says, this reading ^' takes the shine off the Memling paintings of St. Ursula and her train, and throws a great many bones quite out of business. *'

Why are we stopping at this old inn! I hear you ask. We really intended to go to one of the hotels, but our chauffeur brought us here, for some reason best known to himself, and at the first glimpse of the overhanging eaves and timber-work of this most picturesque house, Miss Cassandra began to untie her bonnet-stringa with such an air of satisfaction that we felt sure that nothing would make her quite so happy as to stop at this old ^^God Begot House,'' which dates back to 1558. Archie remarked, quite pathetically, after dinner, that **man cannot live upon antiquities alone,'' but it is only for a day or two as I reminded him. There are many other advantages here to compensate for the lack of such comforts as we might find at some up-to-date inn. To be on High Street near the beautiful Market Cross is a pleasure in itself, and then to look out of the window, at any hour of the day or night, and see the full-length figure of good Queen Anne, with the orb in her hand and a crown of gold upon her head, is a privilege not to be lightly esteemed. It is interesting to be in Winchester on St. Swithin's Day, in the evening, and especially encouraging to be told that ^^not a drop of rain has fallen to-day.'' We may be reasonably sure of good weather, for according to the old rhyme —

" St. Swithin's Day, if thou dost rain For forty days it will remain : St. Swithin's Day, if thou be f aire For forty days 'twill rain nae maire."

We find it easy to believe that St. Swithin was kept out of his tomb in the Cathedral by forty days of rain. But what we are inclined to doubt is that it will rain *^nae maire" for so long a time, St. Swithin's Day being clear.

July 16th.

Oh! my prophetic soul! In the home of the St. Swithin legend, and with all signs in our favor, we awoke this morning to hear the rain pouring in torrents — a rain of the permeating dampness and wetness for which English rains are particularly distinguished. The two men of the party were anxious to go to Stonehenge, stopping over for a couple of hours at Salisbury, and although we women had all been to both places, and though we were longing for another day in Winchester, we had amiably signified our willingness to accompany them. This

A FLIGHT INTO THE I>AST

downpour was too much for even Walter's antiquarian enthusiasm, and so we all had a morning together in the ^'Seinte Marie College of Wynchestre," as it is called in the old charter, which we saw in the muniment room; the date is 1382, but there was a Grammar School here under the care of monks of St. Swithin's Priory long before the Norman Conquest where Ethelwulf and Alfred were educated.

Amid all the wealth of antiquities here I do not wonder that you and I missed some of the interesting things, among others the old painting of the ^* trusty servant'' in the college hall. Such an odd old picture! The servant's hands are full of implements of husbandry and housewifery. His head is that of an ass, a padlock on his mouth:

" The padlock shut — no secrets he 'II disclose, Patient the ass — his master's wrath to bear, Swiftness in errand — the stag's feet declare."

Altogether a most delicious conceit, dating back to the fourteenth century, although the figure has been touched up and put into Brunswick uniform as a compliment to George III, who paid a visit to the college in 1778.

By dint of much questioning and infinite patience, Miss Cassandra has unearthed the Dulce

4 49

Domum legend, and, as Archie says, demonstrated her prowess in running a quarry to its lair. The story is that an unhappy scholar of Wykeham, kept in college during the long vacation, wrote some Latin verses with the refrain,

" Domum, domum, domum, dulce domum."

The boy died just as the holidays were ending, it is said of a broken heart, and the verses were found under his pillow.

Is it not a curious coincidence that almost the same arrangement of words was used by the young Wykehamist so many years before John Howard Payne wrote our own *^Home, sweet home''? The date of the writing we cannot find, but the verses were probably set to music by John Reading, who was organist to the college between 1680 and 1692. There is no really good translation of the Latin verses, so I will not inflict any of them upon you.

The sad little story of the boy's death is doubted by the latest historian of Winchester College; but the fact remains that the Latin verses are still sung each year at the close of the summer term, around a great tree that was pointed out to us.

Some other verses, that Walter found, amused us very much. It appears that when

Grocyn, the noted Greek scholar, was still a callow youth in Winchester College, a girl threw a snowball at him, upon which he wrote, in a strain which is a bit suggestive of Waller :

" My Julia smote me with a ball of snow ; I thought that snow was cold; but 'tis not so. The fire you wakened, Julia, in my frame Not snow, nor ice can cool ; but answering flame."

It was here that the sententious little scholar, when asked by her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, whether he had ever experienced the charms of the ^^bibling rod,'' replied in the well-known line, which was sufficiently stately to suit the occasion —

" Thou bidst me, Queen, renew a speechless grief."

Archie has discovered a most hideous regulation of the college; the boys actually paid *^rod money," and thus contributed to their own *^ speechless grief," which refinement of cruelty, something akin to buying the rope for your own hanging, was practiced until the beginning of the last century. After a long and profitable morning in the college, which contains a number of portraits, carvings, and tapestries, we returned through College Street, passing by Jane Austen's house, which suggested to us the idea of motoring out to her country home. This house in Winchester is the one in which she spent the last months of her life, but the Steventon parsonage, in which her girlhood was passed, is over near Basingstoke, about fourteen miles north of Winchester. Miss Cassandra was overjoyed at the thought of this little pilgrimage, and begged me to go with her to the Cathedral to take one more look at the brass tablet in memory of Jane Austen, placed there by her nephew, Austen Leigh. The words are so simple and sweet :

Jane Austen, known to many by her writings, endeared to her family by the varied charms of her character, and ennobled by Christian faith and

PIETY.

There is a much longer inscription on the ledger stone in the floor nearly opposite the tomb of William of Wykeham ; but we like this one best, and as we stood there reading the words Miss Cassandra recalled to me Mrs. Maiden's story of the stranger who visited Winchester Cathedral thirty years ago, to whom the verger said, quite apologetically, **Pray, sir, can you tell me whether there is anything particular about that lady, so many people want to see where she is buried T' Such was Jane Austen ^s fame so near the place of her birth!

*^My dear/' said Miss Cassandra, with a glint of something like tears in her kindly gray eyes, '*I want to tell thee that I was named for Jane Austen's mother. Thee must know that although my father was a Friend he always enjoyed a good romance. Walter Scott was his delight; but above all others he placed Jane Austen. I have seen him laugh over some of Mr. Bennett's witticisms until the tears rolled down his cheeks, and when he was looking about for a name for me my mother suggested Elizabeth, as the name of his favorite heroine."

**Why not Jane?" I asked.

*'Why, thee sees I had a sister Jane; but just at that time there came out a sketch, in one of the magazines, about Jane Austen and her family, in which her mother, Cassandra Leigh, was described as a witty, clever, and charming woman from whom Jane inherited much of her ability, and forthwith my father named me Cassandra. Jane also had a sister Cassandra to whom she was devotedly attached."

And so you see our cheery Miss Cassandra is not named after the Trojan lady of dismal prophecy. After this revelation, nothing would have induced us to give up the trip to Steventon. Fortunately St. Swithin ceased to frown, and the sun shone forth after luncheon.

There is nothing especially picturesque or inspiring about the little village of Steventon or the parsonage, which, it appears, is not the same house in which the novels were written, as that was pulled down some years since. We may believe, however, that the old-fashioned garden is much the same, and the *'turf terrace'* exactly answers to the description of the terrace in ^^Northanger Abbey. '* Miss Cassandra also called our attention to the Hampshire hedges, or hedgerows, to which Jane Austen so frequently refers. Quite different from the ordinary English hedge, the Hampshire hedge is — sometimes a path, and sometimes a cartroad bordered with copse wood and timber. The hedges at Steventon were called the ' ' Wood walk ' ' and the ' ' Church walk. ' ' The latter led to the church, and to a fine old manor house of the time of Henry VIII, to whose grounds the little Austens had free access.

Seeing this small village, situated among the chalk hills of North Hants, and the hedges, and the rather monotonous and uninteresting country in which Jane Austen lived when she was painting her ** little bits of ivory two inches wide," caused us to wonder more than ever at the touch of genius that gave interest and vitality to everyday and somewhat commonplace characters and events.

Although the Austens afterwards lived at Chawton Cottage, on the Winchester highway, it was her early home at Steventon that is most often reflected in Jane Austen's novels. Miss Cassandra says: *^It is very much with Jane Austen as with the Brontes ; she was true to the Hampshire that she knew, just as ^ Jane Eyre' and *Wuthering Heights' breathe the Yorkshire moors in every line."

If we have never been to Haworth, Miss Cassandra says, **go and see the parsonage with the graveyard beside it, and walk across those desolate moors, and then you will understand something of the life and genius of those wonderful women."

How I should love to go ! but is there any end to the interesting things we could do in England 1 From Winchester we could make a dozen literary pilgrimages, Charlotte Yonge's home is at Otterbourne, and John Keble's at Hursley, both near Winchester ; Massinger, Fielding, and Joseph Addison all lived at Salisbury; and only three miles away is Wilton, of carpet fame, where Philip Sidney wrote his '* Arcadia" and George Herbert his hymns. Charles Kingsley's

Eversley and Miss Milford's Swallowfield are within easy reach. Shall we not come here and spend a whole month some time?

Salisbury, July 17th.

This morning we left Winchester betimes, stopping by the way to pay our respects to the St. Cross Hospital, which is on the Itchen only a mile from the town. This very interesting old hospital, founded by Bishop Henry de Blois, in 1136, is for the support of ^ thirteen poor, feeble old men," and after the lapse of nearly eight hundred years it still carries on the work for which it was established. We met some of the aged brothers coming out of the chapel, in black gowns with silver crosses on the left breast. A very intelligent brother took us through the chapel and explained to us the curious griffs on the bases of the columns, carvings of various animals, and the beautiful Norman work over the doors and windows, and the ^ lepers' squint." The quadrangle through which we passed to the refectory is most picturesque and is surrounded by the dormitories, with their many slender chimneys and lovely arched doorways. In the refectory, which is open to the sky, our guide showed us the great leather jacks, or pitchers, which were used to bring up ale from the cellar, as each poor feeble brother was allowed three quarts per day.

An interesting rule of St. Cross is that no person asking for a piece of bread and a horn of ale shall be turned away from the gate. We did not demand this far-famed dole at the porter's lodge, but we had the pleasure of seeing some poor men enjoy it, three of them at one time. The woman at the gate said it was given out as long as the daily portion lasted. There is a regular fee charged for admission to St. Cross, but so small a one — a shilling and six pence for a party — that we naturally wished to give the good brother who conducted us a small douceur. Archie and Walter, I knew, were having a bad quarter of an hour over this question of to tip or not to tip the refined and educated man who had given us so much pleasure. Miss Cassandra, like the proverbial **Lady from Philadelphia," came to their rescue by telling them that the good brothers were quite used to accepting tips, and by putting all of our offerings together we could make up a sum which they need not hesitate to offer our guide. As usual. Miss Cassandra was right, and the old gentleman was more than willing.

We accomplished our motor trip to Stonehenge this morning, which I need not tell you looked quite the same as when we saw it. The only thing that seems to be changed is the opinion of the antiquarians about the origin of the mysterious monuments. It was all quite easy and simple when we studied history and Mrs. Markham told us that these were Druidical altars, but now the Phoenicians, the Saxons, the Danes, and even the Buddhists are allowed an opportunity to claim the honor of setting up Stonehenge. Archie's antiquarian told him that there are a number of these stone circles in the Orkneys, on the Island of Lewis, and in other parts of the kingdom. So much excavating is being done through England that their history will some time be revealed.

We stopped at Old Sarum, on our way, an enormous camp once the site of a Eoman encampment. It is not possible to go any distance here without being reminded of the Eoman occupation. At Amesbury, where we stopped for luncheon, Vespasian had a camp, and what interested me more. Gay wrote his ** Beggar's Opera" at Amesbury Abbey, a quite proper place for pla3rwriting, as Amesbury, like the town of the Prince of Dramatists, is situated upon the Avon. And as if to hopelessly confuse one's geography, there is a village of Stratford quite near.

We reached Salisbury in time to walk around the Cathedral and the close. The best view we had of it was from Sarum hill, and as it rises from the surrounding level with a certain dignity, lightness and grace, Salisbury Cathedral may well be called The Lady of the Plain.

The interests of the day have been rather too varied to suit my taste; but this was our one day for Stonehenge, as we all go our separate ways to-morrow. Archie insists upon taking us to Eeading, which is a good starting-place for Miss Cassandra and Miss Lydia, who are to visit friends in Cambridge; and for ourselves, as we are going northward. I really do not know just where we are going, as Walter is so mysterious about our next stopping-place; I rather think I am to have another ** wedding journey," and if it proves as delightful as this one of Archie's and Walter 's planning, I shall feel that to keep quiet and drift is a desirable role for me. Whatever my good man's plans are, Miss Cassandra is evidently au courant of them, as they have mysterious confabs and much nodding and smiling on the part of the Quaker lady. I choose to see nothing, as I dearly love to be surprised. Something else that is not exactly a surprise, as it was my own suggestion, is that