| Show WAKEMANS wanderings LONDON april to lo 1893 in my preceding article on english villages and their folk I 1 gave some account of seven english en 1 h villages and these in merest out outline ine seven hundred is truly nearer the number I 1 have personally visited gach each one could furnish through leisurely study for brush or pen abundant material for a winsome volume some writers would have us believe that english villages were things of the past that rural england had completely f gone one to decay that the smoke of factory stacks hung like a pall over the remains of all thatis that is m mellow ellow and old and good that the thunders of the mills had drowned all the dear old country sounds that commercial england with hard and cruel hand had effaced almost the last vestige of the erst sweet and charning charming country sides and that brick and iron iron stone and steel coal and brummagem varied now and then by nob lemans demesne or gent lemans seat were the characteristic features of an english landscape As goodly a proportion of english as american people have come to accept this as true but it is astoundingly false as any one who will really saunter not rush about england may know books are largely responsible for this english fiction like Amet american ican fiction of from a half century to a century ago was replete with pictures of village life and character when charlotte bronte laid down her pen and the labor of george eliot who was to the early victorian age at least in degree what shak speare was to the elizabethan was done mastership in this school of deline aaion seemed to cease neither america nor england angland has since produced a lasting work of fiction upon rural scenes and lowly folk novelists have wallowed in altruism psychological phenomena subtleties of crime and its detection hideous salaciousness ous ness positive and comparative ye religion ligion the heroics of agnosticism and infidelity and in the shredded and be draggled dragg led warp and woot woof of ultra intense metropolitan netro politan life so those who rely on intelligent fiction to reflect reality have felt that the english village and its folk had surely passed away again the great world of activities has come constantly to intelligent attention through the press the reviews and through statistical volumes largely to the exclusion of the great underlying world of tact fact and sentiment in america the stupendous affairs and progress of our great cities have almost almonr obliterated the memory of some of the sweetest old nooks in all the world the historic and beautiful hamlets of new england ot of the eastern and even of the solL southern thern and middle middle states yet they are ma just as they once were prettier and for their pensiveness and increasing age here similarly everything is london leeds Birmin birmingham gh am man manchester cl iester liverpool hull and that host of practically new manufacturing towns and cities of yorkshire and lancashire the rhe Affie american rican commercial mind and the english commercial mind have heard for a quarter of a century of naught else than their ingots ingols and spindles pottery and looms fabrics and ships chips lockouts lock outs and walk outs cuts depression ion and their tremendous trade superlatives of every hard and harassing description but the material and literary fact still remains that all the thousands of ancient english villages and with not a half hundred exceptions are here just as trey tay yere were at the beginning of the century and just as we have pored over them in in the best old works of english fiction not only this but hundreds of modern villages with winsome olden architecture in in the habiliment habil ament of elizabethan and even earlier tudor times enriched with luxurious parking and ana intelligent floriculture and windows filled with ruddy english faces have been addred to the mossier olden stock even in the congested districts of lancashire yorkshire northern war wilkshire wick shire staffordshire and ahro shire not an ancient village has passed from sight save where a town or city has grown within and around it and where factory towns are so thick that clusters of chimney stacks crowd every acre of the horizon like giant spears above some mighty encia encircling cling camp there between betwee enn still stands the ancient hamlets more witching for the grimy fellowship of trade and endless solace to eye and heart of those who ceaseless toil therefore when the lively american who does england in a week tells us that the rural england of literature is noo no more he tells us what perhaps some hyde park orator railway station porter or traveling salesman has told him but still something which he does not know and when the london literary dilettante falls upon and disposes of rural england in a single breezy magazine article or smart review he commits for a needed stipend of ten or twenty pounds little short of literary crime such as these and better still all those who love the truly beautiful arid and winsomely picturesque in in any land without seeking quixotic quests imong among political icat and social problems should cerla certainly pass at least one summer among eng lish villages hundreds can be found even along the lines of railway leaving these at any station by coach by trap upon bicycle or more advantageously and fuller 0 of elation than all on your own good legs every fine old hedge bordered highway will furnish you as aa astounding revelation in in every half days drive or walk what wondrous bondro us jour nevin nevings gs into the past are thus afforded what splendid pages of history are thus reopened for it has been beed in in and about english villa villages rather than in towns that english eng fes ish history has been made what challenges are prompted to the great and the immortal to come from their wraith lands and walk beside you sou where they once dwelt and how you find that all you knew of books has inexpressibly lacked in the true color and feeling until you yott thus wed presence and actuality with the toneless tale of words the rhe wealth of number of these olden villages in kent alone would confound 1 14 the Dryas dusts and the iconoclasts of rural england it is with a thrill I 1 of delight that you wander through salt wood peeping out between leafy hills upon the glorious sea lyminge Ly minge mossy and still beside the most ancient church of southern kent so ancient that in its walls are actually seen every specimen of ecclesiastic architecture from saxon L to perpendicular so ancient still that st Edil bergan one of its patron saints and daughter of the saxon king ethelbert who reigned more than 1000 years ago lies buried within erith with its unique old houses its winding lanes of green banks of chalk shadowy combes ana and tender uplands cobham leafiest snug gest and prettiest of all kentish villages with its loidl lordly park its stately towered any churches and brasses of years in memory of the noble Cob hams hims and its leather bottle inn made famous is in the immortal pages of pickwick beautiful old shome girdled with massive elms and richest i achard bloom and a hundred more set along the lane girt downs clustering in the w woody weld or nestling among the kentish orchards and hop gardens with their rows of cottages with white washed walls dormer windows thatched roofs and garden fronts each a maze of fus chias pinks carnations and roses and all of them from a hundred to a thousand years ald who is there to fitly describe or paint the droning old villages of that curious english region variously known as the 11 norfolk broads the broad district and the norfolk and suffolk fene where as at dilham dalham and ruston many an old daub and wattle cottage may still be seen it is a land of lagoons of rassy dykes of ghostly windmills wind mills as flugge huge and as numerous as in holland of rich and low lying farm interspersed by broads of shallow lakes of mighty herds of cattle and sheep shee of duck widgeon mallard and coot of picturesque inns of call half hidden bidden among copses of willows of ruined rained castles abbeys and priories ories whose ancient moats are now serving as market gardeners canals of gray old hamlets set about with clumps of pollard oaks and of a peasantry as simple brave and true as in good old sir john Fast Fa day not Shak knave of the merry wives but of the real fastwolf who fought the battle of herrings and soundly drubbed grubbed the french the eventide pictures from some of these old waterside hamlet porches are worthy the brush of a turner or a millet As the sun goes down in forests of waving wavine reeds it flames the thatches of hamlets on opposite shores weirdly lights the arms of the spectral atral windmills bringing to a looming nearness the irim grim norman towers of far olden churches or gilds the ivied top of some medee ival ruin as with gold As it sinks from sight the waters of the broads are for a moment mor rient burp purple ae then pitchy black when instantly the stars are shining in the depths above and from the waters beneath with a shimmering luster enveloping all then the songs and chirps of myriad insects the whirr and splash ash of late homing waterfowl water fowl and te the wit witching ching whispered soughing of the breeze in the rushes and the reeds up in cumberland and westmorland westmoreland what loving wraiths of memory are conjured red when basking in the glowing beauty auty of slumberous verdure clad blossom bowered keswick grasmere rydal Amble ambleside side and bowness here in 42 OW old keswick town dwelt and sang mind and lies buried in church yard ard near the murmurings murmur ings ot of the greta C he so 6 loved that high poet of pensive remembrance and meditative calm robert southey here too the anh unhappy la coleridge passed the most though still the most miserable years af of his baleful slavery to a deadly dru drug and with his girl wife harriet y here knew the only happy hours of his unfortunate life in ancient gras awre grasmere of ancient rush bear y ja ly fame Grast grasmere nere with perhaps the oldest and ana certainly the quaintest quain test church in england grasmere where the brave old ld dame soundly walloped the prince of f wales W for harrying her er sheep tomas thomas de quincey lived in in h his i s dri dream am af fe e madness and in st oswalds churchyard church yard sleep hartley coleridge william wordsworth beside the beauteous gothay which lea leaping i ng from sequestering meadows gives back ack along Vue the e old church wall the deathless songs they sung that one whose memory gives to the orgin organ tones of the two cascades of rydal roal their wondrous heart thrilling power who is first and last when your of fancy penetrated the past is wordsworth who lived on rydal mount above the hamlet for forty sunlit years sturdy iconoclastic yet vue true and practically christian if still heretic harriet martineau stands bright clear in the picture among the blossoms of ambleside Amble side christopher north with his huge frame and benign face face as if the very spirit of the lovely region shone from his kindly eyes makes these village ways sunnier for his strong sure tread with him though later you will see another one firm calm tender nobleine nob leone who through his labor at rugby swept swept forever from the british educational system the rule of brutality and dread lofty soled noble dr arnold while old bowness huddling bet between the highway and the is sweeter still because you see through its tiny cottage panes the wraith of good felicia hemans with a tinge of sadness in her pallid patient face pleasant indeed is a weeks idle loitering in among the villages of surrey some 0 of the most picturesque timbered cottages of engla d can be found among these ancient hamlets sleepy old Go dalming was once a nest of fullers homes and numbers of these habitations are still in good preservation at shere the former home of the earls of ormond and the noble nobl ehouse house of audley and roundabout are wondrously inter interesting epting lanes of cottages besides there are wonersh Won ersh with its fine gables and chimneys and charming picturesque old mill house haslemere Has lemere with its high and graceful chimneys where was first made in england with its ne fourteenth century cottages and famous old crown inn witley with its church tower surmounted by a spire as quaint as that of S ode poges boges and its cottages which are in every every artists sketchbook sketch book alford most primitive of surrey villages with its curious ironwork and moats and with scores more winsome old cranleigh crawleigh Cran leigh where at bay nards bards jane roper wife of the younger sir edward bray so long kept the head of her father ill fated sir Thom asMore which was finally deposited in st dus tans canterbury you will never heed the passing hours if afloat upon the avon you set out in quest of english villages within the western shires the thatches of the hamlets lean everywhere along the avon almost to the rivers brink you will have no need for an inn with your yeoman companion you will be welcomed everywhere at night among the village peasantry by and by b Y you ou come to the vales among the Cots wolds ds then will you see hamlets and villages dotting the valleys embedded in gardens perched upon the heights in settings of orchards waving fields within checkered lines of hawthorn hedges or denser rows of limes and these in turn backed by banks of forest primeval all in such droning quiet ample content and smiling opulence that full of the winey exultation of it all you again and again irresistibly exclaim here is arcady at last in essex one could wander for a whole summer and never tire of its mossy nooks like thaxted thaxter with its I 1 long ong straggling street of many gabled homes its e exquisite 7 church its strange moot hall and its noble relic reli c horham hall cogshall with its abbey ruins and curious inn saffron walden hotbed hot bed of essex superstitions superstition as with its ruined ca catle tle tie wonderful old houses and antique sun inn which has set the essex antiquarians endl endlessly estly by the ears with its jumble of cottages piled one upon another and its quaint timber built almshouses like those of coventry covener 1 st osyth with its remarkable church s splendid p i old id priory and marvelously b beautiful e ga gatehouse te house and little dunmow dunkow straggling tiny hamlet that it is but famous the world over for its olden flitch of bacon prize for conjugal felicity and if all these were not enough to make you know the indescribably interesting and beautiful rural england of today come here where the shires of bucks berks and su surrey join in and saunter for but a day round about royal windsor at chertsey cherksey Ch ertsey but nine miles distant once famous for its abbey lived and and died the poet cowley while albert smith author of christopher tadpole and many other charming works of fiction was born in the same quaint old village datchet datcher Da on the thames about a mile from windsor has the remains of a very ancient monastery while datchet datcher mead was rendered famous by shak speare in his merry wives of windsor but four miles distant is the quaint and sequestered village of horton in this at bercyn manor house lived milton with his father and mother when they retired from business in 1632 andi here were written his comus t ar cades as dallegro LAl legro and 11 11 II Pen serero at old windsor two miles down the river is is one of the most impressive old yew and cypress shaded churchyards in england its moat f farm arm was the hunting huntin g seat of saxon kin kings IC mrs robinson the authoress and t the e unfortunate perdita is buried here and 4 its beaumont lodge was the former home of warren hastings bray is but five miles distant up up the thames the vicar of bray one 1 Sy |
