such places, but there is one melancholy incident of the early days of
the palace which has weird interest for the wanderer who stands amidst
the shattered grandeur, and which we may best relate in the words of an
English historian:
"Lord Dacre, of Herstmonceux, a young nobleman of high spirit and
promise, not more than twenty-four years old, was tempted by his own
folly, or that of his friends, to join a party to kill deer in the
park of an unpopular neighbor. The excitement of lawless adventure was
probably the chief or only inducement for the expedition; but the party
were seen by the foresters; a fray ensued, in which one of the latter
was mortally wounded and died two days after.
"Had Lord Dacre been an ordinary offender he would have been disposed
of summarily. Both he and his friends happened to be general favorites.
The Privy Council hesitated long before they resolved on a prosecution
and at last it is likely they were assisted by a resolution from the
King.
"'I found all the Lords at the Star Chamber,' Sir William Paget wrote
to Wriothesley, 'assembled for a conference touching Lord Dacre's
case. They had with them present the Chief Justice with others of the
King's learned council, and albeit I was excluded, yet they spoke so
loud, some of them, that I might hear them notwithstanding two doors
shut between us. Among the rest that could not agree to wilful murder,
the Lord Cobham, as I took him by his voice, was very vehement and
stiff.' They adjourned at last to the King's Bench. The Lord Chancellor
was appointed High Steward and the prisoner was brought up to the bar.
He pleaded 'not guilty,' he said that he intended no harm, he was
very sorry for the death of the forester, but it had been caused in
an accidental struggle; and 'surely,' said Paget, who was president,
'it was a pitiful sight to see a young man brought by his own folly
into so miserable a state.' The lords, therefore, as it seems they
had determined among themselves, persuaded him to withdraw his plea
and submit to the King's clemency. He consented; and they repaired
immediately to the Court to intercede for his pardon. Eight persons
in all were implicated--Lord Dacre and seven companions. The young
nobleman was the chief object of commiseration; but the King remained
true to his principles of equal justice; the frequency of crimes of
violence had required extraordinary measures of repression; and if a
poor man was to be sent to the gallows for an act into which he might
be tempted by poverty, thoughtlessness could not be admitted as an
adequate excuse because the offender was a peer. Four out of the eight
were pardoned. For Lord Dacre there was to the last an uncertainty.
He was brought to the scaffold, when an order arrived to stay the
execution, probably to give time for a last appeal to Henry. But if it
was so the King was inexorable. Five hours later the sheriff was again
directed to do his duty; and the full penalty was paid."
Leaving the ruined mansion we drop down to the seashore, passing
Bexhill on the way to Hastings, which is now a modern city of
sixty-five thousand people, its red-brick, tile-roofed houses rising
in terraces overlooking the sea. Once it was an important seaport,
but here the sea has advanced and wiped out the harbor, and it is
now chiefly known as a watering-place. A few miles from the town was
fought the Battle of Hastings, which stamped the name so deeply on
English history and marked the overthrow of the Saxon dynasty. On a
precipitous hill looking far over town and sea stands the scanty ruin
of its castle, whose story is much clouded, though legend declares it
was built by the Conqueror.
Far greater is the attraction of the unspoiled old towns of Winchelsea
and Rye, a few miles farther on the coast road. A former visit gives
them a familiar look, but we stop an hour in Rye. The receding sea
robbed these towns of their importance hundreds of years ago, and their
daily life is now quite undisturbed by modern progress. Each occupies
a commanding hill separated by a few miles of low-lying land. A local
writer makes the truest appeal for Rye when he declares that it gives
us today a presentment of a town of centuries earlier. "Rye," he
says, "is southern and opulent in coloring. There is here mellowness, a
gracious beauty; one has the feeling that every house and garden is the
pride and love of its owner, and indeed this impression is a true one,
for it is the characteristic of Rye to inspire the loving admiration of
its inhabitants, whether native-born or drawn thither in later life."
Rye has a magnificent church, the largest in Sussex, which overshadows
the town from the very crest of the hill. A very unusual church it
is, with a low cone-pointed tower and triple roofs lying alongside
each other. At the end of the nave are three immense stone-mullioned
windows, very effective and imposing, though the glass is modern.
Queen Elizabeth presented to the church the remarkable old tower clock
which has marked time steadily for more than three hundred years. The
pendulum swings low inside, describing a wide arc only a little above
the preacher's head.
[Illustration: THE HOSPITAL, RYE.
From Original Water Color by Theresa Thorp, A. R. M. S.]
Rye itself is quite as interesting as its church, a place of crooked
lanes and odd buildings, among which the hospital pictured in such a
realistic manner by our artist is one of the most notable. It is a
splendid combination of stucco and timber, with red tiled gables and
diamond-paned lattice windows. Much else there is in Rye to tempt one
to linger, but the sun is setting and we are off on the fine level
road to Folkestone. For the latter half of the distance we run along
the very edge of the ocean--as we saw it, fifteen miles of shimmering
twilight water. Those who are attracted by the gruesome will pause at
the old church in Hythe to see the strange collection of human remains,
thousands of skulls and bones, that are ranged on shelves or piled in
heaps on the floor in the crypt. Whence these ghastly relics came,
antiquarians dispute; but local tradition has it that a great battle
was fought near Hythe, between the Britons and Danes, and these bones
are the remains of the slain. Be that as it may, one does not care to
linger--a mere glance at such a charnel house is quite sufficient.
Folkestone may well contest with Brighton, Bournemouth and Portsmouth
for first honors among English watering-places. We have seen nearly
all of them and we should be inclined, in some particulars, to give
the honors to Folkestone; but let those who enjoy such places be the
judges. Anyway, there are few statelier hotels in England than those
on the east cliff and few that occupy a more magnificent site. At the
Grand they are more willing to permit you to take ease than at most
English hotels of its class. You are not required under penalty to be
on hand for dinner at a certain hour, announced usually by a strident
gong, and to make the pretense of swallowing an almost uneatable table
d'hote concoction pushed along by a vigilant waiter bent on making
all possible speed. This hotel and many others stand on the east cliff
several hundred feet above the sea, but one may reach the shore by
a lift, or if inclined to exercise, by a steep winding pathway. On
moderately clear days, the white line of the French coast may be seen
from the hotel.
Very like to Folkstone is Dover, but seven miles farther up the coast,
and thither we proceed over a steep road closely following the sea.
Dover was chief of the cinque ports of olden days and its small bay
still affords shelter for shipping, including ocean-going steamers. But
the first thing that catches the pilgrim's eye when he comes into Dover
is the splendidly preserved, or rather restored, castle, which stands
in sullen inaccessibility on the clifflike hill overlooking the city.
We make the stiff climb up to the castle gateway, only to be halted by
the guard with the information that we are an hour early. We have had
such experiences before and we suggest that no possible harm can be
done by admitting us at once.
"I really cawn't do it, sir," said the guard. "Some of the guards got
careless in letting people in before hours and the Colonel says he will
court-martial the next one who does it."
Of course this silences our importunity and we engage our soldier
friend in conversation. Why did he enter the army?--Because a common
man has no chance in England; he was going to the dogs and the army
seemed the best opportunity open to him. He had enlisted three years
ago and it had made a man of him, to use his own words. He rather
looked it, too--a husky young fellow with a fairly good face.
The castle is strongly fortified and garrisoned by a regiment of
soldiers. The interior of the court is largely occupied by barrack
buildings, and of the ancient castle the keep is the most important
portion left. It was built to withstand the ages, for its walls are
twenty-three feet in thickness and it rises to a height of nearly one
hundred feet. Within it is a well three hundred feet deep, supposed to
have been sunk by the Saxon king, Harold. The primitive chapel dates
from Norman times. There are also remains of the foundation of the
lighthouse that occupied the commanding height, long
"ere the tanner's daughter's son
From Harold's hand his realm had won."
Dover has other antiquities, among them a church so old that its origin
has been quite forgotten. Roman brick was used in its construction,
probably by Saxon builders. Over against the town gleams the white
chalk of Shakespeare's Cliff, so called because of the reference in
King Lear. Queen Elizabeth visited Dover and vented her wit for
rhyming on its mayor, who, standing on a stool, began,
"Welcome, gracious Queen,"
only to get for his pains,
"O gracious fool,
Get off that stool."
The eastern Kentish coast, lying nearest to the continent, once had
many towns of importance that have since dwindled and decayed. Among
these is Sandwich, once second of the cinque ports; but the coast line
receded until it is now two miles away. The town contains some of the
richest bits of medieval architecture in England. The wall which once
surrounded it may still be traced and one of the original gateways
is intact. We drove through the narrow crooked lanes that serve as
streets in Sandwich, and could scarce believe the population no more
than three thousand. The low lichen-covered buildings, with leaning
walls and sagging, dull-red tiles, straggle over enough space for a
city of three or four times the size. There is no touch of newness
anywhere; no note of inharmonious color jars with the silver grays,
grayish greens and brownish reds that prevail on every hand; no black
and white paint destroys the beauty of the brick and timber fronts
and gables. Most of the houses have but one story and the streets
run with delightful disregard of straight lines and bid defiance to
points of the compass. The two churches with splendid open-beamed oak
roofs are well in keeping with the spirit of the surrounding twelfth
and thirteenth century structures. They stand a mute evidence of the
one-time greatness and prosperity of Sandwich. One of the old houses
is pointed out as the stopping-place of Queen Elizabeth when she was
touring the Kentish coast.
From Sandwich we skim along smooth, level roads to Ramsgate,
Broadstairs and Margate, the last of the long chain of resort towns
of the southeastern coast stretching from Land's End to the Thames
River. What an array of them there is: Penzance, Torquay, Portsmouth,
Bournemouth, Brighton, Eastbourne, Bexhill, Hastings, Folkestone,
Dover, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Margate, and a host of lesser lights. We
have seen them nearly all and many more such places on the northern
and western coasts, as well as a number of inland resorts. It is
therefore a phase of England with which we have become fairly familiar,
and the old towns and isolated ruins seem only the more charming and
time-mellowed by contrast with the crowded and sometimes gaudy modern
resorts. Margate, situated just at the mouth of the Thames on low-lying
grounds, is one of the most pretentious of all.
A few miles out of Margate we turn from the main Canterbury road into
a byway from which we enter the lanes through the fields and farmyards.
The country is level and intersected everywhere by sluggish drains;
but the wheatfields, nearly ready for the harvest, are as fine as we
have seen in England. From afar we catch sight of the twin towers of
the ruined church at Reculver, the object of our meanderings in the
fen-land lanes. We halt in the tiny hamlet beneath the shadow of the
grim sentinels on the sea-washed headland. The old caretaker hastens
to meet us and is eager to relate the story of the ruin. Aside from
the towers there is nothing but fragments of the walls; he points
out clearly where portions of a Roman temple were incorporated into
the Saxon church, and also the Saxon work that the Normans used. One
hundred years ago, this remarkable church was nearly intact; but the
rapid encroachment of the sea upon the brittle rock on which the
structure stands convinced a short-sighted vicar that it would soon be
undermined by the waves. It was therefore torn down, with the exception
of the towers, and the stone used for a small church farther inland.
The sea is now held in check by stone and timber riprap and though it
gnaws at the very foot of the ruin, there seems little chance that it
will farther advance. Besides the church there are the remains of a
great Roman castrum, or fort, at Reculver: a strong wall, several feet
high in places, once enclosed a space of considerable extent, though a
large part has been inundated by the sea.
One will never weary of Canterbury; come as often as he may he will
always feel a thrill of pleasure as the great cathedral towers break
on his vision. And indeed there is nothing of the kind in all Britain
finer than these same towers. We reach the town later than we planned
and hasten to the cathedral, but the guide, wearied with troops of
holiday visitors during the day, tells us we are too late. We find
means, however, to extend our time and to enlist his willing services;
and thus we come to see every detail of the magnificent church as we
could hardly have done earlier in the day. It has no place in this
chronicle, this
"mother minster vast
That guards Augustine's rugged throne,"
about which volumes have been written and with whose history and
traditions the guide-books fairly teem. We have visited it before
during a Sunday-morning service, but its vast dim aisles, its great
crypts, its storied shrines and tombs, and the ivy-clad ruin of its old
monastery, all make a strangely different impression when viewed in the
deepening shadows of the departing day.
After sunset we wander about the old streets, where even the more
modern buildings conform to the all-pervading air of antiquity. It is
the close of the Saturday holiday and the main street is packed with
a cheerful crowd of people of all degrees. Shop-keepers improve the
opportunity to sell their wares and a lively trade is carried on at
the open booths along the walks. One butcher is especially active in
booming business, having a fellow in front of his place, a "barker," we
would style him in the States, who bellows in a voice like a foghorn,
"Lovely meat! the same that the king and nobility heats--lovely meat."
Surely a recommendation that would shake the resolution of a confirmed
vegetarian.
But we soon weary of the glare and noise of the crowded street. We
wander into the crooked lanes that lead to the nooks and corners about
the cathedral. We catch the towers from different viewpoints; as they
stand, boldly outlined against an opalescent sky flecked with red-toned
clouds, they form a fit study for the artist--and one of which the
artist has often availed himself. The college court is full of shadows;
how easy it would be to imagine a cowled figure stealing along in the
dusk and passing from sight in the Norman entrance yonder--than which
there is no choicer bit of medieval architecture in the Kingdom.
We have the whole of the following day to reach London; and what a
superb day it is, the very essence of the beauty of English midsummer!
We have been over the Rochester and Maidstone road before, so we take
the narrow and hilly but marvelously picturesque highway that drops
some fourteen miles straight southward. The country through which it
passes is distinctly rural, with here and there a grove or a farmhouse.
A little to one side is Petham, a quiet hamlet under gigantic trees,
with a half-timbered inn seemingly out of all proportion to the
possible needs of the place. The main road running from Hythe, near the
coast, through Ashford to Tunbridge Wells, a distance of about fifty
miles, is one of the finest in the Kingdom. It runs in broad, sweeping
curves through a gently undulating country, and the grades are seldom
enough to check the motor's flight. It had lately been re-surfaced and
much of the way oiled or asphalted, quite eliminating dust. We pass
much charming country, wooded hills, stretches of meadowland, fields
of yellowing grains, and many sleepy villages, all shimmering in the
lucent air of a perfect summer day. The sky is as blue as one ever sees
it in England, and a few silvery-white clouds drift lazily across it.
It is what the natives call a very warm day, but it seems only balmy to
us.
[Illustration: ON THE DOWNS.
From Original Painting by Alfred Elias.]
Bethesden, Biddenden and Lamberhurst all attract our attention. The
second has a very quaint old inn on the market square, with a queer
little ivy-covered tower; but Lamberhurst hardly merits the extravagant
praise given it by William Cobbett in his "Rural Rides"--"one of the
most beautiful villages that man ever set eyes upon." Still, it may
have altered somewhat since his time; there are few red-brick villas
among the older cottages. It is, none the less, a pleasant place, rich
with verdure and bright with flowers, and picturesquely situated on a
gently rising hill. Coming on this road, one gets the best conception
of the really magnificent situation of Tunbridge Wells, and cannot
wonder that it has gained such popularity. The main part of the town
lies in a depression in the undulating downs, its villas, houses
and streets all set down on a liberal scale with plenty of room for
trees, in whose luxuriant foliage the place is half hidden. All around
stretches the wavelike succession of the hills, diversified with forest
and bright with heather and gorse. Thackeray was very fond of Tunbridge
Wells and his enthusiastic words in "Round About Papers" breathe much
of the spirit of the place:
"I stroll over the common and survey the beautiful purple hills around,
twinkling with a thousand bright villas which have sprung up over this
charming ground since first I saw it. What an admirable scene of peace
and plenty! What a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows the
cloud-shadows across it, and murmurs through the full-clad trees! Can
the world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful?"
We pause at the excellent though rather unpretentious Grand Hotel for
our late luncheon; and as a final adieu to the pleasant town, drive
through its commons with their strange wind-worn stones, before setting
out Londonward. We pass on into Sussex as far as Grinstead and there
strike the direct London road through Epsom, where we have a glimpse
of the famous racing downs. The quiet, staid-looking old town gives no
hint of the furor that possesses it on Derby days. A few miles farther
we enter the outskirts of London.
XVIII
FROM DUBLIN TO CORK
We are off for the Emerald Isle. There was much of interest in the
three days between London and Dublin, but I will not follow our
journey here; in a later chapter I will endeavor to gather some of the
scattered threads. We reach Ludlow the first night, one hundred and
forty-eight miles in six hours--very speedy going for us--but a day
from Ludlow to Barmouth and another to Holyhead is more in keeping with
our usual leisurely progress.
One can never truly feel the plaintive sweetness of Lady Dufferin's
song until with his own eyes he beholds the melancholy beauty of the
"Sweet Bay of Dublin." We enter its gates in the opalescent light of
a perfect morning. The purple mists hanging over the headlands are
glowing with the first rays of the sun and the pale emerald waters
flash into burnished gold as the low beams strike along their surface.
The voyage has been an easy one; our tickets were purchased, our cabin
reserved, and provision made for the transport of the motor, all in
a few minutes at the office of the Royal Automobile Club in London,
and the genial touring-secretary, Mr. Maroney, has supplied us with
necessary maps and information. We have not long to wait at the pier;
a swinging crane picks up the car from the boat and carefully deposits
it on the pavement. A railway employee is at hand with a supply of
petrol and we are soon ready for the road. The night voyage has been
a comfortable one; we were able to go aboard at nine o'clock and take
possession of our cabin, quite as large and well-appointed as those of
the best ocean-going steamers, and breakfast was served on the ship.
Altogether, nothing is easier than a trip to Ireland with a motor car
if one only goes about it rightly.
An unknown land lies before us. Much has been written of Ireland--books
of travel, history, and fiction--and poets have sung her beauties and
sorrows; we have read much of the Island, but nothing that has given us
more than a hint of what we are about to see. To know Ireland, one must
take a pilgrim's staff, as it were; he must study her ruins and ancient
monuments, see her cities and her towns, her half-deserted villages,
her wretched hovels and her lonely places, and above all, must meet and
know her people; then, after all, he can only say to others, "If you
wish to know the reality, go and do likewise."
Dublin is a handsomely built modern city of three hundred thousand
inhabitants and has an air of general prosperity. It has much of
interest, but it does not rightly belong in this chronicle. The low
hum of our motor calls us to the open road, the green fields, and the
unfrequented villages. We are soon away on the Carlow road with Cork as
our objective.
The road out of Dublin is distressingly rough as compared with
English highways, though it improves before we reach Naas. Our first
impressions are distinctly melancholy; a "deserted village"--a row of
stone cottages, roofless, windowless, and with crumbling or fallen
walls--speaks of Ireland's sorrows more plainly than any words. And
such sad reminders are not uncommon; wholly or partly ruined villages
greet us every little while on the way.
Naas, the first town of any size, is dirty and unattractive, but
its historic importance ill accords with its present meanness. Its
traditions are not antedated by any town in the Island; it was once
the capital of the Leinster kings--half-clad savages, no doubt, but
kings none the less. Cromwell thought it important enough to visit, and
incidentally wiped its strong castle out of existence. Rory O'More a
century later burned it to the ground, destroying some eight hundred
houses--it has not so many now. Adjoining the town is the ruin of
Jigginstown House, an unfinished palace begun on a vast scale by the
Earl of Strafford, who expected to entertain Charles I. here; but
Charles failed to arrive and the Earl had other matters--among them the
loss of his head--to engage his attention.
The road to the south of Naas lies in broad, straight stretches and
the surface is better, but we found it almost deserted. This impressed
us not a little. We ran many miles, meeting no one; there were few
houses--only wide reaches of meadowland with but few trees--and
altogether the country seemed quite uninhabited.