MILTON AT HORTON
On leaving Cambridge, when he was nearly twenty-four years old, Milton
retired to his father's new home at Horton, about seventeen miles west of
London. Here he tells us that, "with every advantage of leisure, I spent a
complete holiday in turning over the Greek and Latin writers; not but that
I sometimes exchanged the country for the town, either for the purpose of
buying books, or for that of learning something new in mathematics, or in
music, in which sciences I then delighted."
As Milton's father was in easy circumstances his son never earned money
until after he was thirty-two years of age. These free and quiet years at
Horton, when he was his own master, and was without a care, were the
happiest of his life.
The visitor from London now alights at the little station of Wraysbury,
and if it be upon a July 4th, as when the writer made a pilgrimage to
Horton, he will find no pleasanter way to celebrate the day than to stroll
through level fields by the green country roadside a mile and a half to
the little hamlet among the trees. On the way he will espy to the left, on
the horizon, the gray towers of Windsor, and may imagine the handsome
young poet, whose verse has glorified this quiet rural landscape, pausing
some morning in the autumn on his early walk to listen to the far sound of
the huntsman's horn, and presently to see the merry rout of gaily clad
dames and cavaliers dash by, leaping fearlessly the hedgerows and barred
gates.
Horton is a tiny, tranquil village, with little that remains to-day,
outside the ancient parish church, that John Milton saw, except the Horton
manor-house of the Bulstrode family, which had had connections with Horton
from the time of Edward VI. The modern Milton manor, situated in beautiful
grounds, may or may not stand upon the site of Milton's former home, which
remained until 1798, when it was pulled down. The old tavern of uncertain
date upon the one broad street may perhaps have gathered around its
antique hob, within the little taproom, gray-haired peasants who guided
clumsy ploughs through the rich loam of the fields of Horton, while the
white-handed poet sat on a velvet lawn under leafy boughs, and penned his
blithe tribute to the nightingale, or in imagination sported with
Amaryllis in the shade, or with the shepherds, sprites, and nymphs who
peopled his youthful dreams.
As in Cambridge, runnels of clear water, which come from the little river
Colne not far distant, flow beside the road. Even to-day one has not far
to seek to find the suggestion for those exquisite lines in "Comus" which
Milton wrote in Horton:
"By the rushy-fringed bank,
Where grows the willow and the osier dank,
My sliding chariot stays,
Thick set with agate and the azurn sheen
Of turkis blue and emerald green
That in the channel strays:
Whilst from off the waters fleet
Thus I set my printless feet
O'er the cowslip's velvet head
That bends not as I tread."
The student of Milton finds the centre of interest in Horton to-day to be
the beautiful old church where the Milton family attended service for five
years, and where the mother lies buried.
It stands in the green churchyard, back from the village street. Yew-trees
and rose-bushes lend it shade and fragrance. The tombs for the most part
are not moss-grown with age, but are rather new, though the slab at the
entrance over which Milton passed is marked "1612." The battlemented stone
tower is draped with ivy and topped with reddish brick. Like scores of
churches of the twelfth or thirteenth century, in which it was built, the
gabled portico is on the side. The interior is well-preserved; it has a
nave with two aisles and a chancel, and in the porch is an old Norman
arch. Upon the wall at the rear are wooden tablets which record curious
bequests of small annuities for monthly doles of bread to needy people.
Never since those five joyous years at Horton has any English poet blessed
the world with verse of such rare loveliness and perfection as fell from
the pen of Milton during this time, when spirit, heart, and mind were in
attune. The world's clamour had not broken in upon his peace.
Probably at the request of his friend, the composer Lawes, he wrote his
"Arcades" in honour of the Countess Dowager of Derby, who had been
Spenser's friend. The venerable lady lived about ten miles north of Horton
on her fine old estate of Harefield, where Queen Elizabeth had visited her
and her husband. On that occasion a masque of welcome had been performed
for her in an avenue of elms, which thus received the name of the "Queen's
Walk." It was in this verdant theatre that Milton's "Arcades" was
performed by the young relatives of the countess. Among these were Lady
Alice and her boy-brothers, who on the following year took part in
Milton's "Comus," which he wrote anonymously to be played at Ludlow Castle
upon the Welsh border, when the children's father was installed as lord
president of Wales. Besides these longer poems, Milton wrote his "Il
Penseroso" and "L'Allegro" at Horton, as well as the noble elegy
"Lycidas," which was written in memory of his gifted friend, Edward King,
who was drowned in the summer of 1637, just before Milton left his
father's home.
In this peaceful valley of the Thames, his clear eye searched out every
sight, his musical ear sought out every sound that revealed beauty or that
suggested the antique, classic world in which his whole nature revelled.
He walked in "twilight groves" of "pine or monumental oak;" he listened to
"soft Lydian airs" and curfew bells, to the lark's song, and Philomel's.
He watched "the nibbling flocks," the "labouring clouds," and saw,
"bosomed high in tufted trees," towers and battlements arise, and beheld
in vision his--
"Sabrina fair,...
Under the glassy, cool translucent wave
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose train of her amber dropping hair."
He lived in a world enchanted by the magic of his genius. Yet in his
little world of loveliness he was not deaf to the distant hoarse cry of
the coming storm, and at the last the Puritan within him awoke and cried
out at those--
"who little reckoning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast ...
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheephook--or have learnt aught else the least
That to the faithful herds-man's art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs,
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;
The hungry sheep look up and are not fed
But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw
Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread."
In the spring of 1637, the last year that the poet spent at Horton, just
before another outbreak of the plague, his mother died. We may think of
brother Christopher, a young student of laws of the Inner Temple, and the
widowed sister Anne and her two boys coming post-haste from London, and
standing beside the desolate father and the poet-brother in the chancel,
when the tabernacle of clay was lowered to its resting-place. A plain blue
stone now bears the record: "Heare lyeth the Body of Sarah Milton, the
wife of John Milton, who died the 3rd of April, 1637."
The American visitor to Horton on the day that commemorates his country's
declaration of independence will remember Runnymede and Magna Charta
Island. And he will find nothing more consonant with his feeling, after
visiting the home of the republican Milton, than to wend his way across
the fields, golden with waving grain and gay with scarlet poppies, to the
spot where his ancestors and Milton's in 1215 brought tyrant John to
sullen submission to their just demands.
On the margin of the river he may embark, and as the sun casts grateful
shadows eastward, he may drift gently down beside the long, narrow island
in the rushy margin of the stream, where white swans build their nests. A
notice warns him not to trespass, for the gray stone house upon it, whose
gables are half hid by dense shrubbery, is private property. Some day
perhaps this English nation that so loves its own great history will
reclaim this historic spot, and mark Magna Charta Island with a memorial
of the brave men who made it world-famous. Or perhaps,--who knows?--some
American, who has spent three years at Oxford, and learned to love the
history of the race from which he sprang, may be impelled to honour that
which is best in her, and after placing in Cambridge and in Horton fit
memorials of Milton, may be moved to erect here a worthy monument to the
bold barons.