Sight-seeing with ease and comfort is the ideal of the cycling tourist,
and this run into a corner of Buckinghamshire and the Milton country
comes as near the ideal as anything ever does in a world of punctures,
leakages, hills, headwinds, and weather that is either sultry or
soaking.
Starting from Southall Station, which will probably strike the tourist
as in anything but a desirable locality, we gain that flattest of
flat highways—the Oxford road—just here, and, leaving the canal and
its cursing bargees, together with the margarine works, the huge
gasometers, and other useful but unlovely outposts and necessaries
of civilisation, speed along the excellent surface, past Hayes End
and the hamlet Cockneys are pleased to call “’illingdon ’eath,” until
within a mile and a half of Uxbridge, where a turning on the right
hand will be noticed, properly furnished with a sign-post, pointing
to Ickenham, Ruislip, and Pinner. Here we leave the dusty high road
and its scurrying gangs of clubmen, whose faces, as they scorch along,
are indicative of anything but pleasure. It is a pleasant by-road
upon whose quiet course we have now entered, going in a mile-long
descending gradient, past the grand old trees of Hillingdon Court
overhanging the way, down towards Ickenham. It is a perfectly safe and
thoroughly delightful coast down here, far away from the crowds, along
a lane whose leafy beauty and luxuriant hedgerows might almost belong
to Devonshire, instead of being merely in Middlesex. At Ickenham,
one of those singularly tiny and curiously old-world villages that
are, paradoxically enough, to be found only in this most populous of
English counties, are a village green, a pond, and a pump. The pond is,
perhaps, not so translucent as it might be, for the reason that the
ducks are generally busily stirring up the mud; and the green, being
mostly loose gravel, is not so verdant as could be wished; but the
pump, occupying a very central position, is at once ornate and useful,
and, in appearance, something between a Chinese joss-house, a County
Council band-stand, and a newspaper kiosk. Also, it still retains
on its weathercock the tattered and blackened flag of some loyal
celebration or another, which may mean loyalty in excelsis or merely
local laziness. The very interesting old church, with whitewashed walls
and with odd dormers in the roof, has some excellent windows and a
little timbered spirelet that shows up white against a dense background
of trees, and is, altogether, just such a place as Gray describes in
his “Elegy,” in whose churchyard sleep the rude forefathers of the
hamlet. Suburbia has not yet disturbed this “home of ancient peace,”
and it is still worth the very earnest attention of the artist, as also
is that grand old Jacobean mansion of Swakeleys, standing in its park,
near by.
[Illustration: Map—WINDSOR to SOUTHALL]
A mile onward is Ruislip, best reached by bearing to the right at the
next turning, and then sharply to the left. Round about “Riselip,”
as its inhabitants call it, they grow hay, cabbages, potatoes, and
other useful, if humble, vegetables; and, by dint of great patience
and industry, manage to get them up to the London market. It is only
at rare intervals that the villagers ever see a railway engine, for
Ruislip is far remote from railways, and so the place and people keep
their local character. Two or three remarkably quaint inns face the
central space round which the old and new cottages are grouped, and
the very large church stands modestly behind, its battlemented tower
peering over the tumbled roofs and gable-ends with a fine effect, an
effect that would be still finer were it not that the miserably poor
“restoration” work of the plastered angles, done by that dreadful
person, Sir Gilbert Scott, is only too apparent.
[Illustration: RUISLIP.]
Taking the Rickmansworth road, and presently crossing the road to
Harefield, a desolate, half-ruined modern house of large size,
apparently never yet occupied, is seen on the right. This is called
St. Catherine’s End. Beyond it, on the same side, presently appears an
unobtrusive road, with an air of leading to nowhere in particular, and,
in fact, abruptly ending on the banks of Ruislip Reservoir. The sound
of “reservoir” is not a pleasing one to those who are familiar with
the ugly things of that name with which an unbusiness-like Legislature
has allowed the water companies to destroy the beauty of the suburban
Thames; but there are reservoirs of sorts, and this is one of the
picturesque kind. The Regent’s Canal Company made it, many years ago,
as a store for refilling that waterway, and it was doubtless more than
sufficiently ugly then. But trees have since that time partly covered
the hillsides sloping down to it, and that finest of all artists and
best of landscape gardeners, Nature, has grown rushes and water-lilies
here, and nibbled a bit out of the straight-edged bank there, until the
place looks anything but artificial. Wild birds and wild flowers, too,
render this a pleasant spot, and there are boats even, in which one
may voyage down the mile, or less, of lake, at whose distant end the
red-roofed villas of Northwood may just be seen, whimsically like some
foreign port.
Returning to the road, the first hill of the journey presents its
unwelcome front to be climbed or walked. Duck’s Hill, as it is called,
leads to an elevated tableland where the bracken and the blackberry
briars grow, and shortly leads down again, by means of an exceedingly
steep, though short, fall through a mass of loose stones and thick
dust. The gradient and the quality of the road-surface render this bit
particularly dangerous. Succeeding this is a more gradual descent,
leading to a right and left road. The right-hand, on a down-grade,
and one the tourist would fain follow, is not the route, which lies,
instead, to the left, and goes determinedly uphill for half a mile.
Just when you begin to think this excursion is too much like taking a
bicycle out for a walking tour, it becomes possible to mount and ride
with comfort; and then, entering Batchworth Heath and Hertfordshire
simultaneously, the lodge gates of Moor Park are seen across a
wide-spreading green surrounded by scattered houses. It is of little
use to describe Moor Park, for the house cannot be seen by the casual
tourist, and the cyclist is not allowed in the grounds. The place has
passed through many hands, and now belongs to Lord Ebury. It was once
the property of a certain Benjamin Hoskins Styles, a forerunner of the
modern type of financier, who had grown suddenly rich by speculating in
South Sea shares. He caused the hills that faced the house in either
direction to be cut through, in order to provide “vistas.” He secured
his vistas at a cost of £130,000, which seems a high price to pay for
them; but, according to Pope, he also let in the east wind upon his
house, and the next owner, who happened to be Admiral Lord Anson, spent
£80,000 in trying to keep it out again.
Gradual descents, and two or three sharper ones, lead for a mile in
the direction of Rickmansworth, and then a C.T.C. danger-board shows
its red warning face over a hedge-top, just as a beautiful distant
view of the town unfolds itself below. There are those who, as a rule,
disregard danger-boards: if such they be who wheel this way, let them
be advised to make this an exception, for it is a long and winding drop
down, and ends by making directly for a brick wall, some cottages, and
a canal; sufficiently awkward things to encounter on a runaway machine.
Those who will not be advised, and are accordingly run away with, are
recommended to choose the canal.
But the wise walk down, and, nearing the level, mount again, and
wheeling over a switchback canal bridge and a river bridge, come
happily into Rickmansworth.
This old town resembles Watford, Ware, and Hertford, but is much
prettier. They are four sisters, these Hertfordshire towns, with a
strong family likeness but minor differences. Ware is the slippered
slut of them, without doubt, and Hertford (if local patriotism will
forgive the comparison) the dowdy; Watford the more pretentious; while
Rickmansworth is the belle. All are alike in their rivers and canals,
their surrounding meads and woodlands, and their breweries.
Green pastures and still waters, hanging woods and old-world ways,
render Rickmansworth delightful. One comes into it from Batchworth
Heath downhill, and, across its level streets, climbs up again for
Chenies, reached past Chorleywood and its common, and a succession of
the loveliest parks. Chenies is a place of pilgrimage, for the church
is the mausoleum of the Russells, Dukes of Bedford; and if one cannot,
in fact, feel any enthusiasm for a family that has exhibited such
powers of “getting on in the world,” and has consistently used those
powers of self-aggrandisement, while professing Liberal opinions, at
least the long and splendid series of their tombs is worth seeing.
The Rozels, as they were originally named, came over, like many other
Norman filibusters, with the Conqueror. They did not, for a long
while, make any great mark after that event, and history passes them
by until 1506. During all those centuries, the Russell genius for
getting on lay fallow, and none of them did anything in particular.
They just vegetated on their lands in Dorsetshire, at Kingston Russell,
near Bridport, until that year, when a quite unexpected happening
put the beginnings of promotion in their way. John Russell, heir of
the uncultivated bucolic head of the house, had just returned from
Continental travels, and had acquired polish and the command of the
French, Spanish, and German tongues, accomplishments that would
probably have been of no sort of use to him had it not been for the
singular happening already hinted at. In the winter of 1506 the
Archduke of Austria, voyaging from the Low Countries to Spain, was
driven by the fury of the Channel gales into Weymouth. He was most
unromantically sea-sick, and landed; although England was at that time
no safe place for one of his house. But he preferred the prospect of
political imprisonment to the unkindly usage of the seas. Meanwhile,
until the king’s pleasure became known, he was sheltered by Sir Thomas
Trenchard of Wolveton, near Dorchester; and because Sir Thomas knew no
tongue but his own robust, native English, he had his young kinsman,
John Russell, over from Kingston Russell, to act as interpreter and
entertainer to the distinguished foreigner. Young Russell proved
himself so courtly and tactful that when the Archduke visited Henry the
Seventh on a friendly invitation to Windsor—where, instead of being
clapped into a dungeon, he was royally entreated—he spoke in such high
praise of this young Englishman that the king speedily found him a
position in the Royal Household. Thus was a career opened up to this
most fortunate young man. He was with Henry the Eighth in France, and
fought in several battles, losing an eye at the taking of Morlaix and
at the same time gaining a knighthood. Diplomacy, which, rather than
fighting, is the Russell _métier_, soon claimed him. Diplomacy, it has
been well said, is the art of lying for the advantage of one’s country.
Perhaps he had not learned the art sufficiently well, for his great
mission to the Continent failed, and he returned, not in disgrace, but,
with the inevitable Russell address and luck, to preferment. The times
were fatal to honest men, and that Russell survived that troubled era
and died in his bed in the reign of Mary, at peace, and ennobled by
the title of Earl of Bedford, enriched with the spoils of confiscated
religious houses and the lands of attainted and executed friends, is
therefore no recommendation of his character, which was that of a
cautious time-server and cunning sycophant. He lies here, the Founder
of his house, his recumbent effigy beside that of his countess, who
brought Cheneys into the family. It is a magnificent monument and the
effigies evidently carefully executed likenesses, even down to the
small detail of the earl’s eyelid, represented as drooping over the
lost eye.
The second Earl of Bedford was a man of greater honour and sincerity
than his father, the Founder. His monument and that of his countess
stands beside his parents’ altar-tomb, and is of alabaster bedizened
to extremity with painting and gilding. He was the first Francis of
the family. The last was the man (Francis, 9th Duke of Bedford) who
poisoned himself in 1891.
Earl Francis, perhaps, derived his sincerity from his mother. Both
were sincere Protestants, while his father was anything you pleased,
so long as he could keep his head on his shoulders and put more money
in his pocket. The son’s Protestantism was nearly the undoing of him,
for the bloody Gardiner would probably have sent him to the stake had
he not escaped to Geneva. When Elizabeth succeeded her sister, he
returned and served his Queen well and truly, until his death in 1585.
He was succeeded by his grandson, Edward, who in turn was followed by
his cousin Francis; “the wise earl,” they call him, perhaps because
he found, after being released from his imprisonment in the Tower for
his political opinions, that it was more peaceful and profitable to
busy himself about the draining of the ill-gotten Russell lands at
Whittlesea and Thorney, than to contend with Parliament against the
Crown. This is indeed wisdom, and worthy of a Russell and a lawyer; for
as a lawyer he had been trained before his succession to the earldom
had been thought of. His son William reproduced the shiftiness of the
Founder, and lukewarmly sided first with King, then with Parliament,
and so continually back and forth during the Civil War. They made him a
duke before he died—they, that is to say, the advisers of William the
Third—and the price paid for it was the blood of his eldest son. The
title was given as a kind of solace for the loss of that son, and must
have been a bitter kind of plaister to salve grief. That son, William,
had not the canny caution of his race, and deserves to be honoured
for the self-neglecting enthusiasm for the Protestant religion which
brought him to the block in 1683 for his alleged complicity in the Rye
House Plot.
The most elaborate monument here at Chenies is that to his father
and mother, but more truly to himself; for that fantastic pile of
theatrical statuary, exhibiting the Duke and Countess contorted with
paroxysms of grief, leads up, as the central point of this stony
emotion, to the portrait head of this unhappy patriot who fell under
the headsman’s axe.
There are other Russell monuments here, for the family has rarely been
averse from post-mortem glorification; but to make a catalogue of them
would be wearisome. Among the latest, and the most unassuming, is the
plain slab to Earl Russell,—the Lord John Russell of earlier political
struggles,—who died in 1878.
Chenies village, let it at once be said, is utterly disappointing,
after one has heard so much of its beauties. “A model village,” no
doubt, but how depressing these model villages are! And, indeed, the
Russells rule “Chaineys” (as it should be pronounced) with an iron
rule. The country in which it is set is beautiful, and at the centre
of the village a group of noble trees, with a pretty spring and
well-house, may be noticed; but that anyone can admire the would-be
Tudor architecture of the cottages, almost all rebuilt by a Duke of
Bedford about fifty years ago, is surprising. Yet there are those who
affect to do so. The village lies just off the road, to the right; and
at its farther end stand the church and the manor-house, close to one
another.
“Isenhampton Cheneys” is the real name of the place, but the Cheynes
who once were paramount here are long since extinct, and the insistent
“B” is now on every cottage, gate-post, and weathercock. The church,
rebuilt, has the whole of its north aisle appropriated as the Bedford
Chapel, so that, even here, you see how the Russells maintain the
feudal idea. Froude, indeed, says the gorgeous monuments here are
second only to the tombs of the Mendozas, the proudest race in Spain;
but true though that be, he is grossly fulsome when he praises the
Russells for their “Liberal” ideas. Truth to tell, the family has ever
been content to wear the Liberal mask and yet to treat its unfortunate
tenants in a manner that many an old Tory race would have neither the
courage nor the wickedness to adopt. Ask of the Russell tenantry what
they think, and, receiving your answer, the wonder arises how that
family can keep up their curious pretence of being “friends of the
people.”
Leaving Chenies, and regaining the highway to Amersham, we wheel
along until, passing under the Metropolitan Railway at Chalfont Road
Station, we take the second turning to the left, leading to Chalfont
St. Giles. These three miles form the most exquisite part of the whole
tour, from the purely rustic point of view; for they lead down through
sweet-scented woodlands where the perfume of the pines and the heavy
scent of the bracken (strongly resembling that of ripe strawberries)
mingle with the refreshing odour of the soil itself. Nothing breaks
the stillness in the daytime save the hoarse “crock-crock” of the
pheasants, and, when night comes, the feathered choir from the
well-named neighbouring Nightingale Woods tunes up.
[Illustration: MILTON’S COTTAGE, CHALFONT ST. GILES.]
Chalfont St. Giles lies down in the valley of the Misbourne, across the
high road which runs left and right, and past the Pheasant Inn. It is a
place made famous by Milton’s residence here, when he fled London and
the Great Plague. The cottage—the “pretty cot,” as he aptly calls it,
taken for him by Thomas Ellwood, the Quaker—is still standing, and is
the last house on the left-hand side of the long village street. The
poet could only have known it to be a “pretty cot” by repute, for he
was blind.
Americans, perhaps more than Englishmen, make this a place of
pilgrimage; and serious offers were made, not so long since, to
purchase the little gabled brick and half-timbered dwelling, and to
transport it to the United States. Happily, all fears of such a fate
are now at an end; for the parish has purchased the freehold, and
has made the cottage a museum, where the literary pilgrim can see
the veritable low-browed room where _Paradise Lost_ was written and
_Paradise Regained_ suggested, together with the actual writing-table
the poet worked at. An interesting collection of early and later
editions is to be seen, with Milton portraits, and cannon-balls found
in the neighbourhood. No one will grudge the modest sixpence charged
for admission by the parish authorities to all who are not parishioners.
The parish church still remains interesting, although three successive
restoring architects have been let loose upon it; and there are
some really exquisite modern stained-glass windows, as well as some
very detestable ones. Their close companionship renders the good an
excellent service, but has a very sorry effect on the bad. Notice the
very beautiful carved-oak communion rails, which came from one of the
side chapels of St. Paul’s Cathedral, given by Francis Hare, Bishop of
Chichester and Dean of St. Paul’s. This spoiler of the metropolitan
Cathedral is buried here, and a tablet records his dignities. Among
other posts, he held that of Chaplain to the great Duke of Marlborough,
whose courier, Timothy Lovett, by the way, who died in 1728, aged
seventy years, lies in the churchyard, beneath the curious epitaph—
“Italy and Spain
Germany and France
have been on Earth
my weary Dance.
So that I own
Ye Graves my greatest Friend
That to my Travels
all has put an end.”
Timothy, it is evident, was not of the touring kind by choice.
Having seen these literary and other landmarks, we can either regain
the road, and, passing through Chalfont St. Peter and its picturesque
water-splash, where the Misbourne crosses the road by the church, come
to the Oxford road, and by the turning to Denham through Uxbridge into
Middlesex again; or else, braving a very steep, stony, and winding
lane, make for Jordans, that lonely graveyard and meeting-house of
the early Quakers, where lies William Penn, founder of the State
of Pennsylvania, with many another of his sect. A left-hand fork
in the road leads toilsomely in a mile and a half to the solitary
shrouded dell where Jordans lies hid, embosomed amid trees. It was
precisely for its solitude and comparative inaccessibility that Thomas
Ellwood, the friend of Milton, with others of the Society of Friends,
purchased Jordans in 1671. They bought it of one William Russell with
the original intention of making it merely a burial-ground, but the
building of the meeting-house soon followed.
This is the humble, domestic-looking, red brick building the pilgrim
suddenly catches sight of when wheeling along the darkling lane.
Hepworth Dixon, writing in 1851, says, “the meeting-house is like an
old barn in appearance,” but that is scarcely correct. As a matter of
fact, it greatly resembles a stable, and indeed is almost precisely
identical in appearance with the still-existing range of stables facing
Old Palace Green, Kensington; buildings erected at the same period as
this.
The stern, austere character of the original Quakers—Cobbett calls
them “unbaptized, buttonless blackguards”—is reflected in the look
both of their burial-ground and their meeting-house. Nothing less like
a place of worship could be imagined. Many in style—or in the lack of
style—like it are to be seen in the New England States of the United
States of America, to whose then desolate shores many of the early
Quakers carried the creed that made them outcasts in their native land;
and the American citizens who throng here in summer must often be
struck with the complete likeness of the scene to many Pennsylvanian
Quaker places of meeting.
The plot where Penn and many others lie is just an enclosed field, and
not until recent years were any memorials placed over some of their
resting-places. A dozen small headstones now mark the grave of William
Penn, the Founder of the State, and others of his family.
Twice a year is Jordans the scene of Quaker worship, on the fourth
Sunday in May and the first Thursday in June, when many of the faith
come from long distances to commemorative services.
Leaving Jordans, and striking the road into Beaconsfield, we reach that
quietly cheerful town in another two miles, coming into it past Wilton
Park, on the Oxford road. The little town that gave Benjamin Disraeli
his title is a singularly unpretending place, and is less a town than
a very large village. Passing through its yellow, gravelly street,
and turning to the left, when a mile and a half out, down the Oxford
road, at the hamlet of Holtspur, the way to Wooburn Green and Bourne
End lies downhill, along the valley of that little-known tributary
of the Thames, the Wye, which, some miles higher up, gives a name to
High Wycombe. Bourne End has of late years grown out of all knowledge,
being now a place greatly favoured by those outer suburbanites who more
especially affect the Thames; so that new villas plentifully dot the
meads and the uplands towards Hedsor Woods and Clieveden.
And so across the Thames into Cookham and Berkshire. Frederick Walker
discovered Cookham, and painted the common and the geese cackling
across it, long before Society had found the Thames. He died untimely,
and is buried in the old church close by; and since then Cookham has
become more sophisticated—pretty, of course, and equally, of course,
delightful, but not the Cookham of the seventies. But if, on the other
hand, you did not know the village then, and make its acquaintance only
now, you will have no regrets, and will enjoy it the more. There is
an odd effort at poetry on a stone in the churchyard, which, perhaps,
should not be missed. It tells of the sudden end of William Henry
Pullen in 1813, and among other choice lines says—
“Well could he drive the coursers fleet, which oft he’d drove before;
When, turning round a narrow street, he fell—to rise no more.
No one commanded more respect, obliging, kind, and fair;
None charged him with the least neglect, none drove with greater care.
He little thought when he arose the fatal fifth of June
That morn his life’s career would close and terminate so soon.”
Three parts of the road from Cookham to Maidenhead are exceedingly
dull and uninteresting; let us therefore take the towing-path, and
cycle along that, ignoring, like everyone else, the absurd prohibition
launched a few seasons ago by the Thames Conservancy. Not hurrying—that
would be foolishness; for although the river is well-nigh spoiled by
Boulter’s Lock, it is still lovely all the way to Cookham, with the
most glorious views of Clieveden Woods, rising, tier over tier, on the
opposite shore. Here too, of course, have been changes since first
Society, and then the Stage, discovered the river a few years ago, and
bungalows are built on the meadows; but we must needs be thankful that
they were built in these latter days, now that the hideous villas of
forty years since are quite impossible.
Nearing Maidenhead, and coming to the Bath road, running right and
left, we turn to the right and then down the first road to the left
(Oldfield road), then the next two turnings in the same direction, when
the old tower of Bray Church comes in sight; that Bray celebrated for
its vicar immortalised in the well-known song, who, when reproached
with being a religious trimmer and inconstant to his principles,
replied, “Not so; for I always keep my principle, which is to live and
die the Vicar of Bray.” Simon Alleyn was the name of this worthy, who
lived, and was vicar, in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary,
and Elizabeth.
First a Papist, he kept his place by becoming a Protestant, recanting
when Mary came to the throne, and again becoming a Protestant under
Elizabeth. Called apostate, renegade, turncoat, and denier of Christ,
modern times would give him the kindlier name of “opportunist.” At
anyrate, his opportunism was successful, for he held office from
1540 to 1588. The ballad originated in 1712, in a song entitled “The
Religious Turncoat; or, the Trimming Parson,” which refers to no
particular place or person, and has no fewer than eighteen verses,
quite distinct from the modern ballad. Thus they run, for example:—
“I lov’d no king in ’Forty-one,
When Prelacy went down;
A cloak and band I then put on,
And preached against the Crown.
When Charles returned into the land,
The English Crown’s supporter,
I shifted off my cloak and band
And then became a courtier.
When Royal James began his reign,
And Mass was used in common,
I shifted off my Faith again,
And then became a Roman.”
These verses, it will be noticed, place the trimming story a hundred
years later.
The churchyard is entered by a lich-gate with a curious old house
over it. In the church itself is a monument to William Goddard, the
seventeenth-century founder of Jesus Hospital, and Joyce, his wife.
That celebrated old almshouse stands on the road as we leave Bray for
Windsor. It is a quaintly gabled, red brick building, with a statue
of the founder in an alcove over the entrance. A central courtyard
has little dwellings ranged round it, and a rather striking chapel,
familiar in Frederick Walker’s famous picture, the “Harbour of Refuge,”
painted here in 1871-72. Unfortunately, those who are familiar
with that beautiful picture (now in the National Gallery) will be
disappointed on seeing the real place, for the painter has quite
idealised Jesus Hospital, and has imagined many details that have no
existence.
[Illustration: JESUS HOSPITAL, BRAY.]
Beyond the hospital, a turning to the left leads to Windsor, past
Clewer. Windsor bulks hugely from these levels, with huddled houses and
the towering mass of the castle lining a ridge above the Thames; the
Round Tower, grim and terrible in other days, merely, in these times, a
picturesque adjunct to the landscape.
It seems, indeed, that everywhere in these days the iron gauntlet
has given place to the kid glove; persuasion is, nowadays, more a
mental than a physical process. Only at Windsor these things take
higher ground; here for persuasion in this era read diplomacy, where
it had used to be a blood-boltered performance, in whose dramatic
course axe and chaplain took prominent parts. The castle survives,
its mediæval defences restored for appearance sake, but its State
Apartments filled with polite furniture, dreadfully gilded and tawdry.
It makes a picture, this historic warren of kings and princes; but alas
for picturesqueness, Henry the Eighth’s massive gateway is guarded
to-day—not by an appropriate Yeoman of the Guard, but by a constable of
that singularly unromantic body—the police!
If one is wise, one does not visit Windsor for the sake of the State
Apartments, but for the external view of the castle, set grandly, like
a jewel, amid its verdant meads. The meads form the most appropriate
foreground; the proper time, either early morning or evening, for then,
when the mists cling about the river, and the grass is damp with them,
that ancient palace and stronghold, that court and tomb of Royalty,
bulks larger than at any other hour, both on sight and mind. And,
having thus seen Windsor aright, you cannot but return well pleased.