longing to see it again. We must hie us back to our inn, for the dinner
hour is not far off and we are quite ready for the Castle's substantial
fare. There is still plenty of time after dinner to saunter about the
town and the twilight hours are the best for such a ramble. When the
subdued light begins to envelop castle and ancient walls, one may best
realize the unique distinction of Conway as a bit of twelfth-century
medievalism set bodily down in our workaday modern world. The telegraph
poles and wires, the railways and great bridges fade from the scene and
we see the ancient town, compassed with its mighty betowered walls and
guarded by the frowning majesty of the castle. It is peculiarly the time
to ascend the wall and to leisurely walk its entire length. We find it
wonderfully solid and well-preserved, though ragged and hung with ivy;
grasses carpet its crest in places, yellow and purple wall-flowers cling
to its rugged sides, and in one place a sapling has found footing,
apparently thriving in its airy habitat. Yet the wall is quite in its
original state; the hand of the restorer has hardly touched it, nor does
it apparently require anything in the way of repair. How very different
is it from the walls of York and Chester, which show clearly enough the
recent origin of at least large portions throughout their entire
courses. It reaches in places a height of perhaps twenty feet and I
should think its thickness at the base nearly as great. In old days it
was surmounted by twenty-one watchtowers, all of which still remain in a
state of greater or less perfection. Its ancient Moorish-looking
gateways still survive, though the massive doors and drawbridges that
once shut out the hostile world disappeared long since. We saunter
leisurely down the wall toward the river and find much of interest
whichever way we turn. The town spreads out beneath us like a map and we
can detect, after some effort, its fanciful likeness to the shape of a
harp--so dutifully mentioned by the guide-books. Just beneath this we
gaze into the back yards of the poorer quarter and see a bevy of dirty
little urchins going through endless antics in hope of extracting a
copper or two from us--they know us well for tourists at once--who else,
indeed, would be on the wall at such a time? A little farther are the
rambling gables of Plas Mawr and on the extreme opposite side of the
town, the stern yet beautiful towers of the castle are sharply
silhouetted against the evening sky. How it all savors of the days of
chivalrous eld; the flash of armor from yonder watchtowers, the deep
voice of the sentry calling the hour, the gleam of rushlight from the
silent windows or the reveille of a Norman bugle, would seem to be all
that is required to transport us back to the days of the royal builder
of the castle. Or if we choose to turn our gaze outside the walls, we
may enjoy one of the finest vistas to be found in the British Isles.
Looking down the broad estuary, through which the emerald-green tide is
now pouring in full flow toward the sea, one has a panorama of wooded
hills on the one hand and the village of Deganwy with the huge bulk of
Great Orme's Head as a background on the other; while between these a
vast stretch of sunset water loses itself in the distance.
[Illustration: INNER COURT, PLAS MAWR, CONWAY]
But we are at the north limit of the old wall--for it ends abruptly as
it approaches the beach--and we descend to the promenade along the
river. There is a boathouse here and a fairly good beach. If it had not
so many rivals near at hand, Conway might boast itself as a resort town,
but the average summer vacationist cares less for medieval walls and
historic castles than for sunny beaches and all the diversions that the
seaside resort town usually offers. He limits his stay in Conway to an
hour or two and spends his weeks at Llandudno or Colwyn Bay.
There are many odd corners that are worth the visitor's attention and
one is sure to have them brought to his notice as he rambles about the
town. "The smallest house in the Island" is one of them and the little
old woman who occupies this curiosity will not let you pass without an
opportunity to look in and leave a copper or two in recognition of her
trouble. It is a boxlike structure of two floors about four by six feet
each, comfortably furnished--to an extent one would hardly think
possible in such very contracted quarters. There are many very ancient
homes in the town dating from the sixteenth century and perhaps the best
known of them--aside from Plas Mawr--is the little "Black Lion" in
Castle Street. It is now fitted up as a museum, though its exhibit, I
fear, is more an excuse to exact a shilling from the pocket of the
tourist than to serve any great archeological end. The interior,
however, is worth seeing, as it affords some idea of the domestic life
of a well-to-do middle-class merchant of three or four hundred years
ago. Another building in the same street is of even earlier date, for
the legend, "A. D. 1400," appears in quaint characters above its door.
Still another fine Elizabethan home shows the Stanley arms in stained
glass--an eagle with outstretched wings swooping down upon a child--but
this building, as well as many others in Conway, has been "restored"
pretty much out of its original self. I name these particular things
merely to show what a wealth of interest the town possesses for the
observer who has learned that there is something else besides the castle
and who is willing to make a sojourn of two or three days within the
hoary walls.
The church of St. Mary's has little claim to architectural distinction,
but like nearly all the ancient churches of Britain, it has many odd
bits of tradition and incident quite peculiar to itself. There is an
elaborate baptismal font and a beautiful rood screen dating from the
thirteenth century. John Gibson, R. A., the distinguished sculptor, who
was born near Conway, is buried in the church and a marble bust has been
erected to his memory. Another native buried within the sacred walls is
entitled to distinction in quite a different direction, for a tablet
over his grave declares:
"Here lyeth the body of Nich's Hookes of Conway, Gent. who was ye 41
child of his father William Hookes Esq. and the father of 27 children,
who died on the 20 day of Mch. 1637."
Surely, if these ancient Welshmen were alive to-day they would be
lionized by our anti-race-suicide propagandists! In the chancel there
are several elaborate monuments of the Wynne family which exhibit the
usual characteristics of old-time British mortuary sculpture. One of
these tombs is of circular shape, and interesting from its peculiarity,
though none of them shows a high degree of the sculptor's art.
Outside, near the south porch, is a curious sun dial erected in 1761,
which is carefully graduated to single minutes. Near this is a grave
made famous by Wordsworth in his well-known poem, "We are Seven,"--for
the poet, as we have learned in our wanderings, was himself something of
a traveler and these simple verses remind us of his sojourn in Conway.
Their peculiar appeal to almost every tourist is not strange when we
recall that scarcely a school-reader of half a century ago omitted them.
Conway, as might be expected, has many quaint customs and traditions.
One of these, as described by a pleasing writer, may be worth retelling:
"At Conway an old ceremony called the 'Stocsio' obtained till the
present reign, being observed at Eastertide, when on the Sunday crowds
carrying wands of gorse were accustomed to proceed to a small hill
outside the town known as Pen twt. There the most recently married man
was deputed to read out to a bare-headed audience the singular and
immemorial rules that were to prevail in the town on the following day:
All men under sixty were to be in the street by six o'clock in the
morning; those under forty by four, while youths of twenty or less were
forbidden to go to bed at all. Houses were searched, and much rough
horse-play was going about. Defaulters were carried to the stocks, and
there subjected to a time-honoured and grotesque catechism, calculated
to promote much ridicule. Ball-play in the castle, too, was a
distinguishing feature of all these ancient fete days."
Another carefully preserved tradition relates to the tenure of the
castle by the town corporation, which must pay annually a fee of eight
shillings sixpence to the crown, and the presentation by way of tribute
of a "dish of fish" to the Marquis of Hertford--the titular Earl of
Conway--whenever he visits the town. This gave rise to a ludicrous
misunderstanding not very long ago. An old guide-book substituted "Mayor
of Hereford" for "Marquis of Hertford," and a perusal of this led the
former dignitary to formally claim the honor when he was in Conway. The
mayor of the ancient burg explained the error to his guest, but went on
to say that had sparlings, the peculiar fish for which the Conway River
is noted, been in season and obtainable, he would have had great
pleasure in presenting a dish of them to the Mayor of Hereford; as it
was, it was understood that in default of the sparlings the worthy civic
clerk of Conway would treat his illustrious visitor to a bottle of
champagne of an especially old and choice vintage. There is no record
that the dignitary from Hereford made any objection to the substitution
of something "just as good."
In leaving the castle until the last, I am conscious that I am violating
the precedent set by nearly all who have written of Conway and its
attractions, but I have striven--I hope successfully--to show that there
is enough in the old town to make a pilgrimage worth while, even if it
did not have what is perhaps the most picturesque ruin in the Island.
For the superior claims of Conway Castle are best described by the
much-abused word, "picturesque." While it has seen stirring times, it
did not cut the figure of Denbigh, Harlech or Carnarvon in Welsh
history, nor did it equal many others in size and impregnability. But to
my mind it is doubtful if any other so completely fulfills the ideal of
the towered and battlemented castle of the middle ages. From almost any
viewpoint this is apparent, though the view from across the river is
well-nigh spoiled by the obtrusively ugly tubular railroad bridge; nor
does the more graceful suspension bridge add to it, for that matter. In
earlier times the only approach from this direction was by ferry--an
"awkward kind of a boat called yr ysgraff," says a local guide-book. The
boat seems to have been quite as unmanageable as its name, for on
Christmas day, 1806, it capsized, drowning twelve persons. Twenty years
later the suspension bridge was ready for use and the tubular bridge
followed in 1848.
[Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE--THE OUTER WALL]
Conway Castle was one of the several fortresses built by the first
Edward to complete the conquest of Wales. It was designed by Henry de
Elreton, a builder of great repute in his time and also the architect of
Carnarvon and Beumaris. The work was conducted under personal command of
the king and its completion in 1291 was celebrated by a great fete at
Christmastime. As one wanders through the roofless, ivy-clad ruin,
carpeted with the green sward that has crept over the debris-covered
floors, and contemplates the empty windows open to all the winds of
heaven, the fallen walls and crumbling towers, the broken arches--only
one of the eight which spanned the great hall remaining--amid all the
pathetic evidence of dissolution and decay, it is hard indeed to
reconstruct the scene of gay life that must have filled the noble pile
in that far-off day. Here the high-spirited and often tyrannical king,
accompanied by the queen, almost as ambitious and domineering as
himself, had gathered the flower of English knighthood and nobility with
their proud dames and brightly liveried retainers to make merry while
the monarch was forging the chains to bind the prostrate principality.
Here, we may imagine, the revelry of an almost barbarous time and people
must have reached its height; and we may thank heaven that the old order
of things is as shattered and obsolete as the ruined walls that surround
us.
As previously intimated, the history of Conway Castle is hardly in
accord with its grandeur and importance. Its royal founder soon after
its completion found himself closely besieged within its walls by the
Welsh and was nearly reduced to an unconditional surrender, when the
subsidence of the river made it possible for reinforcements to relieve
the situation. A century later Richard II. commanded the troops raised
to war in his behalf on the haughty Bolingbroke to assemble at Conway,
but the monarch's feebleness and vacillation brought all plans of
aggressive action to naught; for he basely abandoned his followers and
rushed blindly into his enemy's power. And thus what might have been a
historic milestone in the career of the castle degenerated into an
unimportant incident. Conway escaped easily during the civil war which
sounded the knell of so many feudal castles. The militant Archbishop
Williams, whose memorial we may see in the parish church, espoused the
side of the king and after his efforts had put everything in shape for
defence, he was ordered to turn over the command to Prince Rupert. This
procedure on the part of Charles led the warlike churchman to suddenly
change his opinion of the justice of the royal cause and he at once
joined forces with the Cromwellians. He carried with him a considerable
following and personally assisted General Mytton in his operations
against both Denbigh and Conway Castles. The latter was first to fall
and the good bishop received the thanks of Parliament for his services
and also a full pardon for the part he had taken in support of King
Charles. He was also able to restore to his followers the valuables
which had been hidden in the castle for safe keeping. Conway was another
exception to Cromwell's rule of destruction of such feudal fortresses.
Perhaps the fact that at the time of its surrender the Royalists were
almost everywhere subdued and not likely to be able to reoccupy it, had
something to do with this unusual leniency. In any event, the discredit
for the destruction of the splendid structure rests with King Charles,
who permitted one of his retainers to plunder it of its leaden roof and
timbers. These materials were to be sent to Ireland--just for what
purpose is not clear--but it does not matter, for the ships carrying the
wreckage were all lost in a violent storm.
Since that memorable period the old ruin has witnessed two and a half
centuries of unbroken peace. Its enemies were no longer battering ram
and hostile cannon. The wild storms of winter, the summer rains and the
sea winds have expended their forces upon it, only to give it a weird,
indescribable beauty such as it never could have possessed in its
proudest days. Careful restoration has arrested further decay and
insures its preservation indefinitely. It has never figured in song or
story to the extent its beauty and romance would lead us to expect,
though Owen Rhoscomyl, a native Welshman, has written a stirring novel,
"Battlements and Towers," which deals with the castle in civil war days.
The story has a historic basis and the graves of the lovers, Dafyd and
Morfa, may still be seen in Conway Church.
But no Welshman has yet arisen to do for his native land what Scott did
for Scotland. The field is fully as rich--surely the struggles of this
brave little people were as heroic and full of splendid incident as
anything that transpired in Scotch history. But as a venture for letters
the field still lies fallow and perhaps the unromantic atmosphere of our
present-day progress will always keep it so. In leaving Conway for our
fifth sojourn at Ludlow we find ourselves wondering which of these may
outrank the other as the gem of all the smaller medieval towns we have
visited in Britain. Indeed, we have not answered the query yet, but we
are sure the distinction belongs to one or the other.
XVII
THE HARDY COUNTRY AND BERRY POMEROY
It has been said that the traveler who has visited either John O'Groats
or Land's End never feels at ease until he has both of these places to
his "credit." I should be loath to confess that such a feeling had
anything to do with our setting out from London with Land's End as an
ill-defined objective, though appearances may indeed favor such an
inference. Once before we were within ten miles of the spot and did not
feel interested enough to take the few hours for the trip. But now we
have spent a night at John O'Groats--and have no very pleasant
recollection of it, either--and should we ever tell of our exploit the
first question would be, "And did you go to Land's End?" Be that as it
may, we find ourselves carefully picking our way through the crowded
Oxford street which changes its name a half dozen times before we come
out into the Staines Road. We are not in the best of humor, for it was
two o'clock when we left our hotel--we had planned to start at nine in
the morning! But a refractory magneto in the hands of an English repair
man--who had promised it on the day before--was an article we could not
very well leave behind.
Our itinerary--we never really made one, except in imagination--called
for the night at Dorchester. We had previously passed through the
pleasant old capital of the "Hardy Country" and felt a longing for a
closer acquaintance. But Dorchester is one hundred and thirty miles from
London and our usual leisurely jog will never get us there before
nightfall--a fact still more apparent when we find nearly an hour has
been consumed in covering the dozen miles to Staines. We shall have to
open up a little--a resolution that receives a decided chill when a
gentlemanly Automobile Association scout, seeing the emblem on our
engine hood, salutes us with, "Caution, Sir! Police traps all the way to
Basingstoke." We take some chances nevertheless, but slow down when we
come to a hedgerow or other suspicious object which we fancy may afford
concealment for the despised motor "cop." At Basingstoke a second scout
pronounces the way clear to Andover and Salisbury and the fine
undulating road offers every opportunity to make up for lost time--and
police traps. If the speed limit had been twice twenty miles per hour, I
fear we might--but we are not bound to incriminate ourselves!
Salisbury's splendid spire--the loftiest and most graceful in all
Britain--soon arises athwart the sunset sky and we glide through the
tortuous streets of the town as swiftly as seems prudent. The road to
Blandford is equally good and just at dusk we enter the village of
Puddletown, stretching for half a mile along the roadside. Its name is
not prepossessing, but Puddletown has a church that stands to-day as it
stood nearly three hundred years ago, for it has not as yet fallen into
the hands of the restorer. Its paneled and beamed ceiling of Spanish
chestnut, innocent of paint or varnish, its oaken pews which seated the
Roundheads and Royalists of Cromwell's day, its old-fashioned pulpit and
its queer baptismal font, are those of the country church of nearly
three centuries ago. The village is a cozy, beflowered place on a clear
little river, whose name, the Puddle, is the only thing to prejudice one
against it. Just adjoining Puddletown is Aethelhampton Court, the finest
country house in Dorset, which has been inhabited by one family, the
Martins, for four hundred years.
Darkness is setting in when we drive into the courtyard of the King's
Arms in Dorchester. It is a wild, windy evening; rain is threatening and
under such conditions the comfortable old house seems an opportune haven
indeed. It is a characteristic English inn such as Dickens eulogizes in
"Pickwick Papers"--one where "everything looks--as everything always
does in all decent English inns--as if the travelers had been expected
and their comforts prepared for days beforehand." There is a large,
well-furnished sitting-room awaiting us, with bedrooms to match, and the
evening meal is ready on a table resplendent with fresh linen and
glittering silver. In a cabinet in the corner of the dining-room is an
elaborate silver tea-service with the legend, "Used by His August
Majesty King Edward VII. when as Prince of Wales he was a guest of the
King's Arms, Dorchester, on--" but we have quite forgotten the date. A
rather recent and innocent tradition, but perhaps the traveler of two
centuries hence may be duly impressed, for the silver service will be
there if the King's Arms is still standing. It is an irregular old
house, built nobody knows just when, and added to from time to time as
occasion required. The lack of design is delightfully apparent; it is a
medley of scattered apartments and winding hallways. It would fit
perfectly into a Dickens novel--indeed, with the wind howling furiously
outside and the rain fitfully lashing the panes we think of the stormy
night at the Maypole in "Barnaby Rudge." But it has been a rather trying
day and our musings soon fade into pleasant dreams when we are once
ensconced in the capacious beds of the King's Arms.
One can spend a profitable half day in Dorchester and a much longer time
might be consumed in exploring the immediate vicinity. There are two
fine churches, All Saints', with a tall slender spire, and St. Peter's,
with a square, battlemented tower from which peal the chimes of the town
clock. In the latter church is a tomb which may interest the few
Americans who come to Dorchester, since beneath it is buried Rev. John
White, who took an active part in founding Massachusetts Colony. In 1624
he despatched a company of Dorset men to the new colony, raising money
for them, procuring their charter and later sending out as the first
governor, John Endicott of Dorchester, who sailed for New England in
1629 in the "George Bona Ventura." In both churches there is an unusual
number of effigies and monuments which probably escaped because of
Dorchester's friendliness for the Parliamentary cause--but none of them
commemorates famous people. Outside St. Peter's there is a statue to
William Barnes, the Dorset poet, with an inscription from one of his own
poems which illustrates the quaint dialect he employed:
"Zoo now I hope his kindly feace
Is gone to find a better pleace:
But still wi' vo'k a-left behind
He'll always be a-kept in mind."
The county museum, adjoining the church, contains one of the best
provincial collections in England. The vicinity is noted for Roman
remains and a number of the most remarkable have found a resting-place
here. There are curiosities galore in the shape of medieval implements
of torture, among them a pair of heavy leaden weights labeled "Mercy,"
which a tender-hearted jailer ordered tied to the feet of a man hanged
for arson as late as 1836, so he would strangle more quickly. There are
relics of Jeffreys' dread court, the chair he used when sentencing the
Dorset peasants to transportation and death and the iron spikes on which
the heads of the rebels were exposed to blacken in the sun. There is
much besides horrors in Dorchester Museum, though I suppose the gruesome
and horrible will always get the greater share of attention. And such
things are not without their educational and moral value, for they speak
eloquently of the progress the human race has made to render such
implements of torture only objects of shuddering curiosity.
To the admirer of Thomas Hardy, the novelist, Dorchester will always
have a peculiar interest, for here the master still lives, much alone,
in a little house near the town, his simple life and habits scarcely
differentiating him from the humblest Wessex peasant. I say "the
novelist," for another Thomas Hardy was also a Dorchester man--the
admiral who supported the dying Nelson at Trafalgar. The great writer,
however, is known to all the townsmen and is universally admired and
revered. Shortly after our visit the people of the town essayed a fete
in his honor, the chief feature being two plays adapted from Wessex
tales. Mr. Hardy, though in his seventy-second year, followed the
rehearsals closely, sitting night after night in a dark corner of the
auditorium. A correspondent described him as "a grave, gray little
figure with waxed moustache ends and bright vigilant eyes, who rose
occasionally to make a suggestion, speaking almost apologetically as if
asking a favor." His suggestions usually had to do with the character
and effect of word cadences. Nothing could exceed his sensitiveness to
the harmonies of speech. "Will you let me see the book, please?" he
would say. "I think that sentence does not sound right; I will alter it
a little."