lies through Savernake Forest and its outskirts, passing the loveliest
forest scenery in England. Nothing can compare for magnificence with the
massed beeches and oaks of Savernake, whose glorious alleys of foliage
extend for miles in every direction. These fine full-grown trees are
planted for the most part in a well-considered design, and radiate from a
central point in eight directions. These "Eight Walks," as they are
called, vary in length from four miles downwards, and lie to the south of
the road. The highway runs through the northern verge of the Forest, quite
open and hedgeless all the way, with two gates across it, about two miles
apart. The scenery is like nothing so much as a painting by De Wint or
Constable.
The Marquis of Ailesbury, to whom this noble demesne (the only Forest in
the possession of a subject) belongs, has his residence near the southern
boundary of the Forest, at Tottenham House, which is a singularly plain
building externally, and so reminiscent in name of the Tottenham Court
Road that it would have been exquisitely appropriate had the late Marquis
sold the estate to Sir John Blundell Maple instead of to Lord Iveagh.
I suppose the eccentricities of the late Marquis of Ailesbury will become
the subject of curious legends in the coming by-and-by. He was born out of
his time, and was a kind of "throw-back" to earlier types that flourished
when the Prince Regent and the Toms and Jerrys disported themselves in the
famous Corinthian manner.
The glades of Savernake still remain in the family, but were alienated to
Lord Iveagh, the man of Dublin stout, of whom the quaint Biblical conceit
was invented by some temperance wag: "He who is not for us is agin us.[3]
He brews XX." Lord Iveagh bought the estates and paid for them, but the
House of Lords refused to sanction the sale, and so Savernake still
belongs to the Brudenell-Bruces.
The late Marquis had a perfect genius for dissipating wealth. A "horsey"
man among the "horsey," his favourite companions were sporting men of the
more unrefined type, and he was hail-fellow with the cab-men and 'bus-men
of London. Radicals found in his career a text for their discourses and a
reason for abolishing the House of Lords as an hereditary chamber; and the
ballet-girls of the London theatres regarded him as all a Peer should be.
One who knew "Lord Stomach-ache," as he was playfully nicknamed before he
had succeeded to the Marquisate and was yet Lord Savernake, said--
"The wealth and colour of his lordship's language surprised me. I never
knew or heard a costermonger in the Dials with such a repertory. I saw him
once with a couple of choice friends on a costermonger's barrow, such as
is used for hawking fish or vegetables. One 'pal' had a 'yard of tin' (or
coaching horn), on which he tootled melodiously. His lordship wore a very
high collar, a blue birds-eye belcher fastened with a nursery-pin for a
necktie, a huge drab box-cloth coat with large mother-o'-pearl buttons, a
low-crowned, broad-brimmed coachman's hat, and a very tight pair of
trousers. It was raining, a pitiless, pelting drizzle, and as they pulled
up for drinks, he took off his heavy coat, and, placing it carefully over
the patient 'moke,' said to it, as he patted it, 'There y'are, Neddy;
that'll keep the bloomin' wet off you, old bloke, won't it?'"
For my own part, I think the latter part of that incident is the most
creditable thing on record in the "short and merry" life of poor
"Stomach-ache."
[Sidenote: _OLD TIMES ON THE ROAD_]
Savernake Forest left behind, the road descends steeply down Forest Hill
in the direction of Marlborough. This hill was one of the worst obstacles
met with between London and Bath in the old times, and its steepness was
then rendered more difficult by reason of the execrable surface of the
road. This is the experience of one travelling to London about 1816:
"Twenty times at least the eight horses came to a standstill, and had to
be allowed their own time before they would move. For more than half the
way up there lay an extensive encampment of gipsies along each side of the
road, forming a most picturesque scene with their wild figures, their
bright-coloured costumes, and dark bronzed skin; their white tents, and
the numerous columns of blue, thin smoke that curled upwards and lost
itself in the dense foliage. These stout vagabonds rendered us an
essential service; they cheered and lashed the horses, they pushed bodily
in the rear, and they climbed the spokes of the revolving wheels, to send
them round, with a recklessness and dexterity only acquired by long
practice. To compensate them for their labour, the coachman halted at the
top of the hill to give them a chance of trading; and then the women came
forward and did a little fortune-telling with the ladies, not without
joking and bantering on the part of the onlookers; while the younger
gipsies brought abundance of sweet wood-strawberries, dished up in
dock-leaves, than which nothing at the time could have been more welcome.
"During the first half of the journey to London our pace would not average
more than four miles an hour, and sometimes the tramps and wanderers of
the road would keep up with us for the hour together, especially the
pedlars and packmen, who would display their Brummagem wares, and now and
then effect a sale as we rumbled along."
A wide view extends from here, over the valley of the Kennet, with
Marlborough lying in its hollow, and the Wiltshire downs, stretching away
in bare rolling masses, in the direction of Swindon. Marlborough develops
itself slowly as one descends, and becomes lost for a time as the
panoramic view sinks out of sight.
XXXII
[Sidenote: _MARLBOROUGH_]
There are fine old inns at Marlborough; coaching inns, fallen from the
high estate that was theirs in the days when Pepys and Sheridan, my Lord
Chatham with his gout and his innumerable train of servants, and Horace
Walpole with his gimcrackery and his caustic comments upon the kind of
society in which he found himself upon the Bath Road, stayed here. No one
comes here nowadays with vast retinues of lackeys, and the man does not
exist, be he Peer or Commoner, who could dare be so offensive as that
haughty and insufferable personage, the aforesaid Earl of Chatham, who,
nursing his gout at the "Castle" Hotel in 1762, practically converted the
place to his own exclusive use, regardless of the comfort or convenience
of any one else. He would not stay at the "Castle," he said, storming at
the terrified landlord, unless all the servants of the establishment were
forthwith clothed in the Chatham livery. And so clothed they were, and the
"Castle" became for some weeks what it had been before the strange
workings of fate had converted it into the finest of all the inns along
the road to Bath--the private residence of a nobleman.
There are breakneck streets in Marlborough, for the town, although built
in the valley, has the entrance to its principal street carried round the
spur of a foothill so that one side of the thoroughfare is considerably
lower than the other, and the humorous among Marlborough's neighbours
declare that bicycles are the only vehicles that can be driven round by
the Town Hall without upsetting. But, in spite of what Cobbett says in his
"Rural Rides," that "Marlborough is an ill-looking place enough," this
street is the finest, broadest, neatest, and most picturesque of any along
these hundred odd miles of highway. Think of all the adjectives that make
for admiration, and you have scarce employed one that overrates the
dignified and stately air of the High Street of Marlborough. The width of
the road is accounted for by its having been used as a market-place; the
architectural character of the houses lining it is due to the fires that
devastated the town in 1653, 1679, and 1690, burning down the older
houses, and causing the town to be almost wholly rebuilt. Those were the
days of the Renaissance, and before the dwelling-house became frankly
unornamental and merely a brick or stone box for people to live in, with
window and door holes from which they could look or issue forth.
Thanks, then, to these fires, Marlborough is to-day a town of
architectural delights, while the older portion of the College is fully as
interesting, having been built on the site of the old Castle from designs
by Inigo Jones or his son-in-law, Webb. It is thus a noble view along the
High Street: the shops, which are interspersed among the private houses,
being here and there fronted with covered ways, forming dry walks in wet
weather; an arcaded Market House and Town Hall at the eastern end, and a
church closing the view in each direction.
[Sidenote: _ARCADIAN HUMBUG_]
Marlborough College is at the western end of this street, occupying the
fine mansion built by Francis, Lord Seymour, in time to entertain Charles
the Second, who with his Queen, his brother, and a crowded suite halted
here on his way to the West, in one of his Royal progresses. It became the
residence of that Earl of Hertford whose Countess had a gushing affection
for those tame poets of the eighteenth century whose blank verse was so
soothing to the senses and so absolutely restful to the mind--requiring
little mental exercise to write, and none at all to read. My Lady held
quite a poetic court, of which Pope, Dr. Watts, and Thomson were the
shining lights, and squirted amiable piffle about Chloes and Strephons
while her fine London guests strutted about the emerald lawns pretending
to be Wiltshire peasantry; the ladies wielding shepherds' crooks, and
leading lambs made presentable with much expenditure of soap and water, in
leashes of sky-blue silk; while the gallant gentlemen, more used, we may
be sure, to dining and drinking, learned to play upon oaten reeds, and
were quite idyllic and Arcadian. What an astounding time! and how
disgusted these fine folks would have been, had they been forced to fare
on the fat bacon and small beer of the real shepherds, instead of the
kickshaws and the port which helped them to sustain their affectations!
The spectacle of that vicious era, pretending to rural simplicity is,
perhaps, the most notable example of vice paying homage to virtue that may
be given. The folly of the age is almost inconceivable, but it is all
preserved for us and duly certified in its literature and in the pictures
of the school of Watteau; while this particular instance of it may be
voluminously read of in the records of the time, or be conjured up by a
sight of the winding walks and grottoes in the Castle gardens, where,
perhaps, Dr. Watts may have seen the original busy bee that gave him the
first notion of--
"How doth the little busy bee
Employ each shining hour,
By gath'ring honey all the day
From ev'ry opening flower."
[Illustration: MARLBOROUGH.]
Meanwhile, Thomson was sipping nectar (which is Greek for brandy-punch)
with my Lord Hertford, and babbling of other things than green fields. In
fact, the literary Lady Hertford found the poet of the "Seasons" to be a
drunkard, and he was not invited to any more of her parties.
The house passed at length to the Dukes of Northumberland, who neglected
it, and at last leased it to a Mr. Cotterell, an innkeeper, who with
prophetic vision saw custom coming down the road in an increasing tide.
Appropriately known as the "Castle," it remained an hotel until January 5,
1843, when its doors were finally closed, to be re-opened as the home of
the newly established "Marlborough College."
For nearly a century the "Castle" entertained the best society in the
land. Forty-two coaches passed through the town every day when it was at
the height of its prosperity, and a goodly proportion of their occupants
stayed here. Take, in fact, the lists of distinguished arrivals at Bath
during that time, and you have practically a visitors' list of the
"Castle."
Marlborough College was established in this house of entertainment, and
new buildings have been added from time to time; but the old "Castle
Hotel" may yet be traced from its characteristic architecture. Amid its
pleasant lawns and gardens rises that prehistoric hill on which
Marlborough Castle was built. Indeed, here, in this "Castle Mound," is the
very fount and origin of the town, whose very name is supposed to derive
from this earthwork, being the grave of the magician Merlin, who with his
enchantments is said to lie here still, until Britain shall be in need of
him again. "Merleberg," or "Merlin's town," is said to have been
Marlborough's first name, and the crest over the town arms still
represents the Mound, with a motto in Latin to "the bones of the wise
Merlin."[4]
XXXIII
[Sidenote: _THE KENNET_]
When the traveller leaves Marlborough he bids good-bye, for many miles yet
to come, to the pleasant forest groves, the rich, low-lying pastures, and
the fishful streams that have bordered the road hitherto. The valley of
the Kennet is, it is true, near by, and for the next six miles it may be
glimpsed, on the left, like some Promised Land of Plenty; but the road
itself is bare. The "green pastures and still waters" of the Psalmist,
indeed, you think when mounting gradually out of Marlborough you see the
pleasant water-meadows afar off as you toil up the shoulder of the downs,
passing a picturesque roadside inn, the "Marquis of Ailesbury's Arms,"
and the village of Fyfield on the way, with a glimpse of Manton village
down below, amid its elms and farmyards by the windings of the stream.
[Illustration: ROADSIDE INN, MANTON.]
Fyfield (how many dozens of Fyfields are there in England?) is tiny,
clean, and quaint, with a pinnacled church tower on to whose roof you look
down from the road, and may glimpse in a backward glance the whole of the
district traversed since Savernake Forest was left behind. There, in long
dark clumps upon the distant hilly horizon are the grand avenues of
that forest; the Bath Road descending from them like a white ribbon
into Marlborough town, whose houses are hid, only the church towers
shining white in the sun, against a green background. Ahead rises
unenclosed downland, with chalky, flint-strewn road, the unenclosed wastes
of green-grey grass, broken here and there with mounds, grass-grown too.
[Illustration: FYFIELD.]
[Sidenote: _MARLBOROUGH DOWNS_]
On the left hand, at the distance of half a mile, perhaps, rises the
church of West Overton, an offence here in its newness, for this road is
Roman, these mounds are ancient British graves, and everywhere, look in
what direction you will on these bleak and treeless wastes, are the
mysterious vestiges of a people who had no arts, no science, no
literature, who lived, in fact, a savage nomadic life, but who, for all
those disabilities, have left records of their passing that may well
remain when the civilization of to-day has perished. On these downs are
countless tumuli; in the hollows are unnumbered thousands of stones,
brought no one knows whence, or for what purpose, and the remains of
cromlechs may be seen that add to the complex puzzle of the wherefore of
it all. West Kennet village stands in the succeeding hollow, like some
shamed modern trespasser, amid these prehistoric remains which appear,
Sphinx-like, on the sky-line or stand lonely in the folds of the barren
hills.
The district seems to have been a metropolis of the prehistoric dead (if,
indeed, all these ruined stone avenues and circles are sepulchral), or
some vast open-air cathedral of a forgotten faith; if they have a
religious rather than a mortuary significance. For, but little over a mile
distant, are the remains of the so-called "Druid Temple" at Avebury, a
monument second only to Stonehenge in mystery, and a good deal more
impressive in appearance; while, frowning down upon the highway, and
standing immediately beside it, is that "greatest earthwork in Europe,"
Silbury Hill.
Avebury village stands on the road to Swindon, on the borders of
Marlborough Downs, and has been built within a great circle which appears
to have been approached by an avenue of standing stones. A few of these
may still be observed, standing beside the hedgeless road. Some idea of
the vast size and impressive aspect of this circular monument of those dim
ages before history began may be obtained when it is said that it consists
of an excavation 40 feet deep and 4442 feet in circumference, encircled on
the outer side with an earthwork 40 feet high, the whole enclosing nearly
29 acres. On the inner brink of this deep fosse there are now left
thirty-five huge stones out of the original number of about one thousand.
Nine of these are upright, ten thrown down, and sixteen buried. Traces of
pits show where the farmers of many years ago dug up the others and took
them away for building-stones or gateposts. Over six hundred and fifty
others are known to have been destroyed, the cottages of Avebury and the
roads having been built of their fragments. How the unknown builders of
this weird place could have brought these huge rocks, some of them
measuring fourteen feet in length, and all weighing many tons a-piece,
from unguessed distances, remains a mystery.
[Illustration: MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON.]
[Sidenote: _AVEBURY_]
The first mention of Avebury Temple is by Aubrey the antiquary. It was in
1648 that he first saw the place, which seems, curiously enough, to have
been until then quite unknown. He came upon it quite by chance, when
hunting, and must have been astonished at the discovery of so
extraordinary a place. His account of it led that kingly amateur of
science, Charles the Second, to visit Avebury on his way to Bath in 1668.
Pepys, too, going to Bath, unexpectedly happened both upon Avebury and
Silbury Hill, and viewed them and the sepulchral barrows that, crowned
with pine trees, look down from the hill sides, with an admiration not
unmixed with a superstitious dread.
[Illustration: AVEBURY.]
The road to Swindon goes straight through this great earthwork, and is
crossed midway by another; together, with part of the village built within
the circle, cutting it up lamentably.
[Illustration: SILBURY HILL.]
[Sidenote: _SILBURY HILL_]
Silbury Hill, which stands within sight, is a fitting pendant to these
mysteries. Antiquaries have contended together in referring both to
ancient Britons, Phoenicians, Danes, Saxons, and even Romans, and are
divided in opinion as to their object: whether they were intended for
Druids' or Snake-worshippers' temples, or whether they marked the last
resting-places of those slain in some great battle fought before the dawn
of history. That Silbury Hill stood here when the Romans came seems,
however, to be certain from the fact that the old Roman road from
_Cunetio_ to _Aquae Solis_ (the existing Bath Road between Marlborough and
Bath), engineered along the whole of its course in a perfectly straight
line, swerves slightly from the south base of the hill, evidently to avoid
injuring it. A learned antiquary (but the most learned must be reduced to
the level of the most ignorant before these mute earthworks) considers
that Silbury was raised to commemorate a battle, probably Arthur's second
and last battle of Badon Hill. The same authority thinks Avebury to be a
burying-place of the dead slain in a great battle, and planned to show the
dispositions of the forces engaged on either side.
But Silbury remains inscrutable. It is wholly an artificial hill, somewhat
pyramidical in shape, and 170 feet in height. Its base covers five acres
of ground, and was once surrounded by a stone circle, of which scanty
traces are now left. The contents of it are estimated at 468,170 cubic
yards of earth. Repeated attempts have been made to pluck out the heart of
this mystery, but without success. So far back as 1777 it was mined from
above by a party of Cornish miners, who worked under the direction of the
then Duke of Northumberland and others, but nothing was discovered. Then
in 1849 it was tunnelled from the base to the centre, where a space of
twelve feet in diameter was examined, with the same disappointing result.
Antiquaries consequently regard Silbury with hungry and expectant eyes.
Just beyond this baffling relic stands the Beckhampton inn, where the
"coaches dined" and changed teams, and where the Bath Road divides into
the two routes; the right-hand road going through Calne, Chippenham, and
Box; the other reaching Bath by way of Devizes and Melksham. Some coaches
went one way and some the other. The crack coaches, including the
"Beaufort Hunt," went by the former, which is two and a half miles
shorter, and is the classic route, and always the one selected nowadays by
record-breaking cyclists.
XXXIV
The road between Newbury and Bath was in coaching days known as the "lower
ground." So far as physical geography goes, however, the land is a great
deal higher, and much more hilly than the "upper ground" between London
and Newbury, and it is not to be wondered at that accidents would
sometimes happen here. This, then, was the scene of an accident to a coach
driven by a gay young blade, one "Jack Everett;" an accident in which he
and an elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both sufferers were
put into a cart filled with straw, and taken to the nearest surgeon. On
the road into Marlborough the coachman beguiled the tedium of the way and
the pain of his injured limb by saying to the old lady, "I have often
kissed a young woman, and I don't see why I shouldn't kiss an old
one"--and he suited the action to the words.
[Sidenote: _THE CHERHILL WHITE HORSE_]
Beckhampton inn, whose real sign is the "Waggon and Horses," is the place
mentioned by Dickens in the "Bagman's Story" in the _Pickwick Papers_. It
remains as old-fashioned to-day as ever,[5] but does not very closely
resemble the word-picture Dickens draws of it. He probably made
acquaintance with the downs and the inn only in passing on his way between
Bath and London in 1835. It stands at a spot where the road promises to
become more cheerful and less gaunt and inhospitable; but the promise is
not kept, the way going inexorably again along downs as bare as before,
for another two miles. All the way between here and Cherhill village the
"Lansdowne Column" is seen crowning the rolling hills to the left front.
Built within the ramparts of an ancient hill-fort of the Danes, who
encamped naturally enough in the most inaccessible position they could
find, this "column," which is an obelisk, is an exceedingly prominent
object in every direction. As one proceeds and turns the flank of the
hill, the strange sight of a trotting White Horse is seen carved in the
chalk of its swelling shoulder. This is not one of the ancient White
Horses that decorate the hillsides of some parts of the West County and
date from Anglo-Saxon times, but dates only from 1780, when it was cut by
Dr. Allsop, an eccentric physician of Calne. The site it occupies is said
to be the highest point between London and Bath, and the White Horse is
supposed to be visible for thirty miles--which there is no occasion to
believe. The figure measures 157 feet from head to tail, and the eye alone
is 12 feet in diameter. The way the figure was designed is just a little
curious.
No one could possibly have correctly traced the outlines of so huge an
affair, except by external aid, which probably accounts for the bad
drawing of the ancient examples. Dr. Allsop adopted the plan of stationing
himself on the downs in full view of the rough draft, so to speak, which
he had already staked out with flags, and of shouting directions to his
workmen by the aid of a speaking-trumpet.
The hillside is so steep at this point that when the White Horse was
restored in 1876, a workman was nearly killed by a truck load of chalk
descending upon him down the slope.
Passing this interesting spot and the village of Cherhill, which lies
hidden to the right of the road, the highway reaches Calne through its
suburb of Quemerford, along a flat road.
[Illustration: THE WHITE HORSE, CHERHILL.]
XXXV
[Sidenote: _CALNE_]