place. Once the seat of a cloth-making industry, it has seen its trade
utterly decay, and is only now regaining something of its commerce in the
very different staple of bacon-curing. One does not contemn Calne on
account of its misfortunes, but it must always have been a slipshod place.
"Calne," according to Hartley Coleridge, who described his father's three
years' residence there, "is not a very pretty place. The soil is clayey
and chalky; the streams far from crystal; the hills bare and shapeless;
the trees not venerable; the town itself irregular, which is its only
beauty. But there were good, comfortable, unintellectual people in it."
With all of which one may agree; save that the "irregularity" of the town
is now rather sluttish than beautiful. As for the people, we are but
travelling the road, and Calne is only an incident on our way--the people
of it something less to ourselves, resembling, in fact, x, an unknown
quantity.
The outskirts of Calne are not prepossessing, nor does the long, stony
street of mean characterless stone houses that leads to the centre of the
little town alter the stranger's view. Calne, in fact, lying so near
Bowood, long the seat of the Marquises of Lansdowne, and being their
property, wears an abject, servile look. All that makes life worth living
is at lordly Bowood; only that which is mean and commonplace is left to
Calne. It seems (although one's prejudices are Conservative) as though
some vampire were seated near, sucking away the life-blood of the place.
There are two hills just out of Calne; Black Dog Hill, and Derry Hill, and
they lead the traveller through picturesque scenery, past one of the
lodges of Bowood, and so down into the flat alluvial lands where the Avon
flows, and now and again floods out all the dwellers in those levels. The
road down there is dreadfully dull to the pedestrian. To the cyclist, on
the other hand, who has for these miles past been struggling up hills he
cannot climb, and walking down others he dare not coast, the change is one
from a penitential pilgrimage to Paradise.
The entrance to the "ancient and royal" borough of Chippenham is hatefully
like that into Calne, whose paltry houses are reproduced there. The centre
of the town is, however, of a better character, although the streets are
cramped and narrow. A singularly foreign air is given to the place by its
balustraded stone bridge across the Avon, and if one cares to pursue the
Continental tone further it may be found in the huge factory near by,
where "Swiss" Condensed Milk, of the "Milkmaid" brand, is manufactured on
an immense scale. For the rest, its cheese and corn markets and
bacon-curing keep it very much alive, and a modern (and brutally ugly)
Town Hall, built in 1856, shows sufficiently well how trade has grown
since the time when the picturesque old Town Hall, still standing, was
built in the sixteenth century.
[Illustration: THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM.]
[Sidenote: _MAUD HEATH'S CAUSEWAY_]
The most interesting thing in Chippenham is (to borrow a "bull" for the
occasion) outside the town. "Maud Heath's Causeway," a stone-pitched path
along the road that runs through the heavy clay lands beside the Wiltshire
Avon, extends for four and a half miles, from Chippenham to the summit of
Bremhillwick Hill. It was made under the will of Maud Heath, who died
about 1474, for the benefit of the market folk resorting to Chippenham,
who found the low-lying roads almost impassable in winter. Little is known
of this old-time benefactress, but legend supplies the lack of knowledge,
and the popular belief is that she was a market-woman who, finding the
road from Langley Burrell into the town in so dreadful a state, determined
to leave the savings of a lifetime for the provision of a stone causeway,
so that future generations might go dry-shod to market.
This causeway goes from the north-east side of the town, and continues
through Langley Burrell to Tytherton Kellaways, up the shoulder of
Bremhillwick Hill. The portion between Chippenham and Langley Burrell was,
for some unexplained reason, not constructed until 1852-3.
According to the inscriptions on the stone posts beside it, the Causeway
is held to commence at the Hill, and to end at Chippenham--
"From this WICK HILL begins the praise
Of MAUD HEATH'S gift to these highways."
At the other end, next Chippenham, where the road joins those from
Malmesbury and Draycott, is another stone, with the inscription--
"Hither extendeth MAUD HEATH'S gift,
For where I stand is Chippenham Clift."
Midway, on the bridge over the Avon, is another stone--a pillar twelve
feet high, erected by the Trustees in 1698, with the following facts
recorded on it:--
"To the memory of the worthy MAUD HEATH, of Langley Burrell, Spinster:
who in the year of grace, 1474, for the good of travellers, did in
charity bestow in land and houses, about eight pounds a year, for
ever, to be laid out on the highway and causeway, leading from Wick
Hill to Chippenham Clift."
CHIPPENHAM CLIFT. Injure me not. WICK HILL.
A statue of Maud Heath, a purely imaginary likeness of course, since no
portrait of her is known to exist, was set up on a pillar on the summit of
Bremhillwick Hill in 1838 by the Marquis of Lansdowne and a local
clergyman.
The pillar is forty feet high, and the seated statue on the top of it
represents Maud Heath in the costume of the period of Edward the Fourth,
with a staff in her hand, and a basket by her side. An inscription bids--
"Thou who dost pause on this aerial height,
Where MAUD HEATH'S Pathway winds in shade or light,
Christian wayfarer in a world of strife,
Be still--and ponder on the path of life."
The sentiments are admirable, if a little depressing: the verse atrocious.
[Sidenote: _IMPROVING SENTIMENTS_]
But worse remains. There are three dials on the pillar, with an
inscription on the side facing the rising sun--
"VOLAT TEMPUS.
"Oh, early passenger, look up, be wise:
And think how, night and day, TIME onward FLIES."
Opposite Noon is the advice, "Whilst we have time, do good."
"QVUM TEMPUS HABEMUS, OPEREMUR BONUM.
"Life steals away--this hour, O man, is lent thee
Patient to work the work of Him that sent thee."
For Evening the admonition is not a little alarming--if taken literally.
"REDIBO. TU NUNQUAM.
"Haste, traveller! the sun is sinking low;
He shall return again--but NEVER THOU."
The passing wayfarer might well ask why he should never return along this
road!
The late vicar of Bremhill did these metrical paraphrases of the Latin
which led so tragically, but whose qualities, as verse, resemble the
average of the ordinary Pantomime librettist.
Maud Heath's charity is still in existence, and is now worth about L120
per annum, a sum amply sufficient for keeping her Causeway in repair.
XXXVI
Rowden Hill, a mile out of Chippenham, on the road to Bath, is a welcome
drop down into level land again, and would be enjoyable were it not for
the bad surface. It is while wheeling such hills and such road-metal that
one appreciates at the full the pluck and endurance of those early
cyclists who raced across them in the early seventies, making the pace on
the high bicycles of those times as gallantly as though the terrible
jolting they experienced was really enjoyable. That well-known body of
cyclists, the Bath Road Club, has numbered some good sportsmen and rare
flyers in its time, and though their pace reads ridiculously slow beside
that of these pneumatic-tyred days, the performances of those
half-forgotten racers were quite as fine, and, conditions being equal,
perhaps finer, than the record rides of recent seasons. There was a
time--in August, 1870, to be precise--when two cyclists--Gardner and
Fisher, did the double journey of 107 miles each way in five days, and men
looked upon them as marvellous riders; so perhaps they were, considering
the mechanical limitations of the machines they rode, whose like is not to
be seen nowadays save in collections of curios. Equally wonderful were
those stalwarts who cut away the hours, piece by piece, until their
performances were topped by "Wat" Britten on the "ordinary" in 1880, when
he did the double journey in 23 hours. There were those who then thought
the last word had been said in the matter of Bath Road Records. They must
have been astonished when R. C. Nesbitt's "ordinary" record was made on
August 1, 1891, when he covered the out and home course in 15 hrs. 40
mins. 34 secs. Improved methods of manufacture may have had something to
do with the smashing character of this new performance; but, even so,
consider the extraordinary efforts that must have gone toward getting
those figures, which cut Britten's by 7 hrs. 20 mins., and at the same
time secured one of the rare victories of the "ordinary" over the "safety"
pneumatic-tyred bicycle. For this grand ride defeated Mr. Lowe's, made on
a "safety," in 1891 by more than 30 minutes.
[Sidenote: _CYCLING HISTORY_]
But that was one of the last expiring efforts of the now obsolete and
miscalled "ordinary." It was speedily beaten by J. W. Jarvis, September
20, 1892, who put the figures at 15 hrs. 16 mins. 42 secs.--23 mins. 52
secs. better than the previous best. Then came that hardy Brighton Road
record-maker, C. G. Wridgway, whose ride of August 2, 1893, put the
clocking at 14 hrs. 22 mins. 57 secs.--a wonderfully heavy lowering of
figures. The following year Wridgway established records on both the
Brighton and Bath Road within a month; beating his record here of the
previous August by his ride on October 4, when he reduced his own time by
the astonishing margin of 1 hr. 27 mins. 43 secs.
Time was now cut so close that when W. J. Neasen, of the Anfield Club,
essayed the difficult task of lowering it, he only succeeded, on May 11,
1895, in getting inside Wridgway's time by 24 mins. 10 secs., the figures
then standing at 12 hrs. 31 mins. 4 secs. H. C. Horswill, of the Essex
Wheelers, then beat Neason's performance, in July, 1897, by 24 mins. 34
secs., to be succeeded finally by F. W. Barnes, who on October 30, in the
same year, performed the double journey in 11 hrs. 48 mins. 42 secs., and
still holds the record.
Among these records of the Bath Road must be mentioned the various essays
made by C. A. Smith, of the Bath Road Club, on tricycles. He rode to Bath
and back on a three-wheeler, July 16, 1891, in 16 hrs. 13 mins. 18 secs.,
thus establishing a record, which was beaten four years later--August 23,
1895--by F. Martin, by the narrow margin of 11 mins. 43 secs. These
figures in turn were lowered, August 5, 1897, by T. J. Gibbs, Bath Road
Club, who accomplished a record of 14 hrs. 18 min.
XXXVII
[Sidenote: _PICKWICK_]
And now we come, past the tree-shaded hamlet of Cross Keys, to Pickwick,
ninety-seven miles from London, situated at a turning in the road which
leads to Corsham Regis, half a mile distant, on the left hand. The
traveller, exploring this road for the first time, looks forward with
curiosity to seeing a place with so famous a name; but Pickwick, the
decayed coaching hamlet, can scarcely be said to "live up to" its
literary associations. Strictly speaking, it is not even decayed; but, now
that the coaches are no more, flourishes on the "Pickwick Brewery," which
makes a brave show down the road. It is an eminently prosperous-looking,
stone-built hamlet, a comparatively modern offshoot of the hoary Saxon
village of Corsham, which, once on the main road, was thrust into the
background when the mail coach came in, and the great highway to Bath was
cut on this route, half a mile away.
[Illustration: CROSS KEYS.]
It is a curious literary puzzle--How did the title of the "Pickwick
Papers" originate? It is a well-ascertained fact that, in 1835, Dickens,
then a reporter for the daily press, was sent to Bath to report a speech
of Lord John Russell's, that now almost-forgotten statesman being a
candidate for representing that city. The future novelist was then but
twenty-three years of age, a time of life when impressions of travel are
vivid and lasting. Journeying by coach, he had every opportunity for
observing places and people; and so it happened that when, a few months
later, the now historic publishing firm of Chapman and Hall offered him
the literary commission which resulted in the "Posthumous Papers of the
Pickwick Club," the story he produced derived many of its features from
his own experiences. His recollections had no time to fade, for in March,
1836, the first part of "Pickwick" was published, and others were well on
the way. It must ever be a matter of doubt whether Dickens noticed the
existence of Pickwick, the place. That he had noted the existence of
Moses Pickwick, the coach proprietor of Bath, is obvious enough from the
"Pickwick Papers," where Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller are taking their
seats for that City of the Waters.
"'I'm wery much afeerd, sir, that the properiator o' this here coach is a
playin' some imperence vith us,' says Sam.
"'How is that, Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick; 'aren't the names down on the
way-bill?'
"'The names is not only down on the vay-bill, sir,' replied Sam, 'but
they've painted vun on 'em up, on the door o' the coach.'
"'Dear me,' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, quite staggered by the coincidence,
'what a very extraordinary thing!'
"'Yes, but that ain't all,' said Sam, again directing his master's
attention to the coach door; 'not content vith writin' up Pickwick, they
puts "Moses" afore it, vich I call addin' insult to injury.'"
There were then, it will be seen, real Pickwicks living in Bath, and the
"Moses" Pickwick referred to was an actual person, the great-grandson of
one Eleazer Pickwick, who, many years before, had risen by degrees from
the humble position of post-boy at the "Old Bear," at Bath, to be landlord
of the once famous "White Hart" inn, which stood where the "Grand Pump
Room" hotel now towers aloft.
Now comes the long-sought-for connection between place and persons of
identical name. Eleazer Pickwick was a foundling. Discovered as an infant
on the road at Pickwick, he was named by the guardians, in accordance with
an old custom, after the place.
[Sidenote: _CORSHAM REGIS_]
Corsham, to which Pickwick belongs, is one of those places which it would
be almost an indignity to call a "village," while to name it a "town"
would be to give too great an importance to it. It is Corsham "Regis," by
virtue of having been a residence of the Saxon Kings; but the Great
Western has docked the kingly suffix, and if you were to ask at Paddington
for a ticket to Corsham Regis, it is to be feared that the booking-clerk
would not recognize the place under its full name.
[Illustration: THE HUNGERFORD ALMSHOUSE, CORSHAM REGIS.]
The townlet is a pleasing one, and, always excepting the new and ugly
stone villas recently built, it abounds with delightful specimens of
domestic architecture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and mid-eighteenth
centuries; fine houses built of Corsham stone in a dignified Renaissance
manner, or in the earlier Tudor convention of gables and mullioned
windows. Corsham Court, the finest of all, standing in its nobly-wooded
park, is Elizabethan, and exhibits the merging of the two periods of
Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It was Lady Hungerford, widow of a
former owner of Corsham Court, who, in 1672, built the quaint Hungerford
Almshouse, close by.
For the rest, Corsham has little history. It was the scene of a mysterious
murder in 1594, when a gentleman, one Henry Long, was shot dead, while
sitting at dinner amid his friends, by Sir Charles and Sir Henry Danvers,
two brothers, who hailed from Dauntsey. The motive was never known, and
the assassins were never punished. Six years later, Charles was beheaded
for taking part in Essex's rebellion; which seems to be a kind of oblique
and fumbling retribution on the part of Providence for his crime. Henry,
however, prospered amazingly, and was eventually created Earl Danby,
flourishing all his life, as the wicked are, on good authority, supposed
to do, "like the green bay tree," and dying in the odour of sanctity,
"full of honours, woundes, and daies." He is commemorated in an eloquent
epitaph, written by the saintly George Herbert of Bemerton, more than ten
years before his (Danvers') death; a circumstance which would seem to
prove Herbert a hypocrite and Danvers peculiarly solicitous for his own
post-mortem reputation.
Corsham was the birthplace of Sir Richard Blackmore, physician to William
the Third, and poetaster, who, says Leigh Hunt, "composed heaps of dull
poetry, versified the Psalms, and, by way of extending the lesson of
patience, wrote a paraphrase of the Book of Job." What sarcasm!
But Blackmore was read in his day, just as Leigh Hunt was in his, and Fate
is sardonic enough (for who at this time reads Hunt's tedious stuff?) to
consign critic and criticized to one common limbo of neglect.
XXXVIII
[Sidenote: _THE BOX TUNNEL_]
From Corsham the old road used to lead precipitously up to the summit of
Box Hill and thence downwards by breakneck gullies, furrowed by rains, and
rich in loose stones, into Box. The modern highway goes modestly round the
shoulder of the hill. The village of Box has gained an adventitious fame
from the celebrated tunnel on the Great Western Railway, which pierces Box
Hill, and was, upon its completion, the longest tunnel in England.
Compared with later works, it sinks into quite minor importance; but it is
still an impressive engineering feat, whether you view it from the railway
carriage windows or from the highway. Its length is 3199 yards, or nearly
two miles, and the hill rises above it to a height of three hundred feet.
Its cost of over L500,000 is no less impressive.
A curious story is told at Box of a platelayer, employed in the tunnel
some twenty years ago, who with his gang worked there at night, and slept
at Box village in the day. After a while he became engaged to a girl in
the village, and the wedding-day was fixed. The vicar of Box, however, was
a stickler for red tape, and it appears that he found some technical
objection in the fact of the man not sleeping the night in the village.
At any rate, he would not perform the ceremony until the Bishop (of
Gloucester) compelled him to do so.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BOX QUARRIES.]
[Sidenote: _BOX QUARRIES_]
At Box we are well within the stone district whose quarries have rendered
building-stone from the times of the Roman occupation until the present
day. The oolite which comes from here and from the Corsham quarries is a
fine grained stone, easily worked, and of a rich cream colour when freshly
wrought. As "Bath stone" it is famous, and has made Bath exclusively a
city of stone-built houses. In addition, it is sent to all parts of the
country, and even exported. The quarries of Corsham and Box are,
therefore, the centres of a large and important industry. Box Hill is a
mass of this stone, and the tunnel is consequently pierced through it.
Three of the quarries are situated in the hill, some of them of great
extent. The most extensive is driven into the flank of the hill like a
tunnel, and has over three miles of galleries laid with tram-lines: dark,
damp places, whose roofs are supported here and there by timber struts.
The coldness of these quarry tunnels is remarkably piercing, even in the
height of summer.
[Illustration: BOX VILLAGE.]
Box seems to have been a favourite country resort of the Romans, away from
the crowded streets of _Aquae Solis_; for on the land that slopes down
toward the little Box Brook there have been found many Roman remains,
while, only so recently as 1897, the site of a Roman villa was excavated
near the south side of the church, with the result of unearthing a
complete ground-plan and such interesting relics as mosaic pavements and
votive altars.
It is a crowded village to-day, and rather by way of being a town. Lying
in a deep hollow, its stone-built houses climb steeply up both sides, with
a picturesque glimpse back from where the old village lock-up stands
beside the highway to the straggling cottages that line the old road down
the side of Box Hill.
Leaving Box we also, in the course of one mile, leave Wiltshire and come
into Somerset, with Bath but four miles distant. The Box Brook runs on the
right-hand side of the road, the Great Western Railway on the left. Soon,
however, the road bends to the right at Bathford, and we come to
Batheaston, once a village, but now merely a suburb of Bath, joined to
the city by continuous streets.
But there are pretty scenes just off these streets. Bathampton Mill, for
instance, just below, on the Avon, with views of the grand circle of hills
that enclose Bath.
The picturesquely broken and wooded elevation of Combe Down rises away on
the other side of the valley, with Prior Park nestled amid its hanging
woods, and the village of Widcombe beneath. At an elevation of five
hundred and fifty feet above the sea, it commands views not to be bettered
in all the country round. Down below, in the warm steamy atmosphere of the
Avon valley, one sees the railway entering Bath on its stone viaducts, and
the trains winding in and out along the sharp curves amid the clustered
houses. Bathampton lies below there, where the air is languorous and the
hillsides hold the heat of the sun. From that sheltered spot the view
backwards towards Bathampton Mill and the terraced houses of Batheaston is
delightful; the houses that turn their ugly side to the road showing from
here, amid their setting of green, like fairy palaces. Lower down the
valley the houses cluster more thickly, where the valley widens out into
the likeness of a great amphitheatre, and suburbs fade gradually into
Bath.
Then, coming to Walcot, the road finally loses all its character as a
highway, and tramways, omnibuses, and traffic of every description
proclaim the entrance to a populous city.
[Illustration: BATHAMPTON MILL.]
XXXIX
[Sidenote: _BATH_]
The story of Bath goes back some two thousand years, and has its origin in
the myths of ages, in which Bladud figures variously as discoverer and
creator of the healing springs. Serious historians are wont to exclude
Bladud, and his descent from Brute the Trojan, and Lud Hudibras, the
British King, from their pages, for the reason that Geoffrey of Monmouth,
the monkish chronicler, who first narrates these stories in his history of
Britain, was apt sometimes to confound chronicling with romancing. When,
therefore, he tells how Prince Bladud was an adept in magic, and placed a
cunning stone in the springs of this valley so that it made the water hot
and healed the sick who resorted to them, he is looked upon with a
suspicion that is deepened when he goes on to say that Bladud successfully
attempted to fly with wings of his own invention from Bath to London, and
only came to grief when London was reached, through the strings breaking,
so that he fell and was dashed to pieces on the roof of the Temple of
Apollo!
Nor is the better known legend of Prince Bladud, the leper, exiled from
his father's Court, universally accepted. According to that story, the
Prince wandered to where Keynsham now stands, where he became a swineherd,
and infected the pigs with his disease. Coming, however, into this valley,
the porkers rolled themselves into the hot mud, which then occupied the
site of Bath Abbey and the Baths, and were cured. Bladud perceiving this,
applied the remedy to himself, with the like result, and returned to his
home once more; building a city upon the spot in after years. This
happened B.C. 863, and there is a statue of King Bladud, as he afterwards
became, erected in the "Pump Room" in 1669; so that any one not
subscribing to the truth of this legend had better do so at once, in view
of this overwhelming evidence thus afforded.
[Sidenote: _ROMAN RELICS_]