A town with two names--An amusing mistake--Abbot's Bromley
and its quaint horn dance--Dr. Johnson doing penance at
Uttoxeter--Burton-on-Trent--The "Hundreds All" milestone--Indoor
wind-dials--Stone-milled flour--The old Globe Room at Banbury--Dick
Turpin's pistol--A strange find.
Leaving Boscobel by a winding lane I presently got on to the ancient
Roman Watling Street at a forsaken-looking portion of it, though I
fancy the whole of the street for most of the way is, more or less,
deserted. I had never been on Watling Street before; it looks so
uncompromisingly straight and so uninviting on the map that I never
felt any desire to explore it, but now I had come to it by accident I
thought it a very pleasant road, this portion at least, with its wide
grassy margins, and there before us it stretched far away through a
well-wooded and lonely country--a genuine bit of Old England, mellow
and grateful to the eye. I forgave the road for its straightness on
account of the long and goodly green vista it afforded me, reaching
even to the far-away blue--and it was delightfully free from traffic.
Now I am a selfish traveller, I do not care for much company on the
way. Here I had the advantages of a good road with the loneliness of a
lane.
So along the old Roman street we went, passing but few human
habitations, here a solitary inn, there a grey old farmstead, and every
now and then a cottage, but that was all; it was pleasant driving,
for there were no children, nor dogs, nor fowls for miles to trouble
us, and all being safe we indulged in a burst of speed purely as a
stimulant. Once on it I intended to follow the ancient street all the
way to Daventry, but somehow I got wrong at a point where it takes one
of its few bends, and unexpectedly found myself at Lichfield. Through
Lichfield I drove without a stop, for I was not travelling to revisit
familiar places, and Lichfield and its cathedral I knew long ago. The
route I took through the city I took at a venture, but when I got into
the country again I discovered by a signpost that I was journeying to
King's Bromley--well, I would go to King's Bromley, it mattered little
where I went, life is too short to trouble over trifles; I was out to
see the country, one way was as good as another, provided it took me
through pleasant scenery, and on this score I could make no complaint.
About three miles from Lichfield, at a point where London was a good
hundred and twenty miles away, I was amused by a solitary and leaning
signpost with simply "To London" on it, and its arm pointed down a
mere lane that one would imagine led to nowhere in particular. I
remember some years back coming to another such solitary signpost in
Hertfordshire with just "York" inscribed on its extended arm, but that
was on the Great North Road and there was some excuse for it, though
York was very far off. There is such a thing as character in even
signposts, and I rather sympathise with signposts that deal with big
distances, they impress me with their pride of importance.
The next signpost we came to had "To Abbot's Bromley" on it; I felt
uncertain whether this were a different place, but a man who was
passing assured me that King's Bromley and Abbot's Bromley were one and
the same. "It's a small town," said he, "with two names. You can call
it which you please." I thanked him for the information. I wondered
who he was walking leisurely on the country road clad in a shooting
suit. He might have been a squire--or a gamekeeper. I thought I would
find out, so I made further innocent inquiries about Abbot's Bromley.
"It's a small town," said he; "you won't do much business there." I
discovered he thought me a travelling commercial--of a glorified type,
I hope. I did not mind for myself, but I felt the slight on my car;
fortunately a car has no feelings, but my dog growled--manifestly he
had. "In what line do you travel?" queried he quite politely, possibly
with the idea of being helpful. Here was a poser. Could I tell a lie?
Manifestly not, so I said I was out sampling scenery. "Well, I never
heard of such a thing," exclaimed he, and before he had time to think
the matter over I went my way. I hope when he realised his mistake,
as I presume he did, he would not think I was offended, I was simply
amused. I only wish I could have kept up the character, but I was hard
put to do it on the sudden emergency. I wonder who he could have been?
I am sorry now I drove on so hastily, but the situation was getting
strained. It is the people you meet by the way as well as places that
are interesting; at least I was glad to find that every motorist is not
considered a millionaire. When I come to think of it, it was an idiotic
thing to say that I was sampling scenery; still, was I not? The strange
fact is that when occasionally I have, at country town inns, been
thrown in the company of commercials, and have tried my best to play
the part of one of them, I have ignominiously failed. I might invent a
new proverb, "If you want to do a thing don't try to do it"; in your
anxiety you are almost sure to overact your part. To make amends for
being considered a commercial, the landlord of a certain country inn
once took me for a real live lord travelling under an assumed name,
and the more I tried to convince him of his error the more sure was he
that he had made no mistake, he had seen my photograph as Lord Somebody
in some paper; he was honoured to receive me, lords would have their
whims; why should they not travel under assumed names if it pleased
them? He would "my lord" me--and charged for it heavily in the bill.
Abbot's Bromley, or King's Bromley, gave us quite a cheerful greeting.
I saw one or two flags flying in the town; the village maids (it seemed
but a village to me) were dressed in their best; some were carrying
flowers and looked quite charming in a rustic way, and there were young
men in attendance too, dressed in their black Sunday best that did
not suit them a bit. So I would know what was happening. I ventured a
joke on one of the prettiest maids. "I see you were expecting me," I
said. It fell flat. "No, we weren't," she replied, "it's a bazaar,"
and without a further word she walked away. But another maid, who had
overheard the conversation, graciously came up to me and explained:
"We're having an open-air bazaar; will you come to it? We're going
to have the horn dance." Then I became interested. What was the horn
dance? I wondered; I did not remember having heard of such a thing
before. I begged for information, saying I was a stranger that chance
had brought that way. I hardly need have done this, for in country
places everybody seems to know everybody and their business, so the
good people doubtless knew I was a stranger, and most of them appeared
to think I had been attracted from afar by the news of the bazaar with
its special attraction of the horn dance. It was an eventful day for
Abbot's Bromley, where eventful days I should imagine are a rarity.
Then I learnt that Abbot's Bromley is one of the few places where
the old hobby-dances are still kept up and take place yearly, but
this was a special performance in aid of the bazaar. The horn dance,
I understood, is carried out by ten or a dozen performers all gaily
attired, and the characters are a Maid Marian, a fool, a man with a
hobby-horse, and a man with a bow and arrow; then there are six dancers
each of whom carries a pair of reindeer horns of large size. These
reindeer horns are kept in the church tower, and are mounted on wooden
skulls provided with handles. According to tradition these horns are
those of reindeers that in times long past once roamed over the forests
surrounding Abbot's Bromley.
In my copy of _Paterson's Roads_ (that gives a short account of the
various towns on the way), under Abbot's Bromley I find the following
reference to this dance, from which it appears that it was then in
abeyance: "The curious custom called the hobby-horse dance formerly
prevailed here; it was generally celebrated at Christmas, on New Year's
Day, and Twelfth Day, when a person carrying beneath his legs the
semblance of a horse, made of thin boards, danced through the principal
street, having a bow and arrow in his hands ... five or six other
persons also dancing carrying six reindeers' heads on their shoulders."
Abbot's Bromley struck me as a very pleasant and picturesque little
place; it has no railway, and that is perhaps why it has such an
old-fashioned look. I have always a liking for these little towns
beyond railways. Most of its houses, built long years ago, are of black
and white half-timber; and the ancient inn there is of half-timber too,
that with its grey gables, its casement windows, its swinging sign,
is suggestive of the coaching and Pickwickian days and all the lost
romance of them. It took my fancy. It ought to have some story to tell
of those "good old times," but I failed to find or to conjure one;
for though the house remains much as it was, the actors are dead and
gone--host, coach-farer, and highwayman. It is the sort of inn you
read of in Harrison Ainsworth's novels, though I doubt if any one reads
them to-day. How rich in incident and picturesque description they
are! I know I took my fill of them when I was a boy; now, alas! they
have lost much of their flavour; yet they have changed not, the change
must be in me. To complete the old-world picture of the place, Abbot's
Bromley boasts of an ancient roofed-in Market Cross, with thick oak
supporting-posts around. Only compare the sought-for picturesqueness of
a model garden city with the natural unsought-for picturesqueness of
such old towns as Abbot's Bromley, and oh, the difference! I left the
little, forgotten town basking, but not sleeping, in the sunshine, for
it was much alive and making merry that day.
We had not gone far before a change came over the weather--I hope the
open-air bazaar did not suffer from it. Overhead the sky grew dark
and threatening, then came a sudden flash of lightning, loud thunder
followed, then the rain in torrents. I wondered whether a motor-car
with all its metal work was the safest place to be in, for the storm
was severe; but there was nothing for it but to drive on, with such
uncertain assurance as the saying of the farmer at Wem afforded that
"lightning never strikes a moving object." In spite of that comforting
dictum lightning is not to be trusted. Since then I have heard that a
motor-car travelling on the road has been struck by lightning, and,
though fortunately no one was hurt, the car was damaged. How the rain
hissed down, and how the wind howled through and shook the trees, even
blowing bits of their branches and leaves across the road! Still above
the sound of the storm I could hear the steady beat of our pistons, as
one hears the reassuring throb of the engines of a steamer in a gale at
sea.
The country appeared to be richly wooded, as far as I could judge;
but what with the thunder and the lightning, the wind and the rain, I
obtained but a vague impression of it. Then after the storm had done
its worst, a town loomed up on a hill before us, and this proved to
be Uttoxeter, a neat town neither attractive nor ugly, and that is
the best I can say for it. Here, it may be remembered, Dr. Johnson,
when in the height of his fame, stood in its market-place bare-headed
in the rain, "exposed to the sneers of the standers-by," as an act of
penance for his unfilial disobedience as a boy in refusing to watch his
weary and infirm father's bookstall set up there for a while. It is a
well-known story, but the actual sight of the spot where that touching
incident took place made me realise it the more.
Having viewed the market-place, made historic by this event, we took
the first road handy out of the town, mildly wondering where we were
going next. There was a sense of pleasurable excitement in not knowing
our destination. I have a friend who does this sort of thing when he
goes a-cycling, and who, like myself, travels to see the country,
little caring where he goes. If a windy day he simply lets the wind
settle his direction, for he always makes a point of cycling with the
wind behind him; he finds it much easier so, and when it blows hard he
finds himself blown along with the minimum of exertion. So he never
troubles about any plan, but when he starts out in the morning he just
glances at the way of the wind and goes contentedly with it. Capricious
though this mode of travelling be, yet it rendered fortunate results.
When he traced me out on the map one or two tours he had made in this
haphazard fashion, I felt bound to confess that no planned tour could
have turned out better, and it took him to many odd out-of-the-way and
pleasant places he would probably never have seen otherwise. Truly I
did not consult the wind, but on the other hand I did not consult my
map unless I wished to make for any special spot, and I also toured
fortunately so, to the discovery of interesting places, for the most of
my journey.
This time it was a milestone that revealed the fact we were bound for
Burton-on-Trent. Now to Burton I had no desire to go; Burton is a
big town, but the road was a very pleasant one, so I kept to it. The
country was fine and open, with glorious views to the south, where
undulating hills bounded the distant blue. We passed one or two stately
old and dignified homes standing "amid their tall ancestral trees";
then the rain came on again, and in the pouring rain we passed through
Tutbury, where afterwards I learnt there are the slight remains of
a castle; but I saw nothing of them, for I was thinking more of the
rain and the road than anything else: the rain was blinding, so
little wonder I missed them. It was not a moment for seeing castles or
anything else.
I was not pleased at having to drive through Burton, for I expected
to find it a busy town with much traffic in its streets, and this was
the first large and busy town I had to pass through during the whole
of my outing; I had merely skirted Shrewsbury, so that did not count.
Yet never have I passed through a large and busy town so easily as I
passed through Burton; its streets are wide, and for a wonder I found
the traffic on them, much of it brewers' drays, kept well to its side
of the road, so I was soon into the country again.
Just beyond Burton I had a choice of two roads, and was doubtful which
to take, when I saw a signpost with "To Watling Street" upon it--merely
to that old highway and not to any inhabited place. This decided me;
I would rejoin the famous Watling Street, of which I had a pleasant
memory. I knew it avoided big, bustling towns, and that was no small
recommendation. A long rise brought me into a very pleasant country,
and into welcome blue skies and warm sunshine. Such varied samples
of weather had I that day--the blackest of clouds and the bluest of
skies, cold pelting rain and the brightest of sunshine. The scenery was
delightfully rural all the long and lonely way to Atherstone, where
we should be on the Watling Street again, excepting that at one spot
there were some collieries on a near hill that spoilt the prospect for
a while; but I looked the other way. These passed, we traversed a fine
undulating country, made up of meadows, fields, and woods, and ever
and again wide views of much charm opened out before us; and there the
air blew sweet and bracing, with the rare freshness that follows rain.
I pulled up at one quiet spot under the shelter of some overhanging
trees for refreshment and for a rest, and there I stopped for an hour
or more, and not a soul either driving, riding, cycling, or afoot went
by. It was a cross-country road, apparently little used, and one to
be enjoyed for its quietude and rural pleasantness. It surprised me
how often I came upon such long stretches of almost deserted roads; we
travelled far on that stage before we met a human being. Perhaps when
I pulled up it was the hour of the day when the good old-fashioned
country folk are mostly indoors dining, and the labourers resting from
their work, so no one was about; but that does not account for the rest
of the road later on being so forsaken.
Atherstone is one of the order of far-extending thoroughfare towns that
flourished in the old coaching days, and that seem to have fallen half
asleep since, for the chief concern of such towns was with the road
and its traffic, though Atherstone is not so sleepy as most of them
are. All that I could discover of any interest in the place was an
old milestone set up against the ancient "Red Lion Inn" there; this,
curiously enough, stands just one hundred miles respectively from
London, Liverpool, and Lincoln, as the following inscriptions on it
show:--
To To To
Liverpool London Lincoln
100 100 100
Miles. Miles. Miles.
A man who was quietly watching me copying these inscriptions, when I
had done my copying, exclaimed, "That be a famous old milestone. The
drivers of the old coaches as stopped at the inn used always to call
their passengers' attention to it." On returning home I looked up in my
_Paterson_ for the name of the chief inn at Atherstone, and found it
was "The Red Lion."
It seems strange that to-day, when so much loving regard is shown
to the preservation of old houses, and to the careful restoration
of them backwards to the intention of their ancient architects,
that our many quaint and friendly-looking old coaching inns should
have found such few patrons to preserve their fascinating features.
Standing by the roadside, how delightfully picturesque they often are,
when unaltered and--save the mark!--unimproved. Many, in truth, are
poems in buildings (and the term is not strained in regard to them)
with their many-gabled, time-toned fronts; their signs often gaily
painted, swinging on an upright post without, to proclaim their useful
business; their great arched doorways under which the loaded coaches
drove and landed their passengers at ease sheltered from the rain and
undisturbed, or their ample porches that spoke a welcome as plain
as any uttered word. Some are of half-timber and some are of stone.
Perhaps those of half-timber are the more picturesque, but nearly all
are pleasing to the eye; some, alas! are going to sad decay, such as
that fine specimen of an old English roadside hostelry, "The Bell" at
Stilton, which used to be both afamous and aflourishing house in its
day, and which gave its name to the well-known cheese that the landlord
of the time used to sell to his guests--indeed I believe it was
considered the thing to buy a cheese at "The Bell" to take home with
you. One of these old inns Ashby-Sterry has pictured to us in verse,
and well the picture suits many an inn I know:
'Tis a finely-toned, picturesque, sunshiny place,
Recalling a dozen old stories,
With a rare, British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face,
Suggesting old wines and old Tories.
Ah! many's the magnum of rare crusted port,
Of vintage no one could cry fie on,
Has been drunk by good men of the old-fashioned sort
At the Lion.
"The Lion," white or red, was in the past--I am not sure that it is not
even to-day--by far and away the favourite sign; "The White Hart," I
think, came second. These old inns, both outwardly and inwardly, have
suffered sadly from neglect, and from the mania for show that does not
spell comfort. Yet when simply, decently cared for, and unaltered, how
charming and restful their old-time interiors are with their snug,
low, brown-beamed, ceilinged parlours, sometimes panelled and with big
ingle-nooks, their mullioned windows with their lattice panes, often
deeply recessed with a seat in them, their cool and cosy bars and odd
nooks and curious corners. That delightful Jacobean hostelry, "The
Whyte Harte," to wit, at Broadway in Worcestershire, with its genuine
old-world atmosphere and quiet comfort, may be given as a good example
of one. Some of these old hostelries were provided with a quaint device
in the shape of an indoor wind-dial worked by a vane without, so that
travellers overnight could judge by it of the next day's possibilities,
and learn from the direction of the wind whether it were likely to be
hot or cold, wet or fair. One of these interesting and useful indoor
wind-dials may still, I believe, be seen in London at the Buckingham
Palace Hotel; at least one was there and working but a year or two ago,
and I understand that they are being introduced into modern homes.
There are still some things we may learn from our ancestors.
At Atherstone I was again on the ancient Watling Street, and I
followed it to Daventry as far as it is at present opened out to the
south. Again it led me through a lonely country of field and forest,
unexciting but very pleasant, a country fragrant with the scent of wild
flowers and the refreshing odours of the woods. I did not dally at
Daventry, for the little town appeared to me featureless, and finding
from my map that Banbury was but sixteen miles away, I thought to
spend the night in that place as being of greater interest; moreover,
I had recently read in my morning paper an account of the old historic
Globe Room there at the "Reindeer Inn," with the further unwelcome
information that its fine oak panelling, with its richly carved
fireplace and its elaborately enriched plaster ceiling, had all been
sold and were to be removed, and I wished to see it--if not too late.
In this room Cromwell, it is said, held a council of war in October
1642 just before the battle of Edge Hill, so it had (oh, that pathetic
word "had"!), besides the charm of its ancient picturesqueness, the
additional interest of being with little doubt the place of that
historic gathering. Now the fine old room has been gutted. So the "vast
museum" of England is being despoiled! Whatever were the citizens of
Banbury about to permit of such a thing; could they not have subscribed
the price demanded for the panelling and decorative work (comparatively
a paltry sum when divided amongst so many), and have retained that
beautiful, historic, and ancient room intact? You cannot replace or
purchase history. Even taking the meanest, most commercial view of the
transaction, surely it would have well repaid the town to have bought
and to have preserved that fine old chamber so intimately associated
with Banbury, for I know it brought many tourists from afar to see
it, some from even across the wide Atlantic; now perhaps they will
not desire to go to Banbury and spend their money there, for it has
little else but some ancient houses to show. Years ago the iconoclastic
Banbury folk pulled down their exceptionally fine and interesting old
church, "one of the most magnificent in the shire," even destroying
its fine monuments, to save the little needed to keep it and them
in repair, to say nothing of having done away with their "goodly
crosse" of nursery renown, though a later generation has replaced it
with a poor and meaningless substitute. What child would now "ride a
cock-horse to Banbury Cross"? It is not worth riding to or talking
about.
But I am a little previous, not having arrived at Banbury yet; our
road to that town was either up or down hill all the way, but there
was nothing to grumble at in this, for the scenery was rewarding and
the motor had to do the climbing. At the top of one hill we came upon
a lonely old windmill going to decay, its gaunt arms standing darkly
profiled against the sky and shaking with every gust of wind. It had a
weird and haunted look, though I never heard of a mill being haunted;
precisely what is it, I wonder, that gives certain buildings such an
uncanny look? There must really have been some magic about that mill,
for I photographed it and only got a ghostly result on my film. I have
never seen a ghost, but to my astonishment three intelligent people
have declared, and positively declared, to me that they have done so. A
little later will be found a reference to this matter. Now a ghost is
a visible object and ought to be capable of being photographed: what
would I not give to see a genuine photograph of a ghost! When next I
sleep in a haunted room I must take my camera with me on the off chance
of a ghost appearing, so that I may snap him! Though I fear my chances
are but slight, for I have slept in haunted rooms where other people
are reported to have seen "things," but saw nothing--not even in my
dreams, which were undisturbed. Why will "things" appear to others and
not to me?
Years gone by, and not so many years either, you might from one spot
have seen half a dozen or more windmills busily at work where now by
chance you may see one; and in those past years you might have seen
farmers' waggons slowly wending their way to the mill loaded with
sacks of corn to be ground, or wending their way back white with fat
sacks of flour. Now, except possibly in some parts of Sussex, to see a
windmill with its hurtling sails is a rare sight. Grieved indeed am I
that it should be so, for as a child I dearly loved the merry bickering
windmill--what child does not? Now I have grown to man's estate I have
not lost the old love of the sight of one. There is something very
cheery and fascinating in watching the mill sails whirling round and
round in their never-completed journey, now grey in shade, now white
in the glance of the sun. But I sadly fear the dear old picturesque
windmill is doomed, unless the manufactured article flour, not the
raw material wheat, is taxed. I am no politician--I think I have said
so already--for in an age when it seems to me, to misquote Macaulay,
"all are for the party and none are for the State," the business of
politics, as one of the Georges, I forget now which, remarked, "is not
to my fancy." I preach neither free trade nor tariff reform; I have
not studied the question, and I do not profess to know the facts of
the case without study, as some people do--even members of Parliament
who vote for their party right or wrong; it would probably cost them
their seat and four hundred golden sovereigns a year if they did
otherwise. But this I know, for I have tested it, that stone-ground
flour produced by the old-fashioned windmill is infinitely sweeter,
more nutritious, and more wholesome than the foreign roller-mill flour
that is so starchy, "hence the present-day indigestion and the decay
of teeth." Then, again, there is the fact, of which some clever people
lose sight, that by importing flour and not wheat to grind at home we
lose the valuable asset of "waste" as a fattening food for fowls, pigs,
and cattle.
The village of Charwelton was the only one on the way of which I
retain a memory, and this I remember on account of a fine and very old
two-arched Gothic bridge of stone there by the side of, and parallel
to, the road, manifestly intended only for foot passengers, so narrow
is it, a carriage bridge in miniature, so solidly built and buttressed
as though it spanned a rushing river and had to resist its strivings.
Now the road was dry and no water flowed under the bridge; I could
only presume that water had once flowed there. So I asked a man, who
was idly standing by, about it. "The road be flooded in the winter
time," said he, "and then us use the bridge. The water be quite deep at
times and the horses on the road have to ford it. That bridge be seven
hundred years old, they do say." It looked it. He appeared inclined
to talk, so I let him, not knowing what might be coming. "It's a slow
place Charwelton be," he went on, "there's no getting away from that.
The church be a mile away from the village, and that don't encourage
you to go to it. You see, the place were badly knocked about during
the war, so I suppose they built a new village here, and let the church
bide there." He spoke of "the war" as though it were of recent date; I
was mystified, till I discovered he meant the Civil Wars when Charles
I. was fighting for his crown!
I noticed nothing further on the way to Banbury but a big
mounting-block of stone standing by a grassy margin of the road, an
interesting survival, and a somewhat unusual thing to see, so I stopped
to inspect it, and on it I discovered inscribed--
Thomas High of Warden
Set up this. Ivly, 1659.
It is still there to keep green the memory of this Thomas High, though
I should imagine that few ever read the inscription or make use of the
stone. I wonder why he put it up in that lonely spot, where, even in
the old days, few people would be likely to need it. Now you rarely
see a horseman on the road unless it be a huntsman; I doubt if the
mounting-block has been used for these fifty years back.
At Banbury I went to the "White Lion"; there was also, I afterwards
found, a "Red Lion" in the same street, a cosy-looking hostelry with
an ancient front of the fifteenth century that appealed to me. In
_Paterson's Roads_ I note both these inns mentioned as existing in the
coaching days. The "Red Lion" is the more picturesque of the two, but
I was very comfortable at the "White." During the evening I hunted up
mine host and inquired of him about the Globe Room. Alas! I had come
too late to see it, for he told me that it had already been stripped of
its panelling, its finely carved oak fireplace removed, its enriched
plaster ceiling had been taken down, and all these had been carted
away. I felt provoked with the Banbury people; I told the landlord
so. I do not think I shall ever stay in Banbury again. I learnt of
one curious and interesting find that had been made in the room. On
pulling down the panelling there had been discovered hidden behind it
a double-barrelled pistol with flint locks; the pistol was inlaid with
gold and had the maker's name, "Baker, London," engraved upon it, and
above the name the Prince of Wales's feathers. The pistol bears the
following inscription: "Presented to Dick Turpin at the White Bear
Inn, Drury-lane, February 7th, 1735." How came it there, I wonder,
and who presented it to that famous highwayman? Of the genuineness of
the pistol I think there can be but little doubt. Dick Turpin, it may
be remembered, was hanged at York on 7th April 1739, four years after
the pistol was presented to him. Writing of Dick Turpin reminds me of
the myth of his renowned ride to York that Harrison Ainsworth in his
_Rookwood_ romanced about; now the credit of this surprising exploit
really belongs to another of the fraternity, one Nick Nevison, of
earlier time; this knight of the road robbed a traveller at Gad's Hill
in Kent one morning at 4 A.M., and furiously riding on to
York reached that city at 8 P.M. on the evening of the same
day, and so established an alibi and saved his neck, at least on that
occasion. The skeleton of a poor unfortunate cat was also found behind
the panelling; I wonder if it was that of the historic cat that was
hanged as recorded by Drunken Barnaby?
To Banbury came I, O prophane-One!
Where I saw a Puritane-One
Hanging of his cat on Monday,
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.
The landlord of "The White Lion," a pattern of civility, called my
attention to "the famous wistaria" that is trained along the walls of
the outbuildings of his ancient inn. This wistaria, he informed me, was
the largest and finest in the kingdom, its branches extending for over
two hundred feet. He was manifestly proud of it, and I duly admired it,
but I had seen many fine wistarias before; I would rather have seen the
Globe Room. There is little or nothing now left in Banbury to tempt the
pilgrim to linger there. So I took my departure the next morning, and
that early.