Walks and talks of an American farmer in England (Part 2 of 2)

AN ARCADIAN HAMLET.—OUT OF THE WORLD, BUT NOT BEYOND THE REACH OF THE YANKEE PEDDLER.—THE COTTAGES OF THE DOWNS.—GROUT AND COBBLE-STONES.—CHARACTER OF THE LABOURING CLASS OF THE DOWNS.—WANT OF CURIOSITY.—OLD STOCKBRIDGE, WINCHESTER, WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.—HIS LEGACY TO WAYFARERS.—THE CATHEDRAL.—SOME REMARKS ON ARCHITECTURAL SITUATION.—SEARCH FOR LODGINGS.—MOTHERLY KINDNESS.—RAILROAD MISMANAGEMENT.—WATERLOO DAY AT PORTSMOUTH.

Wallop, where we spend the night, is a most poetical hamlet, so hidden by trees, that as we came over the downs, after we were within a few moments’ walk of it, we had to inquire where it was. It is a narrow road and string of cottages some miles long, by the bank of a cool, silvery brook, at which, when we first saw it, we rushed to drink like camels in the desert; and the water was indeed delicious. It is an exceedingly quiet, peaceful place. As we sit at our window at the “Lower George,” we can hear nothing but the rippling of the brook, which threads its way through the trees and among the cottages across the street, the rustling of the trees in the gentle air, the peeping of chickens, and the chirping of small birds. There is a blacksmith’s shop, but no smoke ascends from it, and the anvil is silent. There is a grist-mill further down; there is a little, square, heavy-roofed schoolhouse, and there is a church and graveyard. But there is no stage-coach, no public conveyance, not even a carrier’s cart by which we might send on our packs, runs through or from the hamlet. Yet this is a good inn, clean, and well provided; we have a large room, comfortably furnished, and the landlord seems to understand what a tired traveller wants; and down stairs, in the parlour, there is—would you ever guess? It tells its own story thus:—

It cost twelve shillings, and was a capital time-piece, only lately it had got a-going too fast, and the landlord wished Mr. Welton would send his man over and have it fixed according to contract. It marked the hour rather behind our watches, but as it was the liveliest thing in the village, we have set it back to the landlord’s notion, lengthened the pendulum, and oiled the “pallet,” all to save the reputation of Mr. Welton and the universal Yankee nation.

The cottages here are generally built of a chalk grout, sometimes with lines of flint stones for ornament. In others, flint pebbles are laid regularly in tiers set in grout, like the “cobble-stone houses” in western New York; in others, grout, and stones set in grout, alternately; or brick and stone in grout, in alternate tiers a foot thick. The village fences and the stock-yard walls about here are also made of white grout, very thick, and with a coping of thatch. The thatch on the cottages is very heavy, sometimes two feet deep.

The labouring class upon the downs have generally a quiet, sleepy, stupid expression, with less evident viciousness and licentious coarseness of character, and with more simplicity, frankness, and good-nature, than those we have previously been among. The utter want of curiosity and intelligent observation, among a people living so retired from the busy world, is remarkable. We have met but two to-day whose minds showed any inclination to move of their own accord: one of them was a pensioned soldier who had served at Halifax, and who made inquiries about several old comrades who had deserted and escaped to “the States,” and whom he seemed to suppose we must have seen as we were Yankees; the other, an old woman in Newtown-Tawney, at whose cottage we stopped to get water; she had at first taken us, as we came one after the other over the stile, for a “detachment of the Rifles,” and on discovering her error was quite anxious to know what we were and what we were after, what we carried in our knapsacks, &c.

June 18th.

In the morning we walked from Wallop through Stockbridge to Winchester. A down-land district still, as yesterday, but a well-travelled road, with houses, inns, and guide-boards; more frequent plantations of trees and more cultivated land, yet but little of it is fenced, and the sheep are restrained from crops by shepherds and dogs. Since we left Salisbury we have seen but three cows, each of which was tethered or tied to a woman or child. We have seen no donkeys for the last hundred miles.

Stockbridge is a small village of one wide street, with two clear streams and a canal crossing it, the surface of the ground a dead flat; all as unlike its Massachusetts namesake as it is to a Pawnee village. We saw some fine horses near here.

Winchester—a name we remember as that of the school-place of many a good man—is an interesting old town in a cleft of the downs. All who have heard Mr. Emerson’s lecture upon England will remember it also as the town of “William of Wykeham.”

We visited the cathedral, the college, and the other notable institutions and monuments, and demanded and received our share of the legacy bequeathed by William of Wykeham, five hundred years ago, to all wayfarers passing by—a generous slice of good bread, and a draught of ale, served in an ancient horn. There is certainly no humbug about it, but the good bishop’s hospitable will, in this particular, is yet as sincerely executed as if by servants under his own eye. Mr. Emerson was, nevertheless, unfortunate in his eloquent use of this circumstance to illustrate the simple honesty of English character, and the permanence and reliability of English institutions; for it now appears that, notwithstanding the substantial bread and unadulterated beer, this is but the cleanliness of the cup and platter, and that in the real and worthy legacy which the far-reaching piety of the good prelate left to the future of England, there is much rottenness. Generally, the means which the piety of Englishmen of former generations bequeathed, for the furnishing to the poor aliment of mind, have been notoriously wrenched aside to the emolument and support, in luxurious sinecures, of a few individuals, whom, but for the association of their titles with religion, loyalty, law, and order, and the poor conscience-salve that it is the system and not they that are wrong, every man would know for perjured hypocrites, liars, swindlers; far more detestable than American repudiators, French sycophants, or Irish demagogues.

The cathedral is low and heavy, covering much ground; and exhibits, curiously interworked, the styles of Saxon, Norman, and early and later English architects. I again wrote in my note-book, “unimpressive;” but now, after two years, I find that my mind was strongly, though it would seem unconsciously, impressed by it; for there returns to me, as I very vividly remember its appearance, a feeling of quiet, wholly uncritical veneration, of which I believe a part must be due to the breadth of green turf of the graveyard, and deep shade of the old trees in which it is upreared. There were scarcely any edifices that I saw in Europe that produced in me the slightest thrill of such emotion from sublimity as I have often had in contemplation of the ocean, or of mountains, that it was not plainly due less to the architectural style, than to the connection and harmony of the mass with the ground upon which it was placed. The only church that stopped me suddenly with a sensation of deep solemnity, as I came unexpectedly under it, as it were, in turning the corner of a street, was one that stood upon a bold, natural terrace, and in which the lines of the angles of a heavy tower were continuous and unbroken from base to summit.

At half-past six we took seats in the second-class cars for Portsmouth, and were favoured with a specimen of a corporation’s disregard for the convenience of the public, and the accomplishment of their own promises, that a New Jerseyman would almost have growled at. There was a full hour’s unnecessary detention at the way-stations, and after having arrived near the terminus, that much behind the time-tables, the tickets were collected and the doors locked upon us, and we were kept waiting a long time within a few rods of the station-house. Some one at length got out at the windows, but was sent back by the guard. When we requested to know what was the objection to our leaving, we were answered it was against the rules of the company for any passengers to be allowed upon the ground without the station. After waiting some time longer, we rose in numbers too strong for the guards, who, however, promised that we should be prosecuted for trespass, and made our escape. I may say, in passing, that the speed upon the English roads is, on an average, not better than on ours. It is commonly only from fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The express trains, however, upon the main lines, run usually as fast as fifty miles an hour, sometimes sixty. For the accommodation, comfort, and advantage of all but those who choose and can afford to pay extravagantly, their whole railroad system is very inferior to ours.

It was Waterloo Day, and there had been a review of the forces at Portsmouth, before the Duke of Wellington and Prince Albert; the Queen had been off the harbour in her yacht, and received a salute; there had been a balloon ascension; there had been a carousal with long and eloquently-reported speeches, and in one way and the other a great deal of powder and gas spent. There was to be an illumination yet, and the town was full—some of the streets packed with soldiers and sailors and women. We spent several hours trying to get lodgings; every hotel, inn, tavern, and lodging-house, high and low, was full. The best thing that kindness or covetousness could be induced to offer, was room to lay upon a carpet on the floor, and this nowhere that we thought it likely we should be allowed to sleep. We got supper somewhere, and the landlady informed us frankly that she charged us twice as much for it as she usually would, because it was “holiday.”

It was late at night when, by advice of policemen and favour of sentinels, we had passed out through a series of ramparts, and were going up a broad street of the adjoining town of Portsea. “Good-night, my dear,” we heard a kindly-toned voice; and a woman closed a door, and, after walking on a moment, ascended the steps to another. “Could you be good enough, madam,” one of us took the liberty of inquiring, “to tell us of any house in this vicinity where we should be likely to obtain lodging for the night?”

“No—dear me!—who are you?”

“We are strangers in the town; travellers, who reached here this evening, and we have been looking for several hours to find some place where we could sleep, but all the inns are full.”

“Come here; let me look at you. You are young men, are you not? come up to me, you need not be afraid—yes, I see; youths” (we had caps on, which is unusual in England except for school-boys). “Why, poor youths, I am sorry for you—strangers—you wait here, and I will call my servant and see if she does not think she can find where you can get a bed.”

She then went in, and in a few minutes returned with a maid whom she called Susan, to whom she repeated what we had said; and then inquired further what was our business, were we “travelling with the consent of our parents,” &c., and remarked—“Your parents are reputable people, I think:—yes—yes—dear me!—yes—poor youths. Yes, I will find beds for you. You are good youths, and Susan shall—but come in: you will sit in the parlour, and my servant, Susan, shall sit with you a few minutes, and I will see. Come in, come in, good youths.”

While we remained in the parlour it was infinitely droll to hear the kind old woman talking with another in the next room about the safety and propriety of lodging us. “I have known the world, and I cannot be deceived: these are good youths.”

It was at length concluded that if we would each of us pay a shilling, (“and then we could give whatever we liked besides to Susan,”) and if we would be willing to have our doors locked on the outside, we should be provided then and there with beds. The old woman then came in again to us, and with great severity re-examined us, and finally informed us that we were to spend the night in her house. She then became exceedingly kind again, asked much about our parents and America, and at length asked us, with a whimpering laugh, as if she feared how we would take it, but begged that it might be considered a joke—“We wouldn’t be offended if our doors should be locked on the outside?”