The road from Ludlow to Bridgnorth is—or rather was—not a first-class one. Road conditions in Britain change so rapidly since the advent of the motor that one can scarcely speak of them in the present tense. As we found it, poorly surfaced, narrow and winding, it was not to be compared with the highway along the border. Bridgnorth is an ancient market town, famous for its cattle fair, which has been held yearly since 1226. The service at the Crown Inn, where we stopped for luncheon, was excellent, and the moderate charge proved Bridgnorth off the beaten tourist track, a special rate not yet being established for the infrequent motorists. It was market day and the town was crowded with country people. The ample market square was filled with booths, and goods of every description were offered for sale. A socialist orator—a common nuisance in England—was haranguing the people, who crowded the streets so closely that we could get through only with difficulty. That motors are not so common in Bridgnorth was apparent, and a crowd collected about the car in the hotel stableyard. The general expression was hostile, and many instances were related where “one of the things” had worked disaster with skittish horses.

We made our escape without entering into the discussion and dropped down the almost precipitous hill to the Severn bridge. The road is a charming one, with wooded hills rising sharply on one hand and the broad Severn lying far beneath on the other. At Shifnal a policeman, in response to our inquiry, directed us to the byway leading to the village of Tong, some three miles distant. Here, according to one well qualified to judge, is the “most interesting example of early Perpendicular architecture in Shropshire—a section famous for interesting churches.” But it is better known through its association with Little Nell in “Old Curiosity Shop,” and Dickens’ description shows that the appearance of the church before its restoration was quite different from today:

“The church was old and grey, with ivy clinging to the walls and round the porch. It was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks, who had built their nests among the branches of some tall trees. It was a very aged, ghostly place. The church had been built many hundreds of years ago and once had a convent or monastery attached; for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls were yet standing.” It is still old and gray, but no longer ghostly and ruinous. It was far from lonely, for a crowd of trippers was being shown about by the caretaker when we arrived.

The tombs of Tong Church, with their effigies and brasses, are remarkably perfect, and one of them must be very ancient, for it bears the figure of a crusader in chain mail. The images escaped destruction, it is said, because of the friendship of Cromwell for the Stanleys, who were adherents of the Parliament. In the church are buried several of the Vernons, whom the madcap Dorothy gave to eternal fame, for they had little else to rescue them from the oblivion that overwhelmed such a host of unremembered squires and knights. Dorothy’s sister, Margaret, is buried with her husband, Sir Edward Stanley, who came into possession of Tong Castle through his wife. The church also has a remarkable library of black-letter books, some of them almost as old as the church itself, and a stupendous bell, weighing two tons, hangs in its tower.

The village well accords with the church—a quiet place half hidden by trees and shrubbery, while the ivy and blooming vines give a touch of color to the gray walls. The tiny gardens are brilliant with old-fashioned flowers and the air is laden with their sweetness. Amidst such surroundings are scattered the pleasant old timbered cottages, with thatched roofs and diamond-paned lattice windows. The original castle has disappeared and has been replaced by a large Georgian house—a Moorish-looking mansion with domed roofs and pinnacles, yet rather picturesque, despite the fact that it outrages good architectural taste. It is in ill accord with the unspoiled little village; for altogether, Tong, with its church and associations, is one of the most delightful nooks and thoroughly typical of rural England at its best.

There are other associations in the neighborhood of Tong that may attract anyone especially interested in curious bits of English history, for near at hand is Boscobel House and its Royal Oak. In my youthful days, I read in one of the old-fashioned Sunday school books—many of which were then imported from England and were written by orthodox royalists—the story of the miraculous escape of His Gracious Majesty Charles II. from the wicked rebels who sought to lay violent hands on the “Lord’s Anointed.” I looked on the honest country people of Boscobel as direct instruments of Providence in preserving the sacred life of the king, and fairly held my breath with fear and excitement when I read that the Puritan troopers rode beneath the very tree in which the monarch was concealed. Even when sadly disenchanted by the knowledge that if ever rascal escaped his due it was when Charles Stuart dodged his pursuers, the romance of the old story lingered and I always had a desire to see Boscobel House and the Royal Oak.

After leaving Tong we were only a few minutes in the shady lanes until we drew up in front of the ancient manor and found it a shrine for the English tripper, though the name of no American had been registered in its visitors’ book. The house is quite unaltered and of itself would be worth a visit as an unusually good specimen of early English domestic architecture, for it dates from 1540. The walls are stuccoed between heavy oaken posts at the corners and beams at the line of the floors. The huge chimney, mullioned windows and other touches indicate that it was a gentleman’s residence. Inside there are several fine rooms, with much oak carving and paneling, though in the dining-room, rather the best of all, the oak has been painted. There are a good many portraits and relics of the king, more or less authentic, which are shown with a proper degree of reverence. In the attic floor is the entrance to a small secret chamber reputed as one of the hiding-places of the king, though no doubt originally planned for a “priest hole,” as the Puritans called such places of concealment.

The farm-wife who cared for the house, and who was glad to see visitors, had come to reverence the king as the saint that the old chronicles picture him and had a full stock of the traditions of the place. She pointed out the identical tree which sheltered his Sacred Majesty, though the prosaic and unimpressionable Baedeker declares that it vanished long ago—which we ventured to hint, only to be met with proper scorn. To impress us with the goodness and generosity of the king, she related that the pension he settled on his preservers and their heirs forever is still paid to the descendants of the Penderels by an assessment on the parish—characteristic indeed of Charles, who always rewarded services if he could do so at the expense of some one else. We purchased a quaint book at the house—a facsimile reprint of an account of the events at Boscobel, published after the Restoration and dedicated to the king. As a curious example of the depraved lickspittle attitude of his flatterers toward the person of the monarch—a spirit not altogether extinct today, for that matter—I give a few sentences from the author’s dedication:

“I humbly beg your Majesties pardon, being conscious to myself of my utter incapacity to express, either your unparallel’d valour in the day of contending, or (which is a vertue far less usual for Kings) your strong and even mind in the time of your sufferings. From which sublime endowments of Your Most Heroick Majesty I derive these comforts to my self, That whoever undertakes to reach at your perfections, must fall short as well as I, though not so much. And now, on my bended knees, let me joyfully congratulate his restored Majesty, and humbly offer him this short and hearty wish, O KING, LIVE FOR EVER.”

Bidding Boscobel Manor farewell, we pause for a hasty glance at the scant ruin of White Ladies, an old-time nunnery standing quite apart in a field near by; then we retrace our way to the main road leading through Tong to Newmarket and Market Drayton. The latter town should be of considerable interest to an Englishman, since here was the home of Robert Clive, who, according to a well-known historian, “will ever be remembered as the man who laid deeply the foundations of our Indian Empire and who at a time of national despondency restored the tarnished honor of British arms.” Aside from this, there is little to interest the wayfarer save several fine Elizabethan houses and a mighty church that quite overshadows the town and country.

We are soon away for Shrewsbury, the ever charming county town of Shropshire, fleeting over as fine a road as ever tempted the winged wheels of a motor car. It is nearly deserted, straight, broad and level, and it is quite too late to fear the minions of the law—but this is not a record of miles per hour. Suffice it to say that very shortly we stop at the sign of the Raven in Old Salop.

One could never grow weary of the old town, and we saw another phase in its life and activity on a Saturday evening. The whole population seemed to have turned loose, and the brilliantly lighted main street was quite metropolitan. The quaint old fronts had a rather odd and out-of-place look in the glare of the electric light; the narrow, dimly lit side streets were more in accord with the spirit of the place. The shops were crowded and on the whole seemed surprisingly up to date and well stocked for a town of thirty thousand.

The Sunday following was as quiet as the evening before had been animated, and was as perfect as an English June day can be. In the afternoon we were off for a run, with scarcely any definite point in view, though a jaunt of an hour or two brought us in front of Lichfield Cathedral just as the afternoon service was beginning. We joined the rather diminutive body of worshippers who occupied but a small part of the great church. We were perhaps quite as intent on the interior—a very epic in warm red sandstone—as upon the dreary chant of the litany. A thorough restoration has been made recently and an air of newness prevails, but no one interested in cathedral architecture will miss Lichfield—in some respects the most harmonious and best proportioned of them all. We have seen the town before, but not the large square house before which we pause, for a moment, and which bears a bronze tablet to the memory of its one-time occupant, Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin.

Our route to Shrewsbury was over one of the Roman Watling streets, straight as an arrow’s flight much of the way and often bordered by giant trees. Never did the English countryside appear more charming in all our wanderings through it. There was a continual succession of green fields, vast parks, clear streams and wooded hills, with an occasional retired village—for on our return we avoided Wolverhampton with its rough streets and trams—to lend variety to the rural beauty through which we passed until we again skirted the Severn and re-entered the town.

VII
A WEEK IN SOUTH WALES

We leave Shrewsbury by the Welsh bridge for a week among the rugged hills and valleys of Southern Wales, a country rich in relics of antiquity and romantic associations. We sweep along the fine highway to Welshpool and from thence, a little farther, to Montgomery, a decayed, out-of-the-way town in the hills. A fragment of its castle is perched high on the precipitous hill commanding the town and looking far over the vale of the serpentine Severn. The Severn, like the Wye, is the most sinuous of rivers, and there are few more inspiring prospects than its long shining folds winding through the verdant valley as seen from the castle walls. Montgomery, quiet and unheroic as it is today, has a stirring past. It took its name from Roger de Montgomerie, “Second in command in the army of his kinsman, William of Normandy,” though the grim, almost inaccessible castle antedated his possession of the town. Fierce indeed was the strife between the Normans and the wild Welsh tribes, and the fair vale of the Severn was the scene of many a bloody conflict. The castle, though with varying owners and fortunes, continued a stronghold to the day of its surrender to the soldiers of the Commonwealth; after which nothing remained but blackened walls—another added to the long list of feudal fortresses “destroyed by Cromwell.”

The road southward from Newtown leads through as wild a tract of country as we saw in Britain. Not the Scotch Highlands or the hills at the headwaters of the Welsh Wye equal it in loneliness and seeming remoteness. But it is more picturesque than the localities just named, for the hills are mostly wooded, and the shallow, sparkling river which we followed—though usually far above it—runs through a narrow valley diversified in spots with trees and bits of meadow land. For eight miles out of Newtown we encountered a continually rising grade, which brought us to a narrow upland road running along the hillsides, which drop in almost precipitous slopes to the river far below. The road twists along the edge of the hills, at times in almost circular curves, and too close to the sharp declivity at its side for one’s ease of mind. At Llandrindod Wells we had passed the wildest part of the road and we noted with surprise the handsome houses and palatial hotels of a town we had scarcely heard of before, but which has recently become the queen of Welsh inland resorts. The declining sun shot his rays along the purple hilltops that encircle the place and the shadows were already long in the pine-clad valleys. It was growing late, but after a hurried consultation we decided against the pretentious hotels of Llandrindod Wells.

We dashed across the arched stone bridge over the Wye at Builth Wells and brought sharply up in front of the Lion Hotel, which, standing squarely across the way, seemed to bar farther progress, and we had little choice but to stop for the night. The Lion’s accommodations are not elaborate by any means, but it was quite too late to go farther. Though Builth has mineral wells and a “pump house,” a mile from the town, there is nothing of the resort hotel about the Lion; on the contrary, it is the plainest of old-country inns, apparently a haven for fishermen rather than health seekers. Its walls were covered with the antique hand-colored prints so characteristic of English inns; its mantels were loaded with queer pieces of bric-a-brac; tallow candles lighted the bedrooms. The electric push-button had not superseded the tasseled rope by the bedside, with which one jangles a bell hung on a coiled spring in the hallway. But it is spacious and has an air of old-world comfort about it—little modern except its motor garage.

After all, we were fortunate in our pause at Builth, for we beheld the most glorious of sunsets on the long reaches of the Wye as it enters the town from the west. The river dances down the valley in a series of broad, shallow rapids, resting itself here and there in a quiet lakelike pool. The sunset hues were subdued rather than brilliant; pink and salmon tints were reflected in the stream as we stood on the bridge and looked up the quiet valley, and these faded into hazy amethyst as the twilight advanced. It was a scene of quiet, pastoral beauty amidst surroundings that do not lack for legend and antiquity, and altogether left a pleasing recollection of an unattractive Welsh town which in itself has little of the picturesque.

We were away early in the morning following the Wye Valley road, with its vistas of hill and river, as far as Llyswen, where we crossed the hills to Brecon. Our stop here was short, as our route was to bring us again to this interesting old town in a few days. We did not often find a more delightful road than that down the Usk Valley to Crickhowell, Abergavenny and Caerleon. Its excellent surface and long sweeping grades might be a temptation to speed, but it is quite neutralized by the constant beauty of the scenery and interest of the country. On either hand are the low Welsh mountains, wooded to the very crest, and at times far below we caught the gleam of the river—though so shrunken as to scarcely deserve the name—leaping and flashing over its stone-strewn bed. Here and there a quiet village nestled unobtrusively by the roadside; at Crickhowell we found a larger but somnolent town whose huge church is crowded with memorials of the old Welsh warriors. Even larger and more impressive is the great Priory Church at Abergavenny, whose square battlemented tower one might think had been built to withstand the sieges of the devil, even as the Welsh castles were made almost impregnable against the attack of man. No quainter town did we pass than Usk; it must have been much the same when the Conqueror sent his legions to overawe the Welsh tribes, save that its castle, then no doubt a lordly fortress, is now a decayed ivy-mantled ruin. Its greater importance in years gone by is attested by its mighty priory church, ill in keeping with the hamlet that clusters about it today. According to tradition, two kings of England were born in Usk—Richard III. and Edward IV.—and Roman remains indicate an important station on the spot almost at the dawn of the Christian Era.

But what shall one say of Caerleon, farther down the valley, now practically a suburb of Newport, where dim legends still linger to the effect that it was once King Arthur’s capital and that here was the castle

A prosaic historian, however, declares that in all likelihood the King Arthur legend sprang from Roman ruins which some hundreds of years ago existed in Caerleon in great magnificence. At any rate, modern Caerleon has no trace of the regal capital of the early king—a bald, unattractive town close upon the Usk, now broadened into a considerable stream, dull with the taint from the manufactories on its banks.

At Newport we are entering a different order of things, brought about by the great industrial development in South Wales due to the coal and iron mines and large shipping interests. In the last century the population of the town has grown from one to seventy thousand. The old order is indeed dead here. There is no effort to attract the tourist, and the castle, almost the sole relic of antiquity, is crumbling into unhindered ruin as it sits far above the drear expanse of mud left by the receding tide. We hasten through the town—we may see a hundred such at home—and seek from a friendly policeman the road to Caerphilly, a village off in the hills which we know has no new-world counterpart.

For ten miles from Newport we wend our way over a dusty, ill-kept byroad with sharp turns and steep grades, and before we come to the village we see from some distance the broken towers and battlements of Caerphilly Castle. We pass through the gateway in the straggling walls and the scene of desolation and massive ruin that lies before us is hardly paralleled in impressiveness among British castles, unless it be by Corfe in Dorset. A great round tower, perhaps fifty feet in diameter, with walls ten feet thick, split as by a thunder stroke, greets our eyes. Half of it is still standing, though leaning many feet from the vertical, and the other half lies in mighty fragments of masonry at its base. There had been four such towers, but only one is comparatively entire. The walls, though much shattered in places, still serve to give an idea of the vast extent of the ancient castle. The huge banqueting hall has been roofed and recalls in a rather pathetic way the rude magnificence of its feudal state.

But words quite fail to describe Caerphilly—such a maze of grim walls and towers, such a network of ruinous apartments, piled deep with debris, overawe and confuse one. Only the antiquarian may painfully decipher the plan of the castle and in imagination reconstruct it as it was when it stood a bulwark between warring nations. But to the ordinary beholder it will remain a mystery set in the midst of the barren hills, and he will hardly care to resolve the impressive pile into its original parts. It will seem an entity to him—it is hard to think it otherwise than it appears today. Its romance is deepened by the obscurity of its history—for the story of Caerphilly has many blanks and breaks. There is no record of when it was first begun and there is doubt as to when it was finally destroyed. Some say the ruin is the work of Cromwell, and it surely seems worthy of that master of the art of wrecking castles; others declare that it was abandoned at the time of the Commonwealth, having been destroyed by Shakespeare’s “Wild irregular Glendower,” in his endless conflicts with the English.

But after all, does it not savor even more of romance that mystery enshrouds the past of the stupendous structure whose scanty remnants encircle us? Why call upon prosaic history to dispel the charm that emanates from the gray ruin, half hidden by its mantle of ivy and dashed here and there with the purple valerian and yellow wall-flower? Such would be folly indeed as we sit on the soft green turf of the court and contemplate the fantastic outlines in the glow of the sunset; when all is silence save for the angry brawls of the rooks, which have entered into full possession—reincarnations, perhaps, of the erstwhile contentious owners.

But the spell of Caerphilly dissolves and a different world surrounds us as we enter the broad modern streets of Cardiff and pause before the American-looking Park Hotel. Cardiff as a village antedates the Conquest, but as a metropolis of two hundred thousand, it is quite recent. One hundred years ago it had a population of a thousand; in 1837, of ten thousand; and it is easy to see that the traces of antiquity in such a city must be few. Its future was assured when the first Marquis of Bute hazarded his entire fortune in the construction of the extensive docks from which shipments of coal and iron are now made. It was a lucky throw of the die for the nobleman, for today his grandson owns the greater part of Cardiff and is one of the wealthiest men in the Kingdom.

Cardiff Castle—forever associated with the dark fate of Prince Robert—has been replaced by a Moorish palace—or rather, an incongruous mixture in which the Moorish predominates. It is easy to gain admittance to this imposing palace, where art has been entirely unhampered by cost, and if garishness and incongruity sometimes prevail, interest is nevertheless continual. There is a fragment of the keep of the old castle in the grounds and Duke Robert’s dungeon is incorporated into the new structure—a dark, vaultlike cavity in the walls where for thirty years the unfortunate prince, the direct heir to the throne of the Conqueror, was kept a close prisoner by his brother Henry. Legend has it that his eyes were put out because of an attempt to escape and that he died in the dungeon at the age of eighty years.

Llandaff is but three miles from Cardiff, and we reached it by a short detour. Its cathedral, recently restored, is probably the most interesting of Welsh churches excepting St. David’s. The site has been occupied by a church ever since the year 600, though the present structure dates from early Norman times. It fell into complete ruin after the time of the Commonwealth. One chronicler declares that “Cromwell’s men turned the nave into an ale house, penned calves in the choir and fed pigs at the font,” though they must have been rather unorthodox Puritans to countenance the ale house. No attempt was made to preserve the fine church from decay until about two hundred years later, and so deplorable was its condition that the task of restoration seemed a well-nigh impossible one. Still, after much difficulty, the work was happily carried out, and the twin towers—one a slender spire and its companion square-topped with Gothic finials—present a very unusual though not unpleasant effect. Inside there is a mixture of Norman and early English styles, and some beautiful Decorated work. There are three paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti that arrest attention at once—done in that artist’s best style long ere he was known to fame. The windows, though modern, are of unusual excellence, having been designed by Burne-Jones and other notable artists. Near by are the ruins of the bishop’s palace, whose fortresslike walls tell of a time when the churchman and the warrior went hand in hand. Its destruction some six hundred years ago is attributed to Owen Glendwr, whose record for castle-smashing in Wales is second only to that of Cromwell. The village of Llandaff is still rural and pretty; it is quite clear of the skirts of Cardiff, being separated from the city by the River Taff. The old stone cross still stands in front of the palace and there is now little to remind one of the big modern city near at hand, which may one day absorb its ancient but diminutive neighbor.

The Swansea road looks well enough on the map, but our recollections of it are far from pleasing. Dusty and rough, and crowded with traffic and tram lines in many places, it wends through a cheerless and often uninteresting country. It passes frequent mining towns straggling along for considerable distances and there were many drunken men reeling on the streets. It was market day at Cowbridge and the village was filled with countrymen, many of whom treated our right to the road with supreme indifference. One fellow in a broad-brimmed slouch hat that made him look like an American cowboy, and who was carrying a black bottle that might hold a gallon, saluted us with owl-like gravity and brought the car to a sharp stop by standing directly in our way.

While getting rid of our would-be acquaintance, we cast about to find a place for luncheon and soon lighted on the sign of the Bear, the sole inn, according to Baedeker. It was some distance to the next town and we decided to patronize the Bear, though its outer appearance filled us with misgivings. But if its outward aspect inspired doubt, words fail in speaking of the inside. The handbook of the Royal Automobile Club in setting forth the delights of a tour in America pays its compliments to our rural Bonifaces in this wise: “The hotel accommodation in country districts is often very poor and dirty,” all of which may be painfully true. But in competition for distinction in these particulars, the Bear would certainly not be distanced by any American rival. Perhaps the confusion and disarray was partly due to the market-day rush, but the grime and dirt that prevailed everywhere seemed as ancient as the ramshackle old house itself. The dining-room was a large apartment with many long tables of boards laid on trestles—an arrangement, no doubt, to accommodate the patronage of market day—and the remnants of the dinner were still heaped upon them in dire confusion. A glance at the meal placed before us and at the dirty hands of the waiting-girl was enough—we left the provender untouched and summarily departed from the table. With difficulty we got the attention of the barmaid, who also acted as cashier, settled our score, and sallied forth dinnerless upon the King’s highway.

Threading our way carefully through the streets of Neath, several miles farther on, with little thought save to get away from the bad road and unpleasant surroundings, we caught a glimpse, down a side street, of an ivy-clad ruin of great extent. We followed the rough rubbish-covered lane that leads directly to the entrance gate of Neath Abbey, as it proved to be. There was no caretaker in charge, but two or three workmen were engaged in cleaning away the debris, which was several feet deep in many of the roofless apartments. Everything indicated that once the abbey had stood in the pleasantest of valleys on the bank of a clear, placid little river; but the coaling industry, which flings its pall over everything in Southern Wales, had played sad havoc with the sylvan retreat of the old Cistercian monks. Heaps of rubbish dotted the uncared-for green about the place. Coal trains rattled on the railroad near at hand. The spot where the abbey now stands so forlornly is the heart of the suburban slums of Neath, and so isolated and forgotten is it that few pilgrims come to view its melancholy beauty. For it is beautiful—does not our picture tell the story?—the mouldering walls hung with masses of ivy, the fine doorways, the great groups of mullioned windows and the high chimneys, green to the very tops, all combine to charm the beholder despite the unlovely surroundings. The workmen told us that the abbey belonged to Lord Somebody—we have quite forgotten—and that he was going to clean up the premises and make necessary repairs. The craze now so prevalent in Britain for preserving every ancient ruin had extended even to Neath Abbey and perchance its titled owner will beautify the surroundings and the fine ruin may yet become a shrine for pilgrims—that the motor-car will bring.

Swansea—Swansy, they call it—had always brought to my mind, I hardly know why, the idea of a seaside resort town; but never was preconceived notion more erroneous. If there is a blacker, uglier, more odoriferous town of the size in the Kingdom, I do not recollect where it is. Here are the greatest copper smelting works in the world and from these come the pungent, stifling odors that so unpleasantly pervade the city. Here, too, is the great steel plant of the Siemens Company and many allied industries. And yet there was a time when Swansea had at least the promise of a resort town before it, when the poet Landor declared that “Italy has a fine climate but that of Swansea is better; that it is the only spot in Britain where one may have warmth without wet.” Then it had six hundred people, but now its population exceeds one hundred thousand. We had no desire to linger and rapidly climbed the long steep hill that leads to the highland road to Carmarthen. We soon left behind us the smoke and grime of the collieries and smelting-works, and the road over which we rapidly coursed took us through a rather pretty rural section, though the hills are numerous and steep.

It was late when we came into Carmarthen, a bare, drab-colored town, but withal rather more prosperous-looking than the average small town of South Wales. The thirty-two miles to Haverfordwest swept by too rapidly to permit us to see the country other than as a fleeting panorama. Just as the twilight faded into dark we came sharply into Haverfordwest and with grave misgivings halted at the Castle Hotel. Here we must stop, willy nilly, for there was nothing that promised better in many miles. But to apply the cautious Yorkshireman’s expression to the Castle Hotel, “It might be worse,” and we were willing to let the uncomfortable feather-beds and the dingy candle-lit rooms overlooking the stable yard, be atoned for by the excellent dinner that our landlady prepared at so late an hour.

We did not linger at Haverfordwest on the following morning, though perhaps the castle and the priory church might well have detained us. The castle, which crowns the terribly steep hill to which the town seems to cling somewhat precariously, has been reduced to a county jail—or gaol, as the English have it—and thus robbed of much of its romance. Still, it is an impressive old fortress, dominating the town with its huge bulk, and it has figured much in the annals of Pembrokeshire.

Haverfordwest has a history antedating the Conquest. It was undoubtedly a stopping-place for the troops of pilgrims who in early days journeyed to the sacred shrine of St. David’s, the Ultima Thule of Southern Wales, sixteen miles to the west, following a tortuous road over many steep and barren hills. The railroad ends at Haverfordwest and no doubt the facilities for reaching St. David’s a thousand years ago were quite as good as today, the daily mail cart and coach twice a week in season being the only regular means of transportation. No wonder in days when strenuous journeys to distant shrines were believed to be especially meritorious, two trips to St. David’s were allowed to confer the spiritual benefit of a single pilgrimage to Rome itself.

And we ourselves are pilgrims to St. David’s shrine—not by the slow horseback cavalcade of old days, or the more modern coach, but by motor car. Our forty-horse engine makes quick work of the precipitous hill out of Haverfordwest and carries us without lagging over the dozen long steep hills on the road to the ancient town. Shortly before reaching St. David’s the road drops down to the ocean side, but the sea is hidden by a long ridge of stones and pebbles piled high by the inrushing waters. The tide was far out and we saw no finer beach on the Welsh coast than the one that lay before us as we stood on the stony drift. A great expanse of yellow—almost literally golden—sand ran down to a pale green sea, which lapped it in silvery sunlit ripples, so quiet and peaceful was the day. But one could not but think of the scope afforded for the wild play of the ocean on stormy days—how the scene must be beyond all description

We left the car near the ancient stone cross in the deserted market place of St. David’s and sought the cathedral, which is strangely situated in a deep dell, the top of the Norman tower being only a little above the level of the market place. The cathedral has been recently restored, more perhaps on account of its historic past than any present need for it, but the bishop’s palace, once one of the most elaborate and extensive in the Kingdom, stands in picturesque decay, beyond any hope of rehabilitation. As to the old-time importance of St. David’s as contrasted with its present isolation, the words of an enthusiastic English writer may perhaps serve better than my own:

“Centuries ago St. David’s bishop had seven palaces for his pleasure; now he does not dwell in his own city. Of old the offerings at St. David’s shrine were divided every Saturday among the priests by the dishful, to save time in counting the coins; now a few pounds weekly is accounted a good collection total. Ancient kings came hither in state to confess their sins; in this travelling age only the enterprising tourist comes to the city at all. Eight or nine roads converged upon the little place on its headland of about three miles square, but the majority are now no better than humble weather-worn lanes. The Atlantic winds sweep across the depression by the Alan brook in which St. David’s Cathedral, the extensive ruins of the bishop’s palace, and the many other fragments of St. David’s glorious prime nestle among trees, with the humble cottages of the city itself surrounding them as if they loved them. Even the dilapidation here is so graceful that one would hardly wish it altered into the trim and rather smug completeness of many an English cathedral with its close.”

The cathedral is extremely interesting and made doubly so by an intelligent verger whom we located with considerable difficulty. Pilgrims to St. David’s were apparently too infrequent to justify the good man’s remaining constantly on duty as in larger places, and a placard forbidding fees, may have dampened his zeal in looking for visitors. But we found him at last in his garden, and he did his part well; nothing curious or important in the history of the cathedral was forgotten by him. The leaning Norman pillars, the open roof of Irish oak, the gorgeous ceiling with its blood-red and gold decorations, and many relics discovered during the restoration, were pointed out and properly descanted upon. But one might write volumes of a shrine which kings once underwent many hardships to visit, among them Harold the Saxon and his conqueror, William of Normandy. Nothing but a visit can do it justice, and with the advent of the motor car, old St. David’s will again be the shrine of an increasing number of pilgrims, though their mission and personel be widely different from the wayfarers of early days.

“Yes, but nothing to the one you must go up out of the town. Just like the roofs of those houses there, and the road rough and crooked. Yes, this is all there is of Fishguard; pretty quiet place except on market days.”

We thanked the officer and cautiously descended the hill before us. We then climbed much the steepest and most dangerous hill we found in all the twelve thousand or more miles covered by our wanderings. To our dismay, a grocer’s cart across the narrow road compelled us to stop midway on the precipitous ascent, but the motor proved equal to the task and we soon looked back down the frightful declivity with a sigh of relief. We were told later of a traveling showman who had been over all the main roads of the Island with a traction engine and who declared this the worst hill he knew of.

Newport—quite different from the Eastern Welsh Newport—and Cardigan are quaint, old-world villages, though now decayed and shrunken. I will not write of them, though the history of each is lost in the mists of antiquity and the former possesses an imposing though ruinous castle. The road between them is hilly, but the hills are well wooded and the prospects often magnificent and far-reaching. We found it much the same after leaving Cardigan, though the country is distinctly better and more pleasing than the extreme south. The farm houses appear more prosperous, and well-cared-for gardens surround them. Nowhere did we find the people kinder or more courteous. An instance occurred at Carmarthen, where we stopped to consult our maps. The owner of a near-by jewelry shop came out and accosted us. Did we want information about the roads? He had lived in Carmarthen many years and was familiar with all the roads about the town. To Llandovery? We had come too far; the road north of the river is the best and one of the prettiest in Wales. It would be worth our while to go back a mile and take this road.

Thanking him, we retraced our way through the long main street of the town and were soon away over one of the most perfect and beautiful of Welsh highways. It runs in straight broad stretches between rows of fine trees, past comfortable-looking farm houses, and through cozy little hamlets nestling amid trees and shrubbery, and seems constantly to increase in charm until it takes one into Llandovery, twenty-five miles from Carmarthen and the center of one of the most picturesque sections of Wales.

Lying among wooded hills in a valley where two clear little rivers join their waters, Llandovery—the church among the waters—is a village of surpassing loveliness. The touch of antiquity so necessary to complete the charm is in the merest fragment of its castle, a mouldering bit of wall on a mound overlooking the rivers—dismantled “by Cromwell’s orders.” Delightful as the town is, its surroundings are even more romantic. The highest peaks of South Wales, the Beacon and the Black Mountains, overlook it and in the recesses of these rugged hills are many resorts for the fisherman and summer excursionist. From the summits are vast panoramas of wooded hills and verdant valleys. The view is so far-reaching that on a clear day one may see the ocean to the south; or, far distant in the opposite direction, the snow-crowned mountains of Northern Wales.

The road from Llandovery to Brecon is as fine as that to Carmarthen, though it is more sinuous and hilly. But it is perfectly surfaced and climbs the hills in such long sweeping curves and easy uniform grades that the steepest scarcely checks the flight of our car as it hastens at a thirty-five mile gait to Brecon. It is growing late—we might well wish for more time to admire the views from the hillside road. The valleys are shrouded in the purple haze of twilight and the sky is rich with sunset coloring. It has been a strenuous day for us—one of our longest runs over much bad road. We note with satisfaction the promise of a first-class hotel at Brecon, though we find it crowded almost to our exclusion. But we are so weary that we vigorously protest and a little shifting—with some complaint from the shifted parties—makes room for us. We are told in awe-stricken whispers that the congestion is partly due to the fact that Her Grace the Duchess of B—— (wife of one of the richest peers in England) has arrived at the hotel with her retinue, traveling in two motor cars. She was pointed out to us in the morning as she walked along the promenade in very short skirts, accompanied by her poodle. We heard of this duke often in our journeyings, one old caretaker in a place owned by the nobleman assuring us that his income was no less than a guinea a minute! The duke owns many blocks of buildings in some of the busiest sections of London. The land occupied by them came into possession of the family through the marriage of the great-grandfather of the present holder of the title with the daughter of a dairy farmer who owned much of the quarter where London real estate is now of fabulous value—thus showing that some of the English aristocracy rose to wealth by means quite as plebeian as some of those across the water. Nowadays the penniless duke would have crossed the Atlantic to recoup his fortune, instead of turning to a rich dairyman’s daughter in his own country.

But in indulging in this more or less interesting gossip, I am forgetting Brecon and the Castle Hotel, rightly named in this instance, for the hotel owns the old castle; it stands in the private grounds which lie between the hotel and the river and are beautified with flowers and shrubbery. Brecon boasts of great antiquity and it was here that Sir John Price made overtures to Henry VIII. which resulted in the union of England and Wales. The priory church is one of the largest and most important in Wales and is interesting in architecture as well as historical association. We saw the plain old house where the ever-charming Mrs. Siddons was born—a distinction of which Brecon is justly proud. And Brecon is not without its legend of Charles the Wanderer, who passed a day or two at the priory during one of his hurried marches in Wales, and the letter he wrote here is the first record we have of his despair of the success of the royal cause.

My chapter is already too long—but what else might be expected of an effort to crowd into a few pages the record of sights and impressions that might well fill a volume?

VIII
SOME NOOKS AND CORNERS

Early next day we were in Hereford, for it is but forty miles from Brecon by the Wye Valley road. It had been just one week since we had passed through the town preparatory to our tour of South Wales—a rather wearisome journey of well upon a thousand miles over some of the worst of Welsh roads. It was not strange, then, that we gladly seized the opportunity for a short rest in Hereford. There is something fascinating about the fine old cathedral town. It appeals to one as a place of repose and quiet, though this may be apparent rather than real, for we found the Green Dragon filled to the point of turning away would-be guests. The town stands sedately in the midst of the broad, level meadows which surround it on every side, and through its very center meanders the Wye, the queenliest of British rivers, as though loath to leave the confines of such a pleasant place. It is a modern city, despite its ancient history, for its old-time landmarks have largely disappeared and its crowded lanes have been superseded by broad streets. Even the cathedral has a distressingly new appearance, due to the recent restoration, and a public park occupies the site of the vanished castle. But for all that, one likes Hereford. Its newness is not the cheap veneer so frequently evident in the resort towns; it is solid and genuine throughout and there are enough antique corners to redeem it from monotony. To sum up our impressions, Hereford is a place one would gladly visit again—and again.

Jotted down on our map adjacent to the Tewkesbury road were blue crosses, indicating several seldom-visited nooks and corners we had learned of in our reading and which we determined to explore. No recollection of our wanderings comes back to us rosier with romance or more freighted with the spirit of rural England than that of our meanderings through the leafy byways of Worcestershire in search of Birtsmorton, Ripple, Stanton and Strensham. One will look long at the map before he finds them and a deal of inquiry was necessary before we reached Birtsmorton and its strange moated manor, Moreton Court. No better idea could be given of the somnolence and utter retirement of the little hamlet than the words of a local writer:

“Birtsmorton is remarkable for the almost total absence of the usual signs of trade and industry; even agriculture is prosecuted within such limits as consist with leaving an ample portion of its surface in the good feudal condition of extended sheep walks and open downs. Such Birtsmorton has ever been, such it still is—but, thanks to projected railroads, such we trust it will not always be.”

The projected railroad has not yet arrived and the lover of quietude and of the truly rural will hope that it will still be long delayed. No quainter old place did we find in our long quest for the quaint than Moreton Court. Fancy a huge, rambling house, a mixture of brick and half-timber, with a great gateway over which the ancient port-cullis still shows its teeth, surrounded closely on all sides by the waters of a very broad moat and connected with the outer world by a drawbridge. Once inside the court, for you gain admission easily, you pause to look at the strange assortment of gables, huge chimneys and mullioned windows, all indicative of ancient state. Not less interesting is the interior; one finds a staircase of solid black oak with a queer, twisted newelpost, dark corridors leading to massive oaken doors, chambers with ceilings intersected by heavy beams, and a state apartment of surpassing beauty. This is a spacious room, paneled to the ceiling with finely wrought dark oak, its mullioned oriel windows overhanging the moat, which on this side widens to a lake. A marvelous chimney-piece with the arms of the ancient owners attracts attention and the scutcheons of a dozen forgotten noblemen are ranged as a frieze around the walls.

We will not seek to learn the history of the old house, but some of its legends have a strange fascination. It is surely appropriate that Moreton Court should have its ghost—the “lily maid” who on winter nights kneels over the grave of her murdered lover in the adjoining churchyard. Her stern father had driven her from his home because of her constancy to her yeoman lover, whom he caused to be hung on the false charge of stealing a cow. The next morning the cruel sire found his daughter dead at his door, covered with the winter snow. But there is another grim old legend far better authenticated, which had its origin in a sad incident occurring at Moreton Court two or three centuries ago, and a sermon is still annually preached in the church against dueling. A pair of lovers were plighting their troth in the manor gardens when an unsuccessful rival of the happy youth chanced upon them and a quarrel ensued which led to a duel fatal to both of the combatants. The heart-broken maiden ended her days in sorrow at Moreton Court and left by will a fund to provide for this annual sermon. Another weird story they tell of the great Wolsey, in his youth chaplain to the lords of Moreton Court. A recalcitrant priest from Little Malvern Priory was condemned to crawl on all fours from his cell to the summit of Ragged-Stone Hill and in his rage cursed all upon whom the shadow of the hill should afterwards fall. Wolsey was one day reading in the manor grounds when to his horror he found that the fatal shadow of the hill-crest enveloped him.

But today, for all its history and legend, Moreton Court has degenerated into an ill-kept tenement farmhouse and the banquet hall with its richly moulded plaster roof is used as a storehouse for cheese. The stagnant waters of the moat and the uncleanly dairy yard directly in front of the house accord ill with its old-time state and with our modern notions of sanitation. The church near at hand is older and quite as unique as the manor; little restoration has interfered with its antique charm. Its bench ends still show the Tudor Rose and are undoubtedly those originally placed in the church. A “sanctuary ring” in the door and an odd circular alms-chest are very unusual and the altar tombs and screens are worthy of notice. In the church are buried the ancient lords of Moreton Court, who sleep their long sleep while church and manor degenerate into plebeian hands and gradually fall into ruin.

We found it practically impossible at the close of the day to trace on the map the maze of byways we threaded before reaching Worcester, and now our wanderings come back only as a general impression. We crossed the Severn at Tewkesbury but did not enter the town. A departure from the Worcester road into a narrow lane led us in a mile or two into Ripple, one of the quaintest and coziest of hamlets. Only a few thatched cottages clustered about the stone market cross of immemorial days—cottages overshadowed by no less immemorial elms, mantled with ivy and dashed with the color of rose vines. Near the cross, relics of days when there were rogues in Ripple—surely there are none now—are the oaken stocks and weather-beaten whipping-post. What a quiet, dreamy, secluded place it seems. It is hard indeed to imagine that within a circle of fifty miles is a country teeming with cities. If the village has any history we did not learn it—no great man is connected with Ripple as Tennyson with Somersby, though Ripple is not unlike Somersby. Ripple is worth a day’s journey just for itself. Only one lane leads to the village, but we left it over a wide common, passing many gates to regain the main road.