CHAPTER XII

RAMBLES IN ARDEN

Stratford-upon-Avon, August 27, 1889.--Among the many charming rambles that may be enjoyed in the vicinity of Stratford, the ramble to Wootton-Wawen and Henley-in-Arden is not least delightful. Both those places are on the Birmingham road; the former six miles, the latter eight miles, from Stratford. When you stand upon the bridge at Wootton you are only one hundred miles from London, but you might be in a wilderness a thousand miles from any city, for in all the slumberous scene around you there is no hint of anything but solitude and peace. Close by a cataract tumbles over the rocks and fills the air with music. Not far distant rises the stately front of Wootton Hall, an old manor-house, surrounded with green lawns and bowered by majestic elms, which has always been a Roman Catholic abode, and which is never leased to any but Roman Catholic tenants. A cosy, gabled house, standing among trees and shrubs a little way from the roadside, is the residence of the priest of this hamlet,--an antiquarian and a scholar, of ample acquirements and fine talent. Across the meadows, in one direction, peers forth a fine specimen of the timbered cottage of ancient times,--the black beams conspicuous upon a white surface of plaster. Among the trees, in another direction, appears the great gray tower of Wootton-Wawen church, a venerable pile and one in which, by means of the varying orders of its architecture, you may, perhaps, trace the whole ecclesiastical history of England. The approach to that church is through a green lane and a wicket-gate, and when you come near to it you find that it is surrounded with many graves, some marked and some unmarked, on all of which the long grass waves in rank luxuriance and whispers softly in the summer breeze. The place seems deserted. Not a human creature is anywhere visible, and the only sound that breaks the stillness of this August afternoon is the cawing of a few rooks in the lofty tops of the neighbouring elms. The actual life of all places, when you come to know it well, proves to be, for the most part, conventional, commonplace, and petty. Human beings, with here and there an exception, are dull and tedious, each resembling the other, and each needlessly laborious to increase that resemblance. In this respect all parts of the world are alike,--and therefore the happiest traveller is he who keeps mostly alone, and uses his eyes, and communes with his own thoughts. The actual life of Wootton is, doubtless, much like that of other hamlets,--a "noiseless tenor" of church squabbles, village gossip, and discontented grumbling, diversified with feeding and drinking, lawn tennis, matrimony, birth, and death. But as I looked around upon this group of nestling cottages, these broad meadows, green and cool in the shadow of the densely mantled trees, and this ancient church, gray and faded with antiquity, slowly crumbling to pieces amid the fresh and everlasting vitality of nature, I felt that surely here might at last be discovered a permanent haven of refuge from the incessant platitude and triviality of ordinary experience and the strife and din of the world.

Wootton-Wawen church is one of the numerous Roman Catholic buildings of about the eleventh century that still survive in this realm, devoted now to Protestant worship. It has been partly restored, but most of it is in a state of decay, and if this be not soon arrested the building will become a ruin. Its present vicar, the Rev. Francis T. Bramston, is making vigorous efforts to interest the public in the preservation of this ancient monument, and those efforts ought to succeed. A more valuable ecclesiastical relic it would be difficult to find, even in this rich region of antique treasures, the heart of England. Its sequestered situation and its sweetly rural surroundings invest it with peculiar beauty. It is associated, furthermore, with names that are stately in English history and honoured in English literature,--with Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, whose sister reposes in its ancient vaults, and with William Somerville [1692-1742], the poet who wrote _The Chase_. It was not until I actually stood upon his tombstone that my attention was directed to the name of that old author, and to the presence of his relics in this remote and lonely place. Somerville lived and died at Edston Hall, near Wootton-Wawen, and was famous in his day as a Warwickshire squire and huntsman. His grave is in the chancel of the church, the following excellent epitaph, written by himself, being inscribed upon the plain blue stone that covers it:--

H. S. E. OBIIT 17. JULY. 1742. GULIELMUS SOMERVILE. ARM. SI QUID IN ME BONI COMPERTUM HABEAS, IMITATE. SI QUID MALI, TOTIS VIRIBUS EVITA. CHRISTO CONFIDE, ET SCIAS TE QUOQUE FRAGILEM ESSE ET MORTALEM.

Such words have a meaning that sinks deep into the heart when they are read upon the gravestone that covers the poet's dust. They came to me like a message from an old friend who had long been waiting for the opportunity of this solemn greeting and wise counsel. Another epitaph written by Somerville,--and one that shows equally the kindness of his heart and the quaintness of his character,--appears upon a little, low, lichen-covered stone in Wootton-Wawen churchyard, where it commemorates his huntsman and butler, Jacob Bocter, who was hurt in the hunting-field, and died of this accident:--

H. S. E. JACOBUS BOCTER. GULIELMO SOMERVILE ARMIGRO PROMUS ET CANIBUS VENATICIS PRAEPOSITOR DOMI. FORISQUE FIDELIS EQUO INTER VENANDUM CORUENTE ET INTESTINIS GRAVITER COLLISIS POST TRIDUUM DEPLORANDUS. OBIIT 28 DIE JAN., ANNO DNI 1719. AETAT 38.

The pilgrim who rambles as far as Wootton-Wawen will surely stroll onward to Henley-in-Arden. The whole of that region was originally covered by the Forest of Arden[42]--the woods that Shakespeare had in mind when he was writing _As You Like It_, a comedy whereof the atmosphere, foliage, flowers, scenery, and spirit are purely those of his native Warwickshire. Henley, if the observer may judge by the numerous inns that fringe its long, straggling, picturesque street, must once have been a favourite halting-place for the coaches that plied between London and Birmingham. They are mostly disused now, and the little town sleeps in the sun and seems forgotten.[43] There is a beautiful specimen of the ancient market-cross in its centre,--gray and sombre and much frayed by the tooth of time. Close beside Henley, and accessible in a walk of a few minutes, is the church of Beaudesert, which is one of the most precious of the ecclesiastic gems of England. Here you will see architecture of mingled Saxon and Norman,--the solid Norman buttress, the castellated tower, the Saxon arch moulded in zigzag, which is more ancient than the dog-tooth, and the round, compact columns of the early English order. Above the church rises a noble mound, upon which, in the middle ages, stood a castle,--probably that of Peter de Montfort,--and from which a comprehensive and superb view may be obtained, over many miles of verdant meadow and bosky dell, interspersed with red-roofed villages from which the smoke of the cottage chimneys curls up in thin blue spirals under the gray and golden sunset sky. An old graveyard encircles the church, and by its orderly disorder,--the quaint, graceful work of capricious time,--enhances the charm of its venerable and storied age. There are only one hundred and forty-six persons in the parish of Beaudesert. I was privileged to speak with the aged rector, the Rev. John Anthony Pearson Linskill, and to view the church under his kindly guidance. In the ordinary course of nature it is unlikely that we shall ever meet again, but his goodness, his benevolent mind, and the charm of his artless talk will not be forgotten.[44] My walk that night took me miles away,--to Claverdon, and home by Bearley; and all the time it was my thought that the best moments of our lives are those in which we are touched, chastened, and ennobled by parting and by regret. Nothing is said so often as good-by. But, in the lovely words of Cowper,

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown."