Part 7

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

"From whose high towers they say Men saw the goodly hills of Somerset, And white sails flying o'er a yellow sea."

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.

Cardiff's municipal buildings are a delight; white stone palaces standing in ample grounds with wide pleasant approaches--altogether models of what civic structures ought to be. Immense and busy as it is, there is little in Cardiff to detain one on such a pilgrimage as ours, and we were away before noon on the Swansea road.

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.