Part 11

"How doth the little busy bee Employ each shining hour, By gath'ring honey all the day From ev'ry opening flower."

Meanwhile, Thomson was sipping nectar (which is Greek for brandy-punch) with my Lord Hertford, and babbling of other things than green fields. In fact, the literary Lady Hertford found the poet of the "Seasons" to be a drunkard, and he was not invited to any more of her parties.

The house passed at length to the Dukes of Northumberland, who neglected it, and at last leased it to a Mr. Cotterell, an innkeeper, who with prophetic vision saw custom coming down the road in an increasing tide. Appropriately known as the "Castle," it remained an hotel until January 5, 1843, when its doors were finally closed, to be re-opened as the home of the newly established "Marlborough College."

For nearly a century the "Castle" entertained the best society in the land. Forty-two coaches passed through the town every day when it was at the height of its prosperity, and a goodly proportion of their occupants stayed here. Take, in fact, the lists of distinguished arrivals at Bath during that time, and you have practically a visitors' list of the "Castle."

Marlborough College was established in this house of entertainment, and new buildings have been added from time to time; but the old "Castle Hotel" may yet be traced from its characteristic architecture. Amid its pleasant lawns and gardens rises that prehistoric hill on which Marlborough Castle was built. Indeed, here, in this "Castle Mound," is the very fount and origin of the town, whose very name is supposed to derive from this earthwork, being the grave of the magician Merlin, who with his enchantments is said to lie here still, until Britain shall be in need of him again. "Merleberg," or "Merlin's town," is said to have been Marlborough's first name, and the crest over the town arms still represents the Mound, with a motto in Latin to "the bones of the wise Merlin."[4]

XXXIII

[Sidenote: _THE KENNET_]

When the traveller leaves Marlborough he bids good-bye, for many miles yet to come, to the pleasant forest groves, the rich, low-lying pastures, and the fishful streams that have bordered the road hitherto. The valley of the Kennet is, it is true, near by, and for the next six miles it may be glimpsed, on the left, like some Promised Land of Plenty; but the road itself is bare. The "green pastures and still waters" of the Psalmist, indeed, you think when mounting gradually out of Marlborough you see the pleasant water-meadows afar off as you toil up the shoulder of the downs, passing a picturesque roadside inn, the "Marquis of Ailesbury's Arms," and the village of Fyfield on the way, with a glimpse of Manton village down below, amid its elms and farmyards by the windings of the stream.

Fyfield (how many dozens of Fyfields are there in England?) is tiny, clean, and quaint, with a pinnacled church tower on to whose roof you look down from the road, and may glimpse in a backward glance the whole of the district traversed since Savernake Forest was left behind. There, in long dark clumps upon the distant hilly horizon are the grand avenues of that forest; the Bath Road descending from them like a white ribbon into Marlborough town, whose houses are hid, only the church towers shining white in the sun, against a green background. Ahead rises unenclosed downland, with chalky, flint-strewn road, the unenclosed wastes of green-grey grass, broken here and there with mounds, grass-grown too.

[Sidenote: _MARLBOROUGH DOWNS_]

On the left hand, at the distance of half a mile, perhaps, rises the church of West Overton, an offence here in its newness, for this road is Roman, these mounds are ancient British graves, and everywhere, look in what direction you will on these bleak and treeless wastes, are the mysterious vestiges of a people who had no arts, no science, no literature, who lived, in fact, a savage nomadic life, but who, for all those disabilities, have left records of their passing that may well remain when the civilization of to-day has perished. On these downs are countless tumuli; in the hollows are unnumbered thousands of stones, brought no one knows whence, or for what purpose, and the remains of cromlechs may be seen that add to the complex puzzle of the wherefore of it all. West Kennet village stands in the succeeding hollow, like some shamed modern trespasser, amid these prehistoric remains which appear, Sphinx-like, on the sky-line or stand lonely in the folds of the barren hills.

The district seems to have been a metropolis of the prehistoric dead (if, indeed, all these ruined stone avenues and circles are sepulchral), or some vast open-air cathedral of a forgotten faith; if they have a religious rather than a mortuary significance. For, but little over a mile distant, are the remains of the so-called "Druid Temple" at Avebury, a monument second only to Stonehenge in mystery, and a good deal more impressive in appearance; while, frowning down upon the highway, and standing immediately beside it, is that "greatest earthwork in Europe," Silbury Hill.

Avebury village stands on the road to Swindon, on the borders of Marlborough Downs, and has been built within a great circle which appears to have been approached by an avenue of standing stones. A few of these may still be observed, standing beside the hedgeless road. Some idea of the vast size and impressive aspect of this circular monument of those dim ages before history began may be obtained when it is said that it consists of an excavation 40 feet deep and 4442 feet in circumference, encircled on the outer side with an earthwork 40 feet high, the whole enclosing nearly 29 acres. On the inner brink of this deep fosse there are now left thirty-five huge stones out of the original number of about one thousand. Nine of these are upright, ten thrown down, and sixteen buried. Traces of pits show where the farmers of many years ago dug up the others and took them away for building-stones or gateposts. Over six hundred and fifty others are known to have been destroyed, the cottages of Avebury and the roads having been built of their fragments. How the unknown builders of this weird place could have brought these huge rocks, some of them measuring fourteen feet in length, and all weighing many tons a-piece, from unguessed distances, remains a mystery.

[Sidenote: _AVEBURY_]

The first mention of Avebury Temple is by Aubrey the antiquary. It was in 1648 that he first saw the place, which seems, curiously enough, to have been until then quite unknown. He came upon it quite by chance, when hunting, and must have been astonished at the discovery of so extraordinary a place. His account of it led that kingly amateur of science, Charles the Second, to visit Avebury on his way to Bath in 1668. Pepys, too, going to Bath, unexpectedly happened both upon Avebury and Silbury Hill, and viewed them and the sepulchral barrows that, crowned with pine trees, look down from the hill sides, with an admiration not unmixed with a superstitious dread.

The road to Swindon goes straight through this great earthwork, and is crossed midway by another; together, with part of the village built within the circle, cutting it up lamentably.

[Sidenote: _SILBURY HILL_]

Silbury Hill, which stands within sight, is a fitting pendant to these mysteries. Antiquaries have contended together in referring both to ancient Britons, Phoenicians, Danes, Saxons, and even Romans, and are divided in opinion as to their object: whether they were intended for Druids' or Snake-worshippers' temples, or whether they marked the last resting-places of those slain in some great battle fought before the dawn of history. That Silbury Hill stood here when the Romans came seems, however, to be certain from the fact that the old Roman road from _Cunetio_ to _Aquæ Solis_ (the existing Bath Road between Marlborough and Bath), engineered along the whole of its course in a perfectly straight line, swerves slightly from the south base of the hill, evidently to avoid injuring it. A learned antiquary (but the most learned must be reduced to the level of the most ignorant before these mute earthworks) considers that Silbury was raised to commemorate a battle, probably Arthur's second and last battle of Badon Hill. The same authority thinks Avebury to be a burying-place of the dead slain in a great battle, and planned to show the dispositions of the forces engaged on either side.

But Silbury remains inscrutable. It is wholly an artificial hill, somewhat pyramidical in shape, and 170 feet in height. Its base covers five acres of ground, and was once surrounded by a stone circle, of which scanty traces are now left. The contents of it are estimated at 468,170 cubic yards of earth. Repeated attempts have been made to pluck out the heart of this mystery, but without success. So far back as 1777 it was mined from above by a party of Cornish miners, who worked under the direction of the then Duke of Northumberland and others, but nothing was discovered. Then in 1849 it was tunnelled from the base to the centre, where a space of twelve feet in diameter was examined, with the same disappointing result. Antiquaries consequently regard Silbury with hungry and expectant eyes.

Just beyond this baffling relic stands the Beckhampton inn, where the "coaches dined" and changed teams, and where the Bath Road divides into the two routes; the right-hand road going through Calne, Chippenham, and Box; the other reaching Bath by way of Devizes and Melksham. Some coaches went one way and some the other. The crack coaches, including the "Beaufort Hunt," went by the former, which is two and a half miles shorter, and is the classic route, and always the one selected nowadays by record-breaking cyclists.

XXXIV

The road between Newbury and Bath was in coaching days known as the "lower ground." So far as physical geography goes, however, the land is a great deal higher, and much more hilly than the "upper ground" between London and Newbury, and it is not to be wondered at that accidents would sometimes happen here. This, then, was the scene of an accident to a coach driven by a gay young blade, one "Jack Everett;" an accident in which he and an elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both sufferers were put into a cart filled with straw, and taken to the nearest surgeon. On the road into Marlborough the coachman beguiled the tedium of the way and the pain of his injured limb by saying to the old lady, "I have often kissed a young woman, and I don't see why I shouldn't kiss an old one"--and he suited the action to the words.

[Sidenote: _THE CHERHILL WHITE HORSE_]

Beckhampton inn, whose real sign is the "Waggon and Horses," is the place mentioned by Dickens in the "Bagman's Story" in the _Pickwick Papers_. It remains as old-fashioned to-day as ever,[5] but does not very closely resemble the word-picture Dickens draws of it. He probably made acquaintance with the downs and the inn only in passing on his way between Bath and London in 1835. It stands at a spot where the road promises to become more cheerful and less gaunt and inhospitable; but the promise is not kept, the way going inexorably again along downs as bare as before, for another two miles. All the way between here and Cherhill village the "Lansdowne Column" is seen crowning the rolling hills to the left front. Built within the ramparts of an ancient hill-fort of the Danes, who encamped naturally enough in the most inaccessible position they could find, this "column," which is an obelisk, is an exceedingly prominent object in every direction. As one proceeds and turns the flank of the hill, the strange sight of a trotting White Horse is seen carved in the chalk of its swelling shoulder. This is not one of the ancient White Horses that decorate the hillsides of some parts of the West County and date from Anglo-Saxon times, but dates only from 1780, when it was cut by Dr. Allsop, an eccentric physician of Calne. The site it occupies is said to be the highest point between London and Bath, and the White Horse is supposed to be visible for thirty miles--which there is no occasion to believe. The figure measures 157 feet from head to tail, and the eye alone is 12 feet in diameter. The way the figure was designed is just a little curious.

No one could possibly have correctly traced the outlines of so huge an affair, except by external aid, which probably accounts for the bad drawing of the ancient examples. Dr. Allsop adopted the plan of stationing himself on the downs in full view of the rough draft, so to speak, which he had already staked out with flags, and of shouting directions to his workmen by the aid of a speaking-trumpet.

The hillside is so steep at this point that when the White Horse was restored in 1876, a workman was nearly killed by a truck load of chalk descending upon him down the slope.

Passing this interesting spot and the village of Cherhill, which lies hidden to the right of the road, the highway reaches Calne through its suburb of Quemerford, along a flat road.

XXXV

[Sidenote: _CALNE_]

Calne (whose name be pleased to pronounce "Carne") is not a pleasing place. Once the seat of a cloth-making industry, it has seen its trade utterly decay, and is only now regaining something of its commerce in the very different staple of bacon-curing. One does not contemn Calne on account of its misfortunes, but it must always have been a slipshod place. "Calne," according to Hartley Coleridge, who described his father's three years' residence there, "is not a very pretty place. The soil is clayey and chalky; the streams far from crystal; the hills bare and shapeless; the trees not venerable; the town itself irregular, which is its only beauty. But there were good, comfortable, unintellectual people in it." With all of which one may agree; save that the "irregularity" of the town is now rather sluttish than beautiful. As for the people, we are but travelling the road, and Calne is only an incident on our way--the people of it something less to ourselves, resembling, in fact, x, an unknown quantity.

The outskirts of Calne are not prepossessing, nor does the long, stony street of mean characterless stone houses that leads to the centre of the little town alter the stranger's view. Calne, in fact, lying so near Bowood, long the seat of the Marquises of Lansdowne, and being their property, wears an abject, servile look. All that makes life worth living is at lordly Bowood; only that which is mean and commonplace is left to Calne. It seems (although one's prejudices are Conservative) as though some vampire were seated near, sucking away the life-blood of the place.

There are two hills just out of Calne; Black Dog Hill, and Derry Hill, and they lead the traveller through picturesque scenery, past one of the lodges of Bowood, and so down into the flat alluvial lands where the Avon flows, and now and again floods out all the dwellers in those levels. The road down there is dreadfully dull to the pedestrian. To the cyclist, on the other hand, who has for these miles past been struggling up hills he cannot climb, and walking down others he dare not coast, the change is one from a penitential pilgrimage to Paradise.

The entrance to the "ancient and royal" borough of Chippenham is hatefully like that into Calne, whose paltry houses are reproduced there. The centre of the town is, however, of a better character, although the streets are cramped and narrow. A singularly foreign air is given to the place by its balustraded stone bridge across the Avon, and if one cares to pursue the Continental tone further it may be found in the huge factory near by, where "Swiss" Condensed Milk, of the "Milkmaid" brand, is manufactured on an immense scale. For the rest, its cheese and corn markets and bacon-curing keep it very much alive, and a modern (and brutally ugly) Town Hall, built in 1856, shows sufficiently well how trade has grown since the time when the picturesque old Town Hall, still standing, was built in the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: _MAUD HEATH'S CAUSEWAY_]

The most interesting thing in Chippenham is (to borrow a "bull" for the occasion) outside the town. "Maud Heath's Causeway," a stone-pitched path along the road that runs through the heavy clay lands beside the Wiltshire Avon, extends for four and a half miles, from Chippenham to the summit of Bremhillwick Hill. It was made under the will of Maud Heath, who died about 1474, for the benefit of the market folk resorting to Chippenham, who found the low-lying roads almost impassable in winter. Little is known of this old-time benefactress, but legend supplies the lack of knowledge, and the popular belief is that she was a market-woman who, finding the road from Langley Burrell into the town in so dreadful a state, determined to leave the savings of a lifetime for the provision of a stone causeway, so that future generations might go dry-shod to market.

This causeway goes from the north-east side of the town, and continues through Langley Burrell to Tytherton Kellaways, up the shoulder of Bremhillwick Hill. The portion between Chippenham and Langley Burrell was, for some unexplained reason, not constructed until 1852-3.

According to the inscriptions on the stone posts beside it, the Causeway is held to commence at the Hill, and to end at Chippenham--

"From this WICK HILL begins the praise Of MAUD HEATH'S gift to these highways."

At the other end, next Chippenham, where the road joins those from Malmesbury and Draycott, is another stone, with the inscription--

"Hither extendeth MAUD HEATH'S gift, For where I stand is Chippenham Clift."

Midway, on the bridge over the Avon, is another stone--a pillar twelve feet high, erected by the Trustees in 1698, with the following facts recorded on it:--

"To the memory of the worthy MAUD HEATH, of Langley Burrell, Spinster: who in the year of grace, 1474, for the good of travellers, did in charity bestow in land and houses, about eight pounds a year, for ever, to be laid out on the highway and causeway, leading from Wick Hill to Chippenham Clift."

CHIPPENHAM CLIFT. Injure me not. WICK HILL.

A statue of Maud Heath, a purely imaginary likeness of course, since no portrait of her is known to exist, was set up on a pillar on the summit of Bremhillwick Hill in 1838 by the Marquis of Lansdowne and a local clergyman.

The pillar is forty feet high, and the seated statue on the top of it represents Maud Heath in the costume of the period of Edward the Fourth, with a staff in her hand, and a basket by her side. An inscription bids--

"Thou who dost pause on this ærial height, Where MAUD HEATH'S Pathway winds in shade or light, Christian wayfarer in a world of strife, Be still--and ponder on the path of life."

The sentiments are admirable, if a little depressing: the verse atrocious.

[Sidenote: _IMPROVING SENTIMENTS_]

But worse remains. There are three dials on the pillar, with an inscription on the side facing the rising sun--

"VOLAT TEMPUS.

"Oh, early passenger, look up, be wise: And think how, night and day, TIME onward FLIES."

Opposite Noon is the advice, "Whilst we have time, do good."

"QVUM TEMPUS HABEMUS, OPEREMUR BONUM.

"Life steals away--this hour, O man, is lent thee Patient to work the work of Him that sent thee."

For Evening the admonition is not a little alarming--if taken literally.

"REDIBO. TU NUNQUAM.

"Haste, traveller! the sun is sinking low; He shall return again--but NEVER THOU."

The passing wayfarer might well ask why he should never return along this road!

The late vicar of Bremhill did these metrical paraphrases of the Latin which led so tragically, but whose qualities, as verse, resemble the average of the ordinary Pantomime librettist.

Maud Heath's charity is still in existence, and is now worth about £120 per annum, a sum amply sufficient for keeping her Causeway in repair.

XXXVI

Rowden Hill, a mile out of Chippenham, on the road to Bath, is a welcome drop down into level land again, and would be enjoyable were it not for the bad surface. It is while wheeling such hills and such road-metal that one appreciates at the full the pluck and endurance of those early cyclists who raced across them in the early seventies, making the pace on the high bicycles of those times as gallantly as though the terrible jolting they experienced was really enjoyable. That well-known body of cyclists, the Bath Road Club, has numbered some good sportsmen and rare flyers in its time, and though their pace reads ridiculously slow beside that of these pneumatic-tyred days, the performances of those half-forgotten racers were quite as fine, and, conditions being equal, perhaps finer, than the record rides of recent seasons. There was a time--in August, 1870, to be precise--when two cyclists--Gardner and Fisher, did the double journey of 107 miles each way in five days, and men looked upon them as marvellous riders; so perhaps they were, considering the mechanical limitations of the machines they rode, whose like is not to be seen nowadays save in collections of curios. Equally wonderful were those stalwarts who cut away the hours, piece by piece, until their performances were topped by "Wat" Britten on the "ordinary" in 1880, when he did the double journey in 23 hours. There were those who then thought the last word had been said in the matter of Bath Road Records. They must have been astonished when R. C. Nesbitt's "ordinary" record was made on August 1, 1891, when he covered the out and home course in 15 hrs. 40 mins. 34 secs. Improved methods of manufacture may have had something to do with the smashing character of this new performance; but, even so, consider the extraordinary efforts that must have gone toward getting those figures, which cut Britten's by 7 hrs. 20 mins., and at the same time secured one of the rare victories of the "ordinary" over the "safety" pneumatic-tyred bicycle. For this grand ride defeated Mr. Lowe's, made on a "safety," in 1891 by more than 30 minutes.

[Sidenote: _CYCLING HISTORY_]

But that was one of the last expiring efforts of the now obsolete and miscalled "ordinary." It was speedily beaten by J. W. Jarvis, September 20, 1892, who put the figures at 15 hrs. 16 mins. 42 secs.--23 mins. 52 secs. better than the previous best. Then came that hardy Brighton Road record-maker, C. G. Wridgway, whose ride of August 2, 1893, put the clocking at 14 hrs. 22 mins. 57 secs.--a wonderfully heavy lowering of figures. The following year Wridgway established records on both the Brighton and Bath Road within a month; beating his record here of the previous August by his ride on October 4, when he reduced his own time by the astonishing margin of 1 hr. 27 mins. 43 secs.

Time was now cut so close that when W. J. Neasen, of the Anfield Club, essayed the difficult task of lowering it, he only succeeded, on May 11, 1895, in getting inside Wridgway's time by 24 mins. 10 secs., the figures then standing at 12 hrs. 31 mins. 4 secs. H. C. Horswill, of the Essex Wheelers, then beat Neason's performance, in July, 1897, by 24 mins. 34 secs., to be succeeded finally by F. W. Barnes, who on October 30, in the same year, performed the double journey in 11 hrs. 48 mins. 42 secs., and still holds the record.