fifth day—ivinghoe to watlington, on the lower icknield way, by aston clinton, weston turville, chinnor, and lewknor

i had to go back to the forking of the icknield way and follow the lower road from ivinghoe. st. mary’s church at ivinghoe stands pleasantly among sycamores and beeches, and next door to a small creeper-covered brewery which is next door to a decent creeper-covered house with round-topped windows and a most cool and comfortable expression. some stout and red-faced men stood talking outside the brewery in cheerful mood. on the opposite side of the road was a green enclosed by a low railing. the village was a straggling one, and there were many newish houses, of pale brick here and there, as well as old timbered cottages. i went into a grocer’s shop at the moment when they were killing a pig on the other side of the wall. neither the shrieking nor the end of it disturbed the stout proprietor cutting up lard and the women talking of the coronation.

grand junction canal.

the road was a dull, straight one going south-westwards over the london and north western railway a mile north of the upper road, and two[177] and a half miles north-west of tring station. it passed allotment gardens and had the company of heavy-laden telegraph-posts, whose wires cut across the terraces or “linces” of southend hill on the right. but if the corn-bunting sang its curst dry monotony on the telegraph-wire a blackbird also sang in an oak. beyond the railway the road was[178] better and had level green edges up to the roses of the high hedge on the right and the low one on the left, over which i could see across the oats to the chilterns lying dark under the sun. on the other side of the barley, which was a cold and bluish green, rose marsworth church tower to the right. the reservoirs beyond the turning to marsworth were broad and rough-edged, and with some trimmed poplars at a corner, a straight rank of trimmed elm trees near the further edge, and the line of telegraph-wires on this side, they made a foreign scene, against the background of the chilterns, of a fascinating dreariness; one man was fishing from the bank. crossing the canal i was in hertfordshire, which i left at the far side of the last reservoir. these dreary waters had attracted some thickets which the sedge-warbler loved and sang in, as by the wilstone reservoir. the inns (where they provide for anglers) and the houses near the locks had the look of canalside and wharfside settlements, a certain squalor more than redeemed by the individuality. the unpopulated hills on the left of it, and the vale of aylesbury on the right, emphasized this half-urban, half-marine character. the road here was very much broken into sharp turns not always by a crossing. immediately after the last reservoir, before the turning to drayton beauchamp, the road was at its best, winding between not too level green edges of unequal breadth, and hedges of thorns and roses and a few ash trees; and on the edges the grass had been cut and was lying across the low clover. doves cooed and a lark[179] overhead sang “as if he never would be old.” then, at a bend where a ditch came in and had a willow above it and some meadow-sweet round about, a sedge-warbler was singing, the soul of a little world ten yards across. the crossing of the road to drayton was one i shall not forget. the signpost pointed back to ivinghoe, forward to aylesbury, buckland, and aston clinton, on the right to puttenham, on the left to drayton. there was a small crook to the left before my road went forward again. in the midst of the meeting ways the signpost had a green triangle to stand on. also, each road had green borders which all widened to the crossing; some of the borders had rushes. the road to puttenham swelled up a little and fell, and over the rim showed the trees of the vale. ahead and to the left were the wooded downs. as i left the signpost i had a very sweet, gentle-spoken “good morning” from a traveller coming towards me, a little and rickety dark foreign man, cheerful and old, carrying a thick satchel on his back and looking neither to the right nor to the left.

instead of going on into akeman street and then turning at right angles along it for a mile, i took a path half a mile on this side of it which led towards buckland church. where the path crossed the first hedge, a narrow, low embankment went off to the left along the hedge, followed by the path to the church and entering at last an elmy and nettly lane. buckland village has many elm trees, plain little houses, twisting lanes, and a “buck’s head” in a dim corner of them. its church is of[180] alternating flints and freestone, but the tower all of stone. it was a very cool place with a slow, muffled, beating clock and a carpet of sun lying across the floor from the netted open door. one of the tablets on the wall was to judith ——. high on the wall under the tower was an inscription saying:—

“near this place, together with those of an infant daughter, lie the earthly remains of frances russell, relict of william russell of great missenden, daughter of edward and frances horwood of this place. she died october 8, 1793, aged 73 years.

“the fleeting moments of prosperity, the tedious hours of adversity, and the lingering illness which providence allotted, she bore with equanimity and christian resignation.

“reader! go and do likewise.”

it was a rusty and dusty inscription read mostly by the bellringers standing under the tower, and one of the most dismal certificates of life, marriage, motherhood, religion, death and the philosophy of relatives that i have seen. it was cheerful afterwards to read the name of peter parrot on a tombstone out in the sun.

aston clinton.

past buckland church, i turned to the right and almost at once to the left along a road which went through a hayfield and then became a borderless hedged road, but with parallel marks as of traffic on the left. it came out opposite aston clinton church into akeman street, a main road of elms, chestnuts, and telegraph-poles, going through a typical “peaceful” village street, with a smithy and a “rose and crown,” “swan,” and “palm in hand,” an advertisement of petrol, a horse’s brass trappings gleaming under a tree, and in the park on the left hand a peacock proclaiming the neighbourhood of a large house. i had to turn to the right along akeman street for a quarter mile before turning out to the left into a road with houses facing the park. they were poor cottages, a little sordid and all jammed in a row, and three public houses amongst them. past these houses the road was a dull, straight one under elms, with a clear view over a level beanfield to the downs and their trees, with bright tops and dark, misty shadows below. presently a brooklet appeared alongside the road among willow-herb and overhung by alder, elder, and willow, and at the beginning of weston turville it provided entertainment for half a hundred ducklings. the road went through the midst of weston turville and among inns on both sides and down the turnings, a “vine,” a “chequers,” a “plough,” a “six bells,” a “black horse,” a “chandos,” and a “crown,” followed not much beyond the church by a “marquis of granby” and a “swan”—but these were at world’s end. it was a village with here a house and there two or three round a square of streets, with the manor-house and elmy church tower outside it to the south; and between the houses there were intervals of garden. i noticed a little house lost between the great bare trunks of half a forest of trees in a timber merchant’s yard. i found an inn which had a straight settle facing a curved one of elm with a sloping back and reasonable arm-rests. there were quoits on pegs under[183] the ceiling, and above the usual circular target for darts; the open fireplace had a kitchen range placed in it. the floor was composed of bluish-black and red tiles alternating.

i did not make certain how the icknield way went through weston turville, though a possible course seemed to turn left on entering the village and go by brook farm and malthouse row, and a little west of the old manor-house and by the “vine.” unless it took some such course, it could hardly have got to terrick and little kimble, but must rather have gone straight on through stoke mandeville, kimblewick, and owlswick and into the road now marked “lower icknield way” at pitch green. i went past the weston reservoir to world’s end, and then over the wendover and aylesbury road only a mile north of wendover, having clearly in view the obelisk on coombe hill, and a little later the towered ellesborough church looking ghostly in the sunlight under beacon hill. the hay was cut on both sides, and the road wound between broad borders of thistles and nettles. near terrick i saw the first meadow crane’s-bill of that season and that country—the purple flower whose purple is the emblem of a rich inward burning passion. at the very edges of the roadside turf the white clover grew. in the hawthorns a blackbird sang.

soon i came to kimble station on the aylesbury branch of the great western and great central junction railway, and some new houses, one of them named “beware of the dogs.” under the[184] railway i turned left to risborough and longwick, not right to hartwell. and now the road settled down to a fairly straight course for about ten miles, with meadow-sweet and rose in its low hedges and a view over the wheat to the chilterns. it was usually about a hundred feet lower than the upper way, and from one to two miles north of it. it was crossed by hardly any road more important than itself, except that from thame to princes risborough. at this crossing, outside “the duke of wellington” or “sportsman’s arms,” a street organ played “beside the seaside” and other national anthems. little more than a mile beyond i entered oxfordshire. i left the road to see chinnor church, half a mile south, which looks southward on the juniper-dotted hills skirted by the upper way. the most notable thing in the church was an oval tablet near the screen inscribed with the words:—

beneath

lie

the remains of

william turner

esqre

who died 23rd march

1797 aged 61

“here the wicked cease

from troubling and

the weary are

at rest.”

the word “here” my fancy took quite literally, and i saw a skeleton cramped behind the tablet protesting to the living that there, inside the wall, denuded of flesh and of all organs, nerves, and desires, a wicked man ceased from troubling and[185] a weary one could be at rest; the teeth of the skeleton shook in their dry sockets as it, now a hundred and ten years old, uttered those sweet words: “here the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.” some of the dead outside bore formidable monosyllabic names, such as wall, crook, saw, and cocks. at the “royal oak” i listened for half an hour to information and complaints about the heat, which was at the time about ninety degrees in the shade, and then went out to make the most of the heat itself, which i could well do, having myself, as a good critic has pronounced, an unvarying temperature of about forty-five degrees (fahr.).

i left the “bird in hand” and a squat, white windmill on the left and entered a fine green road going straight south-west. one of the hedges was high enough for shade, in the other some young chestnut trees were growing up. after some distance the left half of the road was rough and had a ditch along it; then a tiny stream flowed across, and the way lost its left hedge and went slightly raised between wheat and oats, poppy and tall, pale scabious. after that i had clover and bird’s-foot trefoil and bedstraw and rest-harrow underfoot—corn on the left as far as elms in masses, and behind these the chilterns—corn on the right and ridges of elms beyond. then another rillet traversed the road and cooled the feet. in places the grass was very long. crossing the road to kingston blount the way was more used and rougher; as before it had corn on both hands—barley and oats speckled[186] like a partridge. then a third rillet, and then wheat, barley, oats, and beans in turn; on the other side of the way wych-elms. there were always elms, and here and there a farm under them, beyond the corn on the left. aston rowant lay near on my left, with a towered church, a big house, and men upon a rick, at the edge of the elms. to cross the aston road my way made a slight crook to the left and then skirted the hay of aston rowant park, with elms and sweet limes amidst the hay: it was a good grass and clover track, not deeply rutted. presently in the mowed and cleared fields on both sides cattle were walking out from milking. with another slight crook to the left the way crossed the high wycombe and stokenchurch and oxford road, where yellow-hammers were singing in the beeches alongside the telegraph-posts. my way was now a hard road bordered by beeches and firs, through which i could see the tower of lewknor church across a hayfield. a willow-wren, with a voice like the sweet voice of someone a thousand years away, was singing among the tops of the trees. below, briers and thorns were interwoven, and silver-weed grew at the edge of the dust. some country people say that silver-weed is good for the feet, a belief which might well have no better foundation than the fact that it grows commonly close to the road which is cruel to the feet. on the right i passed a little deserted lodge with pointed windows and doorway gaping blank, and on the left a wood of beech, elm, and chestnut shadowing a wall in which there was a door barricaded almost to the lintel by nettles.[187] this cool wood was full of the chiding of blackbirds and one thrush’s singing. near the end this piece of road turns decidedly to the left; but over the wall on the right are some signs of a track which had not this southward bend. at the end of the present road, but a little way to the right along the road to wheatfield, which it enters, is moor court, a small old house of bricks and tiles, with wings at each side, and a massive stone chimney at the road end; and it has a range of thatched farm buildings and a line of lombardy poplars all enclosed in a wet moat. a little farther up, a farm road, which might have continued the track on the right of the road just quitted, turns out to the left and with a short break leads to pyrton and cuxham and brightwell baldwin and so to wallingford; or from pyrton the route might be to watcombe manor, britwell, and ewelme. but the lower icknield way is, to judge from the map, supposed to give up its individuality at moor court and make straight away through lewknor and by sheepcote lane to join the upper road. there seems no good reason why this connection between the two, if it were such, should have been more than a convenience for a few travellers, unless we suppose that the very hilly and uneven portion of the upper road, between the beginning of the separation and chinnor hill, so frequently became impassable that it was abandoned for short or long periods or altogether. but as a road close to ewelme was known in the seventeenth century as the lower icknield way, i was determined to go by ewelme. from moor court i went down to the[188] pretty group of a smithy, a “leather bottle,” and lewknor’s towered church at the crossing, where i entered the high road, making past shirburn castle to watlington. at watlington the road bends sharp to the right, and so comes into line with the lower icknield way, as it was near moor court.

this road between the chilterns and the corn was followed by a single line of telegraph wire. it had a slightly raised green edge on the right, marked by footpaths. it went within a few yards of the moated castle of shirburn. here, says the marvelling countryside, the drawbridge is nightly drawn up, presumably with the philanthropic motive of giving work to somebody. i wished to see the castle as the home of a library which has lately given to the world a collection of ballads from manuscript of the early sixteenth century—“the shirburn ballads.” but a great length of eight-foot wall alongside the road shut off the view. it was a bad wall too, and could not be liked or admired for its own sake. i succeeded only in seeing one new battlemented tower, which, i was told, supplied water for the castle laundry. the best thing at shirburn was almost opposite the castle entrance—a narrow strip of land raised above the road, and protected from it by a row of goodly elm trees, so that i walked between a high hedge and them in a private coolness and green gloom as of an airy church about a hundred yards long. on the hedge side of this strip there was a depression which might have been the old road: or perhaps at one time[189] the elms stood in the middle of the road like those yonder on the upper icknield way under watlington hill. hereby they have set up the reputed remains of one of queen eleanor’s funeral crosses.

watlington.

watlington is a big square village of no great beauty or extraordinary antiquity, all of a piece and rustic, but urban in its compression of house against house. a castle stood at the north edge near the present church. the oxford road bounds[190] the town on its garden side, where farm-houses begin and cottages with gardens of monkshood and roses. near this road there was a “pleasure fair,” where the roundabouts and swings of some travelling company were putting in time on their way to a bigger town and a regular engagement. there must be great wisdom in the men of watlington, to be able to harmonize their grave, rustic streets with the town-bred music as of a steam-engine in pain. it was a feat i could not accomplish. the most i could do was to go into a taproom, where the music did not penetrate and the weary were at rest. it was a most beautiful evening, and the swifts were shrieking low down along the deserted streets at nine o’clock. i should like to see them crowded with sheep from ilsley, and the old drover wearing a thistle in his cap, or with welsh ponies going to stokenchurch fair over the chilterns. but there is no market at watlington, and nothing but a “pleasure” fair; a cheap week-end railway ticket to london pleases the country people by making them feel near london, whether they go or not; and it may encourage new residents. this was what my host wanted; his taproom was much too peaceful for living men, though he liked well enough to smoke his last pipe there, sitting in his shirt sleeves until the silent room was quite dark and his children came home from the roundabouts. a man came heavily down the street wheeling a barrow, stopped outside and called for a pint; while he waited he ruminated, looking down the street to the first stars and whistling “beside the seaside, beside the sea,”[191] then he tipped up his tankard, emptied it, and went off in a determined manner.

when i went up to bed i was astonished to find a bedroom that was not at all new to me, though i had never before, to my knowledge, stopped at this inn. if it was an illusion, the pictures created it. i had certainly seen them before, in wales, in cornwall, in wiltshire, and in kent. what first caught my eye was a beauteous female of a far from slender type kneeling unharmed in the midst of roaring waters. she had on a snowy night-dress, over which her curls flowed far down in admirable disorder. the foam of the sea flew all over and round her without wetting her night-dress or taking the gloss out of her curls. her face also seemed unaffected by her extraordinary position on a small, isolated rock in the sea, and wore an expression that would have been better suited to an afflicted lady in her own apartment. she was suffering, but not from exposure to cold and wet, and what was more extraordinary still was, that on this solitary rock she had found a quantity of thick, velvety stuff, and on this, as was natural, she was kneeling to save her tender knees from the unaccustomed rock.

on the opposite wall hung a similar picture, i suppose by the same artist, for surely there could be only one man who had these marvellous visions—visions they must have been, since no one could invent things so improbable and, without their visionary character, so ridiculous. here also the scene was a wild sea and a rock in the midst. one beauteous girl of the same type as in the other pic[192]ture was in the water, another had apparently just clambered up on to the rock. i say apparently, but her night-dress was dry, snow-white, and untorn. i say apparently, because i could only imagine that the two had been swimming together and one had got first to the rock; for it was not likely that one should find herself on a rock in this position and then by mere chance see a fellow-mortal of the same sex, age, beauty, and costume struggling with the waves close by. her struggle was nearly over, for the beauty on the rock, kneeling on the velvet carpet which, by a fortunate accident, almost covered it, bent over in an attitude of much grace and caught her unhappy sister by one of her fair hands. the face of the swimmer was upturned and exquisitely sad, but, as in the other picture, it was not the sadness of a swimmer in stormy and dark waters, but rather of a lady inwardly tormented by some difficulty of the “heart” or of the “spirit,” to use a popular physiology. her sadness was great, and naturally so; but i should have expected to see astonishment mingled with it, because what could be seen of her night-dress was dry as it had ever been in the linen cupboard at her stately home; and her hair, though loose, was not untidy and would have pleased a lover, had she confessed one and had he, instead of another lady, been aiding her in distress. i had last seen these two pictures at tregaron, and i sighed with a serene and pleasant recollection of the place, the season, and the company.

i was glad also to see a third work of the same artist, or at least of the same school. it belonged[193] to a different period, geological rather than marine; and again it must be insisted that the work was visionary because no one capable of a mere invention so ridiculous is likely to have the power and the patience to execute it with such completeness and finish. the scene was midnight in a valley of rocks and of high, precipitous, rocky sides, wide enough apart to have admitted a mountain torrent of some size. but it was dry, and over the sharp rocks went a most beautiful lady. she was dressed in thin and clinging garments from her shoulders down to her ankles. to meet a woman so beautiful and so suitably and yet unusually dressed all alone in the mountains would be at least as surprising as to see her on a little rock in the sea as one was passing in a storm. i could imagine her easily upon the velvet-covered rock. her arms were bare, and with one she clasped a book to her left breast, while with the other she felt her way along the precipitous wall of the valley and steadied herself over the cruel rocks. it was to be noticed that there was no velvet over these rocks, and this is another proof of the genuineness of the artist’s vision, unless it should be suspected that he disliked the appearance of a long strip of carpet all down a valley. a fierce and extravagant vision, you will say. but the gentleness which had somehow ensured the carpet in the marine vision had not been eclipsed in the geological. from the edge of the farther wall of the valley shone a light. someone was up there with a lantern and was turning its beams down on to the spot under the fair traveller’s feet. there[194] could be little doubt that he was following her along with the light, but he could not be seen. the lantern would have been more natural in a narrow alley in a town, but there was no question here of mere nature. if it comes to nature, was there ever a period when a woman of such beauty, and of very great refinement, strayed out with a book among inhospitable mountains, clad in a dress that was fitted rather to suggest and even display the form of limbs and bosom than to protect them from rocks, thorns, and weather, not to speak of men and other wild beasts? a voluptuous oriental or frenchman might of course sit down and invent an earthly paradise with a small population of like beauties, but their object would be as unmistakable as it would be objectionable to persons of sensibility and discipline, except when alone or off their guard. but an englishman or a german could only have copied such a picture from a vision having nothing to do with the flesh, and a charge of any such thing would recoil upon the accuser. i believe it was by an englishman or a german. i should like to see some of the work of his less visionary moods. i should like to see him with his family, talking to his wife about the butcher’s bill and his daughter’s marriage—i should like to know if he had a daughter or a child at all. i should like to see him with his friends after dinner, and reading mr. george moore’s memoirs of my dead life.

i thought at one time that one of the other pictures was by the same man, partly because it is so often to be seen with his work and appeals to[195] the same people, such as myself, and partly because it had a similar detachment from modern life; but i could not feel sure that it was the result of a vision and not of pure invention. the scene was a summer garden sloping down to a river, and at the foot of the slope a terrace of turf and a flight of steps to the water. on the terrace four girls were having tea. they were much thinner than those on the rocks; they wore white clinging dresses and their heads were bare. they were all smiling and their faces were such that no man could imagine a god, providence, fate, parent, lover, doctor or little boy in the street hard-hearted enough to interrupt the smiles. human beings like them are not to be seen now, and no portraits or records of them in the past have come down to us. they seemed born to eat chocolate and drink sweet lemonade and never suffer from the consequences. there had been five of them, but one stood on the bottom step feeding two swans without any apparent effort. she had a hat in her hand either because a hat is more beautiful than a hand or because it is more easy to draw. she was hanging down her head thinking of something—or it might be nothing—unconnected with the swans or the slow, still river. behind her a person whose mouth would not melt butter stood looking at her back. he was dressed in pretty breeches and buckled shoes, and was interesting chiefly as making the observer marvel what witty power had added a creature so appropriate to such a company. as marvellous must have been the artist’s invention. if it could[196] be imagined that dresses should, out of their own spirit, magically produce beings to wear them they would be like these five ladies; and if dainty breeches, silk stockings, and buckled shoes should have the same power they would unfold a man like the lover. the effect of the whole was to suggest summer, a lovely and harmless place (for the artist’s fresh water would not drown, any more than his sea water would wet a night-dress), wealth, luxury, happiness, youth, frivolity, innocence, benevolence—to suggest them, especially to those who know very little of these things.

there were several pictures of scenery. one showed a steep and very romantic forest road. it was deep in snow, and enormous trees, whose roots were nourished in hades, towered up above on either hand, but let in the light of a full moon that shone straight down the road. towards the moon and up the road went a tall, mantled traveller, leaning on a staff and turning his head to look into the wood. the picture had no name, text, or explanation. it was a nameless man and a nameless traveller, both unknown to history. nothing was happening. it was simply a combination of four or five grand, simple elements; a mighty forest—a moon—snow—a solitary road—a tall traveller.

one of the other pictures was the same, except that a foaming river took the place of the snowy road. the forest and the moon were the same. the traveller was not there, and to one who had seen the last picture there was a touch of tragedy in his absence which atoned for it; he might have[197] been surprised at the very moment when the snowy road was being changed into a foaming river. those who had not seen the other had to be content with a moon, a romantic forest, a river running down through it, and foam instead of snow. it hardly seemed to me to be enough—lacking the human interest. a small flock of sheep among the trees, with or even without a shepherd, would have made a vital difference, and the picture could then also have been recognized by purchasers and recipients of christmas cards. and this picture was one which would appeal to those who knew the kind of thing depicted. rough woodlanders and their wives, people who have suffered in snow, poor men who have travelled alone and leaned on their staffs, would gladly put both pictures on their walls. there were photographs of such people on the mantelpiece, people whom no best clothes or photographer’s polish could turn into poetic heroes or cigar-box beauties; men with queer hairy faces, legs bent like oak branches, and eyes squinting at the photographer; women their equals, but if anything more hardened, more tortured, more smiling upon the occasion of being photographed.

between photographs of a gamekeeper, whose face was like a furze bush with eyes in it, and a card of mourning for jane mary sims, aged seventy-three, hung a picture seeming to have little to do with either. it was of a high-born and well-dressed lady with regular features and graceful, mature figure sitting beside a cradled child. she was bending over towards the child, and her face, though[198] composed, was sorrowful. had she looked up she would have seen an unusual sight, and it was a mercy that she did not, for it would have certainly upset her composure through astonishment and fear. for not many feet from her was the head of a human being who was coming towards her head foremost through the window, or more probably the ceiling. i say a human being because her body—it was a mature and athletic, slender lady—was of the same general form, size, and proportions as those of our own species, and she wore the clinging night-dress so much favoured by the visionary artist. but she had wings attached to her shoulders, not large enough to be of any use, supposing her to have learned their management, but sufficient to make part of a becoming fancy dress or fairy dancing costume. she had apparently dived from some height, and in a bewitching attitude was making straight for the cradle. as she was no ariel’s sister capable of playing “i’ th’ plighted clouds,” the danger both to her and to the cradle was great. she faced it with no sign of fear, her soft eyes and her even and not too full lips expressing a mind in tranquillity and scarcely, if at all, stirred by expectation or surmise. there was no sequel to this daring but painful picture, nor, of course, any explanation. it was, i should say, the fancy of a genius who had mingled the common and the improbable in dreams produced by opium or other drug.