Chapter IV

Biggleswade--“Instituted” or “intruded”!--A poetical will--The
river Ivel--A day to be remembered--The art of
seeing--Misquotations--The striving after beauty--Stories in
stone--An ancient muniment chest--An angler’s haunt--The town
bridge--The pronunciation of names--St. Neots.

Some three miles or so beyond Astwick we reached high ground, from which we had extensive views to the right over miles of fields and undulating greenery. Shortly after this we dropped down into the drowsy old town of Biggleswade; at least it struck us as being a very drowsy sort of place when we were there, but doubtless it wakes up to a little life and movement once a week, on market-days. Even the Biggleswade dogs looked sleepily inclined, curled up under the shelter of various doorways, hardly indeed condescending to give us a glance as we passed by; whilst the nature of dogs generally is to make the arrival of a stranger in their parts an excuse to rush out and bark at him, good-naturedly or the reverse as the mood moves them. A dog seems to reason with himself, “Barking is the chief pleasure of life; here comes a stranger, let’s have a bark!”

Here we drove into the ancient and rambling stable-yard of an old inn near the market-place, and

[Sidenote: _A SUGGESTIVE WORD_]

handed our horses over to the good keeping of the ostler; and whilst our lunch was being prepared we wandered out to have a look round the town, but found nothing to specially interest us, so all else failing, we sought the church. Even here we did not discover much to reward us, though the open and carved timber roof of the south aisle was good, with its ornamental bosses and corbels formed of sculptured figures of angels, the whole being more or less decayed and the worse for age. On the woodwork are some slight remains of decorative painting.

Placed against the wall of the church we observed a board with the following heading--“The Vicars of Biggleswade,” followed by a list of names of the said vicars, “from 1276 to the present time, with the dates of their Institution.” Glancing down the long list of names, after each we noticed the word “instituted,” followed by the date thereof; but when we came to that of William Raulius, we noted instead of the usual “instituted,” the suggestive word and date “intruded 1658” was inserted!

Of this church my _Paterson’s Roads_, that does duty as a sufficient guide-book for us, remarks: “This substantial ancient edifice was built in the year 1230; it was formerly collegiate, and still contains several of the stalls. The parishioners have all an equal right to any of the seats, for which privilege, however, they are constrained to repair or rebuild the fabric when requisite.” Under the heading of “Biggleswade,” the same excellent road-companion also remarks of Sutton Park, near by, on the road to Potton, “It is traditionally stated that this seat formerly belonged to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who gave it to Roger Burgoyne, ancestor of the present proprietor, by the following laconic grant:--

I, John of Gaunt,
Do give and do grant,
Unto Roger Burgoyne,
And the heirs of his loin,
Both Sutton and Potton,
Until the world’s rotten.

There is also a moated site in the park, still known by the name of John of Gaunt’s Castle.”

Leaving Biggleswade, we crossed the river Ivel, but until the crossing thereof we had no idea that there was a river of such a name in England,--a driving tour is certainly helpful to a better and more minute knowledge of the geography of one’s own land. Then we entered upon a far-reaching level stretch of country, with a great expanse of sunny sky above, and the silvery sheen of stilly waters showing below in slothful river and clear but stagnant dyke. We could trace our road for miles ahead in curving lines lessening to the low horizon, inclining first this way and then that, now disappearing, to reappear again along way off. The eye--the artistic eye at any rate--rejoices in such a succession of sinuous curves, as much as it abhors the dictatorial and monotonous straight line; it likes to be led by gentle and slow degrees into the heart of the landscape, and away beyond into the infinity of space where the vague distance vanishes into the sky. Possibly the muscles of the eye more readily

[Sidenote: _A PLEASANT LAND_]

adapt themselves to such easy and gradual transition from spot to spot than to the harsher insistence of a straight line. Nature herself hardly ever indulges in the latter; man may make it, but she, in time, on every opportunity, mars it gloriously.

On either hand, as we drove on, stretched a level land of tilled fields and verdant meadows, the many colours of the crops and the varied greens of the pastures forming a gigantic mosaic. To the right of us rose some rounded fir-crowned hills, if hills be the right term, for only perhaps in a flat country would such modest elevations be dignified with the title of hills. These, to employ a familiar painter’s expression, “told” deeply blue--with all the beauty of ultramarine and all the depth of indigo.

It was an open breezy prospect, delightful to gaze upon, though there was nothing exciting or grand about it save the great distances and the wide over-arching sky; but it had the charm of wonderful colouring, and was full of lightness and brightness that was most inspiriting; full of cheery movement too, where the wild wind made rhythmic waves of the long grasses and unreaped fields of corn, and rustled the leaves and bent the topmost branches of the saplings before its gentle blasts, or where it rippled the gliding waters of the winding river and silvery streams, causing them to glance and sparkle in the flooding sunshine. All Nature seemed buoyant with an exuberant vitality upon that almost perfect afternoon, and the gladness of the hour entered into our very souls and made us exultant accordingly! It was a day to call fondly back to mind when pent up in London during the darksome and dreary November days, half asphyxiated with the smoke and sulphur laden atmosphere; then the very remembrance of such a time of golden sunshine and fresh and fragrant breezes is of untold refreshment.

Some people might have deemed that prospect, composed chiefly of flat fields, sluggish waters, and scattered trees, uninteresting and unbeautiful, with nothing to commend it, still less to rave about; but there is such a thing as the art of seeing, which art reveals, to those who cultivate it, beauty in the most unexpected places. The charm of form and colour is often a noteworthy factor that makes for beauty in a prospect that is devoid of the picturesque and the “sweetly pretty.” The best training in the art of seeing and discovering beauty that I know is to make a series of sketches from Nature, in colour--water-colour for preference, as being clearer of tint and easier applied. Take, for instance, a bit of an old stone wall, or, better still, a weather-stained boulder on some moor, outline it as well as you can--never mind the drawing at first, it is the colour you must look for--copy these tint for tint, hue for hue, as faithfully as you can. Before starting you may imagine that the rugged boulder is simply gray all over, lighter on the side where the sun shines, and darker in the shadows, and that is all; but as you try to represent its surface you will soon discover, if you only look hard and carefully enough, that what you at first deemed to be merely a mass of gray is composed of a myriad changeful colours:

[Sidenote: _A NEW SENSE_]

there are sure to be the silver, and the gold, and perchance the red, of clinging lichen (glorious colours these); then there are the greens of mosses, and countless weather-stains here and there, all to be given; then the rock itself, you will perceive as the eye gets more accustomed to its novel task, is composed of countless tints, changing with almost every change of surface, and where the boulder lies half in shadow you will perceive a sort of blue-gray bloom--look very hard for this; then the blackest shadows, you will note, are rich and deep, and look quite colourful beside any single tint you may mix in the hope of representing them. The more you study that boulder, the more colour you will see in it; and if all this unexpected colour exists in one simple rock, to leave the charms of varying form unconsidered, what must there not exist on the whole wide moor? Look for yourself and see. After your eye has had its first lesson in the art of seeing and searching out the beautiful, it will naturally, unconsciously almost, begin to look for it everywhere--and expect it! I fear I have perhaps written this in too didactical a manner, but I find it difficult to express myself clearly otherwise, and must plead this as my excuse for a failing I find it so hard to endure in others.

It was sketching from Nature that first taught me to look for and find beauties in my everyday surroundings that before I had never even imagined to exist. This art of seeing came to me like a new sense--it was a revelation, and it has ever since afforded me so much positive and lasting pleasure, that I can truly say it has materially increased the happiness of my life. Surely if “a man who can make two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor to his race,” to add, however slightly, to the happiness of life is to be a benefactor too, humble though the addition may be.

Now, after this over-long digression, let us once more resume the even tenor of our tour. I had nearly written the even tenor of our way, and placed the words between inverted commas, so familiar does the saying sound; but I find on reference that Gray really wrote “the noiseless tenor of their way,” which is not exactly the same thing, and it is as well to be correct in small details as in great. It is astonishing to me how often familiar quotations go wrong in the quoting; indeed, it is rather the exception to find them rightly given. I have only just to-day come across two instances of this whilst glancing over a magazine article. First I note that Milton’s “fresh woods and pastures new” is rendered, as it mostly is, “fresh fields and pastures new”; then Nathaniel Lee’s “when Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war” is misquoted, as usual, “when Greek meets Greek,” etc., quite losing the point that when the ancient--not the modern!--Greeks were joined together they were a doughty foe. But now I am wandering again right off the road!

Driving on, we presently crossed the little river Ivel by a gray stone bridge, beneath which the stream ran clear and brightly blue. Across the bridge we found ourselves in the straggling village

[Sidenote: _A SUDDEN CONTRAST_]

of Girtford. This began well with pretty cottages roofed with homely thatch; then passing a wayside public-house with the uncommon title of “The Easy Chair” (a sign that we do not remember to have met with before), the village ended badly, in a picturesque point of view, with a row of uninteresting cottages of the modern, square-box type, shelters for man rather than habitations--commonplace, alas! and unsightly. The sudden contrast from the old to the new was an object-lesson in ancient beauty and modern ugliness.

The progressive nineteenth century, by the mean and hideous structures it has erected over all the pleasant land, has done much towards the spoliation of English scenery. It has done great things, truly. It has created railways, it has raised palaces, mansions, huge hotels, monster warehouses, tall towers, and gigantic wheels of iron; but it has forgotten the way of rearing so simple and pleasing a thing as a home-like farmstead; it cannot even build a cottage grandly. Yet how well our ancestors knew how to do these. Still, the wanderer across country now and then sees signs of better things, a promise of a return to more picturesque conditions, and this sometimes in the most out-of-the-way and unexpected quarters. Thus, during our drive, have we chanced upon a quaint and freshly-painted inn sign done in a rough but true artistic spirit, supported by wrought-iron work of recent date, worthy of the medieval craftsman; and in quiet market-towns and remote villages have our eyes occasionally been delighted by bits of thoughtful architecture, the outcome of to-day, with their gable fronts, mullioned windows, and pleasant porches, in reverent imitation of what is best in the old. Besides these, sundry restorations of ancient buildings backwards, not forwards, point to a striving again for beauty.

An excellent and most delightful example of the revival of picturesque village architecture we discovered the other year when driving through Leigh, near Tunbridge, where the modern cottages are all pictures, charming to look upon with their half-timber framework, thatched roofs of the true Devon type, many gables, big chimneys, and quaint porches--all modern, but imbued with the spirit and poetry of the past. It is as though a medieval architect had been at work on them. The simple cottages are nobly designed; there is no starving of material in the attempt to make the utmost of everything; they are all humble abodes, yet dignified; a millionaire might live in one and not be ashamed; and withal they are essentially English. If they have a failing, it is perhaps that they look a trifle artificial--too suggestive of the model village or of stage scenery; but this I take it arises mainly because we are not accustomed in these commonplace days to find poetry out of books and paintings, so that the coming suddenly upon it realised in bricks and mortar strikes one for the moment as strange and unreal.

After another stretch of wide, open country, flushed with air and suffused with sunshine, the hamlet of Tempsford was reached. By the roadside

[Sidenote: _AN ANCIENT CHEST_]

here stood the ancient fane, gray and dusky with years. Its door was unfastened, so we stepped inside. Our hoary churches are stories in stone, to those who can read them; though not always is the reading easy, or the story complete. The first thing on entering that attracted our attention was an unusually fine medieval muniment chest, its age uncertain, but without doubt centuries old. It had evidently been cut out of the solid trunk of a tree (presumably of an oak). The chest is now much worm-eaten, and is bound round with many broad iron bands, and further secured by five locks. They had great faith in big locks in those days--locks with twisted keyholes, though to the modern mind they look easy enough to pick. The problem that presented itself to us was, seeing that about two-thirds of the wood was interlaced with these metal bands, why was not the chest at the start made wholly of iron? In this case the bands promise to outlast the worm-eaten and decaying wood they enclose, though in some old chests of a similar nature the iron has rusted more than the wood has perished, possibly owing to atmospheric conditions, for dampness would probably destroy the iron quicker than the wood, and dryness would reverse these conditions.

At the west end of the north aisle we observed a curious triangular window, and in the pavement at the base of the tower we found two flat tombstones a little apart. One is inscribed in Latin to the memory of “Knightley Chetwode,” and the other in English to his wife, who, we learnt, was noted for her “piety towards God, fidelity to the King and the Protestant succession”; though why the virtues of the husband should be set forth in Latin and those of his wife in English I do not quite see.

On the wall of the tower we also noted the following inscription cut in a stone slab, the exact import of which was not very clear to us; possibly it related to some rebuilding:--

Wi[=ll] Savnderson Gē
and Thō[=m] Staplo Yēō
Overseers of this New
Work & patentyes of his
Maiesties Letters
Patent Granted for
the same May xii--1621.

The lettering of this was delightfully full of character, and pleasing to look upon simply for the forms of the letters--a something quite apart from the mechanical precision with which the present-day engravers render their works, possibly because they cannot do otherwise; it does not require much thought to be simply precise!

Just beyond Tempsford our road came close to the side of the quiet-flowing Ouse, and there, where for a space the road and river ran together, stood an inviting and picturesque inn, whose sign was that of “The Anchor.” An ideal angler’s haunt it seemed to us as we passed by, with an old punt and boats close inshore, and shady trees overhanging the gleaming stream. There was a look of homely repose about the spot quite incommunicable in words, a beauty about the fresh greens and silvery grays of the wind-stirred foliage to be felt, not described.

[Sidenote: _THE WINDING OUSE_]

And how deep and rich were the luscious reflections where the woods doubled themselves in the glassy flood! How peace-bestowing it all was! We would, for the moment, that we were simple fishermen, and that this were our journey’s end! Great was the temptation to stop and laze a while, but we resisted it and drove on. We feared, perhaps, though we did not confess this to ourselves, that too close an inspection might rob us of our pleasant impressions. We had an ideal, and wished to keep it! There is an art in knowing how much to leave unseen!

On now we drove, through a land of broad and luxuriant meadows, cool and tree-shaded, till we reached Eaton Socon, a pretty village with a small green and a fine large church. Within the sacred edifice we discovered little of interest, only portions of a rather good timber roof, a carved oak screen of fair workmanship, and the remains of a squint blocked up. If there were anything else noteworthy we managed very successfully to miss it.

Then a short stretch of road brought us once more to the blue winding Ouse; at least it looked very blue that day. This we crossed on an ancient, time-worn bridge, that had great recessed angles at the sides wherein pedestrians might retreat and watch the long track of the glimmering river, and dream day-dreams, should they be so minded, safely out of the way of road traffic, and undisturbed by the passing and repassing of those afoot. On the other side of the river we found ourselves _at once_ in the wide market-place of St. Neots. At the bridge the country ended and the town began; there were no straggling suburbs to traverse. Close at hand, right in the market-place, we caught sight of an inviting hostelry, the “Cross Keys” to wit. The first glance at the old inn was enough to decide us in its favour. Relying on the instinct begotten of long years of road travel, we had no hesitation in directly driving under the archway thereof, where we alighted in the courtyard, and sought and obtained, just what we then mostly needed, comfortable quarters for the night. In the case of the selection of an hostelry, we had learnt to judge by outside appearances, in spite of the proverb to the contrary effect. Even in proverbs there are exceptions to the rule!

I should imagine, from the glance we had on passing over, that the bridge at St. Neots forms a sort of outdoor club for a number of the townsfolk. There is something magnetic about a river that equally attracts both the young and the old; it is bright and open, it has the charm of movement, and there is nearly always life of some kind to be found by the waterside. Thither, too, at times the fisherman, or at any rate the fisher-urchin, comes; and what a fascination there is for most minds in watching an angler pursuing his sport, even though in vain! I have frequently observed that in country towns where there is a widish river and a convenient bridge over it, there on that bridge do certain of the citizens regularly congregate at evening-time, when the day’s work is done, for a chat, a quiet smoke, and “a breath of air before turning in.” The town

[Sidenote: _THE CHARM OF MYSTERY_]

bridge has become quite an institution in some places!

As we went out to do a little shopping, we were amused and instructed to hear the different ways that the natives pronounced the name of their town. One would have imagined that there was only one way of doing this, but we discovered three: the first party we conversed with distinctly called it St. Notes, a second as emphatically declared it to be St. Nots, and still another would have it St. Neets, whilst we as strangers had innocently pronounced it as spelt; and now I do not feel at all certain as to which is the prevailing local appellation, or if there may still be another variety.

Our bedroom window faced the old market-square--a large, open, and picturesque space, pleasant to look upon; and at the window we sat for a time watching the life of the place and the odd characters coming and going. It was all as entertaining to us as a scene in a play, and a good deal more so than some, for there was no indifferent acting in our players, and no false drawing in the background--the perspective was perfect! And, as we watched, the light in the west gradually faded away, whilst the moon rose slowly and shone down, large and solemn, through the haze that gathered around when the dusk descended. The gentle radiance of the moonlight made the mist luminous with a mellow light--a light that lent the magic charm of mystery to the prospect. The houses, grouped irregularly round the square, were indistinctly revealed, all their harsher features being softened down; then one after another lights gleamed forth from their many-paned windows, with a warm yellow cheerfulness in marked contrast with the cold silvery moonshine without. The mist-damped roadway was reflective, and repeated vaguely the yellow gleams above, and imparted to the scene quite a Turneresque effect. Above the low-roofed houses, dimly discernible, rose the tall tower of the stately parish church, so grand a church that it has earned the epithet of “the cathedral of Huntingdon.” It was a poetic vision, very beautiful and bewitching to look upon, we thought; but, after all, much of the beauty in a prospect lies in the imaginative qualities of the beholder: we may all see the same things, yet we do not see them in the same manner!