James John Hissey

“ At one spot we dropped down to a sheltered and wooded hollow where we espied a lonely, half-timbered, and rambling farmstead, such as painters put in their pictures—pictures that the wealthy man of taste hangs on the walls of his mansion purely for the pleasure of looking at them, though I am afraid few men realise the subtle charm of such old buildings until an artist has translated it on paper or canvas. They see their beauties through other eyes, for there is an art in seeing and discovering beauty not cultivated by the many. ”

“ Never before have I been in a village with such a forgotten look; there the changeful centuries bring no change. Our car stood unnoticed by the side of a tall and broken flint wall that enclosed a weed-grown garden, wherein stood a great, round, and roofless pigeon-cote; not a face at a window did we see. West Dean took no note of our coming or our going. We drove into, and drove out of, a village asleep, and not even the hum of our engines or the sound of our horn awoke it. There brooded over all a sense of silence and solitude like that of the central sea. ”

“ At the rear of "The Sheffield Arms" the country looked inviting with its green meadows and big branching trees, and noticing a footpath I was tempted to take a stroll. I had not wandered far when to my surprise I came upon a deep, rock-girt, and shady glen of much charm; at the head of this I caught a glimpse of a large still sheet of silvery water, a lake in miniature, for it was perhaps a quarter of a mile in length or more, of generous width also, and from its sides rose, steeply and abruptly, hills, wooded to the skyline—wooded hills that doubled themselves on its mirror-like surface. ”

“ Strolling about the ancient village, I espied, on the further side of the churchyard, a grey old home of the Tudor time, so substantially built those long years ago that to-day it looks, but for the time-toning of its stones and the slight crumbling of one here and there, almost as perfect as when first finished. Its mullion windows are without the usual transomes, and do not seem to need them; their leaden lattice-panes gleamed, just then, cheerfully in the light. Windows are the eyes of a house, in their way as expressive as those of a human being. ”

“ Next we came to Henfield, a quiet and picturesque village. After Henfield we got into a sequestered land beyond railways and on to some pleasant by-roads and narrow lanes where in sunny nooks hosts of wild flowers flourished, and the hedges delighted in tangled disorder. We were again in a land of sleepy farmsteads of the old Sussex type, farmsteads of time-toned walls, weather-tinted tiling, long, low, lichen-laden roofs, and great chimney-stacks—always a great and shapely chimney-stack of much the same pattern, but of a very good and pleasing pattern. ”

“ Reclining at ease on a mossy bank I smoked a fragrant pipe, well pleased with my wayside hostelry, my comfortable couch, and the music provided with my meal. "The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seems after all a gentle habitable place," says Stevenson. Only at night in the summer time do I desire to "cower" into a house, and that for the convenience of it; indeed the only room I can suffer on a summer day is a library walled round with a goodly company of books, and with just a picture here and there of a pleasant landscape for my eyes, when in a lazy mood, to rest upon. ”

“ Stevenson confessed that he could never get over his hankering after a room in a wayside tavern in which to start his tale. There is romance about a lonely and once flourishing inn, however plain that inn may be—romance that clings to it as surely as ivy clings to a crumbling ruin. I feel that, in the days gone by, some eventful happening only waiting to be revealed must have taken place within the walls of such a one, some romance unrecorded yet. For real romance lingered long into the coaching age, but steam and electricity have killed it. ”

“ You cannot escape from Cromwell's doings when you go a-touring in England.
Beyond High Ercall we crossed over a marshy upland, and over a bridge or two so narrow that there was only just room for the car to pass. The country had a remote look, for we travelled far before meeting a soul, and that soul was a solitary man breaking stones by the side of the road. From the uplands we dropped down to a picturesque old mill, its wheel turned by a sparkling stream; and a pretty picture the old mill made with its foaming weir above, its sleepy pool below, and the green fields gently sloping down to it. ”

“ At the end of the valley we found ourselves at Mallwyd, a tiny hamlet consisting of a cottage or two, a curious and ancient church, and an old-fashioned little stone-built inn half drowned in dark ivy. Mallwyd is a lonely spot shut in by gloomy mountains; its inn is the fit resort of anglers and artists, for who else, except perhaps a poet, would seek such solitary quarters, unless it were some one who desired to flee mankind? ”

“ Aldbourne, the first village we came to, with its fine old stately-towered church, its big round pond, and its antique houses grouped around it, pleased us vastly, for the village had such a remote and an unmistakable old-time air—a spot where we really seemed to have left the modern world wholly behind. For a moment we gave ourselves up to the illusion of the place, and were back in the seventeenth century. We pay the novelist to romance for us; why should not we do our own romancing at times? Therein lies the charm of old-fashioned places; they spur the imagination. ”

“ Even to-day, when staying in a moated house, have I felt the sense of security that a moat affords. So much for sentiment.
Claverham disappointed me, though the fault was mine in expecting too much. To cherish an ideal and trusting to find it is to court disillusion, and a seasoned traveller like myself should not have fallen into this error. The unexpected always charms, when it has the power to charm, more than the expected. "Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises," says Shakespeare, whom it is the privilege of all Englishmen to quote. ”

“ It is said, and with some truth, of Thoreau that he found the freedom of the wilderness within the sound of Emerson's dinner-bell; so too Richard Jefferies found his freedom within a walk, if not within actual sight, of his home. Now solitude for the day, with a home, friends, fireside, and a welcome to come to at evening time, is solitude with the keen edge of it considerably blunted.
Coate is a quiet village, not noteworthy in any way of itself. It is neither picturesque nor ugly, merely commonplace; like some worthy people in the world, it lacks character. ”

“ A land where the eye had freedom to rove over wide spaces of green right away to a circling horizon of blue, and a wild wind swept over it, fresh, cool, and laden with the pungent scent of marsh flowers—as fresh and cool as the wind that sweeps over the sea, only without its salt savour. The wind was making holiday; it tossed the long grasses and reeds about, it bent down the hedges before it, it made mimic waves and Lilliputian tempests on the ponds that we passed. It is wind that gives life to a scene, and the strife of it stirred the blood in our veins. ”

“ The ancient mill, wood, and tumbling water, what a perfect picture they made! There on a grassy bank opposite I found an ideal place for my purpose, with the song of the mill-wheel, the swish and splash of the weir, the twittering of birds and the soothing cooing of pigeons to enliven that peace-bestowing solitude, a retired nook where one might "dream down hours to moments." Yet there was no hint from the roadway of mill or river, of anything else than a little wood. How much of quiet beauty that little wood conceals from the vulgar public gaze! ”

“ So along the old Roman street we went, passing but few human habitations, here a solitary inn, there a grey old farmstead, and every now and then a cottage, but that was all; it was pleasant driving, for there were no children, nor dogs, nor fowls for miles to trouble us, and all being safe we indulged in a burst of speed purely as a stimulant. Once on it I intended to follow the ancient street all the way to Daventry, but somehow I got wrong at a point where it takes one of its few bends, and unexpectedly found myself at Lichfield. ”

“ It was so peace-bestowing, and that was its charm. It was a land of health rather than a land of wealth—and who shall say that health is not the better thing?—a land that conformed to no canon of beauty, but none the less pleasing to me. I will wager that no one grew prematurely old from overwork in it: why should he? Mere money-making is the bane of the age; it gives a man no time to call his soul his own. "If a person," says Stevenson, "cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should remain. ”

“ At the foot of the descent we found a large and lone old-fashioned farmstead surrounded by a colony of flint-built barns and out-houses; the little slothful river Cuckmere seeking its way to the sea, with many windings, ran close by. The grey old farmstead with its weather-stained walls, the tranquil, reedy river below, the bare and silent downs beyond, struck a note of intense quietness. A peacefulness profound brooded over this out-of-the-world spot: it might have been a hundred miles from anywhere. A picture, too, it made, effective in its breadth and simplicity. ”

“ Abbot's Bromley struck me as a very pleasant and picturesque little place; it has no railway, and that is perhaps why it has such an old-fashioned look. I have always a liking for these little towns beyond railways. Most of its houses, built long years ago, are of black and white half-timber; and the ancient inn there is of half-timber too, that with its grey gables, its casement windows, its swinging sign, is suggestive of the coaching and Pickwickian days and all the lost romance of them. ”

“ The inn, I imagine, after the coming of the railway suffered from long neglect, left stranded high and dry, as it was, on a travel-forsaken road, its profitable posting and coaching custom gone, and with little else to depend upon: how it existed at all during that stagnant period is a wonder. Who would ever then have dreamt of the resurrection of the road that the motor-car has brought about? How the landlords of the half-forsaken country inns must have rubbed their hands with glee to find custom, and profitable custom too, come again their way. ”

“ After Aldbourne the country had a wild and a deserted look, for we found ourselves traversing the open downs where the landmarks are few, our grey road winding before us miles away, with nothing else visible but bare, green, sun-flushed hills around. It was a glorious drive over those billowy downs, and bracing was the air of them, delightful too in its purity and in the delicate scent of the thymy turf that the breezes gathered on their way and brought to us. There one might indulge in
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be. ”

“ The downs, bare to the skyline, looked lonely enough to satisfy an anchorite. It is refreshing now and again in this crowded England to come upon such silent yet friendly solitudes, for there is nothing frowning or austere about them; hardly does the sunshine cast a shadow upon their spacious slopes of greenery. The charm of English scenery generally lies in its rich detail and finish, the result of the tireless toil of centuries; but the downs afford us broad effects, and broadness of outlook begets broadness of thinking. ”

“ Now and then we caught the scent of new-mown hay, sweetening the air as we drove along under the shadow of leafy trees, and anon in the sunshine. The scent of new-mown hay or of a fragrant beanfield in blossom, how delightful a thing it is; shop-purchased perfumery is poor stuff indeed compared with it. For once we looked above rather than around for beauty, above to the windy, wide, white-clouded sky, with its ever-varying incident of passing and changeful form; for the skyscape has interests as well as the landscape, and there are times when it is the more interesting of the two. ”

“ One travels to escape for a while from man and town, from streets and houses, and then in turn one longs to get back again to despised humanity and neighbourship—at least I do, being no moody philosopher but a lover of my kind.
Leaving my peaceful nook, after further lonely wandering, I struck upon a decent though hilly road, and eventually came to a long, steep descent, at the foot of which I found myself in the truly old-world village of Stanway, where is another fine specimen of a tithe-barn. ”

“ I have sat in their ingle-nooks before blazing fires of logs on their hearths, watching the fitful flames leap up their wide chimneys, as they threw a ruddy glow on beamed ceiling and panelled wall whilst casting mysterious shadows around; and I have fed my full of the poetic charm and the romance, rare in these commonplace days, of those nights. The builder of a house never invented a better thing than the old-fashioned big ingle-nook: not the poor pretence affair that the modern architect calls one, with a cheerless, slow, combustion coal grate in its centre ”

“ Even on the wild Canadian prairies, before the coming of the colonist, one could hardly find a solitude more apparently profound than mine that day, for the eye cannot see farther than the uttermost horizon; beyond might be the end of the world.
Just to live in the present, content with the present, that was my mood of the moment, neither looking backwards nor forwards, being simply thankful to be alive without any pain of body—that is the true holiday spirit, that is the wine of life; then pure laziness is a virtue, for if a man would enjoy his holiday lazing, laze he should. ”