The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1892-07-30
EAKEMAN'S WANDERTNGS.
The Poet Traveller in Some West
of England hooks.
Away from the Maelstrom Lines of
Travel Among the Malvern and
Cotswold Hills-Age-Mossed Mount
ain Hamlets and Drean1ful Valley
Towns-Idyllic saunterings.
Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION. Copyright, 1921


UNION. Copyright, 1921
CIRENcEsTER, England, July IS, 1892.
One does not know hundredth part of
england even after years of travel among
her historic scenes and about her count
less shrines
feel this more and more when, after
firing of grand old beaten paths l step
aside, but step it sometimes seems, and
lind maze upon maze of sweet old hooks,
wonderfully winsome in collective or in
dividual aspects, and these could never
be exhausted if one set out to explore for
such as these and know them never so
little when found during the natural
course of a lifetime.
1t seems to me that the west of Eng
land-say the western Of the midland
counties-furnishes the most extraor-
binary number of these half mountain
series. You need not go so far south or
west as Devon and Somerset, or even into
Wales, where scenery has more the ele-
menls Of wild and savage grandeur, and
where the good folk who can speak Eng
nsh as well as you can, pride themselves
III making you believe they cannot speak
1t all, and that Welsh was the language
OF Adam and Eve.
=
lake district, which is all sublimity and
hotel and posting bills; nor to Northum-
Derland and Durham, VerdureleSS and
suggestive of coal; nor again to York
SHIRE, where the shaddering fogs hap
along the grewsome moors.
But here, in the very heart of England,
where anybody that has two days time,
though he should have two months in
stead, and TWO stout legs, can come from
any great English city almost as in a holt
day stroll, are these myriad places OF rest
fulness and beauty, hidden coy from the
globe trotters' lorgnettes in the glenS and
hOIioWS OF these midland hills, with his
tories reaching farther back than the time
Of the SaXOus' first coming, with the
moss Of ages upon them, and yet all OF
them as sweet and fresh as the dew trick
ling from the Hottest grasses Of CIeeye
Clouds and Broadway Beacon, which
stand like grim old towers above the
COtsw0ld hills.
know the live American tourist is
hardly worthy of himself If, having ar
rived in Liverpool on Tuesday or Friday
evening, he has not ''done' Chester,
dashed through bennington, nodded in a
friendly way to the painted efiigy o!
Shakespeare, become tired Of London.
glanced at keniIwOTth and Warwick and
swept around through the lake district to
Glasgow, the Iossachs, Edinburgh, Alb
bOtstOrd and MelrOsG, III fact exhausted
Great Britain" as he naiveIy and quite
correctly puts it, before the first week has
barely rolled around.
But If this sort Of person could learn
that the best results OF travel come from
ldIlng rather than cyci0ning through for
elgn space, aud could get shunted away
from railways, and then meet with some
sort Of OBTAINING accident that would hold
his lungs, eyes and heart within region
Like this long enough 10 get them used TO
ifs OLE 4
one less rlcochettng nonstrOsity among
men, ana that much OF a blessed calm
would come along the maelsCrOm lines of
travel.
y pleasant way to reach this lovely re-
glOn Is through Warwickshire. Stop a
day or more at Stratford if you like, and
lolter about the church beside the Avon.
Then get an old boatman-mind you an
old and garrulOus bOatman-to row you
down the historic stream. He will tell
you more about VIII Shakespeare and his
times than if the mighty bard had been
his schoolmate. DO not let him row fast.
Give him time to rest and deScant upon
the origin of Roman roads and barrows
and cromlechs, and, above all. give him
time for folklore tales and bugabOOs and
whispered mysteries of the lordIy halls
high up among the parks and demesnes.
Never care for the passing hours. The
matches OF cottages lean everywhere along
i
no need Tor an inn. With your peasant
companion you viii be welcome every
where at night among the peaSantry. BY
and by you will come to the wales among
the Cotswolds. Then will you see ham
let's and villages dOtting the valleys, I'M
bedded in orchards, clustering on the
hillsides, perched upon the nights. and
all in a setting of lush orchards waving
fields within checkered lines OF hawthorn
hedges or denser rows of lines, and these
in turn backed by banks Of forest prime.
val, all in such droning quiet, ample con-
tent and smiling Opulence, that, full OF
the whey e&ultatlOn of it all, you again
and again irresisdbly exclaim, Here is
Already at lastp'
BY and by your boat comes under the
shadows Of a gray old abbey town Near
1t IS DeerhurSt, where Kings older than
Alfred worshiped. The Avon has SUNG
itself to sleep in the bosom of the silver
Severn, and there, by Olney, Cnut and
Edmund lronside met and divided Eng
land between Dane and Saxon. Nearer
sill to the gray old abbey town is the
Bloody Meadow where the War of the
. Roses was decided.
Back past this now peaceful scene, past
old matched cottages, bright gardens and
green fields, there rises upon the strang.
er's sight mighty silver gray old abbey
II is the abbey OF Tewkesbury. 1t is
more than 500 years old, and the Norman
pill lars OF its did old nave are the hugest
and highest in England. Few OF the
English abbeys, or, indeed, of the great
English cathedraIs, contain the materials
of history and story which Tewkes bury
possesses.
Then what wonderful charms there is in
the old half-timbered houses of Tewkes-
bury. They lean over the shadowy
streets rs though they had come back
from misty past to crane their necks
and heads into the affairs OF this bright
and modern time. Here you have Ches-
ter, Bristol, Exeter and Coventry almost
in one in the wealth Of specimens of the
old Tudor style. In the gables, with
their browning pinnacles, in the porches
doors. mullioned windows and huge chin
neys, in the overhanging of stories anC
projection of windows, they are no more
quaint and curious than their interiors
with their spacious, low ceilinged rooms
paneled with oak OF ebon blackness, elab-
orately carved and ornamented, and with
passages, hooks. inches, small rooms, cup
boards and presses bewildering in mum
Der.
All Of those who have read "John Hal
flax" will find in Tewkesbury a closer
charm than in abbey and ancient house
Tewkesbury green was Abel Eletcher's