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ENGLAND of my HEART

SPRING

BY

EDWARD HUTTON


WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GORDON HOME


MCMXIV

TO MY FRIEND
O.K.


INTRODUCTION


England of my heart is a great country of hill and valley, moorland
and marsh, full of woodlands, meadows, and all manner of flowers, and
everywhere set with steadings and dear homesteads, old farms and old
churches of grey stone or flint, and peopled by the kindest and
quietest people in the world. To the south, the east, and the west it
lies in the arms of its own seas, and to the north it is held too by
water, the waters, fresh and clear, of the two rivers as famous as
lovely, Thames and Severn, of which poets are most wont to sing, as
Spenser when he invokes the first:

         "Sweete Themmes runne softly till I end my song";


or Dryden when he tells us of the second:

         "The goodly Severn bravely sings
         The noblest of her British kings,
         At Caesar's landing what we were,
         And of the Roman conquest here...."

Within England of my heart, in the whole breadth of her delight, there
is no industrial city such as infests, ruins, and spoils other lands,
and in this she resembles her great and dear mother Italy. Like her,
too, she is full of very famous towns scarcely to be matched for beauty
and ancientness in the rest of the world, and their names which are
like the words of a great poet, and which it is a pleasure to me to
recite, are Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Salisbury, Bath,
Wells, Exeter, and her ports, whose names are as household words, even
in Barbary, are Dover, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Falmouth, and Bristol.
All these she may well boast of, for what other land can match them
quite?

But there is a certain virtue of hers of which she is perhaps unaware,
that is nevertheless among her greatest delights: I mean her infinite
variety. Thus she is a true country, not a province; indeed, she is
made up of many counties and provinces, and each is utterly different
from other, and their different genius may be caught by the attentive
in their names, which are Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset,
Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and
Berkshire. Her variety thus lies in them and their dear, and let us
hope, immortal differences and characteristics, their genius that is,
which is as various as their scenery. For England of my heart not only
differs fundamentally from every other country of the known world,
but from itself in its different parts, and that radically. Thus in
one part you have ranges of chalk-hills, such as no other land knows,
so regular, continuous, and tremendous withal, that you might think
some army of archangels--and such might well abide there--had thrown
them up as their vast and beautiful fortifications, being good Romans
and believing in the value of such things, and not as the heathen
despising them. These chalk downs are covered, as indeed becomes
things so old, with turf, the smoothest, softest, and sweetest under
the sun.

There are other hills also that catch the breath, and these be those
of the west. They all bear the beautiful names of home, as Mendip,
Quantock, Brendon, and Cotswold. And as there are hills, so there are
plains, plains uplifted, such as that great silent grassland above
Salisbury, plains lonely, such as the Weald and the mysterious marsh
of Romney in the east by which all good things go out of England, as
the legions went, and, as, alas, the Faith went too, another Roman
thing many hundred years ago. There is also that great marsh in the
west by the lean and desolate sea, more mysterious by far, whence a
man may see far off the great and solemn mountains of another land.
By that marsh the Faith came into England of my heart, and there lies
in ruin the greatest of its shrines in loving but alien hands, and
desolate.

I have said nothing of the valleys: they are too many and too fair,
from the fairest of all through which Thames flows seaward, to those
innumerable and more beloved where are for sure our homes. I say
nothing of the rivers, for who could number them? Yet I will tell you
of some if only for the beauty of their names, passing the names of
all women but ours, as Thames itself, and Medway, Stour, and Ouse and
Arun and Rother; Itchen and Test, Hampshire streams; and those five
which are like the fingers of an outstretched hand about Salisbury in
the meads, Bourne and Avon and Wylye and Nadder and Ebble; and those
of the West, Brue, which is holiest of all, though all be holy, Exe
and Barle, Dart and Taw, Fal under the sloping woods, Tamar, which is
an eastern girdle to a duchy, and Camel, which kissed the feet of
Iseult, and is lost ere it finds the sea.

Of the uplifted moorlands which are a part of the mystery of the west,
of the forests, of the greenwood, of the meads, of the laughing coast,
white as with dawn in the east, darkling in the west, I know not how
to speak, for in England of my heart we take them for granted and are
satisfied. They fill all that quiet and fruitful land with their own
joy and beneficence, and are a part of God's pleasure. Because of them
the name of England of my heart might be but Happiness, or--as for
ages we have named that far-off dusky Arabia,--Anglia Felix.

And yet, perhaps, the chief thing that remains with the mere sojourner
in this country of mine, the true Old England, is that in the whole
breadth of it, it is one vast graveyard. Do you not know those long
barrows that cast their shadows at evening upon the lonely downs,
those round tumuli that are dark even in the sun, where lie the men of
the old time before us, our forefathers? Do you not know the grave of
the Roman, the mystery that seems to lurk outside the western gate of
the forgotten city that was once named in the Roman itinerary and now
is nothing? Do you not know many an isolated hill often dark with
pines, but, more often still, lonely and naked where they lie of whom
we are come, with their enemies, and they call the place Battlebury or
Danesbury, or for ever deserted like all battlefields it is nameless?
If you know not these you know not England of my heart, though you
know those populous graveyards about the village churches where the
grass is so lush and green and the dead are more than the living;
though you know that marvellous tomb, the loveliest thing in all my
country, where the first Earl of Salisbury lies in the nave of the
great church he helped to build; though you know that wonder by the
roadside where Somerset and Wiltshire meet; though you know the
beauty that is fading and crumbling in the little church under the
dark woods where the dawn first strikes the roots of the Quantock
Hills.

There is so much to know, and all must be got by heart, for all is a
part of us and of that mighty fruitful and abiding past out of which
we are come, which alone we may really love, and which holds for ever
safe for us our origins.

After all, we live a very little time, the future is not ours, we hold
the present but by a brittle thread; it is the past that is in our
hearts. And so it is that to go afoot through Southern England is not
less than to appeal to something greater and wiser than ourselves, out
of which we are come, to return to our origins, to appeal to history,
to the divine history of the soul of a people.

There is a _genius loci_. To look on the landscapes we have always
known, to tread in the footsteps of our fathers, to follow the Legions
down the long roads, to trudge by the same paths to the same goal as
the pilgrims, to consider the silence of the old, old battlefields, to
pray in forgotten holy places to almost forgotten deities, is to be
made partakers of a life larger and more wonderful than that of the
individual, is to be made one with England. For in the quietness of
those ancient countrysides was England made by the men who begat us.
And even as a man of the Old Faith when he enters one of his
sanctuaries suddenly steps out of England into a larger world, a
universal country; so we in the earthwork by Thannington or the Close
of Canterbury, or upon the hill where Battle Abbey stood, surely have
something added to us by the genius of the place, indeed pass out of
ourselves into that which is England, a splendour and a holiness
beyond ourselves, which cannot die.

It is in such places we may best face reality, for they lend to
history all its poetry and, as Aristotle knew, there is more truth in
poetry than in history. And this, at least to-day, is perhaps the real
value and delight of our churches; I mean those great sanctuaries we
call Cathedrals which stand about England like half-dismantled castles
and remind us more poignantly than any other thing of all we are fain
to forget. There are the indelible words of our history most clearly
written. Consider the bricks of S. Martin's, the rude stones of the
little church of Bradford, the mighty Norman work of Romsey, the Early
English happiness of Salisbury, the riches and security of the long
nave of Winchester. Do we not there see the truth; can stones lie or
an answer be demanded of them according to folly? And if a man would
know the truth, let us say, of the thirteenth century here in England,
where else will he find any answer? Consider it then, the joy as of
flowers, the happiness as of Spring, in that architecture we call
Early English, which for joy and happiness surpasses any other in the
world. The men who carved those shafts and mouldings and capitals
covering them with foliage could not curb their invention nor prevent
their hands from beauty and joy. They forgot everything in their
delight, even the great logic of design, even to leap up to God, since
He was here in the meadows in this garden of ours that He has given us
and blest.

But these great buildings, scarcely to be understood by us save by the
grace of God and now a little lonely too, missing so many of their
sisters, and certainly in an alien service, are how much less
appealing and less holy than those village churches so humble and so
precious that everywhere ennoble and glorify England of my heart. They
stand up still for our souls before God, and are to be loved above all
I think--and even the humblest of them is to be loved--for the tombs
they shelter within and without. More than any Cathedral they touch in
us some profound and fundamental mystery common to us all, that is the
life and the energy of the Christian soul. They, above all, express
England, England of my heart, in them we find utterance, are joined
with the great majority and together approach, in their humility,
beauty, and quietness, God who has loved us all and given us England
therein and thereby to serve Him in delight. They kneel with the hind
and now as ever in the name of Our Lord. It is enough. The Cathedrals
are haunted by the Old Faith, and by Rome, whose they are: but the
village churches are our own. Nor though we be of the Old Faith let us
be too proud to salute their humility. They stand admittedly in the
service of man, and this at least is admirable in the Church of
England of my heart--I mean her humility. To her, unlike Rome,
absolute Truth has not been revealed; she is so little sure of anything
that she will condemn no man, no, not one of her officers, though he
deny the divinity of Christ. She desires only to serve: and if any
man, even an atheist, can approach the God he ignorantly denies most
easily through her open gates, she will not say him nay, nor deny him,
nor send him away. It is her genius. Let us salute its humility.

And so I look upon England of my heart and am certain I am of the
civilisation of Christ. He hath said, ye shall not die but live--
England blossoms in fulfilment. He hath founded his Church, whose
children we are, whether we will or no, and after a far wandering
presently shall return homeward. For those words endure and will
endure; more living than the words even of our poets, more lasting
than the cliffs of the sea, or the rocks of the mountains, or the
sands of the deserts, because they are as the flowers by the wayside.

Therefore England is not merely what we see and are; it is all the past
and all the future, it is inheritance; the fields we have always
ploughed, the landscape and the sea, the tongue we speak, the verse we
know by heart, all we hope for, all we love and venerate, under God.
And there abides a sense of old times gone, of ancient law, of
friendship, of religious benediction.

E. H.

CONTENTS


CHAPTER I
 TO CANTERBURY
   THE PILGRIMS' ROAD TO DARTFORD

CHAPTER II
   THE PILGRIMS' ROAD TO ROCHESTER

CHAPTER III
   THE PILGRIMS' ROAD--ROCHESTER

CHAPTER IV
   THE PILGRIMS' ROAD TO FAVERSHAM

CHAPTER V
   THE PILGRIMS' ROAD TO CANTERBURY

CHAPTER VI
   THE CITY OF ST THOMAS

CHAPTER VII
   CAESAR IN KENT

CHAPTER VIII
   THE WEALD AND THE MARSH

CHAPTER IX
   RYE AND WINCHELSEA

CHAPTER X
   THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS

CHAPTER XI
   LEWES AND SIMON DE MONTFORT

CHAPTER XII
   THE DOWNS

CHAPTER XIII
   THE WEALD

CHAPTER XIV
   TO ARUNDEL AND CHICHESTER

CHAPTER XV
   CHICHESTER

CHAPTER XVI
   SELSEY, BOSHAM AND PORCHESTER

CHAPTER XVII
   SOUTHAMPTON

CHAPTER XVIII
   BEAULIEU AND CHRISTCHURCH

CHAPTER XIX
   THE NEW FOREST AND ROMSEY ABBEY

CHAPTER XX
   WINCHESTER

CHAPTER XXI
   SELBORNE

INDEX


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


CHEYNEY COURT AND THE CLOSE GATE, WINCHESTER

SHOOTERS' HILL

DARTFORD CHURCH AND BRIDGE

THE GATEWAY OF THE MONASTERY CLOSE, ROCHESTER

ROCHESTER

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL FROM CHRISTCHURCH GATE

WEST GATE, CANTERBURY

ON THE STOUR NEAR CANTERBURY

CHILHAM

A CORNER OF ROMNEY MARSH

RYE

WINCHELSEA CHURCH

BATTLE ABBEY

LEWES CASTLE

THE DOWNS

THE WEALD OF SUSSEX, NORTH OF LEWES

ARUNDEL CASTLE

THE MARKET CROSS, CHICHESTER

BOSHAM

THE TUDOR HOUSE, OPPOSITE ST MICHAEL'S CHURCH, SOUTHAMPTON

IN THE NEW FOREST

ROMSEY ABBEY

NORTH TRANSEPT, WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL

ST CROSS, WINCHESTER

SELBORNE FROM THE HANGER




ENGLAND OF MY HEART




CHAPTER I

THE PILGRIMS' ROAD TO CANTERBURY

FROM THE TABARD INN TO DARTFORD


When I determined to set out once more to traverse and to possess
England of my heart, it was part of my desire first of all to follow,
as far as might be, in the footsteps of Chaucer's pilgrims. Therefore
I sought the Tabard Inn in Southwark.

For true delight, it seems to me, a journey, especially if it be for
love or pleasure, should always have about it something of devotion,
something a little rigid too, and dutiful, at least in its opening
stages; and in thus determining my way I secured this. For I promised
myself that I would start from the place whence they set out so long
ago to visit and to pray at the tomb of the greatest of English
saints, that I would sleep where they slept, find pleasure in the
villages they enjoyed, climb the hills and look on the horizons that
greeted them also so many hundred years ago, till at last I stood by
the "blissful martyr's tomb," that had once made so great a rumour in
the world and now was nothing.

In many ways I came short of all this, as will be seen; but especially
in one thing--the matter of time. Chaucer and his pilgrims are
generally thought to have spent three and a half or four days and
three nights upon the road. It is true they went ahorseback and I
afoot, but nevertheless a man may easily walk the fifty-six miles from
London to Canterbury in four days. I failed because I found so much to
see by the wayside. And to begin with there was London itself, which I
was about to leave.

It was very early on an April morning when I set out from my home,
coming through London on foot and crossing the river by London Bridge.
It was there I lingered first, in the half light, as it were to say
good-bye.

I do not know what it is in London that at long last and in some quite
impersonal way clutches at the heart and receives one's eager
affection. At first, even though you be one of her children, she seems
and for how long like something fallen