Motor Tours in the West Country. Rodolph Mrs. Stawell
through a gap in the hills. There are fine views from these uplands, and here and there a glimpse, far behind us, of the Severn estuary. Very slowly we drive through the narrow, winding streets of Axbridge, shadowed by overhanging eaves and gables of every height and angle; and quickly through the level strawberry fields beyond, to Cheddar under the hills.
CHEDDAR GORGE.
Cheddar Gorge is a surprising—almost a startling—place, and we must leave our highway for a little time to see it. From the village at the foot of the Mendips a road—and a very good road it is—climbs to the table-land above through a natural cleft between two mighty cliffs, which rise sheer from the roadway and stand out against the sky in a mass of towers and pinnacles. And all this sternness is softened and made beautiful by hanging draperies of green. Masses of ivy trail from crag to crag; high overhead the little birch-trees find a precarious footing on invisible ledges; every tiny cleft and ridge holds a line of grass and wildflowers across the grey face of the cliff. Gradually, as the road sweeps higher, the towering sides of the gorge change into steep slopes of grass and fern, strewn with boulders and broken here and there by clumps of firs. The slopes become lower and lower, more and more open, till at last the landscape widens into undulating fields. Then we turn, and glide down again round curve after curve, while the grandeur grows, as the huge walls of the gorge close in upon us and reach their climax in the Pinnacle Rocks.
And deep in the heart of these wild cliffs is a strange, uncanny world. Surely in these caverns the gnomes ran riot till they were frightened away by an elaborate system of electric lighting and an exuberance of advertisement. It is plain that they have left Gough’s Cave, for it is more than a little artificial; but none the less there is an ethereal beauty in the myriad stalactites and stalagmites through which the light gleams so softly on roof and floor. As for the poor prehistoric man who guards the entrance of the cave that has served him for dwelling-house and tomb, it is an indignity for him, I think, after his seventy thousand years or so of rest in the heart of the earth, to be set up thus in a glass case to grin at tourists.
Between Cheddar and Wells a pretty, winding, undulating road dips in and out of several red-roofed villages shaded by trees. In the distance the unmistakable outline of Glastonbury Tor is dark against the sky.
This is not the best way into Wells, for the cathedral is hidden. It is from the Shepton Mallet road that we may see “the toune of Wells,” as John Leland saw it nearly four hundred years ago, “sette yn the rootes of Mendepe hille in a stony soile and ful of springes.” It has not changed very much: the clergy here being secular, the Dissolution did not affect them, and Wells has never greatly concerned itself with worldly matters and has been all the more peaceful on that account. There have been disturbing moments, of course; as when Perkin Warbeck set up his claim, so confusing to the minds of quiet folk; and when the Parliament-men made havoc in the cathedral; and when Prince Maurice and his troops were billeted on the town, to its great impoverishment; and when King Monmouth passed this way. But on the whole Wells has suffered little. Leland, when he visited the cathedral, entered the close by one of these gates that are standing to-day: came through the Chain Gate, under the gallery and past the great clock that was made by a monk of Glastonbury, or through Browne’s Gate from Sadler Street, or on foot through Penniless Porch in the corner, once the haunt of beggars; and saw Jocelin’s famous west front rising above the greensward, with the embattled deanery hard by; and passed from the market-place to the moated palace under the archway of Beckington’s “right goodly gatehouse,” the Bishop’s Eye. This fifteenth-century Bishop Beckington did much for the beauty and benefit of Wells; built, not only three gateways, but also “xij right exceding fair houses al uniforme of stone, high and fair windoid,” in the market-place, and set a conduit there, “for the which the burgeses ons a yere solemply visite his tumbe, and pray for hys sowle.”
We may visit his tomb ourselves. His dust lies in the cathedral at the entrance to the choir, beyond that ugly inverted arch that was set up for safety’s sake in the fourteenth century; but in later days his tomb has been treated less reverently than of yore. Its carved and painted canopy stands broken and empty in the chapel of St. Calixtus, and in the south aisle of the choir is the rather ghastly tomb—bishop above and skeleton below—which the burgesses visited so gratefully. It is a rare and delightful custom here that allows one to walk alone through the choir and exquisite lady-chapel; to linger at will by the throne where William Laud and Thomas Ken have sat; to picture Lord Grey standing with drawn sword before this altar, to defend it from the rabble that followed Monmouth; to seek out Bishop Button’s tomb, which cured so many mediæval toothaches; to mount the long flight of footworn steps to the chapter-house, and rest beneath its lovely vault in silence. These same steps lead also to the gallery that was built by Beckington for the use of the priest-vicars, whose peaceful close is reached by a gateway of its own, outside the Chain Gate.
THE BISHOP’S EYE, WELLS.
Beyond the cloisters is the palace: the fortified gatehouse, the towers and drawbridge that Ralph of Shrewsbury found it wise to set between himself and the citizens; the moat that is filled every day from St. Andrew’s Well; the shattered banquet-hall where Edward III. once ate his Christmas dinner; the great red dwelling-house that has passed for nearly seven centuries from hand to hand. “Many bisshops hath bene the makers of it, as it is now,” says Leland. It has had Wolsey for its master though not its inmate; it has been stolen by Somerset the Protector; it has been the home of Bishop Laud. Saintly Thomas Ken went from its seclusion for a little time to join the rest of the Seven Bishops in the wild uproar of their trial and acquittal, and later on was driven from its doors by William of Orange. Here is Ken’s summer-house, at the upper corner of the garden that he loved. Local tradition, whose wish is usually father to its thought, declares that he wrote his Evening Hymn in this little summer-house at the end of the terrace; but history, I believe, says otherwise. It is tradition, too, that accuses Bishop Barlow of stripping the lead from the roof of the banquet-hall, whose great windows we see so plainly from this terrace. Barlow’s misdeeds at St. David’s have given him a well-deserved bad name; but, on this occasion only, he was more sinned against than sinning, for the palace and many other things were wrung from him by Protector Somerset, from whom they passed to one Sir John Gates. This vandal was the destroyer of the banquet-hall, and would probably have done more mischief than he did, if he had not been most justifiably beheaded.
It is behind the palace that we find the loveliest spot in Wells. Here, overlooked by sixteenth-century oriels, are the springs that long ago gave the city its name—the wells of St. Andrew, whose still surface has reflected for hundreds of years the beautiful east end of the cathedral. For hundreds of years, too, its waters have fed the moat. It is only at certain hours, of course, that strangers may walk in the palace garden; but the moat that circles it and the towers that guard it are visible to everyone. So is the swan who rings for his dinner when it is late, with all the jerky impatience of a man in the same plight.
WELLS CATHEDRAL.
There is something that takes a hold on the imagination in the very dulness of the country that lies between Wells and Glastonbury. For the reason that this road with the rough surface is so level, and has such uninteresting surroundings, is that all this country was once the swampy land that lay round the Isle of Avalon. There is Glastonbury Tor before us, conspicuous for many a mile with its steep sides and crowning tower; and here on our left is the orchard-clad slope of Avalon itself, where “golden apples smile in every wood.”
We drive slowly down the long High Street of Glastonbury.
Many, many pilgrims have come this way before us: have passed the great Tudor-rose and mullioned windows of the old stone court-house on the right, have stopped before the panelled front, the wreathed vines and carven beasts, of the “George” Inn, and have entered it beneath the painted arms of Edward IV. For this inn is the New Guesthouse that Abbot Selwood built and embattled