LITMIR.BIZ

      Sonning Bridge.

      At the Bull at Sonning we dined in a parlour gay with geraniums, with windows shaded by vines and creepers, with old-fashioned fire-place surmounted by a huge stuffed fish—a typical river-side inn—and thereafter rowed up from Sonning to Reading, where, by the filthy Kennet side, we left our boat for return to its owner, in the usual Thames-side practice.

      We came to Reading prepared for anything but charm in that town of biscuits, and we were not inclined to alter our ready-made opinion upon sight of it. We passed through “double-quick,” leaving the last of the town as late as 8.30. He who runs may read, perhaps, if the type be sufficiently large; but I don’t think he would find it possible to write: we did not, and so this book must go forth lacking a description of Reading.

      The train that carried us from this town of almost metropolitan savour jogged along in most leisurely fashion past Mortimer Stratfield, and finally brought up at Basingstoke, where we went to bed with what haste we might.

VIII.

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      And so we came into Hampshire. A weary county this, for those who know not where to seek its beauties—a county of flint-bestrewn roads, a county, too, of unconscionable distances and sad, lonely, rolling downs. Hampshire, indeed, seems ever attuned to memories in a minor key. It is, possibly, but a matter of individual temperament, but so it seems that this county of pine woods and bleak hills—bare, save for some crowning clump of eerie trees, whose branches continually whisper in sobbing breezes—shall always restrain your boisterous spirits, however bright the day, with a sense of foreboding. How much more, then, shall you be impressed of eventide, should you be still abroad, to see how weirdly the sun goes down behind those hill-tops, which then grow black beside his dying glory, while the water-meadows below grow blurred and indistinct, as the night mists rise in ghostly swirls. These thoughts can never find adequate expression, charged as they are with a latent superstition which, despite the lapse of centuries, lingers yet, perhaps unreasonably.

      Such are the emotions conjured up by Nature in Hampshire. You may test their force readily at sundown, outside Winchester, when the huge mass of St. Catherine’s Hill looms awfully above the water-meadows of the Itchen, etched in deepest black upon the radiant evening sky. Gazing thus, and presently possessed of a fine thrill of superstitious dread, or artistic admiration—what you will—you may turn and encounter, full to the gaze, the twinkling lamps of the City—prosaic indeed.

      INSCRIPTION: SHERBORNE SAINT JOHN.

      But we anticipate, as the artless novelist of another generation was used to remark, with a painful frequency. Before Winchester, Basingstoke. This morning, we took an early walk to Sherborne St. John, an outlying village, now suburban to Basingstoke, a village, as it proved, uninteresting. The church, as was to be expected at 8 a.m., was locked: our only reminiscence of the place, then, is this problematic inscription from the doorway. Returning, we made a nearer acquaintance with that ruined chapel—the chapel of the Holy Ghost—familiar to all travellers by the South-Western Railway, standing as it does beside the Station. Here was established the lay Fraternity of the Holy Ghost, founded at that late period when Gothic architecture began to feel the influence of the Renaissance. The mixed details are very interesting, though, unfortunately, much mutilated. Gilbert White, the historian of Selborne, says he was, when a schoolboy, “eye-witness, perhaps a party concerned”—observe the grace of later years that made him ashamed of the occasion, and willing to doubt his participance—“in the undermining a vast portion of that fine old ruin at the north end of Basingstoke town.” The motive for this destruction (he says) does not appear, save that boys love to destroy what men venerate and admire; the more danger the more honour, and the notion of doing some mischief gave a zest to the enterprise.

      “It looked so like a sin it pleased the more.”

      The Chapel stands within the cemetery known locally as the Liten. Within its walls are two mutilated effigies on altar-tombs, the sole remains of a building long preceding the present ruin, hacked and carven with many penknives.

      Holy Ghost Chapel, Basingstoke

      Modern Basingstoke—“name of hidden and subtle meaning,” as Mr. Gilbert says in “Ruddigore”—is prosperous, cheerful with the ruddy mellowness of red-brick, and loyal with a lofty Jubilee belfry-tower to its Town Hall; and that is all the spirit moves me to set down here of the town.

IX.

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      No more dreary road than that sixteen miles between Basingstoke and Winchester; a road that goes in a remorseless straight line through insignificant scenery, passing never a village for twelve or more weary miles, a road upon which every turning leads to Micheldever. Sign-posts one and all conspire to lead you thither, with an unanimity perfectly surprising. We made certain that something entirely out of the common run was to be found at that place of the peculiar name, and so we were ill enough advised to visit it by turning aside for the matter of a mile.

      And yet, when we were arrived at the place, there was nothing to be seen; nay, worse than that indeed: there is a church at Micheldever whose architectural enormities would make any sane ecclesiologist flee the neighbourhood on the instant. Of the scenery, I will remark only that the village is overhung with funereal pines and firs, a setting that depresses beyond the power of words to express.

      We retraced our steps toward the high road to Winchester, with anathemas upon those sign-posts, varied by a consideration of Hampshire as a county prolific in what Mr. Gilbert calls, “that curious anomaly”—the lady novelist. For, look you, at Micheldever resides Mrs. Mona Caird, the heroine of the “Marriage a Failure” correspondence, and the authoress of the “Wing of Azrael”; and Sparkford, Haslemere, and the New Forest shelter respectively, Miss Yonge, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Miss Braddon; others, doubtless, there be within these gates who help to swell the output of the familiar three volumes, for almost every woman of leisure and scribbling propensities writes romances nowadays. Hampshire, indeed, seems decidedly a literary county, for Tennyson and Tyndall and Kingsley (Keble, too) have lived and worked within its borders.

      For the next five miles we passed, I think, but one house, Lunways Inn,

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