This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any pale town lady; and although she was the mother of several children, the face was extremely youthful in appearance; it seemed indeed almost girlish in its delicacy and innocent expression when she looked up at me with her blue eyes shaded by her white sun-bonnet. The children were five or six in number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms--all clean and healthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces.
I mentioned that I was on my way to Brans...o...b.., and inquired the distance.
"Brans...o...b..-are you going there? Oh, I wonder what you will think of Brans...o...b..!" she exclaimed, her white cheeks flushing, her innocent eyes sparkling with excitement.
What was Brans...o...b.. to her, I returned with indifference; and what did it matter what any stranger thought of it?
"But it is my home!" she answered, looking hurt at my careless words. "I was born there, and married there, and have always lived at Brans...o...b.. with my people until my husband got work in this place; then we had to leave home and come and live in this cottage."
And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that Brans...o...b.. was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place! That she had been to other villages and towns--Axmouth, and Seaton, and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place like Brans...o...b..--not one that she liked half so well. How strange that I had never been there--had never even heard of it! People that went there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said afterwards that there was no sweeter spot on the earth.
Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in the excitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before me. A pretty sight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin she might have been taken for a woman of Spain--the most natural, perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth. But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, and with a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin. Her shame, too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural; for we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more clothing than the Spanish; and our closer covering "has entered the soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would have said; and that which was only becoming modesty in the English woman would in the Spanish seem rank prudishness.
In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear and swift, running between the hills that rose, round and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, some gra.s.sy, others wooded. This was the Brans...o...b.., and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the other the widely separated groups and little rows of thatched cottages.
Finally, I came to the last and largest group of all, the end of the village nearest to the sea, within ten minutes" walk of the shingly beach. Here I was glad to rest. Above, on the giant downs, were stony waste places, and heather and gorse, where the rabbits live, and had for neighbours the adder, linnet, and wheatear, and the small grey t.i.tlark that soared up and dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling little tune. On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted and had come to seek--the wildness and freedom of untilled earth; an un.o.bstructed prospect, hills beyond hills of malachite, stretching away along the coast into infinitude, long leagues of red sea-wall and the wide expanse and everlasting freshness of ocean. And the village itself, the little old straggling place that had so grand a setting, I quickly found that the woman in the cottage had not succeeded in giving me a false impression of her dear home. It was just such a quaint unimproved, old-world, restful place as she had painted. It was surprising to find that there were many visitors, and one wondered where they could all stow themselves. The explanation was that those who visited Brans...o...b.. knew it, and preferred its hovels to the palaces of the fashionable seaside town. No cottage was too mean to have its guest. I saw a lady push open the cracked and warped door of an old barn and go in, pulling the door to after her--it was her bed-sitting-room. I watched a party of pretty merry girls marching, single file, down a narrow path past a pig-sty, then climb up a ladder to the window of a loft at the back of a stone cottage and disappear within. It was their bedroom. The relations between the villagers and their visitors were more intimate and kind than is usual. They lived more together, and were more free and easy in company. The men were mostly farm labourers, and after their day"s work they would sit out-of-doors on the ground to smoke their pipes; and where the narrow crooked little street was narrowest--at my end of the village--when two men would sit opposite each other, each at his own door, with legs stretched out before them, their boots would very nearly touch in the middle of the road. When walking one had to step over their legs; or, if socially inclined, one could stand by and join in the conversation. When daylight faded the village was very dark--no lamp for the visitors--and very silent, only the low murmur of the sea on the shingle was audible, and the gurgling sound of a swift streamlet flowing from the hill above and hurrying through the village to mingle with the Brans...o...b.. lower down in the meadows. Such a profound darkness and quiet one expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where there were visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and infinitely refreshing.
No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one square path of yellow light was visible. To enjoy the sensation I went out and sat down, and listened alone to the liquid rippling, warbling sound of the swift-flowing streamlet--that sweet low music of running water to which the reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving to imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect.
A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the coast east of the village; it was bold and precipitous in places, and from the summit of the cliff a very fine view of the coast-line on either hand could be obtained. Best of all, the face of the cliff itself was the breeding-place of some hundreds of herring-gulls. The eggs at the period of my visit were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at that stage both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state of anxious suspense. I had seen a good many colonies of this gull before at various breeding stations on the coast--south, west, and east--but never in conditions so singularly favourable as at this spot. From the vale where the Brans...o...b.. pours its clear waters through rough ma.s.ses of shingle into the sea the ground to the east rises steeply to a height of nearly five hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many another, but it has features of peculiar interest. Here, in some former time, there has been a landslip, a large portion of the cliff at its highest part falling below and forming a sloping ma.s.s a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock, which lies like a b.u.t.tress against the vertical precipice and seems to lend it support. The fall must have occurred a very long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the rude slope--hawthorn, furze, and ivy--has an ancient look. Here are huge ma.s.ses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in their forms ruined castles, towers, and churches, some of them completely overgrown with ivy. On this rough slope, under the shelter of the cliff, with the sea at its feet, the villagers have formed their cultivated patches. The patches, wildly irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping ground as to suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on all fours, are divided from each other by ridges and by ma.s.ses of rock, deep fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn and furze bushes.
Altogether the effect was very singular the huge rough ma.s.s of jumbled rock and soil, the ruin wrought by Nature in one of her Cromwellian moods, and, scattered irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of cultivated smoothness--potato rows, green parallel lines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant cabbage-globes--each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pa.s.s and repa.s.s wholly occupied with their own affairs.
I spent hours of rare happiness at this spot in watching the birds.
I could not have seen and heard them to such advantage if their breeding-place had been shared with other species. Here the herring-gulls had the rock to themselves, and looked their best in their foam-white and pearl-grey plumage and yellow legs and beaks. While I watched them they watched me; not gathered in groups, but singly or in pairs, scattered up and down all over the face of the precipice above me, perched on ledges and on jutting pieces of rock. Standing motionless thus, beautiful in form and colour, they looked like sculptured figures of gulls, set up on the projections against the rough dark wall of rock, just as sculptured figures of angels and saintly men and women are placed in niches on a cathedral front. At first they appeared quite indifferent to my presence, although in some instances near enough for their yellow irides to be visible. While unalarmed they were very silent, standing in that clear sunshine that gave their whiteness something of a crystalline appearance; or flying to and fro along the face of the cliff, purely for the delight of bathing in the warm lucent air. Gradually a change came over them. One by one those that were on the wing dropped on to some projection, until they had all settled down, and, letting my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of rock, it was plain to see that all the birds were watching me. They had made the discovery that I was a stranger. In my rough old travel-stained clothes and tweed hat I might have pa.s.sed for a Brans...o...b.. villager, but I did no hoeing and digging in one of the cultivated patches; and when I deliberately sat down on a rock to watch them, they noticed it and became suspicious; and as time went on and I still remained immovable, with my eyes fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased and turned to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others and join in the loud chorus of alarm. It was a wonderful sound. Not like the tempest of noise that may be heard at the breeding-season at Lundy Island, and at many other stations where birds of several species mix their various voices--the yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymming scowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar"s wonderful onomatopoetic lines. Here there was only one species, with a clear resonant cry, and as every bird uttered that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect was produced. The herring-gull and lesser black-backed gull resemble each other in language as they do in general appearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike the guttural black-headed and common gull. But the herring-gull has a shriller, more piercing voice, and resembles the black-backed species just as, in human voices, a boy"s clear treble resembles a baritone. Both birds have a variety of notes; and both, when the nest is threatened with danger, utter one powerful importunate cry, which is repeated incessantly until the danger is over. And as the birds breed in communities, often very populous, and all clamour together, the effect of so many powerful and unisonant voices is very grand; but it differs in the two species, owing to the quality of their voices being different; the storm of sound produced by the black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of the herring-gulls has a ringing sharpness almost metallic.
It is probable that in the case I am describing the effect of sharpness and resonance was heightened by the position of the birds, perched motionless, scattered about on the face of the perpendicular wall of rock, all with their beaks turned in my direction, raining their cries upon me. It was not a monotonous storm of cries, but rose and fell; for after two or three minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and the cries grow fewer and fewer; then the infection would spread again, bird after bird joining the outcry; and after a while there would be another lull, and so on, wave following wave of sound. I could have spent hours, and the hours would have seemed like minutes, listening to that strange chorus of ringing chiming cries, so novel was its effect, and unlike that of any other tempest of sound produced by birds which I had ever heard. When by way of a parting caress and benediction (given and received) I dipped my hands in Brans...o...b.."s clear streamlet it was with a feeling of tender regret that was almost a pain. For who does not make a little inward moan, an Eve"s Lamentation, an unworded, "Must I leave thee, Paradise?" on quitting any such sweet restful spot, however brief his stay in it may have been? But when I had climbed to the summit of the great down on the east side of the valley and looked on the wide land and wider sea flashed with the early sunlight I rejoiced full of glory at my freedom. For invariably when the peculiar character and charm of a place steals over and takes possession of me I begin to fear it, knowing from long experience that it will be a painful wrench to get away and that get away sooner or later I must. Now I was free once more, a wanderer with no ties, no business to transact in any town, no worries to make me miserable like others, nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
Pausing on the summit to consider which way I should go, inland, towards Axminister, or along the coast by Beer, Seton, Axmouth, and so on to Lyme Regis, I turned to have a last look and say a last good-bye to Brans...o...b.. and could hardly help waving my hand to it.
Why, I asked myself, am I not a poet, or verse-maker, so as to say my farewell in numbers? My answer was, Because I am too much occupied in seeing. There is no room and time for "tranquillity," since I want to go on to see something else. As Blake has it: "Natural objects always did and do, weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me."
We know however that they didn"t quite quench it in him.
Chapter Nineteen: Abbotsbury
Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to watch them coming in at day"s decline and listen to their marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions when they rise and break up in great bodies and play at clouds in the sky. When the people of the place, the squire and keepers and others who have an interest in the reeds and osiers, fall to abusing them on account of the damage they do, I put my fingers in my ears. But at Abbotsbury I did not do so, but listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented and the story they told. This was that when the owner of Abbotsbury came down for the October shooting and found the starlings more numerous than ever, he put himself into a fine pa.s.sion and reproached his keepers and other servants for not having got rid of the birds as he had desired them to do. Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said than done, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it himself without a.s.sistance from any one, and getting out a big duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the smallest shot and went down to the reed bed and concealed himself among the bushes at a suitable distance. The birds were pouring in, and when it was growing dark and they had settled down for the night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and by and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or two settled down again in the same place he fired again. Then he went home, and early next morning men and boys went into the reeds and gathered a bushel or so of dead starlings. But the birds returned in their thousands that evening, and his heart being still hot against them he went out a second time to slaughter them wholesale with his big gun.
Then when he had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead and wounded fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and he was mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his return to the house, or palace, he angrily told his people to "let the starlings alone" for the future--never to molest them again!
I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard; there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity and repented.
Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the seven wonders of Britain. And thanks to this great bank, a screen between sea and land extending about fourteen miles eastward from Portland, this part of the coast must remain inviolate from the speculative builder of seaside holiday resorts or towns of lodging-houses.
Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land. I had heard so much about the swannery that it had but little interest for me. The only thing about it which specially attracted my attention was seeing a swan rise up and after pa.s.sing over my head as I stood on the bank fly straight out over the sea. I watched him until he had diminished to a small white spot above the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight. Do these swans that fly away over the sea, and others which appear in small flocks or pairs at Poole Harbour and at other places on the coast, ever return to the Fleet? Probably some do, but, I fancy some of these explorers must settle down in waters far from home, to return no more.
The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is very attractive. Life seems quieter, more peaceful there out of sight of the ocean"s turbulence, out of hearing of its "accents disconsolate." The cottages are seen ranged in a double line along the narrow crooked street, like a procession of cows with a few laggards scattered behind the main body. One is impressed by its ancient character. The cottages are old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the church with its grey square tower, and all about are scattered the memorials of antiquity--the chantry on the hill, standing conspicuous alone, apart, above the world; the vast old abbey barn, and, rough thick stone walls, ivy-draped and crowned with beautiful valerian, and other fragments that were once parts of a great religious house.
Looking back at the great round hill from the village it is impossible not to notice the intense red colour of the road that winds over its green slope. One sometimes sees on a hillside a ploughed field of red earth which at a distance might easily be taken for a field of blossoming trifolium. Viewed nearer the crimson of the clover and red of the earth are very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red of the soil and to soften that of the flower until they are very nearly of the same hue. The road at Abbotsbury was near and looked to me more intensely red than any ordinary red earth, and the sight was strangely pleasing. These two complementary colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus--a little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the red and vivid the green the better they please us. We see this in flowers--in the red geranium, for example--where there is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall translucent gra.s.ses. I remember the joy it was in boyhood in early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in our gallops over the level gra.s.s pampas we came upon a patch of scarlet verbenas. The first sight of the intense blooms scattered all about the turf would make us wild with delight, and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go down among the flowers to feast on the sight.
Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing amid the green is distributed very partially, and it may be the redness of the soil and the cliffs in Devon have given that county a more vivid personality, so to speak, than most others. Think of Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and dull-coloured clays in this connection!
The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a good colourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to burrow in, and the hillocks he throws up from numberless irregular splashes of bright red colour on a green sward. The wild animals that strike us as most beautiful, when seen against a green background, are those which bear the reddest fur--fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow a few miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch cows scattered over a considerable s.p.a.ce of ground, some lying down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving about and cropping the long flowery gra.s.ses. All were of that fine rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red animals in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception of a rare variety of the collie dog. The Irish setter and red chouchou come near it. So beautiful did these red cows look in the meadow that I stood still for half an hour feasting my eyes on the sight.
No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of that road winding over the hill above the village. On going to it I found that it had looked as red as rust simply because it was rust-earth made rich and beautiful in colour with iron, its red hue variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple or violet. I was told that there were hundreds of acres of this earth all round the place--earth so rich in iron that many a man"s mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that every effort had been made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury to allow this rich mine to be worked. But, wonderful to relate, he had not been persuaded.
A hard fragment of the red stuff, measuring a couple of inches across and weighing about three ounces avoirdupois, rust-red in colour with purple streaks and yellow mottlings, is now lying before me. The mineralogist would tell me that its commercial value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which is doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons of the same material lie close to the surface under the green turf and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked up my specimen. The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it is the only article of jewellery I possess, and I value it accordingly. And I intend to keep this native ruby by me for as long as the lords of Abbotsbury continue in their present mind. The time may come when I shall be obliged to throw it away. That any millionaire should hesitate for a moment to blast and blacken any part of the earth"s surface, howsoever green and refreshing to the heart it may be, when by so doing he might add to his income, seems like a fable, or a tale of fairyland.
It is as if one had accidentally discovered the existence of a little fantastic realm, a survival from a remote past, almost at one"s doors; a small independent province, untouched by progress, asking to be conquered and its antediluvian const.i.tution taken from it.
From the summit of that commanding hill, over which the red path winds, a n.o.ble view presents itself of the Chesil Bank, or of about ten miles of it, running straight as any Roman road, to end beneath the rugged stupendous cliffs of Portland. The ocean itself, and not conquering Rome, raised this artificial-looking wall or rampart to stay its own proud waves. Formed of polished stones and pebbles, about two hundred yards in width, flat-topped, with steeply sloping sides, at this distance it has the appearance of a narrow yellow road or causeway between the open sea on one hand and the waters of the Fleet, a narrow lake ten miles long, on the other.
When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near enough to be taken in a draw-net, every villager who owns a share (usually a tenth) in a fishing-boat throws down his spade or whatever implement he happens to have in his hand at the moment, and hurries away to the beach to take his share in the fascinating task. At four o"clock one morning a youth, who had been down to the sea to watch, came running into the village uttering loud cries which were like excited yells--a sound to rouse the deepest sleeper. The mackerel had come! For the rest of the day there was a pretty kind of straggling procession of those who went and came between the beach and the village--men in blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets. During the latter part of the day the proceedings were peculiarly interesting to me, a looker-on with no share in any one of the boats, owing to the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish.
Some sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles again and again only to be mocked in the end; still, a draught of jelly-fish was more to my taste than one of mackerel. The great weight of a catch of this kind when the net was full was almost too much for the ten or twelve men engaged in drawing it up; then (to the sound of deep curses from those of the men who were not religious) the net would be opened and the great crystalline hemispheres, hyaline blue and delicate salmon-pink in colour, would slide back into the water. Such rare and exquisite colours have these great gla.s.sy flowers of ocean that to see them was a feast; and every time a net was hauled up my prayer--which I was careful not to repeat aloud--was, Heaven send another big draught of jelly-fish!
The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and Bridport, turned crimson before it touched the horizon. The sky became luminous; the yellow Chesil Bank, stretching long leagues away, and the hills behind it, changed their colours to violet. The rough sea near the beach glittered like gold; the deep green water, flecked with foam, was mingled with fire; the one boat that remained on it, tossing up and down near the beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea. A dozen men were drawing up the last net; but when they gathered round to see what they had taken--mackerel or jelly-fish--I cared no longer to look with them. That sudden, wonderful glory which had fallen on the earth and sea had smitten me as well and changed me; and I was like some needy homeless tramp who has found a shilling piece, and, even while he is gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure before him--glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest sparkling gems, more than he can gather up.
But it is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems, though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was of another and higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness and freedom from all trammels as if the body had become air, essence, energy, or soul, and of union with all visible nature, one with sea and land and the entire vast overarching sky.
We read of certain saints who were subject to experiences of this kind that they were "s.n.a.t.c.hed up" into some supramundane region, and that they stated on their return to earth that it was not lawful for them to speak of the things they had witnessed. The humble naturalist and nature-worshipper can only witness the world glorified--transfigured; what he finds is the important thing. I fancy the mystics would have been nearer the mark if they had said that their experiences during their period of exaltation could not be reported, or that it would be idle to report them, since their questioners lived on the ground and would be quite incapable on account of the mind"s limitations of conceiving a state above it and outside of its own experience.
The glory pa.s.sed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea turned grey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the men departed slowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth, about fifteen years old. Some important matter which he was revolving in his mind had detained him alone on the darkening beach. He sat down, then stood up and gazed at the rolling wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingle at his feet; then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneath his thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his coat, threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the resolute air of a man about to engage in a fight with an adversary nearly as big as himself. Stepping back a little s.p.a.ce, he made a rush at the sea, not to cast himself in it, but only, as it turned out, with the object of catching some water in the hollow of his hands from the top of an incoming wave. He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in hastily retreating he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he got up and renewed the a.s.sault, and when he succeeded in catching water in his hands he dashed it on and vigorously rubbed it over his dirty face. After repeating the operation about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile several falls and wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marched away homewards with a composed air.
Chapter Twenty: Salisbury Revisited
Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter, when I watched and listened to the doves in those cold days in early spring, I have been there a good many times, but never at the time when the bird colony is most interesting to observe, just before and during the early part of the breeding-season. At length, in the early days of June, 1908, the wished opportunity was mine--wished yet feared, seeing that it was possible some disaster had fallen upon that unique colony of stock-doves. It is true they appeared to be long established and well able to maintain their foothold on the building in spite of malicious persecuting daws, but there was nothing to show that they had been long there, seeing that it had been observed by no person but myself that the cathedral doves were stock-doves and not the domestic pigeon found on other large buildings. Great was my happiness to find them still there, as well as the daws and all the other feathered people who make this great building their home; even the kestrels were not wanting. There were three there one morning, quarrelling with the daws in the old way in the old place, halfway up the soaring spire. The doves were somewhat diminished in number, but there were a good many pairs still, and I found no dead young ones lying about, as they were now probably grown too large to be ejected, but several young daws, about a dozen I think, fell to the ground during my stay. Undoubtedly they were dragged out of their nests and thrown down, perhaps by daws at enmity with their parents, or it may be by the doves, who are not meek-spirited, as we have seen, or they would not be where they are, and may on occasion retaliate by invading their black enemies" nesting-holes.
Swallows, martins, and swifts were numerous, the martins especially, and it was beautiful to see them for ever wheeling about in a loose swarm about the building. They reminded me of bees and flies, and sometimes with a strong light on them they were like those small polished black and silvery-white beetles (Gyrinus) which we see in companies on the surface of pools and streams, perpetually gliding and whirling about in a sort of complicated dance. They looked very small at a height of a couple of hundred feet from the ground, and their smallness and numbers and lively and eccentric motions made them very insect-like.
The starlings and sparrows were in a small minority among the breeders, but including these there were seven species in all, and as far as I could make out numbered about three hundred and fifty birds--probably the largest wild bird colony on any building in England.
Nor could birds in all this land find a more beautiful building to nest on, unless I except Wells Cathedral solely on account of its west front, beloved of daws, and where their numerous black company have so fine an appearance. Wells has its west front; Salisbury, so vast in size, is yet a marvel of beauty in its entirety; and seeing it as I now did every day and wanting nothing better, I wondered at my want of enthusiasm on a previous visit. Still, to me, the bird company, the sight of their airy gambols and their various voices, from the deep human-like dove tone to the perpetual subdued rippling, running-water sound of the aerial martins, must always be a princ.i.p.al element in the beautiful effect.
Nor do I know a building where Nature has done more in enhancing the loveliness of man"s work with her added colouring. The way too in which the colours are distributed is an example of Nature"s most perfect artistry; on the lower, heavier b.u.t.tressed parts, where the darkest hues should be, we find the browns and rust-reds of the minute aerial alga, mixed with the greys of lichen, these darker stainings extending upwards to a height of fifty or sixty feet, in places higher, then giving place to more delicate hues, the pale tender greens and greenish greys, in places tinged with yellow, the colours always appearing brightest on the smooth surface between the windows and sculptured parts. The effect depends a good deal on atmosphere and weather: on a day of flying clouds and a blue sky, with a brilliant sunshine on the vast building after a shower, the colouring is most beautiful. It varies more than in the case of colour in the material itself or of pigments, because it is a "living" colour, as Crabbe rightly says in his lumbering verse:
The living stains, which Nature"s hand alone, Profuse of life, pours out upon the stone.
Greys, greens, yellows, and browns and rust-reds are but the colours of a variety of lowly vegetable forms, mostly lichens and the aerial alga called iolithus.
Without this colouring, its "living stains," Salisbury would not have fascinated me as it did during this last visit. It would have left me cold though all the architects and artists had a.s.sured me that it was the most perfectly beautiful building on earth.
I also found an increasing charm in the interior, and made the discovery that I could go oftener and spend more hours in this cathedral without a sense of fatigue or depression than in any other one known to me, because it has less of that peculiar character which we look for and almost invariably find in our cathedrals. It has not the rich sombre majesty, the dim religious light and heavy vault-like atmosphere of the other great fanes. So airy and light is it that it is almost like being out of doors. You do not experience that instantaneous change, as of a curtain being drawn excluding the light and air of day and of being shut in, which you have on entering other religious houses. This is due, first, to the vast size of the interior, the immense length of the nave, and the un.o.bstructed view one has inside owing to the removal by the "vandal" Wyatt of the old ponderous stone screen--an act for which I bless while all others curse his memory; secondly, to the comparatively small amount of stained gla.s.s there is to intercept the light. So graceful and beautiful is the interior that it can bear the light, and light suits it best, just as a twilight best suits Exeter and Winchester and other cathedrals with heavy sculptured roofs. One marvels at a building so vast in size which yet produces the effect of a palace in fairyland, or of a cathedral not built with hands but brought into existence by a miracle.
I began to think it not safe to stay in that place too long lest it should compel me to stay there always or cause me to feel dissatisfied and homesick when away.