Without Knowing Mr Walkley

by Edith Olivier

  He was indeed a walker of the old type. Wherever he wished to go, he went on foot, walking as easily and naturally about the Plain as a plover lollops over it on the wing. He was one of the native archæologists of Wiltshire, and he often gave lectures to learned societies in Salisbury. On those mornings, he was up early, so as to be sure that all his drawings, maps, and charts should be in the lecture-room by night. They were too many to be carried all at once. He carried the first instalment to Salisbury in the morning, and then walked back to dine at Amesbury, having completed his first eighteen miles. After dinner, he walked off again with the rest of his papers, lectured in the evening and walked home at night.

  Mr. Brown was eventually taken ill and died at Winchester in 1839, in the course of a walk to give one of his lectures at Chichester.

  He was before my day; but I well remember Mr. Inman, the Rector of West Knoyle, who fixed a telescope outside his house, so that through it he could scan the immense road which connects his village with the outer world. Through this telescope, he could recognize, many miles away, the walking figure of any of his clerical friends. The clergyman could be seen while he was still three or four hours away, yet, in that lonely neighbourhood, West Knoyle Rectory was undoubtedly the only possible destination of the inevitably approaching dot. Then Mr. Inman ran to the poultry yard to kill a chicken which was roasted and ready for dinner by the time the hungry pedestrian arrived.

  What a lonely, lovely mode of life is recalled by this picture! The quiet empty downland. The solitary figure moving steadily towards its goal. Mr. Inman’s dramatic gesture of pleasure and surprise as he met his friend at the door. Then the delicious home-made meal; the two voices talking late into the night while Mrs. Inman tossed on her feather-bed overhead; the well-earned sleep, undisturbed by the hoarse voices of the sheep or their tinkling bells, the sounds of which floated continuously through the window all through the night; then, next morning, once more, the long road.

  Those walkers knew every yard of their country roads, while the motorist of to-day can barely catch sight of the milestones which flash past him as he roars relentlessly by.

  When they first married, my parents often walked out to dinner with their friends in the neighbouring villages. This meant a walk of three miles over the hill to dine with Archdeacon Lear at Bishopstone: it was three miles up the Wylye valley to find Archdeacon Buchanan at Wishford: while the Penruddockes at Compton Chamberlayne were six miles away. People dined early then, and it must have been very pleasant to stroll through the late summer afternoon for dinner at half-past six or seven, and afterwards to return in the deep twilight. In dry weather, the roads shewed white in the night, and little traffic came to stir up the dust, when once the farm horses had been brought home after their day’s work.

  The downs all round were utterly still, though now and again a train roared by, followed by a sulky red glare of smoke which lit for a few moments the darkening sky.

  By my day, my parents did not walk to dinner farther than to Wilton House, a quarter of a mile from the Rectory. In fine weather we never drove there, but pinned our long frilled voluminous skirts round our waists, and wore goloshes over our satin shoes. One of mine came off one evening, in a dark slough of slippery mud, and I never knew it till I reached Wilton House, while my sister Mamie once forgot all about hers and went in to dinner with them still on her feet. But the long skirts of those days hid a multitude of sins.

  A short time before the war, I saw a man who was taking a most romantic walk. My father and I were driving from Wilton to Wilsford, and on Camp Hill we overtook a flock of sheep which had spread themselves over the grass on either side of the zigzag road. My father was at once interested, as he did not recognize the breed. Later in the day, when we were coming home, we met them again, and then my father got out of the carriage to have a talk with the shepherd. He was a Dorset man, employed by a farmer in that county, who owned what was indeed one of the only two flocks in England of this particular breed. Every year part of the flock was exchanged with the other, which belonged to a Hertfordshire farmer. The sheep were frightened and upset if they travelled by train, and even in pre-war days there was too much traffic on the main roads to make the journey from farm to farm a pleasant one. So this shepherd had for years driven his sheep by lanes and by-ways from county to county in the month of May. Their pace averaged two miles an hour, and the journey each way took three weeks. All along the route, the man now knew fields into which he could turn his sheep for the night, houses where he himself could find a bed, or inns which would give accommodation both to himself and his flock. When he reached Hertfordshire, he rested there for a week or two, and then drove back to Dorset the sheep he had come to fetch. There could not be a more ideal way of spending the months of May and June. I wonder if this Arcadian pilgrimage still continues, but I fear not, as there can hardly still be in the south of England enough forgotten tracks to allow a shepherd and his sheep to saunter through them from Dorset to Hertfordshire at a pace of two miles an hour.

  My father loved walking. Every day he walked about his parish; and in and out of the houses of his parishioners. He was so completely at home in these, that he often opened the doors and went in without knocking, though this once gave him rather an awkward experience. He walked one day into a kitchen, in which the lady of the house was having her Saturday afternoon’s bath. She heard his quick determined step as he approached, and jumping out of her tub, she crouched behind some linen which was airing on a horse before the fire. My father saw her at once, but with complete sang-froid, he quickly crossed the kitchen, and, looking up the stairs, he called the lady’s name. When he got no answer, he turned on his heel and went quickly away, muttering to himself his disappointment at finding her not at home.

  At one time we went through a phase of writing each other’s epitaphs, and one of my brothers wrote this about my father:

  Here lies the body of the Reverend Dacres,

  The friend of grocers and butchers and bakers.

  He walked so fast

  That at the last

  He walked right into the undertaker’s.

  My father always walked in the country roads wearing a tall hat. His ‘ wide-awake’ was only worn in the garden. He thought it looked lazy, in spite of its name. When he was over seventy, he had a bad carriage accident, and was thrown out of the carriage on to his head. His tall hat saved his life, but curiously enough, he took a dislike to it afterwards, and thenceforth he only wore it in London.

  I wonder what the people of to-day would say, if they found themselves on one of the country roads of my youth. Very muddy in winter, and very dusty in summer, all their users had a share in making them. In the autumn, cartloads of large flints were tipped into piles by the roadside, and upon these the stone-breakers set to work, wearing wire masks to protect their eyes as they hammered the stones into pieces, which were decreed to be ‘no bigger than would go into a man’s mouth’. This measure was a very elastic one, to judge by the size of the stones which were eventually spread upon the roads. They were then slowly driven in by the successive vehicles which passed over them in the course of many months. As we drove about the country in the winter, we saw with despair ahead of us long stretches of road covered with huge rough stones over which we had to pass. Those weary drags over the newly laid stones were our chief experiences in the course of our winter drives. The unhappy horses crept along, heads down, and feet painfully picking a way through the sharp, loose stones, while considerate drivers got out of their carriages and walked beside them. Everyone carried tools with which to pick out the stones which often lodged in the horseshoes, and too often lamed the horses.

  Naturally everyone tried to follow in a track which had already begun to be levelled by someone in front, so one half of the road became more or less mended while the other half was practically untouched. Then the authorities devised the diabolical plan of laying down hurdles upon the levelled half, and so forcing the unhappy road users to
begin their task once more upon the other side. Mr. Savage once leapt out of his carriage and triumphantly threw the hurdles over the hedge into the field. This was an offence against the road acts, and he was prosecuted and severely fined.

  Then the first steam-rollers appeared, and these added a fresh terror to the roads, as very few horses would pass them at work. There were exciting scenes when horses shied, reared, leapt over hedges, turned sharp round, or bolted in the opposite direction while their drivers tried to coax them past these road monsters. Frightened ladies waved their whips at the red-flagged man who gave warning that a ‘ mechanically propelled vehicle’ was approaching; and at this signal, he was bound by law to stop his engine and to lead the frightened animal by. This of course delayed matters, so many roads were never steam-rolled at all, but were left to be levelled in the old way by the casual passerby.

  Chapter Six

  ENTERTAINMENTS

  When I was a girl, country places were far more self-supporting in the way of entertainments than they are to-day. Nowadays, the smallest villages are generally within reach of a cinema; and for those who want to hear music of any kind, there is always the wireless. But in those days, when we wanted amusement, we had to produce it ourselves and our entertainments were often very good ones. At Wilton in my childhood we had a brass band which possessed some very loud and discordant instruments: its repertoire was small and its members never learnt quite perfectly any of the tunes they played, but it looked very important when it marched out on ceremonial occasions. We also had a fife and drum band for merriment, a Choral Society which studied serious music, a troop of Christy Minstrels, and my eldest sister’s ‘Girls’ Class’, which could always sing a cantata. Then there was Fred Rawlence, who in winter arranged tableaux vivants in the Talbot and Wyvern Hall, and in summer he sometimes held a wonderful torchlight pageant in his garden at Bulbridge at night. Edward Slow, our Wiltshire poet, was delighted to step upon the stage and to read extracts from his dialect poems; and at the Rectory we could always produce a good dramatic company.

  The Christy Minstrel Troupe had two excellent corner men, Frank Brazier and Ernest Ridout. They were a most spirited pair and were full of quips and riddles. One series of riddles, which never failed to bring the house down, was based on Christian names. They asked each other: ‘Have you seen Ann?’ ‘Ann who?’ ‘Anemone,’ and so on for at least ten minutes at a time. Once the questioner got confused and said: ‘Have you seen Tommy?’ The other corner man was puzzled by this and he shook his head gravely, saying: ‘No, I ain’t seen Tommy.’ There was another pause, and then came: ‘ Then have you seen Tom?’ Great relief. ‘Tom who?’ ‘Tomato.’

  Of course such little slips appealed very much to the audience.

  In its palmiest days, the Christy Minstrel Troupe numbered about thirty men, and one evening we added to their number by setting in the midst of their row of black faces, a patch of ten or twelve women, elaborately made up and wearing white dresses and wigs. We then called them ‘The Black and White Negro Troupe’, and we made a very grand entrance, when my brother Reginald swung open the stage door and led us in, to the tune of ‘Uncle Thomas walks like that’. As our large company stamped round and round the stage to this tune, a stranger in the audience was heard to ask Lady Pembroke: ‘Who are these people?’ The answer she received was: ‘It’s the Miss Oliviers and their brothers.’ There were forty-two of us.

  The great entertainment of the year was always held on the Tuesday in Easter week. It was a very old-fashioned function and I think my father must have brought the idea from Great Yarmouth, where he had been a curate in the late ’fifties. It was called the Church Helpers’ Tea, and was attended by Church workers of every kind—school teachers, choirmen, bellringers, district visitors, holders of missionary boxes and what not. The hostesses were six of the chief ladies in the parish and they each presided at a long table which they had loaded with the most delicious food. As we each laid our tables, we eyed the others with envious glances, for there was immense rivalry between the hostesses. Nowadays such a party would be considered very banal, but people enjoyed it very much then. After tea, the plates and dishes were cleared away and replaced by cards, draughts, dominoes and letter games. For the next two hours, the guests happily played away at these games, exchanged the latest gossip, and listened to an occasional song by one of the local vocalists— ‘ The Death of Nelson’, and ‘The Children’s Home’, were special favourites. At the end of the evening my father made a speech. He reported on the Church work of the year and he also said how many people had died in its course, and what their ages had been. Then he told us about the weather and gave a great many other statistics which he always succeeded in making supremely exciting. This speech, which sounds from its subject matter as if it must have been very common place, was always the climax of the evening. At its end we broke into a hymn:

  ‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow

  Onward goes the Pilgrim Band.’

  Then we separated for another year.

  We once had a very picturesque entertainment which began with some children’s tableaux, arranged by Fred Rawlence and ended with a Fairy Cantata sung by my sister’s class of factory girls. They were charmingly dressed in white gowns, and wore stars on their heads with floating veils. Each carried a silver wand. We thought of a very ambitious and poetic opening to our cantata, singing the first chorus pianissimo before the curtain went up. The words were:

  Would’st thou know what sounds are stealing

  Through these fair and rural bowers?

  As the exquisite notes stole into the room, we singers behind the scenes were aghast to hear the whole audience break into roars of laughter. We bravely sang on, unable to imagine what could have made our music appear farcical. It was not until the entertainment was over that we learnt that the stage, which had been raised about a foot for the children’s tableaux, had been lowered for the cantata, while the curtain was left at its original height. There was therefore a considerable hiatus between it and the new stage level. The fairylike costumes of the chorus had not included their footwear, and, as they listened to the sentimental strains, the audience saw before their eyes about sixty somewhat clumsy ankles clothed in shapeless boots of all ages, most of them sadly trodden down at the heel. The effect was less fairylike than we had hoped.

  Many of our entertainments were in aid of the Parish Nurse Fund, and at one of these, the Mayor, a crusted old Wiltshire character, made a speech which ended with this peroration.

  ‘They say that all nurses are angels, but I’m sure I can truly say that our nurse is an exception to the rule.’

  Nurse Turner was slightly deaf, and she smiled on serenely, quite unconscious of this somewhat left-handed compliment.

  Perhaps the most amusing entertainment we ever had in Wilton was when we heard the Phonograph for the first time. This was a forerunner of the gramophone. You spoke or sang into it, and the record was immediately reproduced. The entertainer began by telling us that on his arrival in the town that evening, he had been fortunate enough to find the Wilton brass band practising in the hall, and that he had persuaded them to allow him to make a record on the spot. He then proceeded to let us hear this record. Until then, most of the audience had imagined that the phonograph was only an elaborate trick, and that it could not truly reproduce actual sounds heard at the time. Now in one minute we realized that it could indeed do all that its producer boasted. Out there streamed into the room the favourite tune of the Wilton band, well known to everybody present, played by those instruments whose harsh discordant timbre had for years led our club processions to church. Every familiar mistake was reproduced with cruel exactness. No entertainment could possibly have had a better or more appropriate overture.

  The Mayor was now asked to make a speech into the phonograph. He was a nervous man and he was much embarrassed as he climbed on to the platform and, in sight of everyone, was confronted with the mouthpiece of this most tell-tale instr
ument. It made him more nervous than ever, and between each word he spoke, there came an agonized—‘Er … er … er.’ The audience listened entranced, knowing that this was about to be reproduced for their entertainment. In a few moments the poor Mayor’s speech was repeated in a thin Punch-and-Judy voice, with little squeaks to represent those stutterings. The audience feared to lose the faintest of these absurd little sounds, so everybody stuffed their handkerchiefs into their mouths until the speech was over, and then came an outburst of laughter.

  Undeterred by the Mayor’s embarrassing experience, a town councillor then leapt on to the platform, certain that he would be able to make a success. He really was even more absurd. His enunciation was always rather ridiculous and precise, but he was delighted at the thought of his well-turned phrases being now perpetuated.