A Visit to Rugby and a Tramp to the White Horse Hill.

London, September 20, 1902.

One would think at first view that it would be as easy to write a good book for boys about school life as to write a good story about any other subject. But it does not seem to be so. At any rate, many gifted and practised authors have attempted it, with only moderate success. Archdeacon Farrar, one of the most versatile writers of our time, has given us a pretty good story of school life in his St. Winifred's, but the work is marred by its too constant appeal to morbid emotion. Mr. Rudyard Kipling, too, has tried his hand on a book for boys, and has only given us what Dr. Robertson Nicoll justly calls "that detestable thing," Stalky & Co. The less boys have to do with that kind of books the better. High hopes were raised by the announcement that the Rev. John Watson, D. D., of Liverpool, better known as "Ian Maclaren," author of Beside the Bonny Brier Bush, and many other exceedingly popular volumes, was to publish a book on school-boy life. It was known that he had the requisite talent, sympathy and humor, that he was a scholarly and high-minded man, and that he had sons of his own. Surely these are just the qualifications that a man ought to have in order to write an ideal book for boys. But Dr. Watson's book, Young Barbarians, was a disappointment. It has many true and bright and laughable things in it, and it glorifies manliness and pluck, but it often ridicules the good boys of the school, the boys who give the teacher no trouble and perform their tasks faithfully, and it makes the most mischievous and lawless boy in school its hero. Besides, it is not one continuous story, but a group of sketches.

In short, I know only one book of this class having the first order of merit, and that is Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby. In my judgment, that is the best book for boys that has yet been written, the most natural, the most interesting, the most wholesome. It has an abiding charm. I read it as a boy, and I have read it again and again since I was grown. It is one of the books whose scenes I have always wished to visit. The opportunity came a few days ago while I was travelling through Central England with several youngsters, ranging from eleven years to fifteen, to whom I had read Tom Brown, and who wished to visit Rugby.

The place is now an important railway junction, with a wilderness of tracks, and trains flying in and out in every direction. What a change in the mode of travel since the days of the Pig and Whistle which brought Tom down to Rugby! The school itself, however, is much the same—the venerable buildings and quadrangles; the doctor's house, with its wealth of vines; the wide sweep of green playground, where Tom had his memorable first experience at football, and "the island," as the mound on one side was called. On the bulletin board was an announcement about "hare and hounds," so that this splendid game, so finely described in the book, is evidently still a favorite. One marked innovation since Tom's time is the introduction of the military feature into the school. The boys are now regularly drilled, and in passing through the buildings one sees the rows of rifles neatly ranged along the walls. It is one of many indications of England's effort to keep up a full stream of recruits for her army.

In the library we are shown the long gilt hand from the old clock in the school tower, the very hand on which Tom and East scratched their names as a suitable conclusion to a certain series of exploits; and, looking closely, we see the name "Thomas Hughes." He was the original of Tom Brown, and to him we are indebted for this unrivalled story of life at school. Just in front of the library building stands a singularly fit and vital bronze statue of Judge Hughes, represented as wearing a sack coat, informal, manly, keenly intelligent, kind and true—the very thing to appeal to boys.

I spoke above of the generally unchanged appearance of the buildings. But the library just mentioned is an exception, being new; and another exception is the very large and handsome new chapel of variegated brick, so that we no longer see it just as it was when Tom, on revisiting Rugby, knelt before Dr. Arnold's tomb, and lifted a subdued and thankful heart to God. But the remains of the great head-master still lie there, and on one side of the chapel is a good recumbent statue of Arnold, and just below it a similar one of his favorite pupil, Stanley, afterwards the celebrated dean of Westminster.

We left Rugby regretfully, but we were not through with the scenes connected with Tom Brown, by any means, for, a few days later, while sojourning at Oxford, I proposed one evening to our young people that we should make an expedition to the White Horse Vale, where Tom was born, and where, moreover, we could see that most ancient, most striking, and most durable of Saxon monuments, the huge figure of a galloping horse, three hundred and seventy feet long, cut in the hillside by removing the turf to the depth of a foot or two and exposing the white chalk beneath, made by King Alfred's soldiers to commemorate his great victory over the Danes at this place—to say nothing of a great fortified Roman camp on top of the same hill. The suggestion was agreed to with alacrity, and next morning, after an early breakfast, we took a train from Oxford down the Thames Valley, but at Didcot turned westward, and soon came to Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred the Great, of whom there is a statue in the marketplace, the native town also of Bishop Butler, the author of the immortal Analogy, and the residence at present of the notorious leader of Tammany Hall, New York, Richard Croker, who has his racing stables here.

The country through which we are passing is as flat as a Western prairie, but since leaving Didcot we have come in sight of a range of chalk hills covered with the greenest of grass, running parallel with the railway on our left, and distant some two or three miles. The highest point in this range is the White Horse Hill—our destination.

At Uffington Station we leave the train and begin our tramp, first of two miles to Uffington village, where, as we pass the parish school, we have the good fortune to see the children all out at play, as in the time when Harry Winburn taught Tom Brown that valuable trick in wrestling, and when Tom and Jacob Doodlecalf were caught by the wheelwright while performing in the porch in a manner not conducive to the gravity and order of the school.

The ground has been level thus far, but for the next mile or so it rises gently, the great white figure on the hill before us becoming more distinct as we come around in front of it somewhat, and then when we come to the foot of the hill itself we find a sharp climb before us, and are presently going almost straight up. Up, up we go. Let us pause for a rest. Up again. Another pause. Now look back. What a lovely view! One more pull for the top, and here we are at last, standing on the broad tail of the White Horse, mopping our brows with our handkerchiefs, and panting with the exertion, while the wind blows a stiff gale from the west. But we yield the floor for a few moments to the man who first told us about this place:

What a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right up above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea, the boldest, bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever saw. Let us go up to the top of him, and see what is to be found there. Ay, you may well wonder and think it odd you never heard of this before....

Yes, it's a magnificent Roman camp, and no mistake, with gates and ditch and mounds, all as complete as it was twenty years after the strong old rogues had left it. Here, right up on the highest point, from which they say you can see eleven counties, they trenched round all the tableland, some twelve or fourteen acres, as was their custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to overlook them, and made their eyrie. The ground falls away rapidly on all sides. Was there ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to your ankles at every step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There is always a breeze in the "camp," as it is called; and here it lies, just as the Romans left it.... It is altogether a place that you won't forget,—a place to open a man's soul and make him prophesy, as he looks down on that great vale spread out as the garden of the Lord before him, and wave on wave of the mysterious downs behind; and to the right and left the chalk hills running away into the distance, along which he can trace for miles the old Roman road, "the Ridgeway" ("the Rudge," as the country folk call it), keeping straight along the highest back of the hills;—such a place as Balak brought Balaam to and told him to prophesy against the people in the valley beneath. And he could not, neither shall you, for they are a people of the Lord who abide there.

And now we leave the camp, and descend towards the west and are on the Ash-down. We are treading on heroes. For this is the actual place where our Alfred won his great battle, the battle of Ash-down, which broke the Danish power, and made England a Christian land. The Danes held the camp and the slope where we are standing—the whole crown of the hill, in fact. "The heathen had beforehand seized the higher ground," as old Asser says, having wasted everything behind them from London, and being just ready to burst down on the fair Vale, Alfred's own birthplace and heritage. And up the heights came the Saxons, "and there the battle was joined with a mighty shout, and the pagans were defeated with great slaughter." After which crowning mercy the pious king, that there might never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the countryside, carved out on the northern side of the chalk hill, under the camp, where it is almost precipitous, the great Saxon white horse, which he who will may see from the railway, and which gives its name to the vale, over which it has looked these thousand years and more.

Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully, called "the manger" [because it is right under the mouth of the White Horse], into one side of which the hills fall with a series of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as "the Giant's Stairs"; they are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like them anywhere else, with their short, green turf, and tender bluebells, and gossamer and thistle-down gleaming in the sun, and the sheep paths running along their sides like ruled lines.

The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of mankind—St. George, the country folk used to tell me—killed a dragon. Whether it were St. George I cannot say; but surely a dragon was killed there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran down, and more by token the place where it ran down is the easiest way up the hillside. So far Thomas Hughes.

As a truthful chronicler, I must record that some of our party, tempted by the precipitous slope covered with luxuriant grass, slid down the hill from the White Horse into the Manger, sitting down on the turf and letting themselves go, with the result of wrecking a pair of trousers or so, and carrying away some portion of the fertile soil of Berks to Oxford.

Passing along the ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we may come to Wayland Smith's forge, a cave familiar to readers of Kenilworth, but we content ourselves with a distant view, and, descending the hill, turn to the east, and, after a brisk walk of three or four miles, we halt under a fine old tree in front of a cottage door, to see another object described in Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby, the celebrated Blowing Stone, "a square lump of stone, some three feet and a half high, perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian rat holes." It is chained to the tree and secured with a padlock. Instead of the innkeeper, for whom Mr. Hughes was so fearful lest he should burst or have apoplexy when he blew the stone, a very comely matron came out of the cottage and blew it for us—then we all blew it in turn. The sound is described exactly in the book: "a grewsome sound, between a moan and a roar, spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful voice." This stone is said to have been used in old times to give warning and summons in time of war.

In his other book, on The Scouring of the White Horse, that is, the scraping away of the accumulated sand and grass, which is the occasion every year for the gathering of the whole countryside for games and festivities, Judge Hughes gives the following ballad in the country dialect, which contains a reference to this use of the stone:

But the sun is now sinking westward, and we have still a long walk before us to the railroad, and in order to catch our train it must be a rapid walk as well. We have been so much interested that we did not think of anything to eat until now, but the vigorous exercise has given us keen appetites, and we begin to inquire for food. None to be had. So we set out hungry on our forced march to the station, and by steady toil reach it a few minutes before the arrival of our train, having tramped thirteen long miles up hill and down dale since leaving the train there that morning. In the compartment which we entered were a couple of English ladies, who presently opened a small case of tea things, lighted a spirit lamp, and brewed their tea. Then they drank it. That was the best tea I ever—smelled. The delicious aroma of it tantalized and tormented our weary and hungry pedestrians for miles, and put an edge on our appetites that made obedience to the tenth commandment an utter impossibility.

It may seem incredible, but it is a fact that our friend, Mr. Bird, and two of the youngsters in the party, did four miles more on foot at Wantage later on in the same day. You may be sure there was hearty eating and sound sleeping when we all got back to our quarters at Oxford that night, well satisfied with our memorable visit to the White Horse and the Blowing Stone.

Our sojourn at Oxford, with her wealth of mellow architecture and her inspiring historical and literary associations,—our visits to Windsor Castle, Eton College, and Stoke Pogis, where Gray wrote his immortal "Elegy,"—and our excursions to Hampton Court, with its wonderful grape vine and its crowding memories of Wolsey, Cromwell, and William III., and to Kingston, Richmond Hill, Kew Gardens, Kensington and the Crystal Palace,—were all full of interest, but must be passed over here, as there are subjects of greater importance connected with London which will occupy all the remaining space that we can give to England.