Wandering about the roads and lanes of Wiltshire, it has always been possible to come across specimens of that charming if quarrelsome race—the race of born Antiquaries. The Wiltshire strain begins in the seventeenth century with Aubrey, the most winning of gossips. He soon escaped from his tutors, whom he thought ‘dull, ignorant, rest-in-the-house teachers’, and spent his life among ‘umbrages, Osney House ruines, etc., and antiquities’. He finished nothing, but he filled a number of pocket-books with ‘ philosophical and antiquarian remarks’ for his own amusement and the delight of his friends. Thus, ‘by God’s Providence’, as he said, he found happiness, though ‘his businesses and affaires ran kim-kam’, and he lost all his money. More than two hundred years later, Sir Richard Colt Hoare was still at it, but in a more systematic way, for he published the result of his researches in some huge tomes which no Wiltshire historians can yet do without. He dug and measured and wrote things down, though unfortunately his company was so agreeable that he was often detained too long over luncheon with the local squire during his excavations. He left his labourers to go on with the digging and only strolled out late in the afternoon to see what they had thought worth saving among their finds.
Two Antiquaries of the old school were living in Wilton when I was a child, and they died within a few months of each other, some time in the early ’nineties. Like Aubrey, Mr. Nightingale and Mr. Swayne wrote very little down, and most of their learning perished with them. My father constantly quoted bits of old Wiltshire knowledge on no authority but the word of one of these two, and they must have made the most delightful companions. Each of them loved the county with a love resembling that of an old family servant, and the past of Wiltshire lay in their minds as if it were their own. They were chain-talkers too, a reference to one thing evoking from them a flow of associated memories.
Mr. Swayne was also a chain-smoker, with a cigar always in his mouth and a book in his hand. He built an enormous library (since pulled down) on to his house, the Island, at Wilton, but its walls could never hold his books. They lay in heaps on the floor, jumbled up with cigar boxes empty and full, till his son succeeded him and spent several years in tidying up the litter.
Mr. Swayne was a tall thin handsome man with a sardonic expression, and a gift for sarcastic epigram which was said (with what truth I know not) to have lost him half a fortune. In his youth he had been a barrister, and the story goes that once he shot one of the poisoned shafts of his wit across the Court at the sitting judge, who happened to be his own father, and who at once went home and altered his will.
Mr. Swayne was ‘an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers’ except at three o’clock on Sunday afternoons, so, while he lived, a special Evensong was always said in Wilton church for his benefit at this hour. From our nursery window, we always saw him pass on his way to this service, with Mrs. Swayne, a small round woman, walking a few steps behind him.
The Swaynes had several daughters, one of whom was of so dazzling a beauty that she was a legend in her lifetime, and the old ladies at the parties in the Bishop’s palace at Salisbury used to cluster round the door to see her come in. The whole county was in love with her, though she was only nineteen when she married a most brilliant barrister much older than herself. In less than a year, he had a complete and permanent breakdown, and this lovely creature returned to Wilton to live in a tiny house in the Square with her baby daughter. She was like her father, a curious aloof character, and now she became very much a recluse. Only three or four special friends were ever admitted to her house, their names being inscribed on a list hung in the hall, so that the parlour-maid might refresh her memory on her way to answer the bell. My eldest sister was one of the chosen.
Mr. Nightingale’s personality was of another quality to that of Mr. Swayne, with its bitter tang and its touch of mockery. The Nightingales were well known in the county as wine-merchants, though I never heard of Mr. Nightingale selling a bottle of wine. However, as his affairs did not ‘run kim-kam’, and he lived in comfortable leisure to the end of his life, I presume that other members of his family carried on the business, while he lived peacefully with his sister at the Mount. The walls of two of the rooms in this house were glazed to secure the remains of what had been a unique collection of early English porcelain; and here Mr. Nightingale was often to be found, his quiet face very serene, and his calm brown eyes resting affectionately upon some specially loved ‘piece’ which he happened to be showing to one of his friends. He
