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
