For instance, the distance from Wilton to Stonehenge and back is under eighteen miles. Nowadays, if a departing guest unexpectedly lets fall the remark that he has never seen the Stones, it is a simple matter to make a detour round them and to reach the station that way instead of by the usual direct three miles drive to Salisbury. But in my youth, we didn’t throw in Stonehenge like that, as an unconsidered item in the course of a day’s journey. We chose our date some time beforehand, because the horse must be allowed at least two days’ rest before the tremendous undertaking. On the morning of our excursion, we packed two meals into the carriage and drove as far as Wishford, where we all got out, to ‘save the horse’, and walked up the long hill leading to the grass track which I believe was then the only approach to Stonehenge from the Wilton side. Then we got back into the carriage, and drove deliberately on and on. The steady fall of the horse’s hoofs was silenced by the smooth short turf, and our passage would have been entirely soundless but for the squeaking of carriage springs which needed oil. The Stones came into sight at least half an hour before we actually reached them; and to-day it is hard to imagine the romance of that slow and quiet approach, travelling upon a green primeval road, to find Stonehenge at last, alone, unprotected by wire fences, and seemingly forgotten in the wide empty spaces of the Plain.
When we arrived, the horses were at once taken out of the shafts, and their noses were put into nose-bags. When they had finished their dinner they wandered about, on the ends of long hobble-ropes, making a dessert off the turf; while the driver smoked his pipe and went to sleep, and we listened, till we could listen no more, to our elders gravely discussing the origins of Stonehenge, and then we crept away and played rounders.
When my uncles and aunts stayed at Wilton in the summer, my father occasionally consented to interrupt his otherwise invariable rule of visiting in the parish every afternoon, in order to make an ‘excursion’ with us. It required no little planning. We used to start by train and get out at some station twenty, or thirty miles away. Here my father’s genius as conjuror first came into play. He never descended to the time-worn, and indeed futile, trick of producing a rabbit out of a hat; but he never failed to produce a wagonette upon a country road. And here, in the station yard at our first halting place, we always found the first wagonette. We clambered in, bristling with Alpenstocks and field glasses—Papa in his tall hat; uncles in soft felts; Mamma and aunts in cloth dresses and bustles; and I in the hard straw boater which girls of the period laid across the tops of their heads, much as the pancake man carries his tray. It was often pouting with rain, but we had not been able to change our plans because of the weather. Our arrangements had been made by post several days before: telephones did not then exist and most of our ‘ sights’ were so far away from post-offices that telegraphing was out of the question.
We drove to our first destination, and here we generally dismissed our ‘conveyance’ and had luncheon at a wayside inn. We then inspected our first sight, while the beloved stuttering Uncle Bob Eden read aloud some appropriate passages from the Wiltshire Archæological Magazine, and Papa stood impatiently by, watch in hand, waiting to hustle us on to the next stage on our journey. This often meant striking out adventurously on foot across the virgin down; for South Wilts is a country of river valleys divided one from the other by green ridges, and it is often quicker to walk over the hills than to drive round by the roads. Protected by our mackintoshes and umbrellas, or else carrying them in bundles in our hands, we then set out to scramble up the slippery side of the down, holding up our cumbersome skirts, and turning now and again to scan the view through our field glasses. At the time of which I am writing, my elder sister was married, and as Mildred was always sick if she travelled either by train or by carriage, I was as a rule the only member of the party belonging to my own generation. Our route had been chosen to include various points of vantage from which specially good views of the surrounding country could be seen, so there were always several halts on the way, and our walk usually lasted well over an hour. When at last we began to descend towards the next main road, we saw waiting far beneath us the unfailing wagonette. It was not the one we had travelled by in the morning, and it came from a different village; for many of these excursions of ours took place on the lovely bit of country lying between the South and the Great Western Railways, so that our afternoon vehicle often came from a railway station on quite another line. Joyously we now crowded into our little wagonette to be carried to another inn where tea had already been ordered. After this we saw another church or two before catching a train home.
My father loved to plan and to carry out a complicated expedition like this; and one of the things which most endeared them to him was the fact that they had to be arranged so long beforehand. He hated sudden, scatter-brained decisions, and he nicknamed me ‘Flibbertigibbet’, because I often wanted to fly off at a tangent.
When we were at our Grasmere house in the summer, these expeditions were far more frequent than they were at Wilton
