Tenterden, Kent, 12.5.06: Hobbits' Lanes and Painted Pews

Writing now from Tenterden in Kent—sleepy little country inn. It’s crawling with the kind of Brits who are perhaps afraid to venture any closer to France than the chunnel, who stay on the English side of the channel and drive across for a quick foray. Middle-class pretending to be posh. Most are old, going down with the ship, dressing for dinner, murmuring torpidly over the unexciting food after a round of taste-numbing drinks.

A horrible ugly—in all senses of the word—woman who sat directly behind Steve last night made some comment in a loud voice about keeping “the” Americans away. The remark was directed to the whole room—but conspicuously not to us.

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A rich day, and I grow weary of writing in this journal. Drove to Old Romney. St. Clement’s church there is phenomenal—the original stone altar preserved, a rare thing for England. When the Cromwellians demanded that all stone altars be removed, it was used (hidden) as a stepping stone for the porch, which is on the north side of the church, though south is usual. 

The church is low and simple inside. Crude wood vaulting. Painted pews—pink and white, the gated kind. I like them. They give the church an almost Baroque feel.

Must be controversial. A long defense of them on a curious funeral-home-fan-shaped device at the back of the church, pointing out they’re made of plain deal wood and wouldn’t be beautiful if unpainted.

Walls have Georgian sayings, bible verses of the memento-mori ilk, painted on plaques. Similar plaques either side of the altar have the creed and ten commandments.

Low porch; ribbed ceiling, simple and austere, with old unadorned wood ribbing. Outside, a beautiful churchyard surrounded on all sides by sheep pastures, from which (the churchyard, that is) the wildflowers pressed on this page come.

The brass for John Ips and wife Margaret has been removed from its place on the floor of the main aisle in front of the rood (as John Ips’ will requests his burial location to be) to the south all of the church. A guide to the church notes that the Epps family is well-represented in Kent, especially the Romney area, and has descendants in Virginia.

The area around Romney fascinating, reminiscent of the Low Countries. Flat; ditches in pastures, full of water. Sky everywhere. At one point, an amazing cast of light between gray, green, and yellow.

It’s like a world in miniature, far more manicured than Somerset or Shropshire, as if hobbits live down each laneway.

A brochure in the church advertised the studio of C.B. (Betsy) S. at M.C. near the church. We walked there, since a sign said the road was unsuitable for vehicles (though it was clearly driven on).

In front of the cottage (which was two-storied and far from cottagey) a very elderly man on a bench. Fine, warm, sunny day. We exchanged pleasantries about the weather and sheep. He was in coat and tie with the hems of his pants frayed in back from walking on them.

He asked what I was seeking. I said M.C. Blank look. I repeated it. Blank again.

Then something clicked and he said he’d been posted as sentry. His wife, the artist, was in New Romney. She’d be back shortly. Why didn’t we have a look around.

He took us into the house, a warren of damp, low-ceilinged rooms with shabby wonderful old furniture and old books—first editions of the Waverley novels and Gaskell’s life of Charlotte Bronte (to my chagrin, Steve peeked).

Room after room of paintings, mostly pastoral scenes from the area and still lifes and one droll picture of her King Charles spaniel, bug-eyed and wall-eyed. I chose one of the Romney church with a storm on the horizon and a field of sheep, and one of a field of flax for Philip and Penny.

Mr. S. doddered (quite literally) outside, looking for “them” and saying how stupid he was. He kept coming in to say, “They shan’t be a moment,” and “Perhaps I can sell you the paintings,” and then,“Won’t you sit in my room and read the papers?”

This was a door marked private and we hadn’t entered it. It was a perfect little world—more shabby furniture, more old leather-bound volumes, blotting paper, a writing pad with letter opener affixed to it by a strap, a tray with all the accoutrements needed for writing.

And then came Betsy S. and we transacted business after much to-ing and fro-ing about her upcoming exhibit. Apparently she’s not "open" till then, though the church brochure clearly says, Open every day 10-2, incl. Sundays. Which must mean something entirely different to the English . . . . (And they were truly lovely people.)

And speaking of the English, I must get something off my chest, dear reader. Have you noticed (I certainly have) that, while they’re hesitant to show almost any emotion, they have absolutely no problem demonstrating displeasure or disdain? A look I saw on the face of a woman in Chard as we approached on the sidewalk would have curdled milk.

Chard is, I’ve decided, as Geo. Washington said of Charlotte, a piddling little place. Some of the surliest people I’ve seen in England, and many ill-favored . . . .

And after Old Romney, a drive to New Romney to make arrangements for our stay there tomorrow night. Bought fish and chips and ate them by the seashore, which was misted over with haze from the warm, humid day.

And then an afternoon of shopping in Ashford, which was obliterated in the war, and is a surrealistic conglomeration of shopping malls in outré architectural styles and international centers.

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Jan Morris, Wales (NY: Penguin, 2000): “The climate of Wales is anything but preservative in a physical sense, but it is marvelously retentive metaphysically, and the mana of such old Welsh sites, their sense of life and movement, magically survives the ages” (51-2). 

“Another detectably Celtic trait is a certain sense of the dream of things, a conviction that some state of being exists, invisible but sensible, outside our own windows” (58).

“The holiest Welsh place is Dewisland, Pebidiog, a stony protrusion from the coast of Pembrokeshire which was once a spiritual hub of the whole Celtic world. Not only does the countryside there seem holy by its very nature, so ascetic but so exciting, all bare rock and heather headland falling to the wild Atlantic sea, but its associations too are intensely sanctified” (83).

“Visitors sensitive to numen, though, will hardly notice these things [i.e., the architectural details of St. David’s cathedral] but something more ethereal, a tremulous combination of light, hush and muted colour” (84).

“It was all part of a wider magic, hud in Welsh, which is really a key to life and matter itself—the sense that the divine resides in everything around us. This has powerfully affected the Welsh view of creation at least since the days of the Druids” (91).

Chard, Somerset, 10.5.06: Somerset Stone and Signposts

I’m not sure what to write this evening. Since St. David’s, pilgrimage mode is past, and I feel less diligent, more inclined to play and relax.

Still, I feel, somehow, that this pilgrimage has yielded Lessons for Pilgrims. At some point when I’m more focused, I need to write these out and connect them to stories from the trip.

But for now, today: shopping and a haircut in Chard. As we brought back our bags, Betty Jones, the hotel proprietress, said archly, “Shopping in Chard? People rarely come here to shop.”

English understatement. There’s little of worth to buy. We made groceries, mostly—some ploughman’s rolls, extra-sharp local cheddar, smoked salmon, sliced turkey, olives seasoned with thyme and rosemary, cherry tomatoes, and a Mouton Cadet (oh, watercress, too). We’re enjoying all of this now as night falls.

Then a jaunt into the countryside to Poundisford, which turns out to be not a village at all, but Poundisford Park and Lodge, both dating ca. 1550 and built on land leased from the bishop of Winchester by William Hill and his father Roger Hill. There’s also a Poundisford Farm.

But the two grand houses are behind a high wall with trees next to it, and we could see nothing—though I did find two books with pictures interior and exterior and text.

The drive beautiful—long sloping hills with crops and sheep, interspersed with wooded areas. The laneways have huge old oaks along them, never in allées, but here and there, standing alone in majesty. Did they mark something? They lend mystery to the roadside.

Lilacs in full bloom here, white, lavender, purple, overhanging signposts and making the way hard to read. The old stone of the region in houses, barns, walls, not as honey-colored as in the Cotswolds, but gold and warm—beautiful. I think Betty Jones called it Somerset stone.

Pitminster parish church lovely, well-cared for, not lost in time as the one in Stottesdon. On either side of the altar lords and ladies in effigy, tombs of a Coles/Colles family. One has been spoiled by being painted, garish colors.

Lunch at the Queen’s Arms in Pitminster. Lovely inside. A young couple have recently bought it, removed the carpet to expose the old wood floors, wide-planked. The walls are sponged in a soft yellow.

Steve had a smoked salmon sandwich and I a local cheddar with chutney and salad. But tooth killing me, so that every bite was anguish.

And then back to rest, read, loaf, and I’m loving it.

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Ellis Peters, Ellis Peters’ Shropshire (Guernsey: Sutton Publ. Co., 1999): “All the best secrets of Shropshire seem to be approached only by these high-hedged, narrow lanes, calculated to discourage wheeled traffic. Only drivers with nerves of steel take to these kindly, but they find the most delightful places by way of reward” (29-30).

Salopians are a hybrid breed (79). Celts, Romans, Saxons, Welsh . . . .

“The devil is always the intruder, the stranger, the one who is different” (82).

“The most rural parts of Shropshire are a web of perilous little roads, all of which lead to the most entrancing places, but none of which provides room for more than one modest car, or any crossing-places, so that if two vehicles meet nose to nose one of them must back probably a considerable way” (107).

“Have you ever noticed how, if you set out on a definite quest, at the next meeting or parting of ways there are three to choose from, and either no signpost at all, or one that fails to mention the place you are seeking?” (107)

St. David’s, 9.5.06: Old Inglenooks and Angels in White

St. David’s: this shrine on the outermost fringe of Wales once had such eminence that Pope Calixtus declared two pilgrimages to St. David’s the equal of one to Rome—Roma semel quantum, bis dat Menevis tantum.

Extraordinary day yesterday: to T. Went to post office, where entering Welsh folk totally ignored me as I stood outside, but greeted each other volubly and with much humor inside. Bought several O.S. maps for the area, of more to less specific details.

Using material I’d printed before the trip from the Internet, we located it. It’s just past a little village called Brynberian off the A487 and B4329.

We journeyed. As one moves north from St. David’s, especially on back lanes, beautiful old hedges of gorse line lanes and fencerows in fields. Ablaze with bright yellow on the misty day in which cluds overhung hilltops.

The houses in many towns and villages—especially Fishguard—beautiful pastel colors, some even brighter, and often all in a row: soft green followed by yellow, blue, lavender, burnt sienna.

I remember the Portuguese in Toronto painting houses this way. Do people who live near the sea have an instinctive need for such color? It does seem to complement the sea aspects wondrously well. A house shrouded by shrubs and trees in the interior of this green and pleasant land would not need such ornamentation. In fact, it would be clashing and grotesque. But not in the open air and bright sun (when it shines) beaming from a harbor.

T.: past Brynberian, we turned up the first likely lane we saw (right turn, north). This was deep Wales, very narrow lane, tree-shrouded, mist-haunted bunches of yellow primroses everywhere along the banks.

The road seemed to be going nowhere. So when we passed a conglomeration of several houses, Steve stopped at one in which we could see two young women doing each other’s hair (it was a modern bungalow, brick and glass, undistinguished). He knocked and asked about T.

One of the women came out and took him to the roadside and pointed down the road to a house we’d passed and said, “Look, there, through the trees. That house is T.” She encouraged us to stop. A P. family own it, they love to talk about history, etc. . . . .

So we did so. And what an adventure. The house is back a lane and so we hadn’t seen it, an ancient stone farmhouse added onto over the years.

The yard is daunting as you drive up—wheelbarrows akimbo, piles of wood, plants to be potted, some fallen over and the pots broken. Steve knocked. The people graciously invited us in and had us sit in the inglenook where a fire was burning bright in an iron stove—very welcome on the cool damp day.

M. and I. are retired school teachers, he a social psychologist who had become a headmaster for a school, she a geographer who taught primary school. They retired early. M. had a conviction that those who work to 65 die by 70, but those who retire at 50 live to 85.

He recently broke an ankle and is hobbling now with a walker. She is bubbly, warbling, a talker in that hospitable, scatty, wonderful English way that makes connections evident to no one but the speaker.

The house: amazing. Lived in. Generations. Walls a yard thick. Mushrooms growing in damp corners. Slate floor. Massive oak beam over the inglenook with holes in it where the outerwear of anyone coming in from outside was hung to dry. Similar peg holes in the beam next to a lean-to stone dairy built on the back of the house.

The house was originally one room with the huge fireplace and inglenook and a large stone on which to sit by the fire in that room. Low ceilings. M. told us the traditional arrangement was to have a bed for mother and father at ground level and then build the beds for the children on shelves attached to the walls, near the ceiling.

The original one-room construction can be seen in the cornerstones outside the house, two of which mark off the house at the middle. Joined to the one room now is the old cowshed with another fireplace, and the dairy behind, with a large stone at the level of the ground floor (it’s a step down into the dairy) on which milk was placed to say cool.

Above are now two rooms to match the original one and the cowshed. To the side of the house another larger old stone cowshed in which their son and his partner had lived.

Beyond this a spring that I. believes may have been an ancient holy site, since it has quartz bits dropped into it. They’re known to have been used as votives.

To the side of this, an old slab of rock with a cross incised into it. M. told us the early Irish missionaries brought these, in case they should die abroad, to be buried under.

Inside, as we sit and talk, M. says suddenly, “Someone touched me!” He felt the touch on his leg. He says this happens frequently, though not in a long time.

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As we leave Cromlech House in St. David’s today, Sara Davies tells us of an old lady dressed entirely in white who came up and kissed her baby Dylan at the cathedral a few days ago. When she was pregnant with Dylan, a friend told her, as she entered the friend’s house, that a large white angel was following her.

St. David's, 8.5.06: Wild Strawberries and Holy Wells

St. David’s now. Drove here from S. yesterday. Words aren’t adequate, even when I follow Susan Ellen Toth’s suggestion to write impressionistic notes to jog memory afterwards.

I read in the car, partly to catch up and partly to avoid having to see the horror of traffic on the M roads. But when we got to Pembrokeshire, I put my books away and looked.

Lush green fields, some with sheep and Welsh cattle. Rain recently, puddles in lanes, though another gloriously sunny day allowing wide vistas onto the hillsides.

Pee stops: one hear Haverford leading to a little lane between roads that was filthy. Rubbish everywhere. Another—and this is the curious clashing character of Wales—absolutely unspoilt, with wild strawberries trailing on a hillside of black damp earth by the road, and flowering wild primroses. I picked a strawberry and Steve a bunch of primroses, and they’re dried in the preceding page.

Many wildflowers I don’t recognize and haven’t seen in England, both on the roadsides as we drove and on the seaside cliffs as we walked last evening. One looks like a wild pink, and is pink in color, very much like fire pinks at home except for its color. Bluebells in many shades—light to dark blue, white, pink, violet.

On the seaside cliffs, clumps of a white sweet-smelling flower like sweet alyssum, but I don’t think that’s what it was: candytuft? A delicate purple flower, small, tracery of green, growing in nooks and crannies of walls. Violets just under the fringe of green along laneways. Buttercups and dandelions, of course. A curious bladder-shaped low-growing flower, white with maroon lips.

B and b, Cromlech House, interesting: 20 New Street. It’s the old family house of the wife Sara Davies, who’s an artist. Paintings of hers all around—some especially striking watercolor butterflies in the kitchen. She tells us that the back yard has a cromlech, hence the house’s name. Lech must be related to Irish leac, since what she describes—a burial monument of three standing stones—is very like Leac an Scail that we saw near Mullinavat.

Her husband James Crisp a musician who has recorded a c.d. with his compositions, pan-Celtic. She’s raising three young children, Jack, Maggie and Dylan, a babe in arms, and sometimes seems overburdened.

People standoffish till they hear American accents and then very friendly. If they take us for English, I understand, since a group of English ordering tea in the cathedral cafeteria yesterday were oh so supercilious and demanding in that pretend-polite English way, and so demanding: asking twice for milk for their tea, frostier and more polite each time. The implication was that the Welsh never get it quite right.

Yet the person staffing the cash register wasn’t even Welsh. He was a Jakob from Prague and didn’t understand all they were saying to him.

St. David’s: the end of things. Perhaps one reason I felt perturbed as we left for here yesterday is that I sense this.

Every pilgrimage has an end. This destination is a reminder of the ultimate westering of life. What could be further west—and more cut off and distant from everything else—than those old Celtic holy sites on the western fringe of Britain?

The wildness seems to attract poets, artists, nature lovers. Long, exhausting walk to St. Non’s well in the evening, but worth it for the sea vistas, the sense of visiting a site with ancient holy roots.

So much I’m seeing demands the artist’s brush to capture it, not words.