XII - IN WARWICKSHIRE

Summary

There is no better way for the stranger who wishes to know something of England, to plunge in medias res, than to spend a fortnight in Warwickshire. It is the core and centre of the English world; midmost England, unmitigated England. The place has taught me a great many English secrets; I have interviewed the genius of pastoral Britain. From a charming lawn—a lawn delicious to one's sentient boot-sole—I looked without obstruction at a sombre, soft, romantic mass, whose outline was blurred by mantling ivy. It made a perfect picture; and in the foreground the great trees overarched their boughs from right and left, so as to give it a majestic frame. This interesting object was the castle of Kenilworth. It was within distance of an easy walk, but one hardly thought of walking to it, any more than one would have thought of walking to a purple – shadowed tower in the background of a Berghem or a Claude. Here there were purple shadows, and slowly-shifting lights, and a soft-hued, bosky country in the middle distance.

Of course, however, I did walk over to the castle; and of course the walk led me through leafy lanes, and beside the hedgerows that make a tangled screen for lawn-like meadows. Of course too, I am bound to add, there was a row of ancient pedlars outside the castle-wall, hawking twopenny pamphlets and photographs. Of course, equally, at the foot of the grassy mound on which the ruin stands, there were half a dozen public houses; and, always of course, there were half a dozen beery vagrants sprawling on the grass in the moist sunshine.