Part 22

The road which we now followed runs through the very heart of the Island, a distance of one hundred miles from Nenagh to Dublin. It is in the main a broad, well-surfaced highway with even grades and slight curves. It passes through a much better and more prosperous-looking country than the extreme southern portion of the Island. The farm cottages are better and apparently cleanlier, but the towns show little improvement. Nearly all of them are poor and mean-looking, with aged, weather-beaten buildings and many tumble-down houses. They are a good distance apart; Roscrea, Mountrath, Maryborough, Kildare and Naas are the larger places on the road. Only two call for especial mention--one for its dilapidation and filthiness and the other for rather the opposite qualities. The first distinction we may freely accord to Maryborough, the county town of Queens County, with a population of about three thousand. Perhaps we saw it at its worst, for it was the weekly market day. The market place was blocked with live stock, and it was with difficulty that we forced the car through the seething mass. The streets were covered with loose stones, straw and filth, and on the sidewalks, little pens were fenced off and filled with calves and hogs. The farmers circulated among the animals and regarded us rather sullenly for Irishmen. Our luncheon hour was past and we looked dubiously toward the Maryborough hotel. A native, divining our situation, cast a disgusted glance at the wretched surroundings and said, "You had better go on to Kildare; you will find it much better."

We thank him and the car spurns the dirt of Maryborough under her wheels as she springs forward on the twenty miles of fine road to Kildare. We find this town small and rather poor, but far cleanlier than its neighbor. It has an ancient cathedral church and one of the most notable of the round towers, one hundred and five feet high, though somewhat spoiled by a modern battlemented effect in place of the usual conical top. But the joy of Kildare is its hotel, a new, bright-looking brick structure, delightfully pleasant and homelike inside. There is a piano in the parlor and fresh flowers on the mantelpiece. Our tea is soon ready in the dining-room, as cleanly and well ordered as the best across the Channel, and the neat waiter girls serve us promptly. Of course there is a secret somewhere to all this wonder, and we fathom it when we learn that the railroad owns the hotel. May the railroads build more hotels in Ireland!

At Newbridge, a few miles farther, are extensive barracks, a city of red brick, where a large body of Irish troops is quartered. Military life appeals to a great number of Irishmen and some of the crack British regiments are recruited in the Island. The Irishman may justly be proud of his reputation as a fighting man and he never wearies of telling you of the nativity of the Duke of Wellington and of Lord Roberts, the present chief of the British army. A fine racing course also lies between Newbridge and Kildare, and races famous throughout the country are held here annually.

Our Irish pilgrimage is at an end; we leave Dublin on the following day, not without reluctance and regret. This Ireland is very old and very interesting, and it is with a feeling of distinct sadness that we watch her lessening shores. We find ourselves secretly hoping to come again some day with out trusty companion of the winged wheels, to spend a whole summer among the hills and dales, the rivers and loughs of the "Ould Countree."

XX

SOME ODDS AND ENDS

Holyhead is an inconsequential town whose chief end is to serve as a port of departure for Ireland. Were it not for this useful purpose, few tourists would ever see it--or the Isle of Anglesea, for that matter. Aside from some fine coast scenery and the castle, now very ruinous, built by Edward I. at Beaumaris, Anglesea offers little in the way of attractions. The island is rather barren, with here and there a mean-looking village with a long, unpronounceable Welsh name. The main road from the great suspension bridge over the Menai Strait to Holyhead is excellent, but nearly all others in the island are so bad as to discourage motorists.

The Station Hotel at Holyhead is owned by the Northwestern Railway, and would be creditable to a city of one hundred thousand. It affords every comfort to its guests, and the railway people have made special provisions for the motor car, among these one of the best-equipped garages that I saw anywhere. The motor is becoming a serious rival to the railway in Britain, the heavy reduction in first-class passenger travel being attributed to the popularity of the horseless carriage; but the situation has been accepted by the companies which own hotels and they have generally provided first-class accommodation for cars belonging to their guests.

In a previous chapter I referred to our run from London to Holyhead, reaching Ludlow the first night. I am going to have my say about Ludlow in another chapter; for five visits on different occasions to the delightful old border town should perhaps entitle me, though a stranger to its people, to record my impressions of it somewhat in detail.

Bishop's Castle marked our entrance into the hill country of Northern Wales. It is a lonely town following a steep, roughly-paved main street, at the top of which we stop for luncheon at an old-fashioned but very pleasant country inn. From Bishop's Castle to Barmouth by the way of Welshpool, Llanfair, Dinas Mawddwy and Dolgelley, we pass through the very heart of North Wales and see many phases of its beauty, though generally in the wilder and sterner moods. The hills are often steep, but from their crests we have far-reaching views over the wooded vales and green hill ranges. In places we wind through tangled forests or run along the banks of swift little rivers. At Dinas Mawddwy we enter the Welsh mountains, the most imposing hills in Britain. The tiny village nestling beside its rippling river seems lost in the mighty hills that overhang it on every side, rugged and almost precipitous, yet velvety green to their very summits. We begin our climb out of the valley over the Bwlch Ooeddrws Pass--the name is even more alarming than the heavy grade shown in the road book--and for three miles we climb steadily up the mighty hill alongside an incline that drops sharply to the roaring stream far below. From the summit a grand prospect greets our eyes: the wild, broken, intensely green Welsh hills stretching away range after range until they fade in the purple shadows of the distance, and yet higher above us looms the crest of Cader Idris, on which still linger flecks of snow. After a short pause to contemplate the beauty of the scene, we plunge down the descent, steep, sinuous and rough, to Dolgelley, lying at the foot of the hill, a retired little town with a long history; for here the Welsh hero, Owen Glendwr, held his parliaments and made a rallying point for his adherents in North Wales. Today its old-time, gray-stone, slate-roofed houses are hemmed in by more modern villas such as one now finds in most of the beauty spots of northern Wales.

The ten miles of road to Barmouth follows the estuary of the river with only moderate grades until it reaches the town, when it plunges down the long hill to the seashore. Barmouth, or, as the Welsh style it, Abermaw, is a quiet watering-place lying along a narrow beach at the foot of the hills that rise almost sheer behind the town. The coast line of the wide rock-bound harbor is wild and broken, and the view over the estuary at sunset is an enchanting one. The hotels are rather small and the beginning of the crowded season is just at hand. Should one wish to remain for a time in Barmouth to explore some of the grandest scenery in Wales, he would be more at ease in May or June.

As we leave the town an obliging garage man hails us and warns us to beware of Llanaber, two or three miles to the north; a trap for motorists has been set there, and as if to convince us that wealth and station will not protect us, he adds in a rather awe-stricken manner that Her Grace the Duchess of W----, wife of the richest nobleman in the Kingdom, was stopped last week and fined ten pounds. We feel that a contribution to the exchequer of Llanaber would hardly come so easy from us as from the wealthy duchess, and we pass through the wretched little hamlet at a most respectful pace. The rain has begun to fall heavily and has apparently dampened the ardor of the Welsh constables, for we see nothing of them. The road continues many miles between the mountain slope and the low green marshes stretching seaward, but the driving rain obscures the view. At only one point does the ocean lash the rocks directly beneath us; elsewhere along the coast the road is separated from the sea by marshes and stretches of sandy beach, varying from a few hundred feet to two miles in width.

Suddenly the gray bulk of Harlech Castle, standing on its commanding eminence, four square to all the winds of heaven, looms up grim and vast in the gusty rain. It is the last of the great feudal castles of Britain that we are to see on our pilgrimage--save some of those we have seen before--and it marks a fitting close to the long list that we have visited--nearly every one of importance in the Island.

Harlech is one of the seven great castles built by Edward I. in his effort to subdue Wales. It contests with Carnarvon and Conway for first place among the Welsh ruins and is easily one of the half dozen most remarkable castellated fortresses in the Kingdom. It is perched on a mighty rock which drops almost sheer to the wide, sandy marsh along the sea, and just below it on the landward side is the village that gives the castle its name. Inside the great quadrangle, we find the trim neatness that characterizes the ruins belonging to the crown. We ascend the stairway leading to the battlements and follow the path around the walls and towers. A thousand pities that the rain shuts out the view, for surely there are few such panoramas of sea and mountain in Britain as one may get from the walls of Harlech. Shall we let one more fortunate than we, having seen the prospect on a cloudless day, tell its beauty in poetic phrase?

"It is a scene of unparalleled beauty, whichever way one turns; whether to the sea, out beyond the sandy beach at the foot of Castle Rock, running far away, a sheet of intensest blue, until it meets the pale sapphire of the sky; or whether toward the mountains of the north, Snowdon, the snow-crowned king of them all, rising in matchless majesty above his satellites; or to the landward where the tiny village nestles at the foot of craglike hills; or to the westward where the great promontory of Lleyn stretches away, throwing here and there into the sky its isolated peaks, so full of savage sternness tempered with weird beauty."

Verily, these misty days in Britain often hide visions of beauty from one's eager eyes. We will ask little of the story of Harlech, but it is a stirring one. It saw strenuous times as a stronghold of Owen Glendwr, who captured it in 1404 and held it against the forces of Henry IV., who re-took the castle four years later, driving the Welsh prince into the mountains. Here came Margaret, the queen of the Sixth Henry, during the war of the Roses, and the castle yielded, only after a long siege, to the onslaught of the adherents of the House of York. Indeed, Harlech was the last fortress in England to hold out for the Lancastrian cause. But far more memorable than the siege are the wild swinging cadences of the "March of the Men of Harlech," to which the conflict gave birth. During the civil war, the castle was the last in Wales to hold out for King Charles, and its story closes with its surrender to the army of the Commonwealth in 1647.

The rain ceases shortly after we leave Harlech, and the air becomes clear, though the sky is still overcast. It is fortunate, for we see some of the wildest and most impressive of Welsh scenery. Great clifflike hills, splashed with red shale and purple heather or clad in the somber green of the pines, rise abruptly from the roadside. At Beddgelert the beauty culminates in one of the finest scenes in Wales. The valley, a plot of woods and meadows, is surrounded on every hand by the giant hills, whose sides glow with red and purple rock which crops out among the scattered pines that climb to the very crests. Two clear, dashing mountain streams join their waters to form the river Glaslyn, which winds through a mighty gorge to the sea; and alongside the river runs the perfect road over which we have just been coursing. The Royal Goat, right by the roadside, invites us to pause for our late luncheon; a charming old-fashioned inn, odd as its name, but homelike and hospitable. At Beddgelert the beauty begins to fade and one sees only commonplace country and barren hills until he reaches Carnarvon.

[Illustration: ON THE RIVER LLEDR, WALES.

From Original Painting by Daniel Sherrin.]

Returning from Holyhead, we followed the fine coast road from Bangor to Conway, where we paused to renew our acquaintance with one of the most charming towns in the Kingdom. In many respects it is unique, for nowhere will one find more perfect relics of feudal time, or feel more thoroughly its spirit than at Conway. The little city still lies snugly behind its ancient wall, whose one and twenty watch towers stand grimly as of old, though shorn of their defenders in these piping times of peace. And the castle, from many viewpoints the most picturesque of them all, looks marvelously perfect from a little distance--so perfect that one could hardly wonder to see a flash of armor from the stately battlements. Yet with all its antiquity, Conway, inside its walls, is clean and neat and has an air of quiet prosperity. So widely known are its charms that perhaps it should have no place in this record; and yet it is probable that the great majority of American visitors in England never see Conway--which assumption is my excuse for a few words of appreciation.

If there were no castle or wall, there would be ample warrant for coming to see one of the most charming Elizabethan mansions in the Island. Plas Mawr--the Great House--indeed deserves its name; a huge building of many gables, odd corners and stone-mullioned, diamond-paned windows. Inside there are great paneled rooms with richly bossed plaster ceilings, wide fireplaces with mantelpieces emblazoned with the arms of the ancient owners, and many narrow winding passageways leading--you never quite learn whither. Very appropriate is the ghostly legend of the house, and even more fitting the better substantiated story of the visit of Queen Elizabeth--that splendid royal traveler who might well be our patron saint. Stately is the great chamber, the sitting-room of the Queen's suite, with its paneled walls, its highly ornate ceiling, its great group of no less than a dozen windows; and the fireplace, six feet or more across, where a great log might be thrown to glow, a solid core of heat--fit indeed for the evening musings of the royal guest.

A thorough round of Plas Mawr will serve to give one an appetite for luncheon at the Castle Hotel--at least this was the result in our

## particular case. But one would not really need much of an appetite

to be tempted by the luncheon set forth at the Castle Hotel, one of the cleanest, brightest and best-ordered of the many inns at which we stopped in our wanderings.

In a jaunt up the Conway River, one will see much pleasing scenery of hill, valley and river, and will come at Bettws-y-Coed into the Holyhead road, which splendid highway we follow through Llangollen and Oswestry to Shrewsbury. This route abounds in interest; Chirk is famous for its castle and there is an ivy-covered ruin at Whittington, but we do not pause in our swift flight for any of them. The sky has cleared and delightful vistas greet our eyes as we hasten through "the sweet vale of Llangollen." We come into Shrewsbury almost ere we know it, and a half hour later catch sight of the great church tower of Ludlow town.

[Illustration: WHITTINGTON CASTLE, SHROPSHIRE.]

A longing for a farewell glimpse of Warwickshire comes upon us as we leave Ludlow on the afternoon of the following day; and what pleasanter memory could we choose for the closing days of our long pilgrimage in England than a flight through the charming country that lies at her very heart? True, we will pass over roads that we have traversed before, but could one ever weary of Stratford and Warwick and Coventry, and of the quiet Midlands that lie about them?

We pause for one last look at the cathedral at Worcester, its great tower of warm red stone standing sharp against the cloudless sky; it is altogether one of the most perfect in proportion and design of all the churches in the Island. Then we hasten through the summer landscape--its prevailing green dashed with the pale gold of the yellowing harvests--to Droitwich and through Alcester, with its dull-red brick and black-oak beams, into the now familiar streets of Stratford-on-Avon. We pause at the busy souvenir store of which two years before the white-haired mayor was proprietor; but he has since retired, his successor tells us. As one of the notables of the town, he points out Miss Corelli, the novelist, who has made her home in Stratford and waxed rich through much advertising, which sometimes assumed forms highly distasteful to her fellow-townsmen. For it chanced that one Andrew Carnegie would present a handsome library building to Stratford should the town provide a suitable site, but for some reason Miss Corelli objected, and by engaging the plan in some of the endless legal quibbles possible in England, she defeated it. The mayor was vexed beyond measure and when the attorney for Miss Corelli interrogated him,

"Did you not say that you would give a thousand pounds to get Miss Corelli out of Stratford?"

"I have never said so," replied his honor, "but though a thousand pounds does not grow on a gooseberry bush for me, I really believe I would."

This retort so irritated the authoress that she brought an action for libel and was awarded a farthing damages. But this bit of gossip hardly accords with the spirit of Stratford at the coming of twilight, when the low sun flashes on the still bosom of the immemorial Avon and pierces the gloom beneath the great trees that cluster around the church.

We come here again from Coventry on the following day to join the worshipers in the fane where sleeps the Master of English Letters. It is a perfect day and the large light-toned windows lend an air almost of cheerfulness to the graceful interior of Stratford Church, and the great organ fills it with noble melody. With such surroundings, perhaps we miss much of the sermon--at least we can recall nothing of it in the lapse of time--but the memories that come back to us now are of the mingled feelings of reverence and inspiration that dominated us during the hour we lingered.

As we leave the church--our car has stood by the roadside the while--an intelligent little fellow approaches us, urging his services as guide, and he looks so longingly at the car that we take him in. In all our wanderings about Stratford, and hardly a highroad or byway has escaped us, we have missed the old cottage where Mary Arden is said to have lived. Is said to have lived--alas, that hypothetical "said" that flings its blight over so many of our sacred shrines. But what matters it, after all? What mattered it to the pious votary of olden time that the relics of his revered saint, so fraught with comfort and healing to him, turned out to be the bones of a goat? There shall be no question for us on this perfect day of English summer that the low gray walls and sagging dull-red tile roof of the cottage before us once sheltered the mother of Shakespeare. It stands behind a low stone wall, in the village of Wilmcote, two or three miles from Stratford, a blaze of old-fashioned flowers in front of it and creepers and rose vines clamber over its gray walls. It is only a farmhouse tenement now, but with the old buildings grouped about it and its dovecot, it makes a picture well suited to the glamour that legend throws about the place. Our small guide eagerly points it out and proposes to seek admittance for us; but we desire no such disenchantment as this would likely bring. We ask him to point the way to Shottery, for we wish a final glimpse of Anne Hathaway's cottage, whose authenticity is only a shade better attested than that of the home of Mary Arden.

The road from Stratford to Banbury is winding and steep in places, and Sun-Rising Hill is known over the Kingdom as the most formidable in the Midland Country; the road climbs it in sweeping curves and the increasing grade brings the motor to "low" ere we reach the top. But the prospect which greets one from its summit makes the climb worth while, a panorama of green and gold fading into the purple haze of distance. The Red Lion at Banbury appeals to us and we rest awhile in the courtyard after luncheon. Along the walls directly in front of us, a blaze of purple bloom, stretches the "largest wisteria in England," one hundred and eighty feet in length, its stem like a good-sized tree. It has been thus with so many of the old-time inns; each has had some peculiar charm. But surely no architect ever planned the Red Lion Inn; it is a rambling building that seems to have grown up with the years. No straight line curbs its walls; none of its floors maintain the same level; it is a maze of strangely assorted apartments, narrow, winding hallways and odd nooks and corners.