The Hardy Country. Charles G. Harper

“holt” signifies a wood; and thus we may perceive that the surroundings must still wear very much the aspect they owned when the name was conferred. Sparsholt has no guidebook attractions—nothing but its old thatched cottages and quiet surroundings to recommend it. But the fragrant scent of the wood-smoke from cottage hearths is over all. You may see its blue filmy wreaths curling upwards on still days, against the dark background of foliage. It is a rustic fragrance never forgotten, an aroma which, go whithersoever you will, brings back the sweet memory of days that were, and the sound of a voice in more actual fashion than possible to the notes of a well-remembered song, or the scent of a rose.

      They are not woods of forest trees that beset this district, but hillside tangles of scrub oaks, of hazels and alders, where the wild-flowers make a continual glory in early spring. There are the labyrinths of No Man’s Land, the intricacies of Privet and Crab Wood, through whose bosquets run the long-deserted Roman road from Winchester to Old Sarum, and the nameless spinneys dotted everywhere about. Away on the horizon you may perceive a monument, capping a hill. It is no memorial of gallantries in war, but is the obelisk erected on Farley Mount to the horse of a certain “Paulet St. John,” which jumped with him into a chalk-pit twenty-five feet deep, emerging, with his rider, unhurt. That was in 1733. An inscription tells how that wonderful animal was afterwards entered for the Hunters’ Plate, under the name of “Beware Chalk Pit,” at the races on Worthy downs, and won it.

      Continuing on to Stockbridge, whose race-meeting has recently been abolished, the way grows grim indeed, with that Roman grimness characteristic of all the Wessex chalky down country. The road is long, and at times, when the sun is setting and the landscape fades away in purple twilight, the explorer becomes obsessed, against all reason, with the weird notion that the many centuries of civilisation are but a dream and the distant ages come back again. To this bareness the pleasant little town of Stockbridge, situated delightfully in the valley of the Anton, is a gracious interlude. In its old churchyard the curious may still see the whimsical epitaph to John Bucket, landlord of the “King’s Head” inn, who died, aged 67, in 1802:

      And is, alas! poor Bucket gone?

       Farewell, convivial honest John.

       Oft at the well, by fatal stroke

       Buckets like pitchers must be broke.

       In this same motley shifting scene,

       How various have thy fortunes been.

       Now lifting high, now sinking low,

       To-day the brim would overflow.

       Thy bounty then would all supply

       To fill, and drink, and leave thee dry.

       To-morrow sunk as in a well,

       Content unseen with Truth to dwell.

       But high or low, or wet or dry,

       No rotten stave could malice spy.

       Then rise, immortal Bucket, rise

       And claim thy station in the skies;

       Twixt Amphora and Pisces shine,

       Still guarding Stockbridge with thy sign.

      In 1715, when the poet Gay rode horseback to Exeter and wrote a rhymed account of his journey for the Earl of Burlington, he described Stockbridge in doleful dumps. Why? Because for seven years there had been no election:

      Sad melancholy ev’ry visage wears;

       What! no election come in seven long years!

       Of all our race of Mayors, shall Snow alone

       Be by Sir Richard’s dedication known?

       Our streets no more with tides of ale shall float!

       Nor cobblers feast three years upon one vote.

      Some of this seems cryptic, but it is explained by the fact of Sir Richard Steele having published, September 22nd, 1713, a quarto pamphlet entitled The Importance of Dunkirk considered . . . in a letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge, whose name was John Snow. The number of voters at Stockbridge was then about seventy, and its population chiefly cobblers. To say it was a corrupt borough is merely to state what might be said of almost every one at that time; but it seems to have been especially notable, even above its corrupt fellows, for a contemporary chronicler is found writing: “It is a very wet town and the voters are wet too.” He then continues, as one deploring the depreciation of securities, “The ordinary price of a vote is £60, but better times may come.” But when elections only came septennially, the wet voters who subsisted three years upon one vote must have gone dry, poor fellows, an unconscionable while.