Things near & far

The road from Newport to Caerleon-on-Usk winds, as it comes near to the old Roman, fabulous city, with the winding of the tawny river which I have always supposed must be somewhat of the colour of the Tiber. This road was made early in the nineteenth century when stage-coaching came to perfection, for the old road between the two towns passed over the Roman bridge--blown down the river by a great storm in the seventeen-nineties--and climbed the break-neck hill to Christchurch. Well, this new road as I remember it was terraced, as it were, high above the Usk to the west, and above it to the east rose a vast wood, or what seemed a vast wood in 1870, called St. Julian’s Wood, of some fame as a ghostly place. It was cut down long ago by an owner who thought timber of high growth better than ghosts.

On the one side, then, the steep dark ascent of St. Julian’s Wood; on the other, the swift fall of the bank to the yellow river, where, likely enough, there would be a man in a coracle fishing for salmon. And then there came a certain turn, where suddenly one saw the long, great wall of the mountain in the west, and the high dome of Twyn Barlwm, a prehistoric tumulus; and down below, an island in the green meadows by the river, the little white Caerleon, shining in the sun. There is a grey wall on one side of it, a very old and mouldering wall to look at, and indeed it is old enough, for it is all that remains of the Roman wall of Isca Silurum, headquarters of the Second Augustan Legion.

But there, white in the sun of some summer afternoon of fifty years ago or so, Caerleon still stands for me shining, beautiful, a little white city in a dream, with the white road coming down the hill, from Newport, down out of St. Julian’s Wood, and so to the level river meadows, and so winding in a curve and coming to the town over the bridge.

That is my vision of the place where I was born; no doubt the recollection of driving home beside my father on some shining summer afternoon of long ago; but of later years another vision of the same white town and white road has come to me. I have “made this up,” as the children say, though, no doubt, it is all true. The time now goes back from the early ’seventies to the early ’fifties, and two young ladies are setting out from the Vicarage--it stood practically in the churchyard, pretty well in the position of that other, that illustrious Vicarage at Haworth, and my Aunt Maria could never see any reason why a vicarage should not be in a churchyard--the two young ladies closed the Vicarage door, and made their way down the deserted street, where the grass was green between the cobble-stones, and so passed over the bridge and into the Newport road. They were going to meet John, home from Jesus College, Oxford; and no doubt they talked eagerly of how well John was doing at Oxford, and wondered when he would be ordained, and where his first curacy would be, and what a good clergyman he would make, and how they hoped he would marry somebody nice, and what a pity it was that John was not at home when Mr. Tennyson came to Caerleon and stayed at the Hanbury Arms, and smoked a black clay tobacco pipe with his feet on the mantelpiece; very odd, but poets always were odd people and “Airy Fairy Lilian” was very pretty. The Vicar had called of course, and had been a little shocked at the pipe; still, Papa was always so amiable and ready to make allowances.

“Your grandfather,” Aunt Maria said to me years afterwards, “was a most amiable man, but he could not bear radishes or the Adeste fideles.”

Well, the two young ladies, Anne and Maria, shading themselves from the heat of the sun with their fringed parasols, pace decorously along the Newport road discussing these and many other matters; parish-matters, of helping poor people and old people and sick people; county matters, the great doings that there would be at the Park when Sir (?) Hanbury Leigh was to have a great party from London on August 12th to shoot grouse on the mountain; Church matters; how a Mr. Leonard had just been given the living of Kemeys Commander and had actually been heard to say, “I call myself a Catholic priest” and, in spite of the Creeds, wasn’t that going rather far? And what would John say to that? And, somehow, I fancy the talk came circling again and again back to John, and how glad he would be to be at home again, and how lucky it was that Mrs. Williams Pantyreos had come in that very morning because John always said that he never got butter like the Pantyreos butter anywhere, and how it was to be hoped that the weather would keep up till Wednesday when they were all going to drive to Aunt Mary’s at Abergavenny--except Mamma, who said, “Young gadabout ne’er won a clout”--and how this beautiful sunshine must be doing Cousin Blanche’s cough a great deal of good: John would like to see Cousin Blanche again.

And so on, and so on, and the two sisters walk along the white limestone road, picking a flower now and again, for Anne paints flowers and Maria is much interested in Botany--I am not sure whether she had acquired Miss Pratt’s three-volume work on the subject at that date. And the evening draws along, and the sun hangs over the huge round of Mynydd Maen in the west, and the scents of St. Julian’s dark, deep wood fill the stilled air; till Maria says suddenly: “Anne! here is the omnibus at last, and, there! I believe I can see John’s face.”

The old dim yellow and faded chocolate omnibus from the Bull--I remember it in its last days just before they made the line, and never will I speak of this omnibus as a ’bus--comes lumbering on its way, and the old driver, recognising the “two Miss Joneses the Vicarage” and knowing that Master John is inside, causes it to stop. John, a mild-looking young man with little side whiskers, gets out and kisses his sisters; and the three then get in, and the omnibus lumbers down the hill towards Caerleon, the three chattering of Oxford, of plans and prospects, of Caerleon news and how happy Papa looked at breakfast. And so the evening draws on and the shadows deepen and the walls of white Caerleon glimmer and grow phantasmal like the old grey Roman wall as they cross the bridge and the Usk swims to high tide, the tawny yellow tinged with something of the sunset redness that glows over the mountain. The three are talking and chattering all the while, making plans for holidays and happiness and long bright years and the joy of life--a correct joy, but still joy--before them, and John is enquiring eagerly after Cousin Blanche and nodding and smiling to the Bluecoat boys and girls and saying: “I’ll unpack my box to-night and show you my prizes--Parker’s ‘Gothic Architecture,’ in three volumes, and Hooker and a lot more,” and they are hoping again and again that Wednesday will be fine, and Blanche is sure to be quite well by this, and John is feeling his young cheeks grow a little red when--it is night.

Alas! They are all dead, years and years ago. The kind Vicar and his grim, good wife are dead. Poor Cousin Blanche perished of consumption in her fresh youth; no summer sun could allay the racking of that cough of hers. Anne followed her, by the same way to the same end: I have the “Holy Dying” that John, my father, gave her. There are two inscriptions in it; one facing the rubricated title-page, now “foxed” with time. This runs:

To Anne E. Jones from her affectionate Brother John Edward On her Birthday, and in remembrance of the 29th September, 1857[A] April 16th, 1858.

[A] The date, I think, of their father’s death.

The other, on the recto of the leaf, is as follows:

Johannes Edvardus Jones, In memoriam A.E.J.J. Quæ obdormivit in Jesu 29 mo Martii MDCCCLIX

And those of the party that lived longer knew more of sorrow, and more of broken hopes and of dreams that never came true. And thus, advisedly, I begin this second chapter in the story of a young man’s dreams and hopes and adventures. _Ego quoque_--I am forgetting my Latin tags--I, too, have walked on the white road to Caerleon.