THE SEVERN MURMURS SOUTH TO BEWDLEY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE SEVERN MURMURS SOUTH TO BEWDLEY

IN a little square in Kidderminster, carpet-town of Worcestershire, the good Richard Baxter' stands in solemn stone. It was he who wrote -himself a "book, and quaintly inscribed -the' title-page : "Written by the author for his own use in the time of his languishing/' In a'"time of languishing," when doctor and family conspire to keep a body a-bed, there is sore need of the comfort of some such little book. For this novice in the art of languishing, books in armfuls, from Homer's self to the Penguin Press, failed to chase the gloom, till Arthur Mee arrived in red,, all redolent: of ' "Malyern roofs and : Worcester, , chimney smoke." It was good ,to dream .awhile of my last visit to the old cathedral town, of Baldwin's Bewdley• and the grass, by Severn side. . Greenest River Track m The lovely river has .made a valley for iitself< where, all is good to see. It winds seaward through the west land, Where England of (Vie motley, stales. Deepens like a (jarrlen to the Kates In the purple walls of Wales. Its green shire is in the verses of Chesterton and Mnsefield. Housman saw his "coloured counties" front the top of its Bredon Hill, and Drink water is the poet's Baedeker in four lines of lyric verse, Who travels Worcester county, Takes any road that romes; When April tosses bounty To the cherries and the plums. But it was the road from Bewdley to Arlev the greenest river track, that memory, tired of "languishing," took and walked again. Buskin, in a mood of nature-worship, might have done it justice. It takes something more than a gold-nibbed fountain-pen to put on paper those moving elemental things that touch the deepest in us. When Baldwin wrote of the sounds of Knglaml, lie who knew the Arlev river-path, might have thought of the wind there on n summer's day, brushing tlio long flowerfilled grass, and the grout green clouds of foliage, where the oaks and chestnuts stand back from the river's edge. Do nnv birds sing as they do 111 summer where the Severn murmurs south to Bewdley bridge? The doctrine of blood and soil may be a Nazi madness, but there is a mystic something which unites us to the land of our birth. It struck 1110 first, with vague surprise, as the. boat-train climbed through Devon. I stood ill tho carriage corridor, too full for words, at the sight of copse and hedgerow, village roof and spire in the pale wintor sun. And the river track to Arley moves something just as deep.

Tragic Crusader The village nestles among trees and orchards on tbe steep river bank. It looks at tbo hills of Housnian's Shropshire across the glorious valley. lhoi'G is not a corner of England without its touch of history. The iitory of Alley's church goes back eight hundred years. There is a figure there of an armoured knight, cross-legged to show that he

Aucklancler's Memories of Worcestershire By SCRIBA ; '

had crusaded. He was Sir Walter de Balun, who ,was killed in a tournament accident on his wedding day. And now memory returns to Fern Cottage and its tiny bedroom window in the vast thickness of the wall. The quiet lane winds between the wealth of may to Wyre Forest over the ridge. Just within the forest border is Ruskin's farm, and beyond the miles of oaks, Mortimer's Cross. Indeed, the ■very lane without was not untouched by the tragic Wars of the Roses. Peer round the edge of the casement, and see where the lane dips deepest. To this point the blood ran. when soldiers of the white rose and the red skirmished with sword-play •on the ridge of the hill, where the "Hop Pole" hangs its sign. On ancient ordnance maps this peaceful hollow is called "The Bloody Holo." Illustrious Names

• I came by motor-bus from Kidderminster, the day L found Fern Cottage. King John, lie who raved at Runnymede, and whose evil bones lie yonder in Worcester Cathedral, travelled this road to Bewdley; so did Bluebeard's brother, Prince Arthur. It was at Bewdley that he married Catherine of Aragoil by proxy. Their union was brief. In a few months' Arthur lay dead in Ludlow Castle, leaving Henry to marry his widow and change the course of history. Tickenhill Manor, where the strange wedding took place, has known illustrious names. Sir Henry Sidney, father of Sir Philip, lived there, and there was born Sir Philip's sister, of whom the lovely epitaph was written,

Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother, Death! ere thou-hast- slain ,another , Wise and fair and good as she, Tim'o shall throw a dart at thee. •At any rate, tlio long red bus started under the statue of .Rowland Hill in the other , square in the carpet-town, and here lit is, over Bewdley bridge with its three graceful a relies, and memory walks up Load Street. There is . a house, yonder built in 16'i2, and the whole town is rich in its quaint contemporaries. The road runs past the church and up the long steep hill. .The clustered dwellings drop behind, and here is the open country again. Why talk of trees and hedgerows? They only know them who know "the comely land of Tone and Lugg and (.'lent and Glee and Wyre." At the top of the hill is f.lic "Hop Pole." The road turns and follows the ridge. Billow on billow of meadowed downs to the blue distance, and the dark line of Wyre Forest! And here is the hollow, and there the cottage, and memory, sharpened for the flesh-pots by tyrannous dieting, tastes again the capon, the cream and apple-pic. Shrine of Wulfstan

Down to Worcester city is a long trail of history. There is no more beautiful cathedral in all Kngland than Worcester's by the Severn. The dainty square-to we red shrine of St. Wulfstan has looked out over the Faithful City, while Kngland has grown up It has seen its happy days and sad. Sad they were in 16">] when Worcester streets were foul with carnage, and Cromwell's troops used the great cathedral as a loose box, and a pen for prisoners. To-da.v its elegant roofs look down on historic shrines and priceless manuscripts. We leave its aisles in a reverie of history. Tudor and Stuart seem more real than Windsor. Parked at the street corner the, long Midland bus breaks the spell and reminds us that Charles rode in (light three centuries ago. And lunch, arriving in a cup, shatters a lovely day-dream to fragments. New Zealand, bed, and "languishing" again. One Thomas Habington, found guilty of treason, was exiled to Worcestershire for life. Lucky Tom!