Walking to Camelot

by John A. Cherrington

  I stop for a mocha at an independent shop. The husky male owner with a fierce red beard resembles a Viking warrior. He states that the UK is now in the forefront of high-quality bean imports plus quality grinding and blending, with special emphasis on ethical practices and fair trade coffee. The ethically “green” pinnacle is reached, he says, when the grower recycles the leaves and roots of the coffee plants as manure dressing for next year’s crop. It seems that the days of ersatz coffee in England are over.

  Historically, the English love affair with coffee both predates tea and was more torrid. This surely explains why the Victorians tried to suppress coffee — no doubt believing that java overstimulated the senses and detracted from the temperate, sober, controlled society they sought to build. (Hey, any society that found dining-room table legs sexually stimulating and advised homeowners to cover them up would find coffee to be a licentious beverage designed to corrupt the masses.) There was no such danger from tea.

  The coffee craze in England began in 1651, when a vendor known as Jacob the Jew opened a coffeehouse at the Angel Inn in Oxford. Things really took off two years later in London when the Greek servant of a British merchant opened the first coffee shack against the stone wall of a churchyard in an alley off Cornhill. Within two years, Pasqua Rosée was selling six hundred dishes of coffee a day, much to the displeasure of local pub owners. This coffee was a wicked brew — “black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love,” as the Turkish proverb goes. Yet a London newspaper opined in 1701 how the “bitter Mohammedan gruel” nonetheless kindled conversations, inspired debates, sparked ideas, and, as Rosée himself stated in his handbill The Virtue of the Coffee Drink, “made one fit for business.” Some observers credit coffee with bringing Britons out of their “drunken stupor,” leading to the expansion of the economy and empire. In the early eighteenth century, up to eight thousand coffeehouses flourished in London, plus thousands more in country towns. By contrast, Amsterdam boasted only thirty-two in 1700.

  The fervent, wide-ranging discussions of politics, philo-sophy, and religion grew so bold that Charles II tried un-successfully to suppress coffeehouses. The Women’s Petition against Coffee of 1674 claimed that men had become “effeminate, babbling French layabouts.” A counter-petition titled Men’s Answer to the Women’s Petition against Coffee claimed that coffee made men more virile.

  In any case, the conviviality with which men of all classes now mixed can be said to have played at least a minor part in the transition to democracy. For it is in the coffeehouses of London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh that men like Samuel Johnson, David Hume, and Isaac Newton met and discussed their theories, elbow to elbow with dockworkers, fishmongers, and tradesmen. John Dryden and Samuel Pepys favoured Will’s Coffee House in Covent Garden, which became known as the London Centre of the Wits. A pamphlet of 1674 called Rules of the Coffee-House proclaimed: “Pre-eminence of place none here should mind, but take the next fit seat he can find.” This ensured that men of all classes would rub shoulders in a relaxed setting. Lloyd’s of London and the Stock Exchange were founded as a result of meetings of London businessmen at Lloyd’s Coffee House (run by Edward Lloyd) in 1694 and at Jonathan’s Coffee House (founded by Jonathan Miles) in Change Alley in 1762, respectively.

  Tea first arrived in England from China in 1660, and was introduced in the coffeehouses. But tea, unlike coffee, was no social equalizer. On the Continent it was drunk by the fashionable rich. It gradually took hold in the sceptred isle, however, and by 1770 veritable “tea fleets” of ships were importing the brew. As the price of tea went down and people learned how easy it was to make their favourite blend at home, an entire tea culture developed, as did the baking of teacakes, crumpets, and biscuits.

  Pubs deftly made inroads by merging with coffeehouses, and over time the ale prevailed over the java. By the Victorian era, middle-class wives had reined their men in from the coffeehouses to the pleasantness of tea in the garden at home, subject to the odd evening decamp to the local pub. Meanwhile, upper-class men formed private clubs and retreated to their privileged precincts to discuss the political issues of the day. Once again the masses were kept in their place and elitism prevailed.

  Tea calms and refreshes. Coffee stimulates spirited dis-course. Without tea, the Brits would not have muddled through the last world war. Without coffee, the RAF pilots would not have won the Battle of Britain. Without beer, all would have collapsed. But with the recent revival of coffeehouses, one can only hope that Britons will look up from their mobiles and laptops and rouse themselves from their navel-gazing stupor long enough to talk to their neighbours in the friendly kind of banter and badinage that characterized society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Brits consume an average of 4.2 pounds of tea each every year, but espresso sales now exceed tea sales in cash value. Wake up and smell the coffee.

  It is hard to avoid the antiquarian shops in Cirencester. On a whim I purchase a late-fourth-century Roman silver ring and place it on my little finger, willing myself to imagine some Roman soldier wearing it into battle against marauding Saxons.

  Karl just laughs. “What’s your wife going to say — you always said you hated wearing jewellery, and I’ve never even seen you wear a wedding ring. Yet you don’t mind wearing some anonymous dead Roman’s battered band.”

  “That’s not entirely true. I used to wear a wedding ring, but lost it ploughing my back field one day.”

  “So instead of replacing your wedding band, you’re going to prance about with this bit of bling?”

  “I’m hoping to feel the vibes of the past, Karl. Anyway, maybe I won’t wear it every day. Did you get your mobile to work yet?”

  “The damn thing can’t be made to work over here. They say I’ll have to buy a new mobile. They can’t find a chip to work with my North American phone.”

  Our last stop in Cirencester is the Querns, a huge, bowl-like field that contains the remains of the Roman amphitheatre. Some eight thousand spectators could be accommodated here, watching the deadly clashes of Roman gladiators 1,800 years ago. In the medieval period the amphitheatre was used for only slightly less barbarous entertainment: bull-baiting. A bull was chained to a stake by the neck and then hunting dogs — usually bulldogs — were set loose upon the poor animal. Dogs that were killed and maimed were replaced until the bull was killed or they ran out of dogs. Bull-baiting was a variation of the ancient practice of bear-baiting; both practices were banned by Parliament in 1835.

  As we walk the amphitheatre, Karl can’t resist doing his own baiting, asking, “Well, is your precious ring giving you some vibes as to what really went on in this arena during those Roman times?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  At that moment we pass a buxom, middle-aged woman clutching a Starbucks cup and wearing a pink sweatshirt that is inscribed: “My body is not a temple — it’s an amusement park.” Karl winces.

  Cirencester Park forms part of the enormous Bathurst Estate, including Pinbury Park. This ancient seat of the earls of Bathurst consists of 3,000 acres surrounding a mansion. An additional 12,000 acres accommodate equestrian activity. We walk down the Broad Ride, admiring the pristine setting. This was one of the earliest landscape parks in England, built by the first earl of Bathurst, who was assisted in its development by his close friend Alexander Pope. The famous poet and satirist was also a brilliant landscape designer, and helped Bathurst in building and placing classical Greek structures. Pope used his days spent at Cirencester Park to develop his perspective on nature and consider the sociopolitical importance of the landscape garden, which he wrote about in the 1730s.

  Pope describes in a 1718 letter how content he was working at Cirencester Park: “I am with Lord Bathurst, at my bower; in whose groves we yesterday had a dry walk of three hours. It is the place of all others that I fancy.” Bathurst and Pope would go hunting in the afternoon, and in the evening, draw up plans for the estate, including ingenious schemes “to open avenues, cut glades, plant firs, contrive w
ater-works.” In a letter from 1722, Pope said that he looked upon himself “as the magician appropriated to the place.”

  Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, a few miles east of Cirencester, and Cirencester folk naturally claim him as one of their own. He is revered as perhaps the greatest composer England has ever produced. Vaughan Williams achieved a synthesis of lyrical, pastoral, and liturgical traditions with formal composition. One outstanding example of this is his famous Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; another is his 1928 version of “Greensleeves” (the ori-ginal of which many scholars believe was composed by Henry VIII for Anne Boleyn). The Lark Ascending captures the dynamism and acrobatic power of the skylark, which I have recently witnessed in the fields south of Stamford.

  It has been a long, tiring day. Karl and I plod back to the town centre to dine and then crash. Before retiring for the night, I take my Roman ring off and put it in my jeans pocket. After walking around the Querns — imagining first the gladiators fighting to the death and then the blood-soaked bull-baiting — I somehow find the ring unsettling.

  Next morning, the day dawns cool and misty for our hike back to Rendcomb to reunite with the main Macmillan Way. From the trail junction we meander southward to reach Duntisbourne Rouse. I am continually bewildered by the sheer number of paths that intersect our own. One can go anywhere on foot and be rewarded. In The English Landscape, Bill Bryson has commented that England boasts greater diversity and interest squeezed into a small area than anywhere else in the world. “Within a limited radius one encounters some remarkable diversion . . . And, this being England, more often than not it will have an engaging air of eccentricity about it.” Bryson speculates that someone has owned and used every square inch of the country’s land since neolithic times.

  Beyond Duntisbourne Rouse, we encounter some 500 acres of finely clipped turf accommodating hundreds of prancing thoroughbreds that belong to the Bathurst Estate. Karl is a horse lover and stands watching them, entranced. The Cotswolds share with Kentucky the distinction of the highest density of horses per square mile anywhere in the world. The sporting life of England is concentrated in Gloucestershire. Wherever we walk we see paddock activity, plus many horse riders on bridleways. The squirearchy still loves its horses. Private racing tracks abound, and stables and riding rings proliferate. Many young people, especially girls, are passionate about riding.

  The epitome of the country’s equestrian life is the national competitions. Of these, the Ascot races, such as those in the Royal Ascot meeting and the annual King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, are the most prestigious. But the ultimate event among country gentry is the Cheltenham Gold Cup race, highlight of the annual Cheltenham Festival. A key aspect of this race is the assembling of top Irish racehorses to be matched against England’s finest. Horsey people of the Cotswolds flock to the festival to mingle with their peers. Cashmere, tweed, and Land Rovers rule. Dick Francis found much fodder in the Cotswolds for his equestrian crime novels.

  Nothing can slow Karl down, I have found, except horses. I tug his arm to be on our way.

  “Those are fine horses, John, very fine horses. I could watch them all day.”

  “I am sure that they are happy parading about the good Lord’s pasture, Karl. I mean, of course, Lord Bathurst, who is unequivocally the terrestrial Lord in this neighbourhood. I’ve heard that a private helicopter is on constant standby to trundle him back and forth to London.”

  Karl sighs and waves his walking stick with a flourish toward his equine friends, and we trek onward.

  Our view of the Frome Valley is bewitching. Far below us is a meandering stream, winding like a sinuous eel through thick woodlands, with the odd grassy rise above on which sheep graze. Fine mist hangs over patches of the river valley, while the fickle sun flirtatiously flickers and glows and then teasingly hides itself again above the patina of a feather-grey cirrocumulus cloud blanket. One expects to see a knight in full armour come charging up the slope on a warhorse. This place is truly lost in time, and I have this uneasy feeling that we are but intruders.

  Lost in reverie, I am startled when three mounted riders appear as if on cue, on steeds gaily apparelled. Two men attired in bright-coloured livery, like knights of yore, flank a lady princess whose long red tresses cascade beneath her helmet onto her shoulders. No doubt they are venturing out from their castle en route to some jousting tournament. Karl and I both fall backward into the prickly bramble hedge to avoid the lead horse, which snorts and gambols his way past us down the path.

  We have been cast aside like so much hoi polloi. I guess they thought we were serfs. It isn’t even a bridleway, so technically it is illegal for the trio to be riding along the path. But that’s okay — the sight was worth it, and it’s good practice to humble ourselves even if we did have the right-of-way. In fact, as we dove for the hedge to avoid being trampled upon, I should have yelled, “Sorry! Is my body obstructing your Royal Progress?”

  We dust ourselves off. Karl hunts for his walking stick, which became entangled in the brambles and blackthorn bushes when he fell into the hedge.

  “Come on, John, it’s all part of the adventure. Let’s make tracks to our next watering hole.”

  The pallid sky has turned a deep indigo, and it appears we are in for a squall. The path meanders through a meadow full of wildflowers as we near Sapperton, and then it’s onto a muddy bridleway uphill, through a gate where we bear “half-left,” as the Guide enjoins, then across another field to emerge at a red telephone booth in the village.

  We walk beneath ancient yews in the churchyard. Sapperton Church houses many fine tomb effigies. One of those effigies is of our friend Sir Robert Atkyns, whom we last met fighting a duel in Perrott’s Brook. Atkyns had a storied career as a lawyer, judge, and Speaker of the House of Lords. He was a spirited reformer, and teamed up with Edward Coke to denounce the Court of Chancery, pleading for a return to fairer common-law principles of justice and the adoption of equity principles to favour the common man. He opposed the House of Lords acting as an appellate court. His book, The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire, became the first comprehensive history of the county.3

  Sapperton itself is glowing with Cotswold gold. John Masefield, the Poet Laureate of England from 1930 to 1967, made the town his home base, living at nearby Pinbury Park on the Bathurst Estate from 1932 to 1940. Many in the literary establishment felt he was unworthy of his exalted position. His range of poetry extended to Arthurian scenes, Hardy-like pastorals, sea ballads, and war drama. He was no Tennyson or Hardy, but he did give us those lines of “Sea-Fever” that most North American schoolchildren learned by heart in the latter half of the twentieth century:

  I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky;

  And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,

  And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

  And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.

  Below the village runs the two-and-a-quarter-mile tunnel of the Thames and Severn Canal. At the Bell Inn, we encounter an old collie dozing in the garden entrance. As we stand outside contemplating whether to take refreshment here, a man drives up in a Peugeot and emerges wearing a pink tie on a white shirt, pink Bermuda shorts, and long pink socks. Two elderly ladies then appear from the back seat, dressed conservatively in long mauve silk dresses, and he escorts them to the entrance, one on each arm. My smirks disappear when a burly man who is clearly the proprietor, clad in bright pink cotton slacks matched with a pink polka-dot bow tie, appears at the entrance, bows, and graciously ushers this strange trio inside.

  “Karl, it looks like we’re not up on the latest in Carnaby fashion — note that the men here all wear pink!”

  “There are times, my friend, when I wish I was half blind instead of half deaf.”

  “I think we had better move along — we are both sartorial disasters.”

  A quarter mile down the path I s
tand perplexed, peering at high, wrought-iron manor gates through which the Guide assures us our path passes. Yet the gates are barred shut.

  Help, however, is on the way. A well-groomed lady who resembles Margaret Thatcher in cream jodhpurs and black riding boots strides through the gates guiding a golden retriever on a leash. She advises us politely that the path has been rerouted through another part of her estate, as the official right-of-way passes intrusively in front of her morning breakfast window and walkers would peer in at her and her husband sipping their morning coffee. So they have donated land behind the manor house for a redirected path, but the damned sign keeps falling off the rock wall to the right of the gates. She offers to escort us through the adjacent copse. We thank her and say we are sure we can find the diversion path on our own.

  “Better than setting the dogs on us, John,” remarks Karl a few yards later. “I certainly wouldn’t want walkers staring into my kitchen window while I spilled marmalade all over my face.”

  “Quite.”

  There is nothing more important to the English than their privacy. This may account for the fact that the United Kingdom has the highest rate of home ownership in Europe, from simple cottages to urban jungle flats. Jeremy Paxman notes that Continental Europeans are content to live much of their daily lives on the street: “It is the place where you eat, drink, commiserate, flirt, laugh, and pass the time of day. The English answer to the street is the back garden, in which socializing is by invitation only. Because the English dream is privacy without loneliness, everyone wants a house.” At the end of the day, after finishing with her socializing, the Englishwoman likes nothing better than to go home, slam the door, and put on a pot of tea.