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Holyoak of Bidford Grange, Warwickshire, and to Miss M. Willes, who were on a visit at my house, and who all went to see it. Very lately I reminded Mr.
The ragged stretches of Snitterfield downs scrambled away to the left; and on the right, beyond Bearley, were the wooded uplands where Guy of Warwick and Heraud of Arden slew the wild ox and the boar. And down through the midst ran the Avon southward, like a silver ribbon slipped through Kendal green, to where the Stour comes down, past Luddington, to Bidford, and away to the misty hills.
Robert repeated to them the old rhyme about the Warwickshire villages which Shakespeare is said to have composed possibly in this very field: "Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton, Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom and drunken Bidford."
Bidford is not drunken now; it is only sleepy: a long steep street, with, at the top, the church and a beautiful old house, now cottages, once the Falcon Inn, where Shakespeare used to drink, and where the chair came from that they had seen at the birthplace yesterday; and at the foot the Swan Inn and the old bridge.
This is now a museum with all kinds of Shakespeare relics in it, profoundly interesting to Hester if not to the others. The desk at which he sat in the Grammar School is there; and his big chair from the Falcon Inn at Bidford; and many portraits; and on one of the windows, scratched with a diamond, is the name of Sir Walter Scott.
Some of these were immense trees, and not very desirable round arable land, owing to their shade, but they were lovely when in bloom, for standing separately, they seemed to develop richer colours than when close together in an orchard. The story of Shakespeare's carouse, and his night passed under a crab-tree near Bidford, about six miles from Aldington, is well known.
"Piping Pebworth", "Dancing Marston", "Drunken Bidford", "Haunted Hillborough", "Hungry Grafton", "Papist Wixford", and "Beggarly Broom" were visited and rejoiced over in turn; then the car wended its way from Warwickshire to sample the glories of Gloucestershire.
Robert was very firm for the Bidford way, and, of course, he won; and, as it happened, it was very well that he did.
Bidford is built very like a wateringplace that is to say, it is all on one side of the river. The water to-day looked very tempting, especially as a great number of boats were lying on it waiting to be hired; but Robert sternly ordered his party onwards.
His beat in the morning lay between Bidford and Salford Priors, and he was standing beside the road, on the top of the little hill called Marriage Hill just before you cross the River Arrow and come to Salford Priors station at the very moment that Moses, after painfully dragging the Slowcoach up the same eminence, had reached the summit.
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