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Updated: June 17, 2025
And only then did he begin to realize the depth and extent of the engagements to which Sir Richmond had committed himself. "I was suggesting that we run back to Avebury to-morrow," said Sir Richmond. "These ladies were nearly missing it." The thing took the doctor's breath away. For the moment he could say nothing. He stared over his tea-cup dour-faced. An objection formulated itself very slowly.
The Avebury road now ascends the sparsely inhabited chalk hills, part of the range known under the general designation of the Marlborough Downs. To the left, on the northern slopes of Roundway Down, have been erected a number of gaunt and lofty wireless masts, visible for a great distance.
The love of travel is in the blood of both Celt and Anglo-Saxon; our forefathers visited shrines for the joy of the journey as well as for religious motives, and maybe our Bronze Age ancestors, who flocked to the great Sun Festivals at Stonehenge or Avebury Circles, derived pleasure from the change of scene as well as a blessing from the Druids.
The two megaliths seen from the Beckhampton road may be a remnant of it. The purpose of all this intricate and elaborate work is a puzzling problem and, like the mystery of Stonehenge, will probably remain a secret to the end. The literature of Avebury, not quite so copious as that of the stones of the Plain, is also more diffident in its guessing.
Relying on a quaint story in Pliny wherein the druids of Gaul are said to use as a charm a certain magic egg manufactured by snakes, he imagined that the druids were serpent-worshippers, and essayed to see serpents even in the forms of their temples. Thus in the Avebury group the circle on Hakpen Hill was for him the head of a snake and its avenue part of the body.
There is the contention that the pleasures of life as a whole outweigh the sum of its evils. This was maintained, and we need not hesitate to say successfully maintained, by Lord Avebury, and not by him alone. Indeed Darwin had emphatically said, "According to my judgment happiness decidedly prevails."
Avebury Manor, Wiltshire, is an attractive example of the plastered house. The irregular roof-line, the gables, and the white-barred windows, and the contrast of the white walls with the rich green of the vines and surrounding trees combine to make a picture of rare beauty.
"I think," said the doctor and paused. "I shall leave this Avebury expedition to you." "We can be back in the early afternoon," said Sir Richmond. "To give them a chance of seeing the cathedral. The chapter house here is not one to miss...." "And then I suppose we shall go on? "As you please," said Sir Richmond insincerely.
All his life he had been speculating on the subtleties of mortal existence, reading Spencer, Kant, Spinoza, at odd moments, and particularly such men as Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Lord Avebury, Alfred Russel Wallace, and latterly Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Crookes, trying to find out by the inductive, naturalistic method just what life was.
Stamped across this memory are the little black figures of my uncle and Rabbits, telling Avebury, the sexton and undertaker, that "it had all passed off very well very well indeed." That is the last I shall tell of Bladesover. The dropscene falls on that, and it comes no more as an actual presence into this novel.
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