In the shadow of the great man - Wednesday 27th December 2006

Note the actual date of this post is Wednesday 2nd February 2007.

The air was very chill outside the house this morning, with a mist that never completely went away.

Robert Leiper seemed to be in a contradictory mood, saying the opposite of whatever I said (he often does this when he is bored and wants to provoke people). I drove him into the local town where he took some shirts to the dry cleaners, literally gasping at the high cost (a result of the decline of the American currency – one pound sterling is now worth two dollars). A farcical tour around the town’s shops while he tried to buy some shooting socks. I asked why he wanted them and his reply was so evasive I suspected he didn’t really need them but just wanted to buy something unobtainable outside of the United Kingdom. Eventually we found some in a gentleman’s outfitters to the south end of the town. They were so expensive he could only afford one pair (£19 or $38).

After lunch we decided to go out (“Let’s have a blast” Robert said). I warned that hardly anywhere would be open. We took the dog with us.

Driving deep into the hills, we arrived at a tiny village, birthplace of a nineteenth-century Poet Laureate. Crows cawed overhead as we examined the exterior of the Old Rectory where the great man had been born (a Regency villa with gimcrack gothic additions). Much more impressive was The Grange, a very substantial castellated house next door.

Through an iron gate and up the slope of a small mound, we came to the church where the poet’s father (a disinherited eldest son with mental health problems) had been Rector. Inside was a small case of mementos (a clay pipe, a quill pen, scraps of paper with the poet’s handwriting) and a big brass bust of the Poet Laureate in later life (I paused by this sculpture, literally standing in the shadow of the great man). It was all very modest and restrained, considering he was the greatest poet of his age.

Next to the neighbouring village (a even smaller settlement, consisting of Hall Farm and a few cottages). I was very pleased to find the small Perpendicular church open, as I have tried several times to get in. The building is constructed of greenstone, and has a dignified little tower with grimacing gargoyles at each of the corners. Inside the church the air was freezing so that it hurt your lungs as you breathed in. There was a half-hearted attempt at tourist information – the parish contains the “babbling brook” mentioned in one of the poet’s more famous works. Simple one-aisled nave leading to a chancel with elegant 18th century tablet memorials (I wondered about the lives of these refined individuals - possibly they had died of hypothermia).

The dog was sick on the back seat of the car - I covered it up with Robert's copy of The Times.

Always Robert Leiper wanted to move on, so that the afternoon was characterised by a restless quality. We drove on to the next village. The sound of gunshot cracked the air in neighbouring wooded copses, and we saw pheasants walking carefully along the side of the road as if trying to remain incognito. The church was open and contained a recumbent effigy of a knight with very fine chain mail. From the churchyard you could see over an high wall to the Hall, featured in one of Laureate’s most famous poems (a half-true story of obsessive unrequited love, including lines where the name of a girl is repeated in heart-broken monotony, as if crazed repetition could conjure up the object of desire). Robert wanted to see the front of the house so we found a footpath leading through a field (ignoring a warning sign to mind the bull) that gave us a view - a very beautiful façade of mellow red brick.

And that's how we spent our day.