13 SEPTEMBER 1884, Page 12

CONSCIENTIOUS IDLING AT MALVERN.

FOR parsons and peaceableness, I never see the like!" This testimony was borne to the social aspect of the agglomeration of hill-side and hill-foot villages and. villas of the eminently genteel kind, which strangers heedlessly call Malvern, but which jealously divide themselves into several denominations, by an elderly lady, in well-beforehand pos- session of the best place in a brake bound for Eastnor Park. She spoke, as she proceeded to explain, with authority; for, having been left "pretty comfortable" by her deceased husband — presumably associated during his terrestrial career with "provisions "—she had. given her mind. for some years to watering-places, both salt and fresh, and was thoroughly prepared. to justify her prepossessions by facts. Of the malpractices of lodging-house keepers by the sea-board, and inland, what might one not have learned, by journeying onward. to the final destination of the brake with that elderly lady? She carried a picnic basket ; its contents were intended solely for her own consumption ; but would not have been, like David Copperfield's turtle-soup, "a tight-fit for four." Even between Great Malvern and the Wells, she contrived. to cure a pretty young bride of a blind confidence in human nature as exhibited in " 'elth hestablishments," by an awful story about a fashionable bathing-place where "they only lets on to let the water off, my dear ; it all comes back under the floor, and then, into the biler with it, and hout again into your bath ; wish you takes your chance among hall the hillnesses in the 'copia for wot's been in before." "Now," she added, as though arguing a point of great difficulty and nicety, "I don't 'old with that for people as 'as their 'elth, and is takin' their pleasure ; sick folks is pretty mach all one." Thumbscrews should not extract the name of that fashionable watering-place from the present writer; but the faces of two young gentlemen, superfluously equipped with alpenstocks, and field-glasses big enough to serve Lord Wolseley in a survey of the prospect before him, revealed with such ludicrous candour that the dauntless tourists had just "been there," that a smile made the grand, tour of the brake. "But you approve of Malvern, ma'am," inquired the bride 'timidly, with an anxious glance at her husband, a big young man, with red hair and whiskers, in a new coat, who looked as if he might be rolled from the top of the Camp Hill and up again without being the worse for the operation ; "You do think Malvern 'elthy ?" She was pretty ; she had a com- plexion that indicated Devonshire, but she dropped her h's as though to the manner born in Bermondsey. Thereupon the elderly lady waxed eloquent, and declared her belief that you -could not beat Malvern for air, water, sunshine, walks, "for such as 'as legs made to keep on goin' continual up 'ill;" likewise for donkey and pony-chaises to aid persons not so highly privileged. "A quiet place, ma'am, and good company in it, I'll be bound to say," remarked one of the party, eliciting the remark already quoted. It was, perhaps, wanting in elegance, but it had truth to recommend it. Parsons and peaceableness are among the striking features of Malvern. Is the whole parsonic world having what Mr. Guppy calls"an out," and has it `. Limped" for the historic region ? The black coats, the soft hats, and that enviable air of absolute holiday which is never so conspicuous as in the clergyman out of harness, pervade the hills, the plain, and the wood-bordered, winding roads that connect those resorts of the pedestrian health- seeker. If one wants a holiday to be instructive, Malvern will gratify that depraved appetite. Regarded as a "centre," it is a boon and a blessing to the archmologist. Not only can one be summoned to contemplate that vast plain—on which light and shadow play so bewitchingly, that to sit and watch them all day long is a vacation in itself—in its primitive condition as a piece of the floor of the sea, and those green hills (which people who have not made notches in alpenstocks call "grand," to the scorn and disgust of people who have), as the last strong- hold of the natives of Britain against the invading Romans; but any amount of comparatively modern English history, topographically illustrated, lies in wait for one on look- ing out of window or going out-of-doors. You go out for your first drive, in the freshest, sweetest air that ever was breathed, and abandoning yourself with resigned confidence to the ups- and-downs of the road (you will previously have noted with satisfaction that there are very few broken-knee'd horses), you take note of the luxuriant foliage, the well-kept roads, the pretty houses, the well-to-do look of everything, the absence of the formal-melancholy aspect of a resort for invalids ; and you find the driver respectfully directing your attention to a house, unfortunately restored, in which King Charles slept the night before the Battle of Worcester. You are delighted to see even the vulgarised modern presentment of this historic dwelling, and you mention the fact to the first resident who asks how you like Malvern. With a polite and tolerant smile your visitor says,—" Of course, you know that is merely imaginary. King Charles never was near the place ; in fact, he came in on the -other side." You do not know, you have no idea which is the other side, you are perfectly satisfied not to know, and you privately resolve to believe in the house and the sleeping monarch. Then and there, if you are wise, and worthy of a real out,"—you will forswear history, and get yourself into a frame of mind as nearly approaching that sober certainty of waking bliss which consists of not knowing and not caring about things in general, as can be obtained anywhere except on board a friend's yacht in safe and sunny seas. (It must not be your own yacht ; the sense of property interferes with true peace.) It probably is not in human nature, on land, to be indifferent to the arrival of the post, and to refrain from reading the daily papers ; but these infirmities of habit deferred to, there are abounding re- -sources for the conscientious idler at Malvern. It is a splendid place to wake in; for morning comes with a fresh sense of life and beauty, as if it were a new idea only just brought to perfec- tion,—and it is a fine place to sleep in ; for you go there troubled with insomnia, meaning overwork and too much of the company of your fellow-creatures, and after a while you yield to an influ- slice which would shut up the hundred eyes of Argus all at once, and make him sleep like Rip Van Winkle. It is delightfully free from the "butterflies of fashion," it knows not the masher, it is eminently respectable, it bears the impress of peaceableness. If inveterate habit will not permit one to attain that perfec- tion of idleness which excludes observation of anything except the face of the earth, the weakness of wanting something to see may find soothing indulgence in watching the continuous stream of people who are always on their way up to, or on their way clown from, St Anne's Well and the Beacon.

After a few days you have got your hill legs, and you "make" the fiat platform on which the little Well-house stands where the persuasive photographer plays the part of a harmless spider, and a succession of youths and maidens, not to mention middle-aged persons of both sexes, pose in that of fly all day long ; where a row of portraits with a distracting similarity of expression is ranged by the roadside to encourage everybody ; where a friendly company of much-occupied dogs hold canine vestry-meetings, and there is a continuous halting of hill-climbing donkeys, and queer little vehicles drawn by sturdy ponies, with mouths long past influence by tugging. You will see five out of the seven ages of man go by you, coming up from the wind- ing rocky path beneath, and passing on up the steep path beyond, with a sky over their heads so blue and lofty, and a breeze to fan them so pure and bracing, so redolent all the way of lime, and fir, and sycamore-tree, until it becomes the sweet breath of the wild hill-side only, that you think health must be had for the mere trouble of coming there. The itinerant musician is present, with a repertory of such ancient fashion that it has come " in " again. The sixty-years-old "Wreath of Roses" that bloomed in drawing-rooms this season, just as if such a thing as sentiment were still permitted to exist, asserts itself on a rattly hand-organ, with a group of short-petticoated, sandal-shoed, bandeau'd marionettes doing a grave waltz, trois temps, on a little shelf in front of it. The " nosebag " (first given that name in Punch in 1862, on the occasion of the great Exhibition, to which we owed Shirley Brooks' incomparable " Japanese at the Derby ") flourishes as an institution at Malvern. In every variety of bag and basket, from the dainty worsted-worked certificate that " Ida " or" Amy" has been to Than or Geneva, containing some biscuits and fruit, to the uncompromising hamper that means business by-and-bye beside the Beacon on Ilacaulay's hill—cork-bestrewn as are the Pyramids—provisions are carried up to the historic site. On a recent afternoon, so beautiful, so bright, with the lights and shadows dispersed about the plain in a way that turned all gazers into dumb poets while they gazed, the railway brought a prodigious number of holiday-makers into Great Malvern. Earnest-minded, respectable folk, who came in parties, in families, or in pairs, with ulsters, umbrellas, and "nosebags." They " did " the town—it is not intricate—and then they " buckled-to " for the Beacon, with a stage at the Well. There, obstinately occupying two-thirds of a bench, was a lanky, melancholy stranger, more like Hannibal Chollop than might be supposed to be possible, and he regarded the ascending stream of holiday humanity with a stony stare. Whither was his fancy straying ? What pathetic remembrance was tugging at the heartstrings of the exile P Presently he was joined by a com- rade, an uncongenial one probably, for the new-corner, who emerged, with quite a convivial air, from a prolonged drink of the delicious water, was, like Juliet's nurse's husband, "a merry man." He smiled upon the toilers, and he turned a cheerful look upon his friend, who slowly rose to an alarming height, and remarked, "I guess more'n a pig or two's gone up that slope this turn, 'tweeu sandwiches and pork-pies." Then he, too, addressed himself to the slope, and all doubts were solved. The "bright home" of that exile was Chicago.

Although the Baths are an important feature, they do not obtrude themselves perpetually, as in most health resorts. Everybody is not always just going to them, or just coming back from them ; you can forget them easily. Facetious letter- paper vignettes displayed in certain shop-windows portray the comic side of hydropathic processes carried on at various esta- blishments; but "water cure" is not writ large all over the place. It was an excellent idea to conduct the brine from Droitwich to Malvern, and so pickle patients in a lovely scene, instead of a dreary flat in the black-country. The idea would present itself in a completer form if the brine-baths were less preposterously expensive, and if the prospectus tallied a little more closely with the facts. "Experienced bath men and bathwomen are in attendance," says the prospectus ; but on the premises are one male and one female attendant. They are so efficient that it solaces a long period of waiting (occasionally prohibitory, if the aspirant to the bath has anything else to do), merely to contemplate each energy and alacrity as they display, but to be more than "three gentlemen at once" is not given to the most accomplished officials. These would need to be six.

It would be impossible to say too much of the beauty of the scenery, of the easy breezy hills, the magnificent views extend- ing on all sides,—over cities, whose spires form landmarks in the rich distance ; over great estates and ancestral castles, over

ancient battle-fields, and the centres of some of those industries that are fighting for life in the country even now ; along the course of the noble Severn, along the line of the Cotswold hills ; over wide sweeps of cultured country, where the latest operations of harvesting are going on; over orchards, whose trees are bending with the weight of their fruit ; and, when the day is very, very beautiful, and you have gained the topmost ridge of the hills, away to the broad, shining waters of the Bristol Channel. Everyone tells you about the ancient cottages, genuine wattle-and-daub, in the fruit-growing plain ; and very impressive, weird, and " dumb-like " they are, especially those which show patches of the original wattle, but where the daub, often renewed most likely, has fallen away. These cottages are undoubtedly of vast antiquity, and make an appeal to one quite other than that of those stately homes which also count their centuries—the appeal of the serfdom of the generations who have lived and died in those dwellings, in the neighbourhood of the powerful and the wealthy. At least, their successors are not to be dumb for the future; henceforth their voice shall be heard in the land which their labour has made so rich and so heavenly fair.

"I am going," says an Oriental, "to cat the air." Those who propose to do the same, and come to Malvern for the pur- pose, will find that good digestion will wait upon appetite for that ambrosial fare, and health on both.

There is a picturesque bit of common under the terraced bill of Great Malvern, and it is frequented by a large number of very fine geese. Geese are always consequential, but the Malvern geese, perhaps because their common is so hilly and daley, and their pond so big and so clean, are preposterously conceited. There is no smoke, there are no "blacks," and the birds of the air wear their natural colours, a charming fact which led the present writer to betray his Cockney origin by failing to recognise the familiar sparrow in a sleek snuff-colour suit, and by taking him for an unknown songster of these enchanted groves, where scarlet berries of the mountain-ash cluster in a profusion unequalled out of the Kil- larney regions. The same applies to what may be called the birds of the field. The geese are spotless ; their grey is sheeny silver-grey ; their white is the glistening white of frosted sugar; their yellow bills are like amber mouth-pieces. If anybody denies that geese can be beautiful birds, let him survey those on the Common at Malvern, and repent him of his rash judgment.

It was a fine sight to behold these fussy, self-complacent, self-absorbed creatures waddling across the Common in Indian file at a quick pace in an oblique line, and taking the water in succession with a pompous plump. Just as the present writer had come to admire them sufficiently to think that they might possibly be swans, a portly personage, in a shepherd's-taitan suit and a hard glazed hat, who had also been observing this pretty pastoral scene, remarked :—" Getting on nicely for Michaelmas, ain't they, Sir ?"

Beautiful, Malvern must be, always ; but its beauty on these days, when the sunshine is bright, and the sweet air is cool, is only to be surpassed by its beauty on those nights, when, from the terraced road, one looked over the plain, and then back at the grand mass of the dark hills, by the light of the harvest moon, golden-grain coloured, without a cloud near her, in a clear blue sky.