Читать книгу The Letters of Charles Sorley - Charles Hamilton Sorley - Страница 11

Table of Contents

The Field Day was on Thursday at Clifton and was a huge success. We had only Blundell’s on our side, and had Clifton, Cheltenham and a host of little pinchbeck public schools against us. Our main object, though I didn’t study the scheme very thoroughly, was to attack the Clifton Suspension Bridge from the west by drawing the enemy away up north. We had to start very early—by 7.20 we were in the train—and arrived at Flax Bourton, a crocked old village about seven miles west of Bristol, at about ten. We got started in an unusually short time and reached the rendez-vous at about eleven, after a tiring march uphill along a dusty road in which we must have ascended a good 300 feet. Operations began at 11.15; our company was the advance guard, and after marching a mile or so along the Bristol Road, we struck up north across some open country to deceive the enemy of our intentions and make them also move northwards, taking particular care not to capture any of their scouts we saw. We moved at our leisure across a very high plateau of cornfields, and I am glad it was at our leisure, for it was a very strange coincidence for me that the field-day was just at that time and place. For right at the top of the plateau there was the finest view I have ever seen. Down on our right were Clifton and Bristol lying in the Avon valley. And full in face was a broad expanse of water “where Severn’s stream goes out to sea,” and black in the distance against the horizon was a smoky cloud that can only have been Cardiff. On the field to our left at the very top of the hill was Farmer Callow ploughing (what he was doing ploughing at this time of year I cannot tell), and away to the north-east was a spire shining against the sun. And then I knew why

The sea with all her ships and sails,

And that great smoky port in Wales,

And Gloucester tower bright i’ the sun

All know that patient wandering one.

You recognise the quotation?

And then for two hours on end we ran. We scattered all over the country and went in all the wrong directions. We annihilated pinchbeck little public schools, 30 strong, all over the place. But we could not find their main guard Clifton, and seemed to get no nearer the Suspension Bridge. At last we managed to rally, we managed to find Clifton sulking in a hollow, we managed to drive them back a mile in ten minutes, but the Suspension Bridge was still secure when Cease Fire sounded at two.

And now I have got a card up my sleeve still to play. “I’ve been to church.” I have been moving in dizzy circles. Last night (Saturday) I was having dinner at the Lodge, and next door to me on my left hand was—the Bishop of London.

Taking it altogether—and I talked a good deal to him—I could not imagine a nicer man. He really is simply perfect, and now I understand why all those men who came down from Tottenham the other day spoke of him in the way they did. He is, of course you know, an O.M. to add to his other virtues. He has none of that clerical self-consciousness or other-worldliness you expect in bishops. He was just about as delightful as you could hope. He preached this morning—very well indeed.

And to-morrow we take our plunge into the valley of the shadow of the Certificate. It is still a month before we meet again on the Delectable Mountains of Dunbar.