A Dream of England. Peter Milward

should have been buried without an epitaph on his grave in his own country churchyard! But then I remembered that his “Elegy” is itself the poet’s best monument, and it does in fact conclude with an epitaph written by the poet for himself.

      All the same, I did feel something discordant about the place as a whole. What I had come to see wasn’t the church, for all its simple beauty, but the churchyard – the old country churchyard so movingly described in Gray’s poem. But where was it? As I passed through the old lych-gate, my eyes were outraged to see the path continuing with indecent straightness right up to the porch between a line of rose-trees likewise planted at indecently regular intervals. My ears, too, were no less outraged to hear lawn-mowers, not one but several at once, smoothing the grass that had grown up over the old graves.

      Here and there, it is true, some old tomb-stones had been allowed to rear their astonished heads above the placid sea of well-cut grass. What I had come to see was something delightfully irregular, a real old country churchyard. But what I found was a well laid-out modern garden with only a few tomb-stones left to give the impression of a churchyard. Just opposite the porch there was indeed an old yew-tree, but it afforded shade not to mouldering heaps of turf but to a small shop selling picture-postcards and other souvenirs of this world-famous churchyard.

      I should add that besides this and a few other yew-trees, without which no churchyard in England would be worthy of the name, there were several stately trees which provided a pleasant natural setting to the church and the churchyard. Only, the trees were suited rather to sophisticated parkland than to the simple countryside. I noticed several stately cedars and horse-chestnuts, but of Gray’s “rugged elms” there wasn’t a sign. The actual ones he saw have, of course, long since disappeared into mouldering heaps of compost, but I looked in vain for any sign of their descendants.

      In my mind I couldn’t help contrasting this much publicized and much the more disappointing churchyard with another, humbler churchyard I had come across at Selborne, not far from Jane Austen’s Chawton. There the eighteenth-century naturalist, Gilbert White, lies buried. The village nearby is no less charming than the Stoke Poges I hadn’t seen, and it attracts not a few visitors on a fine summer’s day. For the most part, however, they visit the naturalist’s spacious home, “The Wakes”, with its fine garden that gives access to the hills and meadows described by him with minute and loving care in his Natural History of Selborne. Few of them make their way to the church and its churchyard, set back from the road which runs through the village.

      What first attracted me to the church was its ivy-mantled tower, one of the few church towers whose ivy has been allowed to remain in place in our excessively hygienic age. No doubt in the night-time a moping owl still rewards the vicar for his patience with the ivy by duly “complaining to the moon”. In the churchyard it wasn’t so easy to find the tomb of White, as it had been to find that of Gray at Stoke Poges. For here the turf really did heave “in many a mouldering heap”, and here the tomb-stones really did stick up amid the unkempt turf in a higgledy-piggledy manner. Nor was it at all easy to decipher what had been inscribed on them in memory of “the rude forefathers of the hamlet”.

      As I made my way along the narrow, winding path, which was another welcome contrast to the wide, straight path at Stoke Poges, I fortunately passed a couple of visitors on their way back to the village. They made my search easier by directing my steps to the precise spot where White was buried. So I went on, round the back of the church, past more tomb-stones lying thick on either side, till I came to one scarcely distinguishable from the rest save for a small sign pointing to it. The tomb-stone wasn’t even upright, but tilted to one side, and it stood next to another stone tilted, no doubt for some old-fashioned sense of symmetry, to the other side.

      What a charming scene it was! Here I found a real English country churchyard, adjoining a real village church, with a real “ivy-mantled tower” – without a concession to modernity. I looked up, and yes, there were the “rugged elms” I had looked for in vain at Stoke Poges. I felt as if I could hear the curfew tolling “the knell of parting day”, though it was still afternoon. Nor were there any coach parties within earshot. Here I could revel in the luxury of silence, the silence of a sunny afternoon in the heart of the English countryside. Surely, I reflected, if Gray were alive today, he would wish to be buried not in the churchyard of Stoke Poges – though it were by the side of his dear mother – but here in the other churchyard of Selborne by the side of Gilbert White.

      Nevertheless, sight-seers continue to come in their coach-loads to Stoke Poges and even to enjoy what they see with all the bliss of ignorance. They continue to imagine that it is a typical English country churchyard, deceived by the magic of the poet’s (or rather the guide’s) incantation. So great is the power of the pen, when wielded by the imagination of a great poet – even when filtered through the explanation of a guide. But if you wish to visit a genuine English country churchyard and to see for yourself the sort of place Gray has portrayed in his “Elegy”, then you must turn your face away from Stoke Poges and take the next bus to Selborne.