32 



COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



neighbourhood, 





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most delightful letters are dated from there — letters in 

 which he gives charming sketches of English country 

 life in the last century, and paints the old house for us, 

 with its haunted staircase, secret chambers, formal 

 gardens, and the raised terrace behind it where Arabella 

 must often have walked. Bucklebury, in the immediate 



is associated with even greater names. 



This was the country 

 seat of Bolingbroke 

 the magnificent. Here 

 the great statesman 

 who was half Horace 

 'M and half the elder Pitt, 

 forgot the distractions 

 of political intrigue in 

 the smiles of Bur- 

 gundy and the calm 

 pleasures of country 

 life. Bucklebury was 

 his Sabine farm. Here 

 he played the fancy 

 farmer and gathered 

 round him the finest 

 intellects of the day. 

 Swift was a constant 

 visitor, and in a very 

 delightful letter to 

 Stella, he has drawn 

 Mr. Secretary for us 

 as the perfect country 

 gentleman, smoking 

 his tobacco with one or two neighbours inquiring 

 after the wheat in such a field, visiting his hounds 

 and calling them all by their names, he and his wife 

 showing Swift up to his bedroom just in the country 

 fashion. " His house," writes the author of " Gulliver," 

 " is just in the midst of 3,000/. a year he had by his 

 lady, who is descended from Jack of Newbury, of 



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The Old Angel at Theale. 



