CHAPTER I

THE PILGRIMS' ROAD TO CANTERBURY

FROM THE TABARD INN TO DARTFORD


When I determined to set out once more to traverse and to possess
England of my heart, it was part of my desire first of all to follow,
as far as might be, in the footsteps of Chaucer's pilgrims. Therefore
I sought the Tabard Inn in Southwark.

For true delight, it seems to me, a journey, especially if it be for
love or pleasure, should always have about it something of devotion,
something a little rigid too, and dutiful, at least in its opening
stages; and in thus determining my way I secured this. For I promised
myself that I would start from the place whence they set out so long
ago to visit and to pray at the tomb of the greatest of English
saints, that I would sleep where they slept, find pleasure in the
villages they enjoyed, climb the hills and look on the horizons that
greeted them also so many hundred years ago, till at last I stood by
the "blissful martyr's tomb," that had once made so great a rumour in
the world and now was nothing.

In many ways I came short of all this, as will be seen; but especially
in one thing--the matter of time. Chaucer and his pilgrims are
generally thought to have spent three and a half or four days and
three nights upon the road. It is true they went ahorseback and I