PREFACE
This book, a companion to Shakespeare's England, relates to the gray days of an American wanderer in the British islands, and to the gold of thought and fancy that can be found there. In Shakespeare's England an attempt was made to depict, in an unconventional manner, those lovely scenes that are intertwined with the name and the memory of Shakespeare, and also to reflect the spirit of that English scenery in general which, to an imaginative mind, must always be venerable with historic antiquity and tenderly hallowed with poetic and romantic association. The present book continues the same treatment of kindred themes, referring not only to the land of Shakespeare, but to the land of Burns and Scott.
After so much had been done, and superbly done, by Washington Irving and by other authors, to celebrate the beauties of our ancestral home, it was perhaps an act of presumption on the part of the present writer to touch those subjects. He can only plead, in extenuation of his boldness, an irresistible impulse of reverence and affection for them. His presentment of them can give no offence, and perhaps it may be found sufficiently sympathetic and diversified to awaken and sustain at least a momentary interest in the minds of those readers who love to muse and dream over the relics of a storied past. If by happy fortune it should do more than that,—if it should help to impress his countrymen, so many of whom annually travel in Great Britain, with the superlative importance of adorning the physical aspect and of refining the material civilisation of America by a reproduction within its borders of whatever is valuable in the long experience and whatever is noble and beautiful in the domestic and religious spirit of the British islands,—his labour will not have been in vain. The supreme need of this age in America is a practical conviction that progress does not consist in material prosperity but in spiritual advancement. Utility has long been exclusively worshipped. The welfare of the future lies in the worship of beauty. To that worship these pages are devoted, with all that it implies of sympathy with the higher instincts and faith in the divine destiny of the human race.
Many of the sketches here assembled were originally printed in the New York Tribune, with which journal their author has been continuously associated, as dramatic reviewer and as an editorial contributor, since August, 1865. They have been revised for publication in this form. Part of the paper on Sir Walter Scott first appeared in Harper's Weekly, for which periodical the author has occasionally written. The paper on the Wordsworth country was contributed to the New York Mirror. The alluring field of Scottish antiquity and romance, which the author has ventured but slightly to touch, may perhaps be explored hereafter, for treasures of contemplation that earlier seekers have left ungathered. [This implied promise has since been fulfilled, in Brown Heath and Blue Bells, 1895.]
The fact is recorded that an important recent book, 1890, called Shakespeare's True Life, written by James Walter, incorporates into its text, without credit, several passages of original description and reflection taken from the present writer's sketches of the Shakespeare country, published in Shakespeare's England, and also quotes, as his work, an elaborate narrative of a nocturnal visit to Anne Hathaway's cottage, which he never wrote and never claimed to have written. This statement is made as a safeguard against future injustice.
W. W.
1892.
Transcriber's Note: Page numbers link to the top of the page and show the illustrated header. Chapter names link to the chapter heading, below the header.
Transcriber's Note: Page numbers link to the page where the illustration appears in the original. Illustration names link to the illustration itself.
"Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.... All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse he may learn to enjoy it."
DR. JOHNSON.
"There is given,
Unto the things of earth which time hath bent,
A spirit's feeling; and where he hath leant
His hand, but broke his scythe, there is a power
And magic in the ruined battlement,
For which the palace of the present hour
Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower."
BYRON.
"The charming, friendly English landscape! Is there any in the world like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind,—it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it."
THACKERAY.
CHAPTER I
CLASSIC SHRINES OF ENGLAND
London, June 29, 1888.—The poet Emerson's injunction, "Set not thy foot on graves," is wise and right; and being in merry England in the month of June it certainly is your own fault if you do not fulfil the rest of the philosophical commandment and "Hear what wine and roses say." Yet the history of England is largely written in her ancient churches and crumbling ruins, and the pilgrim to historic and literary shrines in this country will find it difficult to avoid setting his foot on graves. It is possible here, as elsewhere, to live entirely in the present; but to certain temperaments and in certain moods the temptation is irresistible to live mostly in the past. I write these words in a house which, according to local tradition, was once occupied by Nell Gwynn, and as I glance into the garden I see a venerable acacia that was planted by her fair hands, in the far-off time of the Merry Monarch. Within a few days I have stood in the dungeon of Guy Fawkes, in the Tower, and sat at luncheon in a manor-house of Warwickshire wherein were once convened the conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. The newspapers of this morning announce that a monument will be dedicated on July 19 to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, three hundred years ago. It is not unnatural that the wanderer should live in the past, and often should find himself musing over its legacies.
Stoke-Pogis Churchyard.
One of the most sacred spots in England is the churchyard of Stoke-Pogis. I revisited that place on June 13 and once again rambled and meditated in that hallowed haunt. Not many months ago it seemed likely that Stoke Park would pass into the possession of a sporting club, and be turned into a race-course and kennel. A track had already been laid there. Fate was kind, however, and averted the final disaster. Only a few changes are to be noted in that part of the park which to the reverent pilgrim must always be dear. The churchyard has been extended in front, and a solid wall of flint, pierced with a lych-gate, richly carved, has replaced the plain fence, with its simple turnstile, that formerly enclosed that rural cemetery. The additional land was given by the new proprietor of Stoke Park, who wished that his tomb might be made in it; and this has been built, beneath a large tree not far from the entrance. The avenue from the gate to the church has been widened, and it is now fringed with thin lines of twisted stone; and where once stood only two or three rose-trees there are now sixty-two,—set in lines on either side of the path. But the older part of the graveyard remains unchanged. The yew-trees cast their dense shade, as of old. The quaint porch of the sacred building has not suffered under the hand of restoration. The ancient wooden memorials of the dead continue to moulder above their ashes. And still the abundant ivy gleams and trembles in the sunshine and in the summer wind that plays so sweetly over the spired tower and dusky walls of this lovely temple—
"All green and wildly fresh without,
but worn and gray beneath."
Gray's Monument.
Thomas Gray.
It would still be a lovely church, even if it were not associated with the immortal Elegy. I stood for a long time beside the tomb of the noble and tender poet and looked with deep emotion on the surrounding scene of pensive, dream-like beauty,—the great elms, so dense of foliage, so stately and graceful; the fields of deep, waving grass, golden with buttercups and white with daisies; the many unmarked mounds; the many mouldering tombstones; the rooks sailing and cawing around the tree-tops; and over all the blue sky flecked with floating fleece. Within the church nothing has been changed. The memorial window to Gray, for which contributions have been taken during several years, has not yet been placed. As I cast a farewell look at Gray's tomb, on turning to leave the churchyard, it rejoiced my heart to see that two American girls, who had then just come in, were placing fresh flowers over the poet's dust. He has been buried more than a hundred years,—but his memory is as bright and green as the ivy on the tower within whose shadow he sleeps, and as fragrant as the roses that bloom at its base. Many Americans visit Stoke-Pogis churchyard, and no visitor to the old world, who knows how to value what is best in its treasures, will omit that act of reverence. The journey is easy. A brief run by railway from Paddington takes you to Slough, which is near to Windsor, and thence it is a charming drive, or a still more charming walk, mostly through green, embowered lanes, to the "ivy-mantled tower," the "yew-trees' shade," and the simple tomb of Gray. What a gap there would be in the poetry of our language if the Elegy in a Country Churchyard were absent from it! By that sublime and tender reverie upon the most important of all subjects that can engage the attention of the human mind Thomas Gray became one of the chief benefactors of his race. Those lines have been murmured by the lips of sorrowing affection beside many a shrine of buried love and hope, in many a churchyard, all round the world. The sick have remembered them with comfort. The great soldier, going into battle, has said them for his solace and cheer. The dying statesman, closing his weary eyes upon this empty world, has spoken them with his last faltering accents, and fallen asleep with their heavenly music in his heart. Well may we pause and ponder at the grave of that divine poet! Every noble mind is made nobler, every good heart is made better, for the experience of such a pilgrimage. In such places as these pride is rebuked, vanity is dispelled, and the revolt of the passionate human heart is humbled into meekness and submission.
All Saints' Church, Laleham.
There is a place kindred with Stoke-Pogis churchyard, a place destined to become, after a few years, as famous and as dear to the heart of the reverent pilgrim in the footsteps of genius and pure renown. On Sunday afternoon, June 17, I sat for a long time beside the grave of Matthew Arnold. It is in a little churchyard at Laleham, in Surrey, where he was born. The day was chill, sombre, and, except for an occasional low twitter of birds and the melancholy cawing of distant rooks, soundless and sadly calm. So dark a sky might mean November rather than June; but it fitted well with the scene and with the pensive thoughts and feelings of the hour. Laleham is a village on the south bank of the Thames, about thirty miles from London and nearly midway between Staines and Chertsey. It consists of a few devious lanes and a cluster of houses, shaded with large trees and everywhere made beautiful with flowers, and it is one of those fortunate and happy places to which access cannot be obtained by railway. There is a manor-house in the centre of it, secluded in a walled garden, fronting the square immediately opposite to the village church. The rest of the houses are mostly cottages, made of red brick and roofed with red tiles. Ivy flourishes, and many of the cottages are overrun with climbing roses. Roman relics are found in the neighbourhood,—a camp near the ford, and other indications of the military activity of Cæsar. The church, All Saints', is of great antiquity. It has been in part restored, but its venerable aspect is not impaired. The large low tower is of brick, and this and the church walls are thickly covered with glistening ivy. A double-peaked roof of red tiles, sunken here and there, contributes to the picturesque beauty of this building, and its charm is further heightened by the contiguity of trees, in which the old church seems to nestle. Within there are low, massive pillars and plain, symmetrical arches,—the remains of Norman architecture. Great rafters of dark oak augment, in this quaint structure, the air of solidity and of an age at once venerable and romantic, while a bold, spirited, beautiful painting of Christ and Peter upon the sea imparts to it an additional sentiment of sanctity and solemn pomp. That remarkable work is by George Henry Harlow, and it is placed back of the altar, where once there would have been, in the Gothic days, a stained window. The explorer does not often come upon such a gem of a church, even in England,—so rich in remains of the old Catholic zeal and devotion; remains now mostly converted to the use of Protestant worship.
ARNOLD'S GRAVE
The churchyard of All Saints' is worthy of the church,—a little enclosure, irregular in shape, surface, shrubbery, and tombstones, bordered on two sides by the village square and on one by a farmyard, and shaded by many trees, some of them yews, and some of great size and age. Almost every house that is visible near by is bowered with trees and adorned with flowers. No person was anywhere to be seen, and it was only after inquiry at various dwellings that the sexton's abode could be discovered and access to the church obtained. The poet's grave is not within the church, but in a secluded spot at the side of it, a little removed from the highway, and screened from immediate view by an ancient, dusky yew-tree. I readily found it, perceiving a large wreath of roses and a bunch of white flowers that were lying upon it,—recent offerings of tender remembrance and sorrowing love, but already beginning to wither. A small square of turf, bordered with white marble, covers the vaulted tomb of the poet and of three of his children.[2] At the head are three crosses of white marble, alike in shape and equal in size, except that the first is set upon a pedestal a little lower than those of the others. On the first cross is written: "Basil Francis Arnold, youngest child of Matthew and Frances Lucy Arnold. Born August 19, 1866. Died January 4, 1868. Suffer little children to come unto me." On the second: "Thomas Arnold, eldest child of Matthew and Frances Lucy Arnold. Born July 6, 1852. Died November 23, 1868. Awake, thou, Lute and Harp! I will awake right early." On the third: "Trevenen William Arnold, second child of Matthew and Frances Lucy Arnold. Born October 15, 1853. Died February 16, 1872. In the morning it is green and groweth up." Near by are other tombstones, bearing the name of Arnold,—the dates inscribed on them referring to about the beginning of this century. These mark the resting-place of some of the poet's kindred. His father, the famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby, rests in Rugby chapel,—that noble father, that true friend and servant of humanity, of whom the son wrote those words of imperishable nobility and meaning, "Thou, my father, wouldst not be saved alone." Matthew Arnold is buried in the same grave with his eldest son and side by side with his little children. He who was himself as a little child, in his innocence, goodness, and truth,—where else and how else could he so fitly rest? "Awake, thou, Lute and Harp! I will awake right early."
Matthew Arnold.
Every man will have his own thoughts in such a place as this; will reflect upon his own afflictions, and from knowledge of the manner and spirit in which kindred griefs have been borne by the great heart of intellect and genius will seek to gather strength and patience to endure them well. Matthew Arnold taught many lessons of great value to those who are able to think. He did not believe that happiness is the destiny of the human race on earth, or that there is a visible ground for assuming that happiness in this mortal condition is one of the inherent rights of humanity. He did not think that this world is made an abode of delight by the mere jocular affirmation that everything in it is well and lovely. He knew better than that. But his message, delivered in poetic strains that will endure as long as our language exists, is the message, not of gloom and despair, but of spiritual purity and sweet and gentle patience. The man who heeds Matthew Arnold's teaching will put no trust in creeds and superstitions, will place no reliance upon the transient structures of theology, will take no guidance from the animal and unthinking multitude; but he will "keep the whiteness of his soul"; he will be simple, unselfish, and sweet; he will live for the spirit; and in that spirit, pure, tender, fearless, strong to bear and patient to suffer, he will find composure to meet the inevitable disasters of life and the awful mystery of death. Such was the burden of my thought, sitting there, in the gloaming, beside the lifeless dust of him whose hand had once, with kindly greeting, been clasped in mine. And such will be the thought of many and many a pilgrim who will stand in that sacred place, on many a summer evening of the long future—
"While the stars come out and the night wind
Brings, up the stream,
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea."
CHAPTER II
HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES
Warwick, July 6, 1888.—One night, many years ago[3] a brutal murder was done, at a lonely place on the highroad between Charlecote Park and Stratford-upon-Avon. The next morning the murdered man was found lying by the roadside, his mangled head resting in a small hole. The assassins were shortly afterward discovered, and they were hanged at Warwick. From that day to this the hole wherein the dead man's head reposed remains unchanged. No matter how often it may be filled, whether by the wash of heavy rains or by stones and leaves that wayfarers may happen to cast into it as they pass, it is soon found to be again empty. No one takes care of it. No one knows whether or by whom it is guarded. Fill it at nightfall and you will find it empty in the morning. That is the local belief and affirmation. This spot is two miles and a half north of Stratford and three-quarters of a mile from the gates of Charlecote Park. I looked at this hole one bright day in June and saw that it was empty. Nature, it is thought by the poets, abhors complicity with the concealment of crime, and brands with her curse the places that are linked with the shedding of blood. Hence the strong lines in Hood's poem of Eugene Aram:
"And a mighty wind had swept the leaves,
And still the corse was bare."
Hampton Lucy.
There are many haunted spots in Warwickshire. The benighted peasant never lingers on Ganerslie Heath,—for there, at midnight, dismal bells have been heard to toll, from Blacklow Hill, the place where Sir Piers Gaveston, the corrupt, handsome, foreign favourite of King Edward the Second, was beheaded, by order of the grim barons whom he had insulted and opposed. The Earl of Warwick led them, whom Gaveston had called the Black Dog of Arden. This was long ago. Everybody knows the historic incident, but no one can so completely realise it as when standing on the place. The scene of the execution is marked by a cross, erected by Mr. Bertie Greathead, bearing this inscription: "In the hollow of this rock was beheaded, on the first day of July 1312, by Barons lawless as himself, Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall. In life and death a memorable instance of misrule." [Hollinshed says that the execution occurred on Tuesday, June 20.] No doubt the birds were singing and the green branches of the trees were waving in the summer wind, on that fatal day, just as they are at this moment. Gaveston was a man of much personal beauty and some talent, and only twenty-nine years old. It was a melancholy sacrifice and horrible in the circumstances that attended it. No wonder that doleful thoughts and blood-curdling sounds should come to such as walk on Ganerslie Heath in the lonely hours of the night.
Another haunted place is Clopton—haunted certainly with memories if not with ghosts. In the reign of Henry the Seventh this was the manor of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, in 1492, he who built the bridge over the Avon,—across which, many a time, William Shakespeare must have ridden, on his way to Oxford and the capital. The dust of Sir Hugh rests in Stratford church and his mansion has passed through many hands. In our time, it is the residence of Sir Arthur Hodgson,[4] by whom it was purchased in July, 1873. It was my privilege to see Clopton under the guidance of its lord, and a charming and impressive old house it is,—full of quaint objects and fraught with singular associations. They show to you there, among many interesting paintings, the portrait of a lady, with thin figure, delicate features, long light hair, and sensitive countenance, said to be that of Lady Margaret Clopton, who, in the Stuart time, drowned herself, in a dismal well, behind the mansion,—being crazed with grief at the death of her lover, killed in the Civil War. And they show to you the portrait of still another Clopton girl, Lady Charlotte, who is thought to have been accidentally buried alive,—because when it chanced that the family tomb was opened, a few days after her interment, the corse was found to be turned over in its coffin and to present indications that the wretched victim of premature burial had, in her agonized frenzy, gnawed her flesh. Her death was attributed to the plague, and it occurred on the eve of her prospective marriage.
Old Porch of Clopton.
It is the blood-stained corridor of Clopton, however, that most impresses imagination. This is at the top of the house, and access to it is gained by a winding stair of oak boards, uncarpeted, solid, simple, and consonant with the times and manners that it represents. Many years ago a squire of Clopton murdered his butler, in a little bedroom near the top of that staircase, and dragged the body along the corridor, to secrete it. A thin dark stain, seemingly a streak of blood, runs from the door of that bedroom, in the direction of the stairhead, and this is so deeply imprinted in the wood that it cannot be removed. Opening from this corridor, opposite to the room of the murder, is an angular apartment, which in the remote days of Catholic occupancy was used as an oratory.[5] In the early part of the reign of Henry the Sixth, John Carpenter obtained from the Bishop of Worcester permission to establish a chapel at Clopton. In 1885 the walls of that attic chamber were committed to the tender mercies of a paper-hanger, who presently discovered on them several inscriptions, in black letter, but who fortunately mentioned his discoveries before they were obliterated. Richard Savage, the antiquary, was called to examine them, and by him they were restored. The effect of those little patches of letters,—isles of significance in a barren sea of wall-paper,—is that of extreme singularity. Most of them are sentences from the Bible. All of them are devout. One imparts the solemn injunction: "Whether you rise yearlye or goe to bed late, Remember Christ Jesus who died for your sake." [This may be found in John Weever's Funeral Monuments: 1631.] Clopton has a long and various history. One of the most significant facts in its record is that, for about three months, in the year 1605, it was occupied by Ambrose Rokewood, of Coldham Hall, Suffolk, a breeder of race-horses, whom Robert Catesby brought into the ghastly Gunpowder Plot, which so startled the reign of James the First. Hither came Sir Everard Digby, and Thomas and Robert Winter, and the specious Jesuit, Father Garnet, chief hatcher of the conspiracy, with his vile train of sentimental fanatics, on that pilgrimage of sanctification with which he formally prepared for an act of such hideous treachery and wholesale murder as only a religious zealot could ever have conceived. That may have been a time when the little oratory of Clopton was in active use. Things belonging to Rokewood, who was captured at Hewel Grange, and was executed on January 31, 1606, were found in that room, and were seized by the government. Mr. Fisher Tomes, resident proprietor of Clopton from 1825 to 1830, well remembered the inscriptions in the oratory, which in his time were still uncovered. Not many years since it was a bedroom; but one of Sir Arthur Hodgson's guests, who undertook to sleep in it, was, it is said, afterward heard to declare that he wished not ever again to experience the hospitality of that chamber, because the sounds that he had heard, all around the place, throughout that night, were of a most startling description. A house containing many rooms and staircases, a house full of long corridors and winding ways, a house so large that you may get lost in it,—such is Clopton; and it stands in its own large park, removed from other buildings and bowered in trees. To sit in the great hall of that mansion, on a winter midnight, when the snow-laden wind is howling around it, and then to think of the bleak, sinister oratory, and the stealthy, gliding shapes upstairs, invisible to mortal eye, but felt, with a shuddering sense of some unseen presence watching in the dark,—this would be to have quite a sufficient experience of a haunted house. Sir Arthur Hodgson talked of the legends of Clopton with that merry twinkle of the eye which suits well with kindly incredulity. All the same, I thought of Milton's lines—
"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."
The manor of Clopton was granted to John de Clopton by Peter de Montfort, in 1236, while Henry the Third was king, and the family of Clopton dwelt there for more than five hundred years. The Cloptons of Warwickshire and those of Suffolk are of the same family, and at Long Melford, in Suffolk, may be found many memorials of it. The famous Sir Hugh,—who built New Place in 1490, restored the Guild chapel, glazed the chancel of Stratford church, reared much of Clopton House, where he was visited by Henry the Seventh, and placed the bridge across the Avon at Stratford, where it still stands,—died in London, in 1496, and was buried at St. Margaret's, Lothbury. Joyce, or Jocasa, Clopton, born in 1558, became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards to Queen Anne, wife of James the First, and ultimately married George Carew, created Earl of Totnes and Baron of Clopton. Carew, born in 1557, was the son of a Dean of Exeter, and he became the English commander-in-chief in Ireland, in the time of Elizabeth. King James ennobled him, with the title of Baron Clopton, in 1605, and Charles the First made him Earl of Totnes, in 1625. The Earl and his Countess are buried in Stratford church, where their marble effigies, recumbent in the Clopton pew, are among the finest monuments of that hallowed place. The Countess died in 1636, leaving no children, and the Earl thereupon caused all the estates that he had acquired by marriage with her to be restored to the Clopton family. Sir John Clopton, born in 1638, married the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Edward Walker, owner of Clopton in the time of Charles the Second, and it is interesting to remember that by him was built the well-known house at Stratford, formerly called the Shoulder of Mutton,[6] but more recently designated the Swan's Nest. Mention is made of a Sir John Clopton by whom the well in which Lady Margaret drowned herself was enclosed; it is still called Lady Margaret's Well; a stone, at the back of it, is inscribed "S. J. C. 1686." Sir John died in 1692, leaving a son, Sir Hugh, who died in 1751, aged eighty. The last Clopton in the direct line was Frances, born in 1718, who married Mr. Parthenwicke, and died in 1792.
CLOPTON HOUSE
Clopton House is of much antiquity, but it has undergone many changes. The north and west sides of the present edifice were built in the time of Henry the Seventh. The building was originally surrounded with a moat.[7] A part of the original structure remains at the back,—a porchway entrance, once accessible across the moat, and an oriel window at the right of that entrance. Over the front window are displayed the arms of Clopton,—an eagle, perched upon a tun, bearing a shield; and in the gable appear the arms of Walker, with the motto, Loyauté mon honneur. Sir Edward Walker was Lord of Clopton soon after the Restoration, and by him the entrance to the house, which used to be where the dining-room now is, was transferred to its present position. It was Walker who carried to Charles the Second, in Holland, in 1649, the news of the execution of his father. A portrait of the knight, by Dobson, hangs on the staircase wall at Clopton, where he died in 1677, aged sixty-five. He was Garter-king-at-arms. His remains are buried in Stratford church, with an epitaph over them by Dugdale. Mr. Ward owned the estate about 1840, and under his direction many changes were made in the old building,—sixty workmen having been employed upon it for six months. The present drawing-room and conservatory were built by Mr. Ward, and by him the whole structure was "modernised." There are wild stories that autographs and other relics of Shakespeare once existed at Clopton, and were consumed there, in a bon-fire. A stone in the grounds marks the grave of a silver eagle, that was starved to death, through the negligence of a gamekeeper, November 25, 1795. There are twenty-six notable portraits in the main hall of Clopton, one of them being that of Oliver Cromwell's mother, and another probably that of the unfortunate and unhappy Arabella Stuart,—only child of the fifth Earl of Lennox,—who died, at the Tower of London, in 1615.
Warwickshire swarmed with conspirators while the Gunpowder Plot was in progress. The Lion Inn at Dunchurch was the chief tryst of the captains who were to lead their forces and capture the Princess Elizabeth and seize the throne and the country, after the expected explosion,—which never came. And when the game was up and Fawkes in captivity, it was through Warwickshire that the "racing and chasing" were fleetest and wildest, till the desperate scramble for life and safety went down in blood at Hewel Grange. Various houses associated with that plot are still extant in this neighbourhood, and when the scene shifts to London and to Garnet's Tyburn gallows, it is easily possible for the patient antiquarian to tread in almost every footprint of that great conspiracy.
Warwick Castle, from the Mound.
Since Irish ruffians began to toss dynamite about in public buildings it has been deemed essential to take especial precaution against the danger of explosion in such places as the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and the Tower of London. Much more damage[46] than the newspapers recorded was done by the explosions that occurred some time ago in the Tower and the Palace. At present you cannot enter even into Palace Yard unless connected with the public business or authorised by an order; and if you visit the Tower without a special permit you will be restricted to a few sights and places. I was fortunately the bearer of the card of the Lord Chamberlain, on a recent prowl through the Tower, and therefore was favoured by the beef-eaters who pervade that structure. Those damp and gloomy dungeons were displayed wherein so many Jews perished miserably in the reign of Edward the First; and Little Ease was shown,—the cell in which for several months Guy Fawkes was incarcerated, during Cecil's wily investigation of the Gunpowder Plot. A part of the rear wall has been removed, affording access to the adjacent dungeon; but originally the cell did not give room for a man to lie down in it, and scarce gave room for him to stand upright. The massive door, of ribbed and iron-bound oak, still solid, though worn, would make an impressive picture. A poor, stealthy cat was crawling about in those subterranean dens of darkness and horror, and was left locked in there when we emerged. In St. Peter's, on the green,—that little cemetery so eloquently described by Macaulay,—they came, some time ago, upon the coffins of Lovat, Kilmarnock, and Balmerino, the Scotch lords who perished upon the block for their complicity with the rising for the Pretender, in 1745-47. The coffins were much decayed. The plates were removed, and these may now be viewed, in a glass case on the church wall, over against the spot where those unfortunate gentlemen were buried.[8] One is of lead and is in the form of a large open scroll. The other two are oval in shape, large, and made of pewter. Much royal and noble dust is heaped together beneath the stones of the chancel,—Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Margaret, Duchess of Salisbury, the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Northumberland, Essex, Overbury, Thomas Cromwell, and many more. The body of the infamous and execrable Jeffreys was once buried there, but it has been removed.
Warwick Castle, from the River.
St. Mary's church at Warwick has been restored since 1885, and now it is made a show place. The pilgrim may see the Beauchamp chapel, in which are entombed Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, the founder of the church; Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in whose Latin epitaph it is stated that "his sorrowful wife, Lætitia, daughter of Francis Knolles, through a sense of conjugal love and fidelity, hath put up this monument to the best and dearest of husbands";[9] Ambrose Dudley, elder brother to Elizabeth's favourite, and known as the Good Earl [he relinquished his title and possessions to Robert]; and that Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who lives in fame as "the friend of Sir Philip Sidney." There are other notable sleepers in that chapel, but these perhaps are the most famous and considerable. One odd epitaph records of William Viner, steward to Lord Brooke, that "he was a man entirely of ancient manners, and to whom you will scarcely find an equal, particularly in point of liberality.... He was added to the number of the heavenly inhabitants maturely for himself, but prematurely for his friends, in his 70th year, on the 28th of April, A.D. 1639." Another, placed for himself by Thomas Hewett during his lifetime, modestly describes him as "a most miserable sinner." Sin is always miserable when it knows itself. Still another, and this in good verse, by Gervas Clifton, gives a tender tribute to Lætitia, "the excellent and pious Lady Lettice," Countess of Leicester, who died on Christmas morning, 1634:
"She that in her younger years
Matched with two great English peers;
She that did supply the wars
With thunder, and the Court with stars;
She that in her youth had been
Darling to the maiden Queene,
Till she was content to quit
Her favour for her favourite....
While she lived she livéd thus,
Till that God, displeased with us,
Suffered her at last to fall,
Not from Him but from us all."
Leicester's Hospital.
A noble bust of that fine thinker and exquisite poet Walter Savage Landor has been placed on the west wall of St. Mary's church. He was a native of Warwick and he is fitly commemorated in that place. The bust is of alabaster and is set in an alabaster arch with carved environment, and with the family arms displayed above. The head of Landor shows great intellectual power, rugged yet gentle. Coming suddenly upon the bust, in this church, the pilgrim is forcibly and pleasantly reminded of the attribute of sweet and gentle reverence in the English character, which so invariably expresses itself, all over this land, in honourable memorials to the honourable dead. No rambler in Warwick omits to explore Leicester's hospital, or to see as much as he can of the Castle. That glorious old place has long been[51] kept closed, for fear of the dynamite fiend; but now it is once more accessible. I walked again beneath the stately cedars[10] and along the bloom-bordered avenues where once Joseph Addison used to wander and meditate, and traversed again those opulent state apartments wherein so many royal, noble, and beautiful faces look forth from the radiant canvas of Holbein and Vandyke. There is a wonderful picture, in one of those rooms, of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, when a young man,—a face prophetic of stormy life, baleful struggles, and a hard and miserable fate. You may see the helmet that was worn by Oliver Cromwell, and also a striking death-mask of his face; and some of the finest portraits of Charles the First that exist in this kingdom are shown at Warwick Castle.
From the Warwick Shield.
CHAPTER III
OLD YORK
York, August 12, 1888.—All summer long the sorrowful skies have been weeping over England, and my first prospect of this ancient city was a prospect through drizzle and mist. Yet even so it was impressive. York is one of the quaintest cities in the kingdom. Many of the streets are narrow and crooked. Most of the buildings are of low stature, built of brick, and roofed with red tiles. Here and there you find a house of Queen Elizabeth's time, picturesque with overhanging timber-crossed fronts and peaked gables. One such house, in Stonegate, is conspicuously marked with its date, 1574. Another, in College street, enclosing a quadrangular court and lovely with old timber and carved gateway, was built by the Neville family in 1460. There is a wide area in the centre of the town called Parliament street, where the market is opened, by torchlight, on certain evenings of every week. It was market-time last evening, and, wandering through the motley and merry crowd that filled the square, about nine o'clock, I bought, at a flower-stall, the white rose of York and the red rose of Lancaster,—twining them together as an emblem of the settled peace that here broods so sweetly over the venerable relics of a wild and stormy past.
Bootham Bar.
Four sections of the old wall of York are still extant and the observer is amused to perceive the ingenuity with which those gray and mouldering remnants of the feudal age are blended into the structures of the democratic present. From Bootham to Monk Gate,—so named in honour of General Monk, at the Restoration,—a distance of about half a mile, the wall is absorbed by the adjacent buildings. But you may walk upon it from Monk Gate to Jewbury, about a quarter of a mile, and afterward, crossing the Foss, you may find it again on the southeast of the city, and walk upon it from Red Tower to old Fishergate, descending near York Castle. There are houses both within the walls and without. The walk is about eight feet wide, protected on one hand by a fretted battlement and on the other by an occasional bit of iron fence. The base of the wall, for a considerable part of its extent, is fringed with market gardens or with grassy banks. In one of its towers there is a gate-house, still occupied as a dwelling; and a comfortable dwelling no doubt it is. In another, of which nothing now remains but the walls, four large trees are rooted; and, as they are already tall enough to wave their leafy tops above the battlement, they must have been growing there for at least twenty years. At one point the Great Northern Railway enters through an arch in the ancient wall, and as you look down from the battlements your gaze rests upon long lines of rail and a spacious station, together with its adjacent hotel,—objects which consort but strangely with what your fancy knows of York; a city of donjons and barbicans, the moat, the draw-bridge, the portcullis, the citadel, the man-at-arms, and the knight in armour, with the banners of William the Norman flowing over all.
The river Ouse divides the city of York, which lies mostly upon its east bank, and in order to reach the longest and most attractive portion of the wall that is now available to the pedestrian you must cross the Ouse, either at Skeldergate or Lendal, paying a half-penny as toll, both when you go and when you return. The walk here is three-quarters of a mile long, and from an angle of this wall, just above the railway arch, may be obtained the best view of the mighty cathedral,—one of the most stupendous and sublime works that ever were erected by the inspired brain and loving labour of man. While I walked there last night, and mused upon the story of the Wars of the Roses, and strove to conjure up the pageants and the horrors that must have been presented, all about this region, in that remote and turbulent past, the glorious bells of the minster were chiming from its towers, while the fresh evening breeze, sweet with the fragrance of wet flowers and foliage, seemed to flood this ancient, venerable city with the golden music of a celestial benediction.
York Cathedral—West Front.
The pilgrim to York stands in the centre of the largest shire in England and is surrounded with castles and monasteries, now mostly in ruins but teeming with those associations of history and literature that are the glory of this delightful land. From the summit of the great central tower of the cathedral, which is reached by two hundred and thirty-seven steps, I gazed out over the vale of York and beheld one of the loveliest spectacles that ever blessed the eyes of man. The wind was fierce, the sun brilliant, and the vanquished storm-clouds were streaming away before the northern blast. Far beneath lay the red-roofed city, its devious lanes and its many gray churches,—crumbling relics of ancient ecclesiastical power,—distinctly visible. Through the plain, and far away toward the south and east, ran the silver thread of the Ouse, while all around, as far as the eye could reach, stretched forth a smiling landscape of emerald meadow and cultivated field; here a patch of woodland, and there a silver gleam of wave; here a manor-house nestled amid stately trees, and there an ivy-covered fragment of ruined masonry; and everywhere the green lines of the flowering hedge. The prospect is even finer here than it is from the splendid summit of Strasburg cathedral; and indeed, when all is said that can be said about natural scenery and architectural sublimities, it seems amazing that any lover of the beautiful should deem it necessary to quit the infinite variety of the British islands. Earth cannot show you anything more softly fair than the lakes and mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland. No city can excel Edinburgh in stately solidity of character, or tranquil grandeur, or magnificence of position. The most exquisitely beautiful of churches is Roslin chapel. And though you search the wide world through you will never find such cathedrals,—so fraught with majesty, sublimity, the loveliness of human art, and the ecstatic sense of a divine element in human destiny,—as those of York, Canterbury, Gloucester, and Lincoln. While thus I lingered in wondering meditation upon the crag-like summit of York minster, the muffled thunder of its vast, sonorous organ rose, rolling and throbbing, from the mysterious depth below, and seemed to shake the great tower as with a mighty blast of jubilation and worship. At such moments, if ever, when the tones of human adoration are floating up to heaven, a man is lifted out of himself and made to forget his puny mortal existence and all the petty nothings that weary his spirit, darken his vision, and weigh him down to the level of the sordid, trivial world. Well did they know this,—those old monks who built the abbeys of Britain, laying their foundations not alone deeply in the earth but deeply in the human soul!
All the ground that you survey from the top of York minster is classic ground,—at least to those persons whose imaginations are kindled by associations with the stately and storied past. In the city that lies at your feet once stood the potent Constantine, to be proclaimed emperor [A.D. 306] and to be vested with the imperial purple of Rome. In the original York minster,—for the present is the fourth church that has been erected upon this site,—was buried that valiant soldier "old Siward," whom "gracious England" lent to the Scottish cause, under Malcolm and Macduff, when time at length was ripe for the ruin of Glamis and Cawdor. Close by is the field of Stamford, where Harold defeated the Norwegians, with terrible slaughter, only nine days before he was himself defeated and slain at Hastings. Southward, following the line of the Ouse, you look down upon the ruins of Clifford's Tower, built by William the Conqueror, in 1068, and destroyed by the explosion of its powder magazine in 1684. Not far away is the battlefield of Towton, where the great Warwick slew his horse, that he might fight on foot and possess no advantage over the common soldiers of his force. Henry the Sixth and Margaret were waiting in York for news of the event of that fatal battle,—which, in its effect, made them exiles and bore to an assured supremacy the rightful standard of the White Rose. In this church Edward the Fourth was crowned [1464], and Richard the Third was proclaimed king and had his second coronation. Southward you may see the open space called the Pavement, connecting with Parliament street, and the red brick church of St. Crux. In the Pavement the Earl of Northumberland was beheaded, for treason against Queen Elizabeth, in 1572, and in St. Crux [one of Wren's churches] his remains lie buried, beneath a dark blue slab, still shown to visitors. A few miles away, but easily within reach of your vision, is the field of Marston Moor, where the impetuous Prince Rupert imperilled and well-nigh lost the cause of Charles the First, in 1644; and as you look toward that fatal spot you can almost hear, in the chamber of your fancy, the pæans of thanksgiving for the victory that were uttered in the church beneath. Cromwell, then a subordinate officer in the Parliamentary army, was one of the worshippers. Charles also has knelt at this altar. Indeed, of the fifteen kings, from William of Normandy to Henry of Windsor, whose sculptured effigies appear upon the chancel screen in York minster, there is scarcely one who has not worshipped in this cathedral.
York Cathedral—South Side.
York minster has often been described, but no description can convey an adequate impression of its grandeur. Canterbury is the lovelier cathedral of the two, though not the grander, and Canterbury possesses the inestimable advantage of a spacious close. It must be said also, for the city of Canterbury, that the presence and influence of a great church are more distinctly and delightfully felt in that place than they are in York. There is a more spiritual tone at Canterbury, a tone of superior delicacy and refinement, a certain aristocratic coldness and repose. In York you perceive the coarse spirit of a democratic era. The walls, that ought to be cherished with scrupulous care, are found in many places to be ill-used. At intervals along the walks upon the banks of the Ouse you behold placards requesting the co-operation of the public in protecting from harm the swans that navigate the river. Even in the cathedral itself there is displayed a printed notice that the Dean and Chapter are amazed at disturbances which occur in the nave while divine service is proceeding in the choir. These things imply a rough element in the population, and in such a place as York such an element is exceptionally offensive and deplorable.
It was said by the wise Lord Beaconsfield that progress in the nineteenth century is found to consist chiefly in a return to ancient ideas. There may be places to which the characteristic spirit of the present day contributes an element of beauty; but if so I have not seen them. Wherever there is beauty there is the living force of tradition to account for it. The most that a conservative force in society can accomplish, for the preservation of an instinct in favour of whatever is beautiful and impressive, is to protect what remains from the past. Modern Edinburgh, for example, has contributed no building that is comparable with its glorious old castle, or with Roslin, or with what we know to have been Melrose or Dryburgh; but its castle and its chapels are protected and preserved. York, in the present day, erects a commodious railway-station and a sumptuous hotel, and spans its ample river with two splendid bridges; but its modern architecture is puerile beside that of its ancient minster; and so its best work, after all, is the preservation of its cathedral. The observer finds it difficult to understand how anybody, however lowly born or poorly endowed or meanly nurtured, can live within the presence of that heavenly building, and not be purified and exalted by the contemplation of so much majesty, and by its constantly irradiative force of religious sentiment and power. But the spirit which in the past created objects of beauty and adorned common life with visible manifestations of the celestial aspiration in human nature had constantly to struggle against insensibility or violence; and just so the few who have inherited that spirit in the present day are compelled steadily to combat the hard materialism and gross animal proclivities of the new age.
York Cathedral—East Front.
What a comfort their souls must find in such an edifice as York minster! What a solace and what an inspiration! There it stands, dark and lonely to-night, but symbolising, as no other object upon earth can ever do, except one of its own great kindred, God's promise of immortal life to man, and man's unquenchable faith in the promise of God. Dark and lonely now, but during many hours of its daily and nightly life sentient, eloquent, vital, participating in all the thought, conduct, and experience of those who dwell around it. The beautiful peal of its bells that I heard last night was for Canon Baillie, one of the oldest and most beloved and venerated of its clergy. This morning, sitting in its choir, I heard the tender, thoughtful eulogy so simply and sweetly spoken by the aged Dean, and once again learned the essential lesson that an old age of grace, patience, and benignity means a pure heart, an unselfish spirit, and a good life passed in the service of others. This afternoon I had a place among the worshippers that thronged the nave to hear the special anthem chanted for the deceased Canon; and, as the organ pealed forth its mellow thunder, and the rich tones of the choristers swelled and rose and broke in golden waves of melody upon the groined arches and vaulted roof, my soul seemed borne away to a peace and rest that are not of this world. To-night the rising moon as she gleams through drifting clouds, will pour her silver rays upon that great east window,—at once the largest and the most beautiful in existence,—and all the Bible stories told there in such exquisite hues and forms will glow with heavenly lustre on the dark vista of chancel and nave. And when the morning comes the first beams of the rising sun will stream through the great casement and illumine the figures of saints and archbishops, and gild the old tattered battle-flags in the chancel aisle, and touch with blessing the marble effigies of the dead; and we who walk there, refreshed and comforted, shall feel that the vast cathedral is indeed the gateway to heaven.
York minster is the loftiest of all the English cathedrals, and the third in length,[11]—both St. Albans and Winchester being longer. The present structure is six hundred years old, and more than two hundred years were occupied in the building of it. They show you, in the crypt, some fine remains of the Norman church that preceded it upon the same site, together with traces of the still older Saxon church that preceded the Norman. The first one was of wood and was totally destroyed. The Saxon remains are a fragment of stone staircase and a piece of wall built in the ancient herring-bone fashion. The Norman remains are four clustered columns, embellished in the zigzag style. There is not much of commemorative statuary at York minster, and what there is of it was placed chiefly in the chancel. Archbishop Richard Scrope, who figures in Shakespeare's historical play of Henry the Fourth, and who was beheaded for treason in 1405, was buried in the lady chapel. Laurence Sterne's grandfather, who was chaplain to Laud, is represented there, in his ecclesiastical dress, reclining upon a couch and supporting his mitred head upon his hand,—a squat figure uncomfortably posed, but sculptured with delicate skill. Many historic names occur in the inscriptions,—Wentworth, Finch, Fenwick, Carlisle, and Heneage,—and in the north aisle of the chancel is the tomb of William of Hatfield, second son of Edward the Third, who died in 1343-44, in the eighth year of his age. An alabaster statue of the royal boy reclines upon his tomb. In the cathedral library, which contains eight thousand volumes and is kept at the Deanery, is the Princess Elizabeth's prayer-book, containing her autograph. In one of the chapels is the original throne-chair of Edward the Third.
In St. Leonard's Place still stands the York theatre, erected by Tate Wilkinson in 1765. In York Castle Eugene Aram was imprisoned and suffered death. The poet and bishop Beilby Porteus, the sculptor Flaxman, the grammarian Lindley Murray, and the fanatic Guy Fawkes were natives of York, and have often walked its streets. Standing on Skeldergate bridge, few readers of English fiction could fail to recall that exquisite description of the place, in the novel of No Name. In his artistic use of weather, atmosphere, and colour Wilkie Collins is always remarkable equally for his fidelity to nature and fact, and for the felicity and beauty of his language. His portrayal of York seems more than ever a gem of literary art, when you have seen the veritable spot of poor Magdalen's meeting with Captain Wragge. The name of Wragge is on one of the signboards in the city. The river, on which I did not omit to take a boat, was picturesque, with its many quaint barges, bearing masts and sails and embellished with touches of green and crimson and blue. There is no end to the associations and suggestions of the storied city. But lest my readers weary of them, let me respect the admonition of the midnight bell, and seek repose beneath the hospitable wing of the old Black Swan in Coney street, whence I send this humble memorial of ancient York.
CHAPTER IV
THE HAUNTS OF MOORE
Devizes, Wiltshire, August 20, 1888.—The scarlet discs of the poppies and the red and white blooms of the clover, together with wild-flowers of many hues, bespangle now the emerald sod of England, while the air is rich with fragrance of lime-trees and of new-mown hay. The busy and sagacious rooks, fat and bold, wing their way in great clusters, bent on forage and mischief. There is almost a frosty chill in the autumnal air, and the brimming rivers, dark and deep and smoothly flowing through the opulent, cultivated, and park-like region of Wiltshire, look cold and bright. In many fields the hay is cut and stacked. In others the men, and often the women, armed with rakes, are tossing it to dry in the reluctant, intermittent, bleak sunshine of this rigorous August. Overhead the sky is now as blue as the deep sea and now grim and ominous with great drifting masses of slate-coloured cloud. There are moments of beautiful sunshine by day, and in some hours of the night the moon shines forth in all her pensive and melancholy glory. It is a time of exquisite loveliness, and it has seemed a fitting time for a visit to the last English home and the last resting-place of the poet of loveliness and love, the great Irish poet Thomas Moore.
Thomas Moore.
When Moore first went up to London, a young author seeking to launch his earliest writings upon the stream of contemporary literature, he crossed from Dublin to Bristol and then travelled to the capital by way of Bath and Devizes; and as he crossed several times he must soon have gained familiarity with this part of the country. He did not, however, settle in Wiltshire until some years afterward. His first lodging in London was a front room, up two pair of stairs, at No. 44 George street, Portman square. He subsequently lived at No. 46 Wigmore street, Cavendish square, and at No. 27 Bury street, St. James's. This was in 1805. In 1810 he resided for a time at No. 22 Molesworth street, Dublin, but he soon returned to England. One of his homes, shortly after his marriage with Elizabeth Dyke ["Bessie," the sister of the great actress Mary Duff, 1794-1857] was in Brompton. In the spring of 1812 he settled at Kegworth, but a year later he is found at Mayfield Cottage, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire. "I am now as you wished," he wrote to Mr. Power, the music-publisher, July 1, 1813, "within twenty-four hours' drive of town." In 1817 he occupied a cottage near the foot of Muswell Hill, at Hornsey, Middlesex, but after he lost his daughter Barbara, who died there, the place became distressful to him and he left it. In the latter part of September that year, the time of their affliction, Moore and his Bessie were the guests of Lady Donegal, at No. 56 Davies street, Berkeley square, London. Then [November 19, 1817] they removed to Sloperton Cottage, at Bromham, near Devizes, and their permanent residence was established in that place. Lord Landsdowne, one of the poet's earliest and best friends, was the owner of that estate, and doubtless he was the impulse of Moore's resort to it. The present Lord Landsdowne still owns Bowood Park, about four miles away.
The Bear—Devizes.
Devizes impresses a stranger with a singular and pleasant sense of suspended animation,—as of beauty fallen asleep,—the sense of something about to happen, which never occurs. More peaceful it could not be, unless it were dead,—and that is its most alluring charm. Two of its many streets are remarkably wide and spacious, while the others are narrow and often crooked. Most of its habitations are low houses, built of brick, and only a few of them, such as the old Town Hall and the Corn Exchange, are pretentious as architecture. The principal street runs nearly northwest and southeast. There is a north gate at one end of it, and a south gate at the other, but no remnant of the ancient town gates is left. The Kennet and Avon Canal, built in 1794-1805, skirts the northern side of the town, and thereafter descends the western slope, passing through twenty-seven magnificent locks, within a distance of about two miles,—one of the longest consecutive ranges of locks in England. The stateliest building in Devizes is its noble Castle, which, reared upon a massive hill, at once dominates the surrounding landscape and dignifies it. That splendid edifice, built about 1830, stands upon the site of the ancient Castle of Devizes, which was built by Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, in the reign of Henry the First, and it resembles that famous original,—long esteemed one of the most complete and admirable works of its kind in Europe. The old Castle was included in the dowry settled upon successive queens of England. Queen Margaret possessed it in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and Queen Katharine in that of Henry the Eighth. It figured in the Civil Wars, and it was deemed the strongest citadel in England. The poet-soldier, Edmund Waller, when in the service of the Parliament, bombarded it, in 1643, and finally it was destroyed by order of the Roundheads. Toward the close of the eighteenth century its ruins were, it is said, surmounted with a couple of snuff-mills. No part of the ancient fortress now survives, except the moat; but in its pleasant grounds fragmentary remnants may still be seen of its foundations and of the dungeons of a remote age. During the rebuilding of the Castle many relics were unearthed,—such as human bones and implements of war,—the significant tokens of dark days and fatal doings long since past and gone. In the centre of the town is a commodious public square, known as the Market-place,—a wide domain of repose, as I saw it, uninvaded by either vehicle or human being, but on each Thursday the scene of the weekly market for cattle and corn, and of the loquacious industry of the cheap-jack and the quack. On one side of it is the old Bear Hotel, an exceptionally comfortable house, memorable as the birthplace of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the famous artist [1769-1830]. In the centre are two works of art,—one a fountain, the other a cross. The latter, a fine fabric of Gothic architecture, is embellished with thirteen pinnacles, which rise above an arched canopy, the covering of a statue. One face of the cross bears this legend: "This Market Cross was erected by Henry Viscount Sidmouth, as a memorial of his grateful attachment to the Borough of Devizes, of which he has been Recorder thirty years, and of which he was six times unanimously chosen a representative in Parliament. Anno Domini 1814." Upon the other face appears a record more significant,—being indicative equally of credulity and a frugal mind, and being freighted with tragic import unmatched since the Bible narrative of Ananias and Sapphira. It reads thus:
"The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the stability of this building to transmit to future times the record of an awful event which occurred in this market-place in the year 1753, hoping that such a record may serve as a salutary warning against the danger of impiously invoking the Divine vengeance, or of calling on the holy name of God to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud.
"On Thursday, the 25th January 1753, Ruth Pierce, of Potterne, in this county, agreed, with three other women, to buy a sack of wheat in the market, each paying her due proportion toward the same.
"One of these women, in collecting the several quotas of money, discovered a deficiency, and demanded of Ruth Pierce the sum which was wanted to make good the amount.
"Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share, and said, 'She wished she might drop down dead if she had not.'
"She rashly repeated this awful wish, when, to the consternation of the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell down and expired, having the money concealed in her hand."
That is not the only grim incident in the history of the Market-place of Devizes; for in 1533 a poor tailor, named John Bent, of the neighbouring village of Urchfont was burnt at the stake, in that square, for his avowed disbelief of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
An important and deeply interesting institution of Devizes is the Wilts County Museum, in Long street, devoted to the natural history and the archæology of Wiltshire. The library contains a priceless collection of Wiltshire books, and the museum is rich in geological specimens,—richer even than the excellent museum of Salisbury; for, in addition to other treasures, it includes the famous Stourhead collection, made by Sir Richard Colt Hoare,—being relics from the ancient British and Saxon barrows on the Wiltshire downs. The Stourhead collection is described by Sir Richard, in his book on "Antient Wilts." Its cinerary and culinary urns are fine and numerous. The Wilts County Museum is fortunate in its curator, B. Howard Cunnington, Esq., of Rowde—an indefatigable student, devoted to Wiltshire, and a thorough antiquarian.
St. John's Church—Devizes.
An interesting church in Devizes is that of St. John, the Norman tower of which is a relic of the days of Henry the Second, a vast, grim structure with a circular turret on one corner of it. Eastward of this church is a long and lovely avenue of trees, and around it lies a large burial-place, remarkable for the excellence of the sod and for the number visible of those heavy, gray, oblong masses of tombstone which appear to have obtained great public favour about the time of Cromwell. In the centre of the churchyard stands a monolith, inscribed with these words:
"Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.—This monument, as a solemn monitor to Young People to remember their Creator in the days of their youth, was erected by subscription.—In memory of the sudden and awful end of Robert Merrit and his wife, Eliz. Tiley, her sister, Martha Carter, and Josiah Denham, who were drowned, in the flower of their youth, in a pond, near this town, called Drews, on Sunday evening, the 30th of June, 1751, and are together underneath entombed."
In one corner of the churchyard I came upon a cross, bearing a simple legend far more solemn, touching, and admonitory: "In Memoriam—Robert Samuel Thornley. Died August 5, 1871. Aged 48 years. For fourteen years surgeon to the poor of Devizes. There shall be no more pain." And over still another sleeper was written, upon a flat stone, low in the ground—
"Loving, beloved, in all relations true,
Exposed to follies, but subdued by few:
Reader, reflect, and copy if you can
The simple virtues of this honest man."
Hungerford Chapel—Devizes.
Nobody is in haste in Devizes, and the pilgrim who seeks for peace could not do better than to tarry here. The city bell which officially strikes the hours is subdued and pensive, and although reinforced with chimes, it seems ever to speak under its breath. The church-bell, however, rings long and vigorously and with much melodious clangour,—as though the local sinners were more than commonly hard of hearing. Near to the church of St. John, are some quaint almshouses, but not much seems to be known of their history. One of them was founded as a hospital for lepers, before A.D. 1207, and it is thought that one of them was built of stone which remained after the erection of the church. Those almshouses are now governed by the Mayor and Corporation of Devizes, but perhaps formerly they were under the direct control of the Crown. [See Tanner's Nolitia.] There are seven endowments, one dating back to 1641, and the houses are to this day occupied by widows, recommended by the churchwardens of St. Mary's and St. John's. An old inhabitant of Devizes, named Bancroft, left a sum of money to insure for himself a singular memorial service,—that the bells of St. John's church should be solemnly tolled on the day of his birth, and rung merrily on that of his death; and that service is duly performed every year. Devizes is a fit place for the survival of ancient customs, and these serve very pleasantly to mark its peculiar and interesting character. The Town Crier, who is a member of the Corporation, walks abroad arrayed in a helmet and a uniform of brilliant scarlet,—glories that are worn by no other Crier in the kingdom, excepting that of York.
As I was gazing at the old church, surrounded with many ponderous tombstones and gray and cheerless in the gloaming, an old man approached me and civilly began a conversation about the antiquity of the building and the eloquence of its rector. When I told him that I had walked to Bromham to attend the service there, and to see the cottage and grave of Moore, he presently furnished to me that little touch of personal testimony which is always so interesting and significant in such circumstances. "I remember Tom Moore," he said; "I saw him when he was alive. I worked for him once in his house, and I did some work once on his tomb. He was a little man. He spoke to us very pleasantly. I don't think he was a preacher. He never preached that I heard tell of. He was a poet, I believe. He was very much liked here. I never heard a word against him. I am seventy-nine years old the thirteenth of December, and that'll soon be here. I've had three wives in my time, and my third is still living. It's a fine old church, and there's figures in it of bishops, and kings, and queens."
Most observers have remarked the odd way, garrulous, and sometimes unconsciously humorous, in which senile persons prattle their incongruous and sporadic recollections. But—"How pregnant sometimes his replies are!" Another resident of Devizes, with whom I conversed, likewise remembered the poet, and spoke of him with affectionate respect. "My sister, when she was a child," he said, "was often at Moore's house, and he was fond of her. Yes, his name is widely remembered and honoured here. But I think that many of the people hereabout, the farmers, admired him chiefly because they thought that he wrote Moore's Almanac. They used to say to him: 'Mister Moore, please tell us what the weather's going to be.'"
From Devizes to the village of Bromham, a distance of about four miles, the walk is delightful. Much of the path is between green hedges and is embowered by elms. The exit from the town is by Northgate and along the Chippenham road—which, like all the roads in this neighbourhood, is smooth, hard, and white. A little way out of Devizes, going northwest, this road makes a deep cut in the chalk-stone and so winds downhill into the level plain. At intervals you come upon sweetly pretty specimens of the English thatch-roof cottage. Hay-fields, pastures, and market-gardens extend on every hand. Eastward, far off, are visible the hills of Westbury, upon which, here and there, the copses are lovely, and upon one of which, cut in the turf, is the figure of a colossal white horse, said to have been put there by the Saxons, to commemorate a victory by King Alfred.[12] Soon the road winds over a hill and you pass through the little red village of Rowde, with its gray church tower. The walk may be shortened by a cut across the fields, and this indeed is found the prettiest part of the journey,—for now the path lies through gardens, and through the centre or along the margin of the wheat, which waves in the strong wind and sparkles in the bright sunshine and is everywhere tenderly touched with the scarlet of the poppy and with hues of other wild-flowers, making you think of Shakespeare's
"Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,
With hemlock, harlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn."
There is one field through which I passed, just as the spire of Bromham church came into view, in which a surface more than three hundred yards square was blazing with wild-flowers, white and gold and crimson and purple and blue, upon a plain of vivid green, so that to look upon it was almost to be dazzled, while the air that floated over it was scented as if with honeysuckle. You may see the delicate spire and the low gray tower of Moore's church some time before you come to it, and in some respects the prospect is not unlike that of Shakespeare's church at Stratford. A sweeter spot for a poet's sepulchre it would be hard to find. No spot could be more harmonious than this one is with the gentle, romantic spirit of Moore's poetry, and with the purity, refinement, and serenity of his life. Bromham village consists of a few red brick buildings, scattered along a few irregular little lanes, on a ridge overlooking a valley. Amid those humble homes stands the gray church, like a shepherd keeping his flock. A part of it is very old, and all of it, richly weather-stained and delicately browned with fading moss, is beautiful. Upon the tower and along the south side the fantastic gargoyles are much decayed. The building is a cross. The chancel window faces eastward, and the window at the end of the nave looks toward the west,—the latter being a memorial to Moore. At the southeast corner of the building is the lady chapel, belonging to the Bayntun family, in which are suspended various fragments of old armour, and in the centre of which, recumbent on a great dark tomb, is a grim-visaged knight, clad from top to toe in his mail, beautifully sculptured in marble that looks like yellow ivory. Vandal visitors have disgracefully marred this superb work, by cutting and scratching their names upon it. Other tombs are adjacent, with inscriptions that implicate the names of Sir Edward Bayntun, 1679, and Lady Anne Wilmot, elder daughter and co-heiress of John, Earl of Rochester, who successively was the wife of Henry Bayntun and Francis Greville, and who died in 1703. The window at the end of the nave is a simple but striking composition, in stained glass, richer and nobler than is commonly seen in a country church. It consists of twenty-one lights, of which five are lancet shafts, side by side, these being surmounted with smaller lancets, forming a cluster at the top of the arch. In the centre is the figure of Jesus and around Him are the Apostles. The colouring is soft, true, and beautiful. Across the base of the window appear the words, in the glass: "This window is placed in this church by the combined subscriptions of two hundred persons who honour the memory of the poet of all circles and the idol of his own, Thomas Moore." It was beneath this window, in a little pew in the corner of the church, that the present writer joined in the service, and meditated, throughout a long sermon, on the lovely life and character and the gentle, noble, and abiding influence of the poet whose hallowed grave and beloved memory make this place a perpetual shrine.
Moore was buried in the churchyard. An iron fence encloses his tomb, which is at the base of the church tower, in an angle formed by the tower and the chancel, on the north side of the building. Not more than twenty tombs are visible on this side of the church, and these appear upon a level lawn, as green and sparkling as an emerald and as soft as velvet. On three sides the churchyard is enclosed by a low wall, and on the fourth by a dense hedge of glistening holly. Great trees are all around the church, but not too near. A massive yew stands darkly at one corner. Chestnuts and elms blend their branches in fraternal embrace. Close by the poet's grave a vast beech uprears its dome of fruited boughs and rustling foliage. The sky was blue, except for a few straggling masses of fleecy, slate-coloured cloud. Not a human creature was anywhere to be seen while I stood in this sacred spot, and no sound disturbed the Sabbath stillness, save the faint whisper of the wind in the lofty tree-tops and the low twitter of birds in their hidden nests. I thought of his long life, unblemished by personal fault or public error; of his sweet devotion to parents and wife and children; of his pure patriotism, which scorned equally the blatant fustian of the demagogue and the frenzy of the revolutionist; of his unsurpassed fidelity in friendship; of his simplicity and purity in a corrupt time and amid many temptations; of his meekness in affliction; of the devout spirit that prompted his earnest exhortation to his wife, "Lean upon God, Bessie"; of the many beautiful songs that he added to our literature,—every one of which is the melodious and final expression of one or another of the elemental feelings of human nature; and of the obligation of endless gratitude that the world owes to his fine, high, and beneficent genius. And thus it seemed good to be in this place and to lay with reverent hands the white roses of honour and affection upon his tomb.
On the long, low, flat stone that covers the poet's dust are inscribed the following words: "Anastatia Mary Moore. Born March 16, 1813. Died March 8, 1829. Also her brother, John Russell Moore, who died November 23, 1842, aged 19 years. Also their father, Thomas Moore, tenderly beloved by all who knew the goodness of his heart. The Poet and Patriot of his Country, Ireland. Born May 28, 1779. Sank to rest February 26, 1852. Aged 72. God is Love. Also his wife, Bessie Moore, who died 4th September 1865. And to the memory of their dear son, Thomas Lansdowne Parr Moore. Born 24th October 1818. Died in Africa, January 1846." Moore's daughter, Barbara, is buried at Hornsey, near London, in the same churchyard where rests the poet Samuel Rogers. On the stone that marks that spot is written, "Anne Jane Barbara Moore. Born January the 4th, 1812. Died September the 18th, 1817."
Northwest from Bromham church[13] and about one mile away stands Sloperton Cottage,[14] the last home of the poet and the house in which he died. A deep valley intervenes between the church and the cottage, but, as each is built upon a ridge, you may readily see the one from the other. There is a road across the valley, but the more pleasant walk is along a pathway through the meadows and over several stiles, ending almost in front of the storied house. It is an ideal home for a poet. The building is made of brick, but it is so completely enwrapped in ivy that scarcely a particle of its surface can be seen. It is a low building, with three gables on its main front and with a wing; it stands in the middle of a garden enclosed by walls and by hedges of ivy; and it is embowered by great trees, yet not so closely embowered as to be shorn of the prospect from its windows. Flowers and flowering vines were blooming around it. The hard, white road, flowing past its gateway, looked like a thread of silver between the green hedgerows which here for many miles are rooted in high, grassy banks, and at intervals are diversified with large trees. Sloperton Cottage is almost alone, but there are a few neighbours, and there is the little rustic village of Westbrook, about half a mile westward. Westward was the poet's favourite prospect. He loved the sunset, and from a terrace in his garden he habitually watched the pageant of the dying day. Here, for thirty-five years, was his peaceful and happy home. Here he meditated many of those gems of lyrical poetry that will live in the hearts of men as long as anything lives that ever was written by mortal hand. And here he "sank to rest," worn out at last by incessant labour and by many sorrows,—the bitter fruit of domestic bereavement and of disappointment. The sun was sinking as I turned away from this hallowed haunt of genius and virtue, and, through green pastures and flower-spangled fields of waving grain, set forth upon my homeward walk. Soon there was a lovely peal of chimes from Bromham church tower, answered far off by the bells of Rowde, and while I descended into the darkening valley, Moore's tender words came singing through my thought:
"And so 'twill be when I am gone—
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
While other bards shall walk these dells
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!"
CHAPTER V
THE BEAUTIFUL CITY OF BATH
The Avon and Bridge—Bath.
August 21, 1888.—From Devizes the traveller naturally turns toward Bath, which is only a few miles distant. A beautiful city, marred somewhat by the feverish, disturbing spirit of the present day, this old place [so old that in it the Saxon King Edgar was crowned, A.D. 973] nevertheless retains many interesting characteristics of its former glory. More than a century has passed since the wigged, powdered, and jewelled days of Beau Nash. The Avon,—for there is another Avon here, distinct from that of Warwickshire and also from that of Yorkshire,—is spanned by bridges that Smollett never dreamt of and Sheridan never saw. The town has crept upward, along both the valley slopes, nearer and nearer to the hill-tops that used to look down upon it. Along the margins of the river many gray, stone structures are mouldering in neglect and decay; but a tramcar rattles through the principal street; the boot-black and the newsvender are active and vociferous; the causeways are crowded with a bustling throng,[85] and carts and carriages dash and scramble over the pavement, while, where of old the horn used to sound a gay flourish and the coach to come spinning in from London, now is heard the shriek and clangour of the steam-engine dashing down the vale, with morning papers and with passengers, three hours from the town. This, indeed, is not "the season" and of late it has rained with zealous persistence, so that Bath is not in her splendour. Much however can be seen, and the essential fact that she is no longer the Gainsborough belle that she used to be is distinctly evident. You must yield your mind to fancy if you would conjure up, while walking in these modern streets, the gay and quaint things described in Humphrey Clinker or indicated in The Rivals. The Bath chairs, sometimes pulled by donkeys, and sometimes trundled by men, are among the most representative relics now to be seen. Next to the theatre [where it was my privilege to enjoy and admire Mr. John L. Toole's quaint and richly humorous performance of The Don], stands a building, at the foot of Gascoigne place, before which the traveller pauses with interest, because upon its front he may read the legend, neatly engraved on a white marble slab, that "In this house lived the celebrated Beau Nash, and here he died, February 1761." It is an odd structure, consisting of two stories and an attic, the front being of the monotonous stucco that came in with the Regent. Earlier no doubt the building was timbered. There are eleven windows in the front, four of them being painted on the wall. The house is used now by an auctioneer. In the historic Pump Room, dating back to 1797, raised aloft in an alcove at the east end, still stands the effigy of the Beau, even as it stood in the days when he set the fashions, regulated the customs, and gave the laws, and was the King of Bath; but the busts of Newton and Pope that formerly stood on either side of this statue stand there no more, save in the fancy of those who recall the epigram which was suggested by that singular group:
"This statue placed these busts between
Gives satire all its strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
But Folly at full length."
Beau Nash.
Folly, though, is a word that carries a different meaning to different ears. Douglas Jerrold made a play on the subject of Beau Nash, an ingenious, effective, brilliantly written play, in which he is depicted as anything but foolish. Much always depends on the point of view.
Bath Abbey.
Quin [1693-1766] was buried in Bath Abbey, and Bath is the scene of The Rivals. It would be pleasant to fancy the trim figure of the elegant Sir Lucius O'Trigger strolling along the parade; or bluff and choleric Sir Anthony Absolute gazing with imperious condescension[88] upon the galaxy of the Pump Room; Acres in his absurd finery; Lydia with her sentimental novels; and Mrs. Malaprop, rigid with decorum, in her Bath chair. The Abbey, begun in 1405 and completed in 1606, has a noble west front and a magnificent door of carved oak, and certainly it is a superb church; but the eyes that have rested upon such cathedrals as those of Lincoln, Durham, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, such a heavenly jewel as Roslin, and such an astounding and overwhelming edifice as York minster, can dwell calmly on Bath Abbey. A surprising feature in it is its mural record of the dead that are entombed beneath or around it. Sir Lucius might well declare that "There is snug lying in the Abbey." Almost every foot of the walls is covered with monumental slabs, and like Captain Cuttle, after the wedding of Mr. Dombey and Edith Granger, I "pervaded the body of the church" and read the epitaphs,—solicitous to discover that of the renowned actor James Quin. His tablet was formerly to be found in the chancel, but now it is obscurely placed in a porch, on the north corner of the building, on what may be termed the outer wall of the sanctuary. It presents the face of the famous comedian, carved in white marble and set against a black slab. Beneath is the date of his death, "Ob. MDCCLXVI. Ætat. LXXIII.," and his epitaph, written by David Garrick. At the base are dramatic emblems,—the mask and the dagger. As a portrait this medallion of Quin gives convincing evidence of scrupulous fidelity to nature, and certainly it is a fine work of art. The head is dressed as it was in life, with the full wig of the period. The features are delicately cut and are indicative of austere beauty of countenance, impressive if not attractive. The mouth is especially handsome, the upper lip being a perfect Cupid's bow. The face is serious, expressive, and fraught with intellect and power. This was the last great declaimer of the old school of acting, discomfited and almost obliterated by Garrick; and here are the words that Garrick wrote upon his tomb:
"That tongue which set the table on a roar
And charmed the public ear is heard no more;
Closed are those eyes, the harbingers of wit,
Which spoke, before the tongue, what Shakespeare writ;
Cold is that hand which, living, was stretched forth,
At friendship's call, to succour modest worth.
Here lies JAMES QUIN. Deign, reader, to be taught
Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In nature's happiest mould however cast,
To this complexion thou must come at last."
High Street—Bath.
A printed reminder of mortality is superfluous in Bath, for you almost continually behold afflicted and deformed persons who have come here to "take the waters." For rheumatic sufferers this place is a paradise,—as, indeed, it is for all wealthy persons who love luxury. Walter Savage Landor said that the only two cities of Europe in which he could live were Bath and Florence; but that was long ago. When you have walked in Milsom street and Lansdowne Crescent, sailed upon the Avon, observed the Abbey, without and within,—for its dusky, weather-stained walls are extremely picturesque,—attended the theatre, climbed the hills for the view of the city and the Avon valley, and taken the baths, you will have had a satisfying experience of Bath. The greatest luxury in the place is a swimming-tank of mineral water, about forty feet long, by twenty broad, and five feet deep,—a tepid pool of most refreshing potency. And the chief curiosity is the ruin of a Roman bath which was discovered and laid bare in 1885. This is built in the form of a rectangular basin of stone, with steps around it, and originally it was environed with stone chambers that were used as dressing-rooms. The basin is nearly perfect. The work of restoration of this ancient bath is in progress, but the relic will be preserved only as an emblem of the past.
A Fragment from an Old Roman Bath.
Thomas Haynes Bayly, the song-writer, 1797-1839, was born in Bath, and there he melodiously recorded that "She wore a wreath of roses," and there he dreamed of dwelling "in marble halls." But Bath is not nearly as rich in literary associations as its neighbour city of Bristol. Chatterton, Southey, Hannah More, and Mary Robinson,—the actress, the lovely and unfortunate "Perdita,"—were born in Bristol. Richard Savage, the poet, died there [1743], and so did John Hippesley, the comedian, manager, and farce-writer [1748]. St. Mary Redclyffe church, built in 1292, is still standing there, of which Chatterton's father was the sexton, and in the tower of which "the marvellous boy" discovered, according to his ingenious plan of literary imposture, the original Canynge and Rowley manuscripts. The ancient chests, which once were filled with black-letter parchments, remain in a loft in the church tower, but they are empty now. That famous preacher, the Rev. Robert Hall [1764-1831], had a church in Bristol. Southey and Coleridge married sisters, of the name of Fricker, who resided there, and a house called Myrtle Cottage, once occupied by Coleridge is still extant, in the contiguous village of Clevedon,—one of the loveliest places on the English coast. Jane Porter and Anna Maria Porter lived in Bristol, and Maria died at Montpelier, near by. These references indicate but a tithe of what may be seen, studied, and enjoyed in and about Bristol,—the city to which Chatterton left his curse; the region hallowed by the dust of Arthur Hallam,—inspiration of Tennyson's In Memoriam, the loftiest poem that has been created in the English language since the pen that wrote Childe Harold fell from the magical hand of Byron.
Remains of The Old Roman Bath.
CHAPTER VI
THE LAND OF WORDSWORTH
A good way by which to enter the Lake District of England is to travel to Penrith and thence to drive along the shore of Ullswater, or sail upon its crystal bosom, to the blooming solitude of Patterdale. Penrith lies at the eastern slope of the mountains of Westmoreland, and you may see the ruins of Penrith Castle, once the property and the abode of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, before he became King of England. Penrith Castle was one of the estates that were forfeited by the great Earl of Warwick, and King Edward the Fourth gave it to his brother Richard, in 1471. It is recorded that Richard had lived there for five years, from 1452 to 1457, when he was Sheriff of Cumberland. Not much remains of that ancient structure, and the remnant is now occupied by a florist. I saw it, as I saw almost everything else in Great Britain during the summer of 1888, under a tempest of rain; for it rained there, with a continuity almost ruinous, from the time of the lilac and apple-blossom till when the clematis[95] began to show the splendour of its purple shield and the acacia to drop its milky blossoms on the autumnal grass. But travellers must not heed the weather. If there are dark days there are also bright ones,—and one bright day in such a paradise as the English Lakes atones for the dreariness of a month of rain. Besides, even the darkest days may be brightened by gentle companionship. Henry Irving[15] and Ernest Bendall, two of the most intellectual and genial men in England, were my associates, in that expedition. We went from London into Westmoreland on a mild, sweet day in July, and we rambled for several days in that enchanted region. It was a delicious experience, and I often close my eyes and dream of it—as I am dreaming now.
PENRITH CASTLE
Ullswater.
In the drive between Penrith and Patterdale you see many things that are worthy of regard. Among these are the parish church of Penrith, a building made of red stone, remarkable for a massive square tower of great age and formidable aspect. In the adjacent churchyard are The Giant's Grave and The Giant's Thumb, relics of a distant past that strongly and strangely affect the imagination. The grave is said to be that of Ewain Cæsarius,[16] a gigantic individual who reigned over Cumberland in remote Saxon times. The Thumb is a rough stone, about seven feet high, presenting a clumsy cross, and doubtless commemorative of another mighty warrior. Sir Walter Scott, who traversed Penrith on his journeys between Edinburgh and London, seldom omitted to pause for a view of those singular memorials, and Scott, like Wordsworth, has left upon this region the abiding impress of his splendid genius. Ulfo's Lake is Scott's name for Ullswater, and thereabout is laid the scene of his poem of The Bridal of Triermain. In Scott's day the traveller went by coach or on horseback, but now, "By lonely Threlkeld's waste and wood," at the foot of craggy Blencathara, you pause at a railway station having Threlkeld in large letters on its official signboard. Another strange thing that is passed on the road between Penrith and Patterdale is "Arthur's Round Table,"—a circular terrace of turf slightly raised above the surrounding level, and certainly remarkable, whatever may be its historic or antiquarian merit, for fine texture, symmetrical form, and lovely, luxuriant colour. Scholars think it was used for tournaments in the days of chivalry, but no one rightly knows anything about it, save that it is old. Not far from this bit of mysterious antiquity the road winds through a quaint village called Tirril, where, in the Quaker burial-ground, is the grave of an unfortunate young man, Charles Gough, who lost his life by falling from the Striding Edge of Helvellyn in 1805, and whose memory is hallowed by Wordsworth and Scott, in poems that almost every schoolboy has read, and could never forget,—associated as they are with the story of the faithful dog, for three months in that lonesome wilderness vigilant beside the dead body of his master,
"A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below."
Patterdale possesses this advantage over certain other towns and hamlets of the lake region, that it is not much frequented by tourists. The coach does indeed roll through it at intervals, laden with those miscellaneous, desultory visitors whose pleasure it is to rush wildly over the land. And those objects serve to remind you that now, even as in Wordsworth's time, and in a double sense, "the world is too much with us." But an old-fashioned inn, Kidd's Hotel, still exists, at the head of Ullswater, to which fashion has not resorted and where kindness presides over the traveller's comfort. Close by also is a cosy nook called Glenridding, where, if you are a lover of solitude and peace, you may find an ideal abode. One house wherein lodging may be obtained was literally embowered in roses on that summer evening when first I strolled by the fragrant hay-fields on the Patterdale shore of Ullswater. The rose flourishes in wonderful luxuriance and profusion throughout Westmoreland and Cumberland. As you drive along the lonely roads your way will sometimes be, for many miles, between hedges that are bespangled with wild roses and with the silver globes of the laurel blossom, while around you the lonely mountains, bare of foliage save for matted grass and a dense growth of low ferns, tower to meet the clouds. It is a wild place, and yet there is a pervading spirit of refinement over it all,—as if Nature had here wrought her wonders in the mood of the finest art. And at the same time it is a place of infinite variety. The whole territory occupied by the lakes and mountains of this famous district is scarcely more than thirty miles square; yet within this limit, comparatively narrow, are comprised all possible beauties of land and water that the most passionate worshipper of natural loveliness could desire.
My first night in Patterdale was one of such tempest as sometimes rages in America about the time of the fall equinox. The wind shook the building. It was long after midnight when I went to rest, and the storm seemed to increase in fury as the night wore on. Torrents of rain were dashed against the windows. Great trees near by creaked and groaned beneath the strength of the gale. The cold was so severe that blankets were welcome. It was my first night in Wordsworth's country, and I thought of Wordsworth's lines:
"There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods."
The next morning was sweet with sunshine and gay with birds and flowers, and all semblance of storm and trouble seemed banished forever.
"But now the sun is shining calm and bright,
And birds are singing in the distant woods."
Wordsworth's poetry expresses the inmost soul of those lovely lakes and mighty hills, and no writer can hope to tread, save remotely and with reverent humility, in the footsteps of that magician. You understand Wordsworth better, however, and you love him more dearly, for having rambled over his consecrated ground. There was not a day when I did not, in some shape or another, meet with his presence. Whenever I was alone his influence came upon me as something unspeakably majestic and solemn. Once, on a Sunday, I climbed to the top of Place Fell[17] [which is 2154 feet above the sea-level, while Scawfell Pike is 3210, and Helvellyn is 3118], and there, in the short space of two hours, I was thrice cut off by rainstorms from all view of the world beneath. Not a tree could I find on that mountain-top, nor any place of shelter from the blast and the rain, except when crouching beside the mound of rock at its summit, which in that country they call a "man." Not a living creature was visible, save now and then a lonely sheep, who stared at me for a moment and then scurried away. But when the skies cleared and the cloudy squadrons of the storm went careering over Helvellyn, I looked down into no less than fifteen valleys beautifully coloured by the foliage and the patches of cultivated land, each vale being sparsely fringed with little gray stone dwellings that seemed no more than card-houses, in those appalling depths. You think of Wordsworth, in such a place as that,—if you know his poetry. You cannot choose but think of him.
"Who comes not hither ne'er shall know
How beautiful the world below."
Yet somehow it happened that whenever friends joined in those rambles the great poet was sure to dawn upon us in a comic way. When we were resting on the bridge at the foot of Brothers Water, which is a little lake, scarcely more than a mountain tarn, lying between Ullswater and the Kirkstone Pass, some one recalled that Wordsworth had once rested there and written a poem about it. We were not all as devout admirers of the bard as I am, and certainly it is not every one of the great author's compositions that a lover of his genius would wish to hear quoted, under such circumstances. The Brothers Water poem is the one that begins "The cock is crowing, the stream is flowing," and I do not think that its insipidity is much relieved by its famous picture of the grazing cattle, "forty feeding like one." Henry Irving, not much given to enthusiasm about Wordsworth, heard those lines with undisguised merriment, and made a capital travesty of them on the spot. It is significant to remember, with reference to the inequality of Wordsworth, that on the day before he wrote "The cock is crowing," and at a place but a short distance from the Brothers Water bridge, he had written that peerless lyric about the daffodils,—"I wandered lonely as a cloud." Gowbarrow Park is the scene of that poem,—a place of ferns and hawthorns, notable for containing Lyulph's Tower, a romantic, ivy-clad lodge owned by the Duke of Norfolk, and Aira Force, a waterfall much finer than Lodore. Upon the lake shore in Gowbarrow Park you may still see the daffodils as Wordsworth saw them, a golden host, "glittering and dancing in the breeze." No one but a true poet could have made that perfect lyric, with its delicious close:
"For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude:
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
Lyulph's Tower—Ullswater.
The third and fourth lines were written by the poet's wife, and they show that she was not a poet's wife in vain. It must have been in his "vacant mood" that he rested and wrote, on the bridge at Brothers Water. "I saw Wordsworth often when I was a child," said Frank Marshall[18] [who had joined us at Penrith]; "he used to come to my father's house, Patterdale Hall, and once I was sent to the garden by Mrs. Wordsworth to call him to supper. He was musing there, I suppose. He had a long, horse-like face. I don't think I liked him. I said, 'Your wife wants you.' He looked down at me and he answered, 'My boy, you should say Mrs. Wordsworth, and not "your wife."' I looked up at him and I replied, 'She is your wife, isn't she?' Whereupon he said no more. I don't think he liked me either." We were going up Kirkstone Pass when Marshall told this story,—which seemed to bring the pensive and homely poet plainly before us. An hour later, at the top of the pass, while waiting in the old inn called the Traveller's Rest, which incorrectly proclaims itself the highest inhabited house in England,[19] I spoke with an ancient, weather-beaten hostler, not wholly unfamiliar with the medicinal virtue of ardent spirits, and asked for his opinion of the great lake poet. "Well," he said, "people are always talking about Wordsworth, but I don't see much in it. I've read it, but I don't care for it. It's dry stuff—it don't chime." Truly there are all sorts of views, just as there are all sorts of people.
William Wordsworth.
Mementos of Wordsworth are frequently encountered by the traveller among these lakes and fells. One of them, situated at the foot of Place Fell, is a rustic cottage that the poet once selected for his residence: it was purchased for him by Lord Lonsdale, as a partial indemnity for losses caused by an ancestor of his to Wordsworth's father. The poet liked the place, but he never lived there. The house somewhat resembles the Shakespeare cottage at Stratford,—the living-room being floored with stone slabs, irregular in size and shape and mostly broken by hard use. In a corner of the kitchen stands a fine carved oak cupboard, dark with age, inscribed with the date of the Merry Monarch, 1660.
Approach to Ambleside.
What were the sights of those sweet days that linger still, and will always linger, in my remembrance? A ramble in the park of Patterdale Hall [the old name of the estate is Halsteads], which is full of American trees; a golden morning in Dovedale, with Irving, much like Jaques, reclined upon a shaded rock, half-way up the mountain, musing and moralising in his sweet, kind way, beside the brawling stream; the first prospect of Windermere, from above Ambleside,—a vision of heaven upon earth; the drive by Rydal Water, which has all the loveliness of celestial pictures seen in dreams; the glimpse of stately Rydal Hall and of the sequestered Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth so long lived and where he died; the Wishing Gate, where one of us, I know, wished in his heart that he could be young again and be wiser than to waste his youth in self-willed folly; the restful hours of observation and thought at delicious Grasmere, where we stood in silence at Wordsworth's grave and heard the murmur of Rotha singing at his feet; the lovely drive past Matterdale, across the moorlands, with only clouds and rooks for our chance companions, and mountains for sentinels along our way; the ramble through Keswick, all golden and glowing in the afternoon sun, till we stood by Crosthwaite church and read the words of commemoration that grace the tomb of Robert Southey; the divine circuit of Derwent,—surely the loveliest sheet of[106] water in England; the descent into the vale of Keswick, with sunset on the rippling crystal of the lake and the perfume of countless wild roses on the evening wind. These things, and the midnight talk about these things,—Irving, so tranquil, so gentle, so full of keen and sweet appreciation of them,—Bendall, so bright and thoughtful,—Marshall, so quaint and jolly, and so full of knowledge equally of nature and of books!—can never be forgotten. In one heart they are cherished forever.
Grasmere Church.
Wordsworth is buried in Grasmere churchyard, close by the wall, on the bank of the little river Rotha. "Sing him thy best," said Matthew Arnold, in his lovely dirge for the great poet—
"Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone."
In the same grave with Wordsworth sleeps his devoted wife. Beside them rest the poet's no less devoted sister Dorothy, who died at Rydal Mount in 1855, aged 83, and his daughter, Dora, together with her husband Edward Quillinan, of whom Arnold wrote so tenderly:
"Alive, we would have changed his lot,
We would not change it now."
On the low gravestone that marks the sepulchre of Wordsworth are written these words: "William Wordsworth, 1850. Mary Wordsworth, 1859." In the neighbouring church a mural tablet presents this inscription:
"To the memory of William Wordsworth. A true poet and philosopher, who by the special gift and calling of Almighty God, whether he discoursed on man or nature, failed not to lift up the heart to holy things, tired not of maintaining the cause of the poor and simple, and so in perilous times was raised up to be a chief minister, not only of noblest poetry, but of high and sacred truth. The memorial is raised here by his friends and neighbours, in testimony of respect, affection, and gratitude. Anno MDCCCLI."
Rydal Mount—Wordsworth's Seat.
A few steps from that memorable group will bring you to the marble cross that marks the resting-place of Hartley Coleridge, son of the great author of The Ancient Mariner, himself a poet of exquisite genius; and close by is a touching memorial to the gifted man who inspired Matthew Arnold's poems of The Scholar-Gipsy and Thyrsis. This is a slab laid upon his mother's grave, at the foot of her tombstone, inscribed with these words:
"In memory of Arthur Hugh Clough, some time Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, the beloved son of James Butler and Anne Clough. This remembrance in his own country is placed on his mother's grave by those to whom life was made happy by his presence and his love. He is buried in the Swiss cemetery at Florence, where he died, November 13, 1861, aged 42.
"'So, dearest, now thy brows are cold
I see thee what thou art, and know
Thy likeness to the wise below,
Thy kindred with the great of old.'"
Southey rests in Crosthwaite churchyard, about half a mile north of Keswick, where he died. They show you Greta Hall, a fine mansion, on a little hill, enclosed in tall trees, which for forty years, ending in 1843, was the poet's home. In the church is a marble figure of Southey, recumbent on a large stone sarcophagus. His grave is in the ground, a little way from the church, marked by a low flat tomb, on the end of which appears an inscription commemorative of a servant who had lived fifty years in his family and is buried near him. There was a pretty scene at this grave. When I came to it Irving was already there, and was speaking to a little girl who had guided him to the spot. "If any one were to give you a shilling, my dear," he said, "what would you do with it?" The child was confused and she murmured softly, "I don't know, sir." "Well," he continued, "if any one were to give you two shillings, what would you do?" She said she would save it. "But what if it were three shillings?" he asked, and each time he spoke he dropped a silver coin into her hand, till he must have given her more than a dozen of them. "Four—five—six—seven—what would you do with the money?" "I would give it to my mother, sir," she answered at last, her little face all smiles, gazing up at the stately, sombre stranger, whose noble countenance never looked more radiant than it did then, with gentle kindness and pleasure. It is a trifle to mention, but it was touching in its simplicity; and that amused group, around the grave of Southey, in the blaze of the golden sun of a July afternoon, with Skiddaw looming vast and majestic over all, will linger with me as long as anything lovely and of good report is treasured in my memory. Long after we had left the place I chanced to speak of its peculiar interest. "The most interesting thing I saw there," said Irving, "was that sweet child." I do not think the great actor was ever much impressed with the beauties of the lake poets.
Another picture glimmers across my dream,—a picture of peace and happiness which may close this rambling reminiscence of gentle days. We had driven up the pass between Glencoin and Gowbarrow, and had reached Matterdale, on our way toward Troutbeck station,—not the beautiful Windermere Troutbeck, but the less famous one. The road is lonely, but at Matterdale the traveller sees a few houses, and there our gaze was attracted by a gray church nestled in a hollow of the hillside. It stands sequestered in its place of graves, with bright greensward around it and a few trees. A faint sound of organ music floated from this sacred building and seemed to deepen the hush of the summer wind and shed a holier calm upon the lovely solitude. We dismounted and silently entered the church. A youth and a maiden, apparently lovers, were sitting at the organ,—the youth playing and the girl listening, and looking with tender trust and innocent affection into his face. He recognised our presence with a kindly nod, but went on with the music. I do not think she saw us at all. The place was full of soft, warm light streaming through the stained glass of Gothic windows and fragrant with perfume floating from the hay-fields and the dew-drenched roses of many a neighbouring hedge. Not a word was spoken, and after a few moments we departed, as silently as we had come. Those lovers will never know what eyes looked upon them that day, what hearts were comforted with the sight of their happiness, or how a careworn man, three thousand miles away, fanning upon his hearthstone the dying embers of hope, now thinks of them with tender sympathy, and murmurs a blessing on the gracious scene which their presence so much endeared.
An Old Lich Gate.
CHAPTER VII
SHAKESPEARE RELICS AT WORCESTER
Worcester, July 23, 1889.—The present wanderer came lately to The Faithful City, and these words are written in a midnight hour at the Unicorn Hotel. This place is redolent of the wars of the Stuarts, and the moment you enter it your mind is filled with the presence of Charles the Martyr, Charles the Merry, Prince Rupert, and Oliver Cromwell. From the top of Red Hill and the margin of Perry wood,—now sleeping in the starlight or momentarily vocal with the rustle of leaves and the note of half-awakened birds,—Cromwell looked down over the ancient walled city which he had beleaguered. Upon the summit of the great tower of Worcester Cathedral Charles and Rupert held their last council of war. Here was lost, September 3, 1651, the battle that made the Merry Monarch a hunted fugitive and an exile. With a stranger's interest I have rambled on those heights; traversed the battlefield; walked in every part of the cathedral; attended divine service[113] there; revelled in the antiquities of the Edgar Tower; roamed through most of the city streets; traced all that can be traced of the old wall [there is little remaining of it now, and no part that can be walked upon]; explored the royal porcelain works, for which Worcester is rightly famous; viewed several of its old churches and its one theatre, in Angel street; entered its Guildhall, where they preserve a fine piece of artillery and nine suits of black armour that were left by Charles the Second when he fled from Worcester; paced the dusty and empty Trinity Hall, now abandoned and condemned to demolition, where once Queen Elizabeth was feasted; and visited the old Commandery,—a rare piece of antiquity, remaining from the tenth century,—wherein the Duke of Hamilton died, of his wounds, after Cromwell's "crowning mercy," and beneath the floor of which he was laid in a temporary grave. The Commandery is now owned and occupied by a printer of directories and guide-books, the genial and hospitable Mr. Littlebury, and there, as everywhere else in storied Worcester, the arts of peace prevail over all the scenes and all the traces of
"Old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago."
Worcester Cathedral, from the Edgar Tower.
In the Edgar Tower at Worcester they keep the original of the marriage-bond that was given by Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, of Shottery, as a preliminary to the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. It is a long, narrow strip of parchment, and it has been glazed and framed. Two seals of light-coloured wax were originally attached to it, dependent by strings, but these have been removed,—apparently for the convenience of the mechanic who put the relic into its present frame. The handwriting is crabbéd and obscure. There are but few persons who can read the handwriting in old documents of this kind, and thousands of such documents exist in the church-archives, and elsewhere, in England, that have never been examined. The bond is for £40, and is a guarantee that there was no impediment to the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. It is dated November 28, 1582; its text authorises the wedding after only once calling the banns in church; and it is supposed that the marriage took place immediately, since the first child of it, Susanna Shakespeare, was baptized in the Church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford on May 26, 1583. No registration of the marriage has been found, but that is no proof that it does not exist. The law is said to have prescribed that three parishes, within the residential diocese, should be designated, in any one of which the marriage might be made; but custom permitted the contracting parties, when they had complied with this requirement, to be married in whatever parish, within the diocese, they might prefer. The three parishes supposed to have been named are Stratford, Bishopton, and Luddington. The registers of two of them have been searched, and searched in vain. The register of the third,—that of Luddington, which is near Shottery, and about three miles southwest of Stratford,—was destroyed, long ago, in a fire that burnt down Luddington church; and conjecture assumes that Shakespeare was married at Luddington. It may be so, but until every old church register in the ancient diocese of Worcester has been examined, the quest of the registration of his marriage ought not to be abandoned. Richard Savage, the learned and diligent librarian of the Shakespeare Birthplace, has long been occupied with this inquiry, and has transcribed several of the old church registers in the vicinity of Stratford. The Rev. Thomas Procter Wadley,[20] another local antiquary, of great learning and incessant industry, has also taken part in this labour. The long-desired entry of the marriage of William and Anne remains undiscovered, but one gratifying and valuable result of these investigations is the disclosure that many of the names used in Shakespeare's works are the names of persons who were residents of Warwickshire in his time. It has pleased various crazy sensation-mongers to ascribe the authorship of Shakespeare's writings to Francis Bacon. This could only be done by ignoring positive evidence,—the evidence, namely, of Ben Jonson, who knew Shakespeare personally, and who has left a written description of the manner in which Shakespeare composed his plays. Effrontery was to be expected from the advocates of the preposterous Bacon theory; but when they have ignored the positive evidence, and the internal evidence, and the circumstantial evidence, and every other sort of evidence, they have still a serious obstacle to surmount,—an obstacle that the researches of such patient scholars as Mr. Savage and Mr. Wadley are strengthening day by day. The man who wrote Shakespeare's plays knew Warwickshire as it could only be known to a native of it; and there is no proof that Francis Bacon knew it or ever was in it.[21]
The Edgar Tower.
With reference to the Shakespeare marriage-bond, and the other records that are kept in the Edgar Tower at Worcester, it may perhaps justly be said that they are not protected with the scrupulous care to which such treasures are entitled. The Tower,—a gray and venerable relic, an ancient gate of the monastery, dating back to the time of King John,—affords an appropriate receptacle for those documents; but it would not withstand fire, and it does not contain either a fire-proof chamber or a safe. The Shakespeare marriage-bond,—which would be appropriately housed in the Shakespeare Birthplace, at Stratford,—was taken from the floor of a closet, where it had been lying, together with a number of dusty books, and I was kindly permitted to hold it in my hands and to examine it. The frame provided for this priceless relic is such as may be seen on an ordinary school slate. From another dusty closet an attendant extricated a manuscript diary kept by William Lloyd, Bishop of Worcester [1627-1717], and by his man-servant, for several years, about the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne; and in this are many quaint and humorous entries, valuable to the student of history and manners. In still another closet, having the appearance of a rubbish-bin, I saw heaps of old parchment and paper writings,—a mass of antique registry that it would need the labour of five or six years to examine, decipher, and classify. Worcester is especially rich in old records, and it is not impossible that the missing clew to Shakespeare's marriage may yet be found in that old cathedral city.
Worcester is rich also in a superb library, which, by the kindness of Mr. Hooper, the custodian, I was allowed to explore, high up beneath the roof of the lovely cathedral. That collection of books, numbering about five thousand, consists mostly of folios, many of which were printed in France. They keep it in a long, low, oak-timbered room, the triforium of the south aisle of the nave. The approach is by a circular stone staircase. In an anteroom to the library I saw a part of the ancient north door of this church,—a fragment dating back to the time of Bishop Wakefield, 1386,—to which is still affixed a piece of the skin of a human being. The tradition is that a Dane committed sacrilege, by stealing the sanctus bell from the high altar, and was thereupon flayed alive for his crime, and the skin of him was fastened to the cathedral door. In the library are magnificent editions of Aristotle and other classics; the works of the fathers of the church; a beautiful illuminated manuscript of Wickliffe's New Testament, written on vellum in 1381; and several books, in splendid preservation, from the press of Caxton and that of Wynken de Worde. The world moves, but printing is not better done now than it was then. This library, which is for the use of the clergy of the diocese of Worcester, was founded by Bishop Carpenter, in 1461, and originally it was stored in the chapel of the charnel-house.
Reverting to the subject of old documents, a useful word may perhaps be said here about the registers in Trinity church at Stratford,—documents which, in a spirit of disparagement, have sometimes been designated as "copies." That sort of levity in the discussion of Shakespearean subjects is not unnatural in days when "cranks" are allowed freely to besmirch the memory of Shakespeare, in their wildly foolish advocacy of what they call "the Bacon theory" of the authorship of Shakespeare's works. The present writer has often held the Stratford Registers in his hands and explored their quaint pages. Those records are contained in twenty-two volumes. They begin with the first year of Queen Elizabeth, 1558, and they end, as to the old parchment form, in 1812. From 1558 to 1600 the entries were made in a paper book, of the quarto form, still occasionally to be found in ancient parish churches of England. In 1599 an order-in-council was made, commanding that those entries should be copied into parchment volumes, for their better preservation. This was done. The parchment volumes,—which were freely shown to me by William Butcher,[22] the parish clerk of Stratford,—date back to 1600. The handwriting of the copied portion, covering the period from 1558 to 1600, is careful and uniform. Each page is certified, as to its accuracy, by the vicar and the churchwardens. After 1600 the handwritings vary. In the register of marriage a new handwriting appears on September 17 that year, and in the registers of Baptism and Burial it appears on September 20. The sequence of marriages is complete until 1756; that of baptisms and burials until 1812; when, in each case, a book of printed forms comes into use, and the expeditious march of the new age begins. The entry of Shakespeare's baptism, April 26, 1564, from which it is inferred that he was born on April 23, is extant as a certified copy from the earlier paper book. The entry of Shakespeare's burial is the original entry, made in the original register.
Some time ago an American writer suggested that Shakespeare's widow,—seven years his senior at the start, and therefore fifty-nine years old when he died,—subsequently contracted another marriage. Mrs. Shakespeare survived her husband seven years, dying on August 6, 1623, at the age of sixty-seven. The entry in the Stratford register of burial contains, against the date of August 8, 1623, the names of "Mrs. Shakespeare" and "Anna uxor Richard James." Those two names, written one above the other, are connected by a bracket on the left side; and this is supposed to be evidence that Shakespeare's widow married again. The use of the bracket could not possibly mislead anybody possessing the faculty of clear vision. When two or more persons were either baptized or buried on the same day, the parish clerk, in making the requisite entry in the register, connected their names with a bracket. Three instances of this practice occur upon a single page of the register, in the same handwriting, close to the page that records the burial, on the same day, of Mrs. Shakespeare, widow, and Anna the wife of Richard James. But folly needs only a slender hook on which to hang itself.
John Baskerville, the famous printer [1706-1775], was born in Worcester, and his remains, the burial-place of which was long unknown, have lately been discovered there. Incledon, the famous singer, died there. Prince Arthur [1486-1502], eldest son of King Henry the Seventh, was buried in Worcester Cathedral, where a beautiful chantry was built over his remains in 1504. Bishop John Gauden [1605-1662], who wrote the Eikon Basiliké, long generally attributed to Charles the First, rests there. The Duke of Hamilton, who died of his wounds, after a Worcester fight, was transferred to that place, from his temporary grave in the Commandery. And in the centre of the sacrarium stands the tomb of that tyrant King John, who died on October 19, 1216, at Newark, and whose remains, when the tomb was opened,[23] July 17, 1797, presented a ghastly spectacle.
CHAPTER VIII
BYRON AND HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH
January 22, 1888.—On a night in 1785, when Mrs. Siddons was acting at Edinburgh, the play being The Fatal Marriage and the character Isabella, a young lady of Aberdeenshire, Miss Catherine Gordon, of Gight, was among the audience. There is a point in that tragedy at which Isabella recognises her first husband, whom she had supposed to be dead, and in whose absence she had been married to another, and her consternation, grief, and rapture are sudden and excessive. Mrs. Siddons, at that point, always made a great effect. The words are, "O my Biron, my Biron!" On this night, at the moment when the wonderful actress sent forth her wailing, heart-piercing cry, as she uttered those words, Miss Gordon gave a frantic scream, fell into violent hysterics, and was borne out of the theatre, repeating "O my Biron, my Biron!" At the time of that incident she had not met the man by whom she was afterward wedded,—the Hon. John Byron, whose wife she became, about a year later. Their first-born and only child was George Gordon, afterward Lord Byron, the poet; and among the many aspects of his life which impress the thoughtful reader of its strange and melancholy story none is more striking than the dramatic aspect of it,—so strangely prefigured in this event.
Lord Byron.
Censure of Byron, whether as a man or as a writer, may be considered to have spent its force. It is a hundred years since he was born, and almost as many since he died.[24] Everybody who wished to say a word against him has had ample opportunity for saying it, and there is evidence that this opportunity has not been neglected. The record was long ago made up. Everybody knows that Byron's conduct was sometimes deformed with frenzy and stained with vice. Everybody knows that Byron's writings are occasionally marred with profanity and licentiousness, and that they contain a quantity of crude verse. If he had never been married, or if, being married, his domestic life had not ended in disaster and scandal, his personal reputation would stand higher than it does at present, in the esteem of virtuous society. If about one-third of what he wrote had never been published, his reputation as a man of letters would stand higher than it now does in the esteem of stern judges of literary art. After an exhaustive discussion of the subject in every aspect of it, after every variety of hostile assault, and after praise sounded in every key of enthusiasm and in every language of the world, these truths remain. It is a pity that Byron was not a virtuous man and a good husband. It is a pity that he was not invariably a scrupulous literary artist, that he wrote so much, and that almost everything he wrote was published. But, when all this has been said, it remains a solid and immovable truth that Byron was a great poet and that he continues to be a great power in the literature and life of the world. Nobody who pretends to read anything omits to read Childe Harold.
To touch this complex and delicate subject in only a superficial manner it may not be amiss to say that the world is under obligation to Byron, if for nothing else, for the spectacle of a romantic, impressive, and instructive life. His agency in that spectacle no doubt was involuntary, but all the same he presented it. He was a great poet; a man of genius; his faculty of expression was colossal, and his conduct was absolutely genuine. No man in literature ever lived who lived himself more fully. His assumptions of disguise only made him more obvious and transparent. He kept nothing back. His heart was laid absolutely bare. We know even more about him than we know about Dr. Johnson,—and still his personality endures the test of our knowledge and remains unique, romantic, fascinating, prolific of moral admonition, and infinitely pathetic. Byron in poetry, like Edmund Kean in acting, is a figure that completely fills the imagination, profoundly stirs the heart, and never ceases to impress and charm, even while it afflicts, the sensitive mind. This consideration alone, viewed apart from the obligation that the world owes to the better part of his writings, is vastly significant of the great personal force that is inherent in the name and memory of Byron.
It has been considered necessary to account for the sadness and gloom of Byron's poetry by representing him to have been a criminal afflicted with remorse for his many and hideous crimes. His widow, apparently a monomaniac, after long brooding over the remembrance of a calamitous married life,—brief, unhappy, and terminated in separation,—whispered against him, and against his half-sister, a vile and hideous charge; and this, to the disgrace of American literature, was subsequently brought forward by a distinguished female writer of America, much noted for her works of fiction and especially memorable for that one. The explanation of the mental distress exhibited in the poet's writings was thought to be effectually provided in that disclosure. But, as this revolting and inhuman story,—desecrating graves, insulting a wonderful genius, and casting infamy upon the name of an affectionate, faithful, virtuous woman,—fell to pieces the moment it was examined, the student of Byron's grief-stricken nature remained no wiser than before this figment of a diseased imagination had been divulged. Surely, however, it ought not to be considered mysterious that Byron's poetry is often sad. The best poetry of the best poets is touched with sadness. Hamlet has never been mistaken for a merry production. Macbeth and King Lear do not commonly produce laughter. Shelley and Keats sing as near to heaven's gate as anybody, and both of them are essentially sad. Scott was as brave, hopeful, and cheerful as any poet that ever lived, and Scott's poetry is at its best in his dirges and in his ballads of love and loss. The Elegy and The Ancient Mariner certainly are great poems, but neither of them is festive. Byron often wrote sadly because he was a man of melancholy temperament, and because he deeply felt the pathos of mortal life, the awful mystery with which it is surrounded, the pain with which it is usually attended, the tragedy with which it commonly is accompanied, the frail tenure with which its loves and hopes are held, and the inexorable death with which it is continually environed and at last extinguished. And Byron was an unhappy man for the reason that, possessing every elemental natural quality in excess, his goodness was constantly tortured by his evil. The tempest, the clangour, and the agony of his writings are denotements of the struggle between good and evil that was perpetually afflicting his soul. Had he been the wicked man depicted by his detractors, he would have lived a life of comfortable depravity and never would have written at all. Monsters do not suffer.
The true appreciation of Byron is not that of youth but that of manhood. Youth is captured by his pictorial and sentimental attributes. Youth beholds him as a nautical Adonis, standing lonely upon a barren cliff and gazing at a stormy sunset over the Ægean sea. Everybody knows that familiar picture,—with the wide and open collar, the great eyes, the wild hair, and the ample neckcloth flowing in the breeze. It is pretty but it is not like the real man. If ever at any time he was that sentimental image he speedily outgrew that condition, just as those observers of him who truly understand Byron have long outgrown their juvenile sympathy with that frail and puny ideal of a great poet. Manhood perceives a different individual and is captured by a different attraction. It is only when the first extravagant and effusive enthusiasm has run its course, and perhaps ended in revulsion, that we come to know Byron for what he actually is, and to feel the tremendous power of his genius. Sentimental folly has commemorated him, in the margin of Hyde Park, as in the fancy of many a callow youth and green girl, with the statue of a sailor-lad waiting for a spark from heaven, while a Newfoundland dog dozes at his feet. It is a caricature. Byron was a man, and terribly in earnest; and it is only by earnest persons that his mind and works are understood. At this distance of time the scandals of a corrupt age, equally with the frailties of its most brilliant and most illustrious poetical genius, may well be left to rest in the oblivion of the grave. The generation that is living at the close of the nineteenth century will remember of Byron only that he was the uncompromising friend of liberty; that he did much to emancipate the human mind from every form of bigotry and tyranny; that he augmented, as no man had done since Dryden, the power and flexibility of the noble English tongue; and that he enriched literature with passages of poetry which, for sublimity, beauty, tenderness, and eloquence, have seldom been equalled and have never been excelled.
HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH
It was near the close of a fragrant, golden summer day [August 8, 1884], when, having driven out from Nottingham, I alighted in the market-place of the little town of Hucknall-Torkard, on a pilgrimage to the grave of Byron. The town is modern and commonplace in appearance,—a straggling collection of low brick dwellings, mostly occupied by colliers. On that day it appeared at its worst; for the widest part of its main street was filled with stalls, benches, wagons, and canvas-covered structures for the display of vegetables and other commodities, which were thus offered for sale; and it was thronged with rough, noisy, and dirty persons, intent on barter and traffic, and not indisposed to boisterous pranks and mirth, as they pushed and jostled each other, among the crowded booths. This main street ends at the wall of the graveyard in which stands the little gray church where Byron was buried. There is an iron gate in the centre of the wall, and in order to reach this it was necessary to thread the mazes of the market-place, and to push aside the canvas flaps of a peddler's stall which had been placed close against it. Next to the churchyard wall is a little cottage,[25] with its bit of garden, devoted in this instance to potatoes; and there, while waiting for the sexton, I talked with an aged man, who said that he remembered, as an eye-witness, the funeral of Byron. "The oldest man he seemed that ever wore gray hairs." He stated that he was eighty-two and that his name was William Callandyne. Pointing to the church, he indicated the place of the Byron vault. "I was the last man," he said, "that went down into it, before he was buried there. I was a young fellow then, and curious to see what was going on. The place was full of skulls and bones. I wish you could see my son; he's a clever lad, only he ought to have more of the suaviter in modo." Thus, with the garrulity of wandering age, he prattled on; but his mind was clear and his memory tenacious and positive. There is a good prospect from the region of Hucknall-Torkard church, and pointing into the distance, when his mind had been brought back to the subject of Byron, my venerable acquaintance now described, with minute specification of road and lane,—seeming to assume that the names and the turnings were familiar to his auditor,—the course of the funeral train from Nottingham to the church. "There were eleven carriages," he said. "They didn't go to the Abbey" (meaning Newstead), "but came directly here. There were many people to look at them. I remember all about it, and I'm an old man—eighty-two. You're an Italian, I should say," he added. By this time the sexton had come and unlocked the gate, and parting from Mr. Callandyne we presently made our way into the church of St. James, locking the churchyard gate behind us, to exclude rough and possibly mischievous followers. A strange and sad contrast, I thought, between this coarse and turbulent place, by a malign destiny ordained for the grave of Byron, and that peaceful, lovely, majestic church and precinct, at Stratford-upon-Avon, which enshrine the dust of Shakespeare!
Hucknall-Torkard Church.
The sexton of the church of St. James and the parish clerk of Hucknall-Torkard was Mr. John Brown, and a man of sympathetic intelligence, kind heart, and interesting character I found him to be,—large, dark, stalwart, but gentle alike in manner and feeling, and considerate of his visitor. The pilgrim to the literary shrines of England does not always find the neighbouring inhabitants either sympathetic with his reverence or conscious of especial sanctity or interest appertaining to the relics which they possess; but honest and manly John Brown of Hucknall-Torkard understood both the hallowing charm of the place and the sentiment, not to say the profound emotion, of the traveller who now beheld for the first time the tomb of Byron. This church has been restored and altered since Byron was buried in it, in 1824, yet it retains its fundamental structure and its ancient peculiarities. The tower, a fine specimen of Norman architecture, strongly built, dark and grim, gives indication of great age. It is of a kind often met with in ancient English towns: you may see its brothers at York, Shrewsbury, Canterbury, Worcester, Warwick, and in many places sprinkled over the northern heights of London: but amid its tame surroundings in this little colliery settlement it looms with a peculiar frowning majesty, a certain bleak loneliness, both unique and impressive. The church is of the customary crucial form,—a low stone structure, peak-roofed outside, but arched within, the roof being supported by four great pillars on either side of the centre aisle, and the ceiling being fashioned of heavy timbers[131] forming almost a true arch above the nave. There are four large windows on each side of the church, and two on each side of the chancel, which is beneath a roof somewhat lower than that of the main building. Under the pavement of the chancel and back of the altar rail,—at which it was my privilege to kneel, while gazing upon this sacred spot,—is the grave of Byron.[26] Nothing is written on the stone that covers his sepulchre except the name of BYRON, with the dates of his birth and death, in brass letters, surrounded by a wreath of leaves, in brass, the gift of the King of Greece; and never did a name seem more stately or a place more hallowed. The dust of the poet reposes between that of his mother, on his right hand, and that of his Ada,—"sole daughter of my house and heart,"—on his left. The mother died on August 1, 1811; the daughter, who had by marriage become the Countess of Lovelace, in 1852. "I buried her with my own hands," said the sexton, John Brown, when, after a little time, he rejoined me at the altar rail. "I told them exactly where he was laid, when they wanted to put that brass on the stone; I remembered it well, for I lowered the coffin of the Countess of Lovelace into this vault, and laid her by her father's side." And when presently we went into a little vestry he produced the Register of Burials and displayed the record of that interment, in the following words: "1852. Died at 69 Cumberland Place, London. Buried December 3. Aged thirty-six.—Curtis Jackson." The Byrons were a short-lived race. The poet himself had just turned thirty-six; his mother was only forty-six when she passed away. This name of Curtis Jackson in the register was that of the rector or curate then incumbent but now departed. The register is a long narrow book made of parchment and full of various crabbéd handwritings,—a record similar to those which are so carefully treasured at the church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford; but it is more dilapidated.
Another relic shown by John Brown was a bit of embroidery, presenting the arms of the Byron family. It had been used at Byron's funeral, and thereafter was long kept in the church, though latterly with but little care. When the Rev. Curtis Jackson came there he beheld this frail memorial with pious disapprobation. "He told me," said the sexton, "to take it home and burn it. I did take it home, but I didn't burn it; and when the new rector came he heard of it and asked me to bring it back, and a lady gave the frame to put it in." Framed it is, and likely now to be always preserved in this interesting church; and earnestly do I wish that I could remember, in order that I might speak it with honour, the name of the clergyman who could thus rebuke bigotry, and welcome and treasure in his church that shred of silk which once rested on the coffin of Byron. Still another relic preserved by John Brown is a large piece of cardboard bearing the inscription which is upon the coffin of the poet's mother, and which bore some part in the obsequies of that singular woman,—a creature full of faults, but the parent of a mighty genius, and capable of inspiring deep love. On the night after Byron arrived at Newstead, whither he repaired from London, on receiving news of her illness, only to find her dead, he was found sitting in the dark and sobbing beside the corse. "I had but one friend in the world," he said, "and she is gone." He was soon to publish Childe Harold, and to gain hosts of friends and have the world at his feet; but he spoke what he felt, and he spoke the truth, in that dark room on that desolate night. Thoughts of these things, and of many other strange passages and incidents in his brief, checkered, glorious, lamentable life, thronged into my mind as I stood there, in presence of those relics and so near his dust, while the church grew dark and the silence seemed to deepen in the dusk of the gathering night.
Hucknall-Torkard Church—Interior.
They have for many years kept a book at the church of Hucknall-Torkard [the first one, an album given by Sir John Bowring, containing the record of visitations from 1825 to 1834, disappeared[27] in the latter year, or soon after], in which the visitors write their names; but the catalogue of pilgrims during the last fifty years is not a long one. The votaries of Byron are far less numerous than those of Shakespeare. Custom has made the visit to Stratford "a property of easiness," and Shakespeare is a safe no less than a rightful object of worship. The visit to Hucknall-Torkard is neither so easy nor so agreeable, and it requires some courage to be a votary of Byron,—and to own it. No day passes without bringing its visitor to the Shakespeare cottage and the Shakespeare tomb; many days pass without bringing a stranger to the church of St. James. On the capital of a column near Byron's tomb I saw two mouldering wreaths of laurel, which had hung there for several years; one brought by the Bishop of Norwich, the other by the American poet Joaquin Miller. It was good to see them, and especially to see them close by the tablet of white marble which was placed on that church wall to commemorate the poet, and to be her witness in death, by his loving and beloved sister Augusta Mary Leigh,—a name that is the synonym of noble fidelity, a name that in our day cruel detraction and hideous calumny have done their worst to tarnish. That tablet names him "The Author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"; and if the conviction of thoughtful men and women throughout the world can be accepted as an authority, no name in the long annals of English literature is more certain of immortality than the name of Byron. People mention the poetry of Spenser and Cowley and Dryden and Cowper, but the poetry of Byron they read. His reputation can afford the absence of all memorial to him in Westminster Abbey, and it can endure the neglect and censure of the precinct of Nottingham. That city rejoices in a stately castle throned upon a rock, and persons who admire the Stuarts may exult in the recollection that there the standard of Charles the First was unfurled, in his fatal war with the Parliament of England; but all that really hallows it for the stranger of to-day and for posterity is its association with the name of Byron. The stranger will look in vain, however, for any adequate sign of his former association with that place. It is difficult even to find prints or photographs of the Byron shrines, in the shops of Nottingham. One dealer, from whom I bought all the Byron pictures that he possessed, was kind enough to explain the situation, in one expressive sentence: "Much more ought to be done here as to Lord Byron's memory, that is the truth; but the fact is, the first families of the county don't approve of him."
When we came again into the churchyard, with its many scattered graves and its quaint stones and crosses leaning every way, and huddled in a strange kind of orderly confusion, the great dark tower stood out bold and solitary in the gloaming, and a chill wind of evening had begun to moan around its pinnacles, and through its mysterious belfry windows, and in the few trees near by, which gave forth a mournful whisper. It was hard to leave the place, and for a long time I stood near the chapel, just above the outer wall of the Byron vault. And there the sexton told me the story of the White Lady,—pointing, as he spoke, to a cottage abutting on the churchyard, one window in which commands a clear view of the place of Byron's grave. [That house has since been removed.] "There she lived," he said, "and there she died, and there," pointing to an unmarked grave near the pathway, about thirty feet from the Byron vault, "I buried her." It is impossible to give his words or to indicate his earnest manner. In brief, this lady, whose past no one knew, had taken up her residence in this cottage long subsequent to the burial of Byron, and had remained there until she died. She was pale, thin, handsome, and she wore white garments. Her face was often to be seen at that window, whether by night or day, and she seemed to be watching the tomb. Once, when masons were repairing the church wall, she was enabled to descend into that vault, and therefrom she obtained a skull, which she declared to be Byron's, and which she scraped, polished, and made perfectly white, and kept always beneath her pillow. It was her request, often made to the sexton, that she might be buried in the churchyard, close to the wall of the poet's tomb. "When at last she died," said John Brown, "they brought that skull to me, and I buried it there in the ground. It was one of the loose skulls from the old vault. She thought it was Byron's, and it pleased her to think so. I might have laid her close to this wall. I don't know why I didn't."
In those words the sexton's story ended. It was only one more of the myriad hints of that romance which the life and poetry of Byron have so widely created and diffused. I glanced around for some relic of the place that might properly be taken away: there was neither an ivy leaf shining upon the wall nor a flower growing in all that ground; but into a crevice of the rock, just above his tomb, the wind had at some time blown a little earth, and in this a few blades of grass were thinly rooted. These I gathered, and still possess, as a memento of an evening at Byron's grave.