From this same castle tower, too, in the words of Scott:
Nor Tees alone in dawning bright
Shall rush upon the ravished sight,
But many a tributary stream
Each from its own dark dell shall gleam.
But the Greta, on whose banks Rokeby, as well as the fortified manor-house of Mortham, still in good repair, are situated, comes in just below Barnard Castle; a lovely stream roaring between rocky terraces, sweeping the base of limestone cliffs and burrowing in the dark shadow of luxuriant woods. The beautiful grounds of Rokeby which include the Greta are much, I think, as they were when Scott stayed here with his friend Mr. Morritt the owner.
There has always seemed to me a suggestion of bathos in associating the scene of Rokeby and Greta banks with Nicholas Nickleby and the hideous but world-famous picture of Dotheboys Hall. But the great old bare posting-house at Greta Bridge, where Dickens stayed, is still standing and much furbished up as the “Morritt Arms.” There seems no doubt that this Arcadian corner of Yorkshire had a justifiably evil reputation for institutions of the kind. In a letter written from here by Dickens to his wife but eight years after Rokeby was published, he describes with some humour having actually travelled up on the coach with the proprietress of one of them who gradually drank herself into a state of happy insensibility. One would fain, I think, associate the Tees with the flavour of Rokeby rather than of Dotheboys Hall, with Bertram rather than with Squeers! A spot more profoundly out of touch with a Dickens atmosphere it would be difficult to find in all England. The ruins of Eggleston Abbey are here too on the banks of Tees, and the remains of a Roman station at Greta Bridge. These upper reaches by no means exhaust either the beauty or the interest of the Tees, but henceforth the scenery becomes lower and less inspiring, and the high romance fades as the river pursues a more conventional course towards the busy town of Darlington.
THE OUSE, NEAR ST. IVES, HUNTINGDONSHIRE
