Early in July, I preceded my mother northwards, made a little sketching tour in Lincolnshire, where arriving with little luggage, and drawing hard all day, I excited great commiseration amongst the people as a poor travelling artist. "Eh, I shouldn't like to have such hard work as that on. Measter, I zay, I should'na like to be you."
At Lincoln I joined my mother, and we went on together to Yorkshire, where my friend Rutson lent us a charming old manor-house, Nunnington Hall near Helmsley, the centre of an interesting country, in which we visited the principal ruined abbeys of Yorkshire. My mother entirely recovered here, and was full of enjoyment. On our way to Harrogate, a Quakeress with whom we travelled persecuted me with "The Enquiring Parishioner on the Way to Salvation," and then, after looking at my sketches, hoped that "one so gifted was not being led away by Dr. Pusey!" At Bolton we stayed several days at the Farfield Farm, and thence drove through Swale Dale to Richmond. On our way farther north, I paid my first visit to my cousins at Ravensworth, and very alarming I thought it; rejoining my mother at Warkworth, a place I have always delighted in, and where Mrs. Clutterbuck[112] and her daughters were very kind to us. More charming still were the next few days spent with my kind old cousin Henry Liddell (brother-in-law of my Aunt Ravensworth) in Bamborough Castle.
We visited Dryburgh and Jedburgh, and the vulgar commonplace villa, with small ill-proportioned rooms looking out upon nothing at all, out of which Sir Walter Scott created the Abbotsford of his imagination. Charlotte Leycester having joined us, I left my mother at the Bridge of Allan for a little tour, in the first hour of which I, Italian-fashion, made a friendship with one with whom till her death I continued to be most intimate.
To MY MOTHER.
"Tillycoultry House, August 12, 1856.—My mother will be surprised that, instead of writing from an inn, I should date from one of the most beautiful places in the Ochils, and that I should be staying with people whom, though we met for the first time a few hours ago, I already seem to know intimately.
"When I left my mother and entered the train at Stirling, two ladies got in after me; one old, yellow, and withered; the other, though elderly, still handsome, and with a very sweet interesting expression. She immediately began to talk. 'Was I a sportsman?'—'No, only a tourist.'—'Then did I know that on the old bridge we were passing, the Bishop of Glasgow long ago was hung in full canonicals?' And with such histories the younger of the two sisters, in a very sweet Scottish accent, animated the whole way to Alloa. Having arrived there, she said, 'If we part now, we shall probably never meet again: there is no time for discussion, but be assured that my husband, Mr. Dalzell, will be glad to see you. Change your ticket at once, and come home with me to Tillycoultry.' And ... I obeyed; and here I am in a great, old, half-desolate house, by the side of a torrent and a ruined churchyard, under a rocky part of the Ochils.
"Mr. Dalzell met us in the avenue. He is a rigid maintainer of the Free Kirk, upon which Mrs. Huggan (the old sister) says he spends all his money—about £18,000 a year—and he is very odd, and passes three-fourths of the day quite alone, in meditation and prayer. He has much sweetness of manner in speaking, but seems quite hazy about things of earth, and entirely rapt in prophecies and thoughts either of the second coming of Christ or of the trials of the Kirk part of his Church on earth.
"Mrs. Dalzell is quite different, truly, beautifully, practically holy. She 'feels,' as I heard her say to her sister to-night, 'all things are wrapt up in Christ.' The evening was very long, as we dined at four, but was varied by music and Scotch songs.
"The old Catholic priest who once lived here cursed the place, in consequence of which it is believed that there are—no little birds!"
"Dunfermline, August 13.—This morning I walked with Mr. Dalzell to Castle Campbell—an old ruined tower, on a precipitous rock in a lovely situation surrounded by mountains, the lower parts of which are clothed with birch woods. Inside the castle is a ruined court, where John Knox administered his first Sacrament. On the way we passed the little burial-ground of the Taits, surrounded by a high wall, only open on one side, towards the river Devon."