The act of looking backwards at this point is a more pleasing physical exercise than the mental retrospect is ever likely to be, anywhere. Sir Walter Scott perceived the beauty of the view, for he introduces it in Jeanie Deans’ journey south, and says, in a fine passage: “The hundred-armed Trent and the blackened ruins of Newark castle, demolished in the great Civil War, lay before her.”
“Hundred-armed” is a good and eloquent figure, although on a prosaic calculation likely to be found an exaggeration. Milton, indeed, writing a hundred and ninety years or so before, gives the Trent but thirty arms, on which, it must be allowed, Sir Walter’s computation is a great advance. But here is Milton’s version:—
“Trent, which like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads.”
Even Drayton, in his Polyolbion, does not more nearly approach to Sir Walter’s computation, in the couplet:—
“The bounteous Trent, that in herself enseams,
Both thirty sorts of fish and thirty sundry streams.”
Shakespeare rather shirks the calculation, and contents himself with describing it as the “smug and silver Trent.” As for mere travellers, who did not happen to be poets or to be engaged in the exploitation of scenery, they regarded this stream merely with apprehension, and they did right so to look upon it, for Trent often overflowed its thirty or hundred arms, as the case might be, and converted the flats for miles around into the semblage of a vast lake. Then, indeed—if at no other time—Newark was “upon” Trent, if not actually “in” it, and all the many other towns and villages, which bear a similarly composite title, were in like case. Doubtless it was on one of these occasions in 1739, before the river was bridged here, that the Newcastle wagon was lost at the ford, when the driver and the horses all perished. Nearly thirty years later, on the 6th of June 1767, the poet Gray, writing from London, before starting on a journey in these parts, says:—“Pray that the Trent may not intercept us at Newark, for we have had infinite rain here.” Nor are floods infrequent, even now, and many a boating-party has voyaged down the Great North Road between Newark and Carlton-upon-Trent.
North and South Muskham lie off the road to the right, and are not remarkable, except perhaps for the fact that a centenarian, in the person of Thomas Seals of Grassthorpe, who died in 1802, age 106, lies in North Muskham churchyard. Cromwell, on the other hand, which now comes in sight, although now a commonplace roadside village of uninteresting, modern, red-brick cottages, with an old, but not remarkable, church, has a place in history. According to Carlyle, “the small parish of Cromwell, or Crumwell (the well of Crum, whatever that may be), not far from the left bank of the Trent, simple worshippers still doing in it some kind of divine service every Sunday,” was the original home of the Cromwell family, from which the great Protector sprang. “From this,” he adds, “without any ghost to teach us, we can understand that the Cromwell kindred all got their name.” But the hero-worshipper will look in vain for anything at Cromwell to connect the place with that family. Not even a tablet in the church; nothing, in fact, save the name itself survives.
Here is a blacksmith’s forge, with the design of a huge horseshoe encompasing the door, and this inscription:—
“F. NAYLOR
BlacksmithGentlemen, as you pass by,
Upon this shoe pray cast an eye.
I’ll make it wider,
I’ll ease the horse and please the rider.
If lame from shoeing, as they often are
You may have them eased with the greatest care.”
Hence to Carlton-upon-Trent, Sutton-upon-Trent, Scarthing Moor, and Tuxford is an easy transition of nearly eight miles, with little scenery or history on the way. An old posting-house, now retired into private life, the level-crossing of Crow Park, and an old roadside inn, the “Nag’s Head,” beside it are all the objects of interest at Carlton; while Sutton is scarce more than a name, so far as the traveller along the road is concerned.