Sir Carnaby Haggerston does not appear—apart from this vandal act of his—to have been an especially Wicked Squire, although his devastating name launched him upon the world ear-marked for commission of all the crimes practised by the libertine landowners who made so brave a show in a certain class of literature and melodrama once popular. His name strikes the ear even more dramatically than that of Sir Rupert Murgatroyd, the accursed Baronet of Ruddigore in Mr. W. S. Gilbert’s comic opera, but he never lived up to its possibilities. The only things he seems to have had in common with the typical squire of old seem to have been a love of port and whist, and a passion for building houses too large for his needs or means.

The Wicked Squire who unwillingly sat to the novelists who used to write in the pages of Reynolds’ Miscellany and journals of that stamp fifty years ago, as the high-born villain of their gory romances, may be regretted, because without him the pages of the penny novelist are become extremely tame; but his disappearance need not be mourned for any other reasons.

It is to him we owe the many supposedly “classical” mansions that, huge and shapeless, like so many factories, reformatories, or workhouses, affront the green sward, the beautiful gardens, and the noble trees of many English parks. To build vast mansions of this “palatial” character, the squires often pulled down middle-Tudor or Elizabethan, or even earlier manor-houses of exquisite beauty, vying with one another in the size and extravagance of the new buildings, whose original cost and subsequent maintenance have during the past hundred and fifty years kept many county families in straitened circumstances, and do so still. There was a squire who pulled down a whole series of mediæval wayside crosses in his district, and used the materials as building-stones toward the great mansion he was erecting for the purpose of outshining a neighbour. Those transcendent squires, the noblemen of old, had larger opportunities and made the worst use of them. The Duke of Buckingham, for example, bought a property, demolished the Elizabethan hall that stood on it, and built Stowe there in its place; a building of vast range and classic elevation with colonnades and porticoes, and “windows that exclude the light and lead to nothing,” as some one has very happily remarked. Sir Francis Dashwood, that hero of the Hell Fire Club, pulled down West Wycombe church and built the existing building, that looks like a Lancashire cotton-mill, and every one built houses a great deal larger than were wanted or they could afford; which, like the Earl of Leicester’s seat at Holkham were so little like homes that they could neither live in their stately apartments nor sleep in their vast bedrooms. Like the Earl and Countess of Leicester, who were compelled for comfort’s sake to sleep in one of the servants’ bedrooms in the attics, they lived as settlers in corners of their cavernous and uncomfortable palaces.

Pity the poor descendant of the Squires! He cannot afford in these days to keep up his huge house; to pull it down would in itself cost a fortune; and its very size frightens the clients of the house-agent in whose hands he has had it for letting, these years past. All over England this is seen, and the old Yorkshire tale would stand true of any other county and of many other county magnates of that time. The Marquis of Rockingham, according to that story, built a mansion at Wentworth big enough for the Prince of Wales; Sir Rowland Winn built one at Nostel Priory fit for the Marquis of Rockingham; and Mr. Wrightson of Cusworth built a house fit for Sir Rowland Winn. No doubt the farmers carried on the tale of extravagance down to their stratum of society, and so ad infinitum.

But to return to Haggerston Castle, which now belongs to the Leylands. Conspicuous for some distance is the tower built of recent years to at one and the same time resemble a mediæval keep and to serve a practical purpose as a water-tower, engine-room, and look-out. The place, however, is remarkable for quite other things than its mock castle, for in the beautiful park are kept in pens, or roaming about freely, herds of foreign animals which make of it a miniature Zoological Gardens. It is, in a sense, superior indeed to that well-known place, for if the collections do not cover so wide a range, the animals are in a state of nature. Emus, Indian cattle, kangaroos, and many varieties of wild buck roam this “paradise,” together with a thriving herd of American bison. The bison is almost extinct, even in his native country, but here he flourishes exceedingly and perpetuates his kind. A bison bull is a startling object, come upon unawares, and looks like the production of a lunatic artist chosen to illustrate, say, the Jabberwock in Alice in Wonderland. He is all out of drawing, with huge shaggy forelegs, and head and shoulders a size too large for the rest of his body; an eye like a live coal, tufted coat, like a worn-out door-mat, and uncomfortable-looking horns: the kind of creature that inhabits Nightmare Country, popularly supposed to be bred of indigestion and lobster mayonnaise.

XXIX

Beyond Haggerston, and up along the rising road that leads for six of the seven miles to Berwick, the journey is unexpectedly commonplace. The road has by this time turned away from the sea, and when it has led us through an entirely charming tunnel-like avenue of dwarf oaks, ceases to be interesting. Always upwards, it passes collieries, the “Cat” inn, and the hamlet of Richardson’s Stead or Scremerston, whence, arrived at the summit of Scremerston Hill, the way down into Tweedmouth and across the Tweed into Berwick is clear.

Tweedmouth sits upon the hither shore of Tweed, clad in grime and clinkers. Like a mudlark dabbling in the water but not cleansing himself in it, Tweedmouth seems to acquire no inconsiderable portion of its dirt from its foreshore. Engineering works and coal-shoots are responsible for the rest. Little or nothing of antiquity enlivens its mean street that leads down to the old bridge and so across the Tweed into Scotland. The roofs of Berwick, clustered close together and sealing one over the other as the town ascends the opposite shore of the river, are seen, with the spired Town Hall dominating all at the further end of the long, narrow, hump-backed old structure, and away to the left that fine viaduct of the North Eastern Railway, the Royal Border Bridge. But the finest view, and the most educational in local topography, is that gained by exploring the southern shore of the Tweed for half a mile in an easterly direction. An unlovely waterside road, it is true, a maze of railway arches spanning it, and shabby houses hiding all but the merest glimpses of Tweedmouth church and its gilded salmon vane, referring to the salmon-fishery of the Tweed, but leading to a point of view whence the outlook to the north-west is really grand. There, across the broad estuary of the Tweed, lies Berwick, behind its quays and its enclosing defences. Across the river, in the middle distance, goes Berwick Bridge, its massive piers and arches looking as though carved out of the rock, rather than built up of single stones. Beyond it, in majestic array, go the tall arches of the Royal Border Bridge, and, in the background, are the Scottish hills. Tweedmouth, its timber jetty, its docks, and church spire, and its waterside lumber are in the forefront. This, then, is the situation of Berwick, for centuries the best-picked bone of contention between the rival countries of England and Scotland; the Border cockpit, geographically in the northern kingdom, but wrested from it by the masterful English seven hundred and fifty years ago, and taken and re-taken by or from stubborn Scots on a round dozen of occasions afterwards. Sieges, assaults, stormings, massacres under every condition of atrocity; these are the merest commonplaces of Berwick’s story, until the mid-sixteenth century; and the historian who would write of its more unusual aspects must needs turn attention to the rare and short-lived interludes of peace.

It was in 1550, during the short reign of Edward the Sixth, that the existing fortifications enclosing the town were begun, whose river-fronting walls are so conspicuous from Tweedmouth. The old bridge, built by James the First, was the first peaceful enterprise between the two kingdoms, for, although Berwick had for over a century been recognised as a neutral or “buffer” state, peace went armed for fear of accidents, and easy communication across the Tweed was not encouraged. There is food for reflection in comparison between that bridge and the infinitely greater work of the railway viaduct. The first, 1,164 feet in length, with only 17 feet breadth between the parapets, bridging the river with fifteen arches, cost £17,000, and took twenty-four years to build; the railway bridge of twenty-eight giant arches, each of 61½ feet span, and straddling the Tweed at a height of 129 feet, was built in three years, at a cost of £120,000. The “Royal Border Bridge,” as it was christened at its opening by the Queen, has precisely the appearance of a Roman aqueduct and belongs to the Stone and Brick Age of railways. Were it to do over again, there can be no doubt that, instead of a long array of graceful arches, half a dozen lengths of steel lattice girders would span the tide. It was at a huge cost that England and Scotland were thus joined by rail; bridge and approaches swallowing up the sum of £253,000. The first passenger train crossed over, October 15, 1848, but the works were not finally completed until 1850. In the August of that year the Queen formally opened it, nearly two years after it was actually opened; a fine object-lesson for satirists. How we laugh at ceremonials less absurd than this when they take place in China and Japan.