Returned to Ludlow yesterday; came here to-day: the road from Ledbury to Malvern wonderfully fine, and nothing grander than the view of Eastnor Castle.
July 3rd, 1839, Troy House
Stayed at Malvern two days, clambering to the top of the hills which overhang the place (for town it is not), from which the views are very fine over a rich but generally flat country; the prospect is grand from its great extent. There is a curious and interesting church there, formerly of some priory, with a handsome gateway. I came through Eastnor Park in the way to Ledbury, exceedingly fine, and the castle something like Belvoir apparently, but I was not permitted to approach it. Nothing particular in the road till Ross, a very pretty town, where I first met the Wye, but, alas, in its muddiest state: this was the abode of ‘The Man of Ross.’ Very pretty road from Ross to Monmouth, through which latter place I walked, and passed by a very old house, which, as I afterwards heard, is said to have been the abode of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and they show his study. Troy, a plain, good-looking house, imperfectly kept up and poorly furnished, as a house is likely to be whose owners never inhabit it. It was built by the Duke of Beaufort in 1689, who came to sulk here on the expulsion of the last of the Stuarts, having a deeply-rooted sentiment of hereditary loyalty. Multa fecerunt and multa tulerunt, certainly, for that unhappy race. Here they show a chair in which a plot was contrived against Charles I.—that is, ‘in which the president of the conspirators is said to have sat.’ The story was obscure, but I did not think it advisable to press the narrator for explanations. Likewise a cradle, which tradition assigns to Henry V. (Harry of Monmouth), which is evidently old enough and was splendid enough in a rude style to justify any such tradition; the only unfortunate thing is, that there is a rival cradle somewhere else with the same claim. Mr. Wyatt, the Duke’s agent, received me with great civility and hospitality, having been enjoined by the Duke to make me his guest and himself my cicerone. Accordingly we set forth on Monday morning and went to Usk Castle, a ruin of which not much is left besides a picturesque round tower; neither the Castle nor the country is very remarkable, but we brought home a crimped salmon, for which Usk is famous (and where the crimping is said to be a secret unattainable even to the vendors of Wye and Severn salmon), which was, without exception, the most dainty fish I ever ate. From Usk we returned to Raglan Castle, a most noble and beautiful ruin; there has often been a notion of restoring it, and an estimate was made of the probable expense, which was calculated at 30,000ℓ.; but the idea and the estimate are equally preposterous: it would be reconstructing a very unmanageable house and destroying the finest ruin in England, and the cost would infallibly be three times 30,000ℓ. As there had been a question of its restoration, I expected to find greater and more perfect remains, but, though some of the apartments may be made out, it is a vast wreck. The strange thing is that the second Marquis of Worcester, when his possessions were restored to him, and when the damage done to the castle might easily have been repaired, should not have done it nor any of his immediate descendants. Great pains are now taken to preserve the beauties of this majestic fabric and to arrest the further progress of decay. Yesterday I rode to Goodrich Castle, stopping to see some remarkable views of the Wye, particularly one called Simmons Yat or Rock, which is very beautiful (and must be GOODRICH CASTLE, TINTERN ABBEY. much more so when the river is clear and transparent); and a curious rock called the Buck-stone, which was probably a Druidical place of worship, but of which nothing is positively known, though conjecture is busy. Goodrich Castle, which was partly battered down by the Cromwellians like Raglan, is more ancient, and was much stronger than the latter; but, though not so beautiful and splendid, it is an equally curious and interesting ruin, with many of its parts still more perfect than anything at Raglan. I was exceedingly delighted with Goodrich, and there was a female custos, zealous and intelligent, whose husband, she told us, was continually occupied in clearing away rubbish and exposing the remains of the old Castle. We then went to Goodrich Court, a strange kind of bastard castle built by Blore, and which the possessor, Sir Samuel Meyrick, has devoted to the exhibition of his collection of armour. There are only a few acres of ground belonging to him, on which he has built this house, but it is admirably situated, overhanging the Wye and facing the Castle, of which it commands a charming view. After being hurried through the armoury, which was all we were invited to inspect, we embarked in a boat we had sent up, and returned to Monmouth down the Wye through some beautiful scenery, but which it was too cold to enjoy.
July 4th, 1839, Clifton
I came here last night, the wind having changed to S.W., and summer having come with it. I left Troy in the morning and went to Tintern Abbey: most glorious, which I could not describe if I would, but which produced on me an impression similar in kind and equal in amount to that which I felt at the sight of St. Peter’s. No description nor any representation of it can do justice, or anything like justice, to this majestic and beautiful ruin, such is its wonderful perfection viewed in every direction, from every spot, and in the minutest detail. That the remains should be so extensive and so uninjured is marvellous, for there can be no doubt that this Abbey might be restored to its former grandeur. Much has been done by Mr. Wyatt, the Duke’s agent, both to preserve the Abbey and to develope its beauties by cutting away the trees and ivy, and clearing away the accumulation of earth; by the latter means several tombs and many detached fragments of beautiful design and workmanship have been found, and I did my best to encourage him to pursue his researches.
Casting many lingering looks behind, I left Tintern and went to Windcliffe, from the summit of which there is a very fine view; but the Wye, instead of being an embellishment, is an eyesore in the midst of such scenery: it looks like a long, slimy snake dragging its foul length through the hills and woods which environ its muddy stream. We dined in a moss-cottage at the foot of Windcliffe, and then proceeded to Chepstow, a very curious and striking ruin, and which I should have seen with much greater interest and admiration if Tintern had not so occupied my thoughts and filled my mind that I had not eyes to do justice to Chepstow. I went all over the ruins, however, and examined them very accurately; for it is one of the great merits of these different castles, Raglan, Goodrich, and Chepstow, that they are wholly dissimilar, and each is therefore a fresh object of curiosity. I crossed the old passage, as it is called, in a ferry, and came on to Clifton.
Bath.—After taking a cursory view of Clifton from the Roman Camp and part of Bristol, I came to Bath, where I have not been these thirty years and more. I walked about the town, and was greatly struck with its handsomeness; thought of all the vicissitudes of custom and fashion which it has seen and undergone, and of the various characters, great and small, who have figured here. Here the great Lord Chatham used to repair devoured by gout, resentment, and disappointment, and leave the Government to its fate, while his colleagues waited his pleasure submissively or caballed against his power, according as circumstances obliged them to do the first or enabled them to do the second. Here my uncle, Harry Greville, the handsomest man of his day, used to dance minuets while all the company got on chairs and benches to look at him, and a few years since he died in poverty at the Mauritius, where he had BATH, SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. gone to end his days, after many unfortunate speculations, in an office obtained from the compassion of Lord Bathurst. Sic transit gloria mundi, and thus its frivolities flourish for their brief hour, and then decay and are forgotten. An old woman showed me the Pump-room and the baths, all unchanged except in the habits and characters of their frequenters; and my mind’s eye peopled them with Tabitha Bramble, Win Jenkins, and Lismahago, and with all the inimitable family of Anstey’s creation, the Ringbones, Cormorants, and Bumfidgets—Tabby and Roger.[4]
[4] Humphrey Clinker and Anstey’s Bath Guide.
July 5th, 1839, Salisbury
I saw the Abbey Church at Bath this morning, which is handsome enough, but not very remarkable, unless for the vast crowds of its tombstones in every part; it has been completely repaired by the corporation at a great expense. I went to Stonehenge, of which no description is necessary; thence to Wilton; very fine place; hurried through the gallery of marbles, but looked longer at the pictures, which I understand and taste better; saw the gardens and the stud, and then came here; went directly to the Cathedral, with which I was exceedingly delighted, having seen nothing like it for extent, lightness, and elegance. There is one modern tomb by Chantrey which is very fine, that of Lord Malmesbury, erected by his sister; but, however skilfully executed or admirably designed, I do not like such monuments so well, nor think them so appropriate to our cathedrals, as the rude effigies of knights and warriors in complete armour, with their feet on couchant hounds, or those stately though sometimes gaudy and fantastic monuments, in which, among crowds of emblematical devices and armorial bearings, the husband and the wife lie side by side in the richest costume of the day, while their children are kneeling around them; these, with the venerable figures of abbots and bishops, however rudely sculptured, give me greater pleasure to look upon than the choicest productions of Roubillac, Nollekens, or Chantrey, which, however fine they may be, seem to have no business there, and to intrude irreverently among the mighty dead of olden time. This cathedral is in perfect repair within and without; the colour of the stone is singularly beautiful, and it is not blocked up with buildings, Bishop Barrington having caused all that were adjacent to be removed. The chapter house and cloisters are exceedingly fine, but the effect is spoilt in the former by great bars of iron which radiate in all directions from a ring attached to the supporting pillar, and which have been put there (probably without any necessity) to relieve it of a portion of the superincumbent weight. It is remarkable that wherever I have gone in my travels, I have found the same complaints of the mischievous propensities of that silly, vulgar, vicious animal, called the public. Amongst the beauties of nature or of art, rocks, caves, or mountains, in ruined castles and abbeys, or ancient but still flourishing cathedrals, the same invariable love of pilfering and mutilating is to be found: some knock off a nose or a finger, others deface a frieze or a mullion from sheer love of havoc, others chip off some unmeaning fragment as a relique or object of curiosity; but the most general taste seems to be that of carving names or initials, and some of the ancient figures are completely tattooed with these barbarous engravings: this propensity I believe to be peculiar to our nation, and not to be found in any part of the Continent, where, indeed, it would probably not be permitted, and where detection and punishment would speedily overtake the offender. It is quite disgusting to see the venerable form of a knight templar or a mitred abbot scarred all over with the base patronymics of Jones and Tomkins, or with a whole alphabet of their initials.