I must continue my narrative.—Leamington (‘car il faut pourtant que j’en dise quelque chose’) was only a little village a few years ago, and is now a rich and elegant town, containing ten or twelve palace-like inns, four large bath-houses with colonnades and gardens, several libraries, with which are connected card, billiard, concert and ball-rooms (one for six hundred persons,) and a host of private houses, which are almost entirely occupied by visitors, and spring out of the earth like mushrooms. All here is on a vast scale, though the waters are insignificant. The same are used for drinking as for bathing, and yet it swarms with visitors. The baths are as spacious as the English beds, and are lined throughout with earthenware tiles.
Not far from Leamington, and a league from Warwick, is a beautiful enchanting spot called Guy’s Cliff; part of the house is as old as Warwick Castle. Under it is a deep cavern, in the picturesque rocky shore of the Avon, into which, as tradition says, Guy of Warwick, after many high deeds at home and abroad, secretly retired to close his life in pious meditation. After two years of incessant search, his inconsolable wife found him lying dead in his cave, and in despair threw herself down from the rocks into the Avon. In later times a chapel was built in the rock to commemorate this tragic event, and adorned by Henry the Third with a statue of Sir Guy. This has unhappily been so mutilated by Cromwell’s troops, that it is now but a shapeless block. Opposite to the chapel are twelve monks’ cells hewn in the rock, now used as stables. The chapel itself, which has been entirely renovated in the interior, is connected with the dwelling of the proprietor, part of which is Gothic some centuries old, part in the old Italian style, and part quite new, built exactly to correspond with the most ancient part. The whole is extremely picturesque, and the interior is fitted up with equal attention to taste and comfort. The drawing-room, with its two deep window-recesses, struck me as uncommonly cheerful. One of these windows stands above a rock which rises fifty feet perpendicularly from the river, in whose bosom lies a lovely little island, and behind it a wide prospect of luxuriant meadows, beautiful trees, and, quite in the background, a village half buried in wood. At a short distance on the side is an extremely ancient mill, said to have been in existence before the Norman invasion. A little further off, the picture was terminated by a woody hill, also within the enclosure of the park, on which a high cross marks the spot where Gavestone, the infamous favourite of Edward the Second, was executed by the rebellious lords Warwick and Arundel. All these recollections, united with so many natural beauties, make a strong impression on the mind.—The other window afforded a perfect contrast with this. It overlooks a level plain laid out as a very pretty French garden, in which gay porcelain ornaments and coloured sand mingled their hues with the flowers, and terminates in a beautiful alley overshadowed with ivy cut into a pointed arch. In the room itself sparkled a cheerful fire; choice pictures adorned the walls, and several sofas of various forms, tables covered with curiosities, and furniture standing about in agreeable disorder, gave it the most inviting and home-like air.
I returned back to the town of Warwick to see the church, and the chapel containing the monument of the great King-Maker, which he placed there in his life-time, and now reposes under. His statue of metal lies on the sarcophagus; an eagle and a bear at his feet. The head is very expressive and natural. He does not fold his hands as is the case in most statues of knights, but only raises them a little to heaven, as though he would not pray, and could greet even his Maker only with a gesture of courtesy: his head is slightly inclined, but with no air of humility. Round his stone coffin are emblazoned the splendid bearings of all his lordships, and an enormous sword lies threatening by his side. The splendid painted windows, and the numerous well-preserved and richly gilded ornaments give to the whole a stately, solemn character.
A family of the town most unfortunately got permission, about a hundred and fifty years ago, to erect a monument to some country ‘squire or other, immediately under the large central window. It occupies the entire wall, and destroys the beautiful simplicity of the whole by this hideous, disgraceful modern excrescence.
By the side-wall lies another intruder carved in stone, but one of better pretensions;—no less a man than the powerful earl of Leicester: he is represented of middle age, a handsome, high-bred and haughty looking man; but without the lofty genius in his features so strikingly portrayed on the metal countenance of the great Warwick.
A few posts from Leamington, in a country which gradually becomes more solitary and dreary, lies Kenilworth.
With Sir Walter Scott’s captivating book in my hand I wandered amid these ruins, which call up such varied feelings. They cover a space of more than three-quarters of a mile in circumference, and exhibit, although in rapid decay, many traces of great and singular magnificence.
The oldest part of the castle, built in 1120, still stands the firmest, while the part added by Leicester is almost utterly destroyed. The wide moat which formerly surrounded the castle, and around which stretched a park of thirty English miles in circuit, was dried up in Cromwell’s time, in the hope of finding treasure in it. The park, too, has long disappeared, and is now changed into fields, on which are some scattered cottages. A part of the castle, standing isolated and almost hidden under creeping plants, is transformed into a kind of out-work; and the whole surrounding country has a more barren, deserted and melancholy aspect than any part we have travelled through. But this harmonizes well with the character of the principal object, and enhances the saddening effect of greatness in such utter decay.
The balcony called Elizabeth’s Bower is still standing; and the tradition goes, that in moonlight nights a white figure is often seen there looking fixedly and immovably into the depth below. The ruins of the banqueting-hall, with the gigantic chimney-piece, the extensive kitchen, and the wine-cellar beneath, are still clearly distinguishable; and many a lonesome chamber may still be standing in the towers, to which all access is cut off. The fancy delights in guessing the past by what still remains; and I often dreamed, while climbing among the ruins, that I had found the very spot where the infamous Vernon traitorously plunged the truest and most unhappy of wives into eternal night. But equally lost are the traces of the crimes and of the virtues which lived within these walls; Time has long since thrown his all-concealing veil over them; and gone are the eternally-repeated sorrows and joys, the mouldering splendour, and the transient struggle.
The day was gloomy; black clouds rolled across the heavens, and occasionally a yellow tawny light broke from between them; the wind whistled among the ivy, and piped shrilly through the vacant windows; now and then a stone loosened itself from the crumbling building, and rolled clattering down the outer wall. Not a human being was to be seen; all was solitary, awful;—a gloomy but sublime memorial of destruction.