Over Fen and Wold

by James John Hissey

At Wansford we crossed the river Nene on a fine old stone bridge of thirteen arches, if we counted them aright: a solid bit of building pleasing to look upon and making a pretty picture from the meadows below with the clustering, uneven roofs of the village for a background. Over the centre arch let in the wall we noticed a stone inscribed P. M. 1577. Wansford is curiously called locally “Wansford in England” and has been so called for generations. In my copy of Drunken Barnaby’s four journeys to the North of England, edition of 1778, I find the following lines:—

Thence to Wansforth-brigs ...
. . . . .
On a haycock sleeping soundly,
Th’ River rose and took me roundly
Down the Current: People cry’d
Sleeping down the stream I hy’d:
Where away, quoth they, from Greenland?
No; from Wansforth brigs in England.

A GREAT ARCHITECT

Now we hastened along to “Stamford town,” some six miles farther on, where we proposed to spend the night. Just before we reached our destination we passed to our right Burleigh park and house. Of the latter we had a good view: a splendid pile it is, stately but not too stately, dignified yet homelike, it combines picturesqueness with grandeur—a rare and difficult achievement for any architect and one for which Vanbrugh strove in vain; the more merit therefore to the famous John Thorpe who designed Burleigh House, in my humble opinion the greatest of English architects; his works speak his praises. The man who originated the Elizabethan style of architecture was no ordinary genius! Thorpe built pictures, he was never commonplace.

My readers will remember Tennyson’s well-known lines about the “Lord of Burleigh” and his village spouse; unfortunately, like the charming story of Dorothy Vernon’s elopement, the romance loses much of its gilt by too critical an examination. The lovely and loving Countess was the Lord’s second wife, he having married another lady from whom he was divorced. After the separation, acting upon the advice of his uncle, and having lost all his own fortune, he retired into the country and eventually took lodgings with a farmer named Thomas Hoggins at Bolas in Shropshire, giving himself out to be a certain Mr. Jones, not an uncommon name. Here “Mr. Jones,” possibly finding time hanging heavily on his hands, promptly made love to his landlord’s daughter Sarah, the village beauty, and eventually married her. It was not till after the death of his uncle that he became “Lord of Burleigh,” all of which is a matter of history. It was after this event, when he succeeded to the Earldom and estates, that his rank was revealed, much in the romantic manner that Tennyson relates. Then the new “Lord of Burleigh” took his innocent and loving wife by easy stages to her home, pointing out all the country sights and mansions on the way, she dreaming all the while of the little cottage he so long had promised her—

All he shows her makes him dearer:
Evermore she seems to gaze
On that cottage growing nearer,
Where they twain will spend their days.
. . . . .
Thus her heart rejoices greatly,
Till a gateway she discerns
With armorial bearings stately,
And beneath the gate she turns;
Sees a mansion more majestic
Than all those she saw before:
Many a gallant gay domestic
Bows before him at the door.
And they speak in gentle murmur,
When they answer to his call,
While he treads with footstep firmer,
Leading on from hall to hall.
And, while now she wonders blindly,
Nor the meaning can divine,
Proudly turns he round and kindly,
“All of this is mine and thine.”

A PICTURESQUE TOWNSCAPE

Driving into Stamford, a place we had never visited before, we were struck by the familiarity of the townscape presented to us; it seemed to greet us like an old friend, whose face we had often seen. The square towers, the tall tapering spires, with the gable-fronted, mullion-windowed old houses, and the picturesque way that these towers, steeples, and old-fashioned houses were grouped and contrasted had a strangely well-known look—yet how could this be if we had not beheld them before? Then we suddenly solved the promising mystery by remembering that it was Turner’s engraved drawing of Stamford in his “England and Wales” series of views that had brought the prospect to mind. In this case—judging by our recollection of the engraving, a great favourite, so strongly impressed upon us—Turner has been more than usually topographically faithful: he appears to have taken very little, if any, liberty with the buildings or the composition of the subject—possibly because the natural grouping is so good, that art could not, for the nonce, improve picturesquely upon fact. For it is not the province of true art to be realistic, but to be poetic; the painter is not a mere transcriber, but a translator. There is such a thing as pictorial poetry; the pencil can, and should, be employed sincerely yet romantically. Observe, in this very drawing of Stamford, how Turner, whilst not departing one whit from the truth, has by the perfectly possible, yet wonderful, sky-scape he has introduced, with the effective play of light and shade that would be caused thereby, strong yet not forced, and the happy arrangement of figures and the old coach in the foreground, added the grace of poetry to the natural charms of the ordinary street scene. The photograph can give us hard facts and precise details, enough and to spare, yet somehow to the artistic soul the finest photographs have a want, they are purely mechanical, soulless, and unromantic. They lack the glamour of the painter’s vision, who gives us the gold and is blind to the dross, he looks for the beautiful and finds it; so he brightens his own life and those of others, and his work is not in vain!

Scott, who often travelled by this famous Great North Road, described St. Mary’s Hill at Stamford as being “the finest street between London and Edinburgh,” and surely Scott ought to know! To use an artist’s slang expression of a good subject “it takes a lot of beating.” Besides being beautiful, Stamford is one of the most interesting towns in England, with quite a character of its own; it is essentially individual, and therein lies its special charm: to me it is passing strange that such a picturesque and quaint old town should be so

AN ERST UNIVERSITY TOWN