That Irish channel has, as the English say, “a nasty way with it.” I embarked at noon on the 26th, in a magnificent steamer, the Royal Sovereign, which had been engaged by Lord Eglington (as per advertisement) to set down at Ardrossan all passengers bound to the tournament. This was a seventeen hours’ job, including a very cold, blowy, and rough night; and of the two hundred passengers on board, one half were so blest as to have berths or settees—the others were unblest, indeed.
I found on board several Americans; and by the time I had looked at the shape of the Liverpool harbor and seen one or two vessels run in before a slapping breeze, the premonitory symptom (which had already sent many to their berths) sent me to mine. The boat was pitching backward and forward with a sort of handsaw action that was not endurable. By foregoing my dinner and preserving a horizontal position I escaped all sickness, and landed at Ardrossan at six the next morning with a thirty-six hours’ fast upon me, which I trusted my incipient gout would remember as a per contra to the feast in the promised “banquet.”
Ardrossan, built chiefly, I believe, by Lord Eglington’s family, and about eight miles from the castle, is a small but very clean and thrifty looking hamlet on that part of the western coast of Scotland which lies opposite the Isle of Arran. Ailsa rock, famous in song, slumbers like a cloud on the south-western horizon. The long breakers of the channel lay their lines of foam almost upon the street, and the harbor is formed by a pier jutting out from a little promontory on the northern extremity of the town. The one thoroughfare of Ardrossan is kept clean by the broom of every wind that sweeps the Irish sea. A cleaner or bleaker spot I never saw.
A Gael, who did not comprehend a syllable of such English as a Yankee delivers, shouldered my portmanteau without direction or request, and travelled away to the inn, where he deposited it and held out his hand in silence. There was certainly quite enough said between us; and remembering the boisterous accompaniment with which the claims of porters are usually pushed upon one’s notice, I could well wish that Gaelic tide-waiters were more common.
“Any room, landlord?” was the first question. “Not a cupboard, sir,” was the answer.—“Can you give me some breakfast?” asked fifty others in a breath.—“Breakfast will be put upon all the tables presently, gentlemen,” said the dismayed Boniface, glancing at the crowds who were pouring in, and, Scotchmanlike, making no promises to individuals.—“Landlord!” vociferated a gentleman from the other side of the hall—“what the devil does this mean? Here’s the room I engaged a fortnight ago occupied by a dozen people shaving and dressing!”—“I canna help it, sir! Ye’re welcome to to turn ’em a’ out—if ye can!” said the poor man, lifting up his hands in despair, and retreating to the kitchen. The hint was a good one, and taking up my own portmanteau, I opened a door in one of the passages. It led into a small apartment, which, in more roomy times might have been a pantry, but was now occupied by three beds and a great variety of baggage. There was a twopenny glass on the mantel-piece, and a drop or two of water in a pitcher, and where there were sheets I could make shift for a towel. I found presently, by the way, that I had had a narrow escape of surprising some one in bed, for the sheet which did duty as a napkin was still warm with pressure of the newly-fled occupant.
Three or four smart-looking damsels in caps looked in while I was engaged in my toilet, and this, with one or two slight observations made in the apartment, convinced me that I had intruded on the dormitory of the ladies’ maids belonging to the various parties in the house. A hurried “God bless us!” as they retreated, however, was all either of reproach or remonstrance that I was troubled with; and I emerged with a smooth chin in time for breakfast, very much to the envy and surprise of my less-enterprising companions.
There was a great scramble for the tea and toast; but uniting forces with a distinguished literary man whose acquaintance I had been fortunate enough to make on board the the steamer, we managed to get places at one of the tables, and achieved our breakfasts in tolerable comfort. We were still eight miles from Eglington, however, and a lodging was the next matter of moment. My friend thought he was provided for nearer the castle, and I went into the street, which I found crowded with distressed looking people, flying from door to door, with ladies on their arms and wheelbarrows of baggage at their heels, the townspeople standing at the doors and corners staring at the novel spectacle in open-mouthed wonder. Quite in a dilemma whether or not to go on to Irvine (which, being within two miles of the castle, was probably much more over-run than Ardrossan) I was standing at the corner of the street, when a Liverpool gentleman, whose kindness I must record as well as my pleasure in his society for the two or three days we were together, came up and offered me a part of a lodging he had that moment taken. The bed was what we call in America a bunk, or a kind of berth sunk into the wall, and there were two in the same garret, but the sheets were clean; and there was a large Bible on the table—the latter a warrant for civility, neatness, and honesty, which, after many years of travel, I have never found deceptive. I closed immediately with my friend; and whether it was from a smack of authorship or no, I must say I took to my garret very kindly.
It was but nine o’clock, and the day was on my hands. Just beneath the window ran a railroad, built to bring coal to the seaside, and extending to within a mile of the castle; and with some thirty or forty others, I embarked in a horse-car for Eglinton to see the preparations for the following day’s tournament. We were landed near the park gate, after an hour’s drive through a flat country blackened with coal pits; and it was with no little relief to the eye that I entered upon a smooth and gravelled avenue, leading by a mile of shaded windings to the castle. The day was heavenly; the sun-flecks lay bright as “patines of gold” on the close-shaven grass beneath the trees; and I thought that nature had consented for once to remove her eternal mist veil from Scotland, and let pleasure and sunshine have a holiday together. The sky looked hard and deep; and I had no more apprehension of rain for the morrow than I should have had under a July sun in Asia.
Crossing a bright little river (the Lugton I think it is called) whose sloping banks, as far as I could see up and down, were shaven to the rich smoothness of “velvet of three-pile,” I came in sight of the castle towers. Another bridge over a winding of the same river lay to the left, a Gothic structure of the most rich and airy mould, and from either end of this extended the enclosed passage for the procession to the lists. The castle stood high upon a mound beyond. Its round towers were half concealed by some of the finest trees I ever saw—and though less antique and of a less frowning and rude aspect than I had expected, it was a very perfect specimen of modern castellated architecture. On ascending to the lawn in front of the castle, I found that it was built less upon a mound than upon the brow of a broad plateau of table-land, turned sharply by the Lugton, close under the castle walls—a natural site of singular beauty. Two Saracenic-looking tents of the gayest colors were pitched upon the bright green lawn at a short distance, and off to the left, by several glimpses through the trees, I traced along the banks of the river the winding enclosures for the procession.
The large hall was crowded with servants; but presuming that a knight who was to do his devoir so conspicuously on the morrow would not be stirring at so early an hour, I took merely a glance of the armor upon the walls in passing, and deferring the honor of paying my respects, crossed the lawn and passed over the Lugton by a rustic foot-bridge in search of the lists. A crosspath (leading by a small temple enclosed with wire netting, once an aviary, perhaps, but now hung around in glorious profusion with game, vension, a boar’s head, and other comestibles,) brought me in two or three minutes to a hill-side overlooking the chivalric arena. It was a beautiful sight of itself without plume or armor. In the centre of a verdant plain, shut in by hills of an easy slope, wooded richly, appeared an oblong enclosure glittering at either end with a cluster of tents, striped with the gayest colors of the rainbow. Between them, on the farther side, stood three galleries, of which the centre was covered with a Gothic roof highly ornamented, the four front pillars draped with blue damask, and supporting a canopy over the throne intended for the Queen of Beauty. A strongly-built barrier extended through the lists; and heaps of lances, gay flags, and the heraldic ornaments, still to be added to the tents, lay around on the bright grass in a picture of no little richness. I was glad afterward that I had seen thus much with the advantage of an unclouded sun.