Famous Persons and Places

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

On entering the castle hall, a lofty room hung round with arms, trophies of the chase, ancient shields, and armor of every description, I found myself in a crowd of a very merry and rather a motley character—knights half armed, esquires in buff, palmers, halberdiers, archers, and servants in modern livery, here and there a lady, and here and there a spectator like myself, and in a corner by one of the Gothic windows—what think you?—a minstrel?—a gray-haired harper?—a jester? Guess again—a reporter for the Times! With a “walking dictionary” at his elbow, in the person of the fat butler of the castle, he was inquiring out the various characters in the crowd, and the rapidity of his stenographic jottings-down (with their lucid apparition in print two days after in London) would in the times represented by the costumes about him, have burnt him at the stake for a wizard with the consent of every knight in Christendom.

I was received by the knight-marshal of the lists, who did the honors of hospitality for Lord Eglington during his preparation for the “passage of arms;” and finding an old friend under the gray beard and scallop shell of a venerable palmer, whose sandal and bare toes I chanced to stumble over, we passed in together to the large dining room of the castle. “Lunch” was on the long table, and some two hundred of the earl’s out-lodging guests were busy at knife and fork, while here and there were visible some of those anachronisms which, to me, made the zest of the tournament—pilgrims eating Périgord pies, esquires dressing after the manner of the thirteenth century diving most scientifically into the richer veins of pâtés de foie-gras, dames in ruff and farthingale discussing blue blanc-mange, and a knight with an over-night headache calling out for a cup of tea!

On returning to the hall of the castle, which was the principal place of assemblage, I saw with no little regret that ladies were coming from their carriages under umbrellas. The fair archers tripped in doors from their crowded tent, the knight of the dragon, who had been out to look after his charger, was being wiped dry by a friendly pocket-handkerchief, and all countenances had fallen with the barometer. It was time for the procession to start, however, and the knights appeared, one by one, armed cap-à-pie, all save the helmet, till at last the hall was crowded with steel-clad and chivalric forms; and they waited only for the advent of the Queen of Beauty. After admiring not a little the manly bearing and powerful “thewes and sinews” displayed by the array of modern English nobility in the trying costumes and harness of olden time, I stepped out upon the lawn with some curiosity to see how so much heavy metal was to be got into a demipique saddle. After one or two ineffectual attempts, foiled partly by the restlessness of his horse, the first knight called ingloriously for a chair. Another scrambled over with great difficulty; and I fancy, though Lord Waterford and Lord Eglinton, and one other whom I noticed, mounted very gallantly and gracefully, the getting to saddle was possibly the most difficult feat of the day. The ancient achievement of leaping on the steed’s back from the ground in complete armor would certainly have broken the spine of any horse present, and was probably never done but in story. Once in the saddle, however, English horsemanship told well; and one of the finest sights of the day I thought was the breaking away of a powerful horse from the grooms, before his rider had gathered up his reins, and a career at furious speed through the open park, during which the steel encumbered horseman rode as safely as a fox-hunter, and subdued the affrighted animal, and brought him back in a style worthy of a wreath from the Queen of Beauty.

Driven in by the rain, I was standing at the upper side of the hall, when a movement in the crowd and an unusual “making-way” announced the coming of the “cynosure of all eyes.” She entered from the interior of the castle with her train held up by two beautiful pages of ten or twelve years of age, and attended by two fair and very young maids of honor. Her jacket of ermine, her drapery of violet and blue velvet, the collars of superb jewels which embraced her throat and bosom, and her sparkling crown, were on her (what they seldom are, but should be only) mere accessaries to her own predominating and radiant beauty. Lady Seymour’s features are as nearly faultless as is consistent with expression; her figure and face are rounded to the complete fulness of the mould for a Juno; her walk is queenly, and peculiarly unstudied and graceful, yet (I could not but think then and since) she was not well chosen for the Queen of a Tournament. The character of her beauty, uncommon and perfect as it is, is that of delicacy and loveliness—the lily rather than the rose—the modest pearl, not the imperial diamond. The eyes to flash over a crowd at a tournament, to be admired from a distance, to beam down upon a knight kneeling for a public award of honor, should be full of command, dark, lustrous, and fiery. Hers are of the sweetest and most tranquil blue that ever reflected the serene heaven of a happy hearth—eyes to love, not wonder at, to adore and rely upon, not admire and tremble for. At the distance at which most of the spectators of the tournament saw Lady Seymour, Fanny Kemble’s stormy orbs would have shown much finer, and the forced and imperative action of a stage-taught head and figure would have been more applauded than the quiet, nameless, and indescribable grace lost to all but those immediately round her. I had seen the Queen of Beauty in a small society, dressed in simple white, without an ornament, when she was far more becomingly dressed and more beautiful than here, and I have never seen, since, the engravings and prints of Lady Seymour which fill every window in the London shops, without feeling that it was a profanation of a style of loveliness that would be—

——“prodigal enough

If it unveiled its beauty to the moon.”

The day wore on, and the knight-marshal of the lists, (Sir Charles Lamb, the stepfather of Lord Eglinton, by far the most knightly looking person at the tournament,) appeared in his rich surcoat and embossed armor, and with a despairing look at the increasing torrents of rain, gave the order to get to horse. At the first blast of the trumpet, the thick-leaved trees around the castle gave out each a dozen or two of gay-colored horsemen who had stood almost unseen under the low hanging branches—mounted musicians in silk and gay trappings, mounted men-at-arms in demi-suits of armor, deputy marshals and halberdiers; and around the western tower, where their caparisons had been arranged and their horse armor carefully looked to, rode the glittering and noble company of knights, Lord Eglinton in his armor of inlaid gold, and Lord Alford, with his athletic frame and very handsome features, conspicuous above all. The rain, meantime, spared neither the rich tabard of the pursuivant, nor the embroidered saddle cloths of the queen’s impatient palfrey: and after a half-dozen of dripping detachments had formed and led on, as the head of the procession, the lady archers—who were to go on foot—were called by the marshal with a smile and a glance upward which might have been construed into a tacit advice to stay in doors. Gracefully and majestically, however, with quiver at her back, and bow in hand, the tall and fair archer of whose uncommon beauty I have already spoken, stepped from the castle door; and, regardless of the rain which fell in drops as large as pearls on her unprotected forehead and snowy shoulders, she took her place in the procession with her silken-booted troop picking their way very gingerly over the pools behind her. Slight as the circumstance may seem, there was in the manner of the lady, and her calm disregard of self in the cause she had undertaken, which would leave me in no doubt where to look for a heroine were the days of Wallace, (whose compatriot she is) to come over again. The knight-marshal put spurs to his horse, and re-ordered the little troop to the castle; and regretting that I had not the honor of the lady’s acquaintance for my authority, I performed my only chivalric achievement for the day, the sending a halberdier whom I had chanced to remember as the servant of an old friend, on a crusade into the castle for a lady’s maid and a pair of dry stockings! Whether they were found, and the fair archer wore them, or where she and her silk-shod company have the tournament consumption, rheumatism, or cough, at this hour, I am sorry I cannot say.

The judge of peace, Lord Saltoun, with his wand, and retainers on foot bearing heavy battle axes, was one of the best figures in the procession; though, as he was slightly gray, and his ruby velvet cap and saturated ruff were poor substitutes for a warm cravat and hat-brim, I could not but associate his fine horsemanship with a sore throat, and his retainers and their battle axes with relays of nurses and hot flannels. The flower of the tournament, in the representing and keeping up of the assumed character, however, was its king, Lord Londonderry. He, too, is a man, I should think, on the shady side of fifty, but of just the high preservation and embonpoint necessary for a royal presence. His robe of red velvet and ermine swept the ground as he sat in his saddle; and he managed to keep its immense folds free of his horse’s legs, and yet to preserve its flow in his prancing motion, with a grace and ease, I must say, which seemed truly imperial.—His palfrey was like a fiery Arabian, all action, nerve, and fire; and every step was a rearing prance, which, but for the tranquil self-possession and easy control of the king, would have given the spectators some fears for his royal safety. Lord Londonderry’s whole performance of his part was without a fault, and chiefly admirable, I thought, from his sustaining it with that unconsciousness and entire freedom from mauvaise honte which the English seldom can command in new or conspicuous situations.

The Queen of Beauty was called, and her horse led to the door; but the water ran from the blue saddle cloth and housings like rain from a roof, and the storm seemed to have increased with the sound of her name. She came to the door, and gave a deprecating look upward which would have mollified any thing but a Scotch sky, and, by command of the knight-marshal, retired again to wait for a less chivalric but drier conveyance. Her example was followed by the other ladies, and their horses were led riderless in the procession.

The knights were but half called when I accepted a friend’s kind offer of a seat in his carriage to the lists. The entire park, as we drove along, was one vast expanse of umbrellas; and it looked from the carriage window, like an army of animated and gigantic mushrooms, shouldering each other in a march. I had no idea till then of the immense crowd the occasion had called together. The circuitous route railed in for the procession was lined with spectators six or seven deep, on either side, throughout its whole extent of a mile; the most distant recesses of the park were crowded with men, horses, and vehicles, all pressing onward; and as we approached the lists, we found the multitude full a quarter of a mile deep, standing on all the eminences which looked down upon the enclosure, as closely serried almost as the pit of the opera, and all eyes bent in one direction, anxiously watching the guarded entrance. I heard the number of persons present variously estimated during the day, the estimates ranging from fifty to seventy-five thousand, but I should think the latter was nearer the mark.