Famous Persons and Places

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

We presented our tickets at the private door, in the rear of the principal gallery, and found ourselves introduced to a very dry place among the supports and rafters of the privileged structure. The look-out was excellent in front, and here I proposed to remain, declining the wet honor of a place above stairs. The gentleman-usher, however, was very urgent for our promotion; but as we found him afterward chatting very familiarly with a party who occupied the seats we had selected, we were compelled to relinquish the flattering unction that he was actuated by an intuitive sense of our deservings. On ascending to the covered gallery, I saw, to my surprise, that some of the best seats in front were left vacant, and here and there, along the different tiers of benches, ladies were crowding excessively close together, while before or behind them there seemed plenty of unoccupied room. A second look showed me small streams of water coming through the roof, and I found that a dry seat was totally unattainable. The gallery held about a thousand persons (the number Lord Eglinton had invited to the banquet and ball,) and the greater part of these were ladies, most of them in fancy dresses, and the remainder in very slight demi-toilette—everybody having dressed apparently with a full reliance on the morning’s promise of fair weather. Less fortunate than the multitude outside the Earl’s guests seemed not to have numbered umbrellas among the necessities of a tournament; and the demand for this despised invention was sufficient (if merit was ever rewarded) to elevate it for ever after to a rank among chivalric appointments. Substitutes and imitations of it were made of swords and cashmeres; and the lenders of veritable umbrellas received smiles which should induce them, one would think, to carry half-a-dozen to all future tournaments in Scotland. It was pitiable to see the wreck going on among the perishable elegancies of Victorine and Herbault—chip hats of the most faultless tournure collapsing with the wet; starched ruffs quite flat; dresses passing helplessly from “Lesbia’s” style to “Nora Creina’s;” shawls, tied by anxious mammas over chapeau and coiffure, crushing pitilessly the delicate fabric of months of invention; and, more lamentable still, the fair brows and shoulders of many a lovely woman proving with rainbow clearness that the colors of the silk or velvet composing her head-dress were by no means ‘fast.’ The Irvine archers, by the way, who as the Queen’s body guard, were compelled to expose themselves to the rain on the grand staircase, resembled a troop of New Zealanders with their faces tattooed of a delicate green; though, as their Lincoln bonnets were all made of the same faithless velvet, they were fortunately streaked so nearly alike as to preserve their uniform.

After a brief consultation between the rheumatisms in my different limbs, it was decided (since it was vain to hope for shelter for the entire person) that my cloth cap would be the best recipient for the inevitable wet; and selecting the best of the vacated places, I seated myself so as to receive one of the small streams as nearly as possible on my organ of firmness. Here I was undisturbed, except once that I was asked, (my seat supposed to be a dry one) to give place for a lady newly arrived, who, receiving my appropriated rivulet in her neck, immediately restored it to me with many acknowledgments, and passed on. In point of position, my seat, which was very near the pavilion of the Queen of Beauty, was one of the best at the tournament; and diverting my aqueduct, by a little management, over my left shoulder, I contrived to be more comfortable, probably, than most of my shivering and melancholy neighbors.

A great agitation in the crowd, and a dampish sound of coming trumpets announced the approach of the procession. As it came in sight, and wound along the curved passage to the lists, its long and serpentine line of helmets and glittering armor, gonfalons, spear-points, and plumes, just surging above the moving sea of umbrellas, had the effect of some gorgeous and bright-scaled dragon swimming in troubled waters. The leaders of the long cavalcade pranced into the arena at last, and a tremendous shout from the multitude announced their admiration of the spectacle. On they came toward the canopy of the Queen of Beauty, men-at-arms, trumpeters, heralds, and halberdiers, and soon after them the king of the tournament, with his long scarlet robe flying to the tempest, and his rearing palfrey straining every nerve to show his pride and beauty. The first shout from the principal gallery was given in approbation of this display of horsemanship, as Lord Londonderry rode past; and considering the damp enthusiasm which prompted it, it should have been considered rather flattering. Lord Eglinton came on presently, distinguished above all others no less by the magnificence of his appointments than by the ease and dignity with which he rode, and his knightly bearing and stature. His golden armor sat on him as if he had been used to wear it; and he managed his beautiful charger, and bowed in reply to the reiterated shouts of the multitude and his friends, with a grace and chivalric courtesy which drew murmurs of applause from the spectators long after the cheering had subsided.

The jester rode into the lists upon a gray steed, shaking his bells over his head, and dressed in an odd costume of blue and yellow, with a broad flapped hat, asses’ ears, &c. His character was not at first understood by the crowd, but he soon began to excite merriment by his jokes, and no little admiration by his capital riding. He was a professional person, I think it was said, from Astley’s, but as he spoke with a most excellent Scotch “burr,” he easily passed for an indigenous “fool.” He rode from side to side of the lists during the whole of the tournament, borrowing umbrellas, quizzing the knights, &c.

One of the most striking features of the procession was the turn-out of the knight of the Gael, Lord Glenlyon, with seventy of his clansmen at his back in plaid and philibeg, and a finer exhibition of calves (without a joke) could scarce be desired. They followed their chieftain on foot, and when the procession separated, took up their places in a line along the palisade serving as a guard to the lists.

After the procession had twice made the circuit of the enclosure, doing obeisance to the Queen of Beauty, the jester had possession of the field while the knights retired to don their helmets, (hitherto carried by their esquires,) and to await the challenge to combat. All eyes were now bent upon the gorgeous clusters of tents at either extremity of the oblong area; and in a very few minutes the herald’s trumpet sounded, and the Knight of the Swan rode forth, having sent his defiance to the Knight of the Golden Lion. At another blast of the trumpet they set their lances in rest, selected opposite sides of the long fence or barrier running lengthwise through the lists, and rode furiously past each other, the fence of course preventing any contact except that of their lances. This part of the tournament (the essential part, one would think) was, from the necessity of the case, the least satisfactory of all. The knights, though they rode admirably, were so oppressed by the weight of their armor, and so embarrassed in their motions by the ill-adjusted joints, that they were like men of wood, unable apparently even to raise the lance from the thigh on which it rested. I presume no one of them either saw where he should strike his opponent, or had any power of directing the weapon. As they rode close to the fence, however, and a ten-foot pole sawed nearly off in two or three places was laid crosswise on the legs of each, it would be odd if they did not come in contact; and the least shock of course splintered the lance—in other words, finished what was begun by the carpenter’s saw. The great difficulty was to ride at all under such a tremendous weight, and manage a horse of spirit, totally unused both to the weight and the clatter of his own and his rider’s armor. I am sure that Lord Eglinton’s horse, for one, would have bothered Ivanhoe himself to “bring to the scratch;” and Lord Waterford’s was the only one that, for all the fright he showed, might have been selected (as they all should have been) for the virtue of having peddled tin-ware. These two knights, by the way, ran the best career, Lord Eglinton, malgré his bolter, coming off the victor.

The rain, meantime, had increased to a deluge, the Queen of Beauty sat shivering under an umbrella, the jester’s long ears were water-logged, and lay flat on his shoulders, and everybody in my neighborhood had expressed a wish for a dry seat and a glass of sherry. The word “banquet” occurred frequently right and left; hopes for “mulled wine or something hot before dinner” stole from the lips of a mamma on the seat behind; and there seemed to be but one chance for the salvation of health predominant in the minds of all—and that was drinking rather more freely than usual at the approaching banquet. Judge what must have been the astonishment, vexation, dread, and despair, of the one thousand wet, shivering, and hungry candidates for the feast, when Lord Eglinton rode up to the gallery unhelmeted, and delivered himself as follows:—

“Ladies and gentlemen, I had hoped to have given you all a good dinner; but to my extreme mortification and regret, I am just informed that the rain has penetrated the banqueting pavilions, and that, in consequence, I shall only be able to entertain so many of my friends as can meet around my ordinary table.”

About as uncomfortable a piece of intelligence to some nine hundred and sixty of his audience, as they could have received, short of a sentence for their immediate execution.

To comprehend fully the disastrous extent of the disappointment in the principal gallery, it must be taken into consideration that the domicils, fixed or temporary, of the rejected sufferers, were from five to twenty miles distant—a long ride at best, if begun on the point of famishing, and in very thin and well-saturated fancy dresses. Grievance the first, however, was nothing to grievance the second; viz. that from the tremendous run upon post-horses, and horses of all descriptions, during the three or four previous days, the getting to the tournament was the utmost that many parties could achieve. The nearest baiting-place was several miles off; and in compassion to the poor beasts, and with the weather promising fair on their arrival, most persons had consented to take their chance for the quarter of a mile from the lists to the castle, and had dismissed their carriages with orders to return at the close of the banquet and ball—daylight the next morning! The castle, every body knew, was crammed, from “donjon-keep to turret-top,” with the relatives and friends of the noble earl, and his private table could accommodate no more than these. To get home was the inevitable alternative.