“In doubt I lived, in doubt I die,
Yet stand prepared the vast abyss to try,
And undismayed expect eternity.”
A grim old tale that fits well with the lonely fortress, standing in unguarded ruin in the mysterious forest about it.
RUINS OF CHARTLEY CASTLE, DERBYSHIRE.
But the day was waning and we hastened on to Uttoxeter, a town to which Nathaniel Hawthorne made a pilgrimage nearly half a century ago, attracted by the fact that it is the birthplace of Dr. Samuel Johnson. He regretted that there was no memorial of the great author in his native town, but this has since been supplied. An ugly fountain has been erected on the traditional spot where Johnson did penance, as he described in a letter to Miss Seward on his return from Uttoxeter:
“Fifty years ago, madam, on the day, I committed a breach of filial piety which has ever since lain heavy on my mind, and has not till this day been expiated. My father ... had long been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market and opening a stall of his books during that day. Confined to his bed by indisposition, he requested me, this time fifty years, to visit the market in his place. But, madam, my pride prevented me from doing my duty and I gave my father a refusal. To do away the sin of disobedience, this day I went in a post-chaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather.”
The open road to Derby is broad, straight, smooth and level—what a combination of excellences for the motorist!—and the car skims joyously along. There are many fine estates on either hand with wide forest-dotted parks and imposing gateways. Derby is a large, rather unattractive town and we do not care to linger. Mansfield appeals more strongly to us, for Mansfield is the center of the Byron country. The road is not a pleasing one, passing through towns crowded with workingmen’s cottages and climbing steep, stony hills. At dusk we come into Mansfield and find it a larger town than we had fancied—a rather modern city built around an ancient center, in the very heart of which stands the old many-gabled Swan Inn.