The road to Darlington is excellent, though sinuous, and we found in that bustling city little evidence of the antiquity vouched for by its twelfth century church. It is now a railway center and has been since the first passenger train in England ran over the Darlington & Stockton Railway in 1825. In going to Barnard Castle we proceeded by the way of Staindrop, though the direct road by the Tees is the best. But the route we chose passes Raby Castle, which burst on our view shortly before we reached Staindrop,—a huge gray pile, half fortress, half palace, with many square battlemented towers and crenelated turrets, all combining to fulfill the very ideal of the magnificence of feudal days.
Permission to visit the castle was easily gained from the estate agent at Staindrop. It would be hard to imagine anything more imposing than Raby Castle as we saw it on that perfect July day, its vast bulk massed against the green background of the wooded hills, and in front of it a fine lawn, with many giant elms, stretching down to the road; but does not our picture tell more than any words? We noted that few of the great private parks which we had visited were so beautifully kept or had so much to please and attract; the great trees, the lawnlike sward, the little blue lakes, the herds of tawny deer—all combined to form a setting fit for one of the proudest and best preserved of the ancient homes of England.
The castle dates from the thirteenth century. By fortunate chance it escaped the ravages of war, and having been continuously occupied—indeed, there is a legend that its hearth-fire has never died out in five hundred years—it is one of the most perfect examples of its type in England. The exterior has not been greatly altered, but inside it has been much modernized and transformed into a palatial and richly furnished residence. In the library is a collection of costly books; the gallery has many rare portraits and pictures; and scattered about the different apartments are many valuable objects of art, among these the famous marble, “The Greek Slave,” by Powers, the American sculptor.
Least altered of all is the medieval kitchen, which occupies the base of a large tower and is one of the most interesting features of the castle. Its immense size serves to impress upon one the proportions of feudal hospitality—that the lord of the castle must look above everything else to the good cheer of his guests. But there is a touch of modernism here, too, in the iron ranges which have superseded the great fireplace—perhaps thirty feet in width—of former times.
RABY CASTLE.
Raby cannot greatly boast of historic events, yet it is interesting to know that it was once the home of the younger Sir Henry Vane, who was governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1636. It was built by the Nevilles in 1370, but passed to other hands two hundred years later, when that family took part in the Catholic uprising in the north. But after all, Raby is far more interesting as a survival of the “days of roselight and romance” than would be the story of the tenure of this or that forgotten lord or earl.
Barnard Castle takes its name from the ancient fortress whose scanty ruin still looms over the town. It stands on a cliff which drops from the castle wall almost sheer to the shallow Tees beneath. One thinks first of Dickens’ association with the town and naturally enough hastens to the King’s Head, where the novelist’s room is still shown. Master Humphrey’s clock, which adorned a building just opposite the hotel, has disappeared—purchased by an American, a native told us with a shade of indignation in his voice—but the town itself is little different from the one Dickens knew. He gained here much material for “Nicholas Nickleby,” though at Bowes, high on the moor to the westward, is supposed to have been the original of Dotheboys Hall.
The King’s Head we found a comfortable, well-managed, old-time inn, an excellent headquarters for excursions to the many interesting points of the vicinity. We reached here early in the afternoon, affording us time for a fifteen-mile jaunt up the Tees Valley to the High Force—they call a waterfall the “force” in Yorkshire—the largest cataract in England, we were told. It is situated in a lovely dell, and while the flood of white water pouring over the jagged cliff into the brown boiling lake below is pretty and striking, it has nothing awe inspiring or majestic about it. True, at the time, the Tees was at lowest ebb; a long drouth had reduced it to a fourth its normal volume and of course we did not see the High Force at its best. Every spot of interest in the Kingdom has its inn and it was in the farmyard of the High Force Hotel that we left the car. On returning from the falls, a deflated tire prolonged our stay, encouraging acquaintance with the hotel people. The landlord, who out of the hotel season was apparently a farmer, became friendly and communicative, especially desiring us to deliver a message to his son, whom he seemed to think we might easily locate in America. Then he led us into the hotel, where a framed page from his visitors’ book showed that the Princess Ena—now Queen Victoria of Spain—and members of her suite had been guests at the High Force Hotel. The two great events in the old man’s life seemed to be the success that he considered his son was making in the States and the royal visit to his inn. I do not know which gave him the greater satisfaction.