“Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green.”
The Abbey of Egliston was founded about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and was dedicated to St. Mary and St. John the Baptist. Its inhabitants were the Premonstratensian or White Canons, whose alleged object was to ensure a pure and contemplative life, and who, in coming here, certainly removed themselves from the reach of worldly temptations, and secured plenteous leisure for meditative calm. They must have seemed like ghosts amid these woodlands, their dress being a long white cassock, a rochet, a white cloak, and a white cap. They are supposed to have been the schoolmasters of John Wycliffe, who was born some four or five miles away, and who would find only one other place of education within his reach. In Scott’s time some portions of the religious house attached to the Abbey were still habitable, and until quite recently a hermit dwelt in one of the chambers; but the progress of decay has, during the last five or six years, been exceedingly rapid, and before long, probably, this interesting ruin will be no more than a heap of grey stones. At my own recent visit parts of the walls were being removed lest they should fall in, and the materials were being employed in some farm buildings near. There were signs of impending collapse elsewhere, and only such restorations as would be a disfigurement could now save what remains of the Abbey for future generations.
ON THE GRETA AT ROKEBY.
About two miles from Egliston, still on the Yorkshire side, is the fine domain of Rokeby Park, along one side of which the Greta flows to the Tees. Greta Bridge is known to all lovers of literature through the mention of it which is made by Dickens. It was there that Nicholas Nickleby descended from the coach which had brought him thus far on his way towards Dotheboys Hall. “About six o’clock that night he and Mr. Squeers and the little boys and their united luggage, were all put down together at the George and New Inn, Greta Bridge.” Dickens insists that whilst he was not exaggerating the cruelties practised on boys at schools resembling Dotheboys Hall, Mr. Squeers was the representative of a class and not of an individual. This is a view of the facts that the people around Greta Bridge cannot be induced to accept, and there is no doubt that the novelist really did—without intending it, probably—very serious injury to one who is held by those who knew him to have been a very estimable man.
JUNCTION OF THE GRETA AND THE TEES.
There is now no one living to whom a relation of the facts can give pain, and so they shall be stated briefly here. The school which has been generally accepted as the subject of the great novelist’s savage exposure was situated at Bowes, four miles from Greta Bridge. Bowes is no more than one straggling street, stretching away towards the desolation of Stanmore, and the school which was identified with Dotheboys Hall is the last house in the village, which lies along the Roman road of the Watling Street. The place was kept by a Mr. Shaw, who is said to have died of a broken heart. He had “only one eye,” as Dickens remarked of his grim tyrant; he had also a wife and a daughter who assisted him in the management of the school. So far he “realises the poster,” as an actor would say. There is no doubt, either, that his school was visited, and that he was seen by Dickens and by Hablot Browne. The one eye was in itself, unfortunately, a sufficient means of identification, there being no other one-eyed schoolmaster within any known distance of Greta Bridge. Dickens may have meant no more than to make use of this personal characteristic, combined with characteristics derived from other sources, as in the almost equally unlucky Miss Moucher case; but he had so associated a one-eyed schoolmaster with a place not far from Greta Bridge that no amount of explanation could remove the impression that Mr. Squeers was intended for Mr. Shaw, or could repair what was unquestionably an injury to one who stood high in the good opinion of his neighbours. All the members of the Squeers group of characters, indeed, were identified with persons then living in or around Bowes. John Browdie, for instance, is said to have been a farmer named Brown, and of the Browns there are still several families among the substantial farmers of the district. Of the good-feeling of which Mr. Shaw was the subject there are evidences still remaining in the resentment which is felt by the older inhabitants of Bowes when any inquiry is made as to Dotheboys Hall. “You’d better gan and inquire somewheere else,” one of these remarked when questioned on the subject. “Yow folks come here asking all manner of questions, and then you gan and write bowks about us.” The name of Dickens is absolutely detested by some of those who know the circumstances. As to the lady who was identified with Fanny Squeers, and who died but recently, she is declared to have been distinguished by great kindness of heart, “the sort of woman a dog or a child leaps to instinctively.” In fact, however true it may have been that “Mr. Squeers and his school are faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality,” it seems to be placed beyond question by common testimony that this reality did not exist at the village of Bowes, though nothing whatever can now remove the impression that Dickens intended to represent the school of Mr. Shaw.
