Part 20

FitzGerald, devoted to Crabbe, was apparently not less so to this small break in the wide, low, heathery bareness that brings the sweet Suffolk commons—rare purple and gold when I arrived—nearly to the edge of the sea. We don’t, none the less, always gather the particular impression we bravely go forth to seek. We doubtless gather another indeed that will serve as well any such turn as here may wait for it; so that if it was somehow not easy to work FitzGerald into the small gentility of the sea-front, the little “marina,” as of a fourth-rate watering-place, that has elbowed away, evidently in recent years, the old handful of character, one could at least, to make up for that, fall back either on the general sense of the happy trickery of genius or on the special beauty of the mixture, in the singer of Omar Khayyam, that, giving him such a place for a setting, could yet feed his fancy so full. Crabbe, at Aldeburgh, for that matter, is perhaps even more wonderful—in the light, I mean, of what is left of the place by one’s conjuring away the little modern vulgar accumulation. What is left is just the stony beach and the big gales and the cluster of fishermen’s huts and the small, wide, short street of decent, homely, shoppy houses. These are the private emotions of the historic sense—glimpses in which we recover for an hour, or rather perhaps, with an intensity, but for the glimmer of a minute, the conditions that, grimly enough, could engender masterpieces, or at all events classics. What a mere pinch of manners and customs in the midst of winds and waves! Yet if it was a feature of these to return a member to Parliament, what wonder that, up to the Reform Bill, dead Dunwich should have returned two?

The glimpses I speak of are, in all directions, the constant company of the afternoon “spin.” Beginning, modestly enough, at Dunwich itself, they end, for intensity, as far inland as you have time to go; far enough—this is the great point—to have shown you, in their quiet vividness of type, a placid series of the things into which you may most read the old story of what is softest in the English complexity. I scarce know what murmur has been for weeks in my ears if it be not that of the constant word that, as a recall of the story, may serve to be put under the vignette. And yet this word is in its last form nothing more eloquent than the mere admonition to be pleased. Well, so you are, even as I was yesterday at Wesselton with the characteristic “value” that expressed itself, however shyly, in the dear old red inn at which I halted for the queer restorative—I thus discharge my debt to it—of a bottle of lemonade with a “dash.” The dash was only of beer, but the refreshment was immense. So even was that of the sight of a dim, draped, sphinx-like figure that loomed, at the end of a polished passage, out of a little dusky back parlour which had a windowful of the choked light of a small green garden—a figure proving to be an old woman desirous to dilate on all the years she had sat there with rheumatism “most cruel.” So, inveterately—and in these cases without the after-taste—is that of the pretty little park gates you pass to skirt the walls and hedges beyond which the great affair, the greatest of all, the deep, still home, sits in the midst of its acres and strikes you all the more for being, precisely, so unrenowned. It is the charming repeated lesson that the amenity of the famous seats in this country is nothing to that of the lost and buried ones. This impression in particular may bring you round again harmoniously to Dunwich and above all perhaps to where the Priory, laid, as I may say, flat on its back, rests its large outline on what was once the high ground, with the inevitable “big” house, beyond and a little above, folded, for privacy, in a neat, impenetrable wood. Here as elsewhere the cluster offers without complication just the signs of the type. At the base of the hill are the dozen cottages to which the village has been reduced, and one of which contains, to my hearing, though by no means, alas, to his own, a very ancient man who will count for you on his fingers, till they fail, the grand acres that, in his day, he has seen go the way of the rest. He likes to figure that he ploughed of old where only the sea ploughs now. Dunwich, however, will still last his time; and that of as many others as—to repeat my hint—may yet be drawn here (though not, I hope, on the instance of these prudent lines) to judge for themselves into how many meanings a few elements can compose. One never need be bored, after all, when “composition” really rules. It rules in the way the brown hamlet really disposes itself, and the grey square tower of the church, in just the right relation, peeps out of trees that remind me exactly of those which, in the frontispieces of Birket Foster, offered to my childish credulity the very essence of England. Let me put it directly for old Suffolk that this credulity finds itself here, at the end of time, more than ever justified. Let me put it perhaps also that the very essence of England has a way of presenting itself with completeness in almost any fortuitous combination of rural objects at all, so that, wherever you may be, you get, reduced and simplified, the whole of the scale. The big house and its woods are always at hand; with a “party” always, in the intervals of shooting, to bring down to the rustic sports that keep up the tradition of the village green. The russet, low-browed inn, the “ale-house” of Shakespeare, the immemorial fountain of beer, looking over that expanse, swings, with an old-time story-telling creak, the sign of the Marquis of Carabas. The pretty girls, within sight of it, alight from the Marquis’s wagonette; the young men with the one eye-glass and the new hat sit beside them on the benches supplied for their sole accommodation, and thanks to which the meditator on manners has, a little, the image, gathered from faded fictions by female hands, of the company brought over, for the triumph of the heroine, to the hunt or the county ball. And it is always Hodge and Gaffer that, at bottom, _font les frais_—always the mild children of the glebe on whom, in the last resort, the complex superstructure rests.

The discovery, in the twilight of time, of the merits, as a building-site, of Hodge’s broad bent back remains surely one of the most sagacious strokes of the race from which the squire and the parson were to be evolved. He is there in force—at the rustic sports—in force or in feebleness, with Mrs. Hodge and the Miss Hodges, who participate with a silent glee in the chase, over fields where their shadows are long, of a pig with a greased tail. He pulls his forelock in the tent in which, after the pig is caught, the rewards of valour are dispensed by the squire’s lady, and if he be in favour for respectability and not behind with rent, he penetrates later to the lawn within the wood, where he is awaited by a band of music and a collation of beer, buns, and tobacco.

I mention these things as some of the light notes, but the picture is never too empty for a stronger one not to sound. The strongest, at Dunwich, is indeed one that, without in the least falsifying the scale, counts immensely for filling in. The palm in the rustic sports is for the bluejackets; as, in England, of course, nothing is easier than for the village green to alternate with the element that Britannia still more admirably rules. I had often dreamed that the ideal refuge for a man of letters was a cottage so placed on the coast as to be circled, as it were, by the protecting arm of the Admiralty. I remember to have heard it said in the old country—in New York and Boston—that the best place to live in is next to an engine-house, and it is on this analogy that, at Dunwich, I have looked for ministering peace in near neighbourhood to one of those stations of the coast-guard that, round all the edge of England, at short intervals, on rock and sand and heath, make, with shining whitewash and tar, clean as a great state is at least theoretically clean, each its own little image of the reach of the empire. It is in each case an image that, for one reason and another, you respond to with a sort of thrill; and the thing becomes as concrete as you can wish on your discovering in the three or four individual members of the simple staff of the establishment all sorts of educated decency and many sorts of beguilement to intercourse. Prime among the latter, in truth, is the great yarn-spinning gift. It differs from man to man, but here and there it glows like a cut ruby. May the last darkness close before I cease to care for sea-folk!—though this, I hasten to add, is not the private predilection at which, in these incoherent notes, I proposed most to glance. Let me have mentioned it merely as a sign that the fault is all my own if, this summer, the arm of the Admiralty has not, in the full measure of my theory, represented the protection under which the long literary morning may know—abyss of delusion!—nothing but itself.

DUNWICH, August 31, 1879.

INDEX

Abergavenny, 247.

“Adam Bede,” locality of, 216, 217.

Aldeburgh, birthplace of Crabbe, 323, 324.

Apsley House, 20, 21.

Arnold, Matthew, 24; “The Sick King in Bokhara,” quoted, 29.

Avon River, 90.

Baillie, Joanna, 44.

Banbury, 218.

Becket, Thomas A’, his assassination at Canterbury, 149, 150; his shrine, 150, 151.

Belgravia, 15, 16; in dog-days, 154.

Blackheath, the Common, 168.

Black Prince, the (_see_ Edward Plantagenet).

Blunderstone, 318, 319.

Bonchurch, 253, 254.

Brighton, 278; gaiety of, 279.

Broughton Castle, 219, 220.

Browning, Robert, 51-59.

Buckingham Palace, 21, 23.

Bury St. Edmunds, 266; ruined abbey at, 267.

Cambridge University, famous chapel of King’s College, 264, 265.

Cambridgeshire, Newmarket Heath, 265, 266; shooting-boxes in, 266; Bury St. Edmunds, 266, 267.

Canterbury, 142; the cathedral, 147-152; King’s School, 148, 149; where Becket was killed, 149, 150; tomb of the Black Prince, 150; Lady Chapel, 151; the pilgrimage to, 151.

Charing Cross, 7; railway station, 42.

Chatsworth, 87.

Chaucer, his story-telling cavalcade, 151.

Chelsea, 42, 43.

Chester, ancient wall, 62-67; cathedral, 66, 72-76; the Rows, 67-72; Anglican service, 73, 74; Canon Kingsley, 73-75.

Chichester, the cathedral, 257, 260; an old market cross, 259.

Clapham, a classic community, 178, 179.

Climate, richness of London, 17.

Compton Wyniates, 220.

Coventry, charity foundations, 210, 212, 213.

Crabbe, George, birthplace of, 323, 324.

“Daniel Deronda,” recalled in Warwickshire, 202, 203.

“David Copperfield,” 290; retrospective pictures in, 65; sleeps under a cannon at Chatham, 145; his birthplace visited, 317, 318; home of the Peggottys, 319.

“Denis Duval,” locality of, 288-315.

Devonshire, beauties of, 93, 94.

Dickens, Charles, retrospective pictures in “David Copperfield,” 65; his Gadshill house, 143; recalled by talkative shopkeeper, 144; background of “Oliver Twist” identified, 274; birthplace of David visited, 317, 318.

Doré, Gustave, his drawing suggested by Devon seacoast, 104.

Dover, 142.

Du Maurier, George, 19.

Dunwich, a desolate seaport, 320-322; ruins of, 322, 323; FitzGerald’s tribute to quaintness of, 323; the Priory, 326; inroads of the sea, 326, 327; rural merry-making, 327, 328.

Edward Plantagenet, his tomb, 150; “Fleur-de-Lis” inn named in honour of, 151; in the sea-fight off Winchelsea, 310.

Edward III, fights Spaniards off Winchelsea, 310, 311.

Eliot, George, characters in “Daniel Deronda” suggested, 202, 203; locality of “Adam Bede” and “Middlemarch,” 216, 217.

England, its social discipline, 121, 122; universal church-going, 123-125; social usages, 125, 126; Easter exodus from London, 126; holiday spirit, 128, 129; Passion Week, 130-138; its people handsome, 136-138; its poverty depressing, 137; proletariat funeral, 138-141; no public entertainments, 157-159; prestige of, 170-173; the Egyptian occupation, 172, 173; Derby Day, 175-188; the country the basis of society, 176; a rural Sunday, 204, 205; types of English beauty, 206-208; rural scenery, 225-230; an English New Year, 269-275; watering-places in winter, 277-286.

Epsom, Derby Day, 175-188.

Exeter, the cathedral, 95-97.

FitzGerald, Edward, tribute to Suffolk in his “Letters,” 323; fond of Crabbe’s birthplace, 323, 324.

Fletcher, John, born at Rye, 309.

Fog, London, 32, 33, 35, 131, 272.

Foster, Birket, 327.

Gladstone, William Ewart, speech on Egyptian occupation, 173.

Glastonbury, 115, 116; ruined abbey of, 115-117.

Green Park, 21-23.

Greenwich, 43; dining at, 161-163; river excursion to, 164, 165; observatory and park, 166.

Grosvenor Place, 21.

Haddon Hall, 83-87.

Hampstead, 43, 44.

Hastings, 277; a little London, 278, 279; inns and hotels, 280-284; a quiet retreat, 285, 286.

“Henry Esmond,” lines from, recalled, 5, 6; its Kensington setting, 44.

Hyde Park, 18; the Row, 19, 20; the Corner, 20-23, 46; in dog-days, 153.

Ilfracombe, 97-101.

“Ingoldsby Legends,” an incident suggests, 5.

Isle of Wight, detestable railways of, 251; Ryde, 251; Ventnor, 251-253; Bonchurch, 253, 254; Shanklin, 254.

Johnson, Samuel, first glimpse of Temple Bar, 79; birthplace, 78-83.

Jones, Inigo, 167.

Kenilworth, 198-201.

Kensington Gardens, enchanting vista in, 18.

Kingsley, Charles, discourse at Chester, 74, 75.

Lichfield, Dr. Johnson’s birth-house, 78; cathedral, 79-83; Haddon Hall, 83-87; Chatsworth, 87.

Liverpool, first impression of, 2, 3, 5; journey from, to London, 3-5.

London, first impressions of, 1, 4, 7, 8; St. Paul’s, 4; Morley’s Hotel, 4, 5; Temple Bar, 5; Ludgate Hill, 6; Strand, 6, 7; Charing Cross, 7; Piccadilly, 7, 8; its immensity an advantage, 8-13; creeds and coteries, 11; home of human race, 13; headquarters of English speech, 14; absence of style, 15; accident of style replaces intention, 16, 17; parks, 16-25; rural impressions, 18, 19; rustic walk from Notting Hill to Whitehall, 18-25; Hyde Park, 19-22; Hyde Park Corner, 20; Grosvenor Place 21; Apsley House, 20, 21; Green Park, 21-23; Buckingham Palace, 21-23; levelling tendencies of London life, 25-28; beautiful women the great admiration, 28; liberal hospitality, 29; cultivation of the abrupt, 29, 30; lights and shades, 31-36, 134; holidays, 34; railway stations, 37, 38; bookstalls, 38, 39; Thames River, 40-43; Hampstead, 43, 44; Kensington, 44; the Season, 45-51; Easter exodus, 126-128; Passion Week, 130-138; architectural ugliness, 133, 134; people of the slums, 137; proletariat funeral, 138-141; the Tower, 142, 143; dog-days in, 153-161; no “public fund” of amusement, 157-159; tramps, 160, 161; convivial gatherings, 162-164.

Ludgate Hill, 6.

Ludlow, a charming old town, 240; provincial society at, 241-243.

Lynton, 102-104.

Mayfair, mind of, residences of, 15, 16.

“Middlemarch,” locality of, 216, 217.

“Mill on the Floss,” retrospective pictures in, 65.

Milton, John, 14.

Monmouthshire, April in, 245, 246; the Skirrid, 246, 247; Abergavenny, 247; a mediæval church, 247-249; feudal manors, 249, 250.

Newmarket Heath, 265, 266.

Notting Hill, rustic walk to Whitehall, 18-25.

North Devon, 93-105; Exeter Cathedral, 95-97; beauties of Ilfracombe, 97-101; Lynton, 102-104; Somerset, 104, 105.

Odger, George, radical agitator, his funeral, 138-141.

“Oliver Twist,” visit to a workhouse recalls, 274.

Oxford, 41; at Commemoration, 189-196; typifies union of science and sense, 261; Trinity College, 261-264.

“Pall Mall Gazette,” 176.

Pall Mall, 32, 33.

Piccadilly, 7, 8, 14, 21; funeral procession on, 130, 140; the “White House,” 177.

Portsmouth, untidy and prosaic, 255, 256; Nelson’s “Victory,” 256, 257.

“Punch,” 7.

Queen Anne, statue of, 6.

Rembrandt, pictures at Warwick Castle, 90.

Rochester, the Dickens country, 143-145; Watts’s shelter, 144; the cathedral, 145-147.

Ryde, 251.

Rye, locality of “Denis Duval,” 288-315; old shipyards, 304, 306; old gardens, 304-306; haunt of artists, 306-308; birthplace of Fletcher, 309; landscape beauties, 313-315; Romney Marsh, 314.

St. Leonards, 278, 285.

St. Paul’s, cathedral of, 4.

Salisbury, the cathedral, 117, 118; Stonehenge, 118, 119; Wilton House, 119, 120.

Scott, Sir Walter, 290; locality of “Woodstock,” 221, 222.

Serpentine, bridge over, 17, 18.

Shakespeare, William, 14; Warwickshire his country, 88, 213, 214; his clowns, 201; Dame Quickly’s ale-house identified, 201; a garden setting for his comedies, 216.

Shanklin, 254.

“Sir Roger de Coverley,” visualized at Porlock, 105.

Skirrid, the, 246, 247.

Somerset, 104, 105.

Stokesay, 236; the castle, 237-240.

Stonehenge, 118, 119.

Strand, first walk in, 6; Exeter Hall, 6, 7.

Stratford, 201; ideal home for a scholar, 214; a modern house in, 215.

Suffolk, locality of “David Copperfield,” 317-319; Dunwich, 320-330; Aldeburgh, 323, 324; Wesselton, 325, 326.

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 323.

Temple Bar, 5; Dr. Johnson’s first glimpse, 79.

Thackeray, William Makepeace, locality of “Denis Duval,” 288-315; “Lovel the Widower,” 288; Adventures of Philip, 288; “Henry Esmond,” 289; “The Roundabout Papers,” 295, 296.

Thames River, 15; beauties of, 40-42; penny steamboats on, 142, 164, 165.

Vandyck, Anthony, pictures at Warwick Castle, 90, 91; portraits at Wilton House, 119, 120.

Ventnor, 251-253.

Warwick, 89; the castle, 89-91; Leicester’s Hospital, 210-212.

Warwickshire, 87, 88; centre of English life, 197; Kenilworth, 198-201; an old rectory, 201-207; a Sunday in, 204, 205; pretty girls of, 207, 208; conservatism of, 208-210; charitable institutions, 210-213; Stratford, 214, 215; Broughton Castle, 219, 220; Compton Wyniates, 220; Wroxton Abbey, 222, 223.

Wells, the cathedral, 107-112; the close, 112; Bishop’s Palace, 113, 114; beautiful church of St. Cuthbert, 114; Glastonbury Abbey, 115-117.

Wesley, John, his last sermon at Winchelsea, 309.

Wesselton, 325, 326.

Westminster, impressive towers of, 18, 23.

Westminster Abbey, Browning in, 51-59; Easter service at, 135.

Winchelsea, locality of “Denis Duval,” 288-315; inroads of the sea, 302; her great church, 302, 303; plans for expansion, 303, 304; Wesley’s last sermon preached at, 309; sea-fight with Spaniards in, 310; atmospheric and colour effects at, 312, 313.

“Woodstock,” its locality, 221, 222.

Woolwich, walk from Blackheath to, 168; the common, 169; military college and arsenal, 169; feelings inspired by, 170-173.

Wroxton Abbey, 222, 223.

Wye River, 83.

FOOTNOTE

[1] The monument in the middle of the square, with Sir Edgar Boehm’s four fine soldiers, had not been set up when these words were written.