CHAPTER XXIV

THE LAND OF MARMION

Berwick-upon-Tweed, September 8, 1890.--It had long been my wish to see something of royal Berwick, and our acquaintance has at length begun. This is a town of sombre gray houses capped with red roofs; of elaborate, old-fashioned, disused fortifications; of dismantled military walls; of noble stone bridges and stalwart piers; of breezy battlement walks, fine sea-views, spacious beaches, castellated remains, steep streets, broad squares, narrow, winding ways, many churches, quaint customs, and ancient memories. The present, indeed, has marred the past in this old town, dissipating the element of romance and putting no adequate substitute in its place. Yet the element of romance is here, for such observers as can look on Berwick through the eyes of the imagination; and even those who can imagine nothing must at least perceive that its aspect is regal. Viewed, as I had often viewed it, from the great Border bridge between England and Scotland, it rises on its graceful promontory,--bathed in sunshine and darkly bright amid the sparkling silver of the sea,--a veritable ocean queen. To-day I have walked upon its walls, threaded its principal streets, crossed its ancient bridge, explored its suburbs, entered its municipal hall, visited its parish church, and taken long drives through the country that encircles it; and now at midnight, sitting in a lonely chamber of the King's Arms and musing upon the past, I hear not simply the roll of a carriage wheel or the footfall of a late traveller dying away in the distance, but the music with which warriors proclaimed their victories and kings and queens kept festival and state. This has been a pensive day, for in its course I have said farewell to many lovely and beloved scenes. Edinburgh was never more beautiful than when she faded in the yellow mist of this autumnal morning. On Preston battlefield the golden harvest stood in sheaves, and the meadows glimmered green in the soft sunshine, while over them the white clouds drifted and the peaceful rooks made wing in happy indolence and peace. Soon the ruined church of Seton came into view, with its singular stunted tower and its venerable gray walls couched deep in trees, and around it the cultivated, many-coloured fields and the breezy, emerald pastures stretching away to the verge of the sea. A glimpse, and it is gone. But one sweet picture no sooner vanishes than its place is filled with another. Yonder, on the hillside, is the manor-house, with stately battlement and tower, its antique aspect softened by great masses of clinging ivy. Here, nestled in the sunny valley, are the little stone cottages, roofed with red tiles and bright with the adornment of arbutus and hollyhock. All around are harvest-fields and market-gardens,--the abundant dark green of potato-patches being gorgeously lit with the intermingled lustre of millions of wild-flowers, white and gold, over which drift many flights of doves. Sometimes upon the yellow level of the hayfields a sudden wave of brilliant poppies seems to break,--dashing itself into scarlet foam. Timid, startled sheep scurry away into their pastures, as the swift train flashes by them. A woman standing at her cottage door looks at it with curious yet regardless gaze. Farms teeming with plenty are swiftly traversed, their many circular, cone-topped hayricks standing like towers of amber. Tall, smoking chimneys in the factory villages flit by and disappear. Everywhere are signs of industry and thrift, and everywhere also are denotements of the sentiment and taste that are spontaneous in the nature of this people. Tantallon lies in the near distance, and speeding toward ancient Dunbar I dream once more the dreams of boyhood, and can hear the trumpets, and see the pennons, and catch again the silver gleam of the spears of Marmion. Dunbar is left behind, and with it the sad memory of Mary Stuart, infatuated with barbaric Bothwell, and whirled away to shipwreck and ruin,--as so many great natures have been before and will be again,--upon the black reefs of human passion. The heedless train is skirting the hills of Lammermoor now, and speeding through plains of a fertile verdure that is brilliant and beautiful down to the margin of the ocean. Close by Cockburnspath is the long, lonely, melancholy beach that well may have been in Scott's remembrance when he fashioned that weird and tragic close of the most poetical and pathetic of his novels, while, near at hand, on its desolate headland, the grim ruin of Fast Castle,--which is deemed the original of his Wolf's Crag,--frowns darkly on the white breakers at its surge-beaten base. Edgar of Ravenswood is no longer an image of fiction, when you look upon that scene of gloomy grandeur and mystery. But do not look upon it too closely nor too long,--for of all scenes that are conceived as distinctly weird it may truly be said that they are more impressive in the imagination than in the actual prospect. This coast is full of dark ravines, stretching seaward and thickly shrouded with trees, but in them now and then a glimpse is caught of a snugly sheltered house, overgrown with flowers, securely protected from every blast of storm. The rest is open land, which many dark stone walls partition, and many hawthorn hedges, and many little white roads, winding away toward the shore: for this is Scottish sea-side pageantry, and the sunlit ocean makes a silver setting for the jewelled landscape, all the way to Berwick.

The profit of walking in the footsteps of the past is that you learn the value of the privilege of life in the present. The men and women of the past had their opportunity and each improved it after his kind. These are the same plains in which Wallace and Bruce fought for the honour, and established the supremacy, of the kingdom of Scotland. The same sun gilds these plains to-day, the same sweet wind blows over them, and the same sombre, majestic ocean breaks in solemn murmurs on their shore. "Hodie mihi, cras tibi,"--as it was written on the altar skulls in the ancient churches. Yesterday belonged to them; to-day belongs to us; and well will it be for us if we improve it. In such an historic town as Berwick the lesson is brought home to a thoughtful mind with convincing force and significance. So much has happened here,--and every actor in the great drama is long since dead and gone! Hither came King John, and slaughtered the people as if they were sheep, and burnt the city,--himself applying the torch to the house in which he had slept. Hither came Edward the First, and mercilessly butchered the inhabitants, men, women, and children, violating even the sanctuary of the churches. Here, in his victorious days, Sir William Wallace reigned and prospered; and here, when Menteith's treachery had wrought his ruin, a fragment of his mutilated body was long displayed upon the bridge. Here, in the castle, of which only a few fragments now remain (these being adjacent to the North British railway station), Edward the First caused to be confined in a wooden cage that intrepid Countess of Buchan who had crowned Robert Bruce, at Scone. Hither came Edward the Third, after the battle of Halidon Hill, which lies close by this place, had finally established the English power in Scotland. All the princes that fought in the wars of the Roses have been in Berwick and have wrangled over the possession of it. Richard the Third doomed it to isolation. Henry the Seventh declared it a neutral state. By Elizabeth it was fortified,--in that wise sovereign's resolute and vigorous resistance to the schemes of the Roman Catholic church for the dominance of her kingdom. John Knox preached here, in a church on Hide Hill, before he went to Edinburgh to shake the throne with his tremendous eloquence. The picturesque, unhappy James the Fourth went from this place to Ford Castle and Lady Heron, and thence to his death, at Flodden Field. Here it was that Sir John Cope first paused in his fugitive ride from the fatal field of Preston, and here he was greeted as affording the only instance in which the first news of a defeat had been brought by the vanquished General himself. And within sight of Berwick ramparts are those perilous Farne islands, where, at the wreck of the steamer Forfarshire, in 1838, the heroism of a woman wrote upon the historic page of her country, in letters of imperishable glory, the name of Grace Darling. (There is a monument to her memory, in Bamborough churchyard.) Imagination, however, has done for this region what history could never do. Each foot of this ground was known to Sir Walter Scott, and for every lover of that great author each foot of it is hallowed. It is the Border Land,--the land of chivalry and song, the land that he has endeared to all the world,--and you come to it mainly for his sake.

"Day set on Norhams castled steep, And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone."

The village of Norham lies a few miles west of Berwick, upon the south bank of the Tweed,--a group of cottages clustered around a single long street. The buildings are low and are mostly roofed with dark slate or red tiles. Some of them are thatched, and grass and flowers grow wild upon the thatch. At one end of the main highway is a market-cross, near to which is a little inn. Beyond that and nearer to the Tweed, which flows close beside the place, is a church of great antiquity, set toward the western end of a long and ample churchyard, in which many graves are marked with tall, thick, perpendicular slabs, many with dark, oblong tombs, tumbling to ruin, and many with short, stunted monuments. The church tower is low, square, and of enormous strength. Upon the south side of the chancel are five windows, beautifully arched,--the dog-toothed casements being uncommonly complete specimens of that ancient architectural device. This church has been restored; the south aisle in 1846, by I. Bononi; the north aisle in 1852, by E. Gray. The western end of the churchyard is thickly masked in great trees, and looking directly east from this point your gaze falls upon all that is left of the stately Castle of Norham, formerly called Ublanford,--built by Flamberg, Bishop of Durham, in 1121, and restored by Hugh Pudsey, another Prince of that See, in 1164. It must once have been a place of tremendous fortitude and of great extent. Now it is wide open to the sky, and nothing of it remains but roofless walls and crumbling arches, on which the grass is growing and the pendent bluebells tremble in the breeze. Looking through the embrasures of the east wall you see the tops of large trees that are rooted in the vast trench below, where once were the dark waters of the moat. All the courtyards are covered now with sod, and quiet sheep nibble and lazy cattle couch where once the royal banners floated and plumed and belted knights stood round their king. It was a day of uncommon beauty,--golden with sunshine and fresh with a perfumed air; and nothing was wanting to the perfection of solitude. Near at hand a thin stream of pale blue smoke curled upward from a cottage chimney. At some distance the sweet voices of playing children mingled with the chirp of small birds and the occasional cawing of the rook. The long grasses that grow upon the ruin moved faintly, but made no sound. A few doves were seen, gliding in and out of crevices in the mouldering turret. And over all, and calmly and coldly speaking the survival of nature when the grandest works of man are dust, sounded the rustle of many branches in the heedless wind.

The day was setting over Norham as I drove away,--the red sun slowly obscured in a great bank of slate-coloured cloud,--but to the last I bent my gaze upon it, and that picture of ruined magnificence can never fade out of my mind. The road eastward toward Berwick is a green lane, running between harvest-fields, which now were thickly piled with golden sheaves, while over them swept great flocks of sable rooks. There are but few trees in that landscape,--scattered groups of the ash and the plane,--to break the prospect. For a long time the stately ruin remained in view,--its huge bulk and serrated outline, relieved against the red and gold of sunset, taking on the perfect semblance of a colossal cathedral, like that of Iona, with vast square tower, and chancel, and nave: only, because of its jagged lines, it seems in this prospect as if shaken by a convulsion of nature and tottering to its momentary fall. Never was illusion more perfect. Yet as the vision faded I could remember only the illusion that will never fade,--the illusion that a magical poetic genius has cast over those crumbling battlements, rebuilding the shattered towers, and pouring through their ancient halls the glowing tide of life and love, of power and pageant, of beauty, light, and song.

THE END

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_In thy mind thou conjoinest life's practical knowledge, And a temper unmoved by the changes of fortune, Whatsoever her smile or her frown, Neither bowed nor elate,--but erect_"

LORD LYTTON'S TRANSLATION

[2] Since these words were written a plain headstone of white marble has been placed on this spot, bearing the following inscription:--

"Matthew Arnold, eldest son of the late Thomas Arnold, D.D., Head Master of Rugby School. Born December 24, 1822. Died April 15, 1888. There is sprung up a light for the righteous, and joyful gladness for such as are true-hearted."

The _Letters of Matthew Arnold_, published in 1895, contain touching allusions to Laleham Churchyard. At Harrow, February 27, 1869, the poet wrote: "It is a wonderfully clear, bright day, with a cold wind, so I went to a field on the top of the hill, whence I can see the clump of Botleys and the misty line of the Thames, where Tommy lies at the foot of them. I often go for this view on a clear day." At London, August 2, 1869, he wrote: "On Saturday Flu and I went together to Laleham. It was exactly a year since we had driven there with darling Tommy and the other two boys, to see Basil's grave; he enjoyed the drive, and Laleham, and the river, and Matt Buckland's garden, and often talked of them afterwards. And now we went to see _his_ grave, poor darling. The two graves are a perfect garden, and are evidently the sight of the churchyard, where there is nothing else like them; a path has been trodden over the grass to them by people coming and going. It was a soft, mild air, and we sat a long time by the graves."

[3] The crime was committed on November 4, 1820. The victim was a farmer, named William Hirons. The assassins, four in number, named Quiney, Sidney, Hawtrey, and Adams, were hanged, at Warwick, in April, 1821.

[4] Arthur Hodgson, born in 1818, was educated at Eton and at Cambridge. He went to Australia in 1839, and made a fortune as a sheep-farmer. He served the State in various public offices, and was knighted by Queen Victoria. He has been five times Mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon.

[5] An entry in the Diocesan Register of Worcester states that in 1374 "John Clopton of Stretforde obtained letters dimissory to the order of priest."--In 1477 Pope Sixtus the Fourth authorized John Clopton to perform divine service in Clopton manor-house.--Mrs. Gaskell, then Miss Byerley, saw the attic chapel at Clopton, in 1820, and wrote a description of it at that time.

[6] The original sign of the Shoulder of Mutton, which once hung before that house, was painted by Grubb, who also painted the remarkable portrait of the Corporation Cook, which now hangs in the town hall of Stratford,--given to the borough by the late Henry Graves, of London.

[7] When the moat was disused three "jack bottles" were found in its bed, made of coarse glass, and bearing on the shoulder of each bottle the crest of John-a-Combe. These relics are in the collection of Sir Arthur Hodgson.

[8] It is said that the remains of Lord Lovat were, soon after his execution, secretly removed, and buried at his home near Inverness, and that the head was sewed to the body.

[9] Robert Dudley [1532-1588] seems not to have been an admirable man, but certain facts of his life appear to have been considerably misrepresented. He married Amy Robsart, daughter of Sir John Robsart, of Siderstern, Norfolk, on June 4, 1550, publicly, and in presence of King Edward the Sixth. Amy Robsart never became Countess of Leicester, but died, in 1560, four years before Dudley became Earl of Leicester, by a "mischance,"--namely, an accidental fall downstairs,--at Cumnor Hall, near Abingdon. She was not at Kenilworth, as represented in Scott's novel, at the time of the great festival in honour of Queen Elizabeth, in 1575, because at that time she had been dead fifteen years. Dudley secretly married Douglas Howard, Lady Sheffield, in 1572-73, but would never acknowledge her. His third wife was the Lætitia whose affection deplores him, in the Beauchamp chapel.

[10] Those cedars are ranked with the most superb trees in the British Islands. Two of the group were torn up by the roots during a terrific gale, which swept across England, leaving ruin in its track, on Sunday, March 24, 1895.

[11] Length. Height of Tower. Winchester 556 ft. 138 ft. St. Albans 548 ft. 4 in. 144 ft. York 524 ft. 6 in. 213 ft.

[12] The White Horse upon the side of the hill at Westbury was made by removing the turf in such a way as to show the white chalk beneath, in the shape of a horse. The tradition is that this was done by command of Alfred, in Easter week, A.D. 878, to signalise his victory over the Danes, at Oetlandune, or Eddington, at the foot of the hill. Upon the top of that hill there is the outline of an ancient Roman camp.

[13] The curfew bell is rung at Bromham church, at eight o'clock in the evening, on week days, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and at the same hour on every Sunday throughout the year; and on Shrove Tuesday the bell is rung at one o'clock in the day.

[14] Sloperton Cottage is now, 1896, the property of H. H. Ludlow Burgess, of Seend.

[15] The famous actor was knighted, by Queen Victoria, in 1895, and became Sir Henry Irving.

[16] "In our stage to Penrith I introduced Anne to the ancient Petreia, called Old Penrith, and also to the grave of Sir Ewain Cæsarius, that knight with the puzzling name, which has got more indistinct."--_Journal of Sir Walter Scott_, Vol. II., p. 151.

[17] The poet Gray, who visited these mountains in 1769, wrote, in his Journal, October 1: "Place Fell, one of the bravest among them, pushes its bold broad breast into the midst of the lake, and forces it to alter its course, forming first a large bay to the left and then bending to the right."

[18] F. A. Marshall, editor of _The Henry Irving Edition of Shakespeare_ and author of _A Study of Hamlet_, the comedy of _False Shame_, and many other works, died in London, December, 1889, much lamented. His widow,--the once distinguished actress, Miss Ada Cavendish,--died, at 34 Thurloe square, London, October 6, 1895.

[19] The Traveller's Rest is 1481 feet above the sea-level, whereas the inn called The Cat and Fiddle,--a corruption of Caton le Fidèle, governor of Calais,--on Axe Edge, near Buxton, is 1700 feet above the level of the sea.

[20] Mr. Wadley died at Pershore, April 4, 1895, and was buried in Bidford churchyard on April 10.

[21] See in the _London Athenæum_, February 9, 1889, a valuable article, by Mr. John Taylor, on "Local Shakesperean Names" based upon, and incorporative of, some of the researches of Mr. Wadley.

[22] William Butcher died on February 20, 1895, aged sixty-six, and was buried in the Stratford Cemetery.

[23] See _An Account of the Discovery of the Body of King John, in the Cathedral Church of Worcester_. By Valentine Green, F.S.A., 1797.

[24] Byron was born on January 22, 1788, and he died on April 19, 1824.

[25] Since this paper was written the buildings that flanked the church wall have been removed, the street in front of it has been widened, and the church has been "restored" and considerably altered.

[26] Revisiting this place on September 10, 1890, I found that the chancel has been lengthened, that the altar and the mural tablets have been moved back from the Byron vault, and that his gravestone is now outside of the rail.

[27] It is now, 1896, said to be in the possession of a resident of one of our Southern cities, who says that he obtained it from one of his relatives, to whom it was given by the parish clerk, in 1834.

[28] Dr. Joseph Wharton, in a letter to the poet Gay, described Lavinia Fenton as follows: "She was a very accomplished and most agreeable companion; had much wit, good strong sense, and a just taste in polite literature. Her person was agreeable and well made; though I think she could never be called a beauty. I have had the pleasure of being at table with her when her conversation was much admired by the first characters of the age, particularly old Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville."

General James Wolfe, killed in battle, at the famous storming of Quebec, was born in 1726, and he died in 1759.

Robert Clive, the famous soldier and the first Lord Clive, was born in 1725, and he died, a suicide,--haunted, it was superstitiously said, by ghosts of slaughtered East Indians,--in 1774.

[29] The romantic house of Compton Wynyate was built of material taken from a ruined castle at Fulbrooke, by Sir William Compton, in the reign of Henry the Eighth. Wynyate signifies a vineyard.

[30] Miss Mary Anderson, the distinguished American actress, was married, on June 17, 1890, at Hampstead, to Mr. Antonio De Navarro. Her Autobiography, called _A Few Memories of My Life_, was published, in London, in March, 1896.

[31] Mr. Wall retired from the office of librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial in June, 1895, and was succeeded by Mr. William Salt Brassington.

[32] In 1894 the number of visitors to New Place was 809; in 1895 it was 716, while 13,028 visited the Memorial.

[33] Mrs. Bulmer served as custodian of New Place until her death, on March 14, 1896. The office was then assigned to Richard Savage, in addition to his other offices.

[34] Miss Maria Chattaway died on January 31, 1891. Miss Caroline Chattaway removed from Stratford on October 7, 1895, to Haslor.

[35] Mr. Skipsey resigned his office, in October, 1891, and returned to Newcastle.

[36] The grave of Charles Frederick Green, author of an account of Shakespeare and the Crab Tree,--an idle tradition set afloat by Samuel Ireland,--was made in the angle near the west door of Trinity church, but it has been covered, tombstone and all, with gravel.

[37] Mr. Loggin was Mayor of Stratford in 1866 and 1867, and under his administration, in the latter year, was built the Mill Bridge, across the Avon, near Lucy's Mill, to replace an old and dilapidated structure. Mr. Loggin died on February 3, 1885, aged sixty-nine, and was buried at Long Marston.

[38] The Anne Hathaway cottage was purchased for the nation, in April, 1892.

[39] Mr. Laffan resigned his office in June, 1895, and became President of Cheltenham College. Rev. E. J. W. Houghton is now head-master.

[40] Mrs. Eliza Smith died at No. 56 Ely street, Stratford, on February 24, 1893, aged 68, and the relics that she possessed passed to a relative, at Northampton. They were sold, in London, in June, 1896.

[41] Modern editions, following Pope's alteration, say "whereon" instead of "where"; but "where" is the reading in the Folio of 1623. Mr. Savage contends that the bank that Shakespeare had in mind is Borden Hill, near Shottery, where the wild thyme is still abundant.

[42] That learned antiquarian W. G. Fretton, Esq., of Coventry, has shown that the Forest of Arden covered a large tract of land extending many miles west and north of the bank of the Avon, around Stratford.

[43] It has been awakened. A railway to Henley was opened in 1894.

[44] The venerable Mr. Linskill died in the rectory of Beaudesert in February, 1890, and was buried within the shadow of the church that he loved. That picturesque rectory of Beaudesert was the birthplace of Richard Jago [1715-1781], the poet who wrote _Edgehill_.

[45] Like many other pleasures it has now become only a memory. Mr. Childs died, in Philadelphia, February 3, 1894.

[46] Chantrey had seen the beautiful sculpture of little Penelope Boothby, in Ashbourne church, Derbyshire, made by Thomas Banks, and he may have been inspired by that spectacle.

[47] 1896. The building is, if possible, to be made a museum of relics of Johnson. It is now a lodging-house. Its exterior has recently been repaired. Johnson is the name of its present owner.

[48] Thomas Jefferson, 1728-1807, was a contemporary and friend of Garrick, and a member of his company, at various times, at Drury Lane. He was the great-grandfather of Joseph Jefferson, famous in Rip Van Winkle.

[49] On the stone that marks this sepulchre are inscriptions, which may suitably be preserved in this chronicle:

"Alexander Campbell Esquire, of Ederline. Died 2^d October, 1841. In his 76^{th} year.

Matilda Campbell. Second daughter of William Campbell Esq., of Ederline. Died on the 21^{st} Nov^r 1842. In her 6^{th} year.

William Campbell Esq., of Ederline. Died 15^{th} January 1855, in his 42^{nd} year.

Lachlan Aderson Campbell. His son. Died January 27^{th}, 1859. In his 5^{th} year."

[John Campbell, the eldest son of Alexander, died February 26, 1855, aged 45, and was buried in the Necropolis, at Toronto, Canada. His widow, Janet Tulloch Campbell, a native of Wick, Caithness, died at Toronto, August 24, 1878, aged 65, and was buried beside him.]

[50] It is a small oval glass, of which the rim is fashioned with crescents, twenty-two of them on each side.

[51] Chapters on Iona, Staffa, Glencoe, and other beauties of Scotland may be found in my books, which are companions to this one, called _Old Shrines and Ivy_ and _Brown Heath and Blue Bells_.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained.

"Corse" is an archaic form of "corpse". "Oftens" is an archaic adverb.

Page 121, added "a" (after a Worcester fight) Page 311, changed "along" to "alone" (standing alone among ruins)