CHAPTER XXIII.

_Haddon Hall—Chatsworth—Shrewsbury—Chester._

After renewing my acquaintance with the hospitable friends at B——, with whom I had passed my Easter, I made an excursion into Derbyshire, with an episodical trip to Nottingham. My chief attraction to this latter place was that of an invitation from sundry relatives of my B—— friends to visit them, though the town is certainly well worthy of being visited for itself. For the sake of poor Kirke-White, one would wish to hunt up his lowly birth-place, and some would say that Newstead Abbey deserves a traveller’s homage. In fact, the Park and Abbey are the great charm of the neighbourhood, to most visitors; but I must own that I could not bring myself to make a pilgrimage to the scene of those orgies for which it is chiefly distinguished. On making some such remark to a worthy ex-magistrate of the borough, I was struck with the downright English common sense of his reply,—“You are quite right”—said he—“no one thinks much of Lord Byron, in these parts, where he was known; he cheated the tradesmen with whom he had dealings, and made himself so odious, that when his remains were brought through Nottingham, to be buried, we could not make up our minds to pay him any honours!” So much for romance and misanthropy! Genius, without honour and morality, is despicable indeed: and one even doubts the sentimental refinement of the man, of whom an intimate friend and companion could say, with anything like epigrammatic truthfulness, that “he cried for the press, and wiped his eyes with the public.”

A visit to the castle, and its caves, to which my reverend friend from B—— conducted me, well repaid us for our walk to the eminence on which it stands in ruins. It belonged to the late Duke of Newcastle, and was burned, as I remember very well, during the Reform riots, by an infuriate mob: but it is supposed, that the stiff old aristocrat whom they meant to injure, was very well pleased with the outrage. He did not inhabit it; he was well reimbursed for his loss; and was relieved from the tax of keeping up an unnecessary residence. The caves which undermine the castle, are famous for their historical connection with the story of the “She-wolf of France:” for through them was made the entrance into the fortress, which resulted in the arrest of Isabella and her paramour. They still point out a certain cave, as Mortimer’s; but the whole rock is riddled by fissures and loop-holes, and appears to be very soft and friable. From the summit one gets a beautiful view of Clifton-grove and the Vale of Trent; and on another side of Belvoir Castle, (pronounced _Beaver_,) the seat of the Duke of Rutland. The “Field of the Standard” is near the castle, and I surveyed, with deep feeling, the spot where King Charles set up his ensign, to be torn down by the storm the same night, and to be even more unfortunate, in the issue, than the omen seemed to require. After a visit to a few of the churches and public buildings, and a single night under one of its roofs, I was off to Derbyshire.

With Derby itself I was not long detained, though I cannot but remember, with pleasure, the acquaintance I formed there with several very agreeable persons. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Derby is the historical reminiscence, that here the progress of the Stuart standard was finally, and forever arrested. It is surprising that “Royal Charlie” ever succeeded in pushing his invasion to this point: but thus much he effected, in the fatal ’45, and the spot where he was lodged, in Derby, is still shown by the townsfolk, with interest, if not enthusiasm.

Even railway glimpses of Derbyshire give one many pleasurable emotions, abounding as it does in beautiful valleys and streams, and in abrupt rocky hills—jocosely described by Walton, as frightful and savage, to such a degree that he affects surprise at the sight of a church among them, and asks whether there be verily any Christians in such a country. When, at last, I found myself strolling along the Wye, and conversing with an angler, in the green mead, just within sight of the battlements of Haddon Hall, all the delicious nature and good humour of old Izaak came upon me, and observing that nothing near me seemed to be of modern fashion, I was almost transported back two centuries, and fancied myself for a moment at his side, learning, like _Venator_, to love angling, and so to weather the evil days of Cromwell—studying to be quiet in that vocation, and to mind my own business, as the apostle doth enjoin. It had been my purpose to visit Dove-dale, in honour of Walton, but this I found impracticable, and the nearest I could come to it was now realized. Blessings on his worthy memory! for though I be not an accepted brother of the angle, having never enjoyed great luck when I have gone a fishing, yet do I allow the art all honour, and do consider it the becoming recreation for a Churchman; admitting its connection with the catechism, and saying _Amen_ to divers other postulates of Walton, of like grave and self-evident character.

I must own that I found Haddon Hall of considerably less dimensions than I had foreshadowed to my fancy. I had supposed its smallest chamber one of those gigantic apartments, in which candles and fire-light must strive in vain to throw their illumination from the chimney-piece to the opposite wainscot; or in which a nocturnal guest might find the freest exercise of imagination, in looking after noises, towards the dark distance, from the lamp at his bedside, of the waving hangings and creaking doors. It is not altogether such a house as that; and yet if there be a better site for the residence of a ghost, or a troop of them, I have never seen it. Your nervous man should never try to lodge there. It is stripped of nearly all its furniture, save only such as is requisite to give full effect to midnight sounds and mysterious moanings. Its history is lost in that of the dim and traditionary ages of the Plantagenets; the windows of its lonely chapel bear the date 1427; and the last touches of the builder were given to it at least three hundred years ago. There it stands—a relic of the domestic architecture of feudal England. Here are turreted and embattled gate-ways, and quadrangular courts, enclosed as if to stand a siege. The kitchen is designed for the largest hospitality; spits, dressers and chopping block, all speaking of the bountiful housekeeping of the olden time—to say nothing of the vast chimneys, which seem made to roar with Christmas fires perpetually. You ascend a great stair-case, on which it seems almost profane to set a modern foot, so entirely does it bespeak its ancient right to be trodden by the doughty and dainty steps of lords and dames, in the attire of by-gone centuries. You enter a room hung with antique tapestry, now ready to drop into tatters. You push-to the old squeaking doors, and drop these hangings, and it no longer appears how you got in, or how you may get out. You understand at once the allusions of many an old play, and almost expect to find some thievish figure lurking behind the arras. Hangings they truly are, for hooks are built into the wall, and to these the arras are attached. But the “Long Gallery” is the place in which a ghost would naturally air himself. It is wainscoated and floored with oak, and ornamented with various carved devices and emblems, such as the rose, and the thistle, and the boar’s head; and then it has deep recessed window-seats and oriels; and some of them look out on the sunny terraces of the garden, and suggest vague ideas of romance, and create phantom ladies of olden time, to fill up the scene, and rich illustrative stories to make them interesting. No doubt real hearts have throbbed here with high and tender emotions: and events which we know only as the dry details of history, have filled these silent chambers with notes of joy or sorrow, with the wail of the widow or the forlorn maiden, or with the voice of the bridegroom and the bride. The stately Elizabeth is said to have once figured in this gallery, at a ball.

The architecture of the great hall is severely antique, and suggests a rude and uncivil age, in spite of its air of dignity and hospitality. The men who dined here evidently wore swords, and the loving-cup and health-drinking were no mere ceremonies; the party who drank, as he lifted his arm, looking narrowly at the friend who stood up to guard him. A hand-cuff which is fastened to the wood-work seems to hint that guests were sometimes troublesome after taking plenty of sack. I could think of nothing but Twelfth-night revels in this curious old place, adorned as it is with the antlers of stags that were hunted long ago, and whose venison once smoked on the board.

The terraced gardens, with their shades, and balusters, and steps, and walks, and portals, are in keeping with all the rest, and the tale of the Lady Dorothea Vernon, and of her mysterious elopement, is enough to fill them with the charm of romance. From one of the towers you look down upon the whole range of roofs and courts, and then gaze far away over a beautiful view of the vale of Haddon. Before you depart you are shown some ancient utensils belonging to the place, such as jack-boots, and match-locks, and doublets. These are kept in the apartment of my reverend brother, the domestic chaplain, whoever he may have been; but whether he had any use for such things I cannot bear testimony. The adjoining chapel in which he officiated is very small, and quite plain. The ancient piscina, beside the altar, tells its simple story of the rites which, according to the mediæval liturgy of England, hallowed it of yore. It conjured up before my fancy the midnight mass of Christmas, as described by Scott—

“That night alone, of all the year, Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.”

It was, at any rate, no Tridentine Eucharist, though it was a mutilated one; and sad as were the scenes of debauchery with which those solemnities are associated, I could not but trust that, even here, Christ crucified had been truly worshipped, of old, on the solemn feast of his Nativity, and on many other occasions of Christian joy or penitence. Who would not cling to such communion with ancient piety? And yet this natural sympathy, when morbidly developed, has done more than all things else together, to bewitch the imaginative with Romanism, and to make them slavish captives to a Church which has retained nothing mediæval except that newfangled creed, to which the departed spirit of Mediæevalism has bequeathed none of its poetry, and which only exists as the inanimate slough of its superstition.

Compared with Haddon Hall, the superb modern residence of Chatsworth struck me as tame and spiritless. The mansion has indeed a pleasant seat: and the deer, bounding over the velvet turf of its park, or the peacock, strutting amid its balusters and fountains, give it indeed a lordly look of opulent show, without much ease. Yet what is it, at best, but the dull round of “my lord’s apartments,” without one association beyond that of my lord’s great wealth and luxury? I should be ashamed to confess, indeed, that I was not pleased with the pictures, and more than pleased with the exquisite carvings and magnificent sculpture, viewed merely as works of art; but I was fatigued with the vast worldliness of such a house, and felt that it would better have suited a Hadrian, than it does a Christian nobleman of England. Such a residence as Warwick Castle comes to its possessor historically, and a nobleman may well keep it up; but Chatsworth seems built for display, and must be altogether too much for comfort. I am glad if its possessor enjoys it—but I should rather dwell in the humblest parsonage in England. Nature itself, as seen from the windows of Chatsworth, has a combed and dressy look. Its vast conservatory—the original of the Crystal Palace—is well worth a visit, and its gardens are curious enough, but the water-works are elaborately frivolous. I was promised a fine artificial cataract—but lo! in the side of a beautiful hill I saw a stone stair-case, and by-and-by the water came sluggishly down stairs, like a little girl, in white dress, afraid to let go of the hand rail, as she leaps timidly from step to step. “Good morning, Miss Cataract,” said I, “that will do!”

The same clipped and artificial beauty belongs to the neighbouring village of Edensor, and the whole seems the more unreal as contrasting violently with the natural features of this wild and ruggedly beautiful country. I am glad to have seen Chatsworth, but I should not care to see it again, though the desolate Haddon Hall never recurs in my memory, without awakening fresh longings to be once more in Derbyshire, and to saunter again along its rushing Wye.

With my visit to Matlock Bath, I was much better satisfied. Here indeed is Derbyshire, in spite of spruce inns and fashionable boarding-houses. I scampered over the hills, (having first climbed them with more pleasure than fatigue,) and went from view to view with increasing transports. This region is all cliff and ravine, and precipice and chasm; yet in every direction the eye is refreshed and delighted, and the mind takes pleasure alike in thinking that it is scarcely English scenery, and that it is yet strikingly unlike anything but England after all! These sharp outlines, and bold walls of rock, for example, you say are somewhat Swiss; but as you look over them, towards the horizon, you see that their foliage and their verdure are English, absolutely; and then, looking down the chasm, at your feet, you see a trim and neat little village, and houses set in gardens, and peeping out from shrubbery, and especially a church, altogether such as no one ever sees save in England only! I entered the Speedwell mine, and went through the usual experiments with lights amid the spar, but, on the whole, the subterranean part of Matlock was what I liked least about it. I felt lonely, however, in enjoying my ramble about so beautiful a place, and the company of certain loved ones in America was longed for over and over again to make it all that I desired. From this delightful place I made my way to Shrewsbury.

Beautiful is Shrewsbury, without and within! Its spires and its towers give you far-off promise of a place worthy of the traveller’s halt, and when you enter its old-fashioned streets, you are not disappointed. I found the market-place, with its hall and surrounding mansions, quite as unmodernized as those of towns in the north of France. The projecting gable of many an old timbered house confronts you as you go hither and thither through the borough, and very often the woodwork of such houses is fancifully arranged and ornamented, in a manner highly effective and picturesque. Their modern tenants paint the timbers with grave, but appropriate colours, and whitewash the plastered walls which intervene, thus bringing out the full design of the ancient architect in a neat and striking manner. I saw, in one of the streets, a chair carried by bearers, precisely as in Hogarth’s prints, and which seemed to have been in use ever since Hogarth’s day. Its occupant was a portly female, who might have graced the Court of Queen Anne, so far as her appearance was concerned, and what with such an apparition, in a place altogether so antique, I found myself for a moment quite in doubt whether the nineteenth century were actually in existence, with its many inventions.

I went through the beautiful and finely-wooded field called _the Quarry_, and the walk called _St. Chad’s_, and crossed one of the bridges over the Severn to the Abbey Church. Here I found some interesting monuments and architectural curiosities; and the neighbourhood seemed to abound in similar relics of what must once have been a very large conventual establishment. At St. Mary’s, there was a Jesse-window and some tombs, which afforded me a gratifying occupation for awhile; then the ruins of an old castle, such as they are, attracted me; and, though last, not least, the fragments of a very ancient church, being merely its chancel, dedicated to St. Chad. The school in which Sir Philip Sydney was reared, and where Fulke Grevil became his friend, still swarms with the ingenuous youth of England, and I encountered them at every turn, in the highways and by-ways of the town. What an element of education it must be of itself for a lad to be sent to a school that has such a history! Such thoughts made me faint of heart for a moment, when I felt the irreparable poverty of my own country in historical associations. The inestimable dowry of a glorious antiquity can never mingle its ennobling qualities with our national character. We may, and we do, enjoy immense compensations; but what reflective American does not give way at times to a melancholy sense that he has indeed “no past at his back,” and that God has isolated him involuntarily, by this great fact, from the fellowship of nations! “But here comes a Shrewsbury boy,” said I, amid such thoughts, “what cares he for Sydney, more than an ordinary American lad at school?” Sure enough! Why then be sentimental? It is, after all, only a certain class of minds, that receives powerful impressions from anything past or future: and I believe an American youth can enjoy such impressions effectively, by means of a healthful imagination, while an English youth may often find it hard to divest the realities with which he is daily conversant, of the degrading effects of familiarity. Such is my calmer judgment.

I tasted the famous “Shrewsbury cakes” at the station-house, and having spent several hours “by Shrewsbury clock,” in this pleasing survey of the old borough, I left it with regret, purposing to return, and to make excursions from it to a neighbouring seat to which I had been kindly invited, and also to Hodnet, which I greatly desired to see, in honour of the gentle and beloved Heber. In these plans, however, I was disappointed. As you leave Shrewsbury for the north, you gain a most agreeable view of the town, which stands on a fair peninsula in the bright embrace of the Severn. It is a place full of poetry. On one side are the Welsh Mountains; on the other, amid Salopian fields, you descry the columnar monument of Lord Hill; but the tall spires and the Abbey Tower tell more eloquently of Hotspur.

At Chirk station a Welsh family entered the train, gabbling their consonants most unintelligibly; but I soon discovered from their adieus, and their tears and sighs, that they were emigrants going to Liverpool to ship for America. This stirred up a warm home-feeling: I found that one of them could talk English, and I was not long in finding a way to their hearts. They were going to Wisconsin, and were very willing to be advised on ordinary matters. I tried, also, to impress them with my own ideas of the privileges they might enjoy under the care of the Nashotah Missionaries; but I fear they were dissenters, as the Welsh peasantry too often are, and that my endeavours to add to the burthens of my esteemed brethren of that diocese were quite unavailing. I slept that night at Chester.

But I despair of describing Chester. Elsewhere in England you meet with ancient houses and picturesque streets; but Chester is all antiquity. What you would go miles to see, when in search of the quaintly beautiful, is here multiplied before you in almost every house. In the first place it is a walled town. I made the circuit of the walls in the morning, with constant emotions of astonishment; for they are in good repair, and seem even yet to have their use, whereas, I had imagined them to be mere relics of the past. I came to the Tower upon the wall, from the summit of which Charles the First beheld the total rout of his army. It is a mere watch-tower; but as the memorial of a great event, it would be hard to imagine a monument more striking. There is much more to interest the passenger as he goes on, looking now into houses built into the wall like swallows’ nests, and now into church-yards, and now into a race-course, and again into a river: but a thoughtful tourist, and especially one from America, will find it hard to think of anything but that Tower, and the mighty issues which were once deciding before it, in view of an august and awfully interested spectator. Poor King! as he descended from it, what must have been his emotions?

The streets of Chester are said still to preserve the outlines of the Roman camp, from which the town derives its name. They are a great curiosity in themselves, and seem to have been cut down into the rock, while the houses were reared on the banks, above the level thus obtained. And such houses! Gable after gable, timbered, pargetted, enriched with carving, and jutting over the street—each one “a picture for painters to study!” And where are the _trottoirs_, or side-walks? Lo! the houses all run down to the carriage-way; but what should be their front rooms, above the basement floor, are mere verandahs, through the whole line of which freely walks the public, always under cover, and always at home! These “rows” (even more than the walls) are the feature of Chester which most strikes the stranger; especially as the opposite houses, which he beholds in passing through them, are full of curious objects for any one whose eye delights in the antique. On one, for example, are rich emblematic or fanciful decorations and carvings; on another, a scene from Scripture history is cut in uncouth style; while another bears the legend: _God’s providence is mine inheritance_, 1652. A good inheritance always, but especially in Cromwell’s time. The guide-book says, that in the great plague of the year thus designated, this house was the only one which the destroying angel did not visit. Hence the pious inscription.

But there is no doing justice to old Chester, on a tourist’s page. Its cathedral is a poor one, and so crumbling are its walls and buttresses, that every shower washes down a plentiful soil, from the decomposing stone. I lingered without weariness, however, in its aisles and cloisters, and must say that its service was sung delightfully, although the singers were few, and the clergy fewer still. The same disgraceful poverty and lifelessness, which I had remarked elsewhere, characterized the visible force of the establishment; and I could not but say to myself, if this feeble performance is, nevertheless, so edifying and effective, what might not be the blessed result of a vitalized cathedral body, serving God night and day in His Temple, as God should be always served, in this rich and ancient Church of an empire which professes to be Christian, and which God has so unspeakably exalted among the nations of the earth.

The other ecclesiastical objects of the town were duly visited, and then I took a boat on the Dee, and was rowed toward Eaton Hall, which I finally reached on foot, after a walk through the surrounding park. This was, till very lately, regarded as the finest possible specimen of modern Gothic, in the domestic line, and a vast amount of Cockney admiration has been wasted on it. I found it undergoing repairs, which must greatly improve it; but, after all, it is a meagre thing, when one has seen the Gothic of the cathedrals, or of such a castle as Kenilworth. I did not see much of the interior, as visitors were necessarily excluded, in favour of the workmen; and so after visiting the conservatories, and various outlying dependencies of this great house, I left it, not greatly overwhelmed with what I had seen. I was better pleased with my return voyage, on the Dee, and with the river-view of Chester.