Part 10
The second quotation is from "Childe Harold," more positive in its tone, though less scintillating in its verbiage. In the wall near by, the gift of a Scotch admirer, is a marble profile medallion of the poet's face, with Shelley's characterization, "The Pilgrim of Eternity." In the adjoining vestry the walls are covered with the graven words of many of the greatest men of the century--tributes to the genius of Byron. Verily the church at Hucknall has become as a mausoleum to one denied burial in the nation's Valhalla, and who was, in truth, almost grudged sepulture in his native soil by a large number of the Englishmen of his day. And there came to us a faint conception of the intense bitterness of the times--when the body of England's greatest genius, dead in a forlorn but glorious cause, was brought to his native land to be greeted with a storm of hatred and a fierce protest against interment in Westminster Abbey. With little ceremony he was laid away in the church of Hucknall and pilgrims now come daily to that otherwise uninteresting and rather ugly town to do honor to the memory of Byron--certainly one of the brightest and most fascinating, if not the greatest, of English poets.
For me there was none other of the historic places which we visited more deeply tinged by its romantic associations or possessing a greater fascination than Newstead Abbey. Perhaps this feeling was intensified by our previous unsuccessful attempts to gain admission and by the recollection of the passion of my boyhood days for the verse of Byron--though indeed I have hardly read him latterly. But we were to visit Newstead at last. If we found a little difficulty--possibly the result of our ignorance--in getting permission, we could not complain of the opportunities afforded us as visitors.
From the Mansfield road we entered the gateway and drove through the stretches of forest and meadow in the great park, halting the car at the very doorway of the ancient place. We paused to view the fine facade, with its square battlemented tower at one end and the ruins of the abbey church at the other. There is little left of this latter save the east wall, once pierced by three great windows, two of which have at some time been filled in. We were conducted by the rather aristocratic housekeeper to every part of the house save the private apartments of the family, and there was no effort to hurry us along--so often the fate of the tourist in such cases.
One who is accustomed to think of Newstead Abbey as it lives, lonely and half ruinous, in the verse of Byron, who had such an intense affection for the home of his ancestors; or even one who reads Washington Irving's interesting account of his visit to the place when owned by Col. Wildman a few years later, is hardly prepared for the modern palace into which the abbey has been transformed. The paneled halls, with their rich furnishings and rare curios from all parts of the world, and the trim, beautifully kept gardens that greet one everywhere from the windows, have little in common with the Newstead of which Byron wrote in "Hours of Idleness:"
"Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle, Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay; In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle Have choked up the rose which once bloomed in the way."
Still, much is unaltered and there are many relics to bring memories of the one-time noble, though unfortunate, owner, whose recklessness quite as much as his necessities compelled the sale of his ancestral estate.
Of greatest interest are the apartments which Byron himself occupied, a suite of three medium-sized rooms, which have been religiously kept through all the years just as the poet left them. The simple blue and white toilet set was his own, the bed the one he slept in, and many other articles and furnishings vividly recall the noble occupant who never returned after the sale of the abbey. Probably no one has occupied the rooms since Washington Irving slept there during the visit we have referred to and was roused in the middle of the night by a ghostly footfall in the hall--but found only Boatswain II. outside the door.
In the hall the marks of the pistol shots of the young lord and his wild companions have not been effaced from the walls and in the gallery there is a collection of many mementos of the poet. Perhaps the most interesting is a section of the tree upon which he carved his name and that of his sister, Augusta--cut down because it was decaying. The gallery is largely filled with portraits of the present family, but our interest centers in the famous portrait by Phillips, in which the refined features and dignified though slightly melancholy air has invested the poet's face with a spirituality which it probably did not possess in so great a degree.
From the house we were ushered into the gardens and were shown every nook and corner of these by the gardener in charge. They were elaborate indeed; rich with the color and perfume of the flowers which bloom so profusely in England; and there were many rare plants and shrubs. We were interested in Boatswain's grave, with its elaborate monument and inscription in which pathos verges on the ridiculous, yet highly consistent with the misanthropic moods so often affected by Byron. In contrast with the trim neatness of the flower beds and shrubbery is the fragment of the abbey church, through which the wind whistles as it did in the poet's day, and which has weathered the sun and rain of more than three hundred years since the heavy hand of the eighth Henry smote it into ruins. And it carries us back four hundred years farther to another Henry, who built the abbey to expiate his crime of instigating the murder of Thomas a'Becket.
The history of Newstead told in brief by Irving need not occupy space in this hasty chronicle. It was with reluctance that we departed after our two hours' sojourn. It often comes back in memory with all the color and glory of a perfect June day--the majestic hall, the abbey ruin, the gardens with their riot of coloring, the shining lake, the woodland and the meadows--an enchanted world which we left behind us as we hastened away over the road to Mansfield, where we had late luncheon at the Swan.
One will not leave the vicinity of Mansfield without a visit to Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle, famous for their connection with Elizabeth Spencer, "Bess of Hardwick." Architecturally, both are disappointing; Hardwick, bald, harsh and square, like a modern concrete factory, and Bolsover, an incongruous pile cut up into small, ill-arranged apartments, by far the finest part of it in complete ruin. Hardwick is still a residence of the Duke of Devonshire and had just passed on the death of Spencer Cavendish to his nephew, who was refurnishing the house preparatory to making it his home. A bare, unhomelike place it seemed, with its great staring windows, its uneven concrete floors, and its high ceilings of decorated plaster, broken and discolored in many places. Its chief historical interest centers in the fact that it was one of the many prison-houses of Mary Stuart; but her imprisonment here was far from rigorous--in fact, so considerate was the Earl of Shrewsbury of his royal ward that it roused the jealousy of his amiable spouse, the energetic Bess. Concerning this incident Miss Strickland--a rather biased historian, we must fear--takes the countess to task in vigorous style, declaring that--
"His proud and cruel wife, whose temper could not be restrained by any power on earth or in heaven, soon became jealous of the lovely and fascinating prisoner, and led her husband, a noble of exemplary gravity and a grandsire, a terrible life!"
However, as in nearly every case of the kind, there appears to have been another side to it, and in any event, there were many who took the part of the jealous wife, including, as might be expected, Queen Elizabeth herself.
The countess, besides Hardwick Hall, built the former house at Chatsworth, which has since been torn down. Bolsover was completed by her son; it is now unoccupied but maintained in good repair. It is worth a visit rather for the fine view from its towers--for it occupies a most magnificent site on a high promontory overlooking the wide vale of the river--than for any interest the castle itself possesses.
The sun had sunk low when we came down from the castle walls and started for York, sixty miles away. At Worksop we were clear of the byways and the open road, invitingly smooth and level and almost free from traffic, stretched out before us. This chronicle is no record of miles per hour, and the motor enters into it only as a means to an end; yet there is no harm in saying that we had few swifter, evener flights through a more charming country than that which fleeted past us between Worksop and York. We soon caught sight of Doncaster's dominating church tower, a fit mate for many of the cathedrals, but in our haste out of the town we missed the North Road and were soon noting the milestones to Tadcaster, famous for little else than its ales. The North Road is a trifle better in surface and a little more direct, but we had traversed it before and did not regret the opportunity of seeing a different country. The minster towers soon loomed dim in the purple light and we felt a sense of almost homelike restfulness when we were established at the Station Hotel--to our notion one of the two or three most comfortable in England.
X
FROM YORKSHIRE COAST TO BARNARD CASTLE
The Minster of St. John of Beverley is easily the finest single example of Perpendicular architecture in England; in beauty and majesty of design, in proportion and in general effect--from almost any viewpoint--there is no more pleasing church in the Kingdom. We come in sight of its graceful twin towers while yet afar from the town, after a thirty-mile run from York through some of the most prosperous farming country in the shire. As we come nearer, the mass of red tiles, from which rises the noble bulk of the minster, resolves itself into the houses of the old town, whose ancient heart has lost none of its charm in the little city which has more recently grown up around it.
As we emerge from a narrow street bordered with mean little houses, the great church suddenly bursts on our view and we pause to admire its vast yet perfect proportions, its rich carvings, and the multitude of graceful pinnacles. We enter, but the caretaker receives us with little enthusiasm, though at our request he shows us about in a rather reserved manner. A card on the wall explains matters: "Positively no fees to attendants." Our experience has been that such a notice means cash in advance if you are to have the attention you want and which you really need if you are to see and appreciate such a church. We proceed, therefore, to get on a proper footing with our guide, and begin forthwith to learn the history, the architecture, the curiosities and the gossip of Beverley Minster. And the last is not the least interesting, for here, as at Wymondham, was a rector who with the modest salary of four hundred pounds a year had spent many thousands of his own money in restoration and repair of the minster. He had restored the intricate screen and replaced some of the images which had been broken up, yet so cleverly was the toning and coloring done that the newer work could not be distinguished from the old.
The St. John from whom the minster took its name was Archbishop of York and founded a church on the present site in the sixth century. He died in 731 and, tradition says, is buried in the minster. But Beverley's most distinguishing historic fact is that it was one of the three "sanctuaries of refuge" in England. Here, by the strange edict of the early church, any criminal who could evade his pursuers might take refuge in the precincts of Beverley Minster and for thirty days be entitled to the protection and hospitality of the monks, after which he was given a passport to sail from the nearest port to some foreign land. We saw the rude stone chair of "refuge" to which no doubt many a gasping scoundrel clung, safe, for the time, from justice by virtue of his ability to outrun his pursuers. One incident is recorded of a "Tailour of York" who had cruelly murdered his wife but who escaped punishment by taking refuge in Beverley. The only penalty inflicted was to brand the criminal on the thumb with a hot iron and to watch him closely until he sailed for France. However, all this was better than being hanged, the penalty freely administered by the civil authorities in those days, and as a consequence Beverley always had a large number of "undesirable citizens" within her borders.
There is much else of interest in the minster, though we may not linger over its attractions save to mention the Percy tomb, reputed the finest in Europe--and indeed, its rare marbles and delicate sculptures must represent a princely fortune. Nor could we have more than a passing glimpse of St. Mary's Church, second only to the minster in importance, for Beverley is the only town in England of anywhere near its size that has the distinction of possessing two churches of really the first magnitude.
Following the road from Beverley to the coast by Great Driffield and Bridlington, we had a glimpse near the latter place of the high cliff of Flamborough Head, from which the startled Yorkshiremen of a century or more ago saw the "pirate," John Paul Jones, win his ever memorable victory over the Serapis. It is not a subject even to this day which the natives can discuss with entire equanimity.
The road closely follows the coast to Scarborough, the queen of Yorkshire watering-places. We caught frequent glimpses of the ocean, which, once out of the shadows of the towering cliffs, stretched away until its deep--almost metallic--blue faded against the silvery horizon. We soon found ourselves on the handsome main street of the new town, which brought us to the waterfront at the foot of castle hill. An old man approached us, seeing our hesitation, and informed us that the new road around the promontory, one of the finest drives in England, was open--not officially open, to be sure, and it would not be until some of the "Nobs" came and the ceremonies of a formal dedication were performed. The road had been cut in the almost sheer side of the cliff, a broad driveway overlooking the varied scenery of coast and ocean--the latter now as mild and softly shimmering as a quiet inland lake. One could only imagine, on such a day, how the sea must rage and thunder against the promontory in wild weather, and we learned that storms interfered much with the building of the road, one of them causing damage estimated at fifty thousand pounds. But Scarborough persevered and the splendid driveway had just been completed. Later we had the satisfaction of learning from the newspapers that the Princess of Wales had visited Scarborough for the express purpose of formally dedicating the road with all the ceremony so dear to the English.
Scarborough is unique in its combination of the old and the modern; but few of its rivals can boast of a castle with a history reaching back to the wars with the Danish invaders. Brighton and Eastbourne, sometimes ranked with Scarborough, are quite recent and lack the distinction that comes of centuries. Scarborough Castle, perched on its mighty rock, still presents a formidable appearance and impresses one with the tremendous strength its situation and heavy walls gave it before gunpowder brought such things to naught. From the keep tower a far-reaching prospect lies beneath us; a panorama of the sea chafing on the broken coast, and to the landward are the barren moors that encircle the town. There is not much of the fortress left, but the fragments are carefully guarded from decay and in places have been somewhat restored. There is a museum near the entrance to the keep, with a miscellaneous collection of relics, more or less gruesome, unearthed about the town and castle.
Few indeed are the places which bring back more delightful memories or a greater longing to return than Whitby--old, straggling, storm-beaten Whitby--climbing up its steep hill crowned by one of the most unique churches and stateliest abbey ruins in all Britain. The road which takes us from Scarborough to its ancient rival is a wild one, wandering around the black, heather-splotched hills with trying grades which make careful driving necessary. To the right the ocean still shimmers in the setting sun and in nooks on the coast we catch glimpses of fishing villages--among them Robin Hood's Bay, called by some the most picturesque of the smaller fishing-towns in England. Long before we come into Whitby we catch sight of the skeleton of the abbey on the headland, standing almost weirdly against the evening sky. We descend a long, winding hill and find ourselves threading our way through crooked, narrow streets thronged with people who get out of the way only when they have to. Passing between rows of old houses crowding closely on either hand, we cross the bridge over the inlet and ascend the sharp hill where the hotels face the town and abbey on the opposite cliff. Thither we wend our way after dinner, just as the daylight begins to fade, and passing through the devious streets thronged with fisher folk and dirty youngsters, we ascend the ninety-nine broad stone steps by which one reaches the headland.
The ruin is deserted and we find ourselves sole possessors of Whitby Abbey at an hour when the twilight softens the outlines and touches with gray and purple hues the old town at our feet and the rough moorland hills in the background, while the wide expanse of ocean glows mysteriously from the reflection of the dim-lit skies. The ruin rises abruptly from the soft greensward upon which the cows are contentedly grazing, and near at hand, gleaming darkly in the fading light, lies the fish pool, which lends much to the picturesqueness of the surroundings. The great church has fallen into complete ruin; decay is riot everywhere. Only half a century ago the central tower crashed to the earth, carrying many arches and pillars with it, and huge fragments of masonry still lie scattered about as if fallen from some thunder-riven cliff.
Whitby Abbey is rich in legend, and at such an hour we will trouble ourselves little about sober fact--let mystery wrap the ruin even as the mantle of gathering darkness; for us it shall be only the "High Whitby's cloistered pile" of romance. We pass outside the abbey confines and pause before St. Mary's Church, a long squat building with low tower, as bald and plain as the abbey is pretentious and ornate. It was built as a rival to the abbey church in a very early day when there were bickerings between the townspeople and the monks of Whitby. In the churchyard, thick with mouldering memorials, has lately been raised a Saxon cross, inscribed to the memory of Caedmon, Father of English Letters, who "fell asleep hard by A. D. 680."
As we return to our hotel, we are attracted into one of the old-town shops by a display of old brass and silver, and the genial proprietor at once establishes a basis of community, for has he not been in the States and has he not a brother there now? We pick up an antique lantern with dingy horn doors and green with verdigris and try the stale joke, "Made in Birmingham," which once or twice has brought a storm of indignant protest on our heads. But it does not so excite our Yorkshire friend.
"Yes," he said, "I had a dozen copies made of a very rare piece that came into my hands. And that accounts for the price--genuine antiques are so rare and so sought for that the original would cost you many times the copy--and after all, you would be no better off when you had it."
We cannot resist such confidence and add further to our burden of oddities such as one gathers, willy nilly, in a tour of the nooks and corns. Whitby shops are full of jet ornaments--brooches, beads, bracelets, and a thousand and one fanciful things--for jet is mined near the town,--a smooth lustrous substance whose name has come to signify the final degree of blackness.
On the following day we again wander about the old-world streets of the town, which we find ourselves loath to leave. The morning's catch is just in at the fish-market and the finny tribes of all degrees are sorted on the pavement and sold to the townspeople. The fishing industry of Whitby is now on a small scale only; in former days it constituted a source of some wealth. The ballad writer celebrating Robin Hood's visit to Whitby gives this very good reason:
"The fishermen more money have Than any merchants two or three."
And thus the sturdy highwayman found it easy to replenish his exchequer from the fat purses of Whitby folk. It may be, though, that the isolated situation of the town between the wild moors and the sea, and its good harbor for small vessels, made the occupation of smuggling especially profitable, and the wealth of the old-time citizens of Whitby may have been augmented by this practice.
Our route out of the town led through the Cleveland Hills, the roughest and loneliest of the Yorkshire moors. We climbed many steep, rugged hills and dropped down sharp, dangerous slopes; one will hardly find elsewhere in England a country scored more deeply by narrow valleys. There is little of life on the twenty-five miles of road to Guisborough, where one comes out of the moor into the wide valley of the Tees. Guisborough is a bleak little town whose beautiful surroundings have been marred by the mines. Of its ancient priory, there remains only the magnificent eastern wall, pierced nearly to the top by tall lancet windows from which the stone tracery has long since vanished. It stands in a wide meadow, half hidden by giant trees. As we glided along the highroad we caught glimpses of the wall, rising from a stretch of velvety lawn, but there was not enough of the ruin to make a nearer inspection worth while.
From Guisborough our road ran through a level, fertile farming country. We missed Middlesbrough, a manufacturing city of one hundred thousand, whose array of factory chimneys loomed up thickly across the fields, and soon came into Stockton-on-Tees, about half the size of its neighbor. It lies directly on the river, here a black, turbid stream, sullied by the factories that crowd its banks. We hesitated entering the Black Lion--it had an uncanny look that made us distrust even the infallible Baedeker. No one except the busy barmaids was to be seen. A few glances about the place confirmed our suspicions and we "silently stole away."
What a contrast to the Black Lion we found in its next-door neighbor, the Vane Arms, a fine type of the hospitable old-time English inn. Its massive, richly carved furniture would delight the heart of the connoisseur and is the pride of the stately landlady, who sat at the head of the table and treated us as though we were guests in more than the perfunctory hotel parlance. In the desert of daily hotel life one does not easily forget such an oasis as the Vane Arms. It is the only thing I can think of that might make one wish to linger in Stockton-on-Tees.