Part 11
The road to Darlington is excellent, though sinuous, and we found in that bustling city little evidence of the antiquity vouched for by its twelfth century church. It is now a railway center and has been since the first passenger train in England ran over the Darlington & Stockton Railway in 1825. In going to Barnard Castle we proceeded by the way of Staindrop, though the direct road by the Tees is the best. But the route we chose passes Raby Castle, which burst on our view shortly before we reached Staindrop,--a huge gray pile, half fortress, half palace, with many square battlemented towers and crenelated turrets, all combining to fulfill the very ideal of the magnificence of feudal days.
Permission to visit the castle was easily gained from the estate agent at Staindrop. It would be hard to imagine anything more imposing than Raby Castle as we saw it on that perfect July day, its vast bulk massed against the green background of the wooded hills, and in front of it a fine lawn, with many giant elms, stretching down to the road; but does not our picture tell more than any words? We noted that few of the great private parks which we had visited were so beautifully kept or had so much to please and attract; the great trees, the lawnlike sward, the little blue lakes, the herds of tawny deer--all combined to form a setting fit for one of the proudest and best preserved of the ancient homes of England.
The castle dates from the thirteenth century. By fortunate chance it escaped the ravages of war, and having been continuously occupied--indeed, there is a legend that its hearth-fire has never died out in five hundred years--it is one of the most perfect examples of its type in England. The exterior has not been greatly altered, but inside it has been much modernized and transformed into a palatial and richly furnished residence. In the library is a collection of costly books; the gallery has many rare portraits and pictures; and scattered about the different apartments are many valuable objects of art, among these the famous marble, "The Greek Slave," by Powers, the American sculptor.
Least altered of all is the medieval kitchen, which occupies the base of a large tower and is one of the most interesting features of the castle. Its immense size serves to impress upon one the proportions of feudal hospitality--that the lord of the castle must look above everything else to the good cheer of his guests. But there is a touch of modernism here, too, in the iron ranges which have superseded the great fireplace--perhaps thirty feet in width--of former times.
Raby cannot greatly boast of historic events, yet it is interesting to know that it was once the home of the younger Sir Henry Vane, who was governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1636. It was built by the Nevilles in 1370, but passed to other hands two hundred years later, when that family took part in the Catholic uprising in the north. But after all, Raby is far more interesting as a survival of the "days of roselight and romance" than would be the story of the tenure of this or that forgotten lord or earl.
Barnard Castle takes its name from the ancient fortress whose scanty ruin still looms over the town. It stands on a cliff which drops from the castle wall almost sheer to the shallow Tees beneath. One thinks first of Dickens' association with the town and naturally enough hastens to the King's Head, where the novelist's room is still shown. Master Humphrey's clock, which adorned a building just opposite the hotel, has disappeared--purchased by an American, a native told us with a shade of indignation in his voice--but the town itself is little different from the one Dickens knew. He gained here much material for "Nicholas Nickleby," though at Bowes, high on the moor to the westward, is supposed to have been the original of Dotheboys Hall.
The King's Head we found a comfortable, well-managed, old-time inn, an excellent headquarters for excursions to the many interesting points of the vicinity. We reached here early in the afternoon, affording us time for a fifteen-mile jaunt up the Tees Valley to the High Force--they call a waterfall the "force" in Yorkshire--the largest cataract in England, we were told. It is situated in a lovely dell, and while the flood of white water pouring over the jagged cliff into the brown boiling lake below is pretty and striking, it has nothing awe inspiring or majestic about it. True, at the time, the Tees was at lowest ebb; a long drouth had reduced it to a fourth its normal volume and of course we did not see the High Force at its best. Every spot of interest in the Kingdom has its inn and it was in the farmyard of the High Force Hotel that we left the car. On returning from the falls, a deflated tire prolonged our stay, encouraging acquaintance with the hotel people. The landlord, who out of the hotel season was apparently a farmer, became friendly and communicative, especially desiring us to deliver a message to his son, whom he seemed to think we might easily locate in America. Then he led us into the hotel, where a framed page from his visitors' book showed that the Princess Ena--now Queen Victoria of Spain--and members of her suite had been guests at the High Force Hotel. The two great events in the old man's life seemed to be the success that he considered his son was making in the States and the royal visit to his inn. I do not know which gave him the greater satisfaction.
We returned to Barnard Castle following the road north of the Tees--we had come to Middleton on the south side of the river--and we had an almost continual view of the winding stream and its pleasantly diversified valley. It was a peaceful rural landscape, glimmering in the twilight--the silver thread of the river running through it--that greeted our view during our swift flight along the upland road.
It was the end of a rather trying day and it seemed hardly possible that we had sojourned in Old Whitby only the night before--so different was the scene and so varied our experiences; still, the distance in miles is not great. The restful quiet of the King's Head and its well-served dinner were indeed a welcome close to the wanderings of the day.
XI
LAKELAND AND THE YORKSHIRE DALES
During a tour such as ours one becomes impressed that a large proportion of Britain is in barren moorlands or broken hills suitable only for sheep grazing--an impression made all the stronger by the diminutive size of the country. We in America can better afford our vast tracts of waste land; we have fertile river valleys from which dozens of Englands might be carved; but it seems almost melancholy that at least a third of the Kingdom, no greater in size than an average American state, should be almost as irreclaimable as the Sahara. One does not so much note this waste in railway travel, for the steam roads usually follow the valleys and lowlands, always green and prosperous, and naturally seek out the more populous centers. But the wagon road climbed steep hills and wended its way into many retired sections where the steam engine cannot profitably go, and the motor car has opened to tourists a hitherto almost unexplored country.
We were early away for Lakeland, and for miles and miles we traversed a rather inferior road through the moors and fells. Four or five miles out of Barnard Castle we passed through Bowes, a typical Yorkshire moorland town stretching some distance along the highroad. Though otherwise uninteresting enough, Bowes has one distinction of which it is far from proud, for here Charles Dickens found the school which served as the prototype of Dotheboys Hall in "Nicholas Nickleby." The building, altered into a tenement house and its evil reputation disguised under the more pleasing name of "The Villa," still stands at the western end of the town. In Dickens' day it was known as Shaw's School, and it seems that it deserved far less than many others of its class the overwhelming odium cast upon it in "Nicholas Nickleby"; and it is said that there still are people in Bowes who chafe at the injustice done their old-time townsman. But even if the Bowes school suffered some injustice, the purpose of Dickens was accomplished none the less in the reformation of the terrible juvenile workhouses which masqueraded as "schools."
The moorland road carries us onward to Brough, a shabby, desolate town deep in the hills, with scarcely a touch of color to lighten its gray monotone. But this decayed village has its traditions; it was once famous through all England for its annual horse fair. They tell us that the fair is still held in Brough, though its fame has long since declined and it is now of only local interest.
At Appleby we enter the vale of the Eden, and bounding the western horizon we catch the first glimpse of the blue hills in whose deep depressions lie the English lakes. Appleby has a comfortable hotel, where we pause for lunch, and the appearance of the town is better and more prosperous than those we have recently passed. The square tower of the castle rises from an adjacent height and the church presents the remarkable spectacle of a hair dresser's rooms occupying a portion of the ancient cloisters which open on the market place.
There is no finer highway in the north of England than the Carlisle road through Penrith. It pursues nearly if not quite the course of the old Roman road following the lowlands along the river--a broad white way which leads through a pleasant succession of fields and villages. We pass many ancient landmarks--on the left Brougham Castle, a red sandstone ruin splashed with ivy and creepers, and farther on to the right, Eden Hall, made famous by the ballad of Uhland.
Penrith is a busy town of ten thousand or more, seemingly improved since our visit of four years before, when it had no electric light plant. It is the starting-point for most Lake District excursions, whether by rail or coach. The railway follows the wagon road quite closely to Keswick and from thence one must have some other conveyance than rail to explore the region. And is it not well enough, for what impression worth while could one gain of Lakeland from a railway car?
From Keswick we turn southward over the hills, from whose summits the landscape--every hill and vale redolent with music and memories of the "Lakers"--stretches away beneath us, the lakes set in the valleys like great flashing gems. How familiar the odd names have been made by the poets of Lakeland! Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Borrowdale, Langdale Pikes and Fells, Rydal, Grasmere, and a hundred others--all call to mind the stanzas of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
Our road sweeps up and down the hills along the sinuous shores of Thirlmere, certainly one of the most picturesque of the bright sisterhood of English lakes, but which now serves the very practical purpose of a source of water-supply for the city of Manchester, which acquired it by purchase. This transaction has aroused the indignation of a modern lake poet who falls little short of the best traditions of his illustrious predecessors and he makes vigorous protest against the cities whose "million-throated thirst" menaces the "sacred meres" of Lakeland. But the Manchester ownership--prosaic as it may be--has not detracted from the beauty of Thirlmere and many nuisances that once encumbered its shores have been abated.
But the human interest of the lakes centers around Grasmere and Rydal Water. Perchance Rydal and Grasmere and Dove Cottage are out of place in a chronicle of unfamiliar England, and yet who could write of the Lake District with no reference to the very attractions that have made it most famous? It is late as we pass the quaint old church "with bald bare tower" and pause at the cottage just off the highroad, where Wordsworth passed so many years in humble state that verged closely on poverty, as one would count it now. There is little of the picturesque in the gray-stone slate-roofed cottage, though the diamond-paned windows and the rose vines climbing to the eaves somewhat relieve the monotony of the square walls and the rude stone fence just in front. Like Shakespeare's house, it is now the property of an association which insures its preservation in memory of the poet. It has been restored as nearly as possible to the same condition as during the occupancy of the Wordsworths, and the collection of books and other relics pertaining to them is being constantly increased.
It is easy for us to enter into the daily life of the poet as we pass through the small and rather rudely furnished rooms; and one must indeed be totally lacking in poetic instinct if he cannot feel at least a touch of sympathy with the pleasant surroundings so often the theme of the great laureate of the simple life. We sit in the rustic seat which Wordsworth was wont to occupy and can look over the gray roof of the cottage to the long succession of hills stretching away until their blue outlines are silhouetted against the sunset sky--verily an inspiration even to the most matter-of-fact intellect. We know that much of Wordsworth's best work was composed in the little garden to the rear of the cottage--a bit of earth that he loved with an intensity that has found more than one expression in his written words. And it was of the very seat upon which we sit that he wrote:
"Beneath these fruit tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of spring's unclouded weather, In this sequestered nook how sweet To sit upon my orchard seat! And birds and flowers once more to greet My last year's friends together."
But to know more of the simple, happy life at Dove Cottage, one may read from the letter written by Dorothy in 1800:
"We are daily more delighted with Grasmere and its neighborhood. Our walks are perpetually varied, and we are more fond of the mountains as our acquaintance with them increases. We have a boat upon the lake, and a small orchard and smaller garden, which, as it is the work of our own hands, we regard with pride and partiality. Our cottage is quite large enough for us, though very small; and we have made it neat and comfortable within doors; and it looks very nice on the outside; for though the roses and honeysuckles which we have planted against it are only of this year's growth, yet it is covered all over with green leaves and scarlet flowers; for we have trained scarlet beans upon threads, which are not only exceedingly beautiful but very useful, as their produce is immense. We have made a lodging-room of the parlor below stairs, which has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all over with matting. We sit in a room above stairs, and we have one lodging-room with two single beds, a sort of lumber-room, and a small low unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and in which we have put a small bed."
But come! We may not stop at Dove Cottage for the night; it would now offer but sorry cheer, and Windermere seems the most available place to tarry. We pass close to the water's edge along Grasmere, and Rydal brings up new associations of the poet--here on the "Mount" overlooking the tiny lake is the house where Wordsworth lived in his later and more prosperous years, still the home of his granddaughter, we are told. But the tripper is not welcome and the envious tangle of trees and shrubbery denies to the wayfarer even a glimpse of the house.
The beautiful situation of the Lowwood Hotel attracts our attention as we follow the margin of the lake, but we pass on in our swift race for Windermere. Coming thither we inquire of a policeman in the market place for the best hotel. He is diplomatic enough to disclaim fitness to judge, but adds confidentially, "You'll make no mistake if you go to the Hold Hengland; that's where the quality goes." We thank him--praise Heaven that is all one is expected to do, or in fact, may do for a policeman in Britain!--but when we view the Old England we are seized with regret that we passed Lowwood with its magnificent frontage on the lake. It is nothing to retrace the half dozen miles to the most pretentious hotel in the Lake District, though probably far from the most comfortable, and certainly anything but the place for travelers of an economical turn. What motorist could forget or forgive the charge of half a crown for simple garage--two and one-half times the standard price in England! Still, the view of the lake from Lowwood as the evening falls compensates for many shortcomings. The twilight has transformed the limpid waters into a sheet of dull silver, touched with faint rose hues from the last glow of the sun. The hills beyond stand in dark blue outline against a pale opalescent sky and the dim gray towers of Wray Castle rear their massive bulk in the foreground. There is no more enchanting view from the shores of Windermere Lake and we saw it under the most favorable conditions.
A sharp change has come over the scene when we resume our journey in the morning. A light rain is falling and the mist hovering over the lake half hides the distant hills. Gray tones predominate everywhere, contrasting cheerlessly with the brilliance of the preceding day. But such a day may be looked for as the rule rather than the exception, for the rainfall of the Lake District is much the heaviest in England. We pass Ambleside at the head of the lake, and follow the steep, ill-kept road, slippery from the rain, to Coniston, a very quiet village, nestling at the foot of the great hills at the head of Coniston Water. In the churchyard here John Ruskin was laid to rest--a Celtic cross marks the spot--and a museum in the town contains many of his sketches and manuscripts. The road southward closely follows Coniston Water, though with many slight but sharp undulations, winding through a dense growth of young trees. We pass directly under Brantwood, the plain old house where Ruskin lived, and catch glimpses of the oriel window of leaded glass in which he was wont to sit at his work. The house is situated on a wooded hillside and commands a fine view of the lake. The road from Brantwood to the end of the lake is so narrow, so tortuous and so obscured by the trees that extreme caution is necessary. It is still early and the way is quite clear; we experience no trouble, yet we are glad indeed to get into the main road to Dalton and Ulverston.
Furness Abbey, once neglected and rather inaccessible, has more recently become one of the best known and most easily reached of the historic spots of northern England. Among the multifarious activities of the late Duke of Devonshire, was the building of the railroad that leads to Barrow-in-Furness and the development of that town into an important port of sixty thousand inhabitants. A few miles north of the town are the extensive ruins of Furness Abbey, a Cistercian foundation of the twelfth century, situated in a narrow valley underneath overshadowing hills from which the red sandstone used in the building was taken. The keen business sense of the duke recognized in this splendid ruin a decided factor to assist in his plan of development. The grounds surrounding the abbey were converted into a handsome park, a station was opened on the railroad just opposite, and a large hotel was built near by.
Furness Abbey, however, carefully groomed and in charge of voluble guides posted in the minutest detail of architecture and history, can hardly impress one as it did when, a lonely and crumbling ruin, it was the goal of only the infrequent visitor. Its story is a long one but of interest only to the specialist or antiquarian. To the layman the tales of the different abbeys seem wonderfully alike: founded in religious zeal, a period of penury, then of prosperity, and finally one of great power and affluence. Then came the quarrel of Henry VIII. with Rome and through the activity of the king's agents the abbeys were plundered and partially destroyed. The direct damage inflicted by the looters was usually limited to tearing the lead from the roofs, smashing the windows, and defacing the tombs. Then followed the long ages of neglect and the decay consequent upon the rains of summer and the storms of winter. But more than all other causes that contributed to the ruin and sometimes complete effacement of the magnificent abbey buildings, was the vandalism that converted them into stone walls and hovels--every one became the neighborhood quarry and in many instances we owe the fragments that remain to the solidity that made tearing down a difficult task.
Furness Abbey is well worth a visit. While only fragments of its walls remain, excavations have been made with such care and intelligence that one has the whole groundwork of the great establishment before him and may gain from it an excellent idea of monastic life. With the sole exception of Fountains, it is probably the most extensive monastic ruin in Britain, and while it lacks much of the beauty and impressiveness of its Yorkshire rival, it serves to give one a better insight into the daily life of the ancient occupants. Judged by our standard, it must have been a rigorous, cheerless life, though it probably contrasted more favorably with conditions of its own time. There is today a growing belief that, on the average, the life of the monks was not so easy nor so corrupt as apologists for the ruthless despoilation of the abbeys would have us think.
I have consumed in these vagaries the space that I should have devoted to the description of the abbey; but descriptions are easy to be had and the best of them will fall short of the interest and beauty that awaits the visitor to the charming Lancashire ruin. One may well stay a day at the hotel, than which there are few in England more comfortable, more beautifully located, or better in appointment.
We have covered three thousand miles in our wanderings and a certain weariness possesses us. We feel that a rest of a day or two will not come amiss, and no place within reach appeals to us as old York. To our notion the resort towns with their ostentatious hotels--Harrogate and Ilkley are nearer--cannot compare with the cathedral city and its Station Hotel as a place where one may be at ease. The Station, with its unpretentious and prosaic name, is the property of the railway company, a great rambling building of yellow brick, unhampered by limitations of space and so arranged that every guest-room has light and air from the outside. There are spacious and finely kept grounds in front and at some distance to the rear is the station, but not close enough to disturb the quiet of the hotel.
But York is full two days' journey at our rate of traveling; there is much to see on the way and our route will be anything but a direct one. We leave Furness Abbey in the early afternoon and the skies, which had cleared as we reached Coniston, are lowering again. The road by which we came carries us to Ulverston, and from thence we soon come to Lake Side, at the lower end of Windermere. The fine road to the north closely skirts the lake, but the trees stand so thickly that we catch only occasional glimpses of the water. A light summer shower is falling, and the fleeting sun and shadow over the mirrorlike surface, mottled with patches of gleaming blue and almost inky blackness, gives us another of the endless phases of the beauty of Lakeland. For seven or eight miles we keep close to the shore, through Bowness to Windermere, two quiet little towns largely given over to hotels and lodging-houses. The great vogue of the Lake District as a resort is comparatively recent, and as a consequence one finds in these towns a mingling of the ancient and modern. Windermere, which grew out of the little village of Birthswaite, is especially accessible, being reached in about an hour by train from Manchester.