Part 14

The ascent of Gonerby Hill, where these events took place, is a part of the journey to the North. It begins at the distance of a mile and a quarter beyond Grantham, shortly before reaching the hundred and twelfth milestone from London. For this part of the world it is a remarkable eminence, but although a long continuous climb, it does not come up to the impressive old descriptions of it, and cannot compare with such hills as Reigate Hill, or with Boughton Hill on the Dover Road. The village of Great Gonerby, a poor, out-at-elbows kind of a place, stands on the crest of the hill, with its great spired church as a landmark, a wide, bare street, a little inn with the curious sign of the “Recruiting Sergeant,” and an old posting inn, the “Rutland Arms,” its principal features. Passing through the cutting by which the gradient of the northern side of the hill has been eased, a remarkable view is unfolded of that flat region, fertile as a land of promise, the Vale of Belvoir.

We shall hear presently what Sir Walter Scott has to say of Gonerby Hill, but in the meanwhile let us see how the view from it struck another traveller, the Reverend Thomas Twining, an amiable clergyman of Colchester, who in the eighteenth century was in the habit of taking holidays along the roads, mounted on his horse “Poppet,” and writing letters to his friends, describing what he saw. He was here in 1776.

“You have a view,” says he, “somewhat sublime and striking from its mere extent and suddenness but it is flat as a pancake. The road is through level, moorish, unpleasant ground from the bottom of that hill to Newark, but, as road, excellent.” No guide-book ever pictured a view so vividly as this description, which may stand unaltered to-day.

Gonerby Hill—“Gunnerby” is the correct pronunciation of the word—is something more to us in these pages than merely a hill. It is a place of literary eminence, whose terrors are enshrined in the pages of Scott and Ainsworth. Jeanie Deans, of all the romantic and historic characters that people this historic and romantic road the most prominent, is especially to be identified with this height. Historic she is because there is a substantial basis of truth in the character of Sir Walter Scott’s heroine, and of Effie and many another figure in the _Heart of Midlothian_. They have fictitious names, but some were real persons. Helen Walker, who died in 1791 and was buried in the churchyard of Irongray, near Dumfries, is the prototype of Jeanie. She had in 1737 walked to London and sought a pardon for her sister, Isabella, condemned to death by the ferocious Scots law on a _presumption_ of having murdered her child. She actually did (as Scott’s heroine is described as having done) seek the Duke of Argyle and through his interest obtain the object of her journey; but Scott is responsible for the embroidery of this simple and affecting story; for he never saw Helen Walker, and she, with Scottish closeness, never described her adventures, being only too anxiously concerned that the story of her sister’s shame should be forgotten.

It is a curious and (admirable or not, as one may personally think it) unusual conscience that would hesitate to stretch a point in evidence when to do so would be to save the life of a loved sister; and more strange still to find so unbending a moralist enduring the toils and dangers of a four-hundred miles’ tramp with the bare possibility of preserving the life of the sinner in view at the end; but to understand the workings of the Scottish conscience is beyond the mental reach of any one who does not chance to be either a Scot or a Presbyterian.

And here let it be said that the Jeanie Deans of the novel is by no means so attractive a heroine as Scott wished to make her. There is heroism in her walk from Scotland to London, and we rejoice when she is fortunate enough to obtain a “cast in a wagon,” or pity her when she falls in with thieves and murderers at Gonerby Hill foot; but when we find her “conforming to the national (that is to say, the English) extravagance of wearing shoes and stockings for the whole day,” we can scarce subdue a snort of contempt at the very superior manner in which she thus yields to the popular prejudice in favour of this extravagance in shoe-leather. Nor is she a particularly lovable figure when she disputes theology with the rector of Willingham, with all the assurance of a Doctor of Divinity and all the narrow-minded bigotry of a Covenanter; coming in these things perilously near the ideal of the perfect prig.

We must here quote the landlord of the “Saracen’s Head” at Newark on Gonerby Hill. He spoke of it as though it were some beetling eminence, resembling at the very least a Snowdon or an Helvellyn. He called it a “high mountain,” and indeed Scott has in putting this phrase into mine host’s mouth made him characteristic of his age.

The year of Jeanie Deans’ romantic expedition was 1737, and then, and for long afterwards, travellers and all who had business with the roads magnified hills in this manner. They disliked hills, and so for that matter did most people, for the appreciation of scenery was not yet born. “When I was young,” said Wordsworth, many years later, “there were no lakes nor mountains,” and it was Thomas Gray, the author of the _Elegy_, who really was the first to discover beauty instead of terror and desolation in them.

Jeanie Deans, on the other hand, was pleased to hear of Gonerby Hill. Not, mark you, that she was educated up to an appreciation of the picturesque. We know, in fact, that she was not, because when she and the Duke of Argyle stood looking down upon the lovely expanse of woods, meads, and waters seen from Richmond Hill, all she could find to say was that “It’s braw feeding for the cows.” No, when she learned with pleasure of the “mountain” she was to cross, it was only for association’s sake: “I’m glad to hear there’s a hill, for baith my sight and my very feet are weary o’ sic tracts o’ level ground—it looks a’ the way between this and York as if a’ the land had been trenched and levelled, whilk is very wearisome to my Scotch een. When I lost sight of a muckle blue hill they ca’ Ingleboro’, I thought I hadna a friend left in this strange land.”

“As for the matter of that, young woman,” said mine host, “an you be so fond o’ hill, I carena an thou couldst carry Gunnerby away with thee in thy lap, for it’s a murder to post-horses. But here’s to thy journey, and mayst thou win well through it, for thou is a bold and a canny lass.”

Gonerby Hill was reputed the steepest bit between London and Edinburgh. It was, at the time when Scott wrote, a great deal steeper than nowadays, now that the road has been cut deeply through it, instead of climbing painfully over the crest. Then also, as he remarks, the open ground at its foot was unenclosed and covered with copses and swampy pools. Also, as Jeanie discovered, there was “bad company” where the “bonny hill lifted its brow to the moon.” But surely never did such odd company as Sir Walter has invented lurk in these recesses. The _Heart of Midlothian_, indeed, is a fantastic novel quite unworthy of the Wizard of the North, and its wildly improbable characters and marvellous rencounters are on a par with Harrison Ainsworth at his worst. Syston, two miles away to the right, is, they say, the original of the Willingham village in the novel, and Barkston, close by, is doubtless the “Barkston town-end” where Mother Murdockson was put in the stocks; but the references to them are of the haziest.

It was not inadvisedly that Ainsworth was just mentioned, for Gonerby Hill is named in Turpin’s Ride. Ainsworth always resorted to the gibbet when he wanted to make a point in the gruesome. Accordingly, when Turpin mounts the rise, what does he find but “two scarecrow objects covered with rags and rusty links of chain,” depending from “the tree.” “Will this be my lot, I wonder?” asks the hero with a shudder. We need only to be slightly acquainted with Ainsworth’s methods to know that a melodramatic answer was immediately forthcoming. Springing from the briars and tussocks of rank grass between the foot of the gallows and the road, a gaunt figure exclaimed, “Ay, marry will it!” These “gaunt figures” never failed the novelist; but the plain man wants to know what they were doing on these inclement spots, and by what unfailing instinct they were always there at the precise moment demanded in the interests of fiction.

The descent of Gonerby Hill accomplished, and the level reached, a singularly featureless and flat twelve miles leads into Newark, past Marston cross-roads, where a turnpike gate used to trouble travellers, past Foston, a forlorn village on a knoll, Long Bennington, a larger and still more forlorn village on the flat, and thence, with the graceful spire of Claypole far on the right, over the Shire Dyke, into Nottinghamshire, and through Balderton.

XXIX

THE approach to Newark is long and dull, by way of the suburban “London Road” and past the decaying Beaumond Cross, but this leads at length to the great open square of the Market-place, the most striking of all such centres of public resort to be found on the way to the North. Newark-“upon-Trent” is a misnomer, for neither the town nor the castle, which was once the “new work” that gave the place its name, are on that river, but only on a branch of it—the Devon—which falls into the Trent at Crankley Point, some miles below the town. The “new work” was only new some eight hundred years ago, when Edward the Confessor’s castle on the banks of the Devon was built, or when it was rebuilt or enlarged by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, 1123–47. Bishops and other mighty castle-builders in those times not infrequently built their own prisons when piling up their grim fortresses, and so the Bishop of Lincoln found, when King Stephen seized him and kept him in durance within his own stronghold. A judiciously low diet of bread and water, and confinement in an unhealthy dungeon below the level of the river, soon broke the haughty Churchman’s spirit, and he transferred the castle to the Crown.

But Newark Castle has better claims to notice than as the dungeon of one of those old bloody-minded prelates. As the place where King John ended his evil life, we may well look upon its ruined walls with interest. His rebellious barons scattered on his approach in that year of 1216, and England seemed in danger of a long continuance of its troubles under the profligate king. But a surfeit of peaches brought that wicked life to a hasty conclusion, and here, on the banks of the sluggish Devon, one of the worst of English monarchs died. We need not regard peaches with apprehension because John is said to have died of them. We must consider whence they came; from the monks of Swineshead Abbey, where the king had stayed on his journey to Newark. Now, Holy Church had the very best of reasons for hating that monarch, and from hatred to murder was not a far cry in those days. So of peaches King John doubtless died; but of peaches subtly flavoured with poison, there is little doubt.

The castle was again seized by the barons, in the succeeding reign, but they surrendered, after a week’s siege, and by the gift of the king, the Bishops of Lincoln received their own again. Under Edward the Sixth it again became the property of the crown, and when James the First “progressed” through England to his throne, these walls sheltered him during a week of festivity.

A lawless and discourteous, as well as a weak-minded king, as we shall see. Crowds assembled during the festivities set apart by the corporation, and a fellow was caught in the act of pocket-picking. By order of the king, the unfortunate wretch was strung up, instanter, without the veriest semblance of a trial! There’s your lawlessness, and here follows the discourtesy.

[Picture: Newark Castle]

There was a certain Dame Eleanor Disney, who, to do honour to this strange kind of king, came, splendidly dressed, with her husband, Sir Henry, to one of the receptions. James’s eye lighted upon all this finery, and his frugal mind was shocked. “Wha,” he asked, “be that lady wi’ a lairdship to her bock?”

But the most stirring of Newark’s historic days were yet to come. Newark to the last was loyal to Charles the First. Three times was the town besieged by the Parliament, and never taken. All the inhabitants armed and did excellent service, making sorties and capturing troops of Parliamentary horse; and had not the royal cause failed elsewhere, Newark must have emerged, triumphant, at the end. But at last all that remained were some few outlying garrisons throughout the country. Newark was especially commanded by the king to discontinue a hopeless resistance, and accordingly the town laid down its arms in 1646. It was then that the castle was ruined.

It is a highly picturesque ruin to-day, and lacking nothing in itself of grandeur, only needs a more effective site. As it stands, only slightly elevated above the river and the surrounding levels, this historic castle has not the advantages that belong to fortresses like Ludlow and Harlech, perched on their rocky heights. But it has done its duty and still serves to give a note of dignity to Newark town, as one approaches it by the long straight levels of the road from the north. It looks much the same to-day as when Rowlandson made his sketch of it, with the coach dashing over the bridge, more than a hundred years ago; the projecting Tudor oriel windows still looking forth upon the sullen tide from the more ancient walls, their crumbling stones scarce more decayed than then. The old wooden bridge, however, that formerly spanned the Devon, was pulled down and rebuilt in 1775.

The great glory of Newark is its beautiful church, with that soaring spire which is visible for miles away, before the town itself is glimpsed. Not so tall as Grantham spire, it is as beautiful in its simpler style, and the church is better placed in the town than that of Grantham. Especially striking is the view across the great market-place, the grey Early English and Decorated spire, with its numerous belfry-lights, and the fine windows and bold arcading of the tower forming a splendidly effective contrast with the seventeenth and eighteenth century red-brick houses facing the square. Newark and Grantham spires are really the products of an old-time rivalry between the two towns. Either town is satisfied that it possesses the best, and so the peace is kept throughout the ages.

A relic of old times is found in the custom at Newark known as “Ringing for Gofer.” On six successive Sunday evenings, beginning twelve Sundays before Christmas, the old parish church bells are rung for one hour, complying with the terms of a bequest left by a merchant named Gofer, over two centuries ago. He had on one occasion lost his way at night in Sherwood Forest, then infested by robbers of no very chivalrous instincts, who required, not “your money or your life,” but both. Just as he had given up hope, he heard these bells of Newark, and by their sound he made his way to safety. In memory of his deliverance he left a sum of money for this bell-ringing.

The market-square has always been the centre of Newark’s life. It is singularly like the great market-square of Nottingham, on a smaller scale, and, like it, is partly surrounded by houses with a colonnaded piazza. An empty void now, save on the weekly market-day, that occasion finds its broad, cobble-stoned space thickly covered with stalls, while groups of farmers throng the pavements, and with their samples of corn displayed in the palms of their hands sell and buy in immense quantities. In the old times this vast empty square was peopled every day with arriving or departing coaches, and its pavements beset with passengers mounting or alighting, for the celebrated inns of Newark were mostly situated here, and the chief of them are here, even now, on the opposite side from the church, and adjoining one another. Newark is said to have once had no fewer than fifty inns. The classical Town Hall, built in 1773, on the west side of the square, stands on the site of two of them, and many others have been converted to different uses. Here on the south side are the “Clinton Arms,” so called in honour of the Duke of Newcastle’s family, powerful in these parts; the “Saracen’s Head,” with a bust of an alleged (but very pallid and mild-looking) Saracen on its frontage; and the “White Hart,” most ancient of all these existing hostelries. An inn of this name is spoken of as existing here in 1113. A “Saracen’s Head” stood here, certainly as far back as 1341, but unhappily the existing house only dates from 1721. This house is the one mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, who says, “The travellers who have visited Newark more lately will not fail to remember the remarkably civil and gentlemanly manners of the person who now keeps the principal inn there, and may find some amusement in contrasting them with those of his more rough predecessor.”

Let us put on record the name of this remarkable person: William Thompson, landlord from 1784 to 1819. His “more rough predecessor” was perhaps the landlord who dispensed such open-handed and free hospitality to Jeanie Deans, when that somewhat priggish young woman stayed there, and on leaving asked for her “lawing.”

[Picture: Market-Place, Newark]

“Thy lawing!” exclaimed that “more rough” person; “Heaven help thee, wench! what ca’st thou that?”

“It is—I was wanting to ken what was to pay.”

“Pay? Lord help thee!—why, nought, woman—we hae drawn no liquor but a gill o’ beer, and the “Saracen’s Head” can spare a mouthful o’ meat to a stranger like thee, that cannot speak Christian language.”

Alas! whatever your language, the more smooth innkeepers of Newark, in our times, do not do business on this principle.

The “Clinton Arms” has seen many changes of name. It was originally the “Talbot,” and as such is mentioned in 1341. At a later date it became the “Kingston Arms.” Byron often stayed there, and writes from London in 1807, “The ‘Kingston Arms’ is my inn.” It was also the inn, during the election contest of 1832, of Mr. Gladstone, soliciting for the first time the suffrages of “free and independent” electors, who duly returned him, in the Tory interest. Newark thus gave him an opportunity in Parliament of defending his father as a slave-owner, and of whetting his youthful eloquence to a keen edge in extolling the principle of slave-owning. The Newarkers were long proud of having returned the “statesman” to the House, but history will perhaps deny him that title. It has been denied, and the term of “egotistical politician” found to fit better. He set a fashion in surrender, and his country reaped shame while he lived; but the bitterest harvest-home of his methods has come, after his death, in the red vintage of English blood. It was when standing for this pocket-borough of the Duke of Newcastle’s that Gladstone gave an early and characteristic specimen of his peculiarly Jesuitical ways of thought. He took the mail-coach on a Sunday from Newark for London, and beguiled the tedium of the journey and the Sabbath by discussing the question of Sunday travelling with a Tory companion. Not merely did he severely condemn the practice, but he also gave some tracts to his fellow-traveller! He gives the facts himself: it is no outsider’s satire. Thus, in one moment of confidence, he reveals not only what he is, but what he will be. He implicitly announces that he is a law unto himself and that those things are permitted to him which in others must be deadly sins. In the very moment of crime he can present an accomplice with a tract, and glow with all the fervour of one helped to save a lost soul.

[Picture: Newark Castle (After Rowlandson)]

The “Ram,” another old inn, is still standing, opposite the castle, on Beast Market Hill. George Eliot stayed here in September 1868, “seeing some charming quiet landscapes” along the Trent. Quiet, undoubtedly.

Ridge, the printer and bookseller, Byron’s first publisher, who issued his _Hours of Idleness_, carried on business in a fine old house still standing at a corner of the square, and the house-door and the brass knocker at which the new-fledged poet knocked exist to-day.

XXX

BY Beast Market Hill, past the castle and over the bridge, one leaves Newark for the north. Level crossings of the railways now and again bedevil the way, which is flat so far as the eye can reach—and much farther, and the meadows on either side are intersected by runlets and marshes, the road carried over them by a succession of red-brick bridges. At a distance of one and a half miles, the true Trent is crossed by a wooden bridge, and South Muskham reached, where the level-crossing gates take the place of the old turnpike.

The act of looking backwards at this point is a more pleasing physical exercise than the mental retrospect is ever likely to be, anywhere. Sir Walter Scott perceived the beauty of the view, for he introduces it in Jeanie Deans’ journey south, and says, in a fine passage: “The hundred-armed Trent and the blackened ruins of Newark castle, demolished in the great Civil War, lay before her.”

“Hundred-armed” is a good and eloquent figure, although on a prosaic calculation likely to be found an exaggeration. Milton, indeed, writing a hundred and ninety years or so before, gives the Trent but thirty arms, on which, it must be allowed, Sir Walter’s computation is a great advance. But here is Milton’s version:—

“Trent, which like some earth-born giant spreads His thirty arms along the indented meads.”

Even Drayton, in his _Polyolbion_, does not more nearly approach to Sir Walter’s computation, in the couplet:—

“The bounteous Trent, that in herself enseams, Both thirty sorts of fish and thirty sundry streams.”

Shakespeare rather shirks the calculation, and contents himself with describing it as the “smug and silver Trent.” As for mere travellers, who did not happen to be poets or to be engaged in the exploitation of scenery, they regarded this stream merely with apprehension, and they did right so to look upon it, for Trent often overflowed its thirty or hundred arms, as the case might be, and converted the flats for miles around into the semblage of a vast lake. Then, indeed—if at no other time—Newark was “upon” Trent, if not actually “in” it, and all the many other towns and villages, which bear a similarly composite title, were in like case. Doubtless it was on one of these occasions in 1739, before the river was bridged here, that the Newcastle wagon was lost at the ford, when the driver and the horses all perished. Nearly thirty years later, on the 6th of June 1767, the poet Gray, writing from London, before starting on a journey in these parts, says:—“Pray that the Trent may not intercept us at Newark, for we have had infinite rain here.” Nor are floods infrequent, even now, and many a boating-party has voyaged down the Great North Road between Newark and Carlton-upon-Trent.