Part 5
Dora's field is thickly covered in spring-time with the beautiful golden daffodils, planted by the poet himself. No sight is more fascinating at this season than a field of these bright yellow flowers. We Americans, who only see them planted in gardens, cannot realize what daffodils mean to the English eye, unless we chance to visit England during the early spring. What Wordsworth called a "crowd" of daffodils, growing in thick profusion along the margin of a lake, beneath the trees, ten thousand to be seen at a glance, all nodding their golden heads beside the dancing and foaming waves, is a sight well worth seeing.
"The waves beside them danced; but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee; A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude: And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils."
But now the time had come to return to Windermere, and reluctantly we turned our backs upon these scenes, so full of pleasant memories. The day, however, was not yet done, for after supper we climbed to the top of Orrest-Head, a little hill behind the village. No more charming spot could have been chosen in which to spend the closing hours of this peaceful day. Far below lay the quiet waters of the lake, only glimpses of its long and narrow surface appearing here and there, like "burnished mirrors" set by Nature for the sole purpose of reflecting a magnificent golden sky. It was "an evening of extraordinary, splendor," like that one which Wordsworth saw from Rydal Mount:--
"No sound is uttered,--but a deep And solemn harmony pervades The hollow vale from steep to steep, And penetrates the glades."
As we stood watching the splendid sunset, the village church rang out its chimes, as if to accompany the inspiring scene with sweet and holy music.
"How pleasant, when the sun declines, to view The spacious landscape change in form and hue! Here vanish, as in mist, before a flood Of bright obscurity, hill, lawn, and wood; Their objects, by the searching beams betrayed, Come forth and here retire in purple shade; Even the white stems of birch, the cottage white, Soften their glare before the mellow light."
The shadows which had been slowly falling upon the scene had now so far enveloped the mountain-side that the narrow roadways and stone fences marking the boundaries of the fields were barely visible. Suddenly in the distance we saw a moving object, a mere speck upon the hillside. It darted first in one direction and then another, like some frightened being uncertain which way to turn. Then a darker speck appeared, and with rapid movement circled to the rear of the whiter one, the latter moving on ahead. Another sudden movement, and a second white speck appeared in another spot. The black speck as quickly moved to the rear of this second bit of white, driving it in the same direction as the first. The white specks then began to seem more numerous. We tried to count--one--two--three--ten--a dozen--perhaps even twenty. There was but one black speck, and he seemed to be the master of all the others, for, darting here and there after the stragglers, he kept them all together. He drove them along the narrow road. Then, coming to an opening in the fence, he hurried along to the front of the procession; then, facing about, deftly turned the whole flock through the gate into a large field. Through this pasture, with the skill of a military leader, he marshaled his troop, rushing backwards and forwards, allowing none to fall behind nor to stray away from the proper path, finally bringing them up in a compact body to another opening in the opposite end of the field. On he went, driving his small battalion along the road, then at right angles into another road, until the whole flock of sheep and the little black dog who commanded them disappeared for the night among the out-buildings of a far distant farm.
The twilight had almost gone, and in the growing darkness we retraced our steps to the village, well content that, through communion with the Spirit of Wordsworth in the presence of that "mighty Being" who to him was the great Teacher and Inspirer of mankind, our own love of nature had been reawakened, and our time well spent on this peaceful, never-to-be-forgotten day at Windermere.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Grass.
IV
FROM HAWTHORNDEN TO ROSLIN GLEN
IV
FROM HAWTHORNDEN TO ROSLIN GLEN
"Roslin's towers and braes are bonnie-- Craigs and water! woods and glen! Roslin's banks! unpeered by ony, Save the Muse's Hawthornden."
The vale of the Esk is unrivaled, even in Scotland, for beauty and romantic interest. From its source to where it enters the Firth of Forth, the little river winds its way past ancient castles with their romantic legends, famed in poetry and song, and the picturesque homes of barons and lairds, poets and philosophers, forming as it goes, with rocks and cliffs, tall trees and overhanging vines, a bewildering succession of beautiful scenes.
It was to this charming valley that Walter Scott came, with his young wife, in the first year of their wedded life. A young man of imaginative and romantic temperament, though as yet unknown to fame, he found the place an inspiration and delight. A pretty little cottage, with thatched roof, and a garden commanding a beautiful view, made the home where many happy summers were spent. This was at Lasswade, a village which took its striking name from the fact--let us hope it was a fact--that here a sturdy lass was wont to wade the stream, carrying travelers on her back,--a ferry service sufficiently romantic to make up for its uncertainty.
Lockhart tells us that "it was amidst these delicious solitudes" that Walter Scott "laid the imperishable foundation of all his fame. It was here that when his warm heart was beating with young and happy love, and his whole mind and spirit were nerved by new motives for exertion--it was here that in the ripened glow of manhood he seems to have first felt something of his real strength, and poured himself out in those splendid original ballads which were at once to fix his name."
"Sweet are the paths, O passing sweet! By Esk's fair streams that run, O'er airy steep through copsewood deep, Impervious to the sun.
* * * * *
Who knows not Melville's beechy grove And Roslin's rocky glen, Dalkeith, which all the virtues love, And classic Hawthornden?"
The visitor who would see "Roslin's rocky glen" may take a coach in Edinburgh and soon reach the spot after a pleasant drive over a well-kept road. But if he would see "classic Hawthornden" in the same day, he must go there first. For the gate which separates the two opens out from Hawthornden and the traveler cannot pass in the opposite direction. We therefore took the train from Edinburgh, and after half an hour alighted at a little station, from which we walked a few hundred yards along a quiet country road, until we reached a lodge marking the entrance to a large estate. Entering here, a few steps brought us to the house of the gardener, who first conducted us to the place that interests him the most--a large and well-kept garden, full of fruits and vegetables, beautiful flowers and well-trained vines. His pride satisfied by our sincere admiration of his handiwork, our guide was ready to reveal to us the glory of Hawthornden, and conducted us to the edge of a precipice known as John Knox's Pulpit. In front is a deep ravine of stupendous rocks partly bare and partly covered with bushes and pendent creepers. The tall trees on the border, the wooded hill in the distance, and the grand sweep of the river far below, form a scene of majestic grandeur as nearly perfect as one could wish. To the left, on the very edge of a perpendicular rock, is a strong, well-built mansion, so situated that the windows of its principal rooms command a view of the wondrous vale. On the other side of the house are the ivy-covered ruins of an older castle, dating back many centuries.
Since the middle of the sixteenth century, Hawthornden has been the home of a family of Drummonds--a famous Scottish name. William Drummond, the most distinguished of them all, whose name is inseparably associated with the place, was born in 1585. His father was a gentleman-usher at the court of King James VI, and through his association with the Scottish royalty had acquired the Hawthornden property. The boy grew up amid such surroundings, was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and traveled on the Continent for three years before settling down to his life-work, which he then thought would be the practice of law. But scarcely had he returned to Edinburgh for this purpose, when his father died, and young Drummond, at the age of twenty-four, found himself master of Hawthornden with ample means at his command. All thought of the law was abandoned forthwith. The quiet of Hawthornden and the beauty of its natural scenery fitted his temperament exactly. He had already acquired a scholar's tastes, had read extensively, and possessed a large library in which the Latin classics predominated, though there were many books in Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, French, and English. He retired to his delightful home to live among his books, and if he found that such surroundings became a tacit invitation from the Muses to keep them company, who could wonder? "Content with my books and the use of my eyes," he said, "I learnt even from my boyhood to live beneath my fortune; and, dwelling by myself as much as I can, I neither sigh for nor seek aught that is outside me."
It has been said that Drummond's three stars were Philosophy, Friendship, and Love. Some three or four years after the poet began his contented life at Hawthornden, the latter star began to shine so brightly as to eclipse the other two. In 1614 he met an attractive girl of seventeen or eighteen, the daughter of Alexander Cunningham, of Barns, a country-seat on a little stream known as the Ore, in Fifeshire, on the opposite side of the Firth of Forth. His poems began at once to reveal the extent to which the loveliness of the fair Euphame had taken possession of him:--
"Vaunt not, fair Heavens, of your two glorious lights, Which, though most bright, yet see not when they shine, And shining cannot show their beams divine Both in one place, but part by days and nights; Earth, vaunt not of those treasures ye enshrine, Held only dear because hid from our sights, Your pure and burnished gold your diamonds fine, Snow-passing ivory that the eye delights; Nor, Seas, of those dear wares are in you found; Vaunt not rich pearl, red coral, which do stir A fond desire in fools to plunge your ground. Those all more fair are to be had in her: Pearl, ivory, coral, diamond, suns, gold, Teeth, neck, lips, heart, eyes, hair, are to behold."
On seeing her in a boat on the Forth he declared her perfection:--
"Slide soft, fair Forth, and make a crystal plain; Cut your white locks, and on your foaming face Let not a wrinkle be, when you embrace The boat that earth's perfections doth contain."
The river Ore, on the banks of which he first met his lady-love, became to Drummond the greatest river in the world. In one sonnet he compares the tiny stream with every famous river from the Arno to the Nile; and finds that none of them
"Have ever had so rare a cause of praise."
Unfortunately, his happiness was of brief duration, for on the very eve of the marriage, the young lady died. Drummond's grief was intense. One can almost imagine him mournfully gazing down the beautiful glen, which she might have enjoyed with him, and exclaiming--
"Trees, happier far than I, That have the grace to heave your heads so high, And overlook those plains; Grow till your branches kiss that lofty sky Which her sweet self contains. Then make her know my endless love and pains And how those tears, which from mine eyes do fall Helpt you to rise so tall. Tell her, as once I for her sake loved breath So, for her sake, I now court lingering death."
For some years after her death, Euphame was to Drummond what Beatrice was to Dante--the inspirer of all that was good in him. Later in life he married Elizabeth Logan, a lady who was said to resemble Euphame Cunningham, and she became the mother of his five sons and four daughters.
In front of the mansion of Hawthornden is a venerable sycamore, said to be five hundred years old. In the month of January, 1619, according to a favorite and oft-told story, Drummond was sitting beneath this tree, when he saw and recognized the huge form of Ben Jonson, as that rollicking hero sauntered toward him along the private road. Jonson had walked all the way from London to see what could be seen in Scotland, and one of the attractions had been an invitation from Drummond, who was now beginning to be known in England, to spend two or three weeks at his home. As he approached, Drummond arose and greeted him heartily, saying,--
"Welcome, welcome, royal Ben!"
To which Jonson quickly replied replied--
"Thankee, thankee, Hawthornden!"
Upon which they both laughed and felt well acquainted at once.
The contrast between these two men, as they stood under the old sycamore, must have been strongly marked. Drummond, quiet, reserved, and gentle in manner--Jonson, boisterous and offensively vulgar: Drummond, well dressed and refined in appearance--Jonson, fat, coarse, and slovenly; Drummond, a country gentleman, accustomed to live well, but always within his means, caring little for society, a man of correct habits and strict piety, and later in life a loving husband and a tender father--Jonson, the dictator of literary London, who waved his scepter in the "Devil Tavern" in Fleet Street, egotistical and quarrelsome, self-assertive, a bully in disposition, his life a perpetual round of dissipation and debt, his means of livelihood dependent on luck or favor, and his greatest enjoyment centering in association with those who, like himself, were most at home in the theaters and taverns of the great bustling city.
Yet both were poets and men of genius, though in different ways. In spite of his peculiarities, Drummond found "rare Ben Jonson" a most interesting companion. He kept a close record of the conversations which passed between them, and might well be called the father of modern interviewing. But unlike the interviewer of to-day, Drummond did not rush to the nearest telegraph station to get his story "on the wire" and "scoop" his contemporaries. There were no telegraphs nor newspapers to call for such effort, and Drummond had too much respect for the courtesy due a guest to think of publishing their private talks. But a portion of the material was published in 1711, long after Drummond's death, and probably the whole of it in 1832. These conversations with one who knew intimately most of the literary leaders of his time have proved invaluable. They contain Ben's opinions of nearly everybody--Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Leicester, King James, Spenser, Raleigh, Shakespeare, Bacon, Drayton, Beaumont, Chapman, Fletcher, and many other contemporaries. Most of all they contain his opinion of himself and his writings, which needless to say is quite exalted.
With no thought of his notes being published, Drummond allowed himself perfect frankness in writing about his guest. His summary of the impression made by Ben's visit is as follows:--
He is a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scorner of others; given rather to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him (especially after drink, which is one of the elements in which he liveth); a dissembler of ill parts which reign in him, a bragger of some good that he wanteth; thinketh nothing well but what either he himself or some of his friends and countrymen hath said or done: he is passionately kind and angry; careless either to gain or keep; vindictive, but, if he be well answered, at himself. For any religion, as being versed in both. Interpreted best sayings and deeds often to the worst. Oppressed with phantasy which hath ever mastered his reason, a general disease in many poets.... He was in his personal character the very reverse of Shakespeare, as surly, ill-natured, proud and disagreeable as Shakespeare, with ten times his merit, was gentle, good-natured, easy, and amiable.
Jonson expressed with equal frankness his opinion of Drummond, to whom he said that he "was too good and simple, and that oft a man's modesty made a fool of his wit."
Drummond as a poet was classed by Robert Southey and Thomas Campbell in the highest rank of the British poets who appeared before Milton. His sonnets, which are remarkable for their exquisite delicacy and tenderness, won for him the title of "the Scottish Petrarch." It has been said that they come as near to perfection as any others of this kind of writing and that as a sonneteer Drummond is surpassed only by Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth among the poets who have written in English.
Before taking leave of the Scottish poet and his picturesque home, we paused for a few minutes to visit the wondrous caverns, cut out of the solid rock upon which the house is built. Antiquarians have insisted that these caves date back to the time of the Picts, at least as far as the ninth or tenth century.
This, too, was the popular understanding before the scientists offered their opinion. In a curious old volume, published in 1753,[2] we are told:--
Underneath [the house of Drummond] are the noted Caverns of _Hawthorn-Den_, by Dr. _Stuckely_ in his _Itinerarium-Curiosa_, said to have been the King of _Pictlands_ Castle or Palace; which nothing can shew the Doctor's Credulity more than by suffering himself to be imposed upon by the Tattle of the Vulgar, who in all things they cannot account for, are ascribed to the _Picts_, without the least Foundation. For those caves, instead of having been a Castle or Palace, I take them either to have been a Receptacle for Robbers, or Places to secure the People and their Effects in, during the destructive Wars between the _Picts_ and _English_, and _Scots_ and _English_.
During the contests between Bruce and Baliol for the Scottish crown, these caves became a place of refuge for Bruce and his friends, and one of the rooms is still pointed out as Bruce's bedchamber.
"Here, too, are labyrinthine paths To caverns dark and low, Wherein they say King Robert Bruce Found refuge from his foe."
In the walls are many square holes, from twelve to eighteen inches deep, supposed to have been used as cupboards. On a rough table near one of the openings is a rude and very much damaged desk, said to have been the property of John Knox.
Leaving these gloomy resorts of ancient heroes--perhaps of ancient robbers--we sought a brighter and more cheerful scene. Descending the path we reached a bridge over the Esk on which is a gate that permitted us to leave Hawthornden, although it does not allow wanderers on the other side to enter. The bridge gave a fine opportunity for a farewell view of the grand old mansion, high in the air at the top of the cliff, which we were now viewing from below.
A delightful stroll along the left bank of the stream for about two miles brought us to Roslin Castle, situated on a rocky promontory high above the river. At the point of the peninsula the river is narrowed by a large mass of reddish sandstone over which it falls. When flooded this becomes a beautiful cascade,--whence the name, "Ross," a Gaelic word meaning promontory or jutting rock, and "Lyn," a waterfall,--the "Rock of the Waterfall." The Esk, where it forms the cascade, is still called "the Lynn." The view from the promontory is one of the most delightful to be imagined. The banks are precipitous and covered with a luxurious growth of natural wood. The vale seems to be crowded with every possible combination of trees and cliffs, foliage and sparkling stream, that nature can put together to form a region of romantic suggestion.
Little now remains of the ancient castle of Roslin, which was formerly two hundred feet long and ninety feet wide. A few ivy-covered walls and towers may still be seen, in the midst of which is a more modern dwelling rebuilt in 1653. The ancient foundation walls, nine feet thick, still visible below the surface, and the almost inaccessible location of the castle tell the story of its original purpose. A huge kitchen, with the fireplace alone occupying as much space as the entire kitchen of one of our modern houses, suggests the lavish scale upon which the establishment was once conducted.
The castle was built by a family of St. Clairs, whose ancestor, Waldernus de St. Clair, came over with the Conqueror. William St. Clair, Baron of Roslin, Earl of Caithness and Prince of the Orkneys, who flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century, was one of the most famous of these barons. He lived in the magnificence of royal state.
He kept a great court and was royally served at his own table in vessels of gold and silver.... He had his halls and other apartments richly adorned with embroidered hangings. His princess, Elizabeth Douglas, was served by seventy-five gentlewomen, whereof fifty-three were daughters of noblemen, all clothed in velvet and silks, with their chains of gold, and other ornaments; and was attended by two hundred riding gentlemen in all her journeys; and if it happened to be dark when she went to Edinburgh, where her lodgings were at the foot of the Black Friar's Wynd, eighty lighted torches were carried before her.[3]
The castle was accidentally set on fire in 1447 and badly damaged, and was leveled to the ground by English forces under the Earl of Hertford, in 1544, who was sent to Scotland by Henry VIII to seek to enforce the marriage of his son Edward to the infant Mary of Scotland, the daughter of James V. In 1650 it was again destroyed, during Cromwell's campaign in Scotland, by General Monk, and rising again, suffered severely at the hands of a mob from Edinburgh in 1688.
It was William St. Clair, the feudal baron above referred to, who built the exquisitely beautiful chapel which stands not far from the castle. The same ancient manuscript, previously quoted, informs us that
His age creeping on him made him consider how he had spent his time past, and how to spend that which was to come. Therefore to the end he might not seem altogether unthankfull to God for the benefices receaved from Him, it came in his minde to build a house for God's service of most curious work, the which, that it might be done with greater glory and splendour he caused artificers to be brought from other regions and forraigne kingdoms and caused dayly to be abundance of all kinde of workemen present, etc., etc.