Part 18

Among the many of the Cavendish family who lie here are William, second Earl of Devonshire, and his wife and children. The Earl himself died in 1628, and he and his family were commemorated by a fearful monument, the effigies grotesquely misshapen and clad in what seem to be sheets. In 1877 the horrible thing was destroyed, but the statues themselves remain; the Earl himself, a shortened figure with wide mouth and a combined wistful, comical, and grotesque expression that puzzles the modern beholder with reminiscent feelings. Where, he asks himself, has he seen the like before? and presently the truth is borne in upon him, that the thing might well be a reproduction of the late Mr. Dan Leno.

St. Alkmund’s spire is a fine foil to the grand tower of All Saints’: its grace contrasting with it, as manly strength with feminine beauty. St. Mary’s, its next-door neighbour, the Roman Catholic church, is an unfortunate example of Gothic as understood in the middle of the nineteenth century, but it is only necessary to descend a little way, to the bridge crossing the Derwent, and then to look back, for distance to lend a peculiar enchantment to the scene. From the hump-backed bridge you see the bad details of its ill-informed Gothic abolished in a broad, comprehensive kindly haze of smoke issuant from the clustered chimneys of this slummy but picturesque quarter, and it stands up boldly in the view, with St. Alkmund’s spire on the left, as though inspired with the finest spirit of the fifteenth century. Equally kindly poplar trees, growing courageously from the Derwent banks, come in to aid the view. We will not look too curiously upon the Derwent itself, for although splashing weirs diversify it, factories of divers sorts line its course, and the water is polluted by them; and this, in short, is not the Derwent as understood by poets.

[Sidenote: _THE OLD CRAFTSMAN_]

The bridge itself is small and old, and doubtless will in the not distant future give place to a new. Meanwhile it is weathered in a way that artists love, and there are some quite fine lamp-standards on it, designed in the days before gas. Their design and execution are unobtrusive: it is indeed quite a small achievement, and doubtless the smith who wrought these standards, a hundred and fifty years or so ago, did the work in the everyday course of his craft and thought no more about the matter. But he wrought better than he knew. They were not—those old fellows—self-conscious: they did not know they were artists, and did not do like their present-day descendants, stand admiringly before their work and call heaven and earth to witness the supreme artistry of it.

XXIX

The Manchester Road leaves Derby by way of Friar Gate: the town extending rapidly in that direction, too. As I came this way, gangs of navvies were excavating for the new electric tramway, and there I saw, amid the churned mud, a crushed white butterfly; and it seemed to me to typify these developments.

[Sidenote: _KEDLESTON HALL_]

The road onward to Ashbourne is lonely, except for the offshoots sent out in the coaching age by adjacent villages. Thus Mackworth is represented by a wayside fringe of houses, the old village lying below, with its fine church and old castle gate; while Kirk Langley, in like manner, lies to the other side of the road. Quarndon, further off to the right, neighboured by Kedleston Park, is brother to Quorndon in Leicestershire; the only wonder being that the other is written with an “o”: the natural rural disposition being to change an “e” (here the “e” in “quern”) into “a” wherever possible in speech.

There was a time when Quarndon enjoyed a considerable reputation as a spa. It possessed the most frightful sulphureous water, which only expert chemists, past-masters in stinks and nauseous flavours, can match; and a big hotel was built near by the spring, to accommodate invalids; who, however, seem to have presently found the healing waters too awful. Like the famous Lord Derby who suffered from gout, and tasting a special sherry that was recommended to him, remarked that he “preferred the gout,” they rather preferred their ailments than this cure for them. And so the hotel has for the last forty years ceased to be an hotel, and is now a farmhouse—and a very ugly one it is, too.

Dr. Johnson, who was shown Lord Scarsdale’s noble residence of Kedleston Hall, near by, affected not to be impressed by it. He objected to it as “costly but ill-contrived,” and was of opinion that more cost than judgment had gone towards the building. The bedrooms, he justly pointed out, were “small, low, dark, and fitter for a prison than a house of splendour,” and the kitchen was so disposed that the fumes of it were plentifully dispersed over the house, so that you dined sufficiently on the smell in the process of cooking, and were much more than satisfied before you sat at table. Indeed, he thought Kedleston Hall to be nothing better than “a big town-hall.” Robert Adam designed and built it, after the requirements of the age, which delighted in such unhomely homes: and nearly all the great mansions of that period have similar objections: that they are a congeries of mean and awkward rooms, built around a central hall designed to strike neighbours with astonishment and envy. Here the great hall, with its twenty Corinthian columns of pale primrose Elvaston alabaster, is noble enough for an Emperor, but most of the other rooms are mean.

Brailsford, on the way to Ashbourne, still tells in no uncertain way, to those interested in these things, of coaching days. Here still stand the “Rose and Crown,” the “Saracen’s Head,” where the old “Manchester Defiance” changed horses, and a number of farmhouses that were once inns of various grades. And now the scenery grows bold and lovely with thickly wooded hill and dale. Down on the left hand you see a magnificent castellated building of dark limestone, seated in a park where deer are roaming. This is Osmaston Manor, whose grandeur would be calculated to astonish the original Osmund who gave this particular “aston” his name, in far-off Saxon times. It is the seat of Sir Peter Walker, son of Sir A. B. Walker, the first baronet, widely known as the donor of the great Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, where his wealth—his will was proved for three millions sterling—was acquired in the brewing of beer. In the park of Osmaston Manor there roam Chitrali goats and Iceland and Siberian sheep.

The country round about is spangled with another collection of “aston” villages; Ednaston, Edlaston, Ellaston, Hognaston. Muggington is the grotesque name of a place on the right hand of the road.

[Sidenote: _ASHBOURNE_]

A long and steep hill leads down into Ashbourne, but the way was steeper and more winding before this road was cut, in coaching days, replacing the hazardous descent of Spital Hill. “Romantic Ashbourne,” says Canning; and there it lies, far below, in the valley of the Dove, so dwarfed by distance; and the almost sheer look down upon it that the huddled houses look like some sediment, collected at the bottom of the green vale.

XXX

The approach to Ashbourne, when you have descended the hill, is not romantic, consisting as it does of the long squalid street of Compton, rich in “lodgings for travellers,” _i.e._ tramps; and with the little two-arched bridge, spanning the Henmore stream, lined with men and boys diligently occupied in doing nothing, with great zest and complete content.

The road at the end of Compton, which to all intents and purposes is Ashbourne, takes a puzzling right and left-angle turn; and there you are in the long street of the town, with the market-place, lining the side of a hill, and the “Green Man,” at one end, and the church at the other.

The town stands at a junction of roads that was once of considerable importance. Going forward to Manchester, there is a choice of routes; by way of Buxton, or by Leek, and thus the coaching traffic of Ashbourne was considerable.

Canning, in his _Loves of the Triangles_, a sly parody of Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s admired _Loves of the Plants_, celebrates Ashbourne and the “Derby Dilly” which ran through it:

So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides The Derby Dilly, carrying three insides, One in each corner sits and lolls at ease, With folded arms, propt back, and outstretched knees; While the press’d Bodkin, pinch’d and squeezed to death, Sweats in the mid-most place, and scolds, and pants for breath.

Canning, who was a friend of the Boothbys of Ashbourne Hall, probably wrote this there.

The “Derby Dilly” was the current name for the “Diligence,” or light post-coach, that ran in those days between Manchester and Derby, through Ashbourne, and continued to run in this remote district long after railways had elsewhere displaced coaches. To understand the allusions in Canning’s verse, it is necessary to explain that these “diligences” afforded less accommodation than that of an ordinary coach. They carried no outsides, and three insides only, who sat on one seat, facing the horses. The peculiar defects of the “diligence,” from the point of view of the middle passenger, are obvious enough.

It was long thought that railways would never succeed in penetrating into the Peak district, and the “Derby Dilly” maintained its existence until 1858, when the impossible came to pass. Then also the strictly local mail-coach, the Manchester and Derby Mail, was withdrawn; its last journey being on Saturday, October 2nd, 1858.

[Sidenote: _PICKFORD AND CO._]

But, indeed, these sixty miles between Derby and Manchester must needs be of a peculiar interest to the student of traffic and its growth, for it was in this district that the carrying firm of Pickford & Co. had its beginnings, so far back as three hundred years ago. It was some time early in the seventeenth century that the original firm of pack-horse carriers began, from whose descendants, the Pickfords, by purchase; or otherwise, acquired the business, about 1730. From pack-horses, the goods came at last to be carried by waggons, and about 1770 we find Matthew Pickford established at Manchester, with his scope of operations extending to London, to which his “Flying Waggon” travelled in the then unprecedented time of four days and a half; and so the already historic firm continued until 1817, when Joseph Baxendale was admitted to the old firm of Matthew and Thomas Pickford. He soon acquired control of the business and bought out the Pickfords, and although the name has ever since been retained, the firm still remains the property of his descendants.

Great fortunes have been made in the carrying business, and Baxendales, Suttons, and others have, almost unsuspected, amassed amazing wealth; but not every carrier was satisfied with his lot, and one, at least, saw a more excellent way. This was William Bass, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, was a carrier between Burton-on-Trent, Ashbourne, and Derby. The greater part of his business was done in the carrying of Burton ale for Benjamin Printon, who had, a good many years earlier, begun brewing for the trade. He had started with three men, but the fame of his beer grew, and induced others to set up. Bass, impressed greatly with the increase of his carrying, caused entirely by the beer trade, planned a way to brew and carry his own beer, and accordingly set up as a brewer at Burton. There is no need to enlarge upon the history of the great firm of Bass & Co., probably now the largest firm of brewers in England, thus founded by William Bass, grandfather of the present head of the firm, Michael Arthur Bass, created Baron Burton in 1886.

William Bass very soon withdrew from the carrying business, which was left to other members of his family and eventually absorbed by the firm of Pickfords, in whose service there remained many years, until his death at an advanced age, a Michael Bass, great-uncle, I believe, of Lord Burton.

Ashbourne, although a town of four thousand inhabitants, is now a very quiet place, and there is little to stir the pulses, except the annual Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday game of football through the streets, between the rival “Uppards” and “Downards” ends. The goals are placed three miles apart at Sturston and Clifton mills, on the Henmore, and there the excited scrimmages in the water, and the consequent duckings, often ending in fights, seem to exhaust all the energies of Ashbourne until the next Shrovetide.

Ashbourne has a good many claims to notice. Among them is that of possessing a Grammar School which has twice, through bad management, been reduced to one scholar. According to Cotton, fellow-angler with Izaak Walton, the town held an invidious distinction in his day, being famed for the best malt and notorious for the worst ale in England. Prominent among its features is the church of St. Oswald, “the Pride of the Peak.” It is not near the Peak, but that is immaterial, nor is it, as George Eliot says, “the finest mere parish church in the kingdom”; but it is, at any rate, an exceedingly large and very beautiful building, with a graceful spire rising to a height of 212 feet. Boswell styled it “one of the largest and most luminous churches that I have seen in any town of the same size.” The church was built in the Early English period, as the dedication plate, still existing, proves. There are many very beautiful and interesting monuments here, but none—not even that of Penelope Boothby—more beautiful than the modern stained-glass window erected to one of the Turnbull family. It is a fine piece of varied colouring, notably in the gorgeous blue of the angel’s robe.

[Sidenote: _THE COKAYNES_]

The old lords of Ashbourne, the Cokaynes and the Boothbys are represented plentifully in epitaphs and chiselled stone and marble in the north transept. For more than two centuries—from 1372 to 1592—the Cokaynes ruled, and after them came the Boothbys, for two hundred and fifty years. The Cokayne monuments are very fine, although Ruskin will only allow them to be blundering journeyman attempts at imitating Italian workmanship of the same date. They look, however, very grim old knights and dames who thus lie in stark effigy, in rows, the knights in their chain or plate armour, the dames in their horned or butterfly head-dresses, when compared with the effigy of little Penelope Boothby, the only child of the last of the Boothbys of Ashbourne Hall.

[Sidenote: _PENELOPE BOOTHBY_]

The epitaph reads

To Penelope Only child of Sir Brooke Boothby and Dame Susannah Boothby, Born April 11th, 1785, died March 13th, 1791. She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their all in this Frail bark, And the wreck was total.

An inscription beneath runs in English: “I was not in safety, neither had I rest, and the trouble came.” This is repeated in Latin, French, and Italian.

The white marble effigy, showing the child lying on a mattress, one of the most simple and yet most beautiful examples of monumental sculpture, is the work of Thomas Banks, R.A., and is perhaps the most celebrated piece of sculpture in England. I do not know why Sir Brooke chose to express his sorrows chiefly in Italian. Long inscriptions in that language appear on the marble, carefully translated in one of the books for which he was responsible:

All our joys are perished with thee alone, But thou art happy and blessed, my dear Penelope, who, by one touch of Death, hast Escaped so many and so great miseries.

* * * * *

Those that descend into the grave are not concealed from Heaven.

* * * * *

Thy locks of pure shining gold, the lightening of thy angelic smile, which used to make a Paradise on earth, are now become only a little senseless dust.

* * * * *

Beauty, this then is thy last asylum!

Her tomb does not yet contain all: it waits for the rest of its prey:—it will not wait long.

But “hearts do not break, they sting and ache,” and Sir Brooke survived for years afterwards.

The love Sir Brooke Boothby bore his little daughter is reflected in many ways. He wrote and printed a considerable volume, _Sorrows Sacred to the Memory of Penelope_; but he was something by way of a literary gent and nursed his grief for the purpose of increasing his output; and even then his tearful cantos made but a few pages, so he filled out the book with other literary exercises. But he did not _sell_ his book: he did not do as did our own modern What’s-his-Name, who wrote a poem on the death of his wife and sold it to an editor.

Even more famous than the celebrated monument to Penelope Boothby is the portrait of her painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1788, and familiar to most people in the engravings after it. The original picture was bought at auction, at the Windus sale of 1859, by the Earl of Dudley, for eleven hundred guineas, and in 1885 it was bought by Mr. Thwaites for no less than £20,000. It was the direct inspiration of Sir John Millais’ equally famous “Cherry Ripe,” painted as a portrait of the little Miss Ramage, who had gone to a fancy-dress ball in the character of Penelope.

The inspiration of the monument itself has been very marked. The “Sleeping Children” by Chantrey in Lichfield Cathedral is due to Mrs. Robinson, the mother of them, asking Sir Francis Chantrey, whom she had commissioned, to base his work on the monument to Penelope. The sculptor accordingly visited Ashbourne and made a sketch from the work of Thomas Banks.

Lichfield then speedily became the object of the hatred and jealousy of the Ashbourne people, who heard with bitter feelings that the group by Chantrey was even better than the figure they so prided themselves upon. So far back as 1829, a visitor told how “the venerable matron that shows the monument” in Ashbourne church said, in reply to a remark that Chantrey’s sculpture was the finer, “Humph! the like of that’s what I hear every day. Hang that fellow Chanty, or Canty, or whatever you call him! I wish he had never been born.”

Ashbourne Hall, the old home of the Boothbys, is now an hotel. It sheltered Prince Charles in 1745, and in the other bedrooms his chief officers quartered. Their names were chalked at the time upon the doors, and the chalk was afterwards painted over carefully in white paint by some Boothby eager to preserve memories of the historic occasion, but no traces of them are now to be seen.

[Sidenote: _PRISONERS OF WAR_]

During the wars with Napoleon, Ashbourne enjoyed a phenomenal prosperity; for, owing largely to its situation in the midst of England, rendering access to the sea rather a long business, the Government made the little town a place where, by 1804, two hundred captured French officers were stationed, on parole. They are said to have spent £30,000 a year in this place. The worst of which they had to complain was their enforced idleness and the obligation to be within bounds at nine o’clock in the evening. They were, in any case, not supposed to go beyond one mile from the town, and if they were late the penalty was a fine of one guinea, to be given to the informer. General Roussambeau was one of the most distinguished of these prisoners. One day he rode far beyond bounds, to Matlock, to meet Lord Macartney and General Boyer. He met them, and with them a humorous person who joked with him at breaking bounds. The Frenchman, incensed at this, promptly sent him a guinea, the informer’s fee, on his return to Ashbourne; whereupon, not willing for the Frenchman to have the last word, the humorist in haste informed the authorities in London, who at once removed Roussambeau to Yaxley, in Huntingdonshire.

But Dr. Johnson is the great figure at Ashbourne. Here he for many years used to visit Dr. Taylor, at the great brick house, still standing, opposite the old Grammar School. It is named simply, and yet arrogantly, “The Mansion.” Tradition tells that the frontage was designed by an Italian architect: probably the dullest dog in his profession, if the solid, stolid, uninspired elevation is the measure of his capabilities. But how beautiful is the garden front, with its two gabled wings and the odd, but distinguished, pavilion between! This unusual feature, containing what is known as the “Octagon Room,” is said to have been built by Dr. Taylor for the purpose of entertaining George the Third.

Dr. Taylor was one of a kind peculiar to the eighteenth century and the first few years of the nineteenth. Low reforming people have so altered the complexion of affairs that his sort are now well-nigh impossible. He was the ideal squarson; with an estate of his own and all manner of pickings from the Church of England, including the rectory of St. Margaret, Westminster, a prebendal stall in the Abbey, and the rectory of Market Bosworth. He was also a Justice of the Peace. He lived in a style befitting these dignities and the emoluments that derived from most of them, and rarely went out without his post-chaise, four horses, and two postilions.

[Sidenote: _THE SQUARSON_]

The tie between Taylor and Dr. Johnson was that of early school-friendship and of a continued acquaintance at Oxford, although, to be sure, when they went up to the University, Taylor as a rich man went of course to Christ Church, and Johnson, equally of course, to Pembroke.

One of Taylor’s hobbies was that of making cascades in his garden, from the Henmore. The observer of to-day who regards the exiguous trickle of that stream with a doubtful eye is of opinion that it must have been ill striving to make cascades out of it, if the flow were no greater then than now. Another hobby was farming, and Dr. Johnson, in his correspondence with Mrs. Thrale, tells how he kept a great bull whose like, he boasted, was not to be found elsewhere in Derbyshire. He was so proud of his bull that he generally, with considerable pains, managed to lead up to the subject of it at table. One day, however, a man called upon Dr. Taylor, on the subject of hiring a farm, and was shown the famous bull, and to Dr. Taylor’s mortification declared he had seen one still larger. He does not seem to have succeeded in hiring that farm, and a year later, Dr. Johnson is found writing to Mrs. Thrale, “We yet hate the man who had seen a bigger bull.”

In 1776 Johnson introduced his friend Boswell to Dr. Taylor, and the next year that hero-worshipper was invited, on the instance of Dr. Johnson, to make a longer stay. He remained a fortnight. At his departure for the north he hired a post-chaise at the still-existing “Green Man” inn, which has absorbed the “Black’s Head” since then and added the name of that extinct house to its own. Boswell describes the landlady of the “Green Man” as a “mighty civil gentlewoman.” Indeed she was! She gave him a humble curtsey, and an engraving of her house, upon which she had written: “M. Kilingley’s duty waits upon Mr. Boswell, is exceedingly obliged to him for this favour; whenever he comes this way, hopes for the continuance of the same. Would Mr. Boswell name this house to his extensive acquaintance, it would be a singular favour conferred on one who has it not in her power to make any other return but her most grateful thanks and sincerest prayers for his happiness in time and in blessed eternity. Tuesday morn.” There does not seem to have been an “Amen” at the end of this, but it is certainly a “felt want.”

The gallows sign of the house boldly straddles the narrow street, with the “Green Man” sign pendant from it, and a huge “Black’s Head,” with glaring eyes and a gaudily painted turban, above.

XXXI

[Sidenote: _CHOICE OF ROADS_]