It would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting spot for a
dwelling-place than that where stood Hollymead House. Near the
north-western angle of the Forest of Dean, it commanded a view of the
Wye where this beautiful stream, after meandering through the verdant
meads of Herefordshire, over old red sandstone, assaults the
carboniferous rocks of Monmouth, whose bold, high ridges, lying
transversely to its course, look as if no power of water could ever have
cut through them. But the Wye has, in its flow of countless ages,
carved out--in Spanish-American phrase _canoned_--a channel with banks
here and there rising nigh a thousand feet above the level of its bed.
Between these it glides with swift current; not direct, but in
snake-like contortions, fantastically doubling back upon itself, almost
to touching. Here and there cliffs rise sheer up from the water's edge,
grand mural escarpments of the mountain limestone, such as show the
"tors" and dales of Derbyshire. The Codwell rocks below Lydbrook,
forming the base of the famed "Symonds' Yat," are of this character,
their grim facades seamed and broken into separate battlements, giving
them resemblance to ruined castles, but such as could have been
inhabited only "in those days when there were giants on the earth."
The view from Hollymead House--better still from a high hill or "tump"
above it--took in the valley of the river where it enters the
carboniferous _strata_ near Kerne bridge. There was no Kerne bridge
then; the stream being crossed by ford and ferry, a mile further up.
Looking is that direction, in the foreground was Coppetwood Hill, an
oblong eminence embraced by one of the great sinuosities of the river,
more than six miles in the round and less than one across the neck or
isthmus. At this neck, perched on a spur of the hill o'erhanging the
stream, stood a vast pile of building, the castle of Goodrich, on whose
donjon floated a flag long ere Norman baron set foot on the soil of
England. For there the Saxon Duke Godric lorded it over his churls and
swineherds; his iron rule at the Conquest replaced by that of the
Marshalls, and later the Talbots, alike stern and severe.
Looking beyond, and north-westward, a wide stretch of country came under
the eye, thickly wooded and undulating, the ancient kingdom of Erchyn--
now called Archenfield--backed in the far distance by a horizon of
hills, many with a mountain aspect, and some real mountains, as the
curious Saddlebow, with a depression or "col" between its twin summits;
Garway, the Cerriggalch, and the long dark range of the Hatterals.
To the west was a very conglomeration of mountains, seemingly crowded
against one another, yet all apart, each distinguishable by an outline
and aspect of its own. Most conspicuous of these, the conical
Sugarloaf, the two Skyrrids--one of them named Holy Mountain--and the
Blorenge, all towering above the town of Abergavenny, which is
surrounded and embraced by them as the arena of an amphitheatre by its
outer and more elevated circle.
Sweeping round the sky line, north and north-east the eye was met by
many a bold projection, as the Longmynds and Clee hills, with their blue
basalt, and the Haugh wood, summit of the famed Silurian upcast of
Woolhope. Farther on to the east the Malvern Beacons of true mountain
aspect, remarkable from their isolation, but still more in that there
the geologist can see rocks the earliest stratified on earth, some
metamorphosed, and all trace of stratification destroyed; while there,
too, are visible the rocks of igneous agency, upheaved both by plutonic
and volcanic forces--the gneisses, basalts, syenites, and granites.
Eastward over the Forest edge could be seen, extending far as vision's
verge, the wide plains of Worcester and Gloucester--as said, an ancient
sea bed--through which now flows the yellow Severn; and on a clear day
bends and reaches of this grand river might be distinguished glistening,
gold-like, in the sun; the level expanse of its valley diversified by
several isolated and curious eminences--hills and ridges--as May and
Breddon due east, and, more to the south, the Mendips and Cotswolds.
Alone looking southward from Hollymead no mountains met the eye; in that
direction only the undulations of the Forest itself, clad in its livery
of green--all trees. But immediately in front of the house, and sloping
gently away from it, was a wide and long stretch of park-like pasture
land, where the trees stood solitary or in clumps, a double row of grand
oaks bisecting it centrally, guarding and shading the avenue which led
to the public road outside. This passed from Ruardean out of the forest
by a steep descent down to Walford, thence on to Ross.
Architecturally, Hollymead House was a singular structure. For it was
in the early Tudor style, built when bricks were a scarce and dear
commodity, and timber, in the inverse ratio, plentiful and cheap. The
walls were a framework of hewn oak--uprights, cross-beams, and diagonal
ties--due to the handiwork of the carpenter, only the spaces between
showing the skill of the mason. And, as if to keep ever in record the
fact of this double yet distinct workmanship, the painter and
whitewasher had been now and then called upon to perpetuate it by giving
separate and severely contrasting colours to what was timber and the
interspacing material of mortar and brick. The result a striped and
chequered aspect of the oddest and quaintest kind. Sir Richard might
have had it in his mind when he made the figurative allusion to a cage
and pair of pretty birds. Still it was not exactly cage-shaped, but
more like several set together, some smaller ones stuck against or
hanging from a large one that stood central; the congeries due to a
variety of wings, projecting windows, dormers, and other outworks.
Equally odd and irregular the arrangement inside. An entrance-hall with
a wide stairway carried up around it, the oak balusters very beams, with
a profusion of carving on them; on each landing, corridors dimly lighted
leading off to rooms no two on the same level; some of them
bed-chambers, only to be got at by passing through other sleeping
apartments interposed between. And, turn which way one would, along
passages, or from room to room, short flights of stairs, or it might be
but a step or two, were encountered everywhere, to the imminent risk of
leg or neck-breaking.
Though such a structure may appear strange to the modern eye, it did not
so then, for there was nothing uncommon in it Hollymead House was but
one of many like mansions of the day, though one of the largest and most
imposing. Nor are they all gone yet. Scores of such still stand
throughout the shires of the marches, and in perfect repair, to
commemorate the architectural skill, or rather the absence of it, which
distinguished our ancestry in the Tudor times.
The owner of Hollymead, Ambrose Powell, was a man of peculiar tastes and
idiosyncrasies, some evidence of which appears in the baptismal names he
had bestowed upon his daughters. A fancy, having its origin in the fact
that from a hill above the house could be seen the two great western
rivers, Wye and Severn--poetically, _Vaga_ and _Sabrina_--themselves in
a sense sisters, nurslings from the same breast of far Plinlimmon. From
the summit of that "tump" his elder daughter had looked on her
name-mother at a later date than she made pretence of when urging the
younger up the ridge between Ruardean and Drybrook. It was a wild,
witching spot, the grey rocks of mountain limestone here and there
peeping out from a low growth of hazel, hawthorn, yew, and holly. But
the summit itself was bare, affording on all sides a varied and
matchless panorama of landscape. Being within the boundaries of their
own domain, Sabrina oft climbed up to it; not for the view's sake alone,
but because it was to her hallowed ground, sacred as the place where she
had made surrender of her young heart, when she told Sir Richard Walwyn
it was his. There was a pretty little summer house, with seats, and
many an hour Ambrose Powell himself spent there, in the study of books
and the contemplation of Nature--his delight. Not in a mere meditative
way, or as an idle dreamer; but an active observer of its workings and
searcher after its secrets. Nor did he confine himself to this, but
also took an interest in the affairs of man, so strong as to have
studied them in every aspect--probed the social and political problems
of human existence to their deepest depths. Which had conducted him to
a belief--a full, firm conviction--in the superiority of republican
institutions; as it must all whose minds are as God made or intended
them, and not perverted by prejudice or corrupted by false teachings.
He was, in point of fact, a Puritan, though not of the extreme stern
sort; in his ways of thinking rather as Hampden and Sir Harry Vane, or
with still closer similitude to a people then scorned and persecuted
beyond all others--the "Friends." It is difficult in these modern days,
under the light of superior knowledge, and a supposed better
discrimination between right and wrong, to comprehend the cruelties, ay
barbarous atrocities, to which were submitted the "Friends," or, as
commonly called, "Quakers." A people who, despite their paucity of
numbers, did then, and since then have done and been doing, more to
ennoble the national character of England than all the apostles of her
Episcopacy, with her political boasters and military braggarts to boot.
If neither the most notorious nor glorious, no names in England's
history can compare in goodness and gracefulness with the Penns of 1640
and the Brights of 1880.
Though not a professed "Friend," Ambrose Powell was a believer in their
faith and doctrines; and in his daily walk and life acted very much in
accordance with them. But not altogether. From one of their ideas he
dissented--that of non-resistance. Of a proud, independent spirit,
despite his gentle inclinings, he would brook no bullying; the last man
to have one cheek smitten and meekly turn the other to the smiter.
Instead, he would strike back. A scene we are now called upon to
record, and which occurred on that same evening, gives appropriate
illustration of this phase of his character.