_Haddon Hall—Chatsworth—Shrewsbury—Chester._
After renewing my acquaintance with the hospitable friends at B——,
with whom I had passed my Easter, I made an excursion into Derbyshire,
with an episodical trip to Nottingham. My chief attraction to this
latter place was that of an invitation from sundry relatives of my B——
friends to visit them, though the town is certainly well worthy of being
visited for itself. For the sake of poor Kirke-White, one would wish to
hunt up his lowly birth-place, and some would say that Newstead Abbey
deserves a traveller’s homage. In fact, the Park and Abbey are the great
charm of the neighbourhood, to most visitors; but I must own that I
could not bring myself to make a pilgrimage to the scene of those orgies
for which it is chiefly distinguished. On making some such remark to a
worthy ex-magistrate of the borough, I was struck with the downright
English common sense of his reply,—“You are quite right”—said he—“no
one thinks much of Lord Byron, in these parts, where he was known; he
cheated the tradesmen with whom he had dealings, and made himself so
odious, that when his remains were brought through Nottingham, to be
buried, we could not make up our minds to pay him any honours!” So much
for romance and misanthropy! Genius, without honour and morality, is
despicable indeed: and one even doubts the sentimental refinement of the
man, of whom an intimate friend and companion could say, with anything
like epigrammatic truthfulness, that “he cried for the press, and wiped
his eyes with the public.”
A visit to the castle, and its caves, to which my reverend friend from
B—— conducted me, well repaid us for our walk to the eminence on which
it stands in ruins. It belonged to the late Duke of Newcastle, and was
burned, as I remember very well, during the Reform riots, by an
infuriate mob: but it is supposed, that the stiff old aristocrat whom
they meant to injure, was very well pleased with the outrage. He did not
inhabit it; he was well reimbursed for his loss; and was relieved from
the tax of keeping up an unnecessary residence. The caves which
undermine the castle, are famous for their historical connection with
the story of the “She-wolf of France:” for through them was made the
entrance into the fortress, which resulted in the arrest of Isabella and
her paramour. They still point out a certain cave, as Mortimer’s; but
the whole rock is riddled by fissures and loop-holes, and appears to be
very soft and friable. From the summit one gets a beautiful view of
Clifton-grove and the Vale of Trent; and on another side of Belvoir
Castle, (pronounced _Beaver_,) the seat of the Duke of Rutland. The
“Field of the Standard” is near the castle, and I surveyed, with deep
feeling, the spot where King Charles set up his ensign, to be torn down
by the storm the same night, and to be even more unfortunate, in the
issue, than the omen seemed to require. After a visit to a few of the
churches and public buildings, and a single night under one of its
roofs, I was off to Derbyshire.
With Derby itself I was not long detained, though I cannot but remember,
with pleasure, the acquaintance I formed there with several very
agreeable persons. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Derby is the
historical reminiscence, that here the progress of the Stuart standard
was finally, and forever arrested. It is surprising that “Royal Charlie”
ever succeeded in pushing his invasion to this point: but thus much he
effected, in the fatal ’45, and the spot where he was lodged, in Derby,
is still shown by the townsfolk, with interest, if not enthusiasm.
Even railway glimpses of Derbyshire give one many pleasurable emotions,
abounding as it does in beautiful valleys and streams, and in abrupt
rocky hills—jocosely described by Walton, as frightful and savage, to
such a degree that he affects surprise at the sight of a church among
them, and asks whether there be verily any Christians in such a country.
When, at last, I found myself strolling along the Wye, and conversing
with an angler, in the green mead, just within sight of the battlements
of Haddon Hall, all the delicious nature and good humour of old Izaak
came upon me, and observing that nothing near me seemed to be of modern
fashion, I was almost transported back two centuries, and fancied myself
for a moment at his side, learning, like _Venator_, to love angling, and
so to weather the evil days of Cromwell—studying to be quiet in that
vocation, and to mind my own business, as the apostle doth enjoin. It
had been my purpose to visit Dove-dale, in honour of Walton, but this I
found impracticable, and the nearest I could come to it was now
realized. Blessings on his worthy memory! for though I be not an
accepted brother of the angle, having never enjoyed great luck when I
have gone a fishing, yet do I allow the art all honour, and do consider
it the becoming recreation for a Churchman; admitting its connection
with the catechism, and saying _Amen_ to divers other postulates of
Walton, of like grave and self-evident character.
I must own that I found Haddon Hall of considerably less dimensions than
I had foreshadowed to my fancy. I had supposed its smallest chamber one
of those gigantic apartments, in which candles and fire-light must
strive in vain to throw their illumination from the chimney-piece to the
opposite wainscot; or in which a nocturnal guest might find the freest
exercise of imagination, in looking after noises, towards the dark
distance, from the lamp at his bedside, of the waving hangings and
creaking doors. It is not altogether such a house as that; and yet if
there be a better site for the residence of a ghost, or a troop of them,
I have never seen it. Your nervous man should never try to lodge there.
It is stripped of nearly all its furniture, save only such as is
requisite to give full effect to midnight sounds and mysterious
moanings. Its history is lost in that of the dim and traditionary ages
of the Plantagenets; the windows of its lonely chapel bear the date
1427; and the last touches of the builder were given to it at least
three hundred years ago. There it stands—a relic of the domestic
architecture of feudal England. Here are turreted and embattled
gate-ways, and quadrangular courts, enclosed as if to stand a siege. The
kitchen is designed for the largest hospitality; spits, dressers and
chopping block, all speaking of the bountiful housekeeping of the olden
time—to say nothing of the vast chimneys, which seem made to roar with
Christmas fires perpetually. You ascend a great stair-case, on which it
seems almost profane to set a modern foot, so entirely does it bespeak
its ancient right to be trodden by the doughty and dainty steps of lords
and dames, in the attire of by-gone centuries. You enter a room hung
with antique tapestry, now ready to drop into tatters. You push-to the
old squeaking doors, and drop these hangings, and it no longer appears
how you got in, or how you may get out. You understand at once the
allusions of many an old play, and almost expect to find some thievish
figure lurking behind the arras. Hangings they truly are, for hooks are
built into the wall, and to these the arras are attached. But the “Long
Gallery” is the place in which a ghost would naturally air himself. It
is wainscoated and floored with oak, and ornamented with various carved
devices and emblems, such as the rose, and the thistle, and the boar’s
head; and then it has deep recessed window-seats and oriels; and some of
them look out on the sunny terraces of the garden, and suggest vague
ideas of romance, and create phantom ladies of olden time, to fill up
the scene, and rich illustrative stories to make them interesting. No
doubt real hearts have throbbed here with high and tender emotions: and
events which we know only as the dry details of history, have filled
these silent chambers with notes of joy or sorrow, with the wail of the
widow or the forlorn maiden, or with the voice of the bridegroom and the
bride. The stately Elizabeth is said to have once figured in this
gallery, at a ball.
The architecture of the great hall is severely antique, and suggests a
rude and uncivil age, in spite of its air of dignity and hospitality.
The men who dined here evidently wore swords, and the loving-cup and
health-drinking were no mere ceremonies; the party who drank, as he
lifted his arm, looking narrowly at the friend who stood up to guard
him. A hand-cuff which is fastened to the wood-work seems to hint that
guests were sometimes troublesome after taking plenty of sack. I could
think of nothing but Twelfth-night revels in this curious old place,
adorned as it is with the antlers of stags that were hunted long ago,
and whose venison once smoked on the board.
The terraced gardens, with their shades, and balusters, and steps, and
walks, and portals, are in keeping with all the rest, and the tale of
the Lady Dorothea Vernon, and of her mysterious elopement, is enough to
fill them with the charm of romance. From one of the towers you look
down upon the whole range of roofs and courts, and then gaze far away
over a beautiful view of the vale of Haddon. Before you depart you are
shown some ancient utensils belonging to the place, such as jack-boots,
and match-locks, and doublets. These are kept in the apartment of my
reverend brother, the domestic chaplain, whoever he may have been; but
whether he had any use for such things I cannot bear testimony. The
adjoining chapel in which he officiated is very small, and quite plain.
The ancient piscina, beside the altar, tells its simple story of the
rites which, according to the mediæval liturgy of England, hallowed it
of yore. It conjured up before my fancy the midnight mass of Christmas,
as described by Scott—
“That night alone, of all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.”
It was, at any rate, no Tridentine Eucharist, though it was a mutilated
one; and sad as were the scenes of debauchery with which those
solemnities are associated, I could not but trust that, even here,
Christ crucified had been truly worshipped, of old, on the solemn feast
of his Nativity, and on many other occasions of Christian joy or
penitence. Who would not cling to such communion with ancient piety? And
yet this natural sympathy, when morbidly developed, has done more than
all things else together, to bewitch the imaginative with Romanism, and
to make them slavish captives to a Church which has retained nothing
mediæval except that newfangled creed, to which the departed spirit of
Mediæevalism has bequeathed none of its poetry, and which only exists as
the inanimate slough of its superstition.
Compared with Haddon Hall, the superb modern residence of Chatsworth
struck me as tame and spiritless. The mansion has indeed a pleasant
seat: and the deer, bounding over the velvet turf of its park, or the
peacock, strutting amid its balusters and fountains, give it indeed a
lordly look of opulent show, without much ease. Yet what is it, at best,
but the dull round of “my lord’s apartments,” without one association
beyond that of my lord’s great wealth and luxury? I should be ashamed to
confess, indeed, that I was not pleased with the pictures, and more than
pleased with the exquisite carvings and magnificent sculpture, viewed
merely as works of art; but I was fatigued with the vast worldliness of
such a house, and felt that it would better have suited a Hadrian, than
it does a Christian nobleman of England. Such a residence as Warwick
Castle comes to its possessor historically, and a nobleman may well keep
it up; but Chatsworth seems built for display, and must be altogether
too much for comfort. I am glad if its possessor enjoys it—but I should
rather dwell in the humblest parsonage in England. Nature itself, as
seen from the windows of Chatsworth, has a combed and dressy look. Its
vast conservatory—the original of the Crystal Palace—is well worth a
visit, and its gardens are curious enough, but the water-works are
elaborately frivolous. I was promised a fine artificial cataract—but
lo! in the side of a beautiful hill I saw a stone stair-case, and
by-and-by the water came sluggishly down stairs, like a little girl, in
white dress, afraid to let go of the hand rail, as she leaps timidly
from step to step. “Good morning, Miss Cataract,” said I, “that will
do!”
The same clipped and artificial beauty belongs to the neighbouring
village of Edensor, and the whole seems the more unreal as contrasting
violently with the natural features of this wild and ruggedly beautiful
country. I am glad to have seen Chatsworth, but I should not care to see
it again, though the desolate Haddon Hall never recurs in my memory,
without awakening fresh longings to be once more in Derbyshire, and to
saunter again along its rushing Wye.
With my visit to Matlock Bath, I was much better satisfied. Here indeed
is Derbyshire, in spite of spruce inns and fashionable boarding-houses.
I scampered over the hills, (having first climbed them with more
pleasure than fatigue,) and went from view to view with increasing
transports. This region is all cliff and ravine, and precipice and
chasm; yet in every direction the eye is refreshed and delighted, and
the mind takes pleasure alike in thinking that it is scarcely English
scenery, and that it is yet strikingly unlike anything but England after
all! These sharp outlines, and bold walls of rock, for example, you say
are somewhat Swiss; but as you look over them, towards the horizon, you
see that their foliage and their verdure are English, absolutely; and
then, looking down the chasm, at your feet, you see a trim and neat
little village, and houses set in gardens, and peeping out from
shrubbery, and especially a church, altogether such as no one ever sees
save in England only! I entered the Speedwell mine, and went through the
usual experiments with lights amid the spar, but, on the whole, the
subterranean part of Matlock was what I liked least about it. I felt
lonely, however, in enjoying my ramble about so beautiful a place, and
the company of certain loved ones in America was longed for over and
over again to make it all that I desired. From this delightful place I
made my way to Shrewsbury.
Beautiful is Shrewsbury, without and within! Its spires and its towers
give you far-off promise of a place worthy of the traveller’s halt, and
when you enter its old-fashioned streets, you are not disappointed. I
found the market-place, with its hall and surrounding mansions, quite as
unmodernized as those of towns in the north of France. The projecting
gable of many an old timbered house confronts you as you go hither and
thither through the borough, and very often the woodwork of such houses
is fancifully arranged and ornamented, in a manner highly effective and
picturesque. Their modern tenants paint the timbers with grave, but
appropriate colours, and whitewash the plastered walls which intervene,
thus bringing out the full design of the ancient architect in a neat and
striking manner. I saw, in one of the streets, a chair carried by
bearers, precisely as in Hogarth’s prints, and which seemed to have been
in use ever since Hogarth’s day. Its occupant was a portly female, who
might have graced the Court of Queen Anne, so far as her appearance was
concerned, and what with such an apparition, in a place altogether so
antique, I found myself for a moment quite in doubt whether the
nineteenth century were actually in existence, with its many inventions.
I went through the beautiful and finely-wooded field called _the
Quarry_, and the walk called _St. Chad’s_, and crossed one of the
bridges over the Severn to the Abbey Church. Here I found some
interesting monuments and architectural curiosities; and the
neighbourhood seemed to abound in similar relics of what must once have
been a very large conventual establishment. At St. Mary’s, there was a
Jesse-window and some tombs, which afforded me a gratifying occupation
for awhile; then the ruins of an old castle, such as they are, attracted
me; and, though last, not least, the fragments of a very ancient church,
being merely its chancel, dedicated to St. Chad. The school in which Sir
Philip Sydney was reared, and where Fulke Grevil became his friend,
still swarms with the ingenuous youth of England, and I encountered them
at every turn, in the highways and by-ways of the town. What an element
of education it must be of itself for a lad to be sent to a school that
has such a history! Such thoughts made me faint of heart for a moment,
when I felt the irreparable poverty of my own country in historical
associations. The inestimable dowry of a glorious antiquity can never
mingle its ennobling qualities with our national character. We may, and
we do, enjoy immense compensations; but what reflective American does
not give way at times to a melancholy sense that he has indeed “no past
at his back,” and that God has isolated him involuntarily, by this great
fact, from the fellowship of nations! “But here comes a Shrewsbury boy,”
said I, amid such thoughts, “what cares he for Sydney, more than an
ordinary American lad at school?” Sure enough! Why then be sentimental?
It is, after all, only a certain class of minds, that receives powerful
impressions from anything past or future: and I believe an American
youth can enjoy such impressions effectively, by means of a healthful
imagination, while an English youth may often find it hard to divest the
realities with which he is daily conversant, of the degrading effects of
familiarity. Such is my calmer judgment.
I tasted the famous “Shrewsbury cakes” at the station-house, and having
spent several hours “by Shrewsbury clock,” in this pleasing survey of
the old borough, I left it with regret, purposing to return, and to make
excursions from it to a neighbouring seat to which I had been kindly
invited, and also to Hodnet, which I greatly desired to see, in honour
of the gentle and beloved Heber. In these plans, however, I was
disappointed. As you leave Shrewsbury for the north, you gain a most
agreeable view of the town, which stands on a fair peninsula in the
bright embrace of the Severn. It is a place full of poetry. On one side
are the Welsh Mountains; on the other, amid Salopian fields, you descry
the columnar monument of Lord Hill; but the tall spires and the Abbey
Tower tell more eloquently of Hotspur.
At Chirk station a Welsh family entered the train, gabbling their
consonants most unintelligibly; but I soon discovered from their adieus,
and their tears and sighs, that they were emigrants going to Liverpool
to ship for America. This stirred up a warm home-feeling: I found that
one of them could talk English, and I was not long in finding a way to
their hearts. They were going to Wisconsin, and were very willing to be
advised on ordinary matters. I tried, also, to impress them with my own
ideas of the privileges they might enjoy under the care of the Nashotah
Missionaries; but I fear they were dissenters, as the Welsh peasantry
too often are, and that my endeavours to add to the burthens of my
esteemed brethren of that diocese were quite unavailing. I slept that
night at Chester.
But I despair of describing Chester. Elsewhere in England you meet with
ancient houses and picturesque streets; but Chester is all antiquity.
What you would go miles to see, when in search of the quaintly
beautiful, is here multiplied before you in almost every house. In the
first place it is a walled town. I made the circuit of the walls in the
morning, with constant emotions of astonishment; for they are in good
repair, and seem even yet to have their use, whereas, I had imagined
them to be mere relics of the past. I came to the Tower upon the wall,
from the summit of which Charles the First beheld the total rout of his
army. It is a mere watch-tower; but as the memorial of a great event, it
would be hard to imagine a monument more striking. There is much more to
interest the passenger as he goes on, looking now into houses built into
the wall like swallows’ nests, and now into church-yards, and now into a
race-course, and again into a river: but a thoughtful tourist, and
especially one from America, will find it hard to think of anything but
that Tower, and the mighty issues which were once deciding before it, in
view of an august and awfully interested spectator. Poor King! as he
descended from it, what must have been his emotions?
The streets of Chester are said still to preserve the outlines of the
Roman camp, from which the town derives its name. They are a great
curiosity in themselves, and seem to have been cut down into the rock,
while the houses were reared on the banks, above the level thus
obtained. And such houses! Gable after gable, timbered, pargetted,
enriched with carving, and jutting over the street—each one “a picture
for painters to study!” And where are the _trottoirs_, or side-walks?
Lo! the houses all run down to the carriage-way; but what should be
their front rooms, above the basement floor, are mere verandahs, through
the whole line of which freely walks the public, always under cover, and
always at home! These “rows” (even more than the walls) are the feature
of Chester which most strikes the stranger; especially as the opposite
houses, which he beholds in passing through them, are full of curious
objects for any one whose eye delights in the antique. On one, for
example, are rich emblematic or fanciful decorations and carvings; on
another, a scene from Scripture history is cut in uncouth style; while
another bears the legend: _God’s providence is mine inheritance_, 1652.
A good inheritance always, but especially in Cromwell’s time. The
guide-book says, that in the great plague of the year thus designated,
this house was the only one which the destroying angel did not visit.
Hence the pious inscription.
But there is no doing justice to old Chester, on a tourist’s page. Its
cathedral is a poor one, and so crumbling are its walls and buttresses,
that every shower washes down a plentiful soil, from the decomposing
stone. I lingered without weariness, however, in its aisles and
cloisters, and must say that its service was sung delightfully, although
the singers were few, and the clergy fewer still. The same disgraceful
poverty and lifelessness, which I had remarked elsewhere, characterized
the visible force of the establishment; and I could not but say to
myself, if this feeble performance is, nevertheless, so edifying and
effective, what might not be the blessed result of a vitalized cathedral
body, serving God night and day in His Temple, as God should be always
served, in this rich and ancient Church of an empire which professes to
be Christian, and which God has so unspeakably exalted among the nations
of the earth.
The other ecclesiastical objects of the town were duly visited, and then
I took a boat on the Dee, and was rowed toward Eaton Hall, which I
finally reached on foot, after a walk through the surrounding park. This
was, till very lately, regarded as the finest possible specimen of
modern Gothic, in the domestic line, and a vast amount of Cockney
admiration has been wasted on it. I found it undergoing repairs, which
must greatly improve it; but, after all, it is a meagre thing, when one
has seen the Gothic of the cathedrals, or of such a castle as
Kenilworth. I did not see much of the interior, as visitors were
necessarily excluded, in favour of the workmen; and so after visiting
the conservatories, and various outlying dependencies of this great
house, I left it, not greatly overwhelmed with what I had seen. I was
better pleased with my return voyage, on the Dee, and with the
river-view of Chester.