between rather shabby-looking buildings on either side, is not wholly
prepossessing. We hesitate to enter the courtyard, though it is quite
late, until a policeman assures us there is nothing better in the
town--or in the country about, for that matter. Had we needed further
assurance, we might have glanced at our trusty Baedeker to find the
Swan honored with special mention as "an excellent, long-established
house with winding oak stairs three hundred years old." Once inside
our misgivings vanish instantly amidst the air of cleanliness, solid
comfort and pleasant antiquity that prevails. We have a large room,
almost oppressive in its wealth of mahogany, and, dimly lighted by
candles in ancient candlesticks, it seems pervaded with an air of
ghostly mystery. There are tall-posted, canopied beds of marvelous
state, mysterious oaken chests heavily carved, antique chairs, quaint
old settees, and many curious things wrought in brass and copper.
Altogether, few other of the country inns had quite the charm of the
Swan, and very agreeable did we find the ladies who managed it. We told
them of our previous futile attempts to see Newstead Abbey and they
were certain that the coveted privilege would be secured for us on the
following day--it had never been refused to guests of the Swan at the
request of the manageress. She would write at once and would doubtless
have an answer in the morning. It need hardly be said that we were glad
to stay another day at the Swan and in the meanwhile visit some of the
curious and delightful spots in which Derbyshire abounds. No section
of England is more famed than the "Peak District," with Haddon Hall,
Chatsworth, Bakewell Church, Buxton and Dovedale; and though almost
unknown to tourists, the great moorlands which stretch away to the
north we found none the less interesting.
Chesterfield Church is famous for its distorted spire, strangely
twisted and leaning several degrees from the vertical. Some say it was
due to a whim of the designer, but local legend prefers to ascribe it
to the malice of His Satanic Majesty, who chose such queer ways of
venting his spite on the churches of olden time. If he indeed twisted
Chesterfield's spire, it was at least a far more obvious evidence
of his ill will toward churches than the scratch of his claw still
shown on the bell of St. Mary's at Shrewsbury. But the troublesome
antiquarians, who have such a way of discrediting the painstaking
and very satisfactory work of the legend-makers, would have us believe
that the oaken timbers of the spire warped while seasoning under
their coverings of lead. Be that as it may, Chesterfield Church is
worthy a few minutes' pause on account of its remarkable tombs and
unusual screen mysteriously carved with emblems of the crucifixion.
Less imposing is Trinity Church, though the white marble tablet on its
walls with the simple inscription, "George Stephenson, died August 12,
1848, aged 68 years," will have a fascination for the wayfarer from the
remotest part of the earth, wherever the steam railroad has penetrated.
The great inventor spent his declining years in retirement on a farm
about a mile from Chesterfield, and his house still stands, partly
hidden from the road by ancient trees.
[Illustration: CHESTERFIELD CHURCH.]
We had no desire to visit Chatsworth House a second time, though we
followed the much frequented road through the park. No section of
rural England, possibly excepting the Stratford-upon-Avon country is
more favored by tourists; motors, carriages and chars-a-bancs were
everywhere in evidence and stirred up clouds of limestone dust, which
whitened the trees and hedges and filled the sky with a silvery haze.
The number of English visitors is greater than at Stratford, and
the more intelligent Englishman who has not visited Chatsworth is
rather the exception. A thousand visitors a day is not uncommon; yet
Chatsworth House is thrown open free to all every week day--surely an
example of princely generosity on the part of the Duke of Devonshire.
Few who visit Chatsworth will omit Haddon Hall, and while a single
visit to the modern palace may suffice, a hundred to Haddon, it seemed
to us, would leave one still unsatisfied. Who could ever weary of the
indescribable beauty of the ancient house or cease to delight in its
atmosphere of romantic story? Nowhere in England is there another place
that speaks so eloquently of the past or which brings so near to our
prosaic present day the life, manners and environment of the English
nobleman of three or four centuries ago. No sight in England is more
enchanting than the straggling walls and widely scattered towers of
Haddon, standing in gray outline against the green of its sheltering
hill--the point of view chosen by the painter of our picture. Yet, with
all its battlements and watch-towers, Haddon was never a fortified
castle--a circumstance to which we owe its perfect preservation.
The wars of the Roses and the Commonwealth left it scathless; it
was an actual residence until 1730, since which time every care has
been exercised to maintain it in repair. We will not rehearse the
well-known legends of the place, nor will we give ear for an instant
to the insinuation that the romance of the fair Dorothy was fabricated
less than a hundred years ago. What tinge of romance will be left to
this prosaic world if these busybody iconoclasts are given heed? They
cannot deny that Dorothy married John Manners, Duke of Rutland, anyway,
for it was through this union that Haddon Hall passed to its present
owners.
[Illustration: HADDON HALL FROM THE RIVER.
From the Original Water Color by C. F. Allbon.]
After a long, loving look at her ancestral home, we turn away and
follow the dusty road to Bakewell, where we stand before her tomb in
the fine old church. Here in effigy she kneels facing her husband
and below are the indescribably quaint figures of her four children.
The caretaker, who is loudly lecturing a group of trippers, catches
a glimpse of us as we enter and his practical eye differentiates
instantly the American tourist. He hastens to us and begs us to wait
a little--the party is large--he will soon give us his personal
attention. The trippers are hurried along and dismissed with scant
ceremony and we are shown about in detail that encroaches upon our
time. Still, there are many things of genuine interest and antiquity in
Bakewell Church and the dissertations of our guide concerning them is
worth the half crown we bestow upon him.
Outside, we pause to contemplate the grand old structure. Its massive
walls terminate in castellated battlements and its splendid spire, a
miniature of Salisbury, in slender yet graceful proportions, rises to
a height of two hundred feet. All around is the spacious churchyard,
thickly set with monumental stones, and upon one of these we noted the
quaintest of the many quaint old English epitaphs we read. Happy indeed
the parish clerk immortalized in the following couplets:
"The vocal Powers let us mark
Of Philip our late Parish Clerk
In Church none ever heard a Layman
With clearer Voice say Amen!
Who now with Hallelujas Sound
Like Him can make the Roofs rebound.
The Choir lament his Choral tones
The Town--so soon Here lie his bones
Sleep undisturbed within thy peaceful shrine,
Till Angels wake thee with such notes as thine."
From Bakewell we followed one of the many Wyes to Buxton--a road
scarcely equalled for beauty in the Peak District. What a contrast
its wayside trees and flowers and pleasant farm cottages presented to
the stony moorland road we pursued northward from Buxton! We lingered
at the latter place only enough to note the salient features of the
popular watering-place of the Peak. It is situated in a verdant valley,
but the moorland hills, bleak and barren, nearly surround it. Only
three miles distant is Dovedale, famed as the loveliest and most
picturesque of the many English "Dales."
I have no words cheerless enough to tell our impressions of the great
Midland Moor, through whose very heart our way led to the northward. A
stony road through a gray, stony country with a stone hovel here and
there, tells something of the story. We pass bleak little towns, climb
many steep, winding hills, speed swiftly along the uplands, leaving a
long trail of white dust-clouds in our wake--until we are surprised
by Glossop, a good-sized city in the midst of the moor. It has large
papermills, substantially built of stone, an industry made possible
by the pure waters of the moor. The streets are paved with rough
cobble-stones and the town has altogether a cheerless, unattractive
look, but interesting as quite a new phase of England. In all our
journeyings throughout the Kingdom we found no section more utterly
bleak and dreary than that through which we passed from Buxton to
Glossop. We could but imagine what aspect a country that so impressed
us on a fine day in June time must present in the dull, gray English
winter. How the unimpeded winds must sweep the brown moorlands! How
their icy blasts must search out every crevice in the lone cottages and
penetrate the cheerless-looking hovels in the villages! A small native
of whom we asked his recollection of winter shook his head sadly and
said, "Awfully cold"; and a local proverb referring to the section has
it that "Kinderscout is the cowdest place aout."
The Sheffield road follows the hills, which towered high above us at
times or again dropped almost sheer away below to a black, tumbling
stream. In one place, beneath an almost mountainous hill, we had an
adventure which startled us more than any other occurrence of our tour.
From the summit of a hill hundreds of feet above us, some miscreant
loosened a huge boulder, which plunged down the declivity seemingly
straight at us, but by good fortune missed our car by a few yards. The
perpetrator of the atrocity immediately disappeared and there was no
chance of tracing him. Happily, we had no similar outrage to record of
all our twelve thousand miles in Britain, and we pass the act as that
of a criminal or lunatic. This road was built about the beginning of
the nineteenth century and a competent authority expresses doubt if
there is a finer, better-engineered road in England than that between
Glossop and Ashopton, a village about half way to Sheffield, and adds,
"or one where houses are so rare--or the sight of an inn rouses such
pleasureable anticipation," though one of these, "The Snake," must have
other attractions than its name. It is indeed a fine road, though by no
means unmatched by many others--the Manchester road to the northwest
fully equals it, and following as it does the series of fine reservoirs
lying in the valleys, is superior in scenery.
We took a short cut through Sheffield, the city of knives, razors and
silver plate, caught a second glimpse of Chesterfield's reeling spire,
and swept over the hills into Mansfield just as the long twilight was
fading into night.
The next morning our hostess of The Swan placed in our hands the
much-sought-for pass to Newstead Abbey, and to while the time until
the hour set for admittance, we went by the way of Hucknall, to visit
Byron's grave in the church whose square-topped tower dominates the
town. Recent restoration gives an air of newness, for Hucknall Church,
when Byron's remains were laid before its altar, was little better than
a ruin. The old man working over the graves in the churchyard knew
full well our mission and leaving his task accosted us in unmistakable
Irish brogue. He led us directly to the poet's tomb, and it was with
deep feeling not unmixed with awe that we advanced toward the high
altar of Hucknall Church and stood silent and uncovered before the
grave of Byron. On the wall over the tomb were graven two of those
passages whose lofty sentiments glitter like gems--though betimes in
inharmonious setting--throughout the poet's writings, which breathe
the high hopes he felt in his better moments. Well may the tablet over
his last resting-place bear the inspired lines:
"If that high world, which lies beyond
Our own, surviving Love endears;
If there the cherish'd heart be fond,
The eye the same, except in tears--
How welcome those untrodden spheres!
How sweet this very hour to die!
To soar from earth and find all fears
Lost in thy light--Eternity!"
"It must be so; 'tis not for self
That we so tremble on the brink;
And, striving to o'erleap the gulf,
Yet cling to Being's severing link.
Oh! in that future let us think
To hold each heart the heart that shares;
With them the immortal waters drink,
And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!"
The second quotation is from "Childe Harold," more positive in its
tone, though less scintillating in its verbiage. In the wall near
by, the gift of a Scotch admirer, is a marble profile medallion of
the poet's face, with Shelley's characterization, "The Pilgrim of
Eternity." In the adjoining vestry the walls are covered with the
graven words of many of the greatest men of the century--tributes to
the genius of Byron. Verily the church at Hucknall has become as a
mausoleum to one denied burial in the nation's Valhalla, and who was,
in truth, almost grudged sepulture in his native soil by a large number
of the Englishmen of his day. And there came to us a faint conception
of the intense bitterness of the times--when the body of England's
greatest genius, dead in a forlorn but glorious cause, was brought
to his native land to be greeted with a storm of hatred and a fierce
protest against interment in Westminster Abbey. With little ceremony he
was laid away in the church of Hucknall and pilgrims now come daily to
that otherwise uninteresting and rather ugly town to do honor to the
memory of Byron--certainly one of the brightest and most fascinating,
if not the greatest, of English poets.
For me there was none other of the historic places which we visited
more deeply tinged by its romantic associations or possessing a greater
fascination than Newstead Abbey. Perhaps this feeling was intensified
by our previous unsuccessful attempts to gain admission and by the
recollection of the passion of my boyhood days for the verse of
Byron--though indeed I have hardly read him latterly. But we were to
visit Newstead at last. If we found a little difficulty--possibly the
result of our ignorance--in getting permission, we could not complain
of the opportunities afforded us as visitors.
From the Mansfield road we entered the gateway and drove through the
stretches of forest and meadow in the great park, halting the car at
the very doorway of the ancient place. We paused to view the fine
facade, with its square battlemented tower at one end and the ruins
of the abbey church at the other. There is little left of this latter
save the east wall, once pierced by three great windows, two of which
have at some time been filled in. We were conducted by the rather
aristocratic housekeeper to every part of the house save the private
apartments of the family, and there was no effort to hurry us along--so
often the fate of the tourist in such cases.
One who is accustomed to think of Newstead Abbey as it lives, lonely
and half ruinous, in the verse of Byron, who had such an intense
affection for the home of his ancestors; or even one who reads
Washington Irving's interesting account of his visit to the place when
owned by Col. Wildman a few years later, is hardly prepared for the
modern palace into which the abbey has been transformed. The paneled
halls, with their rich furnishings and rare curios from all parts
of the world, and the trim, beautifully kept gardens that greet one
everywhere from the windows, have little in common with the Newstead of
which Byron wrote in "Hours of Idleness:"
"Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle,
Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay;
In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle
Have choked up the rose which once bloomed in the way."
Still, much is unaltered and there are many relics to bring memories of
the one-time noble, though unfortunate, owner, whose recklessness quite
as much as his necessities compelled the sale of his ancestral estate.
[Illustration: NEWSTEAD ABBEY.]
Of greatest interest are the apartments which Byron himself occupied,
a suite of three medium-sized rooms, which have been religiously kept
through all the years just as the poet left them. The simple blue
and white toilet set was his own, the bed the one he slept in, and
many other articles and furnishings vividly recall the noble occupant
who never returned after the sale of the abbey. Probably no one has
occupied the rooms since Washington Irving slept there during the visit
we have referred to and was roused in the middle of the night by a
ghostly footfall in the hall--but found only Boatswain II. outside the
door.
In the hall the marks of the pistol shots of the young lord and his
wild companions have not been effaced from the walls and in the
gallery there is a collection of many mementos of the poet. Perhaps
the most interesting is a section of the tree upon which he carved his
name and that of his sister, Augusta--cut down because it was decaying.
The gallery is largely filled with portraits of the present family,
but our interest centers in the famous portrait by Phillips, in which
the refined features and dignified though slightly melancholy air has
invested the poet's face with a spirituality which it probably did not
possess in so great a degree.
From the house we were ushered into the gardens and were shown every
nook and corner of these by the gardener in charge. They were elaborate
indeed; rich with the color and perfume of the flowers which bloom
so profusely in England; and there were many rare plants and shrubs.
We were interested in Boatswain's grave, with its elaborate monument
and inscription in which pathos verges on the ridiculous, yet highly
consistent with the misanthropic moods so often affected by Byron. In
contrast with the trim neatness of the flower beds and shrubbery is the
fragment of the abbey church, through which the wind whistles as it did
in the poet's day, and which has weathered the sun and rain of more
than three hundred years since the heavy hand of the eighth Henry smote
it into ruins. And it carries us back four hundred years farther to
another Henry, who built the abbey to expiate his crime of instigating
the murder of Thomas a'Becket.
The history of Newstead told in brief by Irving need not occupy space
in this hasty chronicle. It was with reluctance that we departed after
our two hours' sojourn. It often comes back in memory with all the
color and glory of a perfect June day--the majestic hall, the abbey
ruin, the gardens with their riot of coloring, the shining lake, the
woodland and the meadows--an enchanted world which we left behind us as
we hastened away over the road to Mansfield, where we had late luncheon
at the Swan.
One will not leave the vicinity of Mansfield without a visit to
Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle, famous for their connection
with Elizabeth Spencer, "Bess of Hardwick." Architecturally, both
are disappointing; Hardwick, bald, harsh and square, like a modern
concrete factory, and Bolsover, an incongruous pile cut up into small,
ill-arranged apartments, by far the finest part of it in complete
ruin. Hardwick is still a residence of the Duke of Devonshire and
had just passed on the death of Spencer Cavendish to his nephew,
who was refurnishing the house preparatory to making it his home. A
bare, unhomelike place it seemed, with its great staring windows, its
uneven concrete floors, and its high ceilings of decorated plaster,
broken and discolored in many places. Its chief historical interest
centers in the fact that it was one of the many prison-houses of Mary
Stuart; but her imprisonment here was far from rigorous--in fact, so
considerate was the Earl of Shrewsbury of his royal ward that it roused
the jealousy of his amiable spouse, the energetic Bess. Concerning
this incident Miss Strickland--a rather biased historian, we must
fear--takes the countess to task in vigorous style, declaring that--
"His proud and cruel wife, whose temper could not be restrained by any
power on earth or in heaven, soon became jealous of the lovely and
fascinating prisoner, and led her husband, a noble of exemplary gravity
and a grandsire, a terrible life!"
However, as in nearly every case of the kind, there appears to have
been another side to it, and in any event, there were many who took
the part of the jealous wife, including, as might be expected, Queen
Elizabeth herself.
The countess, besides Hardwick Hall, built the former house at
Chatsworth, which has since been torn down. Bolsover was completed by
her son; it is now unoccupied but maintained in good repair. It is
worth a visit rather for the fine view from its towers--for it occupies
a most magnificent site on a high promontory overlooking the wide vale
of the river--than for any interest the castle itself possesses.
The sun had sunk low when we came down from the castle walls and
started for York, sixty miles away. At Worksop we were clear of the
byways and the open road, invitingly smooth and level and almost free
from traffic, stretched out before us. This chronicle is no record of
miles per hour, and the motor enters into it only as a means to an end;
yet there is no harm in saying that we had few swifter, evener flights
through a more charming country than that which fleeted past us between
Worksop and York. We soon caught sight of Doncaster's dominating church
tower, a fit mate for many of the cathedrals, but in our haste out of
the town we missed the North Road and were soon noting the milestones
to Tadcaster, famous for little else than its ales. The North Road is a
trifle better in surface and a little more direct, but we had traversed
it before and did not regret the opportunity of seeing a different
country. The minster towers soon loomed dim in the purple light and we
felt a sense of almost homelike restfulness when we were established
at the Station Hotel--to our notion one of the two or three most
comfortable in England.
X
FROM YORKSHIRE COAST TO BARNARD CASTLE
The Minster of St. John of Beverley is easily the finest single example
of Perpendicular architecture in England; in beauty and majesty
of design, in proportion and in general effect--from almost any
viewpoint--there is no more pleasing church in the Kingdom. We come in
sight of its graceful twin towers while yet afar from the town, after a
thirty-mile run from York through some of the most prosperous farming
country in the shire. As we come nearer, the mass of red tiles, from
which rises the noble bulk of the minster, resolves itself into the
houses of the old town, whose ancient heart has lost none of its charm
in the little city which has more recently grown up around it.
As we emerge from a narrow street bordered with mean little houses,
the great church suddenly bursts on our view and we pause to admire
its vast yet perfect proportions, its rich carvings, and the multitude
of graceful pinnacles. We enter, but the caretaker receives us with
little enthusiasm, though at our request he shows us about in a rather
reserved manner. A card on the wall explains matters: "Positively no
fees to attendants." Our experience has been that such a notice means
cash in advance if you are to have the attention you want and which
you really need if you are to see and appreciate such a church. We
proceed, therefore, to get on a proper footing with our guide, and
begin forthwith to learn the history, the architecture, the curiosities
and the gossip of Beverley Minster. And the last is not the least
interesting, for here, as at Wymondham, was a rector who with the
modest salary of four hundred pounds a year had spent many thousands of
his own money in restoration and repair of the minster. He had restored
the intricate screen and replaced some of the images which had been
broken up, yet so cleverly was the toning and coloring done that the
newer work could not be distinguished from the old.