York and founded a church on the present site in the sixth century.
He died in 731 and, tradition says, is buried in the minster. But
Beverley's most distinguishing historic fact is that it was one of the
three "sanctuaries of refuge" in England. Here, by the strange edict
of the early church, any criminal who could evade his pursuers might
take refuge in the precincts of Beverley Minster and for thirty days be
entitled to the protection and hospitality of the monks, after which
he was given a passport to sail from the nearest port to some foreign
land. We saw the rude stone chair of "refuge" to which no doubt many
a gasping scoundrel clung, safe, for the time, from justice by virtue
of his ability to outrun his pursuers. One incident is recorded of a
"Tailour of York" who had cruelly murdered his wife but who escaped
punishment by taking refuge in Beverley. The only penalty inflicted was
to brand the criminal on the thumb with a hot iron and to watch him
closely until he sailed for France. However, all this was better than
being hanged, the penalty freely administered by the civil authorities
in those days, and as a consequence Beverley always had a large number
of "undesirable citizens" within her borders.
There is much else of interest in the minster, though we may not linger
over its attractions save to mention the Percy tomb, reputed the finest
in Europe--and indeed, its rare marbles and delicate sculptures must
represent a princely fortune. Nor could we have more than a passing
glimpse of St. Mary's Church, second only to the minster in importance,
for Beverley is the only town in England of anywhere near its size that
has the distinction of possessing two churches of really the first
magnitude.
Following the road from Beverley to the coast by Great Driffield and
Bridlington, we had a glimpse near the latter place of the high cliff
of Flamborough Head, from which the startled Yorkshiremen of a century
or more ago saw the "pirate," John Paul Jones, win his ever memorable
victory over the Serapis. It is not a subject even to this day which
the natives can discuss with entire equanimity.
The road closely follows the coast to Scarborough, the queen of
Yorkshire watering-places. We caught frequent glimpses of the ocean,
which, once out of the shadows of the towering cliffs, stretched
away until its deep--almost metallic--blue faded against the silvery
horizon. We soon found ourselves on the handsome main street of the new
town, which brought us to the waterfront at the foot of castle hill. An
old man approached us, seeing our hesitation, and informed us that the
new road around the promontory, one of the finest drives in England,
was open--not officially open, to be sure, and it would not be until
some of the "Nobs" came and the ceremonies of a formal dedication were
performed. The road had been cut in the almost sheer side of the cliff,
a broad driveway overlooking the varied scenery of coast and ocean--the
latter now as mild and softly shimmering as a quiet inland lake. One
could only imagine, on such a day, how the sea must rage and thunder
against the promontory in wild weather, and we learned that storms
interfered much with the building of the road, one of them causing
damage estimated at fifty thousand pounds. But Scarborough persevered
and the splendid driveway had just been completed. Later we had the
satisfaction of learning from the newspapers that the Princess of Wales
had visited Scarborough for the express purpose of formally dedicating
the road with all the ceremony so dear to the English.
Scarborough is unique in its combination of the old and the modern;
but few of its rivals can boast of a castle with a history reaching
back to the wars with the Danish invaders. Brighton and Eastbourne,
sometimes ranked with Scarborough, are quite recent and lack the
distinction that comes of centuries. Scarborough Castle, perched on
its mighty rock, still presents a formidable appearance and impresses
one with the tremendous strength its situation and heavy walls gave it
before gunpowder brought such things to naught. From the keep tower a
far-reaching prospect lies beneath us; a panorama of the sea chafing
on the broken coast, and to the landward are the barren moors that
encircle the town. There is not much of the fortress left, but the
fragments are carefully guarded from decay and in places have been
somewhat restored. There is a museum near the entrance to the keep,
with a miscellaneous collection of relics, more or less gruesome,
unearthed about the town and castle.
Few indeed are the places which bring back more delightful memories or
a greater longing to return than Whitby--old, straggling, storm-beaten
Whitby--climbing up its steep hill crowned by one of the most unique
churches and stateliest abbey ruins in all Britain. The road which
takes us from Scarborough to its ancient rival is a wild one, wandering
around the black, heather-splotched hills with trying grades which
make careful driving necessary. To the right the ocean still shimmers
in the setting sun and in nooks on the coast we catch glimpses of
fishing villages--among them Robin Hood's Bay, called by some the most
picturesque of the smaller fishing-towns in England. Long before we
come into Whitby we catch sight of the skeleton of the abbey on the
headland, standing almost weirdly against the evening sky. We descend
a long, winding hill and find ourselves threading our way through
crooked, narrow streets thronged with people who get out of the way
only when they have to. Passing between rows of old houses crowding
closely on either hand, we cross the bridge over the inlet and ascend
the sharp hill where the hotels face the town and abbey on the opposite
cliff. Thither we wend our way after dinner, just as the daylight
begins to fade, and passing through the devious streets thronged with
fisher folk and dirty youngsters, we ascend the ninety-nine broad stone
steps by which one reaches the headland.
The ruin is deserted and we find ourselves sole possessors of Whitby
Abbey at an hour when the twilight softens the outlines and touches
with gray and purple hues the old town at our feet and the rough
moorland hills in the background, while the wide expanse of ocean
glows mysteriously from the reflection of the dim-lit skies. The
ruin rises abruptly from the soft greensward upon which the cows are
contentedly grazing, and near at hand, gleaming darkly in the fading
light, lies the fish pool, which lends much to the picturesqueness of
the surroundings. The great church has fallen into complete ruin; decay
is riot everywhere. Only half a century ago the central tower crashed
to the earth, carrying many arches and pillars with it, and huge
fragments of masonry still lie scattered about as if fallen from some
thunder-riven cliff.
Whitby Abbey is rich in legend, and at such an hour we will trouble
ourselves little about sober fact--let mystery wrap the ruin even as
the mantle of gathering darkness; for us it shall be only the "High
Whitby's cloistered pile" of romance. We pass outside the abbey
confines and pause before St. Mary's Church, a long squat building with
low tower, as bald and plain as the abbey is pretentious and ornate.
It was built as a rival to the abbey church in a very early day when
there were bickerings between the townspeople and the monks of Whitby.
In the churchyard, thick with mouldering memorials, has lately been
raised a Saxon cross, inscribed to the memory of Caedmon, Father of
English Letters, who "fell asleep hard by A. D. 680."
[Illustration: WHITBY ABBEY AND CROSS.]
As we return to our hotel, we are attracted into one of the old-town
shops by a display of old brass and silver, and the genial proprietor
at once establishes a basis of community, for has he not been in the
States and has he not a brother there now? We pick up an antique
lantern with dingy horn doors and green with verdigris and try the
stale joke, "Made in Birmingham," which once or twice has brought a
storm of indignant protest on our heads. But it does not so excite our
Yorkshire friend.
"Yes," he said, "I had a dozen copies made of a very rare piece that
came into my hands. And that accounts for the price--genuine antiques
are so rare and so sought for that the original would cost you many
times the copy--and after all, you would be no better off when you had
it."
We cannot resist such confidence and add further to our burden of
oddities such as one gathers, willy nilly, in a tour of the nooks
and corns. Whitby shops are full of jet ornaments--brooches, beads,
bracelets, and a thousand and one fanciful things--for jet is mined
near the town,--a smooth lustrous substance whose name has come to
signify the final degree of blackness.
On the following day we again wander about the old-world streets of
the town, which we find ourselves loath to leave. The morning's catch
is just in at the fish-market and the finny tribes of all degrees
are sorted on the pavement and sold to the townspeople. The fishing
industry of Whitby is now on a small scale only; in former days it
constituted a source of some wealth. The ballad writer celebrating
Robin Hood's visit to Whitby gives this very good reason:
"The fishermen more money have
Than any merchants two or three."
And thus the sturdy highwayman found it easy to replenish his exchequer
from the fat purses of Whitby folk. It may be, though, that the
isolated situation of the town between the wild moors and the sea, and
its good harbor for small vessels, made the occupation of smuggling
especially profitable, and the wealth of the old-time citizens of
Whitby may have been augmented by this practice.
[Illustration: IN OLD WHITBY.
From Original Painting by R. E. Morrison, Royal Cambrian Academy, 1908.]
Our route out of the town led through the Cleveland Hills, the roughest
and loneliest of the Yorkshire moors. We climbed many steep, rugged
hills and dropped down sharp, dangerous slopes; one will hardly
find elsewhere in England a country scored more deeply by narrow
valleys. There is little of life on the twenty-five miles of road to
Guisborough, where one comes out of the moor into the wide valley
of the Tees. Guisborough is a bleak little town whose beautiful
surroundings have been marred by the mines. Of its ancient priory,
there remains only the magnificent eastern wall, pierced nearly to the
top by tall lancet windows from which the stone tracery has long since
vanished. It stands in a wide meadow, half hidden by giant trees. As we
glided along the highroad we caught glimpses of the wall, rising from a
stretch of velvety lawn, but there was not enough of the ruin to make a
nearer inspection worth while.
From Guisborough our road ran through a level, fertile farming country.
We missed Middlesbrough, a manufacturing city of one hundred thousand,
whose array of factory chimneys loomed up thickly across the fields,
and soon came into Stockton-on-Tees, about half the size of its
neighbor. It lies directly on the river, here a black, turbid stream,
sullied by the factories that crowd its banks. We hesitated entering
the Black Lion--it had an uncanny look that made us distrust even the
infallible Baedeker. No one except the busy barmaids was to be seen. A
few glances about the place confirmed our suspicions and we "silently
stole away."
What a contrast to the Black Lion we found in its next-door neighbor,
the Vane Arms, a fine type of the hospitable old-time English inn.
Its massive, richly carved furniture would delight the heart of the
connoisseur and is the pride of the stately landlady, who sat at the
head of the table and treated us as though we were guests in more
than the perfunctory hotel parlance. In the desert of daily hotel
life one does not easily forget such an oasis as the Vane Arms. It is
the only thing I can think of that might make one wish to linger in
Stockton-on-Tees.
The road to Darlington is excellent, though sinuous, and we found in
that bustling city little evidence of the antiquity vouched for by its
twelfth century church. It is now a railway center and has been since
the first passenger train in England ran over the Darlington & Stockton
Railway in 1825. In going to Barnard Castle we proceeded by the way
of Staindrop, though the direct road by the Tees is the best. But the
route we chose passes Raby Castle, which burst on our view shortly
before we reached Staindrop,--a huge gray pile, half fortress, half
palace, with many square battlemented towers and crenelated turrets,
all combining to fulfill the very ideal of the magnificence of feudal
days.
Permission to visit the castle was easily gained from the estate agent
at Staindrop. It would be hard to imagine anything more imposing than
Raby Castle as we saw it on that perfect July day, its vast bulk massed
against the green background of the wooded hills, and in front of it
a fine lawn, with many giant elms, stretching down to the road; but
does not our picture tell more than any words? We noted that few of the
great private parks which we had visited were so beautifully kept or
had so much to please and attract; the great trees, the lawnlike sward,
the little blue lakes, the herds of tawny deer--all combined to form a
setting fit for one of the proudest and best preserved of the ancient
homes of England.
The castle dates from the thirteenth century. By fortunate chance
it escaped the ravages of war, and having been continuously
occupied--indeed, there is a legend that its hearth-fire has never died
out in five hundred years--it is one of the most perfect examples of
its type in England. The exterior has not been greatly altered, but
inside it has been much modernized and transformed into a palatial and
richly furnished residence. In the library is a collection of costly
books; the gallery has many rare portraits and pictures; and scattered
about the different apartments are many valuable objects of art, among
these the famous marble, "The Greek Slave," by Powers, the American
sculptor.
Least altered of all is the medieval kitchen, which occupies the base
of a large tower and is one of the most interesting features of the
castle. Its immense size serves to impress upon one the proportions
of feudal hospitality--that the lord of the castle must look above
everything else to the good cheer of his guests. But there is a touch
of modernism here, too, in the iron ranges which have superseded the
great fireplace--perhaps thirty feet in width--of former times.
[Illustration: RABY CASTLE.]
Raby cannot greatly boast of historic events, yet it is interesting
to know that it was once the home of the younger Sir Henry Vane, who
was governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1636. It was built
by the Nevilles in 1370, but passed to other hands two hundred years
later, when that family took part in the Catholic uprising in the
north. But after all, Raby is far more interesting as a survival of the
"days of roselight and romance" than would be the story of the tenure
of this or that forgotten lord or earl.
Barnard Castle takes its name from the ancient fortress whose scanty
ruin still looms over the town. It stands on a cliff which drops
from the castle wall almost sheer to the shallow Tees beneath. One
thinks first of Dickens' association with the town and naturally
enough hastens to the King's Head, where the novelist's room is still
shown. Master Humphrey's clock, which adorned a building just
opposite the hotel, has disappeared--purchased by an American, a native
told us with a shade of indignation in his voice--but the town itself
is little different from the one Dickens knew. He gained here much
material for "Nicholas Nickleby," though at Bowes, high on the moor to
the westward, is supposed to have been the original of Dotheboys Hall.
The King's Head we found a comfortable, well-managed, old-time inn, an
excellent headquarters for excursions to the many interesting points
of the vicinity. We reached here early in the afternoon, affording
us time for a fifteen-mile jaunt up the Tees Valley to the High
Force--they call a waterfall the "force" in Yorkshire--the largest
cataract in England, we were told. It is situated in a lovely dell,
and while the flood of white water pouring over the jagged cliff into
the brown boiling lake below is pretty and striking, it has nothing
awe inspiring or majestic about it. True, at the time, the Tees was at
lowest ebb; a long drouth had reduced it to a fourth its normal volume
and of course we did not see the High Force at its best. Every spot of
interest in the Kingdom has its inn and it was in the farmyard of the
High Force Hotel that we left the car. On returning from the falls, a
deflated tire prolonged our stay, encouraging acquaintance with the
hotel people. The landlord, who out of the hotel season was apparently
a farmer, became friendly and communicative, especially desiring us
to deliver a message to his son, whom he seemed to think we might
easily locate in America. Then he led us into the hotel, where a framed
page from his visitors' book showed that the Princess Ena--now Queen
Victoria of Spain--and members of her suite had been guests at the High
Force Hotel. The two great events in the old man's life seemed to be
the success that he considered his son was making in the States and
the royal visit to his inn. I do not know which gave him the greater
satisfaction.
We returned to Barnard Castle following the road north of the Tees--we
had come to Middleton on the south side of the river--and we had
an almost continual view of the winding stream and its pleasantly
diversified valley. It was a peaceful rural landscape, glimmering in
the twilight--the silver thread of the river running through it--that
greeted our view during our swift flight along the upland road.
It was the end of a rather trying day and it seemed hardly possible
that we had sojourned in Old Whitby only the night before--so different
was the scene and so varied our experiences; still, the distance
in miles is not great. The restful quiet of the King's Head and its
well-served dinner were indeed a welcome close to the wanderings of the
day.
XI
LAKELAND AND THE YORKSHIRE DALES
During a tour such as ours one becomes impressed that a large
proportion of Britain is in barren moorlands or broken hills suitable
only for sheep grazing--an impression made all the stronger by the
diminutive size of the country. We in America can better afford our
vast tracts of waste land; we have fertile river valleys from which
dozens of Englands might be carved; but it seems almost melancholy that
at least a third of the Kingdom, no greater in size than an average
American state, should be almost as irreclaimable as the Sahara. One
does not so much note this waste in railway travel, for the steam roads
usually follow the valleys and lowlands, always green and prosperous,
and naturally seek out the more populous centers. But the wagon road
climbed steep hills and wended its way into many retired sections where
the steam engine cannot profitably go, and the motor car has opened to
tourists a hitherto almost unexplored country.
We were early away for Lakeland, and for miles and miles we traversed
a rather inferior road through the moors and fells. Four or five miles
out of Barnard Castle we passed through Bowes, a typical Yorkshire
moorland town stretching some distance along the highroad. Though
otherwise uninteresting enough, Bowes has one distinction of which it
is far from proud, for here Charles Dickens found the school which
served as the prototype of Dotheboys Hall in "Nicholas Nickleby."
The building, altered into a tenement house and its evil reputation
disguised under the more pleasing name of "The Villa," still stands at
the western end of the town. In Dickens' day it was known as Shaw's
School, and it seems that it deserved far less than many others of
its class the overwhelming odium cast upon it in "Nicholas Nickleby";
and it is said that there still are people in Bowes who chafe at the
injustice done their old-time townsman. But even if the Bowes school
suffered some injustice, the purpose of Dickens was accomplished none
the less in the reformation of the terrible juvenile workhouses which
masqueraded as "schools."
The moorland road carries us onward to Brough, a shabby, desolate town
deep in the hills, with scarcely a touch of color to lighten its gray
monotone. But this decayed village has its traditions; it was once
famous through all England for its annual horse fair. They tell us
that the fair is still held in Brough, though its fame has long since
declined and it is now of only local interest.
At Appleby we enter the vale of the Eden, and bounding the western
horizon we catch the first glimpse of the blue hills in whose deep
depressions lie the English lakes. Appleby has a comfortable hotel,
where we pause for lunch, and the appearance of the town is better and
more prosperous than those we have recently passed. The square tower of
the castle rises from an adjacent height and the church presents the
remarkable spectacle of a hair dresser's rooms occupying a portion of
the ancient cloisters which open on the market place.
There is no finer highway in the north of England than the Carlisle
road through Penrith. It pursues nearly if not quite the course of the
old Roman road following the lowlands along the river--a broad white
way which leads through a pleasant succession of fields and villages.
We pass many ancient landmarks--on the left Brougham Castle, a red
sandstone ruin splashed with ivy and creepers, and farther on to the
right, Eden Hall, made famous by the ballad of Uhland.
Penrith is a busy town of ten thousand or more, seemingly improved
since our visit of four years before, when it had no electric light
plant. It is the starting-point for most Lake District excursions,
whether by rail or coach. The railway follows the wagon road quite
closely to Keswick and from thence one must have some other conveyance
than rail to explore the region. And is it not well enough, for what
impression worth while could one gain of Lakeland from a railway car?
From Keswick we turn southward over the hills, from whose summits the
landscape--every hill and vale redolent with music and memories of the
"Lakers"--stretches away beneath us, the lakes set in the valleys like
great flashing gems. How familiar the odd names have been made by the
poets of Lakeland! Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Borrowdale, Langdale Pikes and
Fells, Rydal, Grasmere, and a hundred others--all call to mind the
stanzas of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
Our road sweeps up and down the hills along the sinuous shores of
Thirlmere, certainly one of the most picturesque of the bright
sisterhood of English lakes, but which now serves the very practical
purpose of a source of water-supply for the city of Manchester, which
acquired it by purchase. This transaction has aroused the indignation
of a modern lake poet who falls little short of the best traditions of
his illustrious predecessors and he makes vigorous protest against the
cities whose "million-throated thirst" menaces the "sacred meres" of
Lakeland. But the Manchester ownership--prosaic as it may be--has not
detracted from the beauty of Thirlmere and many nuisances that once
encumbered its shores have been abated.
But the human interest of the lakes centers around Grasmere and Rydal
Water. Perchance Rydal and Grasmere and Dove Cottage are out of place
in a chronicle of unfamiliar England, and yet who could write of the
Lake District with no reference to the very attractions that have made
it most famous? It is late as we pass the quaint old church "with bald
bare tower" and pause at the cottage just off the highroad, where
Wordsworth passed so many years in humble state that verged closely on
poverty, as one would count it now. There is little of the picturesque
in the gray-stone slate-roofed cottage, though the diamond-paned
windows and the rose vines climbing to the eaves somewhat relieve the
monotony of the square walls and the rude stone fence just in front.
Like Shakespeare's house, it is now the property of an association
which insures its preservation in memory of the poet. It has been
restored as nearly as possible to the same condition as during the
occupancy of the Wordsworths, and the collection of books and other
relics pertaining to them is being constantly increased.