Rock Ferry, August 29th.--Yesterday we all took a walk into the country.
It was a fine afternoon, with clouds, of course, in different parts of
the sky, but a clear atmosphere, bright sunshine, and altogether a
Septembrish feeling. The ramble was very pleasant, along the hedge-lined
roads in which there were flowers blooming, and the varnished holly,
certainly one of the most beautiful shrubs in the world, so far as
foliage goes. We saw one cottage which I suppose was several hundred
years old. It was of stone, filled into a wooden frame, the black-oak of
which was visible like an external skeleton; it had a thatched roof, and
was whitewashed. We passed through a village,--higher Bebbington, I
believe,--with narrow streets and mean houses all of brick or stone, and
not standing wide apart from each other as in American country villages,
but conjoined. There was an immense almshouse in the midst; at least, I
took it to be so. In the centre of the village, too, we saw a
moderate-sized brick house, built in imitation of a castle with a tower
and turret, in which an upper and an under row of small cannon were
mounted,--now green with moss. There were also battlements along the
roof of the house, which looked as if it might have been built eighty or
a hundred years ago. In the centre of it there was the dial of a clock,
but the inner machinery had been removed, and the hands, hanging
listlessly, moved to and fro in the wind. It was quite a novel symbol of
decay and neglect. On the wall, close to the street, there were certain
eccentric inscriptions cut into slabs of stone, but I could make no sense
of them. At the end of the house opposite the turret, we peeped through
the bars of an iron gate and beheld a little paved court-yard, and at the
farther side of it a small piazza, beneath which seemed to stand the
figure of a man. He appeared well advanced in years, and was dressed in
a blue coat and buff breeches, with a white or straw hat on his head.
Behold, too, in a kennel beside the porch, a large dog sitting on his
hind legs, chained! Also, close beside the gateway, another man, seated
in a kind of arbor! All these were wooden images; and the whole
castellated, small, village-dwelling, with the inscriptions and the queer
statuary, was probably the whim of some half-crazy person, who has now,
no doubt, been long asleep in Bebbington churchyard.
The bell of the old church was ringing as we went along, and many
respectable-looking people and cleanly dressed children were moving
towards the sound. Soon we reached the church, and I have seen nothing
yet in England that so completely answered my idea of what such a thing
was, as this old village church of Bebbington.
It is quite a large edifice, built in the form of a cross, a low peaked
porch in the side, over which, rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and
something. The steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old; so does
the whole church, though portions of it have been renewed, but not so as
to impair the aspect of heavy, substantial endurance, and long, long
decay, which may go on hundreds of years longer before the church is a
ruin. There it stands, among the surrounding graves, looking just the
same as it did in Bloody Mary's days; just as it did in Cromwell's time.
A bird (and perhaps many birds) had its nest in the steeple, and flew in
and out of the loopholes that were opened into it. The stone framework
of the windows looked particularly old.
There were monuments about the church, some lying flat on the ground,
others elevated on low pillars, or on cross slabs of stone, and almost
all looking dark, moss-grown, and very antique. But on reading some of
the inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent; for, in fact,
twenty years of this climate suffices to give as much or more antiquity
of aspect, whether to gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our
own,--so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon does it blacken,
so soon do the edges lose their sharpness, so soon does Time gnaw away
the records. The only really old monuments (and those not very old) were
two, standing close together, and raised on low rude arches, the dates on
which were 1684 and 1686. On one a cross was rudely cut into the stone.
But there may have been hundreds older than this, the records on which
had been quite obliterated, and the stones removed, and the graves dug
over anew. None of the monuments commemorate people of rank; on only one
the buried person was recorded as "Gent."
While we sat on the flat slabs resting ourselves, several little girls,
healthy-looking and prettily dressed enough, came into the churchyard,
and began to talk and laugh, and to skip merrily from one tombstone to
another. They stared very broadly at us, and one of them, by and by, ran
up to U. and J., and gave each of them a green apple, then they skipped
upon the tombstones again, while, within the church, we heard them
singing, sounding pretty much as I have heard it in our pine-built New
England meeting-houses. Meantime the rector had detected the voices of
these naughty little girls, and perhaps had caught glimpses of them
through the windows; for, anon, out came the sexton, and, addressing
himself to us, asked whether there had been any noise or disturbance in
the churchyard. I should not have borne testimony against these little
villagers, but S. was so anxious to exonerate our own children that she
pointed out these poor little sinners to the sexton, who forthwith turned
them out. He would have done the same to us, no doubt, had my coat been
worse than it was; but, as the matter stood, his demeanor was rather
apologetic than menacing, when he informed us that the rector had sent
him.
We stayed a little longer, looking at the graves, some of which were
between the buttresses of the church and quite close to the wall, as if
the sleepers anticipated greater comfort and security the nearer they
could get to the sacred edifice.
As we went out of the churchyard, we passed the aforesaid little girls,
who were sitting behind the mound of a tomb, and busily babbling
together. They called after us, expressing their discontent that we had
betrayed them to the sexton, and saying that it was not they who made the
noise. Going homeward, we went astray in a green lane, that terminated
in the midst of a field, without outlet, so that we had to retrace a good
many of our footsteps.
Close to the wall of the church, beside the door, there was an ancient
baptismal font of stone. In fact, it was a pile of roughly hewn stone
steps, five or six feet high, with a block of stone at the summit, in
which was a hollow about as big as a wash-bowl. It was full of
rainwater.
The church seems to be St. Andrew's Church, Lower Bebbington, built in
1100.
September 1st.--To-day we leave the Rock Ferry Hotel, where we have spent
nearly four weeks. It is a comfortable place, and we have had a good
table and have been kindly treated. We occupied a large parlor,
extending through the whole breadth of the house, with a bow-window,
looking towards Liverpool, and adown the intervening river, and to
Birkenhead, on the hither side. The river would be a pleasanter object,
if it were blue and transparent, instead of such a mud-puddly hue; also,
if it were always full to its brine; whereas it generally presents a
margin, and sometimes a very broad one, of glistening mud, with here and
there a small vessel aground on it.
Nevertheless, the parlor-window has given us a pretty good idea of the
nautical business of Liverpool; the constant objects being the little
black steamers puffing unquietly along, sometimes to our own ferry,
sometimes beyond it to Eastham, and sometimes towing a long string of
boats from Runcorn or otherwhere up the river, laden with goods, and
sometimes gallanting a tall ship in or out. Some of these ships lie for
days together in the river, very majestic and stately objects, often with
the flag of the stars and stripes waving over them. Now and then, after
a gale at sea, a vessel comes in with her masts broken short off in the
midst, and with marks of rough handling about the hull. Once a week
comes a Cunard steamer, with its red funnel pipe whitened by the salt
spray; and, firing off cannon to announce her arrival, she moors to a
large iron buoy in the middle of the river, and a few hundred yards from
the stone pier of our ferry. Immediately comes poring towards her a
little mail-steamer, to take away her mail-bags and such of the
passengers as choose to land; and for several hours afterwards the Cunard
lies with the smoke and steam coming out of her, as if she were smoking
her pipe after her toilsome passage across the Atlantic. Once a
fortnight comes an American steamer of the Collins line; and then the
Cunard salutes her with cannon, to which the Collins responds, and moors
herself to another iron buoy, not far from the Cunard. When they go to
sea, it is with similar salutes; the two vessels paying each other the
more ceremonious respect, because they are inimical and jealous of each
other.
Besides these, there are other steamers of all sorts and sizes, for
pleasure-excursions, for regular trips to Dublin, the Isle of Man, and
elsewhither; and vessels which are stationary, as floating lights, but
which seem to relieve one another at intervals; and small vessels, with
sails looking as if made of tanned leather; and schooners, and yachts,
and all manner of odd-looking craft, but none so odd as the Chinese junk.
This junk lies by our own pier, and looks as if it were copied from some
picture on an old teacup. Beyond all these objects we see the other side
of the Mersey, with the delectably green fields opposite to us, while the
shore becomes more and more thickly populated, until about two miles off
we see the dense centre of the city, with the dome of the Custom House,
and steeples and towers; and, close to the water, the spire of St.
Nicholas; and above, and intermingled with the whole city scene, the
duskiness of the coal-smoke gushing upward. Along the bank we perceive
the warehouses of the Albert dock, and the Queen's tobacco warehouses,
and other docks, and, nigher to us, a shipyard or two. In the evening
all this sombre picture gradually darkens out of sight, and in its place
appear only the lights of the city, kindling into a galaxy of earthly
stars, for a long distance, up and down the shore; and, in one or two
spots, the bright red gleam of a furnace, like the "red planet Mars"; and
once in a while a bright, wandering beam gliding along the river, as a
steamer cones or goes between us and Liverpool.