'Tis not possible to express the least part of the joy your return
gives me; time only and experience will convince you how very sincere
it is. I excessively long to meet you, to say so much, so very much to
you, that I believe I shall say nothing. I have given orders to be
sent for the first minute of your arrival--which I beg you will let
them know at Mr. Jervas's. I am four-score miles from London, a short
journey compared to that I so often thought at least of undertaking,
rather than die without seeing you again. Tho the place I am in is
such as I would not quit for the town, if I did not value you more
than any, nay everybody else there; and you will be convinced how
little the town has engaged my affections in your absence from it,
when you know what a place this is which I prefer to it; I shall
therefore describe it to you at large, as the true picture of a
genuine ancient country-seat.
You must expect nothing regular in my description of a house that
seems to be built before rules were in fashion: the whole is so
disjointed, and the parts so detached from each other, and yet so
joining again, one can not tell how, that--in a poetical fit--you
would imagine it had been a village in Amphion's time, where twenty
cottages had taken a dance together, were all out, and stood still in
amazement ever since. A stranger would be grievously disappointed who
should ever think to get into this house the right way. One would
expect, after entering through the porch, to be let into the hall;
alas! nothing less, you find yourself in a brew-house. From the
parlor you think to step into the drawing-room; but, upon opening the
iron-nailed door, you are convinced, by a flight of birds about your
ears, and a cloud of dust in your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house.
On each side our porch are two chimneys, that wear their greens on the
outside, which would do as well within, for whenever we make a fire,
we let the smoke out of the windows. Over the parlor window hangs a
sloping balcony, which, time has turned to a very convenient
penthouse. The top is crowned with a very venerable tower, so like
that of the church just by, that the jackdaws build in it as if it
were the true steeple.
The great hall is high and spacious, flanked with long tables, images
of ancient hospitality; ornamented with monstrous horns, about twenty
broken pikes, and a matchlock musket or two, which they say were used
in the civil wars. Here is one vast arched window, beautifully
darkened with divers scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be
great propriety in this old manner of blazoning upon glass, ancient
families being like ancient windows, in the course of generations
seldom free from cracks. One shining pane bears date 1286. The
youthful face of Dame Elinor owes more to this single piece than to
all the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can say after this
that glass is frail, when it is not half so perishable as human beauty
or glory? For in another pane you see the memory of a knight
preserved, whose marble nose is moldered from his monument in the
church adjoining. And yet, must not one sigh to reflect, that the
most authentic record of so ancient a family should lie at the mercy
of every boy that throws a stone? In this hall, in former days, have
dined gartered knights and courtly dames, with ushers, sewers, and
seneschals; and yet it was but the other night that an owl flew in
hither, and mistook it for a barn.
This hall lets you up (and down) over a very high threshold, into the
parlor. It is furnished with historical tapestry, whose marginal
fringes do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of this
room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet
chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of moldy ancestors, who
look as dismally as if they came fresh from hell with all their
brimstone about 'em. These are carefully set at the further corner:
for the windows being everywhere broken, make it so convenient a place
to dry poppies and mustard-seed in, that the room is appropriated to
that use.
Next this parlor lies, as I said before, the pigeon-house, by the side
of which runs an entry that leads, on one hand and t'other, into a
bed-chamber, a buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study.
Then follow a brew-house, a little green and gilt parlor, and the
great stairs, under which is the dairy. A little further on the right,
the servants' hall; and by the side of it, up six steps, the old
lady's closet, which has a lattice into the said hall, that, while she
said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men and maids. There
are upon this ground floor in all twenty-four apartments, hard to be
distinguished by particular names; among which I must not forget a
chamber that has in it a large antiquity of timber, which seems to
have been either a bedstead or a cider-press.
Our best room above is very long and low, of the exact proportion of a
bandbox; it has hangings of the finest work in the world; those, I
mean, which Arachne spins out of her own bowels: indeed, the roof is
so decayed, that after a favorable shower of rain, we may, with God's
blessing, expect a crop of mushrooms between the chinks of the floors.
All this upper story has for many years had no other inhabitants than
certain rats, whose very age renders them worthy of this venerable
mansion, for the very rats of this ancient seat are gray. Since these
have not quitted it, we hope at least this house may stand during the
small remainder of days these poor animals have to live, who are now
too infirm to remove to another: they have still a small subsistence
left them in the few remaining books of the library.
I had never seen half what I have described, but for an old starched
gray-headed steward, who is as much an antiquity as any in the place,
and looks like an old family picture walked out of its frame. He
failed not, as we passed from room to room, to relate several memoirs
of the family; but his observations were particularly curious in the
cellar: he shewed where stood the triple rows of butts of sack, and
where were ranged the bottles of tent for toasts in the morning; he
pointed to the stands that supported the iron-hooped hogsheads of
strong beer; then stepping to a corner, he lugged out the tattered
fragment of an unframed picture: "This," says he, with tears in his
eyes, "was poor Sir Thomas, once master of all the drink I told you
of: he had two sons (poor young masters!) that never arrived to the
age of his beer; they both fell ill in this very cellar, and never
went out upon their own legs." He could not pass by a broken bottle
without taking it up to show us the arms of the family on it. He then
led me up the tower, by dark winding stone steps, which landed us into
several little rooms, one above the other; one of these was nailed up,
and my guide whispered to me the occasion of it. It seems the course
of this noble blood was a little interrupted about two centuries ago
by a freak of the Lady Frances, who was here taken with a neighboring
prior; ever since which the room has been nailed up, and branded with
the name of the adultery-chamber. The ghost of Lady Frances is
supposed to walk here: some prying maids of the family formerly
reported that they saw a lady in a farthingale through the keyhole;
but this matter was hushed up, and the servants forbid to talk of it.
I must needs have tired you with this long letter; but what engaged me
in the description was a generous principle to preserve the memory of
a thing that must itself soon fall to ruin; nay, perhaps, some part of
it before this reaches your hands: indeed, I owe this old house the
same sort of gratitude that we do to an old friend that harbors us in
his declining condition, nay, even in his last extremities. I have
found this an excellent place for retirement and study, where no one
who passes by can dream there is an inhabitant, and even anybody that
would visit me dares not venture under my roof. You will not wonder I
have translated a great deal of Homer in this retreat; any one that
sees it will own I could not have chosen a fitter or more likely place
to converse with the dead. As soon as I return to the living, it shall
be to converse with the best of them. I hope, therefore, very speedily
to tell you in person how sincerely and unalterably I am, madam, your
most faithful, obliged, and obedient servant.