ROKEBY
The town of Barnard Castle, where we arrived one evening after a long
tour through Yorkshire, is on the left bank of the river Tees and on
the southern boundary of the county of Durham. In the morning we were
told by 'Boots,' the one man in an English hotel who knows everything,
that the castle, which gives its name to the town, could be reached
through the stable-yard back of the house. After travelling far out of
our way to view the setting of Rokeby, which in the natural beauty of
its scenery is unsurpassed by that of any of Scott's other poems,
except 'The Lady of the Lake,' the suggestion of such an entrance to
the locality of the opening stanzas was a rude shock to our sense of
romantic propriety. The reality was worse than the suggestion and we
began to think that possibly Mr. Boots might have misdirected us,
supposing we wished to see the barnyard instead of Barnard Castle. We
proceeded on our way, however, soon coming to a small cottage with a
pretty little garden,--nearly every English cottage boasts one of these
delightful little areas of colour and of fragrance,--and passing
through, reached the enclosure where all that is left of the castle, or
nearly all, now stands. Two impressive ruined towers and a short
connecting wall are practically all that remain of a once splendid
royal residence. On the left is 'Brackenbury's dungeon-tower,' no
longer 'dismal,' for the ancient stones are partly clothed with {87}
the foliage of fruit trees, trained English fashion against the walls,
while a bed of bright-blooming flowers on the right, the fresh green
leaves of some overhanging branches on the left, and the lawn,
plentifully besprinkled with the dainty little English daisies, each
catching its own ray of sunshine and giving a sparkle to the whole
scene, all spoke eloquently of the change from death to life since the
time when these walls cast only deep shadows of darkness and despair.
On the right of the enclosure is the old Baliol Tower, and in the wall
connecting it with Brackenbury is an oriel window, where the arms of
King Richard III may still be faintly traced in the stone.
Baliol Tower is a heavy round structure of great antiquity. It has a
remarkable vaulted ceiling composed entirely of keystones arranged in
circles. A narrow staircase within the walls leads to the battlements
from which we obtained a magnificent view of the valley of the Tees.
What prospects from his watch-tower high
Gleam gradual on the warder's eye!
Far sweeping to the east he sees
Down his deep woods the course of Tees,
And tracks his wanderings by the steam
Of summer vapours from the stream.
If Barnard Castle appeared unromantic, approached from the yard of the
inn, exactly the opposite feeling took possession of us when we viewed
it from the footbridge, just above the dam. Here the river widens
until it looks like a placid lake. The castle rises high above the
stream, its base concealed by trees of heavy growth, but not tall
enough to cover the two great towers and {88} the oriel window of King
Richard. It is no longer a single ruined wall, but the imposing front
of a vast structure, well placed for defence, once strong in war but
now beautiful in peace.
Barnard Baliol, whose father was one of the followers of William the
Conqueror, founded the castle in the beginning of the twelfth century.
He was the grandfather of John Baliol, who contested with Robert Bruce
the claim to the Scottish crown. The original castle or fortress
covered an extensive area of over six acres, most of which is now given
over to sheep-raising or to the cultivation of fruit trees. An
extensive domain, comprising much of the surrounding country, was
granted to the descendants of Barnard Baliol in the reign of King
Rufus. Edward I granted it to Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in whose
family it remained for several generations. Through the marriage of
the daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, famous as the
king-maker, to the Duke of Gloucester, afterward King Richard III, the
estate came into possession of the Crown. The castle was a favourite
residence of Richard, who made many additions to it. In the reign of
Charles I it was purchased by Sir Henry Vane the elder. When Scott
makes it the property of Oswald Wycliffe, he does not go very far
astray, for John Wycliffe, the great forerunner of the Reformation in
England, was born on the banks of the river Tees and received his
education at Baliol College, Oxford, which was founded by the Baliols
of Barnard Castle, who were the neighbours of his family.
[Illustration: BRACKENBURY TOWER, BARNARD CASTLE]
Barnard Castle, however, interesting as it is, was not the magnet that
drew the poet to this region for his {89} scenery. In 1808, Scott
began his intimacy with John B. S. Morritt, a man of sterling character
and high literary attainments, for whom he came to entertain a genuine
affection. Morritt had inherited the estate of Rokeby, situated about
four miles southeast of Barnard Castle. The Rokebys, like their
neighbours, the Baliols, were descended from one of the followers of
the Conqueror. The old manor house was destroyed by the Scotch after
the battle of Bannockburn (1314), and the Rokeby of that day built the
Castle of Mortham, much of which still remains standing on the opposite
bank of the Greta. The present Hall was built in 1724. It stands in
the midst of an extensive and beautiful park, which Scott, on the
occasion of his first visit, thought 'one of the most enviable places'
he had ever seen. 'It unites,' said he, 'the richness and luxuriance
of English vegetation with the romantic variety of glen, torrent, and
copse, which dignifies our Northern scenery. The Greta and Tees, two
most beautiful and rapid rivers, join their currents in the demesne.
The banks of the Tees resemble, from the height of the rocks, the Glen
of Roslin, so much and justly admired.' The letter containing this
enthusiastic praise of his friend's estate was written in 1809. Two
years later, when the purchase of Abbotsford seemed to require another
poem for its consummation, it was to the one place worthy of comparison
with his beloved Glen of Roslin that the poet instinctively turned for
his backgrounds.
Scott's ambition to be the 'laird' of an estate was gratified in the
summer of 1811 when he became the owner of an unprepossessing farm of
about one hundred acres. The land was in a neglected state, but little
of it {90} having been under cultivation. The farmhouse was small and
poor, and immediately in front of it was a miserable duck pond. The
place, from its disreputable appearance, had been known as 'Clarty
Hole.' But Scott's prophetic vision could look beyond all this and see
something, if not all, of the transformation which was to be wrought in
the next twelve years. The farm lay for half a mile along the banks of
the beautiful Tweed, the river which Scott loved. He knew the
fertility of the soil and saw the possibility of making the place a
beautiful grove. At first he thought only of 'a cottage and a few
fields,' but as the passion for buying, planting, and building grew
with his apparent prosperity, the farm became a beautifully wooded
estate of eighteen hundred acres, the cottage grew into a castle, and
'Clarty Hole,' its name changed into 'Abbotsford' within less than an
hour after the new owner took possession, became one of the most famous
private possessions in the world.
The farm cost £4000, one half of which was borrowed from the poet's
brother, Major John Scott, and the other half advanced by the
Ballantynes on the security of 'Rokeby,' though the poem was not yet
written. The plans for the purchase out of the way, Scott wrote to his
friend, Morritt, outlining the new poem, having for its scene the
domain of Rokeby and its subject the civil wars of Charles I. Morritt
was delighted and immediately responded with a letter full of valuable
information. The following summer was a busy one. Until the middle of
July, Scott's duties as Clerk of the Court of Sessions kept him at
Edinburgh five days in the week. Saturdays and Sundays were spent at
Abbotsford. He composed poetry while planting trees and wrote down the
verses {91} amid the noise and confusion incident to building his new
cottage. 'As for the house and the poem,' he wrote to Morritt, 'there
are twelve masons hammering at the one and one poor noddle at the
other.' Both 'Rokeby' and 'The Bridal of Triermain' were written under
these conditions and at the same time, while Scott found opportunity
also to continue his work on the 'Life of Swift,' which eventually
reached nineteen octavo volumes, and to render other literary services
to his publishers, the Ballantynes.
It was not long before Scott found an opportunity to visit Rokeby
again, where he remained about a week. On the morning after his
arrival, he informed Morritt that he needed 'a good robber's cave and
an old church of the right sort.' Morritt promptly undertook to supply
both, and to find the former rode with his friend to Brignall Woods,
where the Greta flows through a deep glen, on one side of which are
some perpendicular rocks, the site of an old quarry. I could not find
any robber's caves, but it was easy enough for Scott to make one in
such a rock formation. I could, however, form a pretty good idea of
the wild flight of Bertram Risingham as he
Now clomb the rocks projecting high
To baffle the pursuer's eye:
Now sought the stream, whose brawling sound
The echo of his footsteps drowned.
In all probability, the scene is the same to-day, as it was in Scott's
time, wild and beautiful. The stream winds around through shady nooks,
here rippling over the rocks and then widening out into a placid pool;
occasionally passing out from beneath the trees into an open glade,
where the well-worn boulders that punctuated its {92} course lay
gleaming in the sun, and presenting at every turn some new and changing
view.
O, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta Woods are green.
In describing the visit to this place Mr. Morritt gives an excellent
idea of Scott's method:--
I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and
herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near
his intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help saying that as he
was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses
would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I
laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he
replied, 'that in nature herself no two scenes were ever exactly alike,
and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess
the same variety in his descriptions and exhibit apparently an
imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he
recorded; whereas whoever trusted to imagination would soon find his
own mind circumscribed, and contracted to a few favourite images, and
the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that very
monotony and bareness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in
the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth.
The 'old church of the right sort' was found on the other side of
Rokeby Park. We reached it from Barnard Castle by crossing the high
Abbey Bridge, beneath which the Tees flows in a narrow, rippling,
foaming lane of water, flanked on either side by trees of rich foliage
whose bright green branches wave to each other continually across the
stream in a sort of friendly salute. The old grey Abbey of Egliston is
pleasantly situated on rising ground near where the Tees is joined by
the rivulet known as Thorsgill.
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Yet scald or kemper erred, I ween,
Who gave that soft and quiet scene,
With all its varied light and shade,
And every little sunny glade,
And the blithe brook that strolls along
Its pebbled bed with summer song,
To the grim God of blood and scar,
The grisly King of Northern War.
The abbey was founded in the twelfth century and dedicated to St. Mary
and St. John the Baptist. It was once a beautiful cruciform building
in the Early English style, but has been allowed to fall into decay and
now only parts of the walls of the choir and nave remain.
The reverend pile lay wild and waste,
Profound, dishonoured, and defaced.
Through storied lattices no more,
In softened light the sunbeams pour,
Gilding the Gothic sculpture rich
Of shrine and ornament and niche.
This was the scene which Scott chose for the culminating tragedy of the
poem.
There are many other places in the neighbourhood to which the poet
refers. There is 'Raby's battered tower,' a large castle which boasts
the honour of twice entertaining Charles I. There is the Balder, 'a
sweet brooklet's silver line,' which flows into the Tees a few miles
above Barnard Castle, and farther to the northwest, where the three
counties of York, Durham, and Westmoreland meet, is the place
Where Tees in tumult leaves his source
Thundering o'er Cauldron and High-Force.
These two cataracts are most impressive when rainstorms have swelled
the stream to its full capacity. Just {94} outside the park of Rokeby
is a charming spot where the Greta meets the Tees,--
Where, issuing from her darksome bed,
She caught the morning's eastern red,
And through the softening vale below
Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow
All blushing to her bridal bed,
Like some shy maid in convent bred,
While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay
Sang forth her nuptial roundelay.
Half hidden by the trees, the old stone 'dairy bridge' crosses the
Greta, just where the river emerges from the park. It makes a pretty
picture as you look through the single arch into the cool shades of the
peaceful domain. Passing over this bridge we came to the old tower of
Mortham. We did not find it deserted as did Wilfrid and Bertram, for
it is now used as a farm and the tower is almost completely surrounded
by low buildings of comparatively recent construction. From the
garden, however, a fairly good view can be obtained.
And last and least, and loveliest still,
Romantic Deepdale's slender rill.
Who in that dim-wood glen hath strayed,
Yet longed for Roslin's magic glade?
The glen which Scott would compare with his favourite Roslin must be
romantic, indeed. The rill of Deepdale joins the Tees just above
Barnard Castle. The scenery increases in beauty as the stream is
ascended, to the solitary spot near the Cat Castle rocks--
Where all is cliff and copse and sky,--
and reaches its climax at the pretty waterfall of Cragg Force.
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[Illustration: THE VALLEY OF THE TEES, FROM BARNARD CASTLE]
The Cavaliers and Roundheads whom Scott introduces into the midst of
this beautiful scenery are not, it must be confessed, particularly
interesting, nor is the villain Bertram, in spite of the fact that the
poet was a little proud of him as a sketch full of dash and vigour.
There are three people, however, who hold the attention. The first is
Matilda, who, by the poet's faintly veiled admission, was intended to
be the picture of his early love, Williamina Stuart. In Wilfrid, the
youth of poetic temperament, who loved in vain, and Redmond, his
successful but generous rival, there is a suggestion, which one can
scarcely escape, of the poet himself and Sir William Forbes, who
married Williamina. Redmond showed his kindly heart and soldierly
strength by fighting desperately over the prostrate figure of his
wounded rival, at length carrying him in his arms from the burning
castle to a place of safety, after his entire train had deserted their
leader. Sir William Forbes was one of the first to offer aid when
financial misfortune overtook Sir Walter, and when one creditor
undertook to make serious trouble, privately paid the entire claim of
nearly £2000, taking care that Scott should not know how it was
managed. As a matter of fact, Sir Walter did not learn the truth until
some time after the death of his generous friend.
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