September 13th.--The weather was very uncertain through the last week,
and yesterday morning, too, was misty and sunless; notwithstanding which
we took the rail for Kenilworth before eleven. The distance from
Leamington is less than five miles, and at the Kenilworth station we
found a little bit of an omnibus, into which we packed ourselves,
together with two ladies, one of whom, at least, was an American. I
begin to agree partly with the English, that we are not a people of
elegant manners. At all events there is sometimes a bare, hard, meagre
sort of deportment, especially in our women, that has not its parallel
elsewhere. But perhaps what sets off this kind of behavior, and brings
it into alto relievo, is the fact of such uncultivated persons travelling
abroad, and going to see sights that would not be interesting except to
people of some education and refinement.
We saw but little of the village of Kenilworth, passing through it
sidelong fashion, in the omnibus; but I learn that it has between three
and four thousand inhabitants, and is of immemorial antiquity. We saw a
few old, gabled, and timber-framed houses; but generally the town was of
modern aspect, although less so in the immediate vicinity of the castle
gate, across the road from which there was an inn, with bowling-greens,
and a little bunch of houses and shops. Apart from the high road there
is a gate-house, ancient, but in excellent repair, towered, turreted, and
battlemented, and looking like a castle in itself. Until Cromwell's
time, the entrance to the castle used to be beneath an arch that passed
through this structure; but the gate-house being granted to one of the
Parliament officers, he converted it into a residence, and apparently
added on a couple of gables, which now look quite as venerable as the
rest of the edifice. Admission within the outer grounds of the castle is
now obtained through a little wicket close beside the gate-house, at
which sat one or two old men, who touched their hats to us in humble
willingness to accept a fee. One of them had guide-books for sale; and,
finding that we were not to be bothered by a cicerone, we bought one of
his books.
The ruins are perhaps two hundred yards from the gate-house and the road,
and the space between is a pasture for sheep, which also browse in the
inner court, and shelter themselves in the dungeons and state apartments
of the castle. Goats would be fitter occupants, because they would climb
to the tops of the crumbling towers, and nibble the weeds and shrubbery
that grow there. The first part of the castle which we reach is called
Caesar's Tower, being the oldest portion of the ruins, and still very
stalwart and massive, and built of red freestone, like all the rest.
Caesar's Tower being on the right, Leicester's Buildings, erected by the
Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth's favorite, are on the left; and
between these two formerly stood other structures which have now as
entirely disappeared as if they had never existed; and through the wide
gap, thus opened, appears the grassy inner court, surrounded on three
sides by half-fallen towers and shattered walls. Some of these were
erected by John of Gaunt; and among these ruins is the Banqueting-Hall,--
or rather was,--for it has now neither floor nor roof, but only the
broken stone-work of some tall, arched windows, and the beautiful, old
ivied arch of the entrance-way, now inaccessible from the ground. The
ivy is very abundant about the ruins, and hangs its green curtains quite
from top to bottom of some of the windows. There are likewise very large
and aged trees within the castle, there being no roof nor pavement
anywhere, except in some dungeon-like nooks; so that the trees having
soil and air enough, and being sheltered from unfriendly blasts, can grow
as if in a nursery. Hawthorn, however, next to ivy, is the great
ornament and comforter of these desolate ruins. I have not seen so much
nor such thriving hawthorn anywhere else,--in the court, high up on
crumbly heights, on the sod that carpets roofless rooms,--everywhere,
indeed, and now rejoicing in plentiful crops of red berries. The ivy is
even more wonderfully luxuriant; its trunks being, in some places, two or
three feet in diameter, and forming real buttresses against the walls,
which are actually supported and vastly strengthened by this parasite,
that clung to them at first only for its own convenience, and now holds
them up, lest it should be ruined by their fall. Thus an abuse has
strangely grown into a use, and I think we may sometimes see the same
fact, morally, in English matters. There is something very curious in
the close, firm grip which the ivy fixes upon the wall, closer and closer
for centuries. Neither is it at all nice as to what it clutches, in its
necessity for support. I saw in the outer court an old hawthorn-tree, to
which a plant of ivy had married itself, and the ivy trunk and the
hawthorn trunk were now absolutely incorporated, and in their close
embrace you could not tell which was which.
At one end of the Banqueting-Hall, there are two large bay-windows, one
of which looks into the inner court, and the other affords a view of
the surrounding country. The former is called Queen Elizabeth's
Dressing-room. Beyond the Banqueting-Hall is what is called the Strong
Tower, up to the top of which we climbed principally by the aid of the
stones that have tumbled down from it. A lady sat half-way down the
crumbly descent, within the castle, on a camp-stool, and before an easel,
sketching this tower, on the summit of which we sat. She said it was Amy
Robsart's Tower; and within it, open to the day, and quite accessible, we
saw a room that we were free to imagine had been occupied by her. I do
not find that these associations of real scenes with fictitious events
greatly heighten the charm of them.
By this time the sun had come out brightly, and with such warmth that we
were glad to sit down in the shadow. Several sight-seers were now
rambling about, and among them some school-boys, who kept scrambling up
to points whither no other animal, except a goat, would have ventured.
Their shouts and the sunshine made the old castle cheerful; and what with
the ivy and the hawthorn, and the other old trees, it was very beautiful
and picturesque. But a castle does not make nearly so interesting and
impressive a ruin as an abbey, because the latter was built for beauty,
and on a plan in which deep thought and feeling were involved; and having
once been a grand and beautiful work, it continues grand and beautiful
through all the successive stages of its decay. But a castle is rudely
piled together for strength and other material conveniences; and, having
served these ends, it has nothing left to fall back upon, but crumbles
into shapeless masses, which are often as little picturesque as a pile of
bricks. Without the ivy and the shrubbery, this huge Kenilworth would
not be a pleasant object, except for one or two window-frames, with
broken tracery, in the Banqueting-Hall. . . . .
We stayed from eleven till two, and identified the various parts of the
castle as well as we could by the guide-book. The ruins are very
extensive, though less so than I should have imagined, considering that
seven acres were included within the castle wall. But a large part of
the structures have been taken away to build houses in Kenilworth village
and elsewhere, and much, too, to make roads with, and a good deal lies
under the green turf in the court-yards, inner and outer. As we returned
to the gate, my wife and U---- went into the gate-house to see an old
chimney-piece, and other antiquities, and J----- and I proceeded a little
way round the outer wall, and saw the remains of the moat, and Lin's
Tower,--a real and shattered fabric of John of Gaunt.
The omnibus now drove up, and one of the old men at the gate came
hobbling up to open the door, and was rewarded with a sixpence, and we
drove down to the King's Head. . . . . We then walked out and bought
prints of the castle, and inquired our way to the church and to the ruins
of the Priory. The latter, so far as we could discover them, are very
few and uninteresting; and the church, though it has a venerable
exterior, and an aged spire, has been so modernized within, and in so
plain a fashion, as to have lost what beauty it may once have had. There
were a few brasses and mural monuments, one of which was a marble group
of a dying woman and her family by Westmacott. The sexton was a cheerful
little man, but knew very little about his church, and nothing of the
remains of the Priory. The day was spent very pleasantly amid this
beautiful green English scenery, these fine old Warwickshire trees, and
broad, gently swelling fields.