five, Mary Ann was sent to Miss Lathorn's school; and a mile southward
from Griff, in a region blackened by pits, is the town of
Bedworth,--"dingy with coal-dust and noisy with looms,"--whose men "walk
with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine," and whose haggard,
overworked women and dirty children and cottages are pathetically
pictured in "Felix Holt." Obviously the changes of the half-century
which has elapsed since George Eliot knew its wretchedness have wrought
little improvement in this place, over which her nephew is rector: we
see pale, hungry faces in the streets, squalor in the poor dwellings,
proofs of pinching poverty everywhere. A little beyond Chilvers Coton we
find the market-town of Nuneaton, the Milby of the romances. The shaking
of hand-looms is less noticeable now than in George Eliot's school-days
here, factories having supplanted the cottage industry; but the dingy,
smoky town, with its environment of flat fields, is still "nothing but
dreary prose." Here we find, near the church, "The Elms" of her
girlhood, a tall brick edifice embowered with ivy; on its garden side,
the long low-ceiled school-room, with its heavy beams, broad windows,
and plain furniture, where she was four years a pupil; the dormitory
whence she beheld the riot which she describes in the election-riot at
Treby in "Felix Holt." Another vision of her girlhood here was a "tall,
black-coated young clergyman-in-embryo," Liggins by name, who afterward
claimed the authorship of her books and so far imposed upon the public
that a subscription was made for him. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the last
to relinquish the belief that Liggins was George Eliot. He spent most of
his time drinking, but did his own house-work, and was found by a
deputation of literary admirers washing his slop-basin at the pump. All
about us at Nuneaton lie familiar objects: the cosy Bull Inn is the "Red
Lion" where, in the opening of "Janet's Repentance," Dempser is
discovered in theologic discussion, and from whose window he harangued
the anti-Tyranite mob; the fine old church, with its beautiful oaken
carvings, is the sanctuary where Mr. Crewe, in brown Brutus wig,
delivered his "inaudible sermons," and where Mr. Elty preached later;
adjoining is the parsonage, erst redolent of Crewe's tobacco, where
Janet helped his deaf wife to spread the luncheon for the bishop, and
where, in the time of Elty, Barton came to the sessions of the "Clerical
Meeting and Book Society;" on this Church street, "Orchard Street" of
Eliot, a quaint stuccoed house with casement windows was Dempser's home,
whence he thrust his wife at midnight into the darkness and cold; the
arched passage near by is that through which she fled to the haven of
Mrs. Pettifer's house. A little way westward amid the pits is
Stockingford, "Paddiford" of the tale, and the chapel where Mr. Tyran
preached. A cousin of George Eliot's was recently a coal-master in this
vicinity.
[Sidenote: Coventry--Birds Grove]
[Sidenote: Coventry Friends]
Eight miles from Griff is Coventry, where our companion is one who had
met Rossetti there forty years before. George Eliot was sometime a pupil
of Miss Franklin's school, lately standing in Little Park Street, and
saw there that lady's father, whom she described as Rev. Rufus Lyon of
Treby Chapel. His diminutive legs, large head, and other peculiarities
are yet remembered by some who were in the school; his home is
accurately pictured in "Felix Holt." In the Foleshill suburb we find the
stone villa of Birds Grove, which was the home of the novelist after
Isaac Evans had succeeded his father at Griff. The house has been
enlarged, but the apartments she knew are little changed: a plain little
room above the entrance, whose window looked beyond the tree-tops to the
superb spire of St. Michael's Church,--where Kemble and Siddons were
married,--was her study, in which, despite her tasks as her father's
housewife and nurse, she accomplished much literary work. At the right
of the window stood her desk, with an ivory crucifix above it, and here
her translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," undertaken through the
persuasion of her friends at Rosehill, was written. Some portions of
this work she found distressing; she declared to Mrs. Bray that nothing
but the sight of the Christ image enabled her to endure dissecting the
beautiful story of the crucifixion. Adjoining the study is her modest
bedchamber, and beyond it that of her father, where during many months
of sickness she was his sole attendant, often sitting the long night
through at his bedside with her hand in his. The grounds are little
changed, save that the occupant has removed much of the foliage which
formerly shrouded the mansion, but some of George Eliot's favorite trees
remain on the lawn. Half a mile away is the pretty villa of Rosehill,
whilom the home of Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara Hennel, who were the
most valued friends of the novelist's young-womanhood and exerted the
strongest influence upon her life. Her letters to these friends
constitute a great part of Cross's "Life." At Rosehill she met Chapman,
Mackay, Robert Owen, Combe, Thackeray, Herbert Spencer, and others of
like genius, and here she spent a day with Emerson and wrote next day,
"I have seen Emerson--the first _man_ I have ever seen." Sara Hennel
testifies that Emerson was impressed with Miss Evans and declared, "That
young lady has a serious soul." When he asked her, "What one book do you
like best?" and she replied, "Rousseau's Confessions," he quickly
responded, "So do I: there is a point of sympathy between us." After her
father's death she was for sixteen months a resident at Rosehill, and
there wrote, among other things, the review of Mackay's "Progress of the
Intellect." Financial reverses caused the Brays long ago to relinquish
this beautiful home, but some of this household were lately living in
another suburb of Coventry and receiving an annuity bequeathed by
George Eliot. Here, too, lately resided another old-time friend, the
Mary Sibtree of the novelist's Coventry days, to whom were addressed
some of the letters used by Cross.
In 1851 George Eliot left this circle of friends to become an inmate of
Chapman's house in London, returning to them for occasional visits for
the next few years; then came her union with Lewes, after which the
loved scenes of her youth knew her no more in the flesh; but the
allusions to them which run like threads of gold through all her work
show how oft she revisited them in "shadowy spirit form."
YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY
_Village of Bowes--Dickens--Squeers's School--The Master and his
Family--Haunt of Scott._
[Sidenote: Bowes--Dotheboys Hall]
From the familiar shrines of Cumberland, the lakeside haunts of
Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, a journey across a wild moorland
region--from whose higher crags we see through the fog-rifts the German
Ocean and the Irish Sea--brings us into Gretavale, on the northern
border of great Yorkshire. In the upper portion of the valley, among the
outlying spurs of the Pennines, the storied Greta flows at the foot of a
bleak, treeless hill on whose summit we find the village of Bowes. This
was the Lavatrae of the Romans, who for three centuries had here a
station, and remains of great Roman works may still be traced in the
vicinage; but to the literary pilgrim Bowes is chiefly of interest as
representing "the delightful village of Dotheboys" described in
Squeers's advertisement of his school in "Nicholas Nickleby." The aspect
of the village is dreary and desolate in the extreme. A single street,
steep and straight, bordered by straggling houses of dull gray stone,
extends along the hill, which is crowned by the church and an ancient
castle: the dun moors decline steeply on every side, leaving the
treeless village dismal and bare and often exposed to a wind "fit to
knock a man off his legs," as Squeers said to Nicholas. In the midst of
the village stands a cosy inn, where Dickens for some time lodged and
was visited by John Browdie, and where we are shown the wainscoted
apartment in which some portion of "Nickleby" was noted. At the time of
Dickens's sojourn here, Bowes was the centre of the pernicious
cheap-school system which he came to expose, and half the houses of the
village were "academies" similar to that of Squeers: among them one is
pointed out as being the place where Cobden was a pupil. But most
interesting of all is the large house at the top of the hill which
Dickens depicted as Dotheboys Hall,--by which name it was long known
among the older dwellers of the place,--a long, heavy, two-storied,
dingy structure of stone, with many windows along its front, and
presenting, despite its bowering vines and trees, an aspect so chill and
cheerless that one can scarcely conceive of a more depressing domicile
for the neglected children who once thronged it. Through an archway at
one end could be seen the pump which was frozen on the first morning of
Nicholas's stay, and beyond it the garden which, by a surprising
mistake, Dickens represents a pupil to be weeding on a freezing winter's
day.
[Sidenote: Squeers]
A few residents of the neighborhood remember the "measther" of Dotheboys
Hall; his name, like Squeers's, was of one syllable and began with S; in
person he was not like Squeers, nor was he an ignorant man. A quondam
pupil of the school informed the writer that Johnny S. was fairly drawn
as Wackford Squeers, but Miss S. was a young lady of considerable
refinement and was in no sense like the spiteful Fanny of the tale.
Squeers had the largest of the schools, and, besides rooms in the
adjoining house, he hired barns in which to lodge his many pupils. A
farm attached to his house was cultivated by the scholars, whose food
was chiefly oatmeal: scanty diet and liberal flogging was the portion of
all who displeased the master. According to local belief, this school
was not so bad as some of its neighbors, and no one of the schools
realized all the wretchedness which Dickens portrays; yet, despite the
author's avowal that Squeers was a representative of a class, and not an
individual, the popular identification of this school as the typical
Dotheboys, and the odium consequent thereupon, wrought its speedy ruin
and the death of the master and mistress. The latter result is to be
deplored, for the reason that in the case of this pair the abhorrence
seems to have been not wholly deserved. Two charges, at least, which
affected them most painfully--that of goading the boys to suicide and
that of feeding them upon the flesh of diseased cattle--were, by the
testimony of their neighbors, unfounded so far as the proprietors of
this school were concerned. Relatives of Squeers lately occupied
Dotheboys Hall, which had become a farm-house, and other relatives and
descendants are respectable denizens of the vicinity. Dickens's exposure
of the schools led to their extinction and to the consignment of Bowes
to its present somnolent condition. In the village church-yard lie the
lovers whose simultaneous deaths were commemorated by Mallet in "Edwin
and Emma." At Barnard Castle, a few miles away, the prototype of Newman
Noggs is still traditionally known, and known as "a gentleman."
[Sidenote: Rokeby]
The abounding beauties of the Greta have been painted by Turner and sung
by Scott, both frequenters of this vale. From Bowes, a ramble along the
lovely stream, between steep tree-shaded banks where it chafes and
"greets" over the great rocks, and through mossy dells where it softly
murmurs its content, brings us to the demesne of Rokeby, where Scott
laid the scene of his famous poem. On every hand amid this region of
enchantment, in glade and grove, in riven cliff and headlong torrent, in
sunny slope and dingle's shade, we recognize the poetic imagery of
Scott. Every turn reveals some new vista, rendered doubly delightful by
the romantic associations with which the great poet has invested it. To
the poet himself Greta's banks were potent allurements, and they were
his habitual haunts during his sojourns in the valley. A descendant of
the friend whom Scott visited here and to whom the poem is inscribed,
points out to us a natural grotto, in the precipitous bank above the
stream, where the poet often sat, and where some part of "Rokeby" was
pondered and composed amid the scenery it portrays.
STERNE'S SWEET RETIREMENT
_Sutton--Crazy Castle--Yorick's Church--Parsonage--Where Tristram
Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were written--Reminiscences--
Newburgh Hall--Where Sterne died--Sepulchre._
At historic old York we are fairly in the midst of great Yorkshire:
standing upon the tower of its colossal cathedral, we overlook half that
ancient county. At our feet lie the quaint olden streets depicted in
Collins's "No Name," where erstwhile dwelt Porteus, Defoe, Wallis,
Lindley Murray, Mrs. Stannard, Poole of "Synopsis Criticorum," Burton
the author immortalized by Sterne as "Dr. Slop." Below us we see the
feudal castle where Eugene Aram was hanged, the ancient city wall with
its gate-ways and battlements, the ruins of mediaeval shrine and of Roman
citadel and necropolis; abroad we behold the vale which Bunsen
pronounces the "most beautiful in the world (the vale of Normandy
excepted)," with its streams, its mosaics of green and golden fields and
sombre woods, its distant border of savage moors and uplands. The Ouse,
shining like a ribbon of silver, flows at our feet; we may trace its
course from the hills of Craven on the one hand, while southward we
behold it "slow winding through the level plain" on its way to the sea;
into its valley we see the Wharfe flowing from the lovely dale where
Collyer grew to manhood, and, farther away, the Aire emerging from the
dreary region where lived the sad sisters Bronte and wove the sombre
threads of their lives into romance. The Foss flows toward us from the
northeast, and our view along its valley embraces the region where dwelt
Sydney Smith, while rising in the north are the Hambleton Hills, which
shelter the vale where Sterne wrote the books that made him famous.
Indeed, this region of York is pervaded with memories of that prince of
sentimentalists: in the great minster beneath us we find the tomb and
monument of his grandfather, once archbishop of this diocese; in the
carved pulpit of the minster Sterne preached as prebendary, and here he
delivered his last sermon; his uncle was a dignitary of the old minster;
his "indefatigably prolific" mother was native to this region; his wife
was born here, and was first seen and loved by Sterne within sound of
the glorious minster bells; most of his adult life was passed within
sight of the minster towers.
[Sidenote: Crazy Castle]
[Sidenote: Sterne's Church]
At Sutton, Sterne's first living, the pilgrim finds little to reward his
devotion. Sterne's life here was obscure and, save in preparation,
unproductive. Skelton Castle was then the seat of his college friend
Stevenson, author of "Crazy Tales," etc., who was the Eugenius of
"Shandy," and to whom the "Sentimental Journey" was inscribed. Here
Sterne found a library rich in rare treatises upon unusual subjects, in
which, during his stay at Sutton, he spent much time and acquired a fund
of odd and fanciful learning which constituted in part his equipment for
his work. We find this castle nearer the stern coast which Yorkshire
opposes to the endless thunders of the North Sea. Once a Roman
stronghold, then a feudal fortress and castle of the Bruces, later a
country-seat, it has since Sterne's time been rebuilt and modernized out
of all semblance to the "Crazy Castle" of his letters. It is believed
that only a few of the rooms remain substantially as he knew them. A
tradition is preserved to the effect that during his visits here he
bribed the servants to tie the vane with the point toward the west,
because Eugenius would never leave his bed while an east wind prevailed.
A near-by hill is called Sterne's Seat, but time has left here little to
remind us of the sentimental "Yorick" who long haunted the place. It is
only at Coxwold, fourteen miles from York and in the deeper depths of
the shire, that we find many remaining objects that were associated with
his work and with that portion of his life which chiefly concerns the
literary world. A result of the publication of the first part of
"Tristram Shandy" was the presentation of this living to its author, and
his removal to this sequestered retreat, which was to be his home during
his too few remaining years. The hamlet has now a railway station, but
the usual approach is by a rustic highway which conducts to and
constitutes the village street. Within the hamlet we find a low-eaved
road-side inn, and by it the shaded green where the rural festivals were
held, and where, to celebrate the coronation of George III., Sterne had
an ox roasted whole and served with great quantities of ale to his
parishioners. Just beyond, Sterne's church stands intact upon a gentle
eminence, overlooking a lovely pastoral landscape bounded by verdant
hills. The church dates from the fifteenth century and is a pleasing
structure of perpendicular Gothic style, with a shapely octagonal tower
embellished with fretted pinnacles and a parapet of graceful design. One
window has been filled with stained glass, but Sterne's pulpit remains,
and the interior of the edifice is scarcely changed since he preached
here his quaint sermons. The walls are plain; the low ceiling is divided
by beams whose intersections are marked by grotesque bosses; the whole
effect is depressing, and to the sensitive "Yorick"--haunted as he was
by habitual dread that his ministrations might provoke a fatal pulmonary
hemorrhage--it must have been dismal indeed. Among the effigied tombs of
the Fauconbergs which line the chancel we find that of Sterne's friend
who gave him this living.
[Sidenote: Shandy Hall]
[Sidenote: Sterne's Parsonage--Study]
Beyond the church and near the highway stands the quaint and picturesque
old edifice where dwelt Sterne during the eight famous years of his
life. In his letters he calls it Castle Shandy, and in all the
countryside it is now known as Shandy Hall, shandy meaning in the local
dialect crack-brained. It is a long, rambling, low-eaved fabric, with
many heavy gables and chimneys, and steep roofs of tiles. Curious little
casements are under the eaves; larger windows look out from the gables
and are aligned nearer the ground, many of them shaded by the dark ivy
which clings to the old walls and overruns the roofs. Abutting the
kitchen is an astounding pyramidal structure of masonry--an Ailsa Craig
in shape and solidity, yet more resembling Stromboli with its emissions
of smoke,--which, beginning at the ground as a buttress, terminates as a
kitchen-chimney and imparts to this portion of the house an
architectural character altogether unique. Shrubbery grows about the old
domicile, venerable trees which may have cast their shade upon "Yorick"
himself are by the door, and the aspect of the place is decidedly
attractive. To Sir George Wombwell, who inherits the Fauconberg estate
through a daughter of Sterne's patron, we are indebted for the
preservation of the exterior of the house in the condition it was when
Sterne inhabited it; but the interior has been partitioned into two
dwellings and thus considerably altered. However, we may see the same
sombre wainscots and low ceiling that Sterne knew, and we find the one
room which interests us most--Sterne's parlor and study--little changed.
It is a pleasant apartment, with windows looking into the garden, where
stood the summer-house in which he sometimes wrote, and beyond which was
the sward where "my uncle Toby" habitually demonstrated the siege of
Namur and Dendermond. On the low walls of this room Sterne disposed his
seven hundred books,--"bought at a purchase dog-cheap,"--and here he
wrote, besides his sermons, seven volumes of "Tristram Shandy" and the
"Sentimental Journey." There is a local tradition that other MSS.
written here were found by the succeeding tenant and used to line the
hangings of the room. Sterne's letters afford glimpses of him in this
room: in one we see him "before the fire, with his cat purring beside
him;" in another he is "sitting here and cudgelling his brains" for
ideas, though he usually wrote facilely and rapidly; in another he shows
us a prettier picture, in which "My Lydia" (his daughter) "helps to copy
for me, and my wife knits and listens as I read her chapters;" and
later, after his estrangement from Mrs. Sterne, we see him "sitting here
alone, as sad and solitary as a tomcat, which by the way is all the
company I keep." In the repose of this charming place, and amid the
peaceful influences about him here in his pretty home, Sterne appears at
his best. And here for a time he was happy; we find his letters
attesting, "I am in high spirits, care never enters this cottage;" "I am
happy as a prince at Coxwold;" "I wish you could see in what a princely
manner I live. I sit down to dinner--fish and wild fowl, or a couple of
fowls, with cream and all the simple plenty a rich valley can produce,
with a clean cloth on my table and a bottle of wine on my right hand to
drink your health." But the melancholy days came all too soon; the
"bursting of vessels in his lungs" became more and more frequent, his
struggle with dread consumption was inaugurated, and now his letters
from the pretty parsonage abound with references to his "vile cough,
weak nerves, dismal headaches," etc. Now his "sweet retirement" has
become "a cuckoldy retreat;" he complains of its situation, of its
"death-doing, pestiferous wind." Returning to it from a sentimental
journey or from a brilliant season of lionizing in London, he finds its
quiet and seclusion insufferably irksome. Mortally ill, growing old,
hopelessly estranged from his wife, deprived of the companionship of his
idolized child, the poor master of Castle Shandy is "sad and desolate,"
his "pleasures are few," he sits "alone in silence and gloom." Such were
some of the diverse phases of his life which these dumb walls have
witnessed; in the dismalest, they have seen him at his desk here,
resolutely ignoring his ills and tracing the passages of wit and fancy
which were to delight the world. The incomplete "Sentimental Journey"
was written in his last months of life.
A mile from Sterne's cottage, and approached by a way oft trodden by him
and his "little Lyd," is Newburgh Hall, the ancient seat of Sterne's
friend. Parts of the walls of a priory founded here in 1145 are
incorporated into the oldest portion of the hall, and this has been
added to by successive generations until a great, incongruous pile has
resulted, which, however, is not devoid of picturesque beauty. Within
this mansion Sterne was a familiar guest: urged by the friendly
persistence of Fauconberg, he frequently came here to chat or dine with
his friend and the guests of the hall, his brilliant converse making
him the life of the company. Among the family portraits here are that of
his benefactor and one of Mary Cromwell, wife of the second Fauconberg,
who preserved here many relics of the great Protector, including his
bones, which were somehow rescued from Tyburn and concealed in a mass of
masonry in an upper apartment of the hall.
Sterne was not only popular with his lordly neighbor of Newburgh, but
also, improbable as it would seem, with the illiterate yeomen who were
his parishioners: although they understood not the sermons and found the
sermonizer in most regards a hopeless enigma, yet, according to the
traditions of the place, these simple folk discerned something in the
complexly blended character of the creator of "my uncle Toby" which
elicited their esteem and prompted many acts of love and service. In a
letter to an American friend, Arthur Lee, Sterne writes, "Not a
parishioner catches a hare, a rabbit, or a trout, but he brings it an
offering to me."
[Sidenote: Place of Sterne's Death and Burial]