THE DOVE.
What's in the Name--Axe Edge and Dove Head--The Monogram--Glutton
Mill--Hartington--Beresford Dale--Pike Pool--Izaak Walton
and Charles Cotton--Beresford Hall--Dove Dale--Its
Associations--Ilam--The Manifold--Ashbourne--Doveridge--
Uttoxeter--Sudbury--Tutbury--The Confluence.
There are two rivers bearing the beautiful name of the Dove--a name
derived from "the shimmering gleam of water, corresponding to the
lustre of the dove's white wing." There are also two Dove Dales. In
Longfellow's "Poems of Places," Wordsworth's tender verses beginning--
"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,"
are often ascribed to the Derbyshire river, which is more than worthy
of such a dedication. But the Dove which the venerable recluse of Rydal
Mount referred to is the wayward mountain streamlet of his own beloved
Lakeland; and the Dove Dale of that district, in its romantic beauty
and historic associations, is but a wayside dell in comparison with
the enchanting glen where Izaak Walton discoursed upon philanthropy
and fishing, and the gallant Charles Cotton alternately entertained
the ancient angler, and hid himself in caves to escape the polite
attentions of unpleasant creditors. The phrase, however--
"A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye,"
aptly, if unconsciously, describes Dove Head, where the Derbyshire Dove
escapes from the morose moorlands of Axe Edge, the mountain cradle of
four other rivers--the Wye, the Dane, the Goyt, and the Manifold.
[Illustration:
_Walker & Boutall sc._
MAP OF THE DOVE.]
Axe Edge is a wild heathery table-land, in which the counties of Derby,
Stafford, and Cheshire meet in a savage solitude. The loneliness of
this region is impressive, although fashionable Buxton, the spa of
the Peak, is only three miles away. There are whisperings of water
everywhere on these breezy highlands, now purple under a passing cloud,
now a vivid green in the slanting sunlight, as shadow and shine succeed
each other over the rugged slopes. They are mere liquid lispings.
Their articulations are not so loud as the crow of the blackcock, the
clamour of the peewit, or the call of the grouse. But the imperceptible
tinkling, the mere tracery of moisture among the rank grass and ebony
peat, grow until the rill has become a rivulet; and now we are at Dove
Head. There is an isolated farmstead, the whitewashed buildings of
which stand out in strong relief from the sombre moorland background.
Over the doorway of this solitary old farmhouse are carved the words
"Dove Head." Exactly opposite to this house is a moss-grown trough with
bubbling water, clear and cold, not topaz-coloured like most streams
that have their origin in mountain mosses. On the slab the initials
of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton are entwined in cypher, after the
manner of the monogram in the fishing-house in Beresford Dale. This
spot indicates the county boundary. Staffordshire claims one side of
the Dove, but Derby has greater pretensions to the ownership of the
river, for both its head and its foot are in the latter county.
Dove Head is one of the view points of the "Peake Countrie." The
panoramic prospect over bleak height and verdant dale is one to
transport the landscape painter. Yet it is too near Buxton, with
Manchester only forty minutes' railway ride away, to tempt the English
artist. There exist, in a relative sense and with due respect to
proportion, few wilder or more picturesque "bits" of scenery than are
comprised in the ramble from Dove Head to Glutton Mill. For three or
four miles the river, a mere brook, passes through a gritstone gorge,
with rocky escarpments above, boulders below, and a paradise of ferns
around. At Glutton Mill the character of the scenery changes with the
geological nature of the country. The limestone now crops up, and there
are peculiar volcanic upheavals, such as Chrome Hill and Parker Hill.
The rocky glen has widened suddenly into a green and spacious valley,
and the harsh and hungry stone walls give place to park-like pastures
and hawthorn hedgerows. Chrome Hill and Parker Hill rise steep between
the "Princess Dove" in her infancy and her maidenhood; while green High
Wheeldon and austere Hollins Clough are the sentinels of two jealous
counties. Glutton Mill, with its red-tiled roof, idyllic surroundings,
and sleepy atmosphere, might have inspired the Laureate when he
confessed--
"I loved the brimming wave that swam
Through quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still,
The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door
Made misty with the floating meal."
Glutton Dale, a rocky gorge, gives access to the odd, old-world village
of Sterndale, with a tavern the sign of which is "The Silent Woman."
It is a pictorial sign in the most pronounced Van Daub style; but the
designer must have been a satirical humourist, for the lady depicted is
without a head!
The Dove for the next few miles loses its wild features. There are no
deep gorges or rocky chasms. The walk now is through lush meadows,
and the progress of the stream, so swift and tumultuous in its upper
reaches, is in comparison almost sluggish. It ripples with soothing
murmur over pebbly shallows, or reflects patches of blue sky in deep
and glassy pools. Here and there a water-thread from either the
Staffordshire or the Derbyshire side, is welcomed, and trout and
grayling invite the angler. Past Beggar's Bridge, Crowdecote Bridge,
Pilsbury, Broad Meadow Hall, and a fertile country dotted with dairy
farms, and we are at the patrician village of Hartington, with its
Elizabethan hall on the hill, and its venerable church with pinnacled
tower, dating back to the first part of the thirteenth century,
_temp._ Henry III. Hartington, which gives the Marquises their title,
is eleven miles from Dove Head, and the length of the river from its
source to its junction with the Trent is exactly fifty-six picturesque
unpolluted miles, without an uninteresting point along the entire
course. A riverside path brings us to Beresford Dale, perhaps the most
secluded portion of the valley, for the Dove Dale tourist and the
"cheap tripper" rarely penetrate so far up the zigzag windings of the
river. Here the stream resumes its romantic features. Limestone tors
embroidered with foliage shut it out from the world. There is a strip
of white cloud above, and a gleam of liquid light below. Pellucid pools
reflect wooded height and gleaming crag. All around is the sense of
solitude and the rapture of repose, broken only by the soliloquy of the
stream and the song of the wild birds.
At Pike Pool (there are no pike), alluded to in the "Compleat Angler,"
rises from the centre of the Dove a pinnacle of weather-beaten
limestone forty feet high. Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton indulge in
a characteristic colloquy concerning this isolated needle, "one of the
oddest sights." The intimacy of the reckless young squire who penned
the indecencies of "Virgil Travestie," and the rigid moralist who wrote
the Lives of Hooker and George Herbert, is one of the curiosities of
famous friendships. It can only be accounted for by the conclusion that
true love is like the law of magnetism--the attraction of opposites.
Here, however, "Piscator" and "Viator" cease to be abstractions,
for, behold! this is the classic Fishing House, wherein "my dear
son Charles" entertained his "most affectionate father and friend."
Externally it is the same as when Izaak and Charles smoked their
morning pipe, which was "commonly their breakfast," and discoursed of
the joys and contentment of country life. The little temple is built
on a green peninsula at a pretty bend of the river, with the swing of
trees above and the song of the stream below. "It is"--says the author
of "Pictures of the Peak"--"a one-storied building, toned with the
touch of time. In shape it is a perfect cube of eighteen feet, with a
pyramidal stone roof, from which springs a stone pillar and hip knob.
There are lattice windows and shutters on all sides. The doorway, with
its three moss-grown steps, faces the dale, and over it is a square
panel with the inscription--
Piscatoribus
Sacrum
1674.
A monogram, similar to the one at Dove Head, declares the affinity
between the two old-world fishermen!" Formerly the oak wainscoting was
covered with paintings of riverside scenes, and the portraits of the
"father" and his "adopted son" decorated the panels of the buffet. The
old fireplace, the marble table, and the carved oak chairs, however,
remain intact.
[Illustration: THE MONOGRAM AT DOVE HEAD.]
Not far from this fishing house stood Beresford Hall, the ancestral
home of Charles Cotton. It was pulled down some years ago, when it was
condemned as being structurally unsafe. But the owner (the late Mr.
Beresford Hope) had all the stones carefully numbered and marked with a
view to their re-erection somewhat after the old style. They now lie in
an adjacent meadow. Beresford Hall in Charles Cotton's days was a noble
building. It stood in plantations among the rocks with woodland vistas
opening out to the windings of the water. The hall was wainscoted in
oak. It was rich in old carved furniture, ebony coffers, and trophies
of the chase. The most prized possession, surrounded with arms and
armour, hunting horns and falcons' hoods and bells, antlers and
fowling-pieces, was the fishing rod presented to Charles Cotton by old
Izaak, whose bed-chamber, "with sheets laid up in lavender," was one of
the choicest apartments of the house. There were figured patterns over
the chimney-piece, and angels' heads stamped in relief on the ceiling.
On the rocks above the site of the hall are to be seen vestiges of
the Prospect Tower, the basement of which was Cotton's study, and the
summit a beacon where flambeaux were lit by his wife to guide her
husband home in the darkness, even as Hero's watch-fires brought her
beloved Leander to her bosom. Cotton himself called this observatory
"Hero's Tower," and in a poetic epistle, describing his journey from
London to Basford Hall, he thus alludes to the building:--
"Tuesday at noon at Lichfield town we baited,
But there some friends, who long that hour had waited,
So long detain'd me, that my charioteer
Could drive that night but to Uttoxeter.
And there, the Wednesday being market-day,
I was constrain'd with some kind lads to stay,
Tippling till afternoon, which made it night,
When from my Hero's Tower I saw the light
Of her flambeaux, and fancied, as we drave,
Each rising hillock was a swelling wave,
And that I swimming was, in Neptune's spight,
To my long long'd for harbour of delight."
Dissipated Charles! devoted wife!
[Illustration: THE BANKS OF THE DOVE.]
Leaving Beresford Dale, we come to many enticing passages on the Dove,
troutful and leafy, where rock and water and woodland make combinations
that are the despair of artists. Wolfscote Ravine, Narrow Dale, Cold
Eaton, Alstonfield, Load Mill, and Mill Dale are but topographical
expressions, but to those who know the Dove they cease to be words, and
become scenes of enchantment. And now we are in the Dove Dale of the
tourists and the trippers, the painters and the picnic parties, the
fly-fishermen and the amateur photographers. The guide-books have done
Dove Dale grievous injustice by "heaping Ossa upon Pelion" with such
misleading epithets as "grand," "majestic," "stupendous," "terrific,"
"awful," etc., _ad nauseam_. Dove Dale is only imposing by its
surpassing loveliness, its perfect beauty. A romantic glen three miles
long, narrow and winding, it is a dream of pretty scenery. Limestone
cliffs close in the clear and voiceful water. Their precipitous sides
are draped to the sky-line with a wealth and wonder of foliage, the
white tors shining through the green gloom. The wooded slopes, rich
with wild flowers, ferns, and mosses, just admit of a pathway by the
water, which is now white and wavy with cascades, and now a dreamy calm
in reflective pools. Each turn in this romantic valley has its surprise
in scenery. A revelation awaits each step.
[Illustration: ILAM HALL.]
Some of the impending crags have such an individual character that
they are known by particular names, such as Sharplow Point, the Twelve
Apostles, Tissington Spires, the Lion's Head, the Watch Box, the
Straits, the Sugar Loaf, the Church Rock, etc.; whilst perforations
in the rock forming natural arches and caverns are entitled Dove
Holes, Dove Dale Church, Grey Mare's Stable, Reynard's Cave, Reynard's
Kitchen, the Crescent, the Arched Gateway, the Amphitheatre, the Abbey,
and so on. These limestone tors, standing out from their green setting,
assume castellated shapes. Here they suggest a bastion, there a spire;
now an assemblage of towers, anon a convent church.
Dove Dale possesses many literary associations apart from those
attached to Izaak Walton and his "adopted son" Charles. Surly Samuel
Johnson frequently visited his friend Dr. Taylor, the Ashbourne divine
who made his will in favour of the Fleet Street philosopher, but who
lived to preach his funeral sermon in Westminster Abbey. In Dove Dale
Dr. Johnson discovered the Happy Valley of "Rasselas." Morbid Jean
Jacques Rousseau found a hospitable asylum at David Hume's house at
Wootton Hall. It was another sort of "asylum" to which he should have
been admitted, for he quarrelled with his benefactor. In Dove Dale
he wandered scattering the seeds of rare plants that still flourish,
and pondering over his "Confessions," the most introspective of
autobiographies. Thomas Moore lived by the banks of the Dove, and his
letters to Lord Byron abound with references to the "beauty spots" of
the neighbourhood. He rented a little cottage at Mayfield, where he
passed the early years of his married life, buried his first-born,
wrote most of "Lalla Rookh," and in "Those Evening Bells" swung into
undying music the metallic chimes of Ashbourne Church. Congreve wrote
several of his comedies at Ilam. Canning was one of Dove Dale's
devotees, and the reader will remember his political squib beginning--
"So down thy slope, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby Dilly, carrying six insides."
The law of association links the Dove with other illustrious names:
with Alfred Butler, the novelist, author of "Elphinstone," "The
Herberts," and other works of fiction famous in their day; with Michael
Thomas Sadler, author of the "Law of Population;" with Ward, the author
of "Tremaine;" with Richard Graves, who wrote the "Spiritual Quixote,"
and whose portrait Wilkie painted; with Hobbes, the philosopher of
Malmesbury; with Wright of Derby; and Edwards, the author of the "Tour
of the Dove."
Dove Dale proper is at its extremity guarded by two imposing
hills--Thorpe Cloud, a cone-shaped eminence of 900 feet, and burly
Bunster, less conspicuous, but considerably higher. Passing these
portals we come to the Izaak Walton Hotel, with the Walton and Cotton
monogram of 1660 over its lichened gateway. The house is even older,
and it serves to introduce us to the delightful village of Ilam,
with its trim Gothic cottages, its magnificent Hall, its elegant
Cross and Fountain, and its pretty church. In the church is Sir
Francis Chantrey's masterpiece. It represents David Pike Watts on his
death-bed taking leave for ever of his wife and children. The scene
is an affecting one, and the composition one of pathetic beauty. It
is a sermon in stone, and insensible to all feeling must be the man
who can gaze upon this touching group without emotion. In the grounds
of Ilam Hall the Manifold joins the Dove. Both rivers had their
birthplace on Axe Edge, and throughout their course have never been
far apart, although not within actual sight of each other. They have
kept a "respectful distance," and not been on "speaking terms." The
two rivers might have cherished a mutual aversion, if you can imagine
such a repugnance. Before the Manifold emerges into the larger stream
it has pursued a subterranean course for several miles. It bursts into
daylight from a cave in the limestone rock, and at once plunges into
the pure and placid waters of the Dove.
After leaving Ilam, the Dove again assumes a pastoral character. It
flows with graceful curves through a rich and reposeful landscape,
where green woods cover gentle slopes. Passing Okeover and Mappleton,
it just avoids Ashbourne, that only needed its silvery, shimmering
waters to complete the charm of its dreamy old-world streets, as
drowsy and quaint now as they were in the days of the '45, when Prince
Charlie raised his standard in the market-place, and the ancient
gables framed a Highland picture of targets and claymores and dirks,
of unkempt, wild-haired clansmen in bonnet and kilt, ready to face any
foe or endure any danger in the cause of the young Chevalier, whom
they proclaimed King of England. A local tradition states that the
Ashbourne men caught a Highlander, killed him, and found his skin so
tough that it was tanned, and made most excellent leather! The church
is the pride and glory of Ashbourne, and it is, indeed, a possession
worthy of its fascinating surroundings and historic associations. It
was dedicated in 1241; its tower and spire attain a height of 212 feet.
The long series of Cockayne monuments, dating from the middle of the
twelfth century to the end of the sixteenth, are worthy of a volume to
themselves. In the chancel is Banks' pathetic monument to the memory
of Penelope Boothby. The portrait of this sweet child was painted by
Sir Joshua Reynolds. One of the illustrated papers has reproduced the
picture, and made the innocent little face familiar in every home.
Sympathetic inscriptions in English, French, Latin, and Italian on
pedestal and slab vainly express Sir Brooke Boothby's poignant grief
over his great loss. One of these inscriptions reads:--"She was in form
and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their
all on this frail bark, and the wreck was total." One of the legends
of art is that Chantrey stole into the church to study this poem in
marble, and that it gave him the idea for his "Sleeping Children" in
Lichfield Cathedral, which he designed in an Ashbourne hostelry while
the inspiration was fresh upon him.
After leaving Ashbourne, the Dove, alder-fringed and willowed over,
broadening through sweet-smelling pastures and passing prosperous
farmsteads, makes its first acquaintance with a railway. The
North Staffordshire line and the river play at hide-and-seek all
the way down to the Trent, and the traveller has many gratifying
glimpses--carriage-window pictures--of the glancing stream. The Dove is
now not quite half-way on its journey to the strong and stately Trent.
The scenery is very much like that of the Upper Thames, and should
tempt some of our bright open-air school of painters. In succession
follow Hanging Bridge and Mayfield, associated with the genius of Tom
Moore; Church Mayfield, Clifton, Colwich Abbey, and Norbury, with its
grand old church glorious in old stained glass, perfect of its kind,
and its manor-house rebuilt in 1267. Then comes Rocester, inviting
alike the artist, the angler, and the archæologist. The Dove here
receives the rippling waters of the Churnet that flows past Alton
Towers, and at Marston Montgomery it is joined by the Tean Brook, a
tributary of considerable volume.
[Illustration: ASHBOURNE CHURCH.]
Passing Eaton with its rich verdure and hanging woods, once part of
Needwood Forest, we come to Doveridge, the Hall--the seat of Lord
Hindlip--rising above the wooded ridge. If the house itself, because of
its debased style of architecture, is not an attractive addition to the
landscape, its situation, on the green heights above the valley of the
Dove, with the rolling Staffordshire moorlands and the obtuse peaks of
the Weaver Hills in the distance, is enchanting. The Dove winds in the
rich pastoral "strath" below in the most capricious curvatures, and the
eye follows the course of the wilful stream by meadow and upland, by
deep dell and dusky slope, for many miles. Presently comes Uttoxeter,
the spire of the church being a conspicuous feature in a landscape
filled with sylvan beauty. The pronunciation of the word puzzles the
visitor, and even the natives grow gently disputatious on the subject.
A local bard, however, comes to the rescue of the stranger. In a fine
patriotic outburst he declares:
"In all the country round there's nothing neater
Than the pretty little town of Uttoxeter."
Uttoxeter is a characteristic specimen of an old English market town,
which neither the railway nor what Carlyle contemptuously calls
"the age of gin and steam-hammers" has left unspoiled. It has many
interesting literary and historical associations. Here Mary Howitt
was born; and Dr. Johnson's father, bookseller at Lichfield, kept a
stall in the market-place. On one occasion he asked his son to attend
the market in his place, but the future lexicographer's stubborn
pride led to insubordination. Fifty years afterwards, haunted by this
disobedience of the paternal wish, Dr. Johnson made a pilgrimage to
Uttoxeter market-place, and in inclement weather stood bare-headed for
a considerable time on the spot where his father's stall used to stand,
exposed to a pelting rain and the flippant sneers of the bystanders.
"In contrition," he confesses, "I stood, and I hope the penance was
expiatory." The incident says much for Johnson's character, and the
scene may be commended to a painter in search of an historical theme.
[Illustration: THE STRAITS, DOVEDALE.]
At Uttoxeter the Dove is thirty-eight miles from its mountain home. It
now winds past Sudbury, where it is crossed by a strikingly handsome
bridge giving access to Lord Vernon's domain, with its deer park of
600 acres and model dairy farm. The Hall is a red-brick mansion in the
Elizabethan style, and was erected in the early part of the seventeenth
century. This delightful retreat was the residence of the Dowager Queen
Adelaide from 1840 to 1843. The church, which is within the park, is a
large and venerable structure, grey with age, and green with glossy ivy.
Presently comes Tutbury, where the Dove is fifty miles from Axe
Edge. It flows under the commanding castle hill, where the ruins of
a building that existed before the Norman Conquest look down grim
and gloomy upon the glad Dove, glancing up at its dismantled walls
with their chequered history from the green plain to which she lends
such grace. The three towers associated with John of Gaunt make a
diversified sky-line. Tutbury Castle has all the credentials necessary
to make the reputation of a respectable ruin. For fifteen years it
was the prison-house of Mary Queen of Scots, and it suffered from the
cannon of Cromwell. The west doorway of the Priory Church, with its
"chevron" tracery, is a glorious specimen of Norman architecture. The
village was notorious for its bull-baiting, and everybody has heard of
"the fasting woman of Tutbury," one Ann Moore, who professed to live
without food. She added an assumption of piety to her imposture, and
by this means collected £240. She was subsequently sent to prison for
fraud. An interesting feature in connection with the history of the
place should receive notice. In 1831 an extraordinary find of coins was
made in the bed of the river, over 100,000 in number. People flocked
from all parts to dig up the auriferous and argentiferous river-bed,
until at last the Crown despatched a troop of soldiers to protect the
rights of the Duchy of Lancaster. Still stands the notice-board on the
bridge threatening prosecution to all trespassers. It is supposed that
the coins formed part of the treasury of the Earl of Lancaster when he
had taken up arms against Edward II., and that in the panic of retreat
across the Dove the money chests were lost in the swollen river, at
that time scarcely fordable.
The Dove valley downward from Tutbury past Marston, Rolleston, and
Egginton, is full of quiet and stately beauty. At Newton Solney the
stream, as crystal as it was in the limestone dales, is greeted by the
Trent, its clear waters soon losing their shining transparency in the
darker tinged tide of the larger river.
EDWARD BRADBURY.
[Illustration: JOHN OF GAUNT'S GATEWAY, TUTBURY CASTLE.]
[Illustration: JUNCTION OF THE TRENT AND THE DOVE.]
THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.