something more to us in these pages than merely a hill. It is a place of
literary eminence, whose terrors are enshrined in the pages of Scott and
Ainsworth. Jeanie Deans, of all the romantic and historic characters
that people this historic and romantic road the most prominent, is
especially to be identified with this height. Historic she is because
there is a substantial basis of truth in the character of Sir Walter
Scott’s heroine, and of Effie and many another figure in the _Heart of
Midlothian_. They have fictitious names, but some were real persons.
Helen Walker, who died in 1791 and was buried in the churchyard of
Irongray, near Dumfries, is the prototype of Jeanie. She had in 1737
walked to London and sought a pardon for her sister, Isabella, condemned
to death by the ferocious Scots law on a _presumption_ of having murdered
her child. She actually did (as Scott’s heroine is described as having
done) seek the Duke of Argyle and through his interest obtain the object
of her journey; but Scott is responsible for the embroidery of this
simple and affecting story; for he never saw Helen Walker, and she, with
Scottish closeness, never described her adventures, being only too
anxiously concerned that the story of her sister’s shame should be
forgotten.
It is a curious and (admirable or not, as one may personally think it)
unusual conscience that would hesitate to stretch a point in evidence
when to do so would be to save the life of a loved sister; and more
strange still to find so unbending a moralist enduring the toils and
dangers of a four-hundred miles’ tramp with the bare possibility of
preserving the life of the sinner in view at the end; but to understand
the workings of the Scottish conscience is beyond the mental reach of any
one who does not chance to be either a Scot or a Presbyterian.
And here let it be said that the Jeanie Deans of the novel is by no means
so attractive a heroine as Scott wished to make her. There is heroism in
her walk from Scotland to London, and we rejoice when she is fortunate
enough to obtain a “cast in a wagon,” or pity her when she falls in with
thieves and murderers at Gonerby Hill foot; but when we find her
“conforming to the national (that is to say, the English) extravagance of
wearing shoes and stockings for the whole day,” we can scarce subdue a
snort of contempt at the very superior manner in which she thus yields to
the popular prejudice in favour of this extravagance in shoe-leather.
Nor is she a particularly lovable figure when she disputes theology with
the rector of Willingham, with all the assurance of a Doctor of Divinity
and all the narrow-minded bigotry of a Covenanter; coming in these things
perilously near the ideal of the perfect prig.
We must here quote the landlord of the “Saracen’s Head” at Newark on
Gonerby Hill. He spoke of it as though it were some beetling eminence,
resembling at the very least a Snowdon or an Helvellyn. He called it a
“high mountain,” and indeed Scott has in putting this phrase into mine
host’s mouth made him characteristic of his age.
The year of Jeanie Deans’ romantic expedition was 1737, and then, and for
long afterwards, travellers and all who had business with the roads
magnified hills in this manner. They disliked hills, and so for that
matter did most people, for the appreciation of scenery was not yet born.
“When I was young,” said Wordsworth, many years later, “there were no
lakes nor mountains,” and it was Thomas Gray, the author of the _Elegy_,
who really was the first to discover beauty instead of terror and
desolation in them.
Jeanie Deans, on the other hand, was pleased to hear of Gonerby Hill.
Not, mark you, that she was educated up to an appreciation of the
picturesque. We know, in fact, that she was not, because when she and
the Duke of Argyle stood looking down upon the lovely expanse of woods,
meads, and waters seen from Richmond Hill, all she could find to say was
that “It’s braw feeding for the cows.” No, when she learned with
pleasure of the “mountain” she was to cross, it was only for
association’s sake: “I’m glad to hear there’s a hill, for baith my sight
and my very feet are weary o’ sic tracts o’ level ground—it looks a’ the
way between this and York as if a’ the land had been trenched and
levelled, whilk is very wearisome to my Scotch een. When I lost sight of
a muckle blue hill they ca’ Ingleboro’, I thought I hadna a friend left
in this strange land.”
“As for the matter of that, young woman,” said mine host, “an you be so
fond o’ hill, I carena an thou couldst carry Gunnerby away with thee in
thy lap, for it’s a murder to post-horses. But here’s to thy journey,
and mayst thou win well through it, for thou is a bold and a canny lass.”
Gonerby Hill was reputed the steepest bit between London and Edinburgh.
It was, at the time when Scott wrote, a great deal steeper than nowadays,
now that the road has been cut deeply through it, instead of climbing
painfully over the crest. Then also, as he remarks, the open ground at
its foot was unenclosed and covered with copses and swampy pools. Also,
as Jeanie discovered, there was “bad company” where the “bonny hill
lifted its brow to the moon.” But surely never did such odd company as
Sir Walter has invented lurk in these recesses. The _Heart of
Midlothian_, indeed, is a fantastic novel quite unworthy of the Wizard of
the North, and its wildly improbable characters and marvellous
rencounters are on a par with Harrison Ainsworth at his worst. Syston,
two miles away to the right, is, they say, the original of the Willingham
village in the novel, and Barkston, close by, is doubtless the “Barkston
town-end” where Mother Murdockson was put in the stocks; but the
references to them are of the haziest.
It was not inadvisedly that Ainsworth was just mentioned, for Gonerby
Hill is named in Turpin’s Ride. Ainsworth always resorted to the gibbet
when he wanted to make a point in the gruesome. Accordingly, when Turpin
mounts the rise, what does he find but “two scarecrow objects covered
with rags and rusty links of chain,” depending from “the tree.” “Will
this be my lot, I wonder?” asks the hero with a shudder. We need only to
be slightly acquainted with Ainsworth’s methods to know that a
melodramatic answer was immediately forthcoming. Springing from the
briars and tussocks of rank grass between the foot of the gallows and the
road, a gaunt figure exclaimed, “Ay, marry will it!” These “gaunt
figures” never failed the novelist; but the plain man wants to know what
they were doing on these inclement spots, and by what unfailing instinct
they were always there at the precise moment demanded in the interests of
fiction.
The descent of Gonerby Hill accomplished, and the level reached, a
singularly featureless and flat twelve miles leads into Newark, past
Marston cross-roads, where a turnpike gate used to trouble travellers,
past Foston, a forlorn village on a knoll, Long Bennington, a larger and
still more forlorn village on the flat, and thence, with the graceful
spire of Claypole far on the right, over the Shire Dyke, into
Nottinghamshire, and through Balderton.
XXIX
THE approach to Newark is long and dull, by way of the suburban “London
Road” and past the decaying Beaumond Cross, but this leads at length to
the great open square of the Market-place, the most striking of all such
centres of public resort to be found on the way to the North.
Newark-“upon-Trent” is a misnomer, for neither the town nor the castle,
which was once the “new work” that gave the place its name, are on that
river, but only on a branch of it—the Devon—which falls into the Trent at
Crankley Point, some miles below the town. The “new work” was only new
some eight hundred years ago, when Edward the Confessor’s castle on the
banks of the Devon was built, or when it was rebuilt or enlarged by
Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, 1123–47. Bishops and other mighty
castle-builders in those times not infrequently built their own prisons
when piling up their grim fortresses, and so the Bishop of Lincoln found,
when King Stephen seized him and kept him in durance within his own
stronghold. A judiciously low diet of bread and water, and confinement
in an unhealthy dungeon below the level of the river, soon broke the
haughty Churchman’s spirit, and he transferred the castle to the Crown.
But Newark Castle has better claims to notice than as the dungeon of one
of those old bloody-minded prelates. As the place where King John ended
his evil life, we may well look upon its ruined walls with interest. His
rebellious barons scattered on his approach in that year of 1216, and
England seemed in danger of a long continuance of its troubles under the
profligate king. But a surfeit of peaches brought that wicked life to a
hasty conclusion, and here, on the banks of the sluggish Devon, one of
the worst of English monarchs died. We need not regard peaches with
apprehension because John is said to have died of them. We must consider
whence they came; from the monks of Swineshead Abbey, where the king had
stayed on his journey to Newark. Now, Holy Church had the very best of
reasons for hating that monarch, and from hatred to murder was not a far
cry in those days. So of peaches King John doubtless died; but of
peaches subtly flavoured with poison, there is little doubt.
The castle was again seized by the barons, in the succeeding reign, but
they surrendered, after a week’s siege, and by the gift of the king, the
Bishops of Lincoln received their own again. Under Edward the Sixth it
again became the property of the crown, and when James the First
“progressed” through England to his throne, these walls sheltered him
during a week of festivity.
A lawless and discourteous, as well as a weak-minded king, as we shall
see. Crowds assembled during the festivities set apart by the
corporation, and a fellow was caught in the act of pocket-picking. By
order of the king, the unfortunate wretch was strung up, instanter,
without the veriest semblance of a trial! There’s your lawlessness, and
here follows the discourtesy.
[Picture: Newark Castle]
There was a certain Dame Eleanor Disney, who, to do honour to this
strange kind of king, came, splendidly dressed, with her husband, Sir
Henry, to one of the receptions. James’s eye lighted upon all this
finery, and his frugal mind was shocked. “Wha,” he asked, “be that lady
wi’ a lairdship to her bock?”
But the most stirring of Newark’s historic days were yet to come. Newark
to the last was loyal to Charles the First. Three times was the town
besieged by the Parliament, and never taken. All the inhabitants armed
and did excellent service, making sorties and capturing troops of
Parliamentary horse; and had not the royal cause failed elsewhere, Newark
must have emerged, triumphant, at the end. But at last all that remained
were some few outlying garrisons throughout the country. Newark was
especially commanded by the king to discontinue a hopeless resistance,
and accordingly the town laid down its arms in 1646. It was then that
the castle was ruined.
It is a highly picturesque ruin to-day, and lacking nothing in itself of
grandeur, only needs a more effective site. As it stands, only slightly
elevated above the river and the surrounding levels, this historic castle
has not the advantages that belong to fortresses like Ludlow and Harlech,
perched on their rocky heights. But it has done its duty and still
serves to give a note of dignity to Newark town, as one approaches it by
the long straight levels of the road from the north. It looks much the
same to-day as when Rowlandson made his sketch of it, with the coach
dashing over the bridge, more than a hundred years ago; the projecting
Tudor oriel windows still looking forth upon the sullen tide from the
more ancient walls, their crumbling stones scarce more decayed than then.
The old wooden bridge, however, that formerly spanned the Devon, was
pulled down and rebuilt in 1775.
The great glory of Newark is its beautiful church, with that soaring
spire which is visible for miles away, before the town itself is
glimpsed. Not so tall as Grantham spire, it is as beautiful in its
simpler style, and the church is better placed in the town than that of
Grantham. Especially striking is the view across the great market-place,
the grey Early English and Decorated spire, with its numerous
belfry-lights, and the fine windows and bold arcading of the tower
forming a splendidly effective contrast with the seventeenth and
eighteenth century red-brick houses facing the square. Newark and
Grantham spires are really the products of an old-time rivalry between
the two towns. Either town is satisfied that it possesses the best, and
so the peace is kept throughout the ages.
A relic of old times is found in the custom at Newark known as “Ringing
for Gofer.” On six successive Sunday evenings, beginning twelve Sundays
before Christmas, the old parish church bells are rung for one hour,
complying with the terms of a bequest left by a merchant named Gofer,
over two centuries ago. He had on one occasion lost his way at night in
Sherwood Forest, then infested by robbers of no very chivalrous
instincts, who required, not “your money or your life,” but both. Just
as he had given up hope, he heard these bells of Newark, and by their
sound he made his way to safety. In memory of his deliverance he left a
sum of money for this bell-ringing.
The market-square has always been the centre of Newark’s life. It is
singularly like the great market-square of Nottingham, on a smaller
scale, and, like it, is partly surrounded by houses with a colonnaded
piazza. An empty void now, save on the weekly market-day, that occasion
finds its broad, cobble-stoned space thickly covered with stalls, while
groups of farmers throng the pavements, and with their samples of corn
displayed in the palms of their hands sell and buy in immense quantities.
In the old times this vast empty square was peopled every day with
arriving or departing coaches, and its pavements beset with passengers
mounting or alighting, for the celebrated inns of Newark were mostly
situated here, and the chief of them are here, even now, on the opposite
side from the church, and adjoining one another. Newark is said to have
once had no fewer than fifty inns. The classical Town Hall, built in
1773, on the west side of the square, stands on the site of two of them,
and many others have been converted to different uses. Here on the south
side are the “Clinton Arms,” so called in honour of the Duke of
Newcastle’s family, powerful in these parts; the “Saracen’s Head,” with a
bust of an alleged (but very pallid and mild-looking) Saracen on its
frontage; and the “White Hart,” most ancient of all these existing
hostelries. An inn of this name is spoken of as existing here in 1113.
A “Saracen’s Head” stood here, certainly as far back as 1341, but
unhappily the existing house only dates from 1721. This house is the one
mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, who says, “The travellers who have visited
Newark more lately will not fail to remember the remarkably civil and
gentlemanly manners of the person who now keeps the principal inn there,
and may find some amusement in contrasting them with those of his more
rough predecessor.”
Let us put on record the name of this remarkable person: William
Thompson, landlord from 1784 to 1819. His “more rough predecessor” was
perhaps the landlord who dispensed such open-handed and free hospitality
to Jeanie Deans, when that somewhat priggish young woman stayed there,
and on leaving asked for her “lawing.”
[Picture: Market-Place, Newark]
“Thy lawing!” exclaimed that “more rough” person; “Heaven help thee,
wench! what ca’st thou that?”
“It is—I was wanting to ken what was to pay.”
“Pay? Lord help thee!—why, nought, woman—we hae drawn no liquor but a
gill o’ beer, and the “Saracen’s Head” can spare a mouthful o’ meat to a
stranger like thee, that cannot speak Christian language.”
Alas! whatever your language, the more smooth innkeepers of Newark, in
our times, do not do business on this principle.
The “Clinton Arms” has seen many changes of name. It was originally the
“Talbot,” and as such is mentioned in 1341. At a later date it became
the “Kingston Arms.” Byron often stayed there, and writes from London in
1807, “The ‘Kingston Arms’ is my inn.” It was also the inn, during the
election contest of 1832, of Mr. Gladstone, soliciting for the first time
the suffrages of “free and independent” electors, who duly returned him,
in the Tory interest. Newark thus gave him an opportunity in Parliament
of defending his father as a slave-owner, and of whetting his youthful
eloquence to a keen edge in extolling the principle of slave-owning. The
Newarkers were long proud of having returned the “statesman” to the
House, but history will perhaps deny him that title. It has been denied,
and the term of “egotistical politician” found to fit better. He set a
fashion in surrender, and his country reaped shame while he lived; but
the bitterest harvest-home of his methods has come, after his death, in
the red vintage of English blood. It was when standing for this
pocket-borough of the Duke of Newcastle’s that Gladstone gave an early
and characteristic specimen of his peculiarly Jesuitical ways of thought.
He took the mail-coach on a Sunday from Newark for London, and beguiled
the tedium of the journey and the Sabbath by discussing the question of
Sunday travelling with a Tory companion. Not merely did he severely
condemn the practice, but he also gave some tracts to his
fellow-traveller! He gives the facts himself: it is no outsider’s
satire. Thus, in one moment of confidence, he reveals not only what he
is, but what he will be. He implicitly announces that he is a law unto
himself and that those things are permitted to him which in others must
be deadly sins. In the very moment of crime he can present an accomplice
with a tract, and glow with all the fervour of one helped to save a lost
soul.
[Picture: Newark Castle (After Rowlandson)]
The “Ram,” another old inn, is still standing, opposite the castle, on
Beast Market Hill. George Eliot stayed here in September 1868, “seeing
some charming quiet landscapes” along the Trent. Quiet, undoubtedly.
Ridge, the printer and bookseller, Byron’s first publisher, who issued
his _Hours of Idleness_, carried on business in a fine old house still
standing at a corner of the square, and the house-door and the brass
knocker at which the new-fledged poet knocked exist to-day.
XXX
BY Beast Market Hill, past the castle and over the bridge, one leaves
Newark for the north. Level crossings of the railways now and again
bedevil the way, which is flat so far as the eye can reach—and much
farther, and the meadows on either side are intersected by runlets and
marshes, the road carried over them by a succession of red-brick bridges.
At a distance of one and a half miles, the true Trent is crossed by a
wooden bridge, and South Muskham reached, where the level-crossing gates
take the place of the old turnpike.
The act of looking backwards at this point is a more pleasing physical
exercise than the mental retrospect is ever likely to be, anywhere. Sir
Walter Scott perceived the beauty of the view, for he introduces it in
Jeanie Deans’ journey south, and says, in a fine passage: “The
hundred-armed Trent and the blackened ruins of Newark castle, demolished
in the great Civil War, lay before her.”
“Hundred-armed” is a good and eloquent figure, although on a prosaic
calculation likely to be found an exaggeration. Milton, indeed, writing
a hundred and ninety years or so before, gives the Trent but thirty arms,
on which, it must be allowed, Sir Walter’s computation is a great
advance. But here is Milton’s version:—
“Trent, which like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads.”
Even Drayton, in his _Polyolbion_, does not more nearly approach to Sir
Walter’s computation, in the couplet:—
“The bounteous Trent, that in herself enseams,
Both thirty sorts of fish and thirty sundry streams.”
Shakespeare rather shirks the calculation, and contents himself with
describing it as the “smug and silver Trent.” As for mere travellers,
who did not happen to be poets or to be engaged in the exploitation of
scenery, they regarded this stream merely with apprehension, and they did
right so to look upon it, for Trent often overflowed its thirty or
hundred arms, as the case might be, and converted the flats for miles
around into the semblage of a vast lake. Then, indeed—if at no other
time—Newark was “upon” Trent, if not actually “in” it, and all the many
other towns and villages, which bear a similarly composite title, were in
like case. Doubtless it was on one of these occasions in 1739, before
the river was bridged here, that the Newcastle wagon was lost at the
ford, when the driver and the horses all perished. Nearly thirty years
later, on the 6th of June 1767, the poet Gray, writing from London,
before starting on a journey in these parts, says:—“Pray that the Trent
may not intercept us at Newark, for we have had infinite rain here.” Nor
are floods infrequent, even now, and many a boating-party has voyaged
down the Great North Road between Newark and Carlton-upon-Trent.
North and South Muskham lie off the road to the right, and are not
remarkable, except perhaps for the fact that a centenarian, in the person
of Thomas Seals of Grassthorpe, who died in 1802, age 106, lies in North
Muskham churchyard. Cromwell, on the other hand, which now comes in
sight, although now a commonplace roadside village of uninteresting,
modern, red-brick cottages, with an old, but not remarkable, church, has
a place in history. According to Carlyle, “the small parish of Cromwell,
or Crumwell (the well of Crum, whatever that may be), not far from the
left bank of the Trent, simple worshippers still doing in it some kind of
divine service every Sunday,” was the original home of the Cromwell
family, from which the great Protector sprang. “From this,” he adds,
“without any ghost to teach us, we can understand that the Cromwell
kindred all got their name.” But the hero-worshipper will look in vain
for anything at Cromwell to connect the place with that family. Not even
a tablet in the church; nothing, in fact, save the name itself survives.
Here is a blacksmith’s forge, with the design of a huge horseshoe
encompasing the door, and this inscription:—
“F. NAYLOR
Blacksmith
Gentlemen, as you pass by,
Upon this shoe pray cast an eye.
I’ll make it wider,
I’ll ease the horse and please the rider.
If lame from shoeing, as they often are
You may have them eased with the greatest care.”
Hence to Carlton-upon-Trent, Sutton-upon-Trent, Scarthing Moor, and
Tuxford is an easy transition of nearly eight miles, with little scenery
or history on the way. An old posting-house, now retired into private
life, the level-crossing of Crow Park, and an old roadside inn, the
“Nag’s Head,” beside it are all the objects of interest at Carlton; while
Sutton is scarce more than a name, so far as the traveller along the road
is concerned.
Weston, a village at a bend and dip of the road, stands by what was once
Scarthing Moor, whose famous inn, the “Black Lion,” is now, like the
old-time festivities of Sutton-on-Trent, only a memory. The farmers and
cottagers of Sutton-on-Trent long preserved the spring-time custom of
welcoming the coaches, and freely feasting guards, coachmen, and
passengers. It was an annual week’s merrymaking, and young and old
united to keep it up. Coaches were compelled to stop in the village
street, and every one was invited to partake of the good things spread
out upon a tray covered with a beautiful damask napkin on which were
attractively displayed plum-cakes, tartlets, gingerbread, exquisite
home-made bread and biscuits, ale, currant and gooseberry wines,
cherry-brandy, and sometimes spirits. These in old-fashioned glass jugs,
embossed with figures, had a most pleasing effect. As to the contents,
they were superlative. Such ale! such currant-wine! such cherry-brandy!
Half a dozen damsels, all enchanting young people, neatly clad, rather
shy, but courteously importunate plied the passengers.
“Eat and drink you must,” says one who partook of these _al fresco_
hospitalities. “I tasted all. How could I resist the winning manners of
the rustics, with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes? My poor stomach, not
used to such luxuries and extraordinaries at eleven o’clock in the
morning, was, however, in fine agitation the remainder of the ride, fifty
miles. Neither time nor entreaties can prevent their solicitations; they
are issued to reward the men for trifling kindnesses occasionally
granted.”