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T H E K N I C K E R B O C K E R.
VOL. XXIII. APRIL, 1844. NO. 4.
A PILGRIMAGE TO PENSHURST.
BY C. A. ALEXANDER.
One of the admirers of Goethe, commenting on his characteristic
excellencies, has remarked that he is the most _suggestive_ of writers.
Were we to seek an epithet by which to describe the architectural remains
and historical monuments of England, with reference to their impression on
the mind of an observer, perhaps no better could offer itself than that
which has been thus applied to the works of the great German. In the
property of awakening reflection by bringing before the mind that series
of events whose connection with the progress of modern civilization has
been most direct and influential, and of recalling names which, to the
American at least, sound like household words, they stand unrivalled. Our
manners, our customs, our national constitution itself, may be said to
have grown up beneath the shelter of these venerable structures, whose
associations ally them in a manner scarcely less striking with those wider
developments of social and political reason in which we believe the
welfare of our species to be involved. Who is there, that, standing within
'the great hall of William Rufus,' can forget how often it has been the
theatre of those mighty conflicts, in which, however slowly and
reluctantly, error and prejudice have been compelled to relax their hold
on the human mind? Dr. Johnson has spoken to us, in his usual stately
phrase, of patriotism re-invigorated and of piety warmed amid the scenes
of Marathon and Iona; but where is the Marathon which appeals to us so
forcibly as the field consecrated by the blood of a Hamden or a Falkland?
and where the Iona which is so eloquent with recollections as the walls
which have echoed to the voices of a Ridley and a Barrow?
It is true indeed, that the recollections of many other lands, as
associated with their monuments, lay much stronger hold upon the
imagination than those of England. Of the former we might say that there
was about them more of the element of poetry; of the latter, that they
furnish an ampler share of materials for reflection. One great moral, 'the
comprehensive text of the Hebrew preacher,' the invariable 'vanity of
vanities,' is alike inscribed upon all the vestiges of human greatness.
For the rest, a serene and touching beauty lingers around and hallows
every relic which attests the hand of Phidias, or marks the country of
Pericles and Epaminondas. No lapse of time, no process of decay, will ever
wholly exorcise that spirit of stateliness and command which sits
enthroned amid the ruins of the 'Eternal City,' as her own Marius once
sate amid the ruins of a rival capital. But in all that regards a common
standard of opinions, institutions and interests, and in the facility of
reasoning as respects these, from the experience and practice of one time
and people to those of another, we cannot but feel that a vast gulf has
interposed between our own age and that which is commemorated by the
monuments of Greece and Rome. The venerable genius of antiquity, seated
among crumbling arches and broken columns, has but little to say to us
respecting those questions which most deeply agitate and unceasingly
perplex the busy and the thinking part of mankind at the present day. No
response are we to expect from that quarter, concerning our bank-laws and
our corn-laws; our systems of credit and of commerce; our endless
disquisitions on the balance of power and of parties, on the rights of
suffrage and of conscience. While we reserve to the theorist the privilege
of adorning his theme by allusions to the polity of Lycurgus and Numa, we
are sensible that the practical statesman who trusts himself to such
examples will be constantly liable to be deluded by false parallels and
imperfect analogies. A voice, like that which is said to have startled the
mariner of old on the coasts of Ionia, and to have announced to him the
cessation of oracles, comes to us from all the remains of pagan antiquity,
warning us that the spirit of that ancient civilization has departed with
its forms: and while it bids us look forward to a new destiny for the
human race, it teaches us that the maxims and the oracles by which that
destiny must be guided, are to be sought elsewhere than in the Republic of
Plato and the grottos of Egeria.
Compared, then, with the monuments of classic antiquity, those of England
claim the distinction of being associated with an order of things which is
still existing and still in process of development: compared with those of
the rest of christian Europe, they recall a progress, which, much more
consistently than in other countries, has tended in the direction of
popular rights and constitutional liberty. The reader of English history
indeed has too often occasion to blush for the vices or mourn for the
madness of his species, as the spectator who looks upon the grim
fastnesses of the Tower, or into the gloomy purlieus of St. Giles', will
need but little else to remind him of the despotism and inequality which
have pursued liberty into this her boasted and sea-girt retreat. But the
Bastile, certainly, did not look in its day upon scenes of less flagrant
atrocity than the 'towers of Julius;' while this advantage has always
obtained in favor of the latter, that he who turned with disgust or terror
from that image of despotic pride and violence, might behold at no great
distance the piles of Westminster, the seats of law and legislation, where
the irrepressible spirit of freedom in the bosom of the Commons was still
nursing its resentment or muttering its remonstrances at seasons of the
deepest gloom and depression. Henry VIII. might have heard that voice
mingling with the groans of his victims; Charles II. could not altogether
shut it out from the scenes of his midnight revel and debauchery. But no
such hopeful contrast meets us in the features or the history of the
neighboring continent. Democracy, it is true, the rough and hardy growth
of the German forests, struck an earlier root and flourished at first with
better promise _there_ than in England. But this different fortune awaited
it on the continent and the island; that in the former it was soon rooted
out, and required in modern times the most violent and sanguinary efforts
to reproduce it; in the latter it has constantly survived and struggled
through every disaster toward a hopeful development. Such has been the
different political fate of two branches of the great Teutonic family; let
us observe whether some corresponding difference does not make itself
manifest in the aspect of their respective countries.
It might have been readily anticipated that the maintenance of the popular
right as a constitutional principle, operating through a long course of
ages, would have produced not only a sturdy independence among the bulk of
the English nation, but to some extent also, a local independence of the
country as regards the capital and the court. It might have been foreseen,
that instead of concentrating every separate ray of genius and renown into
one grand _halo_ around the throne, this habitual effort of the popular
mind would have had a tendency to scatter those rays more equally over the
land, making the green valley and the sequestered hamlet rejoice, each in
the memory of its bard or hero. Such might have been our prognostic from
the political condition of England as compared with that of the continent,
and such will be found upon observation to have been the result. A French
poet aptly describes the centralizing influences of his own capital as
regards France, when he tells us that 'at Paris people _live_, elsewhere
they only _vegetate_.' One great holocaust of talents, reputations and
fortunes forever ascends there to the glory of the Grand Nation, absorbing
every thing, assimilating every thing to itself, and leaving the country
widowed of its interest and shorn of its appropriate graces. The poet,
whose footsteps on the sunny plains of Provence would have long brightened
in the traditions of its peasantry; the hero, whose name would have
sufficed to confer undying interest on some old _chateau_ of the Jura; the
orator, whose leisure hours might have made some French Tusculum on the
banks of the Loire forever fresh with the memory of associated honors; all
these have alike hastened to Paris, identified themselves once for all
with its crowds, and added whatever _prestige_ might attend their own
names through future ages to the already overshadowing _prestige_ of that
wonderful city. They point you there to the house where the great
Corneille breathed his last; it is hard by the metropolitan church of St.
Roche, and scarcely more than a bow-shot from the Tuilleries, as if the
poet of Cinna and Polyeucte could not render up his breath in peace except
in the neighborhood of those high dignitaries, into whose lips he had
breathed while living so much of his own grandeur and elevation; but who
reminds you of the hills of his native Normandy, or points you to the
humble chamber or the peaceful valley where 'gorgeous Tragedy in sceptred
pall' first swept before the eyes of his dawning fancy? No; if you would
recall the memory of Corneille through the medium of places familiar with
his presence when living, you must repair to the Hotel de Rambouillet, in
one of the most noisy and unpoetic quarters of Paris.
Now with respect to England, all this is as nearly as possible reversed.
The political influences spoken of before, operating no doubt with others
of which it is unnecessary to speak, have acted dispersively on the sum of
national reputations, and equitably allotted to almost every part of the
fair island some _parcenary_ share of fame, some hallowing memory, like a
household genius, to preside over and endear its localities. London has
not, like Paris, proved itself in this the insatiate Saturn of the
national offspring. If you inquire, for instance, for memorials of the
life and presence of Shakspeare, it is not probable, as in the case of
Corneille, that you will be referred to the crowded streets and squares of
the metropolis, though his active life was passed and his unrivalled fame
achieved there; but far away to the west, where Nature received him on her
flowery lap, beside his own Avon; in the shades where his genius first
grew familiar with the shapes of beauty, sublimity, and terror, and
whither he retired at last 'to husband out life's taper' amid the common
charities of home; to this spot it is that you must repair, if you would
drink freshly of that well-spring of associations which hallows the
footsteps of England's immortal dramatist. In like manner, one might say,
that it is not in the sumptuous galleries of Holland House, neighbored by
the crowds and tumult of the parks, that the admirer of Addison would find
it most easy to call up the image of the sage; but in that quiet meadow
which he used to frequent on the banks of the Cheswell, when evening is
gathering on the tops of the lofty elms and around the gray towers of
Magdalen, how pleasing and unforced the effort which recalls him to our
imaginations!
And so too of others. Gray has not made the country church-yard immortal
in song alone, but has laid himself to rest with all the memories of that
imperishable strain around him, beneath as green a sod as wraps the head
of the humblest peasant for whom his muse implored 'the passing tribute of
a sigh.' The pensive shade of Cowper beckons to the groves of Olney; and
the melancholy ghost of Chatterton, (kindred to Cowper only in his woes
and his genius,) has fled from the crowded thoroughfares of London, where
he sank oppressed in the turmoil of life, to haunt forever, in the eyes of
the dreaming enthusiast, those dim aisles of St. Mary Redcliffe in
Bristol, whence he drew the spells which immortalized but could not
preserve him. And thus will it be when the lights of to-day, the bards of
living renown, shall have passed away, but not to be forgotten. No one
will then think of tracing Wordsworth, or Moore, or Southey, amid the
dusky lanes and glittering saloons of the metropolis, but the lakes of
Cumberland and the bowers of Wiltshire will still rejoice in the
ever-brightening honors of associated genius. Even the hardier spirits of
the isle, whose destiny has called them to the rougher paths of life, to
the battle-field or the senate, away from the haunts of nature and the
Muse; even these have seldom failed, in the intervals of busier life, to
remember the charms of the rural life of England, and in giving their more
familiar hours to its enjoyments, have bequeathed to many a fair spot a
heritage of memories more precious than wealth, and which the pilgrims of
after ages will not willingly let perish.
It is to one of these provincial retreats, (if such they may be called,
when the migratory habits of society are rendering them daily more known
and frequented) that the foregoing remarks are designed to lead the
attention of the indulgent reader.
'The southern district of Kent,' says Gibbon, 'which borders on Sussex and
the sea, was formerly overspread with the great forest Anderida; and even
now retains the denomination of the Weald, or Woodland.' On the verge of
this region, now diversified with the traces of civilization and culture,
and at the distance of some thirty miles from London, stands Penshurst,
for many generations the domain and seat of the illustrious family of
Sydney. The mansion is of that class termed castellated houses, as
retaining some of the features of the feudal castle, but accommodated to
the more secure and less circumspect usages of a later age. In itself, it
presents perhaps no very striking example of the merits or defects of its
class, but it claims a much higher distinction in having been the
birth-place and paternal home of Sir Philip Sydney.
To what name can we point which is more brightly adorned than his with all
the accomplishments of the soldier, the courtier and the scholar? Still
rises upon the memory through the mists of three centuries that touching
legend of Zutphen, where the wounded hero waived from his lips the cup of
water because it was more needed by the dying comrade at his side; and the
pure morality and lofty chivalry which animate the 'Arcadia,' still bear
witness to us of the personal merit of this pride and ornament of the
English court. His sagacious but selfish mistress, Elizabeth, once stood,
we are told, between him and the proffered crown of Poland, as being loth
to part (so she expressed herself,) with him who was 'the jewel of her
time.' She is reported too to have denied him on another occasion the
permission which he earnestly sought, of connecting his fame and fortunes
with those trans-atlantic enterprises which were already beginning to
crown with success and distinction the efforts of such men as Drake and
Frobisher. This last is a field of adventure upon which we must still
regret that Sir Philip was not allowed to enter. The New World was then no
less the region for romantic enterprise than profitable exertion, although
the explorers of these distant climes had too often sunk the generosity of
the soldier in the rapacity of the spoiler. In Sir Philip Sydney the world
of Columbus would have had a visitor of a different order. To the courage
of Smith and the accomplishments of Raleigh he would have added a spirit
of honor and moderation peculiarly his own, and we should still have
delighted to trace the impressions of his genius and virtue in the early
annals of our continent. But his fate was destined to a different scene;
and his career, though thus limited by a jealous sovereign and an early
death, has left little which we can reasonably deplore but its brevity;
while that brevity itself throws around his character the last touches of
romantic interest, and assigns him the not unenviable lot of having
carried off the rewards of age without its infirmities, and borne a
maturity of honors into the safe asylum of a premature grave:
'Invida quem Lachesis raptum,
Dum numerat palmas, credidit esse senem.'
In this age of literary and multifarious pilgriming, it cannot be
unacceptable to propose an excursion to a mansion dignified by its
associations with such a name. Neither is it a slight recreation to him
who has been confined for weeks and months within the dusky enclosures of
London, to break his bounds and emerge into the breathing fields of Surry
and Kent. The father of English poetry, and poet of English pilgrims,
Chaucer himself, stands ready to accompany us for at least a small portion
of our route: it was along the road on which we enter, that he conducted,
ages ago, those pilgrims to the shrine of Canterbury who still live in his
verses; and we may glance at the Tabard Inn whence they set forth, and
indulge our fancy with the thought of their quaint equipments, while we
betake ourselves to the modern 'hostelrie' of the Elephant and Castle, and
commit our persons to the modern comforts of an English coach. Alas! for
the fickleness of a world which changes its idols almost as often and as
easily as its fashions. Time was when we should have found this great
highway strewn with devotees hurrying to the shrine of St. Thomas a
Becket. But now, though we might detect, no doubt, in the throng around
us, the counterpart of each individual whom Chaucer committed to his
living canvass; of the knight who 'loved chevalrie' and the Frankelein
'who loved wine;' of the young squire 'with his locks in presse,' and the
fair lady who
----'of her smiling was ful simple and coy,
Her gretest oathe n'as but by Seint Eloy;'
all as intent as of old upon objects not less fleeting, and changed in
little but the fashion of their attire; now there is none so poor as to do
reverence to the martyr-prelate for the sake of those merits which were
once thought a sufficient covering for the sins of countless followers.
As the great eastern artery of London, the road which we have thus far
followed begins to distribute its living mass into the successive
provincial avenues which diverge from it, we find ourselves included in
that portion of the throng, whom the pursuit of health or pleasure
conducts toward Tonbridge.[1] The high and level country which under the
name of 'Downs'[2] forms the northern and western boundary of Kent, sinks
by a sudden and steep declivity on its eastern edge; which edge the
geologists tell us was once washed by a primeval ocean, and is still
seamed by the ineffaceable traces of its currents and storms. For
ourselves it forms a vantage-ground from which we seem to look at one
glance over almost the whole of that fair province which stretches nearly
to the continent, and lifts the white cliffs of Albion above the surges of
the British channel. We think of the day when the standard bearer of the
tenth legion bore the eagle of Caesar to the shore amid the cries of the
opposing Britons; and of the still more signal day when Augustine
displayed the cross before the eyes of the softened and repentant Saxons.
We think too of the beings with whose memories Shakspeare has peopled this
portion of the Isle; of Lear and Cordelia, of Edgar, Gloster, and Kent; of
that night of horrors upon the stormy heath, and that scene of unutterable
tenderness and heart-break on the sands of Dover. Unbidden, as we gaze
over the fair and varied prospect, the words of the same great dramatist
rise to our lips, in his appropriation of the sentiments and language of
the first conqueror of Britain:
'Kent in the commentaries Caesar writ,
Is termed the civil'st place of all this isle;
Sweet is the country because full of riches,
The people liberal, active, valiant, wealthy.'
[1] This route leads, among other villages, through that of
Sevenoaks, famous as the place where Jack Cade and his rabble
overthrew the forces of Stafford, in the very same year,
(1450,) when Faust and Gutenberg set up the first press in
Germany, and long, therefore, before Cade could have justly
complained, as Shakspeare has made him do, that the Lord Say
had 'caused printing to be used' in England, and 'built a
paper-mill.' But who taxes the sun for his spots or Shakspeare
for anachronisms? He who was born to exhaust and imagine
worlds, cannot of course be denied some innocent liberties
with chronology. The village in question, however, is more
interesting to travellers from being in the vicinity of Knole,
the fine old seat of the dukes of Dorset. The stranger is led
here through long galleries garnished with furniture of the
time of Elizabeth and hung with portraits which at every step
recall names of the deepest historical interest. Who can ever
forget that which hangs or hung over the door of Lady Betty
Germaine's chamber? It is Milton in the bloom of manhood, and
the immortal epic seems to be just dawning on those mild and
pensive features. One chamber, of sumptuous appointments
remains, (so runs the legend,) as it was last tenanted by
James I., no head less sapient or august having been since
permitted to press the pillow. In another every thing stands
as it was arranged for the reception of the second James, who
forfeited, it seems, a luxurious lodging at Knole at the same
time that he forfeited his crown. The name of Lady Betty
Germaine, Swift's friend and correspondent, connects the place
with all the celebrities of the reign of Queen Anne. On
emerging from the building we view the magnificent groves of
the park, fit haunt for nightingales, though Becket is said to
have driven them by an anathema from the neighborhood, because
their songs interrupted his nocturnal meditations. But the
memory of Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, (once proprietor
of Knole,) the best poet of his time, and 'the immediate
father-in-verse of Spenser,' sufficiently redresses the stigma
of so churlish a proscription, and the nightingales may well
claim perpetual franchise under sanction of a name to which
the ancient inscription would apply:
[Greek: Li de teai zoousin aedones, hesin o panton
harpakter Aides ouk epi cheira balei.]
Yet live thy nightingales of song: on those
Forgetfulness her hand shall ne'er impose.
[2] DUNUM or Duna, sigifieth a hill or higher ground, whence
_Downs_, which cometh of the old French word _dun_.
COKE LIT. 235.
But the riches of Kent must be spoken of with due limitations. Those
geological changes and formations before alluded to, which have marked the
track of wealth across the British islands by deposits of mineral coal, as
clearly as if it had been traced in sunbeams, have bequeathed no such
sources of sub-terrene affluence to Kent. Nor has nature been more than
parsimonious (to say the least) with respect to the superficial qualities
of its soil. We have only, however, to cast our eyes on a topographical
chart of Kent, to see how beneficently these disadvantages are balanced by
considerations of a different sort. Washed along a vast line of coast by
the ocean, and bordered to an equal or greater extent by the Thames;
penetrated by the navigable Medway, and watered by such fertilizing
streams as the Eden and the Ton; traversed through its whole length by
that ancient highway of Dover, which figured in the itineraries of the
Romans, and which still conveys much of the ceaseless intercourse between
England and the Continent; its coast studded with towers and harbors; its
interior sprinkled with hamlets, parks, cities, and baronial residences;
claiming, finally, to be the episcopal head and fountain of ecclesiastical
dignity for the whole British empire; we can readily see how Kent may
vindicate to itself the praise conveyed in the lines of Shakspeare as the
abode of a liberal, active, valiant, and even wealthy people.
Nor is this flattering ascription of personal qualities unsupported by the
facts of its local history. To the great Roman conqueror the inhabitants
of this part of Britain opposed a resistance, which taught him, as he
indirectly confesses, to look back with many a wistful glance toward the
coast where he had left his transports, but ill-assured against the ocean
or the enemy. Against the Norman conqueror, likewise, when all the rest of
the island had yielded implicitly to his sway and to the substitution of
feudal for native usages, the people of Kent still made good their old
hereditary law of _Gavelkind_. More than once in after times, stung by
oppression or inflamed by zeal, they have drawn together in a spirit of
tumultuous resistance, and borne their remonstrances to the very gates of
the national capital. Connecting this history and character with their
maritime position, we are led to apply a remark which our American
historian Prescott has generalized from the circumstances of a people not
dissimilarly situated. 'The sea-board,' says that admirable writer, 'would
seem to be the natural seat of liberty. There is something in the very
presence, in the atmosphere of the ocean, which invigorates not only the
physical but the moral energies of man.' Or as Wordsworth has expressed
the same idea, with an extension of it, no less just than poetical, to
another class of natural objects:
'Two voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!'
It has already been said that our route lay toward Tonbridge. True, those
celebrated wells lie somewhat beyond Penshurst, yet few pilgrims will fail
to visit them; and it may be permitted to glance aside from our immediate
object to glean a very few observations from the customs of this
fashionable watering-place. But the American visitor must not expect to
meet at a watering-place in England precisely that aggregate of
circumstances which goes to form his idea of the pleasures and privileges
of one in his own country. There are restraints imposed by the
circumstances of these elder lands, their necessity more than their
choice, which must still at first sight appear forbidding and superfluous
to the inhabitant of a new one. The rigid barriers of ceremony; the
appearance of studied isolation and exclusiveness; the monotonous movement
of the great social machine, organized to its minutest details, and
regulated through all its processes; these at first may lead the visitor
from the New World to suppose that he has fallen upon some region of
persevering formality, where all is frost and show, perpetual glitter and
unmeaning barrenness. But pierce these formal barriers of etiquette,
dissolve by the requisite appliances this superficial frost-work of the
English circles, and none, it is believed, will have any just reason to
complain of coldness and reserve. By the social barriers spoken of, are
not meant the distinctions of rank in European society, or the
conventional observances by which they are guarded, for these do not
constitute in fact the points of repulsion by which a stranger is apt to
be encountered. Still less do they mean those mental habits of suspicion,
mystery and indirectness, which may infect communities as well as
individuals. For these there is neither extenuation nor excuse. Rousseau
has finely said: 'Le premier pas vers le vice est de mettre du mystere aux
actions innocentes; et quiconque aime a se cacher, a tot ou tard raison de
se cacher. Un seul precepte de morale peut tenir lieu de tous les autres,
c'est celui-ci: Ne fais, ni ne dis jamais rien que tu ne veuilles que tout
le monde voie et entende. J'ai toujours regarde comme le plus estimable
des hommes ce Romain qui voulait que sa maison fut construite de maniere
qu'on vit tout ce qui s'y faisait.' Whether the Englishman would be the
first or the last to submit himself to this crucial test of _living in a
transparent house_, we do not feel called upon to decide. The barriers, of
which some justification has been attempted, are merely those formal
observances by which society aims to protect itself from the intrusion of
the unworthy and designing; which all must perceive to be in some degree
necessary, even to personal independence; and which common-sense teaches
us must be of greater extent and more rigorous application in a crowded
capital than a country village, in an English Almacks than an American
drawing-room. No one will deny that these barriers are high and strictly
guarded in England; but it would be unreasonable to impute as a fault what
is a dictate of prudence, or to infer that coldness and incivility must of
course lurk under forms which have been manifestly imposed by the
necessity of constant circumspection.
Duly impressed with these considerations, the stranger will be less
disposed to complain when arriving at any place of fashionable resort in
England; at Tonbridge, for instance, one of the most aristocratic; he
finds himself consigned to the solitary comfort of his own apartments,
without the prospect of any of those periods of social reuenion, which
elsewhere tend so strongly to break down the barriers of reserve and
facilitate the process of introduction and acquaintance. Cardinal de Retz
has told us, that the dinner-bell never fails to disperse a mob in France,
and if English travellers are to be believed, it seldom fails to bring one
together in an American hotel; but as a social summons, no such tocsin
breaks the uniformity of the English _menage_. The traveller may dine
indeed in the public room, but it is at a separate table, on his separate
repast; he is served with what viands, at what hour, he pleases, but no
contiguity of position or interchange of friendly offices can remove the
impalpable but impassable partition which divides him from his neighbors.
He feels something of the air of the _penitentiary_ in the very
refinements of his luxurious _hostelrie_. But these are incidents not
without their attendant advantages. If the stranger is thus separated from
his fellows, he is at least saved, in turn, from the attempts of fraud,
and the contact of impertinence. This is, in fact, the meaning of such
arrangements, and if not exactly palatable, they are at any rate
protective. But there are restrictions with regard to the fairer part of
creation, and his correspondence with them, which admit of no such topics
of comfort and alleviation. We nowhere find it stated, by what steps it is
permitted to the English suitor to proceed from the distant bow to the
morning call, always in the presence of the mother, the aunt, or other
watchful guardian; and thence by regular gradations to the heart and hand
of the object of his wishes. But it is enough for our stranger to know,
that whatever may be the laws of strategy, provided for such cases in
other lands, here it is necessary to begin his approaches with the father,
and to lay his lines of earliest circumvallation around the watchful
mother. These distant out-works must be mastered before there is the
slightest chance of communicating even a summons to the citadel. English
travellers, therefore, express surprise at the artless confidence with
which unmarried ladies in America commit themselves to the solitary chat
with a comparative stranger, take his hand or his arm after a few hours'
acquaintance, and expose themselves to the surprise of a _declaration_
before the extent of his means or the respectability of his connexion have
been discussed and settled. Between the merits of these different modes of
procedure, the present writer has neither the wish nor the ability to
arbitrate. They have their growth in such widely different states of
society, that the reformer must be bold who should attempt to transpose or
change them. It is sufficient for our present purpose to remark, that if
the visitor at Tonbridge should have failed to make those preliminary
advances just spoken of, his pleasures here, as an admirer of female
loveliness, will most probably be limited to seeing the fair creatures
ride on diminutive donkeys (such is the custom of Tonbridge) to the wells,
there to drink the chalybeate and promenade the _pantiles_. But what then?
If he have not the _entree_ of society, the charms of nature and the
attractions of English scenery are spread before him. His guide-book will
tell him of grotesque rocks upon lonely heaths where Druids may have
worshipped; and of Bayham Abbey, with its mouldering walls and 'antiquary
ivy,' which still attests amidst its ruins the luxury and wealth of its
ancient masters. He may look in one direction over the broad lands and
towering spires of Eridge Castle, or turning in another, soon lose amidst
the recollections of Penshurst and in the homage which the heart renders
to departed virtue, all sense of the vexatious forms and frivolous though
perhaps inseparable distinctions of modern society.
Approaching Penshurst from Tonbridge, we alight at the ancient church
which stands in close contiguity with the family mansion. A ramble amidst
its graves, a walk through its solemn aisles, a moment's pause among its
darkened monuments, seems to be but a suitable preparation for our farther
researches. It is scarcely possible to enter one of these venerable
religious edifices of the old world, which form so striking a feature in
its scenery, without feeling in some degree an impression as if the dim
and solemn fane were peopled with shadows; as if indistinct forms were
beckoning along its lonely aisles, or waiting the stranger's approach in
its deep and vaulted recesses. The building is not always of great extent,
(this of Penshurst is not so,) but the impression seems to be the result
not more of the solemn style of the building and its accessories, than of
the admirable harmony which they preserve with the recollections and
associations of all around them. Hence it may well be doubted whether, if
we could transport one of these time-honored structures to our own land,
with all its architectural peculiarities, it would have for us exactly the
meaning or the charms which it possesses at home. Our career is as yet too
brief, our land too full of the sounds of enterprise and excitement; our
interest lies too largely and exclusively in the present and the future.
The dawning light and the keen air of morning (soevus equis oriens
anhelis) are not, as represented by the poets, more uncongenial to the
spectral shapes of night, than the recent origin and energetic action of
our rising country to the dim traditions and mouldering memories which
have grown incorporate with the weather-stains and damps of these hoary
sanctuaries. At Penshurst in particular, so complete is this harmony
between the ideal and the actual, and so strongly does it bring before us
the image of the past, that it might seem no unnatural incident of our
reverie, were the grave and reverend knight, the ancient head of the
Sydneys and patron of the church, once more to enter with his retinue from
the neighboring mansion and take his seat in the family chancel. But of
that honored name nothing remains to Penshurst except the memory, and
those fading inscriptions which inform us that they who slumber here bore
it irreproachably in life, and have long since ceased from their earthly
labors. Among these, however, we look in vain for the name of Sir Philip
Sydney. He fell in a foreign land, and his country, we are told, mourned
for him with a loud and poignant lamentation. His remains were afterward
transferred to Saint Paul's, where the ruin which fell at a later period
upon the great national temple involved also the memorial of Sir Philip
Sydney. But it matters less, since the achievements of his pen and sword
have made all places where the name of England comes, his monument, and
every heart which is alive to honor, a sanctuary for his memory.
Let us then pass on to that venerable mansion which having witnessed many
of the incidents of his life may still be considered the lasting memorial
of his virtues. Before us rises a building irregular in its design, but
presenting an extensive line of front, in which square towers and pointed
gables, connected by walls of unequal height, succeed each other with that
sort of caprice which is common in mansions of the same age. Entering
through a spacious gate-way, we cross a quadrangular court, and gain
access by an unfurnished passage to the great hall, which formed the
distinguishing feature of the feudal homestead. In the vast extent of this
apartment we perceive an image of the pride which gloried more in the
number of its retainers than in the luxury or refinement of its
accommodations. Oaken tables, and benches of the same homely material,
stretched from side to side, show that our ancestors required but rude
accessories to recommend to them the substantial enjoyments of their
mighty repasts. Through lofty windows strengthened by mullions and
decorated with intricate carvings, the light streams softened by neither
blind nor curtain. The middle of the hall is occupied by a spacious
hearth, around which gathered the friends and followers of the noble
house; and the fire-utensils which still remain, and which seem destined
for the consumption of entire forests, intimate that the household gods
which presided here dealt in no stinted or penurious economy. There was
scarcely need of flue or chimney, for the smoke curling up among the
interlacing rafters of the roof, might long gather in its ample cavity
without threatening those below with serious inconvenience. It is curious
to observe that when at length so obvious a contrivance as the chimney
grew into more general use, its introduction was opposed by much the same
sort of arguments as have in other ages resisted the encroachments of
change and novelty. A moralist of the times has left us his recorded
opinion, that nothing but agues and catarrhs had followed the abandonment
of that old and genial practice which planted the fire in the middle of
the room and left the smoke to spread its sable canopy aloft. Another
peculiarity in this picture of ancient manners was the slightly-raised
platform called the dais, at the farther extremity of the hall, which
reminds us of the distinction that was preserved even in the hours of
convivial relaxation, between the family of the lord and its dependents.
Nor was this distinction in general one of place alone: in most of the
wealthy and noble houses of the period, it portended a corresponding
distinction in the quality of the food. Hence in the homely times in which
Ben Jonson has apostrophized Penshurst, it is mentioned as an honorable
instance of the hospitality of its owner, that
----'there each guest might eat,
Without his fear, and of the lord's own meat;
Where the same beer, board, and self-same wine,
That is his lordship's, shall be also mine.'
'A strange topic of praise,' remarks Gifford, 'to those who are
unacquainted with the practice of those times; but in fact the liberal
mode of hospitality here recorded was almost peculiar to this noble
person. The great dined at long tables, (they had no other in their vast
halls,) and permitted many guests to sit down with them; but the
gradations of rank and fortune were rigidly maintained, and the dishes
grew visibly coarser as they receded from the head of the table.' To sit
below the salt, is a phrase with which the romances of Scott have made us
familiar, and which originated, it seems, in the custom of placing a large
salt-cellar near the middle of the table, not more for convenience than
with reference to the distribution of the guests.
The same spirit which presided over the appointments of this stately hall
extended itself to the other apartments and remoter details of the
household. Every where there is the same reference to the power and even
the supervision of the lord, manifested in the long suites of rooms which
open upon each other, (the hall just mentioned is commanded by a small
window opening from a superior and adjacent apartment,) as if to give the
master at one glance a view of the number and a knowledge of the pursuits
of the inmates. The ideas of the architects of that age seem to have been
limited in their object, to realizing an image of the great feudal
principle of preeminence and protection on the one side, submissiveness
and reliance on the other. Hence designs and arrangements so little
consistent with the privacy and personal independence which we regard at
present as indispensable to every scheme of domestic accommodation. But
these artists were not limited alone by a defective conception of the
objects of their art; they were also embarrassed in its execution by the
unequal manner in which the different branches of it had been cultivated
and improved. It is doubtless a remark which will admit of very general
application, that the arts which may be made subservient to embellishment
and magnificence, have always far outstripped those which only conduce to
comfort and convenience. The savage paints his body with gorgeous colors,
who wants a blanket to protect him from the cold; and nations have heaped
up pyramids to enhance their sense of importance, who have dwelt
contentedly in dens and caves of the earth. Something of the same
incongruity may be remarked at Penshurst, and other English mansions of
the same age and order; where we sometimes ascend to galleries of
inestimable paintings over steps roughly hewn with the axe, and look upon
ceilings of the most exquisite and elaborate carving suspended over floors
which have never had the benefit of the joiner's plane.
In the tastes, too, and personal habits of that elder period, contrasts of
a not less striking nature might be easily pointed out. We may doubt, for
instance, whether beauty will ever array itself in apparel of more cost
and profusion than that in which the high-born dames of Wresill and
Penshurst swept through their stately apartments. Grandeur will never make
its presence felt by a greater weight of ceremony, nor ever extend a more
watchful and provident care to all the equipage of rank and ostentation.
Flattery, we may safely assert, will never offer its incense in a more
seductive form, than when it borrowed the pencil of Holbein and the lyre
of Spenser. Yet these persons were the same who trode upon floors strewn
with rushes, and deemed it a point of nicety and refinement if these were
changed sufficiently often to prevent the soiling of their clothes. They
are the same who dined without forks, and thought pewter dishes too great
a luxury to be used in common by the highest nobility; who transported
their ladies on pillions for want of coaches, and themselves struggled
through mire for want of pavements; who, with a knowledge of the
manufacture of glass, and possessed beyond ourselves of an exquisite skill
in coloring it, were yet too frugal or careless to use it freely in
lighting their houses. It was an age when the sick were plied with such
delicate restoratives as 'mummy and the flesh of hedge-hogs,' and tables
loaded with such dainties as cranes, lapwings, sea-gulls, bitterns and
curlews. Such is the unequal progress which is often maintained in habits
of undistinguishing luxury and habits of genuine refinement; so great the
difference between a state of society which aims at the gratification of
pride, and one which contents itself with diffusing comfort and promoting
security.
It would be easy, no doubt, to draw from this sketch of ancient manners
many reflections consoling to our own sense of superior comfort and
discernment. But the subject is susceptible of being viewed under aspects
not so flattering yet more instructive. Who is there gross enough to pride
himself on superior wisdom because Kepler believed that the earth was a
vast animal which breathed and reasoned, or to claim the palm of
comparative merit because Sir Thomas More listened to the babbling of a
pretended prophetess, and Luther waged what he considered no visionary but
actual combats with the powers of darkness. If then we have dwelt on the
defects of an age when civilization was still struggling with the remains
of barbarism, it is to foster no spirit of vain exultation: it is rather
to turn with increased pleasure from those stains which disfigure the
picture, to the contemplation of the more prominent and brilliant figures
which occupy the fore-ground. We remember that upon times thus backward in
many of the refinements of life, and scarcely yet freed from the dregs of
medi-oeval darkness, genius and virtue have thrown a lustre by their
presence, not merely sufficient to retrieve them from our scorn, but to
make them in some respects the object of our admiration and even envy.
Perhaps, if it were submitted to our choice to take our places at will in
any circle which genius and merit have ever dignified and adorned, none
could justly claim our preference over that of Penshurst, at the time when
Sir Philip Sydney sate there in the same group with his lovely sister, the
Countess of Pembroke, and with Edmund Spenser, the poet of 'the Faerie
Queen.' Of the first of these eminent persons, it is enough to say, that
his own age conceded to him the style of 'the Incomparable,' and that
posterity has amply ratified the title. The second is known to us by that
affectionate tribute of her brother's love, which has identified the name
of the Countess of Pembroke with his principal work; nor will the latest
readers of English literature be forgetful of one whose memory Jonson has
embalmed in the sweetest inscription that ever flowed from a poet's pen.
Of Spenser, the last but not least illustrious of the honored group, it is
only necessary to say, that as he shared the hospitality, so he has not
left unsung the praises of Penshurst. Where is the circle which shall
again combine so many claims to our admiration and respect? What age shall
presume to vaunt itself for genius or for virtue above the age of Sydney
and of Spenser?
Later times have added to the social and literary lustre of Penshurst. It
has been still farther illustrated by the talents and fame of Algernon
Sydney, whose name never fails to awaken the sympathies of every friend of
liberty for his honorable labors and unhappy fate. It has numbered among
its guests and its eulogists such men as Jonson, Waller, and Southey;
finally, even in our own time it has seen its horizon momently illuminated
by the brief but dazzling splendors of the poet Shelly. This last was of
the lineage of Sydney, and shared the talents and proud integrity, but not
the wisdom and milder virtues of his house. It only remains to say, that
the dwelling and estate of the Sydneys has passed into other hands, but
finds, it would seem, in Lord De Lisle a proprietor not insensible to the
worth nor regardless of the memory of his far-famed predecessors.
Thus the remarks intended, draw to an end. We leave the halls of
Penshurst, and the gates of that venerated mansion close behind us
forever. Even thus did they close ages ago upon him, the light and honor
of that ancient house, who, leaving it in the glow of health, in the pride
of manly beauty, in the aspirations of a high but not a haughty spirit,
was destined never to cross that paternal threshold more. The blessings
that went with him have mouldered on the lips that pronounced them; the
tears that mourned his fall have dried upon the lids from which they
streamed; all who knew and loved, all who watched and wept for Sir Philip
Sydney are silent in the dust to which he himself has long been gathered.
Yet does not his spirit commune with ours as we tread the halls once
familiar with his presence, or gaze upon those all but animated portraits
which Penshurst still numbers among the richest of its treasures? Does
nothing survive here of so much honor, so much courtesy, so much courage,
to elevate us by its example and to inspire us with new hope, ere we turn
again to tread the toilsome mazes of the world? Let the acknowledgments of
all those who with no unworthy or unreflecting spirit have traced these
paths, reply; or rather let the answer embody itself in the words of a
poet, who, while expressing his own sense of the merits of Sydney, has but
given a suitable expression to sentiments which find an echo in every
bosom: