We chose the sunniest morning we could for our visit to Clifford’s
Tower, which remains witness of the Norman castle the Conqueror built
and rebuilt to keep the Danish-Anglian-Roman-British town in awe. But
the tower was no part of the original castle, and only testifies of it
by hearsay. That was built by Roger de Clifford, who suffered death with
his party chief, the Earl of Lancaster, when Edward of York took the
city, and it is mainly memorable as the refuge of the Jews whom the
Christians had harried out of their homes. They had grown in numbers and
riches, when the Jew-hate of 1190 broke out in England, as from time
to time the Jew-hate breaks out in Russia now, to much the same cruel
effect. They were followed and besieged in the castle, and, seeing that
they must be captured, they set fire to the place, and five hundred slew
themselves. Some that promised to be Christians came out and were killed
by their brethren in Christ. In New York the Christians have grown
milder, and now they only keep the Jews out of their clubs and their
homes.
[Illustration: CLIFFORD’S TOWER]
The Clifford Tower leans very much to one side, so that as you ascend it
for the magnificent view from the top you have to incline yourself the
other way, as you do in the Tower of Pisa, to help it keep its balance.
The morning of our visit, so gay in its forgetfulness of the tragical
past, we found the place in charge of an old soldier, an Irishman who
had learned, as custodian, a professional compassion for those poor Jews
of nine hundred years ago, and, being moved by our confession of our
nationality, owned to three “nevvies” in New Haven. So small is the
world and so closely knit in the ties of a common humanity and a common
citizenship, native and adoptive!
The country around York looked so beautiful from Clifford’s Tower that
we would not be satisfied till we had seen it closer, and we chose a
bright, cool September afternoon for our drive out of the town and over
the breezy, high levels which surround it. The first British capital
could hardly have been more nobly placed, and one could not help
grieving that the Ouse should have indolently lost York that early
dignity by letting its channel fill up with silt and spoil its
navigation. The Thames managed better for York’s upstart rival London,
and yet the Ouse is not destitute of sea or river craft. These were of
both steam and sail, and I myself have witnessed the energy with which
the reluctance of the indolent stream is sometimes overcome. I do not
suppose that anywhere else, when the wind is low, is a vessel madly
hurled through the water at a mile an hour by means of a rope tied
to its mast and pulled by a fatherly old horse under the intermittent
drivership of two boys whom he could hardly keep to the work. I loved
the banks of a stream where one could see such a triumph of man over
nature, and where nature herself was so captivating. All that grassy
and shady neighborhood seemed a public promenade, where on a Sunday one
could see the lower middle classes in their best and brightest, and
it had for all its own the endearing and bewitching name of Ings. Why
cannot we have Ings by the Hudson side?
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