HOLMCASTLE MANOR.
SPITE of the natural desire of the reader to plump at once into the
_crême de la crême_ of good society, and to accompany Miss Strong
and her _protégée_ into the company of a live Duchess (Dowager),
I feel it necessary, for the purposes of this narrative, to make him
or her aware, first and foremost, whence Miss Manwaring came, who she
was, what was her family, what her belongings and previous history, and
to explain why it was that she was the recipient of royal favour, and
tenant for life, if so she willed it, of one of the very best sets of
apartments in the noble old Royal Palace of Hampton Court.
Evelyn Manwaring, then, was the only daughter of one Cuthbert Piercey
Manwaring, a gentleman of very ancient family, and of competent,
although not very large estate. Holmcastle Manor, the family place, was
situated amidst beautiful, if somewhat wild and dreary scenery on the
Northern border of the County of Lancaster. Of old time the Manwarings
had been great Seigneurs in those parts, and had owned vast tracts of
fell and fen and moorland, besides more fertile acres; but the loyalty
of some members of the family, who were cavaliers to a man, and the
extravagance of others, had sadly wasted the ancestral patrimony, so
that when Cuthbert Piercey Manwaring succeeded his uncle, Algernon,
the family estate was reduced to the narrower bounds of the parish of
Holmcastle, to a tract of moorland and fell above it which went by the
name of Stanwick Chase, and to a couple of outlying rich farms in the
distant flat country in the neighbourhood of Ormskirk. The Manor-house
of Holmcastle, which had succeeded an ancient castle, whereof the
earthworks and a few shapeless masses of weather-beaten stone were all
that remained, crowned a wooded knoll which rose from nearly the centre
of Arrow Dale; and round nearly three sides of the eminence, which in
places descended precipitously to the river, rippled and raced and
roared and rushed the swift Arrow--now plunging into deep rock-pools,
now flowing over stony shallows, now overhung by huge wych-elms, the
queen of all North-country trees, and now dominated by scarps of grey
or reddish rock. Trout abounded in the deep pools, or lay poising, head
up-stream, in the pebbly shallows, and now and then a noble salmon
might be seen from the old grey bridge below the village of Holmcastle,
which had made its way up past the filth of Preston, and other
manufacturing towns, from the lordly Ribble, whereof the Arrow was one
of the principal tributaries. On either side the valley, and at varying
distances from the river, the arable and pasture land ran up to meet
the broad swathes of brown or purple heather of the stately, swelling
moors; and towards the end of the valley--or “dale,” as the folks
called it--was seen the almost precipitous hill, or rather mountain,
called “Stanwick Edge,” with its bare crest of shivered crags. Here and
there small beck-formed, lateral valleys led up from the Arrow amongst
the hills, and the sides of these were clothed with mountain-ashes,
birches, hollies, and stunted oaks. Far up one of these, on a sort of
platform in the midst of an amphitheatre of solemn hills, which had its
entrance towards the South-West, stood a monument of remote and unknown
antiquity, a monolith of grey, weather-stained stone, known far and
wide to the country folks and dalesmen as the “Long Man,” or more
correctly the “Long _Maen_,” of Stanwick.
The “Manor,” as the Manwaring family house was called, had been
substantially rebuilt in the early part of the last century, and had no
particular pretensions in itself to beauty or picturesqueness; but its
position was perfect, the views from it were delightful, and attached
to it was an ill-kept, but charming old-fashioned garden, with stone
terraces, flights of steps, a sun-dial, and some quaint mutilated
statues--
“Bold Neptune, Plutarch, and Nicodemus,
All standing naked in the open air.”[1]
There was no park, properly so called, but the neighbouring fields,
with their magnificent timber trees, had quite a park-like appearance.
The village of Holmcastle, with its Rectory and small ancient Church,
slept in the valley hard by, at an elevation but a little above the
river, though at a considerable depth below the mansion, and this
circumstance gave the latter a completely feudal appearance. Inside,
the Manor did not differ much from other country houses of the better
class of the same date, save that it contained more family portraits
than usual, and that it had a fine entrance hall, and a remarkably
curious and interesting Library! Upon entering the room, which opened
out of a long corridor upstairs, not a book was visible, but the walls
were panelled in dark Spanish chestnut wood, each panel being divided
from the next by a handsome pilaster. The visitor would then be shown
that, by applying a curiously shaped key which lay on a central table
to a groove in each pilaster, the latter could be turned back, and
then the neighbouring panel flew open, discovering shelves filled with
ancient books, not one of which was of less ancient date than the year
1720, while many of them were of far greater antiquity. One of these
compartments was reserved for books of poetry, another for divinity and
theology, another for the classics, and so on, all the books being in
admirable preservation, and well chosen by the Sir Miles Manwaring who,
on the destruction of the older mansion by fire, had rebuilt the house
in its present form. Underneath the book-shelves were drawers filled
with ancient charters, title-deeds, and other archives of the past.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Father Prout.]