In the centre of the edifice is the quadrangular court, surrounded by a series of low-vaulted arcades, once the stables of the Wicked Byron and long ago the "cloisters dim and damp" of the monks whose dust moulders now beneath the pavement. One crypt-like cell which holds the boilers for heating the mansion was Byron"s swimming-bath. In the middle of the court the ancient stone fountain, with its grotesque sculptures of saints and monsters, graven by the patient toil of the monks, still sends out sprays of coolness.
We spend delightful hours loitering in the ancient gardens of the friars and about their ruined chapel. Through its mighty window, "yawning all desolate," pours a flood of western light upon the turf that covers the holy ground where congregations knelt in worship; while, amid the dust of the priests and near the site of the altar where they "raised their pious voices but to pray," Byron"s dog lies in a tomb far handsomer than that which holds his n.o.ble master. It was in excavating Boatswain"s grave that Byron found the skull afterward used as a drinking-cup. The dog"s monument consists of a wide pedestal, surmounted by a panelled altar-stone which upholds a funeral urn and bears Byron"s familiar eulogistic inscription and the misanthropic stanzas ending with the lines,--
"To mark a friend"s remains these stones arise; I never knew but one, and here he lies."
Other panels were designed to bear the epitaph of Byron, who directed in his will (1811) that he should be buried in this spot with his valet and dog; it is said to have been discovered that the poet had made careful preparation for his entombment here, the stone trestles and slab to support his coffin being in place upon the pavement, but the sale of Newstead led to his interment elsewhere, and faithful Murray--who declined to lie here "alone with the dog"--sleeps near his master.
[Sidenote: Grounds--Recollections]
The gardens of the Abbey lie about its ancient walls: here are the fish-pools of the monks; the n.o.ble terrace; the "Young Oak" of Byron"s poem, planted by his hands and now grown into a large and graceful tree; other trees rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests here. At one side is a grove of beeches and yews, in whose gloomy recesses the Wicked Byron erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of which the rustics were so afraid that they would not go near them after nightfall, and which are still respectfully spoken of in the servants" hall as "Mr.
and Mrs. Devil." Before the mansion lies the lucid lake described in "Don Juan:" the forest that shades its sh.o.r.e and sweeps over the farther hill-side was planted by Byron to repair the spoliation of his uncle, and is called the "Poet"s Wood." Upon some of the farms of the domain live descendants of Nancy Smith, whom Irving"s readers will remember, her son having married despite his mother"s protest and reared a family.
One aged servitor claims to remember Irving"s visit, and opines "the old colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine man--for an American." He recounts some peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among the servants, which show that worthy to have been less precise in morals than in dress. The ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of one whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, and we here see Robin Hood"s cave and other reminders of the bold outlaw and his "merrie men in Lyncolne greene."
Such, briefly, is the condition of Byron"s ancestral home as it appears nearly eighty years after he saw it for the last time. Besides the charms which won his affection and made him relinquish the Abbey with such poignant regret, it holds for us an added spell in that it has been the habitation of a transcendent genius. Where Wildman"s fortune failed his wishes the present owner has supplemented his work, until the vast pile now gleams with more than its ancient splendor; and, as we take a last view through a glade whose beauty fitly frames the picture of the restored mansion, we trust that somehow and somewhere Byron knows that his hope for his beloved Newstead is accomplished:
"Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine, Thee to irradiate with meridian ray; Hours splendid as the past may still be thine, And bless thy future as thy former day."
WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT
_Miss Mulock--Butler--Somervile--Dyer--Rugby--Homes of George Eliot-- Scenes of Tales--Cheverel--Shepperton--Milly"s Grave--Paddiford-- Milby--Coventry, etc.--Characters--Incidents._
Some one has said that to write about Warwickshire is to write about Shakespeare. True, the transcending fame of the bard of Avon gives the places a.s.sociated with his life and genius pre-eminence, but the literary rambler will find in this heart of England other shrines worthy of homage. Inevitably our pilgrimage includes the Stratford scenes,--from the birthplace and the Hathaway cottage to the fane where all the world bows at Shakespeare"s tomb,--but, resolutely repressing the inclination to describe again these oft-described resorts, we fare to less familiar shrines: to the birthplace of the author of "Hudibras"
and the haunts and tomb of Somervile, poet of "The Chase" and "Rural Sports;" to the Rhynhill of Braddon"s tale and the Kenilworth of Scott"s matchless romance; to Bilton, where Addison sometime dwelt, and the Calthorpe home of Dyer, bard of "Grongar Hill" and "The Fleece," where we find his garden and a tree he planted which shades now his battlemented old church; to Rugby, where we see the dormitory of "Tom Brown" Hughes, the cla.s.s-rooms he shared with Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Dean Stanley, the grave of the beloved Dr. Arnold in the "Rugby Chapel" of his son"s poem.
At Avonmouth we find the Norton Bury of "John Halifax," and the old inn where Dinah Mulock lived while writing this her popular tale. The inn garden holds the yew hedge of the novel, "fifteen feet high and as many thick," and the sward over which crept the lame Phineas: sitting there, we see the view the boy admired,--the old Abbey tower, the mill of Abel Fletcher, the river where the famished rioters fought for the grains the grim old man had flung into the water, the green level of the Ham dotted with cattle, the white sails of the encircling Severn, the farther sweep of country extending to the distant hills,--and hear the sweet-toned Abbey chimes and the lazy whir of the mill which sounded so pleasantly in Phineas"s ears.
[Sidenote: Other Shrines--Loamshire]
[Sidenote: Birthplace and Home of George Eliot]
[Sidenote: Scenes of her Tales]
"John Halifax" was published simultaneously with another tale of Warwickshire life, "Amos Barton." We are newly come from the London homes of George Eliot and her grave on the Highgate hill-side, and now, as we traverse sweet Avonvale, we gladly remember that Shakespeare"s shire is hers as well. A jaunt of a score of miles from Stratford brings us to the scenes amid which she was born and grew to physical and mental maturity. Our course by "Avon"s stream," bowered by willows or bordered by meads, lies past the n.o.ble park where Shakespeare did not steal deer and the palace of his Justice Shallow where he was not arraigned for poaching. (We find it as impossible to keep Shakespeare out of our MS. as did Mr. d.i.c.k of "Copperfield" to keep Charles I. out of the memorial.) Beyond Charlecote is storied Warwick Castle, with the old mansion of Compton Wyniates, dwelling of the royalist knight of Scott"s "Woodstock," not far away. Beyond these again we come to the Coventry region and the frontier of the "Loamshire" whose characteristics are imaged and whose traditions, phases of life, and scenery are wrought with tender touch into poem and tale by George Eliot and so made familiar to all the world. Warwickshire scenery is not sublime; Dr. Arnold characterized it as "an endless monotony of enclosed fields and hedgerow trees." While its landscapes lack striking features, theirs is the quiet, un.o.btrusive beauty which Hawthorne loved and which for us is full of restful charm. Across sunny vales and gentle eminences we look away to the far-off Malvern Hills, whose shadowy outlines bound many a "Loamshire" landscape. We see vistas of low-lying meads with circling "lines of willows marking the watercourses;" of slumberous expanses of green or golden fields; of villages grouped about gray church-towers; of groves of venerable woods,--survivors of Shakespeare"s "Forest of Arden" which erst clothed the countryside. We find it, indeed, "worth the journey hither only to see the hedgerows,"--green, fragrant walls of hawthorn which border lane and highway, bound garden and field. With their gleaming boughs rayed by bright blossoms and festooned with interlacing vines, these barriers are often marvels of beauty and strength. Between miles of such hedgerows, and beneath lines of overshading elms, a highway running northward from the town of G.o.diva and "Peeping Tom" brings us to the great Arbury property of the Newdigates, where we find the South Farm homestead in which Robert Evans--newly appointed agent of the estate--temporarily placed his family, and where, in the room at the left of the central chimney-stack, at five o"clock on the morning of St. Cecilia"s day, 1819, his youngest child, Mary Ann, was born. It is a broad-eaved, many-gabled, two-storied structure of stuccoed stone, with trim hedges and flower-bordered garden-beds about it, a wider environment of lawn and woodland, and colonnades of the elms which figure in her poems and were already venerable when she saw the light beneath their shade. On the same estate, near the highway between Bedworth and Nuneaton, is Griff House, "the warm nest where her affections were fledged," to which she was removed at the age of four months, and where her first score years of life were pa.s.sed. It is a pleasant and picturesque double-storied mansion of brick, quaint and comfortable. Ma.s.sy ivy mantles its walls, climbs to its gables, overruns its roofs, peeps in at its tiny-paned cas.e.m.e.nts; doves coo upon its ridges. About it flowers shine from their setting in the emerald of the lawn, and great trees open their leaves to the sunshine and winds of summer. s.p.a.cious rooms lie upon either side of the entrance: of the one at the left, the novelist gives us a glimpse in "The Mill on the Floss." It is a home-like apartment, with low walls and a pleasant fireplace; it was the dining-room and sitting-room also in the days when "the little wench" Mary Ann was the pet of the household.
Here she acted charades with her brother Isaac and astonished the family by repeating stories from "Miller"s Jest Book," a treasured volume of hers in that early time. We learn from Maggie Tulliver--in whose childhood is pictured the author"s inner life as a child--that Defoe"s "History of the Devil" was another of Mary Ann"s juvenile favorites, and her relatives preserve the worn copy she used to read here before this fireplace with her father, containing the pictures of the drowning witch and the devil which little Maggie explained to Mr. Riley in "The Mill on the Floss." Here, years afterward, Mary Ann heard, from her "Methodist Aunt Samuel," the thrilling story of the girl executed for child-murder, which was the germ of the great romance "Adam Bede." The aunt, who had been a preacher in earlier life, remained at Griff for some time, and George Eliot has told us that the character of Dinah Morris grew out of her recollections of this relative. It may be noted that in real life Dinah married Seth Bede, Adam being drawn in part--like Caleb Garth--from the novelist"s father. In this same room, but a few years ago, the "Brother" of the poem, who played here at charades with little Mary Ann, suddenly expired in his chair but a few minutes after his return from "Shepperton Church." The windows of Mary Ann"s chamber command a reach of the coach-road of "Felix Holt" and a farther vista of woodlands and fields; in another chamber is the mahogany bed beneath which she was once found hidden to avoid going to school. In the roof is the attic which was Maggie Tulliver"s retreat, where she kept her wooden doll with the nails in its head, and here is the chimney-stack against which that vicarious sufferer was ground and beaten. The death of her mother, Mrs. Hackit of "Barton," made Mary Ann mistress of Griff at sixteen. At Griff"s gates stood the cottage of Dame Moore"s school, where the novelist began her education, and where years after she used to collect the children of the vicinage for religious instruction each Sabbath. A son of Mrs. Moore lately lived not far away, and had more to say in praise of "Mary Hann" than of her surviving kinsfolk, who seem ashamed of their relationship to the novelist. In a shaded part of the garden lately stood a bower with a stone table, which George Eliot doubtless had in mind when she described the finding of Casaubon"s corpse in the arbor at Lowick. The exhausted quarries in the shale close by, a resort of Mary Ann"s girlhood, are the "Red Deeps"
where Maggie met her lover; the "brown ca.n.a.l" of the poem winds through the near hollow; and beyond it, on "an apology for an elevation of ground," is the "College" workhouse to which Amos Barton walked through the sleet to read prayers. Not far distant is Arbury Hall, seat of the Newdigates, for whom the tenant of Griff was and is agent. This is the Cheverel Manor of "Gilfil," an imposing castellated structure of gray stone, with flanking towers and great mullioned windows of multishaped panes, famous for its elaborately decorated ceilings. That George Eliot had often been within this mansion is shown by her familiarity with the arrangement and ornamentation of the rooms, accurately described as scenes of many incidents of the tale. In the grounds, too, the imagery of the "Love Story" may be perfectly realized: here are the lawn where little Caterina sat with Lady Cheverel, and the shimmering pool, with its swans and water-lilies, which was searched for her corpse the morning of her flight; at a little distance we find "Moss-lands," and the cottage of the gardener to which the dead body of Wybrow was carried; and, farther away, the spot under giant limes where the poor girl, coming to meet her recreant lover "with a dagger in her dress and murder in her heart," found him lying dead in the path, his hand clutching the dark leaves, his eyes unheeding the "sunlight that darted upon them between the boughs." A touching incident in the life of a former owner of Arbury was made the plot of Otway"s tragedy "The Orphan."
[Sidenote: Shepperton Church--Milly"s Grave]
A mile northward from Griff is the quaint church of Chilvers Coton, where Mary Ann was christened at the age of a week, where a little later her "devotional patience" was fostered by smuggled bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and where as child and woman she worshipped for twenty years. It is a ma.s.sive stone edifice with Gothic windows, one of them being a memorial of the wife of Isaac Evans, and with a square tower rising above its low roofs; at one corner, "a flight of stone steps, with their wooden rail running up the outer wall," still leads to the children"s gallery as in the days of Gilfil and Amos Barton, for this is the Shepperton Church of the tales. Within we see the memorials of Rev. Gilpin Ebdell (thought to be Gilfil) and of the original of Mrs. Farquhar; the place where Gilfil read his sermons from ma.n.u.script "rather yellow and worn at the edges,"
and where Barton later "preached without book." About the renovated fane is the church-yard, with its gra.s.sy mounds and mouldering tombstones, one of which, protected by a paling and shaded by leafy boughs, is crowned by a funeral urn and marks the spot where Milly was laid,--"the sweet mother with her baby in her arms,"--the grave to which Barton came back an old man with Patty supporting his infirm steps. Its inscription is to "Emma, beloved wife of Revd. John Gwyther, B.A.," curate here in George Eliot"s girlhood: during his inc.u.mbency the community felt aggrieved for his wife on account of the prolonged stay at the parsonage of a strange woman who, years after, was described as Countess Czerlaski by one who as a child had seen her here. Not far from Milly"s monument the parents of George Eliot lie in one grave, with Isaac, the "Brother"
of her poem, sleeping near. By the church-yard wall stands the pleasant ivy-grown parsonage to which Gilfil brought his dark-eyed bride, and where, after brief months of happiness, he lived the long years of solitude and sorrow. We see the cosy parlor--smelling no longer of his or Barton"s pipe--where the lonely old man sat with his dog, and above, its pretty window overlooking the garden, the chamber where he tenderly cherished the dainty belongings of his dead wife with the unused baby-clothes her fingers had fashioned, and where, in another tale, is laid one of the most affecting and high-wrought scenes in all fiction, the death of Milly Barton.
[Sidenote: Milby--Liggins]
A half-mile distant lies the village of Attleboro, where, at the age of five, Mary Ann was sent to Miss Lathorn"s school; and a mile southward from Griff, in a region blackened by pits, is the town of Bedworth,--"dingy with coal-dust and noisy with looms,"--whose men "walk with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine," and whose haggard, overworked women and dirty children and cottages are pathetically pictured in "Felix Holt." Obviously the changes of the half-century which has elapsed since George Eliot knew its wretchedness have wrought little improvement in this place, over which her nephew is rector: we see pale, hungry faces in the streets, squalor in the poor dwellings, proofs of pinching poverty everywhere. A little beyond Chilvers Coton we find the market-town of Nuneaton, the Milby of the romances. The shaking of hand-looms is less noticeable now than in George Eliot"s school-days here, factories having supplanted the cottage industry; but the dingy, smoky town, with its environment of flat fields, is still "nothing but dreary prose." Here we find, near the church, "The Elms" of her girlhood, a tall brick edifice embowered with ivy; on its garden side, the long low-ceiled school-room, with its heavy beams, broad windows, and plain furniture, where she was four years a pupil; the dormitory whence she beheld the riot which she describes in the election-riot at Treby in "Felix Holt." Another vision of her girlhood here was a "tall, black-coated young clergyman-in-embryo," Liggins by name, who afterward claimed the authorship of her books and so far imposed upon the public that a subscription was made for him. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the last to relinquish the belief that Liggins was George Eliot. He spent most of his time drinking, but did his own house-work, and was found by a deputation of literary admirers washing his slop-basin at the pump. All about us at Nuneaton lie familiar objects: the cosy Bull Inn is the "Red Lion" where, in the opening of "Janet"s Repentance," Dempser is discovered in theologic discussion, and from whose window he harangued the anti-Tyranite mob; the fine old church, with its beautiful oaken carvings, is the sanctuary where Mr. Crewe, in brown Brutus wig, delivered his "inaudible sermons," and where Mr. Elty preached later; adjoining is the parsonage, erst redolent of Crewe"s tobacco, where Janet helped his deaf wife to spread the luncheon for the bishop, and where, in the time of Elty, Barton came to the sessions of the "Clerical Meeting and Book Society;" on this Church street, "Orchard Street" of Eliot, a quaint stuccoed house with cas.e.m.e.nt windows was Dempser"s home, whence he thrust his wife at midnight into the darkness and cold; the arched pa.s.sage near by is that through which she fled to the haven of Mrs. Pettifer"s house. A little way westward amid the pits is Stockingford, "Paddiford" of the tale, and the chapel where Mr. Tyran preached. A cousin of George Eliot"s was recently a coal-master in this vicinity.
[Sidenote: Coventry--Birds Grove]
[Sidenote: Coventry Friends]
Eight miles from Griff is Coventry, where our companion is one who had met Rossetti there forty years before. George Eliot was sometime a pupil of Miss Franklin"s school, lately standing in Little Park Street, and saw there that lady"s father, whom she described as Rev. Rufus Lyon of Treby Chapel. His diminutive legs, large head, and other peculiarities are yet remembered by some who were in the school; his home is accurately pictured in "Felix Holt." In the Foleshill suburb we find the stone villa of Birds Grove, which was the home of the novelist after Isaac Evans had succeeded his father at Griff. The house has been enlarged, but the apartments she knew are little changed: a plain little room above the entrance, whose window looked beyond the tree-tops to the superb spire of St. Michael"s Church,--where Kemble and Siddons were married,--was her study, in which, despite her tasks as her father"s housewife and nurse, she accomplished much literary work. At the right of the window stood her desk, with an ivory crucifix above it, and here her translation of Strauss"s "Leben Jesu," undertaken through the persuasion of her friends at Rosehill, was written. Some portions of this work she found distressing; she declared to Mrs. Bray that nothing but the sight of the Christ image enabled her to endure dissecting the beautiful story of the crucifixion. Adjoining the study is her modest bedchamber, and beyond it that of her father, where during many months of sickness she was his sole attendant, often sitting the long night through at his bedside with her hand in his. The grounds are little changed, save that the occupant has removed much of the foliage which formerly shrouded the mansion, but some of George Eliot"s favorite trees remain on the lawn. Half a mile away is the pretty villa of Rosehill, whilom the home of Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara Hennel, who were the most valued friends of the novelist"s young-womanhood and exerted the strongest influence upon her life. Her letters to these friends const.i.tute a great part of Cross"s "Life." At Rosehill she met Chapman, Mackay, Robert Owen, Combe, Thackeray, Herbert Spencer, and others of like genius, and here she spent a day with Emerson and wrote next day, "I have seen Emerson--the first _man_ I have ever seen." Sara Hennel testifies that Emerson was impressed with Miss Evans and declared, "That young lady has a serious soul." When he asked her, "What one book do you like best?" and she replied, "Rousseau"s Confessions," he quickly responded, "So do I: there is a point of sympathy between us." After her father"s death she was for sixteen months a resident at Rosehill, and there wrote, among other things, the review of Mackay"s "Progress of the Intellect." Financial reverses caused the Brays long ago to relinquish this beautiful home, but some of this household were lately living in another suburb of Coventry and receiving an annuity bequeathed by George Eliot. Here, too, lately resided another old-time friend, the Mary Sibtree of the novelist"s Coventry days, to whom were addressed some of the letters used by Cross.
In 1851 George Eliot left this circle of friends to become an inmate of Chapman"s house in London, returning to them for occasional visits for the next few years; then came her union with Lewes, after which the loved scenes of her youth knew her no more in the flesh; but the allusions to them which run like threads of gold through all her work show how oft she revisited them in "shadowy spirit form."
YORKSHIRE SHRINES: DOTHEBOYS HALL AND ROKEBY
_Village of Bowes--d.i.c.kens--Squeers"s School--The Master and his Family--Haunt of Scott._
[Sidenote: Bowes--Dotheboys Hall]
From the familiar shrines of c.u.mberland, the lakeside haunts of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, a journey across a wild moorland region--from whose higher crags we see through the fog-rifts the German Ocean and the Irish Sea--brings us into Gretavale, on the northern border of great Yorkshire. In the upper portion of the valley, among the outlying spurs of the Pennines, the storied Greta flows at the foot of a bleak, treeless hill on whose summit we find the village of Bowes. This was the Lavatrae of the Romans, who for three centuries had here a station, and remains of great Roman works may still be traced in the vicinage; but to the literary pilgrim Bowes is chiefly of interest as representing "the delightful village of Dotheboys" described in Squeers"s advertis.e.m.e.nt of his school in "Nicholas Nickleby." The aspect of the village is dreary and desolate in the extreme. A single street, steep and straight, bordered by straggling houses of dull gray stone, extends along the hill, which is crowned by the church and an ancient castle: the dun moors decline steeply on every side, leaving the treeless village dismal and bare and often exposed to a wind "fit to knock a man off his legs," as Squeers said to Nicholas. In the midst of the village stands a cosy inn, where d.i.c.kens for some time lodged and was visited by John Browdie, and where we are shown the wainscoted apartment in which some portion of "Nickleby" was noted. At the time of d.i.c.kens"s sojourn here, Bowes was the centre of the pernicious cheap-school system which he came to expose, and half the houses of the village were "academies" similar to that of Squeers: among them one is pointed out as being the place where Cobden was a pupil. But most interesting of all is the large house at the top of the hill which d.i.c.kens depicted as Dotheboys Hall,--by which name it was long known among the older dwellers of the place,--a long, heavy, two-storied, dingy structure of stone, with many windows along its front, and presenting, despite its bowering vines and trees, an aspect so chill and cheerless that one can scarcely conceive of a more depressing domicile for the neglected children who once thronged it. Through an archway at one end could be seen the pump which was frozen on the first morning of Nicholas"s stay, and beyond it the garden which, by a surprising mistake, d.i.c.kens represents a pupil to be weeding on a freezing winter"s day.
[Sidenote: Squeers]
A few residents of the neighborhood remember the "measther" of Dotheboys Hall; his name, like Squeers"s, was of one syllable and began with S; in person he was not like Squeers, nor was he an ignorant man. A quondam pupil of the school informed the writer that Johnny S. was fairly drawn as Wackford Squeers, but Miss S. was a young lady of considerable refinement and was in no sense like the spiteful f.a.n.n.y of the tale.
Squeers had the largest of the schools, and, besides rooms in the adjoining house, he hired barns in which to lodge his many pupils. A farm attached to his house was cultivated by the scholars, whose food was chiefly oatmeal: scanty diet and liberal flogging was the portion of all who displeased the master. According to local belief, this school was not so bad as some of its neighbors, and no one of the schools realized all the wretchedness which d.i.c.kens portrays; yet, despite the author"s avowal that Squeers was a representative of a cla.s.s, and not an individual, the popular identification of this school as the typical Dotheboys, and the odium consequent thereupon, wrought its speedy ruin and the death of the master and mistress. The latter result is to be deplored, for the reason that in the case of this pair the abhorrence seems to have been not wholly deserved. Two charges, at least, which affected them most painfully--that of goading the boys to suicide and that of feeding them upon the flesh of diseased cattle--were, by the testimony of their neighbors, unfounded so far as the proprietors of this school were concerned. Relatives of Squeers lately occupied Dotheboys Hall, which had become a farm-house, and other relatives and descendants are respectable denizens of the vicinity. d.i.c.kens"s exposure of the schools led to their extinction and to the consignment of Bowes to its present somnolent condition. In the village church-yard lie the lovers whose simultaneous deaths were commemorated by Mallet in "Edwin and Emma." At Barnard Castle, a few miles away, the prototype of Newman Noggs is still traditionally known, and known as "a gentleman."
[Sidenote: Rokeby]
The abounding beauties of the Greta have been painted by Turner and sung by Scott, both frequenters of this vale. From Bowes, a ramble along the lovely stream, between steep tree-shaded banks where it chafes and "greets" over the great rocks, and through mossy dells where it softly murmurs its content, brings us to the demesne of Rokeby, where Scott laid the scene of his famous poem. On every hand amid this region of enchantment, in glade and grove, in riven cliff and headlong torrent, in sunny slope and dingle"s shade, we recognize the poetic imagery of Scott. Every turn reveals some new vista, rendered doubly delightful by the romantic a.s.sociations with which the great poet has invested it. To the poet himself Greta"s banks were potent allurements, and they were his habitual haunts during his sojourns in the valley. A descendant of the friend whom Scott visited here and to whom the poem is inscribed, points out to us a natural grotto, in the precipitous bank above the stream, where the poet often sat, and where some part of "Rokeby" was pondered and composed amid the scenery it portrays.
STERNE"S SWEET RETIREMENT
_Sutton--Crazy Castle--Yorick"s Church--Parsonage--Where Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were written--Reminiscences-- Newburgh Hall--Where Sterne died--Sepulchre._
At historic old York we are fairly in the midst of great Yorkshire: standing upon the tower of its colossal cathedral, we overlook half that ancient county. At our feet lie the quaint olden streets depicted in Collins"s "No Name," where erstwhile dwelt Porteus, Defoe, Wallis, Lindley Murray, Mrs. Stannard, Poole of "Synopsis Criticorum," Burton the author immortalized by Sterne as "Dr. Slop." Below us we see the feudal castle where Eugene Aram was hanged, the ancient city wall with its gate-ways and battlements, the ruins of mediaeval shrine and of Roman citadel and necropolis; abroad we behold the vale which Bunsen p.r.o.nounces the "most beautiful in the world (the vale of Normandy excepted)," with its streams, its mosaics of green and golden fields and sombre woods, its distant border of savage moors and uplands. The Ouse, shining like a ribbon of silver, flows at our feet; we may trace its course from the hills of Craven on the one hand, while southward we behold it "slow winding through the level plain" on its way to the sea; into its valley we see the Wharfe flowing from the lovely dale where Collyer grew to manhood, and, farther away, the Aire emerging from the dreary region where lived the sad sisters Bronte and wove the sombre threads of their lives into romance. The Foss flows toward us from the northeast, and our view along its valley embraces the region where dwelt Sydney Smith, while rising in the north are the Hambleton Hills, which shelter the vale where Sterne wrote the books that made him famous.
Indeed, this region of York is pervaded with memories of that prince of sentimentalists: in the great minster beneath us we find the tomb and monument of his grandfather, once archbishop of this diocese; in the carved pulpit of the minster Sterne preached as prebendary, and here he delivered his last sermon; his uncle was a dignitary of the old minster; his "indefatigably prolific" mother was native to this region; his wife was born here, and was first seen and loved by Sterne within sound of the glorious minster bells; most of his adult life was pa.s.sed within sight of the minster towers.
[Sidenote: Crazy Castle]
[Sidenote: Sterne"s Church]
At Sutton, Sterne"s first living, the pilgrim finds little to reward his devotion. Sterne"s life here was obscure and, save in preparation, unproductive. Skelton Castle was then the seat of his college friend Stevenson, author of "Crazy Tales," etc., who was the Eugenius of "Shandy," and to whom the "Sentimental Journey" was inscribed. Here Sterne found a library rich in rare treatises upon unusual subjects, in which, during his stay at Sutton, he spent much time and acquired a fund of odd and fanciful learning which const.i.tuted in part his equipment for his work. We find this castle nearer the stern coast which Yorkshire opposes to the endless thunders of the North Sea. Once a Roman stronghold, then a feudal fortress and castle of the Bruces, later a country-seat, it has since Sterne"s time been rebuilt and modernized out of all semblance to the "Crazy Castle" of his letters. It is believed that only a few of the rooms remain substantially as he knew them. A tradition is preserved to the effect that during his visits here he bribed the servants to tie the vane with the point toward the west, because Eugenius would never leave his bed while an east wind prevailed.
A near-by hill is called Sterne"s Seat, but time has left here little to remind us of the sentimental "Yorick" who long haunted the place. It is only at c.o.xwold, fourteen miles from York and in the deeper depths of the shire, that we find many remaining objects that were a.s.sociated with his work and with that portion of his life which chiefly concerns the literary world. A result of the publication of the first part of "Tristram Shandy" was the presentation of this living to its author, and his removal to this sequestered retreat, which was to be his home during his too few remaining years. The hamlet has now a railway station, but the usual approach is by a rustic highway which conducts to and const.i.tutes the village street. Within the hamlet we find a low-eaved road-side inn, and by it the shaded green where the rural festivals were held, and where, to celebrate the coronation of George III., Sterne had an ox roasted whole and served with great quant.i.ties of ale to his parishioners. Just beyond, Sterne"s church stands intact upon a gentle eminence, overlooking a lovely pastoral landscape bounded by verdant hills. The church dates from the fifteenth century and is a pleasing structure of perpendicular Gothic style, with a shapely octagonal tower embellished with fretted pinnacles and a parapet of graceful design. One window has been filled with stained gla.s.s, but Sterne"s pulpit remains, and the interior of the edifice is scarcely changed since he preached here his quaint sermons. The walls are plain; the low ceiling is divided by beams whose intersections are marked by grotesque bosses; the whole effect is depressing, and to the sensitive "Yorick"--haunted as he was by habitual dread that his ministrations might provoke a fatal pulmonary hemorrhage--it must have been dismal indeed. Among the effigied tombs of the Fauconbergs which line the chancel we find that of Sterne"s friend who gave him this living.
[Sidenote: Shandy Hall]