A Month in Yorkshire Part 8

The road runs along the high ground near enough to the sea for you to hear its roar, and note the outline of the cliffs, while inland the country rolls away hilly to the dreary region described by old writers as "Black-a-moor." Another half-hour, and having pa.s.sed through Hawsker, you see a strange-looking building a long way off. It is the Abbey of Whitby. And now a view opens into the Vale of Pickering; and there, in the fields on the left, are the stones which mark where the arrows fell, when Robin Hood and Little John, who had been treated to a dinner at the Abbey, went up on the roof to gratify the monks with a specimen of their skill, and proved the goodness of their bows, and their right to rank as foremost of English archers. As your eye measures the distance, more than a mile, your admiration of the merry outlaws will brighten up, unless like the incredulous antiquary, you consider such stories as only fit to be left "among the lyes of the land."

Seen from the road, over the wall-top, the abbey reveals but few of the beautiful features which charm your eye on a nearer view. To gain admission you have to pa.s.s through an old mansion belonging to the Cholmley family, in which, by the way, there are rooms, and pa.s.sages, and a stair, weapons, furniture, and tapestry that remind you of the olden time; and in the rear a delightful garden, with a prospect along the vale of Esk. From the garden you enter a meadow, and may wander at will about the ruin.

I saw it to perfection, for the sky had cleared, and the evening sun touched the crumbling walls and ma.s.sy columns and rows of graceful arches with wondrous beauty, relieved by the lengthening shadows. The effect of the triple rows of windows is singularly pleasing, and there are carvings and mouldings still remaining that will bear the closest inspection, although it was a mason of the thirteenth century who cut them. Three distinct styles are obvious, and you will notice that the whitest stone, which is the oldest, is the least decayed. An aisle still offers you the shelter of its groined roof, the transept still shows the corbels and niches, and carved roses that fed the eyes of Robin Hood's entertainers, and on the sedilia where they sat you may now repose. Every moment you discover some new beauty, something to increase your admiration, and wonder that so much should be left of a building which has not a tree to shelter it from the storms of the sea.

For twelve hundred years the ground has been consecrated. Here the blessed St. Hilda founded a monastery, and dedicated it to St. Peter, in 658. Here it was that the famous debate was held concerning the proper time of Easter between the Christians who were converted by Culdee missionaries from Ireland before St. Augustine's visit, and those of the later time. It was St. John and the practice of the Eastern Church against St. Peter and the Western; and through the eloquent arguments of Wilfrid of Ripon, the latter prevailed.

Here Coedmon, one of the menial monks, was miraculously inspired to write the poem which immortalises his name; and here St. John of Beverley was educated. Then came the Danish pirates under Ubba, and destroyed the monastery, and the place lay waste till one of William the Conqueror's warriors, grieved to the heart on beholding the desolation, exchanged his coat of steel for a Benedictine's gown, and rebuilt the sacred house.

Few who come hither will need to be reminded of that inspiriting voyage along the coast, when

"The Abbess of St. Hilda placed With five fair nuns the galley graced,"

nor of the sisters' evening talk, while

"--Whitby's nuns exulting told, How to their house three barons bold Must menial service do; While horns blow out a note of shame, And monks cry 'Fye upon your name!

In wrath, for loss of sylvan game, St. Hilda's priest ye slew.'-- This on Ascension day, each year, While labouring on our harbour-pier, Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear.-- They told how in their convent cell A Saxon princess once did dwell, The lovely Edelfled; And how of thousand snakes, each one Was changed into a coil of stone When holy Hilda pray'd; Themselves, within their holy bound, Their stony folds had often found.

They told how seafowls' pinions fail, As over Whitby's towers they sail, And sinking down, with flutterings faint, They do their homage to the saint."

The stately tower, the glory of the ruin, fell in 1830, at the close of a reign, during which things good and beautiful were unhappily but too much neglected. A rugged heap, with lumps of stone peeping out from tufts of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, marks the spot where the fall took place; the last, it is to be hoped, that will be permitted in so striking a memorial of the architecture of the past. Standing in private grounds and surrounded by a light iron fence, it is now safe from the intrusion of cattle and from wanton spoilers.

A few yards beyond the abbey, you cross St. Mary's churchyard to the top of a long flight of steps, where a remarkable scene opens suddenly beneath. Whitby, lying on each side of the Esk, the river winding from a wooded vale, expanding to receive the numerous vessels of the inner harbour, and flowing away between the houses and the two piers to the sea. The declivity is so abrupt, that the houses appear strangely huddled together, tier above tier, in irregular ma.s.ses, as if resting one on the other, and what with the colour and variety of forms, the shipping, the great depth of the valley, the great bluffs with which it terminates, and line upon line of breakers beginning to foam at two furlongs from the sh.o.r.e, make up a scene surpa.s.singly picturesque; one that you will be in no hurry to lose sight of. If the Whitby church-goers find it toilsome to ascend nearly two hundred steps every Sunday, they have a goodly prospect for recompense, besides the service.

One wall of the church is said to be older than any portion of the abbey; but the edifice has undergone so many alterations, that meritorious architecture is not now to be looked for. A more breezy churchyard it would not be easy to find. Opposite, on the farther cliff, is a cl.u.s.ter of new stone houses, including a s.p.a.cious hotel, built to attract visitors; an enterprise promoted by King George Hudson in his palmy days.

I lingered, contemplating the view, till it was time to look for an inn; I chose the _Talbot_, and had no reason to repent my choice. On the way thither, I bought two religious ballads at a little shop, the mistress of which told me she sold "hundreds of 'em," and that they were printed at Otley. As specimens of a cla.s.s of compositions which are relished and sung as hymns by a numerous section of the community, they are eminently suggestive. Do they supply a real want? Are they harmless?

Are they edifying? Can they who find satisfaction therein be led up to something better? To close this chapter, here follows a quotation from _The Railway to Heaven_:

"O! what a deal we hear and read About Railways and railway speed, Of lines which are, or may be made; And selling shares is quite a trade.

Allow me, as an old Divine, To point you to another line, Which does from earth to heaven extend, Where real pleasures never end.

Of truth divine the rails are made, And on the Rock of Ages laid; The rails are fix'd in chairs of love, Firm as the throne of G.o.d above.

One grand first-cla.s.s is used for all, For Jew and Gentile, great and small, There's room for all the world inside, And kings with beggars here do ride.

About a hundred years or so Wesley and others said they'd go: A carriage mercy did provide, That Wesley and his friends might ride.

'Tis nine-and-thirty years, they say, Whoever lives to see next May, Another coach was added then Unto this all important train.

Jesus is the first engineer, He does the gospel engine steer; We've guards who ride, while others stand Close by the way with flag in hand.

CHORUS.

"My son, says G.o.d, give me thy heart; Make haste, or else the train will start."

The other, ent.i.tled _Daniel the Prophet_, begins with:

"Where are now the Hebrew children?

Where are now the Hebrew children?

Where are now the Hebrew children?

Saved into the promised land;"

and after enumerating the prophet, the fiery furnace, the lion, tribulation, Stephen, and the Great Apostle, in similar strain, ends:

"Where is now the patriarch Wesley?

Where is now the patriarch Wesley?

Where is now the patriarch Wesley?

Saved into the promised land."

CHORUS.

"When we meet we'll sing hallelujah, When we meet we'll shout hosannah, When we meet we'll sing for ever, Saved into the promised land."

Though good taste and conventionality may be offended at such hymns as these, it seems to me that if those who sing them had words preached to them which they could understand and hearken to gladly, they would be found not unprepared to lay hold of real truth in the end.

CHAPTER XII.

Whitby's Attractions--The Pier--The River-Mouth--The Museum-- Saurians and Ammonites--An enthusiastic Botanist--Jet in the Cliffs, and in the Workshop--Jet Carvers and Polishers--Jet Ornaments--The Quakers' Meeting--A Mechanics' Inst.i.tute-- Memorable Names--A Mooky Miner--Trip to Grosmont--The Basaltic Dike--Quarries and Ironstone--Thrifty Cottagers--Abbeys and Hovels--A Stingy Landlord--Egton Bridge--Eskdale Woods--The Beggar's Bridge.

Whitby, and not Scarborough, would be my choice had I to sojourn for a few weeks on the Yorkshire coast. What it lacks of the style and show which characterize its aristocratic neighbour, is more than made up by its situation on a river and the beauty of its neighbourhood; and I regretted not having time to stay more than one day in a place that offers so many attractions. Woods and waterfalls beautify and enliven the landscape; shady dells and rocky glens lie within an easy walk, and the trip by rail to Pickering abounds with "contentive variety." And for contrast there is always the wild Black-a-moor a few miles inland; and beyond that again the pleasant hills and vales of Cleveland.

And few towns can boast so agreeable a promenade as that from the bridge, along the s.p.a.cious quay, and out to the pier-head, a distance of nearly half a mile. Thence can be seen all the life and movement on the river, all the picturesque features of the heights on each side crowded with houses, and to seaward the foaming crests of waves chasing one another towards the land. You can see how, after rolling and plunging on the rocky bar, they rush up the stream with a mighty swell even to the bridge. In blowing weather their violence is such that vessels cannot lie safely in the lower harbour, and must shift to the upper moorings above the bridge. On the pier-head stands a lighthouse, built in the form of a fluted Doric column, crowned by a gallery and lantern; and here, leaning on the encircling parapet, you can admire the solid masonry, or watch the furious breakers, while inhaling the medicinal breath of the sea. The pier on the opposite side is more exposed, serving the purpose of a breakwater; and at times clouds of spray leap high from its outer wall, and glisten for an instant with rainbow hues in the sunshine.

It surprises a stranger on first arrival to hear what seems to him the south bank of the river spoken of as the east bank, and the north bank as the west; and it is only by taking into account the trend of the coast, and the direction of the river's course, that the cardinal points are discovered to be really in their true position, and you cease to look for sunrise in the west.

One of the buildings at the rear of the quay contains the Baths, and on the upper floor the Museum, and a good Subscription Library. The Museum, which belongs to the Literary and Philosophical Society, dates from 1823, a time when Whitby, with the sea on one side and wild tracts of moorlands on the other, was in a manner shut out from the rest of the world, and compelled to rely on its own resources. Not till 1759 was any proper road made to connect it with neighbouring towns. Warm hospitality was thereby nourished, and, as regards science, the result is highly meritorious. To say nothing of the collections which represent antiquity, ethnology, natural history, and mineralogy, the fossil specimens are especially worth attention. Side by side with a section of the strata of the coast from Bridlington to Redcar is a collection of the fossils therein contained; among which those of the immediate neighbourhood, such as may be called Whitby fossils, occupy the chief place, all cla.s.sed and labelled in a way that shows how much may be done with small means when the curator is in earnest. There are saurians in good preservation, one of which was presented to the Museum for 150_l._, by the n.o.bleman on whose estate it was found embedded in lias. The number of ammonites of all sizes is surprising. These are the headless snakes of St. Hilda's nuns, and the "strange frolicks of Nature," of philosophers in later days, who held that she formed them "for diversion after a toilsome application to serious business." Perhaps it is to some superst.i.tious notion connected with the snake-stones that the town owes the three ammonites in its coat of arms. In all, the fossil specimens in the Museum now amount to nearly nine thousand.

I had the advantage of explanations from Mr. Simpson, the curator, during my visit, and afterwards of accompanying him and some of his friends on a walk. One of the party, a botanist, was the first to discover the _Epilobium alpinum_ (alpine willow herb) in England, while walking one day on the hills near Whitby. No sooner did he set eyes on it, than, as his companions said, they thought he had taken leave of his senses, for he leaped, shouted, danced, sang, and threw his hat up in the air, and made other enthusiastic demonstrations around the plant, which, up to that time, was believed not to exist south of the Tweed. I asked him if he would have exchanged his emotions for California.

"No," he answered, "that I wouldn't! At all events, not for the first three minutes."

Besides its traffic in ship-building, alum, and stone, Whitby has a trade in works of art which makes at least its name known to fashionable society; and for this, as for its fossils, it depends on the neighbouring cliffs. For many miles along the sh.o.r.e, and at places inland, jet is found embedded with other formations. Drayton makes mention of it:

"The rocks by Moulgrave too, my glories forth to set, Out of their crany'd cleves can give you perfect jet."