Over the Ocean Part 10

Among the curiosities in this natural artificial region was a wonderful tree, a sort of stiff-looking willow, but which our conductor changed by touching a secret spring into a _veritable_ weeping willow, for fine streams of water started from every leaf, twig, and shoot of its copper branches--a most novel and curious style of fountain.

But we must pa.s.s on to the great conservatory, another surprise in this realm of wonders. Only think of a conservatory covering more than an acre of ground, with an arched roof of gla.s.s seventy feet high, and a great drive-way large enough for a carriage and four horses to be driven right through from one end to the other, a distance of two hundred and seventy-six feet, as Queen Victoria's was, on her visit to the estate.

Before the erection of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, this conservatory was the most magnificent building of the kind in England, and was designed and built by Paxton, the duke's gardener, afterwards the architect of the Crystal Palace. Here one might well fancy himself, from the surroundings, transferred by Fortunatus's wishing cap into the tropics. Great palm trees lifted their broad, leafy crowns fifty feet above our heads; slender bamboos rose like stacks of lances; immense cactuses, ten feet high, bristled like fragments of a warrior's armor; the air was fragrant with the smell of orange trees; big lemons plumped down on the rank turf from the dark, glossy foliage of the trees that bore them; opening ovoids displayed stringy mace holding aromatic nutmegs; wondrous vegetation, like crooked serpents, wound off on the damp soil; great pitcher-plants, huge broad leaves of curious colors, looking as if cut from different varieties of velvet, and other fantastic wonders of the tropics, greeted us at every turn. Here was the curious sago palm; there rose with its cl.u.s.ters of fruit the date palm; again, great cl.u.s.ters of rich bananas drooped pendent from their support; singular shrubs, curious gra.s.ses, wonderful leaves huge in size and singular in shape, and wondrous trees _as large as life_, rose on every side, so that one might readily imagine himself in an East Indian jungle or a Brazilian forest,--

"And every air was heavy with the sighs Of orange groves,"--

or the strong, spicy perfume of strange trees and plants unknown in this cold climate.

Over seventy thousand square feet of gla.s.s are between the iron ribs of the great roof of this conservatory, and within its ample s.p.a.ce the soil and temperature are carefully arranged to suit the nature and characters of the different plants it contains, while neither expense nor pains are spared to obtain and cultivate these vegetable curiosities in their native luxuriance and beauty.

I will not attempt a particular description of the other green-houses.

There are thirty in all, and each devoted to different kinds of fruits or flowers--a study for the horticulturist or botanist. One was devoted entirely to medicinal plants, another to rare and curious flowering plants, gay in all the hues of the rainbow, and rich with perfume; a Victoria Regia house, just completed, of octagon form, and erected expressly for the growth of this curious product of South American waters; magnificent graperies, four or five in all, and seven hundred feet long, with the green, white, and purple cl.u.s.ters depending in every direction and in various stages of growth, from blossom to perfection; pineries containing whole regiments of the fruit, ranged in regular ranks, with their martial blades erect above their green and yellow coats of mail. Peach-houses, with the pink blossoms just bursting into beauty, were succeeded by the fruit, first like vegetable grape-shot, and further on in great, luscious, velvet-coated spheroids at maturity, as it drops from the branches into netting spread to catch it.

In the peach-houses is one tree, fifteen feet high, and its branches extending on the walls a distance of over fifty feet, producing, some years, over a thousand peaches. Then there are strawberry-houses, apricot, vegetable, and even a house for mushrooms, besides the extensive kitchen gardens, in which every variety of ordinary vegetable is grown; all of these nurseries, gardens, hot-houses, and conservatories are well cared for, and kept in excellent order.

The great conservatory is said to have cost one hundred thousand pounds; it is heated by steam and hot water, and there are over six miles of piping in the building. The duke's table, whether he be here or at London, is supplied daily with rare fruits and the other products of these _hot-beds of luxury_.

But the reader will tire of reading, as does the visitor of viewing, the endless evidences of the apparently boundless wealth that almost staggers the conception of the American tourist fresh from home, with _his_ ideas of what const.i.tutes wealth and power in a republican country.

After having visited, as we have, one of the most magnificent modern palaces of one of the most princely of modern England's n.o.blemen, it was a pleasant transition to ride over to one of the most perfect remnants of the habitations of her feudal n.o.bility, Haddon Hall, situated in Derbyshire, a few miles from Chatsworth.

This fine old castellated building is one from which can be formed a correct idea of those old strongholds of the feudal lords of the middle ages; indeed, it is a remnant of one of those very strongholds, a crumbling picture of the past, rich in its fine old coloring of chivalry and romance, conjuring up many poetic fancies, and putting to flight others, by the practical realities that it presents in the shape of what would be now positive discomfort in our domestic life, but which, in those rude days, was magnificence.

Haddon Hall is in fact a very fine example of an old baronial hall in ye times of old, and portions of the interior appear as though it had been preserved in the exact condition it was left by its knightly occupants three hundred years ago.

The embattled turrets of Haddon, rising above the trees, as it stood on its rocky platform, overlooking the little River Wye and the surrounding country, seemed only to be wanting the knightly banner fluttering above them, and we almost expected to see the flash of a spear-head in the sunlight, or the glitter of a steel helmet from the ancient but well-preserved walls. We climbed up the steep ascent to the great arched entrance, surmounted with the arms, in rude sculpture, of the Vernon family, who held the property for three centuries and a half; and beneath that arch, where warlike helmets, haughty brows, and beauteous ladies, the n.o.blest and bravest blood of England have pa.s.sed, pa.s.sed we.

No warder's horn summons the man-at-arms to the battlements above; no drawbridge falls, with ringing clang, over the castle moat, or pointed portcullis slowly raises its iron fangs to admit us; but for hundreds of years have hundreds of feet pressed that threshold of stone--the feet of those of our own time, and of those who slumbered in the dust hundreds of years ere we trod the earth; and we mark, as we pa.s.s through the little door, cut through one of the broad leaves of the great gates, that in the stony threshold is the deep impression of a human foot, worn by the innumerable steppings that have been made upon the same spot by mailed heels, ladies' slippers, pilgrims' sandals, troopers' boots, or the leather and steel-clad feet of our own time. Pa.s.sed the portal, and we were in the grand, open court-yard, with its quaint ornaments of stone carving, its stone pavement, and entrances to various parts of the building.

There is a picture, ent.i.tled "Coming of Age in the Olden Time," which is familiar to many of my readers, and which is still common in many of our print-stores; an engraving issued by one of the Scotch Art Unions, I believe, which was brought forcibly to my mind, as I stood in this old court-yard of Haddon Hall, there were so many general features that were similar, and it required no great stretch of the imagination for me to place the young n.o.bleman upon the very flight of steps he occupies in the picture, and to group the other figures in the parts of the s.p.a.ce before me, which seemed the very one they had formerly occupied; but my dreams and imaginings were interrupted by a request to come and see what remained of the realities of the place.

First, there was the great kitchen, all of stone, its fireplace big enough to roast an ox; a huge rude table or dresser; the great trough, or sink, into which fresh water was conducted: and an adjoining room, with its huge chopping-block still remaining, was evidently the larder, and doubtless many a rich haunch of venison, or juicy baron of beef, has been trimmed into shape here. Another great vaulted room, down a flight of steps, was the beer cellar; and a good supply of stout ale was kept there, as is evinced by the low platform of stone-work all around, and the stone drain to carry off the drippings. Then there is the bake-house, with its moulding-stone and ovens, the store-rooms for corn, malt, &c., all indicating that the men of ye olden times liked good, generous living.

The Great Hall, as it is called, where the lord of the castle feasted with his guests, still remains, with its rough roof and rafters of oak, its minstrel gallery, ornamented with stags' antlers; and there, raised above the stone floor a foot or so, yet remains the dais, upon which rested the table at which sat the n.o.bler guests; and here is the very table itself, three long, blackened oak planks, supported by rude X legs--the table that has borne the boars' heads, the barons of beef, gilded peac.o.c.ks, haunches of venison, flagons of ale, and stoups of wine. Let us stand at its head, and look down the old baronial hall: it was once noisy with mirth and revelry, music and song: the fires from the huge fireplaces flashed on armor and weapons, faces and forms that have all long since crumbled into dust; and here is only left a cheerless, barn-like old room, thirty-five feet long and twenty-five wide, with time-blackened rafters, and a retainers' room, or servants'

hall, looking into it.

Up a ma.s.sive staircase of huge blocks of stone, and we are in another apartment, a room called the dining-room, used for that purpose by more modern occupants of the Hall; and here we find portraits of Henry VII.

and his queen, and also of the king's jester, Will Somers. Over the fireplace are the royal arms, and beneath them, in Old English character, the motto,--

=Drede G.o.d, and honor the King.=

Up stairs, six semicircular steps of solid oak, and we are in the long gallery, or ball-room, one hundred and ten feet long and eighteen wide, with immense bay-windows, commanding beautiful views, the sides of the room wainscoted in oak, and decorated with carvings of the boar's head and peac.o.c.k, the crests of the Vernon and Manners families; carvings of roses and thistles also adorn the walls of this apartment, which was said to have been built in Queen Elizabeth's time, and there is a curious story told of the oaken floor, which is, that the boards were all cut from _one_ tree that grew in the garden, and that the roots furnished the great semicircular steps that lead up to the room. The compartments of the bay-windows are adorned with armorial bearings of different owners of the place, and from them are obtained some of those ravishing landscape views for which England is so famous--silvery stream, spanned by rustic bridges, as it meandered off towards green meadows; the old park, with splendid group of oaks; the distant village, with its ancient church; and all those picturesque objects that contribute to make the picture perfect.

We now wend our way through other rooms, with the old Gobelin tapestry upon the walls, with the pictured story of Moses still distinct upon its wondrous folds, and into rooms comparatively modern, that have been restored, kept, and used within the past century. Here is one with furniture of green and damask, chairs and state bed, and hung with Gobelin tapestry, with Esop's fables wrought upon it. Here, again, the rude carving, ma.s.sive oak-work, and ill-constructed joining, tell the olden time.

But we must not leave Haddon Hall without pa.s.sing through the ante-room, as it is called, and out into the garden on Dorothy Vernon's Walk. On our way thither the guide lifts up occasionally the arras, or tapestry, and shows us those concealed doors and pa.s.sages of which we have read so often in the books; and now that I think of it, it was here at Haddon Hall that many of the wild and romantic ideas were obtained by Mrs.

Radcliff for that celebrated old-fashioned romance, "The Mysteries of Udolpho."

The "garden of Haddon," writes S. C. Hall, "has been, time out of mind, a treasure store of the English landscape painter, and one of the most favorite 'bits' being 'Dorothy Vernon's Walk,' and the door out of which tradition describes her as escaping to meet her lover, Sir John Manners, with whom she eloped." Haddon, by this marriage, became the property of the n.o.ble house of Rutland, who made it their residence till the commencement of the present century, when they removed to the more splendid castle of Belvoir; but to the Duke of Rutland the tourist and those who venerate antiquity, owe much for keeping this fine old place from "improvements," and so much of it in its original and ancient form.

That the landscape painters had made good and frequent use of the garden of Haddon I ascertained the moment I entered it. Dorothy's Walk, a fine terrace, shaded by limes and sycamores, leads to picturesque flights of marble steps, which I recognized as old friends that had figured in many a "flat" of theatrical scenery, upon many an act-drop, or been still more skilfully borrowed from, in effect, by the stage-carpenter and machinist in a set scene. Plucking a little bunch of wild-flowers from Dorothy's Walk, and a sprig of ivy from the steps down which she hurried in the darkness, while her friends were revelling in another part of the hall, we bade farewell to old Haddon, with its quaint halls, its court-yards, and its terraced garden, amid whose venerable trees

"the air Seems hallowed by the breath of other times."

CHAPTER V.

Kenilworth Castle will in many respects disappoint the visitor, for its chief attraction is the interest with which Walter Scott has invested it in his vivid description of the Earl of Leicester's magnificent pageant on the occasion of the reception of his royal mistress, Queen Elizabeth.

And the host of visitors who make the pilgrimage to this place, so hallowed by historical a.s.sociations, may be cla.s.sed as pilgrims doing homage to the genius of Scott. I find, on looking up Kenilworth's history, that it was here that "old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster," dwelt; here also his son Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., and Prince Hal, when he was a jovial, roistering sack-drinker; here Henry VI. retired during the Jack Cade rebellion; Richard III. has held high revel in the great hall; Henry VII. and bluff Hal VIII. have feasted there with their n.o.bles; but, after all, the visitor goes to see the scene where, on the 9th of July, 1575, was such a magnificent fete as that described by the novelist.

We walked through the village and on towards the castle, through the charming English scenery I have described so often, the gardens gay with roses and the banks of the roadside rich with wild flowers, a fair blue sky above, and the birds joyous in the hedges and woods. This was the avenue that led towards the Gallery Tower, through which rode Elizabeth with a cavalcade illuminated by two hundred wax torches of Dudley's retainers, the blaze of which flashed upon her sparkling jewels as she rode in stately style upon her milk-white charger--the avenue now a little rustic road, with a wealth of daisies on its banks; proudly rode Leicester at her side, who, Scott says, "glittered, like a golden image, with jewels and cloth of gold."

On we go to where the long bridge extended from the Gallery Tower to Mortimer's Tower, which the story tells us was light as day with the torches. A ma.s.s of crumbling ruins is all that remains of the two towers now; and after pa.s.sing by the end of a great open s.p.a.ce, known as the Tilt Yard, we come in sight of the princ.i.p.al ruins of the castle. We go through a little gateway,--Leicester's gateway; R. D. is carved on the porch above it,--and we are in the midst of the picturesque and crumbling walls, half shrouded in their green, graceful mantle of ivy.

Here we find Caesar's Tower, the Great Hall, Leicester's Buildings, the Strong Tower, which is the Mervyn's Tower of the story, the one into which the unfortunate Amy Robsart was conveyed while waiting for a visit from Leicester during the festivities of the royal visit.

The Great Hall was a room of magnificent dimensions, nearly one hundred feet long by fifty broad, and, as one may judge from its ruins, beautiful in design. One oriel of the many arched windows is a beautiful bit of picturesque ruin, and through it a most superb landscape view is commanded. You are shown "The Pleasance," the place in the little garden near the castle which was the scene of Queen Elizabeth's encounter with Amy Robsart, and which still is called by the same name. The part of the castle built by the Earl of Leicester in 1571, known as Leicester's Buildings, are crumbling to decay, and is far less durable than some of the other ma.s.sive towers.

The outer walls of Kenilworth Castle encompa.s.sed an area of seven acres; but walls and tower, great hall and oriel, are now but ma.s.ses of ruined masonry, half shrouded in a screen of ivy, and giving but a feeble idea of what the castle was in its days of pride, when graced by Queen Elizabeth and her court, and made such a scene of splendor and regal magnificence as to excite even the admiration of the sovereign herself.

Time has marked the proud castle with its ineffable signet, and notwithstanding the aid of imagination, Kenilworth seems but a mere ghost of the past.

From Kenilworth Castle we took train for Stratford-on-Avon,--the place which no American would think of leaving England without visiting,--a quiet little English town, but whose inns have yearly visitors from half the nations of the civilized world, pilgrims to this shrine of genius, the birthplace of him who wrote "not for a day, but all time." A quaint, old-fashioned place is Stratford, with here and there a house that might have been in existence during the poet's time; indeed, many were, for I halted opposite the grammar school, which was founded by Henry IV., and in which Will Shakespeare studied and was birched; the boys were out to play in the little square close, or court-yard, and as I entered through the squat, low doorway, which, like many of these old buildings in England, seems compressed or shrunk with age, I was surrounded by the whole troup of successors of Shakespeare, the gates closed, and my deliverance only purchased by payment of sixpence.

That antique relic of the past, the poet's birthplace, which we at once recognize from the numerous pictures we have seen of it, I stood before with a feeling akin to that of veneration--something like that which must fill the mind of a pilgrim who has travelled a weary journey to visit the shrine of some celebrated saint.

It is an odd, and old-fashioned ma.s.s of wood and plaster. The very means that have been taken to preserve it seem almost a sacrilege, the fresh paint upon the wood-work outside, that shone in the spring sunlight, the new braces, plaster and repairs here and there, give the old building the air of an old man, an octogenarian, say, who had discarded his old-time rags and tatters for a suit of new cloth cut in old style; but something must, of course, be done to preserve the structure from crumbling into the dust beneath the inexorable hand of time, albeit it was of substantial oak, filled in with plaster, but has undergone many "improvements" since the poet's time.

The first room we visit in the house is the kitchen with its wide chimney, the kitchen in which John Shakespeare and his son Will so often sat, where he watched the blazing logs, and listened to strange legends of village gossips, or stories of old crones, or narratives of field and flood, and fed his young imagination to the full with that food which gave such l.u.s.ty life to it in after years. Here was a big arm-chair--Shakespeare's chair, of course, as there was in 1820, when our countryman Washington Irving visited the place; but inasmuch as the _real_ chair was purchased by the Princess Czartoryska in 1790, one cannot with a knowledge of this fact feel very enthusiastic over this.

From the kitchen we ascend into the room in which the poet was born--a low, rude apartment, with huge beams and plastered walls, and those walls one mosaic ma.s.s of pencilled autographs and inscriptions of visitors to this shrine of genius. One might spend hours in deciphering names, inscriptions, rhymes, aphorisms, &c., that are thickly written upon every square inch of s.p.a.ce, in every style of chirography and in every language: even the panes of gla.s.s in the windows have not escaped, but are scratched all over with autographs by the diamond rings of visitors; and among these signatures I saw that of Walter Scott. At the side of the fireplace in this room is the well-known actor's pillar, a jamb of the fireplace thickly covered with the autographs of actors who have visited here; among the names I noticed the signatures of Charles Kean, Edmund Kean, and G. V. Brooke. Visitors are not permitted now to write upon any portion of the building, and are always closely accompanied by a guide, in order that no portion of it may be cut and carried away by relic-hunters.

The visitors' book which is kept here is a literary as well as an autographic curiosity; it was a matter of regret to me that I had only time to run over a few of the pages of its different volumes filled with the writing of all cla.s.ses, from prince to peasant, and in every language and character, even those of Turkish, Hebrew, and Chinese. The following, I think, was from the pen of Prince Lucien:--

"The eye of genius glistens to admire How memory hails the soul of Shakespeare's lyre.

One tear I'll shed to form a crystal shrine For all that's grand, immortal, and divine."

And the following were furnished me as productions, the first of Washington Irving, and the second of Hackett, the well-known comedian, and best living representative of Falstaff:--

"Of mighty Shakespeare's birth the room we see; The where he died in vain to find we try; Useless the search, for all immortal he, And those who are immortal never die."

"Shakespeare, thy name revered is no less By us who often _reckon_, sometimes _guess_.

Though England claims the glory of thy birth, None more appreciate thy page's worth, None more admire thy scenes well acted o'er, Than we of states unborn in ancient lore."

The room in which the poet was born remains very nearly in its original state, and, save a table, an ancient chair or two, and a bust of Shakespeare, is without furniture; but another upper room is devoted to the exhibition of a variety of interesting relics and mementos. Not the least interesting of these was the rude school desk, at which Master Will conned his lessons at the grammar school. A sadly-battered affair it was, with the little lid in the middle raised by rude leather hinges, and the whole of it hacked and cut in true school-boy style. Be it Shakespeare's desk or not, we were happy in the belief that it was, and sat down at it, thinking of the time when the young varlet crept "like a snail unwillingly to school," and longed for a release from its imprisonment, to bathe in the cool Avon's rippling waters, or start off on a distant ramble with his schoolmates to Sir Thomas Lucy's oak groves and green meadows.

Next we came to the old sign of "The Falcon," which swung over the hostelrie of that name at Bedford, seven miles from Stratford, where Shakespeare and his a.s.sociates drank too deeply, as the story goes, which Washington Irving reproduces in his charming sketch of Stratford-on-Avon in the Sketch Book. Here is Shakespeare's jug, from which David Garrick sipped wine at the Shakespeare Jubilee, held in 1758; an ancient chair from the Falcon Inn, called Shakespeare's Chair, and said to have been the one in which he sat when he held his club meetings there; Shakespeare's gold signet-ring, with the initials W. S., enclosed in a true-lover's knot. Among the interesting doc.u.ments were a letter from Richard Quyney to Shakespeare, asking for a loan of thirty pounds, which is said to be the only letter addressed to Shakespeare known to exist; a "conveyance," dated October 15, 1579, from "John Shackspere and Mary his wyeffe" (Shakespeare's parents) "to Robt. Webbe, of their moitye of 2 messuages or tenements in Snitterfield;" an original grant of four yard lands, in Stratford fields, of William and John Combe to Shakespeare, in 1602; a deed with the autograph of Gilbert Shakespeare, brother of the poet, 1609; a declaration in an action in court of Shakespeare _v._ Philip Rogers, to recover a bill for malt sold by Shakespeare, 1604.