Books: Our Old Home

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home

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On our passage through this beautiful suite of apartments, we saw,
through the vista of open doorways, a boy of ten or twelve years old
coming towards us from the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, a linen
sack that had certainly been washed and re-washed for a summer or two,
and gray trousers a good deal worn,--a dress, in short, which an American
mother in middle station would have thought too shabby for her darling
school-boy's ordinary wear. This urchin's face was rather pale (as those
of English children are apt to be, quite as often as our own), but he had
pleasant eyes, an intelligent look, and an agreeable, boyish manner. It
was Lord Sunderland, grandson of the present Duke, and heir--though not,
I think, in the direct line--of the blood of the great Marlborough, and
of the title and estate.

After passing through the first suite of rooms, we were conducted through
a corresponding suite on the opposite side of the entrance-hall. These
latter apartments are most richly adorned with tapestries, wrought and
presented to the first Duke by a sisterhood of Flemish nuns; they look
like great, glowing pictures, and completely cover the walls of the
rooms. The designs purport to represent the Duke's battles and sieges;
and everywhere we see the hero himself, as large as life, and as
gorgeous in scarlet and gold as the holy sisters could make him, with a
three-cornered hat and flowing wig, reining in his horse, and extending
his leading-staff in the attitude of command. Next to Marlborough,
Prince Eugene is the most prominent figure. In the way of upholstery,
there can never have been anything more magnificent than these
tapestries; and, considered as works of Art, they have quite as much
merit as nine pictures out of ten.

One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the library, a most noble
room, with a vast perspective length from end to end. Its atmosphere is
brighter and more cheerful than that of most libraries: a wonderful
contrast to the old college-libraries of Oxford, and perhaps less sombre
and suggestive of thoughtfulness than any large library ought to be,
inasmuch as so many studious brains as have left their deposit on the
shelves cannot have conspired without producing a very serious and
ponderous result. Both walls and ceiling are white, and there are
elaborate doorways and fireplaces of white marble. The floor is of oak,
so highly polished that our feet slipped upon it as if it had been New
England ice. At one end of the room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her
royal robes, which are so admirably designed and exquisitely wrought that
the spectator certainly gets a strong conception of her royal dignity;
while the face of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a
suitable idea of her personal character. The marble of this work, long
as it has stood there, is as white as snow just fallen, and must have
required most faithful and religious care to keep it so. As for the
volumes of the library, they are wired within the cases and turn their
gilded backs upon the visitor, keeping their treasures of wit and wisdom
just as intangible as if still in the unwrought mines of human thought.

I remember nothing else in the palace, except the chapel, to which we
were conducted last, and where we saw a splendid monument to the first
Duke and Duchess, sculptured by Rysbrack, at the cost, it is said, of
forty thousand pounds. The design includes the statues of the deceased
dignitaries, and various allegorical flourishes, fantasies, and
confusions; and beneath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their
veritable bones and dust, and probably all the Marlboroughs that have
since died. It is not quite a comfortable idea, that these mouldy
ancestors still inhabit, after their fashion, the house where their
successors spend the passing day; but the adulation lavished upon the
hero of Blenheim could not have been consummated, unless the palace of
his lifetime had become likewise a stately mausoleum over his remains,--
and such we felt it all to be, after gazing at his tomb.

The next business was to see the private gardens. An old Scotch
under-gardener admitted us and led the way, and seemed to have a fair
prospect of earning the fee all by himself; but by and by another
respectable Scotchman made his appearance and took us in charge, proving
to be the head-gardener in person. He was extremely intelligent and
agreeable, talking both scientifically and lovingly about trees and
plants, of which there is every variety capable of English cultivation.
Positively, the Garden of Eden cannot have been more beautiful than this
private garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres, and by the
artful circumlocution of the paths, and the undulations, and the
skilfully interposed clumps of trees, is made to appear limitless. The
sylvan delights of a whole country are compressed into this space, as
whole fields of Persian roses go to the concoction of an ounce of
precious attar. The world within that garden-fence is not the same weary
and dusty world with which we outside mortals are conversant; it is a
finer, lovelier, more harmonious Nature; and the Great Mother lends
herself kindly to the gardener's will, knowing that he will make evident
the half-obliterated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty, and allow
her to take all the credit and praise to herself. I doubt whether there
is ever any winter within that precinct,--any clouds, except the fleecy
ones of summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon my recollection
of it as if it were eternal. The lawns and glades are like the memory of
places where one has wandered when first in love.

What a good and happy life might be spent in a paradise like this! And
yet, at that very moment, the besotted Duke (ah! I have let out a secret
which I meant to keep to myself; but the ten shillings must pay for all)
was in that very garden (for the guide told us so, and cautioned our
young people not to be too uproarious), and, if in a condition for
arithmetic, was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten-shilling
tickets had that day been sold. Republican as I am, I should still love
to think that noblemen lead noble lives, and that all this stately and
beautiful environment may serve to elevate them a little way above the
rest of us. If it fail to do so, the disgrace falls equally upon the
whole race of mortals as on themselves; because it proves that no more
favorable conditions of existence would eradicate our vices and
weaknesses. How sad, if this be so! Even a herd of swine, eating the
acorns under those magnificent oaks of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and
of better habits than ordinary swine.

Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as a description of
Blenheim; and I bate to leave it without some more adequate expression of
the noble edifice, with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that
beautiful sunshine; for, if a day had been chosen out of a hundred years,
it could not have been a finer one. But I must give up the attempt; only
further remarking that the finest trees here were cedars, of which I saw
one--and there may have been many such--immense in girth, and not less
than three centuries old. I likewise saw a vast heap of laurel, two
hundred feet in circumference, all growing from one root; and the
gardener offered to show us another growth of twice that stupendous size.
If the Great Duke himself had been buried in that spot, his heroic heart
could not have been the seed of a more plentiful crop of laurels.

We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat down to a cold collation, of
which we ate abundantly, and drank (in the good old English fashion) a
due proportion of various delightful liquors. A stranger in England, in
his rambles to various quarters of the country, may learn little in
regard to wines (for the ordinary English taste is simple, though sound,
in that particular), but he makes acquaintance with more varieties of hop
and malt liquor than he previously supposed to exist. I remember a sort
of foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very vivacious, and
appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled cider. Another excellent
tipple for warm weather is concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter ale
with ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier liquor from its
depths, forming a compound of singular vivacity and sufficient body. But
of all things ever brewed from malt (unless it be the Trinity Ale of
Cambridge, which I drank long afterwards, and which Barry Cornwall has
celebrated in immortal verse), commend me to the Archdeacon, as the
Oxford scholars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary who first
taught these erudite worthies how to brew their favorite nectar. John
Barleycorn has given his very heart to this admirable liquor; it is a
superior kind of ale, the Prince of Ales, with a richer flavor and a
mightier spirit than you can find elsewhere in this weary world. Much
have we been strengthened and encouraged by the potent blood of the
Archdeacon!

A few days after our excursion to Blenheim, the same party set forth, in
two flies, on a tour to some other places of interest in the neighborhood
of Oxford. It was again a delightful day; and, in truth, every day, of
late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if each must be the very
last of such perfect weather; and yet the long succession had given us
confidence in as many more to come. The climate of England has been
shamefully maligned, its sulkiness and asperities are not nearly so
offensive as Englishmen tell us (their climate being the only attribute
of their country which they never overvalue); and the really good
summer-weather is the very kindest and sweetest that the world knows.

We first drove to the village of Cumnor, about six miles from Oxford, and
alighted at the entrance of the church. Here, while waiting for the
keys, we looked at an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of loose gray
stones which are said to have once formed a portion of Cumnor Hall,
celebrated in Mickle's ballad and Scott's romance. The hall must have
been in very close vicinity to the church,--not more than twenty yards
off; and I waded through the long, dewy grass of the churchyard, and
tried to peep over the wall, in hopes to discover some tangible and
traceable remains of the edifice. But the wall was just too high to be
overlooked, and difficult to clamber over without tumbling down some of
the stones; so I took the word of one of our party, who had been here
before, that there is nothing interesting on the other side. The
churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and seems not to have been
mown for the benefit of the parson's cow; it contains a good many
gravestones, of which I remember only some upright memorials of slate to
individuals of the name of Tabbs.

Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church-door, and we entered the
simple old edifice, which has the pavement of lettered tombstones, the
sturdy pillars and low arches and other ordinary characteristics of an
English country church. One or two pews, probably those of the
gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were better furnished than the rest, but
all in a modest style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there
is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, built against the
wall, and surmounted by a carved canopy of the same material; and over
the tomb, and beneath the canopy, are two monumental brasses, such as we
oftener see inlaid into a church pavement. On these brasses are engraved
the figures of a gentleman in armor and a lady in an antique garb, each
about a foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer; and there is a long Latin
inscription likewise cut into the enduring brass, bestowing the highest
eulogies on the character of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous
dame, lies buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightly figure
that kneels above; and if Sir Walter Scott ever saw this tomb, he must
have had an even greater than common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to
venture on depicting Anthony Forster in such lines as blacken him in the
romance. For my part, I read the inscription in full faith, and believe
the poor deceased gentleman to be a much-wronged individual, with good
grounds for bringing an action of slander in the courts above.

But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its serious moral.
What nonsense it is, this anxiety, which so worries us, about our good
fame, or our bad fame, after death! If it were of the slightest real
moment, our reputations would have been placed by Providence more in our
own power, and less in other people's, than we now find them to be. If
poor Anthony Forster happens to have met Sir Walter in the other world, I
doubt whether he has ever thought it worth while to complain of the
latter's misrepresentations.

We did not remain long in the church, as it contains nothing else of
interest; and driving through the village, we passed a pretty large and
rather antique-looking inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged
Staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a hundred years, as
Giles Gosling's time; nor is there any other object to remind the visitor
of the Elizabethan age, unless it be a few ancient cottages, that are
perhaps of still earlier date. Cumnor is not nearly so large a village,
nor a place of such mark, as one anticipates from its romantic and
legendary fame; but, being still inaccessible by railway, it has retained
more of a sylvan character than we often find in English country towns.
In this retired neighborhood the road is narrow and bordered with grass,
and sometimes interrupted by gates; the hedges grow in unpruned
luxuriance; there is not that close-shaven neatness and trimness that
characterize the ordinary English landscape. The whole scene conveys the
idea of seclusion and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether on foot
or otherwise.

I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's peregrinations; but, after
leaving Cumnor a few miles behind us, I think we came to a ferry over the
Thames, where an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a boat across
by means of a rope stretching from shore to shore. Our two vehicles
being thus placed on the other side, we resumed our drive,--first
glancing, however, at the old woman's antique cottage, with its stone
floor, and the circular settle round the kitchen fireplace, which was
quite in the mediaeval English style.

We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we were received at the
parsonage with a hospitality which we should take delight in describing,
if it were allowable to make public acknowledgment of the private and
personal kindnesses which we never failed to find ready for our needs.
An American in an English house will soon adopt the opinion that the
English are the very kindest people on earth, and will retain that idea
as long, at least, as he remains on the inner side of the threshold.
Their magnetism is of a kind that repels strongly while you keep beyond a
certain limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within the magic line.

It was at this place, if I remember right, that I heard a gentleman ask a
friend of mine whether he was the author of "The Red Letter A"; and,
after some consideration (for he did not seem to recognize his own book,
at first, under this improved title), our countryman responded,
doubtfully, that he believed so. The gentleman proceeded to inquire
whether our friend had spent much time in America,--evidently thinking
that he must have been caught young, and have had a tincture of English
breeding, at least, if not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and
appear so much like other people. This insular narrowness is exceedingly
queer, and of very frequent occurrence, and is quite as much a
characteristic of men of education and culture as of clowns.

Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It was formerly the seat
of the ancient family of Harcourt, which now has its principal abode at
Nuneham Courtney, a few miles off. The parsonage is a relic of the
family mansion, or castle, other portions of which are close at hand;
for, across the garden, rise two gray towers, both of them picturesquely
venerable, and interesting for more than their antiquity. One of these
towers, in its entire capacity, from height to depth, constituted the
kitchen of the ancient castle, and is still used for domestic purposes,
although it has not, nor ever had, a chimney; or we might rather say, it
is itself one vast chimney, with a hearth of thirty feet square, and a
flue and aperture of the same size. There are two huge fireplaces
within, and the interior walls of the tower are blackened with the smoke
that for centuries used to gush forth from them, and climb upward,
seeking an exit through some wide air-holes in the comical roof, full
seventy feet above. These lofty openings were capable of being so
arranged, with reference to the wind, that the cooks are said to have
been seldom troubled by the smoke; and here, no doubt, they were
accustomed to roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and ado as a modern
cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the tower is very dim and sombre
(being nothing but rough stone walls, lighted only from the apertures
above mentioned), and has still a pungent odor of smoke and soot, the
reminiscence of the fires and feasts of generations that have passed
away. Methinks the extremest range of domestic economy lies between an
American cooking-stove and the ancient kitchen, seventy dizzy feet in
height and all one fireplace, of Stanton Harcourt.

Now--the place being without a parallel in England, and therefore
necessarily beyond the experience of an American--it is somewhat
remarkable, that, while we stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted
and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I had seen just this
strange spectacle before.--The height, the blackness, the dismal void,
before my eyes, seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my
grandmother's kitchen; only my unaccountable memory of the scene was
lighted up with an image of lurid fires blazing all round the dim
interior circuit of the tower. I had never before had so pertinacious an
attack, as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state of mind wherein
we fitfully and teasingly remember some previous scene or incident, of
which the one now passing appears to be but the echo and reduplication.
Though the explanation of the mystery did not for some time occur to me,
I may as well conclude the matter here. In a letter of Pope's, addressed
to the Duke of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton Harcourt (as I
now find, although the name is not mentioned), where he resided while
translating a part of the "Iliad." It is one of the most admirable
pieces of description in the language,--playful and picturesque, with
fine touches of humorous pathos,--and conveys as perfect a picture as
ever was drawn of a decayed English country-house; and among other rooms,
most of which have since crumbled down and disappeared, he dashes off the
grim aspect of this kitchen,--which, moreover, he peoples with witches,
engaging Satan himself as headcook, who stirs the infernal caldrons that
seethe and bubble over the fires. This letter, and others relative to
his abode here, were very familiar to my earlier reading, and, remaining
still fresh at the bottom of my memory, caused the weird and ghostly
sensation that came over one on beholding the real spectacle that had
formerly been made so vivid to my imagination.

Our next visit was to the church which stands close by, and is quite as
ancient as the remnants of the castle. In a chapel or side-aisle,
dedicated to the Harcourts, are found some very interesting family
monuments,--and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, the figure of an
armed knight of the Lancastrian party, who was slain in the Wars of the
Roses. His features, dress, and armor are painted in colors, still
wonderfully fresh, and there still blushes the symbol of the Red Rose,
denoting the faction for which he fought and died. His head rests on a
marble or alabaster helmet; and on the tomb lies the veritable helmet, it
is to be presumed, which he wore in battle,--a ponderous iron ease, with
the visor complete, and remnants of the gilding that once covered it.
The crest is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood.

Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adornment of his tomb;
and, indeed, it seems strange that it has not been stolen before now,
especially in Cromwell's time, when knightly tombs were little respected,
and when armor was in request. However, it is needless to dispute with
the dead knight about the identity of his iron pot, and we may as well
allow it to be the very same that so often gave him the headache in his
lifetime. Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the tomb, is the
shaft of a spear, with a wofully tattered and utterly faded banner
appended to it,--the knightly banner beneath which he marshalled his
followers in the field. As it was absolutely falling to pieces, I tore
off one little bit, no bigger than a finger-nail, and put it into my
waistcoat-pocket; but seeking it subsequently, it was not to be found.

On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or three yards from this
tomb, is another monument, on which lie, side by side, one of the same
knightly race of Harcourts, and his lady. The tradition of the family
is, that this knight was the standard-bearer of Henry of Richmond in the
Battle of Bosworth Field; and a banner, supposed to be the same that he
carried, now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk
rag as the one already described. The knight has the order of the Garter
on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm, an odd place enough
for a garter; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be
decorously visible. The complete preservation and good condition of
these statues, even to the minutest adornment of the sculpture, and their
very noses,--the most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living
one,--are miraculous. Except in Westminster Abbey, among the chapels of
the kings, I have seen none so well preserved. Perhaps they owe it to
the loyalty of Oxfordshire, diffused throughout its neighborhood by the
influence of the University, during the great Civil War and the rule of
the Parliament. It speaks well, too, for the upright and kindly
character of this old family, that the peasantry, among whom they had
lived for ages, did not desecrate their tombs, when it might have been
done with impunity.

There are other and more recent memorials of the Harcourts, one of which
is the tomb of the last lord, who died about a hundred years ago. His
figure, like those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad,
not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title is now extinct, but
the family survives in a younger branch, and still holds this patrimonial
estate, though they have long since quitted it as a residence.

We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds appertaining to the mansion,
and which used to be of vast dietary importance to the family in Catholic
times, and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There are two or
three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of which is of very respectable
size,--large enough, indeed, to be really a picturesque object, with its
grass-green borders, and the trees drooping over it, and the towers of
the castle and the church reflected within the weed-grown depths of its
smooth mirror. A sweet fragrance, as it were, of ancient time and
present quiet and seclusion was breathing all around; the sunshine of
to-day had a mellow charm of antiquity in its brightness. These ponds
are said still to breed abundance of such fish as love deep and quiet
waters; but I saw only some minnows, and one or two snakes, which were
lying among the weeds on the top of the water, sunning and bathing
themselves at once.

I mentioned that there were two towers remaining of the old castle: the
one containing the kitchen we have already visited; the other, still more
interesting, is next to be described. It is some seventy feet high, gray
and reverend, but in excellent repair, though I could not perceive that
anything had been done to renovate it. The basement story was once the
family chapel, and is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At one
corner of the tower is a circular turret, within which a narrow
staircase, with worn steps of stone, winds round and round as it climbs
upward, giving access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerging on
the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret-stair, and arriving at the
third story, we entered a chamber, not large, though occupying the whole
area of the tower, and lighted by a window on each side. It was
wainscoted from floor to ceiling with dark oak, and had a little
fireplace in one of the corners. The window-panes were small and set in
lead. The curiosity of this room is, that it was once the residence of
Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of the translation of
Isomer, and likewise, no doubt, the admirable letters to which I have
referred above. The room once contained a record by himself, scratched
with a diamond on one of the window-panes (since removed for safe-keeping
to Nuneham Courtney, where it was shown me), purporting that he had here
finished the fifth book of the "Iliad" on such a day.

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