Books: Our Old Home
N >>
Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 | 15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26
A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other human being is gifted
withal; it is indestructible, and clings forevermore to everything that
he has touched. I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that
the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was created for him; but
here, after a century and a half, we are still conscious of the presence
of that decrepit little figure of Queen Anne's time, although he was
merely a casual guest in the old tower, during one or two summer months.
However brief the time and slight the connection, his spirit cannot be
exorcised so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, Pope, or
any other person with an available claim, is right in adhering to the
spot, dead or alive; for I never saw a chamber that I should like better
to inhabit,--so comfortably small, in such a safe and inaccessible
seclusion, and with a varied landscape from each window. One of them
looks upon the church, close at hand, and down into the green churchyard,
extending almost to the foot of the tower; the others have views wide and
far, over a gently undulating tract of country. If desirous of a loftier
elevation, about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring the
occupant to the summit of the tower,--where Pope used to come, no doubt,
in the summer evenings, and peep--poor little shrimp that he was!--
through the embrasures of the battlement.
From Stanton Harcourt we drove--I forget how far--to a point where a boat
was waiting for us upon the Thames, or some other stream; for I am
ashamed to confess my ignorance of the precise geographical whereabout.
We were, at any rate, some miles above Oxford, and, I should imagine,
pretty near one of the sources of England's mighty river. It was little
more than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars, to pass, shallow,
too, and bordered with bulrushes and water-weeds, which, in some places,
quite overgrew the surface of the river from bank to bank. The shores
were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the boatman told us, are
overflowed by the rise of the stream. The water looked clean and pure,
but not particularly transparent, though enough so to show us that the
bottom is very much weedgrown; and I was told that the weed is an
American production, brought to England with importations of timber, and
now threatening to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. I
wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the Merrimack, the
Connecticut, or the Hudson,--not to speak of the St. Lawrence or the
Mississippi!
It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, comfortably
accommodating our party; the day continued sunny and warm, and perfectly
still; the boatman, well trained to his business, managed the oars
skilfully and vigorously; and we went down the stream quite as swiftly as
it was desirable to go, the scene being so pleasant, and the passing
hours so thoroughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider and deeper,
perhaps, as we glided on, but was still an inconsiderable stream: for it
had a good deal more than a hundred miles to meander through before it
should bear fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces and towers and
Parliament houses and dingy and sordid piles of various structure, as it
rolled two and fro with the tide, dividing London asunder. Not, in
truth, that I ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its turbid
breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it now, is swollen into the
Thames at London.
Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the boatman and some other
persons drew our skiff round some rapids, which we could not otherwise
have passed; another time, the boat went through a lock. We, meanwhile,
stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the old nunnery of Godstowe, where
Fair Rosamond secluded herself, after being separated from her royal
lover. There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a shattered tower at
one of the angles; the whole much ivy-grown,--brimming over, indeed, with
clustering ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls. The nunnery is now,
I believe, held in lease by the city of Oxford, which has converted its
precincts into a barn-yard. The gate was under lock and key, so that we
could merely look at the outside, and soon resumed our places in the
boat.
At three o'clock or thereabouts (or sooner or later,--for I took little
heed of time, and only wished that these delightful wanderings might last
forever) we reached Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took possession of
a spacious barge, with a house in it, and a comfortable dining-room or
drawing-room within the house, and a level roof, on which we could sit at
ease, or dance if so inclined. These barges are common at Oxford,--some
very splendid ones being owned by the students of the different colleges,
or by clubs. They are drawn by horses, like canal-boats; and a horse
being attached to our own barge, he trotted off at a reasonable pace, and
we slipped through the water behind him, with a gentle and pleasant
motion, which, save for the constant vicissitude of cultivated scenery,
was like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble of living;
nothing was ever more quietly agreeable. In this happy state of mind
and body we gazed at Christ Church meadows, as we passed, and at the
receding spires and towers of Oxford, and on a good deal of pleasant
variety along the banks: young men rowing or fishing; troops of naked
boys bathing, as if this were Arcadia, in the simplicity of the Golden
Age; country-houses, cottages, water-side inns, all with something fresh
about them, as not being sprinkled with the dust of the highway. We were
a large party now; for a number of additional guests had joined us at
Folly Bridge, and we comprised poets, novelists, scholars, sculptors,
painters, architects, men and women of renown, dear friends, genial,
outspoken, open-hearted Englishmen,--all voyaging onward together, like
the wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember not a single annoyance,
except, indeed, that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on
the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the
pomatum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim,
and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put
us in mind that we were mortal.
Meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of our barge, and spread
with cold ham, cold fowl, cold pigeon-pie, cold beef, and other
substantial cheer, such as the English love, and Yankees too,--besides
tarts, and cakes, and pears, and plums,--not forgetting, of course, a
goodly provision of port, sherry, and champagne, and bitter ale, which is
like mother's milk to an Englishman, and soon grows equally acceptable to
his American cousin. By the time these matters had been properly
attended to, we had arrived at that part of the Thames which passes by
Nuneham Courtney, a fine estate belonging to the Harcourts, and the
present residence of the family. Here we landed, and, climbing a steep
slope from the river-side, paused a moment or two to look at an
architectural object, called the Carfax, the purport of which I do not
well understand. Thence we proceeded onward, through the loveliest park
and woodland scenery I ever saw, and under as beautiful a declining
sunshine as heaven ever shed over earth, to the stately mansion-house.
As we here cross a private threshold, it is not allowable to pursue my
feeble narrative of this delightful day with the same freedom as
heretofore; so, perhaps, I may as well bring it to a close. I may
mention, however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apartment, hung
round with portraits of eminent literary men, principally of the last
century, most of whom were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house
itself is about eighty years old, and is built in the classic style, as
if the family had been anxious to diverge as far as possible from the
Gothic picturesqueness of their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The
grounds were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed to me even
more beautiful than those of Blenheim. Mason the poet, a friend of the
house, gave the design of a portion of the garden. Of the whole place I
will not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic praise, but be bold to say
that it appeared to me as perfect as anything earthly can he,--utterly
and entirely finished, as if the years and generations had done all that
the hearts and minds of the successive owners could contrive for a spot
they dearly loved. Such homes as Nuneham Courtney are among the splendid
results of long hereditary possession; and we Republicans, whose
households melt away like new-fallen snow in a spring morning, must
content ourselves with our many counterbalancing advantages, for this
one, so apparently desirable to the far-projecting selfishness of our
nature, we are certain never to attain.
It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nuneham Courtney is one of
the great show-places of England. It is merely a fair specimen of the
better class of country-seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many
superiors, in the features of beauty, and expansive, manifold, redundant
comfort, which most impressed me. A moderate man might be content with
such a home,--that is all.
And now I take leave of Oxford without even an attempt to describe it,--
there being no literary faculty, attainable or conceivable by me, which
can avail to put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It must
remain its own sole expression; and those whose sad fortune it may be
never to behold it have no better resource than to dream about gray,
weather-stained, ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic ornament,
and standing around grassy quadrangles, where cloistered walks have
echoed to the quiet footsteps of twenty generations,--lawns and gardens
of luxurious repose, shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit up with
sunny glimpses through archways of great boughs,--spires, towers, and
turrets, each with its history and legend,--dimly magnificent chapels,
with painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diversified hues,
creating an atmosphere of richest gloom,--vast college-halls,
high-windowed, oaken-panelled, and hung round with portraits of the men,
in every age, whom the University has nurtured to be illustrious,--long
vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wisdom and learned folly of all
time is shelved,--kitchens (we throw in this feature by way of ballast,
and because it would not be English Oxford without its beef and beer),
with huge fireplaces, capable of roasting a hundred joints at once,--and
cavernous cellars, where rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume with
that mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk of Alma Mater; make all
these things vivid in your dream, and you will never know nor believe how
inadequate is the result to represent even the merest outside of Oxford.
We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this article without making our
grateful acknowledgments, by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing
kindness was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and enjoyments.
Delightful as will always be our recollection of Oxford and its
neighborhood, we partly suspect that it owes much of its happy coloring
to the genial medium through which the objects were presented to us,--to
the kindly magic of a hospitality unsurpassed, within our experience, in
the quality of making the guest contented with his host, with himself,
and everything about him. He has inseparably mingled his image with our
remembrance of the Spires of Oxford.
SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS.
We left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within the half-hour were
at Gretna Green. Thence we rushed onward into Scotland through a flat
and dreary tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, where
probably the moss-troopers were accustomed to take refuge after their
raids into England. Anon, however, the hills hove themselves up to view,
occasionally attaining a height which might almost be called mountainous.
In about two hours we reached Dumfries, and alighted at the station
there.
Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we found it an awfully hot
day, not a whit less so than the day before; but we sturdily adventured
through the burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our way to the
residence of Burns. The street leading from the station is called
Shakespeare Street; and at its farther extremity we read "Burns Street"
on a corner-house, the avenue thus designated having been formerly known
as "Mill-Hole Brae." It is a vile lane, paved with small, hard stones
from side to side, and bordered by cottages or mean houses of whitewashed
stone, joining one to another along the whole length of the street. With
not a tree, of course, or a blade of grass between the paving-stones, the
narrow lane was as hot as Topbet, and reeked with a genuine Scotch odor,
being infested with unwashed children, and altogether in a state of
chronic filth; although some women seemed to be hopelessly scrubbing the
thresholds of their wretched dwellings. I never saw an outskirt of a
town less fit for a poet's residence, or in which it would be more
miserable for any man of cleanly predilections to spend his days.
We asked for Burns's dwelling; and a woman pointed across the street to a
two-story house, built of stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors, but
perhaps of a little more respectable aspect than most of them, though I
hesitate in saying so. It was not a separate structure, but under the
same continuous roof with the next. There was an inscription on the
door, hearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the house was
now occupied by a ragged or industrial school. On knocking, we were
instantly admitted by a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when we
told our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain parlor, not more
than twelve or fifteen feet square. A young woman, who seemed to be a
teacher in the school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been
Burns's usual sitting-room, and that he had written many of his songs
here.
She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little bedchamber over the
parlor. Connecting with it, there is a very small room, or windowed
closet, which Burns used as a study; and the bedchamber itself was the
one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in which he died at last.
Altogether, it is an exceedingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and
rural poet to live or die in,--even more unsatisfactory than
Shakespeare's house, which has a certain homely picturesqueness that
contrasts favorably with the suburban sordidness of the abode before us.
The narrow lane, the paving-stones, and the contiguity of wretched hovels
are depressing to remember; and the steam of them (such is our human
weakness) might almost make the poet's memory less fragrant.
As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. After leaving the
house, we found our way into the principal street of the town, which, it
may be fair to say, is of very different aspect from the wretched
outskirt above described. Entering a hotel (in which, as a Dumfries
guide-book assured us, Prince Charles Edward had once spent a night), we
rested and refreshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the
mausoleum of Burns.
Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man digging a grave, and,
scrambling out of the hole, he let us into the churchyard, which was
crowded full of monuments. Their general shape and construction are
peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet of marble or other
stone, within a framework of the same material, somewhat resembling the
frame of a looking-glass; and, all over the churchyard, those sepulchral
memorials rise to the height of ten, fifteen, or twenty feet, forming
quite an imposing collection of monuments, but inscribed with names of
small general significance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain the rank
of those who slept below; for in Scotland it is the custom to put the
occupation of the buried personage (as "Skinner," "Shoemaker," "Flesher")
on his tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives are buried under their
maiden names, instead of those of their husbands; thus giving a
disagreeable impression that the married pair have bidden each other an
eternal farewell on the edge of the grave.
There was a foot-path through this crowded churchyard, sufficiently well
worn to guide us to the grave of Burns; but a woman followed behind us,
who, it appeared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was privileged to
show it to strangers. The monument is a sort of Grecian temple, with
pilasters and a dome, covering a space of about twenty feet square. It
was formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch atmosphere, but
is now protected and shut in by large squares of rough glass, each pane
being of the size of one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked
the door, and admitted us into the interior. Inlaid into the floor of
the mausoleum is the gravestone of Burns,--the very same that was laid
over his grave by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. Displayed
against the surrounding wall is a marble statue of Burns at the plough,
with the Genius of Caledonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet.
Methought it was not a very successful piece of work; for the plough was
better sculptured than the man, and the man, though heavy and cloddish,
was more effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us that an old
man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies this statue to be very like the
original.
The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of some of their children,
lie in the vault over which we stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in
her own plain way, and very agreeable to talk withal) said that the vault
was opened about three weeks ago, on occasion of the burial of the eldest
son of Burns. The poet's bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once
so brimming over with powerful thought and bright and tender fantasies,
was taken away, and kept for several days by a Dumfries doctor. It has
since been deposited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault.
We learned that there is a surviving daughter of Burns's eldest son, and
daughters likewise of the two younger sons,--and, besides these, an
illegitimate posterity by the eldest son, who appears to have been of
disreputable life in his younger days. He inherited his father's
failings, with some faint shadow, I have also understood, of the great
qualities which have made the world tender of his father's vices and
weaknesses.
We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, but found that it
robbed the poet's memory of some of the reverence that was its due.
Indeed, this talk over his grave had very much the same tendency and
effect as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visiting just
previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwelling and its surroundings, and
picturing his outward life and earthly manifestations from these, one
does not so much wonder that the people of that day should have failed to
recognize all that was admirable and immortal in a disreputable, drunken,
shabbily clothed, and shabbily housed man, consorting with associates of
damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occupation, gauging the
whiskey, which he too often tasted. Siding with Burns, as we needs must,
in his plea against the world, let us try to do the world a little
justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet when his fame has
taken shape in the spotlessness of marble than when the actual man comes
staggering before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his daily
life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his recognition dawned so
brightly while he was still living. There must have been something very
grand in his immediate presence, some strangely impressive characteristic
in his natural behavior, to have caused him to seem like a demigod so
soon.
As we went back through the churchyard, we saw a spot where nearly four
hundred inhabitants of Dumfries were buried during the cholera year; and
also some curious old monuments, with raised letters, the inscriptions on
which were not sufficiently legible to induce us to puzzle them out; but,
I believe, they mark the resting-places of old Covenanters, some of whom
were killed by Claverhouse and his fellow-ruffians.
St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was built about a hundred
years ago, on an old Catholic foundation. Our guide admitted us into it,
and showed us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble figure of a
child asleep, with a drapery over the lower part, from beneath which
appeared its two baby feet. It was truly a sweet little statue; and the
woman told us that it represented a child of the sculptor, and that the
baby (here still in its marble infancy) had died more than twenty-six
years ago. "Many ladies," she said, "especially such as had ever lost a
child, had shed tears over it." It was very pleasant to think of the
sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art to re-create his tender
child in stone, and to make the representation as soft and sweet as the
original; but the conclusion of the story has something that jars with
our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from London had seen the statue,
and was so much delighted with it that he bought it of the father-artist,
after it had lain above a quarter of a century in the church-porch. So
this was not the real, tender image that came out of the father's heart;
he had sold that truest one for a hundred guineas, and sculptured this
mere copy to replace it. The first figure was entirely naked in its
earthly and spiritual innocence. The copy, as I have said above, has a
drapery over the lower limbs. But, after all, if we come to the truth of
the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fully reposited in the
drawing-room of a connoisseur as in a cold and dreary church-porch.
We went into the church, and found it very plain and naked, without
altar-decorations, and having its floor quite covered with unsightly
wooden pews. The woman led us to a pew cornering on one of the
side-aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns's family-pew,
showed us his seat, which is in the corner by the aisle. It is so
situated, that a sturdy pillar hid him from the pulpit, and from the
minister's eye; "for Robin was no great friends with the ministers," said
she. This touch--his seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself nodding
in sermon-time, or keenly observant of profane things--brought him before
us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right before Burns,
and not more than two feet off, sat the young lady on whom the poet saw
that unmentionable parasite which he has immortalized in song. We were
ungenerous enough to ask the lady's name, but the good woman could not
tell it. This was the last thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of
record; and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some money which
my companion offered her, because I had already paid her what she deemed
sufficient.
At the railway-station we spent more than a weary hour, waiting for the
train, which at last came up, and took us to Mauchline. We got into an
omnibus, the only conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the
village, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of the
veriest country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of
Mauchline, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any other, consists
of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly whitewashed, and with
thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate village,
and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make, or to render
uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion of paving
the village street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of
another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness; but, I presume, we
are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they
used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this of Mauchline. The
church stands about midway up the street, and is built of red freestone,
very simple in its architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In
this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene of one of Burns's
most characteristic productions, "The Holy Fair."
Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village street, stands
Posie Nansie's inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" congregated. The latter is
a two-story, red-stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means
venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fashioned
windows, and may well have stood for centuries,--though, seventy or
eighty years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it
might have been something better than a beggars' alehouse. The whole
town of Mauchline looks rusty and time-worn,--even the newer houses, of
which there are several, being shadowed and darkened by the general
aspect of the place. When we arrived, all the wretched little dwellings
seemed to have belched forth their inhabitants into the warm summer
evening; everybody was chatting with everybody, on the most familiar
terms; the bare-legged children gambolled or quarrelled uproariously, and
came freely, moreover, and looked into the window of our parlor. When we
ventured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old town: people
standing in their doorways, old women popping their heads from the
chamber-windows, and stalwart men idle on Saturday at e'en, after their
week's hard labor--clustering at the street-corners, merely to stare at
our unpretending selves. Except in some remote little town of Italy
(where, besides, the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of
beggary), I have never been honored with nearly such an amount of public
notice.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 | 15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22 |
23 |
24 |
25 |
26