LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDODSmSlbD it*jlh¥iilllFiWIIII|0)lo>: w^M'-.«Illi.nUI Class 1)961 Book -0 3 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. FROM IRISH CASTLES TO FRENCH CHATEAuX Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/fromirishcastlesOOcars FROM IRISH CASTLES TO FRENCH CHATEAUX BY NORMA BRIGHT CARSON AUTHOR OF "THE DREAM CHILD AND OTHER POEMS ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS ^ o-^ \'--^ Copyright, 1910 By Small, Maynard & Company (incobporated) Entered at Stationers* Hall CGLA268^36 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. AUTHOR'S NOTE Since certain portions of this volume first appeared as a series of articles in "The Book News Monthly " of Philadelphia, I wish here to express my appreciation for the kind per- mission given by Mr. John Wanamaker, the publisher of that magazine, to use the material in the present form. I desire also to acknowledge my indebted- ness to my husband, Mr. Robert Carson, for his help in procuring many of the photographs that appear as illustrations, and to express my gratitude to Mr. W. J. Roberts, a literary col- league in London, for the use of the pictures that bear his name. CONTENTS Page I To THE North of Ireland ... 3 II From the Causeway to Ardrossan 17 III Alloway To-day : A Triumph in Landscape Gardening .... 25 IV In the Scotch Lake Country . . 41 V Edinburgh the Picturesque ... 59 VI Melrose Abbey and Abbotsford . . 81 VII Two Quaint Cathedral Cities : Ancient Rome in the Heart of England loi VIII London : A Historic and Literary Ghostland 117 IX House-Cleaning in Westminster Abbey 145 X The Homes of Milton 159 XI Stratford-on-Avon : The Beautiful and the Incongruous . . . . 185 vii CONTENTS Page ' XII Paris : A Sketch in Impressionism . 203 XIII Versailles and Fontainebleau: Tombs of a Dead Glory . . 217 XIV When the Sea Storms : Three Fragments 235 viu ILLUSTRATIONS Interior of St. Clement Danes Church . Frontispiece Facing Page Landing Stage, New York 4 Photographed from the rear deck of the Mauretania An Irish Homestead 6 Shane's Castle, Ireland 10 At the Giants' Causeway 18 Ladies' Bathing Place, Portrush 20 The Burns Cottage, Alloway 26 From the garden The Garden of the Burns Cottage .... 28 Photograph by N. B, Carson The " AuLD Brig," Ayr 30 The " AuLD Alloway Kirk " ...... 32 The Burns Museum, Alloway 34 Photograph by N. B. Carson The Burns Monument at Alloway .... 36 Taken from the old '* Brig o' Doon." Photograph by N. B. Carson The Burns Statue, Ayr 38 Photograph by N. B. Carson Loch Lomond 42, 54 Photograph by N. B. Carson ix ILLUSTRATIONS Facing Page Ellen's Isle, Loch Katrine ....... 50 Photographs by N. B. Carson Princes Street, Edinburgh 74. Showing the Scott Monument Abbotsford and the Eildon Hills .... 86 Melrose Abbey, South Transept and Tower . 92 Dryburgh Abbey 94 Scott's Favorite Seat in Melrose Abbey . . 96 Where he wrote much of "The Lay of the Last Minstrel " Photograph by N. B, Carson York, from the City Walls ....... 104 York Minster, West Front 108 Lincoln Cathedral from the East . . . . iio Newport Arch, Lincoln 112 The Thames Embankment, from the Hotel Metropole 118 Photograph by N. B. Carson London from St. Paul's 122 St. John's Gate 126 Where Dr. Johnson did hack-work for Cave. Photograph by N. B. Carson Johnson Building, The Temple 128 The Supposed Grave of Goldsmith, Temple Gardens 130 Photograph by W. J. Roberts Gough Square 132 Showing the house in which Dr. Johnson finished the ** Dictionary." Photograph by N. B. Carson ILLUSTRATIONS Facing Page Interior of the " Cheshire Cheese," Fleet Street, London 134 Showing what is popularly believed to be Dr. Johnson's favorite seat. Photograph by W. J. Roberts The Milton Tablet in Bread Street . . . 162 Christ's College, Cambridge 164 Where Milton studied The Old Library at Langley Marish . . . 166 The Interior of the Milton Cottage . . . 178 The Avon, with Trinity Church in the Dis- tance 186 The Shakespeare House from the Garden . 188 The Shakespeare Memorial 194 Place de l'Opera, Paris 206 The Gardens at Versailles 218 The Fountain of Apollo, Versailles .... 222 The Fountain of the Sun, Versailles . . . 224 The Palace at Fontainebleau 226, 228 The Forest of Fontainebleau 230 Rear Deck of the Mauretania 240 XI TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND SUNSET ON THE SEA Skies sundered by a flashing, seething roar, All golden, glimmering, gleaming more and more As wider fly the gates of Heaven's blue That the persistent Sun may sweep unhindered through. Far in his wake he leaves a city glowing, 'Neath purple clouds each moment denser grow- ing— Proudly, majestically, he takes away his light, And leaves the world to settle down to night. But not before the sea he 's gently kissed, And wrapped the waves in warming, golden mist; Nor yet before the clouds he 's silver-lined. And playful patterns on the dimming sky de- signed — A final burst of splendor; then the gray That blurs with patient slowness the long, shining way. FROM IRISH CASTLES TO FRENCH CHATEAUX TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND Amid frantic cheering, hat-throwing, and umbrella-waving on the landing-stage, the Mauretania slid majestically out of the dock and turned her huge bulk with a long, slow swing that headed her for the sea. It was the summer of 1908, and the two great Cu- narders were still among the wonders of the Hudson, as they were still matters of new experience even to the oldest seafarers aboard. To write of the particular trip, the end of which found us in Liverpool, would be but to recount the events, or rather the lack of events, that make any ocean voyage on a 3 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND calm sea a monotonous round of eating, deck-walking, ocean-gazing, sleeping, and "' small talk/^ Everybody was bored, and only the sunsets ministered to the delights of the spirit. At least, that was so until our last day out, when, late in the afternoon, a far-off mist-line cut across the clouds, and little by little the Irish cliffs came into view. A day in Liverpool, the night boat to Belfast; by morning v/e were in Ireland, We felt that now, and now only, our trip had begun. Everything in Ireland has the appearance of being small. Her hills are numerous but low; her fields are like so many pieces of patchwork comprising a pattern; her mini- ature farmhouses nestle with an air of capti- vating shyness in the luxury of fragrant hedges. Some one has complained that in Ireland even the landscape is small — not a well-founded complaint, but a most apt de- scriptive expression. 4 i Landing Stage, New York Photographed from the rear deck of the Mauretania TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND Summer in Ireland is a gentle, inoffensive affair. There is no indulgence in spectac- ular electrical storms; there are no fierce waves of heat that consume and wither. True, the sun shines with a certain hint of subdued sullenness and a persistent threat of storms to come; gray clouds chase over the blue sky and tumble toward the earth with an impudence that is almost a challenge ; but when the rain arrives, it falls with a sweet- ness and grace, with a quiet earnestness, and an absence of fluster that would put the angry, splashing little showers and down- rightly serious outpourings of our own land to shame. In Scotland they call these fre- quent gentle rainfalls " Scotch Mist " ; the ever-varying aspect of the Irish sky has made it a common saying among the people that Ireland has no weather — only " samples 'M The North of Ireland wears a look of prosperity. The farms are beautifully 5 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND kept; the cottages in many cases are over- run with rambHng roses and flowering vines; the fields are painstakingly marked out, now with low hedgerows, or again with irregularly-laid dykes of gray stone. Trees are scarce; they grow in clusters — tall, lanky guards scattered over the rolling land- scape, with its ascending and descending meadows, which give the impression that every available inch of pasture space and potato or flax-growing land has been utilized. The people in the country districts of North Ireland are a quaint, plain, kind- hearted folk, living a life free from compli- cations and stress, their interests centering in their homes, their children, and their church, their recreation taking the form of roadside gossip or a neighborly grouping around the kitchen fire in the evenings that are cold. Far echoes of American doings come over the sea ; news filters up from Par- liament sittings in the great world metropo- 6 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND lis; there are reminiscences of the ravages of the " Big Wind," and the afterglow of ex- periences from the '' Great Revival of '59." Enough to talk about, even for an Irish- man, and there is no man of any nation who can surpass him in conversational facil- ity and powers! As one gets nearer the cities, much of this is changed, for Belfast, with its neighboring towns, presents an up-to-date and business- like aspect that is decidedly out of keeping with many of the things one hears about Irish poverty and slowness. Indeed, there are few American cities that surpass Belfast in point of beautiful natural environment combined with civic cleanness, and one goes through the town with the feeling of being very much at home. Some not too complimentary visitor to Ireland has maintained that an Irishman takes more care of his pigs than of his chil- dren. Personally, I saw no evidence of 7 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND this, though at the same time it must be confessed that few things so stir an Irish farmer's industry as the hope of taking a fine cart-load of young pigs to the market. I have never seen a more fascinating sight than that of Htter after Htter of tiny, smooth, pink-and-white wriggHng piglets, immacu- lately scrubbed and polished, and displayed for sale in the Fairhill at Ballymena. It would make one's heart ache to eat young pork after such a spectacle ! It is as pathetic as another Irish custom is funny. I shall never forget my first long drive through County Antrim in a jaunting-car. Far down the road I saw approaching gradually a sturdy old farmer, staff in hand, dust-coat flying open to the breezes. He came on leisurely, in the wake of a great, lumbering mass that waddled with deliberate and exas- perating slowness. As they drew near I discovered that the old farmer's companion was a massive fat sow, and their strolling 8 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND out together presaged Dame Piggy's change of ownership. For the farmer was not tak- ing his pig for an outing — as I first thought, with the stupidity of the city-bred — he was driving her to market in the town! We took two very dehghtful excursions before we left the region of Belfast for Portrush and the Giant's Causeway. One was to the beautiful glens at Glenariff, in County Antrim, and the other was to Shane's Castle, the county seat of the famous family of O'Neills, at one time Kings of Ulster and among the bloodiest and most daring fighters Ireland has had. At Glenariff the natural beauty of North Ireland in its quieter and more romantic moods reaches its fullest development. Bank holidays have created a picnic ground of this bit of wonder wilderness, but popularity has served to beautify rather than to destroy beauty in this mountain rift, with its tall waterfalls, its thick growths of ferns and 9 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND shamrocks on steep hillsides, its winding paths over moss-covered stones and along the slopes of precipitous cliffs, and its odd crannies bursting with wild flowers. Rus- tic bridges span the clear, green valleys or lead the way across the sparkling, music- making streams; now and again a bird's song penetrates the stillness, while the air breathes the fragrance of a thousand living, growing things. Great pines stretch up- ward to the sky, their heads hidden in a pale mist, that is lightly dispelled by the sunlight pouring through the lacy roofing of the branches. From the end of the glen one ascends to a point from which the sea is visible, also, a picturesque curve of coast- line, with the dim forms of a dozen fairy ships slipping through a haze of blue and silver. The coast is that of Scotland — a wonderful view. There is less of romance, and more of the heroic in the castle on Loch Neagh. One 10 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND drives and walks through miles of beautiful woodland — ■ stately beeches, waving elms, and far-spreading oak-trees — to the new castle that now houses the present O'Neill. The park is carefully tended; the gardens are artistically devised; calmly surveying it all, there rises a mansion of a luxurious but purely conventional order. One may find any or all of these things at home and in many other places, but one cannot find every- where a survival of the days of the Ulster Kings, the remnants of the glory of the Red Hand ! Where the Shane's Castle park reaches the borders of North Ireland's largest lake, Loch Neagh, one comes upon a group of crumbling but majestic ruins. A Norman watch-tower lifts its head over the waters ; a sturdy stone wall borders the lake at an elevation that must have given the de- fenders of the fortress a considerable advan- tage over waterside invaders in the days of the wars that made the O'Neill chieftains II TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND famous. All that remains of the original castle consists of some broken, ivy-grown walls of varying heights, and certain weird and mysterious subterranean passages in which the voice awakens a shrill and horrible echo, and where the rabbits and rats so in- discriminately scamper that it requires cour- age in no small degree to brave the darkness and the dampness and the fleeting shadows. Tradition has it that the original O'Neill came over from Scotland with a party of invaders, who agreed among themselves that he should be King whose hand first touched Irish soil. They had trouble in landing, however, and in the midst of their striving to reach the shore, the O'Neill drew his sword, chopped off his left hand at the wrist, and threw it to the beach. He then claimed the right to the title of King and obtained it, hence the O'Neill coat-of-arms carries a blood-red hand among its other devices. One is tempted to dwell at greater length 12 TO THE NORTH OF IRELAND upon the many picturesque and interesting spots in Northern Ireland, such as quaint graveyards, rambHng villages, and charming sea-side places, but the limits of space pro- hibit any such indulgence. No one gets within forty miles of the Giant's Causeway without experiencing an irresistible desire to see and know this wonderful rocky coast- formation, and the popularity of Portrush, the Atlantic City, Coney Island, and Brigh- ton Beach combined of Ireland, makes the Causeway excursion a foregone conclusion. 13 FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN SLEMISH AVhere purple Slemish heaves its heathered sides, And thrusts its scrubby head into the skies, "Where rude Atlantic waters roll their tides Against the rugged, ragged coastline's rise: There pleasant farms, by fragrant hedges bounded. By dark and grimy peat-bogs all surrounded, Spell prosperous days for Erin's green-gray isle. On Slemish sides so broad and heather-clad, St. Patrick, long ago, did graze his sheep : And dream the dreams to make a sad world glad And bring the light of joy to eyes that weep. To-day few sheep among the bracken wander. No Patrick hither brings his dreams to ponder; But over Ireland's North, a watchful guard. Old Slemish, bent and hoary, battle-scarred, Bids all who 'neath its purple shadows dwell To love and live both loyally and welL ir FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN When God made the world He must have experienced a variety of moods that worked themselves out in the process of creation. The Northern Coast of Ireland was prob- ably the result of a very special mood. " Giant's Causeway " describes it with an ac- curacy that cannot be improved upon, for only giants could appropriately inhabit the tremendous cliffs, and the deep, dark chasms ; cliffs that resound with the roar of a rough and aggressive ocean; caverns that rever- berate with the dull thud of waves that break angrily against stolid, impervious walls of rock, and swirling pools of foam- ing waters that suck madly at the barriers which confine them and dash in impotent fury against the sides of huge boulders im- 2 17 FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN peding their progress. Aptly are the vari- ous phenomenal formations designated the '^Devil's Punch Bowl"; the "Giant's Soup Dish''; the "Wishing Chair." Man finds himself diminutive indeed as he leaps from one flat octagonal rock to another; as he climbs the great steps hewn by time and tide from the steep cliff-sides; as he is whirled through the caves, and under the high arches, in a world that is awesome with its echoes, its weird cries of sizzling oceans, its ghostly intimations of presences felt but in- visible, of powers in force but unseen. The Causeway is a happy hunting-ground for the picture post-card vender and the itinerant photographer, but fortunately Na- ture has set limits to the audacity even of these. The visitor passes through a spring gate, and is free — free to roam over the boulders ; among the sleeping pools ; far out to the water-line. One may climb up or climb down, and always there is the outlook i8 1 FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN to the shining sea, the up-look to the great expanse of the heavens, the subHme quiet of vast spaces, the imposing calm of a series of remarkable natural phenomena, unique in achievement, demanding a toll of worship for the wonderful forces that have created and made these things which are beyond man's conceptions and the scope of his handiwork, almost beyond the sweep of his imagination save as his ability to see opens up his comprehension. When you have been to the Giant's Cause- way you have been to a garden of God, for the Voice of the Power that shaped a great world in the Void sounds through the si- lences of these open spaces, and the Spirit that '' moved over the waters " has left His footprints in the mighty stones that rise and fall and overlap to make this wonderful Causeway, which legendary lore has not dared to people save with giants. At Portrush one takes a boat to Ardros- 19 FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN san, in Scotland, and the afternoon was wan- ing as we put to sea. All the sky was dully- glowing with the gradual setting of the sun, and a faint mist hung about the coast, soft- ening the jagged outlines of the Causeway, which we now saw in all its variety and beauty from the sea. This view loses some- thing of the immensity with which we were so much impressed while actually on the Causeway, but the wonderful details of the formation are here revealed in their entirety for the first time. Now the noble sweep of the arches, the lofty summits of the cliffs, the piled-up crags and tumbling boulders • — well might giant figures of an early age have trod these steeps and leaped these chasms! When the moss shines softly green on the hillsides, and the bracken grows brown shadows, the hardy aborigines of the North may well have lain at ease, their senses soothed by the music of the ocean's roar and the squall of the sea-gull. 20 FROM THE CAUSEWAY TO ARDROSSAN For almost an hour we rode in full view of the Causeway, the light growing mel- lower with each passing moment. When at last we began to draw away, the cliffs were enveloped in a purple haze. A mass of dull brown, vapor-covered, heaved its bulk against a rosy sky, and little by little the gray mist grew denser, until only a faint, far suggestion of the rugged coast was seen. It was dark when we made the dock at Ardrossan, and the building ships by the waterside loomed like black specters against a starry sky. We had seen the sun setting on the Causeway ; we had been close at hand when the last rose rays kissed the peaks of Arran; we had rejoiced over the glow and scintillation of the waters as the changing lights played upon them; it was night, and we had reached Scotch shores ! 21 ALLOWAY TO-DAY — A TRIUMPH IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING THE PEAKS OF ARRAN WouLDST see a fairy-land, forsooth, A wonder-land of light and love, in truth? Note Arran's peaks upon a moonlit night: When shadows chase the gay moonbeams. And clouds pursue the helter-skelter gleams; While happy waters laugh to see the sight. Like dainty barges on a fair lagoon. The isles go gently drifting 'neath the moon. Their peaks in silv'ry mists discreetly veiled. But lights and shadows quickly shift, The clouds their filmy mantles lightly lift, The island into broad moonlight has sailed. But now again the glow is hid. The moon once more has mischievously slid Behind the swiftly-gathering clouds of gray; Lights flash; the darkness deeper grows. As Night its shadows all too thickly blows And folds the last remaining light away. Ill ALLOWAY TO-DAY — A TRIUMPH IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING From Ardrossan to Ayr is but a short train- ride, and as to omit Alloway from one's itinerary were to miss one of the choicest landmarks Scotland has to offer, we made our way down to the Country of Burns. All Ayr is sacred to the memory of the author of " Tam o' Shanter " and " The Cotter's Saturday Night." The railway station is one huge center of advertisement; you are scarcely out of it ere you are con- fronted by Lawson's magnificent statue, set high in the midst of a generous square, the very railings of which are inscribed with the monogram " R. B." It is sufficient testi- mony to the love in which the Ayrshire 25 ALLOWAY TO-DAY people hold their poet that his life-sized figure in bronze should so dominate their principal city. Alloway, as we know, is a bare two miles from Ayr. It makes a pleasant walk, if one has plenty of leisure, a delightful ride if one is pressed for time. The drivers of vehicles have learned their lesson well; their enthu- siasm over the poet is genuine ; their quota- tions are apropos. At precisely the right moment the whip is pointed toward the spot where supposedly Tam crossed the ford on the night of his wild ride; with a gracious air of hospitality they drive up before a spick-and-span little house on the road- way, and grandiloquently invite attention to the signboard which explains that this is the cottage in which Robert Burns was born. In January of 1759, when, in the tiny kitchen, now scrubbed to immaculateness, the eldest son of William Burns first saw 26 o « ALLOWAY TO-DAY the light, the cottage itself and the surround- ing countryside must have looked very dif- ferent from what they do to-day. At that time Ayr was doubtless skirted round by fields and meadows and open lands, small farms for the most part, with the typical thatch-roofed cottage of the Scotch peas- antry for a homestead, where Calvinism held full sway and the Devil and eternal torment were very live possibilities by way of expe- rience. The road out from Ayr was not in those days the well-laid, excellently rolled drive which to-day leads into Alloway. Poor Tam, back from the grave, would surely find himself in a strange, strange land among the fertile, prosperous fields of the spaces between the town and the village. Burns himself would never recognize the scene of his old haunts in the rows of splendidly equipped villas that now make up Alloway. The symmetrically trimmed hedges, the care- fully laid out gardens, the prim, precise ter- 27 ALLOWAY TO-DAY races ^ — these would certainly astonish the gay, irresponsible poet whose existence has made them possible. Burns may have had a garden of his own. If so, it was meager. But what of the gar- den that now lies back of the cottage, — that garden with its smooth, bright lawn, its background of blooming, fragrant shrub- beries, its tall, fine trees, its even, cemented walks ? Go a little distance into the country, where no poet has immortalized the ground and made it sacred, where no Memorial Trust has prepared an artistic landmark, and you will find the rough-and-tumble cottage that gives Burns his more congruous setting. Where the thatch grows moss and blos- soms wild flowers, where the whitewash is smudged and darkened, where the floors are broken and rough, and the honest housewife smokes her pipe by the fire as she gently rocks her cradle, where the open fire burns brightly but not richly, and the kettle sings its song 28 ALLOWAY TO-DAY of welcome to the home-coming farmer — in such surroundings one may picture Burns. All the poet's wit would mock this excellent bit of artistry now placarded " The Birth- place of Burns.'^ This is not to say, however, that the Burns Memorial Cottage and Museum at Alloway, nor again the Burns Monument a bit farther up the road, are failures. As monuments they are not so. In the cottage one finds many interesting relics; in the little mu- seum, just across the garden, there are original manuscripts, early editions, and a variety of informing items and objects. There is Burns's own Bible, inscribed in his hand ; there are any number of pictures and engravings that add no little to the knowl- edge, sum total, of the eager student who comes here to browse about and dream. True, his fastidious taste may rebel at the commer- cial aspect of a post-card and relic table. Bisque busts of the poet that mutilate and mar 29 ALLOWAY TO-DAY his every feature, as we know them from authentic sources, will scarcely appeal to the admirer of " The Address to the Deil." Miniature reproductions of the Burns Bible may fail to attract the seeker after an under- standing of the Burns philosophy ; and even the more humble worshipers at the shrine of the man who penned " The Cotter's Satur- day Night," while they may not appreciate the incongruity of certain of these estab- lished projects for money-getting, will still certainly wonder how the spirit of the poet who sang those immortal songs, " My Highland Lassie, O,'' " Bonnie Dundee," and " Auld Lang Syne," could ever rest in peace among these modern inventions for the improvement of an old '' home " site. The visitor to Alloway will, of course, drive up to the " Brig o' Doon." Here nat- ural beauty is again questionably enhanced by human instrumentation. One stands 30 i^-.-Jk ALLOWAY TO-DAY Upon the " auld brig '' and watches the lazy Doon water as it creeps below, but one's med- itations are sore perplexed by the festive array of prosperous-looking tea gardens, with their tiny refreshment houses and their conveniently disposed resting-benches. As a park this is a pleasant retreat; all that is picturesque in woodland scenery along a riverside is here to be found. Above it, just across the road, and carefully enclosed, the Burns Monument rests on an eminence. It is not a beautiful sculpture, despite its elab- orateness; it has not the significance that would make it even approach the adequate; it has none of the humanity, none of the poetic personality, that characterize the bronze figure in the square at Ayr. But here again is a museum, one interesting relic being the Bible Burns gave to Highland Mary. The whole place is excellently ar- ranged, beautifully managed, but they have not succeeded in capturing the inspiration 31 ALLOWAY TO-DAY of Burns to inhabit this magnificent edifice, these artistic garden spots created to com- memorate his fame. But there are places in Alloway and Ayr, and the vicinity, that recall the poet more distinctly. There is the " Auld Alloway Kirk,'' for example, along the road a little way this side of the monument, and perhaps halfway between the birthplace and the old " Brig o' Doon." Very ancient is this bit of ruin — four gray walls, vine-covered, a roofless sanctuary, spirit-haunted, set amid dark trees, hemmed in among shadows, the central figure in a space of graves and moss- encrusted tombstones. It is a quiet spot — one can think of it at midnight. Here Tam saw the witches dance their strange, weird numbers, as " The lightnings flash from pole to pole, Near and more near the thunders roll, When, glimmering thro' the groaning trees, Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze, 32 ALLOWAY TO-DAY Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing, And loud resounded mirth and dancing. Warlocks and witches in a dance: Nae cotillon, brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. A winnock-bunker in the east. There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast; A tousie tyke, black, grim and large, To gie them music was his charge. He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl. Till roof and rafters a' did dirl — Coffins stood round, like open presses. That show'd the Dead in their last dresses ; And (by some devilish cantraip sleight) Each in its cauld hand held a light." Alloway Kirk has stood as it stands to- day for many and many a long year. One needs not any rare stretching of the imagina- tion to picture the wine-driven Burns pos- sessed of visions in the presence of this grim, gray death-house. It is not my purpose here to dwell upon those aspects in the character of Robert Burns that contributed to his un- 3 33 ALLOWAY TO-DAY doing, but one cannot help feeling that the '' auld kirk " must have held innumerable terrors, not for the sober Burns, but for that other creature who has given shame to the name and fame of the greatest of Scotch singers. Up in the town of Ayr there stands " Tarn o' Shanter's Inn," and one can scarcely " do '' Alloway without having one's atten- tion called to it. This is a landmark that Tam's fellows in a newer generation prize. And only a little distance away from it we come upon the " Twa Brigs " that Burns made famous. Queer, was it not, that the prophecy spoken then should have already been fulfilled? The " auld brig " is the orig- inal one as it stood in Burns' day ; the boast, " I '11 be a brig when ye 're a shapeless cairn ! " came true early in the nineteenth century, and the bridge that was the " new brig" had then to be replaced by one still newer. 34 m \ ^ ALLOWAY TO-DAY There may be some who will wonder why any one should quibble over the earnest ef- forts to make of Alloway a triumph in land- scape gardening. I grant you that no one has the right to quibble ; it is a case of take it or leave it. The Burns trustees have doubtless done their best — the best that can be done when it comes to preserving the birthplace of a poet, to building an enduring monument to his fame. Alloway to-day typifies the esteem in which the Scotch people hold the great poet who voiced their thoughts, their aspirations, their every char- acteristic, in their own tongue. They have done what they could to obliterate the mem- ory of the man who failed to live as they would like to have had him live, but who did, nevertheless, sing in a fashion after their own hearts. They love the Burns of those tender, touching melodies, which might have been composed on the harp of an arch- angel; they are desirous of forgetting the 35 ALLOWAY TO-DAY Burns who defied the law and the Church and who could laugh their most sacred doc- trines to scorn in the proud brilliancy of his wonderful but riotous intellect. They want to think of the tender-hearted Burns, who could so whimsically sympathize with the field-mouse, the Burns who could cry — no matter how inconsistently — " Is there, in human form, that bears a heart, A wretch ! a villain ! lost to love and truth ! That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art. Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth? Curse on his perjur'd arts! dissembling smooth! Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exil'd? Is there no pity, no relenting ruth. Points to the parents fondling o'er their child? Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild?" They want the Burns who could whisper beautiful messages to " Mary in Heaven," who could love gently, sing sweetly, preach eloquently. And, little by little, the world at large is viewing Burns from a new stand- 36 The Burns Monument at Alloway Taken from the old *'Brig o' Doon "' ALLOWAY TO-DAY point. Little by little, we are finding greater riches in him. And because there is some- thing lovable in this Scotch Byron, some- thing fascinating in his wild career, some- thing infinitely pathetic in the story of his weaknesses, yet something sublime in his simple Scotch melodies, something deeper, worthy our closer contemplation in his "Holy Will/s Prayer," his "Jolly Beggars," we seek to find him in his old haunts, the man and the poet. And though the conven- tionality of the improved Alloway stifles his spirit, we may still discern the ghost of him haunting the open spaces about the " auld kirk " ; we may find it along the Doon banks, and in the neighboring wooded places, and yet again among the gray stones of Ayr's " auld brig," or even lurking in the shadowy corners of the now famous Tam o' Shanter's Inn. We may smile at the unctuous modernity that has tried to enshrine a poet's soul in 37 ALLOWAY TO-DAY sleek, tenderly nurtured gardens and picnic places, but before the forces of poetry that have rebelled against such housing, and have taken up their abode in their own chosen places, we are awed. Who knows but that in the dead of night Tarn continues to gallop madly down the roadway, while the lights gleam in the old kirk and the spirits hold their revelry amid the shadows? For then the tea gardens are closed ; the greedy tour- ist is away; once more the spirit of poetry rides abroad. 38 L V f The Burns Statue, Avr IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY A SONG OF THE HEATHER O, THE heather it is purple, And the heather it is white, It makes soft the stony places. It gives darkened corners light! How we love the dainty heather, How we seek to know its charm ; How we search in nooks well hidden. For the spray that keeps from harm. We can find it on the hillsides, It awaits us in the dell. On the mountain, in the valley, There 's the music of its bell. So we pluck the purple heather. But we cherish most the white; For our hearts are full of longings And we need its boasted might. IV IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY If there be any place in the world where one may feel poetry, it is in the region of Lochs Katrine and Lomond, under the shadows and in the bypaths of Ben Lomond and Ben Venue. There are a hundred and one parts of the world in which romance breathes through the very atmosphere, but the won- drous country that Scott revealed in " The Lady of the Lake '' holds a distinctive place of its own, for its beauty has an everlasting variety; it is verily human in its many moods, its changeable and at all times fasci- nating aspects. The schoolboy or schoolgirl who was once exasperated by the eternal necessity for par- aphrasing Lady Ellen's love story, and for 41 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY accomplishing the thankless task of forcing Sir Walter's musical meters into a weari- some prose, must go to Loch Katrine and the Trossachs to learn to appreciate anew the beauties of Scott's accurate descriptions of the country through which the Hunter came on that memorable day when Ellen pushed her light skiff over the water and carried the stranger to the little lodge on the isle. It is not my purpose to waste any time here on a record of the trip through the lake country which gave me my first view of Highland wonders. Many of my readers will have taken that trip for themselves, and a mere itinerary would therefore bore them. For those who have not taken it the details would have no interest; for those who pro- pose taking it I should advise a consultation with Baedeker — he is far more familiar with train times and the methods of transporta- tion than I am. Moreover, the stereotyped 42 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY route and round of trains and boats and coaches has Httle to do with the emotional gains of a journey such as this is; and in a land so much aHve with poetry and romance, and rare natural loveliness, it is the emo- tional effect with which one is disposed to deal, and over which one would most delight- edly linger. The way from Balloch to Callender or vice versa — and from Callender westward was really the route pursued by Fitz-James in his famous chase — is a way replete with surprises and wonders that are the more wonderful in that they are never stationary. In the Trossachs one is in fairyland. Na- ture has been lavish, but she has also been choice. Lakes big and little, waters silvery and clear; wild flowers in profusion, but artistically mingled; woods dense, but fra- grant, and hills high and low; hills purple with their mantles of heather, overtopped by gaunt, gray rocks that seem to cleave the 43 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY s]^y — this is the barest outline of the many individual features which make up the Tros- sachs. Individually they appeal as any bit of Nature's careful handiwork must appeal; taken together, they are splendid. It is not that they satisfy the soul hungering after beauty; it is rather that they shatter the contentment of a soul too well satisfied with the poor artificialities of an increasingly potent civilization. If into the primitive glories and passions of this marvelous wood- land and lakeland, Civilization has intruded with audacious calm, this same calm has been routed, put to flight and utterly ban- ished. This is no part of a smug, twentieth century world, trained to self-poise and a mastery over physical and mental forces. They may set their handsome hotels in the very midst of this, enchanted and enchanting tract, but their influence is not to be per- ceived beyond the radius of a few acres — we drop our gold into their greedy maw subcon- 44 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY sciously as it were, for are we not in dream- land, and what has dreamland to do with practical considerations ? As one jolts over the roadway, now wide, now narrow, now straight, or again wind- ing; sometimes down a steep, curved hill, or up a still steeper and more sharply jagged one, it seems as if the centuries had ceased to be, as if the age of chivalry, of childlike faith and hate and love and passion, were once more with us and upon us. Through the woods beside us we can almost hear the stag go crashing; in imagination's ears we hear the hunters, shout on shout. The dogs bay as they leap up and down and along the hillside; there is a ring of steel, the fall of a horse's hoofs, Fitz-James himself seems to " ride alone " over the beautiful Brig of Turk. This is the heart of a land young with the youth of untamed ages; a land of Rob Roys, of Highland chieftains, of minstrels bent and hoar, their songs and prophecies 45 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY filling the air with a wild, weird sound as of * desolation, or with a loud, triumphant cry of victory. Men chase men ; or again, they chase the deer ; the trees rise nobly to shield them; the leaves rustle gently to cool their flushed and sweating brows; the heather smooths itself out for a resting-place for their wearied limbs and the spent horses that carry them — so close to Nature men live that they speak with her, think in harmony with her, and yield themselves to all her tender ministrations with a perfectness of trust, a sublime appreciation, the wholeheart- edness and unconsciousness of which must warm God's heart and make Him glad that He established these splendid mountains, these wooded, sheltered places, these cool, refreshing waters, for their delectation. Heaven seems terribly near in the High- lands. The blue skies embrace the hills ; the soft, rolling clouds here and there mask and envelop them. Light rains sprinkle the ten- 46 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY iderly green foliage, as if the Gardener of all were lovingly caring for the outward as- pect of His garden, and were keeping it bright and fresh by an abundance of clear sunshine and frequent, gentle showers. Scott has all the poet's vision in picturing those regions that appealed to his romantic nature. He knew the glories of a sunset in the lake country ; he knew the awe-inspiring forces of a thunder shower. *'Each purple peak, each flinty spire; Was bathed in floods of living fire.'' But one must go high in the Trossachs to view a sunset; for down in the deep ravines it is true that " not a setting beam could glow '' ; " where twined the path in shadow hid,'' all is cool, damp, strangely silent and sweetly soothing. Here may one wander and meditate, for here God has set His temple and His sanctuary, and every tree bends with a humble grace to acknowledge 47 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY the forces that so quietly yet so insistently prevail. This is the garden of souls, bul- warked about by stately hills. The spirit, refreshed and restrengthened, may climb upward to the summits and meet the sun face to face, for these are the Scotch Sinais, and the glory of the God of Moses sweeps them with refulgent gleam. There is a richness of beauty in Scott's de- scription of a Trossach glen as he wrote it for " The Lady of the Lake ": " Boon nature scatter'd, free and wild, Each plant or flower, the mountain's child. Here eglantine embalm'd the air, Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower ; Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side. Emblems of punishment and pride, Group'd their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain. With boughs that quaked at every breath, Gray birch and aspen wept beneath; 48 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY Aloft, the ash and warrior oak Cast anchor in the rifted rock; And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung, Where seemed the cHffs to meet on high, His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky. Highest of all, where white peaks glanced. Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced, The wanderer's eye could barely view The summer heaven's delicious blue ; So wondrous wild, the whole might seem The scenery of a fairy dream." It is not given every one to " issue from the glen/' to gain " an airy point '' and see " Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnished sheet of living gold. Loch Katrine lay beneath him roll'd," but all who come forth from amid the mingled grandeurs and more intimately charming places of the Trossachs will pause spellbound on the shores of Loch Katrine. This is romance incarnate, and one longs to 4 49 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY ride over its waters, singing. All around rise the hills — bare hills, hills heather-clad, hills grown over with thick forest mazes, hills reflected in the clear waters of the lake, reflections intermingled with islands large and small, islands all wooded and in their turn giving to the mirroring waters pictures as wild as they are weird, pictures full of color and light and the ravishing power of beautiful form. Listen to the winding of the Hunter's horn, as on his little promontory he medi- tates and wishes and longs. And then in answer comes the maiden; a chieftain's daughter she, who carries the stranger to her lakeland isle, that isle which was " So close with copsewood bound, Nor track nor pathway might declare That human foot frequented there. Until the mountain maiden show'd A clambering unsuspected road, That winded through the tangled screen, And opened on a narrow green, 50 H IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY Where weeping birch and willow round With their long fibers swept the ground. Here, for retreat in dangerous hour, Some chief had framed a rustic bower." Ellen's Isle appears just as Scott described it ; a small island, densely wooded, its banks high set and no landing-place visible. Its outer appearance breathes mystery, yet sug- gests romance, and that romance the Scotch poet has given it. The way between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, or, more accurately, the way be- tween Inversnaid and Stranachlacher, is in- deed the way of the mountains. My own experience on this road was one to remem- ber. Most persons going through the lake country hope for or wait for a clear day, and they describe a clear day as being one of un- variegated sunshine. Those who have had a rainy day for the trip look back upon it as a somewhat doubtfully delightful journey, personal discomfort contributing to the dis- 51 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY appointment of dull skies, mists that obscure and mud that predominates. There is, how- ever, an in-between kind of day that is quite usual in the Highlands, and my day was one of these. Every twenty minutes it showered — a cool, refreshing, wetting, but not en- during, shower. After each shower the Sun had a frolic — in fact, I am sure that on such a day the Sun enjoys a most benignant humor. And such a humor adds a wonder- ful charm to the Highlands. For one mo- ment dense purple mists would veil the faces of the mountains, heavy clouds would roll low over the hills ; then suddenly the clouds would fade, the mists would scatter, the sky would glow with gold and gleam with blue and silver patches. Every green blade would sparkle with a raindrop; the trees would glisten emerald under the soft sun-sheen; along the sides of the high, long-sloped mountains, the rainbow would lay its curved line of gorgeous colors with an abandonment 52 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY and a grace that enraptured. Here was Na- ture in one of her grand moods, not a gran- deur that overpowers, but a grandeur that exalts. The same spirit prevailed on Loch Lo- mond. The scene here is less brilliant; the great mountains heave their shoulders high ; their boulders project and over fold like the mighty muscles of giants ; their shadows are somber, the sunshine is less inspiring, the weight of massive rocks oppresses even while it uplifts the spirit. Loch Lomond is expan- sive, and its scenery is on a more magnificent scale than that of Loch Katrine. It has more of the awe-inspiring and less of the sympathetic, the touching. One is moved to wonder with a far-away wonder; there is not that immediate incentive to aspiration, and there is far less of intimate inspiration. Nature seems to guard here the passes into some wonder-world; but one hesitates to desire a watchword that will open the passes, 53 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY lest instead of enchanting garden spots, in- stead of the chivalrous lords and beautiful ladies of a bygone romantic day, one may find beyond those mountains gray giants' castles, monsters that devour, and the deso- lateness of dungeons dreary and dark. These are, however, but the dreams that the Scotch lakes and the Scotch mountains engender. They are visions worth seeing; they are feelings worth experiencing. If you do not know yourself closer to the things of Heaven when you end your day in the Scotch lake country, you have missed some- thing in soul culture; if you have not seen visions, have not dreamed dreams, you have lost a delightful bit of imaginative revelling, an experience which, if you do not get it here, you will not be likely to get anywhere. For the man or woman who has not re- sponded to the exalted spirit of these moun- tain heights; who has not drunk of the in- spiration of these clear and sparkling waters ; 54 IN THE SCOTCH LAKE COUNTRY whose soul has not reached the purple mists that encircle the summits, or has not stooped to commune with the humblest wild flowers of the deepest glen, that man or that woman is like the man "... that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds." 55 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE EDINBURGH CASTLE BY MOONLIGHT High on its hill, above the town that sleeps, The castle stands, all silent and all dark; Beneath it, in the green and fragrant park, Where Princes Street a new tradition keeps. Pedestrians stand at gaze and scan the steeps, The castle's mighty bulwarks to remark; Where once a lover, hungry for a lark, Scaled desperate heights by bounds and daring leaps. Above that pile, historic, dark, and still, The full moon spreads its glowing, silvery light, Bright gleams the shadows touch with glisten- ing threads Where now the ghost of Mary softly treads. Each turret wears a strand of shining white, Enhaloed by moon-luster rests the hill. V EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE Picturesque is probably the most apt word with which to describe Edinburgh, and it would seem that to no city in the British Isles could this term be more appropri- ately applied. Even as Rome, this is a city set upon seven hills, and, like Rome, the spirit of all things ancient seems to inhabit these monumented crests. To attempt to describe this quaint old Scottish town by recording any particular number or set of facts were as futile as the efforts of all artists of all ages to add the apparently lost arms to the incomparable Venus of Milo; while to brush away the misty but ornate cobwebs that centuries of 59 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE history-making have woven about storied ruins and quaint architectural groups would be a task unworthy an appreciative student's pen, an artistic crime that only one foolhardy would dare to think of committing. My first sight of Edinburgh was at night, and even as we climbed the innumerable steps leading up from Waverley Station to the streets of the old town, I sensed that at- mosphere of historic and poetic sanctity with which Edinburgh is endowed. Not that the first scene upon which we came had anything of sacredness or the awe-inspiring to hallow it, for the " Old Town '' at ten o'clock in the evening is more rife with evil even than most cities are, and the poverty-stricken, drink- ing, gambling, pickpocketing crew of men and women who make the Canongate re- gion, for instance, unsafe for respectable wayfarers, presents as unsavory if as piti- able a sight as one can well imagine. For Edinburgh's poor are desperately poor ; and 60 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE Edinburgh's slums can scarcely be matched for their sorrow and suffering, even as they cannot be matched for their quaintness, which is incongruous. For here is a world within a world, a world above a world; yes, and a world beneath a world. Just a few steps through a narrow passageway that has its entrance on the High Street, and you come into a court on three sides of which rise narrow, very high, grimy, dingy, flat-faced, myriad-windowed buildings, the lands — in our language, the tenements — of Edin- burgh. Extremely old, extremely dirty, ex- tremely tragical are these ancient buildings, surviving from a day when the rapid growth of population in a restricted area demanded that men build up and up, story upon story, since they had not the space for expansion. Out on the High Street life moves on in a more or less ordinary stream; within. Trag- edy and Comedy brush elbows as they pass up and down the steep stairways, and in and 6i EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE out of the filthy, mean Httle rooms, in which, as Stevenson says, now one is dying, or again one is being born — in the very midst of the fumes of bad Hquor, and to the sound of the maudHn whines of the many who drink and loaf and fight. And yet, just on the other side of the dirty, half-tottering, semi-mysterious lands, the Princes Street Gardens, when we saw them, lay in their beautiful hollow, fragrant with flowers, dainty in garments of green, rich in refresh- ment and rest for the eyes of the fashionable throngs that pass them lightly by on their way to and from the handsome shops and inviting bookstores that line the opposite side of the broad thoroughfare. But, with it all^ — the poverty, the dirt, the horrible struggle for existence — the inhabitant of the Edinburgh tenement house has one item of wealth of which no one can deprive him. To quote Stevenson, who has expressed it as few others could : 62 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE *' The poor man may roost high in the center of Edinburgh, and yet have a peep of green country from his window ; he shall see the quarters of the well-to-do fathoms underneath, with their broad squares and their gardens; he shall have nothing overhead but a few spires, the stone topgallants of the city ; and perhaps the wind may reach him with a rustic pureness, and bring a smack of the sea or of flowering lilacs in the Spring." And in the very chamber where now Drunkenness holds riot, and Starvation stands at guard, there may once have cHnked the glasses of the noble, and have sounded the silvery laughter of fine ladies — for once on a time these strange, steep apartment places were the dwelling houses of the wealthy, and into these dreary courts the chariots of kings and courtiers were wont to be driven with a fine flourish and a blare of horns. Nowadays, the more fortunate of the Edinburgh townspeople have a " New Town '' of their own, but tradition, and the glories of association with a great historic 63 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE past, vest themselves in these meaner quar- ters, under the shadow of St. Giles' great lantern tower and in the clustering heaps of stone and plaster that make up the region round about Holyrood. It was in one of the lands off the High Street, now gloomy and dark, that Dr. John- son roomed with Boswell during his stay in Edinburgh, and certain windows are still pointed out as belonging to the particular chamber occupied by the great man and his faithful biographer. Edinburgh is unusually rich in historic and literary associations. They begin at the castle, which dominates the city from its place on a great hill at the top of the High Street, and they continue on down, past St. Giles and the famous Tron Church; past the Heart of Midlothian — a heart outlined in cobble-stones set in the street just above St. Giles, and marking the doorway of the ancient Tolbooth, celebrated in Scotf s novel, 64 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE " The Heart of Midlothian '' — and on into the Canongate, at the head of which stands a quaint, old, irregularly constructed house, its staircase leading from the street to the second floor, its lower floor now comprising a picturesque bookshop stocked with queer, aged, discolored engravings and musty, fine- typed books of a historic period. In this house, supposedly, John Knox, the hammer- tongued preacher of Queen Mary's day, lived and died, and from a window looking out over the High Street he is supposed to have hurled his prophecies and admonitions and denunciations to the gaping crowds below. A little lower down, the Canongate church- yard shelters the remains of Adam Smith, author of "The Wealth of Nations,'' and the murdered Rizzio, and gives a place to the grave of that unhonored Scotch poet, Fergusson, to whom Robert Burns owed so much that in later years he erected a monu- ment here in token of his appreciation. 5 65 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE Here, also, stands the Canongate Tolbooth, with its ironic inscription on the old clock that extends above the street — Sic itur ad astra- — pointing the way to Heaven for those who were hanged from this exten- sion. And now at last we see Holyrood Palace, quite at the foot of the long hill that had its summit at the castle. But we came down that hill just a little precipi- tately — let us retrace our steps for a word about the castle and St. Giles ere we go into Holyrood. All that is romantic in the wars and tri- umphs, even in the defeats, of the Scottish nation, has its place in Edinburgh's gray old castle. I have not the time, nor again the space, for details with which to describe this grim, gaunt pile — perhaps you would not thank me for such a description, as it is by no means inaccessible — but from the mo- ment one takes the first step up the broad esplanade that leads to the entrance gate, 66 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE one is conscious of an atmosphere fraught with the thrill of the deeds of brave men, and the horror of the deeds of wicked men. For in this castle the young Douglases were bidden to a banquet, and were there mur- dered; in this castle Queen Mary gave birth to the son who was to join the forces of the Scots and the English; and in this castle the Duke of Argyll suffered his long im- prisonment. Here we see displayed the Regalia of Scotland, symbol of a power for- ever gone; and here, in a humble chamber, exalted by the spirit of a queen's prayer graved on its impaneled wall, a king first saw the light, while from a little window he was lowered to a waiting group below, who carried him away to Stirling that he might be baptized in his mother's faith ^ — the faith of Rome. Once, this castle was taken by a band of fifty men, who climbed the ramparts under the guidance of a youth who knew the way because by night he was 67 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE wont to visit his sweetheart far down in the Old Town. To-day one looks over those same ramparts and sees spread below the magnificent Princes Street Gardens. But in that day a river flowed through the hol- low, the bed of which has given place for the railroad which now leads into Waverley Station. It is a sight to stir the most prosaic mind to stand on Castlehill, to stand by the side of Mons Meg, the great and famous cannon, and look out over and beyond Edin- burgh. There are few views in the world to surpass this, embracing as it does the high Arthur's Seat on the one hand; the stretch of the sea, with its glimpses of white sails; the Pentland Hills in the distance, and the irregular up-hill-and-down-dale town of Edinburgh, lying under a clear sky, with a faint, fine mist over the face of the scattered peaks and a flood of sunshine in the valley of the Gardens. High houses, low houses, church spires in countless numbers — the 68 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE city of a beautiful, unhappy queen; the city of a mighty, stentorian-voiced reformer ; the city of poets and romancers, and of the doers of deeds that are recorded in the annals of a nation that has played an important part in the world's history. After the inspiration of this view, with its burden of thoughts and memories, go into St. Margaret's Chapel, that tiny stone shrine placed there more than eight hundred years ago, which gave a refuge to the good Queen Margaret, a holy woman, who loved her country and her God, and served both faithfully and well. The chapel is a place for meditation, for a mo- ment's respite for the soul before one goes back into the hum and color of the castle's military life; for to-day the castle is used as a barracks, and a Highland regiment, picturesque in its dress uniform of cream- colored kilts and scarfs of the plaid, keeps things in a state of movement and rush dis- tinctively modern. From this atmosphere 69 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE one wanders on to St. Giles, and, in the sweetness of its solemn silence, ponders over many of the ideas engendered by the survey of the town thus far. Suddenly, upon the hush that fills the lofty, high-arched spaces of the nave, falls the low rumble of first organ notes, growing sweeter and more clear as they progress. To music marched the warriors into battle, warriors now dust under these monuments of stone, in these magnificent sarcophagi reared to commemorate their achievements. To the sound of music thronged the crowds to hear John Knox thunder from the pulpit, and in effigy of marble stands the preacher now, characteristic as to expression and pose. To the organ's tense vibrations quiver the silken fragments of the once glorious flags that to-day hang in dejected groups about the tall and fluted pillars of the church which honors their heroic bearers and the houses for which they once so proudly stood. 70 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE Scotland has been generous in the monu- ments placed in St. Giles, down to her more recent acquisitions, including the now famil- iar tablet which our own Saint Gaudens carved into a likeness of her poet-romancer, Robert Louis Stevenson. But one lingers in the old cathedral as one may or will ; for the present it requires that we move on, once more down the High Street and through Canongate, even into the Palace of Holyrood. This is the place to which the spirits of the queen and Darnley and Rizzio and the four Marys are wont to return, for in the rooms of this palace Darn- ley and Mary lived their briefest of brief romances, and here the Italian secretary was brutally murdered. The palace has become a mere show place ; one is piloted through a quick succession of rooms that must be peo- pled instantaneously, if one would experi- ence the romantic emotion that they by right and reason should inspire. It needs an 71 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE after-thinking really to get Holyrood into a historic perspective, and it needs a quiet leisure in the gloom of the broken Abbey. Here, as at Melrose, there is the feeling of the sacredness of age, of ruin evolved from glory through the agency of Time. So close to the haunts of sin stood this sanctuary; in its holy precincts knelt a queen whose weakness was only equaled by the intensity of her suffering, whose marvelous beauty gave often the cause for her sin. Yet the tragedy of the farce enacted at Fotheringay would almost blot out all save the sorrow, and one may bow the head in Holyrood Ab- bey, under the blue sky that roofs its shat- tered columns, and feel a thrill of sympathy, a wonderful depth of pity for this most un- fortunate of queens. Up from the valley in which Holyrood rests it is not a long walk to Calton Hill, the National Monument on the top of which — a Parthenon-like structure of pillars that 72 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE has never been completed — has given Edin- burgh the title of '' modern Athens/' so much like the Acropolis at Athens does it look from a distance. Calton Hill is a queer mixture of monu- ments and public buildings, which crown its heights and rest upon its slopes. Here is the prison, the Royal High School, a monument to Burns, one to Dugald Stewart, and one to Lord Nelson. The hill rises di- rectly opposite the castle, at the other side of the town, and each day, an hour after the sun crosses the meridian of Greenwich, a shot is fired from the castle and a ball falls from the top of the Nelson monument. The architecture on Calton Hill is in execrable taste, while the monuments are disposed in the least appropriate way possible. It is said that the National Monument was never finished because the commissioners enjoyed too many elaborate repasts paid for from the funds, and to-day the structure is dubbed by 73 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE the people of Edinburgh the " National Disgrace/' The road from Calton Hill leads down to Princes Street, and here one has a view of the handsome Scott monument, the most elaborate thing of its kind in the world. The carvings on it are exquisite, portraying various characters from the novels, and an excellent presentment of the poet and story- writer, in white marble, rests under the canopy. The principal sights of Edinburgh can be seen in a day; but an indefinite period of time would scarcely exhaust its possibilities along the line of historic association and literary landmarks. Through Scott's novels alone one may trace a long line of interest- ing places which gave the descriptive data or the historic episodes for some one of the romances. Scott was born in Edinburgh, lived there part of his life, and visited the town frequently in times he did not live 74 X EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE there. In Parliament Close, by St. Giles, he sat at the bar of law, and, in his place there, wrote many chapters of the Waverley Novels as the judicial proceedings went monotonously on. In Advocates' Court he found the original for the lawyer in " Guy Mannering," and down in the heart of the old town he went to seek the setting for the Porteous riots described in " The Heart of Midlothian." Just outside the town there still stands a quaint cottage, known as Davie Deans' Cottage, and down by Holyrood one pauses to step into the Whitehorse Close, pictured so minutely in '^ Waverley." It was in Paul's Work that the Ballantyne Press was first located, and an old wooden press is still shown there, on which portions of the Waverley Novels were printed. Edinburgh is sacred to the fame of Allan Ramsay, author of " The Gentle Shepherd " ; to the novelist, Tobias Smollett; to Drum- mond of Hawthornden, whom Ben Jonson 75 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE visited; to David Hume, to John Gay, to Robert Burns; to Lockhart, son-in-law and biographer of Scott; to Francis Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review, that terrible organ of criticism; to Sydney Smith; to the poet, Thomas Campbell; and to Thomas Carlyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Dr. John Brown, creator of " Rab." Moreover, it is filled with legends and historic tales sur- rounding the life and tragic death of Mary, Queen of Scots; and always will the spirit of John Knox seem to preside over much of the old town. There is one place to which I ought to call especial attention. We were taken down a long line of steps from the upper town to a lower portion — for Edin- burgh's hills necessitate much step-climbing as one walks through the city — to the old Magdalene Chapel, the oldest church in Edinburgh, more than three hundred and fifty years of age. It belongs to the Corpo- ration of Hammermen, and it is a tiny, 76 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE quaint place, surmounted by a beautiful spire. A silver bell hangs in the belfry, and our guide climbed up the steep stairs to pull the rope. The chime was as clear and sweet as that of any bell I have heard. The glass in the windows of Magdalene Chapel belongs to pre-Reformation days, and is the only painted glass now left in Scotland. In this chapel John Knox preached, and the pulpit he used is preserved there. The place is a keystone, so to speak, in the " Old Town," before the " New Town," with its broad, beautiful terraces, its mansions, its hospi- tals, and its university buildings came into being. And those who would know historic Edinburgh, the Edinburgh that is quaint, even as it is so essentially picturesque, must know these steep, narrow streets, deep below the main thoroughfares, walled by the seven, eight, and ten story buildings that may be only four stories high on their opposite sides, and reached by long flights of steps of stone 77 EDINBURGH THE PICTURESQUE or wood that connect the city below with the city above. My last good look at Edinburgh was late at night, later even than the time of my ar- rival. And it was a view decidedly different ; not a view of Canongate, but one of the Princes Street Gardens, just below the castle. It was moonlight, and a full moon rested just over the castle's round tower. The fortress was all in shadow, just the merest outline of a black mass being discernible. The gar- dens below were lighted, and Princes Street was thronged with an up-to-date, enjoyment- seeking crowd. So the new marched under the shadow of the old ; and the ancient cita- del, serene in its now secured repose, but weighted with memories that cannot be ban- ished, seemed like a great giant, sitting in melancholy reflection, in the face of a lively panorama in which he could take or have no part. 78 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD MELROSE IN RUINS Where once the light all rainbow-tinted fell Through Melrose windows splendid, lofty-arched, Beneath which dark-cowled monkish figures marched As conned they o'er their beads their prayers to tell : Like wraiths that in ethereal regions dwell, The ghostly twilight of a later day Those shadows gaunt and dim now drives away, And Beauty yields its glow to Ruin's spell. For broken now those sculptured blossoms rare, That once made Melrose cloisters garden fair; Dust-scattered now those forms severely grave. Whose footsteps echoed through the nave; E'en tattered are the emblems heroes bore. They fly to stimulating winds no more. VI MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD Abbotsford is among those literary land- marks that afford excuses for the American traveler abroad who needs a " beaten way," since in going across the Atlantic at all he must, American-wise, so plan his journey that he shall finish it with the comfortable feeling of having ''invested" something; moreover, of having realized generously on the investment. The happy day may come when we shall go abroad — I am speaking generally, not specifically — without aim, without purpose, without planning; just to absorb whatever comes our way and to drink in whatever of inspiration those fair and pregnant scenes may carry to us. But we have not yet ceased 6 8i MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD to be " orthodox/' or middle-classedly re- spectable, in our travels — hence the ease with which our neighbors over the waters make profit of our strenuous efforts to " do " everything in sight. The less conventional tourist may well hesitate before journeying down to Abbots- ford, but, having hesitated, he is committed to a decision in the affirmative. It then be- comes but a question of getting there. And the canny Scotsman knows too thoroughly the propensities of his American brothers to let slip this excellent opportunity for turn- ing an honest penny. Wherefore, whether one starts from England, and the south, or comes by way of Edinburgh, as we did, the station at Melrose is conveniently equipped with several varieties of vehicle, in which,, for a modest fee, one may jolt down hill and up dale and around corners to that low-lying,; wide-rambling, much-turreted, and bedecked mansion which Sir Walter Scott, with a taste 82 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD more extravagant than artistic, and an ambi- tion far in excess of most literary men's bank balances, erected as a pedestal on which to rear that long and mighty line of Scotts of which he dreamed, but that remains principally as a monument to his success as a novelist and to his unique and wonderful ability in effecting the collection of valuable historical trophies. It is not necessary here to tell the story of Abbotsford — it has been sufficiently talked about. Indeed, one wonders if it really is not superfluous to describe in any way this great and remarkable pile which to-day is, first of all, the official residence of Scott's great-granddaughter, who, for the sake of the curious, the venerating, the honestly appreciative, has permitted this " pride " of her illustrious ancestor to remain accessible to a vast and miscellaneous public, some of whom weep and others of whom smile when brought thus face to face with the actual 83 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD belongings, the immediate home and sur- roundings, of Scotland's most significant genius. The Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott is herself an author of whom Sir Walter, were he alive, would not need to be ashamed. She has done more than one splendid thing in the way of descriptive and historical writ- ing, her " Tragedy of Fotheringay " being the most accurate and complete account we have had of the travesty of a trial which sent Mary, Queen of the Scots, to the block. But this is not a review of the literary achievements of the present owner of Ab- botsford. For, lightness aside, Abbotsford has one merit as a literary landmark that is not shared by most such relics. It is still too modern to have acquired anything of the legendary, and the care with which it has been preserved has kept away the incon- gruities of restoration. One may laugh heartily at being ushered into a basement 84 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD room to inspect picture post-cards, photo- graphs, and souvenir editions, on the heels of which one is requested to purchase a ticket of admission for the rooms upstairs; but one ceases to laugh when at length the study door is thrown open and one is pro- jected suddenly into the very holy of holies, the place in which the high priest of Scottish Border Minstrelsy performed his most sacred rites. It matters little that the furnishings are rich, unique, endowed, many of them, with historic interest of an unusual degree; what does matter is that here Scott, the poet and novelist, worked and lived; here he gathered about him his treasures; here he planned and dreamed, and made many of the dreams come true. I don't remember what I saw in that study at Abbotsford — save that I recall wondering at the height of the desk as compared with the height of the chair that stood before it, and was the chair which Scott himself used in writing 85 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD — I don't care to remember the details of these furnishings, since there are always Baedeker and the photographs to tell me if I need to refer to them concretely; what I do remember is the feeling of the presence of a genius whose spirit cannot be separated from this temple which it created for itself. This was a presence to discover which I needed neither guide nor guide-book. That something in the personality of Walter Scott which quickens the sympathies and touches the heart — the lovableness of the man's personality — that is what one finds in these rooms at Abbotsford. And in the study, where a master mind wove cunningly those wondrous lengths of bright-hued, grimly shadowed, bounteously figured and more bounteously backgrounded tapestries, in that study the Genius of Imagination and the Spirit of Romance stand like twin angels with flaming swords to guard against the profanation of a sanctuary. 86 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD In the library one senses the kindly, hos- pitable spirit of the Abbotsford laird; the geniality, the courteous grace of one who welcomes friends to partake of his home joys. From a niche in the wall the gently humorous eyes of the poet and story-teller smile in greeting to the visitor; the books bear witness to the wealth of history and legend that went to make up that noble array of romancing art in the concrete form of a long line of novels. At every point one meets some token that either suggested or enhanced or confirmed a well-known story, and one is made greatly to wonder when the treasures of the glass-covered table by the window are conned over, name by name. The crucifix that the most unfortunate Scot- tish queen carried through her final ordeal; Napoleon's own blotting-pad and book, taken after Waterloo ; Flora MacDonald's pocket- book; and a tumbler from which Bobbie Burns had drunk a frequent dram, — these 87 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD are all symbols of the master's skill in creat- ing romance about tangible objects, and are furthermore emblems of his passion for col- lecting interesting relics. From the library one passes on into the drawing-room, where the Raeburn portrait of Scott has a delightful reminiscence in its youthful whimsicality, in its tender, implied caress for the big, beautiful deer-hound; and the portrait of Abbotsford's present mis- tress on another wall calls for a moment's attention. From the library window we had had an inspiring landscape view — the long line of hills in the distance; nearer, the his- toric Tweed, a thin line of silver, separated from the house only by the broad lawns ; and then again, a connecting link in the person of Mrs. Maxwell-Scott's young son, great- great-grandson of Sir Walter, who played a heated game of tennis just above the Tweed's green bank. The Armory — considered to hold the 88 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD finest private collectioji of its kind in the world — adjoins the drawing-room. Here Rob Roy's gun, Napoleon's pistol, Prince Charlie's hunting knives, the keys of the old Tolbooth in Edinburgh, and a variety of ancient instruments of torture, make up a remarkable display of warlike instruments, every one of which probably figures in some bloody or otherwise exciting scene of the novels. There is a picture in the Armory that has a story which is worth repeating. It is called " Scott of Harden's Introduction to Muckle-mou'ed Meg." Scott of Harden, so the legend goes, was found poaching on the estate of Sir Gideon Murray at Elibank. He was sentenced to be hanged, but was reprieved on the condition that he marry the Murray's daughter, an ill-visaged young woman popularly designated as " Muckle- mou'ed Meg." Young Scott found it hard to accede to these terms, though he finally 89 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD did so, and this same " Meg '' thus be- came one of Sir Waher Scott's ancestors. Scott himself tells the story humorously in his " Border Antiquities/' the tale losing nothing in the telling, you may rest assured. All that money, forethought, and loving, diligent care could do has been done for Abbotsford, from the moment Scott pur- chased unpromising Cartleyhole till to-day, when beautifully arranged gardens testify to the landscape gardener's skill, and the smooth velvet of broad lawns bespeaks generations of constant cherishing. And yet, with all its hosts of memories, its genius-haunted spots, it is not at Abbots- ford that we look for the most endearing aspects of Scott's personality. Scott the poet dwells elsewhere in greater force — at Melrose, in that wonderfully beautiful, rarely inspiring heap of broken stones and majestic columns, whose 90 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD "... pillars with cluster'd shafts so trim, With base and with capital flourished around, Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound.'' I did not see " fair Melrose '' " by the pale moonlight." I am satisfied with Scott's de- scription of its wonders. In the dying daylight of a chilly, rainy afternoon, sub- sequent to a few hours at Abbotsford, the Melrose ruins breathed a pathos, wore a desolateness of habit, that told the tragedy of the centuries with an eloquence that no moonlight, however ravishing, could achieve. The ghosts were there — pale ghosts, shiver- ing in the cold air, against which the roofless abbey was powerless to protect them ; on the grave of the heart of the Bruce the fine, soft rain dropped with a dreary pitter-patter, and the great east window cast somber shadows against a dull, gray sky. Of all the picturesque and beautiful ruins that figure in the landscapes of Scotland and England, there is nothing that quite equals 91 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD Melrose. Architecturally it is perfect — a monument builded by loving hands, in that happy, bygone age when time was not money and money was insignificant anyway ; when men loved God and worked their very souls' essence into the stones they chipped and hammered and carved. The windows at Melrose are superb without stained glass, for the frames for the glasses are exqui- sitely fashioned, with a pattern so fine, so wondrously and subtly artistic, that the light pouring in through the open spaces discovers ever new glories to the eye. And so it is with every portion of the standing stones — the mighty, fiiuted columns, the graceful, wide- sweeping arches, the thousands and thou- sands of tiny yet marvelous details with which every fragment visible is enriched. No more " Spreading herbs and flowerets bright Glisten with the dew of night;" 92 h MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD but it still remains true that '' Nor herb nor floweret glistened there, But was carved in the cloisters' arches as fair." Years of ruin and decay have despoiled that wondrous garden of the monks, but the herbs and flowerets carven in the cloisters' arches cannot be destroyed. Bit by bit they may break and wear away, but only w^hen long ages have passed will they be finally obliterated. One treads softly at Melrose Abbey. Out- side the walls disappointment seizes the visi- tor who comes for the first time. For, close in against the ruins, enterprising moderners have builded a hotel, and this, with the guide's cottage and surrounding buildings which have encroached on the abbey grounds, shuts off the ruins from the town side. In consequence the wide, open spaces that would enhance the beauty of the rare old pile, and would give it an appropriate setting, as it were, are missing, and one enters at a point 93 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD where commercialism seems to be throttling ancient art. But once inside the gate that forms the entrance, hotels and whatever else of material moment vanish away, one stands awe-stricken, meditative, hushed, in the dim, green squares of lawn that form the abbey's present interior. And awe-stricken one re- mains; wandering dreamily among those silent graves, and amid the shadows, the magnificence of a great historic Past rises up to confront one, demanding that a listen- ing ear give heed to its insistent call. Low under the eastern window, where once the high altar stood, a pile of rude stones marks the spot in which the heart of the Bruce has reposed these long, long years. Not far away, the grave of Michael Scott claims all the imagination of any one who loves the magnificent " Lay," for here, to this grave, the " Monk of St. Mary s aisle " led Delo- raine when, on that dreadful night,^ the war- rior brave rode from Branksome to obtain the 94 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD book of magic that lay in the wizard's grave. The old guide at Melrose knows the story well, and loves Scott's version of it. He stood with us beside that grave and recited it for us — recited it in a voice that vibrated deep and full through the solemn quiet of the lofty arches under a still sky. " Lo, Warrior ! now the Cross of red Points to the grave of the mighty dead ; Within it burns a Vondrous light, To chase the spirits that love the night ; That lamp shall burn unquenchably, Until the Eternal doom shall be." So spake the monk, and then the stone was lifted, after which the priest 'Vhis death- prayer prayed." Then unto Deloraine he said: " Now speed thee what thou hast to do, Or, Warrior, we may deeply rue; For those thou mayest not look upon Are gathering fast round the yawning stone." Surely one can see the dim, shadowy shapes that seem to hover there; one can 95 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD see the old monk, majestic, calm, command- ing, sending forth those last cautionary words to a man terror-dumb. How often has Walter Scott sat on the heap of stones now designated as his favorite seat, and lived over again the scenes in Scottish song and story which glorify and romanticize Mel- rose's holy abbey. It seems as if he ought to sleep there in his last sleep, but he himself decreed it otherwise. Wherefore, the visitor who goes to Abbotsford and Melrose drives on to Dryburgh Abbey, some four miles away, and there, in another mass of ruins, green-grown with ivy and moss-encrowned, the Laird of Abbotsford rests in a stately tomb. Dryburgh has not the architectural beau- ties of Melrose, but it has the environment. It possesses the sacred isolation of a holy place set apart. A swaying, swinging bridge that warns visitors against crossing it in num- bers exceeding ten makes the frail connection 96 MELROSE ABBEY AND ABBOTSFORD over the Tweed waters that brings the abbey into communication with the world without; and long, winding walks, heavily foliaged, give a dignified and ceremonious approach. Only after a certain set preliminary form does one come to Dryburgh, to its brooding silence, its delicious coolness, its wide, open- air sacredness. This is indeed a congrega- tion of fragments, beautiful fragments, of a simplicity and grandeur not to be denied. There is poetry at Dryburgh, lots of it, for everything is undisturbed and undisturbing. There are surprises too, delightfully roman- tic, such as the abbot's parlor in its cool, green, sheltered solitude. And deep down in the gray lights of damp, dank vaults, the visitor inscribes his name in a great book. It is the final touch to a memorable occasion. One has been in the land of dreams and poetry and romance, and has been there with one of the greatest of dreamers, of poets, of romancers — Sir Walter Scott ! 7 97 TWO QUAINT cathedral; CITIES THE IMP OF LINCOLN Who set thee in yon lofty site, Oh, naughty imp ? I hear thee crow ; I watch the smile about thy thick lips grow As o'er thy face the ever-changing light Reveals in shadows tragic thy soul's night. Thine it has been through ages long to know Historic pageants and the ceremonial show, Thine to indulge in secret, deep delight. But now thy simple, grinning face looks down On remnants splendid for their great renown; Priest, eager student, and the tourist gay With interest fill thy otherwise dull day. And so throughout the centuries yet to be. Thou still the changes of a moving world shall see. VII TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES ANCIENT ROME IN THE HEART OF ENGLAND If one is limited in choice when planning a visit to some of the English cathedral cities, it is perfectly safe to decide upon York and Lincoln. There are several advantages in so deciding: of all the magnificent specimens of church architecture in the British Isles there is none more interesting to study than the Church of St. Mary at Lincoln ; through- out the length and breadth of England there is no such important collection of stained glass as may be found in York; moreover, if one be crossing the Scotch border from the region of Melrose with the intention of mak- ing London by a direct route, York and Lin- . , lOI TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES coin become the most logical stopping-off places. In fact, a better combination of his- toric value and convenient situation could scarcely be devised. It is not the purpose of this sketch of im- pressions to enter into historic or architec- tural details concerning either of the towns under question. Both date from the days when Julius Caesar came over into Britain, and both bear the marks of the subsequent Roman occupation. Lincoln, indeed, existed and even flourished prior to the appearance of the legions, who set up a camp close by the little town and called it " Lindum Colonia.'' In later days William the Conqueror, mak- ing a proud tour of his freshly-acquired prov- inces, quelled rebellious York, then passed on to Lincoln, and to-day the tourist sees the very Roman gate, known as the Newport Arch, through which the hero of Hastings entered at that time. In those days Lincoln 102 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES was one of the four principal cities in England. However, one does not need guide-book evidence to appreciate the finer sentiments that hover about these two quaint, ancient towns. For quaint they surely are, and no one could deny the ancientness of their ex- terior aspects. York presents an almost fortified front. A massive wall, constructed of great stones, forms a rampart round about a large section of the city. One encounters it immediately upon leaving the railroad station, and to fol- low it gives the surest road to the cathedral. To-day this age-old wall serves as a prome- nade, but its warlike appearance gives the town the demeanor of a hoary-headed sol- dier, a veteran resting after years of hardy service, but resting always in the conscious- ness of his achievements, to recall which he continues to parade his old-fashioned regi- mentals and to display his now rusted, out- 103 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES of-date armor. The stateliness of York is not soon forgotten; its native dignity is dominant in its mass of walls, its great gates, its many bridges, and throughout the shad- owed recesses of its most glorious and glori- fying monument, the cathedral. There is not the time to describe the remains of St. Mary's Abbey, as exquisite a piece of ruined masonry as one can find in England; or the historic old Guildhall, resting silently but im- pressively on the river-bank. Nor may one dwell upon the narrow, sloping, crooked, curving streets through which one must wind and wind again while touring the city, ■ — every one of which seems to lead like Roman roads to but one place, in this case again, the cathedral. Few spots in England aflford so unique a sight as this prosperous York town. On the continent one is forever running into the mediaeval atmosphere ; steep streets — the width of foot-paths — are the rule rather 104 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES than the exception; but in England one is less impressed by this old-world habit of unchangeableness, this air of having stood for centuries and of intending to stand un- altered for centuries still. It takes but a small power of the imagination to picture the Roman legionary striding with bold step and clanking sword through the irregular streets of the olden city, saluting as he goes some dainty English maiden, who peeps from her overhanging casement out into the roadway. Try as they will to give York an air of spick- and-spanness, the very cobbles in the streets cry out in rebellion, and the dilapidated, rain-beaten, sagging, staggering house- fronts in the older sections of the city defy once and for all the meddling hand of resto- ration and improved hygienic conditions. Yet humbly enough they bow their storm- haunted heads in deference to the greater majesty of the temple in their midst, and York minster lifts its noble frame protect- 105 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES ingly above a motley of ragged, jagged roofs that cherish its most ancient traditions. Seen from a distance the minster is vastly impressive — a mighty structure, typically Gothic, rearing three great, square towers against the sky. A trifle squat that central tower, to be sure, but then, as some one has put it, " as English builders did not fully master the Gothic constructional scheme, they could not build tall churches." On nearer view the beautiful if somewhat mixed variety of the architectural details engrosses one, and upon entering, one feels at once the calm sanctity of an edifice into which genius has poured its soul. Later will come the realization that York has some- thing which most English cathedrals lack; at present one senses merely a satisfying warmth in the pervading dimness that dif- fuses through the shadows the suggestion of a holy glow. .York has lights, the richly subdued lights 1 06 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES of wonderful, old, stained-glass windows. A voluble guide in any English cathedral v/ill painstakingly explain the destructions wrought by Cromwell to rare windows and the splendid brasses of the churches he so undauntingly demolished. But whatever the Puritan crimes in the matter of windows, certain precautionary measures saved a num- ber of York's choicest specimens, with the result that the somewhat startling aspect of *' well-washness," which obtains in most English churches of the monumental type, is not so apparent at York. Here, under the sweep of lofty, wide-curved arches, a soft light faintly glows, and looking up to the northern end of the transept we see the five remarkable lancet-windows which constitute the famous " Five Sisters " group. Unfounded as it may be, and impossible practically, Dickens' legend in " Nicholas Nickleby '' instantly comes to one — of how five beautiful sisters worked on a rarely large 107 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES piece of embroidery; how one of them died and was buried in the nave of the minster; how the other four gathered there and con- ceived the idea of having a window de- signed. They secured the permission of the church authorities, and the group of five arrow-Hke windows was wrought, the design being done from an exact copy of the piece of embroidery which they five had worked on together. Then, singularly enough, when the window was placed, the sun shone through it with wonderful beauty, and a brilliant gleam of light stretched away until it illumined the name " ALICE '' carved on the youngest sister's tomb. Whatever the true history of the window, it is most deli- cately worked out in a fine pattern of exqui- sitely tinted glass, the pale light from which sheds a soft glory through the portion of the church it reaches. The great East window comprises two hundred panels, each one of which depicts io8 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES a portion of the Scripture story, from the Creation to the Death of Absalom, conclud- ing with an interpretation of Revelation. This is a window compact of many colors, a remarkable example of early English stained glass at its best. All York's win- dows are double-mulHoned — a unique fea- ture — and her pillars and shafts are crowned with beautiful carvings, of an in- finite variety of designs, as fascinating to contemplate as the flowered cloisters and the audacious gargoyles of Melrose. To describe minutely the many points of interest that make York famous would ne- cessitate the more strictly guide-book form of narrative; to recount the long line of events that link present-day England with Roman invasion through the history of this mighty minster would mean to enter defi- nitely the field of historic research. I am dealing with impressions, with atmospheres, with ghosts, and with the sentiments to 109 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES which associations give significance. Stand under the Hght of the " Five Sisters " and experience that wonderful sensation of being present at the passing pageant of some nine- teen centuries. The occupations of peace, the devastations of war, have their sepa- rate places in the quick-moving, ever-chang- ing scenes. The hardy Briton, the rough- soldier, the gentle lady; kings, queens, and warriors; the conqueror and the conquered ■ — all are here, and in the midst of them a great church rises, little by little and with many vicissitudes, till it stands complete and supreme. York's historical days would seem to be over ; the minster is now a monument, sacred to the memory of doughty deeds and proud achievements. In its dim aisles the townsmen bend their bodies before the Pres- ence that is there enshrined; visitors come and go, speaking softly, stepping lightly, for the Peace of God inhabits the temple now that the days of tumult and of strife, the no TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES clatter of arms and the storms of political conventions are over and gone. Leaving York one takes the train direct for Lincoln, riding through a flat, open coun- try that in summer is covered with wheat fields, while among the tall, nodding stalks, heavy with grain, the passer-by glimpses bright bunches of wild poppies, a vivid scarlet nestling against a background of gold. Lincolnshire is a county of fev/ hills ; that is why the cathedral, resting on an eminence, can be seen from such a distance. Its prom- inent position distinguishes it from many other English cathedrals, and to find a fit companion for it one must again have re- course to the continent. As a writer on the subject has put it, most cathedral towns have an appearance of subsequent growth; that is, the cathedral having been erected, a town has been builded and developed around it. But at Lincoln, the cathedral is " the proper III TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES crown and finish for the city which bears it aloft in a close, sturdy clasp." Prudence dic- tates that the visitor to Lincoln take advan- tage of one of the several good inns that cluster on the cathedral hill; otherwise the journey up the steep, narrow, winding streets involves an expenditure of physical force that quite overcomes a possible enjoyment of the great minster's features. Lincoln is replete with reminiscences of Roman occupation. The rough-hewn stones, sturdily mounded, that form the Newport Arch are typically Roman; the steep streets and the narrow-angled corners present a house frontage that is often age-encrusted. In Lincoln Cathedral Lancet-Pointed work predominates; Decorated work is much in evidence; there are Norman features still remaining, and the Perpendicular offers its contribution to the artistic effect of the whole. In this way one may trace the growth of architecture through the centuries in this 112 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES one cathedral, whose impressive front opens on a small area of green; whose cloisters are coolly refreshing in their shadows, divinely touched by brief glimpses of sun- light. The present church was begun in the thirteenth century, though the West front and a portion of the nave remain from the earlier church consecrated in the eleventh century. The great East window is the noblest example of Geometrical Decorated in the kingdom, and the Angel Choir, built be- tween 1255 and 1280, shows Gothic architec- ture at its best in the delicate and beautiful carvings. I lay awake my first night in Lincoln and heard Great Tom chime the midnight hour, and nothing in Lincoln makes the cathedral so certainly a central power as this booming forth of the hours as the days, months, and years go by. I left York with my perceptions of historic values quickened; I went out of Lincoln subdued by the feeling that comes 8 113 TWO QUAINT CATHEDRAL CITIES to one in a holy place. My last look at the cathedral was perforce an upward one, and all the significance of the " city set upon a hill '' was suggested by the proudly conscious yet benignant uplift of those mighty towers. 114 LONDON: 'A HISTORIC AND LITERARY GHOSTLAND LONDON FROM ST. PAUL'S DOME If thou would'st see a city then of dreams, Go, mount the steps that reach to St. Paul's dome ; No Florence this, nor yet again a ruined Rome, A city here through which a great life streams. In veiling mists Thames water brightly gleams; Around tall spires soft-shadowed, gray clouds foam, Shot here and there with sunlight dulled to chrome — Far down, each street with moving figures teems. From here Westminster's towers dimly rise, And hitherward Big Ben's strong echo cries ; As spiders' webs a narrow brooklet span. So Thames' banks have been linked by Man. And down the waters gently trail A long, dim line of floating stack and sail. VIII LONDON: A HISTORIC AND LITERARY GHOSTLAND The perennial charm of London, elusive as it is, and subtle in its defiance of analysis, seems to resolve itself, in the final instance, into a quality of atmosphere produced by the audaciousness with which historic facts, the reminiscences of ages long gone by, intrude themselves upon, mingle with, and affect the movements of an essentially modern spirit. In no other city in the world does the march of a typically twentieth century progress mark time so harmoniously with the solemn, heavy tread of the shades of those who tra- versed the same paths centuries ago. Age and modernity arm in arm — but the one in the full vigor of health and life, the other a 117 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND pale shadow of the things that have been; yet, in the very streets, these ghosts of a dead Past insist upon hobnobbing with the representatives of a Hving and active Present. True, one by one, the older landmarks dis- appear; little by little the surroundings change, taking on an entirely new aspect. The process of evolution, laboring over mo- rass and river bed, over mud hut and crudely constructed stonework, has finally produced the magnificence of a Saint Paul's and the splendor of a long array of beautifully builded and as beautifully equipped hotels and residence places ; while the narrow lanes, lacking sanitation, of a city too thickly grown, are spreading, year by year, into broad, clean streets and smooth highways, into wide-sweeping parks and squares that are green with fresh foliage and alive with the singing of birds. But man himself, in his humanity, changes ii8 LITERARY GHOSTLAND only in degree, not in kind. Your up-to-date Londoner is punier than his ancestors, who produced an Og, a Gog, and a Magog; he dresses himself with a care that would have astounded his bloodthirsty forefathers; he eats with a fork and for the most part drinks his tea noiselessly; but the hardy blood of the Northland throbs in his veins: he is as ready to fight — in a just cause — as eager to hunt the creatures of forest and field, and just as eager to devour them after the cap- ture. And he retains, moreover, something of that hunger for amusement, that love of the spectacular, w^iich gave rise in the days of his fathers to the tourney and the joust, the pageant and the festival, and, in Eliza- beth's time, provided the impetus from which came the plays of Kit Marlowe and Shake- speare and the others of their tribe. London is no longer the scene of these merry occa- sions, but the average Cockney — as w^ell as his more polished brother — finds his soul 119 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND thrill to the sound of the drum and the clatter of hoofs, and watches with high heart the parade of the Life Guards, resplendent in their uniforms of gold and red, and majestic under the nod of their long plumes. And this same Cockney stands for hours, by the side of his best girl, spending his hard- earned shilling for the pleasure of viewing from the pit the latest popular comedy, or the newest, most advertised spectacle of the Hippodrome. Because of this delight in a " show," the Lord Mayor of London con- tinues to be the most gorgeously appareled official in the kingdom, riding in a coach of gold, attended by '^ gold-covered footmen and coachman, with a golden chain and a chaplain, and his great sword of State." He rules, in reality, over an area of something like a square mile, for to that space the '' city " proper is restricted ; but it pleases the people to surround him with time-hon- ored ceremonial, and to retain the customs 120 LITERARY GHOSTLAND that in former years befitted the dignity and importance of his position. One going into London for the first time has an experience that will never be repeated. For only once is it given to know the thrill of that sudden plunge into the hubbub and whirl of earth's greatest city. The queer part of it is, that through and over the con- fusion, the bustle, there presides a certain air of deliberate and leisurely calm; one senses the underlying order and precision of it all, beside which Manhattan presents but a chaos, a turmoil, a reckless, heedless, unnecessary, and uninspiring rush. There is music in the streets of London town — wonderful music that soothes and entrances. Up and down the Strand, up and down Fleet Street, over Ludgate Hill, and around St. Paul's; into Cheapside, in Ox- ford Circus, in Piccadilly, through the Mall — the soft thud of countless horses' feet, the tramp, tramp of numberless pedestrians 121 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND mingle together, with a perfectness of rhythm that is to the din of our American metropohs as. a symphony of Beethoven is to a score of the erratic Strauss. No noise of trolleys, no break in the steady stream of traffic; London knows that haste does not make speed, but is more likely to retard it. So the heart of the city beats regularly and strong; the pulse indicates no fever, but the calm pride of a confident health. This, then, is London, the finished product into which the Londons of all the yesterdays have been merged, yet so merged that each retains its individual features, its essential characteristics, its well-defined lines of de- marcation. There is historic London, cen- tering in the Abbey, St. Paul's, the Thames, and the Tov/er; there is literary London, with its relics in Fleet Street and Cheapside, and all about the Temple; there is the Lon- don that environed a Milton; the London that submitted to the dictates of a Johnson; 122 LITERARY GHOSTLAND the London that inspired a Dickens and a Thackeray. However, to attempt to describe these various Londons by following up the distin- guishing marks of each were a task likely to strain the capacity of several volumes; in the case of an article like this it were an effort to accomplish the impossible. More- over, this is not a catalog which we are build- ing; our study is not scientific; it is psy- chological. Our ambition is to discern and appreciate the spirit — or the spirits — of a city that has more of soul-quality than per- haps any city on earth. We have sensed this soul-quality ; it is our pleasure to erect upon it a series of reminiscences that will unveil the faces and figures of those myriad moving shadows that crowd themselves between and upon the more tangible forms of a material sphere. There is the Abbey, for instance, with its mountains of monuments and its layers of 123 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND dust. Each group, each statue, each plate of stone so carefully carven, calls up before the mind's eye some figure, now distinct, or again vague, according to the knowledge that supplies its details. For so the fine frag- ments, that in human shape at one time housed a mighty, potent spirit, reconstruct themselves upon a film of recollection that peoples the vast spaces of choir and naves until the centuries have seemed to roll away, and Time has seemed to vanish, leaving the burly form of Dr. Johnson, clad in greasy velvet and soiled lace, side by side with the dapper figure of the benign-faced Thackeray, while the sprightly Garrick claps a daring hand upon the shoulder of the solemn-vis- aged, consciously majestic Irving. Even old Geoffrey Chaucer comes to life again, astride, as always, the back of the same an- cient, wooden-legged, stiff-backed, rocking- horselike steed which, according to the books we know, bore him on his memorable jour- 124 LITERARY GHOSTLAND ney to Canterbury. And beside these, what hosts of kings, queens, soldiers, states- men, priests, poets, and historians fill the Abbey's aisles, as, imagination alive, the history seeker, the book lover, the hero wor- shiper, crowd about these treasured, over- treasured tombs ! Many of these same figures live again, in different guises, here and there throughout the city's length and breadth. Broad White- hall has her ghosts, her memories — the ghost of the beautiful Anne Boleyn, who danced in these palace halls with the eighth Henry, and so sealed her doom; the ghost of a fallen cardinal, the once so superior Wolsey ; the ghost of a king led forth by his own people to the execution block ; the ghost of a ruler of iron, the Lord Protector Crom- well, by whose side the fair face of the in- spired Milton glows as with a divine fire. Only a little further on, and proud Trafal- gar lifts the great height of her triumphal 125 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND column high, bearing aloft the bronze effigy of her sailor-hero whose never-to-be-forgot- ten slogan sounds down from the skies to put new heart, new courage into Englishmen. Charing Cross teems with the life of a contemporaneous day; the Strand marches on with alert and energetic tread. But in this Strand the stately Addison strolls, pon- dering; the gay Dick Steele bows his grace- ful head and sweeps away his cap ; the dandy Pope rides gorgeously in his sedan — all on their way to the Kit-Kat Club, which in their times held its meetings in the Trumpet, standing on Shire Lane, a narrow street run- ning off the Strand near the Law Courts. There is no Trumpet now, to which a doting father can carry his tiny girl, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was carried, a child of seven, to be the toast of these learned and talented men. The ghosts may continue to seek the neighborhood of the Lane, but they will wander on unceasingly, in the Strand, 126 LITERARY GHOSTLAND in Fleet Street, along the Thames ; they will seek rest amid the shadows of the Temple, conversing one with another of those days when the Thames glistened with the gilt and glowed with the colors of a thousand pleas- ure craft, gay barges filled with gayer ladies, and gallant gentlemen brightly bedight; when Covent Garden bore the aspect of a fashionable promenade, and jest was given for jest, laughter for laughter, where now prosaic clerks, with serious mien, go to and from their business, sober-clad, sober- minded, bent only upon the securing of a humble maintenance in surroundings as dull as they were once colorful, as forsaken of fashion as they were once favored of it. The spaces between the Strand and the Thames might tell many a story could lips long dumb set them forth. For noble pal- aces have fallen to dust on whose founda- tions mighty hotels have risen; and where the American tourist takes his ease, looking 127 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND out over the river, there are the shadows of a historical pageant that begins back before the time of Henry VIII and comes down to the day when omnibuses replace the river barges, and the highway of the Thames grows less indispensable. The gardens of the Embankment are beautiful in the neat- ness, the well-keptness of their array; but the ghosts walk more shyly in these open and unfamiliar spaces; one must build up within one's self the various pictures — of Lady Jane Grey's triumphal embarkation, as she takes her brief journey as Queen to the Tower, that scene of brilliancy and yet of evil purport, so graphically described by Ainsworth in his " Tower of London." In Elizabeth's day the river fairly scintillated with the splendor of the pageant that Queen Bess so dearly loved; and now the pres- ence of Will Shakespeare brings a new glory into scenes of merrymaking, scenes of care- less, festive grace. Let us go into the 128 h LITERARY GHOSTLAND Temple, lingering among its gardens, then passing through to Middle Temple Hall. The Temple's history is too rich in facts for us to attempt to trace it here; enough that we recall how, in the year 1601, " Twelfth Night " was performed in this great hall, Elizabeth witnessing, Shakespeare, doubt- less, presiding. Beautiful in itself as this place is, no association could more endear it to the hearts of the multitude than this which connects it with an early presentation of a play so many thousands love. The Temple has harbored a long line of the illustrious. Henry Fielding had cham- bers there ; Cowper was among the lodgers ; Burke studied there and Charles Lamb was born in Crown Office Row. Wycherly, Beau- mont, Congreve, Tom Moore, and Sheridan, all provide ghosts for the Temple; but no figure is more distinct, more dominating than that of Dr. Johnson. Dr. Johnson belongs at London's very 9 129 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND center. After nearly two hundred years his great heart continues to beat in perfect ac- cord with the heart of the city that nourished him. The Johnson Buildings in the Temple com- memorate the fact that he had a room in Inner Temple Lane from 1760 to 1765, and no one standing in the passageway before them can fail to recall BoswelFs story of his first visit to the Doctor, in 1763, when the particular Scotchman found the good Doc- tor's apartment, furniture, and morning dress sufficiently uncouth. " But," continued the loyal Boswell, ^' he received me very cour- teously; and all these slovenly peculiarities were forgotten the moment he began to talk." Goldsmith enjoyed much of the compan- ionship of Johnson in the Temple, and as one walks in the garden to-day, one comes upon the simple slab that is supposed to mark poor Goldy's resting-place. 130 LITERARY GHOSTLAND How often may Johnson and his poet friend have walked in these gardens, Hnger- ing by the fountain, as the good Doctor dis- coursed in his able wont and the faithful Boswell mayhap found excuse to become an appreciative listener ! It may be that Burke and Reynolds came to call upon them here, as we know they, with Johnson, mounted the stairs to pay their last respects to Goldsmith dying. Years later the Temple knew Thack- eray and Tennyson and William Blake, while Dickens used its picturesque Fountain Court for a settins: in " Martin Chuzzlewit/' But we must resist the temptation to fol- low up the many suggestions which a riiere mention of the Temple engenders. With just a glance at the quaint, old, shrub-shad- owed church, guarding carefully the dust of the Crusaders who founded it, let us go out of the Temple Gardens by the opposite en- trance-way into Fleet Street — sacred to modern newspaperdom, and in the eigh- 131 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND teenth century especially associated with the pursuit of letters. Fleet Street was one of Johnson's favorite haunts, and for many years he lived close by it, in various houses. From the Temple it is but a little way to Gough Square, now entered through Hind Court from Fleet Street, where still stands the house in which the Rambler was writ- ten, and the Dictionary was completed. Commercialism of to-day has appropriated Gough Square, but the house that sheltered the first English lexicographer has still some marks whereby it may be known. From Fleet Street, also, we enter Wine Office Court, and bespeak our luncheon in the queer, quaint little restaurant, the Che- shire Cheese. Here, as in the Temple, Time pauses in deference to the memories that would linger, and here, as in no place in London, we enter into the world of the eighteenth century coffee-house. In the Cheshire Cheese we experience that atmos- 132 < •X u o LITERARY GHOSTLAND phere so congenial to the talkative Steele, the meditative Addison, the voluble Johnson. Here the ghosts are, as it were, incarnate spirits, and no one is in the least surprised to hear the deep growl of the dogmatic John- son setting down his official comment upon some topic appertaining to literature or to life. Boswell, it is true, omits to mention the Cheshire Cheese in the famous " Life." In fact, we have no very authoritative reference to this particular refreshment house. Canny proprietors have brass-plated the Doctor's favorite seat, and have hung his portrait over it, while in an upper room they display a small collection of interesting relics once associated with him. For myself, I should say that the proprietors have the better of the argument, insomuch as the Cheshire Cheese was within convenient distance of the Temple and of at least three houses in which Johnson lived; it has been noted for ^33 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND about two centuries for certain especially prepared dishes, and it must have been fre- quented by just that kind of miscellaneous company in which Johnson was wont to find ready listeners. At any rate, the Cheshire Cheese has en- dured, and has retained its " old-worldness " in the very center of a new world, has gath- ered unto itself a company of ghosts in the presence of whom the present-day visitor is not abashed. And in this company Johnson and Goldsmith are very tangible, very alive, even as on that morning long ago, in this very Wine Office Court, in a house not now standing, Johnson read " The Vicar of Wakefield," and, taking it away from its author's lodgings, secured a publisher's ad- vance upon it by means of which an irate landlady was appeased and Goldsmith v/as spared eviction. We might linger long in the Cheshire Cheese, satisfying our hunger with pigeon 134 xl— _1, 1 . Q LITERARY GHOSTLAND pie and our souls with reflection upon good days gone by; but we must hurry on for just the briefest visits to one or two more ghost- haunted London spots. On the top of an omnibus we may go on up Fleet Street, as '' through this strait all business London pours," and ascend Ludgate Hill to St. Paul's. And now indeed our second sight furnishes us a vision. For here, tradition has it, in the days when Csesar entered Brit- ain, the Romans built a temple to Diana or to Jupiter; on this spot Ethelbert erected, in 6 10, a wooden church, rebuilt in 961 and destroyed by fire in 1087. Then, some time later, the first St. Paul's was begun. It was in Elizabeth's day that St. Paul's tangible history opened, though, as some one puts it, " the church in that day was no edifying spectacle, resembling rather the temple from which Christ drove the usu- rers." For, despoiled of its beauties prior to Elizabeth's reign, the cathedral was used 135 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND as a market-place and a thoroughfare, the highway for porters, fruit sellers, fish mon- gers ; the lounging-place for resplendent gal- lants and boisterous soldiers home from the wars. Here gamblers tossed coin and en- terprising tradesmen made their bargains, while laughter and oaths awakened the echoes as here some jested and others waxed dangerous in altercation. Gentle Shake- speare doubtless knew these scenes full well ; they may have furnished his Rialto, as most assuredly they suggested many of his most entertaining characters. But Elizabeth dies, the cathedral sinks more and more into sac- rilege and decay; then, in the middle of the seventeenth century. Sir Christopher Wren is commissioned to restore the old pile. We will refer to H. Barton Baker and his " Streets of London " for a description of the next episode — the great fire that swept away the filth of desecration and gave room for the new St. Paul's: 136 LITERARY GHOSTLAND " The scaffolding is erected, all is ready for a com- mencement. On the night of the 2d of September, 1666, the watchman who is on guard, while dozing away the dark hours, becomes conscious of a red glare in the eastern sky, denoting a fire some little distance off; but conflagrations are so common among the wooden houses of old London that he thinks nothing of it, and falls asleep again. But by-and-by he is roused by a strange hurtling in the air, wailing voices and great clattering of feet, as though the stragglers of a routed army are sweep- ing by. Again he starts up and sees that citywards the sky is like molten brass, shot with tongues of flame and lurid spirals of smoke. He runs down and questions some of the sobbing, affrighted people hurrying past; but when he learns that the fire is away in Eastcheap he comforts himself with the reflection that it must certainly be stopped before it reaches Paul's, and goes to breakfast with the philo- sophical calm of selfishness. Each moment the fugitives increase and their cries grow more terrible : " Woe, woe to this wicked city, for the judgment day has come ! " is shrieked by a hundred voices. The air is hot and becoming almost unbreathable, it is so thick with the pungent odour of burning ; and the roar and swirl of the flames, the thunderous fall of buildings, can be heard coming nearer and nearer. 137 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND Filled with horror he once more ascends the tower. Perhaps not since Nero gazed upon burning Rome has such a sight met human eyes; the sun is shin- ing, but the awful glow, the billowy clouds of smoke obscure the day ; beneath this canopy, that might be the roof of hell, blazes the city; it is a second Go- morrah; fire rains down upon it, fire surges up from it; streets, churches, houses, are a red-hot mass ; London Bridge is a cascade of flame, the river beneath, a burning lake. Dense showers of glitter- ing spangles borne on the east wind come nearer and nearer until they burn the watchman's clothes; people in the houses round about are wildly drag- ging out their furniture; tremendous explosions — they are endeavoring to stop the conflagration by blowing up houses — add a new horror to the hurly- burly; but all in vain, walls of flame, Hke the sand clouds of the desert, come whirling onwards, driv- ing shrieking wretches before them. Almost par- alysed by terror, the watchman descends and rushes into the stream of panic-stricken people fleeing down Ludgate Hill. When he turns to look he sees the flames like fiery pythons twisting round the scaffold- ing, and soon the old Cathedral is a mountain of fire, while with redoubled vigour, like the blast of a sirocco, the winged flames still speed onwards." 138 LITERARY GHOSTLAND So, after all, St. Paul's is comparatively new, and its newness dims the impressions of the ghosts that walk therein. We may dream, however, in the great cathedral, feeling the force of that humanity which gave history to this spot; then we go forth into Cheapside, and in the " busiest street in London " view a marvelous panorama of action, as the ghosts of Shakespeare's day, of John Milton's, pass and pass again among the crowds of tradesmen, officials, sight- seers, beggars, and fakirs, who throng Cheapside to-day. Cheapside is an appropriate highway to the Tower, the most famous, as it is the most tragical, of England's historic monu- ments, sharing the importance of its fame with the Abbey only. The ghostland of the Tower of London is too significant to be dismissed hastily, but at the present moment we must so dismiss it. Would we follow out its romance and its tragic story, we would go 139 LONDON: A HISTORIC AND to Harrison Ainsworth and his Old World novel, and with Og, Gog, and Magog would review the history of the gray old fortress in which beautiful women and gallant men^ angels and villains both, have paid the price of greatness won or of greatness thrust upon them. In the Tower queens reigned, kings reigned ; but in it, too, kings and queens and courtiers, faithful and unfaithful alike, came to their end. The fair form of Jane Grey cries for pity in the Tower's dusty shadows ; the strong voice of Raleigh murmurs brok- enly under the same roof that echoes the distressed weeping of the murdered princes. The very walls speak through the lips of the signatures of the long line of the illustrious who suffered here as prisoners, and each cut in the executioner's block has its story to tell. As a government arsenal, the Tower of London is now but a harmless relic of history, but no modern use to which it may be put can banish the ghosts that abide there. 140 LITERARY GHOSTLAND As the years move on, and modern meth- ods overcome the customs of earher days ; as streets are widened and cleared, and build- ings crumbling v^^ith age are taken away, the ghosts of the old London will need to ad- just themselves to newer habitations. They have had to do so already, and from many places they have wandered away, but it will be long years and many years, despite im- provements, ere Modernity will chase the ghosts from the Tower; ere a new world will annihilate the old world from the pre- cincts of Cheapside and Fleet Street and the Temple; ere the commercial craft that darken the Thames will overshadow the memories of the brilliant pageants that so often brightened its waters ; and ere the Ab- bey, ugly as it may be in its accumulations of the centuries, will yield up the ghosts that its multitude of tombs has gathered. Dust may return to dust and ashes to ashes; the souls of the dead may have departed 141 LONDON: A HISTORIC GHOSTLAND far, but the ghosts of historic memory linger ever, even after their familiar en- vironment has been taken away, and the traces of their everyday doings have vanished. 142 HOUSE-CLEANING IN WESTMIN- STER ABBEY DOWN WHITEHALL Where great Trafalgar enters Whitehall wide, As London's busy life goes marching through; There Landseer's lions like guardians, two and two, With patient air and attitude abide, 'Neath the heroic form of him who died That England her bright glory might renew, To whom a greater empire might accrue That she might grow in worldly fame and pride. Down Whitehall wide the troops of Cromwell pranced, Backward and forward their sharp-edged swords glanced. In Whitehall wide a king, led forth to die. Laid low his head without a moan or cry. Down Whitehall ride proud princes to be crowned, And here are borne in death the world's renowned. IX HOUSE-CLEANING IN WESTMIN- STER ABBEY It has been said that Americans are more famiHar with Westminster Abbey than are Londoners themselves. Certain it is that Americans have contributed not a Httle to- ward the further embelHshment of this greatest and most comprehensive of Eng- land's national monuments; to American suggestion are owing many of its important features, and Americans more than any other nation's people most frequently and in the largest numbers visit it. Indeed, upon the shoulders of Americans one may almost lay the responsibility of having spoiled it. lo 145 HOUSE-CLEANING IN For spoiled to a considerable degree this magnificent old pile has been. You recall going into St. Giles, in Edin- burgh. What a spirit of sanctity filled the place completely! You walked with light and hesitating step, you spoke in whispers, your heart-beat quickened as you seemed to approach closer and more closely the Great Presence which you knew was there. Even as the God of Israel accepted the gift of Solomon's temple, and took His rightful place in the Holy of Holies, so you knew the same God had taken up His abode in this vast auditorium, among the monuments that men have with reverent hands erected to brave comrades, to admirable statesmen, to martyrs to whose triumph this cathedral in itself is a living and enduring testimonial. You went into York Minster, into the ca- thedral at Lincoln, and there also the same softened tread and low voices, the reverent air, generally predominated. 146 WESTMINSTER ABBEY But you came to London; you sought out St. Paul's, and your ear was shocked by the noise and the hubbub, the tramp of many feet, the chorus of curious voices ; your gaze encountered the crude stare of the myriads of mere sightseers who can recognize in this beautiful example of Wren's finest work nothing more than a magnificent show place. Saddened, and just a bit heartsick, you took your way to the Abbey — surely here one might find that " profound and mysterious awe " which Washington Irving attributed to " the spaciousness and gloom of this vast edifice." But your search was in vain. At the very doorway your patronage was bespoken by the picture post-card vender; within, you found yourself in the midst of a great con- course, vast, moving, instinct with life, agog with curiosity; no humble worshipers these, come to commune with the Divine ; not even hero worshipers come in quest of monu- 147 HOUSE-CLEANING IN ments erected to the world's great ones; tourists, for the greater part, hugging Bae- dekers to their hearts, or scanning the pages of guide-books with a fanatic ferocity. This, then, is the atmosphere of the Abbey — that holy place which Saint Peter him- self is supposed to have dedicated; that mighty heaping up of architectural splen- dor, whose wide sweeps of arches have all the grace of massive oaken branches; in the shadows and spaces of whose lofty vaulted roofs angel bands might surely congregate to swell the splendid organ melodies that echo through their vastness. True, service in Westminster Abbey is im- pressive, duly imposing; but what spirit in a silence forced, an awe insisted upon ? The last word of the service over, and once more the everlasting hum of mingled voices, the thud of thousands of footsteps, the busy passing backward and forward of comments and criticisms, trite, unfeeling, ill-considered, 148 WESTMINSTER ABBEY tHe tinappreciative small talk of ignorance that poses for something infinitely better and more important. This then is Britain's Walhalla. This is the place where most of the greatest of the English poets, from Chaucer and Spenser to Browning and Alfred Tennyson, sleep the last sleep. Here are the accumulated tombs of kings and queens and princes and noble- men, from Edward the Confessor to Vic- toria. Warriors, statesmen, historians, drama- tists, novelists, and actors — all have a place, until interment for a prominent Englishman elsewhere than in the Abbey has come to be a distinction. St. Paul's and Westminster quarreled over Nelson's body. He was bur- ied in St. Paul's — whereupon the Abbey authorities added to their collection of effi- gies a popular Nelson figure, and decked it out in clothes worn by the Admiral at Traf- algar. It costs sixpence to see this wax 149 HOUSE-CLEANING IN figure ; it has cast the tomb at St. Paul's into the shade. Ben Jonson pleaded for just twelve inches by twelve of space in the Abbey for his grave. They buried him upright, so as not to exceed that space. Yet no spot in Westminster to-day stirs up a more heart- felt admiration than does that simple square slab on which was inscribed Sir William Davenant's unique but immortal tribute: *' O rare Ben Jonson ! " What need to erect a medallion in the Poets' Corner? Was not this monument enough and more pregnant with meaning? Overcrowdedness explains much of the disappointment that one encounters in West- minster Abbey — overcrowdedness and a much-needed renovation. Prosaic terms these for the edifice that has inspired men like Addison and Irving to burst almost into lyric praise of it. But Addison and Irving both lived before the days of the " Ameri- 150 WESTMINSTER ABBEY can tourist peril/' and before those days when so universally capital began to be made out of all historic landmarks and places and points of historic and literary interest. One can almost picture the second-hand dealer standing in the North Transept of the Abbey proclaiming his wares : '' A monu- ment to Lord Chatham! Sell it cheap! There are better ones more recently arrived; room must be made for them ! '^ In the Poets' Corner, no sense of fitness has been observed in the arrangement. Busts and medallions are scattered about promiscuously ; some of them signify tombs ; many are there merely as marks of commem- oration. In the floors are the tablets that cover the burial places of Browning, Dick- ens, Dr. Johnson, Handel, Garrick, Tenny- son, and Macaulay, and many, many more. The crowds surge over them with casual comment: "Here's Browning! Here's Tennyson! See what a small slab Henry 151 HOUSE-CLEANING IN Irving has ! " Poor Chaucer is thrown into insignificance; a Shakespeare statue that is wholly superfluous fills a large space, and a variety of portrait busts and lesser monu- ments that mean little in this place confuse the mind and blur the impressions that a more orderly array would naturally make. You enter the chapels. Dust, dirt, dingi- ness ; pasteboard signs rudely lettered ; incon- gruous monuments that mark the interment of a long line of nobles who mean noth- ing in the nation's history. The older coro- nation chair stands in the Chapel of Edward the Confessor, lost almost to view among the shadows; Edward the Confessor's tomb reminds one of a gypsy's worn and tattered tent. An example this of the same kind of forced, unnatural sentiment that keeps a scrap of dirty blanket, four inches square, on the bed of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Holy- rood Palace, and causes it to be pointed out as a bit of a blanket the Scotch queen used. 152 WESTMINSTER ABBEY Nothing in Westminster Abbey is more beautiful than the Chapel of King Henry VII. Yet I have seen that chapel in a state of untidiness and general upheaval that left only round tables and bottles to the imagi- nation to picture it as a concert hall after the performance is over, or a French cafe after an evening of hilarity. What if the choir stalls are superbly carved in rich, dark oak; v^hat if each seat does bear in brass the coat- of-arms of that particular Knight of the Bath to w^hose occupation it is sacred; here indeed is " pomp of architecture, and the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. . . . Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the won- derful minuteness and airy security of a cob- web." ^ But one needs a restful atmosphere, an * Washington Irving. HOUSE-CLEANING IN environment of peace and reverential awe in which to examine and appreciate this sculp- tured beauty, these carven wonders. De- molished by fire, worn away by wind and storm Melrose Abbey may be, yet in its silent shadows one's heart is lifted up in a strange exaltation, one's perceptions of the finer beauties of architecture are quickened; we stand in awe and contemplate those marvels of chiseled patterns, those poets' dreams made real in stone. There are times, doubtless many of them, when the tourist hordes have winged their way homeward, and the patriotic English- man is otherwise occupied, that the Abbey is left to a peaceful contemplation of its aged- ness. At such times we may reflect, with Addison : "When I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and as~ 154 WESTMINSTER ABBEY tonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind." Perhaps in some one of these seasons Westminster Abbey will be subjected to such a house-cleaning as is needed, and once again the grandeur and splendor of a beauti- ful temple, with its wealth of sentiment re- siding in those histories and personalities which it so vividly recalls, will gain power over the spirit of curiosity and commercial- ism now so prominent, and the " great quiet " of a place holy and sanctified will be restored, as well as its furnishings renovated and renewed. Perhaps, just as the Abbey authorities awoke to the fact, some years ago, that the wax effigies of Elizabeth and her companions in " efiigydom " ought to be tricked out anev/, they will one day realize that fewer monuments and a better and more orderly arrangement of them, some fresh paint and a few brass signboards, will do more to uphold the prestige of the great pile 155 HOUSE-CLEANING IN they love than any catering to random whims in the matter of new and additional monuments, or suchlike resorts as that of providing figures in wax to make up for a deficiency in tombs of popular heroes. 156 THE HOMES OF MILTON THE FIELDS AT LANGLEY Come, let us walk in Langley fields, Where dockens flaunt their colors bright, Where richest green and pink and yellow All mingle with the gay sunlight. The sheep a happy pasture find In Langley's olden meadow ways ; The birds a mating-place have there And sing glad songs through long bright days. Afar the towers of Windsor rise ; From Horton way the breeze drives clear; The fields at Langley sacred are, For youthful Milton lingered here. These fields the Milton music heard Ere yet in words it was expressed; The quaint church here a shelter gave The lad whose worth was scarcely guessed. To-day at Langley is a shrine, A bookish room, the rare delight Of " Lycidas' " young author, whose Slim hands did here a many verses write. So come and walk in Langley fields. And seek the old church dimly gray. Where shadows chase the gold sunlight And life is one long, peaceful day. X THE HOMES OF MILTON One by one the various homes and haunts of the poet Milton have disappeared. The necessity for widening London streets and the gradual decay of the older houses have obliterated many of the once sacred land- marks of the ancient city, and especially have the numerous places of abode asso- ciated with Milton been the objects of demolition. John Milton — so the biographies tell us ■ — was born in Bread Street, at the Sign of the Spread Eagle, on December 9, 1608. I set out one morning to find the place. My guidebook to literary London informed me that the site of the birthplace was now occu- pied by warehouses, numbered 58 to 6^, and 159 THE HOMES OF MILTON that one might find there a bust of Milton kept to commemorate the spot. I took a " bus " to St. Paul's, walked around the churchyard, where once stood the fa- mous St. Paul's School, which Ben Jonson, John Leland, Camden, Pepys, and John Mil- ton himself used to attend — a school that was years ago removed to Hammersmith, though a tablet still marks the old site — and striking off into Cheapside, walked up that busy thoroughfare until I saw a narrow by-street, marked in bold, black letters, Bread Street. This is in the very heart of Old London, and in Milton's day it was, as now, the center of a busy town's activity. Through the cathedral, as through a thoroughfare, wandered all day long the " gentry, lords, and courtiers, and men of all professions." In short, St. Paul's afforded through its middle aisle the fashionable promenade of seventeenth-century London, while beyond 1 60 THE HOMES OF MILTON it Cheapside gave a bustling market-place, as is indicated by the names that cling to its streets — Bread Street, Milk Street, Honey Lane, and the like. It was in Cheap- side, by the way, between Bread and Friday streets, where stood the Mermaid Tavern, in which gathered, half a century before. Sir Walter Raleigh, Shakespeare, Spenser, Beaumont, Fletcher, Cotton, Donne, and all their friends. But to return to our original quest. I found the building numbered 58 to 6^ — an ordinary wholesale draper's establishment in its external aspect. Nothing outside, cer- tainly, would indicate that it possessed the slightest historical interest. However, I opened the door and went in. A young man came forward, and met my inquiry regarding the Milton bust with a nonplussed air. Somewhat despairingly he turned me over to an elderly gentleman, who, fortunately, knew all about the matter. II 161 THE HOMES OF MILTON This man explained to me how a narrow close had intercepted Bread Street at the point where now the entrance to the ware- house stood. This close had houses on both sides, and the Sign of the Spread Eagle, which was the sign employed by Milton's father to designate his abode, stood on the side nearest Cheapside. Then this obliging gentleman took me up to the third floor, into the midst of a wholesale millinery showroom, and pointed out to me, up in the right-hand corner of the room, on a small bracket above the manager's desk, a rather dilapidated bust of the great English poet. I was in- vited to mount a short ladder to the mana- ger's platform in order to read the inscrip- tion, which ran something like this : " John Milton, the English poet, was born here, De- cember 9, 1608." Imagine the sedate Milton forced to preside over the frivolities of a mil- liner's shop! I was sorely tempted to try to get a photograph of that bust, but I am 162 THE HOMES OF MILTON afraid my courage left me; evidently, few- people go in search of this particular monu- ment, from the way the various members of the establishment looked at me! Leaving numbers 58 to 63, one may walk down Bread Street to the next intersecting street, where, in the wall of the corner build- ing — a wine and spirit shop — on the Bread Street side, there is set a rather hand- some bronze tablet, with Milton's head en- graved thereon. This tablet marks the site of the Church of All Hallows, where John Milton the elder married Sarah Jeffrey, and where the younger John Milton was baptized. On February 12, 1624, the name of John Milton was entered upon the roll-books of Christ's College, Cambridge. This is old- style dating — according to our reckoning it would be 1625. I went down to Cambridge, wandered about among the colleges, spent an hour or so in the beautiful gardens of Christ's College, where the famous mulberry 163 THE HOMES OF MILTON tree associated with Milton's name still stands, and took a peep at the room which the poet is said to have occupied. It is sup- posed that this remains very much the same as when Milton studied there. Cambridge is not, to-day, a wholly attractive town; it lacks the atmosphere of Oxford, and pre- sents too much the appearance of a prosper- ous and up-to-date commercial community. Milton did not find it congenial — at least from certain of his poems one infers this to be true. Apparently he was not inspired by the landscapes about him, though one won- ders how he failed to enjoy the college gar- dens. Whatever may have been the con- dition of the gardens then, they are to-day remarkably fine. Great trees and broad, smooth lawns, and banks of old-fashioned flowers — where but in England can one find such combinations of color, such grace- ful groupings of shrubbery, such back- grounds of spreading, ancient trees! 164 THE HOMES OF MILTON However, " The Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity '' emanated from Cam- bridge — the first important poem that Mil- ton produced. Though it remained for him to find his greatest lyric inspirations in a bit of country-side some twenty miles out from London, in the years which followed his Cambridge period, and which gave to the world "UAllegro,'' "II Penseroso," " Co- mus," and " Lycidas." John Milton the elder had prospered dur- ing the youth of his son, and had taken a house at Horton, a village in Buckingham- shire, less than a day's journey from Lon- don, and within sight of Windsor Castle. Leaving Cambridge, young Milton went to live at Horton, in the heart of that lovely England which embraces Windsor, Stoke Poges, Langley, and Slough. Here at last was a world to dream in — a world of singing birds and humming bees, of gently grazing lambs and soft-lowing 165 THE HOMES OF MILTON cattle, of trees and flowers and woodland wonders, a world of blue skies and light- winged breezes that might well bear a poet's soul to heights of ecstasy. We did not go to Horton, but took the train from London to Langley. The objects of the search were a church and a library, and a walk of a half-mile from the station brought us there. Langley Marish, as they call the place, is a village of perhaps a dozen houses — the quaintest, queerest little houses one's imagi- nation can conceive of. Generally speaking, they are Elizabethan in style, red brick, with tiled roofs and a delightful tendency to curls in their exterior outlines. The church and the almshouses stand close together, with the graveyard between. Nobody knows when the church was built — the clerk informed us that it was old in the eleventh century! It is a beautiful place, hoary with age and vine-clad, simple in its interior, but very i66 ^f^jBk IwClJilB .^^^_^^iy— ^ §^l£ fe^. ^ M y Wk ^Hii ^^^^ ,#*] ^?^ '^^^§, . -.,.,..,:jM^t«™«» , ■^■■-'^ :■ -" 'V ^ THE HOMES OF MILTON carefully kept. On its south side an addition was built, some time in the reign of James I, by a Sir John Kederminster, to serve as a library. The entrance to this is from the outside ; it is separated from the church audi- torium — at a point where the Kederminster Chapel is built — by an iron railing. You enter a small door, and pass into a narrow corridor. In front of you is the chapel ; you turn to your left, pass through another small door, then down two steps into one of the most charming little libraries you have ever seen. Not more than twelve feet square, the room is exquisitely carved and painted. The four walls are paneled, with just one window on the Windsor side. On the panels beneath the ceiling are painted views of Windsor as it was in the days when the library was erected ; the panels on two of the walls open, to discover cupboards filled with ancient leather tomes. The insides of these cupboard doors are also painted — showing stacks of 167 THE HOMES OF MILTON heavy, age-worn volumes. The whole room is wonderfully preserved, even to the great Hebrew Bible that stands on a central table. Two miles away from this library dwelt a poet, a young man without definite occu- pation, one who wandered at will through the surrounding country and discovered in his wanderings this queer old room, where, in absolute quiet, in the very midst of the dead, he might study and think and dream. We can imagine that John Milton loved Langley, with its picturesque village, its solemn little church, its wealth of inspiration in old books of the foreign tongues he was so competent in using. No doubt this very Hebrew Bible which we touched was thumbed by him, as, in the dim light of the little room, he scanned eagerly its pages, even in that day possessing the first ideas of that great poem which at a future time he would compose. i68 THE HOMES OF MILTON Glimpses of the country between Horton and Langley abound in Milton's poems. Listen to this from " L'Allegro/' Straight mine eyes hath caught new pleasures Whilst the landscape round it measures ; Russet lawns and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Mountains, on whose barren breast The laboring clouds do often rest; Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide; Towers and battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some Beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes. Or take this night scene from ^^ II Penseroso." Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, I woo to hear thy even-song ; And missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, 169 THE HOMES OF MILTON To behold the wandering moon Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the Heaven's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud. Oft on a plot of rising ground I hear the far-off curfew sound Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar; Or, if the air will not permit. Some still, removed place will fit. Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom. It was while Milton was at Horton that his mother died (1637), and that young Edward King, a Cambridge chum, was drowned in the Irish Channel. This last event inspired " Lycidas," one of the few great elegiac poems in our language. From Horton, Milton went to travel on the Continent, whence he returned to take a part in the struggle for civil and religious liberty that was just beginning in England. 170 THE HOMES OF MILTON Arrived in London, he took up his abode in a house in St. Bride's Churchyard. St. Bride's stands on Fleet Street, between Lud- gate Circus and the Strand. It is one of the most beautiful of the smaller London churches, and was built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1680. The grave of Samuel Rich- ardson, the English novelist, is in the center aisle of the church — the verger was good enough to lift up the carpet in order that I might see it. The house to which Milton went has dis- appeared, but the quiet that pervades the churchyard suggests a reason for the choice of locality. Here the poet undertook the education of his two nephews, and hither, in 1643, he brought his young wife, Mary Powell. Here, too, was enacted that tragedy of married life that resulted, at the end of three weeks, in the young wife's return to her parents — ostensibly for a visit, but the visit was merely an excuse for separation. 171 THE HOMES OF MILTON One dislikes, however, the idea that there was no happiness in those three weeks in the shadow of St. Bride's. Anne Manning, in " Mary Powell,'' gives us several glimpses of the husband and wife as they dwelt to- gether, and what right has one to say that these pictures bear no hint of the truth? Milton could, no doubt, be tender, as on that day, when, for the first time after his mar- riage, his pupils resumed their studies. The young wife writes : After a few Words the boys retired to theire Books; and my Husband, taking my Hand, sayd in his kindliest manner — " And now I leave my sweete Moll to the pleasant Companie of her own goode and innocent Thoughtes; and, if she needs more, here are both stringed and keyed Instruments, and Books both of the older and modern Time, soe that she will not find the Hours hang heavie." Was it his fault that she would rather *' ride upon Clover than read all the books that were ever penned " ? And who was to 172 THE HOMES OF MILTON blame that this fair girl, reared in the country, wont to breathe the fresh air and pick the dewy flowers, should find Lon- don stuffy and foot-wearing and generally dismal ? Mary Milton returned to her home at Forest Hill on August 21, 1643. She re- mained there until June of 1646, when she came up to London and made peace with her now thoroughly unhappy spouse. In the meantime he had printed his Divorce Doc- trine, but, in spite of it, they managed to live blissfully for some years, during which time she bore him four children, dying at the birth of the last. There is every reason to suppose that this latter portion of their wedded life was one of mutual contentment. Milton took a house in Barbican, and showed a rare generosity in bringing his wife's family to live with him when Cromwell's hosts made Forest Hill uninhabitable for these rollicking Royal- 173 THE HOMES OF MILTON ists. It must have cost the stern Puritan a pang to admit these gay cavahers to his daily companionship, but he did it, and Mary Milton was grateful. It was in the Barbican house that he ex- perienced the first great difficulty with his eyes. Writes his wife: Whenever he looks at a lighted candle, he sees a Sort of Iris all about it; and, this Morning, he disturbed me by mentioning that a total Darknesse obscured everie Thing on the left Side of his Eye, and that he even feared, sometimes, he might eventu- ally lose the Sight of both. " In which Case," he cheerfully sayd, " you, deare Wife, must become my Lecturer as well as Amanuensis, and content yourself to read to me a World of crabbed Books, in Tongues that are not nor need ever be yours, see- ing that a Woman has ever enough of her own ! " The house in Barbican was destroyed in 1864, and now to follow the events in Mil- ton's career we must take our way to White- hall. Whitehall Palace and its grounds oc- cupied the greater part of that space which 174 THE HOMES OF MILTON IS now bounded by Trafalgar Square, the Thames, the Houses of ParHament, and St. James Park. What remains of it stands on the right-hand side (going toward the Abbey) of the broad street called " White- hall," which extends from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Street. It was from Whitehall that Charles I was led out on January 30, 1649, ^^^ beheaded, and it was at Whitehall that Cromwell set up his Protectorate. Hither came John Milton, appointed to be Latin secretary to the Commonwealth, a task that was rendered increasingly difficult by the gradual blindness that was overtaking him. He now moved again — to lodgings in Charing Cross, where he remained until 1652, when his youngest daughter, Deborah, was born. Soon after this Mary Milton died. In about that same year Milton became totally blind, and retired on a pension. With his three small daugh- ters he went to live in a house in Petty 175 THE HOMES OF MILTON France (this house is also gone), and in 1656, needing a mother for his children very badly, he married Catherine Woodcock, whom he had never seen. She lived a few months over a year, then died in bearing a daughter. The child also died. When the Commonwealth ended, in 1660, Milton found a house in Bartholomew Close. Here he kept out of the way of the avenging forces that were meting out punishment to all Cromwellians, and now at last he began to dictate " Paradise Lost.'' In all these years he had written little poetry. His whole time had been devoted to political papers and the divorce doctrines. He had, in 1646, published a small edition of his poems, some in English and some in Latin. Now at last, however, he was to take up his great work. He moved twice in the next two years, and then married, in 1663, Elizabeth MinshuU, a frivolous young woman thirty years his junior, with whom his 176 THE HOMES OF MILTON daughters quarreled and wrangled in a way to make any man's life miserable. Not long after this marriage the family went to their last London house, in Artil- lery Walk, Bunhill Fields, close to the grave- yard where Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan, and Dr. Isaac Watts lie buried. But now came the Great Plague, and the Milton women, in terror, begged to be taken to the country. The poet preferred to remain where he was ; a blind man naturally does not like to be in a continuous state of uprooting. But his protestations were in vain; a house was found at Chalfont St. Giles, a pretty village twenty-five miles from London, and prepa- rations for moving were made. This was a time of bustle. Mr. Milton must have his books and his organ. The latter had to be taken apart in order that it could be carted down. One can picture the blind old man in the great coach as it ambled along the old London road. 12 177 THE HOMES OF MILTON The cottage at Chalfont remains as it was when Milton Hved in it. The village has one street; the Milton cottage stands at the ex- treme end. Its broad brick chimney faces the road, and on the roadside wall a tablet identifies it with the author of " Paradise Lost." There is a luxuriant garden, which you enter; the door to the house is on the garden side. As you go in you find to your right the room in which the poet worked. His china is still there, and two old-fashioned stools. There are photographs and manu- scripts and a few other relics. The several pieces of furniture are of his period, but were not his. There is a large open fireplace, and one knows that the big organ must have rested against one of the walls. It is a tiny room — one can understand the petulance of the blind man when he was brought to it. The family must have lived in cramped quarters, and the poet must have found relief in the sweet-smelHng garden. 178 THE HOMES OF MILTON All around the country is enchanting — rolling hills, dense woods, and spreading meadow-lands. But these Milton could not see — he could only hear the birds singing and drink in the fragrance of the flowers. We can picture him in these days walking down the village street, accompanied by his wife or one of the daughters, and we can hear the neighbors saying: "There goes Mr. Milton, the Protector's secretary and the writer of poems." Perhaps the same little duck pond lay at the entrance to the village, just as it does now, a pond over which a soli- tary swan holds sway. After all, Chalfont was Paradise compared with plague-ridden London. But back to London the Miltons went, and there, in the house in Bunhill Fields, John Milton died, November 8, 1674. He was buried in the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, w^here a bust was erected to him in 1793, and in the churchyard of which, 179 THE HOMES OF MILTON more recently, they have raised up a life-size statue in bronze. Note: Not all of Milton's houses are mentioned in this article. He lived for a time in Aldersgate Street, and a question has been raised as to whether it was not this house to which he brought his bride. But the best authorities state that it was the house in St. Bride's Churchyard. He also lived in High Holborn, in Red Lion Square, and on Jewin Street. Nothing of any of these houses, however, remains. i8o STRATFORD-ON-AVON: THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE INCONGRUOUS FAIR APRIL GAVE A POET (WILLIAM Shakespeare) Fairies from ev'ry bud and bloom did pour, Titania and Puck and many more; They gathered them within a cool, dim glen. There to decide the destinies of men. This was the Spring, and April now was due — Up from the South her herald swallows flew ; Soon in their midst the queenly maiden stood. In rainbow gown and brightly-flowered hood. But ere begin the frolic and the dance, Young April, with a smile and sunny glance. Announces her bequest unto the earth. And names her present as a poet's birth. Each year, when April comes along with Spring, Vv^hen flowers rise and birds begin to sing, One priceless gift to the glad world is made, While homage of that world at April's feet is laid. And every fairy in the little band, In giving of the gift must have a hand. So now the mischief-maker, Puck, the sprite, Who chases timid moths on starry night, And tinkles tiny bells in hidden nooks, Then loudly laughs to see the frightened looks — Puck, to the poet whom fair April gave, Presented meed of wit. — Titania grave. The queen of fairies, dainty, gold-haired fay, Whose beck all fairies lovingly obey, A wondrous fancy proffered for her share, Imagination rich and visions fair. Each of the others now a quality did add, Ah! Poet ne'er before such riches had. And for the poet's home they chose a place — Fair England — land of Saxons' sturdy race — There might the singer drink full deep the stream Of Inspiration; there might dreamer dream Those dreams that Nature in her bounteous moods Does proffer in the glories of her fragrant woods. XI STRATFORD-ON-AVON: THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE INCONGRUOUS It seems almost superfluous to write a de- scription of the birth-town of our greatest English poet. We all seem to know it so well — its every feature wears a familiar aspect. And yet — Americans as we are, and hence enthusiastic hero-worshipers — we have somehow enveloped Stratford-on-Avon in a glamour of sentimental feeling — mild or intense according to our various dispositions — that has prevented us from establishing those finer shades of meaning that make Stratford the setting for a romantic drama as wonderful in its coloring and action as the great plays themselves — and just as human. For as a setting this quaint little 185 STRATFORD-ON-AVON town and its surrounding countryside must be considered, since, had Destiny not decreed that one WilHam Shakespeare, by nature a poet of quaHty subHme, should be born there, the town itself would possess small interest to-day for traveler or patriot, whereas, in present circumstances, it attracts to itself as many as fifty thousand visitors a year. The first time I saw Stratford-on-Avon was on a rainy day in the summer-time. It was in the season when naturally tourists would have flocked into Warwickshire, but the London trains bore very few passengers to either Oxford or Stratford; the little station was practically deserted, and we had it all our own way on the road up to Henley Street. We passed by the memorial drink- ing fountain — one of the several American memorials that now grace Stratford [in this case the gift of the late Mr. George W. Childs, of Philadelphia] — and walked to the birthplace. No surprise awaits one here — i86 CJ STRATFORD-ON-AVON I do not suppose we know the pictures of our own capital at Washington any more familiarly than we know those of this queer, crooked little house — yet this moment was one to which we had looked forward for years; it was a dream made actual. But almost immediately one realizes the truth — if you would have Shakespeare in Stratford, you must take him with you. Imagination must enthrone the poet's spirit in this setting which tradition accords the historical figure — otherwise he is not to be found there. A loyal nation may harbor within the four walls that sheltered the poet's childhood whatever memorials it pleases — his works, models of his monuments, his reputed handwritings, pictures and such ar- ticles of furniture as excuse can be found for ; guides may be deputed to reel off glibly the few facts that research can establish as true; the elderly lady in the library may report with zeal of those things which ^' Wil- 187 STRATFORD-ON-AVON Ham '' did when he Hved here — her feehng for " William '' is so intimately mothering — but of Shakespeare himself, his actual per- sonality, there is nothing. True, William Shakespeare was born in this house on April 23, 1 564. Here he lived as a boy — but how ? Imagination, loving imagination, must sup- ply the details. A tall lad, a slender one, supple of limb, lofty of forehead, merry-faced but grave-eyed — so this boy should have been. No cleaner than his fellow urchins in the Stratford streets, no more fastidious, no better where behavior was concerned, but a bright boy surely, cjuick at his lessons in the little grammar school — still shown to visitors — quick, too, in his play, and mis- chievous as Puck, fond of escapade, an ar- dent listener where any group of townsmen discussed politics or war, a keen observer of those eccentricities which differentiate character, an eager reader when any book — ■ especially Plutarch's '' Lives " — was of- H STRATFORD-ON-AVON fered. We can see him stretched at full length on the floor beside the fireplace, read- ing and dreaming, his fancy roaming in the fields of poetic thought, his mind engaged ever with those perplexing problems that make life such a mystery. He must have loved the little garden back of the house — he could not have helped it ; he must have loved a cool plunge in the Avon, or an hour's drifting over its smooth waters. What a world that forest of Arden must have been to him, peopled as it was with fairies and robbers and exiled lords, ladies, and clowns in motley. Some of the people in '' As You Like It '' he may really have met; we are sure he conversed freely with Titania and Oberon and encouraged Puck in his pranks. At the Stratford taverns he must have seen and talked with men like Bottom and his fellows. Irresponsible he probably was, but his very irresponsibility was laying up for him treasures without 189 STRATFORD-ON-AVON number, and certainly without price. All this strange assortment of people he carried home with him, into that little house, to that fireside, into those very places where now their pictured images hang on the walls, whither their most famous expositors have gone as pilgrims, but from which their cre- ator, loath to intrude his personality among them, has in the succeeding years withdrawn, leaving a happy hunting-ground for admir- ers, a stock in trade for later generations of awed countrymen who have found it con- venient to cultivate a taste and an enthusi- asm for Avon's bard. The visitor to Stratford knows well the story of Anne Hathaway — or at least, he or she knows it as well as such a matter of mystery can be known. At any rate, we are all willing to spend a part of our time in a trip to Shottery, a mile out from the town, where, in a picturesque spot, a vine-covered, hedge-surrounded cottage, quite as pretty as 190 STRATFORD-ON-AVON the typical English cottage is wont to be, and supposedly the home of that shadowy figure, Anne, is shown as the scene of a most in- teresting episode, Shakespeare's courtship. It were just as well for us to enter this quaint, small cottage in a spirit of whole-souled faith — the skeptic had better omit Shottery from his itinerary — it might be well to for- tify one's self by reading Miss Sterling's generously romantic '' Shakespeare's Sweet- heart," for in fact there is nothing very au- thentic about Anne Hathaway's relation to this particular cottage, though its English wooded prettiness suggests an attraction for a young man of poetic temperament ; the wide settle by the fire would indeed have been an ideal courting place, and the country round about is just that kind of country wherein lovers, seeking atmosphere con- genial to their own exalted spirits, might roam at ease and find themselves addition- ally inspired. It is all so charmingly primi- 191 STRATFORD-ON-AVON tive that one wants Shakespeare to have wooed Anne here with ardent soul and im- patient feehng; and where Shakespeare the man is concerned, one may have what one wants simply by seeing and believing. Shakespeare married Anne — that much requires no exercise of imagination; he also went up to London — without his wife and presumably because he was not a model citizen, but an impulsive, rebellious, and dar- ing young man. We care nothing for his offense against Sir Thomas Lucy — it was so ordained perhaps that he might be forced into that new field in which his powers were to ripen and bear fruit. Stratford is impartial where London enters its claim — for he loved Stratford so dearly that he came back there to stay when he had conquered fame and fortvme. Stratford admired the imposing Londoner, no matter how much or how little she may have appreciated the poet and dram- atist. At New Place he was a personage 192 STRATFORD-ON-AVON — what a pity that nothing of this house re- mains save the foundations ! — and he con- tinues to be a personage in every part of Stratford, even to the old church, where alone, of all the places, as Washington Ir- ving remarks — and we agree to the remark — his spirit may really be found, for here he lies buried. But before visiting Trinity Church the traveler naturally turns from the site of New Place to the Shakespeare Memorial close at hand. This memorial is in itself a most inter- esting building: as a mark of commemora- tion to Shakespeare it is appropriate. It overlooks the Avon ; from its tower one has a beautiful view of the church and the coun- try around. It is nearly surrounded by gardens and lawns, in the midst of which, on the side toward the church and also over- looking the river, stands what is probably the most beautiful Shakespearean statue that has been erected, that by Lord Ronald 13 193 STRATFORD-ON-AVON Gower. It is a statue so well known that it needs no description, but it inspires the feel- ing of a presence when one stands before it. The pose is that of a poet and thinker, just such a one as might have been inspired amid such surroundings. For in the neighbor- hood of the memorial, when no festival is on, there is the peaceful quiet of a woodland shelter: the Avon scarcely murmurs, the trees barely quiver, only the birds singing make a sound. Shakespeare himself would have loved — doubtless did love — this spot. Inside the Memorial Building there are three centers of interest — the library, the theater and the picture gallery. In the li- brary the Shakespearean student may browse at ease — the relics are in no way remark- able, but the collection of Shakespeareana is superb and superbly arranged. The theater is a tiny place, but splendidly equipped — to see the plays themselves on this stage is a treat, without doubt; the art gallery has 194 STRATFORD-ON-AVON many pictures that call for the traveler's at- tention. Here is the Droeshout portrait, and here are many paintings that portray scenes from the plays, a number of them showing famous actors in the principal roles. One series of pictures gave me personally a great deal of pleasure, and that was the series of water-colors, hung low round the walls, pic- turing scenes from the life of the poet. Purely imaginary these scenes are, of course — an imaginative presentment based on the few facts really known and on some of the legends. But the sympathy and appreciation and understanding that the artist has shown make this a collection that one remembers. It is but a short distance from the Memo- rial Building to the Stratford Church. The avenue of limes that leads from the road to the entrance on the north side has had many words of enthusiastic description. Every- thing is so still ; Nature is close and intimate ; and the very spirits of the dead seem to 195 STRATFORD-ON-AVON hover in the woodland shadows. A sense of agedness compels one to a recognition of the passing of the centuries ; the tree trunks are overgrown with thick and ancient moss. Architecturally the church is beautiful, both without and within. One enters it rever- ently, and reverently likewise contemplates its monuments and tombs. The Shake- speares are buried in the chancel, inside the altar rails. Here lie the poet, his wife, his daughter and her husband, and Thomas Nash, the husband of his granddaughter. Rectangular slabs of stone mark each grave, irregularly placed. The inscriptions are known to everyone, especially that on the poet's own tomb, the famous admonition which he himself composed, and which has kept even the most audacious from disturbing his remains. The monument to Shakespeare is set high in the wall; its colors are dim, but its out- lines are distinct. One is not instinctively so 196 STRATFORD-ON-AVON well pleased with this portrayal of the poet's features, though it is probably the most authentic of any bust, since supposedly it was modeled from the death-mask. However, it glimpses the prosperous owner of New Place, the retired dramatist — imagination must again supply the links between the poet and the well-trained, comfortably wealthy citi- zen of Stratford, home from his adventures in the town and settled down to retirement. This monument in Trinity Church is not a monument to the author of '^ A Midsummer Night's Dream " or " Venus and Adonis '' ; of that Shakespeare, the poet Milton might well and appropriately ask: What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones The labour of an age in piled stones ? Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name ? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a livelong monument. 197 STRATFORD-ON-AVON For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavoring art, Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book Those Delphic lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving, Dost make tis marble with too much conceiving, And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb might wish to die. No, Stratford-on-Avon is an artificially developed landmark. In it much has been made out of little. Each shop is of effort all compact to do honor to the poet that men from afar have come to seek signs of; each hotel is given over to ministering to the tastes of those who deign to honor the town with their presence because an immortal singer once lived there; but the Stratford shopkeeper is a commercial being at best, and the Stratford hotel-keeper more than average wise. Yet, with it all, the town is charming with an Old World charm, the very essence of beauty is in its environment. We may need 198 STRATFORD-ON-AVON to take Shakespeare with us into these his once native haunts, but, having taken him, v^e shall not come away unrefreshed or un- invigorated. And our immediate contact with those phases and aspects of Nature that the poet so loved will annihilate our feeling for the incongruities and disproportions that have inflicted themselves upon us during our sojourn, whether brief or long. 199 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM XII PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM To those who have been to Paris but once, the city remains, in retrospect, a dreamhke experience, and the hazy glamour which softens the details of a vision tints and glisters the ever-changing shadows of the great city as they pass and repass with the tides of memory vivified by imagination. Paris is a city of light, but the glare of its lights is not without an eclipse of its shad- ows ; it is a city of laughter, but its laughter readily melts into tears ; it is a city of good- nature, but its good-nature can on the instant degenerate into brutishness. But more than lights and shadow^s, laugh- ter and tears, good humor and ill, is the movement, the vivacity of Paris. One sees 203 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM it as one sees the moving film pictured on the screen; numberless variations and light- ning rapid changes go to make up the in- dividual scene, and with all the speed of the highly dramatic each scene shifts and fades away. Paris is essentially a city of crowds and a city of noises. Even Strauss would have much ado to find a sufficient number of kinds of instruments with which to reproduce its multitude of sounds. An enormous canvass would scarcely comprehend the mighty mass of individually different figures which haunt the boulevards in the evenings, and line the pavements before the cafes at all times. Countless living human beings pass and mingle in the life that fills Parisian streets to bursting, but the shadowy ghosts of as many countless thousands dead press be- tween and among, before and behind these living figures. Paris by day, in clear weather, presents 204 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM a riot of color under a deep, blue sky; Paris by night shows an electrical display that no brilliancy of the heavens can rival. But by day or by night Paris is essentially a city of artificialities. Its landscapes are man-made ; its boulevards and parks and its gorgeous gardens reveal themselves as the products of an artistry that is as marvelous in its technique, as undeniable in its appre- ciation of the beautiful, as it is uninspired by any nobler purpose than to minister to the needs of the senses of those who dwell with it. God in nature has no revealment in Parisian green places; the silence of the night under the sweep of a star-lit sky will thrill no soul. Paris is dedicated to the joy of the liv- ing; enthusiastically it raises its monuments to the glory of its dead. Paris leaves little to the imagination from Napoleon's Tomb in the Invalides to Pere La Chaise with its conglomeration of memorials. 205 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM The Paris of to-day exhibits the Paris of yesterday with the pride of an artist display- ing a masterpiece. In a wealth of museums she memorializes her art, her history, her literature, presenting as object-lessons tan- gible remnants and representations of the fames she wishes to celebrate. The visible marks of her triumphs decorate her streets; her achievements are recorded in monuments of every description and of every degree and grade of beauty. So rich in choice examples of valuable relics and exquisite memorials is Paris that the visitor with a limited time at his or her command has no small difficulty in deciding upon the places most desirable and most im- portant to see. There are Notre Dame, the Pantheon, the Invalides, the Madeleine, the Place de la Concorde, the Place de la Bastille, the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Opera House, the Champs Elysees, the Bois de Bou- logne — so many places, and one may not 206 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM nor would wish to miss any of them. Most of them are prominent in a bird's-eye view — the Champs Elysees cries invitation in the sunshine ; the InvaHdes' gilded dome beckons insistingly; all known legendary, historic, artistic, and literary lore compel eagerness in the direction of the Isle de la Cite or to the region of the long galleries of the Louvre, or again to the broad expanses of the Place de la Concorde. Visit Notre Dame when there is little or no sunlight. It is a cathedral best experi- enced in dimness. Do not go to see, but to feel; rest quietly, and the soft drone of a progressing service will steal soothingly through the vast spaces ; out of the shadows gradually but surely will emerge the splen- did details of the great, old church ; you will seem thousands of miles away from the bustle of life, and a peace such as one cannot know in the garishness of daylight will come upon you. Later you may visit the treasure store, 207 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM but it is unimportant as compared with the precious moments spent among the dusky shadows, when the soul drinks in its fill of the strength and beauty of a holy quietness. To learn about Notre Dame read Victor Hugo; read first, then go, and keep mind and heart open for impressions. The Pantheon is purely pagan ; absolutely unemotional. Save for Rodin's " Thinker " before the portals, there is no touch of the sublime attached to the edifice. Coldly beau- tiful, the frescoes of Puvis de Chavannes delicately tint the high walls; of spirit the place is empty. Far below, where Paris buries her illustrious dead in a series of elab- orated vaults, one passes by the places where rest Hugo, Rousseau, and Voltaire, but the emotion is like that experienced by the tomb of Napoleon — an intellectual admira- tion for perfect arrangements and artistic marbles — no more. To know a thrill one seeks the Louvre and 208 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM the Luxembourg. Here are dreams come true ! For here one may stand and gaze in- definitely before " Monna Lisa/' before Ra- phael's "St. Michael/' before Murillo's '' Immaculate Conception." Time is no more, nor are centuries to be counted; realities fade into oblivion while the soul absorbs the perfectness of the purity that makes Leonardo's masterpiece an in- carnation of genius, and lifts high the spirit on the clouds that float so caressingly about the exquisite figure of the mother of God. On the way down stairs one stops en- thralled before the lightsome poise of the *' Winged Victory of Samothrace," a figure so wonderfully moulded that it seems more spirit than marble. And then, down at the end of that long, shadowed corridor, lined on either side by innumerable relics of Greek and Roman art in sculpture, a white figure stands forth from a black background. The *' perfect woman " — the " Venus de Milo " 14 209 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM ■ — will bear no written description ; one must see it to realize the miracle of its power — a beauty that hurts in that it is so lovely. The Louvre has treasures inexhaustible; its pictures and sculptures are but two de- partments in this immense museum where everything that is art has its representation. The Luxembourg speaks nothing for the ancient — it emphasizes the evolution of the modern art. Here Whistler, Cottet, Moreau, Constant, Puvis de Chavannes, and Fantin Latour have some of their noblest efforts exhibited, while the Rodin sculptures form of themselves a priceless collection. Revolutionary Paris speaks in accents of woe from the eminence of the Place de la Bastille, and from the w^hite asphalts of the Place de la Concorde. Gay as may be the life that now trips lightly through these broad, brightly beautiful squares, the Col- umn of the Fourteenth of July cries blood to the heavens, and the atrocities of the guil- 2IO PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM lotine stain the pavements before the ObeHsk: blood-red. Imagination becomes a prey to historic fact as one gazes on these monu- ments of the travail out of which a Republic was born, and not all the floods of all the Seines that flow can wash away the stains of noble and innocent blood shed lustfully in Liberty's name! As I write this chapter Paris is but awak- ing from a period of darkness and bereave- ment. Her overflowing river has devastated her city — the Champs Elysees, the Isle de la Cite, the regions of the Louvre, the vicin- ity of the Madeleine are but now emerging from an overwhelming tide. Paris has been sitting in mourning, waiting for the waters to subside; at the first intimation that the danger has passed by, the whole city dances forth, courageously garmented, to take up its temporary abandoned frivolities, and to forget its prayers in the gayest, most riotous songs. 211 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM I cite the episode because it reveals just what I hope to convey through the medium of this impression. Paris, " a city of moods," might be used as appropriately de- scriptive, for the mood is the thing in this great, white, wonderful city, which men have builded for the satisfaction of their nationally artistic-loving eye, which they have so many times degraded in their mad thirst for revenge upon opposing powers, in which kings have risen, have fallen, and have risen again, with a rapidity as senseless as it has been startling, in which republics have been born, have been throttled till they died, have been decently or indecently buried, until Revolution has become a byword and Riot a logical sequence to any petty dissatis- faction. Alternate light and darkness, alter- nate heights and abysses, alternate blood- sheddings and peace-makings, — this is Paris, beautiful, kaleidoscopic, wonderfully colored, marvelously animated Paris: the 212 PARIS — A SKETCH IN IMPRESSIONISM city of statues and gardens, and music and laughter, where victory carries to sublime heights of enthusiasm on the crest of the wave that has risen from the deeps of dark- ness and defeat. 213 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINE- BLEAU: TOMBS OF A DEAD GLORY THE GOLDEN AGE Pan by the stream with his reed plays Through days that are golden and long; Wood-nymphs glide bright through the tree- maze, Hear snatches of rapturous song — Shepherds a-dreamy and sad-eyed, Their flocks straying far and away, Lie in the shade on the hill-side, Hear love's plaintive note in the lay — Dryads in forests a-dancing, To music of birds and of stream; Diana's arrows a-glancing. See Apollo's answering gleam — Fleet-footed deer through the forest Are driven by Puck's mirthful fays; Running and leaping with huge zest, See flowers their sleepy eyes raise — These were the days of real romance, Of dryads' and fairies' dance; Days of delight and joyous song. Days that were olden and golden and long ! XIII VERSAILLES AND FONTAINE- BLEAU: TOMBS OF A DEAD GLORY There is a certain element of the grotesque in the silent emptiness of the French royal palaces, those magnificent edifices which, having passed through every kind of politi- cal change and vicissitude, have gradually fallen to the plane of mere show-places, the proud display of which is not a little incon- gruous in the light of what the republic stands for as opposed to the monarchical glory that these sumptuous one-time resi- dences commemorate. On the other hand, to still the echoes that even yet reverberate through the long halls 217 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU and the lofty salons of Versailles and Fon- tainebleau; to destroy the images that im- mediately take form before the mind's eye as one contemplates the more intimate sur- roundings of the illustrious Bourbons and the great Napoleon, would be to consign to oblivion much of France's most prideful history, and to cut out from the book of re- membrance many of her most fascinating personalities and most interesting charac- ters. To inhabit the favorite seat of the Sun- King's court with the paraphernalia of de- mocracy would offend a taste far less fine than that of the least educated Frenchman, whereas to hand over these relics of a golden age to a private care that would restrict their value as sources of a public enjoyment would be to commit an indiscretion that the world at large would not soon forgive. A more than casual contrast forces itself upon one in going over Versailles and Fon- tainebleau. At Versailles there is little to 218 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU appeal to the poetic imagination; at Fon- tainebleau the heart of the poet is more than rejoiced and satisfied. Versailles typifies man^s triumph over Nature; Fontainebleau shows Nature pre- dominant over man's ambitions. The over- whelming desire of the fourteenth Louis to achieve the highest point in the development of the decorative has a monument in Ver- sailles ; the same methods employed at Fon- tainebleau would have defeated their own purposes. To-day Versailles basks in the brilliant afterglow of a great but past glory. The stupendousness of its conception is worthy a line of mighty potentates; its success, in so far as it accomplished the task set, has immortalized the landscape architect who obeyed the king's command. Only a Louis, surrounded by every luxury that even the most practiced voluptuary could imagine, would have planned on so extravagant a 219 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU scale; only a prodigal would have had the courage to expend the immense fortunes out of which Versailles, a great king's great and brilliant residence for a whole court, was. evolved. Not even a river was exempt from the demand of the king's will. A deflected course was nothing if it ministered to the larger elaboration of the details in a mag- nificent scheme. Versailles to-day is not, of course, Ver- sailles as Louis le Grande builded it. Later Bourbons added to it and diminished; Na- poleon would scarcely have been satisfied had his personality not had its reflection in some changes made in the palaces he so coolly adapted to his own uses. We approach Versailles with more than a little conscious curiosity in our attitude. The familiarity assured us, through the me- dium of historical works, with many of the most important personages and episodes associated with the palace and its environs, 220 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU has made our interest in its relics and its memories doubly sure. The brilliancy of the days of the Montespan, the triumphs of de Maintenon, the reigns of the Pompadour and Du Barry are vivid patches in a bright tap- estry that unrolls before one through the corridors and chambers of the fine old cha- teau and the Trianons. Darker places in the picture indicate the careers of Louis XVI and his proud queen, the Austrian Marie Antoinette; of the beautiful and innocent Elizabeth, and the two pretty children — the one such a sad little Dauphin, later a sadder little king — whose young lives were thrown into a turmoil on that day when the stones of Versailles rang shrill under the impact of mobbish feet, and the shrieks of mad women mingled with the hoarser cries of men and the dull boom of a thousand drums as the starving hordes from Paris poured into the great court and demanded the king's ap- pearance before them. The Ghost of the 221 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU Grand Monarch must surely have danced with rage on that dark day, though better had it wept in agony to see its proud suc- cessor brought to such a pass through those very extravagances and the employment of licenses which had made Revolution inevitable. Peace came to Versailles only after sore trials. Hellish Fury chased the golden Phoebus from his court of Sunlight, and the fiery chariot has been seen no more before the rich portals of the palace. Silence reigns where chimy laughter mel- odied the dances and where soft voices whispered eager words of love among the shadowed recesses of the gardens. Like a great, beautiful tomb, skilfully architectured, lies Versailles, a carefully- tended, conscientiously-maintained memorial. Swept, brushed, regularly garnished, its fine old furniture, its rare tapestries, its magnificent pictures, its splendid frescoes 222 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU enshrine the memories of those who are dead, for the glory that made the palace, that in- habited it and gave it life and song, humor and pathos, comedy and tragedy, has passed forever by, and France cannot recall it, would not if she could, though pride demands the knee before this symbol of achievement, a temple of triumph to kings whose " divine rights " were maintained indisputably, whose conquests were the envy of the nations, whose personal influence gathered around them the greatest that genius could attain or offer, whose private lives were romances as colorful as they were scandalous, but out of whose decline was wrought a brilliant empire and later a republic of power to keep pace with the demands that democracy has levied on the later centuries. The tomb of a dead glory — Versailles, the beautifully environed: so one may call it. It is not enough to erect a superb edifice ; it must have appropriate and artistic sur- 223 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU foundings. When Louis XIV set about es- tablishing a court at Versailles, he planned these splendid gardens, and he had worked out for him so elaborate a system of foun- tains that, to accomplish their playing, a river had to be turned from its course. The fountains at Versailles play once a week only — fortunate the traveler who goes there on that day. Versailles in the sunlight is hot but pic- turesque. Its broad walks give a miniature Paris; its avenues of trees are almost hide- ously symmetrical. Nature has been forced to assume certain aspects and shapes, cone- trimmed trees, close-cropped shrubs and boxed bushes make of the gardens a series of regularly devised walks and angularly shadowed promenades, with gorgeous foun- tains as center-pieces alternating with ten- derly nurtured flower beds. Artificial hills and slopes, cool picturesque grottoes for resting-places, long vistas of white walks 224 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU closely hedged: these are features of the broad acres that spread themselves before and around the beautiful old chateau, and in whose midst rest the Great and Petit Tri- anons, in themselves superb palaces on a smaller scale. At a set time, late in the afternoon, the first tall spires of water shoot upward from the mouths of the fountains. Higher they grow and higher, until they break and fall in glistening spray that settles into cream foam over the top of the basin's pool of water. Hundreds of fountains, in many varieties of design, all merrily sing as they spout, burst- ing into rainbow colors as they splash and sparkle in the sunlight. All over the grounds you can see the slender streams rising; in the great Fountain of the Sun one has a gor- geous spectacle. Here the water escapes over the surface of a gilded cascade, the central streams rising to lofty heights in the air, lower streams supporting them at the 15 225 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU bases. Crested waves ripple down the sides ; the great basin sings and scintillates as the water gathers and rises to the top of its bright, broad rim. To see the Versailles fountains playing is to behold what money and labor can contrive to make possible. As the brilliancy of a sunny day gradually passes, and the hour of sunset draws near, the fountains flowing send a cool refreshment through the air, the merry swirl seems to grow softer ; the waters murmur soothingly as one by one they cease to play. Shadowy now the green aisles and dim the more sheltered corners — the splen- dor of the day dies even as the reign of the Sun King died years ago at Versailles. And the sweet stillness and peace of the dead rest around and about the gardens of the chateau as twilight casts its silvery veil over the mausoleum of France's brightest and most enchanting glory — dead. 226 . ^^,«f VERSAILLES • AND FONTAINEBLEAU The surroundings of Fontainebleau pre- sent a very different appearance from those of Versailles. The deep inspiration of the Scotch lake district resides in the heart of the mighty and justly famous forest. This is indeed a bit of God's own country for the artist to paint, for the poet to sing about; and the beauty of the chateau which the first Francis built on the edge of the forest justi- fies the thousands of pilgrimages which are made to Fontainebleau year after year. The gardens at Fontainebleau are tracts of the forest which encroach upon the palace domains. The trees retain their natural sweep and droopings. The chateau is ex- quisite in architectural detail, from its great horseshoe-shaped staircase to its beautiful small summer-house in the center of the bright lake, where Napoleon was wont to secrete himself when matters of state de- manded his undivided attention. Within the palace the arrangements are superb, less gor- 227 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU geous than at Versailles, but choicer in that their splendor has more of refinement. The royal chapel is perfect in its appointments; the long succession of rooms in which the French kings have lived and died present a wonderful array of fine, polished floors, richly carved and decorated ceilings, panels hung with famous Gobelin tapestries, furni- ture of the fine beauty of Bourbon days and the period of the First Empire. Here in Fontainebleau Louis XIV set up his " King's Conscience," the ever enigmatic but all-powerful Maintenon; here in Fon- tainebleau Pope Pius VII was detained by Napoleon until the Emperor's will was ac- complished; here in Fontainebleau Napo- leon signed his abdication on a table that still bears the mark of his dagger as in sudden, uncontrollable anger he struck out with it. Marie Antoinette luxuriated in Fontaine- bleau, and Marie Louise gave birth to the little King of Rome in one of these cham- 228 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU bers. The brightness of Fontainebleau was restored by Napoleon III, and to him is due the Httle theater that is so interesting an addition to the chateau. But Fontainebleau is not entirely dedi- cated to this palace of kings. The visitor going there can dispose of the chateau and its most immediate vicinity in a short space of time. The rare features of Fontaine- bleau are to be found in its forest, that vast stretch of magnificent woodland to which painters from all over the world have gone to seek inspiration, and which Watteau and Cottet and Millet, Morland, and Constable have immortalized on canvases that are priceless. But the forest of Fontainebleau has in it that element of the eternal which lingers with any of Nature's larger manifes- tations so long as the hand of man is with- held from demolishing them. Miles and miles of trees are here — their lower trunks hidden in fern bracken, slender trees, tall 229 VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU trees, lithe saplings and broad-based patri- archs whose spreading branches roof the forest with a fine lacework of green foliage. Soft mosses clinging, creeping; vines twin- ing and intertwining; here and there a purple patch of heather, or a dell is bright- ened by wild flowers. Rifts of sunshine filter through the vaulted roofings and glimpses of blue sky grow vivid in the sunlight. This indeed was one among Na- ture's first and greatest cathedrals, and prince and peasant alike have worshipped therein. On all hands one sees pictures in Fon- tainebleau's forest, and the visitor rides out from the immense tract with a mind full of entrancing natural masterpieces. The beauties of Fontainebleau will sur- vive whatever political changes may ring through France. Palaces may be builded and may crumble away; kings may be lifted up and deposed; emperors may storm through 230 :^;.K-^?m^^^ i^h VERSAILLES AND FONTAINEBLEAU meteoric careers, and presidents may come and go; but Fontainebleau stands for the best that France has to give, and its gemUke chateau takes its place with the rarely lovely chateaux of the Touraine region to symbol- ize the wonders of a past that is buried but not forgotten, in that man and Nature have joined hands to commemorate it by raising up in its honor monuments that testify nobly to brave deeds and heroic undertakings, the conquests, the triumphs, political, social, ar- tistic, and literary which have made the pages of French history more colorful and romantic than those of any other nation in the world. 231 WHEN THE SEA STORMS: THREE FRAGMENTS SHADOWS AT SEA And now the Sun, his golden glory spent, Withdraws his shafts of light, and hides from view; Long curtain clouds of gray fall gently to. Night into camp the hosts of day has sent. As if to darken all the world he meant ; But here and there a streak of rose or blue From pearly deeps comes faintly filtering through, The new pale moon begins a slow ascent. Mid-ocean takes unto itself new bounds; The growing shadows, range on range, pile high ; It is as if the waters met a wooded strand, A strip of picturesque, mysterious land, A weird, still world that ships pass silent by. While hearts thrill deep to catch faint spirit sounds. XIV WHEN THE SEA STORMS: THREE FRAGMENTS This record of impressions would scarcely be complete without some description of the two unusually severe storms which it was my good fortune to experience on the trip about which I am writing, the one on the English Channel when we crossed from Calais to Dover in the month of September, and the other in mid-ocean as the Maiire- tania came westward a little later in the same month. Calais was in the thrall of a big gale when we arrived there in the afternoon; there had been shipwrecks during the day, and it was doubtful if the boats could make a land- 235 WHEN THE SEA STORMS ing at Dover. On the pier the wind raged; the waters lashed the holdings, and with every sweep of the wildly dashing waves a shower of fine spray spread over the landing- stage. The turbine boat did not get in, but a side-wheeler was made ready for the pas- sage, and sometime around four o'clock the passengers boarded the vessel to cross over to Dover. For all who wished to stay on deck rubber coats were provided, and chairs were drawn well back into the more sheltered places; then the boat pushed ofif, and in a few moments we had taken the plunge into the fury of the storm. It was a glorious sight- — gray skies everywhere; the day dying; in the west a faint, pink afterglow left in the track of the sinking sun. The dark-shadowed clouds hung low over the waters ; the great waves rose high and broke with roars of thunder, their crest waters flung far as the wind caught up the scatter- ing spray points and hurled them through 236 WHEN THE SEA STORMS the air. Now gray, now green, now a deep blue-purple, the tides of the channel swirled and eddied, the dull throbs, the noisy rushes, the hoarse murmurs of the furious seas vying in depth and intensity of sound with the sighs and moans, the high shrieks and angry growls of the maddened wind. Little by little the gray sky deepened to blackness; the waters took on the hues of night; Dover's cliffs showed dull and gray against a deepening twilight, and here and there far lights blinked in the darkness. With her decks running water in full streams, her passengers spray-soaked and weary, the paddle-boat drew into the dock. The wind had subsided somewhat — the worst of the gale was past, but the memory of the rock, the sway, the plunges of the vessel in that seething torrent of a storm- bound channel will remain with her passen- gers for many a long day. 237 WHEN THE SEA STORMS On the fourth day out from Liverpool, the Mauretania ran head-on into a storm. Morning found the biggest ocean-liner ply- ing the high seas, lunging, plunging, stag- gering through a sea that was frenzied by the great strokes of a mighty gale. It is a tribute to that most magnificent of Na- ture's giant children, the Atlantic Ocean, that in the manifestation of her superb strength she can play, as a child plays with a ball, with a vessel of the height and breadth and depth of the great Cunarder. Steady as the Mauretania is, even in a com- paratively rough sea, her steadiness perforce deserted her when the deep undercurrents of a storm-whipped sea heaved her huge bulk up and forward, this way and that, as the high winds came shrilly whistling around her mastheads. Daylight brought a slight change to the wind. We were running with her, and the great vessel's speed was sufficient to outdis- 238 WHEN THE SEA STORMS tance her. The sun gave a faint glow of Hght in the eastern heavens, otherwise the sky remained a dull, mist-veiled slate color, against the far horizon-line of which the broad sea spread a darkly speckled green. Sitting on the deck, on the more protected side of the vessel, one had a magnificent view of the restless, demon-haunted waters. The waves rose mountain-high, as if the forces of an army of Titans were employed in heaving them heavenward. The great boat rode high on the uplifted waters, and a deep, deep valley, smoothly green, stretched down and downward far below the sky-line. Then as the waters subsided, the boat slowly sank; great mountains of water gathered and rose, their sides foam-flecked, their crests white as with frozen snow — alpine in their height and grandeur as they cleaved the sky. Then with a rush and roar, as of an avalanche slipping, their great summits would break and fall, rolling, sliding, tum- 239 WHEN THE SEA STORMS bling till they mingled in a green-blue pool over the surface of which rings of froth formed by the spreading foam lay in mottled beauty. Only in a mid-ocean storm, with the howl of the wind and the roar of the waters in your ears, with the sight of a wholly uncon- trolled and uncontrollable sea driven to reck- lessness by the desperate onslaughts of winds and the deep rebellion of undercurrents be- fore your eyes, can you realize the im- mensity, the cruel relentlessness of some of Nature's forces, against which man's hand is but an inert, useless instrument, and in the direction of which man's brain proves but an impotent agent. One other picture I wish to recall, and all who have awaited the dissipation of a heavy fog will recognize it. There is music in this picture, too, as in most sea-pictures, the wild, weird music of the siren's shrill cry and the 240 Rear Deck of the MAURET^Niyi WHEN THE SEA STORMS deep-toned chime of the boat's bells. All around the vessel the fog lies thick like a heavy, densely-woven veil of drab. If the sun shines at all it merely casts stray beams upon the veil, through which they sift in pal- pitating dust-flecks of gold. Suddenly, out from the thick wall of gray, a figure begins to take form, then like a fairy- ship, poised for flight over calm waters, a fishing-schooner comes slowly into view. All around a shimmer, light and pale tints mellowed by a misty glamour, outlines soft- ened to indefinite shapes — the little boat moves proudly out from its background of shadows and rides gayly over lightly rip- pling waters till, clear and distinctly, its masts, its bow, its stern, perhaps its crew assume tangible shapes, and the dream-ship becomes a reality. In much the same way the great, benig- nant goddess of the harbor rises like Venus from the sea-foam, a shadow-shape slowly i6 241 WHEN THE SEA STORMS materializing, until, in dignity and proffered loving-kindness, she bends and beckons, her attitude symbolizing promise to the new arrival, " welcome home " to the traveler returning after a sojourn over the seas. FINIS j^l ^ vm One copy del. to Cat. Div.