Читать книгу Impressions of England; or, Sketches of English Scenery and Society - A. Cleveland Coxe - Страница 4

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First and Second Thoughts—A Warwickshire Welcome.

About noon, one hazy April day, I found myself approaching the British coast, and was informed by the Captain of our gallant steamer, that in a few minutes we should gain a glimpse of the mountains of Wales. Instead of rushing to the upper-deck, I found myself forced by a strange impulse to retire to my state-room. For nearly thirty years had my imagination been fed with tales of the noble island over the sea; and for no small portion of that period, its history and its institutions had been a favorite subject of study. To exchange, forever, the England of my fancy for the matter-of-fact England of the nineteenth century, was something to which I was now almost afraid to consent. For a moment I gave way to misgivings; collected and reviewed the conceptions of childhood; and then betook myself, solemnly, to the reality of seeing, with my own eyes, the land of my ancestors, in a spirit of thankfulness for so great a privilege. I went on deck. There was a faint outline of Snowdon in the misty distance; and before long, as the mist dispersed, there, just before us, was the noble brow of Holyhead.

It reminded me of the massive promontory opposite Breakneck, as we descend the Hudson, towards West Point: but the thought that it was another land, and an old as well as an ancestral one, strangely mingled with my comparative memories of home. There is something like dying and waking to life again, in leaving one’s home, and committing one’s self to such a symbol of Eternity as the Ocean, and then, after long days and nights, beholding the reality of things unknown before, and entering upon new scenes, with a sense of immense separation from one’s former self. Oppressive thoughts of the final emigration from this world, and descrying, at last, “the land that is very far off,” were forced upon me. We doubled the dangerous rocks of Skerries, and began to coast along the northern shore of Anglesea: and then, with my perspective-glass, I amused myself contentedly, for hours, as I picked out the objects presenting themselves on the land. Now a windmill, now a village, and now—delightful sight—a Christian spire! It was night-fall when our guns saluted the port of Liverpool, and our noble steamer came to anchor in the Mersey.

Our voyage had been a very pleasant, and a highly interesting one. Extraordinary icebergs had been visible for several successive days, and had given us enough of excitement to relieve the tediousness of the mid-passage. Our two Sundays had been sanctified by the solemnities of worship; and the only mishap of our voyage had been such as to draw forth much good feeling, and to leave a very deep impression. One of the hands had been killed by accidental contact with the engine, and had been committed to the deep with the Burial Service of the Church, in the presence of all on board. A handsome purse was immediately made up for the surviving mother of the deceased; and the painful event tended greatly to the diffusion of a fraternal sympathy among the entire company. We became as one family: and now, before retiring for the night, I was requested, by those who remained on board, to offer a solemn thanksgiving to Almighty God, for our safe deliverance from the perils of the sea. This it gave me pleasure to do; and the words of the Psalmist rose in our evening devotions, “Then are they glad because they are at rest; and so he bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.” The noble vessel in which we had accomplished our voyage now lies many fathoms deep in the sea. It was the Arctic.

On landing, in the morning, I inwardly saluted the dear soil, on which I was permitted at last to place my feet, and on which I could not feel, altogether, a foreigner. I ran the gauntlet of tide-waiters, and the like, without anything to complain of, and, after a bath at the Adelphi, made my way to St. George’s Church. Here, for the first time, I joined in the worship of our English Mother; though it was difficult to conceive myself a stranger, until the expression—“Victoria, our Queen and Governor”—recalled the fact that I was worshipping with the subjects of an earthly Sovereign, as well as among my brethren of the glorious City of God.

A letter awaited me at the Post Office, which invited me to spend my rest-days with a dear friend. So, after a hasty survey of Liverpool, which I did not care to inspect minutely, I took an early evening train for Warwickshire, and was soon speeding athwart highways, and through hedges, towards my friend’s abode. Even my glimpses of England, from the flying carriage, were enough to occupy my mind delightfully: and often did some scene upon the road-side, or in the sprouting fields, recall incidents of history, or passages of poetic description, which filled me with emotion, and greatly heightened my preconceptions of the pleasures before me, in the tour which I thus began.

So it happened that my first night on shore was passed beneath the roof of a pleasant English parsonage. My host had been, for years, my correspondent, and though we had never met before, we counted ourselves old friends. My bed-room had been prepared for me, and furnished with such things, in the way of books and the like, as, it was fancied, would suit my tastes. One window overlooked the Church; and another, over the churchyard, and its green graves, commanded a pretty view of the fields. It was the Holy Week. I was waked every morning by the bell for early prayers. The Bishop of W—— had sent me his permission to officiate, and when I went to Church, it was always as a priest of the One Communion. I was at home: as much so as if I had lived, for years, in the house where I was a guest. We kept the holy time together, and limited our diversions to pleasant and somewhat professional walks. We visited, for example, a parochial establishment, in which some twenty widows were lodged, by the benevolent charity of an individual. Every widow had her own little cottage, and the entire buildings enclosed a square, in which was their common garden. There was also a small chapel; and in each little home there was a text inscribed over the fire-place, encouraging charity, forbearance, and love to God. Here was a quiet Beguinage, built many years ago, and never heard of: but there are many such, in England, dear to God, and the fruits of his Church. I visited also a school founded by King Edward Sixth; and having, on my first landing at Liverpool, paid a visit to its Blue Coat Hospital, founded by a prosperous seaman of the port, and furnishing a noble example to all sea-port cities, I had seen not a little to charm me with the religion of England, before I had been a week on her shores. Our quiet walks through lanes and by-paths, were not less gratifying in their way. The hedges and the fields, gardens and residences, the farms and the very highways, were full of attractions to my eye, and the more so, because my companion seemed to think he could find nothing to show me! He knew not the heart of an American, fond of his mother country, and for the first time in his life coming into contact with old-fashioned things. A heavy wagon, lumbering along the road to market, and inscribed, “John Trott, Carrier, Ashby-de-la-Zouche”—was enough to set me thinking of past and present, of the poetry of Ivanhoe, and the prose of a market-wain; and when I saw a guide-post, which for years had directed travellers “To Stratford,” only twenty miles off, I could almost have bowed to it. A stage coach came along, bearing “Oxford” on its panels; and the thought that it had started that very morning from the seat of the University, and had raised the dust of Stratford-on-Avon, made its wheels look dignified. To enjoy England one must be an American, and a hearty and earnest member of the Anglican Church. Even the cry of “hot cross buns,” which waked me on Good Friday morning, reviving the song of the nursery, and many more sacred associations with the day, made me thankful that I was no alien to the spirit of the solemnities, which even a traditionary cry in the streets tends to fasten upon the heart and conscience of a nation.

Easter morning came at last, and I was up with the sun, and out for a walk. It came with a bright sunrise, and many cheerful notes from morning birds. I was confident I heard a lark singing high up in the air, for though I could not see the little fellow, I could not mistake the aspiring voice. His Easter Carol was a joyous one, and I set it to the familiar words—

Christ, our Lord, is risen to-day,

Sons of men and angels say!

The hedges were just in leaf: here and there the hawthorn had blossomed, but the weather was too cold for its silvery beauty; and one almost pitied the few adventurous flowers, that, like good Churchmen, seemed only to have come out in conscientious regard to the day. I finished my morning walk by a turn or two through the church-yard, every grave of which was sparkling with dews, illuminated by the Easter sun. How forcibly the scene represented the resurrection: “The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.”

As I entered the parsonage, I heard the bells chiming from a distant parish church. My reverend friend met me with the salutation—“the Lord is risen;” to which I could not but fervently respond in the same primitive spirit. We had a festal breakfast, after family prayers, and soon it was time for service. I could willingly have been a worshipper in private, but submitted to the authority of the parson, and became one of his curates for the day. We emerged from the Vestry in due order of the Psalmist—“the singers going before,” men and boys alike in surplices; the latter with red cheeks, and white ribbons to tie their collars, looking like little chubby cherubs, and when they lifted their voices, sounding still more like them. The chancel was neatly decorated; a few flowers placed over the altar, and an inscription on its cloth, “I am the Bread of Life.” With the choral parts of the service I was surprised, as well as delighted. Boys and men all did their parts, in a manner which would have done honor to the authorities of a Cathedral, and I observed that the congregation generally accompanied the choir, especially the children in the galleries. I had never before heard the Athanasian Hymn as part of the regular Service, and I was greatly impressed by its majestic effect. After the Nicene Creed, I ascended the pulpit, and preached “Jesus and the Resurrection,” and then, returning to the Altar, celebrated the Holy Eucharist, according to the English rite, administering to my reverend brethren and the lay-communicants. To this high privilege I was pressingly invited by the pastor himself, in token of entire communion with the Church in America; and thus I was able to join my personal thanksgivings for the mercies of a voyage, and my prayers for my absent flock and family, to a public exercise of the highest functions of my priesthood, at the altar of an English Church.

The many incidents of the day, which afforded me ever fresh delight, might lose their charm, if reduced to narration, or might strike the reader as proofs of my facility to be gratified. But I cannot but mention that, strolling away, in the afternoon, to see how service was performed at another Church, I was gratified to find it filled with devout worshippers of the plainer sort, attentively listening to a very excellent sermon, appropriate to the day. While the preacher was warmly enlarging upon the promise of a glorious resurrection, and I was quite absorbed in his suggestions, I suddenly caught a glimpse, among the crowd of worshippers, of a figure which startled me, as forcibly illustrative of the words of the preacher, “thy dead men shall live.” It was the recumbent effigy of an old ecclesiastic of the fifteenth century, which I had not observed before. As if listening to the preacher, in joyful hope, there it lay upon the tomb, hands clasped placidly together, and looking steadfastly towards heaven! How it seemed to join the hopes of the dead with those of the living, and to give force to every word which fell from the pulpit concerning the glory which shall be revealed in all those who sleep in Jesus!

With Easter-Monday our holidays, in the school-boy sense, began. My reverend friend proposed a visit to the Vicar, to whose patronage he owed his own incumbency of the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, in B——. Off we started on foot, passing through the suburbs of a populous town, and finally emerging into the open country. We came suddenly in sight of the old Church of A——; its beautiful spire and gables admirably harmonizing with the surrounding view, and telling a silent story of long past years. Beyond it, a majestic avenue of elms disclosed at its extremity a mansion of Elizabethan architecture and date; not the less reverend in my associations for the fact that Charles the First slept in it just before Edgehill fight, and that a cannon-ball, still lodged in the stair-case, attests the perilous honor which his Sacred Majesty was thus pleased to bestow on its occupant. The solemn dignity of an old English residence of this kind, had heretofore been to me a thing of imagination; now it was before my eye, not a whit less pleasing in its reality. The rooks were chattering in its venerable trees, which seemed to divide their predilections about equally with the steeple; and I am told that they are such knowing birds, that whenever you see a rookery, you may be sure that there is both orthodox faith, and at least one sort of good-living in the neighborhood.

Had I challenged my friend to show me a genuine Roger-de-Coverley picture in real life, as the entertainment of my holiday, I must have admitted myself satisfied with this scene at A——. Not only did the old hall, and the church, in all particulars, answer to such a demand; not only did a river run by the church-yard; not only were fields beyond, with cattle grazing, corn sprouting, and hedges looking freshly green; but when I entered the church-yard gate, lo! a rustic party, in holiday trim, were hanging about the old porch, awaiting the re-appearance of a bridal train, which had just gone in. It wanted but the old Knight himself and his friend the Spectator, to make the whole scene worthy of the seventeenth century.

I entered the church, and found it in all respects just such an interior as I had longed to see; apparently the original of many a pleasing print, illustrating Irving’s “Sketch-Book” and similar works, the delight of my childhood, and still affording pleasure in recollection. Its ample nave, widened by rows of aisles, terminated in the arch of a long chancel, at the altar of which stood not only one matrimonial couple, but actually five or six, whom two curates were busily uniting in the holy bonds of wedlock. When the procession returned from the altar, they passed into the vestry to register their names, and one of the curates coming to the door of the church, found another group of villagers, at the font, presenting a child for baptism. Following my friend into the vestry, I was presented to the Vicar himself, who seemed the genius loci in all respects; a venerable gray-haired old gentleman, in his surplice, full six feet in stature, and worthy to sit for a portrait of Dr. Rochecliffe, in Woodstock. It was now time for service, and I was desired to robe myself, and accompany him into the chancel, two curates, the clerk, and some singers leading the way. I was put into a stall, marked with the name of some outlying chapelry of the parish, and appropriate to its incumbent when present. The chancel was filled with monuments, of divers ages and styles. At my left hand lay the effigies of a knight and his good dame, in Elizabethan costume; beyond were a pair of Edward III.’s time; opposite were figures of the period of Henry VI. and much earlier; the knights all in armor, and some with crossed legs, as a token that they had fought in Palestine. The service was intoned by one of the curates, in a severe old tone, authorized in Archbishop Cranmer’s time, which the Vicar afterwards assured me was very ancient, and the only genuine music of the Church of England. When the service was concluded, there was a churching to be attended to, at the south porch of the church, and to this duty one of the curates was deputed, while the Vicar himself detained us in the chancel with an enthusiastic antiquarian illustration of the monuments, to which I was a most willing listener. Here slept the de Erdingtons, and there the Ardens: such and such was their story; and such and such were the merits of the sculpture. Chantrey had visited these figures, and assured him that they were the finest in the kingdom; and if I imagined, at the time, that such was merely Sir Francis’ courtesy to the worthy Vicar, I hope I may be forgiven, for some subsequent acquaintance with such things inclines me to believe the sculptor was sincere. On the walls were the heavy tablets of the Hanoverian period, and our attention was directed to the marked decline of art, from the period of the Crusades down to the Georges, growing worse and worse till George Fourth’s time, which improved the existing style, and was succeeded by a period of rapid return to correct taste and principle. Of all this the Church itself bore witness. Here the worthy man pointed out marks of its various stages of decline: here were barbarous repairs; there a sad blunder of old Church-wardens; here a wanton mutilation of Hanoverianism in 1790, when the very worst things happened to the holy and beautiful house; and there, at last, was a fine restoration of our own times.

We were next conducted to the church-yard, the Vicar having doffed his surplice, and assumed his usual habit, which partook of the dignity and taste of its wearer in a pleasing degree. His hat was specially ecclesiastical, and turned up at the sides, and over his cassock and bands he wore a clerical surtout, so that as he strode over the graves, in his small-clothes, displaying a finely proportioned leg, his entire figure might have been thought contemporary with that of his brother of Wakefield. We now learned the history of the Church, its great tithe, and its various plunderings under successive bad kings. We viewed the tower and spire from every possible point of vantage, and then went round the walls to see where a window had been blocked up, or a doorway broken through, or a pointed arch displaced for a square-headed debasement of the Tudor period. I never found before so good a “sermon in stones.” An ancient yew-tree was pointed out as having afforded boughs, before the reformation, for the celebration of Palm-Sunday. We adjourned to the Vicarage, where luncheon was served in the Library, a room filled with the choicest volumes; and then we were dismissed for a walk, promising to return, for our dinner, at five o’clock.

Our road soon brought us to E——, where a Romish Chapel had been lately erected, by a man of fortune, in minute and extravagant reproduction of Mediævalism. It was a thing for a glass case; a piece of admirable art; a complete Pugin; and no doubt in the middle ages would have been a very suitable thing for its purposes; but, in our day, it seemed as little suited to Rome as to Canterbury. The Pope himself never saw such a place of worship, and would scarcely know how to use it; and it was chiefly interesting to me as enabling me to see, at a glance, what the finest old Parish Churches of England had been in the days of the Plantagenets. At any rate, they were never Tridentine, and they were always Anglican. This beautiful toy had a frightful Calvary in the church-yard; but the interior was adorned with the finest carvings in Caen stone, and brilliant colorings and gildings à la Froissart. The pulpit was adorned with the story of Becket, in very delicate sculpture, and around the Church were stations, or representations of the different stages of the Passion, carved elaborately in wood, and beautifully colored. The Virgin’s Altar and Chapel were gems of art; and, of course, replenished with striking proofs that they “worship and serve the creature more than the Creator.” I turned away heart-sick, that such unrealities of a dead antiquity could be employing the whole soul of any Englishman, and even tempting some into apostacy from the simple but always dignified Church of their ancestors. Let taste be the handmaid of religion, and all is well: but here was religion led captive by antiquarian fancy.

Many other objects of interest filled up our day. We made a complete circuit, crossing green fields, leaping ditches, and breaking through hedges. Up hill and down dell, and through fragrant country lanes; here a river, and there a pool; now a farm, and then a mill. Yellow gorse was in flower by the road-sides. We met many parties of village people enjoying their Easter sports, and dressed in holiday attire. This day, at least, it seemed merry England still. We came to Witton Manor-house, and thence caught a distant view of the spire, towards which it grew time to return. Immense elms, of darker look than those of New-England, beautified the view in every direction; and the landscape was diversified by many smaller trees, marking the water-courses. We came out, at last, by the old Hall, the exterior of which we closely examined, imagining the scene around its gates when the royal Stuart came to be its guest. Like many other mansions of the olden time, it is deserted now; and the deepening twilight in which we viewed it, harmonized entirely with the thoughts which it inspired. So we returned to the Vicarage, and again were warmly welcomed. At dinner we were presented to Mrs. ——, the Vicar’s wife, who seemed to take the liveliest interest in my country and its Church, and kindly to appreciate my own enjoyment of the events of the day. After dinner the Vicar lighted his long pipe, and continued his exceedingly interesting discourse about the olden time. I could see that he was no admirer of the Crystal Palace, and all that sort of thing. I had met a laudator temporis acti, whose character and venerable appearance gave him a right to lament the follies of our own age; and seldom have I enjoyed more keenly any intellectual treat than I did his arm-chair illustrations of past and present, as compared together. On his favorite topics of Church-music and Architecture he was very earnest and intelligent. The Northamptonshire Churches, he assured me, were the finest in England; and kindly introducing me to the summa fastigia rerum, he took me to the very garret, to hunt up some superb plates of his favorite localities. When I bade adieu to this Vicarage, it was as one leaves an old friend. Such hospitality, and such heart afforded to a stranger! Thus early had I found that old English manners are not yet extinct, and that the fellowship of the Church admits even a foreigner to their fullest enjoyment. It was eleven o’clock when we reached the no less hospitable home from which I started in the morning.