old english houses.
our country houses, and especially the older ones, are in themselves an inestimable national treasure. a thousand endearing associations gather about them. i cannot conceive a more deeply interesting work than a history of them which entered fully into the spirit of the times in which they were raised, and through which they have stood. which should give us a view of the national changes which have passed over them; mighty revolutions, whether abrupt and violent, or slow and silent, in fortune, in manners, and in mind; and still more, which should, aided by family paintings, family documents and traditions, unfold their domestic annals. what an opening up of the human heart would be there! there is nothing more splendid, or surprising, or fearful, or pathetic, or happy and fanciful in romance, than would be there discovered. there is no success, no glory of life and action, no image of princely or baronial power, no strange freaks of fortune, none of the startling, or the moving incidents of humanity but have there enrolled themselves. what noble hearts; what great and pathetic spirits have dwelt at one time or other in those old places; and then what beautiful and bewitching creatures have cast through them the sunshine of their presence; have made them glad with their wit, and their gay fancies, and their strong affections; or have hallowed them with their sufferings[250] and their tears. o for the revelation of the fair forms; of the scenes of successful or sorrowful love; of the bridals and the burials; of the poetic dreams and pious aspirations, that have warmed or saddened these old halls through the flight of ages! much of this is gone for ever; swept into the black and fathomless gulf of oblivion; but enough might be recovered to make us wonder at what has passed upon our ancestral soil, and to make us love it with a still deeper love. there is no portion of our national history, or point of our national character, but would be brought into the sweep of such narratives, and receive illustration from them. our warriors, statesmen, philosophers, divines, poets, beauties and heroines more admirable than beauty could make them, would all figure there.[10] in the galleries of many of these houses, hang portraits to which traditions are attached that would freeze the blood, or make it dance with ardour and delight; that would chain up the listening spirit in breathless attention, in awe and curiosity. in the very writings by which the estates are secured, in old charters, wills, and other deeds, facts are traced and changes developed of the most singular character; and in the oral annals of the families exist correlative testimonies, which have been imprinted there by the intense interest of the circumstances themselves.
[10] this was written four years ago. since then the author has published the first volume of such a work, under the title of “visits to remarkable places, old halls, battle fields, etc.”
how delightful it is to go through those hereditary abodes of ancient and distinguished families, and to see, in the very construction of them, images of the past times, and their modes of existence. here you pass through ample courts, amid rambling and extensive offices that once were necessary to the jolly establishment of the age,—for hounds, horses, hawks, and all their attendants and dependences. here you come into vast kitchens, with fireplaces at which three or four oxen might be roasted at once, with mantelpieces wide as the arch of a bridge, and chimneys as large as the steeple of a country church. then you advance into great halls, where scores of rude revellers have feasted in returning from battle, or the chase, in the days of feudal running and riding, of foraying and pilgrimages; of hard knocks and hard lying: ere tea and coffee had supplanted beef and ale at breakfast; ere books had[251] charmed away spears and targets, tennis-courts and tourneys, and political squabbles and parliamentary campaigning, the scouring of marches, and firing of neighbours’ castles. then again, you advance into tapestried chambers, on whose walls mythological or scriptural histories wrought by the fingers of high-born dames, at once impress you with a sense of very still and leisurely and woodland times, when crockford’s and almack’s were not; nor the active spirit of civilization had raised up weavers, and spinners, and artificers of all kinds by thousands on thousands, by towns-full and cities-full. and now you come to the very closets and bowers of the ladies themselves—scenes of worn and faded splendour, but shewing enough of their original state to mark their wide difference from the silken boudoirs and luxurious dormitories of the fair dames of this age of swarming and busy artisans; of ample rents and city life; instead of hunting and fighting, of wars in the heart of france, or civil wars at home, to call out the heads of houses, or perhaps drive their families forth with fire and sword in their absence. then there is the antique chapel, and the library; the one having, in most cases, been deserted by its ancient faith, the other still bearing testimony to the range of reading of our old squires and nobles, since reading became a part of their education, in a few grim folios,—a bible, a gwillim’s heraldry, one or two of our chroniclers, and a few latin classics or fathers, for the enjoyment of the chaplain.
but the armoury and the great gallery—these are the places in which a flood of historic light pours in upon you, and the spirit of the past is made so palpable, that you forget your real existence in this utilitarian century; you forget reform in all its shapes—ballot, household suffrage, triennial parliaments; you forget the cry of the church and king; and the counter-cry from a million of eager voices, for liberty of hearth and faith; you forget that all around you, from the very walls that surround you to the distant sea, is nothing but fields cultivated like gardens, secured by gates and fences, and tenfold more costly and powerful parchment, to their particular owners; you forget that towns stand by hundreds, and villages by thousands, filled with a busy, an inquisitive, a reading, thinking, aspiring and irresistible population; and that all the institutions, the opinions, the loves and doings of[252] the times when these things before you were matters of familiar life, are gone, or are going, for ever: that,
another race has been, and other palms are won.
yes, mighty and impressive as these things are; deeply as they visit your daily thought and nightly dreams; woven as they are with the thread of your existence, and your hopes and belief of the future ages,—yes, potent as they are, they vanish for a time. here are swords, helmets, coats of mail, and plate-armour standing up in its own massiveness; shells from which the active bodies which moved them, have long ago disappeared. here are buff-coats, ponderous boots, and huge spurs; broad hats, with sweeping feathers, and chains of gold, crosses and amulets, which make the past for ever in time, the past for ever in spirit, come back again with a vivid and intoxicating effect. you gaze upon arms and relics which figured in all the battles and pilgrimages, the desperate strifes and extravagant pageants of our ancestors; you behold things which link your fancies to all the romantic ages of european history. you forget the present; and exist amid forests, the stern strength of castles and the venerable quiet of convents. you are ready to listen to the distant bell of the abbey; for news of the crusaders; you expect as you ride through the woods, to stumble upon the abode of the hermit. these arms and fragments before you, were in the battles of cressy and poictiers; in the wars of the roses; in the tourney of the field of cloth-of-gold; that mail, on the back of some stout knight, climbed over the ramparts of ascalon, or of jerusalem itself; and those, bringing you down the stream of events, are the equipments of cavaliers and of puritan leaders, when the spirit of feudalism and that of progression came so rudely into strife as to shake the kingdom like an earthquake. you step into the gallery, and there are the very men whose iron habiliments you have been contemplating; there are the rude portraitures of the warriors of an earlier day; and there are the sidneys, the howards, the essexes and leicesters, the warwicks and wiltons, of an after one; the men that set up and pulled down kings, that waded through the blood of others, or that poured out their own, for honour and liberty. you have read of some handsome and gallant knight who wrought some chivalric[253] miracle, who perhaps died in its performance—he is there! you have glowed over the accounts of arrogant and fascinating beauties, who turned the heads of kings and nobles—they are there! worthy of all their fame, their very shadows filling you with sighs and dreams of loveliness, which will haunt you in the open sunshine, and amid all the cheerful sounds of present life.
but it is not merely these great historic characters. there are family ones that constitute a history amongst themselves, most interesting and touching. there are the founders of those families. there is the great minister, who once rose to the favour of his sovereign, and swayed the destinies of the kingdom; there is the great churchman, that climbed up from plebeian obscurity to the primacy; there is the judge, who, from a younger brother of an ancient line, became the fortunate founder of a new one; there are admirals, generals, and nobles, who have figured in the campaigns of every reign. there are stern forms that were despots in their own sphere, or calm and smiling faces that have such blots and dark passages attached to them as confound all your physiognomical acuteness; and there are beautiful and gentle-looking creatures, that are most strangely tainted with blood; noble matrons, who knew sorrows for which neither their rank and affluence, no, nor the possessions of ten kingdoms could make recompense; and lastly, there are young boys and girls, that look on you with most innocent archness or open good-nature, which perished like blossoms ere fully opened, or lived to make you shudder over their remembrance.
such are many of our older houses, to say nothing of later and more splendid ones; nothing of all the modern attractions that have been added to their ancient ones; nothing of those sumptuous places which our nobility have raised on their estates, and filled with all the luxurious adornments of modern life, and with the wealth of art. and then those houses stand scattered over all the kingdom, in fine old parks, in gardens of quaint alleys and topiary work; or in the freer beauty of modern lawns and shrubberies; objects of pleasure and pride to thousands beside their own possessors.
horace walpole wished that they were all collected in london, and then should we have had such a capital as the world could not boast. heaven forgive him for the wish! a splendid capital no[254] doubt we should have had, but we should not have had such a country, such a people, such a national strength and character as we have. it is by living scattered through the realm, amid their own people, their own lands and woods, that our gentry have retained such high independence of principle, and such healthy tastes as they have done. it is by this means that agriculture, and horticulture, and rural architecture, have been promoted to the extent they have reached; that the whole kingdom has become a paradise, and that the people have been linked to the interests of their superiors. we have only too many temptations already to a crowding into our capital. a city life to a wealthy aristocracy must become a life of luxury and splendour, a life of dissipation and rivalry. the enjoyments of society, of music, and of public spectacles, at intervals, might refine the taste; but when this species of life becomes almost perpetual, its certain consequence must be to deteriorate and effeminate character; to weaken the domestic attachments; to divert from, or disincline for that sober thought and those studies which lead to greatness, or leave behind solid satisfaction. we have already too much of this, and its effect will daily become more and more conspicuous, as it is of more and more vital importance. now, while the people are struggling to acquire possession of rights that they long knew not their claim to; now that they are growing informed, and therefore quick to see and to feel—those on whom they look as their natural and powerful rivals, are living at a distance from them; taking no means to conciliate their good-will, or to retain their esteem. their humble neighbours feel no effect from their estates except the withdrawal of their rents; and they ask themselves what claim these people, who are living in our great babylon,
minions of splendour, shrinking from distress,—
have upon their veneration or regard. is it not in these noble ancestral houses, amid their ancestral woods and lands, that the spirit of our gentry is most likely to acquire a right tone? here, where they are surrounded by objects and memories of worth, of greatness and renown, that the fire of a generous and glorious emulation is most likely to be kindled; and that all the best feelings of their nature are likely to be touched, and their best[255] affections quickened? even horace walpole himself furnishes an instance in proof. little as he had of the pensive and poetical in him, his visit to the family place at houghton called up such thoughts and emotions as, if encouraged instead of avoided, might have made him aware of higher qualities in himself than he was habitually accustomed to display. “here am i,” says he in one of his letters, “at houghton! and alone; in this spot where, except two hours last month, i have not been in sixteen years! think what a crowd of reflections! no!—gray and forty churchyards could not furnish so many; nay, i know one must feel them with greater indifference than i possess, to have patience to put them into verse. here i am, probably for the last time in my life, though not for the last time; every clock that strikes tells me that i am one hour nearer to yonder church,—that church into which i have not yet had courage to enter; where lies the mother on whom i doated, and who doated on me! there are the two rival mistresses of houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it. there too lies he who founded its greatness; to contribute to whose fall, europe was embroiled. there he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real enemy, newcastle and bath, are exhausting the dregs of their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets.
“the surprise the pictures gave me is again renewed. accustomed for many years to see wretched daubs and varnished copies at auctions, i look at these as enchantment.... a party arrived just as i did, to see the house: a man and three women, in riding dresses, and they rode fast through the apartments. i could not hurry before them fast enough; they were not so long in seeing for the first time, as i could have been in one room, to examine what i knew by heart. i remember formerly being often diverted by this kind of seers; they come, ask what such a room is called, in which sir robert lay: admire a lobster, or a cottage in a market-piece; dispute whether the last room was green or purple; and then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be overdressed. how different my situation! not a picture here but recals a history; not one but i remember in downing-street, or chelsea, where queens and crowds admired them, though seeing them as little as these travellers.
[256]
“when i had drank tea i strolled into the garden. they told me it was now called the pleasure-ground. what a dissonant idea of pleasure! those groves, those alleys, where i have passed so many charming moments, are now stripped up, or overgrown; many fond paths i could not unravel, though with a very exact clue in my memory. i met two gamekeepers, and a thousand hares! in the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure and vivacity, i hated houghton and its solitude; yet i loved this garden; as now, with many regrets, i love houghton;—houghton, i know not what to call it: a monument of grandeur or ruin! how i wished this evening for lord bute! how i could preach to him!—the servants wanted to lay me in the great apartment—what! to make me pass the night as i had done my evening! it were like proposing to margaret roper to be a duchess in the court which cut off her father’s head, and imagining it could please her. i have chosen to sit in my father’s little dressing-room, and am now in his escritoire, where, in the height of his fortune, he used to receive the accounts of his farmers, and deceive himself, or us, with the thoughts of his economy. how wise a man, at once, and how weak! for what has he built houghton? for his grandson to annihilate, or his son to mourn over.”
horace walpole’s letters, vol. ii. pp. 227-8.
having made these preliminary observations, i will now give a specimen or two from my native neighbourhood, because necessarily more familiar with them; let every reader throughout england look round him in his, and he will find others as interesting there.
