Lichfield To Matlock

( Originally Published Early 1900's )

A MORE tranquil, sleepy, and yet high-feeling old ecclesiastical town than Lichfield, in the green and pleasant valley of South Offlow Hundred, can hardly be found. It is proud of its Cathedral, of its siege, of its Tory renown, of its memories of Dr. Johnson, of its relationship to the illustrious families of Anson and Anglesey. Lichfield is a genuine example of an unchanged English town of some six or seven thousand inhabitants, with its walled " Close," its " Minster Pool," its " Butcher Row," its " Three Crowns Inn," its "King Ed-ward's Grammar-School," all as in the former days.

The Hotel bore evidences of considerable past splendor. The mahogany furniture, black and polished, was majestically carved and stately. The principal staircase had white marble steps, though they were worn into hollows in the middle. And there was a long ball-room up-stairs, with old-fashioned mirrors and a gorgeous chandelier. The names of the streets, St. John Street, Bird Street, Frog Street, Gore Street, Wade Street, etc., are unmodernized. One road out of the town leads to Tamworth. and to Ashby-de-la-Zouch some eight miles distant, the scene of Ivanhoe's achievement. Drayton Manor, the seat of Sir Robert Peel, " the member from Tamworth," is seven miles from Lichfield. Tamworth Castle, now belonging to the Townshend family, is a very old Norman structure built by Robert Marmion.

" They hailed him Lord Marmion;
They hailed him Lord of Fontenaye,
Of Lutterward, and Scrivelbaye,
Of Tamworth tower and town."

Five miles from Lichfield is venerable Wichnor Park, which was formerly held by the tenure of its possessor's being obliged to furnish an annual flitch of bacon to every married pair " who, after being married a year and a day, should make oath that they had never quarreled ! " This custom has been revived, and there have not been wanting honest candidates for this amiable prize. Thus every thing in and about Lichfield leads to the past, and makes a pleasing and restful contrast from the surrounding workshop and coal-bin of Staffordshire.

In front of the Bishop's Palace, on the north side of the Cathedral, is a shaded avenue called " The Dean's Walk," and is said to have been a favorite resort of Major André. This looks down upon the lovely pastoral vale of Stow, and the traditionary spot where the early martyrs were slain, called " The Field of Dead Bodies," which gave the name to Lichfield, or Litchfield, as it is sometimes written, and which signifies field of the dead. The arms of Lichfield is a shield covered with the representation of piteously hacked limbs, mixed with axes and knives.

"Lichfield should be a field of good,
For it was watered with holy blude."

In the rural valley of Stow Mr. Day lived, the author of " Sandford and Merton." Although this is rather a priggish little story, I should like to assist in erecting a monument to him and Defoe conjointly, in some, secluded and beautiful spot in the middle of green England, to be given and consecrated to the " Joy of Boys." Forever blessed be the memory of men who have done something to make youth " frisch, frei, frölich, fromm."

On the little path that leads down into Stow Valley, stands an off-shoot of Dr. Johnson's willow-tree. The original one in which he took a great interest was blown down about forty years ago. Passing along " Butcher's Row " toward the market-place where is Dr. Johnson's statue, is the spot where Lord Brooke was killed by a shot fired by a deaf and dumb man from the battlements of the Cathedral. The monument of the Doctor fronts the house where he was born and lived. I found two big-limbed young countrymen intently gazing at it, and after a long pause one of them asked the other, " Who war the mon ? " The other answered, " I 'se forgot, but he war some gret mon."

It is a clumsy affair, but perhaps good enough to answer every purpose. There is a colossal sitting figure, with plenty of books around, if indeed the " gret mon " is not sitting on a pile of them. The relievos of the pedestal represent the good, brave Englishman in his youth, one of them as a boy chaired by his schoolfellows ; another of him listening to Dr. Sachervell's preaching, mounted on his father's shoulders ; and another of him standing bareheaded in the rain at Uttoxeter, to do penance for youthful disrespect to his father.

The house where he lived in his youth, on the west side of the market-place, is a neat, three-storied, excellent brick dwelling. Instead of M. Johnson, which was formerly written upon it, it has now a sign in large letters, " Clarke -- draper." The next door to it is the " Three Crowns Inn " where Dr. Johnson and Boswell put up, and where the autocrat of the bar-room told Boswell, who was disparaging the respectable quietness of Lichfield, " Sir, we are a city of philosophers, we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands."

The Grammar-School where Johnson, and Addison (who was the son of the Dean of Lichfield), and Garrick went to school, had fallen into decay, but has been recently repaired, and indeed rebuilt, preserving its ancient Elizabethan character. The little shops that one sees going down quiet St. John Street to visit it, reminded me of Hawthorne's description of the " Cent store" in the " House of Seven Gables," and of such little magazines of respectable and uncomplaining poverty as even now may be seen in some of our oldest New England towns.

My first visit to the Cathedral was immediately 3n arriving in the evening. I walked by the long, tranquil " Pool " in the heart of the town, which reflects each object and building around in its smooth mirror, giving a reposeful look to the whole place. I turned down the neatly paved and al-most solitary lane, that led to the Cathedral inclosure, and was delighted with its west front, simple in form, yet enriched with elaborate lines and ornament, and carrying the eye upward in its soaring towers and spires.

The good verger's wife let me go in and walk around as an especial favor, at this late hour. Every one who has a taste for such things should see one of these old cathedrals at this moment, just when evening is fading into night. The yellow moon shone in the lofty painted windows on one side, and the last crimson light of day struck the upper windows on the opposite side. Parts of the vast edifice were already lost in darkness, and while some of the round pillars and foliated capitals stood out full in light, others were hardly seen, as in the depths of a forest, and masses of black shadow like giant hands crossed the pavement. The silent figures of martyrs, saints, and heroes stretched on their tombs, lay around. The activities of this life were over with them forever. It was a place where the ages had come, and bowed down and confessed their sins and need of God. Here rich and poor had knelt together. What were our shadowy earthly life and its restless ambitions, compared with these holy and eternal associations of " God's house." In such places, the old Catholic hymn seems to have a truth in it :

"O! tua palatia
Quanto decet sanctitas !
O ! tua sacraria
Quanto decet pietas,
Deus formidabilis!

" Quis profanis pedibus
Audeat accedere?
Quis pollutis vocibus
Hymnos tibi canere?
Hospes, O terribilis! "

The danger is that the worshiper will be satisfied with the lower beauty and the temple will stand in place of Him to whom it is consecrated. The desire also to restore the perfect church, even to its smallest seat and wash-basin, naturally draws along with it the wish and intention to reinstate in its old place the ancient ceremonial, the entire Catholic service ; and it were perhaps well on this account not to continue to call these " Cathedral " churches, or not to give them any distinction above other houses of worship, for they are after all but stone and mortar, and they had better be burned down by a madman, as York Minster came so near being, or left to tumble into the sea, as Kilnsea Church did, rather than draw men's thoughts from the true building and worship of God.

I spoke of the west front )f the Cathedral. It is a pyramidal gable, supported on the sides by two towers and hexagonal-handed spires, with a large decorated window in the centre, and the whole face lined with rich canopied arcades. The door is deeply recessed, and almost as sumptuously and curiously wrought as the entrance of a Moorish mosque in Spain. Figures of the evangelists stand around the cavernous portal, in niches under frost-work tabernacles. Luxuriant iron scrolls run like vine branches over the doors. The middle spire, 258 feet high, built in the place of one which fell in the siege, is six-sided, and incomparable for lightness and elegance. These three magnificent spires rise from the bosom of the town like three tall tapering pine-trees, that shoot up to heaven far above the rest of the low forest by which they are surrounded, and bear the thoughts up with them into a higher and purer region. The church is terminated by a rich hectagonal Lady Chapel, whose interior, with its central shaft, is still more delicate and elaborate. The heightened ornamentation, the free and flowing carved foliage, the di-verging network of the groined roof, the trefoiled arches, the clustered pillars, the exquisitely finished Lady Chapel, belong chiefly to the epoch of the Decorated style ; and happening thus naturally in the order of our journeying, I would give a glance at this third description of English architecture, which followed the Early English, and prevailed about 100 years from the reign of Edward I. in 1272, to the end of the reign of Edward III. in 1877. It may be called the style of the first three Edwards.

The name of this style, " Decorated," sufficiently describes it. It is the former style or styles covered with a freer, bolder, and more flowing ornament, all parts being modified by this graceful idea. As yet it begins to show but few signs of decay or weakness. Ornament is not generally the end, but the means of a richer and heightened effect. Two characters of lines are seen in the forms of its windows, doors, arches, mouldings etc. ; these are the geometric and the flowing lines The first might be cut with the playful turning of a pair of compasses into semicircles, circles, ellipses, trefoils, quatrefoils, cinquefoils, etc. ; the last are composed of wavy and flowing lines, and especially of what is called the " ogee," a combination formed by the meeting of a round and a hollow, a concave and a convex. The " ogee-arch " is one whose two sides are composed of two contrasted curves. There is a greater drawing out and more striking pronunciation of all lines, the hollows being deeper, the rounds longer. There are very irregular combinations, bold clusterings of things great and small, round and sharp. The flower-work is no longer a stiff thorn-bush foliage, but vine-like, running and flame-pointed, wreathing over and smothering every capital, and flowing along every groined arch, in tropical profusion. The bare, plain shaft of the Norman. or Early English, seems, like Aaron's rod, to have budded. In the earlier times of this style, an ornament called " diaper work " frequently occurs. One may see fine specimens of it in the side-screen of Lincoln Cathedral, and upon the monument of William de Valence, in Westminster Abbey. It is a four-leaved flower cut in stone, and inclosed in a little square ; and multitudes of these squares are brought close together, producing a singularly rich effect. The lines and tracery of windows are especially elegant, satisfying the eye with every idea of luxuriant beauty. The exquisite chapel of Merton College, Oxford, affords throughout a splendid though rather diminutive example of this period. The windows of the Decorated style are large, composed of two, three, or more lights. The east-ern windows of Lichfield Cathedral are noble instances of the general splendor and delicate tracery of this style. The smallest corbel or finial is highly carved, and drops in a bunch of grapes, or a handful of flowers. Some of the finials and crosses of Winchester Cathedral belonging to this epoch are hardly describable, so richly woven over are they in shooting leaves and blossoms ; they might have stood out neglected in some Italian or Sicilian gar-den for half a century of summers, and then have been transplanted with all their tangled wealth hanging about them into the temple.

The sturdy buttresses of this style are more adorned than the Early English, with slender foliated pinnacles and canopied niches. Very characteristic of this epoch are niches for statues with lace-work tabernacles suspended over them But this is quite enough.

The great fault of English cathedrals is want )f height. To use an expressive word, they are squatty. Contrasted with the French, German, or Italian edifices of the same periods, this is a striking deficiency. Give York Minster, or Lincoln Cathedral, or even these smaller edifices of Lich-field, Worcester, and Gloucester, the height of St. Ouen, or St. Stephens at Vienna, or Milan Cathedral, and they would be greatly ennobled ; for they have enormous length, solidity, and elevation of tower and spire, and would bear this heightening of the roof.

In Lichfield Cathedral is a monument to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, a small mural slab, its inscription adverting to her agency in introducing the system of inoculation into Europe. The famous monument by Chantrey of the " Sleeping Children " is touching. Seeing it first by moon-light, it was like looking at the sweet sleep of children in their nursery. One thinks what a start they would have to wake and find themselves in such a strange solemn place. The mother of the children here commemorated — (the youngest of whom was burned and the eldest died shortly after) — is still living. One does not feel like criticizing such a work. Its purity and innocence would seem to preclude all criticism.

The traveler cannot help taking some notice of the more general geological features of such a country as England. They appear in the scenery and vegetation, and are most striking and varied.

They thrust themselves upon you ; they sculpture and paint themselves before the very eye. Derbyshire scenery (for we now come into this beautiful country) is as different from Devonshire scenery as a lily-white English maiden from a swarthy red Indian squaw. I stopped at the town of Derby long enough to see something of it, and to make some small purchases of carved fluor-spar and marble. It has a pleasant site on the lovely Derwent River. It appeared like a prosperous agricultural town, the centre of a fertile region ; it formed a great contrast to Lichfield in its bustling streets. Farm-wagons, cattle and sheep, were going to and from market. There is a race-course here upon the Nottingham road, but the famous Derby race-course in which England royal and England plebeian, England bearded and England smooth - chinned delight, is at Epsom, about sixteen miles from London. The Derby silk manufactures are said to be important, but the buildings themselves do not show signs of very considerable works. The most striking feature of Derby is the remarkable tower of All-Saints Church, running up to a great height, and elegantly divided into stories, or compartments, with buttresses and crocketings, growing more and more enriched as it climbs to its battlemented summit, and finishing with delicate tracery-shields and lofty pinnacles. But the church itself is low and small ; it is like Daniel Webster's head on Tom Thumb's body. Derby was the native town of Richardson, the novelist ; and hero also was the home of that pure spirit, Adelaide Newton.

Seventeen and a half miles further north is Mat-lock Bath, in the heart of the picturesque scenery of Derbyshire. The road lies along the Derwent valley, in which the peculiar charms of the Derby-shire landscape soon begin to appear, though of a softer and more rural type. But at the village of Arabergate, at the Arabergate and Rowsley Junction, there bursts upon one the genuine Derbyshire dale scenery in all its boldness and beauty. Here the rocks begin rising in sheer walls from the valley ; lovely niches, or small territories of bright green, are shut in by rocky barriers, the river gliding softly between ; and I was reminded of the scenery in " Saxon Switzerland," but more especially " Franconian Switzerland," frequently noticing vales that were almost the exact counterpart of the lovely little valley of the Wiesent, which is the German Tempe. But, clanking into the tunnel through High Tor, we are at Matlock Bath.

We arrived at the station just as a monstrous excursion train came in from the north. I drove slowly up the road to the hotel in the company of thousands, literally thousands, who were soon diffused over the beautiful village and its vicinity, filling the walks, scaling the cliffs, riding the donkeys, rowing on the river, laughing, singing, and apparently spending the fine day in hearty enjoyment.

As the " Old Bath Hotel," famous in Matlock fashion and story, was temporarily closed, I went to the " New Bath Hotel," a much finer situation at the further end of the village, on the Cromford road, commanding delightful views of High Tor, the river, and the cliffs on the opposite side. I have lying before me the tariff of prices at the Matlock hotels. It might be well to quote it just to give an idea of the prices at this favorite English watering place among the hills.

" Old Bath Hotel," W. Greaves. Bed, 2s.; board per day, 6s. ; private room, 2s. 6d.; attendance, 1s.; bed and board in public, 7s. per day.

" New Bath Hotel," Ivatts & Jordan. Bed, 2s. ; breakfast, 1s. 6d. to 2s.; lunch, 1s. to 2s. ; dinner, 2s. 6d. to 3s. ; tea, 1s. 8d. to 2s. ; supper, 1s. to 2s. ; attendance, 1s. ; private rooms, 2s. 6d., 3s., 3s. 6d., 4s., or 5s. ; board, 5s. 6d. per day ; sitting-rooms, 15s. to 30s. per week ; bedrooms, 7s. to 14s. per week ; servants' board, 3s. 6d. per day ; maid servants, for attendance per week on one person, 7s. ; on two, 12s. ; on three, 15s. ; on four, 20s.

The garden and grounds at the Matlock Hotel are beautiful. How calm and restful the evenings spent in them, as I sat under the great lime-tree's shade ! The house fronts upon the river, and looks directly upon the gigantic wall of bald cliffs across the Derwent, with tufts of green or painted foliage upon their white perpendicular face, from which two great rocks swelled out like regularly builded round towers with bastions ; while to the left the jeep narrow grassy vale of Matlock extended, with its yellow clustering stone houses, terminated by the sombre " Heights of Abraham," and above them Mount Masson, and a little beyond, at the very extremity of the vale, gleamed the towering and silvery crag of High Tor.

The lime-tree of which I spoke merits the title of " magnificent." Its branches are supported by poles, so that it looks like a banyan-tree, and it covers an immense area with its grove-like shade. A tepid spring runs under its roots. It is a garden of itself, and filled the atmosphere with the sweet perfume of its blossoms.

I went to see the " Old Bath Hotel " for Lord Byron's and Mary Chaworth's sake, who used to meet here during the days of his comparatively sincere and uncorrupted life. On making some remark of pity and sympathy for the poet, the young woman who showed us the assembly-room spoke out with that English positiveness so refreshing to hear, " I have no pity nor sympathy for him ; he was a decidedly bad man."

High Tor is a noble cliff, the centre and king of all. It is a mighty mass of limestone more than four hundred feet high, standing out boldly over the river, beautifully white in many parts of it, and draped at its foot with a noble growth of elms and sycamores ; while vines and shrubs wreathe its front with a tangled tracery ; the river runs at its base, and continues to glide swiftly on under the shadow of cliff's nearly as high, and of the marne perpendicular character. To sit on the grassy river brink when the sun tinges the summits of these rocks with that last serene light just before its setting, and at the same time to watch the swift dark stream beneath, it seems like life flowing idly away under nobler lights and aims that still linger pensively above it.

In the early part of the afternoon we were called to the window by the merry sound of music more animated than harmonious, and found that it accompanied a long procession of all the boys and girls of all the Sunday-schools of the neighborhood, with their banners and decorations. After parading the streets and lanes, they passed through the garden of our hotel into a green, sloping, mountain meadow just behind the house. There, with their teachers and pastors and pastors' wives, and fathers and mothers, and friends high and low, they had a long pleasant afternoon of sports. I sat also on the grass enjoying it as much as they. The boys would start all together from a given tree on the side of the meadow at the bottom of the hill, run up the hill, around another tree in the distance, and down to a given point in the centre of the field, making a course of half a mile or so. It was tough straining work to get up the steep and rough hill, and I don't know when I have laughed more heartily than in watching the manoeuvres of the boys at outwitting and outstripping each other. After turning the tree, they streamed down like a herd of deer, one slim bright-cheeked boy leading them all in most gallant style. He, of course, took the prize, There were also foot-races among the girls, and full as much earnestness and competition were shown by them. There were leaping-bars, leap-frog, and other games that brought out skill, strength, and activity. The trial that created the most interest was climbing a greased pole. Boy after boy bravely essayed to pull the streamers on the top of that taper mast. Some would get up a few feet, some half way, some nearly to the top, and be obliged to give up in spite of every encouragement and pelting of sugar-plums from below. The writhing motions, the red grinning faces, the pantaloons pulled up over the knees, the bold hot beginnings, and the desperate clutchings at the end, were ludicrous enough, for nothing in creation is more comical than a boy, as well as nothing more beautiful in certain moods. One sun-faced, sturdy little fellow nearly did it, but though within two inches of his object, and straining for dear life, he had to slide down. A good-looking larger youth at last succeeded in pulling the ribbons, amid loud shouts and cheerings. A wealthy lady of the parish I understood had provided the afternoon's amusement for the children. The clergymen present managed all the sports, and adjudicated some of the prizes, which must have been very acceptable to the poorer children. This was one instance of many which I have noticed in England, of a very cheerful and natural tone of religious feeling. I am certain that we sometimes war against nature and grace in shutting up the currents of play, or what may be called pure enjoyment, in our type of piety. A good hearty laugh now and then that expands the pent breast, and makes the blood circulate freely, is better than a handful of " greenbacks." It has gone so far with us that when we lash ourselves up to really enjoy ourselves, and to play, it is very sad work. We are soon tired of it. But the soul can hardly be sound and healthy if the springs of joy are not sometimes touched, They may otherwise take inner, tortuous, and evil channels, as we have seen streams in a limestone country like Derbyshire, wearing out for themselves tremendous caverns under the mountains, until they fall into some horrid chasm and disappear forever.

Following a charming road along the Derwent, with the gray grit-stone cliffs that descend into and form the mighty ramparts of Matlock Dale on one side, we came in sight of " Lea Hurst," the home of Florence Nightingale, not far from the villages of Lea and Holloway. It stands on a wooded hill forming the termination or higher summit of a most glorious valley, with crag, mountain, dark forest, glistening river, and green pasture-land spread be-fore it. The scenery though beautiful is wild and free, fitted to inspire fresh thoughts. The house at a distance appears embosomed in woods and vines, and stands just on the skirts of a thick park. An open lawn slopes away down from it. It is an Elizabethan structure of cruciform shape, with quaint gables and square-headed windows. One great bay-window, in particular, overhung by an enormous wealth of ivy, is impressed on my memory t is one of those incomparable English homes, in the midst of a nature where every thing that this world can yield of grand without and exquisite within seems to be combined. Here " the Soldier's Friend " was reared. Her family has another fine place in Hampshire called "Embley Park," but in a more plain and rural county. She was born in Florence in 1820. Her paternal name (changed to Nightingale in 1815) is Shore, an ancient Derbyshire family. Her mother was the daughter of William Smith of Norwich, a well-known friend of Slave Emancipation. We learned in the neighborhood that Florence Nightingale had begun to do good at home among the sick, poor, and ignorant. She went when thirty-one to Kaiserwërth on the Rhine, to learn in that school of the Protestant " Sisters of Mercy " the method of training nurses for the sick, and she has written an account of this institution. She next applied her energies to renovating the Hospital for Sick Governesses in Harley Street, London. She also was greatly interested in the ragged schools springing up at that time. Then came the Crimean war, and the world knows the rest. Over all the gloomy and magnificent memories of that great city of Constantinople her Christian acts shine. The smell of fever and corruption is said to have tainted the air all around the Barrack Hospital at Scutari. But fever itself seizing upon lier own slender frame, could not drive her from her post. The talent, strength of nerve, and wonderful tact shown in re organizing that mass of ill-regulated hospital ser vice was as remarkable as her personal devotion to the sick. She made no distinction in creeds in her choice of nurses, and this subjected her to a mean attack upon her religious opinions, and from a singular quarter, — a clergyman of the Established Church. Should the secret chamber in every one's breast, which no other has a right to enter, be opened, it would probably be found that Miss Nightingale's religion was just that which all true Christians should possess, " a deedful faith."

"Life is joy, and love is power;
Death all fetters doth unbind:
Strength and wisdom only flower
When we toil for all our kind."