Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877. Vol XX - No. 118

Two Papers.—I

The history of Chester is that of a key. It was the last city that gave up Harold's unlucky cause and surrendered to William the Conqueror, and the last that fell in the no less unlucky cause of the Stuart king against the Parliamentarians. In much earlier times it was held by the famous Twentieth Legion, the Valens Victrix, as the key of the Roman dominion in the north-west of Britain, and at present it has peculiarities of position, as well as of architecture, which make it unique in England and a lodestone to Americans. Curiously planted on the border of the newest and most bustling manufacturing district in England, close to the coalfields of North Wales, the mines of Lancashire, the quays of its sea-rival Liverpool and the mills of grimy, wealthy Manchester, it still exercises, besides its artistic and historic supremacy, a bonâ fide ecclesiastical sway over most of these new places. It is the first ancient city accessible to American travellers, many of whom have given practical tokens of their affectionate remembrance of it by largely subscribing to the fund for the restoration of the cathedral, a work that has already cost some eighty thousand pounds.

The neighborhood of Chester is as suggestive of antiquity and foreigners as the city itself. Volumes might be written about the quaint, Dutch-like scenery of the low rich land reclaimed from the sea; the broad, sandy estuary of the Dee, with the square-headed peninsula, the Wirrall, which divides this quiet river from the noisy Mersey; the Hoylake, Parkgate and Neston fisher-folk on the sandy shores, with their queer lives, monotonous scratching-up of mussels and cockles, a never-failing trade, their terms of praise—"the biggest scrat," for instance, "in all the island," being the form of commendation for the woman who can with her rake at the end of a long pole scratch up most shellfish in a given time; the low, fertile green pastures, the creamy cheese and the eight yearly cheese-fairs. The city itself is the most foreign-looking in all England, and the inhabitants have the good taste to be proud of this. The river Dee—Milton's "wizard stream"—celebrated both by English and Welsh bards, is not seen to as much advantage under the walls of the Roman "camp" (castra=Chester) as elsewhere, but its bridges serve to supply the want of fine scenery, especially the Old Bridge, which crosses the river just at its bend, and whose massive pointed arches took the place, when they were first built, of a ferry by which the city was entered at the "Ship Gate," whence now you look over "the Cop" or high bank on the right side of the stream, and view, as from a dike in Holland, the reclaimed land stretching eight miles beyond Chester, though the resemblance ceases at Saltney, where behind the iron-works tower the Welsh hills—Moel-Famman conspicuous above the rest—that bound the Vale of Clwyd.

The Dee is more a Welsh than an English river. It rises in the bleak mountain-region of Merionethshire, the most intensely Welsh of all counties, above Bala Lake, which is commonly but incorrectly called its source. Thence it flows through the Vale of Llangollen, famous in poetry, and waters the meadows of Wynnestay, the splendid home of one of Wales's most national representatives, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, and only beyond that does it become English by flowing round and into Cheshire. On a very tiny scale the Dee follows something of the course of the Rhine: three streamlets combine to form it; these unite at the village of Llanwchllyn, and the river flows on, a mere mountain-torrent, past an old farmhouse, Caer-gai, lying on a desolate moor at the head of Bala Lake, and through the lake itself, after which its scenery alternates, like the Rhine's below Constance, between rocky gorges and flat moist meadows dotted with hamlets, churches and towns. Bala—otherwise Lin-Jegid and Pimblemere ("Lake of the Five Parishes")—has some traditional connection with the great British epic, or rather with its accessories—the Morte d'Arthur—of which Tennyson has availed himself in Enid, mentioning that Enid's gentle ministrations soothed the wounded Geraint

Arthur's own home, according to Spenser, was at the source of the Dee: Vortigern's castle was near by on the head-waters of the Conway; and "under the foot of Rauran's mossy base" was the dwelling of old Timon, where Merlin came and gave to his care the wonderful infant who was to become the Christian Hercules of Britain. "Rauran" is the mountain which in Welsh is Arran-Pon-Llin, and which with its rocky shelves overlooks the yews of Bala's churches and the unaccustomed shade trees which the little town boasts in its principal streets. The lake, quiet and hardly visited as it is now, has great resources which are likely to be called upon in the future, and a survey was made ten years ago with a view of supplying Liverpool, Manchester, Blackburn, Birkenhead, etc. with water whenever a fresh demand for it should arise. This would imply the building of a breakwater at the narrow outlet of the lake, the damming up of a few mountain passes, and the "impounding" of a tributary of the Dee below the lake—the Tryweryn, which has an extensive drainage-area; but these works are still only projected.

There is scarcely an English brook that has not some historical associations, some poetical reminiscences, some attractions beyond those of scenery. Wherever water, forest and meadow were combined, an abbey was generally planted. Bala Lake, with its fishing-rights, once belonged to the Cistercian abbey of Basingwerk, while the Dee just above Llangollen was the property of the abbey of Valle Crucis, whose beautiful ruins still stand on its banks. Before we reach them we pass by the country of the Welsh hero, Owen Glendower, from whom are descended many of the families of this neighborhood and others—the Vaughans, for instance; by Glendower's prison at Corwen, and the Parliament House at Dolgelly, where he signed a treaty with France, and where the beautiful oak carving of the roof would alone repay a visitor for his trouble in getting there. The Dee is for the most part wanting in striking natural features, but here and there steep rocks enclose its foaming waters; deep banks covered with trees break the rugged shore-line; a village, such as Llanderfel with a tumbledown bridge, lies nestled in the valley; and coracles shoot here and there over the stream. These primitive boats, basketwork covered with hides, or, as used now, canvas coated with tar, are propelled by a paddle, and are much used for netting salmon. Near Bangor the fishermen are so skilful that they generally win in the coracle-races got up periodically by enthusiastic revivalists of old national sports.

Llangollen Vale has a beauty of its own, the family likeness of which to that of all valleys in the hearts of mountains makes it none the less welcome. The picturesqueness of thatched houses and a dilapidation of masonry which only age makes beautiful marks the difference between this valley and the Alpine ones with their trim, clean toy houses, or the Transatlantic ones with their square, solid, black log huts and huge well-sweeps; otherwise the fresh greenery, the purple mountain-shadows, the subdued sounds, no one knows whence, the sense of peace and solitude, are akin to every other beautiful valley-scene of mingled wildness and cultivation. A traveller can hardly help making comparisons, yet much escapes him of the peculiar charm that hangs round every place, and is too subtle to disclose itself to the eye of a mere passer. You must live at least six months in one place before its true character unfolds: the broad beauties you see at once, but it needs the microscope of habit to find out the rarest charms. Therefore it is much easier to descant on the tangible, striking beauty of Valle Crucis Abbey than on the aggregate loveliness of Llangollen Vale; and perhaps it is this lack of familiarity that leads novelists, poets and others to dwell so much more and with such detail on buildings than on natural scenery. It may not be given them to understand upon how much higher a plane of beauty stands a bed of ferns on a rocky ledge, a clump of trees even on a flat meadow, and especially a tangled forest-scene or a view of distant mountains in a sunset glow, or the surface of water undotted by a sail, than the highest effect of man-made beauty, be it even York Minster or the Parthenon. What man does has value by reason of the meaning in it, and of course man cannot but fall short of the perfection of his own meaning; whereas Nature is of herself perfection, and perfection in which there is no effort. Valle Crucis is hardly a rival of Fountains or Rivaulx. The Cistercians in the beginning of their foundation were reformers, ascetic, and essentially agriculturists. Their great leader, Bernard of Clairvaux, the advocate of silence and work, once said, "Believe me, I have learnt more from trees than ever I learnt from men." But decay came even into this community of farmer-monks, and the praise and panegyric of the abbey, as handed down to us by a Welsh poet, betray unconsciously things hardly to the credit of a monastic house, for the abbot, "the pope of the glen," he tells us, gave entertainments "like the leaves in summer," with "vocal and instrumental music," wine, ale and curious dishes of fish and fowl, "like a carnival feast," and "a thousand apples for dessert."

The river-scenery changes below Llangollen, and gives us first a glimpse of a wooded, narrow valley, then of the unsightly accessories of the great North Wales coalfield, after which it enters upon a typically English phase—low undulating hills and moist, rich meadows divided by luxuriant hedges and dotted with single spreading trees. The hedgerow timber of Cheshire is beautiful, and to a great extent makes up for the want of tracts of wooded land. This country is not, like the Midland counties and the great Fen district, violently or exclusively agricultural, and these hedges and trees, which are gratefully kept up for the sake of the shade they afford to the cattle, show a very different temper among the farmers from that utilitarianism which marks the men of Leicester shire, Lincoln, Nottingham, Norfolk, or Rutland. There even great land-owners are often obliged to humor their tenants, and keep the unwelcome hedges trimmed so as not to interpose two feet of shade between them and the wheat-crop; and as often as possible hedges are replaced by ugly stone walls or wooden fences. It is only in their own grounds that landlords can afford to court picturesqueness, and in this part of the country the American who is said to have objected to hedges because they were unfit for seats whence to admire the landscape, might safely sit down anywhere; only, as matters are seldom perfectly arranged, there is very little to admire but a flat expanse of wheat, barley and grass. This part of Cheshire has hardly more diversity in its river-scenery, but the mere presence of trees and green arbors makes it a pleasant picture, while here and there, as at Overton (this is Welsh, however, and belongs to Flintshire), a church-tower comes in to complete the scene. Here the Dee winds about a good deal, and receives its beautiful, dashing tributary, the Alyn, which runs through the Vale of Gresford and waters the park of Trevallyn Old Hall, one of the loveliest of old English homes. Its pointed gables and great clustering stacks of chimneys, its mullioned and diamond-paned windows, its finely-wooded park, all realize the stranger's ideal of the antique manor-house. This neighborhood is studded with country-houses in all styles of architecture, from the characteristic national to the uncomfortable and cold foreign type. Houses that were meant to stand in ilex-groves under a purple sky and a sun of bronze look forlorn and uninviting under the gray sky of England and amid its trees leafless for so many months in the year: home associations seem impossible in a porticoed house suggestive of outdoor living and the relegation of chambers to the use of a mere refuge from the weather. For many of these places are no more than villas enlarged, and might be set down with advantage to themselves in the Regent's Park in London, the very acme of the commonplace. On the other hand, all the traditional associations that go with an English hall presuppose a national style of architecture. Even florid Tudor, even sturdy "Queen Anne," can stand juxtaposition with groups of horses, dogs and huntsmen; Christmas cheer and Christmas weather set them off all the better; leafless trees are no drawback; the house looks warmer, coseyer, more home-like, the worse the blast and rush without. A roaring fire is natural to the huge hall fireplace, while in a mosaic-paved "ante-room" or a frescoed "saloon" it looks foreign and out of place. Many an odd Welsh and English house has unfortunately disappeared to make room for a cold, unsuccessful monstrosity that reminds one of a mammoth railway-station or a new hotel; and when Welsh names are tacked on to these absurd dwellings the contrast is as painful as it is forcible. Such, for instance, is Bryn-y-Pys, on the Dee—a house you might guess to belong to a Liverpool merchant who had trusted to a common builder for a comfortable home. Overton Cottage, on the other side, fills in with its walks and plantations an abrupt bend of the river, and the view from the up-going road at its back is very lovely, though the scene is purely pastoral. Overton Churchyard is one of the "seven wonders" of North Wales: it has a very trim and stately appearance, not that ragged, free if melancholy, outspreadedness which distinguishes many country cemeteries, that unpremeditated luxuriance of creepers and flowers, blossoming bushes and grasses, that make up at least half of one's pleasant reminiscences of such places. How much more interesting to find an old tomb or quaint "brass" under the temple of a wild rosebush or in the firm clasp of an ivy-root than to walk up to it and read the inscription newly scraped and cleaned by the voluble attendant who volunteers to show you the place! The great elms by Overton Church and the half-timbered and thatched houses crowding up to its gates somewhat make up for the splendor of the coped wall and new monuments in the churchyard. A scene wholly old is the Erbistock Ferry, which one might mistake for a rope-ferry on the Mosel. The cottage looks like the dilapidated lodge of an old monastery, and here, at least, is no trimness. Two walls with a flight of steps in each enclose a grass terrace between them, and trees and bushes straggle to the edge of the river, hardly keeping clear of the swinging rope. Coracles are sometimes used for ferrying—also punts. Bangor is a familiar name to students of church history, and to those who are not, the startling tale of the massacre of twelve hundred British monks by the Saxon and heathen king of Northumbria, who conquered Chester and invaded Wales in the seventh century, is repeated by the local guides. At present, Bangor is interesting to anglers and to lovers of curiosities—to the former as a good salmon-ground, and to the latter for the quaint verses, which, though trivial in themselves, borrow a value from the date of their inscription and the "laws" to which they refer. They are on the wall of the lower story of the bell-tower:

Farndon Bridge and Wrexham Church (the latter looks like a small cathedral to the unpractised eye) are the last Welsh points of attraction before the Dee becomes quite an English river. Malpas (mauvais pas = "bad step"), on the English bank, is significantly so-called from its situation as a border town: the rector, too, might consider it not ill named, as regards the odd partition of the church tithes, which has been in force from time immemorial, and has given rise to an explanatory legend concerning a travelling king whom the resident curate wisely entertained in the absence of the rector, receiving for his guerdon a promise of an equal share in the income, not only for himself, but for all future curates. In the upper rectory (the lower is the curate's house) was born Bishop Heber in 1783, and in the early years of this century, before missionary meetings were as common as they are now, the young clergyman wrote on the spur of the moment, with only one word corrected, the well-known hymn, "From Greenland's Icy Mountains." A missionary sermon was announced for Sunday at Wrexham, the vicarage of Heber's father-in-law, Shirley, and the want of a suitable hymn was felt. He was asked on Saturday to write one, and did so, seated at a window of the old vicarage-house. It was printed that evening, and sung the next day in Wrexham Church. The original manuscript is in a collection at Liverpool, and the printer who set up the type when a boy was still living at Wrexham within the last twenty years.

The river now makes a turn, sweeping along into English ground and making almost a natural moat round Chester, the great Roman camp whose form and intersecting streets still bear the stamp of Roman regularity, and whose history long bore traces of the influence of Roman inflexibility mingled with British dash. The view of the city is fine from the Aldford road (or Old Ford, where a Roman pavement is sometimes visible in the bed of the stream), with the cathedral and St. John's towering over the peaks and gables that shoot up above the walls. The mention of the ford brings to mind a famous crossing of the river during the civil wars. It was just before the battle of Rowton Moor, which Charles I. watched from the tower that now bears his name; and Sir Marmaduke Langdale, one of his leal soldiers, wishing to send the king notice of his having crossed the Dee at Farndon Bridge and pressing on the Parliamentarians, bade Colonel Shakerley convey the message as speedily as possible. The latter, to avoid the long circuit by the bridge, galloped to the Dee, took a wooden tub used for slaughtering swine, employed "a batting-staff, used for batting of coarse linen," as an oar, put his servant in the tub, his horse swimming by him, and once across left the tub in charge of the man while he rode to the king, delivered his message and returned to cross over the same way.

Eaton and Wynnestay are the grandest of the Dee country-seats, though not the most interesting as to architecture. The former, like many Italian houses, has its park open to the public, and is an exception to the jealously-guarded places in most parts of England, but its avenues, rather formal though very magnificent, are approached by lodges. The Wrexham avenue leads to a farmhouse called Belgrave, and here is the christening-point of the new, fashionable London of society, of novelists and of contractors. Another like avenue leads to Pulford, where there is another lodge: a third leads from Grosvenor Bridge to the deer-park, and a fourth to the village of Aldford. The hall is an immense pile, strikingly like, at first glance, the Houses of Parliament, with the Victoria Tower (this in the hall is one hundred and seventy feet high, and built above the chapel), and the style is sixteenth-century French, florid and costly. The plan is perhaps unique in England, and comfort has been attained, though one would hardly believe it, such size seeming to swamp everything except show. The description of the house, as given by a visitor there, reads like that of a palace: "The hall is an octagonal room in the centre of the house about seventy-five feet in length and from thirty to forty broad: on each side, at the end farthest from the entrance, are two doors leading into anterooms—one the ante-drawing-room, and the other the ante-dining-room; each is lighted by three large windows, and is thirty-three feet in length: they are fine rooms in themselves, and well-proportioned. From these lead the drawing-room and the dining-room respectively, both exceedingly grand rooms, ingenious in design and shape, each with two oriel windows and lighted by three others and a large bay window: this suite completes the east side. The south is occupied by the end of the drawing-room and a vast library—all en suite. The library is lighted by four bay windows, three flat ones and a fine alcove, and the rest of the main building to the west is made up of billiard- and smoking-rooms, waiting-hall, groom-of-chambers' sitting- and bed-rooms, and a carpet-room, besides the necessary staircases. This completes the main building, and a corridor leads to the kitchen and cook's offices: this corridor, which passes over the upper part of the kitchen, branches off into two parts—one leading to an excellently-planned mansion for the family and the private secretary, and another leading to the stables, which are arranged with great skill. The pony stable, the carriage-horse stable, the riding horses, occupy different sides, and through these are arranged, just in the right places, the rooms for livery and saddle grooms and coachmen. The laundry, wash-house, gun-room and game-larder occupy another building, which, however, is easily approached, and the whole building, though it extends seven hundred feet in length, is a perfect model of compactness. Great facilities are given to any one who desires to see it." The mention of a "mansion for the family" shows how the associations of a home are lost in this wilderness of magnificence: indeed, I remember a remark of a person whose husband had three or four country-houses in England and Scotland and a house in London, that "she never felt at home anywhere."

The farms in this neighborhood are mostly small, the average being seventy acres, and some are still smaller, though when one gets down to ten, one is tempted to call them gardens. Grazing and dairy-work are the chief industries. Farther inland, beyond the manufacturing town of Stockport, is a house of the Leghs, an immense building, more imposing than lovely in its exterior, but one of the most individual and pleasant houses in its interior as well as in its human associations. It has been altered at various times, and bears traces, like a corrected map, of each new phase of architecture for several hundred years. The four sides form a huge quadrangle, entered by foreign-looking gateways, and the rooms all open into a wide passage that runs round three sides of the building, and is a museum in itself. Old and new are just enough blended to produce comfort, and the stately, old-English look of the drawing-room, with its dark panelling and tapestry, is a reproach to the pink-and-white, plaster-of-Paris style of too many remodelled houses. Outside there is a garden distinguished by a heavy old wall overrun with creepers, dividing two levels and making a striking object in the landscape; and beyond that, where the country grows bleak and begins to remind one of moors, there are the last survivors of a unique breed of wild cattle, which, like the mastiffs at the house, bear the name of the place. The name of another Cheshire house, formerly belonging to the Stanleys, and now to Mr. Gladstone, is probably familiar to American readers—Hawarden Castle. The present house must trust entirely to associations for its interest, having been built in 1809, before much taste was applied to restore old places, but the old castle in the park dates from the middle of the thirteenth century. The park is not unlike that of Arundel, but the views from the ruin are finer and more varied. The counties of Caernarvon, Denbigh, Flint, Cheshire and Lancashire are spread out around it, and the ruin itself is beautiful and extensive.