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

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Transcriber's note: Punctuation normalized, original spelling retained.

[Illustration: "He stepped forward with a smile." For Percival. Page 420.]

LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.

OCTOBER, 1877.
Vol XX--No. 118

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT
& CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

CHESTER AND THE DEE.

TWO PAPERS.--I.

[Illustration: THE DEE ABOVE BALA.]

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 _bona 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.

[Illustration: CAER-GAI.]

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

As the south-west that blowing Bala Lake,
Fills all the sacred Dee.

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.

[Illustration: BALA.]

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.

[Illustration: REMAINS OF VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY.]

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."

[Illustration: OWEN GLENDOWER'S PRISON.]

[Illustration: THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE, DOLGELLY.]

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:

[Illustration: IN THE VALE OF LLANGOLLEN.]

If that to ring you would come here,
You must ring well with hand and ear;
But if you ring in spur or hat,
Fourpence always is due for that;
But if a bell you overthrow,
Sixpence is due before you go;
But if you either swear or curse,
Twelvepence is due; pull out your purse.
Our laws are old, they are not new;
Therefore the clerk must have his due.
If to our laws you do consent,
Then take a bell: we are content.

[Illustration: LLANGOLLEN.]

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.

[Illustration: CHESTER, FROM THE ALDFORD ROAD.]

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.

[Illustration: CORACLES.]

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."

[Illustration: CHESTER CATHEDRAL AND CITY WALL.]

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.

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