The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume Ii Part 90

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I might ever pa.s.s under that roof time enough to see them more deliberately. We stopped in the Hans Holbein Porch, and upon the Inigo Jones bridge, as long as we Could stand, after standing and staring and straining our eyes till our guide was quite fatigued.

'Tis a n.o.ble collection; and how might it be enjoyed if, as an arch rustic Old labouring man told u, fine folks lived as they ought to do!

Sunday, Aug. 7.-After an early dinner we set off for Milton Abbey, the seat of Lord Milton, partly constructed from the old abbey and partly new. There is a magnificent gothic hall in excellent preservation, of evident Saxon workmans.h.i.+p, and extremely handsome, though not of the airy beauty of the chapel.

The situation of this abbey is truly delicious: it is in a vale of extreme fertility and richness, surrounded by hills of the most exquisite form, and mostly covered with hanging woods, but so varied in their growth and groups, that the eye is perpetually fresh caught with objects of admiration. 'Tis truly a lovely place.

LYME AND SIDMOUTH.

Aug. 8.-We proceeded to Bridport, a remarkably clean town, with the air so clear and pure, it seemed a new climate. Hence we set out, after dinner, for Lyme, and the road through which we travelled is the most beautiful to which my wandering destinies have yet sent me. It is diversified with all that can compose luxuriant scenery, and with just as much of the approach to sublime as is in the province of unterrific beauty. The hills are the highest, I fancy, in the south of this county--the boldest and n.o.blest; the vales of the finest verdure, wooded and watered as if only to give ideas of finished landscapes; while the whole, from time to time, rises into still superior grandeur, by openings between the heights that terminate the View With the Splendour of the British channel.

There was no going on in the carriage through such enchanting scenes; we got out upon the hills, and walked till we could walk no longer. The descent down to Lyme is uncommonly steep; and indeed is very striking, from the magnificence of the ocean that washes its borders. Chidiock and Charmouth, two villages between Bridport and Lyme, are the very prettiest I have ever seen.

During the whole of this post I was fairly taken away, not only from the world but from myself, and completely wrapped up and engrossed by the

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pleasures, wonders, and charms of animated nature, thus seen in fair perfection. Lyme. however, brought me to myself; for the part by the sea, where we fixed our abode, was so dirty and fishy that I rejoiced when we left it.

Aug. 9.- We travelled to Sidmouth. And here we have taken up our abode for a week. It was all devoted to rest and sea-air.

Sidmouth is built in a vale by the sea-coast, and the terrace for company is nearer to the ocean than any I have elsewhere seen, and therefore both more pleasant and more commodious. The little bay is of a most peaceful kind, and the sea was as calm and gentle as the Thames. I longed to bathe, but I am in no state now to take liberties with myself, and, having no advice at hand, I ran no risk.

SIDMOUTH LOYALTY.

Nothing has given me so much pleasure since I came to this place as our landlady's account of her own and her town's loyalty. She is a baker, a poor widow woman, she told us, who lost her husband by his fright in thinking he saw a ghost, just after her mother was drowned. She carries on the business, with the help of her daughter, a girl about fifteen.

I inquired of her if she had seen the royal family when they visited Devons.h.i.+re? "Yes, sure, ma'am!" she cried; there was ne'er a soul left in all this place for going Out to See 'em. My daughter and I rode a double horse, and we went to Sir George Young's, and got into the park, for we knew the housekeeper, and she gave my daughter a bit to taste of the king's dinner when they had all done, and she said she might talk on it when she was a old woman."

I asked another good woman, who came in for some flour, if she had been of the party? "No," she said, "she was ill, but she had had holiday enough upon the king's recovery, for there was such a holiday then as the like was not in all England."

"Yes, sure, ma'am," cried the poor baker-woman, "we all did our best then for there was ne'er a town in all England like Sidmouth for rejoicing. Why, I baked a hundred and ten penny loaves for the poor, and so did every baker in town, and there's three, and the gentry subscribed for it. And the gentry roasted a bullock and cut it all up, and we all eat it, in the midst of the rejoicing. And then we had such a fine

page 420 sermon, it made us all cry; there was a more tears shed than ever was known, all for over-joy. And they had the king drawed, and dressed up all in gold and laurels, and they put un in a coach and eight horses, and carried un about; and all the grand gentlemen in the town, and all abouts, come in their own carriages to join. And they had the finest band of music in all England singing 'G.o.d save the king,' and every Soul joined in the chorus, and all not so much because he was a king, but because they said a was such a worthy gentleman, and that the like of him was never known in this nation before: so we all subscribed for the illuminations for that reason, some a s.h.i.+lling, some a guinea, and some a penny,--for no one begrudged it, as a was such a worthy person."

This good Mrs. Dare has purchased images of all the royal family, in her great zeal, and I had them in my apartment--King, Queen, Prince of Wales, Dukes of York, Clarence, Kent, Suss.e.x, c.u.mberland, and Cambridge; Princess Royal, and Princesses Augusta, Eliza, Mary, Sophia, and Amelia, G.o.d bless them all!

POWDERHAM CASTLE AND COLLUMPTON CHURCH.

Aug. 16.-We quitted Sidmouth, and proceeded through the finest country possible to Exmouth, to see that celebrated spot of beauty. The next morning we crossed the Ex and visited Powderham Castle. Its appearance, n.o.ble and antique without, loses all that character from French finery and minute elegance and gay trappings within. The present owner, Lord Courtney, has fitted it up in the true Gallic taste, and every room has the air of being ornamented for a gala. The housekeeper did not let us see half the castle; she only took us to those rooms which the present lord has modernized and fitted up in the sumptuous French taste ; the old part of the castle she doubtless thought would disgrace him; forgetting or rather never knowing--that the old part alone was worth a traveller's curiosity, since the rest might be antic.i.p.ated by a visit to any celebrated cabinet-maker.

Thence we proceeded to Star Cross to dine; and saw on the opposite coast the house Of Sir Francis Drake, which was built by his famous ancestor. Here we saw a sight that reminded me of the drawings of Webber from the South Sea Isles; women scarce clothed at all, with feet and legs entirely naked, straw bonnets of uncouth Shapes tied on their heads, a

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sort of man's jacket on their bodies, and their short coats pinned up in the form of concise trousers, very succinct! and a basket on each arm, strolling along with wide mannish strides to the borders of the river, gathering c.o.c.kles. They looked, indeed, miserable and savage.

Hence we went, through very beautiful roads, to Exeter. That great old city is too narrow, too populous, too dirty, and too ill-paved, to meet with my applause. Next morning we breakfasted at Collumpton, and visited its church. Here we saw the remains of a once extremely rich gothic structure, though never large.

There is all the appearance of its having been the church of an abbey before the Reformation. It is situated in a deep but most fertile vale; its ornaments still retain so much of gilding, painting, and antique splendour, as could never have belonged to a mere country church. The wood carving, too, though in ruins, is most laboriously well done; the roof worked in blue and gold, lighter, but in the style of the royal chapel at St. James's.We were quite surprised to find such a structure in a town so little known or named. One aisle was added by a clothier of the town in the reign of Edward VI.; probably upon its first being used as a protestant and public place of wors.h.i.+p.

This is still perfect, but very clumsy and inelegant compared with the ancient part. The man, to show he gloried in the honest profession whence he derived wealth for this good purpose, has his arms at one corner, with his name, J. Lane, in gothic characters, and on the opposite corner his image, terribly worked in the wall, with a pair of shears in one hand, so large as to cut across the figure downwards almost obscuring all but his feet. Till the cicerone explained this, I took the idea for a design of Death, placed where most conspicuously he might show himself, ready to cut in two the poor objects that entered the church.

GLAs...o...b..RY ABBEY.

Aug. 19.-To vary the scenery we breakfasted at Bridgewater, in as much dirt and noise, from the judges filling the town, as at Taunton we had enjoyed neatness and quiet. We walked beside the river, which is navigable from the Bristol channel ; and a stream more muddy, and a quay more dirty and tarry and pitchy, I would not covet to visit again. It is here called the Perrot.

Thence, however, we proceeded to what made amends

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all--the ruins of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey. These are the most elegant remains of monkish grandeur I have ever chanced to see,--the forms, designs, ornaments,---all that is left is in the highest perfection of gothic beauty. Five hundred souls, the people told us, were supported in this abbey and its cloisters.

A chapel of Joseph of Arimathea has the outworks nearly entire, and I was quite bewitched with their antique beauty. But the entrance into the main front of the abbey is stupendous; its height is such that the eye aches to look up at it, though it is now curtailed, by no part of its arch remaining except the first inclination towards that form, which shows it to have been the entrance. Not a bit of roof remains in any part. All the monuments that Were not utterly decayed or destroyed have been removed to Wells. Mere walls alone are left here, except the monks' kitchen. This is truly curious: it is a circular building, with a dome as high--higher I fancy--than the Pantheon's; four immense fireplaces divide it Into four parts at the bottom, and an oven still is visible. One statue is left in one niche, which the people about said was of the abbot's chief cook!

If this monastery was built by the famous old cruel hypocrite abbot, Dunstan, I shall grieve so much taste was bestowed on such a wretch.(347) We had only labourers for our informants. But one boy was worth hearing: he told me there was a well of prodigious depth, which he showed me, and this well had long been dried up, and so covered over as to be forgotten, till his grandfather dreamed a dream that the water of this well would restore him from a bad state of health to good; so he dug, and the well was found, and he drank the water and was cured! And since then the poor came from all parts who were afflicted with diseases, and drank the water and were cured. One woman was now at Glas...o...b..ry to try it, and already almost well! What strange inventions and superst.i.tions even the ruins of what had belonged to St. Dunstan can yet engender! The Glas...o...b..ry thorn we forgot to ask for.

WELLS CATHEDRAL.

Hence we proceeded to Wells. Here we waited, as usual, upon the cathedral, which received our compliments with but

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small return of civility. There was little to be seen without, except old monuments of old abbots removed from Glas...o...b..ry, so inferior in workmans.h.i.+p and design to the abbey once containing them, that I was rather displeased than gratified by the sight. They have also a famous clock, brought from the abbey at Its general demolition. This exhibits a set of horses with riders, who curvet a dance round a bell by the pulling a string, with an agility comic enough, and fitted to serve for a puppet-show; which, in all probability, was its design, in order to recreate the poor monks at their hours of play.

There is also a figure of St. Dunstan, who regularly strikes the quarters of every hour by clock-work, and who holds in his hand a pair of tongs--the same I suppose as those with which he was wont to pull the devil by the nose, in their nocturnal interviews.

The old castle of Wells is now the palace for the bishop. It is moated still, and looks dreary, Secluded, and in the bad old style.

At night, upon a deeply deliberate investigation in the medical way, it was suddenly resolved that we should proceed to Bath instead of Bristol, and that I should try there first the stream of King BladUd. So now, at this moment, here we are.

BATH REVISITED.

Queen Square, Bath, Aug. 20.--Bath is extremely altered since I last visited it. Its circ.u.mference is perhaps trebled but its buildings are so unfinished, so spread, so everywhere beginning and nowhere ending, that it looks rather like a s.p.a.ce of ground lately fixed upon for erecting a town, than a town itself, of so many years' duration. It is beautiful and wonderful throughout.

The hills are built up and down, and the vales so stocked with streets and houses, that, in some places, from the ground-floor on one side a street, you cross over to the attic of your opposite neighbour. The white stone, where clean, has a beautiful effect, and, even where worn, a grand one. But I must not write a literal Bath guide, and a figurative one Anstey (348) has all to himself. I will only tell you in brief, yet in truth, it looks a city of palaces, a town of hills, and a hill of towns.

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O how have I thought, in patrolling it, Of my poor Mrs, Thrale!

I went to look (and sigh at the sight) at the house on the North parade where we dwelt, and almost every Old place brings to my mind some scene in which we were engaged. Besides the constant sadness of all recollections that bring fresh to my thoughts a breach with a friend once so loved, how are most of the families altered and dispersed in these absent ten Years! From Mrs.