Kitabı oku: «The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan», sayfa 10
Chapter Eighteen.
The Journey to Dunbar – A Rainy Day
“I lay upon the headland height and listened
To the incessant sobbing of the sea
In caverns under me,
And watched the waves that tossed and fled and glistened,
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
Melted away in mist.”
Longfellow.
July 18th.
We make an early start this morning. The horses are in, and we are out of the field before eight o’clock. We have a long journey before us – three-and-twenty miles to Dunbar – and do it we must.
It is raining in torrents; every hilltop is wrapped in mist as in a gauze veil. The country is fertile, but trees and hedges are dripping, and if the hills are high, we know it not, seeing only their foundations.
About four miles on, the road enters a beautiful wood of oak, through which the path goes winding. There is clovery sward on each side, and the trees almost meet overhead.
Some six miles from Co’burn’s path we stop at a small wayside grocery to oil the wheel-caps, which have got hot. I purchase here the most delicious butter ever I tasted for ten pence a pound. The rain has ceased, and the breaking clouds give promise of a fine day.
I inquire of a crofter how far it is to Inverness.
“Inverness?” he ejaculates, with eyes as big as florins. “Man! it’s a far cry to Inverness.”
On again, passing for miles through a pretty country, but nowhere is there an extensive view, for the hills are close around us, and the road is a very winding one. It winds and it “wimples” through among green knolls and bosky glens; it dips into deep, deep dells, and rises over tree-clad steeps.
This may read romantic enough, but, truth to tell, we like neither the dips nor the rises.
But look at this charming wood close on our right, a great bank of sturdy old oaks and birches, and among them wild roses are blooming – for even here in Scotland the roses have not yet deserted us. Those birken trees, how they perfume the summer air around us! From among the brackens that grow beneath, so rank and green, rich crimson foxglove bells are peeping, and a thousand other flowers make this wild bank a thing of beauty. Surely by moonlight the fairies haunt it and hold their revels here.
We pass by many a quiet and rural hamlet, the cottages in which are of the most primitive style of architecture, but everywhere gay with gardens, flowers, and climbing plants. It does one good to behold them. Porches are greatly in vogue, very rustic ones, made of fir-trees with the bark left on, but none the less lovely on that account.
Here is the porch of a house in which surely superstition still lingers, for the porch, and even the windows, are surrounded with honeysuckle and rowan. (Rowan, or rantle tree, – the mountain ash.)
“Rantle tree and wood-bin
To haud the witches on come in.”
(To keep the witches out.)
The mists have cleared away.
We soon come to a high hill overtopped by a wood. There are clearings here and there in this wood, and these are draped with purple heath, and just beneath that crimson patch yonder is a dark cave-like hole. That is the mouth of a loathsome railway tunnel. There may be a people-laden train in it now. From my heart I pity them. They are in the dark, we in the sunshine, with the cool breeze blowing in our faces, and as free as the birds. We are on the hill; they are in the hole.
As we near Co’burn’s path the scenery gets more and more romantic. A peep at that wondrous tree-clad hill to the right is worth a king’s ransom. And the best of it is that to-day we have all the road to ourselves.
I stopped by a brook a few minutes ago to cull some splendid wild flowers. A great water-rat (bank-vole) eyed me curiously for a few moments, then disappeared with a splash in the water as if he had been a miniature water-kelpie. High up among the woods I could hear the plaintive croodling of the cushie-doo, or wild pigeon, and Dear me, on a thorn-bush, the pitiful “Chick-chick-chick-chick-chee-e-e” of the yellow-hammer. But save these sweet sounds all was silent, and the road and country seemed deserted. Where are our tourists? where our health and pleasure-seekers? “Doing” Scotland somewhere on beaten tracks, following each other as do the wild geese.
We climb a hill; we descend into a deep and wooded ravine, dark even at midday, cross a most romantic bridge, and the horses claw the road as they stagger up again.
A fine old ruined castle among the pinewoods. It has a story, which here I may not tell.
If ever, reader, you come this way, visit Pease Dene and the bridge. What a minglement is here of the beautiful in art and the awesome in nature!
Are you fond of history? Well, here in this very spot, where the Wanderer rests for a little time, did Cromwell, with his terrible battle-cry, “The Lord of hosts,” defeat the Scottish Covenanters. It was a fearful tulzie; I shudder when I look round and think of it.
“Drive on, John, drive on.”
All round Co’burn’s path is a wild land of romance. But here is the hamlet itself.
The inn – there is but one – stands boldly by the roadside; the little village itself hides upon a wooded braeland away behind.
“Is it a large village?” I inquired.
“No,” was the canny Scotch reply, “not so vera large. It is just a middlin’ bit o’ a village.”
So I found it when I rode round, a very middling bit of a village indeed.
The shore is about half a mile from the road. It is bounded by tall steep cliffs, and many of these are pierced by caves. The marks of chisels are visible on their walls, and in troublous times they were doubtless the hiding-places of unfortunate families, but more recently they were used by smugglers, concerning which the hills about here, could they but speak, would tell many a strange story.
Dined and baited at Co’burn’s path, and started on again. And now the rain began to come down in earnest – Scotch rain, not Scotch mist, rain in continuous streams that fell on the road with a force that caused it to rebound again, and break into a mist which lay all along the ground a good foot deep.
Nothing could touch us in our well-built caravan, however; we could afford to look at the rain with a complacency somewhat embittered with pity for the horses.
The country through which we are now passing is beautiful, or would be on a fine day. It is a rolling land, and well-treed, but everything is a blur at present, and half hidden by the terrible rain.
When we reached Dunbar at last, we found the romantic and pretty town all astir. The yeomanry had been holding their annual races, and great was the excitement among both sexes, despite the downpour.
It was an hour or two before I could find a place to stand in. I succeeded at last in getting on to the top of the west cliff, but myself and valet had to work hard for twenty minutes before we got in here. We chartered a soldier, who helped us manfully to enlarge a gap, by taking down a stone wall and levelling the footpath.
At Dunbar, on this cliff-top, from which there was a splendid view of the ever-changing sea, I lay for several days, making excursions hither and thither, and enjoying the sea-bathing.
(For further notes about pleasant excursions, fishing streams, etc, see my “Rota Vitae; or, Cyclist’s Guide to Health and Rational Enjoyment.” Price 1 shilling. Published by Messrs Iliffe and Co, Fleet Street, London.)
The ancient town of Dunbar is too well-known to need description by me, although every one is entitled to talk about a place as he finds it. Dunbar, then, let me say parenthetically, is a town of plain substantial stone, with many charming villas around it. It has at least one very wide and spacious street, and it has the ruins of an ancient castle – no one seems to know how ancient; it has been the scene of many a bloody battle, and has a deal otherwise to boast about in a historical way.
I found the people exceedingly kind and hospitable, and frank and free as well.
English people ought to know that Dunbar is an excellent place for bathing, that it is an extremely healthy town, and could be made the headquarters for tourists wishing to visit the thousand and one places of interest and romance around it.
But it was the rock scenery that threw a glamour over me. It is indescribably wild and beautiful here. These rocks are always fantastic, but like the sea that lisps around their feet in fine weather, or dashes in curling wreaths of snow-white foam high over their summits, when a nor’-east storm is blowing, they are, or seem to be, ever-changing in appearance, never quite the same. Only, one rock on the horizon is ever the same, the Bass.
When the tide is back pools are left among the rocks; here bare-legged children dabble and play and catch the strange little fishes that have been left behind.
To see those children, by the way, hanging like bees – in bunches – on the dizzy cliff-tops and close to the edge, makes one’s heart at times almost stand still with fear for their safety.
There is food here for the naturalist, enjoyment for the healthy, and health itself for the invalid. I shall be happy indeed if what I write about the place shall induce tourists to visit this fine town.
On the morning of the 23rd of July we left Dunbar, after a visit from the Provost and some members of the town council. Sturdy chiels, not one under six feet high, and broad and hard in proportion. An army of such men might have hurled Cromwell and all his hordes over the cliffs to feed the skate – that is, if there were giants in those days.
We got out and away from the grand old town just as the park of artillery opened fire from their great guns on their red-flagged targets far out to sea. Fife-shire Militia these soldiers are, under command of Colonel the Hon. – Halket. Mostly miners, sturdy, strong fellows, and, like the gallant officer commanding them, soldierly in bearing.
I fear, however, that the good folks of Dunbar hardly appreciate the firing of big guns quite so close to their windows, especially when a salvo is attempted. This latter means shivered glass, frightened ladies, startled invalids, and maddened dogs and cats. The dogs I am told get into cupboards, and the cats bolt up the chimneys.
The first day of the firing an officer was sent to tell me that the Wanderer was not lying in quite a safe position, as shells sometimes burst shortly after leaving the gun’s mouth. I took my chance, however, and all went well. Alas for poor Hurricane Bob, however! I have never seen a dog before in such an abject state of shivering terror. The shock to his system ended in sickness of a painful and distressing character, and it was one o’clock in the morning before he recovered.
One o’clock, and what a night of gloom it was! The sky over hills and over the ocean was completely obscured, with only here and there a lurid brown rift, showing where the feeble rays of moon and stars were trying to struggle through.
The wind was moaning among the black and beetling crags; far down beneath was the white froth of the breaking waves, while ever and anon from seaward came the bright sharp flash of the summer lightning. So vivid was it that at first I took it for a gun, and listened for the report.
It was a dreary night, a night to make one shiver as if under the shadow of some coming evil.
Chapter Nineteen.
A Day at Pressmannan – The Fight for a Polonie Sausage – In the Haughs of Haddington – Mrs Carlile’s Grave – Genuine Hospitality
“Here springs the oak, the beauty of the grove,
Whose stately trunk fierce storms can scarcely move;
Here grows the cedar, here the swelling vine
Does round the elm its purple clusters twine;
Here painted flowers the smiling gardens bless,
Both with their fragrant scent and gaudy dress;
Here the white lily in full beauty grows;
Here the blue violet and the blushing rose.”
Blackmore.
Had a gale of wind come on to blow during our stay at Dunbar, our position on the green cliff-top would undoubtedly have been a somewhat perilous one, for the wind takes a powerful hold of the Wanderer. Perhaps it was this fact which caused my illustrious valet and factotum to write some verses parodying the nursery rhyme of “Hush-a-bye baby, upon the tree top.” I only remember the first of these: —
“Poor weary Wanderer on the cliff-top,
If the wind blows the carriage will rock,
If gale should come on over she’ll fall
Down over the cliff, doctor and all.”
Perhaps one of the most pleasant outings I had when at Dunbar was my visit to the beautiful loch of Pressmannan.
I give here a short sketch of it to show that a gentleman gipsy’s life is not only confined to the places to which he can travel in his caravan. The Wanderer is quite a Pullman car, and cannot be turned on narrow roads, while its great height causes overhanging trees to form very serious obstacles indeed.
But I have my tricycle. I can go anywhere on her. Well, but if I want to take a companion with me on some short tour where the Wanderer cannot go, it is always easy to borrow a dogcart, pop Pea-blossom into the shafts, and scud away like the wind. This is what I did when I made up my mind to spend —
A Day at Pressmannan.
I would have preferred going alone on my cycle with a book and my fishing-rod, but Hurricane Bob unfortunately – unlike the infant Jumbo – is no cyclist, and a twenty-miles’ run on a warm summer’s day would have been too much for the noble fellow. Nor could he be left, in the caravan to be frightened out of his poor wits with thundering cannon and bursting shells. Hence Pea-blossom and a light elegant phaeton, with Bob at my feet on his rugs.
We left about ten am, just before the guns began to roar.
The day was warm and somewhat hazy, a kind of heat-mist.
Soon after rattling out of Dunbar we passed through a rural village. We bore away to the right, and now the scenery opened up and became very interesting indeed.
Away beneath us on our right – we were journeying north-west – was a broad sandy bay, on which the waves were breaking lazily in long rolling lines of foam. Far off and ahead of us the lofty and solid-looking Berwick Law could be seen, rising high over the wooded hills on the horizon with a beautiful forest land all between.
Down now through an avenue of lofty beeches and maples that makes this part of the road a sylvan tunnel. We pass the lodge-gates of Pitcox, and in there is a park of lordly deer.
On our left now are immensely large rolling fields of potatoes. These supply the southern markets, and the pomme de terre is even shipped, I believe, from this country to America. There is not a weed to be seen anywhere among the rows, all are clean and tidy and well earthed up.
No poetry about a potato field? Is that the remark you make, dear reader? You should see these even furrows of darkest green, going high up and low down among the hills; and is there any flower, I ask, moch prettier than that of the potato? But there we come to the cosy many-gabled farmhouse itself. How different it is from anything one sees in Yorks or Berkshire, for instance! A modern house of no mean pretensions, built high up on a knoll, built of solid stone, with bay windows, with gardens, lawns, and terraces, and nicely-wooded winding avenues. About a mile farther on, and near to the rural hamlet of Stenton, we stop to gaze at and make conjectures about a strange-looking monument about ten feet high, that stands within a rude enclosure, where dank green nettles grow.
What is it, I wonder? I peep inside the door, but can make nothing of it. Is it the tomb of a saint? a battlefield memorial? the old village well? or the top of the steeple blown down in a gale of wind?
We strike off the main road here and drive away up a narrow lane with a charming hedgerow at each side, in which the crimson sweetbriar-roses mingle prettily with the dark-green of privet, and the lighter green of the holly.
At the top of the hill the tourist may well pause, as we did, to look at the view beneath. It is a fertile country, only you cannot help admiring the woods that adorn that wide valley – woods in patches of every size and shape, woods in rows around the cornfields, woods in squares and ovals, woods upon hills and knolls, and single trees everywhere.
On again, and ere long we catch sight of a great braeland of trees – a perfect mountain of foliage – worth the journey to come and see. That hill rises up from the other side of the loch. We now open a gate, and find ourselves in a very large green square, with farm buildings at one side and a great stone well in the centre. Far beneath, and peeping through the trees, is the beautiful mansion-like model farmhouse. It is surrounded by gardens, in which flowers of every colour expand their petals to the sunshine. No one is at home about the farmyard. The servants are all away haymaking, so we quietly unlimber, stable, and feed Pea-blossom. Hurricane Bob, my Jehu, and myself then pass down the hill through a wood of noble trees, and at once find ourselves on the margin of a splendid sheet of water that winds for miles and miles among the woodlands and hills.
I seat myself in an easy-chair near the boathouse, a chair that surely some good fairy or the genii of this beautiful wildery has placed here for me. Then I become lapt in Elysium. Ten minutes ago I could not have believed that such scenery existed so near me.
What a lonesome delightful place to spend a long summer’s day in! What a place for a picnic or for a lover’s walk! Oh! to fancy it with a broad moon shining down from the sky and reflected in the water!
The road goes through among the trees, not far from the water’s edge, winding as the lake winds. The water to-day is like a sheet of glass, only every now and then and every here and there a leaping fish makes rings in it; swallows are skimming about everywhere, and seagulls go wheeling round or settle and float on the surface. We see many a covey of wild ducks too, but no creature – not even the hares and rabbits among the brackens – appear afraid of us.
Nowhere are the trees of great height, but there is hardly one you can give a name to which you will not find here by the banks of this lovely lonesome lake, to say nothing of the gorgeous and glowing undergrowth of wild shrubs and wild flowers.
Weary at last, because hungry, we returned to the green square where we had left our carriage, and, first giving Pea-blossom water, proceeded to have our own luncheon.
We had enough for the three of us, with plenty to spare for the feathered army of fowls that surrounded us. They were daring; they were greedy; they were insolent; and stole the food from our very fingers.
Ambition in this world, however, sometimes over-reaches itself. One half-bred chick at last stole a whole polonie, which was to have formed part of Bob’s dinner. Bob knew it, and looked woefully after the thieving chick; the brave little bird was hurrying off to find a quiet place in which to make its dinner.
It had reckoned rather rashly, though.
A cochin hen met the chick. “What daring audacity!” cried the hen. “Set you up with a whole polonie, indeed!”
A dig on the back sent the chick screaming away without the sausage, and the big hen secured it.
“I’ll go quietly away and eat it,” she said to herself, “behind the water-butt.”
But the other fowls spied her.
“Why, she’s got a whole polonie!” cried one.
“The impudence of the brazen thing!” cried another.
“A whole polonie! a whole polonie!” was now the chorus, and the chase became general. Bound and round the great stone well flew the cochin, but she was finally caught and thrashed and deprived of that polonie. But which hen was to have it? Oh! every hen, and all the four cocks wanted it.
A more amusing scene I never witnessed at a farmyard. It was like an exciting game of football on the old Rugby system, and at one time, while the game was still going on, I counted three pairs of hens and one pair of Dorking cocks engaged in deadly combat, and all about that polonie. But sly old Bob watched his chance. He was not going to lose his dinner if he could help it. He went round and lay flat down behind the well, and waited. Presently the battle raged in that direction, when suddenly, with one glorious spring, Bob flung himself into the midst of the conflict. The fowls scattered and fluttered and fled, and flew in all directions, and next minute the great Newfoundland, wagging his saucy tail and laughing with his eyes, was enjoying his polonie as he lay at my feet.
Returning homewards, instead of passing the Pitcox lodge-gate, we boldly enter it; I cannot help feeling that I am guilty of trespass. However, we immediately find ourselves in a great rolling park, with delightful sylvan scenery on every side, with a river – the winding Papana – meandering through the midst of the glen far down beneath and to the right.
After a drive of about a mile we descend by a winding road into this glen, and cross the river by a fine bridge. Then going on and on, we enter the archway, and presently are in front of the mansion house of Biel itself. It is a grand old place, a house of solid masonry, a house of square and octangular towers, long and low and strong.
It is the seat of a branch of the Hamilton ilk. Miss Hamilton was not then at home.
“No, the lady is not at home at present, sir,” a baker who was driving a cart informed me, “but it would have been all one, sir. Every one is welcome to look at the place and grounds, and she would have been glad to see you.”
We really had stopped at the back of the house, which is built facing the glen, but I soon found my way to the front.
I cannot describe the beauty of those terraced gardens, that one after another led down to the green glen beneath, where the river was winding as if loth to leave so sweet a place. They were ablaze with flowers, the grass in the dingle below was very green, the waters sparkled in the sunlight, and beyond the river the braeland was a rolling cloudland of green trees.
We drove out by an avenue – two miles long – bordered by young firs and cypresses.
Altogether, the estate is a kind of earthly paradise.
And think of it being constantly open to tourist or visitor!
“What a kind lady that Miss Hamilton must be, sir!” said my coachman.
“Yes, John,” I replied. “This is somewhat different from our treatment at Newstead Abbey.”
I referred to the fact that on my arrival at the gates of the park around that historical mansion where the great Byron lived, I could find no admission. In vain I pleaded with the lodge-keeper for liberty only to walk up the avenue and see the outside of the house.
No, she was immovable, and finally shut the gates with an awful clang in my face.
I have since learned that many Americans have been treated in the same way.
The heat of July the 23rd was very great and oppressive, and a haze almost hid the beautiful scenery ’twixt Dunbar and Haddington from our view.
Arrived at the latter quaint old town, however, we were soon at home, for, through the kindness of the editor of the Courier, the Wanderer found a resting-place in the beautiful haugh close by the riverside, and under the very shadow of the romantic old cathedral and church adjoining.
The cathedral was rendered a ruin by the soldiery of Cromwell, and very charming it looks as I saw it to-night under the rays of the moon.
The people of Haddington are genuinely and genially hospitable, and had I stayed here a month I believe I would still have been a welcome guest.
It is said that the coach-builders here are the best in Scotland. At all events I must do them the credit of saying they repaired a bent axle of my caravan, and enabled me on the afternoon of the 24th to proceed on my way in comfort and safety.
Not, however, before I had made a pilgrimage to the grave of poor Mrs Carlyle. The graveyard all around the church and cathedral is spacious and well-kept, but her grave is inside the ruin.
It was very silent among these tall red gloomy columns; the very river itself glides silently by, and nothing is to be heard except the cooing of the pigeons high over head. The floor is the green sward, and here are many graves.
It was beside Mrs Carlyle’s, however, that I sat down, and the reader may imagine what my thoughts were better than I can describe them.
An old flat stone or slab covers the grave, into which has been let a piece of marble bearing the following inscription beneath other names:
“Here likewise now rests
Jane Welsh Carlyle,
Spouse of Thomas Carlyle, Chelsea, London.
She was born at Haddington, 14th July, 1800,
The only child of the above John Welsh,
And of Grace Welsh, Caplegill,
Dumfriesshire, his wife.
In her bright existence she
Had more sorrows than are common, but also a soft
Invincibility and clearness of discernment, and a noble
Loyalty of heart which are rare. For 40 years she was
The true and ever-loving helpmate of her husband,
And by act and word unwearily forwarded him as none
Else could, in all of worthy, that he did or attempted.
She died at London on the 21st April, 1866,
Suddenly snatched away from him, and
The light of his life, as if gone out.”
I believe the above to be a pretty correct version of this strange inscription, though the last line seems to read hard.
There is a quaint old three-arched bridge spanning the river near the cathedral, and in it, if the tourist looks up on the side next the ruin, he will notice a large hook. On this hook culprits used to be hanged. They got no six-foot drop in those days, but were simply run up as sailors run up the jib-sail, the slack of the rope was belayed to something, and they were left to kick until still and quiet in death.
A visit to a celebrated pigeonry was a pleasant change from the churchyard damp and the gloom of that ruined cathedral. Mr Coalston is a famous breeder of pigeons of many different breeds. The houses are very large, and are built to lean against a tall brick wall. The proprietor seemed pleased to show me his lovely favourites, and put them up in great flocks in their aviaries or flights.
So successful has this gentleman been in his breeding that the walls are entirely covered with prize cards.
He loves his pigeons; and here in the garden near them he has built himself an arbour and smoking-room, from the windows of which he has them all in view.
We started about two pm. I would willingly have gone sooner, but the Wanderer was surrounded on the square by a crowd of the most pleasant and kindly people I ever met in my life. Of course many of these wanted to come in, so for nearly an hour I held a kind of levée. Nor did my visitors come empty-handed; they brought bouquets of flowers and baskets of strawberries and gooseberries, to say nothing of vegetables and eggs. Even my gentle Jehu John was not forgotten, and when at length we rolled away on our road to Musselburgh, John had a bouquet in his bosom as large as the crown of his hat.
God bless old Haddington, and all the kindly people in it!
