As shines the rose above all common flowers,So above common piles this building towers.
As shines the rose above all common flowers,So above common piles this building towers.
As shines the rose above all common flowers,So above common piles this building towers.
Yet such a building must be somewhere! Mr. Wallace went into the town and bought a Guide-book, to find out where.
He walked through the quiet narrow streets, with their gabled houses, craning their necks across the road to pry into one another’s affairs; and he saw the churches where the people were married; and the habitations where the doctors lived, who were knocked up when the people were born; and he accidentally passed the residence of Mrs. Pitcher, who likewise officiated on those occasions; and he remarked an infinity of shops where every commodity of life was sold. He saw the offices of the lawyers who made the people’s wills, the banks where the people kept their money, the shops of the undertakers who made the people’s coffins, the church-yards where the people were buried, butnotthe Registry where the people’s wills were taken care of. “Very extraordinary!” said Mr. Wallace. “In the great city of a great ecclesiastical see, where all kinds of moving reverses and disasters have been occurring for many centuries, where all manner of old foundation and usage, piety, and superstition, were, and a great deal of modern wealth is, a very interesting and an unimpeachable Registry there must be, somewhere!”
In search of this great public edifice, the indefatigable Mr. Wallace prowled through the city. He discovered many mansions; but hecould notsatisfy himself about the Registry.
The uneasiness of Mr. Wallace’s mind increasing with the growth of his suspicion that there must surely be a flaw in the old adage, and that where there was a will (and a great many wills) there was no way at all, he betook himself to the Cathedral-close. Passing down an uncommonly pure, clean, tidy little street, where the houses looked like a tasteful sort of missionary-subscription-boxes, into which subscribers of a larger growth were expected to drop their money down the chimneys, he came by a turnstile, into that haven of rest, and looked about him.
“Do you know where the Registry is?” he asked a farmer-looking man.
“The wa’at!” said he.
“The Registry; where they keep the wills?”
“A’dinnot know for shower,” said the farmer, looking round. “Ding! If I shouldn’t wondther ifthotwur it!”
Mr. Wallace concealed his disparaging appreciation of the farmer’s judgment, when he pointed with his ash-stick to a kind of shed—such as is usually called a lean-to—squeezing itself, as if it were (with very good reason) ashamed, into the south-west corner of the cross, which the ground-plan of the cathedral forms, and sticking to it like a dirty little pimple. But, what was his dismay, on going thither to inquire, to discover that this actually WAS the unimpeachable Registry; and that a confined den within, which would have made an indifferent chandler’s shop, with a pestilent little chimney in it, filling it with smoke like a Lapland hut, was the “Searching Office.”
Mr. Wallace was soon taught that seven thousand pounds per annum is, after all, but a poor pittance for the Registrar of asimple bishopric, when calculated by the ecclesiastical rule of three; for the registry of Cathedral number two, produces to its fortunate patentees twenty thousand per annum; about ten thousand a year for the Registrar who does nothing, and the like amount for his Deputy who helps him.
The portentous personage to whom Mr. Wallace was accredited, received him in state in the small office surrounded by a Surrogate (apparently retained on purpose to cross-examine Mr. Wallace) and the clerks. Mr. Wallace mentioned that he believed the Archbishop had written to the Deputy-Registrar to afford him every facility in consulting the documents under his charge. The Deputy Registrar owned that the Archbishop had done so, but declared that the Archbishop had no jurisdiction whatever over him; and, claiming as he did, complete immunity from, and irresponsibility to, all human control, he begged to say that his Grace the Archbishop, in presuming to write to the high-authorities of that unimpeachable Registry on such a subject, had taken a very great liberty. Mr. William Wallace inquired if that was to be the answer he was expected to convey to the Archbishop? bowed, and was about to retire, when the awful Deputy recalled him. What did he want to search for? Mr. Wallace repeated that his object was wholly literary and archæological. The chief clerk who here came in as a reinforcement, was so good as to intimate that he “didn’t believe a word of it.” Whereupon a strong opinion was added that Mr. Wallace wanted surreptitiously to obtain pedigrees, and to consult wills. A powerful battery of cross-questionings was then opened by the heavier authorities, aided by a few shots from the light-bob, or skirmishing party—the clerk. But had Mr. William Wallace been his great ancestor, he could not have held his position against such odds more firmly. At length the preliminaries of a treaty were proposed by the enemy, the terms of which were that Mr. Wallace should be allowed to consult any records dated before the year one thousand four hundred! This was demured to as utterly useless. Negotiations were then resumed, and the authorities liberally threw in another century, out of the fullness of a respect for the Archbishop, which they had refrained from condescending to express;—Mr. Wallace might consult documents up to the year fifteen hundred.
With this munificent concession, Mr. Wallace was obliged to be satisfied, and proceeded to venture on another stipulation:—
The researches which he had proposed to himself at this Cathedral number two, were elaborate and complicated; they would require such facilities as had been asked on his behalf by the Archbishop. Could he have access to the documents themselves?
The effect which this simple request produced in the office, was prodigious! A small schoolboy who should, at dinner, ask for a piece of the master’s apple-pie; or a drummer on parade, who should solicit from his captain a loan of five shillings, could not produce a more sublime degree of astonishment, than that which glared through the smoke from the faces of the deputy-registrar, the surrogate, the chief clerk, and all the junior clerks, then and there assembled. The effect produced amounted to temporary petrefaction; the principals neither spoke nor moved; the subordinates left off writing and poking the fire. So superlative was the audacity of the request, that it paralyzed the pendulum of that small, rusty, dusty, smoky old ecclesiastical clock, and stopped the works!
Refusal in words was not vouchsafed to Mr. William Wallace; neither did he need that condescension. The silent but expressive pantomine was enough. As the Eastern culprit receiveshis doom by the speechless gesture of the judge’s hand across his own neck; so Mr. William Wallace fully understood that, access to the record depositories of the province appertaining to Cathedral number two, was nearly equivalent to getting into a freemason’s lodge after it has been “tiled,” or to obtaining admission to St. Paul’s cathedral without two-pence.
He therefore waved as perfectly impossible that item of the treaty. For the public, however, the evidence of that gentleman is hardly necessary to bring them acquainted with the manner in which the trust imposed on the Registrar and his Deputy is performed; for while the Deputy Registrar and Mr. William Wallace are settling their differences over the next clause of their treaty, we shall dip into the reports of the Ecclesiastical Commission issued in 1832, to show what the state of things was at that time; and to any one who can prove that those venerable documents have been by any means rescued from decay since that year, the public will doubtless be much obliged. At page one hundred and seventy of the report, Mr. Edward Protheroe, M.P., states, on oath, that in the instance of every Court he had visited the records suffered more or less from damp and the accumulation of dust and dirt. Then, speaking of the Registry of this same Cathedral number two, he declares its documents to have been in a scandalous state. “I found them,” he continues, “perfectly to accord with the description I had received from various literary and antiquarian characters who had occasion to make searches in the office; and I beg leave to remark that the place must have been always totally inadequate as a place of deposit for the records, both as to space and security.” Some of the writings he found in two small cells, “in a state of the most disgraceful filth;” others in “two apertures in the thick walls, scarcely to be called windows; and the only accommodation for these records are loose wooden shelves, upon which the wills are arranged in bundles, tied up with common strings, and without any covering to them; exposed to the effect of the damp of the weather and the necessary accumulation of dirt.” To these unprotected wills the Deputy Registrar was perhaps wise in his generation to deny access; for Mr. Protheroe says in addition that, “if it was the object of any person to purloin a will, such a thing might be accomplished.” Perfectly and safely accessible copies might be made, at “an expense quite trifling.” What? Mr. Protheroe, would you rob these poor Registrars of a shilling of their hard earnings, just to save landed and other property, of some millions value, from litigation and fraud? Would you discount their twenty thousand a year by even a fraction per cent?
The clause of the treaty, offensive and defensive, which was being negotiated all this while, between the Deputy Registrar and his visitor, was drawn up by the former in these concise words, “How long do you want to be here?”
That, Mr. Wallace replied, would depend upon the facilities afforded him, the condition of the calendars and indexes, and the assistance he might be allowed to call in. After much battling, the conference ended by Mr. William Wallace, and a friend who accompanied him, being allowed to set to work upon the calendars of such wills as had been deposited before the year 1500.
The two antiquaries would have commenced their researches immediately; only, on examining their dress, they found it in such a state of filth from the smoke with which the office had been filled during the arrangement of this important compact, that they were obliged to return to the hotel to change their linen. The prospect of spending a week in such a place wasnot altogether agreeable. Mr. Wallace did not enjoy the notion of being smoke-dried; and of returning to the Middle Temple a sort of animated ham. A sojourn in the place was not to be thought of without terror; yet the poor clerks endured their smoking fate with fortitude. Use was to them a second nature; and every man connected with these Registries must be completely inured to dust. But the man of the Middle Temple was a kind of knight-errant in the matter of rescuing ancient documents from their tombs of filth; and not to be daunted. He and his friend opened the campaign directly in the face of the enemy’s fire—which, so great was their ardor, they only wished would become a little more brisk and less smoky.
That day and the next day they bored on with patience and perseverance through every obstacle. When they found in the calendar a reference to what they wanted, every possible obstacle was thrown in their way. The required document was either lost, or had been stolen, or had strayed. Nor was there the slightest reason to doubt that this was true. It was well known to the searchers that one class of documents at least had been actually made away with by a former Deputy Registrar. Dr. Thelwall, of Newcastle, wrote in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1819, page four hundred and ninety:—“It is a fact well known that, by a Canon of James the First, the clergyman of every parish was required to send a copy of the Register annually to the Bishop of the Diocese. The most shameful negligence is attributable to the person (the Deputy Registrar) in whose keeping they have been placed. Indeed I have some reason to suppose this, as I lately saw in the possession of a friend, a great number of extracts from the Register of a certain parish in this neighborhood, and, on questioning him as to the way in which he became possessed of them, I was informed they were given tohim by his cheesemonger, and that they were copies forwarded by the clergyman of the parish to the proper officer in a bordering diocese, and had been allowed through the negligence of their keeper to obtain the distinguished honor of wrapping up cheese and bacon.”
The sale of Records, for waste paper, was the mode adopted to revenge the meanness of the legislature, in not providing the under-paid Registrars with remuneration for this addition to their duties. Was it possible to keep life and soul together upon the ten or fifteen thousand sterling per annum which these two poor fellows were then obliged to starve upon? Certainly not! Therefore, to eke out a wretched existence, they found themselves driven to sell the property of the public, if not for the necessaries, for the luxuries, of life. They had, perhaps, managed to keep their families, by a rigid, pinching economy in bread—dry bread; but to butter it; to indulge themselves with the proper diet of even Church mice, they were obliged to dispose of paper—worth, perhaps, thousands and thousands of pounds to the parties whose names were inscribed on it—at a few pence per pound, to the cheesemonger.
From this doom of some of the parochial records of the province, Mr. William Wallace inferred the degree of care and exactitude with which the wills were kept. Previous knowledge had prepared him for it; but he was not prepared to find thatthe wholeof another and most important class of records, up to a comparatively late date, had been abstracted, in the lump, from the Registry of this Cathedral number two. The case was this:—
In the course of his investigations, it was necessary for him to refer to a “marriage allegation,”—that is, a copy of the statement made by a bridegroom previous to converting himself, bythe help of the Bishop’s license, into a husband. He then learnt that most of such documents are the “private property” of one of the clerks, who kept them in his own private house; that he had bought them of a deceased member of the Herald’s College, and that for each search into them he charged according to a sliding scale, arranged according to the station of the applicant, the maximum of which was five pounds for the simple search, and five pounds more if what the party wanted were found. The English of this is, that the present custodier of these papers purchased of a dead Herald what did not belong to him; and what there could have been no difficulty whatever in restoring to the true owner; (because no one could have known better than the purchaser that they were public property); and that their proper place was not his private house, but the provincial Registry. The produce of this abstraction is an illegal income better possibly than the legal gains of an Admiral or a Government Commissioner; double that of a physician in good practice, or of a philanthropist in easy circumstances,—and treble that of our best dramatist, or our best poet.
Besides these hindrances, which could not be helped, a certain number of wilful obstructions were thrown in the way of our inquiring friends, because they had been desired by the Archbishop to be placed on the fee free-list. They were watched by the entire office; for it became Argus for the occasion. Remarks of a satirical character were discharged point-blank from behind the desks, whenever a good opening occurred. The non-paying searchers were “in the way”—(this was true, so unfit is the apartment for public accommodation); “what people got they ought to pay for, as other people did.” Spies slid silently out from behind the ramparts, or desks, to look overtheir shoulders, and to see that they did not purloin any information posterior to the fifteenth century.
Mr. William Wallace stood all this manfully; but his ally was obliged to retire at the expiration of the second day. Mr. William Wallace at length found he could not advance the objects of his inquiries any more efficiently at this Cathedral number two, than he had advanced them at Cathedral number one; so, at the end of a week, he beat a dignified retreat with all the honors of war. He then turned his face towards the unimpeachable Registry of Cathedral number three, hoping for better success.
THEcore of the inquiry which Mr. William Wallace had a heart, lay imbedded in the depositories of unimpeachable Ecclesiastical Registry number three. To the city of that See he therefore repaired, warmed by that flaming zeal which only burns in the breast of an earnest antiquary, and which no amount of disappointment can quench. Though sanguine, even for an antiquity-hunter, the hopes which rebounded from his previous failures, sunk within him, when he remembered that whereas he was in former instances fortified with letters of recommendation—almost of command—from the Bishops of each Diocese; on this occasion, he had to fight single-handed, (like another St. George,) the dragons that “guarded” the treasures he sought. He had no better introduction to the third Deputy-Registrar than an honest purpose; and, his former experiencetaught him that that was about as unpromising an usher into such a Presence as could be imagined. Mr. Wallace therefore commenced this new attack with no strong presentiment of success.
Strengthened with an ally, in the person of a friendly attorney, Mr. William Wallace marched boldly to the great functionary’s house, a splendid edifice in the Cathedral Close, with thirty-three windows in front, extensive grounds behind, detached stables and a tasteful boat-house at the edge of what is here called the “Minster Pool.”
Into this great house of a great man, Mr. William Wallace was ushered by his friend. Nothing could exceed the obsequiousness of the man of law, and great was the civility of the man of wills. The interview was going on pleasantly and the antiquary was beginning to believe that at last he had found a pattern Deputy-Registrar, when the lawyer happened to mention that Mr. William Wallace was a literary man. Mr. Wallace felt that this would be fatal—and it was so. He knew the condign contempt Ecclesiastical Registrars entertained for the literary world, from the little circumstance of hearing only the week before in another Registry, the most eminent historian of the present day, and our best archaic topographer, designated as “contemptible penny-a-liners.” Mr. Wallace was therefore not at all astonished when the Deputy-Registrar folded up his smiling countenance into a frown. He evidently knew what was coming. Literary men never pay, and Mr. William Wallace wanted to consult “his” registers gratis.
When this shrewd surmise was, by a word from the attorney, realized, the Registrar struggled hard to smoothe his face again to a condition of bland composure; but in vain. The wound which had pierced through his pocket, rankled within. Thedepravity of literary people in endeavoring to dig and delve for historical information without paying for the privilege of benefitting the public by their researches, wastooabominable! The Registrar was so good as to say that he would grant Mr. Wallace the privilege of consulting any wills he pleased—on the usual terms: namely, two shillings and sixpence for every document.
With this condescending permission (which placed Mr. Wallace on exactly the same footing as the great body of the public which had not done itself the honor of visiting the Deputy-Registrar) he repaired to the Searching Office. The point he had set himself to ascertain at this Cathedral Registry number three, hinged upon an authentic attestation of the decease of the father of a distinguished general under Charles the First. The name was a very common one in the diocese, and of course continually occurred in the index. Will after will was produced by the clerks; half-crown after half-crown fell glibly out of Mr. Wallace’s pocket. Still no success. This proved an expensive day. Mr. Wallace had had to pay, in the course of it, twenty-five pounds; although he was not allowed, as at the other places, to make a single extract.
The income of the office even of Deputy Registrar sometimes admits of the maintenance of from six to a dozen race-horses, but the expense of compiling paper calendars could never be tolerated. To make indexes of wills that have never been catalogued would be quite out of the question; for the Registrar charges his clients for thetimeof his clerks in making searches, and it was owned to Mr. Wallace that it would take a year (at from one to two guineas per day) to find any will dated before the year 1526.
The searching office of this Registry was, like the others, inconvenient,small, and often crowded. The policy of the clerks was, therefore, to despatch the inquirers as fast as possible, so as to ensure a rapid change of visitors and a streaming influx of half-crowns. On the second day of Mr. Wallace’s search the trouble he had given on the previous day for his money was intelligibly hinted to him. He was broadly told that he was “very much in the way;” for room was so much required that some applicants were plainly told that they must “come again to-morrow.” To others who had not their inquiries ready cut and dried, in a business form, and who threatened long explanations respecting testators, a deaf ear was turned, or a pretended search was made, and they were told “there was no such will in the place.” A pleasant case occurred on the second morning. An illiterate laborer tried to make the officials understand that an uncle of his wife had, he had heard, left him a legacy, and “he wanted to know the rights o’ it.” He gave the name and the exact date of the death, and a clerk retired under pretence of searching for the document. In a very short time he returned with—
“No such will in the place—half-a-crown, please.”
“Half-a-croone?” said the countryman, “Wat vor?”
“Half-a-crown!” repeated the clerk.
“Wat, vor telling me nought?”
“Half-a-crown!” was again let off with a loud explosion, over the stiff embrasure of white cravat.
“But darn me if oi pay’t,” persisted the expectant legatee.
“Half-a-crown!”
The countryman went on raising a storm in the office, in midst of which the “Half-a-crown!” minute guns were discharged with severe regularity. At length, however, the agriculturist was obliged to succumb, and after a mighty effort to disinter thecoin from under a smock-frock, and out of the depths of a huge pocket and a leather purse, the poor man was obliged to produce and pay over what was probably a fifth of his week’s earnings.
This circumstance having attracted Mr. Wallace’s attention and pity, he took a note of the name of the testator; and, after the inquirer had left, found it in the Calendar, and by-and-by, by dint of a little manœuvring, got a sight of the will. In it he actually found that the poor manhadbeen left a small legacy.
Meanwhile Mr. William Wallace had been actively employed in calling for wills and paying out half-crowns. It was quite evident from the calendars that no greater care was taken of paper and parchment here than in the other Registries. Several wills entered in it, as having been once in the depository—wherever that was—had against them the words “wanting” and “lost.” That ancient records should in the course of centuries fall aside, cannot be wondered at, even in a Registry, which produces at present to its officers from seven to ten thousand per annum; but what excuse can there be for the loss of comparatively modern ones? Certain wills were not to be found of the years 1746; 1750; 1753; and 1757.
Mr. Wallace soon found that in a place where dropping half-crowns into the till and doing as little as possible in return for them, is considered the only legitimate business, he was looked upon even at twenty-five pounds per day as a sort of bad bargain, who required a great deal too much for his money. They could not coin fast enough by Mr. William Wallace, and the Deputy-Registrar indulged the office with his august presence to inform him, that as he gave so much trouble for the searches he was making, he must pay, besides two-and-six-pence forevery future search, two guineas per diem for the use of the office!
It happened that the Bishop of Cathedral number three was then in the city, officiating at an ordination, and to him Mr. William Wallace determined to apply for relief from this extortion. He enclosed to his Lordship his letters from other prelates and stated his case. The answer he received was the Bishop’sunqualified authorityto search wherever and for whatever he wanted in the Registers of his Lordship’s diocese.
Although this letter was addressed by the Bishop to the servant or deputy ofhisservant, the Registrar, yet Mr. Wallace’s dear-bought sagacity had taught him to place very little faith in a Bishop’s power over his inferiors. As it turned out, he found himself one of those who are blessed, because, expecting nothing, they are not disappointed. The Deputy-Registrar received his superior’s mandate with supercilioussang-froid. The old story—“The Bishop had no jurisdiction whatever over him,” but this once, &c. &c.
Mr. William Wallace had met in Cathedrals numbers one and two, repulses and rudeness. But each Cerberus who pretended to guard the documentary treasures of those dioceses, honestly showed his teeth.Theyhad not been guilty of deceit. Deputy-Registrar number three was wiser in his generation. He gave a cold assent to the Bishop’s mandate in Mr. Wallace’s behalf; but with it such wily instructions to his clerks, as rendered it as nugatory as if he had put it in his waste basket or had lighted his cigar. During the two days that half-crowns rained in silver showers from the Antiquary’s purse, nearly every Will he asked for was produced; but now, on the third day, when the Bishop’s letter had closed his purse-strings, Mr. Wallace demanded document after document, and was told bythe “Conservators” of this important kind of public property, that they had “been lost,” “could not be found,” “mislaid.” But the most frequent return was, “destroyed at the siege of the City, in the year 1643”—stolen away with the Tomb of Marmion when
“Fanatic BrookeThe fair Cathedral storm’d and took.”
“Fanatic BrookeThe fair Cathedral storm’d and took.”
“Fanatic BrookeThe fair Cathedral storm’d and took.”
The result of the three days’ investigations stood thus: “During the two paying days, out of a hundred Wills asked for, eighty were produced. Throughout the non-paying day, out of ninety Wills asked for, onlyonewas produced!”
When half-crowns were rife, not one word was said about “the siege of the City, in the year 1643,” although nearly all the Wills Mr. Wallace was obliged with a sight of, were dated anterior to that destructive event.
For some explanation Mr. Wallace repaired to the Deputy-Registrar’s abode. It was too late. The clever sub. knew what was coming—and retreated from the field. The servant’s answer to Mr. Wallace was,
“Out of town, sir!”
But Mr. William Wallace was foiled even more completely in another point: he had a great desire to see where and how the Wills were kept. He knew their condition in 1832, from what Ulster King-at-Arms said before the Ecclesiastical Commission, “I consider the records very dirty; they have not, apparently, been dusted for many years.” The remarkable result of Mr. Wallace’s urgent inquiries was that not a soul he asked could, or would, tell in what place the ecclesiastical records of Cathedral number three were deposited.
Mr. Wallace gave up this investigation in despair and left thecity. Thelocusof the documents was to him a mystery and a wonder!
The habits of the antiquary do not, however, dispose him to indulge in listless despair. To find out the secret masses of the records of Cathedral number three was a task Mr. William Wallace had so earnestly set himself, that next to his domestic relations and his literary labors, it grew into one of the duties of his existence; therefore, on his way to Cathedral number four, he paid another visit to the city of Cathedral number three, fortified with letters to some of its clergy. To be suretheycould clear up the mystery.
His first application was to one of the Canons. Did he know where the ecclesiastical records were kept? Well, it was odd, but it never entered his head to inquire. He really didnotknow. Perhaps some of the Chapter officials could tell.
To one of these, hies Mr. Wallace. Even that functionary—whose courteousness, together with that of his colleague, was pleasant to the applicant by the force of mere contrast—was equally unable to reveal the secret. “But surely,” he added, “such a place cannot, when one sets about it, be so impenetrable a mystery. I have an idea that theMillercould enlighten you.”
“The Miller?”
“Yes. He knows everything about the town. Try him.”
Mr. Wallace had business at the searching office, and having transacted it, determined to make another effort in this legitimate quarter. The following short dialogue occurred between him and the clerk:—“Pray,” said Mr. Wallace, “where are the Wills kept?”
“That’s not your business!” was the answer. Mr. Wallace returned to the charge but the clerk became deaf, and went onwith some writing, precisely as if Mr. William Wallace were invisible and inaudible.
The Miller was the only resource. He was from home, and his wife gave the same answer as everybody else had done. “But,” she said, pointing to an individual who was sauntering into the Close, “there’s one as can tell ’ee. He’s arachettyman—he is.” Without waiting to inquire the meaning of this strange expression, off starts the record-hunter upon the new secret. He runs down his game in no time. It consists of a burly biped, bearing a cage of fine ferrets. Round his person is displayed the broad insignia of office,—he is a rat-catcher.
Here Mr. William Wallace’s perseverance triumphs. The Rat-catcher knows all about it. “Why you see, Sir,” he said, “I contracts for the Registrar.”
“What for?”
“What for? Why, I catches the rats for him at so much a-year.”
“And where do you catch them?”
“Where do I catch them? Why, where the old wills is.”
“And where is that?”
“Where is that? Why,there.”
The Rat-catcher points to a sort of barn that rises from the edge of the Minster Pool. It has no windows on the ground-floor. On the first-floor are six—two in the front of the building and four at the end,—twenty-seven windows less than are displayed in the front of the Registrar’s beautifully glazed house; but much of the little glass afforded to the registry is broken. To mend it upon seven thousand a-year would never do, especially when old parchment is lying about in heaps. Why pay glaziers’ charges when ancient wills and other ecclesiastical records keep out wind and weather as well as glass?—for lightis a thing rather to be shunned than admitted into such places. Accordingly, as the Rat-catcher points to the shed, Mr. Wallace observes numberless ends of record rolls and bundles of engrossed testaments poked into the broken windows: in some places variegated with old rags.
Judging from the exterior, and from the contract for rat-catching, the interior of this depository of the titles of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of property, must be an archæological Golgotha, a dark mouldy sepulchre of parchment and dust.
Lawyers say that there is not an estate in this country with an impregnable title; in other words, it is on the cards in the game of ecclesiastical and common law, for any family to be deprived of their possessions in consequence of being unable to establish a perfect title to them. How can it be otherwise when the very deeds by which they have and hold what they enjoy, are left to be eaten by rats, or to be stuffed into broken windows?
ANantiquary cannot approach the city of Chester from London, even in an express railway train, without emotions more lively than that class of observers generally have credit for. Despite a sensation akin to that of being fired off in a rocket, and a pardonable fancy that the hedges are endless bands of green ribbon in eternal motion, that the houses, and cottages, and churches, and trees, and villages, as they dart past the confinesof the carriage window, are huge missiles shot across fields which are subjected to a rapid dispensation of distorted perspective; yet these mighty evidences of the Present do not dull his mind to the Past. He remembers, with wonder, that two thousand years ago, it was over this identical line of country that the legions of Suetonius lagged along after they had blunted the scythes of Boadicea, routed her hordes, and driven her to suicide.
We will not say that our own fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Mr. William Wallace, retrojected his imagination so far into the past while crossing the Chester platform with his carpet-bag, because we are led to believe, from his report to us, that his views were immediately directed to the more modern times of St. Werburgh, who founded the Abbey of Chester (once the most splendid in England); seeing that it is in the still-standing gateway of that obsolete establishment, that the objects of Mr. Wallace’s especial solicitude are now, and always have been deposited, since Henry the Eighth erected Chester into a diocese.
His hopes of success in seeking out certain facts from the testamentary records of this see, were more slender than they had been while entering upon his errand at the other three cathedrals. He had written to the bishop for that permission to search which had been by other prelates so readily granted, but which had been rendered by the respective Registrars so utterly nugatory, and had received no answer. Awkward reminiscences of the state of this Registry, as disclosed before the last Parliamentary Committee on the Ecclesiastical Courts, fell like a dark shadow over his hopes. Up to the year 1832, the gateway where the wills are kept was, upon the Deputy Registrar’s own showing, neither “fire-proof, sufficiently large, nor absolutely free from plunder.” The searching-office was a part of thegateway; and was as inadequate as other searching offices. The Chief Registrar in 1837 was a sinecurist in theseventiethyear of office, and was verging towards the hundredth of his age; having received, in his time, not less than three hundred and fifty thousand pounds of the public money for doing nothing. The fees for searches and extracts were heavy, and nobody was allowed, as in most other Registries, to see how the wills were kept.
Such were the gloomy prepossessions of Mr. William Wallace, as he approached the archway which held the testamentary treasures of Diocese Number Four. He sought the searching office in vain, and at length was fain to address himself to the first passenger—a burly blacksmith—who, at once, in answer to his inquiry, pointed to a handsome new stone building, that stood within the Abbey Square.
Mr. William Wallace ascended the steps doubtingly; and when he found himself in the wide passage of an evidently well-planned public office—so contrary was the whole aspect of the place to his preconceptions of it, and to his previous experience of other ecclesiastical Registries—that he would have retired, had not the words, “Searching Office,” as plain as paint and capitals could make them, stared him full in the face from a door on his right. This he boldly opened, and beheld a handsome apartment, so mounted with desks, counters, and every appurtenance for public convenience, as to put him in mind of the interior of a flourishing assurance office. “The room,” says Mr. William Wallace, in his report to us, “is furnished with a counter of ample size, extending round it, on which you examine the indexes. On calling for one or two modern wills, the clerks brought me a substantial, well-bound book, in which he informed me all modern wills have been, since the appointment of thepresent Registrar, enrolled at length, in a round text, so distinct and plain, that illiterate persons might read them; and not engrossed, so as to become a source of revenue, as at Doctor’s Commons, where the unlearned, in what is called ‘court-hand,’ are obliged to call in the aid of a clerk, and disburse a fee for the wills to be read to them. I was informed that I could see the originals on giving a satisfactory reason to the Registrar, or, in his absence, to a principal clerk. So promptly is business done here, that I found the wills which had been received from Manchester and other places that day, had been already indexed—very different to York, where wills are sometimes not indexed for six or eight months, and, consequently, often not at all. I next inquired for some earlier wills, and stated that I might probably want to have two or three days’ research, for a literary purpose. On hearing this, the clerk informed me that the Registrar made no charge under such circumstances, except for the clerks’ time. I then called for about six early wills, and only one of the six could not be found. Afterwards I asked for the returns of several Parish Registers; each set of which are well and substantially bound in a separate volume; for this a fee of three shillings and eight-pence is demanded; at York, for the production of a similar quantity of records, fifteen pounds is the price, without clerks’ fees; and at Lincoln it would be impossible to collect them at all, many having been used to bind up modern wills, and for other such purposes.”
Mr. William Wallace, pleasingly surprised at the contrast this Registry number four presented to others he had visited, and where he had been so egregiously snubbed, determined to learn and see as much respecting it as possible. With this view, he applied, without any other introduction than his card, to the Registrar; whose excellent custom it was, he understood, to bein attendance daily for several hours. At that time he was examining witnesses in a case for the Ecclesiastical Court, and handed the card to the bishop’s secretary, who was also in official attendance. “That gentleman,” says Mr. Wallace, “immediately came down, and informed me that the Bishop had written to me, in answer to my application, two days before, giving me permission to search, at reasonable hours, and that the Registrar, as was his usual custom, had not the slightest objection. I then asked to be shown the various parts of the building, the modes of preserving the records, which request was granted without the smallest hesitation.”
Our informant then goes on to say that he found the building—which was raised solely at the expense of the present Registrar, since his appointment in 1837—conveniently divided into different departments like the best of the Government offices,—each department legibly indicated for the benefit of the inquirer, on the different doors.
The manner in which the records are preserved at this Cathedral number four, is spoken of by our friend with satisfaction. His report to us is silent on rats, wet, mildew, smoke, broken windows, torn testaments, and illegible calendars. “Modern wills,” he repeats, “are copied at length into volumes, by the present Registrar, a practice which I regret is not adopted at York, Lincoln, Lichfield, Winchester, and other places I have visited. If wills of an earlier date than that of the enrolment books are required to be taken out of the office for production in any Court of Law, &c., an examined copy made for the purpose, is deposited in its place during its temporary removal from the Registry. The principal portion of the wills are deposited in a dry, but not a fire-proof building, in good repair, called the Abbey Gateway; where, during theoffice hours, two clerks are constantly kept at work in copying wills that come in. These are kept in boxes, arranged upon shelves with just sufficient space to admit them, like drawers; and upon the top of the wills is a sheet of pasteboard fitting the box, as a further protection from dust. The wills are alphabetically arranged in the boxes, which are of uniform size, and contain more or less letters; the first box for 1835, for instance, contains the wills of testators whose names commence with A. or B. The wills of each letter are placed separately, and are divided into packets of one month each, so that the exact date of Probate being known, the will is found immediately.”
Before the period of its renovation, the Registry of Chester was as inefficient and exacting as the other three we have described. To whom the merit of the change and the contrast is really due, is not easily to be ascertained, although the present incumbent of the office must necessarily have the largest share of credit for it. We suspect, however, that the proximate impetus of the reform can be traced to the geographical position of the see. It includes the busiest of the manufacturing towns, and the most business-like, practical, and hard-handed examples of the English character. The thorough-going Manchester or Liverpool legatee would not endure, beyond a certain point and a certain time, the impositions, delays, destructions, and muddling confusion of the will offices in the more easy-going districts. Time with him is cash. What he wants he must have at once, especially if he pays for it. He may be put off once or twice with a rotten, illegible index, or a “Come again to-morrow;” but when he once sees that these may be obviated, he takes care to let there be no delay on his part, and agitates immediately. To engage a Free Trade Hall, and get up a public meeting, is with him a matter of no more consideration than scolding hisclerk, or bringing a creditor to book. He has discredited the maxim that “talking is not doing;” and a constant iteration of pertinent speeches, ending with stinging “resolutions,” has been found todogreater feats, to perform much greater wonders than setting ecclesiastical registries in order. It is possible, therefore, that the lay authorities of the Chester Registry, having the dread of an uncompromising community before their eyes, saw their safety in renovation; and, like sensible men, made it, without that whining sophistication, that grim tenacity, with which abuses are excused and clung to, in exact proportion to their absurdity, profitableness, and injustice.
NOW, my dear cousin, Mr. B., charming as he is in many points, has the little peculiarity of liking to change his lodgings once every three months on an average, which occasions some bewilderment to his country friends, who have no sooner learnt the 19 Belle Vue Road, Hampstead, than they have to take pains to forget that address, and to remember the 27½, Upper Brown Street, Camberwell; and so on, till I would rather learn a page of “Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary,” than try to remember the variety of directions which I have had to put on my letters to Mr. B. during the last three years. Last summer it pleased him to remove to a beautiful village not ten miles out of London, where there is a railway station. Thither his friend sought him. (I do not now speak of the following scent there had been through three or four different lodgings, where Mr. B. had been residing, before his country friend ascertained that he was now lodging at R——.) He spent the morning in making inquiries as to Mr. B.’s whereabouts in the village; but many gentlemen were lodging there for the summer, and neither butcher nor baker could inform him where Mr. B. was staying; his letters were unknown at the post-office, which was accounted for by the circumstance of their always being directed to his office in town. At last the country friend sauntered back to the railwayoffice, and while he waited for the train he made inquiry, as a last resource, of the book-keeper at the station. “No, sir, I cannot tell you where Mr. B. lodges—so many gentlemen go by the trains; but I have no doubt but that the person standing by that pillar can inform you.” The individual to whom he directed the inquirer’s attention had the appearance of a tradesman—respectable enough, yet with no pretensions to “gentility,” and had, apparently, no more urgent employment than lazily watching the passengers who came dropping in to the station. However, when he was spoken to, he answered civilly and promptly. “Mr. B.? tall gentleman, with light hair? Yes, sir, I know Mr. B. He lodges at No. 8 Morton Villas—has done these three weeks or more; but you’ll not find him there, sir, now. He went to town by the eleven o’clock train, and does not usually return until the half-past four train.”
The country friend had no time to lose in returning to the village, to ascertain the truth of this statement. He thanked his informant, and said he would call on Mr. B. at his office in town; but before he left R—— station, he asked the book-keeper who the person was to whom he had referred him for information as to his friend’s place of residence. “One of the detective police, sir,” was the answer. I need hardly say, that Mr. B., not without a little surprise, confirmed the accuracy of the policeman’s report in every particular.
When I heard this anecdote of my cousin and his friend, I thought that there could be no more romances written on the same kind of plot as Caleb Williams; the principal interest of which, to the superficial reader, consists in the alternation of hope and fear, that the hero may, or may not,escape his pursuer. It is long since I have read the story, and I forget the name of the offended and injured gentleman, whose privacy Caleb has invaded; but I know that his pursuit of Caleb—his detection of the various hiding-places of the latter—his following up of slight clews—all, in fact, depended upon his own energy, sagacity, and perseverance. The interest was caused by the struggle of man against man; and the uncertainty as to which would ultimately be successful in his object; the unrelenting pursuer, or the ingenious Caleb, who seeks by every device to conceal himself. Now, in 1851, the offended master would set the detective police to work; there would be no doubt as to their success; the only question would be as to the time that would elapse before the hiding-place could be detected, and that could not be a question long. It is no longer a struggle between man and man, but between a vast organised machinery, and a weak, solitary individual; we have no hopes, no fears—only certainty. But if the materials of pursuit and evasion, as long as the chase is confined to England, are taken away from the storehouse of the romancer, at any rate we can no more be haunted by the idea of the possibility of mysterious disappearances; and any one who has associated much with those who were alive at the end of the last century, can testify that there was some reason for such fears.
When I was a child I was sometimes permitted to accompany a relation to drink tea with a very clever old lady, of one hundred and twenty—or, so I thought then; I now think she, perhaps, was only about seventy. She was lively and intelligent, and had seen and known much that was worth narrating. She was a cousin of the Sneyds, the family whence Mr. Edgeworth took two of his wives; had knownMajor Andre; had mixed in the old Whig Society that the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire and “Buff and Blue Mrs. Crewe” gathered round them; her father had been one of the early patrons of the lovely Miss Linley. I name these facts to show that she was too intelligent and cultivated by association, as well as by natural powers, to lend an over easy credence to the marvellous; and yet I have heard her relate stories of disappearances which haunted my imagination longer than any tale of wonder. One of her stories was this:—Her father’s estate lay in Shropshire, and his park gates opened right on to a scattered village, of which he was landlord. The houses formed a straggling, irregular street—here a garden, next a gable end of a farm, there a row of cottages, and so on. Now, at the end of the house or cottage lived a very respectable man and his wife. They were well known in the village, and were esteemed for the patient attention which they paid to the husband’s father, a paralytic old man. In winter his chair was near the fire; in summer they carried him out into the open space in front of the house to bask in the sunshine, and to receive what placid amusement he could from watching the little passings to and fro of the villagers. He could not move from his bed to his chair without help. One hot and sultry June day all the village turned out to the hay fields. Only the very old and the very young remained.
The old father of whom I have spoken was carried out to bask in the sunshine that afternoon, as usual, and his son and daughter-in-law went to the hay making. But when they came home, in the early evening, their paralyzed father had disappeared—was gone! and from that day forwards nothing more was ever heard of him. The old lady, whotold this story, said, with the quietness that always marked the simplicity of her narrations, that every inquiry which her father could make was made, and that it could never be accounted for. No one had observed any stranger in the village; no small household robbery, to which the old man might have been supposed an obstacle, had been committed in his son’s dwelling that afternoon. The son and daughter-in-law (noted, too, for their attention to the helpless father) had been afield among all the neighbors the whole of the time. In short, it never was accounted for, and left a painful impression on many minds.
I will answer for it, the detective police would have ascertained every fact relating to it in a week.
This story from its mystery was painful, but had no consequences to make it tragical. The next which I shall tell, (and although traditionary, these anecdotes of disappearances which I relate in this paper are correctly repeated, and were believed by my informants to be strictly true,) had consequences, and melancholy ones, too. The scene of it is in a little country town, surrounded by the estates of several gentlemen of large property. About a hundred years ago there lived in this small town an attorney, with his mother and sisters. He was agent for one of the ‘squires near, and received rents for him on stated days, which, of course, were well known. He went at these times to a small public house, perhaps five miles from ——, where the tenants met him, paid their rents, and were entertained at dinner afterwards. One night he did not return from this festivity. He never returned. The gentleman whose agent he was employed the Dogberrys of the time to find him and the missing cash; the mother, whose support and comfort he was, soughthim with all the perseverance of faithful love. But he never returned, and by and by the rumor spread that he must have gone abroad with the money; his mother heard the whispers all around her, and could not disprove it; and so her heart broke, and she died. Years after, I think as many as fifty, the well-to-do butcher and grazier of —— died; but, before his death, he confessed that he had waylaid Mr. —— on the heath close to the town, almost within call of his own house, intending only to rob him; but meeting with more resistance than he anticipated, had been provoked to stab him, and had buried him that very night deep under the loose sand of the heath. There his skeleton was found; but too late for his poor mother to know that his fame was cleared. His sister, too, was dead, unmarried, for no one liked the possibilities which might arise from being connected with the family. None cared if he was guilty or innocent now.
If our detective police had only been in existence!
This last is hardly a story of unaccounted for disappearance. It is only unaccounted for in one generation. But disappearances never to be accounted for on any supposition are not uncommon, among the traditions of the last century. I have heard (and I think I have heard it in one of the earlier numbers of “Chambers’s Journal”) of a marriage which took place in Lincolnshire about the year 1750. It was not thende riguerthat the happy couple should set out on a wedding journey; but instead, they and their friends had a merry, jovial dinner at the house of either bride or groom; and in this instance the whole party adjourned to the bridegroom’s residence, and dispersed; some to ramble in the garden, some to rest in the house until the dinner hour. The bridegroom, it is to be supposed, was with his bride, when he was suddenly summoned away by a domestic, who said that a stranger wished to speak to him; and henceforward he was never seen more. The same tradition hangs about an old deserted Welsh hall, standing in a wood near Festiniog; there, too, the bridegroom was sent for to give audience to a stranger on his wedding day, and disappeared from the face of the earth from that time; but there they tell in addition, that the bride lived long,—that she passed her threescore years and ten, but that daily, during all those years, while there was light of sun or moon, to lighten the earth, she sat watching,—watching at one particular window, which commanded a view of the approach to the house. Her whole faculties, her whole mental powers, became absorbed in that weary watching; long before she died she was childish, and only conscious of one wish—to sit in that long, high window, and watch the road along which he might come. She was as faithful as Evangeline, if pensive and inglorious.
That these two similar stories of disappearance on a wedding-day “obtained,” as the French say, shows us that any thing which adds to our facility of communication, and organization of means, adds to our security of life. Only let a bridegroom try to disappear from an untamedKatherineof a bride, and he will soon be brought home like a recreant coward, overtaken by the electric telegraph, and clutched back to his fate by a detective policeman.
Two more stories of disappearance, and I have done. I will give you the last in date first, because it is the most melancholy; and we will wind up cheerfully (after a fashion.)
Some time between 1820 and 1830, there lived in North Shields a respectable old woman and her son, who was trying to struggle into sufficient knowledge of medicine to go out asship surgeon in a Baltic vessel, and perhaps in this manner to earn money enough to spend a session in Edinburgh. He was furthered in all his plans by the late benevolent Dr. G——, of that town. I believe the usual premium was not required in his case; the young man did many useful errands and offices which a finer young gentleman would have considered beneath him; and he resided with his mother in one of the alleys (or “chares,”) which lead down from the main street of North Shields to the river. Dr. G—— had been with a patient all night, and left her very early on a winter’s morning to return home to bed; but first he stepped down to his apprentice’s home, and bade him get up, and follow him to his own house, where some medicine was to be mixed, and then taken to the lady. Accordingly the poor lad came, prepared the dose, and set off with it some time between five and six on a winter’s morning. He was never seen again. Dr. G—— waited, thinking he was at his mother’s house; she waited, considering that he had gone to his day’s work. And meanwhile, as people remembered afterwards, the small vessel bound to Edinburgh sailed out of port. The mother expected him back her whole life long; but some years afterwards occurred the discoveries of the Hare and Burke horrors, and people seemed to gain a dark glimpse at his fate; but I never heard that it was fully ascertained, or indeed, more than surmised. I ought to add, that all who knew him spoke emphatically as to his steadiness of purpose and conduct, so as to render it improbable in the highest degree that he had run off to sea, or suddenly changed his plan of life in any way.
My last story is one of a disappearance which was accounted for after many years. There is a considerable street in Manchester, leading from the centre of the town to someof the suburbs. This street is called at one part Garratt, and afterwards, where it emerges into gentility and comparatively country, Brook Street. It derives its former name from an old black-and-white hall of the time of Richard the Third, or thereabouts, to judge from the style of building; they have closed in what is left of the old hall now; but a few years since this old house was visible from the main road; it stood low, on some vacant ground, and appeared to be half in ruins. I believe it was occupied by several poor families, who rented tenements in the tumble-down dwelling. But formerly it was Gerard Hall, (what a difference between Gerard and Garratt!) and was surrounded by a park, with a clear brook running through it, with pleasant fish ponds, (the name of these was preserved, until very lately, on a street near), orchards, dove-cotes, and similar appurtenances to the manor-houses of former days. I am almost sure that the family to whom it belonged were Mosleys; probably a branch of the tree of the lord of the Manor of Manchester. Any topographical work of the last century relating to their district would give the name of the last proprietor of the old stock, and it is to him that my story refers.
Many years ago there lived in Manchester two old maiden ladies, of high respectability. All their lives had been spent in the town, and they were fond of relating the changes which had taken place within their recollection; which extended back to seventy or eighty years from the present time. They knew much of its traditionary history from their father, as well; who, with his father before him, had been respectable attorneys in Manchester, during the greater part of the last century; they were, also, agents for several of the county families, who, driven from their old possessions by the enlargement of the town, found some compensation in the increased value of any land which they might choose to sell. Consequently the Messrs. S——, father and son, were conveyancers in good repute, and acquainted with several secret pieces of family history; one of which related to Garratt Hall.
The owner of this estate, some time in the first half of the last century, married young; he and his wife had several children, and lived together in a quiet state of happiness for many years. At last, business of some kind took the husband up to London; a week’s journey those days. He wrote, and announced his arrival; I do not think he ever wrote again. He seemed to be swallowed up in the abyss of the metropolis, for no friend (and the lady had many and powerful friends) could ever ascertain for her what had become of him; the prevalent idea was that he had been attacked by some of the street robbers who prowled about in those days, that he had resisted, and had been murdered. His wife gradually gave up all hopes of seeing him again, and devoted herself to the care of her children; and so they went on, tranquilly enough, until the heir became of age, when certain deeds were necessary before he could legally take possession of the property. These deeds Mr. S—— (the family lawyer) stated had been given up by him into the missing gentleman’s keeping just before the last mysterious journey to London, with which I think they were in some way concerned. It was possible that they were still in existence, some one in London might have them in possession, and be either conscious or unconscious of their importance. At any rate, Mr. S——’s advice to his client was that he should put an advertisement in the London papers, worded so skilfullythat any one who might hold the important documents should understand to what it referred, and no one else. This was accordingly done; and although repeated, at intervals, for some time, it met with no success. But, at last, a mysterious answer was sent, to the effect that the deeds were in existence, and should be given up; but only on certain conditions, and to the heir himself. The young man, in consequence, went up to London; and adjourned, according to directions, to an old house in Barbacan; where he was told by a man, apparently awaiting him, that he must submit to be blindfolded, and must follow his guidance. He was taken through several long passages before he left the house; at the termination of one of these he was put into a sedan chair, and carried about for an hour or more; he always reported that there were many turnings, and that he imagined he was set down finally not very far from his starting-point.
When his eyes were unbandaged, he was in a decent sitting-room, with tokens of family occupation lying about. A middle-aged gentleman entered, and told him that, until a certain time had elapsed (which should be indicated to him in a particular way, but of which the length was not then named), he must swear to secrecy as to the means by which he obtained possession of the deeds. This oath was taken, and then the gentleman, not without some emotion, acknowledged himself to be the missing father of the heir. It seems that he had fallen in love with a damsel, a friend of the person with whom he lodged. To this young woman he had represented himself as unmarried; she listened willingly to his wooing, and her father, who was a shopkeeper in the city, was not averse to the match, as the Lancashire ’squire had a goodly presence, and many similar qualities, which the shopkeeper thought might be acceptable to his customers. The bargain was struck; the descendant of a knightly race married the only daughter of the city shopkeeper, and became a junior partner in the business. He told his son that he had never repented the step he had taken; that his lowly-born wife was sweet, docile and affectionate; that his family by her was large; and that he and they were thriving and happy. He inquired after his first (or rather, I should say, his true) wife with friendly affection; approved of what she had done with regard to his estate, and the education of his children; but said that he considered he was dead to her, as she was to him. When he really died he promised that a particular message, the nature of which he specified, should be sent to his son at Garratt; until then they would not hear more of each other; for it was of no use attempting to trace him under his incognito, even if the oath did not render such an attempt forbidden. I dare say the youth had no great desire to trace out the father, who had been one in name only. He returned to Lancashire; took possession of the property at Manchester; and many years elapsed before he received the mysterious intimation of his father’s real death. After that he named the particulars connected with the recovery of the title-deeds to Mr. S——, and one or two intimate friends. When the family became extinct, or removed from Garratt, it became no longer any very closely kept secret, and I was told the tale of the disappearance by Miss S——, the aged daughter of the family agent.
Once more, let me say, I am thankful I live in the days of the detective police; if I am murdered, or commit a bigamy, at any rate my friends will have the comfort of knowing all about it.
SEVERALyears ago I made a tour through some of the southern counties of England with a friend. We travelled in an open carriage, stopping for a few hours a day, or a week, as it might be, wherever there was any thing to be seen; and we generally got through one stage before breakfast, because it gave our horses rest, and ourselves the chance of enjoying the brown bread, new milk, and fresh eggs of those country roadside inns, which are fast becoming subjects for archæological investigation.
One evening my friend said, “To-morrow, we will breakfast at T——. I want to inquire about a family named Lovell, who used to live there. I met the husband and wife and two lovely children, one summer, at Exmouth. We became very intimate, and I thought them particularly interesting people, but I have never seen them since.”
The next morning’s sun shone as brightly as heart could desire, and after a delightful drive, we reached the outskirts of the town about nine o’clock.
“O, what a pretty inn!” said I, as we approached a small white house, with a sign swinging in front of it, and a flower garden on one side.
“Stop, John,” cried my friend; “we shall get a much cleaner breakfast here than in the town, I dare say; and ifthere is any thing to be seen there, we can walk to it;” so we alighted, and were shown into a neat little parlor, with white curtains, where an unexceptionable rural breakfast was soon placed before us.
“Pray do you happen to know any thing of a family called Lovell?” inquired my friend, whose name, by the way, was Markham. “Mr. Lovell was a clergyman.”
“Yes, ma’am,” answered the girl who attended us, apparently the landlord’s daughter, “Mr. Lovell is the vicar of our parish.”
“Indeed! and does he live near here?”
“Yes, ma’am, he lives at the vicarage. It is just down that lane opposite, about a quarter of a mile from here; or you can go across the fields, if you please, to where you see that tower, it’s close by there.”
“And which is the pleasantest road?” inquired Mrs. Markham.
“Well, ma’am, I think by the fields is the pleasantest, if you don’t mind a stile or two; and, besides, you get the best view of the abbey by going that way.”
“Is that tower we see part of the abbey?”
“Yes, ma’am,” answered the girl; “and the vicarage is just the other side of it.”
Armed with these instructions, as soon as we had finished our breakfast we started across the fields, and after a pleasant walk of twenty minutes we found ourselves in an old churchyard, amongst a cluster of the most picturesque ruins we had ever seen. With the exception of the gray tower, which we had espied from the inn, and which had doubtless been the belfry, the remains were not considerable. There was the outer wall of the chancel, and the broken step that had led tothe high altar, and there were sections of aisles, and part of a cloister, all gracefully festooned with mosses and ivy; whilst mingled with the grass-grown graves of the prosaic dead, there were the massive tombs of the Dame Margerys and the Sir Hildebrands of more romantic periods. All was ruin and decay; but such poetic ruins! such picturesque decay! And just beyond the tall great tower, there was the loveliest, smiling little garden, and the prettiest cottage, that imagination could picture. The day was so bright, the grass so green, the flowers so gay, the air so balmy with their sweet perfumes, the birds sang so cheerily in the apple and cherry trees, that all nature seemed rejoicing.
“Well,” said my friend, as she seated herself on the fragment of a pillar, and looked around her, “now that I see this place, I understand the sort of people the Lovells were.”
“What sort of people were they?” said I.
“Why, as I said before, interesting people. In the first place, they were both extremely handsome.”
“But the locality had nothing to do with their good looks, I presume,” said I.
“I am not sure of that,” she answered; “when there is the least foundation of taste or intellect to set out with, the beauty of external nature, and the picturesque accidents that harmonise with it, do, I am persuaded, by their gentle and elevating influences on the mind, make the handsome handsomer, and the ugly less ugly. But it was not alone the good looks of the Lovells that struck me, but their air of refinement and high breeding, and I should say high birth—though I know nothing about their extraction—combined with their undisguised poverty and as evident contentment. Now, I can understand such people finding here an appropriate home, and being satisfied with their small share of this world’s goods; because here the dreams of romance writers about love in a cottage might be somewhat realized; poverty might be graceful and poetical here; and then, you know, they have no rent to pay.”
“Very true,” said I; “but suppose they had sixteen daughters, like a half-pay officer I once met on board a steam packet?”
“That would spoil it, certainly,” said Mrs. Markham; “but let us hope they have not. When I knew them they had only two children, a boy and a girl, called Charles and Emily; two of the prettiest creatures I ever beheld.”
As my friend thought it yet rather early for a visit, we had remained chattering in this way for more than an hour, sometimes seated on a tombstone, or a fallen column; sometimes peering amongst the carved fragments that were scattered about the ground, and sometimes looking over the hedge into the little garden, the wicket of which was immediately behind the tower. The weather being warm, most of the windows of the vicarage were open, and the blinds were all down; we had not yet seen a soul stirring, and were just wondering whether we might venture to present ourselves at the door, when a strain of distant music struck upon our ears. “Hark!” I said; “how exquisite! It was the only thing wanting to complete the charm.”
“It is a military band, I think,” said Mrs. Markham; “you know we passed some barracks before we reached the inn.”
Nearer and nearer drew the sounds, solemn and slow; the band was evidently approaching by the green lane that skirted the fields we had come by. “Hush!” said I, laying my hand on my friend’s arm, with a strange sinking of the heart;“they are playing the Dead March in Saul! Don’t you hear the muffled drums? It’s a funeral, but where’s the grave?”
“There!” said she, pointing to a spot close under the hedge where some earth had been thrown up; but the aperture was covered with a plank, probably to prevent accidents.
There are few ceremonies in life at once so touching, so impressive, so sad, and yet so beautiful as a soldier’s funeral! Ordinary funerals, with their unwieldy hearses and feathers, and the absurd looking mutes, and the “inky cloaks” and weepers of hired mourners, always seem to me like a mockery of the dead; the appointments border so closely on the grotesque; they are so little in keeping with the true, the only view of death that can render life endurable!
There is such a tone of exaggerated—forced, heavy, overacted gravity about the whole thing, that one had need to have a deep personal interest involved in the scene, to be able to shut one’s eyes to the burlesque side of it. But a military funeral, how different! There you see death in life and life in death! There is nothing overstrained, nothing overdone. At once simple and solemn, decent and decorous, consoling, yet sad. The chief mourners, at best, are generally true mourners, for they have lost a brother with whom “they sat but yesterday at meat;” and whilst they are comparing memories, recalling how merry they had many a day been together, and the solemn tones of that sublime music float upon the air, we can imagine the freed and satisfied soul wafted on those harmonious breathings to its heavenly home; and our hearts are melted, our imaginations exalted, our faith invigorated, and we come away the better for what we have seen.
I believe some such reflections as these were passing through our minds, for we both remained silent and listening, till the swinging to of the little wicket, which communicated with the garden, aroused us; but nobody appeared, and the tower being at the moment betwixt us and it, we could not see who had entered. Almost at the same moment a man came in from a gate on the opposite side, and advancing to where the earth was thrown up, lifted the plank and discovered the newly-made grave. He was soon followed by some boys, and several respectable-looking persons came into the enclosure, whilst nearer and nearer drew the sound of the muffled drums; and now we descried the firing party and their officer, who led the procession with their arms reversed, each man wearing above the elbow a piece of black crape and a small bow of white satin ribbon; the band still playing that solemn strain. Then came the coffin, borne by six soldiers. Six officers bore up the pall, all quite young men; and on the coffin lay the shako, sword, side-belt, and white gloves of the deceased. A long train of mourners marched two and two, in open file, the privates first, the officers last. Sorrow was imprinted on every face; there was no unseemly chattering, no wandering eyes; if a word was exchanged, it was in a whisper, and the sad shake of the head showed of whom they were discoursing. All this we observed as they marched through the lane that skirted one side of the churchyard. As they neared the gate the band ceased to play.
“See there!” said Mrs. Markham, directing my attention to the cottage; “there comes Mr. Lovell. O, how he has changed!” and whilst she spoke, the clergyman, entering by the wicket, advanced to meet the procession at the gate, where he commenced reading the funeral service as he movedbackwards towards the grave, round which the firing party, leaning on their firelocks, now formed. Then came those awful words, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the hollow sound of the earth upon the coffin, and three volleys fired over the grave finished the solemn ceremony.
When the procession entered the churchyard, we had retired behind the broken wall of the chancel, whence, without being observed, we had watched the whole scene with intense interest. Just as the words “Ashes to ashes! dust to dust!” were pronounced, I happened to raise my eyes towards the gray tower, and then, peering through one of the narrow slits, I saw the face of a man—such a face! Never to my latest day can I forget the expression of those features! If ever there was despair and anguish written on a human countenance, it was there! And yet so young! so beautiful! A cold chill ran through my veins as I pressed Mrs. Markham’s arm. “Look up at the tower!” I whispered.