Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) (229 page)

Henry III (1207–1272) was the son and successor of King John, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death.

INTRODUCTIO
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“Well! now are we in Arden,” said an English traveller to his companion, as they passed between Coventry and Warwick, over ground, which his dear Shakspeare had made classic. As he uttered this exclamation of Rosalind, he looked forward with somewhat of the surprise and curiosity, which she may be supposed to have felt, and with an enthusiasm all his own, on beholding the very scene, into which the imagination of the poet had so often transported him with a faint degree of its own rapture. He was not, it appears, one of those critics, who think that the Arden of Shakspeare, lay in France. But he looked in vain for the thick and gloomy woods, which, in a former age, were the home of the doubtful fugitive, and so much the terror of the traveller, that it had been found necessary, on this very road, to clear the ground, for a breadth of six acres on each side, in order to protect the wayfaring part of his Majesty’s liege subjects.

Now, albeit the landscape was still wild and woody, he could not any where espy a forest scene of dignity sufficient to call up before his fancy the exiled duke and his court, at their hunter-feast, beneath the twilight of the boughs; nor a single beech, under the grandeur of whose shade the melancholy Jaques, might “lose and neglect the creeping hours of time,” while he sadly sympathized with the poor stag, that, escaped from the pursuit of man, came to drop his tears into the running brook, and to die in quiet. Not even a grove appeared, through whose deep vista the traveller might fancy that he caught, in the gayer light, a glimpse of the wandering Rosalind and her companions, the wearied princess and the motley fool, or of the figure of Orlando, leaning against an oak, and listening to her song: he could not even catch the last faint echo of that song, in a scene so different from the one his fancy had represented to him for the forest of Arden.

“Alas!” said he, “that enchanting vision is no more found, except in the very heart of a populous city, and then neither by the glimmering of the dawn, nor by the glow of evening, but by the paltry light of stage-lamps. Yet there, surrounded by a noisy multitude, whose cat-calls often piped instead of the black-bird, I have found myself transported into the wildest region of poetry and solitude; while here, on the very spot where Shakspeare drew, I am suddenly let down from the full glow of my holiday-feelings into the plain reality of this work-a-day world.”

Here ensued a conversation on illusions of the imagination and on the various powers of exciting them, shown by English poets, especially by Shakspeare and Milton, which it is unnecessary to repeat in this place. Such was its length, that Mr. Simpson’s part in it had gradually become less and less active, while Willoughton’s increased earnestness had rendered him less and less sensible of the deficiency of replies. At last, on his asking, rather peremptorily, whether his friend did not recollect some fine effects of the towers of Windsor Castle upon the imagination, Mr. Simpson, fortunately concealing how nearly he had approached to a nap, answered, “No, no; I do not recollect any thing of what you tell me; but you were talking a little while ago of Hamlet and towers; now, if you want towers that would do honour to Hamlet, go to Warwick Castle, and if we reach it, as we hope, this night, you can walk from the inn while supper is preparing, and you will find, on the terrace or platform before the gates, towers frowning and majestic enough. If the moon is up, you will see them to perfection, and, as you are so fond of ghosts, you can hardly fail to make an assignation with one there.” “I shall delight in the advantage,” replied Willoughton, laughing: “Though I am not so fond of ghosts in general, as you seem to think. It is only for a few of particular excellence, that I feel a friendship; for them, indeed, I am willing to own even an affection.”

Willoughton, not receiving a rejoinder, observed, that his friend had fallen again into his nap; and he returned to the busy thoughts, to which his first view of this land of Arden, the ground of Shakspeare, had led. Sunk in reverie, he was no longer in the living scene, but ranging over worlds of his own, till a jolt of the carriage awoke his companion; who, shaking his head, and looking out of the window, with the sudden alertness of one who thinks he has been losing time, now supposed himself bound to brush up his thoughts and to talk to his friend.

Willoughton could well have spared the interruption, till a remark, delivered with an air of self-satisfaction, touched the string that recalled him willingly to the present scene.

“There now is an oak,” said Simpson, “that may have been of Elizabeth’s time, by the hollowness of its vast trunk and the state of its branches.”

“Ay, long before her time,” said his companion, “and perhaps Shakspeare’s eyes have dwelt on it; perhaps he has rested under its shade: — O! we are coming now to something like the Forest of Arden: see how finely the woods rise in the distance, and what a rich gleam the western sun throws along the ground, beyond those low-hung boughs on our left.”

As the travellers advanced upon Kenilworth-chace, the country assumed a more forest-like appearance, and a new train of ideas engaged Willoughton, on approaching the venerable ruins of the once magnificent castle, at one period its prison, and at another, the
plaisance
of royalty, where Edward the II. groaned under the traitorous power of Mortimer, and his abandoned Queen; and where the crafty Leicester entertained Elizabeth, with princely splendour. The domain of this castle, with its parks and chaces, included a circuit of nearly twenty miles; and when a survey of it was taken in the reign of James the I., on its forfeiture by the voluntary exile and contempt of Sir Robert Dudley, the son of Leicester and of his first wife, the Lady Sheffield, — the woods alone were valued at twenty thousand pounds, according to Dugdale, who observes of the castle and its territory, that “the like, both for strength, state, and pleasure, was not within the realm of England.”

Recollections of the long and varied history of this castle, crowded upon the mind of Willoughton, and he looked out, with impatience, for a glimpse of its stately towers in the distance, and then of its mouldering gateways, in the sun gleam, beneath the woods that now rose round him with majestic shade. Here, at least, was a mass and pomp of foliage worthy of the noble ruin he was approaching and of the memory of Arden; and, when he first caught a view of the grey walls and turrets overtopping the woods, lighted up by the evening sun, whose long beams, slanting now under the boughs, touched with a golden flush the bending trunk of many an old beech standing deep within the shade, he uttered a note of admiration and curiosity that discomposed Mr. Simpson, who immediately directed the postilion to make his way to the nearest gate.

Soon afterwards they found themselves in a valley, whose woody slopes excluded all distant prospect, and confined their attention to the venerable relique, which seemed to characterise, with its own quiet gloom, the surrounding landscape. They observed the several fine and detached masses of the castle rising on a lone rock in the centre of this secluded little valley; and, as they drove towards the only entrance of the area of these deserted courts, near the square-turreted gateway, which Leicester built for the grand approach to the castle, the impatience of Willoughton became tempered with a gentle and luxurious melancholy, and he forgot even Shakspeare, while he was influenced by somewhat of the poet’s feelings.

But a sense of real life broke in upon him even in this scene of solemn grandeur, and it required somewhat of the patience of a philosopher to endure, in the full glow of his present enthusiasm, the clamorous impetuosity of idle children, who, on the first sound of wheels, were seen running to assail the strangers from every cottage on the neighbouring banks. The visions of quiet solitude and of venerable antiquity were, in an instant, dispersed; the chaise was surrounded, and the travellers, having alighted, made their way with difficulty to the little gate, that led through a garden beside Leicester’s ruined tower into the area that was once the lower court of the castle, followed by a noisy troop, whom neither money, nor command, could for some time disperse.

The tower — the gateway being now closed up, — was no longer accessible to curiosity, nor could gratify it by any traits of the customs of former times. No warder’s bench lurked within the gloom, nor portcullis hung in the arch. The warden’s chamber for those, who, by military tenure, kept guard on certain nights of the year, was transformed into a light parlour, and the whole building changed into a modern habitation. From the green and broken square, anciently the lower courtyard, the travellers looked up to the noble mass of ruins that yet stand proudly on their rocky knoll, and form three irregular sides of what was once the inner and grand court.

On the fourth side, which separated the upper from the lower court, are now no vestiges, save in the inequality of the ground where their foundations stood, and where the walls, fallen from above, may lie buried under the turf and briers, that now cover the spot.

On the left, the shattered walls of that lofty pile, built by Leicester, and still called by his name, advance proudly to the edge of the eminence that overlooked the lower court, hung with the richest drapery of ivy; on the right, stands the strong square tower, called Cæsar’s, which, though the most ancient part of the castle, appears fresher and less injured by time, than parts that were raised some ages later. This was the keep, or citadel, of the castle; and the prodigious thickness of the walls appears through the three arches in front, proportioned and shaped like some which may yet be seen in aqueducts near Rome; the walls here show a depth of fifteen or sixteen feet. The stone, of which this noble tower is built, is of closer texture and of a greyer hue, than that in any other part of the building; and this hue harmonizes beautifully with the ivy towers, which overshadow its arches and door-cases, and with the ashlings and elder crowning its summit, which highly overtops every relique of this once magnificent abode of princes.

“It should seem,” said Willoughton, “that no human force could lay low walls of such strength as these; yet, as one side of the tower is destroyed, while the other three remain nearly entire, it must have been assailed by some power more sudden and partial than that of time.”

“Yes, Sir, yes,” said a man, who had been standing by, observing the strangers with attentive curiosity, “that part was pulled down by Cromwell’s soldiers, and, if they had had more time on their side, they would have pulled it all down; as it was, they did a mort of mischief.”

Willoughton turned to look at his informer, and saw a tall, thin man, who appeared to be a villager, and who, without waiting for encouragement, proceeded: “I have heard say, they destroyed all that stood between Cæsar’s and John O’Gaunt’s tower there, at the end of the great hall, and a deal on the other side of the court, between the Whitehall and Lord Leicester’s buildings.”

“Are those walls before us the remains of the great hall?” inquired Mr. Simpson, pointing to a picturesque mass of ruins, standing on the third side of the upper court and seen in perspective between the other two.

“Yes, Sir,” said the man, “that there was the great banqueting-hall where” —

“Leicester entertained Queen Elizabeth,” observed Willoughton. “How beautifully the ivy falls over those light Gothic window-mullions and that arched doorway, so appropriately and elegantly sculptured with vine-leaves! The sun now slopes its rays through the arch, as if purposely to show the beauty of its proportion and the grace of the vine that entwines it.”

“Ay,” said Mr. Simpson, “many a pitcher of wine and many a baron of beef have been carried under that arch by the King’s yeomen, when Henry the Third kept his court here.”

“I doubt whether by yeomen,” replied Willoughton, “for, though yeomen of the household are mentioned, about this time, yeomen of the guard, a part of whose office it afterwards became to carry certain dishes to the King’s table, do not occur till the reign of Henry the Seventh. However, it is probable, that, before the appointment of the latter, yeomen of the household might perform this business on state occasions, and in that very hall may have stood before the long tables, in double row, with wine ewers in their hands.”

“Those were times worth living in,” observed Mr. Simpson.

“Ay, those were jolly times! Sir,” said the stranger man; “it’s lonely and sad enough in that old hall now; nothing but briers and ivy. Why, there is an ivy tree now against that old wall there, partly as old as the wall itself. Look, Sir, it is as grey, and almost as sapless as the stone it crawls upon, though the trunk is such a size, and hardly shows a green leaf, spring or summer.”

The travellers made their way among the briers to take a nearer view of it; and, if verdant festoons of younger plants had charmed them, Willoughton, at least, was no less affected by the withered sinews and grey locks of this most forlorn and aged tree, which had itself become a ruin, while adorning another. He climbed over hillocks of briers and weeds, which now covered the ruins of walls, fallen into this courtyard, and he looked down into the area of the great hall, through a doorway which had once led from it by a vestibule towards the white-hall, of which latter hardly a vestige remains, and to King Henry’s lodgings. Here he distinguished the upper end of that magnificent banqueting-room, the very spot where the
deis
, or high table, had stood, which had feasted kings and princes, its lords, or visitors; where Henry the Third had sitten, where John O’Gaunt had caroused, and where Elizabeth had received the homage of Leicester.

At one end of this platform were still the remains of the large bay-window, opening upon the grand-court, where the cupboard had stood, and the golden plate was piled; at the other end, a windowed recess bowed out towards the spot, where there had been a lake, and to woods, that still flourished. This also, on state occasions, had probably held a plate-board, or cupboard, and, on others, had been occupied as a pleasant seat, commanding the finest views of the park.