Literary by-paths in old England

Preface

Chief among the charms of the English countryside is the field footpath. It may not offer the most direct route between two given points ; but as, avoiding the dusty high road, it leads the wanderer over verdant meadows, through fields of golden grain, or amid the still recesses of sheltering woodlands, he will not grudge the lengthening of his journey. Along such pathways, which best afford opportunities for quiet meditation, eye and ear are often greeted by sights and sounds not seen or heard on the more frequented highway.

Some such function in the world of literature it is the object of these pages to fill. They are not concerned with criticism, that much-travelled and often dust-enveloped thoroughfare ; instead, they attempt to seek out the pleasant places in the lives of those authors of whom the several papers treat. Still, it may be claimed that, notwithstanding the avoidance of literary criticism, these chapters offer a considerable amount of new x PREFACE

information. In the case of Thomas Carlyle, a visit to his native village resulted in the gleaning of some characteristic and unpublished stories of the sage and his family ; while the papers on John Keats and Thomas Hood are, thanks to the kindness of my late friend, Mr. Towneley Green, R. I., enriched with much fresh and valuable material. Many of the photographs, also, depict either places or documents hitherto unidentified or unpublished.

Contents

Page

I. In Spenser's Footsteps 1

II. The Home of Sir Philip Sidney .... 57

II The Home Of Sir Philip Sidney

II

THE HOME OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

" For a dearer life Never in battle hath been offered up, Since in like cause and in unhappy day, By Zutpheris walls the peerless Sidney fell."

Robert South ey.

Sir Philip Sidney is the enigma of the Elizabethan age. His span of life was but a brief thirty-two years, and as the first twenty years of any man's career are but a preparation for the activities of after-life, Sidney had only twelve years in which to impress himself on English history and win his renown. But they sufficed. After the lapse of more than three centuries his fame shines as brightly in the annals of England as that of Spenser, of Raleigh, of Drake, of Shakespeare, and of other Elizabethan immortals, against whose names there are recorded achievements far surpassing anything Sidney ever accomplished.

As great deeds went in England in the closing half of the sixteenth century, Sidney did nothing great. He made the grand tour as a recognised necessary part of a liberal education in those days ; he was sent to Vienna on a small embassy of condolence ; he was appointed cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth ; he addressed a surprisingly bold epistle to his sovereign in opposition to her contemplated marriage with the Duke of Anjou ; and, finally, as Earl Leicester's companion, he was named Governor of Flushing. This record, even with his literary work thrown in, offers no explanation of the persistence of Sidney's fame. He lives, really, by the heroism of his death, and that heroism was the natural flower of his rare character, and that character was moulded into its fine quality by a wise father and a tender mother in Sidney's happy boyhood days at Penshurst.

When Musidorus, escaped from shipwreck, accompanied his two shepherd friends to the house of Kalender in Arcadia, he found himself in the presence of a building made " of fair and strong stone, not effecting so much any extraordinary kind of fineness as an honorable presenting of a firm stateliness. The lights, doors, and stairs rather directed to the use of the guest than to the eye of the artificer, and yet as the one chiefly heeded so the other not neglected ; each place 60 handsome without loathsomeness ; not so dainty as not to be trod on, nor yet slubberd up with good fellow-ships ; all more lasting than beautiful but that the consideration of the exceeding lastingness made the eye believe it was exceedingly beautiful. The back side of the house was neither field, garden, nor orchard, or rather it was both field, garden, and orchard, for as soon as the de- 61 scending of the stairs had delivered them (that is, Musidorus and Kalender) down they came into a place cunningly set with trees of the most taste-pleasing fruits ; but scarcely had they taken that into their consideration but that they were suddenly stepped into a delicate green thicket, and behind the thickets again new beds of flowers, which being underneath the trees were to them a pavilion, and they were to the trees a mosaical floor, so that it seemed that that art therein would needs be delighted by counterfeiting his enemy error and making order in confusion. In the midst of all the place was a fair pond, whose shaking crystal was a perfect mirror to all the other beauties, so that it bare show of two gardens, one in deed the other in shadows."

So wrote Sidney in the " Arcadia," and the model he had in mind was undoubtedly that stately Penshurst home in which he had his birth.

In all the fair county of Kent there is probably no more picturesque village than Penshurst. Its beauty is that of the past. Modernity has no footing here. Elizabethan types are renewed in an Edwardian age. As the daisy of to-day fashions itself by unerring heredity into the likeness of the daisy of five centuries ago, so the 62

Penshurst cottage homes of the twentieth century perpetuate the semblance of those village homes which clustered about the mansion of the Sidneys in the sixteenth century. Example and authority account for this persistence of type. The example is there in the quaint half-timbered dwellings of the fifteenth century which overhang the pathway that gives entrance to the quiet churchyard ; the authority, in the wise determination of the lord of the manor that any old building which has become unfit for habitation shall be replaced by one bearing exact likeness to that it has displaced. Thus the newest houses look as ancient as the oldest.

Penshurst Place is not exempt from this rule which enforces continuity with the past. Although various additions have been made to the mansion, the harmony of its outward semblance is undisturbed. Between the old banqueting hall of the fourteenth century and the new wing of the nineteenth century there is no discord ; loyalty to the past has shaped every new stone and fitted it so deftly into its place that even the old builders themselves would be deceived could they revisit the work of their hands.

Although Penshurst has been the residence of a noble family almost from the time of the 63

Norman Conquest, it was not until the middle of the sixteenth century that it became the home of the Sidneys. It was to Sir William Sidney, a great favourite and faithful servant of Henry VIII, that Edward VI, in the year of his death, granted the manor of Penshurst. But

Penshurst Place

Sir William had brief enjoyment of the gift, dying as he did in the year in which he received it. His son, Sir Henry Sidney, the father of Philip, succeeded, and he, in 1585, erected the tower which now forms the central feature of the north front. Over the gateway of this tower is still to be seen a stone tablet bearing an inscription which reads thus :

" The most religious and renowned Prince Edward the Sixth, Kinge of England, France and Ireland, gave this house of Pencester with the mannors, landes and appurtences thereunto belongings, unto his trustye and well-beloved servant, Syr William Sidney, Knight Bannaret, servinge him from the tyme of his birth unto his coronation, in the offices of chamberlayne and stuarde of his household, in commemoration of which most worthie and famous Kinge, Sir Henry Sidney, Knight of the most noble order of the garter, Lord President of the Council established in the Marches of Wales, sonne and heyre of the afore named Syr William Sidney, caused this tower to be buylded and that most excellent Prince's arms to be errected anno domino 1585."

Other additions to Penshurst owe their existence to Sir Henry Sidney, but it is his greatest glory that here he moulded the character of his illustrious son, Philip. The room in which he was born on November 29, 1554, is still pointed out, and scattered through the house are portraits and relics which serve the imagination liberally in its pleasant task of picturing the image of this noble youth. Among the family manuscripts is

5 65 one document which goes far towards explaining how he became what we know him to have been. This is the first letter ever written by Sir Henry to his son, then at school at Shrewsbury, England, and as the lapse of three centuries has not rendered its advice obsolete nor its spirit less worthy of imitation, it may be quoted almost in full. After acknowledging the receipt of two letters from his son, one in Latin and the other in French, Sir Henry proceeds :

" Since this is my first letter that ever I did write to you, I will not that it be all empty of some advices, which my natural care for you provoketh me to wish you to follow, as documents to you in this your tender age. Let your first action be the lifting of your mind to Almighty God by hearty prayer ; and feelingly digest the words you speak in prayer, with continued meditation and thinking of Him to whom you pray and of the matter for which you pray. And use this as an ordinary act, and at an ordinary hour, whereby the time itself shall put you in remembrance to do that which you are accustomed to do in that time. Apply your study to such hours as your discreet master doth assign you, earnestly ; and the time I know he will so limit 66 as shall be both sufficient for your learning and safe for your health. And mark the sense of the matter of that you read, as well as the words. So shall you both enrich your tongue with words and your wit with matter ; and judgment will grow as years groweth in you. Be humble and obedient to your master for unless you frame yourself to obey others, yea, and feel in yourself what obedience is, you shall never be able to teach others how to obey you. Be courteous of gesture and affable to all men, with diversity of reverence according to the dignity of the person : there is nothing that winneth so much with so little cost. Use moderate diet, so as after your meal you may find your wit fresher and not duller, and your body more lively and not more heavy. Seldom drink wine, and yet sometimes do, lest being enforced to drink upon the sudden you should find yourself inflamed. Use exercise of body yet such as is without peril of your joints and bones, it will increase your force and enlarge your breath. Delight to be cleanly, as well in all parts of your body as in your garments : it shall make you grateful in each company, and otherwise loathsome. Give yourself to be merry for you degenerate from your father if you find not yourself most able in wit and 67 body and to do anything when you be most merry ; but let your mirth be ever void of all scurrility and biting words to any man, for a wound given by a word is often-times harder to be cured than that which is given with the sword. . . . Think upon every word that you will speak before you utter it, and remember how nature hath ramparted up, as it were, the tongue with teeth, lips, yea, and hair without the lips, and all betokening reins or bridles for the loose use of that member. Above all things tell no untruth ; even, in trifles : the custom of it is naughty. . . . Remember, my son, the noble blood you are descended of, by your mother's side ; and think that only by virtuous life and good action you may be an ornament to that illustrious family, and otherwise, through vice and sloth you shall be counted 'labes generis,' one of the greatest curses that can happen to man."

To this notable letter, Philip's mother, Lady Mary Sidney, added a postscript which is as remarkable for its loving reverence for her husband as for its affectionate solicitude for her son. Letter and postscript, reflecting as in a mirror the characters of Sir Henry and Lady Sidney, explain the high abstracted life of their son and give us the clue to the heroism of his death. It is easy to imagine the days of his boyhood at Penshurst. Ever before him was the image of parents who never faltered in their love for each other and were never divided in the authority with which they shaped the lives of their children. Yet that authority was far removed from austerity. Firm it doubtless was, but loving, and seasoned with innocent mirth. Nothing of good repute was lacking in the childhood environment of Philip Sidney ; from his earliest days he breathed the atmosphere of a home where all that tended to make life joyous and strong had free entrance.

Whether roaming about the park or through the spacious rooms of this old-world mansion, the visitor is ever confronted with memorials of an age of men long passed away. When Philip Sidney was born, an oak was planted in the park to celebrate the coming of Sir Henry's heir, and Ben Jonson, in his day, could describe it as

" That taller tree which of a truth was set At his great birth, when all the muses met."

That birthday tree is gone ; it was cut down in 1768 ; but there still exists the " Sidney Oak," a veteran of many centuries, in whose shadow Philip often sat while framing his own verse or 69 discussing with Spenser the stanzas of the " Shepherds Calender " or the scheme of the " Faerie Queene." For when Spenser returned to London after his sojourn in the north of England on the completion of his college days at Cambridge, and was casting about for an occupation in life, he was the guest of Sidney at Penshurst, and there saw in tangible flesh the high-souled man who became for him the ideal of a perfect knight and gentleman. It was at Penshurst, there is every reason for believing, that Spenser prepared his " Shepherds Calender " for the press, and his companionship with Sidney there accounts for his issuing that work under the shelter of a dedication to his " noble and virtuous " host. It accounts, too, for Sidney figuring so largely in the little poem with which he prefaced the book.

" Goe, little booke ! thy selfe present, As child whose parent is unkent, To him that is the president Of Noblesse and of chevalree.

And if that Envie barke at thee, As sure it will, for succoure flee Under the shadow of his wing ; And asked who thee forth did bring, A shepherds swaine, saye, did thee sing All as his straying flocke he fedde ; And, when his honor has thee redde, Crave pardon for my hardyhedde. 70

Among the rich and rare collections of armour adorning the corridors and rooms of the mansion is Sidney's helmet, bearing his familiar porcupine crest, and elsewhere is to be seen a fragment of his shaving-glass, enclosed in a rude frame. Then there are numerous portraits of the hero, in one of which he has for companion his brother Robert, the first Earl of Leicester. Not less interesting are the portraits of his mother, Lady Mary Sidney, and that sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, for whose amusement in the time of her travail with her first-born he wrote his "Arcadia."

Each stately apartment of Penshurst is replete with historical relics. In the ballroom, which is the first to be visited, there is a bushel measure made from gun metal captured in the fight with the Spanish Armada, and overhead there hang three priceless chandeliers, the gift of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Henry Sidney. It is comforting to know that her Majesty did give Sir Henry something, for it is certain that his services on her behalf as Lord President of Wales and Lord Deputy of Ireland made him immensely poorer in worldly goods if they enriched him with honour. But it is probable that those chandeliers were much more than paid for by the hospitality Elizabeth received on her visit to Penshurst. The apartment next to the ballroom is still known as Queen Elizabeth's Room, and here may yet be seen the suite of furniture made specially in honour of her visit and for her use. Her armchair is in the centre of the apartment, and by the aid of a portrait on the wall it is easy to recall the figure of the Virgin Queen and seat her once more in its capacious depths. Close by stands the card-table for which Elizabeth worked the embroidered top, and in front of that is the black velvet stool upon which Queen Victoria knelt at her coronation in Westminster Abbey. Other royal relics may be sought in the tiny Pages' Closet which opens off the Tapestry Room. This small chamber has now become the storeroom for the family china, and here are preserved Queen Elizabeth's dessert service and Queen Anne's breakfast set. The dessert service has for its ground color a lovely shade of green such as is not seen in modern china, and the breakfast set of Anne is of exquisite blue and white porcelain. In the picture gallery, a noble apartment ninety feet in length, are sufficient objects of virtu to make the fame of two or three museums. Side by side may be seen a quaint old clock with a horizontal brass face and a curious old lamp which was intended to measure time rather than 74 shed light. At the opposite ends of the widened recess are two costly cabinets, and near one of these is a richly decorated spinet which was made in Rome in 1680 for Christina, Queen of Sweden. In this room, too, are a pair of riding-boots which belonged to Algernon Sidney, that premature republican who lost his head on the testimony of a book he had written but had not published.

Penshurst has gathered other interesting associations than those immediately concerned with Sir Philip Sidney. Ben Jonson was a frequent visitor here, and his visits have left their impress on his verse. In " The Forest," for example, there occurs a lengthy description of Penshurst, in the midst of which we happen upon a pleasing picture of the kindly relationship which existed between its noble owners and the retainers of the estate.

" And though thy walls be of the country stone, They 're reared with no man's ruin, no man's groan; There 's none that dwell about them wish them down. But all come in, the farmer and the clown, And no one empty-handed to salute Thy lord and lady, though they have no suit. Some bring a capon, some a rural cake, Some nuts, some apples, some think they make The better cheeses, bring them ; or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear An emblem of themselves in plum or pear." 77

Nor should Algernon Sidney be forgotten. Next to Sir Philip he is the best known member of his famous house. Even in his youth he was credited with a " huge deal of wit and much sweetness of nature." Among the stanchest of his friends was William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and it was at Penshurst the two drew up between them the fundamental articles of the Pennsylvania constitution. He had bitter experience of the gratitude of kings. Two of Charles's children found a haven at Penshurst when the fortunes of the Royal house were wrecked by the Commonwealth, and a third, Charles II, rewarded the brutal Judge Jeffreys with a costly ring for his services at the mock trial which sent Algernon to the scaffold !

One other memory links itself with Penshurst, and this time it is a woman's fair form that fills the imagination. Algernon Sidney had a sister named Dorothy, and it was her fate to awaken a passionate love in the heart of Edmund Waller. He wooed her with all a poet's intensity, and bent his muse to the service of his desire. Penshurst and his poems perpetuate his passion to this day. In the affected language of the seventeenth century, he christened his ideal with the name of 78

Saccharissa, and Lady Dorothy Sidney has lost her title in her lover's endearing epithet. Over

Saccharissa 's Sitting-room the gateway of the inner courtyard is the window of " Saccharissa's Sitting-room," and the stately avenue of lofty beeches by which the mansion is approached from the east is known as " Saccharissa's Walk." It is to that avenue Waller alludes in the following lines :

Saccharissa's Walk

" Ye lofty beeches, tell this matchless dame, That if together ye fed all one flame, It would not equalize the hundredth part Of what her eyes have kindled in my heart ! 80

Go, boy, and carve this passion on the bark Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark Of noble Sidney's birth ; and when such benign, Such more than mortal-making stars did shine ; That there they cannot but for ever prove The monument and pledge of humble love : His humble love, whose hope shall ne'er rise higher, Than for a pardon that he dares admire."

It was all in vain. Neither Waller's bold hyperbole nor his pretence of humility had any power over Saccharissa's heart. She looked for a higher social status than Waller could give, and eventually became the Countess of Sunderland. But Waller had his revenge. When Saccharissa had lost both her husband and her youth, she, on meeting the poet, thoughtlessly asked when he would again write such verses upon her. "When," replied he, "you are as young, Madam, and as handsome as you were then."

Ill

MEMORIALS OF WILLIAM PENN

Ill

MEMORIALS OF WILLIAM PENN

" It should be sufficient for the glory of William Perm, that he stands upon record as the most humane, the most moderate, and the most pacific of all rulers." Lord Jeffrey.

Deep in a shady dell, about a mile and a half from that village of Chalfont St. Giles in which Milton took refuge when the plague was raging in London, stands the Quaker meeting-house of Jordans. Living or dead, no member of the Society of Friends could wish to find himself in a spot more in harmony with the simple tenets of his creed. As the meeting-house breaks upon the vision through the stately trees by which it is surrounded, it seems as if one had been vouchsafed a glimpse of New England in Old England ; it is just such a building as was common in the New World what time the religious refugees of Britain, late in the seventeenth century, crossed the seas in search of that liberty of conscience denied them in the old home. On such rude wooden benches as still remain under that red-tiled roof, no rule of life and faith would be more seemly than that preached by George Fox ; and than that simple God's acre which fronts the meeting-house there could be no fitter resting-place in which to await in quiet confidence that Day which will prove how far that creed was in harmony with absolute truth.

For several miles around, this district is rich in memories of the early Quakers. Near by was the peaceful home of the Penningtons, in which Thomas Ellwood was living as tutor, and from which William Penn was to take his first and most beloved wife. General Fleetwood, too, had his residence in the neighbourhood. The reason for this focussing of so many Friends within a small area was probably the same as that which drove the Covenanters of Scotland to seek refuge on the lonely moors ; to-dajf Jordans is sufficiently inaccessible, and two centuries ago it must have been an ideal haven for suspected sectaries.

More than two hundred years have elapsed since Jordans passed into the possession of the Society of Friends. It owes its name probably to a forgotten owner of the property ; for it was not from a Jordan, but from one William Russell, that, in 1671, Thomas Ellwood and several others acquired the land in behalf of the Society. The idea of a meeting-house seems to have been an after-thought ; it was as a burial-place simply that Jordans was originally purchased. But the

Church of All Hallows Barking, London, where William Penn was Baptised meeting-house was not long in following, for seventeen years later there is authentic record of its existence. Probably some generations have passed since regular meetings were held in this rude temple ; but twice every year — on the fourth Sunday in May and the first Thursday in June — set gatherings are held to keep alive the continuity of Quaker teaching within these walls.

But it is because of its graves, and not on account of its meeting-house, that Jordans attracts so many pilgrims year by year. For a century and a half there was nothing to distinguish one mouldering heap from another. Here, for example, is the account which Mr. William Hepworth Dixon, one of Penn's most competent biographers, wrote of his visit to the place in 1851 : " Nothing could be less imposing than the graveyard at Jordans : the meeting-house is like an old barn in appearance, and the field in which the illustrious dead repose is not even decently smoothed. There are no gravel walks, no monuments, no mournful yews, no cheerful flowers ; there is not even a stone to mark a spot or to record a name. When I visited it with my friend Granville Penn, Esq., great-grandson of the State-Founder, on the 11th of January this year, we had some difficulty in determining the heap under which the great man's ashes lie. Mistakes have occurred before now ; and for many years pilgrims were shown the wrong grave ! "

With the laudable desire of helping pilgrims to pay their devotions at the right shrine, Mr.

Dixon prepared a simple ground-plan of the graveyard, and the positions of the small headstones which mark the graves to-day correspond with that plan to a large extent. But there is one important exception. It will be seen from

Jordans Meeting-house one of the pictures that the stone nearest to the fence in the second row bears the name of " John Penn," whereas in Mr. Dixon's plan that position marks the grave of "John Pennington." It is not easy to throw any light on this mistake. For instance, it is difficult to see what John Penn could be buried under the date given, 89

1746 ; certainly not the grandson who occupied Stoke Park and was responsible, in 1799, for that ponderous cenotaph to the memory of Gray. The grave is undoubtedly more likely to be that of a Pennington, a member of the family to which William Penn's first wife belonged. The mystery about this particular grave makes all the more unmeaning the attempt to desecrate it, which occurred some time back.

It lends a pathetic interest to this lonely graveyard to visit it fresh from a perusal of Thomas Ellwood's simple autobiography. All those who sleep so quietly under these modest headstones figure more or less in his pages ; they become known to us in all their quaint Quaker habits and beliefs, and appeal to us with the tender sentiment of a bygone age. Penn had two wives and eleven children, of whom both wives and seven of the children keep him company here.

Next to Penn himself, the memory which most dominates this burial-place is that of Guli Penn, his first wife. Ellwood knew her in London as a child ; became her playfellow ; used to "ride with her in her little coach, drawn by her footman about Lincoln's Inn Fields." She was the daughter of Sir William Springett, 90 who fell in Cromwell's army, and her mother afterwards became the wife of Isaac Pennington. Other children were born to Isaac Pennington and Lady Springett, and as tutor to those children Ellwood was for many years in

Interior of Jordans Meeting-house daily converse with Guli Springett. He had an ample opportunity, then, to win her for his own ; and he was not " so stupid nor so divested of all humanity as not to be sensible of the real and innate worth and virtue which adorned that excellent dame." Outsiders talked, of course. Ellwood had not joined the Quakers 91 for nothing ; his motive was the conquest of Guli and the annexation of her fortune ; if he could not get her by fair means, why then, of course, he would run away with her and marry her. Such pleasant gossip reached the ears of the Penningtons and their tutor ; but the former did not lose confidence and the latter did not pluck up courage to make the gossip true. For Guli Springett was worth winning. " In all respects," says the meek Ellwood, " a very desirable woman — whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to render her completely comely ; or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way extraordinary and highly obliging ; or to her outward fortune, which was fair." Ell wood's subsequent wooing showed that he did not deserve such a prize. Guli did not lack for suitors ; but towards them all, " till he at length came for whom she was reserved, she carried herself with so much evenness of temper, such courteous freedom guarded with the strictest modesty, that, as it gave encouragement or ground of hopes to none, so neither did it administer any matter of offence or just cause of complaint to any." The " he " for whom she was " reserved " was William Penn. Happening 92 to visit Ellwood at the Penningtons, he saw, was enslaved, and then conquered. Twenty-two years of wedded happiness were meted out to these two, and then Guli Penn was laid to rest at Jordans.