Chapter V: Rokeby

The town of Barnard Castle, where we arrived one evening after a long tour through Yorkshire, is on the left bank of the river Tees and on the southern boundary of the county of Durham. In the morning we were told by 'Boots,' the one man in an English hotel who knows everything, that the castle, which gives its name to the town, could be reached through the stable-yard back of the house. After travelling far out of our way to view the setting of Rokeby, which in the natural beauty of its scenery is unsurpassed by that of any of Scott's other poems, except 'The Lady of the Lake,' the suggestion of such an entrance to the locality of the opening stanzas was a rude shock to our sense of romantic propriety. The reality was worse than the suggestion and we began to think that possibly Mr. Boots might have misdirected us, supposing we wished to see the barnyard instead of Barnard Castle. We proceeded on our way, however, soon coming to a small cottage with a pretty little garden,--nearly every English cottage boasts one of these delightful little areas of colour and of fragrance,--and passing through, reached the enclosure where all that is left of the castle, or nearly all, now stands. Two impressive ruined towers and a short connecting wall are practically all that remain of a once splendid royal residence. On the left is 'Brackenbury's dungeon-tower,' no longer 'dismal,' for the ancient stones are partly clothed with {87} the foliage of fruit trees, trained English fashion against the walls, while a bed of bright-blooming flowers on the right, the fresh green leaves of some overhanging branches on the left, and the lawn, plentifully besprinkled with the dainty little English daisies, each catching its own ray of sunshine and giving a sparkle to the whole scene, all spoke eloquently of the change from death to life since the time when these walls cast only deep shadows of darkness and despair.

On the right of the enclosure is the old Baliol Tower, and in the wall connecting it with Brackenbury is an oriel window, where the arms of King Richard III may still be faintly traced in the stone.

Baliol Tower is a heavy round structure of great antiquity. It has a remarkable vaulted ceiling composed entirely of keystones arranged in circles. A narrow staircase within the walls leads to the battlements from which we obtained a magnificent view of the valley of the Tees.

What prospects from his watch-tower high
Gleam gradual on the warder's eye!
Far sweeping to the east he sees
Down his deep woods the course of Tees,
And tracks his wanderings by the steam
Of summer vapours from the stream.

If Barnard Castle appeared unromantic, approached from the yard of the inn, exactly the opposite feeling took possession of us when we viewed it from the footbridge, just above the dam. Here the river widens until it looks like a placid lake. The castle rises high above the stream, its base concealed by trees of heavy growth, but not tall enough to cover the two great towers and {88} the oriel window of King Richard. It is no longer a single ruined wall, but the imposing front of a vast structure, well placed for defence, once strong in war but now beautiful in peace.

Barnard Baliol, whose father was one of the followers of William the Conqueror, founded the castle in the beginning of the twelfth century. He was the grandfather of John Baliol, who contested with Robert Bruce the claim to the Scottish crown. The original castle or fortress covered an extensive area of over six acres, most of which is now given over to sheep-raising or to the cultivation of fruit trees. An extensive domain, comprising much of the surrounding country, was granted to the descendants of Barnard Baliol in the reign of King Rufus. Edward I granted it to Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in whose family it remained for several generations. Through the marriage of the daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, famous as the king-maker, to the Duke of Gloucester, afterward King Richard III, the estate came into possession of the Crown. The castle was a favourite residence of Richard, who made many additions to it. In the reign of Charles I it was purchased by Sir Henry Vane the elder. When Scott makes it the property of Oswald Wycliffe, he does not go very far astray, for John Wycliffe, the great forerunner of the Reformation in England, was born on the banks of the river Tees and received his education at Baliol College, Oxford, which was founded by the Baliols of Barnard Castle, who were the neighbours of his family.

Barnard Castle, however, interesting as it is, was not the magnet that drew the poet to this region for his {89} scenery. In 1808, Scott began his intimacy with John B. S. Morritt, a man of sterling character and high literary attainments, for whom he came to entertain a genuine affection. Morritt had inherited the estate of Rokeby, situated about four miles southeast of Barnard Castle. The Rokebys, like their neighbours, the Baliols, were descended from one of the followers of the Conqueror. The old manor house was destroyed by the Scotch after the battle of Bannockburn (1314), and the Rokeby of that day built the Castle of Mortham, much of which still remains standing on the opposite bank of the Greta. The present Hall was built in 1724. It stands in the midst of an extensive and beautiful park, which Scott, on the occasion of his first visit, thought 'one of the most enviable places' he had ever seen. 'It unites,' said he, 'the richness and luxuriance of English vegetation with the romantic variety of glen, torrent, and copse, which dignifies our Northern scenery. The Greta and Tees, two most beautiful and rapid rivers, join their currents in the demesne. The banks of the Tees resemble, from the height of the rocks, the Glen of Roslin, so much and justly admired.' The letter containing this enthusiastic praise of his friend's estate was written in 1809. Two years later, when the purchase of Abbotsford seemed to require another poem for its consummation, it was to the one place worthy of comparison with his beloved Glen of Roslin that the poet instinctively turned for his backgrounds.

Scott's ambition to be the 'laird' of an estate was gratified in the summer of 1811 when he became the owner of an unprepossessing farm of about one hundred acres. The land was in a neglected state, but little of it {90} having been under cultivation. The farmhouse was small and poor, and immediately in front of it was a miserable duck pond. The place, from its disreputable appearance, had been known as 'Clarty Hole.' But Scott's prophetic vision could look beyond all this and see something, if not all, of the transformation which was to be wrought in the next twelve years. The farm lay for half a mile along the banks of the beautiful Tweed, the river which Scott loved. He knew the fertility of the soil and saw the possibility of making the place a beautiful grove. At first he thought only of 'a cottage and a few fields,' but as the passion for buying, planting, and building grew with his apparent prosperity, the farm became a beautifully wooded estate of eighteen hundred acres, the cottage grew into a castle, and 'Clarty Hole,' its name changed into 'Abbotsford' within less than an hour after the new owner took possession, became one of the most famous private possessions in the world.

The farm cost £4000, one half of which was borrowed from the poet's brother, Major John Scott, and the other half advanced by the Ballantynes on the security of 'Rokeby,' though the poem was not yet written. The plans for the purchase out of the way, Scott wrote to his friend, Morritt, outlining the new poem, having for its scene the domain of Rokeby and its subject the civil wars of Charles I. Morritt was delighted and immediately responded with a letter full of valuable information. The following summer was a busy one. Until the middle of July, Scott's duties as Clerk of the Court of Sessions kept him at Edinburgh five days in the week. Saturdays and Sundays were spent at Abbotsford. He composed poetry while planting trees and wrote down the verses {91} amid the noise and confusion incident to building his new cottage. 'As for the house and the poem,' he wrote to Morritt, 'there are twelve masons hammering at the one and one poor noddle at the other.' Both 'Rokeby' and 'The Bridal of Triermain' were written under these conditions and at the same time, while Scott found opportunity also to continue his work on the 'Life of Swift,' which eventually reached nineteen octavo volumes, and to render other literary services to his publishers, the Ballantynes.

It was not long before Scott found an opportunity to visit Rokeby again, where he remained about a week. On the morning after his arrival, he informed Morritt that he needed 'a good robber's cave and an old church of the right sort.' Morritt promptly undertook to supply both, and to find the former rode with his friend to Brignall Woods, where the Greta flows through a deep glen, on one side of which are some perpendicular rocks, the site of an old quarry. I could not find any robber's caves, but it was easy enough for Scott to make one in such a rock formation. I could, however, form a pretty good idea of the wild flight of Bertram Risingham as he

Now clomb the rocks projecting high
To baffle the pursuer's eye:
Now sought the stream, whose brawling sound
The echo of his footsteps drowned.

In all probability, the scene is the same to-day, as it was in Scott's time, wild and beautiful. The stream winds around through shady nooks, here rippling over the rocks and then widening out into a placid pool; occasionally passing out from beneath the trees into an open glade, where the well-worn boulders that punctuated its {92} course lay gleaming in the sun, and presenting at every turn some new and changing view.

O, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta Woods are green.

In describing the visit to this place Mr. Morritt gives an excellent idea of Scott's method:--

I observed him noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help saying that as he was not to be upon oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, 'that in nature herself no two scenes were ever exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes would possess the same variety in his descriptions and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas whoever trusted to imagination would soon find his own mind circumscribed, and contracted to a few favourite images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and bareness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth.

The 'old church of the right sort' was found on the other side of Rokeby Park. We reached it from Barnard Castle by crossing the high Abbey Bridge, beneath which the Tees flows in a narrow, rippling, foaming lane of water, flanked on either side by trees of rich foliage whose bright green branches wave to each other continually across the stream in a sort of friendly salute. The old grey Abbey of Egliston is pleasantly situated on rising ground near where the Tees is joined by the rivulet known as Thorsgill.

{93}

Yet scald or kemper erred, I ween,
Who gave that soft and quiet scene,
With all its varied light and shade,
And every little sunny glade,
And the blithe brook that strolls along
Its pebbled bed with summer song,
To the grim God of blood and scar,
The grisly King of Northern War.

The abbey was founded in the twelfth century and dedicated to St. Mary and St. John the Baptist. It was once a beautiful cruciform building in the Early English style, but has been allowed to fall into decay and now only parts of the walls of the choir and nave remain.

The reverend pile lay wild and waste,
Profound, dishonoured, and defaced.
Through storied lattices no more,
In softened light the sunbeams pour,
Gilding the Gothic sculpture rich
Of shrine and ornament and niche.

This was the scene which Scott chose for the culminating tragedy of the poem.

There are many other places in the neighbourhood to which the poet refers. There is 'Raby's battered tower,' a large castle which boasts the honour of twice entertaining Charles I. There is the Balder, 'a sweet brooklet's silver line,' which flows into the Tees a few miles above Barnard Castle, and farther to the northwest, where the three counties of York, Durham, and Westmoreland meet, is the place

Where Tees in tumult leaves his source
Thundering o'er Cauldron and High-Force.

These two cataracts are most impressive when rainstorms have swelled the stream to its full capacity. Just {94} outside the park of Rokeby is a charming spot where the Greta meets the Tees,--

Where, issuing from her darksome bed,
She caught the morning's eastern red,
And through the softening vale below
Rolled her bright waves in rosy glow
All blushing to her bridal bed,
Like some shy maid in convent bred,
While linnet, lark, and blackbird gay
Sang forth her nuptial roundelay.

Half hidden by the trees, the old stone 'dairy bridge' crosses the Greta, just where the river emerges from the park. It makes a pretty picture as you look through the single arch into the cool shades of the peaceful domain. Passing over this bridge we came to the old tower of Mortham. We did not find it deserted as did Wilfrid and Bertram, for it is now used as a farm and the tower is almost completely surrounded by low buildings of comparatively recent construction. From the garden, however, a fairly good view can be obtained.

And last and least, and loveliest still,
Romantic Deepdale's slender rill.
Who in that dim-wood glen hath strayed,
Yet longed for Roslin's magic glade?

The glen which Scott would compare with his favourite Roslin must be romantic, indeed. The rill of Deepdale joins the Tees just above Barnard Castle. The scenery increases in beauty as the stream is ascended, to the solitary spot near the Cat Castle rocks--

Where all is cliff and copse and sky,--

and reaches its climax at the pretty waterfall of Cragg Force.

{95}

The Cavaliers and Roundheads whom Scott introduces into the midst of this beautiful scenery are not, it must be confessed, particularly interesting, nor is the villain Bertram, in spite of the fact that the poet was a little proud of him as a sketch full of dash and vigour. There are three people, however, who hold the attention. The first is Matilda, who, by the poet's faintly veiled admission, was intended to be the picture of his early love, Williamina Stuart. In Wilfrid, the youth of poetic temperament, who loved in vain, and Redmond, his successful but generous rival, there is a suggestion, which one can scarcely escape, of the poet himself and Sir William Forbes, who married Williamina. Redmond showed his kindly heart and soldierly strength by fighting desperately over the prostrate figure of his wounded rival, at length carrying him in his arms from the burning castle to a place of safety, after his entire train had deserted their leader. Sir William Forbes was one of the first to offer aid when financial misfortune overtook Sir Walter, and when one creditor undertook to make serious trouble, privately paid the entire claim of nearly £2000, taking care that Scott should not know how it was managed. As a matter of fact, Sir Walter did not learn the truth until some time after the death of his generous friend.

{96}