Chapter II: The Dove

What's in the Name--Axe Edge and Dove Head--The Monogram--Glutton
Mill--Hartington--Beresford Dale--Pike Pool--Izaak Walton
and Charles Cotton--Beresford Hall--Dove Dale--Its
Associations--Ilam--The Manifold--Ashbourne--Doveridge--
Uttoxeter--Sudbury--Tutbury--The Confluence.

There are two rivers bearing the beautiful name of the Dove--a name derived from "the shimmering gleam of water, corresponding to the lustre of the dove's white wing." There are also two Dove Dales. In Longfellow's "Poems of Places," Wordsworth's tender verses beginning--

"She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,"

are often ascribed to the Derbyshire river, which is more than worthy of such a dedication. But the Dove which the venerable recluse of Rydal Mount referred to is the wayward mountain streamlet of his own beloved Lakeland; and the Dove Dale of that district, in its romantic beauty and historic associations, is but a wayside dell in comparison with the enchanting glen where Izaak Walton discoursed upon philanthropy and fishing, and the gallant Charles Cotton alternately entertained the ancient angler, and hid himself in caves to escape the polite attentions of unpleasant creditors. The phrase, however--

"A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye,"

aptly, if unconsciously, describes Dove Head, where the Derbyshire Dove escapes from the morose moorlands of Axe Edge, the mountain cradle of four other rivers--the Wye, the Dane, the Goyt, and the Manifold.

_Walker & Boutall sc._

MAP OF THE DOVE.]

Axe Edge is a wild heathery table-land, in which the counties of Derby, Stafford, and Cheshire meet in a savage solitude. The loneliness of this region is impressive, although fashionable Buxton, the spa of the Peak, is only three miles away. There are whisperings of water everywhere on these breezy highlands, now purple under a passing cloud, now a vivid green in the slanting sunlight, as shadow and shine succeed each other over the rugged slopes. They are mere liquid lispings. Their articulations are not so loud as the crow of the blackcock, the clamour of the peewit, or the call of the grouse. But the imperceptible tinkling, the mere tracery of moisture among the rank grass and ebony peat, grow until the rill has become a rivulet; and now we are at Dove Head. There is an isolated farmstead, the whitewashed buildings of which stand out in strong relief from the sombre moorland background. Over the doorway of this solitary old farmhouse are carved the words "Dove Head." Exactly opposite to this house is a moss-grown trough with bubbling water, clear and cold, not topaz-coloured like most streams that have their origin in mountain mosses. On the slab the initials of Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton are entwined in cypher, after the manner of the monogram in the fishing-house in Beresford Dale. This spot indicates the county boundary. Staffordshire claims one side of the Dove, but Derby has greater pretensions to the ownership of the river, for both its head and its foot are in the latter county.

Dove Head is one of the view points of the "Peake Countrie." The panoramic prospect over bleak height and verdant dale is one to transport the landscape painter. Yet it is too near Buxton, with Manchester only forty minutes' railway ride away, to tempt the English artist. There exist, in a relative sense and with due respect to proportion, few wilder or more picturesque "bits" of scenery than are comprised in the ramble from Dove Head to Glutton Mill. For three or four miles the river, a mere brook, passes through a gritstone gorge, with rocky escarpments above, boulders below, and a paradise of ferns around. At Glutton Mill the character of the scenery changes with the geological nature of the country. The limestone now crops up, and there are peculiar volcanic upheavals, such as Chrome Hill and Parker Hill. The rocky glen has widened suddenly into a green and spacious valley, and the harsh and hungry stone walls give place to park-like pastures and hawthorn hedgerows. Chrome Hill and Parker Hill rise steep between the "Princess Dove" in her infancy and her maidenhood; while green High Wheeldon and austere Hollins Clough are the sentinels of two jealous counties. Glutton Mill, with its red-tiled roof, idyllic surroundings, and sleepy atmosphere, might have inspired the Laureate when he confessed--

"I loved the brimming wave that swam
Through quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still,
The meal-sacks on the whiten'd floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door
Made misty with the floating meal."

Glutton Dale, a rocky gorge, gives access to the odd, old-world village of Sterndale, with a tavern the sign of which is "The Silent Woman." It is a pictorial sign in the most pronounced Van Daub style; but the designer must have been a satirical humourist, for the lady depicted is without a head!

The Dove for the next few miles loses its wild features. There are no deep gorges or rocky chasms. The walk now is through lush meadows, and the progress of the stream, so swift and tumultuous in its upper reaches, is in comparison almost sluggish. It ripples with soothing murmur over pebbly shallows, or reflects patches of blue sky in deep and glassy pools. Here and there a water-thread from either the Staffordshire or the Derbyshire side, is welcomed, and trout and grayling invite the angler. Past Beggar's Bridge, Crowdecote Bridge, Pilsbury, Broad Meadow Hall, and a fertile country dotted with dairy farms, and we are at the patrician village of Hartington, with its Elizabethan hall on the hill, and its venerable church with pinnacled tower, dating back to the first part of the thirteenth century, _temp._ Henry III. Hartington, which gives the Marquises their title, is eleven miles from Dove Head, and the length of the river from its source to its junction with the Trent is exactly fifty-six picturesque unpolluted miles, without an uninteresting point along the entire course. A riverside path brings us to Beresford Dale, perhaps the most secluded portion of the valley, for the Dove Dale tourist and the "cheap tripper" rarely penetrate so far up the zigzag windings of the river. Here the stream resumes its romantic features. Limestone tors embroidered with foliage shut it out from the world. There is a strip of white cloud above, and a gleam of liquid light below. Pellucid pools reflect wooded height and gleaming crag. All around is the sense of solitude and the rapture of repose, broken only by the soliloquy of the stream and the song of the wild birds.

At Pike Pool (there are no pike), alluded to in the "Compleat Angler," rises from the centre of the Dove a pinnacle of weather-beaten limestone forty feet high. Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton indulge in a characteristic colloquy concerning this isolated needle, "one of the oddest sights." The intimacy of the reckless young squire who penned the indecencies of "Virgil Travestie," and the rigid moralist who wrote the Lives of Hooker and George Herbert, is one of the curiosities of famous friendships. It can only be accounted for by the conclusion that true love is like the law of magnetism--the attraction of opposites. Here, however, "Piscator" and "Viator" cease to be abstractions, for, behold! this is the classic Fishing House, wherein "my dear son Charles" entertained his "most affectionate father and friend." Externally it is the same as when Izaak and Charles smoked their morning pipe, which was "commonly their breakfast," and discoursed of the joys and contentment of country life. The little temple is built on a green peninsula at a pretty bend of the river, with the swing of trees above and the song of the stream below. "It is"--says the author of "Pictures of the Peak"--"a one-storied building, toned with the touch of time. In shape it is a perfect cube of eighteen feet, with a pyramidal stone roof, from which springs a stone pillar and hip knob. There are lattice windows and shutters on all sides. The doorway, with its three moss-grown steps, faces the dale, and over it is a square panel with the inscription--

Piscatoribus
Sacrum
1674.

A monogram, similar to the one at Dove Head, declares the affinity between the two old-world fishermen!" Formerly the oak wainscoting was covered with paintings of riverside scenes, and the portraits of the "father" and his "adopted son" decorated the panels of the buffet. The old fireplace, the marble table, and the carved oak chairs, however, remain intact.

Not far from this fishing house stood Beresford Hall, the ancestral home of Charles Cotton. It was pulled down some years ago, when it was condemned as being structurally unsafe. But the owner (the late Mr. Beresford Hope) had all the stones carefully numbered and marked with a view to their re-erection somewhat after the old style. They now lie in an adjacent meadow. Beresford Hall in Charles Cotton's days was a noble building. It stood in plantations among the rocks with woodland vistas opening out to the windings of the water. The hall was wainscoted in oak. It was rich in old carved furniture, ebony coffers, and trophies of the chase. The most prized possession, surrounded with arms and armour, hunting horns and falcons' hoods and bells, antlers and fowling-pieces, was the fishing rod presented to Charles Cotton by old Izaak, whose bed-chamber, "with sheets laid up in lavender," was one of the choicest apartments of the house. There were figured patterns over the chimney-piece, and angels' heads stamped in relief on the ceiling. On the rocks above the site of the hall are to be seen vestiges of the Prospect Tower, the basement of which was Cotton's study, and the summit a beacon where flambeaux were lit by his wife to guide her husband home in the darkness, even as Hero's watch-fires brought her beloved Leander to her bosom. Cotton himself called this observatory "Hero's Tower," and in a poetic epistle, describing his journey from London to Basford Hall, he thus alludes to the building:--

"Tuesday at noon at Lichfield town we baited,
But there some friends, who long that hour had waited,
So long detain'd me, that my charioteer
Could drive that night but to Uttoxeter.
And there, the Wednesday being market-day,
I was constrain'd with some kind lads to stay,
Tippling till afternoon, which made it night,
When from my Hero's Tower I saw the light
Of her flambeaux, and fancied, as we drave,
Each rising hillock was a swelling wave,
And that I swimming was, in Neptune's spight,
To my long long'd for harbour of delight."

Dissipated Charles! devoted wife!

Leaving Beresford Dale, we come to many enticing passages on the Dove, troutful and leafy, where rock and water and woodland make combinations that are the despair of artists. Wolfscote Ravine, Narrow Dale, Cold Eaton, Alstonfield, Load Mill, and Mill Dale are but topographical expressions, but to those who know the Dove they cease to be words, and become scenes of enchantment. And now we are in the Dove Dale of the tourists and the trippers, the painters and the picnic parties, the fly-fishermen and the amateur photographers. The guide-books have done Dove Dale grievous injustice by "heaping Ossa upon Pelion" with such misleading epithets as "grand," "majestic," "stupendous," "terrific," "awful," etc., _ad nauseam_. Dove Dale is only imposing by its surpassing loveliness, its perfect beauty. A romantic glen three miles long, narrow and winding, it is a dream of pretty scenery. Limestone cliffs close in the clear and voiceful water. Their precipitous sides are draped to the sky-line with a wealth and wonder of foliage, the white tors shining through the green gloom. The wooded slopes, rich with wild flowers, ferns, and mosses, just admit of a pathway by the water, which is now white and wavy with cascades, and now a dreamy calm in reflective pools. Each turn in this romantic valley has its surprise in scenery. A revelation awaits each step.

Some of the impending crags have such an individual character that they are known by particular names, such as Sharplow Point, the Twelve Apostles, Tissington Spires, the Lion's Head, the Watch Box, the Straits, the Sugar Loaf, the Church Rock, etc.; whilst perforations in the rock forming natural arches and caverns are entitled Dove Holes, Dove Dale Church, Grey Mare's Stable, Reynard's Cave, Reynard's Kitchen, the Crescent, the Arched Gateway, the Amphitheatre, the Abbey, and so on. These limestone tors, standing out from their green setting, assume castellated shapes. Here they suggest a bastion, there a spire; now an assemblage of towers, anon a convent church.

Dove Dale possesses many literary associations apart from those attached to Izaak Walton and his "adopted son" Charles. Surly Samuel Johnson frequently visited his friend Dr. Taylor, the Ashbourne divine who made his will in favour of the Fleet Street philosopher, but who lived to preach his funeral sermon in Westminster Abbey. In Dove Dale Dr. Johnson discovered the Happy Valley of "Rasselas." Morbid Jean Jacques Rousseau found a hospitable asylum at David Hume's house at Wootton Hall. It was another sort of "asylum" to which he should have been admitted, for he quarrelled with his benefactor. In Dove Dale he wandered scattering the seeds of rare plants that still flourish, and pondering over his "Confessions," the most introspective of autobiographies. Thomas Moore lived by the banks of the Dove, and his letters to Lord Byron abound with references to the "beauty spots" of the neighbourhood. He rented a little cottage at Mayfield, where he passed the early years of his married life, buried his first-born, wrote most of "Lalla Rookh," and in "Those Evening Bells" swung into undying music the metallic chimes of Ashbourne Church. Congreve wrote several of his comedies at Ilam. Canning was one of Dove Dale's devotees, and the reader will remember his political squib beginning--

"So down thy slope, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby Dilly, carrying six insides."

The law of association links the Dove with other illustrious names: with Alfred Butler, the novelist, author of "Elphinstone," "The Herberts," and other works of fiction famous in their day; with Michael Thomas Sadler, author of the "Law of Population;" with Ward, the author of "Tremaine;" with Richard Graves, who wrote the "Spiritual Quixote," and whose portrait Wilkie painted; with Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury; with Wright of Derby; and Edwards, the author of the "Tour of the Dove."

Dove Dale proper is at its extremity guarded by two imposing hills--Thorpe Cloud, a cone-shaped eminence of 900 feet, and burly Bunster, less conspicuous, but considerably higher. Passing these portals we come to the Izaak Walton Hotel, with the Walton and Cotton monogram of 1660 over its lichened gateway. The house is even older, and it serves to introduce us to the delightful village of Ilam, with its trim Gothic cottages, its magnificent Hall, its elegant Cross and Fountain, and its pretty church. In the church is Sir Francis Chantrey's masterpiece. It represents David Pike Watts on his death-bed taking leave for ever of his wife and children. The scene is an affecting one, and the composition one of pathetic beauty. It is a sermon in stone, and insensible to all feeling must be the man who can gaze upon this touching group without emotion. In the grounds of Ilam Hall the Manifold joins the Dove. Both rivers had their birthplace on Axe Edge, and throughout their course have never been far apart, although not within actual sight of each other. They have kept a "respectful distance," and not been on "speaking terms." The two rivers might have cherished a mutual aversion, if you can imagine such a repugnance. Before the Manifold emerges into the larger stream it has pursued a subterranean course for several miles. It bursts into daylight from a cave in the limestone rock, and at once plunges into the pure and placid waters of the Dove.

After leaving Ilam, the Dove again assumes a pastoral character. It flows with graceful curves through a rich and reposeful landscape, where green woods cover gentle slopes. Passing Okeover and Mappleton, it just avoids Ashbourne, that only needed its silvery, shimmering waters to complete the charm of its dreamy old-world streets, as drowsy and quaint now as they were in the days of the '45, when Prince Charlie raised his standard in the market-place, and the ancient gables framed a Highland picture of targets and claymores and dirks, of unkempt, wild-haired clansmen in bonnet and kilt, ready to face any foe or endure any danger in the cause of the young Chevalier, whom they proclaimed King of England. A local tradition states that the Ashbourne men caught a Highlander, killed him, and found his skin so tough that it was tanned, and made most excellent leather! The church is the pride and glory of Ashbourne, and it is, indeed, a possession worthy of its fascinating surroundings and historic associations. It was dedicated in 1241; its tower and spire attain a height of 212 feet. The long series of Cockayne monuments, dating from the middle of the twelfth century to the end of the sixteenth, are worthy of a volume to themselves. In the chancel is Banks' pathetic monument to the memory of Penelope Boothby. The portrait of this sweet child was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. One of the illustrated papers has reproduced the picture, and made the innocent little face familiar in every home. Sympathetic inscriptions in English, French, Latin, and Italian on pedestal and slab vainly express Sir Brooke Boothby's poignant grief over his great loss. One of these inscriptions reads:--"She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate parents ventured their all on this frail bark, and the wreck was total." One of the legends of art is that Chantrey stole into the church to study this poem in marble, and that it gave him the idea for his "Sleeping Children" in Lichfield Cathedral, which he designed in an Ashbourne hostelry while the inspiration was fresh upon him.

After leaving Ashbourne, the Dove, alder-fringed and willowed over, broadening through sweet-smelling pastures and passing prosperous farmsteads, makes its first acquaintance with a railway. The North Staffordshire line and the river play at hide-and-seek all the way down to the Trent, and the traveller has many gratifying glimpses--carriage-window pictures--of the glancing stream. The Dove is now not quite half-way on its journey to the strong and stately Trent. The scenery is very much like that of the Upper Thames, and should tempt some of our bright open-air school of painters. In succession follow Hanging Bridge and Mayfield, associated with the genius of Tom Moore; Church Mayfield, Clifton, Colwich Abbey, and Norbury, with its grand old church glorious in old stained glass, perfect of its kind, and its manor-house rebuilt in 1267. Then comes Rocester, inviting alike the artist, the angler, and the archæologist. The Dove here receives the rippling waters of the Churnet that flows past Alton Towers, and at Marston Montgomery it is joined by the Tean Brook, a tributary of considerable volume.

Passing Eaton with its rich verdure and hanging woods, once part of Needwood Forest, we come to Doveridge, the Hall--the seat of Lord Hindlip--rising above the wooded ridge. If the house itself, because of its debased style of architecture, is not an attractive addition to the landscape, its situation, on the green heights above the valley of the Dove, with the rolling Staffordshire moorlands and the obtuse peaks of the Weaver Hills in the distance, is enchanting. The Dove winds in the rich pastoral "strath" below in the most capricious curvatures, and the eye follows the course of the wilful stream by meadow and upland, by deep dell and dusky slope, for many miles. Presently comes Uttoxeter, the spire of the church being a conspicuous feature in a landscape filled with sylvan beauty. The pronunciation of the word puzzles the visitor, and even the natives grow gently disputatious on the subject. A local bard, however, comes to the rescue of the stranger. In a fine patriotic outburst he declares:

"In all the country round there's nothing neater
Than the pretty little town of Uttoxeter."

Uttoxeter is a characteristic specimen of an old English market town, which neither the railway nor what Carlyle contemptuously calls "the age of gin and steam-hammers" has left unspoiled. It has many interesting literary and historical associations. Here Mary Howitt was born; and Dr. Johnson's father, bookseller at Lichfield, kept a stall in the market-place. On one occasion he asked his son to attend the market in his place, but the future lexicographer's stubborn pride led to insubordination. Fifty years afterwards, haunted by this disobedience of the paternal wish, Dr. Johnson made a pilgrimage to Uttoxeter market-place, and in inclement weather stood bare-headed for a considerable time on the spot where his father's stall used to stand, exposed to a pelting rain and the flippant sneers of the bystanders. "In contrition," he confesses, "I stood, and I hope the penance was expiatory." The incident says much for Johnson's character, and the scene may be commended to a painter in search of an historical theme.

At Uttoxeter the Dove is thirty-eight miles from its mountain home. It now winds past Sudbury, where it is crossed by a strikingly handsome bridge giving access to Lord Vernon's domain, with its deer park of 600 acres and model dairy farm. The Hall is a red-brick mansion in the Elizabethan style, and was erected in the early part of the seventeenth century. This delightful retreat was the residence of the Dowager Queen Adelaide from 1840 to 1843. The church, which is within the park, is a large and venerable structure, grey with age, and green with glossy ivy.

Presently comes Tutbury, where the Dove is fifty miles from Axe Edge. It flows under the commanding castle hill, where the ruins of a building that existed before the Norman Conquest look down grim and gloomy upon the glad Dove, glancing up at its dismantled walls with their chequered history from the green plain to which she lends such grace. The three towers associated with John of Gaunt make a diversified sky-line. Tutbury Castle has all the credentials necessary to make the reputation of a respectable ruin. For fifteen years it was the prison-house of Mary Queen of Scots, and it suffered from the cannon of Cromwell. The west doorway of the Priory Church, with its "chevron" tracery, is a glorious specimen of Norman architecture. The village was notorious for its bull-baiting, and everybody has heard of "the fasting woman of Tutbury," one Ann Moore, who professed to live without food. She added an assumption of piety to her imposture, and by this means collected £240. She was subsequently sent to prison for fraud. An interesting feature in connection with the history of the place should receive notice. In 1831 an extraordinary find of coins was made in the bed of the river, over 100,000 in number. People flocked from all parts to dig up the auriferous and argentiferous river-bed, until at last the Crown despatched a troop of soldiers to protect the rights of the Duchy of Lancaster. Still stands the notice-board on the bridge threatening prosecution to all trespassers. It is supposed that the coins formed part of the treasury of the Earl of Lancaster when he had taken up arms against Edward II., and that in the panic of retreat across the Dove the money chests were lost in the swollen river, at that time scarcely fordable.

The Dove valley downward from Tutbury past Marston, Rolleston, and Egginton, is full of quiet and stately beauty. At Newton Solney the stream, as crystal as it was in the limestone dales, is greeted by the Trent, its clear waters soon losing their shining transparency in the darker tinged tide of the larger river.

EDWARD BRADBURY.

THE HUMBER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.