CORBY CASTLE AND WALKS.
N the race days at Carlisle, which occur shortly after Midsummer, a great number of Excursions are generally made to the most beautiful or noted parts of the county. Issuing out with a large party with one of these, we, with many pleasant friends, left the flushed, bustling, far-travelled throng of our usually sober city, for Corby. The morning had been showery and unpromising, but at noon–our hour of starting–the clouds cleared off, and from the clear blue of the open sky, fell the full, far-sweeping rays of the gladdening glorious sun. Under its pure beautifying glory we started on our way, the rich scythe-waiting meadows, the densely-foliaged trees, and the sheets of fresh and apparently fadeless flowers beneath them, and stretching their long trails into every nook of nature, giving the first taste of that hallowing joy which nature never fails to give to those who love her. So passing Durran Hill Cottage, the clean, quiet, well-to-do village of Scotby, and the pretty new Station at Wetheral, we came to Corby Bridge, where we alighted. Right on we passed through the village, clean and trim and bright with roses and carnations–which spread their splendid hues before and behind the quiet cottages till we came to the lodge gate—the lodge, which is a very worthy appendant of the castle, being our first object of admiration. Here all at once the scene of beauty opens. There is only a very short distance between this and the castle, which, in a few steps, reveals its square substantial outline, brightened on its eastern side by the rich profuse bloom of the showy rhododendron, and a glass conservatory, full of choice and beautiful flowers, the rich varieties of geraniums, calceolarias, and balsams being now at the very acme of their brilliance. The castle itself has no castleated roof, nor any of the usual features of the real Gothic castle, but is a large handsome massive structure, in the modern style of architecture, surmounted by a well-executed collosal lion, which gives an air of princely beauty to the whole building. Fronting the castle is a fine flowing lawn, which gently descending effectively sets off its stately proportions, and being plain, is in excellent keeping with them. The castle contains several fine pictures—one by Titian—and several curious and interesting antiquarian relics.
But the Walks are the great object of interest, their unprecedented beauty, causing, it is said, even Hume to break out into verse when he visited Carlisle, where he left traced on the window of his hotel—
“Here chicks in eggs for breakfast sprawl
Here godless boys God's glories squall,
But Corby Walks atone for all.”
Leaving the castle on the right, we proceed to the walks close at hand. These consist of many acres of land, densely wooded, rocky, precipitous, sloping down to the Eden, on whose banks they lie, in some places by abrupt perpendicular declivities, in others by circuitous paths, under a canopy of interlacing branches, impervious to the most penetrating rains, and also to all the sunshine of the year, however piercing, however radiant. Many noble trees of all kinds are here, and one old trunk deserves especial notice, on account of its immense size and poetic appearance, being hollow at the bottom and “wreathed and crowned” with ivy at the top and round its sides. How many thoughts that old tree suggested of our ancient England, and the wild wildering years fraught with the exhalations and voices, the breath and bruit of persons and things now become almost, or quite questionable, from their very remoteness, or perhaps lost entirely from the great roll of the world's accredited and accepted facts. What was our England when this tree was a seedling or a sapling? Over what cradles were Englishwomen singing their strangely-lettered lullabies? or what was the staple masculine discussion at the castle dinner, or in the scriptorium amongst the shaven monks, who were making the margins of their manuscripts bright with the floral emblems of the names of their sainted loves? Something of this might perhaps be acquired by learning the exact age of the tree—but, oh! how little and uncertain.[1] That world with all its woes and wonders has passed away, leaving us but the dead ashes of what was once its living substance—a formless, dissimilar, disproportionate residuum, from which scarcely one element, or one true outline of the genuine feature of the life and knowledge that then were can be traced. With these thoughts, and many inexpressible ones, we turn from that old tree, feeling that
“There is a spirit in the pathless woods,”
and feeling also some sympathy with those old, old worshippers who found in trees and rivers the mystery and awfulness out of which they wove the garment of God—their grand, yet heartless God, of force of power.
All ways we look as we pass under these stately, solemn denizens of memorial and immemorial time, fearing lest we lose any of the imposing, soul-abstracting beauty they so abundantly display, our hearts o'er-brimming, although we have but just entered, with feelings which, like odoriferous incense, carry us away to the vast, the illimitable, to the heaven of an enlarged existence, far above and beyond the fret and fever of all our petty cares, and still pettier ambitions. Gliding on, for we walk as in a church, through these solemn aisles of prototypal ecclesiastical architecture, we come to the well—the Wishing Well we are told—whose cool crystal waters, together with the kindly placed cups, are an irresistable temptation to the summer wanderer. Nor did the majority of our party forget the Wishing business, which is done mentally before drinking—the taciturn bearing of the whole party of them respecting their wish causing much merriment. The Well itself is a cistern placed against the descending earth or rocks, into which the spring runs, and which is surmounted by solid masonry, upon the front of which the saintly symbol of human help is placed.
Speedily, for we are on a descending path, we come to an opening, and turn around to the left to seek the recollected hermitage, a little round, cross-surmounted mosshouse, where used to sit in state with girdle and sandals, the bearded hermit, holding the long-stringed numeral of his many prayers. There was no hermit, but the recollection to ourselves, and the description to others, seemed to suffice very well for his absence.
Leaving this, and going back and onward, we come to a long straight open avenue, a sort of long shelving table land between the upper and lower declivities. Here again are the beautiful green sward and the sunshine, the latter heightened by the dark dominant dome of foliage, it winningly but vainly woos to dissipation. At the far end of this, in our front, is the beautiful Summer House, or “Temple D' Ete',” so well known, which is a beautiful sylvan structure, ascended by a long flight of steps, and having a balcony on the right side, under which bloom intertwined with the deeper green of the fir, fair flowery shrubs—eyes through which nature seems to look dispassionately and saintly as a musing seraph. Inside there are pictures, and all the necessary requisites for repose or meditation, the different panels of the room being pictured with foreign scenes and scenery, and the ceiling with an eagle and a fish, while smaller birds are enviously or fearfully winging around. The day being rather dubious, a fire had been very thoughtfully and kindly lighted for us, by the order, doubtless, of the noble and generous master of the place. Descending from the steps of this Summer House, the splendid avenue leading from them shows all its many beauties It is indeed a matchless strip of green earth, noble under all aspects, and in all seasons. At various distances through its length, seats are placed for the repose of the weary, attached to which are printed quotations from the poets for their delight and inspiration.
Under the balcony on the path which leads by the river, almost dark with thick umbrageous branches, we now take our way. Here Nature has her own will, and it is a sweet one, order in disorder, life many-formed and many-hued everywhere. And here is the river musical and magnificent. How pleasantly it unites its sweet symphonies with the sunshine and the breeze, and the fluttering, yet incessant quirings of the overhanging woods; and when these have all ceased,
“When thickest dark doth trance the sky,”
it will still harmonize. Nature never strikes the wrong note. The holy stars and the silent solemn earth will be to-night the wrapt auditors of this eternal wanderer—this awful orator whom time and death never disable, never still.
Returning from here, and down the avenue, we come to “the coups,” where the sheeny waters of the river are broken into foam and fury; but under all forms the river here is grand and glorious—a real thing of beauty, making as it did ours, the heart dance with supremest joy. From this spot there is a beautiful view of the castle—perhaps the best view—its wooded environs which are here seen with it, adding their regal robing to its noble proportions, and enlarging to a graver, greater grandeur, its massive outline.
Later, we crossed the river, on the Wetheral side of which are the ruins of Wetheral Priory, founded for Monks of the Benedictine Order by the Earl Ranulph de Meschines, about the year 1086. A magnificent view of the Corby side of the river may be had from one of the top windows of this building, or from the caves, which are immediately below, on the same side. These are excavations in the solid mass of rock which rises almost perpendicularly on this side of the river. St. Constantine's cell is the most notable one. A Prince of this name, the son of some ancient Scottish king, is said to have resigned his regal inheritance and here retired from the world for the remainder of his life; and opposite them, on the Corby side, those interested will find a representation of him in the habit of a monk, a cross and missal in his hands, and the earthly crown at his feet—all hieroglyphical of his life and deeds. The rocks on this side the river are very romantic and beautiful for a considerable distance, the abrupt heights being charmingly interspersed with wood.
It is said that these caves were for many centuries the shelter of the ancient inhabitants of Carlisle when their city was attacked by the Scots, or by their still fiercer and more remorseless enemies the mosstroopers, of whom they were in constant dread; and the place must certainly have been a good one in those perilous times.
Being on the Wetheral side, we now took the opportunity of visiting the Church, which no one visiting Corby should omit doing, one of the divinest pieces of statuary, and by one of the very chiefest artists, Nollekins, being there. It is an emblematical memorial of the late Mrs. Howard, and said to be the artist's chef d'œuvre. Near it is another, by Flaxman, of the ordinary ecclesiastical type.
As we waited in the evening sun for the boat to take us back again, our hearts lifted and hushed by the grandeur of art, and thoughts of the vastness of the soul, and the splendours of its achieved and possible realizations, we seemed more fully cognizant than ever of the sweeping scene of beauty that stretched before us. Never shall we forget that sit on the stone by the river. We had been talking of the illustrious dead and noble living, and remembered fragments of thought and song had come home to our open spirits, and as we looked up and down the river and on its galleried sides, crowded with the lofty heads of the noblest trees, and these all flushed into a thousand changing lines by the descending sun, we felt the full intensity of Natures's holy hallowing power—felt that God has wealth for all; that noble heart wealth of gladness in beauty, in Nature, and in art.
Again in the Walks, we followed on by winding paths to the caves on that side, whose surrounding beauty we should almost profane by attempting to describe. But the caves—the matchless masonry of Nature, hollows in the solid perpendicular rock, and opening on the river—how they silence all trivial thought, and make one forget flesh and blood. “Thoughts that wander through eternity” start here, and we think of the sublime silences of unpeopled centuries which these sunken, lidless eyes in this ponderous rocky brow of nature must have seen the secrets of. Before the one furnished with pictures, seats, and table, there is a pallisading parallel with the river, and over this, when the sun is descending, if he can, let the visitor of Corby give himself time to hang and muse till he hears nothing, sees nothing, not even the faces and voices of his friends, but this everlasting pageant of natural harmony and vision. From the steps also of the other cave, in the perpetual twilight of depending branches, there is a magnificent view. But our friends have nearly all left us to our tranced speechless musings, and we, though loath, must on. One moment however we must have standing at the green pond by the somewhat dilapidated Nelson, to look up at the rocky heights dripping with ceaseless waters. It is a semicircle of rock shelving up to an immense height, on the top of which is a ruined fane, containing fragments of tritons and nymphs, whose broken faces still wear, amidst decay and ruin, the grotesque smile or serene grandeur of their art birth. This cascade and decorations, together with the steps leading to the heights on which they stand, were formerly introduced as “improvements,” but are now, perhaps wisely, abandoned to ruin, in which state they certainly have a better effect. We could linger amid these scenes for hours—but there are the kind waving hands of our friends from above. We greet each other kindly, gladness is at the very core of our hearts. Nature has cheered and comforted us; we have come into the clime of birds and bees, and we return with their music in our hearts—return admiring the ferns beautifully luxuriant, and gathering some of them and the red campion, which, spreading everywhere, beautifies the whole extent of the woods. On our way up the steep which leads back to the castle, we came upon the giant, or “Belted Will,” as it is more popularly called, rehearsing as we pass it—
“When mailed mosstroopers rode the hill,
When helmed warders paced the keep,
And bugles blew for Belted Will.”
There are many other beauties we have seen and not been able to note at Corby, for our aftenoon was soon gone. We are, however, bound to pay our tribute of admiration and thanks to the noble owner of all this beauty, whose courtesy and kindness are in fine keeping with this his ancient inheritance. With the kindly greetings of himself and his, then unbroken, family, we passed by the castle, and, by his own direction, through the gardens, as the nearest way to the station. We were among the last of our party, and in the dim silence of our own innumerable thoughts, felt devoutly thankful for our afternoon in Corby Walks, and thankful also that this stately home of England, which stands so beautifully on its honoured soil, has for its head a gentleman so truly generous, with an inheritance so largely likely to promote both moral and spiritual refinement.
- ↑ Since the above was written, Mr. Howard himself informed the present writer that this venerable tree was eight hundred years old.