Passages from the English Notebooks, Complete. Hawthorne Nathaniel
came into the shop and ate cakes while we were there. They appeared to be living together in a lodging-house, and ordered some of their housekeeping articles from the confectioner.
Next we went into the village bazaar, – a sort of tent or open shop, full of knick-knacks and gewgaws, and bought some playthings for the children. At half past one we took our seats in the omnibus, to return to Conway.
We had as yet only seen the castle wall and the exterior of the castle; now we were to see the inside. Right at the foot of it an old woman has her stand for the sale of lithographic views of Conway and other places; but these views are ridiculously inadequate, so that we did not buy any of them. The admittance into the castle is by a wooden door of modern construction, and the present seneschal is, I believe, the sexton of a church. He remembered me as having been there a month or two ago; and probably, considering that I was already initiated, or else because he had many other visitors, he left us to wander about the castle at will. It is altogether impossible to describe Conway Castle. Nothing ever can have been so perfect in its own style, and for its own purposes, when it was first built; and now nothing else can be so perfect as a picture of ivy-grown, peaceful ruin. The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky and with thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is indescribably beautiful. The hearthstones of the great old fireplaces, all about the castle, seem to be favorite spots for weeds to grow. There are eight large round towers, and out of four of them, I think, rise smaller towers, ascending to a much greater height, and once containing winding staircases, all of which are now broken, and inaccessible from below, though, in at least one of the towers, the stairs seemed perfect, high aloft. It must have been the rudest violence that broke down these stairs; for each step was a thick and heavy slab of stone, built into the wall of the tower. There is no such thing as a roof in any part; towers, hall, kitchen, all are open to the sky. One round tower, directly overhanging the railway, is so shattered by the falling away of the lower part, that you can look quite up into it and through it, while sitting in the cars; and yet it has stood thus, without falling into complete ruin, for more than two hundred years. I think that it was in this tower that we found the castle oven, an immense cavern, big enough to bake bread for an army. The railway passes exactly at the base of the high rock, on which this part of the castle is situated, and goes into the town through a great arch that has been opened in the castle wall. The tubular bridge across the Conway has been built in a style that accords with the old architecture, and I observed that one little sprig of ivy had rooted itself in the new structure.
There are numberless intricate passages in the thickness of the castle walls, forming communications between tower and tower, – damp, chill passages, with rough stone on either hand, darksome, and very likely leading to dark pitfalls. The thickness of the walls is amazing; and the people of those days must have been content with very scanty light, so small were the apertures, – sometimes merely slits and loopholes, glimmering through many feet of thickness of stone. One of the towers was said to have been the residence of Queen Eleanor; and this was better lighted than the others, containing an oriel-window, looking out of a little oratory, as it seemed to be, with groined arches and traces of ornamental sculpture, so that we could dress up some imperfect image of a queenly chamber, though the tower was roofless and floorless. There was another pleasant little windowed nook, close beside the oratory, where the Queen might have sat sewing or looking down the river Conway at the picturesque headlands towards the sea. We imagined her stately figure in antique robes, standing beneath the groined arches of the oratory. There seem to have been three chambers, one above another, in these towers, and the one in which was the embowed window was the middle one. I suppose the diameter of each of these circular rooms could not have been more than twenty feet on the inside. All traces of wood-work and iron-work are quite gone from the whole castle. These are said to have been taken away by a Lord Conway in the reign of Charles II. There is a grassy space under the windows of Queen Eleanor's tower, – a sort of outwork of the castle, where probably, when no enemy was near, the Queen used to take the open air in summer afternoons like this. Here we sat down on the grass of the ruined wall, and agreed that nothing in the world could be so beautiful and picturesque as Conway Castle, and that never could there have been so fit a time to see it as this sunny, quiet, lovely afternoon. Sunshine adapts itself to the character of a ruin in a wonderful way; it does not "flout the ruins gray," as Scott says, but sympathizes with their decay, and saddens itself for their sake. It beautifies the ivy too.
We saw, at the corner of this grass-plot around Queen Eleanor's tower, a real trunk of a tree of ivy, with so stalwart a stem, and such a vigorous grasp of its strong branches, that it would be a very efficient support to the wall, were it otherwise inclined to fall. O that we could have ivy in America! What is there to beautify us when our time of ruin comes?
Before departing, we made the entire circuit of the castle on its walls, and O'Sullivan and I climbed by a ladder to the top of one of the towers. While there, we looked down into the street beneath, and saw a photographist preparing to take a view of the castle, and calling out to some little girl in some niche or on some pinnacle of the walls to stand still that he might catch her figure and face. I think it added to the impressiveness of the old castle, to see the streets and the kitchen-gardens and the homely dwellings that had grown up within the precincts of this feudal fortress, and the people of to-day following their little businesses about it. This does not destroy the charm; but tourists and idle visitors do impair it. The earnest life of to-day, however, petty and homely as it may be, has a right to its place alongside of what is left of the life of other days; and if it be vulgar itself, it does not vulgarize the scene. But tourists do vulgarize it; and I suppose we did so, just like others.
We took the train back to Rhyl, where we arrived at about four o'clock, and, having dined, we again took the rail for Chester, and thence to Rock Park (that is, O'Sullivan and I), and reached home at about eleven o'clock.
Yesterday, September 13th, I began to wear a watch from Bennet's, 65 Cheapside, London. W. C. Bennet warrants it as the best watch which they can produce. If it prove as good and as durable as he prophesies, J – will find it a perfect time-keeper long after his father has done with Time. If I had not thought of his wearing it hereafter, I should have been content with a much inferior one. No. 39,620.
September 20th. – I went back to Rhyl last Friday in the steamer. We arrived at the landing-place at nearly four o'clock, having started at twelve, and I walked thence to our lodgings, 18 West Parade. The children and their mother were all gone out, and I sat some time in our parlor before anybody came. The next morning I made an excursion in the omnibus as far as Ruthin, passing through Rhyddlan, St. Asaph, Denbigh, and reaching Ruthin at one o'clock. All these are very ancient places. St. Asaph has a cathedral which is not quite worthy of that name, but is a very large and stately church in excellent repair. Its square battlemented tower has a very fine appearance, crowning the clump of village houses on the hill-top, as you approach from Rhyddlan. The ascent of the hill is very steep; so it is at Denbigh and at Ruthin, – the steepest streets, indeed, that I ever climbed. Denbigh is a place of still more antique aspect than St. Asaph; it looks, I think, even older than Chester, with its gabled houses, many of their windows opening on hinges, and their fronts resting on pillars, with an open porch beneath. The castle makes an admirably ruinous figure on the hill, higher than the village. I had come hither with the purpose of inspecting it, but as it began to rain just then, I concluded to get into the omnibus and go to Ruthin. There was another steep ascent from the commencement of the long street of Ruthin, till I reached the market-place, which is of nearly triangular shape, and an exceedingly old-looking place. Houses of stone or plastered brick; one or two with timber frames; the roofs of an uneven line, and bulging out or sinking in; the slates moss-grown. Some of them have two peaks and even three in a row, fronting on the streets, and there is a stone market-house with a table of regulations. In this market-place there is said to be a stone on which King Arthur beheaded one of his enemies; but this I did not see. All these villages were very lively, as the omnibus drove in; and I rather imagine it was market-day in each of them, – there being quite a bustle of Welsh people. The old women came round the omnibus courtesying and intimating their willingness to receive alms, – witch-like women, such as one sees in pictures or reads of in romances, and very unlike anything feminine in America. Their style of dress cannot have changed for centuries. It was quite unexpected to me to hear Welsh so universally and familiarly