A WANDERER’ NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 48, 20 November 1926, Page 24

A WANDERER’ NOTE BOOK

(BY

CHARLES WILSON)

[Specially Written for The Dominion.] No. XI.

An Elizabethan School. “Durbyshire,” and “Durby,” they say in Ashbournelly that pleasant, quietly restful, little country town which is my headquarters during a ten days* sojourn in the beautiful county which I find most English people call “Darbyshire.” Of course, I suppose one ought to follow local pronunciation but how strong is the case for “Darbyshire” and "Darby.” I at once perceive when being privileged to see the actual charter of the Queen Elizabeth’s Endowed Grammar School, I find "Darbyshire”* appearing in several places on a wonderfully preserved roll of vellum which carries the signature of good Queen Bess herself. At the grammar school house, where a hospitable relative is the headmaster, I lodge in an ancient building a tablet over the door of which is dated about the middle of the sixteenth century. A veritable halo of antiquity seems to surround the residence. although the reorganised Grammar School, carried on in a fine new school on a hillside overlooking the town, is now much more famous for its modern science side rather than for .those humanites originally the chief raison d’etre of the institution. The great Dr. Johnson, of whom I. am to come across so many associations in Derbyshire, once applied, so the legend goes, for the post of usher, but was unsuccessful. The old school has had its vicissitudes, for in Johnson’s time, a parson named Langley, who was headmaster for forty odd years, was, apparently, so out of favour as an educationist that only one scholar was left in the free school. Langley seems to have been a quarrelsome pedagogue, for I read of his so frequently assaulting his ushers that they were granted special keys for the rooms in which they locked themselves, and the governors had to dismiss him, losing their case, however, when the tough old gentleman appealed to the Court of Chancery and outwitted his opponents. Nowa'davs the scholars of both sexes are over 200 and I hope to interest them in some views of New Zealand, which I hope to show them before I leave England. “The Pride of the Peak.” At early morn I am awakened in imv oak-beamed and cfuaintly latticewindowed bedroom by the fine chiming of the bell in the splendid tapering spire of St. Oswald’s Church, but a hundred or so yards away. Our old friend Boswell, who. accompanied Miss Pinkerton’s hero, “The Great Lexicographer,” when Johnson once revisited the picturesque little town where, he was wont to stay with his old friend Dr. Taylor, descibes it, in the immortal “Life,” as “one of the largest and most luminous churches that I have seen in any town of the same size”; and a more modem visitor, George Eliot, whose Stonyshire was Derbyshire, and on whom I make a few notes further on, proudly declared it to be the "finest mere parish church in the kingdom.” To many of us, however, a leading association of the church is contained in Tom Moore’s tuneful lines "Those Evening Bells,” which the author of “Lalla Rookh” admitted were inspired by "the sweet music of Ashbourne’s chimes”: Those evening bells! Those evening bolls! How many a tale their music tells Of youth, and home, and that sweet time, When last I heard their soothing chime. Those joyous hours arc passed away! And many a heart that there was gay Within tho- tombs now darkly dwells And hears no more those evening bells. And so 'twill be when I am gone, The tuneful peal will still ring on: While other bards shall walk these dells And sing your praise, tweet evening bells. Tom Moore lived for four years close to Ashbourne, at a pretty little spot called Mayfield, where he had a cottage which he called his “scribbling retreat.” Here he reposed after a long spell of London gaieties and wrote “Lalla Rookh,” that highly colourful but sadly long-winded Oriental poem to which, although the author regarded it as his magnum t.pus, so many of suph, alas, comparatively few readers as the genial Irishman has. I fear, in these days, will prefer his many tuneful ballads. At Mayfield Cottage, to which I walk across the fields in this delightful July twilight, Tom Moore repaired both his health and his finances. lie may never have been a very great poet, but everyone app'ears to agree that he was one ' of the best hearted of men, and most genial of friends. There is a pleasant little abridgement, in one volume, of his famous “Journal,” one of the most companionable of “dipping books,” upon.which the present writer indited a "Literary Causerie” for a New Zealand newspaper a year or so ago. I would I had a copy with me toklav. Toni must have passed some pleasant davs in his retirement at Mayfield with his faithful Bessy, and I would that space allowed me to gossip further bn his associations with this district.

Dr. Johnson and Ashbourne. At Ashbourne, and, later on, at Lichfield, that quaint old cathedral city which is in Staffordshire, but to which my kindly host motors me one sultry summer’s afternoon, and where Johnson was born, one is constantly coming across Johnsonian associations. Almost opposite my windows at the School House is a fine old house, Georgian, I should say, but with a facade of reputedly Italian architecture, which was the residence of Johnson’s great friend at Ashbourne, Dr Taylor. It is still to-day a doctor’s residence, which I would fain inspect, but for a family sickness, which all regret. Here Johnson spent many happy days on his various visits to the town and to his old schoolfellow at Dr. Hunter’s academy at Lichfield. Ohl Taylor must have been quite a ''character.” Roswell describes him as "a hearty English squire, with the parson superinduced,” a gentleman whose post-chaise was “large and roomy, drawn by four plump horses and driven by two steady, jolly postilions,” and whose upper servant, a Mr. Peters, was “a decent, grave man in purple clothes and a large white wig, like the butler or major domo of a bishop.” Here Johnson, we may guess, sinped his port—before he took to swilling numberless cups of the best Bohea or Soochong, and consumed his favourite strawberries and cream, or that wall fruit of which he was so fond—in Dr Taylor's dignified Adams rooms. He drove about, the country in his host’s chaise, during one of his drives making the famous confession: "If I had no duties and no reference to futurity, I would spend mv life .in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman; but she should be one who would understand me and would add something to the conversation.” The giddy old philosopher! It is from one of these drives that we get one of his solemn warnings to the often too bibulous Bozzy, that that worthy should abjure port ami stick to water onlv, for it was on the way from a trip to Derby that he told the future biographer: "Von should drink only water; for then you are sure not to get drunk; whereas, if you drink wine you are never sure.”

Lichfield. Lichfield does not seem to be greatly visited by Australians and New Zealanders, for at Dr. Johnson’s house, which is now a Johnson museum, and is evidently kept in apple pie order by the courteous custodian who shows us round the great man’s birthplace, I turn page after page filled with American entries without coming across any evidence of Antipodean visits. With Lichfield and its beautiful cathedral 1 fall in love at once. The Johnson ‘Museum, with its tiny oak panelled rooms, is full of interesting relics of the Great Cham, and as an ex-librarian good New Zealander, and enthusiastic Johnsonian, I rejoice mildlv over the fact the Turnbull Library at Wellington possesses, I think I am right in saying, several items of Johnsoniana, first editions of Rasselas, and of several of the rarer pamphlets published bv the Sage of Fleet Street, some of which are not included in the Lichfield collection. At the cathedral, on the way to which I am pointed out the early home of Garrick, and that of another Lichfield man, the learned Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin), I am taken to see memoiial tablets to Johnson and Garrick, to Anne Seward, the “Swan of Lichfield,” and to that clever, but eccentric dame, Lady Wortley Montague. Also, referring to my notes, there is here a monument in honour of one of Nelson’s greatest captains, William Parker, who died, a Knight and an Ad-, miral, in 1866. z Lichfield’s Cathedral.

Lichfield is one of the smallest, but in its own wav, one of the most beautiful cathedrals, and the only church in England, so my verger conductor proudly informs me, which possesses three spires—-the “Ladies of the Vale.” The restored central spire is attributed, in its present day form, to Sir Christopher Wren, some of whose beautiful London churches certain overenterprising Yankee gentlemen are anxious, so I read, to transport, stone bv stone, to "the States.” Perhaps at. . the price of wiping out the British debt to Uncle Shylock, as the "Daily Mail” rather rudely calls Uncle Jonatlian, it might be well to conclude such “a deal.” For me, as a New Zealander, I am most interested at Lichfield in the beautifully designed recumbent sculptural monument, in the Lady’s Chappl, justly esteemed one of the gems of the cathedral, of good Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, who, after leaving the antipodean country in whose early colonial history he was so prominent and honoured a figure, became Bishop of Lichfield. But Other interesting places call me onwards, and I must say good-bve to one of the most interesting little English towns I have yet seen. Rural Derbyshire.

One goes to districts which are astonishingly different from preconceived ideas of their characters. Previous to sojourning an all to brief while in Derbyshire I confeis I had thought of that county as consisting mainly of a well-wooded region round the Peak, the rest being mainly an industrial area. Motoring over the country in many directions from Ashbourne I discover Derbyshire to be a singularly beautiful land, the picturesque '‘bosky” charm of whose splendid tree-clad dales and hills I shall never forget. It is a county cf superb vistas, and in this clear, clean, delightfully summer air of my visit I never cease to rejoice over its beauties. Here and there may be a mill chimney, but there is no such pall of smoke, as—when the idiotically wicked coal strike is past—will drench certain parts of my. native Yorkshire in a Dantcan gloom of depressing murkiness. Derbyshire is mainly rural, a land of dairy farming, with nary a Sheffield nor a Leeds—Heaven be thanked—within its confines. Derby itself, where the Midland Railway, now merged into the L.M.S.—London, Midland. and Scottish—lias its centre, is largely industrial. But it is neither smoky nor dirty. Elsewhere in the county are big factories—the Nestle milk works near Ashbourne seem an enortnous pla.ee, and there are important brick and pottery works But their surroundings are never, or verv rarely, sordid This is a cheerful, pretty land, and as one motors along its splendid roads —how the New Zealand motorist would rave over them I—one secs a race of farmers and labourers who are mostlv a fine lieftv lot of fellows, the pleasant soft burr of whose speech falls very agreeably on the ear. In Dovedale.

At Ashbourne I am close to Dovedale, a district specially rich in delightful spots, and, as I am not astonished to find, a happy hunting ground for the artist in search of “paintable bits.” At one end of the dale is the famous little Pishing House built by Charles Cotton, the Derbyshire poet of Jacobean times, who was so intimate a friend, despite the amorous and openly Bacchanalian side of whose verse, of good Master Izaak Walton, he who wrote “The Compleat Angler” (in the second part of which Cotton largely collaborated), and came to these parts to indulge in that sport upon which he discoursed so quaintly. At flic Charles Cotton Hotel, at Hartington, we refresh the motor with petrol and ourselves with cool bitter for the mere male and tea far the ladies of the small party. Here we are but a few minutes from the river Dove, and some qiiaintlv beautiful stepping stones, a scene which has been the joy of so manv rambling artists. Dovedale has its special sights in some queer old caverns, in one of which, so runneth local tradition, the over-merry but too often impecunious Charles Cotton was wont to take refuge when pursued bv "writ servers”—“a malison on their cursed breed,” he is reported to have written. But, indeed, the whole district is full of charm and interest, and the New Zealand tourist who finds delight in Devon and Cornwall but who omits Dovedale from his itinerary is to be pitied.

Passing On. I should like to tell of visits to the historic Haddon Hall and to stately Chatsworth; to the pretty little village of Sudbury, the home of that interesting family, the Vernons; to the queer old Uttoxeter, whose church has such a peculiarly graceful spire, and in whose market place the spot is still pointed out where good Dr. Johnson, then so great a figure in London’s literary circles, stood bareheaded in penance for having objected to sell secondhand books by the side of his father, Michael Then, again, there is Norburv, where, as at Tissington, I witness the quaint old ceremony of “dressing the wells,” and where I remember that I am now in George Eliot’s country, and that Ellaston close by, but across the river, in Staffordshire, is the Hayslope, of which and its folk you mav read in "Adam Bede.” But I also remember that "the north is calling, and that I am due at mv native Harrotate. “And so to bed,” as good old Master Samuel Pepys was wont to record in the famous Diary.