Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

These cloisters were covered porticoes surrounding the garden, where the monks walked for exercise. They are now mostly destroyed, but our guide showed us the remains of exquisite carvings there, in which each group was an imitation of some leaf or flower, such as the curly kail of Scotland; a leaf, by the by, as worthy of imitation as the Greek acanthus, the trefoil oak, and some other leaves, the names of which I do not remember. These Gothic artificers were lovers of nature; they studied at the fountain head; hence the never-dying freshness, variety, and originality of their conceptions.

  Another passage, whose architectural accuracy you feel at once, is this: —

  “They entered now the chancel tall;

  The darkened, roof rose high, aloof

  On pillars lofty, light, and small:

  The keystone that locked, each ribbed aisle

  Was a fleur-de-lis, or a quatre-feuille;

  The corbels were carved grotesque and grim;

  And the pillars, with, clustered shafts so trim,

  With, base and with capital flourished around,

  Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound.”

  The quatre-feuille here spoken of is an ornament formed by the junction of four leaves. The frequent recurrence of the fleur-de-lis in the carvings here shows traces of French hands employed in the architecture. In one place in the abbey there is a rude inscription, in which a French architect commemorates the part he has borne in constructing the building.

  These corbels are the projections from which, the arches spring, usually carved in some fantastic mask or face; and on these the Shakspearian imagination of the Gothic artists seems to have let itself loose to run riot: there is every variety of expression, from, the most beautiful to the most goblin and grotesque. One has the leer of fiendish triumph, with budding horns, showing too plainly his paternity; again you have the drooping eyelids and saintly features of some fair virgin; and then the gasping face of some old monk, apparently in the agonies of death, with his toothless gums, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes. Other faces have an earthly and sensual leer; some are wrought into expressions of scorn and mockery, some of supplicating agony, and some of grim, despair.

  One wonders what gloomy, sarcastic, poetic, passionate mind has thus amused itself, recording in stone all the range of passions — saintly, earthly, and diabolic — on the varying human face. One fancies each corbel to have had its history, its archetype in nature; a thousand possible stories spring into one’s mind. They are wrought with such a startling and individual definiteness, that one feels as about Shakspeare’s characters, as if they must have had a counterpart in real existence. The pure, saintly nun may have been some sister, or some daughter, or some early love, of the artist, who in an evil hour saw the convent barriers rise between her and all that was loving. The fat, sensual face may have been a sly sarcasm on some worthy abbot, more eminent in flesh than spirit. The fiendish faces may have been wrought out of the author’s own perturbed dreams.

  An architectural work says that one of these corbels, with an anxious and sinister Oriental countenance, has been made, by the guides, to perform duty as an authentic likeness of the wizard Michael Scott. Now, I must earnestly protest against stating things in that way. Why does a writer want to break up so laudable a poetic design in the guides? He would have been much better occupied in interpreting some of the half-defaced old inscriptions into a corroborative account. No doubt it was Michael Scott, and looked just like him.

  It were a fine field for a story writer to analyze the conception and growth of an abbey or cathedral as it formed itself, day after day, and year after year, in the soul of some dreamy, impassioned workman, who made it the note book where he wrought out imperishably in stone all his observations on nature and man. I think it is this strong individualism of the architect in the buildings that give the never-dying charm, and variety to the Gothic: each Gothic building is a record of the growth, character, and individualities of its builder’s soul; and hence no two can be alike.

  I was really disappointed to miss in the abbey the stained glass which gives such a lustre and glow to the poetic description. I might have known better; but somehow I came there fully expecting to see the window, where —

  “Full in the midst his cross of red

  Triumphant Michael brandished;

  The moonbeam kissed the holy pane,

  And threw on the pavement the bloody stain.”

  Alas! the painted glass was all of the poet’s own setting; years ago it was shattered by the hands of violence, and the grace of the fashion of it hath perished.

  The guide pointed to a broken fragment which commanded a view of the whole interior. “Sir Walter used to sit here,” he said. I fancied I could see him sitting on the fragment, gazing around the ruin, and mentally restoring it to its original splendor; he brings back the colored light into the windows, and throws its many-hued reflections over the graves; he ranges the banners along around the walls, and rebuilds every shattered arch and aisle, till we have the picture as it rises on us in his book.

  I confess to a strong feeling of reality, when my guide took me to a grave where a flat, green, mossy stone, broken across the middle, is reputed to be the grave of Michael Scott. I felt, for the moment, verily persuaded that if the guide would pry up one of the stones we should see him there, as described: —

  “His hoary beard in silver rolled,

  He seemed some seventy winters old;

  A palmer’s amice wrapped, him round,

  With a wrought Spanish baldric bound,

  Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea:

  His left hand held his book of might;

  A silver cross was in his right;

  The lamp was placed beside his knee:

  High and majestic was his look,

  At which, the fellest fiends had shook,

  And all unruffled, was his face:

  They trusted his soul had gotten grace.”

  I never knew before how fervent a believer I had been in the realities of these things.

  There are two graves that I saw, which correspond to those mentioned in these lines: —

  “And there the dying lamps did burn

  Before thy lone and lowly urn,

  O gallafit chief of Otterburne,

  And thine, dark knight of Liddesdale.”

  The Knight of Otterburne was one of the Earls Douglas, killed in a battle with Henry Percy, called Hotspur, in 1388. The Knight of Liddesdale was another Douglas, who lived in the reign of David II., and was called the “Flower of Chivalry.” One performance of this “Flower” is rather characteristic of the times. It seems the king made one Ramsey high sheriff of Teviotdale. The Earl of Douglas chose to consider this as a personal affront, as he wanted the office himself. So, by way of exhibiting his own qualifications for administering justice, he one day came down on Ramsey, vi et armis, took him off his judgment seat, carried him to one of his castles, and without more words tumbled him and his horse into a deep dungeon, where they both starved to death. There’s a “Flower” for you, peculiar to the good old times. Nobody could have doubted after this his qualifications to be high sheriff.

  Having looked all over the abbey from, below, I noticed a ruinous winding staircase; so up I went, rustling along through the ivy, which matted and wove itself around the stones. Soon I found myself looking down on the abbey from a new point of view — from a little narrow stone gallery, which threads the whole inside of the building. There I paced up and down, looking occasionally through the ivy-wreathed arches on the green, turfy floor below.

  It seems as if silence and stillness had become a real presence in these old places. The voice of the guide and the company beneath had a hushed and muffled sound; and when I rustled the ivy leaves, or, in trying to break off a branch, loosened some fragment of stone, the sound affected me with a startling distinctness. I could not but inly muse and wonder on the life these old monks and abbots led, shrined up here as they were in this lovely retirement.


  In ruder ages these places were the only retreat for men of a spirit too gentle to take force and bloodshed for their life’s work; men who believed that pen and parchment were better than sword and steel. Here I suppose multitudes of them lived harmless, dreamy lives — reading old manuscripts, copying and illuminating new ones.

  It is said that this Melrose is of very ancient origin, extending back to the time of the Culdees, the earliest missionaries who established religion in Scotland, and who had a settlement in this vicinity. However, a royal saint, after a while, took it in hand to patronize, and of course the credit went to him, and from, him Scott calls it “St. David’s lonely pile.” In time a body of Cistercian monks were settled there.

  According to all accounts the abbey has raised some famous saints. We read of trances, illuminations, and miraculous beatifications; and of one abbot in particular, who exhibited the odor of sanctity so strongly that it is said the mere opening of his grave, at intervals, was sufficient to perfume the whole establishment with odors of paradise. Such stories apart, however, we must consider that for all the literature, art, and love of the beautiful, all the humanizing influences which hold society together, the world was for many ages indebted to these monastic institutions.

  In the reformation, this abbey was destroyed amid the general storm, which attacked the ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland. “Pull down the nest, and the rooks will fly away,” was the common saying of the mob; and in those days a man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the carved work.

  Melrose was considered for many years merely a stone quarry, from which materials were taken for all sorts of buildings, such as constructing tolbooths, repairing mills and sluices; and it has been only till a comparatively recent period that its priceless value as an architectural remain has led to proper efforts for its preservation. It is now most carefully kept.

  After wandering through the inside we walked out into the old graveyard, to look at the outside. The yard is full of old, curious, mouldering gravestones; and on one of them there is an inscription sad and peculiar enough to have come from the heart of the architect who planned the abbey; it runs as follows: —

  “The earth walks on the earth, glittering with gold;

  The earth goes to the earth sooner than it wold;

  The earth, builds on the earth, castles and towers;

  The earth, says to the earth, All shall be ours.”

  Here, also, we were interested in a plain marble slab, which marks the last resting-place of Scott’s faithful Tom Purdie, his zealous factotum. In his diary, when he hears of the wreck of his fortunes, Scott says of this serving man, “Poor Tom Purdie, such news will wring your heart, and many a poor fellow’s beside, to whom my prosperity was daily bread.”

  One fancies again the picture described by Lockhart, the strong, lank frame, hard features, sunken eyes, and grizzled eyebrows, the green jacket, white hat, and gray trousers — the outer appointments of the faithful serving man. One sees Scott walking familiarly by his side, staying himself on Tom’s shoulder, while Tom talks with glee of “our trees,” and “our bukes.” One sees the little skirmishing, when master wants trees planted one way and man sees best to plant them another; and the magnanimity with which kindly, cross-grained Tom at last agrees, on reflection, to “take his honor’s advice” about the management of his honor’s own property. Here, between master and man, both freemen, is all that beauty of relation sometimes erroneously considered as the peculiar charm of slavery. Would it have made the relation any more picturesque and endearing had Tom been stripped of legal rights, and made liable to sale with the books and furniture of Abbotsford? Poor Tom is sleeping here very quietly, with a smooth coverlet of green grass. Over him is the following inscription: “Here lies the body of Thomas Purdie, wood forester at Abbotsford, who died 29th October, 1829, aged sixty-two years. Thou hast been faithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things.” Matt. xxv. 21.

  We walked up, and down, and about, getting the best views of the building. It is scarcely possible for description to give you the picture. The artist, in whose mind the conception of this building arose, was a Mozart in architecture; a plaintive and ethereal lightness, a fanciful quaintness, pervaded his composition. The building is not a large one, and it has not that air of solemn massive grandeur, that plain majesty, which impresses you in the cathedrals of Aberdeen and Glasgow. As you stand looking at the wilderness of minarets and flying buttresses, the multiplied shrines, and mouldings, and cornices, all incrusted with carving as endless in its variety as the frostwork on a window pane; each shrine, each pinnace, each moulding, a study by itself, yet each contributing, like the different strains of a harmony, to the general effect of the whole; it seems to you that for a thing so airy and spiritual to have sprung up by enchantment, and to have been the product of spells and fairy fingers, is no improbable account of the matter.

  Speaking of gargoyles — you are no architect, neither am I, but you may as well get used to this descriptive term; it means the water-spouts which conduct the water from the gutters at the eaves of these buildings, and which are carved in every grotesque and fanciful device that can be imagined. They are mostly goblin and fiendish faces, and look as if they were darting out of the church in a towering passion, or a fit of diabolic disgust and malice. Besides these gargoyles, there are in many other points of the external building representations of fiendish faces and figures, as if in the act of flying from the building, under the influence of a terrible spell: by this, as my guide said, was expressed the idea that the holy hymns and worship of the church put Satan and all his forces to rout, and made all that was evil flee.

  One remark on this building, in Billings’s architectural account of it, interested me; and that is, that it is finished with the most circumstantial elegance and minuteness in those concealed portions which are excluded, from public view, and which can only be inspected by laborious climbing or groping; and he accounts for this by the idea that the whole carving and execution was considered as an act of solemn worship and adoration, in which the artist offered up his best faculties to the praise of the Creator.

  After lingering a while here, we went home to our inn or hotel. Now, these hotels in the small towns of England, if this is any specimen, are delightful affairs for travellers, they are so comfortable and home-like. Our snug little parlor was radiant with the light of the coal grate; our table stood before it, with its bright silver, white cloth, and delicate china cups; and then such a dish of mutton chops! My dear, we are all mortal, and emotions of the beautiful and sublime tend especially to make one hungry. We, therefore, comforted ourselves over the instability of earthly affairs, and the transitory nature of all human grandeur, by consolatory remarks on the present whiteness of the bread, the sweetness of the butter; and as to the chops, all declared, with one voice, that such mutton was a thing unknown in America. I moved an emendation, except on the sea coast of Maine. We resolved to cherish the memory of our little hostess in our heart of hearts, and as we gathered round the cheery grate, drying our cold feet, we voted that poetry was a humbug, and damp, old, musty cathedrals a bore. Such are the inconsistencies of human nature!

  “Nevertheless,” said I to S —— , after dinner, “I am going back again to-night, to see that abbey by moonlight. I intend to walk the whole figure while I am about it.”

  Just on the verge of twilight I stepped out, to see what the town afforded in the way of relics. To say the truth, my eye had been caught by some cunning little tubs and pails in a window, which I thought might be valued in the home department. I went into a shop, where an auld wife soon appeared, who, in reply to my inquiries, told me, that the said little tubs and pails were made of plum tree wood from Dryburgh Abbey, and, of course, partook of the sanctity of relics. She and her husband seemed to be driving a thriving trade in the article, and either plum trees must be very abundant at Dryburgh, or what there are must be gifted with that power of self-multiplication which
inheres in the wood of the true Cross. I bought them in blind faith, however, suppressing all rationalistic doubts, as a good relic hunter should.

  I went up into a little room where an elderly woman professed to have quite a collection of the Melrose relics. Some years ago extensive restorations and repairs were made in the old abbey, in which Walter Scott took a deep interest. At that time, when the scaffolding was up for repairing the building, as I understood, Scott had the plaster casts made of different parts, which he afterwards incorporated into his own dwelling at Abbotsford. I said to the good woman that I had understood by Washington Irving’s account, that Scott appropriated bona fide fragments of the building, and alluded to the account which he gives of the little red sandstone lion from Melrose. She repelled the idea with great energy, and said she had often heard Sir Walter say, that he would not carry off a bit of the building as big as his thumb. She showed me several plaster casts that she had in her possession, which were taken at this time. There were several corbels there; one was the head of an old monk, and looked as if it might have been a mask taken of his face the moment after death; the eyes were hollow and sunken, the cheeks fallen in, the mouth lying helplessly open, showing one or two melancholy old stumps of teeth. I wondered over this, whether it really was the fac-simile of some poor old Father Ambrose, or Father Francis, whose disconsolate look, after his death agony, had so struck the gloomy fancy of the artist as to lead him to immortalize him in a corbel, for a lasting admonition to his fat worldly brethren; for if we may trust the old song, these monks of Melrose had rather a suspicious reputation in the matter of worldly conformity. The impudent ballad says, —

  “O, the monks of Melrose, they made good, kail

  On Fridays, when they fasted;

  They never wanted beef or ale

  As long as their neighbors’ lasted.”

  Naughty, roistering fellows! I thought I could perceive how this poor Father Francis had worn his life out exhorting them to repentance, and given up the ghost at last in despair, and so been made at once into a saint and a corbel.