CHAPTER EIGHT.
A HOUSE IN TUDOR STYLE.
It would be difficult to imagine a more enchanting spot for adwelling-place than that where stood Hollymead House. Near thenorth-western angle of the Forest of Dean, it commanded a view of theWye where this beautiful stream, after meandering through the verdantmeads of Herefordshire, over old red sandstone, assaults thecarboniferous rocks of Monmouth, whose bold, high ridges, lyingtransversely to its course, look as if no power of water could ever havecut through them. But the Wye has, in its flow of countless ages,carved out--in Spanish-American phrase _canoned_--a channel with bankshere and there rising nigh a thousand feet above the level of its bed.Between these it glides with swift current; not direct, but insnake-like contortions, fantastically doubling back upon itself, almostto touching. Here and there cliffs rise sheer up from the water's edge,grand mural escarpments of the mountain limestone, such as show the"tors" and dales of Derbyshire. The Codwell rocks below Lydbrook,forming the base of the famed "Symonds' Yat," are of this character,their grim facades seamed and broken into separate battlements, givingthem resemblance to ruined castles, but such as could have beeninhabited only "in those days when there were giants on the earth."
The view from Hollymead House--better still from a high hill or "tump"above it--took in the valley of the river where it enters thecarboniferous _strata_ near Kerne bridge. There was no Kerne bridgethen; the stream being crossed by ford and ferry, a mile further up.Looking is that direction, in the foreground was Coppetwood Hill, anoblong eminence embraced by one of the great sinuosities of the river,more than six miles in the round and less than one across the neck oristhmus. At this neck, perched on a spur of the hill o'erhanging thestream, stood a vast pile of building, the castle of Goodrich, on whosedonjon floated a flag long ere Norman baron set foot on the soil ofEngland. For there the Saxon Duke Godric lorded it over his churls andswineherds; his iron rule at the Conquest replaced by that of theMarshalls, and later the Talbots, alike stern and severe.
Looking beyond, and north-westward, a wide stretch of country came underthe eye, thickly wooded and undulating, the ancient kingdom of Erchyn--now called Archenfield--backed in the far distance by a horizon ofhills, many with a mountain aspect, and some real mountains, as thecurious Saddlebow, with a depression or "col" between its twin summits;Garway, the Cerriggalch, and the long dark range of the Hatterals.
To the west was a very conglomeration of mountains, seemingly crowdedagainst one another, yet all apart, each distinguishable by an outlineand aspect of its own. Most conspicuous of these, the conicalSugarloaf, the two Skyrrids--one of them named Holy Mountain--and theBlorenge, all towering above the town of Abergavenny, which issurrounded and embraced by them as the arena of an amphitheatre by itsouter and more elevated circle.
Sweeping round the sky line, north and north-east the eye was met bymany a bold projection, as the Longmynds and Clee hills, with their bluebasalt, and the Haugh wood, summit of the famed Silurian upcast ofWoolhope. Farther on to the east the Malvern Beacons of true mountainaspect, remarkable from their isolation, but still more in that therethe geologist can see rocks the earliest stratified on earth, somemetamorphosed, and all trace of stratification destroyed; while there,too, are visible the rocks of igneous agency, upheaved both by plutonicand volcanic forces--the gneisses, basalts, syenites, and granites.
Eastward over the Forest edge could be seen, extending far as vision'sverge, the wide plains of Worcester and Gloucester--as said, an ancientsea bed--through which now flows the yellow Severn; and on a clear daybends and reaches of this grand river might be distinguished glistening,gold-like, in the sun; the level expanse of its valley diversified byseveral isolated and curious eminences--hills and ridges--as May andBreddon due east, and, more to the south, the Mendips and Cotswolds.
Alone looking southward from Hollymead no mountains met the eye; in thatdirection only the undulations of the Forest itself, clad in its liveryof green--all trees. But immediately in front of the house, and slopinggently away from it, was a wide and long stretch of park-like pastureland, where the trees stood solitary or in clumps, a double row of grandoaks bisecting it centrally, guarding and shading the avenue which ledto the public road outside. This passed from Ruardean out of the forestby a steep descent down to Walford, thence on to Ross.
Architecturally, Hollymead House was a singular structure. For it wasin the early Tudor style, built when bricks were a scarce and dearcommodity, and timber, in the inverse ratio, plentiful and cheap. Thewalls were a framework of hewn oak--uprights, cross-beams, and diagonalties--due to the handiwork of the carpenter, only the spaces betweenshowing the skill of the mason. And, as if to keep ever in record thefact of this double yet distinct workmanship, the painter andwhitewasher had been now and then called upon to perpetuate it by givingseparate and severely contrasting colours to what was timber and theinterspacing material of mortar and brick. The result a striped andchequered aspect of the oddest and quaintest kind. Sir Richard mighthave had it in his mind when he made the figurative allusion to a cageand pair of pretty birds. Still it was not exactly cage-shaped, butmore like several set together, some smaller ones stuck against orhanging from a large one that stood central; the congeries due to avariety of wings, projecting windows, dormers, and other outworks.
Equally odd and irregular the arrangement inside. An entrance-hall witha wide stairway carried up around it, the oak balusters very beams, witha profusion of carving on them; on each landing, corridors dimly lightedleading off to rooms no two on the same level; some of thembed-chambers, only to be got at by passing through other sleepingapartments interposed between. And, turn which way one would, alongpassages, or from room to room, short flights of stairs, or it might bebut a step or two, were encountered everywhere, to the imminent risk ofleg or neck-breaking.
Though such a structure may appear strange to the modern eye, it did notso then, for there was nothing uncommon in it Hollymead House was butone of many like mansions of the day, though one of the largest and mostimposing. Nor are they all gone yet. Scores of such still standthroughout the shires of the marches, and in perfect repair, tocommemorate the architectural skill, or rather the absence of it, whichdistinguished our ancestry in the Tudor times.
The owner of Hollymead, Ambrose Powell, was a man of peculiar tastes andidiosyncrasies, some evidence of which appears in the baptismal names hehad bestowed upon his daughters. A fancy, having its origin in the factthat from a hill above the house could be seen the two great westernrivers, Wye and Severn--poetically, _Vaga_ and _Sabrina_--themselves ina sense sisters, nurslings from the same breast of far Plinlimmon. Fromthe summit of that "tump" his elder daughter had looked on hername-mother at a later date than she made pretence of when urging theyounger up the ridge between Ruardean and Drybrook. It was a wild,witching spot, the grey rocks of mountain limestone here and therepeeping out from a low growth of hazel, hawthorn, yew, and holly. Butthe summit itself was bare, affording on all sides a varied andmatchless panorama of landscape. Being within the boundaries of theirown domain, Sabrina oft climbed up to it; not for the view's sake alone,but because it was to her hallowed ground, sacred as the place where shehad made surrender of her young heart, when she told Sir Richard Walwynit was his. There was a pretty little summer house, with seats, andmany an hour Ambrose Powell himself spent there, in the study of booksand the contemplation of Nature--his delight. Not in a mere meditativeway, or as an idle dreamer; but an active observer of its workings andsearcher after its secrets. Nor did he confine himself to this, butalso took an interest in the affairs of man, so strong as to havestudied them in every aspect--probed the social and political problemsof human existence to their deepest depths. Which had conducted him toa belief--a full, firm conviction--in the superiority of republicaninstitutions; as it must all whose minds are as God made or intendedthem, and not perverted by prejudice or corrupted by false teachings.He was, in point of fact, a Puritan, though not of the extreme sternso
rt; in his ways of thinking rather as Hampden and Sir Harry Vane, orwith still closer similitude to a people then scorned and persecutedbeyond all others--the "Friends." It is difficult in these modern days,under the light of superior knowledge, and a supposed betterdiscrimination between right and wrong, to comprehend the cruelties, aybarbarous atrocities, to which were submitted the "Friends," or, ascommonly called, "Quakers." A people who, despite their paucity ofnumbers, did then, and since then have done and been doing, more toennoble the national character of England than all the apostles of herEpiscopacy, with her political boasters and military braggarts to boot.If neither the most notorious nor glorious, no names in England'shistory can compare in goodness and gracefulness with the Penns of 1640and the Brights of 1880.
Though not a professed "Friend," Ambrose Powell was a believer in theirfaith and doctrines; and in his daily walk and life acted very much inaccordance with them. But not altogether. From one of their ideas hedissented--that of non-resistance. Of a proud, independent spirit,despite his gentle inclinings, he would brook no bullying; the last manto have one cheek smitten and meekly turn the other to the smiter.Instead, he would strike back. A scene we are now called upon torecord, and which occurred on that same evening, gives appropriateillustration of this phase of his character.