The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844

Duly impressed with these considerations, the stranger will be less disposed to complain when arriving at any place of fashionable resort in England; at Tonbridge, for instance, one of the most aristocratic; he finds himself consigned to the solitary comfort of his own apartments, without the prospect of any of those periods of social reünion, which elsewhere tend so strongly to break down the barriers of reserve and facilitate the process of introduction and acquaintance. Cardinal de Retz has told us, that the dinner-bell never fails to disperse a mob in France, and if English travellers are to be believed, it seldom fails to bring one together in an American hotel; but as a social summons, no such tocsin breaks the uniformity of the English ménage. The traveller may dine indeed in the public room, but it is at a separate table, on his separate repast; he is served with what viands, at what hour, he pleases, but no contiguity of position or interchange of friendly offices can remove the impalpable but impassable partition which divides him from his neighbors. He feels something of the air of the penitentiary in the very refinements of his luxurious hostelrie. But these are incidents not without their attendant advantages. If the stranger is thus separated from his fellows, he is at least saved, in turn, from the attempts of fraud, and the contact of impertinence. This is, in fact, the meaning of such arrangements, and if not exactly palatable, they are at any rate protective. But there are restrictions with regard to the fairer part of creation, and his correspondence with them, which admit of no such topics of comfort and alleviation. We nowhere find it stated, by what steps it is permitted to the English suitor to proceed from the distant bow to the morning call, always in the presence of the mother, the aunt, or other watchful guardian; and thence by regular gradations to the heart and hand of the object of his wishes. But it is enough for our stranger to know, that whatever may be the laws of strategy, provided for such cases in other lands, here it is necessary to begin his approaches with the father, and to lay his lines of earliest circumvallation around the watchful mother. These distant out-works must be mastered before there is the slightest chance of communicating even a summons to the citadel. English travellers, therefore, express surprise at the artless confidence with which unmarried ladies in America commit themselves to the solitary chat with a comparative stranger, take his hand or his arm after a few hours’ acquaintance, and expose themselves to the surprise of a declaration before the extent of his means or the respectability of his connexion have been discussed and settled. Between the merits of these different modes of procedure, the present writer has neither the wish nor the ability to arbitrate. They have their growth in such widely different states of society, that the reformer must be bold who should attempt to transpose or change them. It is sufficient for our present purpose to remark, that if the visitor at Tonbridge should have failed to make those preliminary advances just spoken of, his pleasures here, as an admirer of female loveliness, will most probably be limited to seeing the fair creatures ride on diminutive donkeys (such is the custom of Tonbridge) to the wells, there to drink the chalybeate and promenade the pantiles. But what then? If he have not the entrée of society, the charms of nature and the attractions of English scenery are spread before him. His guide-book will tell him of grotesque rocks upon lonely heaths where Druids may have worshipped; and of Bayham Abbey, with its mouldering walls and ‘antiquary ivy,’ which still attests amidst its ruins the luxury and wealth of its ancient masters. He may look in one direction over the broad lands and towering spires of Eridge Castle, or turning in another, soon lose amidst the recollections of Penshurst and in the homage which the heart renders to departed virtue, all sense of the vexatious forms and frivolous though perhaps inseparable distinctions of modern society.

Approaching Penshurst from Tonbridge, we alight at the ancient church which stands in close contiguity with the family mansion. A ramble amidst its graves, a walk through its solemn aisles, a moment’s pause among its darkened monuments, seems to be but a suitable preparation for our farther researches. It is scarcely possible to enter one of these venerable religious edifices of the old world, which form so striking a feature in its scenery, without feeling in some degree an impression as if the dim and solemn fane were peopled with shadows; as if indistinct forms were beckoning along its lonely aisles, or waiting the stranger’s approach in its deep and vaulted recesses. The building is not always of great extent, (this of Penshurst is not so,) but the impression seems to be the result not more of the solemn style of the building and its accessories, than of the admirable harmony which they preserve with the recollections and associations of all around them. Hence it may well be doubted whether, if we could transport one of these time-honored structures to our own land, with all its architectural peculiarities, it would have for us exactly the meaning or the charms which it possesses at home. Our career is as yet too brief, our land too full of the sounds of enterprise and excitement; our interest lies too largely and exclusively in the present and the future. The dawning light and the keen air of morning (sœvus equis oriens anhelis) are not, as represented by the poets, more uncongenial to the spectral shapes of night, than the recent origin and energetic action of our rising country to the dim traditions and mouldering memories which have grown incorporate with the weather-stains and damps of these hoary sanctuaries. At Penshurst in particular, so complete is this harmony between the ideal and the actual, and so strongly does it bring before us the image of the past, that it might seem no unnatural incident of our reverie, were the grave and reverend knight, the ancient head of the Sydneys and patron of the church, once more to enter with his retinue from the neighboring mansion and take his seat in the family chancel. But of that honored name nothing remains to Penshurst except the memory, and those fading inscriptions which inform us that they who slumber here bore it irreproachably in life, and have long since ceased from their earthly labors. Among these, however, we look in vain for the name of Sir Philip Sydney. He fell in a foreign land, and his country, we are told, mourned for him with a loud and poignant lamentation. His remains were afterward transferred to Saint Paul’s, where the ruin which fell at a later period upon the great national temple involved also the memorial of Sir Philip Sydney. But it matters less, since the achievements of his pen and sword have made all places where the name of England comes, his monument, and every heart which is alive to honor, a sanctuary for his memory.

Let us then pass on to that venerable mansion which having witnessed many of the incidents of his life may still be considered the lasting memorial of his virtues. Before us rises a building irregular in its design, but presenting an extensive line of front, in which square towers and pointed gables, connected by walls of unequal height, succeed each other with that sort of caprice which is common in mansions of the same age. Entering through a spacious gate-way, we cross a quadrangular court, and gain access by an unfurnished passage to the great hall, which formed the distinguishing feature of the feudal homestead. In the vast extent of this apartment we perceive an image of the pride which gloried more in the number of its retainers than in the luxury or refinement of its accommodations. Oaken tables, and benches of the same homely material, stretched from side to side, show that our ancestors required but rude accessories to recommend to them the substantial enjoyments of their mighty repasts. Through lofty windows strengthened by mullions and decorated with intricate carvings, the light streams softened by neither blind nor curtain. The middle of the hall is occupied by a spacious hearth, around which gathered the friends and followers of the noble house; and the fire-utensils which still remain, and which seem destined for the consumption of entire forests, intimate that the household gods which presided here dealt in no stinted or penurious economy. There was scarcely need of flue or chimney, for the smoke curling up among the interlacing rafters of the roof, might long gather in its ample cavity without threatening those below with serious inconvenience. It is curious to observe that when at length so obvious a contrivance as the chimney grew into more general use, its introduction was opposed by much the same sort of arguments as have in other ages resisted the encroachments of change and novelty. A moralist of the times has left us his recorded opinion, that nothing but agues and catarrhs had followed the abandonment of that old and genial practice which planted the fire in the middle of the room and left the smoke to spread its sable canopy aloft. Another peculiarity in this picture of ancient manners was the slightly-raised platform called the daïs, at the farther extremity of the hall, which reminds us of the distinction that was preserved even in the hours of convivial relaxation, between the family of the lord and its dependents. Nor was this distinction in general one of place alone: in most of the wealthy and noble houses of the period, it portended a corresponding distinction in the quality of the food. Hence in the homely times in which Ben Jonson has apostrophized Penshurst, it is mentioned as an honorable instance of the hospitality of its owner, that

——‘there each guest might eat,Without his fear, and of the lord’s own meat;Where the same beer, board, and self-same wine,That is his lordship’s, shall be also mine.’

‘A strange topic of praise,’ remarks Gifford, ‘to those who are unacquainted with the practice of those times; but in fact the liberal mode of hospitality here recorded was almost peculiar to this noble person. The great dined at long tables, (they had no other in their vast halls,) and permitted many guests to sit down with them; but the gradations of rank and fortune were rigidly maintained, and the dishes grew visibly coarser as they receded from the head of the table.’ To sit below the salt, is a phrase with which the romances of Scott have made us familiar, and which originated, it seems, in the custom of placing a large salt-cellar near the middle of the table, not more for convenience than with reference to the distribution of the guests.

The same spirit which presided over the appointments of this stately hall extended itself to the other apartments and remoter details of the household. Every where there is the same reference to the power and even the supervision of the lord, manifested in the long suites of rooms which open upon each other, (the hall just mentioned is commanded by a small window opening from a superior and adjacent apartment,) as if to give the master at one glance a view of the number and a knowledge of the pursuits of the inmates. The ideas of the architects of that age seem to have been limited in their object, to realizing an image of the great feudal principle of preëminence and protection on the one side, submissiveness and reliance on the other. Hence designs and arrangements so little consistent with the privacy and personal independence which we regard at present as indispensable to every scheme of domestic accommodation. But these artists were not limited alone by a defective conception of the objects of their art; they were also embarrassed in its execution by the unequal manner in which the different branches of it had been cultivated and improved. It is doubtless a remark which will admit of very general application, that the arts which may be made subservient to embellishment and magnificence, have always far outstripped those which only conduce to comfort and convenience. The savage paints his body with gorgeous colors, who wants a blanket to protect him from the cold; and nations have heaped up pyramids to enhance their sense of importance, who have dwelt contentedly in dens and caves of the earth. Something of the same incongruity may be remarked at Penshurst, and other English mansions of the same age and order; where we sometimes ascend to galleries of inestimable paintings over steps roughly hewn with the axe, and look upon ceilings of the most exquisite and elaborate carving suspended over floors which have never had the benefit of the joiner’s plane.

In the tastes, too, and personal habits of that elder period, contrasts of a not less striking nature might be easily pointed out. We may doubt, for instance, whether beauty will ever array itself in apparel of more cost and profusion than that in which the high-born dames of Wresill and Penshurst swept through their stately apartments. Grandeur will never make its presence felt by a greater weight of ceremony, nor ever extend a more watchful and provident care to all the equipage of rank and ostentation. Flattery, we may safely assert, will never offer its incense in a more seductive form, than when it borrowed the pencil of Holbein and the lyre of Spenser. Yet these persons were the same who trode upon floors strewn with rushes, and deemed it a point of nicety and refinement if these were changed sufficiently often to prevent the soiling of their clothes. They are the same who dined without forks, and thought pewter dishes too great a luxury to be used in common by the highest nobility; who transported their ladies on pillions for want of coaches, and themselves struggled through mire for want of pavements; who, with a knowledge of the manufacture of glass, and possessed beyond ourselves of an exquisite skill in coloring it, were yet too frugal or careless to use it freely in lighting their houses. It was an age when the sick were plied with such delicate restoratives as ‘mummy and the flesh of hedge-hogs,’ and tables loaded with such dainties as cranes, lapwings, sea-gulls, bitterns and curlews. Such is the unequal progress which is often maintained in habits of undistinguishing luxury and habits of genuine refinement; so great the difference between a state of society which aims at the gratification of pride, and one which contents itself with diffusing comfort and promoting security.

It would be easy, no doubt, to draw from this sketch of ancient manners many reflections consoling to our own sense of superior comfort and discernment. But the subject is susceptible of being viewed under aspects not so flattering yet more instructive. Who is there gross enough to pride himself on superior wisdom because Kepler believed that the earth was a vast animal which breathed and reasoned, or to claim the palm of comparative merit because Sir Thomas More listened to the babbling of a pretended prophetess, and Luther waged what he considered no visionary but actual combats with the powers of darkness. If then we have dwelt on the defects of an age when civilization was still struggling with the remains of barbarism, it is to foster no spirit of vain exultation: it is rather to turn with increased pleasure from those stains which disfigure the picture, to the contemplation of the more prominent and brilliant figures which occupy the fore-ground. We remember that upon times thus backward in many of the refinements of life, and scarcely yet freed from the dregs of medi-œval darkness, genius and virtue have thrown a lustre by their presence, not merely sufficient to retrieve them from our scorn, but to make them in some respects the object of our admiration and even envy. Perhaps, if it were submitted to our choice to take our places at will in any circle which genius and merit have ever dignified and adorned, none could justly claim our preference over that of Penshurst, at the time when Sir Philip Sydney sate there in the same group with his lovely sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and with Edmund Spenser, the poet of ‘the Faërie Queen.’ Of the first of these eminent persons, it is enough to say, that his own age conceded to him the style of ‘the Incomparable,’ and that posterity has amply ratified the title. The second is known to us by that affectionate tribute of her brother’s love, which has identified the name of the Countess of Pembroke with his principal work; nor will the latest readers of English literature be forgetful of one whose memory Jonson has embalmed in the sweetest inscription that ever flowed from a poet’s pen. Of Spenser, the last but not least illustrious of the honored group, it is only necessary to say, that as he shared the hospitality, so he has not left unsung the praises of Penshurst. Where is the circle which shall again combine so many claims to our admiration and respect? What age shall presume to vaunt itself for genius or for virtue above the age of Sydney and of Spenser?

Later times have added to the social and literary lustre of Penshurst. It has been still farther illustrated by the talents and fame of Algernon Sydney, whose name never fails to awaken the sympathies of every friend of liberty for his honorable labors and unhappy fate. It has numbered among its guests and its eulogists such men as Jonson, Waller, and Southey; finally, even in our own time it has seen its horizon momently illuminated by the brief but dazzling splendors of the poet Shelly. This last was of the lineage of Sydney, and shared the talents and proud integrity, but not the wisdom and milder virtues of his house. It only remains to say, that the dwelling and estate of the Sydneys has passed into other hands, but finds, it would seem, in Lord De Lisle a proprietor not insensible to the worth nor regardless of the memory of his far-famed predecessors.

Thus the remarks intended, draw to an end. We leave the halls of Penshurst, and the gates of that venerated mansion close behind us forever. Even thus did they close ages ago upon him, the light and honor of that ancient house, who, leaving it in the glow of health, in the pride of manly beauty, in the aspirations of a high but not a haughty spirit, was destined never to cross that paternal threshold more. The blessings that went with him have mouldered on the lips that pronounced them; the tears that mourned his fall have dried upon the lids from which they streamed; all who knew and loved, all who watched and wept for Sir Philip Sydney are silent in the dust to which he himself has long been gathered. Yet does not his spirit commune with ours as we tread the halls once familiar with his presence, or gaze upon those all but animated portraits which Penshurst still numbers among the richest of its treasures? Does nothing survive here of so much honor, so much courtesy, so much courage, to elevate us by its example and to inspire us with new hope, ere we turn again to tread the toilsome mazes of the world? Let the acknowledgments of all those who with no unworthy or unreflecting spirit have traced these paths, reply; or rather let the answer embody itself in the words of a poet, who, while expressing his own sense of the merits of Sydney, has but given a suitable expression to sentiments which find an echo in every bosom:

‘Are days of old familiar to thy mind,Oh reader? Hast thou let the midnight hourPass unperceiv’d, whilst thou in fancy livedWith high-born beauties and enamor’d chiefs,Sharing their hopes, and with a breathless joy,Whose expectation touched the verge of pain,Following their dangerous fortunes? If such loreHas ever thrill’d thy bosom, thou wilt treadAs with a pilgrim’s reverential thoughtsThe groves of Penshurst. Sydney here was born,Sydney, than whom no gentler, braver manHis own delightful genius ever feign’d,Illustrating the vales of Arcady,With courteous courage and with loyal loves.Upon his natal day an acorn hereWas planted; it grew up a stately oak,And in the beauty of its strength it stoodAnd flourished, when his perishable partHad mouldered dust to dust. That stately oakItself hath perished now, but Sydney’s fameEndureth in his own immortal works.’

ILLUSTRATIONS

Before the extension of commerce and manufactories in Europe, the hospitality of the rich and the great, from the sovereign down to the smallest baron, exceeded every thing which in the present times we can easily form a notion of. Westminster Hall was the dining-room of William Rufus, and might frequently perhaps not be too large for his company. It was reckoned a piece of magnificence in Thomas à Becket that he strewed the floor of his hall with clear hay or rushes in the season, in order that the knights and squires who could not get seats might not spoil their fine clothes when they sat down on the floor to eat their dinner. The great Earl of Warwick is said to have entertained every day, at his different manors, thirty thousand people; and though the number may have been exaggerated, it must however have been very great to admit of such exaggeration. The personal expenses of the great proprietors having gradually increased with the extension of commerce and manufactures, it was impossible that the number of their retainers should not as gradually diminish. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau, for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but in the wantonness of plenty for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the play-things of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesmen in a city.

Wealth of Nations: Book iii., Chap. iv.

The planta-genista or broom having been ordinarily used for strewing floors, became an emblem of humility, and was borne as such by Fulke, Earl of Anjou, grandfather of Henry II., King of England, in his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The name of the royal house of Plantagenet is said to be derived from this circumstance.

Hunt’s Exemplars of Tudor Architecture.

Eleven continued to be the dining hour of the nobility, down to the middle of the seventeenth century, though it was still kept up to ten o’clock in the Universities, where the established system is not so easily altered as in private families. ••• The lord and his principal guests sate at the upper end of the first table, which was therefore called the lord’s board-end. The officers of his household and inferior guests at long tables below in the hall. In the middle of each table stood a great salt-cellar, and as particular care was taken to place the guests according to their rank, it became a mark of distinction whether a person sate above or below the salt. ••• Pewter plates in the reign of Henry VIII. were too costly to be used in common by the highest nobility. In Rymer’s Fœdera is a license granted in 1430 for a ship to carry certain commodities for the express use of the King of Scotland, among which are particularly mentioned a supply of pewter dishes and wooden trenchers. ‘Octo duodenis vasorum de pewter, mille et ducentis ciphis ligneis.’

Archæologia.

The use of forks did not prevail in England till the reign of James I.

Coryat.

In the list of birds served up to table were many fowls which are now discarded as little better than rank carrion, such as cranes, lapwings, sea-gulls, bitterns, ruffs, kerlews, etc.

Grose’s Antiq. Repertory.

The use of coaches is said to have been first introduced into England by Fitz-Allan, earl of Arundel, A. D. 1580. Before that time ladies chiefly rode on horseback, either single on their palfreys, or double, behind some person on a pillion. In cases of sickness or bad weather, they had horse-litters and vehicles called chairs, or carrs, or charres. Glazed windows were introduced into England, A. D. 1180.

Anderson’s History of Commerce.

The ceilings of that part of Wresill Castle left standing by the Commonwealth’s soldiers still appear richly carved, and the sides of the rooms are ornamented with a great profusion of ancient sculpture finely executed in wood, exhibiting the ancient bearings, crests, badges and devices of the Percy family, in a great variety of forms, set off with all the advantages of painting, gilding and imagery. ••• Noblemen in Henry the Eighth’s time were obliged to carry all the beds, hangings and furniture with them when they removed. The usual manner of hanging the rooms in the old castles was only to cover the naked walls with tapestry or arras hung upon tenter hooks, from which they were easily taken down upon every removal. On such an occasion the number of carts employed in a considerable family must have formed a caravan nearly as large as those which traverse the deserts of the East. ••• At the time of the Northumberland House-hold book, glass, though it had perhaps been long applied to the decorating churches, was not very commonly used in dwelling-houses or castles.