We spent the past week in the North of England, partially for family reasons but we also made a few literary jaunts. I have always wanted to visit Newstead Abbey so we stopped off there on the way up. Newstead Abbey was never an abbey but a priory. Following the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, it was sold to Sir John Byron. It was later the home of the poet Lord Byron, a descendant of Sir John. The poet inherited it from his father, who was known as Mad Jack Byron. Mad Jack was very good at spending money and had left his wife and children encumbered with debts. The Abbey was in a state of disrepair so the family did not live there much. Byron himself was not good with money – he refused to accept royalties for his poetry, as it was beneath the dignity of a lord to do so, though his poetry sold in quantities that contemporary poets can only dream of. As a result, he eventually had to sell Newstead Abbey to help pay his debts
The Abbey was eventually sold to a schoolfriend of his, Thomas Wildman. He in turn, sold it to William Webb. Webb was a friend of the explorer David Livingstone, and he stayed at Newstead Abbey for several months after his wife died and wrote his Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries there. Webb had five daughters but refused to allow any of them to marry. When the eldest, Augusta, did marry, she was put last on the list of inheritors of the Abbey. However, as she survived all her siblings, who did not have children, she did eventually inherit and her son sold it to Sir Julien Cahn, who gave it to the City of Nottingham, who still own it. They have found it expensive to run and even thought of closing it. The grounds are open every day but the house is only open at weekends.
Up North, our main activity was family but we did manage to visit Barter Books in Alnwick. Barter Books is located in the former, large Alnwick railway station, and has a lot of books. Most were fairly ordinary but round the walls they had cabinets containing rare books. I was tempted by the second edition of the Poems of Action, Currer and Ellis Bell (later to use their own names of Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë) but, at a price of over £4000 I resisted.
However, we did go to Top Withens. Top Withens has been believed to be the inspiration for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering heights, though there is no evidence for this. The structure of the (now ruined) farmhouse is very different from that of Wuthering Heights and there is no documentary evidence for any association between the two. It is possible, however, that Emily Brontë used the location as an inspiration for her novel. It is about two and a half miles up the moor from the road to Top Withens, via the Brontë Waterfall. I last visited nearly twenty years ago and, on both occasions, the weather was fine at the beginning of the walk but, by the time we reached the ruin, it was very windy and pouring with rain, this time, apparently, the remnants of Hurricane Bertha. Apparently the Japanese are very keen on the Brontës. One of the earliest Brontë websites was and is Japanese. The signposts leading to the Brontë Waterfall and Top Withens are in English and Japanese. When we approached the top, suitably clothed in hooded anoraks, waterproof trousers and walking boots, we saw a Japanese man wearing only a light cotton T-shirt, though he did have an umbrella. We later saw him in the village, looking somewhat bedraggled. He would undoubtedly go home and write a Ph. D. thesis on the effects of the local weather on the Brontë novels.
One of our reasons for going up North, apart from family, was to see a couple of performances at the Gilbert and Sullivan Festival. We are not dyed in the wool G & S fans but do enjoy a good G & S and Harrogate, where it was held this year, is a lovely town. One of the performances we saw was Enagged, a play written by Gilbert before his collaboration with Sullivan. It was an amusing farce, about a man who falls in love with every woman he meets, telling her that she is the tree on which the fruit of his heart will grow. He manages to get engaged to three women and possibly marries one (whether they are married is one of the plot twists). Interestingly, barely a month before the Scottish Independence vote, it was quite anti-Scottish, painting the Scots as venial, greedy and corrupt. Gilbert did use two interesting techniques. At the beginning, when the three Scottish characters are talking, they realise they are in a theatre and speaking Scottish dialect and stop in order to interpret what they are saying for the Sassenachs (i.e. English) in the audience. One of the characters, the jilted Major, spends the entire second act, sitting at the front of the stage munching what seemed to be real wedding cake and commenting by gestures and facial expressions on the action.
Those of you who live in the UK, may have recently seen on TV James Fox’s superb A Very British Renaissance. Fox’s thesis was that, while the Italians had their well-known Renaissance, Britain also had a renaissance. As the blurb says He tells the story of the painters, sculptors, poets, playwrights, composers, inventors, explorers, craftsmen and scientists who revolutionised the way we saw the world. I suspect it was not shown elsewhere and is not available on DVD but, of course, you can see it on YouTube. One segment that appealed to us was about Sir Thomas Tresham. Sir Thomas was a Catholic at a time, during the reign of Elizabeth I, when it was not a good idea to be a Catholic. He was heavily fined for his Catholic activities. However, he remained devoted to his faith. The photo above right shows Rushton Triangular Lodge, which is replete with Catholic symbolism. The three sides, of course, represent the Trinity. It was used for masses and other Catholic ceremonies. As that was entirely illegal at that time, it was concealed behind a high wall and Sir Thomas told the authorities that the area was a rabbit warren. As rabbit breeding was an important rural industry at that time, no-one checked on the real use of the Lodge. The land was sold soon after his death and subsequently the lands were owned by a farmer called Payne. He presented the Lodge to the Department of Works which eventually became English Heritage, which now owns it. The Hall, where the Tresham family lived, used to be a school for the blind, but is now a hotel, spa and conference centre.
Sir Thomas, despite his financial problems, was an extravagant man and planned to build a lodge, now known as Lyveden New Bield, where he could entertain his guests. This lodge also had some Catholic symbolism but the symbolism here was more subtle. It was intended that his guests would walk up (or ride up) from Rushton Hall, through magnificent gardens, to the lodge, which would be surrounded by a moat. Sadly, Sir Thomas died after two years, before the lodge was finished, and his son, Francis, was in the Tower of London for his role in the Gunpowder Plot. With all the debts that the family had, the lodge was never finished which, ironically, may have helped preserve it. It, too, was sold off but the local people bought it in 1922 and eventually gave it to the National Trust, the current owners. Though very much incomplete, you can still see what a fine building it would have been. Interestingly, the Tudor gardens were revealed by a picture taken by the Luftwaffe in 1944, though only discovered in 2010.