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 | Dashes at life with a free pencil |  |
PRINCIPAL DAY.
I was awakened at an early hour the morning after
my arrival at Ardrossan by a band of music in the
street. My first feeling was delight at seeing a bit of
blue sky of the size of my garret skylight, and a dazzling
sunshine on the floor. “Skirling” above all the
other instruments of the band, the Highland bagpipe
made the air reel with “A' the blue bonnets are over
the border,” and, hoisting the window above my head,
I strained over the house-leads to get a look at the
performer. A band of a dozen men in kilt and bonnet
were marching up and down, led by a piper, something
in the face like the heathen representations of Boreas;
and on a long line of roughly-constructed rail-cars
were piled, two or three deep, a crowd resembling, at
first sight, a crushed bed of tulips. Bonnets of every
cut and color, from the courtier's green velvet to the
shepherd's homely gray, struggled at the top; and
over the sides hung red legs and yellow legs, crossbarred
stockings and buff boots, bare feet and pilgrim's
sandals. The masqueraders scolded and laughed, the
boys halloed, the quiet people of Ardrossan stared in
grave astonishment, and, with the assistance of some
brawny shoulders, applied to the sides of the overladen
vehicles, the one unhappy horse got his whimsical
load under way for the tournament.
Train followed train, packed with the same motley
array; and at ten o'clock, after a clean and comfortable
Scotch breakfast in our host's little parlor, we sallied
forth to try our luck in the scramble for places.
After a considerable fight we were seated, each with a
man in his lap, when we were ordered down by the
conductor, who informed us that the chief of the
Campbells had taken the car for his party, and that,
with his band in the succeeding one, he was to go in
state (upon a railroad!) to Eglinton. Up swore half-a-dozen
Glasgow people, usurpers like ourselves, that
they would give way for no Campbell in the world;
and finding a stout hand laid on my leg to prevent my
yielding to the order to quit, I gave in to what might
be called as pretty a bit of rebellious republicanism as
you would find on the Mississippi. The conductor
stormed, but the Scotch bodies sat firm; and as Scot
met Scot in the fight, I was content to sit in silence
and take advantage of the victory. I learned afterward
that the Campbell chieftain was a Glasgow manufacturer;
and though he undoubtedly had a right to
gather his clan, and take piper and eagle's plume, there
might, possibly, be some jealous disapprobation at the
bottom of his townsmen's rudeness.
Campbell and his party presently appeared, and a
dozen or twenty very fine looking men they were. One
of the ladies, as well as I could see through the black
lace veil thrown over her cap and plumes, was a remarkably
handsome woman; and I was very glad when
the matter was compromised, and the Campbells were
distributed among our company. We jogged on at a
slow pace toward the tournament, passing thousands
of pedestrians, the men all shod, and the women all
barefoot, with their shoes in their hands, and nearly
every one, in accordance with Lord Eglinton's printed
request, showing some touch of fancy in his dress. A
plaid over the shoulder, or a Glengary bonnet, or, perhaps,
a goose-feather stuck jauntily in the cap, was
enough to show the feeling of the wearer, and quite
enough to give the crowd, all in all, a most festal and
joyous aspect.
The secluded bit of road between the rail-track and
the castle lodge, probably never before disturbed by
more than two vehicles at a time, was thronged with a
press of wheels, as closely jammed as Fleet street at
noon. Countrymen's carts piled with women and
children like loads of market-baskets in Kent; postchaises
with exhausted horses and occupants straining
their eyes forward for a sight of the castle; carriages
of the neighboring gentry with “bodkins” and over-packed
dickeys, all in costume; stout farmers on
horseback, with plaid and bonnet; gingerbread and
ale-carts, pony-carts, and coal-carts; wheelbarrows
with baggage, and porters with carpet-bags and hat-boxes,
most motley throng of pedestrians it has ever been my
fortune to join. The vari-colored tide poured in at
the open gate of the castle; and if I had seen no other
procession, the long-extended mass of caps, bonnets,
and plumes, winding through that shaded and beautiful
avenue, would have repaid me for no small proportion
of my subsequent discomfort. I remarked, by the
way, that I did not see a hat in the entire mile between
the porter's lodge and the castle.
The stables, which lay on the left of the approach
(a large square structure with turret and clock, very
like four methodist churches, dos-à-dos), presented
another busy and picturesque scene—horses half-caparisoned,
men-at-arms in buff and steel, and the
gay liveries of the nineteenth century paled by the revived
glories of the servitude of more knightly times.
And this part of the scene, too, had its crowd of laughing
and wondering spectators.
On reaching the Gothic bridge over the Lugton,
we came upon a cordon of police who encircled the
castle, turning the crowd off by the bridge in the direction
of the lists. Sorry to leave my merry and
motley fellow-pedestrians, I presented my card of invitation
and passed on alone to the castle. The sun
was at this time shining with occasional cloudings-over;
and the sward and road, after the two or three
fine days we had had, were in the best condition for
every purpose of the tournament.
Two or three noble trees with their foliage nearly
to the ground stood between me and the front of the
castle, as I ascended the slope above the river; and
the lifting of a stage curtain could scarce be more
sudden, or the scene of a drama more effectively composed,
than the picture disclosed by the last step upon
the terrace. Any just description of it, indeed, must
read like a passage from the “prompter's book.” I
stood for a moment, exactly where you would have
placed an audience. On my left rose a noble castle
with four round towers, the entrance thronged with
men-at-arms, and busy comers and goers in every
variety of costume. On the greensward in front of the
castle lounged three or four gentlemen archers in
suits of green silk and velvet. A cluster of grooms
under an immense tree on the right were fitting two
or three superb horses with their armor and caparisons,
while one beautiful blood palfrey, whose fine limbs
and delicately veined head and neck were alone visible
under his embroidered saddle and gorgeous trappings
of silk, was held by two “tigers” at a short distance.
Still farther on the right, stood a cluster of gayly decorated
tents; and in and out of the looped-up curtain
of the farthest passed constantly the slight forms of
lady archers in caps with snowy plumes, kirtles of
green velvet, and petticoats of white satin, quivers at
their backs and bows in their hands—one tall and
stately girl (an Ayrshire lady of very uncommon
beauty, whose name I took some pains to inquire),
conspicuous by her grace and dignity above all.
The back-ground was equally well composed—the
farther side of the lawn making a sharp descent to the
small river which bends around the castle, the opposite
shore thronged with thousands of spectators watching
the scene I have described; and in the distance behind
them, the winding avenue, railed in for the procession,
hidden and disclosed by turns among the
noble trees of the park, and alive throughout its whole
extent with the multitudes crowding to the lists.
There was a chivalric splendor in the whole scene,
which I thought at the time would repay one for a
long pilgrimage to see it—even should the clouds,
which by this time were coming up very threateningly
from the horizon, put a stop to the tournament altogether.
On entering the castle hall, a lofty room hung
round with arms, trophies of the chase, ancient
shields, and armor of every description, I found myself
in a crowd of a very merry and rather a motley
character—knights half armed, esquires in buff, palmers,
halberdiers, archers, and servants in modern
livery, here and there a lady, and here and there a
spectator like myself, and in a corner by one of the
Gothic windows—what think you?—a minstrel?—a
gray-haired harper?—a jester? Guess again—a reporter
for the Times! With a “walking dictionary”
at his elbow, in the person of the fat butler of the
castle, he was inquiring out the various characters in
the crowd, and the rapidity of his stenographic jottings-down
(with their lucid apparition in print two
days after in London) would, in the times represented
by the costumes about him, have burnt him at the
stake for a wizard with the consent of every knight in
Christendom.
I was received by the knight-marshal of the lists,
who did the honors of hospitality for Lord Eglinton
during his preparation for the “passage of arms;”
and finding an old friend under the gray beard and
scallop shell of a venerable palmer, whose sandal and
bare toes I chanced to stumble over, we passed in
together to the large dining-room of the castle.
“Lunch” was on the long table, and some two hundred
of the earl's out-lodging guests were busy at
knife and fork, while here and there were visible some
of those anachronisms which, to me, made the zest
of the tournament—pilgrims eating Périgord pies,
esquires dressing after the manner of the thirteenth
century diving most scientifically into the richer veins
of pátés de foie-gras, dames in ruff and farthingale discussing
blue blanc-mange, and a knight with an overnight
headache calling out for a cup of tea!
On returning to the hall of the castle, which was
the principal place of assemblage, I saw with no little
regret that ladies were coming from their carriages
under umbrellas. The fair archers tripped in doors
from their crowded tent, the knight of the dragon,
who had been out to look after his charger, was being
wiped dry by a friendly pocket handerckief, and all
countenances had fallen with the barometer. It was
time for the procession to start, however, and the
knights appeared, one by one, armed cap-à-pie, all
save the helmet, till at last the hall was crowded with
steel-clad and chivalric forms; and they waited only
for the advent of the queen of beauty. After admiring
not a little the manly bearing and powerful “thewes
and sinews” displayed by the array of modern English
nobility in the trying costumes and harness of olden
time, I stepped out upon the lawn with some curiosity
to see how so much heavy metal was to be got into a
demipique saddle. After one or two ineffectual attempts,
foiled partly by the restlessness of his horse,
the first knight called ingloriously for a chair. Another
scrambled over with great difficulty; and I fancy,
though Lord Waterford and Lord Eglinton, and one
other whom I noticed, mounted very gallantly and
gracefully, the getting to saddle was possibly the most
difficult feat of the day. The ancient achievement
of leaping on the steed's back from the ground in
complete armor would certainly have broken the
spine of any horse present, and was probably never
done but in story. Once in the saddle, however,
English horsemanship told well; and one of the finest
sights of the day I thought was the breaking away of
a powerful horse from the grooms, before his rider had
gathered up his reins, and a career at furious speed
through the open park, during which the steel-encumbered
horseman rode as safely as a fox-hunter, and
subdued the affrighted animal, and brought him back
in a style worthy of a wreath from the queen of
beauty.
Driven in by the rain, I was standing at the upper
side of the hall, when a movement in the crowd and
an unusual “making-way” announced the coming of
interior of the castle with her train held up by two
beautiful pages of ten or twelve years of age, and attended
by two fair and very young maids of honor.
Her jacket of ermine, her drapery of violet and blue
velvet, the collars of superb jewels which embraced
her throat and bosom, and her sparkling crown, were
on her (what they seldom are, but should be only)
mere accessaries to her own predominating and radiant
beauty. Lady Seymour's features are as nearly faultless
as is consistent with expression; her figure and
face are rounded to the complete fulness of the mould
for a Juno; her walk is queenly, and peculiarly unstudied
and graceful, yet (I could not but think then
and since) she was not well chosen for the queen of a
tournament. The character of her beauty, uncommon
and perfect as it is, is that of delicacy and loveliness—the
lily rather than the rose—the modest pearl,
not the imperial diamond. The eyes to flash over a
crowd at a tournament, to be admired from a distance,
to beam down upon a knight kneeling for a public
award of honor, should be full of command, dark,
lustrous, and fiery. Hers are of the sweetest and
most tranquil blue that ever reflected the serene
heaven of a happy hearth—eyes to love, not wonder
at, to adore and rely upon, not admire and tremble for.
At the distance at which most of the spectators of the
tournament saw Lady Seymour, Fanny Kemble's
stormy orbs would have shown much finer, and the
forced and imperative action of a stage-taught head
and figure would have been more applauded than the
quiet, nameless, and indescribable grace lost to all but
those immediately round her. I had seen the Queen
of Beauty in a small society, dressed in simple white,
without an ornament, when she was far more becomingly
dressed and more beautiful than here, and I have
never seen, since, the engravings and prints of Lady
Seymour which fill every window in the London
shops, without feeling that it was a profanation of a
style of loveliness that would be
If it unveiled its beauty to the moon.”
lists (Sir Charles Lamb, the stepfather of Lord
Eglinton, by far the most knightly looking person at
the tournament), appeared in his rich surcoat and
embossed armor, and with a despairing look at the increasing
torrents of rain, gave the order to get to
horse. At the first blast of the trumpet, the thick-leaved
trees around the castle gave out each a dozen
or two of gay colored horsemen who had stood almost
unseen under the low-hanging branches—mounted
musicians in silk and gay trappings, mounted men-at-arms
in demi-suits of armor, deputy marshals and
halberdiers; and around the western tower, where
their caparisons had been arranged and their horse-armor
carefully looked to, rode the glittering and
noble company of knights, Lord Eglinton in his armor
of inlaid gold, and Lord Alford, with his athletic
frame and very handsome features, conspicuous above
all. The rain, meantime, spared neither the rich
tabard of the pursuivant, nor the embroidered saddle-cloths
of the queen's impatient palfrey; and after a
half-dozen of dripping detachments had formed and
led on, as the head of the procession, the lady-archers
(who were to go on foot) were called by the marshal
with a smile and a glance upward which might have
been construed into a tacit advice to stay in doors.
Gracefully and majestically, however, with quiver at
her back, and bow in hand, the tall and fair archer of
whose uncommon beauty I have already spoken,
stepped from the castle door; and, regardless of the
rain which fell in drops as large as pearls on her unprotected
forehead and snowy shoulders, she took her
place in the procession with her silken-booted troop
picking their way very gingerly over the pools behind
her. Slight as the circumstance may seem, there
was in the manner of the lady, and her calm disregard
of self in the cause she had undertaken, which would
leave me in no doubt where to look for a heroine
were the days of Wallace (whose compatriot she is)
to come over again. The knight-marshal put spurs
to his horse, and re-ordered the little troop to the
castle; and regretting that I had not the honor of the
lady's acquaintance for my authority, I performed my
only chivalric achievement for the day, the sending a
halberdier whom I had chanced to remember as the
servant of an old friend, on a crusade into the castle
for a lady's maid and a pair of dry stockings! Whether
they were found, and the fair archer wore them, or
where she and her silk-shod company have the tournament
consumption, rheumatism, or cough, at this
hour, I am sorry I can not say.
The judge of peace, Lord Saltoun, with his wand,
and retainers on foot bearing heavy battle-axes, was
one of the best figures in the procession; though, as
he was slightly gray, and his ruby velvet cap and saturated
ruff were poor substitutes for a warm cravat
and hat-brim, I could not but associate his fine horsemanship
with a sore throat, and his retainers and their
battle-axes with relays of nurses and hot flannels. The
flower of the tournament, in the representing and
keeping up of the assumed character, however, was its
king, Lord Londonderry. He, too, is a man, I should
think, on the shady side of fifty, but of just the high
preservation and embonpoint necessary for a royal presence.
His robe of red velvet and ermine swept the
ground as he sat in his saddle; and he managed to
keep its immense folds free of his horse's legs, and
yet to preserve its flow in his prancing motion, with a
grace and ease, I must say, which seemed truly imperial.
His palfrey was like a fiery Arabian, all action,
nerve, and fire; and every step was a rearing
prance, which, but for the tranquil self-possession and
easy control of the king, would have given the spectators
some fears for his royal safety. Lord Londonderry's
whole performance of his part was without a
fault, and chiefly admirable, I thought, from his sustaining
it with that unconsciousness and entire freedom
from mauvaise honte which the English seldom can
command in new or conspicuous situations.
The queen of beauty was called, and her horse led
to the door; but the water ran from the blue saddle-cloth
and housings like rain from a roof, and the storm
seemed to have increased with the sound of her name.
She came to the door, and gave a deprecating look
upward which would have mollified anything but a
Scotch sky, and, by the command of the knight marshal,
retired again to wait for a less chivalric but drier
conveyance. Her example was followed by the other
ladies, and their horses were led riderless in the procession.
The knights were but half called when I accepted
a friend's kind offer of a seat in his carriage to the lists.
The entire park, as we drove along, was one vast expanse
of umbrellas; and it looked from the carriage-window,
like an army of animated and gigantic mushrooms,
shouldering each other in a march. I had no
idea till then of the immense crowd the occasion had
drawn together. The circuitous route railed in for
the procession was lined with spectators six or seven
deep, on either side, throughout its whole extent of a
mile; the most distant recesses of the park were
crowded with men, horses, and vehicles, all pressing
onward; and as we approached the lists we found the
multitude full a quarter of a mile deep, standing on all
the eminences which looked down upon the enclosure,
as closely serried almost as the pit of the opera, and
all eyes bent in one direction, anxiously watching the
guarded entrance. I heard the number of persons
present variously estimated during the day, the estimates
I should think the latter was nearer the mark.
We presented our tickets at the private door, in the
rear of the principal gallery, and found ourselves introduced
to a very dry place among the supports and
rafters of the privileged structure. The look-out was
excellent in front, and here I proposed to remain, declining
the wet honor of a place above stairs. The
gentleman-usher, however, was very urgent for our
promotion; but as we found him afterward chatting
very familiarly with a party who occupied the seats
we had selected, we were compelled to relinquish the
flattering unction that he was actuated by an intuitive
sense of our deservings. On ascending to the covered
gallery, I saw, to my surprise, that some of the best
seats in front were left vacant, and here and there,
along the different tiers of benches, ladies were crowding
excessively close together, while before or behind
them there seemed plenty of unoccupied room. A
second look showed me small streams of water coming
through the roof, and I found that a dry seat was
totally unattainable. The gallery held about a thousand
persons (the number Lord Eglinton had invited
to the banquet and ball), and the greater part of these
were ladies, most of them in fancy dresses, and the remainder
in very slight demi-toilette—everybody having
dressed apparently with a full reliance on the morning's
promise of fair weather. Less fortunate than
the multitude outside, the earl's guests seemed not to
have numbered umbrellas among the necessities of a
tournament; and the demand for this despised invention
was sufficient (if merit were ever rewarded) to
elevate it for ever after to a rank among chivalric appointments.
Substitutes and imitations of it were
made of swords and cashmeres; and the lenders of
veritable umbrellas received smiles which should induce
them, one would think, to carry half-a-dozen to
all future tournaments in Scotland. It was pitiable
to see the wreck going on among the perishable elegancies
of Victorine and Herbault—chip hats of the
most faultless tournure collapsing with the wet;
starched ruffs quite flat; dresses passing helplessly
from “Lesbia's” style to “Nora Creina's;” shawls,
tied by anxious mammas over chapeau and coiffure,
crushing pitilessly the delicate fabric of months of invention;
and, more lamentable still, the fair brows and
shoulders of many a lovely woman proving with rainbow
clearness that the colors of the silk or velvet composing
her head-dress were by no means “fast.” The
Irvine archers, by the way, who, as the queen's body-guard,
were compelled to expose themselves to the
rain on the grand staircase, resembled a troop of New-Zealanders
with their faces tattooed of a delicate
green; though, as their Lincoln bonnets were all
made of the same faithless velvet, they were fortunately
streaked so nearly alike as to preserve their uniform.
After a brief consultation between the rheumatisms
in my different limbs, it was decided (since it was vain
to hope for shelter for the entire person) that my cloth-cap
would be the best recipient for the inevitable wet;
and selecting the best of the vacated places, I seated
myself so as to receive one of the small streams as
nearly as possible on my organ of firmness. Here I
was undisturbed, except that once I was asked (my
seat supposed to be a dry one) to give place to a lady
newly arrived, who, receiving my appropriated rivulet
in her neck, immediately restored it to me with many
acknowledgments, and passed on. In point of position,
my seat, which was very near the pavilion of the
queen of beauty, was one of the best at the tournament;
and diverting my aqueduct, by a little management,
over my left shoulder, I contrived to be more
comfortable, probably, than most of my shivering and
melancholy neighbors.
A great agitation in the crowd, and a dampish sound
of coming trumpets, announced the approach of the
procession. As it came in sight, and wound along the
curved passage to the lists, its long and serpentine line
of helmets and glittering armor, gonfalons, spear-points,
and plumes, just surging above the moving sea
of umbrellas, had the effect of some gorgeous and
bright-scaled dragon swimming in troubled waters.
The leaders of the long cavalcade pranced into the
arena at last, and a tremendous shout from the multitude
announced their admiration of the spectacle. On
they came toward the canopy of the queen of beauty,
men-at-arms, trumpeters, heralds, and halberdiers, and
soon after them the king of the tournament, with his
long scarlet robe flying to the tempest, and his rearing
palfrey straining every nerve to show his pride and
beauty. The first shout from the principal gallery
was given in approbation of this display of horsemanship,
as Lord Londonderry rode past; and considering
the damp state of the enthusiasm which prompted
it, it should have been considered rather flattering.
Lord Eglinton came on presently, distinguished above
all others no less by the magnificence of his appointments
than by the ease and dignity with which he
rode, and his knightly bearing and stature. His
golden armor sat on him as if he had been used to
wear it; and he managed his beautiful charger, and
bowed in reply to the reiterated shouts of the multitude
and his friends, with a grace and chivalric courtesy
which drew murmurs of applause from the spectators
long after the cheering had subsided.
The jester rode into the lists upon a gray steed,
shaking his bells over his head, and dressed in an odd
costume of blue and yellow, with a broad-flapped hat,
asses' ears, &c. His character was not at first understood
by the crowd, but he soon began to excite merriment
by his jokes, and no little admiration by his
capital riding. He was a professional person, I think
it was said, from Astley's, but as he spoke with a most
excellent Scotch “burr,” he easily passed for an indigenous
“fool.” He rode from side to side of the
lists during the whole of the tournament, borrowing
umbrellas, quizzing the knights, &c.
One of the most striking features of the procession
was the turn-out of the knight of the Gael, Lord
Glenlyon, with seventy of his clansmen at his back
in plaid and philibeg, and a finer exhibition of calves
(without a joke) could scarce be desired. They followed
their chieftain on foot, and when the procession
separated, took up their places in line along the
palisade, serving as a guard to the lists.
After the procession had twice made the circuit of
the enclosure, doing obeisance to the queen of beauty,
the jester had possession of the field while the knights
retired to don their helmets (hitherto carried by their
esquires), and to await the challenge to combat. All
eyes were now bent upon the gorgeous clusters of
tents at either extremity of the oblong area; and in a
very few minutes the herald's trumpet sounded, and
the knight of the swan rode forth, having sent his defiance
to the knight of the golden lion. At another
blast of the trumpet they set their lances in rest, selected
opposite sides of the long fence or barrier running
lengthwise through the lists, and rode furiously
past each other, the fence of course preventing any
contact except that of their lances. This part of the
tournament (the essential part, one would think) was,
from the necessity of the case, the least satisfactory of
all. The knights, though they rode admirably, were
so oppressed by the weight of their armor, and so embarrassed
in their motions by the ill-adjusted joints,
that they were like men of wood, unable apparently
even to raise the lance from the thigh on which it
rested. I presume no one of them either saw where
he should strike his opponent, or had any power of
directing the weapon. As they rode close to the
fence, however, and a ten-foot pole sawed nearly off
in two or three places was laid crosswise on the legs
and the least shock of course splintered the lance
—in other words, finished what was begun by the carpenter's
saw. The great difficulty was to ride at all
under such a tremendous weight, and manage a horse
of spirit, totally unused both to the weight and the
clatter of his own and his rider's armor. I am sure
that Lord Eglinton's horse, for one, would have
bothered Ivanhoe himself to “bring to the scratch;”
and Lord Waterford's was the only one that, for all
the fright he showed, might have been selected (as
they all should have been) for the virtue of having
peddled tin-ware. These two knights, by the way, ran
the best career, Lord Eglinton, malgre his bolter,
coming off the victor.
The rain, meantime, had increased to a deluge, the
queen of beauty sat shivering under an umbrella, the
jester's long ears were water-logged, and lay flat on
his shoulders, and everybody in my neighborhood had
expressed a wish for a dry seat and a glass of sherry.
The word “banquet” occurred frequently right and
left; hopes for “mulled wine or something hot before
dinner” stole from the lips of a mamma on the
seat behind; and there seemed to be but one chance
for the salvation of health predominant in the minds
of all, and that was drinking rather more freely than
usual at the approaching banquet. Judge what must
have been the astonishment, vexation, dread, and despair,
of the one thousand wet, shivering, and hungry
candidates for the feast, when Lord Eglinton rode up
to the gallery unhelmeted, and delivered himself as
follows:—
“Ladies and gentlemen, I had hoped to have given
you all a good dinner; but to my extreme mortification
and regret, I am just informed that the rain has
penetrated the banqueting pavilions, and that, in consequence,
I shall only be able to entertain so many of
my friends as can meet around my ordinary table.”
About as uncomfortable a piece of intelligence, to
some nine hundred and sixty of his audience, as they
could have received, short of a sentence for their immediate
execution.
To comprehend fully the disastrous extent of the
disappointment in the principal gallery, it must be
taken into consideration that the domicils, fixed or
temporary, of the rejected sufferers, were from five to
twenty miles distant—a long ride at best, if begun on
the point of famishing, and in very thin and well-saturated
fancy dresses. Grievance the first, however,
was nothing to grievance the second; viz., that from
the tremendous run upon post-horses and horses of all
descriptions, during the three or four previous days,
the getting to the tournament was the utmost that
many parties could achieve. The nearest baiting-place
was several miles off; and in compassion to the
poor beasts, and with the weather promising fair on
their arrival, most persons had consented to take
their chance for the quarter of a mile from the lists to
the castle, and had dismissed their carriages with
orders to return at the close of the banquet and ball
—daylight the next morning! The castle, everybody
knew, was crammed, from “donjon-keep to turret-top,”
with the relatives and intimate friends of the
noble earl, and his private table could accommodate
no more than these. To get home was the inevitable
alternative.
The rain poured in a deluge. The entire park was
trodden into a slough, or standing in pools of water—
carts, carriages, and horsemen, with fifty thousand
flying pedestrians, crowding every road and avenue.
How to get home with a carriage! How the deuce
to get home without one!
A gentleman, who had been sent out on the errand
of Noah's dove by a lady whose carriage and horses
were ordered at four the following morning, came
back with the mud up to his knees, and reported that
there was not a wheel-barrow to be had for love or
money. After threading the crowd in every direction,
he had offered a large sum, in vain, for a one-horse
cart!
Night was coming on, meantime, very fast; but
absorbed by the distresses of the shivering groups
around me, I had scarce remembered that my own invitation
was but to the banquet and ball—and my
dinner, consequently, nine miles off, at Ardrossan.
Thanking Heaven, that, at least, I had no ladies to
share my evening's pilgrimage, I followed the queen
of beauty down the muddy and slippery staircase, and,
when her majesty had stepped into her carriage, I
stepped over ankles in mud and water, and began my
wade toward the castle.
Six hours of rain, and the trampling of such an immense
multitude of men and horses, had converted
the soft and moist sod and soil of the park into a deep
and most adhesive quagmire. Glancing through the
labyrinth of vehicles on every side, and seeing men
and horses with their feet completely sunk below the
surface, I saw that there was no possibility of shying
the matter, and that wade was the word. I thought,
at first, that I had a claim for a little sympathy on the
score of being rather slenderly shod (the impalpable
sole of a pattern leather-boot being all that separated
me from the subsoil of the estate of Eglinton); but
overtaking, presently, a party of four ladies who had
lost several shoes in the mire, and were positively
wading on in silk stockings, I took patience to myself
from my advantage in the comparison, and thanked
fate for the thinnest sole with leather to keep it on.
The ladies I speak of were under the charge of a most
despairing-looking gentleman, but had neither cloak
nor umbrella, and had evidently made no calculations
for a walk. We differed in our choice of the two
sides of a slough, presently, and they were lost in the
crowd; but I could not help smiling, with all my pity
of their woes, to think what a turning up of prunella
shoes there will be, should Lord Eglinton ever plough
the chivalric field of the Tournament.
As I reached the castle, I got upon the Macadamised
road, which had the advantage of a bottom somewhere,
though it was covered with a liquid mud, of which
every passing foot gave you a spatter to the hips. My
exterior was by this time equally divided between
water and dirt, and I trudged on in comfortable fellowship
with farmers, coal-miners, and Scotch lasses—
envying very much the last, for they carried their
shoes in their hands, and held their petticoats, to say
the least, clear of the mud. Many a good joke they
seemed to have among them, but as they spoke in
Gaelic, it was lost on my Sassenach ears.
I had looked forward with a faint hope to a gingerbread
and ale-cart, which I remembered having seen
in the morning established near the terminus of the
railroad, trusting to refresh my strength and patience
with a glass of anything that goes under the generic
appellation of “summat;” but though the cart was
there, the gingerbread shelf was occupied by a row of
Scotch lasses, crouching together under cover from
the rain, and the pedlar assured me that “there wasna
a drap o' speerit to be got within ten mile o' the castle.”
One glance at the railroad, where a car with a single
horse was beset by some thousands of shoving and
fighting applicants, convinced me that I had a walk
of eight miles to finish my “purgation by” tournament;
and as it was getting too dark to trust to any
picking of the way, I took the middle of the rail-track,
and set forward.
When he reached the foot of the dogwood tree.”
Eight miles in a heavy rain, with boots of the consistence
of brown paper, and a road of alternate deep
mud and broken stone, should entitle one to the green
the “farthest inn” with half the endurance.
I found my Liverpool friends over a mutton-chop
in the snug parlor of our host, and with a strong brew
of hot toddy, and many a laugh at the day's adventures
by land and water, we got comfortably to bed “somewhere
in the small hours.” And so ended the great
day of the tournament.
After witnessing the disasters of the first day, the
demolition of costumes, and the perils by water, of
masqueraders and spectators, it was natural to fancy
that the tournament was over. So did not seem to
think several thousands of newly-arrived persons,
pouring from steamer after steamer upon the pier of
Ardrossan, and in every variety of costume, from the
shepherd's mand to the courtier's satin, crowding to
the rail-cars for Eglinton. It appeared from the
chance remarks of one or two who came to our lodgings
to deposite their carpet-bags, that it had rained
very little in the places from which the steamers had
come, and that they had calculated on the second as
the great day of the joust. No dissuasion had the
least effect upon them, and away they went, bedecked
and merry, the sufferers of the day before looking out
upon them, from comfortable hotel and lodging, with
prophetic pity.
At noon the sky brightened; and as the cars were
running by this time with diminished loads, I parted
from my agreeable friends, and bade adieu to my
garret at Ardrossan. I was bound to Ireland, and my
road lay by Eglinton to Irvine and Ayr. Fellow-passengers
with me were twenty or thirty men in
Glengary bonnets, plaids, &c.; and I came in for my
share of the jeers and jokes showered upon them by
the passengers in the return-cars, as men bound on a
fruitless errand. As we neared the castle, the crowds
of people with disconsolate faces waiting for conveyances,
or standing by the reopened gingerbread carts
in listless idleness, convinced my companions, at last,
that there was nothing to be seen, for that day at least,
at Eglinton. I left them sitting in the cars, undecided
whether to go on or return without losing their places;
and seeing a coach marked “Irvine” standing in the
road, I jumped in without question or ceremony. It
belonged to a private party of gentlemen, who were to
visit the castle and tilting-ground on their way to
Irvine; and as they very kindly insisted on my remaining
after I had apologised for the intrusion, I
found myself “booked” for a glimpse of the second
day's attractions.
The avenue to the castle was as crowded as on the
day before; but it was curious to remark how the
general aspect of the multitude was changed by the
substitution of disappointment for expectation. The
lagging gait and surly silence, instead of the elastic
step and merry joke, seemed to have darkened the
scene more than the withdrawal of the sun, and I was
glad to wrap myself in my cloak, and remember that
I was on the wing. The banner flying at the castle
tower was the only sign of motion I could see in its
immediate vicinity; the sail-cloth coverings of the
pavilion were dark with wet; the fine sward was everywhere
disfigured with traces of mud, and the whole
scene was dismal and uncomfortable. We kept on to
the lists, and found them, as one of my companions
expressed it, more like a cattle-pen after a fair than a
scene of pleasure—trodden, wet, miry, and deserted.
The crowd, content to view them from a distance,
were assembled around the large booths on the ascent
of the rising ground toward the castle, where a band
was playing some merry reels, and the gingerbread
and ale venders plied a busy vocation. A look was
enough; and we shaped our course for Irvine, sympathizing
deeply with the disappointment of the high-spirited
and generous lord of the Tourney. I heard
at Irvine, and farther on, that the tilting would be re
newed, and the banquet and ball given on the succeeding
days; but after the wreck of dresses and peril of
health I had witnessed, I was persuaded that the best
that could be done would be but a slender patching
up of the original glories, as well as a halting rally of
the original spirits of the tournament. So I kept on
my way.
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