The exterior of the Swan Inn, its weather-beaten gables crowded between rather shabby-looking buildings on either side, is not wholly prepossessing. We hesitate to enter the courtyard, though it is quite late, until a policeman assures us there is nothing better in the town—or in the country about, for that matter. Had we needed further assurance, we might have glanced at our trusty Baedeker to find the Swan honored with special mention as “an excellent, long-established house with winding oak stairs three hundred years old.” Once inside our misgivings vanish instantly amidst the air of cleanliness, solid comfort and pleasant antiquity that prevails. We have a large room, almost oppressive in its wealth of mahogany, and, dimly lighted by candles in ancient candlesticks, it seems pervaded with an air of ghostly mystery. There are tall-posted, canopied beds of marvelous state, mysterious oaken chests heavily carved, antique chairs, quaint old settees, and many curious things wrought in brass and copper.

Altogether, few other of the country inns had quite the charm of the Swan, and very agreeable did we find the ladies who managed it. We told them of our previous futile attempts to see Newstead Abbey and they were certain that the coveted privilege would be secured for us on the following day—it had never been refused to guests of the Swan at the request of the manageress. She would write at once and would doubtless have an answer in the morning. It need hardly be said that we were glad to stay another day at the Swan and in the meanwhile visit some of the curious and delightful spots in which Derbyshire abounds. No section of England is more famed than the “Peak District,” with Haddon Hall, Chatsworth, Bakewell Church, Buxton and Dovedale; and though almost unknown to tourists, the great moorlands which stretch away to the north we found none the less interesting.

Chesterfield Church is famous for its distorted spire, strangely twisted and leaning several degrees from the vertical. Some say it was due to a whim of the designer, but local legend prefers to ascribe it to the malice of His Satanic Majesty, who chose such queer ways of venting his spite on the churches of olden time. If he indeed twisted Chesterfield’s spire, it was at least a far more obvious evidence of his ill will toward churches than the scratch of his claw still shown on the bell of St. Mary’s at Shrewsbury. But the troublesome antiquarians, who have such a way of discrediting the painstaking and very satisfactory work of the legend-makers, would have us believe that the oaken timbers of the spire warped while seasoning under their coverings of lead. Be that as it may, Chesterfield Church is worthy a few minutes’ pause on account of its remarkable tombs and unusual screen mysteriously carved with emblems of the crucifixion. Less imposing is Trinity Church, though the white marble tablet on its walls with the simple inscription, “George Stephenson, died August 12, 1848, aged 68 years,” will have a fascination for the wayfarer from the remotest part of the earth, wherever the steam railroad has penetrated. The great inventor spent his declining years in retirement on a farm about a mile from Chesterfield, and his house still stands, partly hidden from the road by ancient trees.

We had no desire to visit Chatsworth House a second time, though we followed the much frequented road through the park. No section of rural England, possibly excepting the Stratford-upon-Avon country is more favored by tourists; motors, carriages and chars-a-bancs were everywhere in evidence and stirred up clouds of limestone dust, which whitened the trees and hedges and filled the sky with a silvery haze. The number of English visitors is greater than at Stratford, and the more intelligent Englishman who has not visited Chatsworth is rather the exception. A thousand visitors a day is not uncommon; yet Chatsworth House is thrown open free to all every week day—surely an example of princely generosity on the part of the Duke of Devonshire.

Few who visit Chatsworth will omit Haddon Hall, and while a single visit to the modern palace may suffice, a hundred to Haddon, it seemed to us, would leave one still unsatisfied. Who could ever weary of the indescribable beauty of the ancient house or cease to delight in its atmosphere of romantic story? Nowhere in England is there another place that speaks so eloquently of the past or which brings so near to our prosaic present day the life, manners and environment of the English nobleman of three or four centuries ago. No sight in England is more enchanting than the straggling walls and widely scattered towers of Haddon, standing in gray outline against the green of its sheltering hill—the point of view chosen by the painter of our picture. Yet, with all its battlements and watch-towers, Haddon was never a fortified castle—a circumstance to which we owe its perfect preservation. The wars of the Roses and the Commonwealth left it scathless; it was an actual residence until 1730, since which time every care has been exercised to maintain it in repair. We will not rehearse the well-known legends of the place, nor will we give ear for an instant to the insinuation that the romance of the fair Dorothy was fabricated less than a hundred years ago. What tinge of romance will be left to this prosaic world if these busybody iconoclasts are given heed? They cannot deny that Dorothy married John Manners, Duke of Rutland, anyway, for it was through this union that Haddon Hall passed to its present owners.

After a long, loving look at her ancestral home, we turn away and follow the dusty road to Bakewell, where we stand before her tomb in the fine old church. Here in effigy she kneels facing her husband and below are the indescribably quaint figures of her four children. The caretaker, who is loudly lecturing a group of trippers, catches a glimpse of us as we enter and his practical eye differentiates instantly the American tourist. He hastens to us and begs us to wait a little—the party is large—he will soon give us his personal attention. The trippers are hurried along and dismissed with scant ceremony and we are shown about in detail that encroaches upon our time. Still, there are many things of genuine interest and antiquity in Bakewell Church and the dissertations of our guide concerning them is worth the half crown we bestow upon him.

Outside, we pause to contemplate the grand old structure. Its massive walls terminate in castellated battlements and its splendid spire, a miniature of Salisbury, in slender yet graceful proportions, rises to a height of two hundred feet. All around is the spacious churchyard, thickly set with monumental stones, and upon one of these we noted the quaintest of the many quaint old English epitaphs we read. Happy indeed the parish clerk immortalized in the following couplets:

From Bakewell we followed one of the many Wyes to Buxton—a road scarcely equalled for beauty in the Peak District. What a contrast its wayside trees and flowers and pleasant farm cottages presented to the stony moorland road we pursued northward from Buxton! We lingered at the latter place only enough to note the salient features of the popular watering-place of the Peak. It is situated in a verdant valley, but the moorland hills, bleak and barren, nearly surround it. Only three miles distant is Dovedale, famed as the loveliest and most picturesque of the many English “Dales.”

I have no words cheerless enough to tell our impressions of the great Midland Moor, through whose very heart our way led to the northward. A stony road through a gray, stony country with a stone hovel here and there, tells something of the story. We pass bleak little towns, climb many steep, winding hills, speed swiftly along the uplands, leaving a long trail of white dust-clouds in our wake—until we are surprised by Glossop, a good-sized city in the midst of the moor. It has large papermills, substantially built of stone, an industry made possible by the pure waters of the moor. The streets are paved with rough cobble-stones and the town has altogether a cheerless, unattractive look, but interesting as quite a new phase of England. In all our journeyings throughout the Kingdom we found no section more utterly bleak and dreary than that through which we passed from Buxton to Glossop. We could but imagine what aspect a country that so impressed us on a fine day in June time must present in the dull, gray English winter. How the unimpeded winds must sweep the brown moorlands! How their icy blasts must search out every crevice in the lone cottages and penetrate the cheerless-looking hovels in the villages! A small native of whom we asked his recollection of winter shook his head sadly and said, “Awfully cold”; and a local proverb referring to the section has it that “Kinderscout is the cowdest place aout.”

The Sheffield road follows the hills, which towered high above us at times or again dropped almost sheer away below to a black, tumbling stream. In one place, beneath an almost mountainous hill, we had an adventure which startled us more than any other occurrence of our tour. From the summit of a hill hundreds of feet above us, some miscreant loosened a huge boulder, which plunged down the declivity seemingly straight at us, but by good fortune missed our car by a few yards. The perpetrator of the atrocity immediately disappeared and there was no chance of tracing him. Happily, we had no similar outrage to record of all our twelve thousand miles in Britain, and we pass the act as that of a criminal or lunatic. This road was built about the beginning of the nineteenth century and a competent authority expresses doubt if there is a finer, better-engineered road in England than that between Glossop and Ashopton, a village about half way to Sheffield, and adds, “or one where houses are so rare—or the sight of an inn rouses such pleasureable anticipation,” though one of these, “The Snake,” must have other attractions than its name. It is indeed a fine road, though by no means unmatched by many others—the Manchester road to the northwest fully equals it, and following as it does the series of fine reservoirs lying in the valleys, is superior in scenery.

We took a short cut through Sheffield, the city of knives, razors and silver plate, caught a second glimpse of Chesterfield’s reeling spire, and swept over the hills into Mansfield just as the long twilight was fading into night.

The next morning our hostess of The Swan placed in our hands the much-sought-for pass to Newstead Abbey, and to while the time until the hour set for admittance, we went by the way of Hucknall, to visit Byron’s grave in the church whose square-topped tower dominates the town. Recent restoration gives an air of newness, for Hucknall Church, when Byron’s remains were laid before its altar, was little better than a ruin. The old man working over the graves in the churchyard knew full well our mission and leaving his task accosted us in unmistakable Irish brogue. He led us directly to the poet’s tomb, and it was with deep feeling not unmixed with awe that we advanced toward the high altar of Hucknall Church and stood silent and uncovered before the grave of Byron. On the wall over the tomb were graven two of those passages whose lofty sentiments glitter like gems—though betimes in inharmonious setting—throughout the poet’s writings, which breathe the high hopes he felt in his better moments. Well may the tablet over his last resting-place bear the inspired lines:

The second quotation is from “Childe Harold,” more positive in its tone, though less scintillating in its verbiage. In the wall near by, the gift of a Scotch admirer, is a marble profile medallion of the poet’s face, with Shelley’s characterization, “The Pilgrim of Eternity.” In the adjoining vestry the walls are covered with the graven words of many of the greatest men of the century—tributes to the genius of Byron. Verily the church at Hucknall has become as a mausoleum to one denied burial in the nation’s Valhalla, and who was, in truth, almost grudged sepulture in his native soil by a large number of the Englishmen of his day. And there came to us a faint conception of the intense bitterness of the times—when the body of England’s greatest genius, dead in a forlorn but glorious cause, was brought to his native land to be greeted with a storm of hatred and a fierce protest against interment in Westminster Abbey. With little ceremony he was laid away in the church of Hucknall and pilgrims now come daily to that otherwise uninteresting and rather ugly town to do honor to the memory of Byron—certainly one of the brightest and most fascinating, if not the greatest, of English poets.

For me there was none other of the historic places which we visited more deeply tinged by its romantic associations or possessing a greater fascination than Newstead Abbey. Perhaps this feeling was intensified by our previous unsuccessful attempts to gain admission and by the recollection of the passion of my boyhood days for the verse of Byron—though indeed I have hardly read him latterly. But we were to visit Newstead at last. If we found a little difficulty—possibly the result of our ignorance—in getting permission, we could not complain of the opportunities afforded us as visitors.

From the Mansfield road we entered the gateway and drove through the stretches of forest and meadow in the great park, halting the car at the very doorway of the ancient place. We paused to view the fine facade, with its square battlemented tower at one end and the ruins of the abbey church at the other. There is little left of this latter save the east wall, once pierced by three great windows, two of which have at some time been filled in. We were conducted by the rather aristocratic housekeeper to every part of the house save the private apartments of the family, and there was no effort to hurry us along—so often the fate of the tourist in such cases.

One who is accustomed to think of Newstead Abbey as it lives, lonely and half ruinous, in the verse of Byron, who had such an intense affection for the home of his ancestors; or even one who reads Washington Irving’s interesting account of his visit to the place when owned by Col. Wildman a few years later, is hardly prepared for the modern palace into which the abbey has been transformed. The paneled halls, with their rich furnishings and rare curios from all parts of the world, and the trim, beautifully kept gardens that greet one everywhere from the windows, have little in common with the Newstead of which Byron wrote in “Hours of Idleness:”

Still, much is unaltered and there are many relics to bring memories of the one-time noble, though unfortunate, owner, whose recklessness quite as much as his necessities compelled the sale of his ancestral estate.

Of greatest interest are the apartments which Byron himself occupied, a suite of three medium-sized rooms, which have been religiously kept through all the years just as the poet left them. The simple blue and white toilet set was his own, the bed the one he slept in, and many other articles and furnishings vividly recall the noble occupant who never returned after the sale of the abbey. Probably no one has occupied the rooms since Washington Irving slept there during the visit we have referred to and was roused in the middle of the night by a ghostly footfall in the hall—but found only Boatswain II. outside the door.

In the hall the marks of the pistol shots of the young lord and his wild companions have not been effaced from the walls and in the gallery there is a collection of many mementos of the poet. Perhaps the most interesting is a section of the tree upon which he carved his name and that of his sister, Augusta—cut down because it was decaying. The gallery is largely filled with portraits of the present family, but our interest centers in the famous portrait by Phillips, in which the refined features and dignified though slightly melancholy air has invested the poet’s face with a spirituality which it probably did not possess in so great a degree.

From the house we were ushered into the gardens and were shown every nook and corner of these by the gardener in charge. They were elaborate indeed; rich with the color and perfume of the flowers which bloom so profusely in England; and there were many rare plants and shrubs. We were interested in Boatswain’s grave, with its elaborate monument and inscription in which pathos verges on the ridiculous, yet highly consistent with the misanthropic moods so often affected by Byron. In contrast with the trim neatness of the flower beds and shrubbery is the fragment of the abbey church, through which the wind whistles as it did in the poet’s day, and which has weathered the sun and rain of more than three hundred years since the heavy hand of the eighth Henry smote it into ruins. And it carries us back four hundred years farther to another Henry, who built the abbey to expiate his crime of instigating the murder of Thomas a’Becket.

The history of Newstead told in brief by Irving need not occupy space in this hasty chronicle. It was with reluctance that we departed after our two hours’ sojourn. It often comes back in memory with all the color and glory of a perfect June day—the majestic hall, the abbey ruin, the gardens with their riot of coloring, the shining lake, the woodland and the meadows—an enchanted world which we left behind us as we hastened away over the road to Mansfield, where we had late luncheon at the Swan.

One will not leave the vicinity of Mansfield without a visit to Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle, famous for their connection with Elizabeth Spencer, “Bess of Hardwick.” Architecturally, both are disappointing; Hardwick, bald, harsh and square, like a modern concrete factory, and Bolsover, an incongruous pile cut up into small, ill-arranged apartments, by far the finest part of it in complete ruin. Hardwick is still a residence of the Duke of Devonshire and had just passed on the death of Spencer Cavendish to his nephew, who was refurnishing the house preparatory to making it his home. A bare, unhomelike place it seemed, with its great staring windows, its uneven concrete floors, and its high ceilings of decorated plaster, broken and discolored in many places. Its chief historical interest centers in the fact that it was one of the many prison-houses of Mary Stuart; but her imprisonment here was far from rigorous—in fact, so considerate was the Earl of Shrewsbury of his royal ward that it roused the jealousy of his amiable spouse, the energetic Bess. Concerning this incident Miss Strickland—a rather biased historian, we must fear—takes the countess to task in vigorous style, declaring that—

“His proud and cruel wife, whose temper could not be restrained by any power on earth or in heaven, soon became jealous of the lovely and fascinating prisoner, and led her husband, a noble of exemplary gravity and a grandsire, a terrible life!”

However, as in nearly every case of the kind, there appears to have been another side to it, and in any event, there were many who took the part of the jealous wife, including, as might be expected, Queen Elizabeth herself.

The countess, besides Hardwick Hall, built the former house at Chatsworth, which has since been torn down. Bolsover was completed by her son; it is now unoccupied but maintained in good repair. It is worth a visit rather for the fine view from its towers—for it occupies a most magnificent site on a high promontory overlooking the wide vale of the river—than for any interest the castle itself possesses.

The sun had sunk low when we came down from the castle walls and started for York, sixty miles away. At Worksop we were clear of the byways and the open road, invitingly smooth and level and almost free from traffic, stretched out before us. This chronicle is no record of miles per hour, and the motor enters into it only as a means to an end; yet there is no harm in saying that we had few swifter, evener flights through a more charming country than that which fleeted past us between Worksop and York. We soon caught sight of Doncaster’s dominating church tower, a fit mate for many of the cathedrals, but in our haste out of the town we missed the North Road and were soon noting the milestones to Tadcaster, famous for little else than its ales. The North Road is a trifle better in surface and a little more direct, but we had traversed it before and did not regret the opportunity of seeing a different country. The minster towers soon loomed dim in the purple light and we felt a sense of almost homelike restfulness when we were established at the Station Hotel—to our notion one of the two or three most comfortable in England.