



                              THE POOR CLARE

                           by Elizabeth Gaskell




CHAPTER I.


December 12th, 1747.—My life has been strangely bound up with
extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I even
knew of their existence. I suppose, most old men are, like me, more
given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest
and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events—though these
may have far more interest for the multitude—immediately passing before
their eyes. If this should be the case with the generality of old
people, how much more so with me! . . . If I am to enter upon that
strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back. I
myself only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her;
but, to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the
order in which they occurred—not that in which I became acquainted with
them. There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part they
called the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named Craven. Starkey Manor-house is rather like a number of rooms clustered round a
gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall. Indeed, I suppose
that the house only consisted of a great tower in the centre, in the days
when the Scots made their raids terrible as far south as this; and that
after the Stuarts came in, and there was a little more security of
property in those parts, the Starkeys of that time added the lower
building, which runs, two stories high, all round the base of the keep. There has been a grand garden laid out in my days, on the southern slope
near the house; but when I first knew the place, the kitchen-garden at
the farm was the only piece of cultivated ground belonging to it. The
deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and might
have browsed quite close up to the house if they had not been too wild
and shy. Starkey Manor-house itself stood on a projection or peninsula
of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills that form the sides of
the Trough of Bolland. These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards
their summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled copsewood and
green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of an ancient forest-tree
would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly white branches, as if
in imprecation, to the sky. These trees, they told me, were the remnants
of that forest which existed in the days of the Heptarchy, and were even
then noted as landmarks. No wonder that their upper and more exposed
branches were leafless, and that the dead bark had peeled away, from
sapless old age. Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently, of the same
date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the family, who
sought shelter—they and their families and their small flocks and
herds—at the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them had pretty much
fallen to decay. They were built in a strange fashion. Strong beams had
been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other
ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape of
one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger. The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish,
mortar—anything to keep out the weather. The fires were made in the
centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only
chimney. No Highland hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher
construction. The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century, was
a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey. His family had kept to the old faith, and
were stanch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to marry any one of
Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to embrace
the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick Starkey’s father had been a follower of
James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign of that
monarch he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as
zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself. He had returned
to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her, bearing her back
to the court at St. Germains. But some licence on the part of the
disorderly gentlemen who surrounded King James in his exile, had insulted
his beautiful wife, and disgusted him; so he removed from St. Germains to
Antwerp, whence, in a few years’ time, he quietly returned to Starkey
Manor-house—some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent their good
offices to reconcile him to the powers that were. He was as firm a
Catholic as ever, and as stanch an advocate for the Stuarts and the
divine rights of kings; but his religion almost amounted to asceticism,
and the conduct of these with whom he had been brought in such close
contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection of a stern
moralist. So he gave his allegiance where he could not give his esteem,
and learned to respect sincerely the upright and moral character of one
whom he yet regarded as an usurper. King William’s government had little
need to fear such a one. So he returned, as I have said, with a sobered
heart and impoverished fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had fallen
sadly to ruin while the owner had been a courtier, a soldier, and an
exile. The roads into the Trough of Bolland were little more than
cart-ruts; indeed, the way up to the house lay along a ploughed field
before you came to the deer-park. Madam, as the country-folk used to
call Mrs. Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her husband, holding on to
him with a light hand by his leather riding-belt. Little master (he that
was afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his pony by a
serving-man. A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong
step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and high up on the mails
and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on the topmost
trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart rocked and
shook in the heavy roads of late autumn. The girl wore the Antwerp
faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and altogether her
appearance was such that the old cottager, who described the possession
to me many years after, said that all the country-folk took her for a
foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the
company. They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at
the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to
the real Squire, “come back at last,” and gazed after the little
procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign
language in which the few necessary words that passed among them were
spoken. One lad, called from his staring by the Squire to come and help
about the cart, accompanied them to the Manor-house.