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CHAPTER VI

1768-1773

NONE but a man of Thomas Percy's universal talents could have discharged the diverse duties that were required of him during the fifteen years that he held his appointment at Alnwick. They included those of chaplain, librarian, secretary, tutor, genealogist, political agent, landscape gardener, art-collector, and balladmaker. To the innumerable literary engagements that formerly crowded upon him were now added the weight of the Duke's correspondence, with that 'most teasing and fatiguing of all employments,' the daily examination of some hundred begging letters, in many of which the endless frauds of a great city could be detected.'

To the study of heraldry Dr. Percy now found it 'proper to pay some attention,' as all questions relating to the genealogy and arms of the Percy family were referred to him. He made diligent search among old parish registers, but, like all British genealogists, his inquiries were often baffled by the fact that these records were only appointed in England in 1539, and were then carelessly kept, whole volumes being often lost. Unmindful of the ridicule with which in his. days 'such dry researches were regarded,' this study soon became his favourite amusement, and led him also to trace out the histories of the Clevelands, Lowes,1

1 Thomas Percy refused £6000 for an old house that he had inherited from the Lowes, in whose possession it had been since the reign of Henry III.

Blounts, Bromleys and Packingtons, from which families he was maternally descended. He also arranged the Percy genealogies that adorn the chapel at Alnwick. On one side, as Dibdin quaintly expresses it, he placed those that are 'pushed up to Charlemagne,' and on the other those 'brought from Hotspur downwards.'

Dr. Percy admitted that he suffered too much of his attention to be engrossed by these researches, which during his brief holidays often interfered with 'his proper attentions to his living relations.' On one occasion he wrote to his cousin, 'I have mentioned my shortcomings to Mrs. Percy, and as she has scolded me for them already, I hope you too will give me a discharge in full.'

He assured the Duchess that while her other friends could entertain her with gossip of what was passing in this present world, he was able to supply her with particulars concerning the doings of her ancestors in previous centuries. On one occasion, when she was absent in Paris, he employed an artist of the name of Lindo to paint portraits' of the first five Earls of Northumberland, whose likenesses he had gathered from various sources. A book in the Museum furnished a miniature of the first earl, and figures taken from a church window at York enabled Lindo to improve the pictures of the second earl, who defended Berwick in 1436, and of his successor, both of whom, after the tradition of their house, were killed in action. The fourth and fifth earls were also touched up from drawings copied from monuments at Beverley, the burying-place of the Percys. Thus, owing to Thomas Percy's energy and resource, the Duchess found, on her return from Paris, in the gallery at Sion, authentic portraits of her ancestors down to the reign of

Henry VIII., and it only remained to hunt up other likenesses to carry the collection on to her own time.

Amid all these avocations Dr. Percy often regretted his past life of leisure and literary amusement. He now found himself in so unsettled a state that he could hardly sit down and handle a pen, and lamented that such of his slight attempts in the belles lettres as had escaped the fire and the pastrycook' were peaceably slumbering in his closet in Northamptonshire, the sequestered retreat that gave them birth.' He was, however, desired by the Duchess to commemorate in verse a romantic spot in which she delighted.

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In the Castle of Warkworth, where the 'Lion of Percy may be seen everywhere, for it is rampant on the keep, and still roars over the tower near the chapel porch,' the minstrels of old celebrated the valiant deeds of the family. Dr. Percy was expected to continue these records, and to such a lover of antiquity, life in the Border country, amid historic scenes of stirring events, was full of interest and poetic inspiration.

Within a mile of Warkworth Castle, on a little eminence, enclosed in a deep valley through which flows the river Coquet, may be seen one of the most curious monuments in the British Isles, the Hermitage of Warkworth. A rock embowered in woods overhangs the river, and out of the solid stone is hewn a beautiful little chapel, with its entrance and ante-chapel. This Gothic building is supported by octagon pillars branching off and forming little pointed arches. On the south side of the altar, carved in the rock, is the recumbent form of a woman, at whose feet a hermit weeps, while near the head stands an angel. At the base is a bull's head, said by Sir Walter Scott to represent a dog, the

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emblem of fidelity. In the small apartment that forms the entrance to the chapel are two square niches where the hermit was wont to sit and contemplate, and above the doorway is carved in Latin My tears have been my meat day and night.' On the other side of the chapel is a doorway leading to the ante-chapel, which also has its altar, and a recess cut in the rock to form a bed. Openings in the wall enabled the hermit, who appears to have been both priest and penitent, while praying at the altar, sitting in contemplation, or lying on his stony bed, to keep the tomb of his lady perpetually in his sight. His meditations may well have been inspired by his surroundings, for a finer solitude can hardly be imagined. From a little seat in the cloister facing the setting sun he looked down on the sweeping curve of the river Coquet with its ceaseless flow, which, like the current of his troubled life, was about to lose itself in the ocean. On the opposite bank lay the wooded slopes and cultivated lands that recalled the busy world he had forsaken.

The history of this Hermitage is a riddle that each one may interpret as he will. Tradition points to a Northumberland warrior of the time of Hotspur, who hewed this temple out of the living rock, and passed his days in prayer for the soul of his lady, to whose memory it was dedicated. Beyond this it is silent. Percy's interpretation in his poem The Hermit of Warkworth' is according to his own mind and the taste of his age. In his new surroundings he had seen something of the fashionable ladies of the day, and lest

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This monumental form of an unknown woman has been believed by some authorities to be intended for that of the Blessed Virgin, but this supposition has been refuted by the fact that she is never represented in a recumbent position.

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they should be unduly exalted by this monument of devotion, which perhaps the great white Indian Taj Mahal' and the tomb of Caecilia Metella in the Campagna alone can equal, his imagination created a tragic situation, caused entirely by the lady's own vanity and caprice.

Even Mrs. Montagu, who, with her Bas Bleu followers, was endeavouring to reform society, had written a dialogue to prove the fatal results of simplicity and truth, and to show why Cleopatra had enslaved the soul of Antony, while the faithful Berenice found herself forsaken and discarded. Her teaching, like that of most false doctrines, contains a germ of truth, though the moral excluded it from Lord Lyttelton's 'Dialogues of the Dead.' According to Mrs. Montagu, Berenice, poor honest fool, really loved Titus, and, what was worse, allowed him to find it out; therefore, like all idolaters-of whom those who bow down to wood and stone are only a type-she was suffering from the insensibility of her idol; whereas Cleopatra, who was proof against any weakness of the head or heart, was gay, haughty, gracious, proud and indifferent by turns, and, if Antony frowned, smiled on Dolabella. Berenice allowed that Cleopatra's method might be suitable in dealing with the reveller Antony, but pleaded that the wisdom and gentleness of the god-like Titus left no part of her heart free to dissemble. Her love was a reality and all her beauty and accomplishments were so dedicated to Titus that she was more proud of the homage she paid him than any she received. Not to such transparent souls do men raise marble temples and dig hermitages out of the rock.

'Indeed, Berenice,' scornfully answered Cleopatra, 'you talk more like a shepherdess than a great queen.

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