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1MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL 24 July. Whitby.--Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and lovelier than ever, and we drove
2up to the house at the Crescent in which they have rooms. This is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs
3through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour. A great viaduct runs across, with high piers,
4through which the view seems somehow further away than it really is. The valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep
5that when you are on the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you are near enough to see down. The
6houses of the old town--the side away from us--are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow, like the
7pictures we see of Nuremberg. Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which
8is the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up in the wall. It is a most noble ruin, of immense size,
9and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it
10and the town there is another church, the parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to
11my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the
12bay to where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the sea. It descends so steeply over the harbour that
13part of the bank has fallen away, and some of the graves have been destroyed. In one place part of the stonework of the
14graves stretches out over the sandy pathway far below. There are walks, with seats beside them, through the churchyard;
15and people go and sit there all day long looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze. I shall come and sit
16here very often myself and work. Indeed, I am writing now, with my book on my knee, and listening to the talk of three
17old men who are sitting beside me. They seem to do nothing all day but sit up here and talk. The harbour lies below me,
18with, on the far side, one long granite wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of it, in the
19middle of which is a lighthouse. A heavy sea-wall runs along outside of it. On the near side, the sea-wall makes an
20elbow crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse. Between the two piers there is a narrow opening into the
21harbour, which then suddenly widens. It is nice at high water; but when the tide is out it shoals away to nothing, and
22there is merely the stream of the Esk, running between banks of sand, with rocks here and there. Outside the harbour on
23this side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp edge of which runs straight out from behind the
24south lighthouse. At the end of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in a mournful sound on
25the wind. They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea. I must ask the old man about
26this; he is coming this way.... He is a funny old man. He must be awfully old, for his face is all gnarled and twisted
27like the bark of a tree. He tells me that he is nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing
28fleet when Waterloo was fought. He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea
29and the White Lady at the abbey he said very brusquely:-- "I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all
30wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn't in my time. They be all very well for
31comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be
32always eatin' cured herrin's an' drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel' who'd
33be bothered tellin' lies to them--even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk." I thought he would be a good person
34to learn interesting things from, so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale-fishing in the
35old days. He was just settling himself to begin when the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said:--
36"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My grand-daughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it
37takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em; an', miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the
38clock." He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could, down the steps. The steps are a great
39feature on the place. They lead from the town up to the church, there are hundreds of them--I do not know how many--and
40they wind up in a delicate curve; the slope is so gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them. I think they
41must originally have had something to do with the abbey. I shall go home too. Lucy went out visiting with her mother,
42and as they were only duty calls, I did not go. They will be home by this. 1 August.--I came up here an hour ago with
43Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join him. He is
44evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. He will not
45admit anything, and downfaces everybody. If he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for
46agreement with his views. Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock; she has got a beautiful colour since
47she has been here. I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming up and sitting near her when we sat down.
48She is so sweet with old people; I think they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did
49not contradict her, but gave me double share instead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once
50into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it down:-- "It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel;
51that's what it be, an' nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' barguests an' bogles an' all anent them is
52only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a-belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs an'
53warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome beuk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to
54get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me ireful to think o' them. Why, it's them that,
55not content with printin' lies on paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the
56tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can
57out of their pride, is acant--simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or
58'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at all; an' the
59memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind
60or another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their
61death-sarks, all jouped together an' tryin' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them
62trimmlin' and ditherin', with their hands that dozzened an' slippy from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their
63grup o' them." I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in which he looked round for the
64approval of his cronies that he was "showing off," so I put in a word to keep him going:-- "Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be
65serious. Surely these tombstones are not all wrong?"
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