In Which I Come Over All Elitist

This years Most Haunted Halloween Special is a five-nighter, with five different locations. Yesterday we were at  Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire and- really- why didn't someone tell me about this place before?

It's a 17th century pleasure palace, filled with erotic paintings and sculpture- a party house, a forerunner of the Playboy Mansion only in much better taste. The atmosphere got to poor David Wells and turned him queasy. "Not evil," he said, "But outside my comfort zone."  The Most Haunted team can be crass- most notably Karl and Stuart- and somehow their crassness last night felt crasser than usual. 

The  couple who created this extraordinary place were the first Duke of Newcastle and his Duchess. He was one of Charles I's generals, a minor poet and playwright, the author of a classic work on horsemanship and a thinking libertine. She was a feminist before the word was coined, brazenly eccentric (known to her contemporaries as Mad Madge) a crossdresser,  philosopher and prolific author- a sort of 17th century George Sand. They were exceptional people and a famously loving couple (in spite of the orgies and black masses) - and stomping round their old home, shouting out to the Duke as "William" and asking him to whistle was maybe not the the best way of approaching them. It made me cross and no doubt made the Duke even crosser- so I'm not at all surprised he tried to push Karl down stairs.

There's a room with a curse on it, called the Pagan room. (Oh wow, I've got to go there). You lie on the floor and say "Sleep no more" and you die. Of course Carl and Stewart wanted to try it. To his credit, David Wells, who sometimes seems uncomfortable in this company, tried to stop them and was in tears when they went ahead. Stupid, bloody oiks. 

There are worse things than mocking one's ancestors- and sometimes, indeed, the ancestors deserve to be mocked- but beauty and distinction are rare enough qualities without the apes being let in to piss over what little of them there is.



Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

 

Something A Bit Spooky For Halloween

This has elements of tradition in it but mainly I made it up. Hadlow Castle is, however, a real place

                                   THE BLACKSMITH'S DAUGHTER

 

                                    How strange it is

                                    That the blacksmith's daughter

                                    Should marry the master

                                    Of Hadlow Castle.

                                    He shut her up

                                    In a windowless room

                                    But she picked the locks

                                    And ran off with her lover.

 

                                    Day after day

                                    He climbed the tower

                                    To train a glass

                                    On her cottage gable.

                                    Seven years passed

                                    Then out he rode

                                    To find the twins

                                    At their mother's door.

 

                                    He let them pat

                                    The grey mare's neck.

                                    He let them climb

                                    To the saddlebow.

                                    He has cut their throats

                                    By the Toadstone rock.

                                    I have served you, Janet,

                                    As you served me.

 

                                    What are those voices in the air?

                                    Only the swallows building.

                                    What are those voices in the earth?

                                    Only the river running.

 

                                    She wrapped herself

                                    In her lover's coat.

                                    She walked out barefoot

                                    In the dew.

                                    She followed the river

                                    To its source

                                    And there two swallows

                                    Flew from a stone.

                                                                                     

                                    Mother, we cannot

                                    Sleep at night;

                                    Our narrow bones

                                    Are so full of fever.

                                    Our killer walks in Tunbridge Wells

                                    Among the gentlemen

                                    Of  leisure.

 

                                    She took a dagger

                                    Of Spanish steel.

                                    She painted her face

                                    Like a Pump Room beauty.

                                    He stooped to chuck her

                                    Under the chin

                                    And she cut him open

                                    From crotch to neckbone.

 

                                    Rest, rest, my children

                                    Under your stone

                                    Where swallows flit

                                    Of a summer's morning.

                                    I will lie

                                    Where two roads cross

                                    With the wheels going over

                                    My head forever.