Hare

AUGUSTUS HARE (1834 - 1903)

Hare is the author of the longest autobiography in the world, of which the early volumes paint a picture of Victorian cruelty masquerading as religion more improbable than anything in Dickens. Hare's first literary guide was so successful that he was asked to do more, and chose Northumberland and Durham. He used his widespread family connections to stay at the stately homes of the North East while doing his research, often based at Ridley Hall, near Riding Mill. He used to visit the Marchioness of Waterford at Ford Castle every year. Hare was in Newcastle on 6/7 May 1862, where he stayed with the Clayton family in Westgate House, now demolished, in Fenkle Street. He gives a delightful picture of the Town Clerk's rather eccentric household.

Hare rarely ventured into industrial areas, but on a visit to his clergyman friend Edward Liddell in Jarrow, he found him:

Amidst a teeming population of blackened, foul-mouthed, drunken rogues, living in rows of dismal houses, in a country where every vestige of vegetation is killed by noxious chemical vapours, on the edge of a slimy marsh, with a distance of inky sky, and the furnesses (sic) vomiting forth volumes of blackened smoke. All nature seemed parched and writhing under the pollution...

More characteristic of Hare, however, are the entrancing descriptions of Teesdale, the Otterburn Moors, Gibside, Ridley Hall, Falloden and Rock, Dunstanburgh and Holy Island. A description of Chillingham Castle, where hare stayed with the Tankervilles can stand for them all:

This park is quite as beautiful in its way as any scenery abroad and much more so, I think, than any in Scotland. It is backed by the Cheviot Hills and often broken into deep dells, with little streamlets running down them, and weird old oaks whose withered branches are never cut off, sheltering herds of deer. Great herds too of wild cattle which are milk-white, and have lived here since time immemorial, come rushing every now and then down the hillsides like an army to seek better pasture in the valley... Nothing can be more lovely than the evening effects each day I have been here, the setting sun pouring streams of golden light into the great grey mysterious basin of the Cheviots, amid which Marmion died and Paulinus baptised the ancient Northumbrians.

Hare knew Algernon Swinburne (q.v.) and Wallington Hall, where the unpredictable Sir Walter Trevelyan had him served a meal consisting entirely of artichokes and cauliflowers. A great teller of stories, Hare's extraordinary account of the man who kept marrying women with wooden legs is perhaps the most entertaining, while the tale of the Croglin Grange vampire can still make the flesh creep. Of Wallington Hall, he writes:

Wallington is still a haunted house: awful noises are heard all through the night; footsteps rush up and down the untrodden passages; wings flap and beat against the windows; bodiless people unpack and put away their things all night long and invisible beings are felt to breathe over you as you lie in bed.

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
AUGUSTUS HARE (1834 - 1903) Hare is the author of the longest autobiography in the world, of which the early volumes paint a picture of Victorian cruelty masquerading as religion more improbable than anything in Dickens. Hare's first literary guide was so successful that he was asked to do more, and chose Northumberland and Durham. He used his widespread family connections to stay at the stately homes of the North East while doing his research, often based at Ridley Hall, near Riding Mill. He used to visit the Marchioness of Waterford at Ford Castle every year. Hare was in Newcastle on 6/7 May 1862, where he stayed with the Clayton family in Westgate House, now demolished, in Fenkle Street. He gives a delightful picture of the Town Clerk's rather eccentric household. Hare rarely ventured into industrial areas, but on a visit to his clergyman friend Edward Liddell in Jarrow, he found him: Amidst a teeming population of blackened, foul-mouthed, drunken rogues, living in rows of dismal houses, in a country where every vestige of vegetation is killed by noxious chemical vapours, on the edge of a slimy marsh, with a distance of inky sky, and the furnesses (sic) vomiting forth volumes of blackened smoke. All nature seemed parched and writhing under the pollution... More characteristic of Hare, however, are the entrancing descriptions of Teesdale, the Otterburn Moors, Gibside, Ridley Hall, Falloden and Rock, Dunstanburgh and Holy Island. A description of Chillingham Castle, where hare stayed with the Tankervilles can stand for them all: This park is quite as beautiful in its way as any scenery abroad and much more so, I think, than any in Scotland. It is backed by the Cheviot Hills and often broken into deep dells, with little streamlets running down them, and weird old oaks whose withered branches are never cut off, sheltering herds of deer. Great herds too of wild cattle which are milk-white, and have lived here since time immemorial, come rushing every now and then down the hillsides like an army to seek better pasture in the valley... Nothing can be more lovely than the evening effects each day I have been here, the setting sun pouring streams of golden light into the great grey mysterious basin of the Cheviots, amid which Marmion died and Paulinus baptised the ancient Northumbrians. Hare knew Algernon Swinburne (q.v.) and Wallington Hall, where the unpredictable Sir Walter Trevelyan had him served a meal consisting entirely of artichokes and cauliflowers. A great teller of stories, Hare's extraordinary account of the man who kept marrying women with wooden legs is perhaps the most entertaining, while the tale of the Croglin Grange vampire can still make the flesh creep. Of Wallington Hall, he writes: Wallington is still a haunted house: awful noises are heard all through the night; footsteps rush up and down the untrodden passages; wings flap and beat against the windows; bodiless people unpack and put away their things all night long and invisible beings are felt to breathe over you as you lie in bed.
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