Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/541



The plot is centered round Haddon Hall, famous in history as one of the places which sheltered Mary Queen of Scots during her captivity. The story itself is of the romantic attachment and elopement of Dorothy Vernon and young John Manners, in spite of the opposition of parents and guardians. The time is around 1560. The story of the hero and heroine has long filled a romantic place in the more personal annals of Elizabethan history. Both Elizabeth and Mary Stuart come into the story, which is set in perhaps the most beautiful of English scenery—the hill country of Derbyshire, in the neighborhood of Chatsworth, beautiful hills through which flow the Wye and the Derwent. This neighborhood is one of the most interesting in England. Not far from it is Chatsworth, where Walter Scott was often seen, and where Byron met fair Mary Chaworth, the heiress of Annesley. Not far to the south of it is Leehurst, where Florence Nightingale used to live, while to the north of it is the grave of Little John, famous in the Robin Hood legend. Some of the rooms in Haddon Hall stand exactly as Dorothy herself saw them three hundred years ago. In the state chamber still stands the canopied bed of green velvet and white satin, in which tradition says Queen Elizabeth slept when she visited Haddon to open the first ball in the new ball-room of that day.