The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heiress of Haddon, by William E. Doubleday

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Title: Heiress of Haddon

Author: William E. Doubleday

Release Date: March 23, 2005 [EBook #15443]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[EIGHTH EDITION.]

THE

HEIRESS OF HADDON.

BY

WM. E. DOUBLEDAY.

LONDON:

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT AND CO., LIMITED.

BUXTON AND BAKEWELL:

U.F. WARDLEY, "HIGH PEAK NEWS" OFFICES.

PREFACE

The real romance of Haddon Hall is a sweet, old-world idyll of
singular attractiveness and interest. The gems of the story have been
reset by dramatists in different surroundings; but while, as in the
Sullivan-Grundy opera, many of its chief incidents have been retained,
many have been omitted.

In the old story there are no Puritans, and not one solitary Scotchman
appears upon the scene. The original drama was enacted in the pastoral
days of "Good Queen Bess," when the Tudor Queen was still young and
beautiful, and

"When all the world was young, lad,
And all the trees were green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen."

Haddon Hall, the scene of the story, is situated at the foot of the
Peak, between Bakewell and Chatsworth, close to Matlock, and not far
from Buxton. Far from the madding crowd the hoary old edifice stands,
carefully preserved, and generously thrown open to public view by its
princely owners, the Dukes of Rutland, who, though for more than a
century back they have ceased to inhabit it, have yet most carefully
protected the building from falling into the slightest disrepair.

In our own day, the Hall stands very much as it did in the heyday of
its glory, when the sisters Margaret and Dorothy received the homage
of their numerous admirers, or the "King of the Peak" himself passed
to and fro within its walls. But it is more beautiful now than it was
then, for now it is tinged with a beauty which age alone can bestow,
and mellowed with a charm that none of the Vernons ever knew.

And of this charm Dor