Shakespeare"s England.
by William Winter.
PREFACE
_Beautiful and storied scenes that have soothed and elevated the mind naturally inspire a feeling of grat.i.tude. Prompted by that feeling the present author has written this record of his rambles in England. It was his wish, in dwelling upon the rural loveliness and the literary and historical a.s.sociations of that delightful realm, to afford sympathetic guidance and useful suggestion to other American travellers who, like himself, might be attracted to roam among the shrines of the mother land. There is no pursuit more fascinating or in a high intellectual sense more remunerative; since it serves to define and regulate knowledge, to correct misapprehensions of fact, to broaden the mental vision, to ripen and refine the Judgment and the taste, and to fill the memory with enn.o.bling recollections. These papers commemorate two visits to England, the first made in _1877, _the second in _1882; _they occasionally touch upon the same place or scene as observed at different times; and especially they describe two distinct journeys, separated by an interval of five years, through the region a.s.sociated with the great name of Shakespeare. Repet.i.tions of the same reference, which now and then occur, were found unavoidable by the writer, but it is hoped that they will not be found tedious by the reader. Those who walk twice in the same pathways should be pleased, and not pained, to find the same wild-flowers growing beside them. The first American edition of this work consisted of two volumes, published in _1879, 1881, _and _1884, _called _The Trip to England _and _English Rambles. _The former book was embellished with poetic ill.u.s.trations by Joseph Jefferson, the famous comedian, my life-long friend. The paper on _Shakespeare"s Home,--_written to record for American readers the dedication of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford,_--_was first printed in _Harper"s Magazine, _in May _1879. _with delicate ill.u.s.trative pictures from the graceful pencil of Edwin Abbey. This compendium of the _Trip _and the _Rambles, _with the t.i.tle of _Shakespeare"s England, _was first published by David Douglas of Edinburgh. That t.i.tle was chosen for the reason that the book relates largely to Warwickshire and because it depicts not so much the England of fact as the England created and hallowed by the spirit of her poetry, of which Shakespeare is the soul.
Several months after the publication of _Shakespeare"s England _the writer was told of a work, published many years ago, bearing a similar t.i.tle, though relating to a different theme--the physical state of England in Shakespeare"s time. He had never heard of it and has never seen it. The text for the present reprint has been carefully revised. To his British readers the author would say that it is neither from lack of sympathy with the happiness around him nor from lack of faith in the future of his country that his writings have drifted toward the pathos in human experience and toward the hallowing a.s.sociations of an old historic land. Temperament is the explanation of style: and he has written thus of England because she has filled his mind with beauty and his heart with mingled joy and sadness: and surely some memory of her venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her rustic glens, her gleaming rivers, and her flower-spangled meadows will mingle with the last thoughts that glimmer through his brain, when the shadows of the eternal night are falling and the ramble of life is done._
_W. W._
1892.
SHAKESPEARE"S ENGLAND
CHAPTER I
THE VOYAGE
1887
The coast-line recedes and disappears, and night comes down upon the ocean. Into what dangers will the great ship plunge? Through what mysterious waste of waters will she make her viewless path? The black waves roll up around her. The strong blast fills her sails and whistles through her creaking cordage. Overhead the stars shine dimly amid the driving clouds. Mist and gloom close in the dubious prospect, and a strange sadness settles upon the heart of the voyager--who has left his home behind, and who now seeks, for the first time, the land, the homes, and the manners of the stranger. Thoughts and images of the past crowd thick upon his remembrance. The faces of absent friends rise before him, whom, perhaps, he is destined nevermore to behold. He sees their smiles; he hears their voices; he fancies them by familiar hearth-stones, in the light of the evening lamps. They are very far away now; and already it seems months instead of hours since the parting moment. Vain now the pang of regret for misunderstandings, unkindness, neglect; for golden moments slighted and gentle courtesies left undone. He is alone upon the wild sea--all the more alone because surrounded with new faces of unknown companions--and the best he can do is to seek his lonely pillow and lie down with a prayer in his heart and on his lips. Never before did he so clearly know--never again will he so deeply feel--the uncertainty of human life and the weakness of human nature. Yet, as he notes the rush and throb of the vast ship and the noise of the breaking waves around her, and thinks of the mighty deep beneath, and the broad and melancholy expanse that stretches away on every side, he cannot miss the impression--grand, n.o.ble, and thrilling--of human courage, skill, and power. For this ship is the centre of a splendid conflict. Man and the elements are here at war; and man makes conquest of the elements by using them as weapons against themselves. Strong and brilliant, the head-light streams over the boiling surges. Lanterns gleam in the tops.
Dark figures keep watch upon the prow. The officer of the night is at his post upon the bridge. Let danger threaten howsoever it may, it cannot come unawares; it cannot subdue, without a tremendous struggle, the brave minds and hardy bodies that are here arrayed to meet it. With this thought, perhaps, the weary voyager sinks to sleep; and this is his first night at sea.
There is no tediousness of solitude to him who has within himself resources of thought and dream, the pleasures and pains of memory, the bliss and the torture of imagination. It is best to have few acquaintances--or none--on shipboard. Human companionship, at some times, and this is one of them, distracts by its pettiness. The voyager should yield himself to nature now, and meet his own soul face to face.
The routine of everyday life is commonplace enough, equally upon sea and land. But the ocean is a continual pageant, filling and soothing the mind with unspeakable peace. Never, in even the grandest words of poetry, was the grandeur of the sea expressed. Its vastness, its freedom, its joy, and its beauty overwhelm the mind. All things else seem puny and momentary beside the life that this immense creation unfolds and inspires. Sometimes it shines in the sun, a wilderness of shimmering silver. Sometimes its long waves are black, smooth, glittering, and dangerous. Sometimes it seems instinct with a superb wrath, and its huge ma.s.ses rise, and clash together, and break into crests of foam. Sometimes it is gray and quiet, as if in a sullen sleep.
Sometimes the white mist broods upon it and deepens the sense of awful mystery by which it is forever enwrapped. At night its surging billows are furrowed with long streaks of phosph.o.r.escent fire; or, it may be, the waves roll gently, under the soft light of stars; or all the waste is dim, save where, beneath the moon, a glorious pathway, broadening out to the far horizon, allures and points to heaven. One of the most exquisite delights of the voyage, whether by day or night, is to lie upon the deck in some secluded spot, and look up at the tall, tapering spars as they sway with the motion of the ship, while over them the white clouds float, in ever-changing shapes, or the starry constellations drift, in their eternal march. No need now of books, or newspapers, or talk! The eyes are fed by every object they behold. The great ship, with all her white wings spread, careening like a tiny sail-boat, dips and rises, with sinuous, stately grace. The clank of her engines--fit type of steadfast industry and purpose--goes steadily on.
The song of the sailors--"Give me some time to blow the man down"--rises in cheery melody, full of audacious, light-hearted thoughtlessness, and strangely tinged with the romance of the sea. Far out toward the horizon many whales come sporting and spouting along. At once, out of the distant bank of cloud and mist, a little vessel springs into view, and with convulsive movement--tilting up and down like the miniature barque upon an old Dutch clock--dances across the vista and vanishes into s.p.a.ce. Soon a tempest bursts upon the calm; and then, safe-housed from the fierce blast and blinding rain, the voyager exults over the stern battle of winds and waters and the stalwart, undaunted strength with which his ship bears down the furious floods and stems the gale. By and by a quiet hour is given, when, met together with the companions of his journey, he stands in the hushed cabin and hears the voice of prayer and the hymn of praise, and, in the pauses, a gentle ripple of waves against the ship, which now rocks lazily upon the sunny deep; and, ever and anon, as she dips, he can discern through her open ports the shining sea and the wheeling and circling gulls that have come out to welcome her to the sh.o.r.es of the old world.
The present writer, when first he saw the distant and dim coast of Britain, felt, with a sense of forlorn loneliness that he was a stranger; but when last he saw that coast he beheld it through a mist of tears and knew that he had parted from many cherished friends, from many of the gentlest men and women upon the earth, and from a land henceforth as dear to him as his own. England is a country which to see is to love.
As you draw near to her sh.o.r.es you are pleased at once with the air of careless finish and negligent grace that everywhere overhangs the prospect. The grim, wind-beaten hills of Ireland have first been pa.s.sed--hills crowned, here and there, with dark, fierce towers that look like strongholds of ancient bandit chiefs, and cleft by dim valleys that seem to promise endless mystery and romance, hid in their sombre depths. Pa.s.sed also is white Queenstown, with its lovely little bay, its circle of green hillsides, and its valiant fort; and picturesque Fastnet, with its gaily painted tower, has long been left behind. It is off the n.o.ble crags of Holyhead that the voyager first observes with what a deft skill the hand of art has here moulded nature"s luxuriance into forms of seeming chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever in rural England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, he will behold nothing but gentle rustic adornment, that has grown with the gra.s.s and the roses--greener gra.s.s and redder roses than ever we see in our western world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful is spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent as the blowing of the summer wind. Portions of English cities, indeed, are hard and harsh and coa.r.s.e enough to suit the most utilitarian taste; yet even in those regions of dreary monotony the national love of flowers will find expression, and the people, without being aware of it, will, in many odd little ways, beautify their homes and make their surroundings pictorial, at least to stranger eyes. There is a tone of rest and homelike comfort even in murky Liverpool; and great magnificence is there--as well of architecture and opulent living as of enterprise and action. "Towered cities" and "the busy hum of men," however, are soon left behind by the wise traveller in England. A time will come for those; but in his first sojourn there he soon discovers the two things that are utterly to absorb him--which cannot disappoint--and which are the fulfilment of all his dreams. These things are--the rustic loveliness of the land and the charm of its always vital and splendid antiquity. The green lanes, the thatched cottages, the meadows glorious with wildflowers, the little churches covered with dark-green ivy, the Tudor gables festooned with roses, the devious footpaths that wind across wild heaths and long and lonesome fields, the narrow, shining rivers, brimful to their banks and crossed here and there with gray, moss-grown bridges, the stately elms whose low-hanging branches droop over a turf of emerald velvet, the gnarled beech-trees "that wreathe their old, fantastic roots so high,"
the rooks that caw and circle in the air, the sweet winds that blow from fragrant woods, the sheep and the deer that rest in shady places, the pretty children who cl.u.s.ter round the porches of their cleanly, cosy homes, and peep at the wayfarer as he pa.s.ses, the numerous and often brilliant birds that at times fill the air with music, the brief, light, pleasant rains that ever and anon refresh the landscape--these are some of the everyday joys of rural England; and these are wrapped in a climate that makes life one serene ecstasy. Meantime, in rich valleys or on verdant slopes, a thousand old castles and monasteries, ruined or half in ruins, allure the pilgrim"s gaze, inspire his imagination, arouse his memory, and fill his mind. The best romance of the past and the best reality of the present are his banquet now; and nothing is wanting to the perfection of the feast. I thought that life could have but few moments of content in store for me like the moment--never to be forgotten!--when, in the heart of London, on a perfect June day, I lay upon the gra.s.s in the old Green Park, and, for the first time, looked up to the towers of Westminster Abbey.
CHAPTER II
THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND
It is not strange that Englishmen should be--as certainly they are--pa.s.sionate lovers of their country; for their country is, almost beyond parallel, peaceful, gentle, and beautiful. Even in vast London, where practical life a.s.serts itself with such prodigious force, the stranger is impressed, in every direction, with a sentiment of repose and peace. This sentiment seems to proceed in part from the antiquity of the social system here established, and in part from the affectionate nature of the English people. Here are finished towns, rural regions thoroughly cultivated and exquisitely adorned; ancient architecture, crumbling in slow decay; and a soil so rich and pure that even in its idlest mood it lights itself up with flowers, just as the face of a sleeping child lights itself up with smiles. Here, also, are soft and kindly manners, settled principles, good laws, wise customs--wise, because rooted in the universal attributes of human nature; and, above all, here is the practice of trying to live in a happy condition instead of trying to make a noise about it. Here, accordingly, life is soothed and hallowed with the comfortable, genial, loving spirit of home. It would, doubtless, be easily possible to come into contact here with absurd forms and pernicious abuses, to observe absurd individuals, and to discover veins of sordid selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the things that first and most deeply impress the observer of England and English society are their potential, manifold, and abundant sources of beauty, refinement, and peace. There are, of course, grumblers. Mention has been made of a person who, even in heaven, would complain that his cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. We cannot have perfection; but the man who could not be happy in England--in so far, at least, as happiness depends upon external objects and influences--could not reasonably expect to be happy anywhere.
Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or two each day, but it causes no discomfort. Fog has refrained; though it is understood to be lurking in the Irish sea and the English channel, and waiting for November, when it will drift into town and grime all the new paint on the London houses.
Meantime, the sky is softly blue and full of magnificent bronze clouds; the air is cool, and in the environs of the city is fragrant with the scent of new-mown hay; and the gra.s.s and trees in the parks--those copious and splendid lungs of London--are green, dewy, sweet, and beautiful. Persons "to the manner born" were lately calling the season "backward," and they went so far as to grumble at the hawthorne, as being less brilliant than in former seasons. But, in fact, to the unfamiliar sense, this tree of odorous coral has been delicious. We have nothing comparable with it in northern America, unless, perhaps, it be the elder, of our wild woods; and even that, with all its fragrance, lacks equal charm of colour. They use the hawthorne, or some kindred shrub, for hedges in this country, and hence their fields are seldom disfigured with fences. As you ride through the land you see miles and miles of meadow traversed by these green and blooming hedgerows, which give the country a charm quite incommunicable in words. The green of the foliage--enriched by an uncommonly humid air and burnished by the sun--is in perfection, while the flowers bloom in such abundance that the whole realm is one glowing pageant. I saw near Oxford, on the crest of a hill, a single ray of at least a thousand feet of scarlet poppies.
Imagine that glorious dash of colour in a green landscape lit by the afternoon sun! n.o.body could help loving a land that woos him with such beauty.
English flowers are exceptional for substance and pomp. The roses, in particular--though some of them, it should be said, are of French breeds--surpa.s.s all others. It may seem an extravagance to say, but it is certainly true, that these rich, firm, brilliant flowers affect you like creatures of flesh and blood. They are, in this respect, only to be described as like nothing in the world so much as the bright lips and blushing cheeks of the handsome English women who walk among them and vie with them in health and loveliness. It is easy to perceive the source of those elements of warmth and sumptuousness that are so conspicuous in the results of English taste. It is a land of flowers.
Even in the busiest parts of London the people decorate their houses with them, and set the sombre, fog-grimed fronts ablaze with scarlet and gold. These are the prevalent colours--radically so, for they have become national--and, when placed against the black tint with which this climate stains the buildings, they have the advantage of a vivid contrast that much augments their splendour. All London wears c.r.a.pe, variegated with a tracery of white, like lace upon a pall. In some instances the effect is splendidly pompous. There cannot be a grander artificial object in the world than the front of St. Paul"s cathedral, which is especially notable for this mysterious blending of light and shade. It is to be deplored that a climate which can thus beautify should also destroy; but there can be no doubt that the stones of England are steadily defaced by the action of the damp atmosphere.
Already the delicate carvings on the palace of Westminster are beginning to crumble. And yet, if one might judge the climate by this glittering July, England is a land of sunshine as well as of flowers. Light comes before three o"clock in the morning, and it lasts, through a dreamy and lovely gloaming, till nearly ten o"clock at night. The morning sky is usually light blue, dappled with slate-coloured clouds. A few large stars are visible then, lingering to outface the dawn. Cool winds whisper, and presently they rouse the great, sleepy, old elms; and then the rooks--which are the low comedians of the air in this region--begin to grumble; and then the sun leaps above the horizon, and we sweep into a day of golden, breezy cheerfulness and comfort, the like of which is rarely or never known in northern America, between June and October.
Sometimes the whole twenty-four hours have drifted past, as if in a dream of light, and fragrance, and music. In a recent moonlight time there was scarce any darkness at all; and more than once I have lain awake all night, within a few miles of Charing Cross, listening to a twitter of birds that is like the lapse and fall of silver water. It used to be difficult to understand why the London season should begin in May and last through most of the summer; it is not difficult to understand the custom now.
The elements of discontent and disturbance which are visible in English society are found, upon close examination, to be merely superficial.
Underneath them there abides a st.u.r.dy, immutable, inborn love of England. Those croakings, grumblings, and bickerings do but denote the process by which the body politic frees itself from the headaches and fevers that embarra.s.s the national health. The Englishman and his country are one; and when the Englishman complains against his country it is not because he believes that either there is or can be a better country elsewhere, but because his instinct of justice and order makes him crave perfection in his own. Inst.i.tutions and principles are, with him, by nature, paramount to individuals; and individuals only possess importance--and that conditional on abiding rect.i.tude--who are their representatives. Everything is done in England to promote the permanence and beauty of the home; and the permanence and beauty of the home, by a natural reaction, augment in the English people solidity of character and peace of life. They do not dwell in a perpetual fret and fume as to the acts, thoughts, and words of other nations: for the English there is absolutely no public opinion outside of their own land: they do not live for the sake of working, but they work for the sake of living; and, as the necessary preparations for living have long since been completed, their country is at rest. This is the secret of England"s first, and continuous, and last, and all-pervading charm and power for the stranger--the charm and power to soothe.
The efficacy of endeavouring to make a country a united, comfortable, and beautiful home for all its inhabitants,--binding every heart to the land by the same tie that binds every heart to the fireside,--is something well worthy to be considered, equally by the practical statesman and the contemplative observer. That way, a.s.suredly, lie the welfare of the human race and all the tranquillity that human nature--warped as it is by evil--will ever permit to this world. This endeavour has, through long ages, been steadily pursued in England, and one of its results--which is also one of its indications--is the vast acc.u.mulation of what may be called home treasures in the city of London.
The mere enumeration of them would fill large volumes. The description of them could not be completed in a lifetime. It was this copiousness of historic wealth and poetic a.s.sociation, combined with the flavour of character and the sentiment of monastic repose, that bound Dr. Johnson to Fleet Street and made Charles Lamb such an inveterate lover of the town. Except it be to correct a possible insular narrowness there can be no need that the Londoner should travel. Glorious sights, indeed, await him, if he journeys no further away than Paris; but, aside from ostentation, luxury, gaiety, and excitement, Paris will give him nothing that he may not find at home.
The great cathedral of Notre Dame will awe him; but not more than his own Westminster Abbey. The grandeur and beauty of the Madeleine will enchant him; but not more than the ma.s.sive solemnity and stupendous magnificence of St. Paul"s. The embankments of the Seine will satisfy his taste with their symmetrical solidity; but he will not deem them superior in any respect to the embankments of the Thames. The Pantheon, the Hotel des Invalides, the Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Tribunal of Commerce, the Opera-House,--all these will dazzle and delight his eyes, arousing his remembrances of history and firing his imagination of great events and persons; but all these will fail to displace in his esteem the grand Palace of Westminster, so stately in its simplicity, so strong in its perfect grace! He will ride through the exquisite Park of Monceau,--one of the loveliest spots in Paris,--and onward to the Bois de Boulogne, with its sumptuous pomp of foliage, its romantic green vistas, its many winding avenues, its hillside hermitage, its cascades, and its affluent lakes whereon the white swans beat the water with their joyous wings; but still his soul will turn, with unshaken love and loyal preference to the sweetly sylvan solitude of the gardens of Kensington and Kew. He will marvel in the museums of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and Cluny; and probably he will concede that of paintings, whether ancient or modern, the French display is larger and finer than the English; but he will vaunt the British Museum as peerless throughout the world, and he will still prize his National Gallery, with its originals of Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Turner, its spirited, tender, and dreamy Murillos, and its dusky glories of Rembrandt. He will admire, at the Theatre Francais, the photographic perfection of French acting; but he will be apt to reflect that English dramatic art, if it sometimes lacks finish, often has the effect of nature; and he will certainly perceive that the playhouse itself is not superior to either Her Majesty"s Theatre or Covent Garden. He will luxuriate in the Champs elysees, in the superb Boulevards, in the glittering pageant of precious jewels that blazes in the Rue de la Paix and the Palais Royal, and in that gorgeous panorama of shop-windows for which the French capital is unrivalled and famous; and he will not deny that, as to brilliancy of aspect, Paris is prodigious and unequalled--the most radiant of cities--the sapphire in the crown of Solomon. But, when all is seen, either that Louis the Fourteenth created or Buonaparte pillaged,--when he has taken his last walk in the gardens of the Tuileries, and mused, at the foot of the statue of Caesar, on that t.i.tanic strife of monarchy and democracy of which France has seemed destined to be the perpetual theatre,--sated with the glitter of showy opulence and tired with the whirl of frivolous life he will gladly and gratefully turn again to his sombre, mysterious, thoughtful, restful old London; and, like the Syrian captain, though in the better spirit of truth and right, declare that Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are better than all the waters of Israel.
CHAPTER III
GREAT HISTORIC PLACES
There is so much to be seen in London that the pilgrim scarcely knows where to choose and certainly is perplexed by what Dr. Johnson called "the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness." One spot to which I have many times been drawn, and which the mention of Dr. Johnson instantly calls to mind, is the stately and solemn place in Westminster Abbey where that great man"s ashes are buried. Side by side, under the pavement of the Abbey, within a few feet of earth, sleep Johnson, Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, d.i.c.kens, c.u.mberland, and Handel. Garrick"s wife is buried in the same grave with her husband. Close by, some bra.s.s letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark the last resting-place of Thomas Campbell. Not far off is the body of Macaulay; while many a stroller through the nave treads upon the gravestone of that astonishing old man Thomas Parr, who lived in the reigns of nine princes (1483-1635), and reached the great age of 152. All parts of Westminster Abbey impress the reverential mind. It is an experience very strange and full of awe suddenly to find your steps upon the sepulchres of such ill.u.s.trious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan; and you come, with a thrill of more than surprise, upon such still fresh antiquity as the grave of Anne Neville, the daughter of Warwick and queen of Richard the Third. But no single spot in the great cathedral can so enthral the imagination as that strip of storied stone beneath which Garrick, Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson, c.u.mberland, d.i.c.kens, Macaulay, and Handel sleep, side by side. This writer, when lately he visited the Abbey, found a chair upon the grave of Johnson, and sat down there to rest and muse. The letters on the stone are fast wearing away; but the memory of that st.u.r.dy champion of thought can never perish, as long as the votaries of literature love their art and honour the valiant genius that battled--through hunger, toil, and contumely--for its dignity and renown. It was a tender and right feeling that prompted the burial of Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together to seek their fortune in the great city. They went through privation and trial hand in hand. Each found glory in a different way; and, although parted afterward by the currents of fame and wealth, they were never sundered in affection. It was fit they should at last find their rest together, under the most glorious roof that greets the skies of England.
Fortune gave me a good first day at the Tower of London. The sky lowered. The air was very cold. The wind blew with angry gusts. The rain fell, now and then, in a chill drizzle. The river was dark and sullen.
If the spirits of the dead come back to haunt any place they surely come back to haunt that one; and this was a day for their presence. One dark ghost seemed near, at every step--the ominous shade of the lonely Duke of Gloster. The little room in which the princes are said to have been murdered, by his command, was shown, and the oratory where king Henry the Sixth is supposed to have met a violent death, and the council chamber, in which Richard--after listening, in an ambush behind the arras--denounced the wretched Hastings. The latter place is now used as an armoury; but the same ceiling covers it that echoed the bitter invective of Gloster and the rude clamour of his soldiers, when their frightened victim was plucked forth and dragged downstairs, to be beheaded on "a timber-log" in the courtyard. The Tower is a place for such deeds, and you almost wonder that they do not happen still, in its gloomy chambers. The room in which the princes were killed (if killed indeed they were) is particularly grisly in aspect. It is an inner room, small and dark. A barred window in one of its walls fronts a window on the other side of the pa.s.sage by which you approach it. This is but a few feet from the floor, and perhaps the murderers paused to look through it as they went to their h.e.l.lish work upon the children of king Edward. The entrance was indicated to a secret pa.s.sage by which this apartment could be approached from the foot of the Tower. In one gloomy stone chamber the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large gla.s.s case. One of the royal relics is a crown of velvet and gold that was made for poor Anne Boleyn. You may pa.s.s across the courtyard and pause on the spot where that miserable woman was beheaded, and you may walk thence over the ground that her last trembling footsteps traversed, to the round tower in which, at the close, she lived. Her grave is in the chancel of the little antique church, close by. I saw the cell of Raleigh, and that direful chamber which is scrawled all over with the names and emblems of prisoners who therein suffered confinement and lingering agony, nearly always ending in death; but I saw no sadder place than Anne Boleyn"s tower. It seemed in the strangest way eloquent of mute suffering. It seemed to exhale grief and to plead for love and pity. Yet--what woman ever had greater love than was lavished on her? And what woman ever trampled more royally and recklessly upon human hearts?
The Tower of London is degraded by being put to commonplace uses and by being exhibited in a commonplace manner. They use the famous White Tower now as a store-house for arms, and it contains about one hundred thousand guns, besides a vast collection of old armour and weapons. The arrangement of the latter was made by J. R. Planche, the dramatic author,--famous as an antiquarian and a herald. [That learned, able, brilliant, and honoured gentleman died, May 29, 1880, aged 84.] Under his tasteful direction the effigies and gear of chivalry are displayed in such a way that the observer may trace the changes that war fashions have undergone, through the reigns of successive sovereigns of England, from the earliest period until now. A suit of mail worn by Henry the Eighth is shown, and also a suit worn by Charles the First. The suggestiveness of both figures is remarkable. In a room on the second floor of the White Tower they keep many gorgeous oriental weapons, and they show the cloak in which General Wolfe died, on the Plains of Abraham. It is a gray garment, to which the active moth has given a share of his a.s.siduous attention. The most impressive objects to be seen there, however, are the block and axe that were used in beheading the Scotch lords, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, after the defeat of the pretender, in 1746. The block is of ash, and there are big and cruel dents upon it, showing that it was made for use rather than ornament. It is harmless enough now, and this writer was allowed to place his head upon it, in the manner prescribed for the victims of decapitation. The door of Raleigh"s bedroom is opposite to these baleful relics, and it is said that his _History of the World _was written in the room in which these implements are now such conspicuous objects of gloom. The place is gloomy and cheerless beyond expression, and great must have been the fort.i.tude of the man who bore, in that grim solitude, a captivity of thirteen years--not failing to improve it by producing a book so excellent for quaintness, philosophy, and eloquence. A "beef-eater,"
arrayed in a dark tunic, trousers trimmed with red, and a black velvet hat adorned with bows of blue and red ribbon, precedes each group of visitors, and drops information and the letter h, from point to point.
The centre of what was once the Tower green is marked with a bra.s.s plate, naming Anne Boleyn and giving the date when she was there beheaded. They found her body in an elm-wood box, made to hold arrows, and it now rests, with the ashes of other n.o.ble sufferers, under the stones of the church of St. Peter, about fifty feet from the place of execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is said to haunt that part of the Tower where she lived, and it is likewise whispered that the spectre of Lady Jane Grey was seen, not long ago, on the anniversary of the day of her execution [Obiit February 12, 1554], to glide out upon a balcony adjacent to the room in which she lodged during nearly eight months, at the last of her wasted, unfortunate, but gentle and n.o.ble life. [That room was in the house of Thomas Brydges, brother and deputy of Sir John Brydges, Lieutenant of the Tower, and its windows command an un.o.bstructed view of the Tower green, which was the place of the block.]
It could serve no good purpose to relate the particulars of those visitations; but n.o.body doubts them--while he is in the Tower. It is a place of mystery and horror, notwithstanding all that the practical spirit of to-day has done to make it trivial and to cheapen its grim glories by a.s.sociation with the commonplace.
Many of these relics have since been disposed in a different way.--Raleigh was incarcerated in various parts of the Tower, in the course of his several imprisonments.
CHAPTER IV
RAMBLES IN LONDON
All old cities get rich in a.s.sociation, as a matter of course and whether they will or no; but London, by reason of its great extent, as well as its great antiquity, is richer in a.s.sociation than any modern place on earth. The stranger scarcely takes a step without encountering a new object of interest. The walk along the Strand and Fleet Street, in particular, is continually on storied ground. Old Temple Bar still stands (July 1877), though "tottering to its fall," and marks the junction of the two streets. The statues of Charles the First and Charles the Second on its western front would be remarkable anywhere, as characteristic portraits. You stand beside that arch and quite forget the pa.s.sing throng, and take no heed of the tumult around, as you think of Johnson and Boswell leaning against the Bar after midnight in the far-off times and waking the echoes of the Temple Garden with their frolicsome laughter. The Bar is carefully propped now, and they will nurse its age as long as they can; but it is an obstruction to travel--and it must disappear. (It was removed in the summer of 1878.) They will probably set it up, newly built, in another place. They have left untouched a little piece of the original scaffolding built around St. Paul"s; and that fragment of decaying wood may still be seen, high upon the side of the cathedral. The Rainbow, the Mitre, the Cheshire Cheese, Dolly"s Chop-House, the c.o.c.k, and the Round Table--taverns or public-houses that were frequented by the old wits--are still extant (1877). The Cheshire Cheese is scarcely changed from what it was when Johnson, Goldsmith, and their comrades ate beefsteak pie and drank porter there, and the Doctor "tossed and gored several persons," as it was his cheerful custom to do. The benches in that room are narrow, incommodious, penitential; mere ledges of well-worn wood, on which the visitor sits bolt upright, in difficult perpendicular; but there is, probably, nothing on earth that would induce the owner to alter them--and he is right.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Approach to Cheshire Cheese."