Ill.u.s.tration: "The Poets" Corner."
Gower, Fletcher, and Ma.s.singer (to name but a few of them) rest in Southwark; Sydney and Donne in St. Paul"s cathedral; More (his head, that is, while his body moulders in the Tower chapel) at Canterbury; Drummond in La.s.swade church; Dorset at Withyham, in Suss.e.x; Waller at Beaconsfield; Wither, unmarked, in the church of the Savoy; Milton in the church of the Cripplegate--where his relics, it is said, were despoiled; Swift at Dublin, in St. Patrick"s cathedral; Young at Welwyn; Pope at Twickenham; Thomson at Richmond; Gray at Stoke-Pogis; Watts in Bunhill-Fields; Collins in an obscure little church at Chichester--though his name is commemorated by a tablet in Chichester cathedral; Cowper in Dereham church; Goldsmith in the garden of the Temple; Savage at Bristol; Burns at Dumfries; Rogers at Hornsey; Crabbe at Trowbridge; Scott in Dryburgh abbey; Coleridge at Highgate; Byron in Hucknall church, near Nottingham; Moore at Bromham; Montgomery at Sheffield; Heber at Calcutta; Southey in Crossthwaite churchyard, near Keswick; Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge side by side in the churchyard of Grasmere; and Clough at Florence--whose lovely words may here speak for all of them--
"One port, methought, alike they sought, One purpose held, where"er they fare: O bounding breeze, O rushing seas.
At last, at last, unite them there!"
But it is not alone in the great Abbey that the rambler in London is impressed by poetic antiquity and touching historic a.s.sociation--always presuming that he has been a reader of English literature and that his reading has sunk into his mind. Little things, equally with great ones, commingled in a medley, luxuriant and delicious, so people the memory of such a pilgrim that all his walks will be haunted. The London of to-day, to be sure (as may be seen in Macaulay"s famous third chapter, and in Scott"s _Fortunes of Nigel), _is very little like even the London of Charles the Second, when the great fire had destroyed eighty-nine churches and thirteen thousand houses, and when what is now Regent Street was a rural solitude in which sportsmen sometimes shot the woodc.o.c.k.
Ill.u.s.tration: "The North Ambulatory."
Yet, though much of the old capital has vanished and more of it has been changed, many remnants of its historic past exist, and many of its streets and houses are fraught with a delightful, romantic interest. It is not forgotten that sometimes the charm resides in the eyes that see, quite as much as in the object that is seen. The storied spots of London may not be appreciable by all who look upon them every day. The cab-drivers in the region of Kensington Palace Road may neither regard, nor even notice, the house in which Thackeray lived and died. The shop-keepers of old Bond Street may, perhaps, neither care nor know that in this famous avenue was enacted the woeful death-scene of Laurence Sterne. The Bow Street runners are quite unlikely to think of Will"s Coffee House, and Dryden, or b.u.t.ton"s, and Addison, as they pa.s.s the sites of those vanished haunts of wit and revelry in the days of Queen Anne. The fashionable lounger through Berkeley Square, when perchance he pauses at the corner of Bruton Street, will not discern Colley Cibber, in wig and ruffles, standing at the parlour window and drumming with his hands on the frame. The casual pa.s.senger, halting at the Tavistock, will not remember that this was once Macklin"s Ordinary, and so conjure up the iron visage and ferocious aspect of the first great Shylock of the British stage, formally obsequious to his guests, or striving to edify them, despite the banter of the volatile Foote, with discourse upon "the Causes of Duelling in Ireland." The Barbican does not to every one summon the austere memory of Milton; nor Holborn raise the melancholy shade of Chatterton; nor Tower Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of Otway; nor Hampstead lure forth the sunny figure of Steele and the pa.s.sionate face of Keats; nor old Northumberland Street suggest the burly presence of "rare Ben Jonson"; nor opulent Kensington revive the stately head of Addison; nor a certain window in Wellington Street reveal in fancy"s picture the rugged lineaments and splendid eyes of d.i.c.kens.
Ill.u.s.tration: "The Spaniards, Hampstead."
Yet London never disappoints; and for him who knows and feels its history these a.s.sociations, and hundreds like to these, make it populous with n.o.ble or strange or pathetic figures, and diversify the aspect of its vital present with pictures of an equally vital past. Such a wanderer discovers that in this vast capital there is literally no end to the themes that are to stir his imagination, touch his heart, and broaden his mind. Soothed already by the equable English climate and the lovely English scenery, he is aware now of an influence in the solid English city that turns his intellectual life to perfect tranquillity.
He stands amid achievements that are finished, careers that are consummated, great deeds that are done, great memories that are immortal; he views and comprehends the sum of all that is possible to human thought, pa.s.sion, and labour; and then,--high over mighty London, above the dome of St. Paul"s cathedral, piercing the clouds, greeting the sun, drawing into itself all the tremendous life of the great city and all the meaning of its past and present,--the golden cross of Christ!
Ill.u.s.tration: "Dome of St. Paul"s"
CHAPTER XII.
SHAKESPEARE"S HOME
It is the everlasting glory of Stratford-upon-Avon that it was the birthplace of Shakespeare. Situated in the heart of Warwickshire, which has been called "the garden of England," it nestles cosily in an atmosphere of tranquil loveliness and is surrounded with everything that soft and gentle rural scenery can provide to soothe the mind and to nurture contentment. It stands upon a plain, almost in the centre of the island, through which, between the low green hills that roll away on either side, the Avon flows downward to the Severn. The country in its neighbourhood is under perfect cultivation, and for many miles around presents the appearance of a superbly appointed park. Portions of the land are devoted to crops and pasture; other portions are thickly wooded with oak, elm, willow, and chestnut; the meadows are intersected by hedges of fragrant hawthorn, and the region smiles with flowers. Old manor-houses, half-hidden among the trees, and thatched cottages embowered with roses are sprinkled through the surrounding landscape; and all the roads that converge upon this point--from Birmingham, Warwick, Shipton, Bidford, Alcester, Evesham, Worcester, and other contiguous towns--wind, in sun and shadow, through a sod of green velvet, swept by the cool, sweet winds of the English summer.
Ill.u.s.tration: "The Grange."
Such felicities of situation and such accessories of beauty, however, are not unusual in England; and Stratford, were it not hallowed by a.s.sociation, though it would always hold a place among the pleasant memories of the traveller, would not have become a shrine for the homage of the world. To Shakespeare it owes its renown; from Shakespeare it derives the bulk of its prosperity. To visit Stratford is to tread with affectionate veneration in the footsteps of the poet. To write about Stratford is to write about Shakespeare.
More than three hundred years have pa.s.sed since the birth of that colossal genius and many changes have occurred in his native town within that period. The Stratford of Shakespeare"s time was built princ.i.p.ally of timber, and it contained about fourteen hundred inhabitants. To-day its population numbers more than eight thousand. New dwellings have arisen where once were fields of wheat, glorious with the shimmering l.u.s.tre of the scarlet poppy. Many of the older buildings have been altered. Manufacture has been stimulated into prosperous activity. The Avon has been spanned by a new bridge, of iron--a path for pedestrians, adjacent to Clopton"s bridge of stone. (The iron bridge was opened November 23, 1827. The Clopton Bridge was 376 yards long and about 16 yards wide. Alterations of the west end of it were made in 1814.) The streets have been levelled, swept, rolled and garnished till they look like a Flemish drawing, of the Middle Ages. Even the Shakespeare cottage, the old Harvard house in High Street, and the two old churches--authentic and splendid memorials of a distant and storied past--have been "restored." If the poet could walk again through his accustomed haunts, though he would see the same smiling country round about, and hear, as of old, the ripple of the Avon murmuring in its summer sleep, his eyes would rest on but few objects that once he knew.
Yet, there are the paths that Shakespeare often trod; there stands the house in which he was born; there is the school in which he was taught; there is the cottage in which he wooed his sweetheart; there are the traces and relics of the mansion in which he died; and there is the church that keeps his dust, so consecrated by the reverence of mankind
"That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."
In shape the town of Stratford somewhat resembles a large cross, which is formed by High Street, running nearly north and south, and Bridge Street and Wood Street, running nearly east and west. From these, which are main avenues, radiate many and devious branches. A few of the streets are broad and straight but many of them are narrow and crooked.
High and Bridge streets intersect each other at the centre of the town, and there stands the market house, an ugly building, of the period of George the Fourth, with belfry and illuminated clock, facing eastward toward the old stone bridge, with fourteen arches,--the bridge that Sir Hugh Clopton built across the Avon, in the reign of Henry the Seventh. A cross once stood at the corner of High Street and Wood Street, and near the cross was a pump and a well. From that central point a few steps will bring the traveller to the birthplace of Shakespeare.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Shakespeare"s Birthplace in Henley Street."
It is a little, two-story cottage, of timber and plaster, on the north side of Henley Street, in the western part of the town. It must have been, in its pristine days, finer than most of the dwellings in its neighbourhood. The one-story house, with attic windows, was the almost invariable fashion of building, in English country towns, till the seventeenth century. This cottage, besides its two stories, had dormer-windows, a pent-house over its door, and altogether was built and appointed in a manner both luxurious and substantial. Its age is unknown; but the history of Stratford reaches back to a period three hundred years antecedent to William the Conqueror, and fancy, therefore, is allowed ample room to magnify its antiquity. It was bought, or occupied, by Shakespeare"s father in 1555, and in it he resided till his death, in 1601, when it descended by inheritance to the poet. Such is the substance of the complex doc.u.mentary evidence and of the emphatic tradition that consecrate this cottage as the house in which Shakespeare was born. The point has never been absolutely settled. John Shakespeare, the father, was the owner in 1564 not only of the house in Henley Street but of another in Greenhill Street. William Shakespeare might have been born at either of those dwellings. Tradition, however, has sanctified the Henley Street cottage; and this, accordingly, as Shakespeare"s cradle, will be piously guarded to a late posterity.
It has already survived serious perils and vicissitudes. By Shakespeare"s will it was bequeathed to his sister Joan--Mrs. William Hart--to be held by her, under the yearly rent of twelvepence, during her life, and at her death to revert to his daughter Susanna and her descendants. His sister Joan appears to have been living there at the time of his decease, in 1616. She is known to have been living there in 1639--twenty-three years later,--and doubtless she resided there till her death, in 1646. The estate then pa.s.sed to Susanna--Mrs. John Hall,--from whom in 1649 it descended to her grandchild, Lady Barnard, who left it to her kinsmen, Thomas and George Hart, grandsons of Joan.
In this line of descent it continued--subject to many of those infringements which are incidental to poverty--till 1806, when William Shakespeare Hart, the seventh in collateral kinship from the poet, sold it to Thomas Court, from whose family it was at last purchased for the British nation. Meantime the property, which originally consisted of two tenements and a considerable tract of adjacent land, had, little by little, been curtailed of its fair proportions by the sale of its gardens and orchards. The two tenements--two in one, that is--had been subdivided. A part of the building became an inn--at first called "The Maidenhead," afterward "The Swan," and finally "The Swan and Maidenhead." Another part became a butcher"s shop. The old dormer-windows and the pent-house disappeared. A new brick casing was foisted upon the tavern end of the structure. In front of the butcher"s shop appeared a sign announcing "William Shakespeare was born in this house: N.B.--A Horse and Taxed Cart to Let." Still later appeared another legend, vouching that "the immortal Shakespeare was born in this house." From 1793 till 1820 Thomas and Mary Hornby, connections by marriage with the Harts, lived in the Shakespeare cottage--now at length become the resort of literary pilgrims,--and Mary Hornby, who set up to be a poet and wrote tragedy, comedy, and philosophy, took delight in exhibiting its rooms to visitors. During the reign of that eccentric custodian the low ceilings and whitewashed walls of its several chambers became covered with autographs, scrawled thereon by many enthusiasts, including some of the most famous persons in Europe. In 1820 Mary Hornby was requested to leave the premises. She did not wish to go. She could not endure the thought of a successor. "After me, the deluge!" She was obliged to abdicate; but she conveyed away all the furniture and relics alleged to be connected with Shakespeare"s family, and she hastily whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a small part of the wall of the upper room, the chamber in which "nature"s darling" first saw the light, escaped that act of spiteful sacrilege. On the s.p.a.ce behind its door may still be read many names, with dates affixed, ranging back from 1820 to 1729. Among them is that of Dora Jordan, the beautiful and fascinating actress, who wrote it there June 2, 1809. Much of Mary Hornby"s whitewash, which chanced to be unsized, was afterward removed, so that her work of obliteration proved only in part successful. Other names have been added to this singular, chaotic scroll of worship. Byron, Scott, Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, and d.i.c.kens are among the votaries there and thus recorded.
Sir Walter Scott visited Shakespeare"s birthplace in August, 1821, and at that time scratched his name on the window-pane. He had previously, in 1815, visited Kenilworth. He was in Stratford again in 1828, and on April 8 he went to Shakespeare"s grave, and subsequently drove to Charlecote. The visit of Lord Byron has been incorrectly a.s.signed to the year 1816. It occurred on August 28, possibly in 1812.
The successors of Mary Hornby guarded their charge with pious care. The precious value of the old Shakespeare cottage grew more and more evident to the English people. Washington Irving made his pilgrimage to Stratford and recounted it in his beautiful _Sketch-Book. _Yet it was not till P. T. Barnum, from the United States, arrived with a proposition to buy the Shakespeare house and convey it to America that the literary enthusiasm of Great Britain was made to take a practical shape, and this venerated and inestimable relic became, in 1847, a national possession. In 1856 John Shakespeare, of Worthington Field, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, gave a large sum of money to restore it; and within the next two years, under the superintendence of Edward Gibbs and William Holtom of Stratford, it was isolated by the demolition of the cottages at its sides and in the rear, repaired wherever decay was visible, and set in perfect order.
The builders of this house must have done their work thoroughly well, for even after all these years of rough usage and of slow but incessant decline the great timbers remain solid, the plastered walls are firm, the huge chimney-stack is as permanent as a rock, and the ancient flooring only betrays by the channelled aspect of its boards, and the high polish on the heads of the nails which fasten them down, that it belongs to a period of remote antiquity. The cottage stands close upon the margin of the street, according to ancient custom of building throughout Stratford; and, entering through a little porch, the pilgrim stands at once in that low-ceiled, flag-stoned room, with its wide fire-place, so familiar in prints of the chimney-corner of Shakespeare"s youthful days. Within the fire-place, on either side, is a seat fashioned in the brick-work; and here, as it is pleasant to imagine, the boy-poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing dreamily into the flames, and building castles in that fairyland of fancy which was his celestial inheritance. You presently pa.s.s from this room by a narrow, well-worn staircase to the chamber above, which is shown as the place of the poet"s birth. An antiquated chair, of the sixteenth century, stands in the right-hand corner. At the left is a small fire-place. Around the walls are visible the great beams which are the framework of the building--beams of seasoned oak that will last forever. Opposite to the door of entrance is a threefold cas.e.m.e.nt (the original window) full of narrow panes of gla.s.s scrawled all over with names that their worshipful owners have written with diamonds. The ceiling is so low that you can easily touch it with uplifted hand. A portion of it is held in place by a network of little iron laths. This room, and indeed the whole structure, is as polished and orderly as any waxen, royal hall in the Louvre, and it impresses observation much like old lace that has been treasured up, in lavender or jasmine. These walls, which no one is now permitted to mar, were naturally the favourite scroll of the Shakespeare votaries of long ago. Every inch of the plaster bears marks of the pencil of reverence. Hundreds of names are written there--some of them famous but most of them obscure, and all destined to perish where they stand. On the chimney-piece at the right of the fireplace, which is named The Actor"s Pillar, many actors have inscribed their signatures.
Edmund Kean wrote his name there--with what soulful veneration and spiritual sympathy it is awful even to try to imagine. Sir Walter Scott"s name is scratched with a diamond on the window--"W. Scott." That of Thackeray appears on the ceiling, and upon the beam across the centre is that of Helen Faucit. The name of Eliza Vestris is written near the fireplace. Mark Lemon and Charles d.i.c.kens are together on the opposite wall. Byron wrote his name there, but it has disappeared. The list would include, among others, Elliston, Buckstone, G. V. Brooke, Charles Kean, Charles Mathews, and f.a.n.n.y Fitzwilliam. But it is not of these offerings of fealty that you think when you sit and muse alone in that mysterious chamber. As once again I conjure up that strange and solemn scene, the sunshine rests in checkered squares upon the ancient floor, the motes swim in the sunbeams, the air is very cold, the place is hushed as death, and over it all there broods an atmosphere of grave suspense and mystical desolation--a sense of some tremendous energy stricken dumb and frozen into silence and past and gone forever.
Opposite to the birthchamber, at the rear, there is a small apartment, in which is displayed "the Stratford Portrait" of the poet. This painting is said to have been owned by the Clopton family, and to have fallen into the hands of William Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, who bought the mansion of the Cloptons in 1758. The adventures through which it pa.s.sed can only be conjectured. It does not appear to have been valued, and although it remained in the house it was cast away among lumber and rubbish. In process of time it was painted over and changed into a different subject. Then it fell a prey to dirt and damp. There is a story that the little boys of the tribe of Hunt were accustomed to use it as a target for their arrows. At last, after the lapse of a century, the grandson of William Hunt showed it by chance to Simon Collins, an artist, who surmised that a valuable portrait might perhaps exist beneath its muddy surface. It was carefully cleaned. A thick beard was removed, and the face of Shakespeare emerged upon the canvas. It is not pretended that this portrait was painted in Shakespeare"s time. The close resemblance that it bears,--in att.i.tude, dress, colours, and other peculiarities,--to the painted bust of the poet in Stratford church seems to indicate that it is a modern copy of that work. Upon a bra.s.s plate affixed to it is the following inscription: "This portrait of Shakespeare, after being in the possession of Mr. William Oakes Hunt, town-clerk of Stratford, and his family, for upwards of a century, was restored to its original condition by Mr. Simon Collins of London, and, being considered a portrait of much interest and value, was given by Mr. Hunt to the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, to be preserved in Shakespeare"s house, 23d April, 1862." There, accordingly, it remains, and, in a.s.sociation with several other dubious presentments of the poet, cheerfully adds to the mental confusion of the pilgrim who would form an accurate image of Shakespeare"s appearance. Standing in its presence it was worth while to reflect that there are only two authentic representations of Shakespeare in existence--the Droeshout portrait and the Gerard Jonson bust. They may not be perfect works of art; they may not do justice to the original; but they were seen and accepted by persons to whom Shakespeare had been a living companion. The bust was sanctioned by his children; the portrait was sanctioned by his friend Ben Jonson, and by his brother actors Heminge and Condell, who prefixed it, in 1623, to the first folio of his works. Standing among the relics that have been gathered into a museum in an apartment on the ground-floor of the cottage it was essential also to remember how often "the wish is father to the thought" that sanctifies the uncertain memorials of the distant past. Several of the most suggestive doc.u.ments, though, which bear upon the spa.r.s.e and shadowy record of Shakespeare"s life are preserved in this place. Here is a deed, made in 1596, which proves that this house was his father"s residence. Here is the only letter addressed to him that is known to exist--the letter of Richard Quiney (1598) asking for the loan of thirty pounds. Here is a declaration in a suit, in 1604, to recover the price of some malt that he had sold to Philip Rogers. Here is a deed, dated 1609, on which is the autograph of his brother Gilbert, who represented him, at Stratford, in his business affairs, while he was absent in London, and who, surviving, it is dubiously said, almost till the period of the Restoration, talked, as a very old man, of the poet"s impersonation of Adam in _As You Like It._ (Possibly the reference of that legend is not to Gilbert but to a son of his. Gilbert would have been nearly a century old when Charles the Second came to the throne.) Here likewise is shown a gold seal ring, found many years ago in a field near Stratford church, on which, delicately engraved, appear the letters W. S., entwined with a true lovers" knot. It may have belonged to Shakespeare. The conjecture is that it did, and that,--since on the last of the three sheets which contain his will the word "seal" is stricken out and the word "hand"
subst.i.tuted,--he did not seal that doc.u.ment because he had only just then lost this ring. The supposition is, at least, ingenious. It will not harm the visitor to accept it. Nor, as he stands poring over the ancient, decrepit school-desk which has been lodged in this museum, from the grammar-school, will it greatly tax his credulity to believe that the "shining morning face" of the boy Shakespeare once looked down upon it, in the irksome quest of his "small Latin and less Greek." They call it Shakespeare"s desk. It is old, and it is known to have been in the school of the guild three hundred years ago. There are other relics, more or less indirectly connected with the great name that is here commemorated. The inspection of them all would consume many days; the description of them would occupy many pages. You write your name in the visitors" book at parting, and perhaps stroll forth into the garden of the cottage, which encloses it at the sides and in the rear, and there, beneath the leafy boughs of the English lime, while your footsteps press "the gra.s.sy carpet of this plain," behold growing all around you the rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue, daisies, and violets, which make the imperishable garland on Ophelia"s grave, and which are the fragrance of her solemn and lovely memory.
Thousands of times the wonder must have been expressed that while the world knows so much about Shakespeare"s mind it should know so little about his life. The date of his birth, even, is established by an inference. The register of Stratford church shows that he was baptised there in 1564, on April 26. It was customary to baptise infants on the third day after their birth. It is presumed that the custom was followed in this instance, and hence it is deduced that Shakespeare was born on April 23--a date which, making allowance for the difference between the old and new styles of reckoning time, corresponds to our third of May.
Equally by an inference it is established that the boy was educated in the free grammar-school. The school was there; and any boy of the town, who was seven years old and able to read, could get admission to it.
Shakespeare"s father, an alderman of Stratford (elected chief alderman, October 10, 1571), and then a man of worldly substance, though afterward he became poor, would surely have wished that his children should grow up in knowledge. To the ancient school-house, accordingly, and the adjacent chapel of the guild--which are still extant, at the south-east corner of Chapel Lane and Church Street--the pilgrim confidently traces the footsteps of the poet. Those buildings are of singular, picturesque quaintness. The chapel dates back to about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was a Roman Catholic inst.i.tution, founded in 1296, under the patronage of the Bishop of Worcester, and committed to the pious custody of the guild of Stratford. A hospital was connected with it in those days, and Robert de Stratford was its first master. New privileges and confirmation were granted to the guild by Henry the Sixth, in 1403 and 1429. The grammar-school, established on an endowment of lands and tenements by Thomas Jolyffe, was set up in a.s.sociation with it in 1482.
Toward the end of the reign of Henry the Seventh the whole of the chapel, excepting the chancel, was torn down and rebuilt under the munificent direction of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London and Stratford"s chief citizen and benefactor. Under Henry the Eighth, when came the stormy times of the Reformation, the priests were driven out, the guild was dissolved, and the chapel was despoiled. Edward the Sixth, however, granted a new charter to this ancient inst.i.tution, and with especial precautions reinstated the school. The chapel itself was occasionally used as a schoolroom when Shakespeare was a boy, and until as late as the year 1595; and in case the lad did go thither (in 1571) as a pupil, he must have been from childhood familiar with the series of grotesque paintings upon its walls, presenting, in a pictorial panorama, the history of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at the beginning of the world to its exaltation at Jerusalem. Those paintings were brought to light in 1804 in the course of a renovation of the chapel which then occurred, when the walls were relieved of thick coatings of whitewash, laid on them long before, in Puritan times, either to spoil or to hide from the spoiler. They are not visible now, but they were copied and have been engraved. The drawings of them, by Fisher, are in the collection of Shakespearean Rarities made by J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps. This chapel and its contents const.i.tute one of the few remaining spectacles at Stratford that bring us face to face with Shakespeare. During the last seven years of his life he dwelt almost continually in his house of New Place, on the corner immediately opposite to this church. The configuration of the excavated foundations of that house indicates what would now be called a deep bay-window in its southern front. There, probably, was Shakespeare"s study; and through that cas.e.m.e.nt, many and many a time, in storm and in sunshine, by night and by day, he must have looked out upon the grim, square tower, the embattled stone wall, and the four tall Gothic windows of that mysterious temple. The moment your gaze falls upon it, the low-breathed, horror-stricken words of Lady Macbeth murmur in your memory:--
"The raven himself is hoa.r.s.e That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements."
New Place, Shakespeare"s home at the time of his death and the house in which he died, stood on the north-east corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane. Nothing now remains of it but a portion of its foundations--long buried in the earth, but found and exhumed in comparatively recent days. Its gardens have been redeemed, through the zealous and devoted exertions of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps and have been restored to what is thought to have been almost their condition when Shakespeare owned them. The crumbling fragments of the foundation are covered with screens of wood and wire. A mulberry-tree, a scion of the famous mulberry that Shakespeare is known to have planted, is growing on the lawn. There is no authentic picture in existence that shows New Place as it was when Shakespeare left it, but there is a sketch of it as it appeared in 1740. The house was made of brick and timber, and was built by Sir Hugh Clopton nearly a century before it became by purchase the property of the poet. Shakespeare bought it in 1597, and in it he pa.s.sed, intermittently, a considerable part of the last nineteen years of his life. It had borne the name of New Place before it came into his possession. The Clopton family parted with it in 1563, and it was subsequently owned by families of Bott and Underhill. At Shakespeare"s death it was inherited by his eldest daughter, Susanna, wife of Dr. John Hall. In 1643, Mrs. Hall, then seven years a widow, being still its owner and occupant, Henrietta Maria, queen to Charles the First, who had come to Stratford with a part of the royal army, resided for three days at New Place, which, therefore, must even then have been the most considerable private residence in the town. (The queen arrived at Stratford on July 11 and on July 13 she went to Kineton.) Mrs. Hall, dying in 1649, aged sixty-six, left it to her only child, Elizabeth, then Mrs. Thomas Nashe, who afterward became Lady Barnard, wife to Sir John Barnard, of Abingdon, and in whom the direct line of Shakespeare ended. After her death the estate was purchased by Sir Edward Walker, in 1675, who ultimately left it to his daughter"s husband, Sir John Clopton (1638-1719), and so it once more pa.s.sed into the hands of the family of its founder. A second Sir Hugh Clopton (1671-1751) owned it at the middle of the eighteenth century, and under his direction it was repaired, decorated, and furnished with a new front. That proved the beginning of the end of this old structure, as a relic of Shakespeare; for this owner, dying in 1751, bequeathed it to his son-in-law, Henry Talbot, who in 1753 sold it to the most universally execrated iconoclast of modern times, the Rev. Francis Gastrell, vicar of Frodsham, in Cheshire, by whom it was destroyed. Mr. Gastrell was a man of fortune, and he certainly was one of insensibility. He knew little of Shakespeare; but he knew that the frequent incursion, into his garden, of strangers who came to sit beneath "Shakespeare"s mulberry" was a troublesome annoyance. He struck, therefore, at the root of the vexation and cut down the tree. That was in 1756. The wood was purchased by Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker of Stratford, who subsequently made the solemn declaration that he carried it to his home and converted it into toys and kindred memorial relics. The villagers of Stratford, meantime, incensed at the barbarity of Mr. Gastrell, took their revenge by breaking his windows. In this and in other ways the clergyman was probably made to realise his local unpopularity. It had been his custom to reside during a part of each year in Lichfield, leaving some of his servants in charge of New Place. The overseers of Stratford, having lawful authority to levy a tax, for the maintenance of the poor, on every house in the town valued at more than forty shillings a year, did not neglect to make a vigorous use of their privilege in the case of Mr. Gastrell. The result of their exactions in the sacred cause of charity was significant. In 1759 Mr. Gastrell declared that the house should never be taxed again, pulled down the building, sold the materials of which it had been composed, and left Stratford forever. He repaired to Lichfield and there died. In the house adjacent to the site of what was once Shakespeare"s home has been established a museum of Shakespearean relics. Among them is a stone mullion, found on the site, which may have belonged to a window of the original mansion. This estate, bought from different owners and restored to its Shakespearean condition, became on April 17, 1876, the property of the corporation of Stratford. The tract of land is not large. The visitor may traverse the whole of it in a few minutes, although if he obey his inclination he will linger there for hours. The enclosure is an irregular rectangle, about two hundred feet long. The lawn is perfect. The mulberry is extant and tenacious, and wears its honours in contented vigour. Other trees give grateful shade to the grounds, and the voluptuous red roses, growing all around in rich profusion, load the air with fragrance.
Eastward, at a little distance, flows the Avon. Not far away rises the graceful spire of the Holy Trinity. A few rooks, hovering in the air and wisely bent on some facetious mischief, send down through the silver haze of the summer morning their sagacious yet melancholy caw. The windows of the gray chapel across the street twinkle, and keep their solemn secret. On this spot was first waved the mystic wand of Prospero.
Here Ariel sang of dead men"s bones turned into pearl and coral in the deep caverns of the sea. Here arose into everlasting life Hermione, "as tender as infancy and grace." Here were created Miranda and Perdita, twins of heaven"s own radiant goodness,--
"Daffodils That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno"s eyes Or Cytherea"s breath."
To endeavour to touch upon the larger and more august aspect of Shakespeare"s life--when, as his wonderful sonnets betray, his great heart had felt the devastating blast of cruel pa.s.sions and the deepest knowledge of the good and evil of the universe had been borne in upon his soul--would be impious presumption. Happily to the stroller in Stratford every a.s.sociation connected with him is gentle and tender. His image, as it rises there, is of smiling boyhood or sedate and benignant maturity; always either joyous or serene, never pa.s.sionate, or turbulent, or dark. The pilgrim thinks of him as a happy child at his father"s fireside; as a wondering school-boy in the quiet, venerable close of the old guild chapel, where still the only sound that breaks the silence is the chirp of birds or the creaking of the church vane; as a handsome, dauntless youth, sporting by his beloved river or roaming through field and forest many miles around; as the bold, adventurous spirit, bent on frolic and mischief, and not averse to danger, leading, perhaps, the wild lads of his village in their poaching depredations on the chace of Charlecote; as the lover, strolling through the green lanes of Shottery, hand in hand with the darling of his first love, while round them the honeysuckle breathed out its fragrant heart upon the winds of night, and overhead the moonlight, streaming through rifts of elm and poplar, fell on their pathway in showers of shimmering silver; and, last of all, as the ill.u.s.trious poet, rooted and secure in his ma.s.sive and shining fame, loved by many, and venerated and mourned by all, borne slowly through Stratford churchyard, while the golden bells were tolled in sorrow and the mourning lime-trees dropped their blossoms on his bier, to the place of his eternal rest. Through all the scenes incidental to this experience the worshipper of Shakespeare"s genius may follow him every step of the way.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Anne Hathaway"s Cottage."
The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery remains accessible.
Wild-flowers are blooming along its margin. The gardens and meadows through which it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous scarlet of the poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile from Stratford, stepping toward the sunset; and there, nestled beneath the elms, and almost embowered in vines and roses, stands the cottage in which Anne Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more antiquated in appearance than the birthplace of Shakespeare, and more obviously a relic of the distant past. It is built of wood and plaster, ribbed with ma.s.sive timbers, and covered with a thatch roof. It fronts southward, presenting its eastern end to the road. Under its eaves, peeping through embrasures cut in the thatch, are four tiny cas.e.m.e.nts, round which the ivy twines and the roses wave softly in the wind of June. The western end of the structure is higher than the eastern, and the old building, originally divided into two tenements, is now divided into three. In front of it is a straggling garden. There is a comfortable air of wildness, yet not of neglect, in its appointments and surroundings. The place is still the abode of labour and lowliness. Entering its parlour you see a stone floor, a wide fireplace, a broad, hospitable hearth, with cosy chimney-corners, and near this an old wooden settle, much decayed but still serviceable, on which Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at his side. The plastered walls of this room here and there reveal portions of an oak wainscot. The ceiling is low. This evidently was the farm-house of a substantial yeoman, in the days of Henry the Eighth. The Hathaways had lived in Shottery for forty years prior to Shakespeare"s marriage. The poet, then undistinguished, had just turned eighteen, while his bride was nearly twenty-six, and it has been foolishly said that she acted ill in wedding her boy-lover. They were married in November, 1582, and their first child, Susanna, came in the following May. Anne Hathaway must have been a wonderfully fascinating woman, or Shakespeare would not so have loved her; and she must have loved him dearly--as what woman, indeed, could help it?--or she would not thus have yielded to his pa.s.sion. There is direct testimony to the beauty of his person; and in the light afforded by his writings it requires no extraordinary penetration to conjecture that his brilliant mind, sparkling humour, tender fancy, and impetuous spirit must have made him, in his youth, a paragon of enchanters. It is not known where they lived during the first years after their marriage. Perhaps in this cottage at Shottery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith Sadler, for whom their twins, born in 1585, were named Hamnet and Judith. Her father"s house a.s.suredly would have been chosen for Anne"s refuge, when presently (in 1585-86), Shakespeare was obliged to leave his wife and children, and go away to London to seek his fortune. He did not buy New Place till 1597, but it is known that in the meantime he came to his native town once every year. It was in Stratford that his son Hamnet died, in 1596. Anne and her children probably had never left the town. They show a bedstead and other bits of furniture, together with certain homespun sheets of everlasting linen, that are kept as heirlooms in the garret of the Shottery cottage. Here is the room that may often have welcomed the poet when he came home from his labours in the great city. It is a homely and humble place, but the sight of it makes the heart thrill with a strange and incommunicable awe. You cannot wish to speak when you are standing there. You are scarcely conscious of the low rustling of the leaves outside, the far-off sleepy murmur of the brook, or the faint fragrance of woodbine and maiden"s-blush that is wafted in at the open cas.e.m.e.nt and that swathes in nature"s incense a memory sweeter than itself.
a.s.sociations may be established by fable as well as by fact. There is but little reason to believe the legendary tale, first recorded by Rowe, that Shakespeare, having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote (there was not a park at Charlecote then, but there was one at Fullbrooke), was so severely persecuted by that magistrate that he was compelled to quit Stratford and shelter himself in London. Yet the story has twisted itself into all the lives of Shakespeare, and whether received or rejected has clung to the house of Charlecote. That n.o.ble mansion--a genuine specimen, despite a few modern alterations, of the architecture of Queen Elizabeth"s time--is found on the west bank of the Avon, about three miles north-east from Stratford. It is a long, rambling, three-storied palace--as finely quaint as old St. James"s in London, and not altogether unlike that edifice, in general character--with octagon turrets, gables, bal.u.s.trades, Tudor cas.e.m.e.nts, and great stacks of chimneys, so closed in by elms of giant growth that you can scarce distinguish it, through the foliage, till you are close upon it.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Charlecote."
It was erected in 1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was Sheriff of Warwickshire, who was elected to the Parliaments of 1571 and 1584, and who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1565. The porch to this building was designed by John of Padua. There is a silly ballad in existence, idly attributed to Shakespeare, which, it is said, was found affixed to Lucy"s gate, and gave him great offence. He must have been more than commonly sensitive to low abuse if he could have been annoyed by such a manifestly scurrilous ebullition of the blackguard and the blockhead,--supposing, indeed, that he ever saw it. The ballad, proffered as the work of Shakespeare, is a forgery. There is but one existing reason to think that the poet ever cherished a grudge against the Lucy family, and that is the coa.r.s.e allusion to the "luces" which is found in the _Merry Wives of Windsor. _There was apparently, a second Sir Thomas Lucy, later than the Sheriff, who was more of the Puritanic breed, while Shakespeare evidently was a Cavalier. It is possible that in a youthful frolic the poet may have poached on Sheriff Lucy"s preserves. Even so, the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that in after years he may have had reason to dislike the ultra-Puritanical neighbour. Some memory of the tradition will, of course, haunt the traveller"s thoughts as he strolls by Hatton Rock and through the villages of Hampton and Charlecote. But this discordant recollection is soon smoothed away by the peaceful loveliness of the ramble--past aged hawthorns that Shakespeare himself may have seen, and under the boughs of beeches, limes, and drooping willows, where every footstep falls on wild-flowers, or on a cool green turf that is softer than Indian silk and as firm and elastic as the sand of the sea-beaten sh.o.r.e. Thought of Sir Thomas Lucy will not be otherwise than kind, either, when the stranger in Charlecote church reads the epitaph with which the old knight commemorated his wife: "All the time of her Lyfe a true and faithfull servant of her good G.o.d; never detected of any crime or vice; in religion most sound; in love to her husband most faithfull and true.
In friendship most constant. To what in trust was committed to her most secret; in wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bringing up of Youth in the feare of G.o.d that did converse with her most rare and singular; a great maintainer of hospitality; greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none unless the envious. When all is spoken that can be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with Virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled of any; as she lived most virtuously, so she dyed most G.o.dly. Set down by him that best did know what hath been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." A narrow formalist he may have been, and a severe magistrate in his dealings with scapegrace youths, and perhaps a haughty and disagreeable neighbour; but there is a touch of manhood, high feeling, and virtuous and self-respecting character in those lines, that instantly wins the response of sympathy.
If Shakespeare really shot the deer of Thomas Lucy the injured gentleman had a right to feel annoyed. Shakespeare, boy or man, was not a saint, and those who so account him can have read his works to but little purpose. He can bear the full brunt of his faults. He does not need to be canonised.
The ramble to Charlecote--one of the prettiest walks about Stratford--was, it may surely be supposed, often taken by Shakespeare.
Many another ramble was possible to him and no doubt was made. He would cross the mill bridge (new in 1599), which spans the Avon a little way to the south of the church. A quaint, sleepy mill no doubt it was--necked with moss and ivy--and the gaze of Shakespeare a.s.suredly dwelt on it with pleasure.
Ill.u.s.tration: "Meadow Walk by the Avon."
His footsteps may be traced, also, in fancy, to the region of the old college building, demolished in 1799, which stood in the southern part of Stratford, and was the home of his friend John Combe, factor of Fulke Greville, Earl of Warwick. Still another of his walks must have tended northward through Welcombe, where he was the owner of land, to the portly manor of Clopton, or to the home of William, nephew of John-a-Combe, which stood where the Phillips mansion stands now. On what is called the Ancient House, which stands on the west side of High Street, he may often have looked, as he strolled past to the Red Horse.
That picturesque building, dated 1596, survives, notwithstanding some modern touches of rehabilitation, as a beautiful specimen of Tudor architecture in one at least of its most charming traits, the carved and timber-crossed gable. It is a house of three stories, containing parlour, sitting-room, kitchen, and several bedrooms, besides cellars and brew-shed; and when sold at auction, August 23, 1876, it brought 400. In that house was born John Harvard, who founded Harvard University. There are other dwellings fully as old in Stratford, but they have been covered with stucco and otherwise changed. This is a genuine piece of antiquity and it vies with the grammar-school and the hall of the Guild, under the pent-house of which the poet would pa.s.s whenever he went abroad from New Place. Julius Shaw, one of the five witnesses to his will, lived in the house next to the present New Place Museum, and there, it is reasonable to think, Shakespeare would often pause, for a word with his friend and neighbour. In the little streets by the riverside, which are ancient and redolent of the past, his image seems steadily familiar. In Dead Lane (once also called Walker Street, now called Chapel Lane) he owned a cottage, bought of Walter Getley in 1602, and only destroyed within the present century. These and kindred shreds of fact, suggesting the poet as a living man and connecting him, however vaguely, with our everyday experience, are seized with peculiar zest by the pilgrim in Stratford. Such a votary, for example, never doubts that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in leisure or convivial hours, of the ancient Red Horse inn. It stood there, in his day, as it stands now, on the north side of Bridge Street, westward from the Avon. There are many other taverns in the town--the Shakespeare, a delightful resort, the Falcon, the Rose and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the Swan"s Nest, being a few of them,---but the Red Horse takes precedence of all its kindred, in the fascinating because suggestive attribute of antiquity. Moreover it was the Red Horse that harboured Washington Irving, the pioneer of American worshippers at the shrine of Shakespeare; and the American explorer of Stratford would cruelly sacrifice his peace of mind if he were to repose under any other roof.
The Red Horse is a rambling, three-story building, entered through an archway that leads into a long, straggling yard, adjacent to offices and stables. On one side of the entrance is found the smoking-room; on the other is the coffee-room. Above are the bed-rooms. It is a thoroughly old-fashioned inn--such a one as we may suppose the Boar"s Head to have been, in the time of Prince Henry; such a one as untravelled Americans only know in the pages of d.i.c.kens. The rooms are furnished in neat, homelike style, and their a.s.sociations readily deck them with the fragrant garlands of memory. When Drayton and Jonson came down to visit "gentle Will" at Stratford they could scarcely have omitted to quaff the humming ale of Warwickshire in that cosy parlour. When Queen Henrietta Maria was ensconced at New Place the general of the royal forces quartered himself at the Red Horse, and then doubtless there was enough and to spare of revelry within its walls. A little later the old house was soundly peppered by Roundhead bullets and the whole town was overrun with the close-cropped, psalm-singing soldiers of the Commonwealth. In 1742 Garrick and Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and thither again came Garrick in 1769, to direct the Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then most dismally accomplished but which is always remembered to the great actor"s credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, lodged there when he came to Stratford in quest of reminiscences of Shakespeare. The visit of Washington Irving, supplemented with his delicious chronicle, has led to what might be called almost the consecration of the parlour in which he sat and the chamber (No. 15) in which he slept. They still keep the poker--now marked "Geoffrey Crayon"s sceptre"--with which, as he sat there in long, silent, ecstatic meditation, he prodded the fire in the narrow, tiny grate. They keep also the chair in which he sat--a plain, straight-backed arm-chair, with a haircloth seat, marked, on a bra.s.s plate, with his renowned and treasured name. Thus genius can sanctify even the humblest objects,
"And shed a something of celestial light Round the familiar face of every day."
To pa.s.s rapidly in review the little that is known of Shakespeare"s life is, nevertheless, to be impressed not only by its incessant and amazing literary fertility but by the quick succession of its salient incidents.
The vitality must have been enormous that created in so short a time such a number and variety of works of the first cla.s.s. The same quick spirit would naturally have kept in agitation all the elements of his daily experience. Descended from an ancestor who had fought for the Red Rose on Bosworth Field, he was born to repute as well as competence, and during his early childhood he received instruction and training in a comfortable home. He escaped the plague that was raging in Stratford when he was an infant, and that took many victims. He went to school when seven years old and left it when about fourteen. He then had to work for his living--his once opulent father having fallen into misfortune--and he became an apprentice to a butcher, or else a lawyer"s clerk (there were seven lawyers in Stratford at that time), or else a schoolteacher. Perhaps he was all three--and more. It is conjectured that he saw the players who from time to time acted in the Guildhall, under the auspices of the corporation of Stratford; that he attended the religious entertainments that were customarily given in the not distant city of Coventry; and that in particular he witnessed the elaborate and sumptuous pageants with which in 1575 the Earl of Leicester welcomed Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle. He married at eighteen; and, leaving a wife and three children in Stratford, he went up to London at twenty-two. His entrance into theatrical life followed--in what capacity it is impossible to say. One dubious account says that he held horses for the public at the theatre door; another that he got employment as a prompter to the actors. It is certain that he had not been in the theatrical business long before he began to make himself known. At twenty-eight he was a prosperous author. At twenty-nine he had acted with Burbage before Queen Elizabeth; and while Spenser had extolled him in the "Tears of the Muses," the hostile Greene had disparaged him in the "Groat"s-worth of Wit." At thirty-three he had acquired wealth enough to purchase New Place, the princ.i.p.al residence in his native town, where now he placed his family and established his home,--himself remaining in London, but visiting Stratford at frequent intervals. At thirty-four he was heard of as the actor of Knowell in Ben Jonson"s comedy of _Every Man in his Humour_ and he received the glowing encomium of Meres in _Wits Treasury. _At thirty-eight he had written _Hamlet _and _As You Like It, _and moreover he had now become the owner of more estate in Stratford, costing 320. At forty-one he made his largest purchase, buying for 440 the "unexpired term of a moiety of the interest in a lease granted in 1554 for ninety-two years of the t.i.thes of Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe." In the meantime he had smoothed the declining years of his father and had followed him with love and duty to the grave. Other domestic bereavements likewise befell him, and other worldly cares and duties were laid upon his hands, but neither grief nor business could check the fertility of his brain. Within the next ten years he wrote, among other great plays, _Oth.e.l.lo, Lear, Macbeth, _and _Coriola.n.u.s._