We were destined to have another experience with the car that day
before we reached our destination. As we drew near Shrewsbury there
was a sharp shower, which, though it did not last many minutes, was
enough to make the roads rather greasy. As we had, however, such a
short distance to go, it did not seem worth while to put on the
chains. As we drove along the main street I was very careful,
fearing we might skid. There is a tramway running through the
street, which did not make things easier, for the rails were wet and
shining in the rain. The street is lined with trees, and on one side
is a high brick wall. My subconscious mind was noting all these
things and perhaps allowing me to drive a little faster than I had
intended, when suddenly the car, as if it were possessed of a devil,
shot from the track to the sidewalk, passing between two trees,
grazing the wall, and was back again on the rails before one could
say "Jack Robinson," or even the English equivalent, "Knife"! It was
not the rear wheels which had slipped but the front ones! No one had
ever told me that could happen, nor should I have known how to guard
against it if they had. Was it not fortunate that it was the tea
hour that the car chose for this little side-trip? All the
tradespeople were in the back rooms behind their shops, and the
street was almost deserted. I trembled to think what might have
happened had children been on their way to or from school, or feeble
folk had failed to jump like grasshoppers! I never was more thankful
than when I turned the motor into the garage of the "Raven."
Our first business in Shrewsbury was, of course, to visit the
battle-field. I reminded Ruth as we drove out of the town the
following morning of a saying of yours: that the best investment any
nation or town could make was to breed a genius! "Sir Walter Scott,"
you said, "had brought more money to Scotland than all the
ship-building on the Clyde, and that the money spent each year in
Marseilles, by men and women who came from all over the world to look
at the Château d'If, and speculate as to which side of it a man, who
had never lived, had escaped could not be counted for multitude!" It
is the same here. What a triumph of the imagination it is that after
four hundred years pilgrims should still be wending their way to the
field of Shrewsbury, as many were doing that morning! Not because it
was historical--as the French say--"they mock themselves well of
that." It is Shakespeare who is the Pied Piper that led us all to
the spot where Harry Monmouth and Hotspur fought indeed, but where
Falstaff bore off the honors of the day!
What a futile fight it was! Would not England have been better off
if Percy had won? Did not the triumph of Henry IV sow the dragon's
teeth that were harvested in the Wars of the Roses? Did it not lead
to the desolation of France and the crime of Jeanne d'Arc's death?
It is the genius of Shakespeare alone which lends glamour to this
stupidity. Look at the heroes! Has any figure in history, except
the miserable Stuarts, called forth such sympathy as the reckless
Hotspur? How much Percy resembles our national hero! It is the
feminine in us that admires Henry V--the reformed rake! It would
seem as if the prudent, calculating world reacts in shame from Henry
IV, as if it saw in him a picture of itself, and admires the reckless
Percy just because it dare not follow him! Falstaff is the real
hero. The fool at the feast of folly! Gross and witty, brave enough
but cynical--what genius to draw respectable people to such
companionship and compel them to enjoy it though they are ashamed to
be seen with him! I suppose the real explanation of this moral
paradox is that human nature esteems a sinner more than it does a
hypocrite. The Lord Chancellor was a more respectable man than
Falstaff, but he was a humbug, and we are glad the fat knight flouted
him.
While I was thus moralizing and, no doubt, boring Ruth, we had
reached the battle-field, and she exclaimed: "Why, there is Mr.
Rhodes!" the historian, whom she had known in Boston--and ran to meet
him.
"Oh, Mr. Rhodes," she cried, "I am sure you have made some new
historical discovery!"
"I have, indeed," he gravely replied, but with a twinkle in his eye.
"Tell me at once what it is," she asked eagerly.
"I have discovered a new lie of Falstaff's--he 'fought a long hour by
Shrewsbury clock,' and the clock is not visible from the
battle-field!"
Shrewsbury was one of the ancient and is still one of the modern
gates into Wales, and had we been tied to a route we should have
entered the kingdom of Glendower from there, but we received two
letters which changed our plans, and led us to leave the motor, and
depart in different directions by train. Of which you will hear in
due time.