Between bright, new Leamington, the growth of the present century, and
rusty Warwick, founded by King Cymbeline in the twilight ages, a thousand
years before the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads, either of which
may be measured by a sober-paced pedestrian in less than half an hour.
One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the smart parades and
crescents of the former town,--along by hedges and beneath the shadow of
great elms, past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and wayside alehouses, and
through a hamlet of modern aspect,--and runs straight into the principal
thoroughfare of Warwick. The battlemented turrets of the castle,
embowered half-way up in foliage, and the tall, slender tower of St.
Mary's Church, rising from among clustered roofs, have been visible
almost from the commencement of the walk. Near the entrance of the town
stands St. John's School-House, a picturesque old edifice of stone, with
four peaked gables in a row, alternately plain and ornamented, and wide,
projecting windows, and a spacious and venerable porch, all overgrown
with moss and ivy, and shut in from the world by a high stone fence, not
less mossy than the gabled front. There is an iron gate, through the
rusty open-work of which you see a grassy lawn, and almost expect to meet
the shy, curious eyes of the little boys of past generations, peeping
forth from their infantile antiquity into the strangeness of our present
life. I find a peculiar charm in these long-established English schools,
where the school-boy of to-day sits side by side, as it were, with his
great-grandsire, on the same old benches, and often, I believe, thumbs a
later, but unimproved edition of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The
newfangled notions of a Yankee school-committee would madden many a
pedagogue, and shake down the roof of many a time-honored seat of
learning, in the mother-country.
At this point, however, we will turn back, in order to follow up the
other road from Leamington, which was the one that I loved best to take.
It pursues a straight and level course, bordered by wide gravel-walks and
overhung by the frequent elm, with here a cottage and there a villa, on
one side a wooded plantation, and on the other a rich field of grass or
grain, until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an arched bridge
over the Avon. Its parapet is a balustrade carved out of freestone, into
the soft substance of which a multitude of persons have engraved their
names or initials, many of them now illegible, while others, more deeply
cut, are illuminated with fresh green moss. These tokens indicate a
famous spot; and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and shadow of
the quiet stream, through a vista of willows that droop on either side
into the water, we behold the gray magnificence of Warwick Castle,
uplifting itself among stately trees, and rearing its turrets high above
their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the scene real, so
completely do those machicolated towers, the long line of battlements,
the massive buttresses, the high-windowed walls, shape out our indistinct
ideas of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the sleepy river
(being Shakespeare's Avon, and often, no doubt, the mirror of his
gorgeous visions) were dreaming now of a lordly residence that stood here
many centuries ago; and this fantasy is strengthened, when you observe
that the image in the tranquil water has all the distinctness of the
actual structure. Either might be the reflection of the other. Wherever
Time has gnawed one of the stones, you see the mark of his tooth just as
plainly in the sunken reflection. Each is so perfect, that the upper
vision seems a castle in the air, and the lower one an old stronghold of
feudalism, miraculously kept from decay in an enchanted river.
A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from the bank a little on
the hither side of the castle, has the effect of making the scene appear
more entirely apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in the
middle of the stream,--so that, if a cavalcade of the knights and ladies
of romance should issue from the old walls, they could never tread on
earthly ground, any more than we, approaching from the side of modern
realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain and theirs. Yet, if we
seek to disenchant ourselves, it may readily be done. Crossing the
bridge on which we stand, and passing a little farther on, we come to the
entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, and hospitably open at
certain hours to all curious pilgrims who choose to disburse half a crown
or so toward the support of the earl's domestics. The sight of that long
series of historic rooms, full of such splendors and rarities as a great
English family necessarily gathers about itself, in its hereditary abode,
and in the lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten times as much,
if indeed the value of the spectacle could be reckoned in money's-worth.
But after the attendant has hurried you from end to end of the edifice,
repeating a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each successive hall of
its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the mere tone in which he talks
about it, you will make the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has
ceased to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on the bridge,
gazing at Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower in the dim English sunshine
above, and in the placid Avon below, and still keep them as thoughts in
your own mind, than climb to their summits, or touch even a stone of
their actual substance. They will have all the more reality for you, as
stalwart relics of immemorial time, if you are reverent enough to leave
them in the intangible sanctity of a poetic vision.
From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front of the
castle-gate, and soon enters the principal street of Warwick, a little
beyond St. John's School-House, already described. Chester itself, most
antique of English towns, can hardly show quainter architectural shapes
than many of the buildings that border this street. They are mostly of
the timber-and-plaster kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a
whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls; their low-browed
doorways open upon a sunken floor; their projecting stories peep, as it
were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of
peaked gables; they have curious windows, breaking out irregularly all
over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks,
opening lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes of
lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edifices (a visible
oaken framework, showing the whole skeleton of the house,--as if a man's
bones should be arranged on his outside, and his flesh seen through the
interstices) is often imitated by modern builders, and with sufficiently
picturesque effect. The objection is, that such houses, like all
imitations of bygone styles, have an air of affectation; they do not seem
to be built in earnest; they are no better than playthings, or overgrown
baby-houses, in which nobody should be expected to encounter the serious
realities of either birth or death. Besides, originating nothing, we
leave no fashions for another age to copy, when we ourselves shall have
grown antique.
Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has overbrimmed, as it were,
from the original settlement, being outside of the ancient wall. The
street soon runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some other
venerable structure above it, and admits us into the heart of the town.
At one of my first visits, I witnessed a military display. A regiment of
Warwickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, was going through
its drill in the market-place; and on the collar of one of the officers
was embroidered the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cognizance
of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy
young men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly faces of English rustics,
looking exceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman-like
carriage and appearance the moment they were dismissed from drill.
Squads of them were distributed everywhere about the streets, and
sentinels were posted at various points; and I saw a sergeant, with a
great key in his hand (big enough to have been the key of the castle's
main entrance when the gate was thickest and heaviest), apparently
setting a guard. Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find
warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and commanded by a
feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often
mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this
modern regiment.
The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the
suburbs through which we approach it; and the High Street has shops with
modern plate-glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few
projections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect of
to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they
are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street; but
behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of expression,
there is probably the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic
exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of England itself.
What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of
what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new things are based
and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a massive strength from
their deep and immemorial foundations, though with such limitations and
impediments as only an Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the
weight of all the past upon his back; and, moreover, the antiquity that
overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a
hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing
his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be
sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better
stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is
by no means without its charm for a disinterested and unencumbered
observer.
When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or institution, appears in
its pristine form, without any attempt at intermarrying it with modern
fashions, an American cannot but admire the picturesque effect produced
by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead-and-buried state of
society into the actual present, of which he is himself a part. We need
not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the kind.
Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a
huge mass of natural rock, hewn into something like architectural shape,
and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one of King
Cymbeline's original gateways; and on the top of the rock, over the
archway, sits a small old church, communicating with an ancient edifice,
or assemblage of edifices, that look down from a similar elevation on the
side of the street. A range of trees half hides the latter establishment
from the sun. It presents a curious and venerable specimen of the
timber-and-plaster style of building, in which some of the finest old
houses in England are constructed; the front projects into porticos and
vestibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, and others
crowning semi-detached portions of the structure; the windows mostly open
on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape and position; a
multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own will, or, at
least, without any settled purpose of the architect. The whole affair
looks very old,--so old indeed that the front bulges forth, as if the
timber framework were a little weary, at last, of standing erect so long;
but the state of repair is so perfect, and there is such an indescribable
aspect of continuous vitality within the system of this aged house, that
you feel confident that there may be safe shelter yet, and perhaps for
centuries to come, under its time-honored roof. And on a bench,
sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of Warwick
as from a life apart, a few old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in
long cloaks, on which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge
representing the Bear and Ragged Staff. These decorated worthies are
some of the twelve brethren of Leicester's Hospital,--a community which
subsists to-day under the identical modes that were established for it in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many features of a
social life that has vanished almost everywhere else.
The edifice itself dates from a much older period than the charitable
institution of which it is now the home. It was the seat of a religious
fraternity far back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry VIII.
turned all the priesthood of England out of doors, and put the most
unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant abodes. In many
instances, the old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well,
and built them on such a broad system of beauty and convenience, that
their lay-occupants found it easy to convert them into stately and
comfortable homes; and as such they still exist, with something of the
antique reverence lingering about them. The structure now before us
seems to have been first granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who perhaps
intended, like other men, to establish his household gods in the niches
whence he had thrown down the images of saints, and to lay his hearth
where an altar had stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance in
those days (when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have
retained an influence over all but the most obdurate characters) to bring
one's hopes of domestic prosperity and a fortunate lineage into direct
hostility with the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all events,
there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and a belief, that
the possession of former Church-property has drawn a curse along with it,
not only among the posterity of those to whom it was originally granted,
but wherever it has subsequently been transferred, even if honestly
bought and paid for. There are families, now inhabiting some of the
beautiful old abbeys, who appear to indulge a species of pride in
recording the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that have
occurred among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely to dog
their own pathway down the ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas
Lestrange, in the beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a
nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell;
but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the
Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the
property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of
Warwick. He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use,
endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of
twelve poor, honest, and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers,
and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans,
or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish dormitories
and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital,
leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned
cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of
Leicester gave to the original twelve. He is said to have been a bad man
in his day; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what
was to him a distant future.
On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date,
1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the Earl's or those of his
kindred, and immediately above the doorway a stone sculpture of the Bear
and Ragged Staff.
Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle, or enclosed
court, such as always formed the central part of a great family residence
in Queen Elizabeth's time, and earlier. There can hardly be a more
perfect specimen of such an establishment than Leicester's Hospital. The
quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to which there is convenient
access from all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, with their
high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into it from antique windows,
and through open corridors and galleries along the sides; and there seems
to be a richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, quainter
carvings in oak, and more fantastic shapes of the timber framework, than
on the side toward the street. On the wall opposite the arched entrance
are the following inscriptions, comprising such moral rules, I presume,
as were deemed most essential for the daily observance of the community:
"Honor all Men"--"Fear God"--"Honor the King"--"Love the Brotherhood";
and again, as if this latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition
among a household of aged people soured with the hard fortune of their
previous lives,--"Be kindly affectioned one to another." One sentence,
over a door communicating with the Master's side of the house, is
addressed to that dignitary,--"He that ruleth over men must be just."
All these are charactered in old English letters, and form part of the
elaborate ornamentation of the house. Everywhere--on the walls, over
windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them--
appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their
proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their
splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an
heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially
is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over,
and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at
full-length, and half-length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in
bas-relief and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was certainly
disposed to reckon his own beneficence as among the hereditary glories of
his race; and had he lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have
kept up an old Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve bedesmen to pray
for the welfare of his soul.
At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated on the bench outside
of the edifice, looking down into the street; but they did not vouchsafe
me a word, and seemed so estranged from modern life, so enveloped in
antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with them
would have been like shouting across the gulf between our age and Queen
Elizabeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found it quite
solitary, except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing
it, with an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman
of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Asking her if I
could come in, she answered very readily and civilly that I might, and
said that I was free to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I
would not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as some visitors
were in the habit of doing. Under her guidance, I went into what was
formerly the great hall of the establishment, where King James I. had
once been feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated by an
inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a very spacious and
barn-like apartment, with a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters
of which are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visible in the
duskiness that broods aloft. The hall may have made a splendid
appearance, when it was decorated with rich tapestry, and illuminated
with chandeliers, cressets, and torches glistening upon silver dishes,
where King James sat at supper among his brilliantly dressed nobles; but
it has come to base uses in these latter days,--being improved, in Yankee
phrase, as a brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar for the brethren's
separate allotments of coal.
The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned into the quadrangle.
It was very quiet, very handsome, in its own obsolete style, and must be
an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when
the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad. There are
shrubs against the wall, on one side; and on another is a cloistered
walk, adorned with stags' heads and antlers, and running beneath a
covered gallery, up to which ascends a balustraded staircase. In the
portion of the edifice opposite the entrance-arch are the apartments of
the Master; and looking into the window (as the old woman, at no request
of mine, had specially informed me that I might), I saw a low, but vastly
comfortable parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxurious
place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of
which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up
in such a way, that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the
midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among
these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in
former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of
modern ingenuity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. On the
cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the
enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window reddened by a great
blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something--
doubtless very nice and succulent--that was being cooked at the
kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two of the savory
fragrance reached my nostrils; at all events, the impression grew upon me
that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles in
England.
I was about to depart, when another old woman, very plainly dressed, but
fat, comfortable, and with a cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in
through the arch, and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition
of the gentle sex (though by no means under its loveliest guise) had
still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an institution which I
had supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. She asked whether
I wished to see the hospital, and said that the porter, whose office it
was to attend to visitors, was dead, and would be buried that very day,
so that the whole establishment could not conveniently be shown me. She
kindly invited me, however, to visit the apartment occupied by her
husband and herself; so I followed her up the antique staircase, along
the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where sat an old man
in a long blue garment, who arose and saluted me with much courtesy. He
seemed a very quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and adventure,
and gray experience, such as I could have fancied in a palmer of ancient
times, who might likewise have worn a similar costume. The little room
was carpeted and neatly furnished; a portrait of its occupant was hanging
on the wall; and on a table were two swords crossed,--one, probably, his
own battle-weapon, and the other, which I drew half out of the scabbard,
had an inscription on the blade, purporting that it had been taken from
the field of Waterloo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all
the particulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bedroom, which
was in the nicest order, with a snow-white quilt upon the bed; and in a
little intervening room was a washing and bathing apparatus; a
convenience (judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of such
parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler ranks of British life.
The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of somebody to talk with;
but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more copiously
than the veteran himself, insomuch that he felt it expedient to give her
an occasional nudge with his elbow in her well-padded ribs. "Don't you
be so talkative!" quoth he; and, indeed, he could hardly find space for a
word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her nimble
tongue ran over the whole system of life in the hospital. The brethren,
she said, had a yearly stipend (the amount of which she did not mention),
and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free; and,
instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine
together at a great table, they could manage their little household
matters as they liked, buying their own dinners and having them cooked in
the general kitchen, and eating them snugly in their own parlors. "And,"
added she, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, "with the
Master's permission, they can have their wives to take care of them; and
no harm comes of it; and what more can an old man desire?" It was
evident enough that the good dame found herself in what she considered
very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small occupations to keep
her from getting rusty and dull; but the veteran impressed me as deriving
far less enjoyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of change or
hope of improvement, that had followed upon thirty years of peril and
vicissitude. I fancied, too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a
stranger's visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle for
the stranger's curiosity; for, if he chose to be morbid about the matter,
the establishment was but an almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned
magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's garment, with a
silver badge on it that perhaps galled his shoulder. In truth, the badge
and the peculiar garb, though quite in accordance with the manners of the
Earl of Leicester's age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, and might
fitly and humanely be abolished.
A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to the hospital, and found
a new porter established in office, and already capable of talking like a
guide-book about the history, antiquities, and present condition of the
charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren are selected from among
old soldiers of good character, whose other resources must not exceed an
income of five pounds; thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose
half-pay would of course be more than that amount. They receive from the
hospital an annuity of eighty pounds each, besides their apartments, a
garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of ale, and a privilege
at the kitchen-fire; so that, considering the class from which they are
taken, they may well reckon themselves among the fortunate of the earth.
Furthermore, they are invested with political rights, acquiring a vote
for member of Parliament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood.
On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or conduct, they are
subject to a supervision which the Master of the hospital might render
extremely annoying, were he so inclined; but the military restraint under
which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier
for them to endure the domestic discipline here imposed upon their age.
The porter bore his testimony (whatever were its value) to their being as
contented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and
affirmed that they spent much time in burnishing their silver badges, and
were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by the
by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen Anne's time, are the
very same that decorated the original twelve brethren.
I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter. He
appeared to take a genuine interest in the peculiarities of the
establishment, and yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could
the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To be sure, his
knowledge and observation were confined to external things, but, so far,
had a sufficiently extensive scope. He led me up the staircase and
exhibited portions of the timber framework of the edifice that are
reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither
worm-eaten nor decayed; and traced out what had been a great hall in the
days of the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled up with
the apartments of the twelve brethren; and pointed to ornaments of
sculptured oak, done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly
visible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to the
chapel--the Gothic church which I noted several pages back--surmounting
the gateway that stretches half across the street. Here the brethren
attend daily prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest paper,
with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The interior of the chapel
is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altar-piece, and a
single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window,
representing,--no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases,--but
that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so many
tangible proofs of his human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the
Earl could have been such a hardened reprobate, after all.
We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down between its
battlements into the street, a hundred feet below us; while clambering
half-way up were foxglove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of
grass, that had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone
foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with
many a church-spire and noble country-seat, and several objects of high
historic interest. Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles I., is
in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house
where Cromwell lodged on the night before the battle. Right under our
eyes, and half enveloping the town with its high-shouldering wall, so
that all the closely compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the
estate, was the Earl of Warwick's delightful park, a wide extent of sunny
lawns, interspersed with broad contiguities of forest-shade. Some of the
cedars of Lebanon were there,--a growth of trees in which the Warwick
family take an hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the castle
heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a lordly
manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are
slate-covered (these are the modern houses), and a part are coated with
old red tiles, denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty
or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of
the town, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a remote
antiquity; at least, there was a possibility of very old houses in the
long past of Warwick, which King Cymbeline is said to have founded in the
year ONE of the Christian era!
And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to
mind a more indestructible reality than anything else that has occurred
within the present field of our vision; though this includes the scene of
Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of those of the Round
Table, to say nothing of the Battle of Edge Hill. For perhaps it was in
the landscape now under our eyes that Posthumus wandered with the King's
daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the
tenderest and womanliest woman that Shakespeare ever made immortal in the
world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the gray
castle, may have held their images in its bosom.
The day, though it began brightly, had long been overcast, and the clouds
now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the east-wind
was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and went next
into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the only
remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is
devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, in the
centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture,
that formerly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar for
measuring the rise and fall of the river Nile. On the pedestal is a
Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of Hatton being so close
at hand) was probably often the Master's guest, and smoked his
interminable pipe along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden,
which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated to the Master, and
twelve small, separate patches to the individual brethren, who cultivate
them at their own judgment and by their own labor; and their beans and
cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if they had received
them directly from the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest
of their food. In the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the old
men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to sit down among
them there, and find out what is really the bitter and the sweet of such
a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen themselves, they put me queerly
in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the venerable personages whom I
found so quietly at anchor there.
The Master's residence, forming one entire side of the quadrangle, fronts
on the garden, and wears an aspect at once stately and homely. It can
hardly have undergone any perceptible change within three centuries; but
the garden, into which its old windows look, has probably put off a great
many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped
shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's reign threw down his
rusty shears and took his departure. The present Master's name is
Harris; he is a descendant of the founder's family, a gentleman of
independent fortune, and a clergyman of the Established Church, as the
regulations of the hospital require him to be. I know not what are his
official emoluments; but, according to an English precedent, an ancient
charitable fund is certain to be held directly for the behoof of those
who administer it, and perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the
nominal beneficiaries; and, in the case before us, the twelve brethren
being so comfortably provided for, the Master is likely to be at least as
comfortable as all the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a
distant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of whom I really
know nothing, except that the people under his charge bear all possible
tokens of being tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them sat
by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter bustling round the hearth
to make ready his porridge and his titbits. It is delightful to think of
the good life which a suitable man, in the Master's position, has an
opportunity to lead,--linked to time-honored customs, welded in with an
ancient system, never dreaming of radical change, and bringing all the
mellowness and richness of the past down into these railway-days, which
do not compel him or his community to move a whit quicker than of yore.
Everybody can appreciate the advantages of going ahead; it might be well,
sometimes, to think whether there is not a word or two to be said in
favor of standing still or going to sleep.
From the garden we went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning
hospitably, and diffused a genial warmth far and wide, together with the
fragrance of some old English roast-beef, which, I think, must at that
moment have been done nearly to a turn. The kitchen is a lofty,
spacious, and noble room, partitioned off round the fireplace, by a sort
of semicircular oaken screen, or rather, an arrangement of heavy and
high-backed settles, with an ever-open entrance between them, on either
side of which is the omnipresent image of the Bear and Ragged Staff,
three feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now black with time and
unctuous kitchen-smoke. The ponderous mantel-piece, likewise of carved
oak, towers high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty
breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of the fireplace being
positively so immense that I could compare it to nothing but the city
gateway. Above its cavernous opening were crossed two ancient halberds,
the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had fought under Leicester in the
Low Countries; and elsewhere on the walls were displayed several muskets,
which some of the present inmates of the hospital may have levelled
against the French. Another ornament of the mantel-piece was a square of
silken needlework or embroidery, faded nearly white, but dimly
representing that wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which we should hardly
look twice at, only that it was wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy
Robsart, and beautifully framed in oak from Kenilworth Castle, at the
expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of our own. Certainly, no
Englishman would be capable of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally,
the kitchen-firelight glistens on a splendid display of copper flagons,
all of generous capacity, and one of them about as big as a half-barrel;
the smaller vessels contain the customary allowance of ale, and the
larger one is filled with that foaming liquor on four festive occasions
of the year, and emptied amain by the jolly brotherhood. I should be
glad to see them do it; but it would be an exploit fitter for Queen
Elizabeth's age than these degenerate times.
The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. In the daytime,
they bring their little messes to be cooked here, and eat them in their
own parlors; but after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared and
swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each with his tankard
and his pipe, and hold high converse through the evening. If the Master
be a fit man for his office, methinks he will sometimes sit down sociably
among them; for there is an elbow-chair by the fireside which it would
not demean his dignity to fill, since it was occupied by King James at
the great festival of nearly three centuries ago. A sip of the ale and a
whiff of the tobacco-pipe would put him in friendly relations with his
venerable household; and then we can fancy him instructing them by pithy
apothegms and religious texts which were first uttered here by some
Catholic priest and have impregnated the atmosphere ever since. If a
joke goes round, it shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller's, as
old as Lord Bacon's collection, or as the jest-book that Master Slender
asked for when he lacked small-talk for sweet Anne Page. No news shall
be spoken of later than the drifting ashore, on the northern coast, of
some stern-post or figure-head, a barnacled fragment of one of the great
galleons of the Spanish Armada. What a tremor would pass through the
antique group, if a damp newspaper should suddenly be spread to dry
before the fire! They would feel as if either that printed sheet or they
themselves must be an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if the shriek of
the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick station, should ever so
faintly invade their ears! Movement of any kind seems inconsistent with
the stability of such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust that the
ages will carry it along with them; because it is such a pleasant kind of
dream for an American to find his way thither, and behold a piece of the
sixteenth century set into our prosaic times, and then to depart, and
think of its arched doorway as a spell-guarded entrance which will never
be accessible or visible to him any more.
Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands the great church of St.
Mary's: a vast edifice, indeed, and almost worthy to be a cathedral.
People who pretend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor
style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, extensively
restored) by Sir Christopher Wren; but I thought it very striking, with
its wide, high, and elaborate windows, its tall towers, its immense
length, and (for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, the love
of an old thing merely for the sake of its age) the tinge of gray
antiquity over the whole. Once, while I stood gazing up at the tower,
the clock struck twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately some
chivies began to play, and kept up their resounding music for five
minutes, as measured by the hand upon the dial. It was a very delightful
harmony, as airy as the notes of birds, and seemed, a not unbecoming
freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, and solemn church;
although I have seen an old-fashioned parlor-clock that did precisely the
same thing, in its small way.
The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp (or, as the
English, who delight in vulgarizing their fine old Norman names, call it,
the Beechum) Chapel, where the Earls of Warwick and their kindred have
been buried, from four hundred years back till within a recent period.
It is a stately and very elaborate chapel, with a large window of ancient
painted glass, as perfectly preserved as any that I remember seeing in
England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here are several monuments
with marble figures recumbent upon them, representing the Earls in their
knightly armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court-finery of their
day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they must needs have been in
their starched linen and embroidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of
Queen Elizabeth's time, the benefactor of the hospital, reclines at full
length on the tablet of one of these tombs, side by side with his
Countess,--not Amy Robsart, but a lady who (unless I have confused the
story with some other mouldy scandal) is said to have avenged poor
Amy's murder by poisoning the Earl himself. Be that as it may, both
figures, and especially the Earl, look like the very types of ancient
Honor and Conjugal Faith. In consideration of his long-enduring
kindness to the twelve brethren, I cannot consent to believe him as
wicked as he is usually depicted; and it seems a marvel, now that so many
well-established historical verdicts have been reversed, why some
enterprising writer does not make out Leicester to have been the pattern
nobleman of his age.
In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent memorial of its founder,
Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly
ornamented altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze figure of a knight
in gilded armor, most admirably executed: for the sculptors of those days
had wonderful skill in their own style, and could make so lifelike an
image of a warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a trumpet were sounded
over his tomb, you would expect him to start up and handle his sword.
The Earl whom we now speak of, however, has slept soundly in spite of a
more serious disturbance than any blast of a trumpet, unless it were the
final one. Some centuries after his death, the floor of the chapel fell
down and broke open the stone coffin in which he was buried; and among
the fragments appeared the anciently entombed Earl of Warwick, with the
color scarcely faded out of his cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in
other respects looking as natural as if he had died yesterday. But
exposure to the atmosphere appeared to begin and finish the long-delayed
process of decay in a moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble; so,
that, almost before there had been time to wonder at him, there was
nothing left of the stalwart Earl save his hair. This sole relic the
ladies of Warwick made prize of, and braided it into rings and brooches
for their own adornment; and thus, with a chapel and a ponderous tomb
built on purpose to protect his remains, this great nobleman could not
help being brought untimely to the light of day, nor even keep his
lovelocks on his skull after he had so long done with love. There seems
to be a fatality that disturbs people in their sepulchres, when they have
been over-careful to render them magnificent and impregnable,--as witness
the builders of the Pyramids, and Hadrian, Augustus, and the Scipios, and
most other personages whose mausoleums have been conspicuous enough to
attract the violator; and as for dead men's hair, I have seen a lock of
King Edward the Fourth's, of a reddish-brown color, which perhaps was
once twisted round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore.
The direct lineage of the renowned characters that lie buried in this
splendid chapel has long been extinct. The earldom is now held by the
Grevilles, descendants of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the
Parliamentary War; and they have recently (that is to say, within a
century) built a burial-vault on the other side of the church, calculated
(as the sexton assured me, with a nod as if he were pleased) to afford
suitable and respectful accommodation to as many as fourscore coffins.
Thank Heaven, the old man did not call them "CASKETS"!--a vile modern
phrase, which compels a person of sense and good taste to shrink more
disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being buried at all. But
as regards those eighty coffins, only sixteen have as yet been
contributed; and it may be a question with some minds, not merely whether
the Grevilles will hold the earldom of Warwick until the full number
shall be made up, but whether earldoms and all manner of lordships will
not have faded out of England long before those many generations shall
have passed from the castle to the vault. I hope not. A titled and
landed aristocracy, if anywise an evil and an encumbrance, is so only to
the nation which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders; and an American,
whose sole relation to it is to admire its picturesque effect upon
society, ought to be the last man to quarrel with what affords him so
much gratuitous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative as England is, and
though I scarce ever found an Englishman who seemed really to desire
change, there was continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old
foundations of things were crumbling away. Some time or other,--by no
irreverent effort of violence, but, rather, in spite of all pious efforts
to uphold a heterogeneous pile of institutions that will have outlasted
their vitality,--at some unexpected moment, there must come a terrible
crash. The sole reason why I should desire it to happen in my day is,
that I might be there to see! But the ruin of my own country is,
perhaps, all that I am destined to witness; and that immense catastrophe
(though I am strong in the faith that there is a national lifetime of a
thousand years in us yet) would serve any man well enough as his final
spectacle on earth.
If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little memorial of Warwick,
he had better go to an Old Curiosity Shop in the High Street, where there
is a vast quantity of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and many of them
so pretty and ingenious that you wonder how they came to be thrown aside
and forgotten. As regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but does
not improve; it appears to me, indeed, that there have been epochs of far
more exquisite fancy than the present one, in matters of personal
ornament, and such delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room table,
a mantel-piece, or a whatnot. The shop in question is near the East
Gate, but is hardly to be found without careful search, being denoted
only by the name of "REDFERN," painted not very conspicuously in the
top-light of the door. Immediately on entering, we find ourselves among
a confusion of old rubbish and valuables, ancient armor, historic
portraits, ebony cabinets inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks,
hideous old china, dim looking-glasses in frames of tarnished
magnificence,--a thousand objects of strange aspect, and others that
almost frighten you by their likeness in unlikeness to things now in use.
It is impossible to give an idea of the variety of articles, so thickly
strewn about that we can scarcely move without overthrowing some great
curiosity with a crash, or sweeping away some small one hitched to our
sleeves. Three stories of the entire house are crowded in like manner.
The collection, even as we see it exposed to view, must have been got
together at great cost; but the real treasures of the establishment lie
in secret repositories, whence they are not likely to be drawn forth at
an ordinary summons; though, if a gentleman with a competently long purse
should call for them, I doubt not that the signet-ring of Joseph's
friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's leading-staff, or the dagger that
killed the Duke of Buckingham (all of which I have seen), or any other
almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. Gold snuff-boxes,
antique gems, jewelled goblets, Venetian wine-glasses (which burst when
poison is poured into them, and therefore must not be used for modern
wine-drinking), jasper-handled knives, painted Sevres teacups,--in short,
there are all sorts of things that a virtuoso ransacks the world to
discover.
It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in Mr. Redfern's shop than
to keep the money in one's pocket; but, for my part, I contented myself
with buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantastically shaped,
and got it at all the more reasonable rate because there happened to be
no legend attached to it. I could supply any deficiency of that kind at
much less expense than regilding the spoon!