Stratford-on-Avon—It has its own life, quite apart from Shakespearean
associations—Its people and its streets—Shakespeare Memorials.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON would be an extremely interesting town, both
historically and scenically, even without its Shakespearean interest. It
does not need association with its greatest son to stand forth easily
among other towns of its size and command admiration. It is remarkably
unlike the mind’s eye picture formed of it by almost every stranger. You
expect to see a town of very narrow streets, rather dull perhaps and with
little legitimate trade, apart from the sale of picture-postcards, fancy
china, guide-books, miniature reproductions of the inevitable Shakespeare
bust, and the hundred-and-one small articles that tourists buy; but
Stratford-on-Avon is not in the least like that. It is true that with a
singular lack of humour there is a “Shakespeare Garage,” while we all
know that Shakespeare never owned a motor-car; that the bust is
represented in mosaic over the entrance to the Old Bank, founded in 1810,
upon which Shakespeare could never, therefore, have drawn a cheque; and
that the Shakespeare Hotel not only bears the honoured name, but also a
very large copy of the bust over its porch, and names all its rooms after
the plays. Honeymoon couples, I believe, have been given the room called
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, and _Cymbeline_, _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ and
many another will astonish the guest at that really very fine and ancient
hotel. I forget if there be a bedroom named after _Two Gentlemen of
Verona_. If so, it must obviously be one of the double rooms mentioned
in the tariff.
They gave me _As you Like It_, and it was sufficiently comfortable: I
liked it much. On the other hand, _Macbeth_ makes one fearful of
insomnia. “Macbeth does murder sleep.” Not poppy nor mandragora—well,
let it be.
It is also true that the old market-house, a quaint isolated building of
late eighteenth or early nineteenth century standing at the junction of
Wood and Henley Streets with Bridge Street, and now a Bank, has for
weather-vane the Shakespeare arms and crest of falcon and spear; and it
is no less undeniable that the presiding genius of the place has his
manifestations in many other directions; but all these things, together
with the several antique furniture and curio shops where the unique
articles—of which there is but one each in the world—you purchase to-day
are infallibly replaced to-morrow, are for the benefit of the visitor,
the stranger and pilgrim. “I was a stranger and ye took me in,” I
murmured when the absolute replica of the unmatched article I had
purchased was unblushingly exposed for sale within a day or two.
The Stratfordian notices none of these things: they are there, but they
don’t concern him. You think they do, and that if a suggestion were made
that the town should be renamed “Shakespeare-on-Avon” he would adopt it
and be grateful; but you would be quite wrong; he would not. If you
caught a hundred Stratford people, _flagrante delicto_, in the pursuit of
their daily business and haled them into the Guildhall or other
convenient room and set them an examination paper on Shakespeare, no one
would pass with honours. Why should any of them? They have grown up
with Shakespeare; they accept him as a fact, just as they do the rising
and setting of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon; but they
are not interested in him any more than they are in the courses of those
luminaries. They talk of anything but Shakespeare, and I have met and
spoken with many who have never been inside the Birthplace, or to Anne
Hathaway’s Cottage, or in the Harvard House, or indeed to any of the
show-places in and about the town. They each save about half a guinea in
the aggregate, but they don’t do so either by way of self-denial or
economy. They are simply not interested.
[Picture: Chapel Street, Stratford-on-Avon]
Stratford would lose a very great deal if the world in general were to
become as indifferent to the Swan of Avon; but it would still be a
prosperous market-town, dependent upon the needs of the surrounding
agricultural villages. Agriculture has ever been the mainstay of
Stratford, and as far as we can see, ever will be. All around in the
Avon valley stretch those rich pastures that still “lard the rother’s
sides,” and on market days there come crawling into the streets, among
the cattle and the sheep, carriers’ carts from many an obscure village,
with curious specimens of countryfolk who have not lost the old habit of
looking upon Stratford as the centre of the universe. So much the better
for Stratford. “’Tain’t much as I waants,” said one to the present
writer, “an’ I rackon I can get it at Stratford ‘most as good as anywheer
else. Besides, I du like to come to town sometimes, an’ see a bit of
life.”
One can, in fact, see a good deal of life in the town, but the liveliest
time—quite apart from the Shakespeare Festival, which is exotic and
mostly for visitors—is the Mop Fair, much more familiarly known as
“Stratford Mop.” This annual event is held somewhat too late for the
average visitor’s convenience; on October 12th, when the tourists have
mostly gone home. It is the great hiring-fair for farm servants and
others: perhaps we had better say, was, for the hiring has almost wholly
fallen into disuse, together with the so-called “Runaway Mop,” of a
fortnight after, at which the servants already hired and not pleased with
their bargain might re-engage.
I think the average visitor might not, after all, be pleased with
Stratford Mop, which is in some ways a very barbarous affair; the chief
barbarity of course being the roasting of oxen whole in the streets; a
loathly spectacle, and not one calculated to increase respect for our
ancestors, whose great idea of fit merry-making for very special
occasions was this same roasting of cattle whole and making the public
conduits run wine. The last sounds better, but from the accounts
preserved of the wine dispersed at such times we know that the quantity
was meagre and the quality exceedingly poor.
But the vast crowds resorting to Stratford for the Mop see nothing
gruesome in the spectacle. Special trains run from numerous places, and
all the showmen in the country seem to have hurried up for the event.
The streets of Stratford are broad and pleasant, with a large proportion
of ancient houses still left; half-timbered fronts side by side with more
or less modern brick and plaster, behind which often lurks a rich old
interior, unknown to the casual passer-by. Sometimes a commonplace
frontage is removed, revealing unexpected beauty in an enriched
half-timber framing which the odd vagaries in taste of bygone generations
have caused to be thus hidden. There is in this way a speculative
interest always attaching to structural alterations in the town. In this
chance fashion the fine timbering of the so-called “Tudor House” was
uncovered in 1903, and other instances might be given. Recently, also,
Nash’s House has been completely refronted, in fifteenth century style,
wholly in oak. In fact, we might almost declare that Stratford is now
architecturally, after many years, reverting to the like of the town
Shakespeare knew. And if the modernised house-fronts were systematically
stripped, among them that occupied by Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son at the
corner of High Street and Bridge Street, the house occupied for many
years by Judith Shakespeare and her husband, Thomas Quiney, the vintner,
Stratford would become greatly transformed.
But the mention of Bridge Street is a reminder that here at any rate a
great change has been made. It is the widest of all the streets, and is
in fact a very wilderness of width. All the winds that sport about the
neighbourhood seem to have their home in Bridge Street. Your hat always
blows off when you turn the corner into it, and the dust and homeless
straws go wandering up and down its emptiness, seeking rest in the Avon
over the Clopton Bridge, but always blown back. Now Bridge Street was
not always like this. In Shakespeare’s time, and until 1858, when the
last of it was cleared away, a kind of island of old houses occupied part
of this roadway. It was called “Middle Row.” Such a collection of
houses was the usual feature of old English towns. There was an example
in London, in Holborn, with exactly the same name; but it disappeared
somewhat earlier than its Stratford namesake. Pictures survive of this
Bridge Street landmark. I think a good many Stratford people regret it,
but regrets will not bring it back. We think of the irrevocable, and of
Herrick’s witch—
“Old Widow Prowse, to do her neighbours evil,
Has given, some say, her soul unto ye Devill;
But when sh’as killed that horse, cow, pig, or hen,
What would she give to get that soul again?”
But the Stratford folk, unlike Widow Prowse, did their spiriting with the
best intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions notoriously pave the way
to hot corners.
It was a very picturesque old row, with the “Swan” inn hanging out its
sign; and perhaps, in these times of reconstructions, it may even yet be
rebuilt, after the evidences of it that exist.
In Bridge Street is another landmark in the way of literary associations.
The “Red Horse” hotel has a large, dull and uninteresting plaster front,
but American visitors find the house attractive on account of Washington
Irving’s stay there about a hundred years ago, when he was writing of
Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s country. The sitting-room he occupied is
kept somewhat as a shrine to his memory, and the chair he fancifully
called his “throne” is still there, but you may not sit in it. It is
kept under lock and key, in a cupboard with glass doors. The poker he
likened to his sceptre is kept jealously in the bar. Citizens of the
United States ask to see it, and it is reverently produced and unfolded
from the many swathings of “Old Glory” in which it is enwrapped: “Old
Glory” being, it is necessary to explain to Britishers, the United States
flag, the “stars and stripes.” Gazing upon it, they see that it is
engraved with a dedicatory inscription by another citizen of the U.S.A.
If you proceed down Bridge Street you come presently to the Clopton
Bridge that crosses the Avon, and so out of the town. The bridge is one
of the many works of public utility and practical piety executed,
instituted, or ordained in his will by Sir Hugh Clopton, the greatest
benefactor Stratford has known. A scion of that numerous family, seated
at Clopton House a mile out of the town, he went to London and prospered
as a mercer, becoming Lord Mayor in 1492. Leland, writing in 1532,
quaintly tells of him and his bridge: “Hugh Clopton aforesaid made also
the great and sumptuous Bridge upon Avon, at the East ende of the Towne,
which hath 14 great Arches of stone and a long Causey made of Stone, lowe
walled on each syde, at the West Ende of the Bridge. Afor the tyme of
Hugh Clopton there was but a poore Bridge of Tymbre, and no Causey to
come to it; whereby many poore Folkes and others refused to come to
_Stratford_ when Avon was up, or comminge thither, stood in jeopardye of
Lyfe. The Bridge ther of late tyme,” he proceeds to say, “was very
smalle and ille, and at high Waters very hard to come by. Whereupon, in
tyme of mynde, one Clopton a very rich Marchant and Mayr of London, as I
remember, borne about _Strateforde_, having neither Wife nor Children,
converted a great Peace of his Substance in good workes at _Stratford_,
first making a sumptuus new Bridge and large of Stone when in the midle
be a VI great Arches for the main Streame of Avon, and at eache Ende
certen small Arches to bere the Causey, and so to pass commodiously at
such tymes as the Ryver riseth.”
The bridge was widened in 1814. I do not think that great benefactor of
Stratford intended that tolls should be charged for passing over his
bridge, but in the course of time, such charges were made, and the very
large and imposing toll-house that remains shows us that it is not so
very long since the bridge has been freed again.
There are many who consider the Harvard House to be the most delightful
piece of ancient domestic work in the town, and it is indeed a gem. The
history of it is absolutely clear. It was built in 1596 by one Thomas
Rogers, alderman. His initials and those of his wife Alice, together
with the date are still to be seen, carved on the woodwork beneath the
first-floor window. The carved brackets supporting the first floor
represent the Warwick Bear and Ragged Staff and the bull of the Nevilles.
The bull is easily recognisable, but the bear is only to be identified
after considerable study, and looks a good deal more like a pig.
Katharine Rogers, daughter of the builders of this house, married Robert
Harvard of Southwark, butcher, in 1605. Almost everything in Stratford
pivots upon Shakespeare, or is made to do so, and it is therefore not
difficult to imagine Rogers’ beautiful little dwelling being erected here
at the very time when Shakespeare was contemplating purchasing New Place,
and the dramatist’s interest in it. Rogers, being, like John Shakespeare
on the town council, must have been very closely acquainted with the
family. The Rev. John Harvard, son of Robert and Katharine, emigrated to
the New England States of America in 1637 and died of consumption the
following year, at Charleston, leaving one half of his estate, which
realised £779 17_s._ 2_d._, together with his library of over 300
volumes, to a college then in contemplation; the present Harvard
University at Cambridge, Massachusetts, described as the oldest and among
the richest seats of learning in the United States; although the
“learning” displayed there has not yet hatched out any world-shaking
genius; genius being, as we who visit Stratford cannot fail to see, a
quality quite independent of the academies, and springing, fully-equipped
to do battle with the world, in the most unpromising places.
[Picture: The Harvard House]
It is not long since the Harvard House was restored and dedicated to the
public, and particularly to the use of Harvard students; in October 1909,
to be precise. It had passed through various hands, and finally was
offered for sale by auction. The biddings failed to reach the reserve
price and the property was withdrawn at £950. Chicago, in the person of
a wealthy native of that place, came to the rescue, and it was privately
bought for the purpose of converting it into a “house of call,” whatever
that may be, for Americans touring this district, and especially, as
already noted, for students of Harvard—who obtain admission free. Other
persons pay sixpence.
It is a place of very great seclusion, for Harvard students (who mostly
study the more lethal forms of football and baseball nowadays) are rare;
and I guess if you want to track the Americans in Stratford, you must go
to the Shakespeare Hotel, anyway, or to the “Red Horse.” The house was
in the occupation of a firm of auctioneers and land agents until the
purchase. The “restoration” of the exterior has been very carefully and
conservatively done, and the interior discloses some particularly
beautiful half-timbered rooms.
From time to time it seems good to amiable and well-meaning persons to
set up “Shakespeare memorials” in Stratford, and it is equally amiable in
the town to accept them. Thus we see in Rother Street an ornate gothic
drinking-fountain and clock-tower, the “American Memorial Fountain,”
given in 1887 by that wealthy Shakespearean collector, George W. Childs,
proprietor of the _Philadelphia Ledger_. It includes also the function
of a memorial of the first Victorian Jubilee. Shakespearean quotations
adorn it, including the apposite one from _Timon of Athens_: “Honest
water, which ne’er left man i’ th’ mire.”
But Shakespeare serves the turn of every man, and if you like your beer,
you can set against this the equally Shakespearean quotation, “A quart of
ale is a dish for a king.”
The Memorial Fountain rather misses being stately, and it would be better
if the quarter chimes of its clock did not hurry so over their business,
as if they wanted life to go quicker, and time itself to be done with.
Amity is the note of Mr. Childs’ fountain, and the “merry songs of peace”
are the subject of one of the carved quotations: that is why the British
Lion and the American Eagle alternate in effigy at the angles, supporting
their respective national shields of arms. The British Lion looks tame
and the American Eagle is a weird fowl wearing the chastened “dearly
beloved brethren” expression of a preacher at a camp meeting.
The Shakespeare Memorial by the riverside is the partial realisation of a
project first considered in 1769, at the jubilee presided over by
Garrick, revived in 1821 and again in 1864. This was an idea for a
national memorial, to include a school of acting: possibly with
Shakespeare’s own very excellent advice to actors, which he placed in the
mouth of Hamlet, set up in gilded words of wisdom in its halls. The
school for actors has not yet come into being, but at the annual
festivals, when Shakespearean companies take the boards in the theatre
which forms a prominent part of the Memorial, you may witness quaint new
readings of the dramatist’s intentions.
[Picture: The Harvard House: Panel Room]
The great pile of buildings standing by the beautiful Bancroft gardens,
in fine grounds of its own beside the river, “comprises,” as auctioneers
and house agents might say, the theatre aforesaid, a library, and picture
gallery. It was built 1877–79 from funds raised by a Memorial
Association founded by Mr. Charles E. Flower of Stratford-on-Avon, and
very widely supported. The architect, W. F. Unsworth, whose name does
not seem to be very generally known, has produced a very imposing, and on
the whole, satisfactory composition, whose shape was largely determined
by that of the original Globe Theatre of Shakespeare’s own time in
Southwark. It is of red brick and stone, and a distinct ornament to the
town and the riverside, although its gothic appears to have here and
there a rather Continental flavour. A little more pronounced, it might
seem almost Rhenish. But let us be sufficiently thankful the Memorial
did not take shape in Garrick’s day, when it would certainly have assumed
some terrible neo-classic form. There are some particularly good and
charming gargoyles over the entrance, notably that of Puck carrying that
ass’s head with which Bottom the Weaver was “translated,” in _Midsummer
Night’s Dream_. A sketch of it appears on the title-page of this book.
I do not think a description of the theatre, the library, or the picture
gallery would serve the object of these pages, and I do not propose to
describe the monument designed, executed and presented by Lord Ronald
Gower, because that is done in every guide-book, and because I do not
like that extremely amateurish and flagrantly-overpraised work: may the
elements speedily obliterate it!
Quick-growing poplars have reached great heights since the buildings were
first opened, and the Theatre and Memorial is being rapidly obscured by
them. It looks its best from the Clopton Bridge, and combines with Holy
Trinity church to render the town, viewed from the other side of the
Avon, a place of considerable majesty and romance.
Crossing either that ancient bridge to the “Swan’s Nest” inn which has
become subdued to the poetry in the Stratford air and has abandoned its
old name, the “Shoulder of Mutton,” we may roam the meadows opposite the
town. Or we may equally well cross the river by the long and narrow red
brick tramway bridge, built in 1826 for the purposes of the
Stratford-on-Avon and Shipston-on-Stour Tramway: an ill-fated but heroic
project that immediately preceded steam railways. The Great Western
Railway appears to have some ownership in the bridge, and by notice
threatens awful penalties—something a little less than eternal
punishment—to those who look upon—or cycle upon—it.
[Picture: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon]
Somehow we reach those free and open meadows over against the town where
the Avon runs broad and deep down to the mill and the ruined lock, just
opposite the church. It is from these meadows that the accompanying
drawing of the church was taken. The breadth of the river between the
Clopton Bridge and the church is exceptional, and gives a great nobility
to the town. Both above and below these points it becomes much narrower,
and the navigation down stream is a thing of the past. The Avon down to
Binton and up beyond Charlecote is, in fact, rendered impassable by
difficulties created by the Lucy family of Charlecote, and by the Earl of
Warwick. Private ownership in navigable or semi-navigable streams is an
ancient and complicated affair concerned with rights of fishing, of weirs
and mill-leets, and other abstruse and immemorial manorial privileges,
and it has furnished the lawyers with many a fat brief. It has cost the
Corporation of Stratford-on-Avon £700 in recent years, in a dispute about
this ruined lock and the impeded access to the river past the church and
the mill, to the other decayed lock at Luddington. The Lucys gained the
day, and that is why we cannot go boating down the river from Stratford.
We may cross the stream just below this point, by a footbridge, and come
into the town again past the big corn-mill whose ancient ownership caused
all this trouble. The present building is only about a century old, but
it is the representative of the original mill that stood on this spot
over a thousand years ago, and belonged then and long afterwards to the
Bishops of Worcester. The exquisite humour of the manorial law ordained
not only that the people of Stratford were under obligation to have their
corn ground here, but that they were also made to pay for it. And as
competitive millers were thus barred, there can be no doubt but that
corn-milling was an expensive item. The old churchmen loved eels, useful
for Friday’s dish, and the Bishops of Worcester were sometimes accustomed
to take consignments of them in place of money payments for use of the
mill.
The possibilities of the Avon in the matter of floods are very eloquently
set forth on the walls of this mill: the astonishing high-water marks of
floods for a century past being marked. Scanning them, it seems strange
that mill and church and a good part of the town itself have not been
washed away.
Passing through Old Town into Church Street, the fine Elizabethan
three-gabled residence seen on the way, on the right hand, is Hall’s
Croft, the home of Dr. John Hall, Susanna Shakespeare’s husband, before
they removed to New Place following upon Shakespeare’s death. The old
mulberry-tree in the beautiful garden at the back of the house is said to
have been planted by her.
[Picture: The Memorial Theatre]