Shottery and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage.
THE hamlet of Shottery, now growing a considerable village, is but one
mile from the centre of Stratford. You come to it most easily by way of
Rother Street, and at the end of that thoroughfare will observe a
signpost marked “Footpath to Shottery.” The spot is not inspiring, and
one could well wish Shottery, the home of Anne Hathaway and the scene of
Shakespeare’s wooing, had not been so near the town. Stratford is a
pleasant place, and as little bedevilled with modern unhistorical suburbs
as any town of its size; but there is a red rash of new and quite
typically suburban villas on these outskirts. I feel quite sure the
sanitation is perfect and that there are baths and hot and cold water
laid on to every one of these “desirable residences”; and no one would
breathe upon the obvious respectability of the people who live in them.
Respectable? Most certainly; why, by the evidence of one’s ears in
passing, every house appears to have a piano; and the possession of one
would seem in these times to be by far a better-accepted criterion of
respectability than the ownership of a gig; which Carlyle in his day
noted as the ideal. Now, it is quite certain that none of the houses
Shakespeare ever dwelt in had any sanitation at all; if he ever took a
bath, he was as exceptional in that matter as in most other things, and
quite unlike his generation. New Place had neither hot nor cold water
laid on, and never had a piano. Judged by modern standards Shakespeare
could scarcely have been respectable: his era did not even know the word
in its present meaning, which is a terrible thought; let us pause to
contemplate the deficiencies of our ancestors.
Well, we will not, at any rate, stay to look longer at these
developments, but, like that rogue, Autolycus, “jog on the footpath way,”
a little disillusioned perhaps, because it presently leads to a level
railway-crossing which was not here when Shakespeare went across the
fields in the summer evenings to see Anne Hathaway. Thence coming upon
allotment gardens, where we more or less “merrily hent the stile-a,” we
arrive at Shottery by way of some tapestry works and a book-bindery.
Shottery, it is at once seen, has been spoiled, utterly and irredeemably,
unless the recent doings are levelled with the ground and wholly
abolished—which we need not expect to be done. Deplorable activity has
lately been manifested here, in the building of rows of small, cheap
cottages. The bloom has been rudely rubbed off the peach, and the
idyllic place which the hero-worshipper fondly expected has ceased to be.
Yet parts of it are good. You may turn your back upon these things and
see a very charming double row of old cottages, the Post Office among
them, as ancient and rustic and half-timbered as the rest, with a very
noble group of trees for background, and by way of foreground a red brick
and timber barn belonging to Shottery manor-house, whose old stone
dovecote stands yet in the garden. I have sketched these old cottages,
in an attempt to show you how charming the scene really is.
[Picture: Shottery]
It has been suggested that the roomy loft beneath the roof of the
manor-house was used as a secret Roman Catholic place of worship when
that religion was proscribed, and that the mystery of Shakespeare’s
marriage is to be explained by the ceremony having taken place here.
But, ingenious although the suggestion may be, it has no shred of
evidence to support it, nor would it appear from anything we know of
Shakespeare’s religious beliefs, that he was a Roman Catholic at all,
much less a fanatical one, as such a proceeding would argue.
Anne Hathaway’s cottage should certainly stand in this, the better part
of the village, but it is situated at the extreme further end; and the
hapless artist who seeks to sketch the scene already described will find
himself acting as a kind of honorary signpost to it. The tragedy of his
fate is that the best point of view happens to be from the middle of the
road, and that the interruptions from motor-cars, largely carrying
Americans, who invariably ask, “Saay, is this the waay to Anne
Hathawaay’s cottuj?” are incessant.
The famous cottage, which is really more than a cottage and part of a
farmhouse, comes into view as you round a corner and cross a small brick
bridge over Shottery Brook. The bridge is so overhung and shut in by
trees that you scarcely notice it to be a bridge at all; but if these be
early summer days and the season not exceptionally dry, the brook can be
heard hoarsely plunging beneath, over a quite respectably large weir.
When Mistress Anne Hathaway lived at the farmhouse now called her
cottage—which is an entirely wrong use of the possessive case, for it
never belonged to her—Shottery Brook was to be crossed only by a
watersplash for vehicles, and a plank footbridge for pedestrians; but
progress and the prosperity of the county funds have changed all that. I
wish they had not: it would be all the better if one came to the place
just in the way Shakespeare used.
The rustic cottage, still heavily thatched, comes before one’s gaze with
that complete familiarity which is the result of numberless
illustrations. It stands at right-angles to the road, with a large
garden in front of it. I would be enthusiastic about that garden if I
honestly might, but truth forbids me to compete with the exaggerated
praise of it commonly lavished by writers upon this scene. It is just a
pleasant rustic garden, partly used for growing beans, cabbages, potatoes
and the usual cottager’s produce; with the customary borders and beds of
old-fashioned flowers. A stone-paved path leads up to the door.
Hundreds of such gardens beautify the old cottages of the Warwickshire
villages and hamlets; and many of them, I declare it, are very much
better. The house itself is built in the customary local manner, on a
rough blue lias foundation, with thick walls partly of the same material,
here and there varied by red brick, and framed with ancient timbering.
Latticed windows light the various rooms. It is a building of rather
late in the fifteenth century, and appears to have been first tenanted by
the Hathaways in 1556, when one John of that name, described as an
archer, was living here. “Hewlands” was then the name of the farm. The
Hathaway family did not actually possess it until 1610, when Bartholomew,
Anne’s eldest brother, purchased the property.
Anne Hathaway was the eldest of the three daughters of Richard, who died
in June 1582. His four sons, Bartholomew, Thomas, John, and William,
were provided for, and the daughters were left £6 13_s._ 4_d._ each.
Anne, or “Agnes,” as she is described in the will, the names being in
those times interchangeable, was to receive hers on the day of her
marriage; her sister Catherine on the like occasion; and Margaret was to
receive her share at the age of seventeen. Anne was married in a hurry
to William Shakespeare at the close of November in the same year. The
Shakespearean connection with the cottage at Shottery is thus not
altogether so intimate or so continuous as would at first be supposed.
[Picture: Anne Hathaway’s Cottage]
The Hathaways would appear to have executed numerous repairs to the
farmhouse which Bartholomew had acquired, and to this day we may see a
stone tablet let into one of the chimneys, bearing the initials “I H”
(for John Hathaway) and the date 1697; while the same initials and date,
together with those of “E H” which doubtless stand for Elizabeth
Hathaway, his wife, occur on the bacon-cupboard in the ingle-nook of the
living-room. The last of the Hathaways was another John, who died in
1746, but the house remained in the hands of descendants until 1838. At
last it came into possession of one Alderman Thompson, of
Stratford-on-Avon, who in 1892 sold it to the Trustees of Shakespeare’s
Birthplace, for £3000. The furniture was bought for a further £500. The
Alderman is said to have made a very good thing out of it, but he would
probably have done still better if he had waited a few years longer. The
average number of visitors, who pay sixpence each to view the cottage, is
40,000 a year. The simplest calculation shows that to mean an income of
£1000, and the upkeep cannot be very expensive. But the heavy thatch
will soon again have to be renewed. The plentiful lack of understanding
among many of the visitors is such that they frequently appear to think
the thatch as old as Shakespeare’s day. It must, of course, have been
many times re-covered, and at the present time it is again in a
dilapidated condition, sodden through with the weather of many years, and
precariously held together by wire netting stretched over it. A very
garden of weeds grows there: shepherds’ purse, groundsel, candy-tuft and
dandelion; and poppies wave their red banners on the roof-ridge.
There are twelve rooms in the house, and of these seven are shown. The
showing is a very business-like proceeding nowadays. At the garden gate
you read the strict rules of the Trust, and then, having paid your
sixpence, receive a printed and numbered ticket. A party of four hundred
and fifty persons from Sheffield was expected on the last occasion the
present writer visited the place, and exactly how much mental sustenance
or what clear impression that half-battalion of excursionists could have
received, it would be difficult to say. “We have to put ’em through
quick,” said one in charge. Obviously it must needs be so, else how
would all see the house before day was done?
Entering by a low-browed doorway, a stone-paved passage opens into rooms
right and left. On the left, down two steps, is the living-room, also,
like all these ground-floor rooms, stone-floored. Overhead are old oaken
beams and joists, and the rough walls are partly panelled. There are
pictures without number of this old-world interior, the most
characteristic of them that showing Mrs. Baker, who for many years
received visitors, sitting by the fireside, in company with her old
family Bible, in which the births, marriages and deaths of many Hathaways
are recorded. She proved her descent from them by way of a niece of Anne
Hathaway; whom, it is rather curious to reflect, no one ever thinks of
styling by her married name, “Mrs. Shakespeare.” I cannot help thinking
she would have resented it, if addressed by her maiden name.
But Mrs. Baker, who lived in the cottage for seventy years and appeared
to be almost as permanent a feature of it as the very walls and
roof-tree, died in September 1899, at the age of eighty-seven. Still,
however, the photographic view of the old lady sitting there is easily
first favourite among all the interior views of the cottage; and many are
those visitors who, coming here and not seeing the familiar figure, miss
it as keenly as they would any intimate article of furniture.
[Picture: The Living-Room, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage]
An old and time-worn wooden settle stands beside the ingle-nook. One may
still sit in the corner seats, but a modern grate occupies the hearth on
which the logs were burnt in the Hathaways’ time. Little square recesses
in the wall show where the tinder-box was kept, and where those who sat
here in olden times set down their jug and glass. The brightly-burnished
copper warming-pan that hangs here, together with the bellows, is not, I
think, credited with a Hathaway lineage. These once necessary, but now
obsolete, household articles are simply placed here for the purpose of
giving a more convincing air to this old home; but one suspects that some
day, when the critical attitude relaxes, they will acquire a kind of
brevet rank, and perhaps eventually even fully qualify as genuine
heirlooms.
The spacious bacon-cupboard, where the flour was also stored, in the
thickness of the wall on the left-hand side of the ingle-nook, is a very
fine specimen. The neighbourhood of Stratford is particularly rich in
these old bacon-cupboards, which indeed seem to be almost a peculiar
feature of the district. There is one at Shakespeare’s Birthplace, in
the town, and another at the “Windmill” inn, in Church Street, and
numerous other examples exist in private houses; but this is the best
specimen I have yet seen, and the better kept; the open lattice-work
oaken door, bearing the initials “I. H., E. H, I. B., 1697,” being well
polished. A further storage place for bacon is the cratch (otherwise the
“rack”) in the roof-joists. You see it in the accompanying illustration.
The long, broad mantel-shelf bears the usual collection of candlesticks
and “chimney ornaments.” Under a window is an old table, with the
visitors’-book, and on the opposite side of the room stands an equally
old dresser, with a display of blue and white plates and dishes: a
grandfather’s clock between it and the door. Gaping visitors are usually
shown, by partial demonstration, with flint-and-steel, how our
long-suffering and patient ancestors struck a light, but the process is
not demonstrated in its entirety. To strike a spark off a flint with a
piece of steel is an easy matter, but if the whole process of directing
the sparks upon the tinder in the tinder-box and then blowing the tinder
into a flame were gone through, visitors would be very much more
astonished at the inconveniences endured by our forbears before the
invention of matches. To get a light in this way was the most chancy
thing in the world. The tinder might possibly catch with the first
spark, or again it might take a quarter of an hour. I think Job must
have taken his first lessons in patience with flint-and-steel and tinder
on a cold winter’s morning. We see, from these fire-raising
difficulties, a reason why our ancestors very rarely allowed the fires on
their hearthstones to go out. Fuel was cheap in the country, and
commonly to be had for the mere gathering of it, while if you let your
fire burn out, it could only be lighted again at considerable pains.
These seem altogether tales of an olden time, and they do actually strike
the visitors to Shottery as very remote indeed; but there are yet many
persons living to whom flint-and-steel and the tinder-box were as
matter-of-course and necessary articles as the match-box is now.
The room to the right of the entrance-passage is the kitchen. Here again
is an ingle-nook, and heavy beams support the floor above. A very tall
man could not walk upright in this room, for these timbers are only about
5 ft. 11 inches from the floor. The ancient hearth remains here, and the
oven runs deep into the masonry: a considerable space—almost large enough
to be called a room—running round to the back of it. The little window
seen rather high up in the wall of the house as you enter by the
garden-gate lights this space.
Returning across the passage and through the living-room, the dairy, a
little stone-flagged room is seen at the back. The door here, like most
of the others, has the old English wooden latch known as the “Drunkard’s
latch” because its cumbrous woodwork affords so good a hold for fumbling
fingers.
[Picture: Anne Hathaway’s Bedroom]
Upstairs, on the left, is “Anne Hathaway’s bedroom,” where the chief
object is a beautiful, but decrepit as to its lower legs, four-post
sixteenth-century bedstead. The legs have assumed a permanently
knock-kneed position, which humorous visitors affect to believe was
caused by the bed having been used, something after the fashion of the
Great Bed of Ware, not only for one person, but in common. It is indeed
a very large bedstead. Apart from its size, it is certainly the finest
article of furniture in the house, the headboard being beautifully carved
with grotesque figures in the Renascence style then in vogue. The sheets
are of old hand-spun flax, and a glass-covered case displayed on the bed
contains a pillow-case of fine linen and beautiful needlework,
traditionally the work of Anne. The mattresses of this bedstead and of
the plainer one in the next bedroom are of plaited rushes. Here rough
bed-curtains, dyed a dull yellow by a vegetable dye, are obviously of
great age. A small slip room of no interest is shown, opening out of
this second bedroom, and with that the exploration of the house is
concluded.