A RECITATION.
THERE is one spot, and only one, in all England, which can in any
general sense be called hallowed—sacred to the memory of departed
man. Priests and kings have done their best for other places, with
small effect; here and there, as in Westminster Abbey, an attempt has
been made to make sacred soil by collecting together the bones of our
greatest men—warriors, authors, divines, statesmen; but these various
elements do not kindly mix: the devotion we would pay to our own
particular idol is chilled perhaps by the neighbourhood of those with
whom we feel no especial sympathy. In all cathedrals, too, there is a
certain religious feeling, artificial as the light which finds its way
through the ‘prophets blazoned on its panes;’ it is difficult in them
to feel enthusiasm. In other places, again, exposed to the free air of
heaven, association is weakened by external influences. I, at least,
only know of one place where Nature, as it were, effaces herself, and
becomes the setting and framework to the epitaph of a dead man. It is
Stratford-on-Avon.
There, save once a year, when Shakespeare’s birthday is commemorated,
fashion brings but few persons to simulate admiration. It is not as
at some great funeral, where curiosity or official position or other
extraneous motive brings men together to do honour to the departed;
they come like humble friends, to pay tribute to one whom they not only
admire, but revere, to this little Warwickshire town. It is too remote
from the places where men congregate to entice the thoughtless crowd;
nor has it any attractions save its associations with that marvellous
mind, of which the crowd has but a vague and cold conception. It is,
to my poor thinking, a very comfortable sign of the advance of human
intelligence that, year after year, in hundreds and in thousands,
but not in crowds—for they arrive alone, or in twos or threes
together—there come, from the uttermost parts of our island, and even
from the ends of the earth, more and more pilgrims to this simple
shrine.
In the days of which I write, Stratford, of course, had far fewer
visitors than at present; but those it did have were certainly not
inferior in enthusiasm. Indeed, it was a time when Shakespeare, if
not more read than now, was certainly more talked about and thought
about. His plays were much oftener acted. The theatre occupied a more
intellectual position in society. Kemble and his majestic sister, Mrs.
Siddons, trod the boards; quotations from Shakespeare were as common
in the mouths of clerks and counter-jumpers as are now the most taking
rhymes from a favourite burlesque; even the paterfamilias who did
not ‘hold by’ stage plays made an exception in honour of the Bard of
Avon. In literary circles an incessant war was waging concerning him;
pamphlet after pamphlet—attack and rejoinder—was published almost
every week by this or that partisan of a phrase, or discoverer of a
new reading. Mr. Samuel Erin was in the fore-front of this contest,
and, as a rule, a stickler for the text. He opposed the advocates
for change in the same terms which Dr. Johnson used to reformers in
politics. The devil, he was wont to say, was the first commentator.
The famous Shakespearean critic Malone was the object of his special
aversion, which was most cordially reciprocated, and often had they
transfixed one another with pens dipped in gall.
It was curious, since the object of Mr. Erin’s adoration has taken such
pains to instil gentleness and feeling among his fellow-creatures,
that his disciple should have harboured the sentiments he sometimes
expressed; and yet it is hardly to be wondered at when one remembers
that the advocates of Christianity itself have fallen into the same
error, and from the same cause. Mr. Samuel Erin was not only a devotee,
but a fanatic.
As the coach crossed the river, near their journey’s end, Mr. Dennis
broke a long silence by a reference to the beauty of the scenery,
which his friend had come professionally to illustrate.
‘Here is a pretty bit of river for your pencil, Mr. Erin.’
‘Hush! hush!’ rejoined that gentleman reprovingly; ‘it is the Avon. We
are on the threshold of his very birthplace.’
It was on the tip of Mr. Dennis’s tongue, who had been thinking of
nothing but Margaret for the last half-hour, to inquire, ‘Whose
birthplace?’—which would have lost him the other’s friendship for
ever. Fortunately he recollected himself (and Shakespeare) just in
time, and in some trepidation at his narrow escape, which his friend
took for reverential awe, murmured some more suitable reply.
William Henry, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. At the
instigation of the guard (who had a commission from the innkeeper on
the guests he brought him), he leant down from the coach-top to inquire
which house Mr. Erin meant to patronise, suggesting that the party
should put up at the ‘Stratford Arms,’ as being the best accommodation.
‘You fool!’ roared the old gentleman; ‘we put up at the “Falcon,” of
course. The idea,’ he continued indignantly, ‘of our going elsewhere,
when the opportunity is afforded us of residing under the very roof
which once sheltered our immortal bard!’
‘Shakespeare did not live in an inn, did he, uncle?’ inquired Margaret
demurely. She knew perfectly well that he had not done so, but was
unwilling to let this outburst against her cousin pass by without some
kind of protest.
‘Well, no,’ admitted Mr. Erin; ‘but he lived just opposite to it,
and, it is supposed—indeed, it may be reasonably concluded—that he
patronised it for his—ahem—convivial entertainments.’
‘I suppose there is some foundation for the story of the “Topers” and
the “Sippers,”’ observed Dennis, ‘and for the bard being found under
the crab-tree _vino et somno_.’
‘There may be, there may be,’ returned the other indifferently; ‘but
as for Shakespeare being beaten, even in a contest of potations, that
is entirely out of the question. It was not in the nature of the man.
If he ran, he would run quickest; if he jumped, he would jump the
highest; and if he drank, he would undoubtedly have drunk deeper than
anybody else.’
The Falcon Inn had no great extent of accommodation—it was perhaps too
full of ‘association’ for it—but Margaret had a neat chamber enough;
and, since it looked on the Guild Chapel and Grammar School where
Shakespeare had been educated, and on the walls which surrounded the
spot where he had spent his latter days, the niece of her uncle could
hardly have anything to complain of. The young men had an attic apiece.
As to what sort of a room was assigned to Mr. Samuel Erin, he could not
have told you himself, for he took no notice of it. His head was always
out of the window. It was his first sight of the shrine of his idol,
and the very air seemed to be laden with incense from it.
To think that that long, low tenement yonder, with the projecting
front, was the very house in which Shakespeare had ‘crept unwillingly
to school,’ that his young feet had helped to wear those very stones
away, and that that ancient archway had echoed his very tones, sent a
thrill of awe through him such as could only be compared with that felt
by some mediæval beholder of ‘a bit of the true cross.’ But, in that
case, faith—and a good deal of it—had been essential to conviction;
whereas in this the facts were indisputable. Behind yonder walls, too,
stood the house to which, full of honour though not of years, he had
retired to spend that leisure in old age which he had desiderated more
than most men.
The aim of all is but to crown the life
With honour, wealth, and ease in waning age,
were the words Mr. Erin repeated to himself with mystic devotion, as
a peasant mutters a Latin prayer. He had no poetic gifts himself, nor
was he even a critic in a high sense; but his long application to
Shakespearean literature had given him some reflected light. What he
understood of it he understood thoroughly; what was too high for his
moderate, though by no means dwarfish intelligence, to grasp, or what
through intermediate perversion was unintelligible, he not only took
on trust, but accepted as reverentially as did those who were wont
to consult her, the utterances of the Sibyl. In literature we have
few such fanatics as Samuel Erin now; but in art he has many modern
parallels—men who, having once convinced themselves that a painting is
by Rubens or Titian, will see in it a hundred merits where there are
not half a dozen, and even discover beauties in its spots and blemishes.
While the head of the little party was thus in the seventh heaven of
happiness above-stairs, the junior members of it had assembled together
in the common sitting-room; the landlady had inquired what refreshments
they would please to have, and tea had been ordered rather with a view
of putting a stop to her importunities than because, after that ample
meal at Banbury, they stood in need of any food.
‘If your uncle were here, Maggie,’ said William Henry, not perhaps
without some remembrance of the snubbing he had just received from
the old gentleman, and from which he was still smarting, ‘he would be
ordering “sherrie sack,” or “cakes and ale.”’
Margaret glanced at him reprovingly, but said nothing. She regretted
that he took such little pains to bridge the breach that evidently
existed between his father and himself, and always discouraged his pert
sallies. William Henry hung his head: if he did not find sympathy with
his cousin, he could, he thought, find it nowhere.
Frank Dennis, however, came to his rescue. He either did not look
upon the penniless, friendless lad as a real rival, or he was very
magnanimous.
‘And how did you enjoy your trip to Bristol?’ he inquired. ‘St. Mary’s
Redcliffe is a fine church, is it not?’
‘Yes, indeed; I paid a visit to the turret, where the papers were
stored to which Chatterton had access, and from which he drew the
Rowley poems.’
‘How interesting!’ exclaimed Margaret; it was plain by her tone that
she wanted to make amends to the young fellow. ‘Are any of his people
still at Bristol?’
‘Oh yes, his sister lives there, a Mrs. Newton. I had a great deal of
talk with her. She told me how angry he was with her on one occasion
when she cut up some old deeds and other things he had brought
home with him, and which she had thought valueless, to make into
thread-papers; he collected them together, thread-papers and all, and
carried them into his own room.’
‘Considering the use the poor young fellow made of them,’ observed
Dennis gravely, ‘she had better have burnt them.’
‘Still, they did give him a certain spurious immortality,’ put in
Margaret pitifully. ‘The other was out of his reach.’
‘Surely, my dear Miss Slade, you cannot mean that?’ remonstrated Dennis
gently.
‘At all events, everybody was very hard upon him just because they were
taken in,’ argued Margaret. ‘If he had acknowledged what they admired
so much to have been his own, they would have seen nothing in it to
admire. I think Horace Walpole behaved like a brute.’
‘That is very true,’ admitted Dennis. ‘Still, the lad was a forger.’
‘People are not starved to death, as _he_ was, even for forging,’
rejoined Margaret. ‘His own people, too, did not care about him. He had
no friends, poor fellow.’
Dennis listened to her with pleasure—though he thought her too
lenient—because she took the side of the oppressed. William Henry was
even more grateful, because he secretly compared his own position with
that of Chatterton—for _he_ too had written poems which nobody thought
much of—and guessed that Margaret had his own case in her eye.
‘Amongst other things that Mrs. Newton told me,’ continued William
Henry, ‘was that her brother was very reserved and fond of seclusion.
On one occasion he was most severely chastised for having absented
himself for half a day from home. He did not shed a tear, but only
observed that it was hard indeed to be whipped for reading.’
‘It was certainly most unfortunate,’ admitted Dennis, ‘that the boy was
amongst persons who did not understand him.’
‘And who, though they were his own flesh and blood, treated him with
contempt and cruelty,’ added Margaret, with indignation. ‘Did this
sister of his never give him credit for possessing talent even?’
‘She thought him odd as a child, it seems,’ answered William Henry.
‘He preferred to be taught his letters from an old black-letter Bible
rather than from any book of modern type. He seems to have had a
natural leaning for the line that he took in life.’
‘In other words, you think he was born with a turn for forgery,’
observed Dennis drily. ‘That is not a very high compliment to him, nor
indeed to Providence either.’
‘But how else could he have become celebrated?’ argued the young man
impatiently.
‘Is it necessary then, my lad, to become celebrated?’ inquired Dennis,
smiling.
‘I don’t say necessary, but it must be very nice.’
‘The same thing may be said of most of our vices,’ answered the other
reprovingly. Frank Dennis often spoke the words of wisdom, but spoke
them cut and dried, like proverbs from a copy-book. He was an excellent
fellow, but not quite human enough for ordinary use. Margaret would
have liked him better, perhaps, if he had been a trifle worse. The
pedagogic tone in which he had spoken to her cousin, and his use of
the words ‘my lad,’ which, as she argued to herself (quite wrongly),
he _must_ know were very offensive to him, irritated her a little.
She felt that William Henry had been schooled enough, and wanted
encouragement.
‘Did you get any inspiration from the turret of St. Mary Redcliffe?’
she inquired.
‘Well, yes.’ he answered, blushing, and a blush very well became his
handsome face; ‘I did perpetrate—— ‘
‘Some mischief, I’ll warrant,’ exclaimed a harsh, disdainful voice. It
was that of Mr. Samuel Erin, who had entered the room unobserved. ‘And
what was it you perpetrated, sir?’
William Henry looked abashed and annoyed. Margaret, though she stood
in no little fear of her uncle, could hardly restrain her indignation.
Frank Dennis as usual interposed with the oil can.
‘Your son has perhaps only written a poem, Mr. Erin, which in so young
a man can hardly be considered a crime.’
‘I don’t know _that_, if the poem—as it probably was—was a bad one.
If he has committed it’—here the old gentleman’s face softened, as
under the influence of the infrequent and home-made joke the grimmest
face will do—‘he has doubtless committed it to memory. Come, sir, let
us have it.’
Now as, of all the pleasant moments which mitigate this painful life,
there are none more charming than those passed in the recital of a poem
of our own composition to (one pair of) loving ears, so there are none
more embarrassing than those which are occupied in doing the same
thing before an unsympathetic audience. Imagine poor Shelley condemned
to recite his ‘Skylark’ or Keats his ‘Nightingale’ to a vestry
meeting! That would indeed be bad enough; but if the bard himself is
conscious that he has no skylark nor nightingale, but only a tomtit or
yellowhammer, to let fly for their edification, how much more terrible
must be his position! Poor William Henry was in even worse case, for
one of his audience, as he well knew, was not only not _en rapport_
with him, but antagonistic, a hostile critic. I once beheld a shivering
schoolboy compelled to make an extempore ode to the moon to a circle
of his fellow-students armed with towels knotted at the end, to flick
him with if his muse should be considered unsatisfactory. Except that
he was not in his night-shirt, as my young friend was, poor William
Henry’s position was almost as bad, and yet he dared not refuse to obey
the paternal mandate.
‘There are only a very few verses, sir,’ he stammered.
‘The fewer the better,’ said Mr. Erin. He meant it for an
encouragement, no doubt, a sort of ‘so far the Court is with you,’ but
it had not an encouraging effect upon his son. It seemed to him that he
had just swallowed a pint of vinegar.
‘Leave off those damnable faces and begin,’ exclaimed Mr. Erin. It was
only a quotation from his favourite bard, and not an inappropriate one,
but it did not sound kind.
‘It is brutal,’ murmured Margaret under her breath, and at the same
time she cast a glance of ineffable pity at the victim. It was like a
ray of sunshine upon a chill day, at sight of which the bird bursts
into song.
‘The lines are on Chatterton,’ he began by way of prelude:—
Comfort and joys for ever fled,
He ne’er will warble more;
Ah me! the sweetest youth is dead
That e’er tuned reed before.
The hand of misery laid him low,
E’en hope forsook his brain;
Relentless man contemned his woe,
To him he sighed in vain.
Oppressed with want, in wild despair he cried,
‘No more I’ll live!’ swallowed the draught, and died.
Mr. Samuel Erin looked as if he had swallowed a draught; one of those
recommended to persons suffering from the effects of poison.
‘Shade of Shakespeare!’ he cried, ‘do you call that a poem?’
William Henry murmured something in mitigation about its being an
acrostic. The old gentleman’s sense of hearing was not acute, and led
him to imagine he was being reproached for his surliness. He turned as
red as a turkey-cock.
Margaret also flushed to her forehead; she too had misunderstood what
her cousin had said, and the more easily because the words she thought
he had used (a cross stick) were so appropriate. But how could he,
_could_ he, be so foolish as thus to give reins to his temper!
Lastly, Frank Dennis became a brilliant scarlet. He was half suffocated
with suppressed laughter. Still, true to his mission of peacemaker,
he contrived to splutter out that when a poem was an acrostic, such
perfection was not to be looked for as when the muse was unfettered.
‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ said Mr. Erin grimly. ‘I’ve heard of young men
wasting their time, and, what is worse, the time of their employers, in
many ways; but that they should take to writing acrostics seems to me
the _ne plus ultra_ of human folly. Bah! give me a dish of tea.’