One of the first visits in the neighborhood was naturally to
Stratford-on-Avon. It lay some ten miles south of us, and I drove down,
with the distinguished literary friend I have before mentioned, in the
carriage of our kind host, securing, by the presence of his servants and
equipage, a degree of respect and attention which would not have been
accorded to us in our simple character of travellers. The prim mistress
of the “Red Horse,” in her close black bonnet and widow’s weeds,
received us at the door with a deeper courtesy than usual, and a smile
of less wintry formality; and proposing to dine at the inn, and “suck
the brain” of the hostess more at our leisure, we started immediately
for the house of the wool-comber—the birthplace of Shakspere.
Stratford should have been forbidden ground to builders, masons,
shopkeepers, and generally to all people of thrift and whitewash. It is
now rather a smart town, with gay calicoes, shawls of the last pattern,
hardware, and millinery, exhibited in all their splendor down the
widened and newer streets;—and though here and there remains a gloomy
and inconvenient abode, which looks as if Shakspere might have taken
shelter under its eaves, the gayer features of the town have the best of
it, and flaunt their gaudy and unrespected newness in the very windows
of that immortal birthplace. I stepped into a shop to inquire the way to
it.
“_Shiksper’s_ ’ouse, sir? Yes, sir!” said a dapper clerk, with his hair
astonished into the most impossible directions by force of brushing;
“keep to the right, sir! Shiksper lived in the wite ’ouse, sir—the
’ouse, you see beyond, with the windy swung up, sir.”
A low, old-fashioned house, with a window suspended on a hinge, newly
whitewashed and scrubbed, stood a little up the street. A sign over the
door informed us in an inflated paragraph, that the immortal Will
Shakspere was born under this roof, and that an old woman within would
show it to us for a consideration. It had been used until very lately, I
had been told, for a butcher’s shop.
A “garrulous old lady” met us at the bottom of the narrow stair leading
to the second floor, and began—not to say anything of Shakspere—but to
show us the names of Byron, Moore, Rogers, &c., written among thousands
of others, on the wall! She had worn out Shakspere! She had told that
story till she was tired of it! or (what, perhaps, is more probable)
most people who go there fall to reading the names of the visiters so
industriously, that she has grown to think some of Shakspere’s pilgrims
greater than Shakspeare.
“Was this old oaken chest here in the days of Shakspere, madam?” I
asked.
“Yes, sir, and here’s the name of Byron, with a capital B. Here’s a
curiosity, sir.”
“And this small wooden box?”
“Made of Shakspere’s mulberry, sir. I had sich a time about that box,
sir. Two young gemmen were here the other day—just run up, while the
coach was changing horses, to see the house. As soon as they were gone I
misses my box. Off scuds my son to the ‘Red Horse,’ and there they sat
on the top looking as innocent as may be. ‘Stop the coach,’ says my son.
‘What do you want?’ says the driver. ‘My mother’s mulberry
box—Shakspere’s mulberry box!—One of them ’ere young men’s got it in
his pocket.’ And true enough, sir, one on ’em had the imperence to take
it out of his pocket, and fling it into my son’s face: and you know the
coach never stops a minnit for nothing, or he’d a’ smarted for it.”
Spirit of Shakspere! dost thou not sometimes walk _alone_ in this humble
chamber! Must one’s inmost soul be fretted and frighted _always_ from
its devotion by an abominable old woman? Why should not such lucrative
occupations be given in charity to the deaf and dumb? The pointing of a
finger were enough in such spots of earth!
I sat down in despair to look over the book of visiters, trusting that
she would tire of my inattention. As it was no use to point out names to
those who would not look, however, she commenced a long story of an
American who had lately taken the whim to sleep in Shakspere’s
birthplace. She had shaken him down a bed on the floor, and he had
passed the night there. It seemed to bother her to comprehend why
two-thirds of her visiters should be Americans—a circumstance that was
abundantly proved by the books.
It was only when we were fairly in the street, that I began to realize
that I had seen one of the most glorious altars of memory—that
deathless Will Shakspere, the mortal, who was, perhaps (not to speak
profanely) next to his Maker, in the divine faculty of creation, first
saw the light through the low lattice on which we turned back to look.
The single window of the room in which Scott died at Abbotsford, and
this in the birth-chamber of Shakspere, have seemed to me almost marked
with the touch of the fire of those great souls—for I think we have an
instinct which tells us on the spot where mighty spirits have come or
gone, that they came and went with the light of heaven.
We walked down the street to see the house where Shakspere lived on his
return to Stratford. It stands at the corner of a lane, not far from the
church where he was buried, and is a newish un-Shaksperian looking
place—no doubt, if it be indeed the same house, most profanely and
considerably altered. The present proprietor or occupant of the house or
site took upon himself some time since the odium of cutting down the
famous mulberry tree planted by the poet’s hand in the garden.
I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes that two or three
miles before coming to Stratford we passed through Shottery, where Anne
Hathaway lived. A nephew of the excellent baronet whose guests we were
occupies the house. I looked up and down the green lanes about it, and
glanced my eye round upon the hills over which the sun has continued to
set and the moon to rise in her love inspiring beauty ever since. There
were doubtless outlines in the landscape which had been followed by the
eye of Shakespere when coming, a trembling lover, to
Shottery—doubtless, teints in the sky, crops on the fields,
smoke-wreaths from the old homesteads on the high hill-sides which are
little altered now. How daringly imagination plucks back the past in
such places! How boldly we ask of fancy and probability the thousand
questions we would put, if we might, to the magic mirror of Agrippa? Did
that great mortal love timidly, like ourselves? Was the passionate
outpouring of his heart simple, and suited to the humble condition of
Anne Hathaway, or was it the first fiery coinage of Romeo and Othello?
Did she know the immortal honor and light poured upon woman by the love
of genius? Did she know how this common and oftenest terrestrial passion
becomes fused in the poet’s bosom with celestial fire, and, in its
wondrous elevation and purity, ascends lambently and musically to the
very stars? Did she coy it with him? Was she a _woman_ to him, as
commoner mortals find woman—capricious, tender, cruel, intoxicating,
cold—everything by changes impossible to calculate or foresee? Did he
walk home to Stratford, sometimes, despairing, in perfect sick
heartedness, of her affection, and was he recalled by a message or a
lover’s instinct to find her weeping and passionately repentant?
How natural it is by such questions and speculations to betray our
innate desire to bring the lofty spirits of our common mould to our own
inward level—to seek analogies between _our_ affections, passions,
appetites, and _theirs_—to wish they might have been no more exalted,
no more fervent, no more worthy of the adorable love of woman than
ourselves! The same temper that prompts the depreciation, the envy, the
hatred, exercised toward the poet in his lifetime, mingles, not
inconsiderably, in the researches so industriously prosecuted after his
death into his youth and history. To be admired in this world, and much
more to be beloved for higher qualities than his fellow-men, insures to
genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be ferreted out with
all his frailties and imperfections from the grave.
The church in which Shakspere is buried stands near the banks of the
Avon, and is a most picturesque and proper place of repose for his
ashes. An avenue of small trees and vines, ingeniously overlaced,
extends from the street to the principal door, and the interior is
broken up into that confused and accidental medley of tombs, pews,
cross-lights, and pillars, for which the old churches of England are
remarkable. The tomb and effigy of the great poet lie in an inner
chapel, and are as described in every traveller’s book. I will not take
up room with the repetition.
It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb of his wife and daughter
beside him. One does not realize before, that Shakspere had wife,
children, kinsmen, like other men—that there were those who had a right
to lie in the same tomb; to whom he owed the charities of life; whom he
may have benefited or offended; who may have influenced materially his
destiny, or he theirs; who were the inheritors of his household goods,
his wardrobe, his books—people who looked on him—on Shakspere—as a
landholder, a renter of a pew, a townsman; a relative, in short, who had
claims upon them, not for the eternal homage due to celestial
inspiration, but for the charity of shelter and bread had he been poor,
for kindness and ministry had he been sick, for burial and the tears of
natural affection when he died. It is painful and embarrassing to the
mind to go to Stratford—to reconcile the immortality and the
incomprehensible power of genius like Shakspere’s, with the space,
tenement, and circumstance of a man! The poet should be like the
sea-bird, seen only on the wing—his birth, his slumber, and his death,
mysteries alike.
I had stipulated with the hostess that my baggage should be put into the
chamber occupied by Washington Irving. I was shown into it to dress for
dinner—a small neat room, a perfect specimen, in short, of an English
bedroom, with snow-white curtains, a looking-glass the size of the face,
a well-polished grate and poker, a well-fitted carpet, and as much light
as heaven permits to the climate.
Our dinner for two was served in a neat parlor on the same floor—an
English inn dinner—simple, neat and comfortable, in the sense of that
word unknown in other countries. There was _just_ fire enough in the
grate, _just_ enough for two in the different dishes, a servant who was
_just_ enough in the room, and _just_ civil enough—in short, it was,
like everything else in that _country of adaptation and fitness_, just
what was ordered and wanted, and no more.
The evening turned out stormy, and the rain pattered merrily against the
windows. The shutters were closed, the fire blazed up with new
brightness, the well-fitted wax lights were set on the table; and when
the dishes were removed, we replaced the wine with a tea-tray, and Miss
Porter sent for the hostess to give us her company and a little gossip
over our cups.
Nothing could be more nicely understood and defined than the manner of
English hostesses generally in such situations, and of Mrs. Gardiner
particularly in this. Respectful without servility, perfectly sure of
the propriety of her own manner and mode of expression, yet preserving
in every look and word the proper distinction between herself and her
guests, she insured from them that kindness and ease of communication
which would make a long evening of social conversation pass, not only
without embarrassment on either side, but with mutual pleasure and
gratification.
“I have brought up, mem,” she said, producing a well-polished poker from
under her black apron, before she took the chair set for her at the
table—“I have brought up a relic for you to see, that no money would
buy from me.”
She turned it over in my hand, and I read on one of the flat sides at
the bottom—“GEOFFREY CRAYON’S SCEPTRE.”
“Do you remember Mr. Irving,” asked my friend, “or have you supposed,
since reading his sketch of Stratford-on-Avon that the gentleman in
number three _might_ be the person?”
The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the expression of a person
about to compliment herself stole into the corners of her mouth.
“Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the habit of observing my guests,
and I think I may say I knows a superior gentleman when I sees him. If
you remember, mem,” (and she took down from the mantle-piece a much-worn
copy of the Sketch-Book,) “Geoffrey Crayon tells the circumstance of my
stepping in when it was getting late, and asking if he had rung. I knows
it by that, and then the gentleman I mean was an American, and I think,
mem, besides,” (and she hesitated a little, as if she was about to
advance an original and rather venturesome opinion)—“I think I can see
that gentleman’s likeness all through this book.”
A truer remark or a more just criticism was perhaps never made on the
Sketch-Book. We smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded:—
“I was in and out of the coffee room the night he arrived, mem,
and I sees directly by his modest ways and timid look that he
was a gentleman, and not fit company for the other travellers.
They were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and you
know, mem, _ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit_, and
after their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I says to
Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, ‘That nice gentleman can’t get
near the fire, and you go and light a fire in number three, and
he shall sit alone, and it shan’t cost him nothing, for I like
the look on him.’ Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and
after his tea, he puts his legs up over the grate, and there he
sits with the poker in his hand till ten o’clock. The other
travellers went to bed, and at last the house was as still as
midnight, all but a poke in the grate now and then in number
three, and every time I heard it, I jumped up and lit a
bed-candle, for I was getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was
getting up to ring for a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded,
and still no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I,
‘Go into number three, and upset something, for I am sure that
gentleman has fallen asleep.’—‘La, ma’am,’ says Sarah,’I don’t
dare.’ ‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘I’ll go.’ So I opens the door, and
I says, ‘If you please, sir, did you ring?’—little thinking
that question would ever be written down in such a beautiful
book, mem. He sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire,
and a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought was in his
mind. ‘No, ma’am,’ says he, ‘I did not.’ I shuts the door, and
sits down again, for I hadn’t the heart to tell him that it was
late, for _he was a gentleman not to speak rudely to_, mem.
Well, it was past twelve o’clock when the bell _did_ ring.
‘There,’ says I to Sarah, ‘thank Heaven he has done thinking,
and we can go to bed.’ So he walked up stairs with his light,
and the next morning he was up early and off to the Shakspere
house, and he brings me home a box of the mulberry tree, and
asks me if I thought it was genuine, and said it was for his
mother in America. And I loved him still more for that, and I’m
sure I prayed she might live to see him return.”
“I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon after did you set aside
the poker?”
“Why, sir, you see there’s a Mr. Vincent that comes here sometimes, and
he says to me one day—‘So, Mrs. Gardiner, you’re finely immortalized.
Read that.’ So the minnit I read it, I remembered who it was, and all
about it, and I runs and gets the number three poker, and locks it up
safe and sound, and by-and-by I sends it to Brummagem, and has his name
engraved on it, and here you see it, sir—and I wouldn’t take no money
for it.”
I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving, and I evidently lost
ground with the hostess of the “Red Horse” for that misfortune. I
delighted her, however, with the account which I had seen in a late
newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the prairies of the west; and
she soon courtesied herself out, and left me to the delightful society
of the distinguished lady who had accompanied me. Among all my many
loiterings in many lands, I remember none more intellectually pure and
gratifying, than this at Stratford-on-Avon. My sleep, in the little bed
consecrated by the slumbers of the immortal Geoffrey, was sweet and
light; and I write myself his debtor for a large share of the pleasure
which genius like his lavishes on the world.