'Are you sure you don't--inside of you?' she demanded. Certain you have
no lurking private ambition to do the Abbey in two hours and get it
over? Oh, I know you! I've brought lots of you here before.'
'I know,' I said, I as a nation we do like to get a good deal for our
time.'
'It's promising when you acknowledge it'--Miss Corke laughed. 'All the
old abbots used to be buried here up to the time of Henry III.; that's
probably one of 'em'--and Miss Corke's parasol indicated a long, thick,
bluish stone thing lying on its back, with a round lump at one end and
an imitation of features cut on the lump. It lay there very solidly
along the wall, and I tried in vain to get a point of view from which it
was expressive of anything whatever. 'One of the early abbots?' said I,
because it seemed necessary to say something.
'Probably,' said Miss Corke.
'Which particular abbot should you say?' I asked, deferentially, for I
felt that I was in the presence of something very early English indeed,
and that it became me to be impressed, whether I was or not.
'Oh, I don't know,' Miss Peter Corke replied. 'Postard, perhaps, or
Crispin, or maybe Vitalis; nobody knows.'
'I suppose it would have been easier to tell a while ago,' I said.
'There is something so worn about his face, I should think even the
other early abbots would find a difficulty in recognising him now.
Nothing Druidical, I suppose?'
'Certainly not. If you are going to be disrespectful,' said Miss Corke,
'I shall take you home at once.' Whereat I protested that I did not
dream disrespect--that he looked to me quite as much like a Druid as
anything else. I even ventured to say that, if she had not told me he
was an early abbot, I might have taken him for something purely and
entirely geological. The whole of this discussion took place at what
stood for the early abbot's feet, and occupied some little time; so
that, finally, Miss Corke was obliged to tell me that, if there was one
thing she couldn't bear, it was dawdling, and would I be pleased to look
at the monumental tablet to Mr. Thomas Thynne, of which she would relate
to me the history. So we paused in front of it, while Miss Corke told
me how the gentleman in the basrelief chariot was Mr. Thomas Thynne,
and the gentleman on horseback, shooting at him with a blunderbuss, was
Kônigsmark, accompanied by his brother; and Kônigsmark was in the act of
killing Mr. Thomas Thynne, with the horses getting unmanageable, and the
two powdered footmen behind in a state of great agitation, because both
Mr. Thomas Thynne and Kônigsmark were attached to the same lady--a young
widow lady with a great deal of money--and she liked Mr. Thomas Thynne
best, which was more than Mr. Kônigsmark could bear. So Mr. Königsmark
first swore properly that he would do it, and then did it--all in Pall
Mall, when Mr. Thomas was in the very act of driving home from paying a
visit to the widow. It was a most affecting story, as Peter Corke told
it, especially in the presence of the memorial with a white marble Cupid
pointing to it, erected by Mr. Thynne's bereaved relatives; and I
was glad to hear that the widow had nothing to do with Mr. Kônigsmark
afterwards, in spite of the simplicity and skill of his tactics
with regard to his rival. I thought the history of the event quite
interesting enough in itself, but Miss Corke insisted that the point
about it really worthy of attention was the fact that the younger Mr.
Kônigsmark was the gentleman who afterwards went back to Hanover, and
there flirted so disgracefully with Sophia Dorothea of Zell that King
George said he wouldn't have it, and shut her up in Ahlden Tower
for thirty-two years. Miss Corke explained it all in a delightful
kindergarten way, mentioning volumes for my reference if I wanted to
know more about the incident. 'Although this,' she said, 'is the sort
of thing you ought to have been improving your mind with ever since you
learned to read. I don't know what you mean by it, coming over here with
a vast unbroken field of ignorance about our celebrities. Do you think
time began in 1776?' At which I retaliated, and said that far from being
an improving incident, I wasn't sure that it was altogether respectable,
and I didn't know of a single church in Chicago that would admit a
bas-relief of it, with or without a mourning Cupid. In return to which
Miss Corke could find nothing better to say than 'Lawks!'
'Don't tell me you've read the "Spectator!"' she remarked a little
farther on, 'because I know you haven't--you've read nothing but W. D.
Howells and the "New York World!" Oh, you have? Several essays! When,
pray? At school--I thought so! When you couldn't help it! Well, I know
you've forgotten Sir Roger de Coverley, in the Abbey, stopping
Addison here, to tell him that man thrashed his grandfather! His own
grandfather, you know, not Addison's!' And we contemplated the studious
effigy of Dr. Busby until I told Miss Corke that I wanted to be taken to
the Poets' Corner.
'Of course you do,' said she; 'there are rows of Americans there now,
sitting looking mournful and thinking up quotations. If I wanted to find
an American in London, I should take up my position in the Poets'
Corner until he arrived. You needn't apologise--it's nothing to your
discredit,' remarked Miss Corke, as we turned in among your wonderful
crumbling old names, past the bust of George Grote, historian of Greece.
'Of course, you have heard of his lady-wife,' she said, nodding at Mr.
Grote. I ventured the statement that she was a very remarkable person.
'Well, she was!' returned Miss Corke, 'though that's a shot in the dark,
and you might as well confess it. One of the most remarkable women of
her time. All the biographers of the day wrote about her--as you ought
to know, intimately. I have the honour of the acquaintance of a niece
of hers, who told me the other day that she wasn't particularly fond of
her. Great independence of character!'
'Where is Chaucer?' I asked, wishing to begin at the beginning.
'Just like every one of you that I've ever brought here!' Miss Corke
exclaimed, leading the way to the curious old rectangular grey tomb in
the wall. 'The very best--the very oldest--immediately! Such impatience
I never saw! There now--make out that early English lettering, if you
can, and be properly sorry that you've renounced your claim to be proud
of it!'
'I can't make it out, so I'll think about being sorry later,' I said.
'It is certainly very remarkable; he might almost have written it
himself. Now, where is Shakespeare?'
'Oh, certainly!' exclaimed Miss Corke. 'This way. And after that you'll
declare you've seen them all. But you might just take time to understand
that you're walking over "O rare Ben Jonson!" who is standing up in his
old bones down there as straight as you or I. Insisted--as you probably
are not aware--on being buried that way, so as to be ready when Gabriel
blows his trumpet in the morning. I won't say that he hasn't got his
coat and hat on. Yes, that's Samuel--I'm glad you didn't say Ben was the
lexicographer. Milton--certainly--it's kind of you to notice him.
Blind, you remember. The author of several works of some reputation--in
England.'
'I knew he was blind,' I said, 'and used to dictate to his daughters. We
have a picture of it at home.' I made this remark very innocently, and
Miss Corke looked at me with a comical smile. 'Bless it and save it!'
she said, and then, with an attempt at a reproach, 'What a humbug it
is!'
We looked at Shakespeare, supreme among them, predicting solemn
dissolution out of 'The Tempest,' and turned from him to Gay, whose
final reckless word I read with as much astonishment as if I had never
heard of it before.
Life's a jest, and all things show it;