VISIT TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON—SHAKSPERE.
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.