Fortunately, before I corrected proof, Mr. Dugdale of Merivale returned from abroad, and kindly allowed me to see the volume of Sir William Dugdale’s Diary which contained his own special drawings for the tombs in Warwickshire Churches. Among these are, as I expected, Shakespeare’s Tomb. It teaches us many things. Sir William Dugdale was not an artist, but an Antiquary. He did not attempt to carry over the expression of the human countenance, even as represented in Stowe, but he was very careful as to significant details. He works with slow and careful pen-and-ink touches. Many of the “proofs” of his untrustworthiness vanish in the study, and a new element in the question is introduced, the art of the engraver. One of the objections brought against his rendering was the spelling of “Judicyo” in the engraving. Dugdale himself, however, renders it “Judicio,” both in his drawing and in his copy of the epitaph by its side. The monument is important, the bust has some of the faults of the engraving. The hands are quite as clumsy, but the cushion on which they rest is not nearly so high or so woolly. The face is older even than that of the engraver, who really improved the expression, possibly after a personal visit. The moustache falls naturally down. The face, as Dugdale draws it, is not so far removed from Rowe’s rendering as might have been expected after “ruin and decay” had injured the outlines. And I was surprised to find that what had proved my own stumbling-block, the lines of the cloak, are drawn by Dugdale as they appear to-day, and the engraver must have carelessly altered the sartorial effect.
The greatest “proof” of Dugdale’s inexactitude, so triumphantly brought forward by my opponents, is utterly extinguished by this volume. The drawing of the Carew Clopton Monument does not appear in the Diary, which means, that the Clopton family, and not Dugdale, was responsible for its drawing and its inaccuracies. He only drew those which had not been sent on to him by the families whom he had invited to do so. He evidently thought Shakespeare’s Monument, though not sent on, specially important, and did it carefully himself. The present Mr. Dugdale thinks, from its position in the volume, and from some notes in the Diary, that it therefore was one of the latest of the drawings before the final publication in 1656. I have to thank him warmly for his help, which has satisfied somewhat my hunger for truth. These facts, with due attention to the contemporary letters about the restoration in 1746-9, given in Note XIII, conclude all I have to say concerning the Shakespeare Monument.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Halliwell-Phillipps knew of the alterations and doubted the exact likeness of the present restoration to the old, but as he says nothing but what Abraham Wivell said before him, and did not notice the difference in Dugdale’s print, I have not brought him into the necessarily contracted space of this article.
[28] Perhaps the most amusing entry is in the bill from Elizabeth Wheeler. “Lost a pigg when the Earl of Essex passed by worth 4/.”
[29] New Place had been bought by Sir Edward Walker and given to his daughter on her marriage with Hugh Clopton. Henry Talbot, her son-in-law, sold it to Rev. Mr. Gastrell.
XIV
SIXTEENTH CENTURY LOCKS AND WEIRS ON THE THAMES
The use of steam, steel, and electricity has changed not only the methods of travelling, but the appearance of the highways of the country. The facilities of transit have enormously multiplied the number of travellers and the quantities of goods consigned. We have been taught to picture the difference between the railroad of to-day and the highway of the sixteenth century—deficient in construction and beset by highwaymen, who lay in wait (as spiders watch for flies) for the saddle horses, pack horses, and lumbering cars and carriages of the time. Sometimes the difficulties of the road were artfully made or increased, so as to bring the prey more easily within reach of the spiders.
But there has been little or no attention paid to the changes on another highway—a Queen’s highway, under Elizabeth as well as Victoria—I mean the royal river of Thames. I started on the subject years ago, because I thought it more than likely that Shakespeare had travelled between Oxford and London by water, and I desired to understand the appearance the river would present in “Shakespeare’s England.” Harrison does not speak of it, nor do novelists romance of it. The passage would not be made in the light skiffs that to-day lend themselves to the picturesque and ideal, in quite dream-like motion through an Arcadian land, apart from the hurry and scurry of everyday life, where all seems peace and joy, and the only modern representative of the old dragon is the snorting steam-yacht that churns the water. Not such a Thames could Shakespeare see, not such a passage could Shakespeare know—but a descent in heavily-laden barges on a busy stream, more cumbered with dangerous locks and weirs than it is to-day, at each of which was a struggle for life and property, and probably a battle with the lock keepers “who sold water.”
From the earliest recorded times there had been a war waged on the waters of the Thames between landed and vested or local interests and travelling or commercial requirements. One of the clauses of Magna Charta determined “that all locks and wears should be utterly pulled down,” a clause expanded and enforced by every succeeding sovereign who confirmed Magna Charta (see M. C. Hen. III, c. 23; 25 Ed. III, st. iii, c. 4; 45 Ed. III, c. 2. In 21 Ric. II, c. 19, there is a recital of the Act of 25 Ed. III, st. iii, c. 4).