The date being arranged, I turned to my Baedeker and was deeply delighted to discover that we must take a train from Euston Station. For it seemed that the wonderful columned façade of Euston was the only appropriate exit from London, when one’s destination was Stratford. I had hoped that our route might cause us to pass through Upper Tooting, as, next to Stratford, this was to me the most interesting name in my little red book. I know not why, but Upper Tooting has always possessed for me a strange fascination and, though it sounds merely like the high notes of a French horn, yet my intuition tells me that it is full of deep and absorbing interest.
Sentimental Tommy met me at Euston Station, and bought tickets for Stratford as casually as if it had been on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Tommy was in jubilant spirits that morning, with the peculiar kind of international triumph which comes only to an American who has attained some especial favour of the English. Gleefully he told me of his great luck: Only that morning he had been kicked by the King’s cat! An early stroll past Buckingham Palace and along Constitution Hill had resulted in an interview with the royal feline, and the above-mentioned honorable result had been achieved. My observation to the effect that I didn’t know that cats kicked, was met by the simple statement that this cat did,—and then we went on to Stratford.
Kicked by the King’s cat.
The ride being in part through the same country that I had traversed when coming to London, I felt quite at home in my surroundings; and we chatted gayly of everything under the sun except the immortal hero of our pilgrimage.
That’s what I like about Tommy—he has such a wonderful intuitive sense of conversational values. And though his obsession by Shakespeare is precisely the same as my own, and though he is himself a Bartlett’s Concordance in men’s clothing, yet I knew, for a surety, that he would quote no line from the poet through the entire day.
As we had neither of us ever been in Stratford before, we left the train at the station and paced the little town with an anticipation that was like a blank page, to be written on by whatever might happen next.
Trusting to Tommy’s instinct, we asked no questions of guidance, and started off at random, on a nowise remarkable street. It was an affable August day, and our gait was much like that of a snail at full gallop; yet before we turned the first corner tears stood in my eyes,—though whether caused by the thrill of being on Shakespeare’s ground, or the reflection of Tommy’s discernibly suppressed emotion, I’ve no idea.
But for pure delightfulness of sensation it is difficult to surpass that aimless wandering through Stratford, with a subconsciousness of what was awaiting us.
In London, historical associations crop up at every step; but, though pointing backward, each points in a different direction, and so they form a great semicircular horizon which becomes misty and vague in the distance. This is restful, and gives one a mere sense of blurred perspective. But Stratford is definite and coherent. Everything in it, material or otherwise, points sharply back to the one figure, and the converging rays meet with a suddenness that is dazzling and well-nigh stunning.