The library was a continuation of fascination. A strange-shaped room whose length is half a dozen times its width, it seemed a place to enter but not to leave.
However, one does not visit Stratford for the delights of hotel-life, and, luncheon over, we again began our wanderings.
By good luck we chanced first upon the Memorial Theatre. The good luck lay in the fact that, having seen the outside of this Tribute to Genius, we had no desire to enter. It was remindful of a modern New England high school building, and, though we knew it contained authentic portraits and first folios, it had little to do with our Shakespeare.
We paused at the Monument, and commented on the cleverness of the happy thought that provided Philosophy to fill up the fourth side of Shakespeare’s genius.
And then we went on to Henley Street and the house where Shakespeare was born.
We entered the narrow door-way into the old house, which shows so plainly the frantic endeavor at preservation, and we climbed the stairs to the room where the poet was born. The air was smoky with memory and through it loomed the rather smug bust, its weight supported by a thin-legged, inadequate table.
With Tommy I was not troubled by the objectionable thought of “first impressions.” In the first moment we took in, with one swift glance, the fireplace, the walls, the windows, and the few scant properties, and after that our attitude was as of pilgrims returning to an oft-visited shrine.
In the room back of the Birthroom, the one that looks out over the garden, sat the old custodian of the place. He was a large handsome man with none of the doddering, mumbling effects of his profession.
My thoughts all with Mary Arden.