The little shops in the quaint little streets of Stratford, all make the most of that which has made their town famous; and busts of Shakespeare, pictures, carvings, guide-books, engravings, and all sorts of mementos to attract the attention of visitors, are displayed in their windows. A china ware store had Shakespeare plates and dishes, with pictorial representations of the poet's birthplace, Stratford church, &c., upon them, so that those inclined could have Shakespeare plates from sixpence to three shillings each, illustrating their visit here.
How often I had read of the old feudal barons of Warwick, and their warlike deeds, which occupy so conspicuous a place in England's history! There were the old Saxon earls, and, most famous of all, the celebrated Guy, that every school-boy has read of, who was a redoubtable warrior in the time of Alfred the Great, and doubtless has in history grown in height as his deeds have in wonder, for he is stated to have been a Saxon giant nine feet high, killed a Saracen giant in single combat, slain a wild boar, a green dragon, and an enormous dun cow, although why killing a cow was any evidence of a warrior's prowess I am unable to state. But we saw at the porter's lodge, at the castle, as all tourists do (and I write it as all tourists do), a big rib of something,—it would answer for a whale or elephant,—which we were told was the rib of the cow aforesaid; also some of the bones of the boar; but when I asked the old dame, who showed the relics, if any of the scales of the dragon, or if any of his teeth, had been preserved, she said,—
"The dragon story mightn't be true; but 'ere we 'ave the cow's ribs and the boar's bones, and there's no disputin' them, you see."
So we didn't dispute them, nor the great tilting-pole, breastplate, and fragments of armor said to have belonged to Guy, or the huge porridge-pot made of bronze or bell-metal, which holds ever so many gallons, and which modern Earls of Warwick sometimes use on great occasions to brew an immense jorum of punch in. Guy's sword, which I took an experimental swing of, required an exercise of some strength, and both hands, to make it describe a circle above my head, and must have been a trenchant blade in the hands of one able to wield it effectively.
Old Guy was by no means the only staunch warrior of the Earls of Warwick. There was one who died in the Holy Land in 1184; another, who stood by King John in all his wars with the barons; another, who was captured in his castle; another, Guy de Beauchamp, who fought for the king bravely in the battle of Falkirk; and another, who, under the Black Prince, led the van of the English army at Cressy, and fought bravely at Poietiers, till his galled hand refused to grasp his battle-axe, and who went over to France and saved a suffering English army at Calais in 1369, and many others, who have left the impress of their deeds upon the pages of history.
The old town of Warwick dates its foundation about A. D. 50, and its castle in 916. Staying at the little old-fashioned English inn, the Warwick Arms, two of us had to dine in solemn state alone in a private room, the modern style of a table d'hote not being introduced in that establishment, which, although well ordered, scrupulously neat and comfortable, nevertheless, in furniture and general appearance, reminded one of the style of thirty years ago.
Of course the lion of Warwick is the castle, and to that old stronghold we wend our way. The entrance is through a large gateway, and we pass up through a roadway or approach to the castle, which is cut through the solid rock for a hundred yards or more, and emerging into the open space, come suddenly in view of the walls and magnificent round cylindrical towers.
First there is Guy's Tower, with its walls ten feet thick, its base thirty feet in diameter, and rising to a height of one hundred and twenty-eight feet; Cæsar's Tower, built in the time of the Norman conquest, eight hundred years old, still strong and in good preservation, and between these two the strong castle walls, of the same description that appear in all pictures of old castles, with the spaces for bowmen and other defenders; towers, arched gateways, portcullis, double walls, and disused moat attest the former strength of this noted fortification.
As the visitor passes through the gate of the great walls, and gets, as it were, into the interior of the enclosure, with the embattled walls, the turrets and towers on every side of him, he sees that the castle is a tremendous one, and its occupant, when it was in its prime, might have exclaimed with better reason than Macbeth, "Our castle's strength will laugh a siege to scorn."
The scene from the interior is at once grand and romantic, the velvet turf and fine old trees in the spacious area of the court-yard harmonize well with the time-browned, ivy-clad towers and battlements, and a ramble upon the broad walk that leads around the latter is fraught with interest. We stood in the little sheltered nooks, from which the cross-bowmen and arquebusiers discharged their weapons; we looked down into the grass-grown moat, climbed to the top of Guy's Tower, and saw the charming landscape; went below Cæsar's Tower into the dismal dungeons where prisoners were confined and restrained by an inner grating from even reaching the small loophole that gave them their scanty supply of light and air; and here we saw where some poor fellow had laboriously cut in the rock, as near the light as he could, the record of his weary confinement of years, with a motto attached, in quaint style of spelling; and finally, after visiting grounds, towers, and walls, went into the great castle proper, now kept in repair, elegantly furnished and rich in pictures, statues, arms, tapestry, and antiquities.