WHEN you have seen Warwick Castle and Guy's Cliff and the Saxon Mill—which is so old that it must be soothing to the most tempestuous temperament—and you hasten back to your hotel and get your dog—if that dog be Charles—on purpose to expose him to its calm influences, you go to St. Mary's Church, which is, the guide-book tells you, "one of the most remarkable specimens of ecclesiastical architecture extant," and you see the Norman Crypt, and the clumsy sarcophagus of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who wrote his own epitaph, and you read how he was "servant to Queen Elizabeth, Canceller to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney."
Also you see the Beauchamp Chapel, and love it and linger in it, admiring the tombs of the earls of Warwick and other grown-ups, and feeling, even after all these years, a thrill of sadness at the sight of the little effigy of the child whose brocaded gown the marble so wonderfully produces and whose little years knock at your heart for pity.
"Here resteth," says the monument, "the body of the noble Impe Robert of Dudley, . . . a child of greate parentage, but of farre greater hope and towardness, taken from this transitory unto the everlasting life in his tender age, . . . on Sunday the 19 of July, in the yeare of our Lorde God 1584."
You see, also, the Warwick pew, and wish you could have worshiped there.
Then you go to Leicester's Hospital, half timbered and beautiful, with the row of whispering limes on its terraced front, where the "brethren" still wear the "gown of blew stuff with the badge of the bear and ragged staff on the left sleeve." And the badges are still those provided by Lord Leicester in 1571.
You are sorry that the old banqueting-hall should now be used for the coal-cellar and the laundry of the brethren, and still more sorry that the minstrels' gallery should have been cut off to enlarge the drawing-room of the Master's house. If you are of a rude and democratic nature you may possibly comment on this in audible voices beneath the Master's windows, which, I am sorry to say, was what Mr. Basingstoke and his companion did.
You will see the Sidney porcupine on the wall of the quadrangle, some gilded quills missing, and no wonder, after all these years. You will see—and perhaps neglect to reverence, as they did—the great chair once occupied by that insufferable monarch and prig, James the First. You will visit the Brethren's Chapel, which seems to be scented by all the old clothes ever worn by any of the old brethren, and you will come out again into the street, and, as you cross the threshold, it will be like stepping across three hundred years, and you will say so. Then you will probably say, "What about Stratford for this afternoon?" At least, that is what Edward said. And as he said it he was aware of a figure in black which said,
"Can you tell me the way to Droitwich?"
It was a woman, spare and pale, in black that was green, but brushed to threadbareness.