William Henry Erin, of whose character the world subsequently took a very different and erroneous view, was essentially a man of impulse. He had attributes, it is true, of another and even of an antagonistic kind. He was very punctual and diligent in his habits, he was neat and exact in his professional work; though a poet, his views of life, or at all events of his own position in it, were practical enough, yet he was impatient, passionate, and impulsive. His proposition to Margaret Slade had been made with such stress and energy that it was no wonder (albeit she knew his character better than most people) that she thought it founded upon some scheme for the future already formed in his own mind. Of its genuineness there could be no shadow of doubt, but she also took it for granted that he had some ground for expectation, which, at all events to his own mind, seemed solid, that within the space of time he had mentioned, something would occur to place him in a better social position. Her impression, or rather her apprehension (for she did not much believe in his literary talents—a circumstance, by-the-bye, which showed that she was by no means over head and ears in love with him), was that he trusted to the publication of his poems to place him on the road to prosperity; his use of the words ‘fame and fortune’ certainly seemed to point to that direction, and what other road was there open to him?
Whereas, as a matter of fact, there was not even that poor halfpennyworth of substratum for his hopes. Circumstances—the finding himself alone with her he loved on Shakespeare’s courting-seat—had, of course, been the immediate cause of his amazing appeal, but they were also the chief cause. The knowledge that Frank Dennis was of the party and could gain her ear at any moment, with the certainty of Mr. Erin’s advocacy to back him, had, moreover, made the young man madly jealous. To secure his beloved Margaret, even for a little while, from so dreaded a rival, was something gained; and then there was the chapter of accidents. We know not what a day may bring forth, how much less what may happen within six months! William Henry was but a boy, yet how many a grown man trusts to such contingencies! In the city, ‘twenty-four hours to turn about in’ is often considered time enough for a total change of fortune. It might be added that, unless Margaret should turn traitress and reveal his secret (which was impossible), he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by his delay; but, to do the young man justice, that idea had not entered into his mind. Passion with the bit between her teeth had run away with him.
As to precocity, it must be remembered that he lived in reckless days, when men did not wait as they do now till they were five-and-forty years of age to marry; by that time, with enterprise and luck, many a gentleman was in the enjoyment of his third, or even his fourth honeymoon.
Still, William Henry was not unconscious that he had taken an audacious step, and felt a genuine sense of relief on finding that Mr. Samuel Erin had provided himself in that armchair with a relic and not a weapon.
This invaluable acquisition—which, when it was brought to London, was placed on a little elevation made on purpose for it in his study, with a brass plate at its foot (after the manner of chairs in our Madam Tussaud’s) with the words ‘Anne Hathaway’s Chair’ upon it—had the effect of putting its possessor into good humour for the remainder of his stay at Stratford, a circumstance which had the happiest results for those about him. William Henry, for his part, was in the seventh heaven. It is not only our virtues which have the power of bestowing happiness upon us—at all events, for a season. Shakespeare himself makes a striking observation on that matter in one of his sonnets; having spoken plainly enough of certain errors, gallantries of which he has repented, he adds, with an altogether unexpected frankness,—
But, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth.
He does not put his tongue in his cheek at morality, far from it; but he rolls the sweet morsel, the remembrance of forbidden pleasure, under his tongue. It is one of the mistakes that our divines fall into to deny to our little peccadilloes any pleasure at all, whereas the fact is that the blossom of them is often very fair and fragrant, though the fruit is full of ashes, and, like the goodly apple, rotten at the core.
And thus it was with William Henry, who, without, indeed, having committed any great enormity, had certainly not been justified in obtaining the loan of his cousin’s love; the consciousness of his temporary possession of it made a very happy man of him for a season. He made no ungenerous use of his advantage, he did not take an ell because he had gained an inch; but he hugged himself in that new-found sense of security as one basks in the summer sunshine. Those days at Stratford were the happiest days of his life. Considering the means by which they were obtained, one can hardly apply to them the usual phrase ‘a foretaste of heaven;’ but they were happy days snatched from a life which was fated to hold few such. It was, perhaps, out of gratitude to him whose memory had helped him to this happiness, that the young man really began to take an interest in Shakespearean matters; and this again reacted to his advantage, since it gratified Mr. Erin, whose good-will, difficult to gain by other means, was approached by that channel with extraordinary facility.
In association with Mr. Jervis the young man ransacked the little town for mementoes of its patron saint, and was fortunate enough to discover a few, which, though of doubtful authenticity, were very welcome to the enthusiastic collector. If they were not the rose, i.e. actual relics, they were near the rose, as proximity is counted in such cases. No doubt it is the same with more sacred relics—in a deficiency of toe-nails of any particular saint it must be something, though not of course so rapturous, to secure a toe-nail of some saint in the next century. As regards Shakespeare, it is certainly one of the marvels in connection with that marvellous man that not a scrap of the handwriting, save his autograph, of one who wrote so much ever turns up to reward the pains of the searcher; nay, there is only one letter extant, even of those that were written to him—a commonplace request for a loan from the man who afterwards became his son-in-law; under which circumstances, when one comes to think about it, there may be some excuse for the language used by Mr. Samuel Erin to that reckless incendiary, Mr. Williams, of Clopton House.