FEEDING THE PEACOCKS AT WARWICK CASTLE
Warwick, a wide-streeted, stately old town, with two of its mediæval gates still standing, was familiar to us both. I had spent a week here, some years ago, and taken occasion, after inspecting the lions, to view the horses, for the autumn races chanced to be on. I remember sitting, surprised at myself, on the grand stand, in an atmosphere of tobacco smoke and betting. The bookmakers stood below, conspicuous in green velveteen coats; some had their names on the open money-bags hanging from their necks; all were shouting themselves hoarse. A red-nosed lady in dashing apparel sat on my right, enlightening my ignorance with a flood of jockey English, while on my left a plain-faced, anxious little body would turn from helping her husband decide his bets to urge upon me the superior morality of this to all other forms of English sport. The green below was filled with a bustling crowd of men, women, and children, pressing about the booths, the Punch-and-Judys and the show-carts, adventuring upon the swings and merry-go-rounds, tossing balls at gay whirligigs and winning cocoanuts in the fascinating game of "Aunt Sally," or ransacking the "silken treasury,"
"Lawns as white as driven snow,
Cyprus black as e'er was crow,"
of many a modern Autolycus. The throng was bright with fluttering pennons, red soldier coats, and the vivid finery of housemaids on a holiday. I saw five out of the seven races sweep by and waxed enthusiastic over "Porridge" and "Odd Mixture," but "good old Maggie Cooper," on which my red-nosed neighbour lost heavily, while the husband of my moral little friend won, put me to such embarrassment between them that I bethought myself of my principles and slipped away.
Eschewing such profane reminiscences, I recalled the Church of St. Mary, with its haughty Beauchamp Chapel where ancient Earls of Warwick keep their marble state, together with the Earl of Leicester and his "noble impe." I recalled the delectable home for old soldiers, Leycester's Hospital, so inimitably described by Hawthorne. Across the years I still could see the antique quadrangle with its emblazoned scutcheons and ornately lettered texts; the vaulted hall with its great carven beams; the delightful kitchen with its crested fireplace of huge dimensions, its oaken settles and copper flagons, its Saxon chair that has rested weary mortality for a thousand years, and its silken fragment of Amy Robsart's needlework. Most clearly of all rose from memory the figures of the old pensioners, the "brethren" garbed in long blue gowns with silver badge on shoulder, stamped, as the whole building is stamped over and over, with the cognisance of The Bear and the Ragged Staff. I had done homage at Warwick to the memory of Landor, who was born there in a house dear to his childhood for its mulberries and cedars, its chestnut wood, and its fig tree at the window. Partly for his sake I had visited Rugby, on the eastern border of Warwickshire,—that great public school which became, under Dr. Arnold's mastership, such a power in English life. Rugby disapproved of my special interest, for it has had better boys than Landor, so wild-tempered a lad that his father was requested to remove him when, only fifteen, he was within five of being head of the school. But the neighbouring village of Bilton entirely endorsed my motives when I went the rounds of Bilton Hall as an act of respectful sympathy for the eminent Mr. Addison, who wedded the Dowager Countess of Warwick and here resided with her for the three years that his life endured under that magnificent yoke.
With so much sightseeing to our credit, we decided to limit our Warwick experiences on this occasion to luncheon and the castle, for although we both had "done" the splendid home of the Earls of Warwick more than once, even viewing it by moonlight and by dawnlight from the bridge across the Avon, it did not seem decorous to pass by without leaving cards—not our visiting cards, but those for which one pays two shillings apiece in the shop over against the gate.
Warwick Castle, built of the very centuries, cannot be expected to alter with Time's "brief hours and weeks"—at least, with so few of them as fall to one poor mortal's lot. From visit to visit I find it as unchanged as the multiplication table. By that same chill avenue, cut through the solid rock and densely shaded, we passed into the same grassy court lorded over by the same arrogant peacocks—who have, however, developed an intemperate appetite for sweet chocolate—and girt about by the same proud walls and grey, embattled towers. A princely seat of splendid memories, one is half ashamed to join the inquisitive procession that trails after a supercilious guide through the series of state apartments—Great Hall, Red Drawing Room, Cedar Room, Gilt Drawing Room, Boudoir, Armory Passage, and so on to the end. We looked at the same relics,—old Guy's dubious porridge pot, Marie Antoinette's mosaic table, Queen Anne's red velvet bed, the mace of the King-maker, Cromwell's helmet; the same treasures of rare workmanship and fabulous cost,—a Venetian table inlaid with precious stones, shimmering tapestries, enamelled cabinets and clocks; the same notable succession of portraits in which the varying art of Van Dyke, Holbein, Rembrandt, Rubens, Lely, Kneller has perpetuated some of the most significant faces of history. How strangely they turn their eyes on one another!—Anne Boleyn; her Bluebeard, Henry VIII, pictured here not only in his rank manhood, but as a sweet-lipped child; Loyola in priestly vestments of gold and crimson; the Earl of Strafford with his doomful look; Charles I; Henrietta Maria; Rupert of the Rhine; the heroic Marquis of Montrose; the literary Duke of Newcastle; the romantic Gondomar, Spanish ambassador to Elizabeth; and with them—confuting my rash statement that the castle knows no change—Sargent's portrait of the present Countess of Warwick, a democrat of the democrats, enfolding her little son. There remained the walk through the gardens to the conservatory, whose Warwick Vase, said to have been found in Hadrian's Villa, is, for all its grandeur, less dear to memory than the level green branches of the great cedars of Lebanon. But when it came to peacocks and pussycats cut in yew, we deemed it time to resume our journey.