“He sat with his feet on the fender, poking the fire, and a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought was in his mind. ‘No, ma’am,’ says he, ‘I did not.’ I shuts the door and sits down again, for I hadn’t the heart to tell him it was late, for he was a gentleman not to speak rudely to, mem. Well, it was past twelve o’clock when the bell did ring. ‘There!’ says I to Sarah, ‘thank heaven he has done thinking, and we can go to bed!’ So he walked up stairs with his light, and the next morning he was up early and off to the Shakspeare house....
“There’s a Mr. Vincent that comes here sometimes, and he says to me one day—‘So, Mrs. Gardiner, you’re finely immortalized! Read that!’ So the minnit I read it I remembered who it was and all about it, and I runs and gets the number three poker, and locks it up safe and sound, and by and by I sends it to Brummagem and has his name engraved on it; and here you see it, sir, and I wouldn’t take no money for it.”
Mr. Willis was in Stratford-on-Avon in 1836. In 1877 the “sceptre” was displayed to us, as I have narrated, as one of the valuable properties of the Red Horse Inn, although good Mrs. Gardiner long ago laid down her housekeeping keys forever.
We sat late over the luncheon served in the parlor, which could not have been refurnished since Irving “had his tea” there, too happy in the chance that had brought us to the classic chamber to be otherwise than merry over the stout bill, one-third of which should have been set down to Geoffrey Crayon’s account. The Britons are thorough utilitarians. Nowhere do you get “sentiment gratis.”
We drove home in the summer twilight, that lasts in the British Isles until dawn, and enables one to read with ease until ten o’clock P.M. Our road skirted the confines of Charlecote, the country-seat of the Lucys. The family was at home, and visitors were therefore excluded. It is a fine old place, but the park, which is extensive, looked like a neglected common after the perfectly appointed grounds of Stoneleigh Abbey, through which we passed. The fence enclosing the Charlecote domain was a sort of double hurdle, in miserable repair, and intertwisted with wild vines and brambles. The deer were gathered in groups and herds under oaks that may have sheltered their forefathers in Shakspeare’s youth. Scared by our wheels, rabbits scampered from hedge to coverts of bracken. If the fences were in no better state “in those ruder ages, when”—to quote Shakspeare’s biographer—“the spirit of Robin Hood was yet abroad, and deer and coney-stealing classed, with robbing orchards, among the more adventurous, but ordinary levities of youth,” the trespass for which the Stratford poacher was arraigned was a natural surrender to irresistible temptation, and the deed easily done.
CHAPTER VII.
Kenilworth.
WE never decided whether it was to our advantage or disappointment that we all re-read the novel of that name before visiting Kenilworth. It is certain that we came away saying bitterly uncharitable things of Oliver Cromwell, to whose command, and not to Time, is due the destruction of one of the finest castles in the realm. Caput, who, after the habit of amateur archæologists, never stirs without an imaginary surveyor’s chain in hand, had studied up the road and ruins in former visits, and acted now as guide and historian. We were loth to accept the country road, narrower and more rutty than any other in the vicinity, as that once filled by the stupendous pageant described by Scott and graver chroniclers as unsurpassed in costliness and display by any in the Elizabethan age. Our surveyor talked of each stage in the progress with the calm confidence of one who had made a part of the procession. We knew to a minute at what hour of the night the queen—having been delayed by a hunt at Warwick Castle—with Leicester at her bridle-rein, passed the brook at the bottom of Castle-hill. A stream so insignificant, and crossed by such a common little bridge, we were ashamed to speak of them in such a connection. The column of courtiers and soldiers thronging the highway was ablaze with the torches carried by Leicester’s men. The castle, illuminated to the topmost battlement, made so brave a show the thrifty virgin needed to feast her eyes often and much upon the splendid beauty of the man at her saddle-bow to console herself for having presented him with Kenilworth and the estates—twenty miles in circumference—pertaining thereunto.