There is a famous Hamlet skull in America, known as Yorick’s skull, which is in the possession of Dr. Horace Howard Furness, of Philadelphia.
Dr. Furness is one of the greatest Shakespearian scholars of the day. Dr. Georg Brandes, of Copenhagen, Mr. Sydney Lee, of London, and he probably know more of the work of this great genius than any other living persons.
When I was in America I had the pleasure of spending a few days at Dr. Furness’s delightful home at Wallingford, on the shores of the Delaware River. The place might be in England, from its appearance—a low, rambling old house with wide balconies, creeper-grown with roses, and honey-suckle hugging the porch. The dear old home was built more than a century ago, by some of Dr. Furness’s ancestors, and one sees the love of those ancestors for the old English style manifest at every turn. The whole interior bespeaks intellectual refinement.
He stood on the doorstep to welcome me, a grey-headed man of some sixty-eight years, with a ruddy complexion, and closely cut white moustache. His manner was delightful; no more polished gentleman ever walked this earth than Horace Howard Furness, the great American writer. His father was an intimate friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose famous portrait at the Philadelphia Art Gallery was painted by the doctor’s brother; so young Horace was brought up amid intellectual surroundings.
At the back of the house is the world-renowned iron-proof Shakespearian library, the collection of forty ardent years. It is a veritable museum with its upper galleries, its many tables, and its endless cases of treasures. The books which line the walls were all catalogued by the doctor himself. He has many of the earlier editions of Shakespeare besides other rare volumes. Some original MSS. of Charles Lamb, beautifully written and signed Elia, are there; a delightful sketch of Mary Anderson by Forbes Robertson; Lady Martin’s (Helen Faucit) own acting editions of the parts she played marked by herself; and in a special glass case lie a pair of grey gauntlet gloves, richly embroidered in silver, which were worn by Shakespeare himself when an actor. If I remember rightly they came from David Garrick, and the card of authenticity is in the case. Then there are Garrick’s and Booth’s walking-sticks, and on a small ebony stand, the famous Yorick skull handled in the grave-digging scene by all the great actors who have visited Philadelphia, and signed by them—Booth, Irving, Tree, Sothern, etc.
I never spent a more delightful evening than one in October, 1900, when the family went off to Philadelphia to see the dramatisation of one of Dr. Weir Mitchell’s novels by his son, and I was left alone with Dr. Furness for some hours.
What a charming companion. What a fund of information and humour, what a courtly manner, what a contrast to the ruggedness of Ibsen, or the wild energy of Björnsen. Here was repose and strength. Not an originator, perhaps, but a learned disciple. How he loved Shakespeare, with what reverence he spoke of him. He scoffed at the mere mention of Bacon’s name, and was glad, very glad, so little was known of the private life of Shakespeare.
“He was too great to be mortal; I do not want to associate any of Nature’s frailties with such a mind. His work is the thing, for the man as a man I care nothing.” This was unlike Brandes, whose brilliant books on Shakespeare deal chiefly with the man.
There was something particularly delightful about Horace Furness and his home. Even the dinner-table appointments were his choice. The soup-plates were of the rarest Oriental porcelain, and the meat-plates were of silver with mottoes chosen by himself round the borders.
“I loved my china, but it got broken year by year, until in desperation I looked about for something that could not break—solid and plain, like myself, eh?” he chuckled. The mottoes were well chosen and the idea as original as everything else about Dr. Furness.