Famous Persons and Places

by Nathaniel Parker Willis

“And this small wooden box?”

“Made of Shakspere’s mulberry, sir. I had sich a time about that box, sir. Two young gemmen were here the other day—just run up, while the coach was changing horses, to see the house. As soon as they were gone I misses my box. Off scuds my son to the ‘Red Horse,’ and there they sat on the top looking as innocent as may be. ‘Stop the coach,’ says my son. ‘What do you want?’ says the driver. ‘My mother’s mulberry box—Shakspere’s mulberry box!—One of them ’ere young men’s got it in his pocket.’ And true enough, sir, one on ’em had the imperence to take it out of his pocket, and fling it into my son’s face: and you know the coach never stops a minnit for nothing, or he’d a’ smarted for it.”

Spirit of Shakspere! dost thou not sometimes walk alone in this humble chamber! Must one’s inmost soul be fretted and frighted always from its devotion by an abominable old woman? Why should not such lucrative occupations be given in charity to the deaf and dumb? The pointing of a finger were enough in such spots of earth!

I sat down in despair to look over the book of visiters, trusting that she would tire of my inattention. As it was no use to point out names to those who would not look, however, she commenced a long story of an American who had lately taken the whim to sleep in Shakspere’s birthplace. She had shaken him down a bed on the floor, and he had passed the night there. It seemed to bother her to comprehend why two-thirds of her visiters should be Americans—a circumstance that was abundantly proved by the books.

It was only when we were fairly in the street, that I began to realize that I had seen one of the most glorious altars of memory—that deathless Will Shakspere, the mortal, who was, perhaps (not to speak profanely) next to his Maker, in the divine faculty of creation, first saw the light through the low lattice on which we turned back to look.

The single window of the room in which Scott died at Abbotsford, and this in the birth-chamber of Shakspere, have seemed to me almost marked with the touch of the fire of those great souls—for I think we have an instinct which tells us on the spot where mighty spirits have come or gone, that they came and went with the light of heaven.

We walked down the street to see the house where Shakspere lived on his return to Stratford. It stands at the corner of a lane, not far from the church where he was buried, and is a newish un-Shaksperian looking place—no doubt, if it be indeed the same house, most profanely and considerably altered. The present proprietor or occupant of the house or site took upon himself some time since the odium of cutting down the famous mulberry tree planted by the poet’s hand in the garden.

I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes that two or three miles before coming to Stratford we passed through Shottery, where Anne Hathaway lived. A nephew of the excellent baronet whose guests we were occupies the house. I looked up and down the green lanes about it, and glanced my eye round upon the hills over which the sun has continued to set and the moon to rise in her love inspiring beauty ever since. There were doubtless outlines in the landscape which had been followed by the eye of Shakespere when coming, a trembling lover, to Shottery—doubtless, teints in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke-wreaths from the old homesteads on the high hill-sides which are little altered now. How daringly imagination plucks back the past in such places! How boldly we ask of fancy and probability the thousand questions we would put, if we might, to the magic mirror of Agrippa? Did that great mortal love timidly, like ourselves? Was the passionate outpouring of his heart simple, and suited to the humble condition of Anne Hathaway, or was it the first fiery coinage of Romeo and Othello? Did she know the immortal honor and light poured upon woman by the love of genius? Did she know how this common and oftenest terrestrial passion becomes fused in the poet’s bosom with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous elevation and purity, ascends lambently and musically to the very stars? Did she coy it with him? Was she a woman to him, as commoner mortals find woman—capricious, tender, cruel, intoxicating, cold—everything by changes impossible to calculate or foresee? Did he walk home to Stratford, sometimes, despairing, in perfect sick heartedness, of her affection, and was he recalled by a message or a lover’s instinct to find her weeping and passionately repentant?

How natural it is by such questions and speculations to betray our innate desire to bring the lofty spirits of our common mould to our own inward level—to seek analogies between our affections, passions, appetites, and theirs—to wish they might have been no more exalted, no more fervent, no more worthy of the adorable love of woman than ourselves! The same temper that prompts the depreciation, the envy, the hatred, exercised toward the poet in his lifetime, mingles, not inconsiderably, in the researches so industriously prosecuted after his death into his youth and history. To be admired in this world, and much more to be beloved for higher qualities than his fellow-men, insures to genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be ferreted out with all his frailties and imperfections from the grave.

The church in which Shakspere is buried stands near the banks of the Avon, and is a most picturesque and proper place of repose for his ashes. An avenue of small trees and vines, ingeniously overlaced, extends from the street to the principal door, and the interior is broken up into that confused and accidental medley of tombs, pews, cross-lights, and pillars, for which the old churches of England are remarkable. The tomb and effigy of the great poet lie in an inner chapel, and are as described in every traveller’s book. I will not take up room with the repetition.