A truer remark or a more just criticism was perhaps never made on the Sketch-Book. We smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded:—
“I was in and out of the coffee room the night he arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his modest ways and timid look that he was a gentleman, and not fit company for the other travellers. They were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and you know, mem, ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit, and after their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I says to Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, ‘That nice gentleman can’t get near the fire, and you go and light a fire in number three, and he shall sit alone, and it shan’t cost him nothing, for I like the look on him.’ Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and after his tea, he puts his legs up over the grate, and there he sits with the poker in his hand till ten o’clock. The other travellers went to bed, and at last the house was as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate now and then in number three, and every time I heard it, I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting up to ring for a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded, and still no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I, ‘Go into number three, and upset something, for I am sure that gentleman has fallen asleep.’—‘La, ma’am,’ says Sarah,’I don’t dare.’ ‘Well, then,’ says I, ‘I’ll go.’ So I opens the door, and I says, ‘If you please, sir, did you ring?’—little thinking that question would ever be written down in such a beautiful book, mem. 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 that 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 Shakspere house, and he brings me home a box of the mulberry tree, and asks me if I thought it was genuine, and said it was for his mother in America. And I loved him still more for that, and I’m sure I prayed she might live to see him return.”
“I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon after did you set aside the poker?”
“Why, sir, you see 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.”
I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving, and I evidently lost ground with the hostess of the “Red Horse” for that misfortune. I delighted her, however, with the account which I had seen in a late newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the prairies of the west; and she soon courtesied herself out, and left me to the delightful society of the distinguished lady who had accompanied me. Among all my many loiterings in many lands, I remember none more intellectually pure and gratifying, than this at Stratford-on-Avon. My sleep, in the little bed consecrated by the slumbers of the immortal Geoffrey, was sweet and light; and I write myself his debtor for a large share of the pleasure which genius like his lavishes on the world.
CHARLECOTE.
Once more posting through Shottery and Stratford-on-Avon, on the road to Kenilworth and Warwick, I felt a pleasure in becoming an habitué in Shakspere’s town—it being recognized by the Stratford post-boys, known at the Stratford inn, and remembered at the toll-gates. It is pleasant to be welcomed by name anywhere; but at Stratford-on-Avon, it is a recognition by those whose fathers or predecessors were the companions of Shakspere’s frolics. Every fellow in a slouched hat—every idler on a tavern bench—every saunterer with a dog at his heels on the highway—should be a deer-stealer from Charlecote. You would almost ask him, “Was Will Shakspere with you last night?”
The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortalized by a varlet poacher who was tried before old Sir Thomas for stealing a buck. They have drawn an apology from Walter Savage Landor for making too free with the family history, under cover of an imaginary account of the trial. I thought, as we drove along in sight of the fine old hall, with its broad park and majestic trees—very much as it stood in the days of Sir Thomas, I believe—that most probably the descendants of the old justice look even now upon Shakspere more as an offender against the game-laws than as a writer of immortal plays. I venture to say, it would be bad tact in a visiter to Charlecote to felicitate the family on the honor of possessing a park in which Shakspere had stolen deer—to show more interest in seeing the hall in which he was tried than in the family portraits.
On the road which I was travelling (from Stratford to Charlecote) Shakspere had been dragged as a culprit. What were his feelings before Sir Thomas? He felt, doubtless, as every possessor of the divine fire of genius must feel, when brought rudely in contact with his fellow-men, that he was too much their superior to be angry. The humor in which he has drawn Justice Shallow proves abundantly that he was more amused than displeased with his own trial. But was there no vexation at the moment? A reflection, it might be, from the estimate of his position in the minds of those who were about him—who looked on him simply as a stealer of so much venison. Did he care for Anne Hathaway’s opinion then?
How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand the relation between Judge and culprit on that trial! How little did he dream he was sitting for his picture to the pestilent varlet at the bar; that the deer-stealer could better afford to forgive him than he the deer-stealer! Genius forgives, or rather forgets, all wrongs done in ignorance of its immortal presence. Had Ben Jonson made a wilful jest on a line in his new play, it would have rankled longer than fine and imprisonment for deer-stealing. Those who crowd back and trample upon men of genius in the common walk of life; who cheat them, misrepresent them, take advantage of their inattention or their generosity in worldly matters, are sometimes surprised how their injuries, if not themselves, are forgotten. Old Adam Woodcock might as well have held malice against Roland Græme for the stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of Misrule.