“All the ciphers that ever a perturbed ingenuity has read into Elizabethan literature cannot shape the uncontroverted and incontrovertible truth that is written in marble over that sacred tomb in Stratford Church: ‘Shakespeare, with whom quick Nature died; Nestor in wisdom, Socrates in genius, Virgil in art.’ And if anything were needed utterly to discredit and finally to explode the Bacon humbug, it would be supplied by the monstrous story that Mrs. Gallup’s reckless and mischievous fancy has evolved, and that Mr. Mallock later has had the astounding effrontery in some sort to countenance,—a story that covers Queen Elizabeth with shame, that makes Essex and Bacon her children (their father being Leicester), so that Bacon becomes practically the murderer and defamer of his own brother, and while darkening Bacon’s already tarnished reputation with unspeakable infamy, capsizes all authentic records of Elizabeth’s time, taxes even the credulity of ignorance, makes common sense ridiculous, and turns all knowledge to laughter and contempt.”
Stratford-on-Avon
A London editor, in commenting upon the work of the Stratford iconoclasts, says it is deplorable to have doubts started as to whether the Shakespeare Museum contains a single genuine relic; whether Anne Hathaway’s cottage is not, after all, a simple fraud; and Mary Arden’s farm a disreputably unhistorical building. Anne Hathaway’s cottage is a place which every Shakespeare-loving visitor to his native town makes a point of inspecting. It has been good enough for all the myriad tourists of all nationalities that have flocked to see it; yet a dark rumor has been going about seriously affecting its bona fides as a genuine article. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, the Shakespearian critic, we are told, is of opinion that the probabilities are decidedly against the so-called cottage ever having contained the woman who, at the age of twenty-seven, married William Shakespeare when the latter was only nineteen. Here is a pleasing illusion dissipated at once. Those who have visited the spot can no longer, as they recall that lowly cot nestling among its trees and ascend again in fancy the creaking wooden staircase, picture to themselves the May mornings when the Bard of All Time must have gone the same round on a courting expedition, and probably sat under the eaves with his arm round his future bride. The sighing tourist will whisper, What next? Well, the next surprise in store for him is the disestablishment and disendowment of the old farmhouse still shown as that in which the poet’s mother, Mary Arden, lived. Its history is now said to be altogether inconsistent with the theory that any of the ancestors of the Shakespeare stock ever resided there. In addition to the attack on the Bard’s wife, his mother too meets with this tragic fate. We are on the high road to having it proved that no such person as Mary Arden ever lived; that, in fact, Shakespeare was such a wonderful man that he never had a mother at all. This about the cottage and farmhouse is distinctly bad news for those who some time ago spent their money on the “Shakespeare Fund,” which went to purchasing for the good of the nation all the spots considered to be traditionally connected with the life of the master-poet. It is also bad news for the tourists and pilgrims. Will they care to go to the shrine of the great dramatist if a cloud of doubt surrounds some of its most cherished monuments?
The people of the little old market-town on the quiet Avon are resentful over this scepticism. The Stratfordians would be the last people in the world to admit the truth of the story about Anne Hathaway’s cottage or Mary Arden’s farm, even when backed up by such a competent critic in these matters as Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps. They have hitherto found the fame of the Prince of Poets exceedingly useful to their small borough. Shakespeare represents bread-and-butter to many of the excellent burghers and burgesses. They owe to him their winter’s stock of coals and their weekly supply of cabbages and candles and household matches. Should any ruthless hand remove from them this source of legitimate gain, then the contiguous workhouse would soon feel the result. This idea, therefore, about Anne Hathaway’s cottage must be regarded simply with disgust by every loyal citizen of the good Warwickshire town. In private they all probably wish to goodness that these pestilent critics were at the bottom of the sea, with their destructive doubts and depressing hypotheses. With one accord, no doubt, the Stratford folk would combine to duck the unfortunate author of the latest Shakespearian heresy in the reedy Avon if they could lay hands on him. Such theories, they think, ought to be put down with a strong hand. What is Parliament about that it allows honest people’s bread to be thus taken out of their mouths? They would boycott the theory-mongers if they could. It would, indeed, be an evil day were the last of the tourists to appear at Stratford. What, no more American enthusiasts? No more smoke-dried pedants and musty students of “First Folios?” No more excursions to the local shrine and personally-conducted mobs of open-mouthed worshippers all gone “away in the ewigkeit?” Such an idea is enough to cause an effusion of blood on the brain of those who have lived all their lives in the shadow of the church where the poet’s dust rests, and where the remarkable effigy is to be seen which is still considered to be one of the best portraits extant of the sublime genius.
When a theory like this is once started, no human being can tell how far the stone will roll, or what will be the ultimate result. What would be the effect on the Shakespeare-worshipping tourist if everything at Stratford were shown to him as being only doubtfully connected with the Bard? For example, instead of the guide-post pointing the way to Anne Hathaway’s cottage, it might be sadly truthful to say, “To the reputed cottage of Anne Hathaway,” and Mary Arden’s farm ought to be ticketed as an “uncertain” building. Shakespeare’s tomb in the church would have to be pointed out as the tomb “either of Shakespeare or somebody else;” and if Shakespeare never wrote his own plays, it really does not much matter whose sepulchre it may be. That famous curse on the person who moves his bones would pass unnoticed; for who would care for a curse launched by somebody who was not Shakespeare, but a local versifier who flourished three hundred years ago, or perhaps the tombstone man himself, who may have charged a little more if he carved a quatrain of his own invention on the stone? Then, supposing the Shakespeare Museum were to experience a breath of the same critical spirit, where would the ring be that the Bard wore, the chair, the books that he might have used, and so on? That ancient chair was described by Washington Irving years ago. He says it is the most favorite object of curiosity in the whole of the house. He draws a picture of how Shakespeare may have sat in it when a boy, watching the slowly-revolving spit with all the longing of an urchin; or of an evening “listening to the gossips and cronies of Stratford, dealing forth church-yard tales and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times of England.” Yes, no doubt he may have done so; and it is because of that delightful possibility that everybody used to sit down in his chair, to its great detriment. Americans are particularly anxious, the custodian asserts, to take a seat where the Bard of Avon had once sat. No sooner did they get into the room than they raced for the chair. After a severe scuffle one proud man succeeded in being the first to sit down in it; but after this sort of thing had gone on for some time, the chair was found to be so rickety that henceforth nobody was allowed to touch it. Washington Irving rather cruelly remarks that the chair partook of the volatile nature of the Santa Casa of Loretto or the Flying Chair of the Arabian Enchanter, for “though sold some time ago to a Northern Princess, it has found its way back again to the old chimney-corner.” This is one of those critical calumnies which need to be indignantly refuted. To doubt Shakespeare’s chair means a depression in the relic and tourist trade at Stratford; and, after all, what does it matter if the chair is a modern one, supposing that everybody believes it to be that in which Shakespeare sat while he composed “Macbeth”? The ordinary tourist does not ask for doubts—he wants certainty. Dogmatism is what is required at literary shrines; not a halting, hesitating statement that “Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps thinks this,” and “Mr. Somebody Else thinks that,” but a downright positive assertion of fact. Anne Hathaway’s cottage will lose half its attractions if the miserable carping spirit of a regard for historic accuracy comes in. There is nothing like resolute, good-humored credulity in such matters.
L. E. L. Assumes a Virtue
William Howitt remarks, “I met Letitia E. Landon in company at a time when there was a report that she was actually though secretly married.[[4]] Mrs. Hofland, on entering the room, went up to her in her plain, straightforward way, and said, ‘Ah, my dear, what must I call you, Miss Landon, or whom?’ After well-feigned surprise at the question, Miss Landon began to talk in a tone of merry ridicule at this report, and ended by declaring that as to love or marriage, they were things she never thought of. ‘What then have you been doing with yourself this last month?’
[4]. In later years, when L. E. L. married Governor Machan, of Cape Coast Castle, West Africa, she was thirty-six years of age, and died a few months afterwards.
“‘Oh, I have been puzzling my brain to invent a new sleeve; how do you like it?’ showing her arm.
“‘You never think of such a thing as love!’ exclaimed a sentimental young man; ‘you, who have written so many volumes upon it?’