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Statford-on-Avon
Thou soft-flowing Avon, by thy silver stream
Of things more than mortal sweet Shakespeare would dream
The fairies by moonlight dance round his green bed,
For hallow'd the turf is which pillow'd his head.
GARRICK.
TO a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he
can truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something
like independence and territorial consequence when, after a weary
day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into
slippers, and stretches himself before an inn-fire. Let the world
without go as it may, let kingdoms rise or fall, so long as he
has the wherewithal to pay his bill he is, for the time being,
the very monarch of all he surveys. The armchair is his throne,
the poker his sceptre, and the little parlor, some twelve feet
square, his undisputed empire. It is a morsel of certainly
snatched from the midst of the uncertainties of life; it is a
sunny moment gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day: and he who has
advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existence knows the
importance of husbanding even morsels and moments of enjoyment.
"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" thought I, as I gave
the fire a stir, lolled back in my elbow-chair, and cast a
complacent look about the little parlor of the Red Horse at
Stratford-on-Avon.
The words of sweet Shakespeare were just passing through my mind
as the clock struck midnight from the tower of the church in
which he lies buried. There was a gentle tap at the door, and a
pretty chambermaid, putting in her smiling face, inquired, with a
hesitating air, whether I had rung. I understood it as a modest
hint that it was time to retire. My dream of absolute dominion
was at an end; so abdicating my throne, like a prudent potentate,
to avoid being deposed, and putting the Stratford Guide-Book
under my arm as a pillow companion, I went to bed, and dreamt all
night of Shakespeare, the jubilee, and David Garrick.
The next morning was one of those quickening mornings which we
sometimes have in early spring, for it was about the middle of
March. The chills of a long winter had suddenly given way; the
north wind had spent its last gasp; and a mild air came stealing
from the west, breathing the breath of life into Nature, and
wooing every bud and flower to burst forth into fragrance and
beauty.
I had come to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My first visit
was to the house where Shakespeare was born, and where, according
to tradition, he was brought up to his father's craft of
wool-combing. It is a small mean-looking edifice of wood and
plaster, a true nestling-place of genius, which seems to delight
in hatching its offspring in by-corners. The walls of its squalid
chambers are covered with names and inscriptions in every
language by pilgrims of all nations, ranks, and conditions, from
the prince to the peasant, and present a simple but striking
instance of the spontaneous and universal homage of mankind to
the great poet of Nature.
The house is shown by a garrulous old lady in a frosty red face,
lighted up by a cold blue, anxious eye, and garnished with
artificial locks of flaxen hair curling from under an exceedingly
dirty cap. She was peculiarly assiduous in exhibiting the relics
with which this, like all other celebrated shrines, abounds.
There was the shattered stock of the very matchlock with which
Shakespeare shot the deer on his poaching exploits. There, too,
was his tobacco-box, which proves that he was a rival smoker of
Sir Walter Raleigh: the sword also with which he played Hamlet;
and the identical lantern with which Friar Laurence discovered
Romeo and Juliet at the tomb. There was an ample supply also of
Shakespeare's mulberry tree, which seems to have as extraordinary
powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the true cross, of
which there is enough extant to build a ship of the line.
The most favorite object of curiosity, however, is Shakespeare's
chair. It stands in a chimney-nook of a small gloomy chamber just
behind what was his father's shop. Here he may many a time have
sat when a boy, watching the slowly revolving spit with all the
longing of an urchin, or of an evening listening to the cronies
and gossips of Stratford dealing forth churchyard tales and
legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times of England. In this
chair it is the custom of every one that visits the house to sit:
whether this be done with the hope of imbibing any of the
inspiration of the bard I am at a loss to say; I merely mention
the fact, and mine hostess privately assured me that, though
built of solid oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees the
chair had to be new bottomed at least once in three years. It is
worthy of notice also, in the history of this extraordinary
chair, that it partakes something of the volatile nature of the
Santa Casa of Loretto, or the flying chair of the Arabian
enchanter; for, though sold some few years since to a northern
princess, yet, strange to tell, it has found its way back again
to the old chimney-corner.
I am always of easy faith in such matters, and am ever willing to
be deceived where the deceit is pleasant and costs nothing. I am
therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local
anecdotes of goblins and great men, and would advise all
travellers who travel for their gratification to be the same.
What is it to us whether these stories be true or false, so long
as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them and enjoy
all the charm of the reality? There is nothing like resolute
good-humored credulity in these matters, and on this occasion I
went even so far as willingly to believe the claims of mine
hostess to a lineal descent from the poet, when, unluckily for my
faith, she put into my hands a play of her own composition, which
set all belief in her own consanguinity at defiance.
From the birthplace of Shakespeare a few paces brought me to his
grave. He lies buried in the chancel of the parish church, a
large and venerable pile, mouldering with age, but richly
ornamented. It stands on the banks of the Avon on an embowered
point, and separated by adjoining gardens from the suburbs of the
town. Its situation is quiet and retired; the river runs
murmuring at the foot of the churchyard, and the elms which grow
upon its banks droop their branches into its clear bosom. An
avenue of limes, the boughs of which are curiously interlaced, so
as to form in summer an arched way of foliage, leads up from the
gate of the yard to the church-porch. The graves are overgrown
with grass; the gray tombstones, some of them nearly sunk into
the earth, are half covered with moss, which has likewise tinted
the reverend old building. Small birds have built their nests
among the cornices and fissures of the walls, and keep up a
continual flutter and chirping; and rooks are sailing and cawing
about its lofty gray spire.
In the course of my rambles I met with the gray-headed sexton,
Edmonds, and accompanied him home to get the key of the church.
He had lived in Stratford, man and boy, for eighty years, and
seemed still to consider himself a vigorous man, with the trivial
exception that he had nearly lost the use of his legs for a few
years past. His dwelling was a cottage looking out upon the Avon
and its bordering meadows, and was a picture of that neatness,
order, and comfort which pervade the humblest dwellings in this
country. A low whitewashed room, with a stone floor carefully
scrubbed, served for parlor, kitchen, and hall. Rows of pewter
and earthen dishes glittered along the dresser. On an old oaken
table, well rubbed and polished, lay the family Bible and
prayer-book, and the drawer contained the family library,
composed of about half a score of well-thumbed volumes. An
ancient clock, that important article of cottage furniture,
ticked on the opposite side of the room, with a bright
warming-pan hanging on one side of it, and the old man's
horn-handled Sunday cane on the other. The fireplace, as usual,
was wide and deep enough to admit a gossip knot within its jambs.
In one corner sat the old man's granddaughter sewing, a pretty
blue-eyed girl, and in the opposite corner was a superannuated
crony whom he addressed by the name of John Ange, and who, I
found, had been his companion from childhood. They had played
together in infancy; they had worked together in manhood; they
were now tottering about and gossiping away the evening of life;
and in a short time they will probably be buried together in the
neighboring churchyard. It is not often that we see two streams
of existence running thus evenly and tranquilly side by side; it
is only in such quiet "bosom scenes" of life that they are to be
met with.
I had hoped to gather some traditionary anecdotes of the bard
from these ancient chroniclers, but they had nothing new to
impart. The long interval during which Shakespeare's writings lay
in comparative neglect has spread its shadow over his history,
and it is his good or evil lot that scarcely anything remains to
his biographers but a scanty handful of conjectures.
The sexton and his companion had been employed as carpenters on
the preparations for the celebrated Stratford Jubilee, and they
remembered Garrick, the prime mover of the fete, who
superintended the arrangements, and who, according to the sexton,
was "a short punch man, very lively and bustling." John Ange had
assisted also in cutting down Shakespeare's mulberry tree, of
which he had a morsel in his pocket for sale; no doubt a
sovereign quickener of literary conception.
I was grieved to hear these two worthy wights speak very
dubiously of the eloquent dame who shows the Shakespeare house.
John Ange shook his head when I mentioned her valuable and
inexhaustible collection of relics, particularly her remains of
the mulberry tree; and the old sexton even expressed a doubt as
to Shakespeare having been born in her house. I soon discovered
that he looked upon her mansion with an evil eye, as a rival to
the poet's tomb, the latter having comparatively but few
visitors. Thus it is that historians differ at the very outset,
and mere pebbles make the stream of truth diverge into different
channels even at the fountain-head.
We approached the church through the avenue of limes, and entered
by a Gothic porch, highly ornamented, with carved doors of
massive oak. The interior is spacious, and the architecture and
embellishments superior to those of most country churches. There
are several ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some
of which hang funeral escutcheons and banners dropping piecemeal
from the walls. The tomb of Shakespeare is in the chancel. The
place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed
windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the
walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat stone marks the
spot where the bard is buried. There are four lines inscribed on
it, said to have been written by himself, and which have in them
something extremely awful. If they are indeed his own, they show
that solicitude about the quiet of the grave which seems natural
to fine sensibilities and thoughtful minds:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare
To dig the dust inclosed here.
Blessed be he that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of
Shakespeare, put up shortly after his death and considered as a
resemblance. The aspect is pleasant and serene, with a
finely-arched forehead; and I thought I could read in it clear
indications of that cheerful, social disposition by which he was
as much characterized among his contemporaries as by the vastness
of his genius. The inscription mentions his age at the time of
his decease, fifty-three years--an untimely death for the world,
for what fruit might not have been expected from the golden
autumn of such a mind, sheltered as it was from the stormy
vicissitudes of life, and flourishing in the sunshine of popular
and royal favor?
The inscription on the tombstone has not been without its effect.
It has prevented the removal of his remains from the bosom of his
native place to Westminster Abbey, which was at one time
contemplated. A few years since also, as some laborers were
digging to make an adjoining vault, the earth caved in, so as to
leave a vacant space almost like an arch, through which one might
have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle
with his remains so awfully guarded by a malediction; and lest
any of the idle or the curious or any collector of relics should
be tempted to commit depredations, the old sexton kept watch over
the place for two days, until the vault was finished and the
aperture closed again. He told me that he had made bold to look
in at the hole, but could see neither coffin nor bones--nothing
but dust. It was something, I thought, to have seen the dust of
Shakespeare.
Next to this grave are those of his wife, his favorite daughter,
Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is
a full-length effigy of his old friend John Combe, of usurious
memory, on whom he is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph.
There are other monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell
on anything that is not connected with Shakespeare. His idea
pervades the place; the whole pile seems but as his mausoleum.
The feelings, no longer checked and thwarted by doubt, here
indulge in perfect confidence: other traces of him may be false
or dubious, but here is palpable evidence and absolute certainty.
As I trod the sounding pavement there was something intense and
thrilling in the idea that in very truth the remains of
Shakespeare were mouldering beneath my feet. It was a long time
before I could prevail upon myself to leave the place; and as I
passed through the churchyard I plucked a branch from one of the
yew trees, the only relic that I have brought from Stratford.
I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrim's devotion, but
I had a desire to see the old family seat of the Lucys at
Charlecot, and to ramble through the park where Shakespeare, in
company with some of the roisterers of Stratford, committed his
youthful offence of deer-stealing. In this harebrained exploit we
are told that he was taken prisoner and carried to the keeper's
lodge, where he remained all night in doleful captivity. When
brought into the presence of Sir Thomas Lucy his treatment must
have been galling and humiliating; for it so wrought upon his
spirit as to produce a rough pasquinade which was affixed to the
park gate at Charlecot.*
This flagitious attack upon the dignity of the knight so incensed
him that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put the severity of
the laws in force against the rhyming deer-stalker. Shakespeare
did not wait to brave the united puissance of a knight of the
shire and a country attorney. He forthwith abandoned the pleasant
banks of the Avon and his paternal trade; wandered away to
London; became a hanger-on to the theatres; then an actor; and
finally wrote for the stage; and thus, through the persecution of
Sir Thomas Lucy, Stratford lost an indifferent wool-comber and
the world gained an immortal poet. He retained, however, for a
long time, a sense of the harsh treatment of the lord of
Charlecot, and revenged himself in his writings, but in the
sportive way of a good-natured mind. Sir Thomas is said to be the
original of Justice Shallow, and the satire is slyly fixed upon
him by the justice's armorial bearings, which, like those of the
knight, had white luces+ in the quarterings.
* The following is the only stanza extant of this lampoon:
A parliament member, a justice of peace,
At home a poor scarecrow, at London an asse,
If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,
Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it.
He thinks himself great;
Yet an asse in his state,
We allow by his ears but with asses to mate,
If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it,
Then sing lowsie Lucy whatever befall it.
+ The luce is a pike or jack, and abounds in the Avon about
Charlecot.
Various attempts have been made by his biographers to soften and
explain away this, early transgression of the poet; but I look
upon it as one of those thoughtless exploits natural to his
situation and turn of mind. Shakespeare, when young, had
doubtless all the wildness and irregularity of an ardent,
undisciplined, and undirected genius. The poetic temperament has
naturally something in it of the vagabond. When left to itself it
runs loosely and wildly, and delights in everything eccentric and
licentious. It is often a turn up of a die, in the gambling
freaks of fate, whether a natural genius shall turn out a great
rogue or a great poet; and had not Shakespeare's mind fortunately
taken a literary bias, he might have as daringly transcended all
civil as he has all dramatic laws.
I have little doubt that, in early life, when running like an
unbroken colt about the neighborbood of Stratford, he was to be
found in the company of all kinds of odd anomalous characters,
that he associated with all the madcaps of the place, and was one
of those unlucky urchins at mention of whom old men shake their
heads and predict that they will one day come to the gallows. To
him the poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park was doubtless like a
foray to a Scottish knight, and struck his eager, and as yet
untamed, imagination as something delightfully adventurous.*
* A proof of Shakespeare's random habits and associates in his
youthful days may be found in a traditionary anecdote, picked up
at Stratford by the elder Ireland, and mentioned in his
"Picturesque Views on the Avon."
About seven miles from Stratford lies the thirsty little
market-town of Bedford, famous for its ale. Two societies of the
village yeomanry used to meet, under the appellation of the
Bedford topers, and to challenge the lovers of good ale of the
neighboring villages to a contest of drinking. Among others, the
people of Stratford were called out to prove the strength of
their heads; and in the number of the champions was Shakespeare,
who, in spite of the proverb that "they who drink beer will think
beer," was as true to his ale as Falstaff to his sack. The
chivalry of Stratford was staggered at the first onset, and
sounded a retreat while they had yet the legs to carry them off
the field. They had scarcely marched a mile when, their legs
failing them, they were forced to lie down under a crab tree,
where they passed the night. It was still standing, and goes by
the name of Shakespeare's tree.
In the morning his companions awaked the bard, and proposed
returning to Bedford, but he declined, saying he had enough,
having drank with
Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,
Haunted Hilbro', Hungry Grafton,
Dudging Exhall, Papist Wicksford,
Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bedford.
"The villages here alluded to," says Ireland, "still bear the
epithets thus given them: the people of Pebworth are still famed
for their skill on the pipe and tabor; Hilborough is now called
Haunted Hilborough; and Grafton is famous for the poverty of its
soil."
The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still
remain in the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly
interesting front being connected with this whimsical but
eventful circumstance in the scanty history of the bard. As the
house stood at little more than three miles' distance from
Stratford, I resolved to pay it a pedestrian visit, that I might
stroll leisurely through some of those scenes from which
Shakespeare must have derived his earliest ideas of rural
imagery.
The country was yet naked and leafless, but English scenery is
always verdant, and the sudden change in the temperature of the
weather was surprising in its quickening effects upon the
landscape. It was inspiring and animating to witness this first
awakening of spring; to feel its warm breath stealing over the
senses; to see the moist mellow earth beginning to put forth the
green sprout and the tender blade, and the trees and shrubs, in
their reviving tints and bursting buds, giving the promise of
returning foliage and flower. The cold snow-drop, that little
borderer on the skirts of winter, was to be seen with its chaste
white blossoms in the small gardens before the cottages. The
bleating of the new-dropt lambs was faintly heard from the
fields. The sparrow twittered about the thatched eaves and
budding hedges; the robin threw a livelier note into his late
querulous wintry strain; and the lark, springing up from the
reeking bosom of the meadow, towered away into the bright fleecy
cloud, pouring forth torrents of melody. As I watched the little
songster mounting up higher and higher, until his body was a mere
speck on the white bosom of the cloud, while the ear was still
filled with his music, it called to mind Shakespeare's exquisite
little song in Cymbeline:
Hark! hark! the lark at heav'n's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs,
On chaliced flowers that lies.
And winking mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty bin,
My lady sweet arise!
Indeed, the whole country about here is poetic ground: everything
is associated with the idea of Shakespeare. Every old cottage
that I saw I fancied into some resort of his boyhood, where he
had acquired his intimate knowledge of rustic life and manners,
and heard those legendary tales and wild superstitions which he
has woven like witchcraft into his dramas. For in his time, we
are told, it was a popular amusement in winter evenings "to sit
round the fire, and tell merry tales of errant knights, queens,
lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters,
witches, fairies, goblins, and friars."*
* Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," enumerates a of these
fireside fancies: "And they have so fraid us with host
bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urchins, elves, hags, fairies,
satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the can sticke, tritons,
centaurs, dwarfes, giantes, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes,
changelings, incubus, Robin-goodfellow, the spoorne, the mare,
the man in the oke, the hell-waine, the fier drake, the puckle,
Tom Thombe, hobgoblins, Tom Tumbler, boneless, and such other
bugs, that we were afraid of our own shadowes."
My route for a part of the way lay in sight of the Avon, which
made a variety of the most fancy doublings and windings through a
wide and fertile valley--sometimes glittering from among willows
which fringed its borders; sometimes disappearing among groves or
beneath green banks; and sometimes rambling out into full view
and making an azure sweep round a slope of meadow-land. This
beautiful bosom of country is called the Vale of the Red Horse. A
distant line of undulating blue hills seems to be its boundary,
whilst all the soft intervening landscape lies in a manner
enchained in the silver links of the Avon.
After pursuing the road for about three miles, I turned off into
a footpath, which led along the borders of fields and under
hedgerows to a private gate of the park; there was a stile,
however, for the benefit of the pedestrian, there being a public
right of way through the grounds. I delight in these hospitable
estates, in which every one has a kind of property--at least as
far as the footpath is concerned. It in some measure reconciles a
poor man to his lot, and, what is more, to the better lot of his
neighbor, thus to have parks and pleasure-grounds thrown open for
his recreation. He breathes the pure air as freely and lolls as
luxuriously under the shade as the lord of the soil; and if he
has not the privilege of calling all that he sees his own, he has
not, at the same time, the trouble of paying for it and keeping
it in order.
I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms, whose
vast size bespoke the growth of centuries. The wind sounded
solemnly among their branches, and the rooks cawed from their
hereditary nests in the tree-tops. The eye ranged through a long
lessening vista, with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant
statue and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the
opening.
There is something about these stately old avenues that has the
effect of Gothic architecture, not merely from the pretended
similarity of form, but from their bearing the evidence of long
duration, and of having had their origin in a period of time with
which we associate ideas of romantic grandeur. They betoken also
the long-settled dignity and proudly-concentrated independence of
an ancient family; and I have heard a worthy but aristocratic old
friend observe, when speaking of the sumptuous palaces of modern
gentry, that "money could do much with stone and mortar, but
thank Heaven! there was no such thing as suddenly building up an
avenue of oaks."
It was from wandering in early life among this rich scenery, and
about the romantic solitudes of the adjoining park of Fullbroke,
which then formed a part of the Lucy estate, that some of
Shakepeare's commentators have supposed he derived his noble
forest meditations of Jaques and the enchanting woodland pictures
in "As You Like It." It is in lonely wanderings through such
scenes that the mind drinks deep but quiet draughts of
inspiration, and becomes intensely sensible of the beauty and
majesty of Nature. The imagination kindles into reverie and
rapture, vague but exquisite images and ideas keep breaking upon
it, and we revel in a mute and almost incommunicable luxury of
thought. It was in some such mood, and perhaps under one of those
very trees before me, which threw their broad shades over the
grassy banks and quivering waters of the Avon, that the poet's
fancy may have sallied forth into that little song which breathes
the very soul of a rural voluptuary
Unto the greenwood tree,
Who loves to lie with me
And tune his merry throat
Unto the sweet bird's note,
Come hither, come hither, come hither.
Here shall he see
No enemy,
But winter and rough weather.
I had now come in sight of the house. It is a large building of
brick with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic style of Queen
Elizabeth's day, having been built in the first year of her
reign. The exterior remains very nearly in its original state,
and may be considered a fair specimen of the residence of a
wealthy country gentleman of those days. A great gateway opens
from the park into a kind of courtyard in front of the house,
ornamented with a grassplot, shrubs, and flower-beds. The gateway
is in imitation of the ancient barbacan, being a kind of outpost
and flanked by towers, though evidently for mere ornament,
instead of defence. The front of the house is completely in the
old style with stone-shafted casements, a great bow-window of
heavy stone-work, and a portal with armorial bearings over it
carved in stone. At each corner of the building is an octagon
tower surmounted by a gilt ball and weather-cock.
The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the
foot of a gently-sloping bank which sweeps down from the rear of
the house. Large herds of deer were feeding or reposing upon its
borders, and swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom. As I
contemplated the venerable old mansion I called to mind
Falstaff's encomium on Justice Shallow's abode, and the affected
indifference and real vanity of the latter:
"Falstaff. You have a goodly dwelling and a rich.
"Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir
John:--marry, good air"
Whatever may have been the joviality of the old mansion in the
days of Shakespeare, it had now an air of stillness and solitude.
The great iron gateway that opened into the courtyard was locked,
there was no show of servants bustling about the place; the deer
gazed quietly at me as I passed, being no longer harried by the
moss-troopers of Stratford. The only sign of domestic life that I
met with was a white cat stealing with wary look and stealthy
pace towards the stables, as if on some nefarious expedition. I
must not omit to mention the carcass of a scoundrel crow which I
saw suspended against the barn-wall, as it shows that the Lucys
still inherit that lordly abhorrence of poachers and maintain
that rigorous exercise of territorial power which was so
strenuously manifested in the case of the bard.
After prowling about for some time, I at length found my way to a
lateral portal, which was the every-day entrance to the mansion.
I was courteously received by a worthy old housekeeper, who, with
the civility and communicativeness of her order, showed me the
interior of the house. The greater part has undergone alterations
and been adapted to modern tastes and modes of living: there is a
fine old oaken staircase, and the great hall, that noble feature
in an ancient manor-house, still retains much of the appearance
it must have had in the days of Shakespeare. The ceiling is
arched and lofty, and at one end is a gallery in which stands an
organ. The weapons and trophies of the chase, which formerly
adorned the hall of a country gentleman, have made way for family
portraits. There is a wide, hospitable fireplace, calculated for
an ample old-fashioned wood fire, formerly the rallying-place of
winter festivity. On the opposite side of the hall is the huge
Gothic bow-window, with stone shafts, which looks out upon the
courtyard. Here are emblazoned in stained glass the armorial
bearings of the Lucy family for many generations, some being
dated in 1558. I was delighted to observe in the quarterings the
three white luces by which the character of Sir Thomas was first
identified with that of Justice Shallow. They are mentioned in
the first scene of the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where the
justice, is in a rage with Falstaff for having "beaten his men,
killed his deer, and broken into his lodge." The poet had no
doubt the offences of himself and his comrades in mind at the
time, and we may suppose the family pride and vindictive threats
of the puissant Shallow to be a caricature of the pompous
indignation of Sir Thomas.
"Shallow. Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a Star Chamber
matter of it; if he were twenty John Falstaffs, he shall not
abuse Sir Robert Shallow, Esq.
Slender. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace and coram.
Shallow. Ay, cousin Slender, and custalorum.
Slender. Ay, and ratolorum too, and a gentleman born, master
parson; who writes himself Armigero in any bill, warrant,
quittance, or obligation, Armigero.
Shallow. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three
hundred years.
Slender. All his successors gone before him have done't, and all
his ancestors that come after him may; they may give the dozen
white luces in their coat. . . .
Shallow. The council shall hear it; it is a riot.
Evans. It is not meet the council hear of a riot; there is no
fear of Got in a riot; the council, hear you, shall desire to
hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot; take your vizaments
in that.
Shallow. Ha! o' my life, if I were young again, the sword should
end it!"
Near the window thus emblazoned hung a portrait, by Sir Peter
Lely, of one of the Lucy family, a great beauty of the time of
Charles the Second: the old housekeeper shook her head as she
pointed to the picture, and informed me that this lady had been
sadly addicted to cards, and had gambled away a great portion of
the family estate, among which was that part of the park where
Shakespeare and his comrades had killed the deer. The lands thus
lost had not been entirely regained by the family even at the
present day. It is but justice to this recreant dame to confess
that she had a surpassingly fine hand and arm.
The picture which most attracted my attention was a great
painting over the fireplace, containing likenesses of Sir Thomas
Lucy and his family who inhabited the hall in the latter part of
Shakespeare's lifetime. I at first thought that it was the
vindictive knight himself, but the housekeeper assured me that it
was his son; the only likeness extant of the former being an
effigy upon his tomb in the church of the neighboring hamlet of
Charlecot.*
* This effigy is in white marble, and represents the knight in
complete armor. Near him lies the effigy of his wife, and on her
tomb is the following inscription; which, if really composed by
her husband, places him quite above the intellectual level of
Master Shallow:
Here lyeth the Lady Joyce Lucy wife of Sir Thomas Lucy of
Charlecot in ye county of Warwick, Knight, Daughter and heir of
Thomas Acton of Sutton in ye county of Worcester Esquire who
departed out of this wretched world to her heavenly kingdom ye 10
day of February in ye yeare of our Lord God 1595 and of her age
60 and three. All the time of her lyfe a true and faythful
servant of her good God, never detected of any cryme or vice. In
religion most sounde, in love to her husband most faythful and
true. In friendship most constant; to what in trust was committed
unto her most secret. In wisdom excelling. In governing of her
house, bringing up of youth in ye fear of God that did converse
with her moste rare and singular. A great maintayner of
hospitality. Greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none
unless of the envyous. When all is spoken that can be saide a
woman so garnished with virtue as not to be bettered and hardly
to be equalled by any. As shee lived most virtuotisly so shee
died most Godly. Set downe by him yt best did knowe what hath byn
written to be true.
Thomas Lucye.
The picture gives a lively idea of the costume and manners of the
time. Sir Thomas is dressed in ruff and doublet, white shoes with
roses in them, and has a peaked yellow, or, as Master Slender
would say, "a cane-colored beard." His lady is seated on the
opposite side of the picture in wide ruff and long stomacher, and
the children have a most venerable stiffness and formality of
dress. Hounds and spaniels are mingled in the family group; a
hawk is seated on his perch in the foreground, and one of the
children holds a bow, all intimating the knight's skill in
hunting, hawking, and archery, so indispensable to an
accomplished gentleman in those days.*
* Bishop Earle, speaking of the country gentleman of his time,
observes, "His housekeeping is seen much in the different
families of dogs and serving-men attendant on their kennels; and
the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A
hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceedingly
ambitious to seem delighted with the sport, and have his fist
gloved with his jesses." And Gilpin, in his description of a Mr.
Hastings, remarks, "He kept all sorts of hounds that run buck,
fox, hare, otter, and badger; and had hawks of all kinds both
long and short winged. His great hall was commonly strewed with
marrow-bones, and full of hawk perches, hounds, spaniels, and
terriers. On a broad hearth, paved with brick, lay some of the
choicest terriers, hounds, and spaniels."
I regretted to find that the ancient furniture of the hall had
disappeared; for I had hoped to meet with the stately elbow-chair
of carved oak in which the country squire of former days was wont
to sway the sceptre of empire over his rural domains, and in
which it might be presumed the redoubled Sir Thomas sat enthroned
in awful state when the recreant Shakespeare was brought before
him. As I like to deck out pictures for my own entertainment, I
pleased myself with the idea that this very hall had been the
scene of the unlucky bard's examination on the morning after his
captivity in the lodge. I fancied to myself the rural potentate
surrounded by his body-guard of butler, pages, and blue-coated
serving-men with their badges, while the luckless culprit was
brought in, forlorn and chopfallen, in the custody of
gamekeepers, huntsmen,, and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble
rout of country clowns. I fancied bright faces of curious
housemaids peeping from the half-opened doors, while from the
gallery the fair daughters of the knight leaned gracefully
forward, eyeing the youthful prisoner with that pity "that dwells
in womanhood." Who would have thought that this poor varlet, thus
trembling before the brief authority of a country squire, and the
sport of rustic boors, was soon to become the delight of princes,
the theme of all tongues and ages, the dictator to the human mind
and was to confer immortality on his oppressor by a caricature
and a lampoon?
I was now invited by the butler to walk into the garden, and I
felt inclined to visit the orchard and harbor where the justice
treated Sir John Falstaff and Cousin Silence "to a last year's
pippin of his own grafting, with a dish of caraways;" but I bad
already spent so much of the day in my ramblings that I was
obliged to give up any further investigations. When about to take
my leave I was gratified by the civil entreaties of the
housekeeper and butler that I would take some refreshment--an
instance of good old hospitality which, I grieve to say, we
castle-hunters seldom meet with in modern days. I make no doubt
it is a virtue which the present representative of the Lucys
inherits from his ancestors; for Shakespeare, even in his
caricature, makes Justice Shallow importunate in this respect, as
witness his pressing instances to Falstaff:
"By cock and pye, Sir, you shall not away to-night. . . . . I
will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not
be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be
excused. . . . Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens;
a joint of mutton; and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell
`William Cook.'"
I now bade a reluctant farewell to the old hall. My mind had
become so completely possessed by the imaginary scenes and
characters connected with it that I seemed to be actually living
among them. Everything brought them as it were before my eyes,
and as the door of the dining-room opened I almost expected to
hear the feeble voice of Master Silence quavering forth his
favorite ditty:
"'Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all,
And welcome merry Shrove-tide!"
On returning to my inn I could not but reflect on the singular
gift of the poet, to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind
over the very face of Nature, to give to things and places a
charm and character not their own, and to turn this "working-day
world" into a perfect fairy-land. He is indeed the true
enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon
the imagination and the heart. Under the wizard influence of
Shakespeare I had been walking all day in a complete delusion. I
had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which
tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been
surrounded with fancied beings, with mere airy nothings conjured
up by poetic power, yet which, to me, had all the charm of
reality. I had heard Jaques soliloquize beneath his oak; had
beheld the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through
the woodlands; and, above all, had been once more present in
spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his contemporaries, from the
august Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master Slender and the
sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand honors and blessings on the bard
who has thus gilded the dull realities of life with innocent
illusions, who has spread exquisite and unbought pleasures in my
chequered path, and beguiled my spirit in many a lonely hour with
all the cordial and cheerful sympathies of social life!
As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I paused to
contemplate the distant church in which the poet lies buried, and
could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes
undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could
his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship
with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled
multitude? What would a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have
been, compared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand in
beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum! The solitude about
the grave may be but the offspring of an overwrought sensibility;
but human nature is made up of foibles and prejudices, and its
best and tenderest affections are mingled with these factitious
feelings. He who has sought renown about the world, and has
reaped a full harvest of worldly favor, will find, after all,
that there is no love, no admiration, no applause, so sweet to
the soul as that which springs up in his native place. It is
there that he seeks to be gathered in peace and honor among his
kindred and his early friends. And when the weary heart and
failing head begin to warn him that the evening of life is
drawing on, he turns as fondly as does the infant to the mother's
arms to sink to sleep in the bosom of the scene of his childhood.
How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard when,
wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful world, he cast back a
heavy look upon his paternal home, could he have foreseen that
before many years he should return to it covered with renown;
that his name should become the boast and glory of his native
place; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as its most
precious treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his
eyes were fixed in tearful contemplation, should one day become
the beacon towering amidst the gentle landscape to guide the
literary pilgrim of every nation to his tomb!
Washington Irving's short story: Statford-on-Avon
_
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