The Mentor: Shakespeare's Country 4

The Mentor: Shakespeare's Country 4

A VISIT TO STRATFORD

 

[Illustration: A ROOM IN THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL, AT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON]

 

I could never forget the emotion with which my mind was thrilled when

first I took the drive from Warwick to Stratford (1877), and alighted

at the old Red Horse Hotel. The day had been one of exceptional beauty.

The long twilight had faded, and the stars were shining when that

night, for the first time, I stood at the door of the birthplace of

Shakespeare, and looked on its quaint casements and gables, its antique

porch, and the massive timbers that cross its front. I conjure up the

vision now, as I saw it then. I stand there for a long while, and feel

that I shall remember these sights forever. Then, with lingering

steps, I turn away, and, passing through a narrow, crooked lane, I walk

in the High Street, and note at the end of the prospect the illuminated

clock in a dark church-tower. A few chance-directed steps bring me to

what was New Place once, where Shakespeare died, and there again I

pause and long remain in meditation, gazing into the inclosed garden,

where, under screens of wire, are fragments of mortar and stone.

These--although I do not know it--are the remains of the foundations

of Shakespeare’s house. The night wanes, but still I walk in Stratford

streets, and by and by I am standing on the bridge that spans the Avon,

and looking down at the thick-clustered stars reflected in the dark

and silent stream. At last, under the roof of the Red Horse, I sink

into a troubled slumber, from which soon a strain of celestial music,

strong, sweet, jubilant, and splendid, awakens me in an instant, and I

start up in bed,--to find that all around me is as still as death; and

then, drowsily, far off, the bell strikes three, in that weird, grim,

lonesome church-tower which I have just seen.

 

[Illustration: NEW PLACE GARDENS STRATFORD-UPON-AVON

 

Where Shakespeare’s house stood]

 

 

THE RED HORSE HOTEL

 

Many times since that first night at Stratford I have rested in the old

Red Horse, and nowhere, in a large experience of travel, have I found a

more homelike abode. It is a storied dwelling, too; for it was an inn

when Shakespeare lived. It is believed to have been known to those old

poets Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson; Betterton is said to have lodged

in it when he visited Stratford, to glean information about the great

dramatist of whose chief characters his age esteemed him the supremely

best interpreter; Garrick knew the house when he was in Stratford in

1769 to conduct the Shakespeare Jubilee; and in later years it has

harbored scores of renowned persons from every part of the world.

Washington Irving, revered as the father of American literature, was a

lodger there in 1817, and wrote about it in his companionable “Sketch

Book,” and the parlor that he then occupied has ever since borne his

name and been embellished with picture and relic commemorative of

his visit. The pilgrim loses much benefit and pleasure by carelessly

speeding through the Shakespeare Country, as many excursionists do. It

is far better to repose in the Red Horse, or some other cozy retreat,

and spend many days in rambling about the neighborhood. To the lover of

the works of Shakespeare the experience is one of the most profitable

that life affords.

 

[Illustration: NEW PLACE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON

 

The last residence of Shakespeare. Only the site now remains

 

From an Old Drawing]

 

 

STONELEIGH AND CHARLECOTE

 

In driving from Warwick to Stratford the traveler obtains a distant

glimpse of Stoneleigh Abbey, one of the fine baronial homes of England,

the residence of Lord Leigh, and at a certain stile, near Charlecote

House, the carriage is halted, so that the spacious park of Charlecote

can be crossed on foot by a passenger who may wish to see the place

where, as legend has long affirmed, Shakespeare killed the deer of Sir

Thomas Lucy, thereby incurring enmity and punishment. The story lacks

proof. No deer were kept by Sir Thomas at Charlecote,--though now they

are numerous there,--but they were kept by him at Fullbrook, a park

that he owned, not very far from Charlecote, and it is not impossible

that Shakespeare and his comrades, in the wildness of frolicsome youth,

did poach upon his preserves. Tradition, in all old English country

places, has, when tested, often been found entirely worthy of credence.

 

 

STRATFORD OLD AND NEW

 

The Stratford of the sixteenth century, though then nearly 300 years

old, was merely a village. The houses were chiefly of the one-story

kind, made of timber. The inhabitants were in number about 1,400:

indeed, the whole population of England was not so numerous as that of

London is now. If Shakespeare could revisit his old haunts, though he

would see the same green, rose-decked, and poppy-spangled countryside

that once he knew, and hear the ripple of the Avon softly flowing

between its grassy banks, he would miss many objects once familiar to

him, and he would be conscious of much change,--in many ways for the

better. Yet there are the paths in which he often trod; there is the

school in which he was taught; there is the garden of the mansion that

he once owned, and in which he died and there is the ancient church

that enshrines his tomb.

 

[Illustration: THOMAS NASH’S HOUSE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON

 

Nash was the husband of Shakespeare’s only granddaughter. The house

stands next to New Place]

 

The Birthplace, as it is now designated, is a two-story cottage made

of timber and plaster, with dormer windows in its sloping, attic roof.

It was originally a finer house than most of its neighbors. Its age

is unknown. John Shakespeare, William’s father, bought it in 1556

and occupied it till his death, in 1601, when it became William’s

property by inheritance. By him it was bequeathed to his sister, Joan,

Mrs. William Hart. It has passed through many ownerships and has been

materially changed; but parts of it remain as originally they were,

particularly the room on the ground floor, in which there is a large

fireplace, with seats in the brick chimney jambs, and also the one

immediately above it, the best room in the house, in which, according

to ancient tradition, the poet was born. In that room there is a chair,

of the sixteenth century.

 

[Illustration: ROOM IN WHICH, ACCORDING TO TRADITION, SHAKESPEARE WAS

BORN]

 

The original window remains, a threefold casement, containing sixty

panes of glass, on which many visitors have scratched their names

with diamonds. No writing, on window or walls, is permitted now; but

in earlier times it was allowed, and it was customary. Sir Walter

Scott scratched his name on the window,--“W. Scott.” Byron wrote on

the ceiling, which is low, as also did Thackeray. Byron’s name has

disappeared. Dickens wrote on one of the walls. The names of many

actors, including those of Edmund Kean and Edwin Booth, are inscribed

on the chimney-jamb at the right of the fireplace. Booth was specially

requested to write his name there, “high up.” That jamb is called “The

Actors’ Pillar.”

 

The Birthplace was purchased for the nation in 1847--the American

museum and circus manager P. T. Barnum having alarmed England by

proposing to buy and remove it to America. New Place and Anne

Hathaway’s Cottage, at Shottery, about a mile west of Stratford, have

since then been purchased, and those properties are now administered as

a trust for the public.

 

[Illustration: THE HOME OF SHAKESPEARE’S MOTHER

 

The Mary Arden Cottage at Wilmcote, a little village near Stratford]

 

New Place, the finest mansion in the town when Shakespeare bought it,

was destroyed in 1759 by order of Rev. Thomas Gastrell, its owner at

that time, who had been annoyed by many visitors, thronging to see his

house and to sit under a mulberry tree in his garden, believed to have

been planted and reared by Shakespeare. The tree was cut down by Mr.

Gastrell; but a reputed “grandson” of it is growing there now. Nothing

remains of the building except its foundation, long buried, but later

exhumed, and now carefully preserved. The house was situated directly

opposite the Guild Chapel, a relic of the thirteenth century, and one

of the most venerable and pictorial of the towered churches of England.

Shakespeare hired two sittings in that church, and when he lived in New

Place he must have seen it almost continually. Next to the church is

the Grammar School, established in 1482, which there is every reason to

believe he attended in his boyhood. The building has been tastefully

“restored” to its original condition: the schoolroom has not been

altered.

 

 

ANNE HATHAWAY’S COTTAGE

 

[Illustration: ANNE HATHAWAY’S COTTAGE, SHOTTERY: FROM THE BROOK.]

 

The Hathaway Cottage, to which the flower-bordered path is an ancient

“right of way,” through gardens and meadows that Shakespeare must

often have traversed, is an exceptionally fine specimen of the

timber-crossed, thatch-roofed dwelling of the Tudor period. It stands

in a large garden, is shaded by tall trees, and is prettily clad with

woodbine, ivy, wild roses, and maiden’s blush. In one of the upper

chambers a large, antique, carved four-post bedstead is shown, as

having been used by Anne Hathaway. It is possible that William and Anne

lived in that cottage immediately after their marriage, which occurred

in 1582. He was eighteen, she was twenty-six. The bond (a document

required in those days to obtain authorization of wedlock) is preserved

and may be inspected in the Edgar Tower at Worcester, where I saw it in

1889. The actual record of their marriage is supposed to have perished

in a fire (before 1600) which, consuming the church of Ludington, a

village near Shottery, destroyed the registers of that parish.

 

[Illustration: From an Old Drawing

 

THE HOUSE IN WHICH SHAKESPEARE WAS BORN

 

At Stratford-upon-Avon]

 

[Illustration: From an Old Drawing

 

THE JUBILEE BOOTH

 

At Stratford-upon-Avon]

 

[Illustration: From an Old Drawing