ENGLAND.
IN OLD, OLD ENGLAND.
IN OLD, OLD ENGLAND.
Warwick, England, June 12, 1905.
When the American tourist reaches old England he has a large and well-selected stock of emotions which he can feel, in addition to the thanks in his heart that the short but “nahsty” trip across the Irish sea is at an end. No matter where an individual’s ancestors may have come from, the mother country of America is England. Up to 1776 our history was only English history, our customs English customs, our laws English laws, and when the Continental army began shooting at the British soldiers, the Continental Congress accompanied every volley with a resolution declaring that the colonists had no desire to separate from England, but were only fighting in self-defense. Our laws, our language, our literature are English. The fight of the parliament against the crown has reached practically the same result in England that the revolution of Congress against King George did by a short cut.
This is the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Dickens, who are just as much American as English, except for the accident of birthplace. This is the home of our heroes of medieval times, of Ivanhoe, Richard the Lion-hearted, and the Black Prince. This is the country which is familiar to us by name and history through Scott and Thackeray, Dickens and Lytton, and a hundred other authors whose works are read in the Americanhomes. We are not strangers to such names as Kenilworth, York, Shrewsbury, Chester, Stratford, Oxford, Cambridge, and in fact nearly every town on the map of England. This is more like the visit to a long-absent friend and not an entrance into a foreign land. We are now going among places of which we have read and among the monuments and works of men whom we have held close to our hearts through the pictures painted for us by our authors. We are going to actually see the things we have so often read about and which we have so much dreamed about.
Instead of beginning at London, the great center of trade, we are going to begin here at Warwick, the center of the oldest Old England left on earth. In Warwick we are five miles from Kenilworth, the castle Scott made famous, seven miles from Stratford-on-Avon, where Shakespeare was born, and surrounded by beautiful rural England, with a fine old castle only five minutes walk away, and churches and buildings which were old when Columbus discovered America.
The first stop in England was at Chester, which was a town of importance when Julius Cæsar was doing business. The walls the Romans built were demolished by the Saxons but rebuilt, and Chester was the last place in England to surrender to William the Conqueror. During the Middle Ages it was the scene of more fights and sieges and the walls then completed are the same walls which we walked on this week. The walls are from ten to twenty feet wide at the top,twenty to thirty feet high, and little towers occupy the angles and corners. From the wall of Chester Charles the First saw the parliamentary army defeat his soldiers, and when Chester surrendered, Cromwell’s men had all of England.
There are two main streets in Chester, crossing each other at the center of the town and terminating in the four city gates. All the other streets of the old town are alleys from six to ten feet wide. But the curious part of Chester is “the Rows.” Along a good part of the main streets there is a second floor, or rather a stone roof over the sidewalks. On this upstairs street are stores and shops, and business is going on as briskly along the second story as on the ground floor. As there were originally but the two streets in Chester, the people simply doubled the street capacity,—a thousand years ago and they haven’t changed. In fact, I suppose a great many people in Chester who have never been out of the neighborhood, think that is the proper and usual way of arranging business streets in all towns.
The greatest place in England is Stratford-on-Avon, because Shakespeare was born there. A great many English towns have ancient cathedrals and are the birthplaces or the deathplaces of kings and queens, dukes and ministers, but Stratford is the only place where Shakespeare was born and there has been but one Shakespeare. Many great men have several birthplaces, or perhaps I should say, several towns claim to be the only birthplace. But Stratford-on-Avon is athousand years old or more, and has never done anything for the world except to provide William Shakespeare, and the world says that is enough to last another thousand. I stood in the church and saw the slab which covers the dust of the great poet and man-knower. By his side are the graves of his wife and daughter. Around the chancel are the inscriptions and memorials which tell of the admiration and affection of the world.
The house where the poet was born is now owned by a public association, and great pains have been taken to gather all the relics of his lifetime that have been spared. The rooms are arranged just as they were when his father, a highly respected tradesman who reached the dignity of a justice of the peace, was running his little shop and William was poaching in the neighboring fields and streams and sparking Anne Hathaway, whose home was a mile away. The Hathaway cottage is kept in the same way as the Shakespeare house, and we wandered through the low rooms and up the narrow stairs just as they were nearly four centuries ago. In talking with an Englishman at Warwick he said he believed the Americans thought more of Shakespeare than the English did, for more of them went to Stratford. Of course that is hardly correct, for the English all love Shakespeare, but they probably do not visit his birthplace so much as American travelers do. Practically every American goes to Stratford, some of them perhaps just because the others do. Coming over on the ship I was being enlightened by anaggressive American on just what was what. “Going to Stratford?” he said. I assented. “Yes, you’ll go there and look around and wonder what in hell you went there for.” But that is not the sentiment which fills the hearts of most of the cousins from across the ocean, as is evidenced by the reverential awe and the thorough appreciation of every nook and corner shown by them when they are in the historic village.
The river Avon is about the size of Cow creek, and looks a good deal like it. The banks are low and the meadows and fields come right to them, without the timber that borders most American streams. The town of Stratford is old-fashioned and quaint. Just as in Warwick, the hotels or inns bear such names as “The Red Dog,” “The Bull and Cow,” “The Golden Lion,” a style of nomenclature which I had always half-way thought was imaginary with the great authors who have made such names familiar. Large, stately trees line the roads and stone walls and hedges conceal the fields and farms, revealing just enough to enhance the beauty of the landscape. One can dreamily think as he rides in the coach from Stratford to Warwick that he is back in the days of Queen Elizabeth and half expect ye knights and ladies to appear before the gate of Kenilworth, but as he does so there is a sudden whir-r-r, a cloud of dust and a smell, and the automobile of the twentieth century has rudely broken the dream.
We visited the castle of the earl of Warwick. The earl evidently did not know we were coming, for hewas away, but a shilling admitted us through the big gate in the massive stone walls which surround the castle and inclose probably twenty acres of ground. It was originally built by a daughter of Alfred, about 915, and has been more or less knocked down and built up since. It is said to be one of the finest old castles in England. A regiment of soldiers could easily parade in the large court within the walls and be quartered in the building and towers. Many a time such a garrison has occupied the place, for the earls of Warwick have been fighters from the beginning and Shakespeare’s Warwick was a regular Cy Leland or a Stubbs in his day, and was known as the king-maker. The castle is about twice as large as the Hutchinson Reformatory, and the earl has to keep a good deal of hired help in these times of peace. Many of the great rooms are kept just as in the old days of chivalry and are filled with armor and weapons. The banquet-room is maintained as it was in the great earl’s time, and much of the castle is really a museum and gallery full of the pictures, portraits, furniture and tapestries of the long ago.
Kings and queens, earls and earlesses, have walked the halls and had their brief time upon the stage of life. The noble of to-day does not have the armor or the power he did then. His band of armed retainers has changed to a crowd of peaceful laborers. He does not lead his men to war, but presides at country fairs and acts as dignified as the spirit of the twentieth century will permit. He no longer fears a midnight assault from a neighboring baron, but only dreads theravages of the American tourists and sensibly compromises by letting them ravage at a quarter apiece. The times of chivalry are gone.
“Their swords are rust;The knights are dust;Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
“Their swords are rust;The knights are dust;Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
“Their swords are rust;The knights are dust;Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
“Their swords are rust;
The knights are dust;
Their souls are with the saints, we trust.”
Here in Warwick and at Kenilworth we take a long dream backward, and by working our imagination and our sentiment we see the England of Shakespeare, of Warwick, of Ivanhoe. It is a good dream, but it is a past that will never return, a past that is more nearly connected with the present in Warwick than at any other place. It is old England, which first learned to rule herself and then began to rule most of the rest of the world, and with the assistance of the American child will undoubtedly do the business in the future. We are going to London and Liverpool, the castles of commerce and industry which now command the trade of the globe. In the England of to-day the castles of the business man and the banker rule in the place of the castles of the baron and the earl, and old England has given place to a new England. But it will be this old England of Shakespeare, Warwick and Kenilworth that will live in the hearts of the English people, and will be the object of pilgrimage for Americans abroad.