CHAPTERIXHISTORIC NOOKS OF WARWICKSHIRE

Stratford-upon-Avon, August 20, 1889.—The traveller who hurries through Warwickshire,—and American travellers mostly do hurry through it,—appreciates but little the things that he sees, and does not understand how much he loses. The customary course is to lodge at the Red Horse, which is one of the most comfortable houses in England, and thus to enjoy the associations that are connected with the visits of Washington Irving. His parlour, his bedroom (number 15), his arm-chair, his poker, and the sexton's clock, mentioned by him in theSketch Book, are all to be seen, if your lightning-express conductor will give you time enough to see them. From the Red Horse you are taken in a carriage, when you ought to be allowed to proceed on foot, and the usual round includes the Shakespeare Birthplace; the Grammar School and Guild chapel; the remains of New Place; Trinity church and the Shakespeare graves in its chancel; Anne Hathaway's cottage at Shottery; and, perhaps, the Shakespeare Memorial library and theatre. Theseare impressive sights to the lover of Shakespeare; but when you have seen all these you have only begun to see the riches of Stratford-upon-Avon. It is only by living in the town, by making yourself familiar with it in all its moods, by viewing it in storm as well as in sunshine, by roaming through its quaint, deserted streets in the lonely hours of the night, by sailing up and down the beautiful Avon, by driving and walking in the green lanes that twine about it for many miles in every direction, by becoming, in fact, a part of its actual being, that you obtain a genuine knowledge of that delightful place. Familiarity, in this case, does not breed contempt. The worst you will ever learn ofStratford is that gossip thrives in it; that its intellect is, with due exception, narrow and sleepy; and that it is heavily ridden by the ecclesiastical establishment. You will never find anything that can detract from the impression of beauty and repose made upon your mind by the sweet retirement of its situation, by the majesty of its venerable monuments, and by the opulent, diversified splendours of its natural and historical environment. On the contrary, the more you know of those charms the more you will love the town, and the greater will be the benefit of high thought and spiritual exaltation that you will derive from your knowledge of it; and hence it is important that the American traveller should be counselled for his own sake to live a little while in Stratford instead of treating it as an incident of his journey.

The Red Horse Hotel.

The occasion of a garden party at the rectory of a clerical friend at Butler's Marston gave opportunity to see one of the many picturesque and happy homes with which this region abounds. The lawns there are ample and sumptuous. The dwelling and the church, which are close to each other, are bowered in great trees. From the terraces a lovely view may be obtained of the richly coloured and finely cultivated fields, stretching away toward Edgehill, which lies southeast from Stratford-upon-Avon about sixteen miles away, and marks the beginning of the Vale of the Red Horse. In the churchyard are the gray, lichen-covered remains of one of those ancient crosses from the steps of which the monks preached, in the early days of the church. Relics of this class are deeply interesting for what they suggest of the people and the life of earlier times. Afine specimen of the ancient cross may be seen at Henley-in-Arden, a few miles northwest of Stratford, where it stands, in mouldering majesty in the centre of the village,—strangely inharmonious with the petty shops and numerous inns of which that long and straggling but characteristic and attractive settlement is composed. The tower of the church at Butler's Marston, a gray, grim structure, "four-square to opposition," was built in the eleventh century,—a period of much ecclesiastical activity in the British islands. Within it I found a noble pulpit, of carved oak, dark with age, of the time of James the First. There are many commemorative stones in the church, on one of which appears this lovely couplet, addressed to the shade of a young girl:

"Sleep, gentle soul, and wait thy Maker's will!Then rise unchanged, and be an angel still."

"Sleep, gentle soul, and wait thy Maker's will!

Then rise unchanged, and be an angel still."

The present village of Butler's Marston,—a little group of cottages clustered upon the margin of a tiny stream and almost hidden in a wooded dell,—is comparatively new; for it has arisen since the time of the Puritan civil war. The old village was swept away by the Roundheads, when Essex and Hampden came down to fight King Charles at Edgehill, in 1642. That fierce strife raged all along the country-side, and you may still perceive there, in the inequalities of the land, the sites on which houses formerly stood. It is a sweet and peaceful place now, smiling with flowers and musical with the rustle of the leaves of giant elms. The clergyman farms his own glebe, and he has expended more than a thousand pounds in the renovation of his manse.The church "living" is not worth much more than a hundred pounds a year, and when he leaves the dwelling, if he should ever leave it, he loses the value of all the improvements that he has made. This he mentioned with a contented smile. The place, in fact, is a little paradise, and as I looked across the green and golden fields, and saw the herds at rest and the wheat waving in sun and shadow, and thought of the simple life of the handful of people congregated here, the words of Gray came murmuring into my mind:

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strifeTheir sober wishes never learned to stray;Along the cool, sequestered vale of lifeThey kept the noiseless tenor of their way."

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife

Their sober wishes never learned to stray;

Along the cool, sequestered vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."

The Grammar School, Stratford.

"Unregarded age, in corners thrown." Was that fine line suggested to Shakespeare by the spectacle of the almshouses of the Guild, which stood in his time, just as they stand now, close to the spot where he lived and died? New Place, Shakespeare's home, stood on the northeast corner of Chapel street and Chapel lane. The Guild chapel stands on the southeast corner of those streets, immediately opposite to what was once the poet's home. Southward from the chapel, and adjoining to it, extends the long, low, sombre building that contains the Free Grammar School, founded by Thomas Jolyffe in 1482, and refounded in 1553 by King Edward the Sixth. In that grammar school, there is reason to believe, Shakespeare was educated; at first by Walter Roche, afterward by Simon Hunt,—who doubtless birched the little boys then, even as the head-master does now; it being a cardinal principle[146]with the British educator that learning, like other goods, should be delivered in the rear. In those almshouses doubtless there were many forlorn inmates, even as there are at present,—and Shakespeare must often have seen them. On visiting one of the bedesmen I found him moving slowly, with that mild, aimless, inert manner and that bleak aspect peculiar to such remnants of vanishing life, among the vegetable vines and the profuse, rambling flowers in the sunny garden behind the house; and presently I went into his humble room and sat by his fireside. The scene was the perfect fulfilment of Shakespeare's line. A stone floor. A low ceiling crossed with dusky beams. Walls that had been whitewashed long ago. A small iron kettle, with water in it, simmering over a few smouldering coals. A roughbed, in a corner. A little table, on which were three conch-shells ranged in a row. An old arm-chair, on which were a few coarse wads of horsehair, as a cushion. A bench, whereon lay a torn, tattered, soiled copy of the prayer book of the church of England, beginning at the epiphany. This sumptuous place was lighted by a lattice of small leaded panes. And upon one of the walls hung a framed placard of worsted work, bearing the inscription, "Blessed be the Lord for His Unspeakable Gift." The aged, infirm pensioner doddered about the room, and when he was asked what had become of his wife his dull eyes filled with tears and he said simply that she was dead. "So runs the world away." The summons surely cannot be unwelcome that calls such an old and lonely pilgrim as that to his rest in yonder churchyard and to his lost wife who is waiting for him.

Interior of the Grammar School.

Warwickshire is hallowed by shining names of persons illustrious in the annals of art. Drayton, Greene, and Heminge, who belong to the Shakespeare period, were born there. Walter Savage Landor was a native of Warwick,—in which quaint and charming town you may see the house of his birth, duly marked. Croft, the composer, was born near Ettington, hard by Stratford: there is a tiny monument, commemorative of him, in the ruins of Ettington church, near the manor-house of Shirley. And in our own day Warwickshire has enriched the world with "George Eliot" and with that matchless actress,—the one Ophelia and the one Beatrice of our age—Ellen Terry. But it is a chief characteristic of England that whichever way you turn in it your footsteps fall on haunted ground.Everyday life here is continually impressed by incidents of historic association. In an old church at Greenwich I asked that I might be directed to the tomb of General Wolfe. "He is buried just beneath where you are now standing," the custodian said. It was an elderly woman who showed the place, and she presently stated that when a girl she once entered the vault beneath that church and stood beside the coffin of General Wolfe and took a piece of laurel from it, and also took a piece of the red velvet pall from the coffin of the old Duchess of Bolton, close by. That Duchess was Lavinia Fenton, the first representative of Polly Peachem, inThe Beggars' Opera, who died in 1760, aged fifty-two.[28]"Lord Clive," the dame added, "is buried in the same vault with Wolfe." An impressive thought, that the ashes of the man who established Britain's power in America should at last mingle with the ashes of the man who gave India to England!

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