The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
to hear all their cabinet counsels and mutual backbitings. As I am too
civil not to agree with the ladies on all occasions, I have committed
myself most horribly with both parties by abusing their opponents.
I might manage to reconcile this to my conscience, which is a truly
accommodating one, but I cannot to my apprehension: if the Lambs and
Trotters ever come to a reconciliation and compare notes, I am ruined!
I have determined, therefore, to beat a retreat in time, and am actually
looking out for some other nest in this great city where old English
manners are still kept up, where French is neither eaten, drunk, danced,
nor spoken, and where there are no fashionable families of retired
tradesmen. This found, I will, like a veteran rat, hasten away before I
have an old house about my ears, bid a long, though a sorrowful adieu
to my present abode, and leave the rival factions of the Lambs and the
Trotters to divide the distracted empire of LITTLE BRITAIN.
STRATFORD-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 certainty, 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