Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume I Part 11

In the center of the floor an octagon s.p.a.ce is marked out with a rim of stone, and within this s.p.a.ce stands a ma.s.sy old dog, or brand-iron, about a yard and a half wide, and the two upright ends three feet six inches high, having on their outer sides, near the top, the double broad arrow of the Sidney arms. The smoke from the fire, which was laid on this jolly dog, ascended and pa.s.sed out through the center of the roof, which is high, and of framed oak, and was adorned at the spring of the huge groined spars with grotesque projecting carved figures, or corbels, which are now taken down, being considered in danger of falling, and are laid in the music gallery.

IV

ENGLISH LITERARY SHRINES

STRATFORD-ON-AVON [Footnote: From "The Sketch Book." Published by G.P.

Putnam's Sons.]

BY WASHINGTON IRVING

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 hallowed the turf is which pillowed his head.

GARRICK.

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 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 a.s.siduous 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 the 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 crones and gossips of Stratford, dealing forth churchyard tales and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times in England. In this chair it is the custom of everyone who 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 a.s.sured me that, tho built of solid oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees, that the chair had to be new-bottomed at least once in three years. From the birthplace of Shakespeare a few paces brought me to his grave.... We approached the church through the avenue of limes, and entered by a Gothic porch, highly ornamented with carved doors of ma.s.sive oak. The interior is s.p.a.cious, and the architecture and embellishments superior to those of most country churches. There are several ancient monuments of n.o.bility 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."

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 s.p.a.ce almost like an arch, through which one might have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle with the 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 s.e.xton 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.

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 Lucy's at Charlecot, and to ramble through the park where Shakespeare, in company with some of the roisterers of Stratford, committed his youthful offense of deer-stealing.

The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still remain in the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly interesting from being connected with this whimsical but eventful circ.u.mstance 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.

My route for a part of the way lay in sight of the Avon, which made a variety of the most fanciful 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 around 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, while 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 foot-path, 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 everyone has a kind of property--at least as far as the foot-path is concerned. I now found myself among n.o.ble 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.

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 gra.s.s-plot, shrubs, and flower-beds. The gateway is in imitation of the ancient barbican; being a kind of outpost and flanked by towers; tho evidently for mere ornament, instead of defense.

The front of the house is completely in the old style; with stone shafted cas.e.m.e.nts, 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 weatherc.o.c.k.

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.

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 n.o.ble 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 fire-place, 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 court-yard. Here are emblazoned in stained gla.s.s the armorial bearings of the Lucy family for many generations, some being dated in 1558....

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 scepter of empire over his rural domains; and in which might be presumed the redoubted Sir Thomas sat enthroned in awful state, when the recreant Shakespeare was brought before him. As I like to deck out pictures for my 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 the blue-coated serving-men with their badges; while the luckless culprit was brought in, forlorn and chapfallen, in the custody of game-keepers, 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, eying 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 now bade a reluctant farewell to the old hall. My mind had become so completely possest 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 my 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 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 Jacques 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.

NEWSTEAD ABBEY [Footnote: From "English Note Books." By permission of, and by arrangement with, the publishers of Hawthorne's works, Houghton, Mifflin Co. Copyright, 1870-1898.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Our drive to Newstead lay through what was once a portion of Sherwood Forest, tho all of it, I believe, has now become private property, and is converted into fertile fields, except where the owners of estates have set out plantations.... The post-boy calls the distance ten miles from Nottingham. He also averred that it was forbidden to drive visitors within the gates; so we left the fly at the inn, and set out to walk from the entrance to the house. There is no porter's lodge; and the grounds, in this outlying region, had not the appearance of being very primly kept, but were well wooded with evergreens, and much overgrown with ferns, serving for cover for hares, which scampered in and out of their hiding-places. The road went winding gently along, and, at the distance of nearly a mile, brought us to a second gate, through which we likewise pa.s.sed, and walked onward a good way farther, seeing much wood, but as yet nothing of the Abbey.

At last, through the trees, we caught a glimpse of its battlements, and saw, too, the gleam of water, and then appeared the Abbey's venerable front. It comprises the western wall of the church, which is all that remains of that fabric, a great, central window, entirely empty, without tracery or mullions; the ivy clambering up on the inside of the wall, and hanging over in front. The front of the inhabited part of the house extends along on a line with this church wall, rather low, with battlements along its top, and all in good keeping with the ruinous remnant. We met a servant, who replied civilly to our inquiries about the mode of gaining admittance, and bade us ring a bell at the corner of the princ.i.p.al porch. We rang accordingly, and were forthwith admitted into a low, vaulted bas.e.m.e.nt, ponderously wrought with intersecting arches, dark and rather chilly, just like what I remember to have seen at Battle Abbey; and, after waiting here a little while, a respectable elderly gentlewoman appeared, of whom we requested to be shown round the Abbey. She courteously acceded, first presenting us to a book, in which to inscribe our names.

I suppose ten thousand people, three-fourths of them Americans, have written descriptions of Newstead Abbey; and none of them, so far as I have read, give any true idea of the place; neither will my description, if I write one. In fact, I forget very much that I saw, and especially in what order the objects came. In the bas.e.m.e.nt was Byron's bath--a dark and cold and cellar-like hole, which it must have required good courage to plunge into; in this region, too, or near it, was the chapel, which Colonel Wildman has decorously fitted up, and where service is now regularly performed, but which was used as a dogs' kennel in Byron's time.

After seeing this, we were led to Byron's own bed-chamber, which remains just as when he slept in it--the furniture and all the other arrangements being religiously preserved. It was in the plainest possible style, homely, indeed, and almost mean--an ordinary paper-hanging, and everything so commonplace that it was only the deep embrasure of the window that made it look unlike a bed-chamber in a middling-cla.s.s lodging-house. It would have seemed difficult, beforehand, to fit up a room in that picturesque old edifice so that it should be utterly void of picturesqueness; but it was effected in this apartment, and I suppose it is a specimen of the way in which old mansions used to be robbed of their antique character, and adapted to modern tastes, before medieval antiquities came into fashion.

Some prints of the Cambridge colleges, and other pictures indicating Byron's predilections at the time, and which he himself had hung there, were on the walls. This, the housekeeper told us, had been the Abbot's chamber, in the monastic time. Adjoining it is the haunted room, where the ghostly monk whom Byron introduces into "Don Juan," is said to have his lurking-place. It is fitted up in the same style as Byron's, and used to be occupied by his valet or page. No doubt, in his lordship's day, these were the only comfortable bedrooms in the Abbey; and by the housekeeper's account of what Colonel Wildman has done, it is to be inferred that the place must have been in a most wild, s.h.a.ggy, tumble-down condition, inside and out, when he bought it.

It is very different now. After showing us these two apartments of Byron and his servant, the housekeeper led us from one to another and another magnificent chamber, fitted up in antique style, with oak paneling, and heavily carved bedsteads, of Queen Elizabeth's time, or of the Stuarts, hung with rich tapestry curtains of similar date, and with beautiful old cabinets of carved wood, sculptured in relief, or tortoise-sh.e.l.l and ivory. The very pictures and realities, these rooms were, of stately comfort; and they were called by the names of kings--King Edward's, King Charles II.'s, King Henry VII.'s, chamber; and they were hung with beautiful pictures, many of them portraits of these kings. The chimney-pieces were carved and emblazoned; and all, so far as I could judge, was in perfect keeping, so that if a prince or n.o.ble of three centuries ago were to come to lodge at Newstead Abbey, he would hardly know that he had strayed out of his own century. And yet he might have known by some token, for there are volumes of poetry and light literature on the tables in these royal bed-chambers, and in that of Henry VII. I saw "The House of the Seven Gables," and "The Scarlet Letter," in Routledge's edition.

Certainly the house is admirably fitted up; and there must have been something very excellent and comprehensive in the domestic arrangements of the monks, since they adapt themselves so well to a state of society entirely different from that in which they originated. The library is a very comfortable room, and provocative of studious ideas, tho lounging and luxurious. It is long, and rather low, furnished with soft couches, and, on the whole, tho a man might dream of study, I think he would be most likely to read nothing but novels there. I know not what the room was in monkish times, but it was waste and ruinous in Lord Byron's. Here, I think, the housekeeper unlocked a beautiful cabinet, and took out the famous skull which Lord Byron transformed into a drinking-goblet. It has a silver rim and stand, but still the ugly skull is bare and evident, and the naked inner bone receives the wine.

There was much more to see in the house than I had any previous notion of; but except the two chambers already noticed, nothing remained the least as Byron left it. Yes, another place there was--his own small dining-room, with a table of moderate size, where, no doubt, the skull-goblet has often gone its rounds. Colonel Wildman's dining-room was once Byron's shooting-gallery, and the original refectory of the monks. It is now magnificently arranged, with a vaulted roof, a music-gallery at one end, suits of armor and weapons on the walls, and mailed arms extended, holding candelabras.

We parted with the housekeeper, and I with a good many shillings, at the door by which we entered; and our next business was to see the private grounds and gardens. A little boy attended us through the first part of our progress, but soon appeared the veritable gardener--a shrewd and sensible old man, who has been very many years on the place. There was nothing of special interest as concerning Byron until we entered the original old monkish garden, which is still laid out in the same fashion as the monks left it, with a large oblong piece of water in the center, and terraced banks rising at two or three different stages with perfect regularity around it; so that the sheet of water looks like the plate of an immense looking-gla.s.s, of which the terraces form the frame. It seems as if, were there any giant large enough, he might raise up this mirror and set it on end.

In the monks' garden, there is a marble statue of Pan, which the gardener told us, was brought by the "Wicked Lord" (great-uncle of Byron) from Italy, and was supposed by the country people to represent the devil, and to be the object of his worship--a natural idea enough, in view of his horns and cloven feet and tail, tho this indicates at all events, a very jolly devil. There is also a female statue, beautiful from the waist upward, but s.h.a.ggy and cloven-footed below, and holding a little cloven-footed child by the hand. This, the old gardener a.s.sured us was Pandora, wife of the above-mentioned Pan, with her son. Not far from this spot, we came to the tree on which Byron carved his own name and that of his sister Augusta. It is a tree of twin stems,--a birch-tree, I think--growing up side by side. One of the stems still lives and flourished, but that on which he carved the two names is quite dead, as if there had been something fatal in the inscription that has made it for ever famous. The names are still very legible, altho the letters had been closed up by the growth of the bark before the tree died. They must have been deeply cut at first.

There are old yew-trees of unknown antiquity in this garden, and many other interesting things; and among them may be reckoned a fountain of very pure water, called the "Holly Well," of which we drank. There are several fountains, besides the large mirror in the center of the garden; and these are mostly inhabited by carp, the genuine descendants of those which peopled the fishponds in the days of the monks. Coming in front of the Abbey, the gardener showed us the oak that Byron planted, now a vigorous young tree; and the monument which he erected to his Newfoundland dog, and which is larger than most Christians get, being composed of a marble, altar-shaped tomb, surrounded by a circular area of steps, as much as twenty feet in diameter. The gardener said, however, that Byron intended this, not merely as the burial-place of his dog, but for himself, too, and his sister.

HUCKNALL-TORKARD CHURCH [Footnote: From "Gray Days and Gold." By permission of, and by arrangement with, the publishers, Moffat, Yard & Co.

Copyright by William Winter, 1890-1911.]

[Byron's Grave]

BY WILLIAM WINTER

It was near the close of a fragrant, golden summer day when, having driven from Nottingham, I alighted in the market-place of the little town of Hucknall-Torkard, on a pilgrimage to the grave of Byron. The town is modern and commonplace in appearance,--a straggling collection of low brick dwellings, mostly occupied by colliers. On that day it appeared at its worst; for the widest part of its main street was filled with stalls, benches, wagons, and canvas-covered structures for the display of vegetables and other commodities, which were thus offered for sale, and it was thronged with rough, noisy, dirty persons, intent on barter and traffic, and not indisposed to boisterous pranks and mirth, as they pushed and jostled each other among the crowded booths. This main street terminates at the wall of the graveyard in which stands the little gray church wherein Byron was buried. There is an iron gate in the center of the wall, and in order to reach this it was necessary to thread the mazes of the marketplace, and to push aside the canvas flaps of a pedler's stall which had been placed close against it. Next to the churchyard wall is a little cottage, with a bit of garden, devoted, at that time, to potatoes; and there, while waiting for the s.e.xton, I talked with an aged man, who said that he remembered, as an eye-witness, the funeral of Byron. He stated his age and said that his name was William Callandyne. Pointing to the church, he indicated the place of the Byron vault. "I was the last man," he said, "that went down into it before he was buried there. I was a young fellow then, and curious to see what was going on. The place was full of skulls and bones. I wish you could see my son; he's a clever lad, only he ought to have more of the _suaviter in modo_." Thus, with the garrulity of wandering age, he prattled on, but his mind was clear and his memory tenacious and positive. There is a good prospect from the region of Hucknall-Torkard Church, and pointing into the distance, when his mind had been brought back to the subject of Byron, my aged interlocutor described, with minute specification of road and lane,--seeming to a.s.sume that the names and the turnings were familiar to me,--the course of the funeral train from Nottingham to the church. "There were eleven carriages," he said. "They didn't go to the Abbey" (meaning Newstead), "but came directly here. There were many people to look at them. I remember all about it, and I'm an old man--eighty-two. You're an Italian, I should say," he added. By this time the s.e.xton had come and unlocked the gate, and parting from Mr.

Callandyne we presently made our way into the Church of St. James, locking the churchyard gate to exclude rough and possibly mischievous followers. A strange and sad contrast, I thought, between this coa.r.s.e, turbulent place, by a malign destiny ordained for the grave of Byron, and that peaceful, lovely, majestic church and precinct at Stratford-upon-Avon which enshrine the dust of Shakespeare....

The s.e.xton of the Church of St. James and the parish clerk of Hucknall-Torkard was Mr. John Brown, and a man of sympathetic intelligence, kind heart, and interesting character I found him to be,--large, dark, stalwart, but gentle alike in manner and feeling, and considerate of his visitor. The pilgrim to the literary shrines of England does not always find the neighboring inhabitants either sympathetic with his reverence or conscious of especial sanct.i.ty or interest appertaining to the relics which they possess; but honest, manly John Brown of Hucknall-Torkard understood both the hallowing charm of the place and the sentiment, not to say the profound emotion, of the traveler who now beheld for the first time the tomb of Byron. The church has been considerably altered since Byron was buried in it, 1824, yet it retains its fundamental structure and its ancient peculiarities. The tower, a fine specimen of Norman architecture, dark, ragged, and grim, gives indication of great age. It is of a kind often met with in ancient English towns; you can see its brothers at York, Shrewsbury, Canterbury, Worcester, Warwick, and in many places sprinkled over the northern heights of London; but amid its tame surroundings in this little colliery settlement it looms with a peculiar frowning majesty, a certain bleak loneliness, both unique and impressive. The edifice is of the customary crucial form,--a low stone structure, having a peaked roof, which is supported by four great pillars on each side of the center aisle. The ceiling, which is made of heavy timbers, forms almost a true arch above the nave. There are four large windows on each side of the nave, and two on each side of the chancel, which is beneath a roof somewhat lower than that of the main building.