Zigzag Journeys in Europe Part 20

absence. He certainly looked like a modern hunter, for he was empty handed, and his clothes were in a very disarranged condition.

"Where are your bow and arrows?" asked Frank.

"I shall tell you nothing at all about it, now," said Tommy. "It is my own secret."

"Then you have two secrets," said Frank, referring to the fact that Tommy had been made custodian of the secret he was supposed to have selected for the Club.

"Yes, but _that_ don't _amount to much_," said Tommy.

"_Nothing, after all_," said Master Lewis, quietly, who had seen Tommy's conundrum on a card. "I did not suppose that you really intended to spend the day in the country alone with bow and arrow."

"Just look at my legs," said Tommy, rolling up his pants, and showing b.l.o.o.d.y scars.

"Where did you get _them_?" asked Master Lewis.

"_Up a tree._ Please do not ask me now. If you will excuse me from telling you now, I will give you a full account some other time."

"I will excuse you from giving an account of yourself, to-night; but please remember that you must not go hunting, or anywhere, alone again without my permission," said Master Lewis, noticing some singular rents in Tommy's clothes.

Tommy went to his supper.

"I've been chased by the _terriblest_ bull you ever saw," he whispered confidentially to Wyllys Wynn, as he pa.s.sed him. "I'll tell you all about it some time."

He added,--

"And that ain't all. I've been chased by _John_ Bull, too."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEVERIL OF THE PEAK.]

Ernest Wynn went, under an arrangement made for him by Master Lewis, to the Peak near Castleton, wishing to view the scene of Sir Walter Scott's charming romance, "Peveril of the Peak." He found there only a pitiful ruin, and instead of knights with dancing plumes and silver shields, with which fancy pictures the eyry of the grand old Norman baron, he met some very strange-looking mining people, who are often to be seen in the rural districts in this part of England.

One incident touched Frank's kind heart, and seemed more to impress him than the a.s.sociations of manorial splendor he had made the journey to see.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOY AT THE WHEEL.]

In the entrance of one of the caves of the Peak was a little rope-spinner, who was lame, and whose time was spent from sun to sun in turning the wheel,--always the same, faithfully turning the wheel.

"I gave him a shilling," said Frank, "spoke kindly to him, and left him gazing after me with tears in his eyes, still turning his wheel, turning his wheel."

From Nottingham Master Lewis and the boys went to Birmingham, and Frank Gray and Ernest Wynn made a detour to the little village of Madeley, and visited Boscobel, the place of refuge of King Charles II.

after his defeat at the battle of Worcester. The king first arrived at White Ladies about three-quarters of a mile from Boscobel House: there he secreted himself in an oak, afterwards famous as the Royal Oak of Boscobel. The brothers Penderell, foresters and yeomen, concealed him in closets in their simple mansion, being true to their sovereign at the risk of their lives, when it might have raised them from poverty to riches to have uttered a treacherous word.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOSCOBEL.]

The closets in which Charles was concealed are exhibited to visitors, and Frank and Ernest were allowed to pa.s.s up and down the pa.s.sages that had afforded so secure a retreat to the fugitive. In the parlor they were shown a chimney-piece, and on one of the panels a picture of the king in the oak, and on another the king in disguise on horse-back, escorted by the Penderells.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {THE TOMB OF RICHARD PENDERELL.}]

It is said that the king's pursuers were thrown off the right track of discovery by an owl that flew out of the oak where he was concealed, leading the captain to say, "The owl loveth not company, and where he is no one else can be." It is also related that when Charles complained of the slowness of the horse on which he fled in disguise, one of the Penderells remarked that the animal never before had "the weight of three kingdoms on his back." These stories may not be quite true, but one is reminded of them by the figures on the chimney-piece.

The Cla.s.s next went to Leamington, a most convenient point from which to make short excursions to Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick Castle, and Kenilworth Castle. Leamington, although itself not historically interesting, is provided with excellent hotels, being an English watering-place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: KING CHARLES'S HIDING PLACE.]

The first excursion of the party from Leamington was to Stratford-on-Avon, to the house where Shakspeare was born, and the church in which he was buried.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHAKSPEARE.]

The birthplace of Shakspeare is an antique-looking stone house two stones high, with picturesque gables fronting the street. In the room where he first saw the light of the world he was to enrich with his thought there is a cast of his face taken after his death, and a portrait painted in the prime of his life. The latter showed a truly n.o.ble brow; it was such a face as fancy itself might paint, so royally did it seem endowed with genius. In this room Sir Walter Scott had inscribed his name on a pane of gla.s.s, and Wordsworth once wrote a stanza which is still preserved under gla.s.s. It began with these lines:--

"The house of Shakspeare's birth we here may see; That of his death we find without a trace.

Vain the inquiry, for immortal he"--

Here the poet seemed to pause as though the literary work was not satisfactory; he drew his pen across what he had written, and under it wrote the following stanza:--

"Of mighty Shakspeare's birth the room we see; That where he died, in vain to find we try.

Useless the search, for, all immortal he: And those who are immortal never die."

The effort furnishes a curious ill.u.s.tration of the methods of a poet's mind in careful composition.

Back of the house is a garden, in which grew the old English flowers that are portrayed by the poet in his dramas.

From the house the party went to the cottage of Anne Hathaway, Shakspeare's wife, whom he loved in youth when life's bright ways lay fair before him. It is a house which is mainly noticeable for its simplicity.

"There is the place where he sat when he came to see his sweetheart,"

said the old lady who showed the house.

Shakspeare and his wife sleep in the same beautiful church amid the bowery town of Stratford-on-Avon; and thither, rowing up the Avon almost to the churchyard, our tourists made their way.

The party approached the church through an avenue of limes, and entered the richly-carved oak doors of the Gothic porch. The tomb of Shakspeare is in the chancel. The Avon runs but a short distance from the walls, and the cool boughs of the summer trees wave before the windows. A flat stone marks the place where the poet is buried, on which are inscribed the oft quoted lines said to be written by the poet himself:--

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here!

Blest be the spade that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones."

Over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of the poet. The inscription mentions his age as fifty-three years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE.]

Returning to the birthplace, Frank Gray and Tommy Toby visited the Shakspeare Museum. The collection of curiosities was somewhat comical,--such for example as a phial containing _juice_ from mulberries gathered from Shakspeare's mulberry-tree; Shakspeare's jug, from which Garrick sipped wine at the Jubilee in 1769. Frank seemed to enjoy the specimens, his mind poetically a.s.sociating them with bygone scenes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF KENILWORTH CASTLE.]

Tommy showed a great contempt for Frank's wonder-talk.

"I've found something now," he said, "that outdoes all the rest. It is a letter written--"

"By Shakspeare?" asked Frank, in an animated way.

"No: _to_ Shakspeare."