University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

“One-p'un'-five outside, sir, two p'un' in.”

It was a bright, calm afternoon in September, promising
nothing but a morrow of sunshine and autumn,
when I stepped in at the “White Horse Cellar,” in
Piccadilly, to take my place in the Tantivy coach for
Stratford-on-Avon. Preferring the outside of the
coach, at least by as much as the difference in the
prices, and accustomed from long habit to pay dearest
for that which most pleased me, I wrote myself down
for the outside, and deposited my two pounds in the
horny palm of the old ex-coachman, retired from the
box, and playing clerk in this dingy den of parcels and
portmanteaus. Supposing my business concluded, I
stood a minute speculating on the weather-beaten,
cramp-handed old Jehu before me, and trying to reconcile
his ideas of “retirement from office” with those
of his almost next door neighbor, the hero of Strathfieldsaye.

I had mounted the first stair toward daylight, when
a touch on the shoulder with the end of a long whip
—a technical “reminder,” which probably came easier
to the old driver than the phrasing of a sentence to a
“gemman”—recalled me to the cellar.

“Fifteen shillin', sir,” said he laconically, pointing
with the same expressive exponent of his profession
to the change for my outside place, which I had left
lying on the counter.

“You are at least as honest as the duke,” I soliloquised,
as I pocketed the six bright and substantial
half-crowns.

I was at the “White Horse Cellar” again the following
morning at six, promising myself with great
sincerity never to rely again on the constancy of an
English sky. It rained in torrents. The four inside
places were all taken, and with twelve fellow-outsides,
I mounted to the wet seat, and begging a little straw
by way of cushion from the ostler, spread my umbrella,
abandoned my knees with a single effort of
mind to the drippings of the driver's weather-proof
upper Benjamin, and away we sped. I was “due” at
the house of a hospitable catholic baronet, a hundred
and two miles from London, at the dinner-hour of that
day, and to wait till it had done raining in England is
to expect the millennium.

London in the morning—I mean the poor man's
morning, daylight—is to me matter for the most
speculative and intense melancholy. Hyde park in
the sunshine of a bright afternoon, glittering with
equipages and gay with the Aladdin splendors of rank
and wealth, is a scene which sends the mercurial qualities
of the blood trippingly through the veins. But
Hyde park at daylight seen from Piccadilly through
fog and rain, is perhaps, of all contrasts, to one who
has frequented it in its bright hours, the most dispiriting
and dreary. To remember that behind the barricaded
and wet windows of Apsley house sleeps the
hero of Waterloo—that under these crowded and fog-wrapped
houses lie, in their dim chambers breathing
of perfume and luxury, the high-born and nobly-moulded
creatures who preserve for the aristocracy
of England the palm of the world's beauty—to remember
this, and a thousand other associations linked with
the spot, is not at all to diminish, but rather to deepen,
the melancholy of the picture. Why is it that the
deserted stage of a theatre, the echo of an empty ball-room,
the loneliness of a frequented promenade in
untimely hours—any scene, in short, of gayety gone
by but remembered—oppresses and dissatisfies the
heart! One would think memory should re-brighten
and re-populate such places.

The wheels hissed through the shallow pools in the
Macadam road, the regular pattering of the small
hoofs in the wet carriage-tracks maintained its quick
and monotonous beat on the ear; the silent driver kept
his eye on the traces, and “reminded” now and then
with but the weight of his slight lash a lagging wheeler
or leader, and the complicated but compact machine
of which the square foot that I occupied had been so
nicely calculated, sped on its ten miles in the hour

with the steadfastness of a star in its orbit, and as independent
of clouds and rain.

“Est ce que monsieur parle François?” asked at the
end of the first stage my right-hand neighbor, a little
gentleman, of whom I had hitherto only remarked that
he was holding on to the iron railing of the seat with
great tenacity.

Having admitted in an evil moment that I had been
in France, I was first distinctly made to understand
that my neighbor was on his way to Birmingham
purely for pleasure, and without the most distant object
of business—a point on which he insisted so long,
and recurred to so often, that he succeeded at last in
persuading me that he was doubtless a candidate for
the French clerkship of some exporter of buttons.
After listening to an amusing dissertation on the rashness
of committing one's life to an English stagecoach,
with scarce room enough for the perch of a
parrot, and a velocity so diablement dangereux, I tired
of my Frenchman; and, since I could not have my
own thoughts in peace, opened a conversation with a
straw-bonnet and shawl on my left—the property, I
soon discovered, of a very smart lady's maid, very indignant
at having been made to change places with
Master George, who, with his mother and her mistress,
were dry and comfortable inside. She “would not
have minded the outside place,” she said, “for there
were sometimes very agreeable gentlemen on the outside,
very!—but she had been promised to go inside,
and had dressed accordingly; and it was very provoking
to spoil a nice new shawl and best bonnet, just
because a great school-boy, that had nothing on that
would damage chose not to ride in the rain.”

“Very provoking, indeed!” I responded, letting in
the rain upon myself unconsciously, in extending my
umbrella forward so as to protect her on the side of
the wind.

“We should have gone down in the carriage, sir,”
she continued, edging a little closer to get the full advantage
of my umbrella; “but John the coachman
has got the hinfluenzy, and my missis wo'n't be driven
by no other coachman; she's as obstinate as a mule,
sir. And that isn't all I could tell, sir; but I scorns
to hurt the character of one of my own sex.” And
the pretty abigail pursed up her red lips, and looked
determined not to destroy her mistress's character—
unless particularly requested.

I detest what may be called a proper road-book—
even would it be less absurd than it is to write one on
a country so well conned as England.

I shall say nothing, therefore, of Marlow, which
looked the picture of rural loveliness though seen
through fog, nor of Oxford, of which all I remember
is that I dined there with my teeth chattering, and
my knees saturated with rain. All England is lovely
to the wild eye of an American unused to high cultivation;
and though my enthusiasm was somewhat damp,
I arrived at the bridge over the Avon, blessing England
sufficiently for its beauty, and much more for the speed
of its coaches.

The Avon, above and below the bridge, ran brightly
along between low banks, half sward, half meadow;
and on the other side lay the native town of the immortal
wool-comber—a gay cheerful-looking village,
narrowing in the centre to a closely-built street, across
which swung, broad and fair, the sign of the “Red
horse.” More ambitious hotels lay beyond, and
broader streets; but while Washington Irving is remembered
(and that will be while the language lasts),
the quiet inn in which the great Geoffrey thought
and wrote of Shakspere will be the altar of the pilgrim's
devotions.

My baggage was set down, the coachman and guard
tipped their hats for a shilling, and, chilled to the bone,
I raised my hat instinctively to the courtesy of a slender
gentlewoman in black, who, by the keys at her girdle,
should be the landlady. Having expected to see a
rosy little Mrs. Boniface, with a brown pinafore and
worsted mittens, I made up my mind at once that the
inn had changed mistresses. On the right of the old-fashioned
entrance blazed cheerily the kitchen fire,
and with my enthusiasm rather dashed by my disappointment,
I stepped in to make friends with the cook,
and get a little warmth and information.

“So your old mistress is dead, Mrs. Cook,” said I,
rubbing my hands with great satisfaction between the
fire and a well-roasted chicken.

“Lauk, sir, no, she isn't!” answered the rosy lass,
pointing with a dredging-box to the same respectable
lady in black who was just entering to look after me.

“I beg pardon, sir,” she said, dropping a courtesy;
“but are you the gentleman expected by Sir
Charles —?”

“Yes, madam. And can you tell me anything of
your predecessor who had the inn in the days of
Washington Irving?”

She dropped another courtesy, and drew up her
thin person to its full height, while a smile of gratified
vanity stole out at the corners of her mouth.

“The carriage has been waiting some time for you,
sir,” she said, with a softer tone than that in which
she had hitherto addressed me; “and you will hardly
be at C— in time for dinner. You will be coming
over to-morrow or the day after, perhaps, sir; and
then, if you would honor my little room by taking a
cup of tea with me, I should be pleased to tell you all
about it, sir.”

I remembered a promise I had nearly forgotten,
that I would reserve my visit to Stratford till I could
be accompanied by Miss J. P—, whom I was to
have the honor of meeting at my place of destination;
and promising an early acceptance of the kind landlady's
invitation, I hurried on to my appointment over
the fertile hills of Warwickshire.

I was established in one of those old Elizabethan
country-houses, which, with their vast parks, their
self-sufficing resources of subsistence and company,
and the absolute deference shown on all sides to the
lord of the manor, give one the impression rather of a
little kingdom with a castle in its heart, than of an
abode for a gentleman subject. The house itself
(called, like most houses of this size and consequence
in Warwickshire, a “Court,”) was a Gothic, half-castellated
square, with four round towers, and innumerable
embrasures and windows; two wings in
front, probably more modern than the body of the
house, and again two long wings extending to the rear,
at right angles, and enclosing a flowery and formal
parterre. There had been a trench about it, now
filled up, and at a short distance from the house stood
a polyangular and massive structure, well calculated
for defence, and intended as a strong-hold for the retreat
of the family and tenants in more troubled times.
One of these rear wings enclosed a catholic chapel,
for the worship of the baronet and those of his tenants
who professed the same faith; while on the northern
side, between the house and the garden, stood a large
protestant stone church, with a turret and spire, both
chapel and church, with their clergyman and priest,
dependant on the estate, and equally favored by the
liberal and high-minded baronet. The tenantry formed
two considerable congregations, and lived and worshipped
side by side, with the most perfect harmony
—an instance of real Christianity, in my opinion, which
the angels of heaven might come down to see. A
lovely rural graveyard for the lord and tenants, and a
secluded lake below the garden, in which hundreds of
wild ducks swam and screamed unmolested, completed
the outward features of C— court.

There are noble houses in England, with a door
communicating from the dining-room to the stables,
that the master and his friends may see their favorites,

after dinner, without exposure to the weather. In the
place of this rather bizarre luxury, the oak-panelled
and spacious dining-hall of C— is on a level with
the organ loft of the chapel, and when the cloth is removed,
the large door between is thrown open, and
the noble instrument pours the rich and thrilling
music of vespers through the rooms. When the
service is concluded, and the lights on the altar extinguished,
the blind organist (an accomplished musician,
and a tenant on the estate), continues his voluntaries
in the dark until the hall-door informs him of
the retreat of the company to the drawing-room.
There is not only refinement and luxury in this
beautiful arrangement, but food for the soul and
heart.

I chose my room from among the endless vacant
but equally luxurious chambers of the rambling old
house; my preference solely directed by the portrait
of a nun, one of the family in ages gone by—a picture
full of melancholy beauty, which hung opposite the
window. The face was distinguished by all that in
England marks the gentlewoman of ancient and pure
descent; and while it was a woman with the more
tender qualities of her sex breathing through her features,
it was still a lofty and sainted sister, true to her
cross, and sincere in her vows and seclusion. It was
the work of a master, probably Vandyke, and a picture
in which the most solitary man would find company
and communion. On the other walls, and in most of
the other rooms and corridors, were distributed portraits
of the gentlemen and soldiers of the family, most
of them bearing some resemblance to the nun, but
differing, as brothers in those wild times may be supposed
to have differed, from the gentle creatures of the
same blood, nursed in the privacy of peace.