 | Romance of travel |  |
Stratford-on-Avon.
ROMANCE OF TRAVEL.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON.
“One-p'un'-five outside, sir, two pun' 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 pound 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,
reconcile his ideas of “retirement from office”
with those of his almost next door neighbour, the
hero of Strathfieldsaye. He was at least as “soft
a gentleman” to look at as the duke; but compare
his crammed and noisesome cellar with the lordly
parks and spacious domains of a king's bounty!
Yet for the mere courage of the man, there are
exigencies in the life of a coachman that require as
much as might have served his grace at Waterloo.
The broad rimmed beaver set knowingly on the
ex-Jehu's forehead, forebade a comparison between
their sculls.
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 out side place, which I had
left lying on the counter.
“You are at least as honest as the duke,” I soliloquized,
as I pocketed the six bright and substantial
half-crowns, “and if a long life of honesty and
courage are to be rewarded but with a seat in a
gloomy cellar, while the addition of brain-work to
duke, there is a mistake somewhere in the scale of
merit.”
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
old 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 millenium.
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 splendours 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
that, behind the barricaded and wet windows
of Apsley House, sleeps the hero of Waterloo; that
within the dripping and close-shuttered balcony
visible beyond, slumbers and dreams in her splendid
beauty the gifted woman, to whom Moore has
swung his censer of glorious incense, whom Byron
has sought, whom all the genius of England gathers
about and acknowledges supreme over minds
like her own—that under these crowded and fogwrapped
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 repopulate
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 monotomous beat on the ear; the
now and then with but the weight of his silk
snapper 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 neighbour,
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 admited in an evil moment that I had
been in France, I was first distinctly made to
understand that my neighbour 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 stage-coach, 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
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
won'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 Abigal 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 lovliness 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 ward, half
meadow; and on the other side lay the native town
of the immortal — 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 Shakespeare,
wil 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
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
will scarce 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
from the house stood a polyangular and massive
structure, well calculated for defence, and intended
as a stronghold 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, dependent
on the estate, and equally favoured 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 his tenants, and a secluded lake below the
garden, in which hundreds of wild duck swan 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 favourites,
after dinner, without exposure to the
weather. In the place of this rather bizarre luxury,
the oak pannelled and spacious dining-hall of C—
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 qualites 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
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.
One of the first visits in the neighbourhood was
naturally to Stratford-on-Avon. It lay some ten
miles south of us, and I drove down, with that distinguished
literary friend I have before mentioned,
in the carriage of our kind host, securing, by the
presence of his servants and equippage, a degree of
respect and attention which would not have been
accorded to us in our simple character of travellers.
The prim mistress of the Red Lion, in her close
black bonnet and widow's weeds, received us at
the door with a deeper courtesy than usual, and a
smile of less wintry formality; and proposing to
dine at the inn, and “suck the brain” of the hostess
more at our leisure, we started immediately for the
house of the wool-comber—the birthplace of Shakspeare.
Stratford should have been forbidden ground to
builders, masons, shopkeepers, and generally to all
people of thrift and whitewash. It is now rather
a smart town, with gay calicoes, shawls of the last
pattern, hardware, and millinery, exhibited in all
streets; and though here and there remains a glorious
old gloomy and inconvenient abode, which
looks as if Shakspeare might have taken shelter
under its eaves, the gayer features of the town
have the best of it, and flaunt their gaudy and
unrespected newness in the very windows of that
immortal birthplace. I stepped into a shop to
inquire the way to it.
“Shiksper's' ouse, sir? Yes, sir!” said a drapper
clerk, with his hair astonished into the most
impossible directions by force of brushing; “keep
to the right, sir! Shiksper lived in the white 'ouse,
sir—the 'ouse, you see beyond, with the windy
swung up, sir.”
A low, old-fashioned house, with a window suspended
on a hinge, newly whitewashed and scrubbed,
stood a little up the street. A sign over the
door informed us in an inflated paragraph, that the
immortal Will Shakspeare was born under this
roof, and that an old woman within would show it
to us for a consideration. It had been used until
very lately, I had been told, for a butcher's shop.
A “garrulous old lady” met us at the bottom of
the narrow stair leading to the second floor, and
began—not to say anything of Shakspeare—but to
show us the names of Byron, Moore, Rogers, etc.,
written among thousands of others on the wall!
story till she was tired of it! or (what perhaps is
more probable) most people who go there fall to
reading the names of the visiters so industriously,
that she has grown to think some of Shakspeare's
pilgrims greater than Shakspeare.
“Was this old oaken chest here in the days of
Shakspeare, madam,” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” and here's the name of Byron—here
with a capital B. Here's a curiosity, sir.”
“And this small wooden box?”
“Made of Shakspeare's mulberry, sir. I had
sich a time about that box, sir. Two young gemman
were here the other day—just run up while
the coach was changing horses, to see the house.
As soon as they were gone I misses the box. Off
scuds my son to the Red Lion, and there they sat
on the top looking as innocent as may be. “Stop
the coach,” says my son. “What do you want,”
says the driver. “My mother's mulberry box?—
Shakspeare's mulberry box!—One of them 'ere
young men's got it in his pocket.” And true
enough, sir, one on 'em had the imperence to take
it out of his pocket and flings it into my son's
face; and you know the coach never stops a minnit
for nothing, sir, or he'd a' smarted for it.”
Spirit of Shakspeare! dost thou not sometimes
walk alone in this humble chamber! Must one's
devotion by an abominable old woman? Why
should not such lucrative occupations be given in
charity to the deaf and dumb? The pointing of a
finger were enough in such spots of earth!
I sat down in despair to look over the book of
visiters, trusting that she would tire of my inattention.
As it was of no use to point out names to
those who would not look, however, she commenced
a long story of an American, who had lately
taken the whim to sleep in Shakspeare's birth-chamber.
She had shaken him down a bed on
the floor, and he had passed the night there. It
seemed to bother her to comprehend why two-thirds
of her visiters should be Americans—a circumstance
that was abundantly proved by the
books.
It was only when we were fairly in the street
that I began to realize that I had seen one of the
most glorious altars of memory—that deathless Will
Shakspeare, the mortal, who was, perhaps, (not to
speak profanely) next to his Maker, in the divine
faculty of creation, first saw the light through the
low lattice on which we turned back to look.
The single window of the room in which Scott
died at Abottsford, and this in the birth-chamber
of Shakspeare, have seemed to me almost marked
with the touch of the fire of those great souls—for I
where mighty spirits have come or gone, that they
came and went with the light of heaven.
We walked down the street to see the house
where Shakspeare lived on his return to Stratford.
It stands at the corner of a lane, not far
from the church were he was buried, and is a newish
un-Shaksperian looking place—no doubt, if it
be indeed the same house, most profanely and considerably
altered. The present proprietor or occupant
of the house or site, took upon himself some
time since the odium of cutting down the famous mulberry
tree planted by the poet's hand in the garden.
I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes
that two or three miles before coming to Stratford,
we passed through Shottery, where Anne
Hathaway lived. A nephew of the excellent baronet
whose guests we were, occupies the house.
I looked up and down the green lanes about it, and
glanced my eye round upon the hills over which
the sun has continued to set and the moon to ride
in her love-inspiring beauty ever since. There
were doubtless outlines in the landscape which had
been followed by the eye of Shakspeare when coming,
a trembling lover, to Shottery—doubtless, teints
in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke-wreaths from
the old homesteads on the hill-sides, which are little
altered now. How daringly the imagination plucks
of fancy and probability the thousand questions we
would put, if we might, to the magic mirror of
Agrippa? Did that great mortal love timidly, like
ourselves? Was the passionate outpouring of his
heart simple, and suited to the humble condition of
Anne Hatha way, or was it the first fiery coinage of
Romco and Othello? Did she know the immortal
honour and light poured upon woman by the love
of genius? Did she know how this common and
oftenest terrestrial passion becomes fused in the
poet's bosom with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous
elevation and purity, ascends lambently and
musically to the very stars! Did she coy it with
him? Was she a woman to him, as commoner
mortals find woman—capricious, tender, cruel,
intoxicating, cold—everything by changes impossible
to calculate or foresee! Did he walk home to
Stratford, sometimes, despairing in perfect sick-heartedness
of her affection, and was he recalled
by a message or a lover's instinct to find her weeping
and passionately repentant?
How natural it is by such questions and speculations
to betray our innate desire to bring the lofty
spirits of our common mould to our own inward
level—to seek analogies between our affections, passions,
appetites and theirs—to wish they might have
been no more exalted, no more fervent, no more
The same temper that prompts the depreciation,
the envy, the hatred exercised toward the
poet in his lifetime, mingles, not inconsiderably, in
the researches so industriously prosecuted after his
death into his youth and history. To be admired
in this world, and much more to be beloved for
higher qualites than his fellow-men, ensures to
genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be
ferretted out with all his frailties and imperfections
from the grave.
The church in which Shakspeare is buried stands
near the banks of the Avon, and is a most picturesque
and proper place of repose for his ashes.
An avenue of small trees and vines, ingeniously
over-laced, extends from the street to the principal
door, and the interior is broken up into that confused
and accidental medley of tombs, pews, cross-lights,
and pillars, for which the old churches of
England are remarkable. The tomb and effigy of
the great poet, lie in an inner chapel, and are as
described in every traveller's book. I will not
take up room with the repetition.
It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb of his
wife and daughter beside him. One does not realize
before, that Shakspeare had wife, children,
kinsmen, like other men—that there were those
who had a right to lie in the same tomb; to whom
benefitted or offended; who may have influenced
materially his destiny, or he theirs; who were the
inheritors of his household goods, his wardrobe,
his books—people who looked on him—on Shakspeare—as
a landholder, a renter of a pew, a townsman;
a relative, in short, who had claims upon
them, not for the eternal homage due to celestial
inspiration, but for the charity of shelter and bread
had he been poor, for kindness and ministry had he
been sick, for burial and the tears of natural affection
when he died. It is painful and embarrassing to the
mind to go to Stratford—to reconcile the immortality
and the incomprehensible power of genius like
Shakspeare's, with the space, tenement and circumstance
of a man! The poet should be like the
sea-bird, seen only on the wing—his birth, his slumber
and his death mysteries alike.
I had stipulated with the hostess that my baggage
should be put into the chamber occupied by
Washington Irving. I was shown into it to dress
for dinner—a small, neat room, a perfect specimen
in short of an English bed-room, with snow-white
curtains, a looking glass the size of the face, a well-polished
grate and poker, a well fitted carpet, and
as much light as heaven permits to the climate.
Our dinner for two was served in a neat parlor
on the same floor—an English inn dinner—simple,
unknown in other countries. There was just fire
enough in the grate, just enough for two in the
different dishes, a servant who was just enough in
the room, and just civil enough—in short, it was,
like every thing else in that country of adaptation
and fitness, just what was ordered and wanted, and
no more.
The evening turned out stormy, and the rain
pattered merrily against the windows. The shutters
were closed, the fire blazed up with new
brightness, the well fitted wax-lights were set on
the table, and when the dishes were removed, we
replaced the wine with a tea-tray, and sent for the
hostess to give us her company and a little gossip
over our cups.
Nothing could be more nicely understood and
defined than the manner of English hostesses
generally in such situations, and of Mrs. Gardiner
particularly in this. Respectful without servility,
perfectly sure of the propriety of her own manner
and mode of expression, yet preserving in every look
and word the proper distinction between herself
and her guests, she ensured from them that kindness
and ease of communication which would make a
long evening of social conversation pass not only
without embarrassment on either side, but with
mutual pleasure and gratification.
“I have brought up, mem,” she said, producing
a well-polished poker from under her black apron
before she took the chair set for her at the table, “I
have brought up a relic for you to see that no
money would buy from me.”
She turned it over in my hand, and I read on one
of the flat sides at the bottom, “GEOFFREY CRAYON'S
SCEPTRE.”
“Do you remember Mr. Irving,” asked my
friend, “or have you supposed, since reading his
sketch of Stratford-on-Avon, that the gentleman in
number three might be the person?”
The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the
expression of a person about to compliment herself
stole into the corners of her mouth.
“Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the
habit of observing my guests, and I think I may
say I knows a super or gentleman when I sees him.
“If you remember, mem,” (and she took down
from the mantlepiece a much worn copy of the
Sketch-Book,) Geoffery Crayon tells the circumstance
of my stepping in when it was getting late
and asking if he had rung. I knows it by that,
and then the gentleman I mean was an American,
and I think, mem. besides,” (and she hesitated a
little as if she was about to advance an original
and rather ventursome opinion,) “I think I can see
that gentleman's likeness all through this book.”
A truer remark or a more just criticism was
perhaps never made on the Sketch-Book. We
smiled, and Mrs. Gardiner proceded:
“I was in and out of the coffee-room the night he
arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his modest
ways and timid look that he was a gentleman, and
not fit company for the other travellers. They
were all young men, sir, and business travellers, and
you know, mem, ignorance takes the advantage of
modest merit, and after their dinner they were very
noisy and rude. So, I says to Sarah, the chambermaid,
says I, that nice gentleman can't get near the
fire, and you go and light a fire in number three
and he shall sit alone, and it shan't cost him nothing,
for I like the look on him, Well, mem, he seemed
pleased to be alone, and after his tea, he puts his
legs up over the grate, and there he sits with the
poker in his hand till ten o'clock. The other
travellers went to bed, and at last the house was
as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate now
and then in number three, and every time I heard
it I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was
getting very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting
up to ring for a light,. Well, mem. I nodded and
nodded, and still no ring at the bell. At last I
says to Sarah, says I, go into number three and
upset something, for I am sure that gentleman has
fallen asleep. `La,' ma'am,' says Sarah, `I don't
the door, and I says, `If you please sir, did you
ring'—little thinking that question would ever be
written down in such a beautiful book, mem. He
sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire, and
a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought
was in his mind. `No, ma'am,' says he, `I did not.'
I shuts the door, and sits down again, for I hadn't
the heart to tell him that it was late, for he was a
gentleman not to speak rudely to, mem. Well, it
was past twelve o'clock, when the bell did ring.
`There,' says I to Sarah,' thank heaven he has done
thinking, and we can go to bed.' So he walked up
stairs with his light, and the next morning he was
up early and off to the Shakspeare house, and he
brings me home a box of the mulberry tree, and
asks me if I thought it was genuine, and said it was
for his mother in America. And I loved him still
more for that, and I'm sure I prayed she might live
to see him return.”
“I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon
after did you set aside the poker.”
“Why, sir, you see there's a Mr. Vincent that
comes here sometimes, and he says to me one day,
`So, Mrs. Gardiner, you're finely immortalized,
Read that.' So the minnit I read it, I remembered
who it was and all about it, and I runs and gets
the number three poker, and locks it up safe and
and has his name engraved on it, and here you see
it, sir, and I would't take no money for it.”
I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving,
and I evidently lost ground with the hostess of the
Red Horse for that misfortune. I delighted her,
however, with the account which I had seen in a
late newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the
praries of the west, and she soon courtesied herself
out and left me to the delightful society of the distinguished
lady who had accompanied me. Among
all my many loiterings in many lands, I remember
none more intellectually pure and gratifying, than
this at Stratford-on-Avon. My sleep, in the little
bed consecrated by the slumbers of the immortal
Geoffery, was sweet and light, and I write myself
his debtor far a large share of the pleasure which
genius like his lavishes on the world.
| Romance of travel | |