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Charlecote.
ROMANCE OF TRAVEL.
CHARLECOTE.
Oncr more posting through Shottery and Stratford-on-Avon,
on the road to Kenilworth and Warwick,
I felt a pleasure in becoming an habitué in
Shakspeare's town—in being recognized by the
Stratford post-boys, known at the Stratford Inn,
and remembered at the toll-gates. It is pleasant to
be welcomed by name any where; but at Stratford-on-Avon,
it is a recognition by those whose fathers
or predecessors were the companions of Shakspeare's
frolics. Every fellow in a slouched hat—
every idler on a tavern bench—every saunterer
with a dog at his heels on the highway, should be a
deer-stealer from Charlecote. You would almost ask
him, “Was Will Shakspeare with you last night?”
The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortalized
by a varlet poacher who was tried before old Sir
apology from Walter Savage Landor for making
too free with the family history, under cover of an
imaginary account of the trial. I thought, as we
drove along in sight of the fine old hall, with its broad
park and majestic trees—(very much as it stood in
the days of Sir Thomas, I believe)—that most probably
the descendants of the old justice look even
now upon Shakspeare more as an offender against
the game-laws, than as a writer of immortal plays.
I venture to say, it would be bad tact in a visiter to
Charlecote to felicitate the family on the honour of
possessing a park in which Shakspeare had stolen
deer—to show more interest in seeing the hall in
which he was tried, than in the family portraits.
On the road which I was travelling, (from Stratford
to Charlecote,) Shakspeare had been dragged
as a culprit. What were his feelings before Sir
Thomas! He felt, doubtless, as every possessor of
the divine fire of genius must feel, when brought
rudely in contact with his fellow-men, that he was
too much their superior to be angry. The humour
in which he has drawn Justice Shallow, proves
abundantly that he was more amused than displeased
with his own trial. But was there no vexation
at the moment? A reflection, it might be, from the
estimate of his position in the minds of those who
were about him—who looked on him simply as a
Hathaway's opinion, then?
How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand the
relation between judge and culprit on that trial!—
How littld did he dream he was sitting for his picture
to the pestilent varlet at the bar; that the
deer-stealer could better afford to forgive him, that
he the deer-stealer. Genius forgives, or rather forgets,
all wrongs done in ignorance of its immortal
presence. Had Ben Johnson made a wilful jest on
a line in his new play, it would have rankled longer
than fine and imprisonment for deer-stealing. Those
who crowd back and trample upon men of genius
in the common walk of life; who cheat them, misrepresent
them, take advantage of their inattention
or their generosity in worldly matters, are sometimes
surprised how their injuries, if not themselves,
are forgotten. Old Adam Woodcock might as well
have held malice against Roland Græme for the
stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of Misrule.
Yet, as I might have remarked in the paragraph
gone before, it is probably not easy to put conscious
and secret superiority entirely between the mind
and the opinions of those around who think differently.
It is one reason why men of genius love
more than the common share of solitude—to recover
self-respect. In the midst of the amusing travesty
he was drawing in his own mind of the grave scene
like a detected culprit as he seemed to the game-keeper
and the justice. It is a small penalty to pay
for the after worship of the world! The ragged and
proverbially ill-dressed peasants who are selected
from the whole campagna, as models to the sculptors
of Rome, care little what is thought of their
good looks in the Corso. The disguised proportions
beneath their rags will be admired in deathless marble,
when the noble who scarce deigns their possessor
a look, will lie in forgotten dust under his stone
scutcheon.
Were it not for the “out-heroded” descriptions
in the Guide-Books, one might say a great deal of
Warwick Castle. It is the quality of over-done
or ill-expressed enthusiasm, to silence that which is
more rational and real. Warwick is, perhaps, the
best kept of all the famous old castles of England.
It is superb and admirably appointed modern dwelling,
in the shell, and with all the means and appliances
preserved, of an ancient strong-hold. It is a
curious union, too. My lady's maid and my lord's
valet, coquet upon the bartizan, where old Guy of
Warwick stalked in his coat of mail. The London
cockney, from his two days watering at Leamington,
stops his poney-chaise, hired at half-a-crown
the hour, and walks Mrs. Popkins over the old
of his shop in the Strand. Scot and Frenchman
saunter through fosse and tower, and no ghost of
the middle ages stalks forth, with closed visor, to
challenge these once natural foes. The powdered
butler yawns through an embrazure, expecting
“miladi,” the countess of this fair domain, who in
one day's posting from London, seeks relief in Warwick
Castle from the routs and soirées of town.
What would old Guy say, or the “noble imp” whose
effigy is among the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers,
if they could rise through their marble slabs,
and be whirled over the drawbridge in a post-chaise?
How indignantly they would listen to the
reckoning within their own portcullis, of the rates
for chaise and postillion! How astonished they
would be at the butler's bow, and the proffered
officiousness of the valet. “Shall I draw off your
lordship's boots. Which of these new vests from
Staub will your lordship put on for dinner.
Among the pictures at Warwick, I was interested
by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, (the best of that
sovereign I ever saw;) one of Michiavelli, one of
Essex, and one of Sir Philip Sidney, The delightful
and gifted woman whom I had accompanied to
the castle, observed of the latter, that the hand alone
expressed all his character. I had often made the
remark in real life, but I had never seen an instance
one could doubt, who knew Sir Philip Sidney's
character, that it was a literal portrait of his hand.
In our day, if you have an artist for a friend, he
makes use of you while you call, to “sit for the
hand” of the portrait on his easel. Having a preference
for the society of artists myself, and frequenting
their studios considerably, I know of some
hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on canvass,
who have procured for posterity and their
children, portraits of their own heads and dress-coats
to be sure, but of the hands of other persons!
The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the
marble in the gallery of Florence, small, slender,
and visibly “made to creep into crevices.” The
face is impassive and calm, and the lips, though
slight and almost feminine, have an indefinable
firmness and character. Essex is the bold, plain,
and blunt soldier history makes him, and Elizabeth
not unqueenly, nor (to my thinking) of an uninteresting
countenance; but, with all the artist's flattery,
ugly enough to be the abode of the murderous
envy that brought Mary to the block.
We paid our five shillings for having been
walked through the marble hall of Castle Warwick,
and the dressing-room of its modern lady, and gratified
much more by our visit than I have expressed
in this brief description, posted on to Kenilworth.
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