University of Virginia Library

1. I.
DREAMS AT CECIL COURT.

May of this troubled year 1642 came into the
world, and found me still weak and feeble,—scarce
able, indeed, to rise from my bed. As June approached,
however, I grew somewhat stronger, began to move
about the grounds, and slowly my hurt healed,—with
which came a sense of exquisite enjoyment.

I look back upon those summer days at Cecil Court
as among the happiest of my life. Everything was
charmingly fresh and buoyant; and my brief experience
of the bustle of courts had only intensified a
sentiment always powerful in me, my love for the scenes
and occupations of our English country life.

It is certain that one is born with this sentiment and
never loses it. I have seen all phases of life in my
time,—the splendid court at Versailles, the rush and
whirl of battle; have talked with dukes and countesses,
flirted the fans of court beauties, and taken part
in royal processions:—all the fine pageant of the life of
cities has passed before me, with waving banners, triumphant
music, gorgeous silks and velvets, and jewels,
and floating plumes; but the whole has been for me a

mere phantasmagoria or idle picture. What I liked
better, and returned to with ever-increasing fondness,
was the calm, untroubled life of the fields and forests,—
the fields and forests of dear, ever-blessed England.

It was these fresh scenes that I looked on now from
the doorway of the old mansion of my fathers on the
banks of the Avon. My illness seemed to have sharpened
every faculty of enjoyment. Through my very
pores I seemed to absorb the delightful influences of
the vernal season. The songs of the birds in the elms,
the daisies starring the turf, the skylark circling in
the clouds,—all were sources of the sweetest happiness;
and I thrilled with an enjoyment which no words can
express.

The banks of the great river of Virginia, wherefrom
I write, are beautiful, and Virginia is surely a charming
country; but, go where you will, friend, there is
no place like home. A kind heaven made my home in
Old England,—with green turf, and blooming hedges,
and great trees, and cawing rooks swarming in and
out of their nests on the summits of the lofty oaks,
beside the little sheet of water on which some swans
sailed serenely to and fro. Every spot around the old
house had some family incident or memory of my own
youth connected with it. There were the apple-trees
where I had gathered the ripe red fruit in autumn;
there was the spot in the hedge where I had hung with
delight over the dove's nest, with its two milk-white
eggs; there was the crotch in the great apple-tree,
where I had robbed the blackbird's nest of its speckled
treasure; yonder the old pony had rolled me on the
grass, when an idle urchin; at the quiet nook in the

little stream where the grass hung over the shadowy
pool, I had fished with a pin-hook and brought home
in triumph my willow twig full of trout. Thus every
locality was full of memories of my childhood. And
boyhood had its souvenirs, no less vivid and delightful.
The child had become a youth, and his heart had expanded
amid these same scenes. The dreams of the
great poets, the first vague thrills of romance, visions
of beauties with great soft eyes and flowing hair,—
these too were framed as it were by the green fields
and woods around Cecil Court. Stealing off in those
days to the banks of the little stream, I would throw
my line in the water where the shadow of a great elm
darkened the limpid surface, stretch myself on the
turf, with the leaves whispering over me, and hour
after hour of the long summer days would flit by like
dreams,—or call them birds, sailing away on silent
wings into the past. Then the blue sky was a wonder,
with its fleecy cloud-ships; the far coo of the dove
came to my ears like dreamy music; the water rippled;
the rooks cawed in the tops of the great elms:—I was
an English boy in my English home, filled in all my
being with the exquisite happiness which comes, to me
at least, only amid the dear scenes of Old England.

As I pass away from this tranquil and charming
period of my life,—I mean the days of my convalescence,
when the old scenes came back so vividly to
me, and I was a boy again,—I lean my head upon my
hand, muse idly as I remember, and again see the
youth lying on the turf beneath the oak, reading
Shakespeare's dramas, and thinking of his own life's
drama,—brief as yet, and just begun. See, I have

written that great name, Shakespeare,—and that, too,
arouses many memories. The fame of my father's
neighbor and friend has grown quite gigantic now, but
at that time he was much less renowned,—indeed, I
might say, was little read. 'Tis so dangerous to one's
fame to be its cotemporary and move about in flesh
and blood! No man is great to those who talk with
him and see him laugh and eat his dinner! “That a
heaven-born genius?” you say: “absurd! 'tis only a
man like myself!” So those who lived near Mr.
Shakespeare were not so very enthusiastic about him.
He was delightful company, my father said, and of
excellent wit and humor; made you laugh very often,
and was altogether gay, and healthy, and natural; but
he was surprisingly simple, seemed never to have
imagined himself of much importance, thought little,
it would appear, of his dramas, and preferred Stratford,
where life was quite humdrum, to London, where
they fêted him and placed crowns upon his forehead.
He came often to see my father at Cecil Court;
laughed at everything and everybody, with a pleasant
wit which did not wound; took an interest in horses,
and calves, and the very spring flowers; smoked his
tobacco-pipe, and never alluded to Macbeth or Hamlet
in his life.

Such was Will Shakespeare, as old neighbors still
called him; and I think my father was one of the few
persons who divined the supreme genius of his writings.
I was early impressed with their charm, and read him
constantly: Titania and Miranda and Ophelia filled
my early dreams. Thus the soul of Shakespeare grew
as 'twere into my young life; and to-day, reading his

great dramas on the banks of the York, 'tis not so much
Elsinore and Duncan's castle and Bosworth field I see,
as Cecil Court in England, where, stretched on the
turf, I looked upon all these visions!

Need I add that in that spring I saw other heroines
in my dreams than Shakespeare's? Frances Villiers!
—I write that name, and leave the picture of the disconsolate
lover to be painted by the imagination. I
will not dwell upon that. I grow old, alas! and romantic
writing from an old gentleman would make his
grandchildren laugh. 'Tis the grand privilege of
youth to be absurd gracefully,—to go into raptures
over Dulcinea, and talk nonsense as fresh and charming
as the passion it describes. Romance-writers share
that privilege, 'tis true; and were I composing a romance,
I might enlarge upon Frances Villiers and my
hero's feelings. If I were only writing the adventures
of an imaginary Mr. Edmund Cecil! Then the
reader should be told everything: my hero's heart
should be laid bare,—his romantic passion should gush
forth in burning words,—and behold, beloved reader,
you would have a love-romance to amuse you. But
this is my own life, you see. I grow ashamed when I
speak of my own feelings: would you like a third person
to be listening, whilst you poured out in some
shady nook the passion of your heart into the ears of
the chosen one? 'Tis thus a sort of shame which seals
my lips: enough that, asleep or awake, Frances was in
my thoughts.

The Cecils are light-hearted, and take trouble easily.
What unhappiness lives forever? what year is all
clouds? The sun will shine at length; and 'tis the

happy constitution of my blood to divine it behind
the clouds, and think, “'Tis coming out soon!”

So fled the spring and early summer. I have told you
of my occupations and dreams at Cecil Court, and have
not said one word of the troubles of the time. They
did not find me indifferent; and twice I mounted my
horse to rejoin the king in the north, only to faint as
often, be borne home, and find my illness renewed. I
was thus forced to wait, but with impatience, throughout
that fiery summer which burnt into all hearts. My
quiet sports had become a weariness then, and more
than one event occurred even in our country nook
which indicated the tumult surging beyond.

To that I pass now. I have pleased myself by speaking
of those spring days at Cecil Court. It was but an
eddy in the torrent: the stream soon swept me on
again.