Читать книгу Summer Days in Shakespeare Land - Charles G. Harper - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Stratford-on-Avon—It has its own life, quite apart from Shakespearean associations—Its people and its streets—Shakespeare Memorials.

Stratford-on-Avon would be an extremely interesting town, both historically and scenically, even without its Shakespearean interest. It does not need association with its greatest son to stand forth easily among other towns of its size and command admiration. It is remarkably unlike the mind’s eye picture formed of it by almost every stranger. You expect to see a town of very narrow streets, rather dull perhaps and with little legitimate trade, apart from the sale of picture-postcards, fancy china, guide-books, miniature reproductions of the inevitable Shakespeare bust, and the hundred-and-one small articles that tourists buy; but Stratford-on-Avon is not in the least like that. It is true that with a singular lack of humour there is a “Shakespeare Garage,” while we all know that Shakespeare never owned a motor-car; that the bust is represented in mosaic over the entrance to the Old Bank, founded in 1810, upon which Shakespeare could never, therefore, have drawn a cheque; and that the Shakespeare Hotel not only bears the honoured name, but also a very large copy of the bust over its porch, and names all its rooms after the plays. Honeymoon couples, I believe, have been given the room called Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Cymbeline, Midsummer Night’s Dream and many another will astonish the guest at that really very fine and ancient hotel. I forget if there be a bedroom named after Two Gentlemen of Verona. If so, it must obviously be one of the double rooms mentioned in the tariff.

They gave me As you Like It, and it was sufficiently comfortable: I liked it much. On the other hand, Macbeth makes one fearful of insomnia. “Macbeth does murder sleep.” Not poppy nor mandragora—well, let it be.

It is also true that the old market-house, a quaint isolated building of late eighteenth or early nineteenth century standing at the junction of Wood and Henley Streets with Bridge Street, and now a Bank, has for weather-vane the Shakespeare arms and crest of falcon and spear; and it is no less undeniable that the presiding genius of the place has his manifestations in many other directions; but all these things, together with the several antique furniture and curio shops where the unique articles—of which there is but one each in the world—you purchase to-day are infallibly replaced to-morrow, are for the benefit of the visitor, the stranger and pilgrim. “I was a stranger and ye took me in,” I murmured when the absolute replica of the unmatched article I had purchased was unblushingly exposed for sale within a day or two.

The Stratfordian notices none of these things: they are there, but they don’t concern him. You think they do, and that if a suggestion were made that the town should be renamed “Shakespeare-on-Avon” he would adopt it and be grateful; but you would be quite wrong; he would not. If you caught a hundred Stratford people, flagrante delicto, in the pursuit of their daily business and haled them into the Guildhall or other convenient room and set them an examination paper on Shakespeare, no one would pass with honours. Why should any of them? They have grown up with Shakespeare; they accept him as a fact, just as they do the rising and setting of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon; but they are not interested in him any more than they are in the courses of those luminaries. They talk of anything but Shakespeare, and I have met and spoken with many who have never been inside the Birthplace, or to Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, or in the Harvard House, or indeed to any of the show-places in and about the town. They each save about half a guinea in the aggregate, but they don’t do so either by way of self-denial or economy. They are simply not interested.

Stratford would lose a very great deal if the world in general were to become as indifferent to the Swan of Avon; but it would still be a prosperous market-town, dependent upon the needs of the surrounding agricultural villages. Agriculture has ever been the mainstay of Stratford, and as far as we can see, ever will be. All around in the Avon valley stretch those rich pastures that still “lard the rother’s sides,” and on market days there come crawling into the streets, among the cattle and the sheep, carriers’ carts from many an obscure village, with curious specimens of countryfolk who have not lost the old habit of looking upon Stratford as the centre of the universe. So much the better for Stratford. “’Tain’t much as I waants,” said one to the present writer, “an’ I rackon I can get it at Stratford ‘most as good as anywheer else. Besides, I du like to come to town sometimes, an’ see a bit of life.”

One can, in fact, see a good deal of life in the town, but the liveliest time—quite apart from the Shakespeare Festival, which is exotic and mostly for visitors—is the Mop Fair, much more familiarly known as “Stratford Mop.” This annual event is held somewhat too late for the average visitor’s convenience; on October 12th, when the tourists have mostly gone home. It is the great hiring-fair for farm servants and others: perhaps we had better say, was, for the hiring has almost wholly fallen into disuse, together with the so-called “Runaway Mop,” of a fortnight after, at which the servants already hired and not pleased with their bargain might re-engage.

I think the average visitor might not, after all, be pleased with Stratford Mop, which is in some ways a very barbarous affair; the chief barbarity of course being the roasting of oxen whole in the streets; a loathly spectacle, and not one calculated to increase respect for our ancestors, whose great idea of fit merry-making for very special occasions was this same roasting of cattle whole and making the public conduits run wine. The last sounds better, but from the accounts preserved of the wine dispersed at such times we know that the quantity was meagre and the quality exceedingly poor.

But the vast crowds resorting to Stratford for the Mop see nothing gruesome in the spectacle. Special trains run from numerous places, and all the showmen in the country seem to have hurried up for the event.

The streets of Stratford are broad and pleasant, with a large proportion of ancient houses still left; half-timbered fronts side by side with more or less modern brick and plaster, behind which often lurks a rich old interior, unknown to the casual passer-by. Sometimes a commonplace frontage is removed, revealing unexpected beauty in an enriched half-timber framing which the odd vagaries in taste of bygone generations have caused to be thus hidden. There is in this way a speculative interest always attaching to structural alterations in the town. In this chance fashion the fine timbering of the so-called “Tudor House” was uncovered in 1903, and other instances might be given. Recently, also, Nash’s House has been completely refronted, in fifteenth century style, wholly in oak. In fact, we might almost declare that Stratford is now architecturally, after many years, reverting to the like of the town Shakespeare knew. And if the modernised house-fronts were systematically stripped, among them that occupied by Messrs. W. H. Smith & Son at the corner of High Street and Bridge Street, the house occupied for many years by Judith Shakespeare and her husband, Thomas Quiney, the vintner, Stratford would become greatly transformed.

But the mention of Bridge Street is a reminder that here at any rate a great change has been made. It is the widest of all the streets, and is in fact a very wilderness of width. All the winds that sport about the neighbourhood seem to have their home in Bridge Street. Your hat always blows off when you turn the corner into it, and the dust and homeless straws go wandering up and down its emptiness, seeking rest in the Avon over the Clopton Bridge, but always blown back. Now Bridge Street was not always like this. In Shakespeare’s time, and until 1858, when the last of it was cleared away, a kind of island of old houses occupied part of this roadway. It was called “Middle Row.” Such a collection of houses was the usual feature of old English towns. There was an example in London, in Holborn, with exactly the same name; but it disappeared somewhat earlier than its Stratford namesake. Pictures survive of this Bridge Street landmark. I think a good many Stratford people regret it, but regrets will not bring it back. We think of the irrevocable, and of Herrick’s witch—

“Old Widow Prowse, to do her neighbours evil,

Has given, some say, her soul unto ye Devill;

But when sh’as killed that horse, cow, pig, or hen,

What would she give to get that soul again?”

But the Stratford folk, unlike Widow Prowse, did their spiriting with the best intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions notoriously pave the way to hot corners.

It was a very picturesque old row, with the “Swan” inn hanging out its sign; and perhaps, in these times of reconstructions, it may even yet be rebuilt, after the evidences of it that exist.

In Bridge Street is another landmark in the way of literary associations. The “Red Horse” hotel has a large, dull and uninteresting plaster front, but American visitors find the house attractive on account of Washington Irving’s stay there about a hundred years ago, when he was writing of Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s country. The sitting-room he occupied is kept somewhat as a shrine to his memory, and the chair he fancifully called his “throne” is still there, but you may not sit in it. It is kept under lock and key, in a cupboard with glass doors. The poker he likened to his sceptre is kept jealously in the bar. Citizens of the United States ask to see it, and it is reverently produced and unfolded from the many swathings of “Old Glory” in which it is enwrapped: “Old Glory” being, it is necessary to explain to Britishers, the United States flag, the “stars and stripes.” Gazing upon it, they see that it is engraved with a dedicatory inscription by another citizen of the U.S.A.

If you proceed down Bridge Street you come presently to the Clopton Bridge that crosses the Avon, and so out of the town. The bridge is one of the many works of public utility and practical piety executed, instituted, or ordained in his will by Sir Hugh Clopton, the greatest benefactor Stratford has known. A scion of that numerous family, seated at Clopton House a mile out of the town, he went to London and prospered as a mercer, becoming Lord Mayor in 1492. Leland, writing in 1532, quaintly tells of him and his bridge: “Hugh Clopton aforesaid made also the great and sumptuous Bridge upon Avon, at the East ende of the Towne, which hath 14 great Arches of stone and a long Causey made of Stone, lowe walled on each syde, at the West Ende of the Bridge. Afor the tyme of Hugh Clopton there was but a poore Bridge of Tymbre, and no Causey to come to it; whereby many poore Folkes and others refused to come to Stratford when Avon was up, or comminge thither, stood in jeopardye of Lyfe. The Bridge ther of late tyme,” he proceeds to say, “was very smalle and ille, and at high Waters very hard to come by. Whereupon, in tyme of mynde, one Clopton a very rich Marchant and Mayr of London, as I remember, borne about Strateforde, having neither Wife nor Children, converted a great Peace of his Substance in good workes at Stratford, first making a sumptuus new Bridge and large of Stone when in the midle be a VI great Arches for the main Streame of Avon, and at eache Ende certen small Arches to bere the Causey, and so to pass commodiously at such tymes as the Ryver riseth.”

The bridge was widened in 1814. I do not think that great benefactor of Stratford intended that tolls should be charged for passing over his bridge, but in the course of time, such charges were made, and the very large and imposing toll-house that remains shows us that it is not so very long since the bridge has been freed again.

There are many who consider the Harvard House to be the most delightful piece of ancient domestic work in the town, and it is indeed a gem. The history of it is absolutely clear. It was built in 1596 by one Thomas Rogers, alderman. His initials and those of his wife Alice, together with the date are still to be seen, carved on the woodwork beneath the first-floor window. The carved brackets supporting the first floor represent the Warwick Bear and Ragged Staff and the bull of the Nevilles. The bull is easily recognisable, but the bear is only to be identified after considerable study, and looks a good deal more like a pig. Katharine Rogers, daughter of the builders of this house, married Robert Harvard of Southwark, butcher, in 1605. Almost everything in Stratford pivots upon Shakespeare, or is made to do so, and it is therefore not difficult to imagine Rogers’ beautiful little dwelling being erected here at the very time when Shakespeare was contemplating purchasing New Place, and the dramatist’s interest in it. Rogers, being, like John Shakespeare on the town council, must have been very closely acquainted with the family. The Rev. John Harvard, son of Robert and Katharine, emigrated to the New England States of America in 1637 and died of consumption the following year, at Charleston, leaving one half of his estate, which realised £779 17s. 2d., together with his library of over 300 volumes, to a college then in contemplation; the present Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts, described as the oldest and among the richest seats of learning in the United States; although the “learning” displayed there has not yet hatched out any world-shaking genius; genius being, as we who visit Stratford cannot fail to see, a quality quite independent of the academies, and springing, fully-equipped to do battle with the world, in the most unpromising places.

It is not long since the Harvard House was restored and dedicated to the public, and particularly to the use of Harvard students; in October 1909, to be precise. It had passed through various hands, and finally was offered for sale by auction. The biddings failed to reach the reserve price and the property was withdrawn at £950. Chicago, in the person of a wealthy native of that place, came to the rescue, and it was privately bought for the purpose of converting it into a “house of call,” whatever that may be, for Americans touring this district, and especially, as already noted, for students of Harvard—who obtain admission free. Other persons pay sixpence.

It is a place of very great seclusion, for Harvard students (who mostly study the more lethal forms of football and baseball nowadays) are rare; and I guess if you want to track the Americans in Stratford, you must go to the Shakespeare Hotel, anyway, or to the “Red Horse.” The house was in the occupation of a firm of auctioneers and land agents until the purchase. The “restoration” of the exterior has been very carefully and conservatively done, and the interior discloses some particularly beautiful half-timbered rooms.

From time to time it seems good to amiable and well-meaning persons to set up “Shakespeare memorials” in Stratford, and it is equally amiable in the town to accept them. Thus we see in Rother Street an ornate gothic drinking-fountain and clock-tower, the “American Memorial Fountain,” given in 1887 by that wealthy Shakespearean collector, George W. Childs, proprietor of the Philadelphia Ledger. It includes also the function of a memorial of the first Victorian Jubilee. Shakespearean quotations adorn it, including the apposite one from Timon of Athens: “Honest water, which ne’er left man i’ th’ mire.”

But Shakespeare serves the turn of every man, and if you like your beer, you can set against this the equally Shakespearean quotation, “A quart of ale is a dish for a king.”

The Memorial Fountain rather misses being stately, and it would be better if the quarter chimes of its clock did not hurry so over their business, as if they wanted life to go quicker, and time itself to be done with. Amity is the note of Mr. Childs’ fountain, and the “merry songs of peace” are the subject of one of the carved quotations: that is why the British Lion and the American Eagle alternate in effigy at the angles, supporting their respective national shields of arms. The British Lion looks tame and the American Eagle is a weird fowl wearing the chastened “dearly beloved brethren” expression of a preacher at a camp meeting.

The Shakespeare Memorial by the riverside is the partial realisation of a project first considered in 1769, at the jubilee presided over by Garrick, revived in 1821 and again in 1864. This was an idea for a national memorial, to include a school of acting: possibly with Shakespeare’s own very excellent advice to actors, which he placed in the mouth of Hamlet, set up in gilded words of wisdom in its halls. The school for actors has not yet come into being, but at the annual festivals, when Shakespearean companies take the boards in the theatre which forms a prominent part of the Memorial, you may witness quaint new readings of the dramatist’s intentions.

The great pile of buildings standing by the beautiful Bancroft gardens, in fine grounds of its own beside the river, “comprises,” as auctioneers and house agents might say, the theatre aforesaid, a library, and picture gallery. It was built 1877–79 from funds raised by a Memorial Association founded by Mr. Charles E. Flower of Stratford-on-Avon, and very widely supported. The architect, W. F. Unsworth, whose name does not seem to be very generally known, has produced a very imposing, and on the whole, satisfactory composition, whose shape was largely determined by that of the original Globe Theatre of Shakespeare’s own time in Southwark. It is of red brick and stone, and a distinct ornament to the town and the riverside, although its gothic appears to have here and there a rather Continental flavour. A little more pronounced, it might seem almost Rhenish. But let us be sufficiently thankful the Memorial did not take shape in Garrick’s day, when it would certainly have assumed some terrible neo-classic form. There are some particularly good and charming gargoyles over the entrance, notably that of Puck carrying that ass’s head with which Bottom the Weaver was “translated,” in Midsummer Night’s Dream. A sketch of it appears on the title-page of this book. I do not think a description of the theatre, the library, or the picture gallery would serve the object of these pages, and I do not propose to describe the monument designed, executed and presented by Lord Ronald Gower, because that is done in every guide-book, and because I do not like that extremely amateurish and flagrantly-overpraised work: may the elements speedily obliterate it!

Quick-growing poplars have reached great heights since the buildings were first opened, and the Theatre and Memorial is being rapidly obscured by them. It looks its best from the Clopton Bridge, and combines with Holy Trinity church to render the town, viewed from the other side of the Avon, a place of considerable majesty and romance.

Crossing either that ancient bridge to the “Swan’s Nest” inn which has become subdued to the poetry in the Stratford air and has abandoned its old name, the “Shoulder of Mutton,” we may roam the meadows opposite the town. Or we may equally well cross the river by the long and narrow red brick tramway bridge, built in 1826 for the purposes of the Stratford-on-Avon and Shipston-on-Stour Tramway: an ill-fated but heroic project that immediately preceded steam railways. The Great Western Railway appears to have some ownership in the bridge, and by notice threatens awful penalties—something a little less than eternal punishment—to those who look upon—or cycle upon—it.

Somehow we reach those free and open meadows over against the town where the Avon runs broad and deep down to the mill and the ruined lock, just opposite the church. It is from these meadows that the accompanying drawing of the church was taken. The breadth of the river between the Clopton Bridge and the church is exceptional, and gives a great nobility to the town. Both above and below these points it becomes much narrower, and the navigation down stream is a thing of the past. The Avon down to Binton and up beyond Charlecote is, in fact, rendered impassable by difficulties created by the Lucy family of Charlecote, and by the Earl of Warwick. Private ownership in navigable or semi-navigable streams is an ancient and complicated affair concerned with rights of fishing, of weirs and mill-leets, and other abstruse and immemorial manorial privileges, and it has furnished the lawyers with many a fat brief. It has cost the Corporation of Stratford-on-Avon £700 in recent years, in a dispute about this ruined lock and the impeded access to the river past the church and the mill, to the other decayed lock at Luddington. The Lucys gained the day, and that is why we cannot go boating down the river from Stratford.

We may cross the stream just below this point, by a footbridge, and come into the town again past the big corn-mill whose ancient ownership caused all this trouble. The present building is only about a century old, but it is the representative of the original mill that stood on this spot over a thousand years ago, and belonged then and long afterwards to the Bishops of Worcester. The exquisite humour of the manorial law ordained not only that the people of Stratford were under obligation to have their corn ground here, but that they were also made to pay for it. And as competitive millers were thus barred, there can be no doubt but that corn-milling was an expensive item. The old churchmen loved eels, useful for Friday’s dish, and the Bishops of Worcester were sometimes accustomed to take consignments of them in place of money payments for use of the mill.

The possibilities of the Avon in the matter of floods are very eloquently set forth on the walls of this mill: the astonishing high-water marks of floods for a century past being marked. Scanning them, it seems strange that mill and church and a good part of the town itself have not been washed away.

Passing through Old Town into Church Street, the fine Elizabethan three-gabled residence seen on the way, on the right hand, is Hall’s Croft, the home of Dr. John Hall, Susanna Shakespeare’s husband, before they removed to New Place following upon Shakespeare’s death. The old mulberry-tree in the beautiful garden at the back of the house is said to have been planted by her.