Charles G. Harper

“ The bloom of sentiment, as delicate as that upon a plum or peach, is rudely rubbed off by these things, by rules and regulations and the numbered ticket; but the very fame of Shakespeare and the increasing number of visitors who have, or think they have—or at the very least of it think they ought to have—an intelligent interest in a great man’s birthplace brings about this horrid nemesis of the professional showman. ”

“ But the pride of all the ancient houses of Campden is that house where William Grevel lived in the fourteenth century. It is not a very large house, one thinks, for so wealthy a man as he was, described as he is on the brass in the church as “the flower of the wool-merchants of all England,” but it presents a charming frontage to the street and has an oriel window of peculiar beauty, presided over by two huge and hideous gargoyles, the one representing a winged, bat-like monster with gaping mouth and a ferocious expression ”

“ It was not, you know it quite well, in the least like this when John Shakespeare lived here and had his wool-store next door, where the Birthplace Museum is now, and sometimes bought and sold corn or carried on the trade of glover. The place has had so many changes of fortune, the appearance of the exterior itself has been so utterly changed and so conjecturally restored, that the thinking man loses a good deal of confidence. And the interior: the rooms without furniture or sign of habitation are like a body whence the soul has fled. ”

“ Once through this ford, you come up to the Castle entrance, on the left. It is a pleasant old part that looks on to the scene of so much feudal state and bygone warlike doings. A group of old red brick and timber cottages, their red brick of the loveliest geranium redness, looks upon a kind of village green. They lean at all kinds of angles, their roofs have skylines like the waves of a troubled sea, in front of each one is a little forecourt garden, and they all supply teas and sell picture-postcards. ”

“ At the “George” inn, Brailes, the traveller to Compton Wynyates will do well to refresh himself before he proceeds further, for not only has he come far, but when he has threaded the steep and winding lanes beyond which that romantic manor-house of the Comptons lies in its deep, cup-like hollow, he will need something wherewith to fortify his energies, especially as it is extremely likely he will lose himself on the way, and as there is no likelihood of his being able to refresh himself when there. Romance, lovely scenery, and picturesque architectural grouping are not well seen when fasting. ”

“ Shakespeare’s success in London as an actor, a reviser and editor of old and out-of-date plays, as manager, theatre-proprietor and playwright, is due to that sprack-witted capacity for excelling in almost any chosen field of intellectual activity with which a born genius is gifted. The saying that “genius is a capacity for taking pains” is a dull, plodding man’s definition. Genius will very often fling away the rewards of its powers through just this lack of staying power, and no plodding pains will supply that intuitive knowledge, that instant perception, which is what we call genius. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The hollow road at Exhall, with high, grassy banks and the group of charming old half-timbered cottages illustrated here is a delight. The builder who built them—they are certainly at least a century older than Shakespeare—built more picturesquely than he knew, with those sturdy chimney-stacks and the long flight of stairs ascending from the road. ”

“ A mile and a half out of the town is that famous place of popular legend, Guy’s Cliff, where the great mansion, standing beside the river and built in 1822, looks so ancient, and where, on the opposite shore of Avon, stands that mill whose highly picturesque features are a standing dish in railway carriage picture-galleries. The impossible armour of the mythical Guy of Warwick we have already seen in Warwick Castle, and the improbable legend of his hermit life in the riverside cave remains now to be told. ”

“ So many thousands annually visit Stratford-on-Avon that the town, and in some lesser degree the surrounding country, are thought to be hackneyed and spoilt for the more intellectual and leisured visitor; but that is very far from being the case. Apart from such acknowledged centres of Shakespearean interest as the Birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon, the parish church, and Anne Hathaway’s Cottage at Shottery; and excepting such great show-places as Kenilworth and Warwick castles, Shakespeare Land is by no means overrun, and is in every way charming and satisfying. ”

“ The plentiful lack of understanding among many of the visitors is such that they frequently appear to think the thatch as old as Shakespeare’s day. It must, of course, have been many times re-covered, and at the present time it is again in a dilapidated condition, sodden through with the weather of many years, and precariously held together by wire netting stretched over it. A very garden of weeds grows there: shepherds’ purse, groundsel, candy-tuft and dandelion; and poppies wave their red banners on the roof-ridge. ”

“ They looked death often in the face as they went the lonely road. The wild things in the forest menaced them, floods obscured the fords, lawless men no less fierce than the animals which roamed the tangled brakes lurked and slew. “Now am I in Arden,” the wayfarer might have said, anticipating Touchstone, “the more fool I; when I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content.”
No town or village then existed upon the banks of Avon, and the first mention of Stratford occurs in A.D. 691, when a monastery situated here is named. ”

“ You render your entrance-fee at a narrow gate and are at once free to wander at will. In front is the grassy Outer Ward, and on the right, the keep and the state buildings, with Leicester’s Building, lofty, seamed with fissures and shored up against its falling. The eyeless windows preach a homily on the transient nature of things.
But, leaving these for a while, we skirt along to the left, coming to the ruins of Mortimer’s Tower, which stood on the wall and formed the entrance to the Castle in this direction. ”

“ For there is no inn, and not the slightest chance of hospitality. But it is well enough if you come to it in daytime, for it has the charm of singularity: the strangeness of the old manor-house behind its lofty enclosing garden-walls and the weirdly rebuilt eighteenth-century church at the end of a farm-road which you dispute with porkers and cluttering fowls. Billesley church is one of the claimants for the honour of witnessing Shakespeare’s marriage, but on what evidence the claim rests no one can tell, and, in any case, it was entirely rebuilt afterwards. ”

“ History comes in few places with such vivid reality to the modern person as it does here. Unmoved, because too often without the mental agility to perceive the significance of it, we look upon the old royal arms of England as they were for centuries, until the time of George the Third, and see the quartering of the Lions of England with the Lilies of France; that proud boast, an idle pretension long before Calais, the final French possession of England, was lost, in the reign of Queen Mary. ”

“ The wild verdure of the park reigns here, outside that enclosure, and trim neatness forms the note within; a contrast greatly loved in those times when Charlecote was planned. It was to the planning of country mansions exactly what the antithetic manner is to literature: both give the spice of sharp contrast.
There are to this day deer couching in the bracken of the park, and they come picturesquely up to the gatehouse and peer within. There are also strange piebald sheep, with long fat tails, very curious to look upon. ”