Stratford-upon-Avon

“ It all goes to show that a man should stick to his own trade and not try to follow two or more widely dissimilar callings at the same time. Sooner or later he is bound to slip up.
We found Stratford-upon-Avon to be the one town in England where guides are really abundant. There are as many guides in Stratford as there are historic spots. I started to say that there is at least one guide in Stratford for every American who goes there ”

“ To traverse Stratford-upon-Avon is to return upon old tracks, but no matter how often you visit that delightful place you will always see new sights in it and find new incidents. After repeated visits to Shakespeare's town the traveller begins to take more notice than perhaps at first he did of its everyday life. In former days the observer had no eyes except for the Shakespeare shrines. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the memory of Shakespeare covers with its disk the whole life and being and history, ancient and modern, of Stratford-upon-Avon. There is nothing seen or felt before or behind it but William Shakespeare. In no quarter of the globe, since he was laid to his last sleep by the sunny side of the peaceful river, has the name of the little town been mentioned without suggesting and meaning him. Many a populous city is proud of the smallest segment of a great man's glory. ”

“ No section of rural England, possibly excepting the Stratford-upon-Avon country is more favored by tourists; motors, carriages and chars-a-bancs were everywhere in evidence and stirred up clouds of limestone dust, which whitened the trees and hedges and filled the sky with a silvery haze. The number of English visitors is greater than at Stratford, and the more [Pg 146] intelligent Englishman who has not visited Chatsworth is rather the exception. A thousand visitors a day is not uncommon ”

“ Stratford-on-Avon, too, belongs to this part of the country,—a little old-world town, where the bust of Shakespeare looks down upon you from every coign of vantage. Mysterious being! who sprang from impenetrable obscurity in that quiet village to light the beacon of an immortal fame, and sink back into the uncertain shades of his native place until he rests definitely in the beautiful parish church, so still among its trees, with the Avon laving the wall of the church-yard.
Anne Hathaway’s cottage remains in good preservation, a picturesque object among the fields ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shakespeare certainly quitted Stratford-upon-Avon when a young man, and it could have been no ordinary impulse which drove him to leave wife, children, friends, and occupation, to take up his abode among strangers in a distant place. ”

“ The town of Stratford lies upon the ancient high-road from London to Ireland, which here crosses the river Avon. To this circumstance it owes its name (Street-ford) . A handsome bridge spanned the river. The picturesque houses, with their gable-roofs, were either wooden or frame-built. There were two handsome public buildings, which still remain: the fine old church close to the river, and the Guildhall, with its chapel and Grammar School. ”

“ Nothing else upon earth—no natural scene, no relic of the past, no pageantry of the present—can vie with the shrine of Shakespeare, in power to impress, to humble, and to exalt the devout spirit that has been nurtured at the fountain of his transcendent genius.
A fortunate way to approach Stratford-on-Avon is by Warwick and Kenilworth. Those places are not on a direct line of travel; but the scenes and associations that they successively present are such as assume a symmetrical order, increase in interest, and grow to a delightful culmination. ”

“ It stands on the banks of the Avon on an embowered point, and separated by adjoining gardens from the suburbs of the town. Its situation is quiet and retired; the river runs murmuring at the foot of the churchyard, and the elms which grow upon its banks droop their branches into its clear bosom. An avenue of limes, the boughs of which are curiously interlaced, so as to form in summer an arched way of foliage, leads up from the gate of the yard to the church-porch. The graves are overgrown with grass ”

“ The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the foot of a gently-sloping bank which sweeps down from the rear of the house. Large herds of deer were feeding or reposing upon its borders, and swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom. As I contemplated the venerable old mansion I called to mind Falstaff's encomium on Justice Shallow's abode, and the affected indifference and real vanity of the latter:
"Falstaff. You have a goodly dwelling and a rich. ”

“ And so we bade good-by to Stratford-on-Avon and its hospitalities, with grateful remembrances of our kind entertainers and all they did for our comfort and enjoyment.
Where should we go next? Our travelling host proposed Great Malvern, a famous watering-place, where we should find peace, rest, and good accommodations. So there we went, and soon found ourselves installed at the "Foley Arms" hotel. The room I was shown to looked out upon an apothecary's shop, and from the window of that shop stared out upon me a plaster bust which I recognized as that of Samuel Hahnemann. ”

“ The place stood upon a decent Stratford road, from which it looked usual enough; but when, after sitting a while in a charming modern drawing-room, one stepped thoughtlessly through an open window upon a verandah, one found that the horizon of the morning call had been wonderfully widened. I will not pretend to detail all I saw after I stepped off the verandah; suffice it that the spire and chancel of the beautiful old church in which Shakespeare is buried, with the Avon sweeping its base, were one of the elements of the vision. ”

“ After leaving Warwick the Avon keeps winding towards the south-western boundary of the county till, before reaching this, it arrives at another and yet more noted town. Stratford-on-Avon is a household word wherever the English tongue is spoken. No American thinks his visit to the country of his ancestors is complete till he has made a pilgrimage to the birthplace and the grave of Shakespeare—nay, even our distant kinsmen in Germany are not seldom drawn thither by the same magnetic force. ”

“ No river of secondary size in England has so many places of distinction upon its banks. Rising at Naseby, skirting Rugby, and washing Leamington, Warwick, and Stratford, is a fine record for the upper part of a single river. This is the group of names with which the world chiefly associates the Avon; but the world knows much less of its lower half, which is far the most naturally beautiful, and has to its credit the more or less ample remains of three great abbeys, Evesham, Pershore, and Tewkesbury. ”

“ The chimneys and the doors of Hadden are well able to give us lessons of construction, even for modest dwellings.
Stratford-on-Avon is a remarkably bright-looking cheerful town, and is, of course, more visited than any other of its size in England. The population is not quite 4000. In the sixteenth century Stratford was an exceedingly beautiful town. The houses were mostly of wood, and each situated in its own garden. One of them still stands in High Street, and has a well-carved front, resembling one of the many that remain in Chester. ”

“ From Kenilworth Castle we took train for Stratford-on-Avon,—the place which no American would think of leaving England without visiting,—a quiet little English town, but whose inns have yearly visitors from half the nations of the civilized world, pilgrims to this shrine of genius, the birthplace of him who wrote "not for a day, but all time." A quaint, old-fashioned place is Stratford, with here and there a house that might have been in existence during the poet's time ”

“ It is only natural that the author should miss in her country home the literary, musical, and artistic society of London, where she has so many friends, but she has made acquaintances too in Warwickshire, where she has the privilege of meeting men and women eminent in the world of letters. Stratford-on-Avon is of itself a shrine to which so many distinguished pilgrims, especially Americans, are drawn, that charming, unexpected meetings often take place and friendships are cemented when she takes her many visitors to see the interesting places in the town. ”

“ The interior, while excavations are in progress, is too much a chaotic rubbish heap to be very inviting. But again this is merely a passing phase and soon the daisy-starred turf will once more mantle the grave of a dead city. The valley road turns off to the left a short distance past the railway and goes to Stratford-sub-castle, just under the shadow of the great mound to the west. This forms a pleasant enough introduction to the scenery and villages of the Upper Avon. ”

“ You have kept strictly to the line of route pursued by the King and Jane Lane from Bentley House, except as regards their arrival at Stratford-on-Avon. They must have come across country until they touched the high road from Birmingham. When within a mile of Stratford they retraced their course, and, according to Mr. Wise's account, turned to the village of Wootton Wawen, seeking the higher ground, and getting to Stratford by a lane, now called the King's Lane. Henley is some miles to the right. ”

“ IN the year 1564, a little more than three hundred years ago, an infant was born in the town of Stratford, in England, who grew to be one of the most wonderful men who has ever lived. Stratford was a quiet little town on the banks of the river Avon, and none of the people there were very rich or grand. ”

“ It would have been a great thing to pass a single night close to the church where Shakespeare's dust lies buried. A single visit by daylight leaves a comparatively slight impression. But when, after a night's sleep, one wakes up and sees the spire and the old walls full before him, that impression is very greatly deepened, and the whole scene becomes far more a reality. Now I was nearly a whole week at Stratford-on-Avon. The church, its exterior, its interior, the birthplace, the river, had time to make themselves permanent images in my mind. ”

“ It is Stratford-on-Avon.
There, save once a year, when Shakespeare’s birthday is commemorated, fashion brings but few persons to simulate admiration. It is not as at some great funeral, where curiosity or official position or other extraneous motive brings men together to do honour to the departed; they come like humble friends, to pay tribute to one whom they not only admire, but revere, to this little Warwickshire town. It is too remote from the places where men congregate to entice the thoughtless crowd ”

“ Throughout the summer season Stratford-on-Avon becomes a metropolis "whereunto the tribes of men assemble." To "do Stratford" [Pg 6] is an article of faith with American visitors, even if they have no more than a week in which to master the wonders of Great Britain and Ireland. Germany sends many admirers, for nowhere is Shakespeare's genius more widely recognised, more highly esteemed, than in that country. London and the big midland towns of England send visitors daily. ”

“ And continually beside or near its banks, from Stratford down, but above all in the Evesham and Bredon neighbourhood, are rural villages, that for consistency of architectural beauty are as a whole surpassed in no part of England. Cleeve Prior and Abbot’s Cleeve, Norton, Cropthorne, Birlingham and the Combertons, Elmley Castle and Bredon, will occur at once to any one who knows the Avon, with their wealth of half-timbered black and white buildings, in which the country of the Wye, the Severn, and the Stratford-Avon so pre-eminently excel. ”

“ This feeling was experienced by two out of the three passengers in the London coach ‘Tantivy,’ which on a certain afternoon in May, [13] at the end of the last century, drew up at the ‘White Hart’ in the town of Banbury: it was their last ‘stopping stage’ before they arrived at their destination—Stratford-on-Avon; and they wished (at least two of them did) that they had reached it already.
Mr. Samuel Erin, the senior and head of the little party, was a man of about sixty years of age, but looked somewhat older. ”

“ The discovery, and the discoverer, William Henry Erin, became ‘the Talk of the Town.’ It seemed to Margaret impossible that the meritorious though fortunate young fellow could ever become more famous; but the possibilities of greatness are infinite; his foot, as it turned out, was only on the first rung of the ladder. The modest house in Norfolk Street became a sort of metropolitan Stratford-on-Avon; it was absolutely besieged by the antiquarian and learned world. ”