CHAPTER IX.

A SERIES OF MEMORABLE VISITS.

Tommy goes hunting.--"Peveril of the Peak."--The Boy at the Wheel.--Leamington.--Stratford-on-Avon.--Shakspeare's Birthplace, Garden, and Tomb.--Queer Relics.--Kenilworth.--Ernest's Album of Leaves and Flowers.--Warwick Castle.--The Mighty Guy.--The Antique Portress.

Master Lewis gave the boys a couple of days in Nottingham to enjoy themselves as they liked.

Tommy Toby went _hunting_.

"I want to be able to tell people," he said, "that I have hunted in Sherwood Forest, the royal hunting-ground of English kings."

"In midsummer?" asked Master Lewis. "I fancy if you were to use a gun in the Forest of Sherwood, you might make a longer vacation abroad than you intended."

"I do not intend to use a gun. I have bought me a bow and some arrows."

"Let me see them," said Master Lewis. "They look very harmless, certainly." Master Lewis seemed to hesitate about making further objections.

Just what came of Tommy's hunting we cannot state at this stage of our narrative. He left the boys at the hotel, bow and arrows in hand, and saying as a word of parting,--

"'Let's go to the wood, said Richard to Robin.'"

He evidently went outside of the city into the wooded district, that was a part of old Sherwood Forest. When Master Lewis found that he had really gone out of the place he looked troubled, and said:--

"I should have prevented it."

Tommy returned late on the evening of the same day after a ten hours' absence. He certainly looked like a modern hunter, for he was empty handed, and his clothes were in a very disarranged condition.

"Where are your bow and arrows?" asked Frank.

"I shall tell you nothing at all about it, now," said Tommy. "It is my own secret."

"Then you have two secrets," said Frank, referring to the fact that Tommy had been made custodian of the secret he was supposed to have selected for the Club.

"Yes, but _that_ don't _amount to much_," said Tommy.

"_Nothing, after all_," said Master Lewis, quietly, who had seen Tommy's conundrum on a card. "I did not suppose that you really intended to spend the day in the country alone with bow and arrow."

"Just look at my legs," said Tommy, rolling up his pants, and showing bloody scars.

"Where did you get _them_?" asked Master Lewis.

"_Up a tree._ Please do not ask me now. If you will excuse me from telling you now, I will give you a full account some other time."

"I will excuse you from giving an account of yourself, to-night; but please remember that you must not go hunting, or anywhere, alone again without my permission," said Master Lewis, noticing some singular rents in Tommy's clothes.

Tommy went to his supper.

"I've been chased by the _terriblest_ bull you ever saw," he whispered confidentially to Wyllys Wynn, as he passed him. "I'll tell you all about it some time."

He added,--

"And that ain't all. I've been chased by _John_ Bull, too."

Ernest Wynn went, under an arrangement made for him by Master Lewis, to the Peak near Castleton, wishing to view the scene of Sir Walter Scott's charming romance, "Peveril of the Peak." He found there only a pitiful ruin, and instead of knights with dancing plumes and silver shields, with which fancy pictures the eyry of the grand old Norman baron, he met some very strange-looking mining people, who are often to be seen in the rural districts in this part of England.

One incident touched Frank's kind heart, and seemed more to impress him than the associations of manorial splendor he had made the journey to see.

In the entrance of one of the caves of the Peak was a little rope-spinner, who was lame, and whose time was spent from sun to sun in turning the wheel,--always the same, faithfully turning the wheel.

"I gave him a shilling," said Frank, "spoke kindly to him, and left him gazing after me with tears in his eyes, still turning his wheel, turning his wheel."

From Nottingham Master Lewis and the boys went to Birmingham, and Frank Gray and Ernest Wynn made a détour to the little village of Madeley, and visited Boscobel, the place of refuge of King Charles II. after his defeat at the battle of Worcester. The king first arrived at White Ladies about three-quarters of a mile from Boscobel House: there he secreted himself in an oak, afterwards famous as the Royal Oak of Boscobel. The brothers Penderell, foresters and yeomen, concealed him in closets in their simple mansion, being true to their sovereign at the risk of their lives, when it might have raised them from poverty to riches to have uttered a treacherous word.

The closets in which Charles was concealed are exhibited to visitors, and Frank and Ernest were allowed to pass up and down the passages that had afforded so secure a retreat to the fugitive. In the parlor they were shown a chimney-piece, and on one of the panels a picture of the king in the oak, and on another the king in disguise on horse-back, escorted by the Penderells.

It is said that the king's pursuers were thrown off the right track of discovery by an owl that flew out of the oak where he was concealed, leading the captain to say, "The owl loveth not company, and where he is no one else can be." It is also related that when Charles complained of the slowness of the horse on which he fled in disguise, one of the Penderells remarked that the animal never before had "the weight of three kingdoms on his back." These stories may not be quite true, but one is reminded of them by the figures on the chimney-piece.

The Class next went to Leamington, a most convenient point from which to make short excursions to Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick Castle, and Kenilworth Castle. Leamington, although itself not historically interesting, is provided with excellent hotels, being an English watering-place.

The first excursion of the party from Leamington was to Stratford-on-Avon, to the house where Shakspeare was born, and the church in which he was buried.

The birthplace of Shakspeare is an antique-looking stone house two stones high, with picturesque gables fronting the street. In the room where he first saw the light of the world he was to enrich with his thought there is a cast of his face taken after his death, and a portrait painted in the prime of his life. The latter showed a truly noble brow; it was such a face as fancy itself might paint, so royally did it seem endowed with genius. In this room Sir Walter Scott had inscribed his name on a pane of glass, and Wordsworth once wrote a stanza which is still preserved under glass. It began with these lines:--

"The house of Shakspeare's birth we here may see; That of his death we find without a trace. Vain the inquiry, for immortal he"--

Here the poet seemed to pause as though the literary work was not satisfactory; he drew his pen across what he had written, and under it wrote the following stanza:--

"Of mighty Shakspeare's birth the room we see; That where he died, in vain to find we try. Useless the search, for, all immortal he: And those who are immortal never die."

The effort furnishes a curious illustration of the methods of a poet's mind in careful composition.

Back of the house is a garden, in which grew the old English flowers that are portrayed by the poet in his dramas.

From the house the party went to the cottage of Anne Hathaway, Shakspeare's wife, whom he loved in youth when life's bright ways lay fair before him. It is a house which is mainly noticeable for its simplicity.

"There is the place where he sat when he came to see his sweetheart," said the old lady who showed the house.

Shakspeare and his wife sleep in the same beautiful church amid the bowery town of Stratford-on-Avon; and thither, rowing up the Avon almost to the churchyard, our tourists made their way.

The party approached the church through an avenue of limes, and entered the richly-carved oak doors of the Gothic porch. The tomb of Shakspeare is in the chancel. The Avon runs but a short distance from the walls, and the cool boughs of the summer trees wave before the windows. A flat stone marks the place where the poet is buried, on which are inscribed the oft quoted lines said to be written by the poet himself:--

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear To dig the dust enclosed here! Blest be the spade that spares these stones, And curst be he that moves my bones."

Over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of the poet. The inscription mentions his age as fifty-three years.

Returning to the birthplace, Frank Gray and Tommy Toby visited the Shakspeare Museum. The collection of curiosities was somewhat comical,--such for example as a phial containing _juice_ from mulberries gathered from Shakspeare's mulberry-tree; Shakspeare's jug, from which Garrick sipped wine at the Jubilee in 1769. Frank seemed to enjoy the specimens, his mind poetically associating them with bygone scenes.

Tommy showed a great contempt for Frank's wonder-talk.

"I've found something now," he said, "that outdoes all the rest. It is a letter written--"

"By Shakspeare?" asked Frank, in an animated way.

"No: _to_ Shakspeare."

"By whom?"

"Mr. Richard Quyney. You have often heard of him, I suppose?"

"He was probably a literary man," said Frank.

"Probably. He asked for a _loan_ of thirty pounds."

The next day's trip was to Kenilworth Castle, an ivy-hung ruin associated with the whole of England's history, and traditionally with the romances of King Arthur. The walls are broken, the great banqueting hall has just fallen into decay, and where the coronals flashed and astrals blazed at night, now shine only the dim light of the moon and stars. Here Queen Elizabeth was entertained by her favorite, the Earl of Leicester. The splendor of that reception has rarely been equalled. The fête, which was one long banquet, broken by a most wonderful series of dramatic representations, lasted seventeen days. There were tilts and tournaments; the park was peopled with gods and goddesses to surprise the Queen wherever she went; nymphs and mermaids rose from the pools, and there was minstrelsy on every hand. Thirty-one barons were present. Ten oxen were slaughtered every morning, sixteen hogsheads of wine and forty hogsheads of beer were consumed daily. There were lodged in the castle four hundred servants, all of whom appeared in new liveries of velvet, and shared the unrestrained hospitality.

"All the clocks in the castle were stopped during that long festival," said Master Lewis, "and the hands were all left pointing at the banquet hour."

"But time went on," said Wyllys Wynn.

"Yes, time went on, and the maiden Queen grew old as all mortals must, and there came a time when her vanity could no longer be deceived. She sought to keep from sight the white hairs and wrinkles of age by every art, but Nature did its work, as with Canute and the sea. When her form and features began to lose whatever of beauty they once possessed, she tried to banish from her mind the reality that she was past her prime by viewing herself in false and flattering mirrors.

"But the wrinkles grew deeper, and the white hairs multiplied, and her limbs lost their power, and her strength at last was gone. Her flatterers still fed her fondness for admiration with their arts, and while life offered her any prospect she still smiled upon those whom she must have suspected were deceiving her.

"'One day,' says her attendant, Lady Southwell, 'she desired to see a _true glass_, which in twenty years before she had not seen, but only such an one as on purpose was made to deceive her sight.'

"They brought it to the poor withered Queen. She raised it to her face with her bony hands, and looked. For the first time for years she saw herself.

"It was a revelation. Her old rage came back again. She pointed to her flatterers with scorn, and ordered them to quit her presence.

"Then came the Archbishop of Canterbury, disgracing his sacred office by his words. 'Madam,' said he, 'your piety, your zeal, and the admirable work of the Reformation afford great grounds of confidence for you.'

"But the wretchedly disenchanted woman could no longer be deceived.

"'My lord,' she said, 'the crown that I have borne so long has given me enough of _vanity_ in my time. I beseech you not to augment it at this hour.'

"She had seen herself, and the world also, in the true glass."

Ernest Wynn was observed by Master Lewis making a collection of ivy leaves at Kenilworth.

"Do you collect leaves at all the historic places you visit?" he asked.

"I picked some heather at the birthplace of Burns, brought ivy from Melrose, and wild flowers from Newstead and from the Peak, and I purchased flowers from Shakspeare's garden."

"What do you intend to do with them?"

"I will tell you privately. George Howe is pleased with collections of interesting things,--shells, stamps, autographs. He has but little money, and I am making a scrap-book of pictures, leaves, and flowers collected at notable places, as a present for him."

"It seems to me an admirable plan," said Master Lewis. "I should be pleased with such a book myself."

The next day the party visited Warwick Castle, one of the finest and best preserved of all the ancient country seats of the English nobility. To one approaching it, its rich lawns, its towering trees (of which some are from Lebanon), its picturesque windows, and harmony of design make it an ideal of castellated beauty.

The Class was ceremoniously admitted by men in livery, and was taken charge of by a portly and pompous Englishwoman, who wore a black silk that rustled as she swept along. She carried a bunch of keys at her side, and evidently entertained a high sense of the dignity of her position.

"_This_," said the stately lady, pointing to an immense structure of armor, "this is the armor of the mighty Guy."

"The mighty Guy!" said Tommy Toby, with large eyes, "will you please tell us who _he_ was?"

The antique portress stared as though amazed at such a confession of ignorance.

"We are from America," said Tommy.

Master Lewis smiled at being included in the uninstructed "we."

"Guy was a giant."

Tommy's interest grew.

"He was the great Earl of Warwick: a valiant soldier who slew so many people that he became melancholy, and retired to Guy's Cliff, as it is now called, and there lived alone in a cave for thirty years. He was _nine_ feet high."

"And what is _that_?" said Tommy Toby, pointing to an immense pot.

"That," said the antique lady, "was the mighty Guy's _porridge pot_."

"How much does it hold?"

"It holds one hundred and twenty gallons, and weighs eight hundred pounds."

"Did the mighty Guy drink as much porridge as that at every meal?" asked Tommy, his curiosity taking a wider circle with each new statement.

"I don't know; all of these things happened long, long before I was born.

"_That_," said the lady, "is a rib of the Dun Cow."

"What kind of a cow was that?" asked Tommy.

"It was a cow which the mighty Guy killed on Dunsmore Heath. It weighs nine pounds and a half."

"The cow?"

"No, the rib."

The lady led the party in a procession which she dramatically headed through the lower rooms of the principal building. She showed them the superb old baronial hall; the drawing-rooms, magnificent with tapestries and inlaid furniture; the pictures by Vandyke. Then in an awesome manner she suddenly stopped, and said in a low confidential voice,--

"The Countess herself is above stairs."

"How many feet high is the Countess? I'd give a quarter--"

Tommy's intended remark was checked by Master Lewis.

The lady requested a fee on showing the party back to the lodge, and dismissed Master Lewis with a stiff bow that indicated a want of confidence in American respect for the great and mighty Guy and his successors.