“The last of these deserted rooms that I remember, the last, the most deserted, and the saddest, was the Nursery, - a nursery without children, without singing voices, without merry chiming footsteps! A nursery hung round with its once inhabitants, bold, gallant boys, and fair, arch-looking girls, and one or two nurses with round, fat babies in their arms. Who were they all? What was their lot in life? Sunshine, or storm? or had they been ‘loved by the gods, and died young?’ The very echoes knew not. Behind the house, in a hollow now wild, damp, and overgrown with elder-bushes, was a well called Margaret’s Well, for there had a maiden of the house of that name drowned herself.
“I tried to obtain any information I could as to the family of Clopton of Clopton. They had been decaying ever since the civil wars; had for a generation or two been unable to live in the old house of their fathers, but had toiled in London, or abroad, for a livelihood; and the last of the old family, a bachelor, eccentric, miserly, old, and of most filthy habits, if report said true, had died at Clopton Hall but a few months before, a sort of boarder in Mr. W --’s family. He was buried in the gorgeous chapel of the Cloptons in Stratford church, where you see the banners waving, and the armour hung over one or two splendid monuments. Mr. W -- had been the old man’s solicitor, and completely in his confidence, and to him he left the estate, encumbered and in bad condition. A year or two afterwards, the heir-at-law, a very distant relation living in Ireland, claimed and obtained the estate, on the plea of undue influence, if not of forgery, on Mr. W --’s part; and the last I heard of our kind entertainers on that day, was that they were outlawed, and living at Brussels.
Prefatory Note by A. W. Ward
The following pages possess a twofold interest as the first known publication of their authoress, and as a personal reminiscence of her girlhood. During her school-days at Miss Byerley’s, in Stratford-on-Avon, she had, some time in the years 1825-27, paid a visit to Clopton House, and of this, when in 1838 William Howitt announced his “Visits to Remarkable Places, etc.,” as forthcoming, she offered him an account. It was readily accepted, and forms part of a discursive chapter of a discursive book, which appeared in 1840. Under the heading of a “Visit to Stratford-on-Avon, and the haunts of Shakespeare,” the worthy author, after dealing with the town of Stratford, and urging that among the relics of the poet the last of his descendants should not be left neglected, passes on to a lively account of Charlecote House and Park, and to a notice of “Clopton Hall” - more properly Clopton House - introduced by the paper of his “fair correspondent.” Howitt pleasantly describes the situation of the house, about a mile north-east of Stratford, as commanding the whole of the vale in which the town stands, while itself “in a little hollow, as it were, in the upland slope.” His brief statement as to the connexion between the Clopton family, and the munificent Sir Hugh Clopton in particular, and Stratford, maybe compared with the authentic data in Dugdale’s “Warwickshire,” and in Mr. Sidney Lee’s “Stratford-on-Avon from the Earliest Times to the Death of Shakespeare” (new edition, 1890).
Sir Hugh Clopton, who had made a fortune in the City, where he was Lord Mayor in 1492, in his latter days withdrew to Stratford, in whose neighbourhood his family had been settled for something like three centuries. Here he built for himself a house of more importance than any other in the town, which was still called New Place within the first quarter of the sixteenth century, and which in 1597 became the property of Shakespeare. He was the last and the most liberal of the early benefactors of Stratford, which owes him the bridge across the Avon and the transept of the Guild Chapel of the Holy Trinity, the whole of which he rebuilt, decorating it with the frescoes now all but annihilated.
Sir Hugh’s elder brother, Thomas, had inherited, with the family estates, the great Clopton Manor House, where he built an oratory and the chapel mentioned by Mrs. Gaskell. It is curious that her eager eye should have lit in the chaplain’s room upon a copy of All for Love - the attractive play in which Dryden, without discredit to himself, treated a theme which Shakespeare had treated before him. From Thomas the property passed to his son William, and from him to his daughter, the wife of George Carew, from 1605 Lord Carew of Clopton, and afterwards Earl of Totnes. Clopton House was, as Mr. Lee says, without doubt one of the houses near Stratford where Shakespeare frequently visited schoolfellows in the retinues of the owners. On the other hand, there are many reasons against, and none directly in favour of, the assumption that the scene of the Induction in The Taming of the Shrew (which abounds in Warwickshire allusions) is Clopton, and the lord its ennobled owner, formerly President of Munster, on whose papers Pacata Hibernia was founded.
On the other hand, a gruesome story, which, naturally enough, impressed itself upon the young Elizabeth Stevenson’s quick imagination, was the “legend” told to her at Stratford Church of Charlotte Clopton. It dates from one of the plague years, of which Stratford - notoriously insanitary - had more than its share of experience, about the middle of the century, very probably from the summer of 1564, when the town was stricken by one of the most fearful epidemics that ever visited it, and lost one-seventh of its inhabitants by the pestilence. Nothing is more likely than that Charlotte Clopton’s doom should have suggested to Shakespeare the agonising fears of Juliet. Of the story of Margaret Clopton, who drowned herself in the well which afterwards bore her name, or of the date of her death, nothing is known.
It is curious that Mrs. Gaskell should not refer to the most interesting historical association connected with Clopton House. Ambrose Rookwood resided in it with Lord Carew in the days of the Gunpowder Plot, and received here many of his fellow-conspirators after the discovery of their design. On February 26, 1606, his goods were inventoried at Clopton House, and “much Papist paraphernalia” seized, by the bailiff of Stratford, accompanied by some burgesses of the town.
As Mrs. Gaskell relates, the family of Clopton had not flickered out even after the estate and house had passed from their possession. In 1792 or 1793 Samuel Ireland, who, in 1795, published his Picturesque Views of the Warwickshire Avon, was presented at Clopton House with a relic of King Henry VII., said to have repeatedly slept under its roof. According to the statement, not to be absolutely trusted a priori, of William Henry Ireland, who accompanied his father on the occasion, they were informed by the then proprietor, named Williams, that numerous valuable papers, including many with Shakespeare’s name written upon them, had been recently destroyed by him. The clever, but unlucky, Mr. W --, whose kind wife made the schoolgirls at home at Clopton House, can neither have been this Mr. Williams, nor the Mr. Ward whom William Howitt found in possession, and upon whom he empties the vials of his mild wrath for moving the Clopton pictures. The famous old house is stated to have been renovated with excellent taste by its present owner, the Rev. F. H. Hodgson.
(1840)
COMPANY MANNERS
Victor Cousin, the French philosopher, has undertaken a new task within the last few years. Whether as a relaxation from, or a continuation of, his study of metaphysics, I do not know, but he has begun to write the biographies of some of the celebrated French women of the seventeenth century. In making out his list, he is careful to distinguish between authoresses and femmes d’esprit ranking the latter infinitely the higher in every point of view. The first of his series is Jacqueline Pascal, the sister of Blaise, known at Port Royal as the Sister Euphemia -- a holy, pure, and sainted woman. The second whom the grave philosopher has chosen as a subject for his biography is that beautiful, splendid sinner of the Fronde, the fair-haired Duchess de Longueville. He draws the pure and perfect outlines of Jacqueline Pascal’s character with a severe and correct pencil; he paints the lovely Duchess with the fond, admiring exaggeration of a lover. The wits of Paris, in consequence, have written the following epitaph for him: “Here lies Victor Cousin, the great philosopher, in love with the Duchess de Longueville, who died a century and a half before he was born.”
Even the friends of this Duchess, insignificant in themselve
s, become dear and illustrious to Cousin for her fair sake. It is not long since he contributed an article on Madame de Sablé to the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” which has since been published separately, and which has suggested the thoughts and fancies that I am now going to lay before the patient public. This Madame de Sablé was, in her prime, an habitual guest at the Hôtel Rambouillet, the superb habitation which was the centre of the witty and learned as well as the pompous and pedantic society of Paris, in the days of Louis the Thirteenth. When these gatherings had come to an end after Madame de Rambouillet’s death, and before Molière had turned the tradition thereof into exquisite ridicule, there were several attempts to form circles that should preserve some of the stately refinement of the Hôtel Rambouillet. Mademoiselle de Scudéry had her Saturdays; but, an authoress herself, and collecting around her merely clever people, without regard to birth or breeding, M. Cousin does not hold the idea of her Saturdays in high esteem. Madame de Sablé, a gentlewoman by birth: intelligent enough doubtless from having been an associate of Menage, Voiture, Madame de Sévigné, and others in the grand hotel (whose meetings must have been delightful enough at the time, though that wicked Molière has stepped between us and them, and we can only see them as he chooses us to do): Madame de Sablé, friend of the resplendent fair-haired Duchess de Longueville, had weekly meetings which M. Cousin ranks far above the more pretentious Saturdays of Mademoiselle de Scudéry. In short, the last page of his memoir of Madame de Sablé -- where we matter-of-fact English people are apt to put in praise of the morals and religion of the person whose life we have been writing -- is devoted to this acme of praise. Madame de Sablé had all the requisites which enabled her tenir un salon with honour to herself and pleasure to her friends.
Apart from this crowning accomplishment, the good French lady seems to have been commonplace enough. She was well-born, well-bred, and the company she kept must have made her tolerably intelligent. She was married to a dull husband, and doubtless had her small flirtations after she early became a widow; M. Cousin hints at them, but they were never scandalous or prominently before the public. Past middle life, she took to the process of “making her salvation,” and inclined to the Port-Royalists. She was given to liking dainty things to eat, in spite of her Jansenism. She had a female friend that she quarrelled with, off and on, during her life. And (to wind up something like Lady O’Looney, of famous memory) she knew how tenir un salon. M. Cousin tells us that she was remarkable in no one thing or quality, and attributes to that single, simple fact the success of her life.
Now, since I have read these memoirs of Madame de Sablé, I have thought much and deeply thereupon. At first, I was inclined to laugh at the extreme importance which was attached to this art of “receiving company,” -- no, that translation will not do! -- “holding a drawing-room” is even worse, because that implies the state and reserve of royalty; -- shall we call it the art of “Sabléing”? But when I thought of my experience in English society -- of the evenings dreaded before they came, and sighed over in recollection, because they were so ineffably dull -- I saw that, to Sablé well, did require, as M. Cousin implied, the union of many excellent qualities and not-to-be-disputed little graces. I asked some French people if they could give me the recipe, for it seemed most likely to be traditional, if not still extant in their nation. I offer to you their ideas, fragmentary though they be; and then I will tell you some of my own; at last, perhaps, with the addition of yours, oh most worthy readers! we may discover the lost art of Sabléing.
Said the French lady: “A woman to be successful in Sabléing must be past youth, yet not past the power of attracting. She must do this by her sweet and gracious manners, and quick, ready tact in perceiving those who have not had their share of attention, or leading the conversation away from any subject which may give pain to any one present.” “Those rules hold good in England,” said I. My friend went on: “She should never be prominent in anything; she should keep silence as long as any one else will talk; but, when conversation flags, she should throw herself into the breach with the same spirit with which I notice that the young ladies of the house, where a ball is given, stand quietly by till the dancers are tired, and then spring into the arena, to carry on the spirit and the music till the others are ready to begin again.”
“But,” said the French gentleman, “even at this time, when subjects for conversation are wanted, she should rather suggest than enlarge -- ask questions rather than give her own opinions.”
“To be sure,” said the lady. “Madame Récamier, whose salons were the most perfect of this century, always withheld her opinions on books, or men, or measures, until all around her had given theirs; then she, as it were, collected and harmonised them, saying a kind thing here, and a gentle thing there, and speaking ever with her own quiet sense, till people the most oppressed learnt to understand each other’s point of view, which it is a great thing for opponents to do.”
“Then the number of the people whom you receive is another consideration. I should say not less than twelve, or more than twenty,” continued the gentleman. “The evenings should be appointed -- say weekly -- fortnightly at the beginning of January, which is our season. Fix an early hour for opening the room. People are caught then in their freshness, before they become exhausted by other parties.”
The lady spoke, “For my part, I prefer catching my friends after they have left the grander balls or receptions. One hears then the remarks, the wit, the reason, and the satire which they had been storing up during their evening of imposed silence or of ceremonious speaking.”
“A little good-humoured satire is a very agreeable sauce,” replied the gentleman, “but it must be good-humoured, and the listeners must be good-humoured; above all, the conversation must be general, and not the chat, chat, chat up in a corner, by which the English so often distinguish themselves. You do not go into society to exchange secrets with your intimate friends; you go to render yourselves agreeable to every one present, and to help all to pass a happy evening.”
“Strangers should not be admitted,” said the lady, taking up the strain. “They would not start fair with the others; they would be ignorant of the allusions that refer to conversations on the previous evenings; they would not understand the -- what shall I call it -- slang? I mean those expressions having relation to past occurrences, or bygone witticisms common to all those who are in the habit of meeting.”
“Madame de Duras and Madame Récamier never made advances to any stranger. Their salons were the best that Paris has known in this generation. All who wished to be admitted, had to wait and prove their fitness by being agreeable elsewhere; to earn their diploma, as it were, among the circle of these ladies’ acquaintances; and, at last, it was a high favour to be received by them.”
“They missed the society of many celebrities by adhering so strictly to this unspoken rule,” said the gentleman.
“Bah!” said the lady. “Celebrities! what has one to do with them in society? As celebrities, they are simply bores. Because a man has discovered a planet, it does not follow that he can converse agreeably, even on his own subjects; often people are drained dry by one action or expression of their lives -- drained dry for all the purposes of a ‘salon.’ The writer of books, for instance, cannot afford to talk twenty pages for nothing, so he is either profoundly silent, or else he gives you the mere rinsings of his mind. I am speaking now of him as a mere celebrity, and justifying the wisdom of the ladies we were speaking of, in not seeking after such people; indeed, in being rather shy of them. Some of their friends were the most celebrated people of their day, but they were received in their old capacity of agreeable men; a higher character, by far. Then,” said she, turning to me, “I believe that you English spoil the perfection of conversation by having your rooms brilliantly lighted for an evening, the charm of which depends on what one hears, as for an evening when youth and beauty are to display themselves among flowers and festoons, and every kind of pretty ornament. I would never have
a room affect people as being dark on their first entrance into it; but there is a kind of moonlight as compared to sunlight, in which people talk more freely and naturally; where shy people will enter upon a conversation without a dread of every change of colour or involuntary movement being seen -- just as we are always more confidential over a fire than anywhere else -- as women talk most openly in the dimly-lighted bed-room at curling-time.”
Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell Page 411