Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  It was a very long ride; but suddenly, before we expected, we had arrived, and those two companions stepped out of the car just before us. I heard the stout gentleman say, cheerily, but with a touch of friendly irony in his words, “Welcome to Stratford, my lord of St. Albans!” If I had then any lingering doubt who the pair were I must have known beyond any misgiving that they were William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, but why they should have come there together on terms of such incredible reconciliation I shall, perhaps, never be able to make clear to the impartial reader; as for their respective partizans I despair of them absolutely. I wished to seize the friendlier phantasm of the two, and force him to some explanation, and I suppose I must have made a clutch at the incorporai air where I had last seen him; but a vigilant young porter mistook my gesture as an appeal for his help.

  He seized our hand baggage, and with the demand, “Any luggage in the van, sir?” hurried us away through the Bank-Holiday makers, already arrived in swarms that Saturday afternoon, and staring about in the distraction which lasted with them for the next sixty hours at least. They thronged the roadways as well as the footways of the old town (which I shall try to keep throughout this narrative from calling quaint), and they would have had my cheap commiseration in their air of vague bewilderment and apprehension of something worse than they were already suffering if I had not been anxious in my doubt whether we should find The Spotted Pard all that we had hoped a small hotel might be when we wired for rooms from Cheltenham. The holiday makers stood about in helpless groups, or streamed, men and maids, and mothers and fathers with footsore children at their heels and toes, and mutely made way for the motor we had found at the station offering itself for the same fare as a fly, and now carrying us and our piled-up trunks to The Spotted Pard for the one-and-six which at home would have translated themselves into two-and-sixty of our little-buying dollars and cents. It was such a quiet, kind-looking, patient crowd, so Englishly single-minded and good-tempered, that I was glad to have our chauffeur consider it humanely in his course; and I did not feel it so very molestful as I might in my vision of the streets and houses, which, from once seeing them years before, I now found so familiar. They did somewhat clutter these charming perspectives which so many streets in Stratford open from the sort of central quadrangle before the Town Hall; and an early stroll before dinner showed them filling the river with their skiffs, and punts and canoes, and droning and whining out the tunes of their blatant gramophones. But people whose holidays are few do not know how to fit themselves becomingly into the general scene, or to take their joy without the vulgarity which it comes so easy for us betters of theirs to avoid. The great thing is for them to have their holiday, and it is no little thing for us finer folk to recognize the vast difference between ourselves and them. The town received them with the hospitality which was none the less sincere because it was commercial; but even for money it could not house them all, and it remains a wonder to me how the most of them got roofs over their heads for the night. Well toward midnight a policeman was seen going about with a party of Americans, richly able and eager to pay for lodgings, and knocking at every promising and unpromising door to demand shelter for them. I am sorry to leave that party of compatriots still walking the streets; they were probably only a little less undeserving than ourselves, who had thought to wire for rooms at The Spotted Pard.

  But even then I did not think ourselves treated in the measure of our merit as the night wore away after we had gone to sleep in them. They were pretty rooms, very fresh of paper and paint, in an ell or extension; but with the falling damp outside a strong musty smell as of old hay began to rise from the floor within. It was so strong that it roused the sleepers from their first sleep and kept them from their second till well toward morning. Then I was haunted in my dream by the noise of a ghostly thumping, such as horses and even cows make in the vigils which they seem able to keep, and not suffer the anguish of insomnia. Without waking or at all ceasing from my indignation at having been given rooms in what might once have been a hay-loft, I was aware that the noise I heard was no stamping of horses or cattle, but the muffled blows which Shakespeare was dealing on the doors of inns and lodgings with a demand for shelter, so that his valued and honored friend Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam and Viscount of St. Albans, should not be obliged to spend the night in the street.

  CHAPTER III

  “You see,” Shakespeare explained, a few days later, “I had asked him down for the week-end, and I fancied he would be my guest at New Place.”

  “New Place?” I ventured to interrupt.

  “Yes, of course; the little property I bought from my friend Underhill when I came to Stratford in 1597, a few years before I returned from London for good. It’s at the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane. You must have seen it—”

  “Oh yes, yes!” I assented, from the strong purpose I had of seeing it.

  “The house was in pretty bad shape when it came into my hands, not much better than a ruin, with two tumbledown old barns, and a weedy, wild-grown, old garden. But I had an architect look the house over and see what could be done with it, and he made something very pretty and comfortable out of it; those fellows have a lot of taste; and there’s where I finally settled when I gave London up in 1609, and there’s where I died seven years later.”

  It was rather creepy hearing him speak of his death in that casual way, but if he did not mind it I did not see why I should, and so I smiled, and nodded, and said, “I remember,” and he went on.

  “I had the garden dug out of the weeds, and the ground leveled, and sown to grass, and I planted a mulberry-tree — I was always planting mulberry-trees—”

  “There I am with you!” I broke in. “I’ve planted no end of them. It’s the most delicious fruit in the world!”

  “Isn’t it?” he joyously returned, though I could feel that he did not quite like having his autobiography interrupted.

  “When I died I left it to my daughter Susanna, who married Doctor Hall — Or would you say Doc?”

  “No, no; some Americans do, in the friendly domesticity of Western country towns; but in New York we don’t say Doc — often.”

  “Hall was a good fellow, a gentleman born, and he had a large practice and was well-to-do; so that I expected the place would remain in the family, but it didn’t fall out so. Susanna’s daughter Elizabeth married a man of the name of Nash, and Susanna settled the place on them. It turned out that this couldn’t stand in law, but they arranged that Elizabeth should keep the property when she became Lady Barnard in her second marriage. After her death it was sold to Sir John Walker, and he gave it to his daughter who married Sir Hugh Clopton, if you follow me. Oddly enough, it was Sir John Clopton who built the house I pulled down, and now he pulled my house down, and put up something very fine in its place.”

  “That’s very interesting,” I said, putting my hand over my mouth.

  “Yes,” Shakespeare said, absently; and then he sighed, and said, “Poor Anne!”

  “Anne?” I echoed.

  “Yes. My widow — my wife. She died in New Place a good many years after me. I have never felt quite happy about the way people talk of Anne. I suppose it began with my leaving her my second-best bed in my will, but that was because she always slept in it at New Place, and wanted it especially devised to her. I made no provision for her because she was in the affectionate keeping of her children, and it would have reflected upon them if I had done so. Young man!” he broke off from his pensive strain of reminiscence.

  “Not unless you call seventy-six young,” I suggested. “I do,” he answered. “I’m three hundred and fifty, counting both worlds, and I feel as young as ever I did. But what I was going to say was that I don’t want you to carry away the notion that Anne was unworthy of me, or socially unequal. She was seven years older than I, when we were married; I was as ripe as she in experience, and I was a very forward boy; I don’t brag of those days of mine. The world somehow likes to think meanly of the wives o
f what it calls geniuses; but if the wives had their say, they could say something on their own side that would stop that talk. Xantippe herself might give a few cold facts about Socrates that would make the world sit up; and if Anne told all she knew about me, my biographers would have plenty of the material that they think they’re so lacking in now. She was a good girl, and her people were well-to-do. For the time and place their house was handsome, as you will see when you go to Shottery. Been to Shottery yet?”

  “Not this time; but I’m going,” I said.

  “Do so. And when you’re there think kindly and reverently of my poor Anne. I only wish I had been as good husband to her as she was wife to me.”

  His voice broke a little, and in the pause he let follow, I ventured: “I’m glad to hear you say all this. If I must be quite honest, the worst grudge I ever had against you was because of that second-best bed.”

  “Well, I’m glad to explain it, and I should be obliged if you would make the case known to your American friends. It was a rush bed like those you will see at Shottery, and such as my poor, dear Anne slept in when she was a girl. She clung to it all her life; the children used to laugh at her about it. We had a good deal of joking in our family, at New Place. Anne liked the children laughing at her — especially Susanna.”

  I ought to ask the reader’s patience with what happened just here. The moving-picture show is not yet established in the general respect which it must enjoy, and I hesitate to say that there now ensued as from a succession of rapidly operated films, like those thrown up at the movies, the apparitions of a young girl and a young man, she mature-looking at first, but growing younger and he older, till they fairly matched in contemporaneity. In the last they stood together, she with her hand through his arm, and he looking fondly down into her lifted face. Under this picture ran the legend:

  So wear they level with each other’s hearts which seemed the adaptation of a familiar verse claiming a like effect in marriage from a disparity of ages.

  Without saying anything my companion looked at these apparitions; when the last flashed out he glanced at me.

  “Then it isn’t true — I am glad it isn’t true — as some people have fancied, that you didn’t live happily with her?” I said.

  “Man!” he cried, sternly, “Anne was with me seven years at New Place, after I came home to her at Stratford. She was with me when I died; and do you think — can you think—”

  “No, no, I don’t think it, and I’m ashamed of hinting at what I’ve heard others hint at thinking.” He seemed unable to go forward from this painful point, and at last I made bold to prompt him: “But who was that Rev. Francis Gastrell who cut down your mulberry-tree when he bought New Place?”

  “That churlish priest? Oh, I don’t know. He seemed to have a spite against the whole place. He hated people coming so much to see the tree, and he pulled the house pretty well to pieces for no better reason. To be sure, the Cloptons had largely made it over by that time. You’ll see some of the old foundations — I don’t say the original. They’ve made a pleasant garden of it now, and planted it with trees and flowers. They’ve got a sort of typical mulberry on a rise of ground in the lawn; I believe it was a slip — you can’t kill a mulberry — brought from my old home-place — they call it the Birthplace — which, of course, you’ve seen. You must go and sit in the New Place garden; it’s very nice.”

  He lapsed into a dreamy silence, and seemed to have forgotten so entirely what we had begun talking about, that after waiting rather a long time without saying anything, I hemmed, and asked, “And Bacon?”

  “And Bacon?” he echoed. “Oh, yes! About our adventure that first night? I’ll own it had slipped my mind. But you know I brought him quite confidently here,” and as Shakespeare said this, I perceived we were sitting in the New Place garden on a bench just opposite the typical mulberry-tree; I noted that the berries were pale red, and I remembered leaving my own mulberries black-ripe at home a month before. “And really, till I came quite to the corner here, I didn’t see that the place was as bare as the Rev. Gastrell had made it; while we came along I had been looking at the moon over the tower of the lovely old Guild Chapel, there, which it silvered along the edges. You might have knocked me down with a feather; I’d been counting so on an eager welcome from Susanna and my poor, dear old Anne; and suddenly it went through me how dead and gone we all were, as well as our pleasant home. I made his lordship what excuse I could, and said I must ask him to put up with humbler quarters in my Birthplace (as they call it) off in Henley Street. I could see he didn’t like it; but he was very tired, and he said he should be content with any sort of shakedown; he added something inculpatory about his supposing I had not thought of Bank Holiday when I asked him here. I can scarcely expect you to believe me when I tell you what happened at the Birthplace; if it hadn’t happened to me I don’t think I should believe it myself. We found the premises in the keeping of a fellow who had been got in to assist the regular custodians, worn out by the rush of Bank Holiday; and he pretended not to know me at first, but I soon made him understand that wouldn’t do; even then he demurred at my having brought a stranger; he said that none of the chambers had beds in them, now, and he could hardly make so bold as to offer us the settle where he had been napping on some rugs. But I said this would do very well for my friend, and I would make shift with any sort of large chair. I said my friend was Lord St. Albans, and he must get a night’s rest, and the man said, ‘Not Sir Francis Bacon?’ and I said yes, and then he answered that he could not think of letting Bacon remain under my roof for a single hour, much less a whole night. He hinted that the fact of my bringing him with me there threw a doubt on my own identity; didn’t I know that the authorship of my own plays had been impudently claimed for this man; and how could I be going about with him on these friendly terms, and trying to extort a reluctant hospitality for him from my native place? I told him that I would be answerable to Stratford for anything in the case that affected her honor or pleasure; that neither Bacon nor I cared the least for that silly superstition, and were, as we always had been, perfectly good friends. While we were wrangling Bacon drowsed in the chair he had sunk into and slept heavily; it was the only sleep he got that night, poor ghost! Actually the man turned us out at last, threatening to call the watch if we didn’t go! Of course we went, poor old Bacon stumbling along, heavy with sleep, on his sore feet; and I suppose we must have knocked at every other door in Stratford.”

  “Yes, I heard you,” I said, and I wanted to tell him how I thought at first it was the stamping of hoofs under my room, but of course he could not interrupt himself for that.

  “It was the same story everywhere: full-up! At some places they were kind and truly sorry; at others they were furious at being called to the door, and banged it in our faces. But we came at last to a house where they said they had a room with two beds in it; and I pushed in at once, before Bacon could object to a double-bedded room; I wasn’t sure that he would have objected, but he’s rather crotchety, you know. The man of the house was such a kindly soul, and took his having been knocked up at one o’clock in the morning so sweetly that I thought I would please him by letting him know what a distinguished guest he had, and I whispered that my friend — he was drowsing again — was the Viscount of St. Albans. He started back, and his face darkened; it turned fairly black with a frown. ‘Do you mean Bacon — the Bacon?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘Sir Francis you know; our late Lord Chancellor.’

  ‘Then,’ says he, ‘I’ll thank you both to walk straight out of my house. I would rather burn it down than let it shelter that cruel wretch for a single night — a single hour — a single minute! Go!’

  ‘But my dear man,’ I said, ‘you surely won’t. I’m your fellow-townsman, and I entreat you not to bring shame upon the place by this barbarity. I’ve lived here, man and boy, body and soul, for three hundred years, and I never knew the like. When I tell you who 7 am I think you’ll be willing to let us stay. Why
, I’m—’

  “‘I don’t care who you are,’ he roared. ‘Out you go, and go you should if you were Shakespeare himself.’” He laughed in an apparently lasting enjoyment of the joke, and then, noticing that I did not seem to share his amusement, he checked himself for such explanation as I might have to offer.

  “Why, but — why, but,” I began, “I don’t quite understand how, being disembodied spirits as you were, you required lodgings at all. I should have thought that the ‘viewless wind’ would have been shelter enough—”

  I stopped, and he said with a smile of interest in the psychical fact: “There is something rather curious in all that. We don’t — we’re not allowed to — return to your world without certain conditions. If we materialize, as you call it — the term is inexact — we must put on some of the penalties as well as privileges of mortality, of matter. We get hungry; we feel heat and cold; we want roofs and walls about us. You see?”

  “Yes, I see,” I said, but in fact I did not see, or at least see why. “Then I should think that after being liberated from those conditions you wouldn’t care to resume them — often.”

  “We don’t. And that accounts for it.”

  “Accounts?”

  “For our coming back so seldom. The incalculable majority of us never even wish to come back. There isn’t really much meaning in our return. Some of you here think it would be a good thing if we appeared as a testimony to our continued existence, but we don’t like being doubted and denounced as impostors when we do that, as occasionally happens; and it’s generally felt that you who are here now can wait, as we waited before you.”