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DA 630.J

Rambles with an American
RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN
 

CHARLES DICKENS AT SIX-AND-TWENTY.
(After Maclise.)
RAMBLES WITH AN
AMERICAN

BY

CHRISTIAN TEARLE

AUTHOR OF ‘HOLBORN HILL," “THE VICE-CHANCELLOR’S WARD," ETC.

WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS

 

NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY

1910
TO

J. NORTON DICKONS
AUTHOR'S NOTE

SrncE the first of these Rambles was written
changes have taken place as regards both places
described and persons referred to. These, how-
ever, are of no great importance, and I have
thought it better not to attempt to bring the

text up to date.
G. D,
January, 1910.
CHAP.

II.
III.
IV.

VIII.
IX.

XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.

XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX,

XX.

CONTENTS

. Wir Dickens 1n Harton GaRDEN - - -

Postscrirpt—‘‘ The Queen must have her will”
With DickENS To THE MARSHALSEA - - -
Tue Bangsipe VISITED - - - - -
THE BangsIpE ReEvIsITED - - - - -

Postscript—Shakespeare in the Water Meadows

. Tae Brrra-Hovuse at Srratrorp-on-AVvon - -
VI.
VII.

Tae Harnaway House at SHOTTERY - - -
Mr. Farrrrerp Learns “ALL ABOUT SHAKE-
SPEARE ”’ - = - - - - -
Posrscrret—‘‘ He was Droonk, y’e knoo!” - — -
SHAKESPEARE’S CHURCH - - - - -
Wit GotpsmitH In GREEN ARBOUR CouRT -
Postscarrt—The Bells of St. Andrew’s, Holborn

. FoLLowine in GoupsmitH’s Foorsters = -

Postscript—Poor Little Houses of Chancerie -
We BEGIN TO RAMBLE ABOUT EDINBURGH - -
Mr. Farrrretp anp “‘ Bonnre DUNDEE” - -
Mr. FAIRFIELD WIELDS THE VERNACULAR - -
WE sEE THE Manuscript or ‘‘ WAVERLEY” -
Mr. Fargrietp Monraises IN GREYFRIARS

CHURCHYARD - - - = 3
We Cross MELRosE BrinpGe aND. CLIMB ELDON -
Metrose ABBEY anD SiR WALTER’s GRAVE -
We Crime SmartHotm Tower - - 5 »
We Ramete abour tHE RayMER’s GLEN AND
FIND THE E1Lpon STONE - - - -
By tHe To.i-HOUSE ON THE SELKIRK Roap -
1x

PAGE

14
16

48
70
71
81

95
100
101
113
127
129
146
149
160
174
186

196
204
215
225

236
246
CHAP,

XXII.

XXIT.

XXII.

XXIV.

XXYV,
XXXVI.

XXVIT.

XXVITI.

XXIX.

CONTENTS

ABBOTSFORD HovusE - - - - - -
Postsoript—‘‘ Sir Walter Scott—for Scotland ”’
We SEB SHAKESPEARE’S WILL, AND DAWDLE aBOUT
Lincorn’s Inn - - - ¥ - -
Postscript—The Ghosts of Lincoln’s Inn -
Mr. Farrrietp Turns Recorp-HunTER, AND
Srupres ‘‘SwinsuRNE on WILLS” - -
Postscript—Epitome of Shakespeare’s Will -
THe Burt Horer, Rocuester: I am Invitep To
Srupy ‘ Epwin Droop” - - z -
We Ramee To GADSHILL- - S - 2
In CopHam PARK WE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT
CHARLES DICKENS = - - 3
We visit Minor Canon Row, anp Ramee ro
CooLine Z = = . 2 = -
Posrscript—A Score o’ Years Ago - - -
Cosnam Woops anp EKastcats Houss - - -
Postscrrpt—The Old English Lyrists - -
We Inspect tae Burr-JERKINS AND MarcHLocks
in RocHesTeR CATHEDRAL - 7 <i a
Envoy—The Rochester Coach - - - -

PAGE
251
263

264
279

284
301

303
313

327

334
351
352
366

367
375
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Cuar.es Dickens at Six-anp-TWENTY - - Frontispiece
After Maclise.
TO FACE PAGE
Gray’s Inn SquaRE - - - - - - - - 2
From Herbert’s “ Antiquities of the Inns of Court,” 1804.

Harton GarpEN Doorways - - - - - - ie
From photographs by T. W. Tyrrell.

St. Grorce’s, SourHwarkK, AND THE MarsHatskaA GATE - 32
From Hughson’s ‘‘ London,” 1807,

(1) Tae Corraces, CoLLIncwoop Srreet, Buackrriars - 51
From a photograph by T, W. Tyrrell.

(2) THE Oxtp Kine’s Arms, Surrey Row, Biackrriars - 51
From a photograph by T. W. Tyrrell.

Tue Oricrvat Giope THpatre, BANKSIDE - - - - 59
From ‘‘ Londina Tlusirata’’.

Tae BanksipE IN QuEEN ExvizaBetTu’s REIGN - - - 70
From ‘‘ Londina Ilustrata’’.

‘Anne Haraaway’s CorTace” - - 7 2 = - $84
From a photograph by T. W. Tyrrell.

Wiliam SHAKESPEARE - - - - - 2 - 98
From the Tirst Folio.

THe CHuRCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON - - - - - 112
From a photograph by T. W. Tyrrell.

Tue Frext Dircu oF tHe “ Duncip” - - - - 138
From Warburton’s ‘‘ Pope,” 1751.
xi
xil LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

TO FACE

Tar OLp West Bow, EpinsurcH - - - - -
From a drawing by Cattermole.

EpINBURGH CASTLE FROM THE GREYFRIARS - - - -
From a drawing by Cattermole.

Tay Liprary, ABBOTSFORD - - - - - - Z
From a drawing by Allan.

Lincoin’s Inn Hatt, CHaret, aND GATEWAY - - -
3
From Herbert’s ‘‘ Antiquities of the Inns of Court,’”’ 1804.

EastcateE Hovust, RocHEsTeR = - - * _ e -
From a photograph by T. W. Tyrrell.

Tur Priory Gare anp tan Back or Minor Canon Row -
From a photograph by T. W. Tyrrell.

PAGE

170

196

253

QI7

306

336
RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

CHAPTER I
WITH DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN

My client, Mr. James C. Fairfield, of Chicago, U.S.A.,
rose to go; but his eye fell upon Gray’s Inn Hall, and
he stood gazing at it out of my office window, as if loth
to depart.

He had made his appearance in Gray’s Inn a few
weeks earlier, to consult me respecting an unpaid letter
of credit. The amount in question was considerable,
and from the beginning I had felt sure that he was a
person of position in his own country. The letter of
introduction which he had brought was written by an
officer of the American embassy, and among the docu-
ments in the case was a note from the Secretary, which
began, “‘ My dear Fairfield”

There was not much of the typical American about
my client; but I fancied that he showed a slight re-
luctance to disclose his second Christian name, and it
must be admitted, that he pronounced the word Chicago
in a manner which defied the imitative powers of an
Englishman. His appearance was allin his favour. His
countenance, though remotely suggestive of the Red
Indian type, was refined and gracious; his more than
fifty winters had dried him up rather than aged him,
and his tall form was spare and willowy.

To-day he had asked for my bill of costs, and after
glancing at the total he had paid the amount. At the
same time he had hinted with perfect taste and evident
sincerity, that he feared he had been more trouble than
2 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

he was worth. Then he had settled himself down to
read the items. They certainly were rather wordy; and
as he waded through them, I fancied from the expression
of his face that he was still a little sorry that I had
gone through so much to get so little. As he continued
to read, he now and again made a pause, as if dwelling
upon a ‘word or phrase; and at length, he said, more to
himself than to me: ‘‘ The English law-language is very
suggestive; it reminds one of the Sonnets”. I knew
that Peacock, my factotum, was an old-fashioned drafts-
man, who loved to use words and phrases rarely met with
nowadays except in deeds; but I felt that though these
might bear a certain Elizabethan smack, a client who
could trace a connexion between old Peacock’s entries
and the Sonnets of Shakespeare was no ordinary person.

So it was not without interest that I watched Mr.
Fairfield gazing across the placid square upon the old
hall of Gray’s Inn. Nor was it without sympathy; for
the lack-lustre eye with which most of my visitors re-
garded that prospect had often made me wonder a little.

“Your Hall is more than three hundred years old ;
isn’t it?’ he asked at length.

**Ti’s more than that since it was ‘re-edified ’—what-
ever that may mean.”

* Folks say that Shakespeare once acted in it,’ he
continued.

“Yes! They say he helped to play the ‘Comedy of
Errors’ there, and certainly Queen Elizabeth has been
there, to say nothing of Bacon, and scores and scores of
other eminent persons. And it has been used as a
Court of Justice. An old clerk of mine remembered
Lord Chancellor Eldon sitting in that hall.’’

Mr. James C. Fairfield drew a long breath, and there
was an unmistakably wistful look in his eyes as he con-
tinued to gaze across the square.

‘The lines, sir, have fallen to you in pleasant places,”
he said, with a very agreeable smile; ‘“‘I have been
wondering why Charles Dickens didn’t like Gray’s Inn.
He called it one of the most depressing institutions in
brick and mortar known to the children of men.”
f
i

An

 

GRAY’S INN SQUARE,
DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN 3

“He had reason,” I answered; ‘“‘he remembered it
as a place of servitude. But it was a pity he kept on
hating it all his life.”’

I spoke with some feeling, for the Inn holds a warm
corner in my heart, and the unkind things said about
it in the ‘‘ Uncommercial Traveller ’’ are hard to beav.

It was with a manifest accession of interest that Mr.
Fairfield eyed me after this, and it was with a shyness
of manner quite new in him that he asked if I had ever
seen the Hatton Garden police-court. ‘‘I know it has
been shut up for many years,” he explained, “but I
want to find it.”

IT had heard of the police-court in question, but I had
no notion of its whereabouts.

“The truth is,” said my client, with a sudden effort,
as if he had determined to make a clean breast of things,
‘some of us in Chicago think a deal of Dickens. I’m
badly bitten myself, and I’ve spent a lot of time in your
city here, following up his tracks. I’ve covered most
of the ground; but I’ve not located the police-office
where Mr. Fang bullied Oliver Twist, and what’s more
I don’t know anybody who has. No doubt all the de-
tail in the book was photographically correct—trust
Charles Dickens for that !—and I want to find the place
if it’s to be found. But I daresay your clientéle doesn’t
bring you near the police-courts,’ he added with a

slight bow.

“ Tt must be more than sixty years since ‘ Oliver Twist’
was published,” said I.

“Dickens wrote it in 1837. He actually had both
that and ‘Pickwick’ in hand at the same time, and
wasn’t even a week in advance of the printer with either.
Think of that, sir! It’s plain from Forster’s ‘ Life’
that the court was in full blast then; for he tells us
Dickens was smuggled into the place, so that he might
study Fang’s ways. The man’s name was really Laing,
and Dickens’s description led the authorities to take an
early opportunity of showing him the door.”

‘Tet us go and find the place,’’ said I, as I took up
my hat.
4 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

T did not make this offer entirely in my client’s inter-
est; for if a man should speak truly, I am a bit of a
Dickensite myself, and it struck me almost as a reproach
that though for many years I had practised within a
stone’s-throw of Hatton Garden, it had never occurred
to me to ascertain where the police-office described in
“Oliver Twist ’’ used to stand.

Although Mr. James C. Fairfield had accepted my offer
with grave politeness, and without any show of enthusi-
asm, I noticed as we turned out of the Inn into Holborn
that a gleam was in his eye, and I felt sure that with
him the hunt was up, and that any trail, however faint,
would be followed to the death. Before starting, I had
stipulated that I should be allowed to conduct the chase
in my own way, and somewhat to my companion’s sur-
prise, I headed not towards Hatton Garden, but in the
opposite direction. When, however, he found that I had
conducted him to the library of the Law Society in
Chancery Lane, and had entrenched myself behind a
rampart of old Law Lists and Post Office Directories,
his doubts vanished, and peering over my shoulder, he
followed my quest with unmistakable eagerness.

It was not long before we found something. The
Directories did not begin until the year 1840, but the
Law Lists went back for many years earlier. I began
at 1836; and the Law List for that year showed that
there was then a Hatton Garden police-court in exist-
ence, and that three magistrates, one of whom was
A. 8. Laing, Eisq., were attached to it; but there was
no information as to its exact locality. The Law Lists
for the four succeeding years were no more explicit on
this point, though they showed that between 1836 and
1838 A. 8. Laing, Esq., had ceased to administer justice
in Hatton Garden. This greatly excited my client.

“Dickens had smashed him, sure enough,” he said
joyfully.

Iwas reluctant to give up the Law Lists, for as I had
turned over the pages, my eye had caught many names
to awaken old memories; but my companion was evi-
dently so anxious to push on with the search that I was
DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN 5

constrained to put them aside and break new ground
with the Directory for 1840. Here we drew a blank,
for though the police-court was mentioned no address
was given. But the Directory for 1841 made amends
for all; no sooner had I turned to the page relating to
police-offices than my client’s eye travelled over it with
lightning rapidity, and I heard in my ear an excited
whisper, “‘ Number 54 Hatton Garden ”

We were now fairly on the trail; but notwithstanding
Mr. Fairfield’s manifest impatience I ventured before
departing to make a hasty reference to the Directories
for the next two or three years. From these I ascer-
tained that between 1841 and 1848 the police-office had
‘been removed from Hatton Garden to Bagnigge Wells
Road, and had changed its name to the Clerkenwell
police-court.

Within a few minutes of our discovery of the number
of the house we were on our way eastward; and the
long, thin gentleman in the closely buttoned frock-coat
and sharply pointed patent-leather shoes had regained
his composure, and was outwardly as calm as fate and
as cold as charity.

With malice aforethought, Iled him down Southamp-
ton Buildings and through Staple Inn. Here, he seemed
on familiar ground, and as he drew near to Number 10
he put on a pince-nez and let the conversation languish.
When we reached the house, his face lit up, and fixing

his eyes on the tablet over the doorway, which bears the
inscription ‘P. J. T. 1747,” he waved a greeting to it.
But he did not stop, nor did he say anything. His
thoughts were with Mr. Grewgious and the other char-
acters in ‘‘ Edwin Drood,” but he kept his illusions to
himself. I honoured his reticence, and even felt it a
little difficult not to let him know that I, too, loved the
Master’s unfinished book, and never went by that old
house without a mental greeting.

We passed under the gateway of Staple Inn into the
roar of Holborn, and made our way towards the Circus.
When we came to the statue of Prince Consort, my client
made it plain to me that he was no stranger to the locality.
6 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“There are many of the original houses still left,”
said he, indicating Hatton Garden by a wave of his
hand, ‘“‘ though they look so stout one can hardly believe
they are more than two hundred years old. This was
the garden of Ely Place, the Bishop of Ely’s London
house. Queen Elizabeth made him lease it to Christo-
pher Hatton. That was the beginning of the end; the
builder got hold of it in 1659. John Evelyn saw the
foundations being laid. He said they were designed for
a little town, and that the place was lately an ample
garden.”

He had culled these fragments of topography from
a little sheaf of notes, which he had been consulting
as he went along. I received them with due reverence,
but I made a mental note to give him a Roland for his
Oliver before I had done with him.

Hatton Garden lay before us. It was true that many
of the houses were old, but some of them had been
modernized almost out of recognition, and at anything
but rare intervals an unmistakably new building showed
itself. The shop-fronts, which had altered the appear-
ance of so many of the original ground-floors, and the
trade advertisements which met the eye on every side,
to say nothing of the bustle of the traffic, made the street
as unlike the fashionable thoroughfare of Evelyn’s day
as that thoroughfare was unlike the “‘ample garden,”
which he remembered, and which Shakespeare knew. !

Mr. Fairfield was deep in his memoranda. ‘ The
Dodger and Charley Bates,” said he reflectively, “ picked
old Brownlow’s pocket on Clerkenwell Green. I have
identified that place; the Clerkenwell sessions-house
stands there. The police-office was quite near at hand,
this points to its being some distance from Hol-

orn.”

I admitted the justice of Mr, Fairfield’s conclusion ;
and as we proceeded along the east side of the street

1 My Lord of Ely, when IJ was last in Holborn,
I saw good strawberries in your garden there.
(“ Richard ITI,” Act iii, Sc. iv.)
 

HATTON GARDEN DOORWAYS,

Nore.—No. 13 (See top left-hand doorway !) was ‘Perdita’’ Robinson's home
during the first years of her married life.
DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN 7

T encouraged him by pointing out that the numbering
tended to confirm it.

“Yes, yes,” he exclaimed; “the numbers begin at
this end, and they run consecutively. Fifty-four must
be a good way in front of us.”’

“That leads to Hly Place,”’ he went on, as he pointed
down a narrow passage on our right, “‘ There’s a tavern
in it called the Mitre. The sign’s dated 1540, but I’m
afraid that’s a legend. Yes, I’m afraid it’s only a
legend.”

He said this with a mournful gravity that was posi-
tively laughable; but a moment later he had resumed
his cheerfulness and was pointing out to me that Hatton
Garden still retained many tokens of its former stateli-
ness. Some of the elaborately carved and fluted door-
ways to which he drew my attention would have made
suitable and imposing entrances to family vaults; and
here and there, through open doors, we caught glimpses
of tessellated marble pavements, and the heavy, carved
balustrades of ancient staircases.

At the corner of Charles Street I paused to administer
my topographical tit-for-tat.

“That tavern,” said I, pointing to the Globe restaurant
on the other side of the way, ‘is not without historical
associations. When Sir George Barclay was hatching
his plot to assassinate William ITI, that house was one
of the places at which he and his fellow-conspirators
used to meet.”’

My client regarded the structure with much interest,
and proceeded to add a note to the sheaf of memoranda
which fluttered in his hand. When, however, he sought
to cross-examine me for further particulars I thought
it wise to confess that the “State Trials’? was my sole
authority, and that I could add nothing to what I had
said, and could not even declare that the tavern before
us was the actual structure in existence in 1696.

“ T suppose you wouldn’t care to dropin and question
the landlord,” hinted my companion, with some diffi-
dence; ‘‘no doubt he knows all the traditions of his
house.”
8 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘‘T’'m afraid I haven’t time this afternoon,” said I, not
much relishing this proposal.

Our pace quickened as we continued our pilgrimage, but
there was no getting Mr. Fairfield past the corner of Cross
Street until he had examined the parochial school-house.

“‘« Histablished in 1696,’” said he, reading from the
inscription, and pausing to study the quaint figures
of a boy and girl in the costume of that day which
flank each of the two entrances. ‘‘I missed this place
when I was here before,” he remarked, as he added a
note to his memoranda.

This done, he ran his eye over several of the slips of
paper in his hand, and then took a long survey north,
south, east and west. His look was very absent as he
did this. His next proceeding was to step into the
roadway, and from the middle of it to renew his survey
of the four points of the compass.

““Do you know Bacon’s ‘ Essays’ ?”’ he asked, with
some shyness. A moment earlier he had turned in my
direction, and had given something of a start at finding
me at his elbow in the middle of the road.

‘Yes, it’s rather a favourite book of mine.”

“T was trying to reconstruct that garden; as you
know the ‘Essays,’ perhaps you will understand what
was in my mind.”

He said this with a half-smile, but he was evidently
feeling his way, and was ready at a touch to shrink
back into his shell.

“Were you thinking of the flowers which were suited
to ‘the climate of London’ ?” I asked.

“That's exactly what I was thinking of. Isn’t it odd
to remember that almost anything could be grown here
in Queen Elizabeth’s time? We know there were heaps
of roses, for the lease to Hatton stipulated that the
bishop should have twenty bushels every year. I wish
I could remember more of that essay on gardens. I’m
sure Bacon mentions scores of London flowers, but all
I can call to mind besides roses are hollyhocks, and
lihes, and daffodils. It’s pleasant to think of this place
as areal garden; isn’t it?”
DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN 9

Mr. Fairfield was now quite at his ease, and he had
been speaking with no little animation.

“It’s pleasant in a sense,’ I admitted, as I looked
about me, ‘‘ but isn’t it a little melancholy, too?”’

“JT never feel like that m London: I hardly know
why. Perhaps it’s because one recognizes that if the
open places hadn’t been built over hundreds of years
ago, the London that we know, simply wouldn’t exist.”’

“Was the bishop’s garden a big place?” I asked.

“Tt stretched as far as Leather Lane on the west;
I can’t make up my mind how far north it went, but
the bishop’s land ran up a good bit farther north than
where we are now. Hatton got fourteen acres besides
the garden and some orchards, and the bishop didn’t
give up quite all the land. There was a paddock or
orchard north of the chapel—he kept that. But leaving
all the rest out of account, just think of fourteen acres
of open ground here! What a view there must have
been of Hampstead, and Highgate, and Islington! I
doubt if there was any building bigger than a cottage
between here and Hampstead, except the little old church
of St. Pancras. It’s still standing: fancy being able to
see it from here! And I daresay you could see the Tower
and nearly all the City. The walls were still there in
Hatton’s time, and Holborn Hill was a suburb with the
River Fleet running through a hollow between it and the
City proper—the hollow that was bridged by the Viaduct
some thirty years ago.”

““We haven’t found that police-court yet,’ I hinted,
after a pause.

“True, true! we must be getting on; your time is
valuable,” he answered penitently.

Before Cross Street was many paces behind us he
had cleared his mind of the London of Elizabeth,
and was once again all eagerness to find the police-office
of ‘Oliver Twist,” but as we drew near the northern
end of Hatton Garden, and the numbers were nearly ap-
proaching the fifties, his hopes seemed to be sinking
low. Whenever we passed a newly-built house, he eyed
it mournfully, but with something of an air of resigna-
10 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

tion, and when we came on Number 50, and found it to
be brand-new, and a few houses ahead we saw another
undoubtedly modern building, he had evidently prepared
himself for the worst. Even I was conscious of a slight
feeling of apprehension—could that new house be Num-
ber 54? Mr, Fairfield paused at Number 52, really, I
think, because he wished to postpone for a moment the
realization of his fears, but ostensibly to examine the
coat of arms upon the pediment of the doorway, and the
smaller shields to right and left of it.

At the next house but one we stopped, and a sigh of
relief burst from my companion. It was manifestly a
very old house, and under the spacious double-fanlight
over the entrance were the figures 54. It was a sub-
stantial dwelling of four storeys, each of which except
the first showed a line of three windows, warped with
age. On the ground-floor the space of the third window
was taken up by the doorway. The door stood open,
and beyond it at the end of a short entrance hall, some-
what poorly panelled, was another door, crowned with
a fanight, through which could be seen part of an old-
fashioned staircase. The house was divided from the
pavement by a railed area of no great depth, and was
apparently in the occupation of a commercial firm.

““Tt’s the place, sure enough!” said Mr. Fairfield
breathlessly. ‘‘ Let us step just inside!”

The hall was by no means impressive; but the door-
chain, which was an iron cable of very fair thickness
and of sufficient length to extend across the full width
of the entrance, and also certain evidences which the
door itself presented that at one time it could be secured
by an iron bar, spoke eloquently of the fact that in
former days Hatton Garden had for its immediate
neighbour a district seething with crime.

“T want to trace the progress of events just as they
are set out in the book,” said Mr. Fairfield, whose usually
placid countenance was flushed with excitement. “ Oli-
ver was brought through two or three streets, and down
a place called Mutton Hill, when he was led beneath a
low archway and up a dirty court, into the police-office,
DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN 11

by the backway. We've got to find that backway—and
T guess it’s round yonder.” ;

He pointed northward, and started off at a brisk trot.
Twenty or thirty yards brought him to the corner of
Hatton Wall; and he turned down it at a pace that re-
called to my mind poor Oliver’s dash for freedom. For-
tunately, no one cried ‘‘ Stop thief!’ after the American
citizen, as he disappeared round the corner; his shoes
twinkling in the sunshine, and his ample vestment
blowing out behind him.

By the time I, too, had turned the corner he was.
thirty or forty yards ahead. In another instant, he had
come to a sudden stop, and regardless of appearances,
was waving me forward with his hat. When TI got up
to him, I found that he was standing in front of a tavern,
and that under a portion of the premises, there ran an
archway, giving access to a narrow passage, called Hatton
Yard, which led to the backs of the houses in Hatton
Garden. At the end of the side-street in which we were
standing, and only a few yards ahead of us, ran Great
Saffron Hill.

We were both through the archway in the twinkling
of an eye. We found that the passage into which it led
was bordered on one side by stables, and on the other
side by certain low irregular structures, which had evid-
ently been built in recent times over the back-gardens
of the houses in Hatton Garden. It was easy to see,
that when the street was a residential quarter of some
pretension, the houses were provided with stabling in
the rear, and that the passage in which we were stand-
ing gave access to it. ‘The place was decidedly unlovely,
and my companion’s face was very downcast as we ex-
amined it; for, though it was easy to locate with toler-
able accuracy the back of Number 54, no trace of an
entrance was visible.

“Oliver was taken into a small paved yard at the back
of the police-office, where the cells were, but it seems
clear that we can’t follow him,” said my client rue-
fully. ‘Some accursed buildings have been erected
over the yard, or at all events, over the approach to it.
12 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

The place was open enough when Dickens saw it; for
when Nancy was sent to find out what had happened to
Oliver at the police-office, she went in by the back way
and tapped with her keys on the cell doors, and made
inquiries of the occupants. It was a nice free-and-easy
way of keeping prisoners.”

We made our way back to the main thoroughfare,
and stood once more in front of Number 54.

“The police-office,’ said my companion, ‘was a
front parlour with a panelled wall. Can there be any
doubt that the room before us is that self-same
parlour?”

I applied the full force of my intellect to this knotty
problem ; and, at length, I felt justified in intimating
with true judicial gravity, that I thought the matter
admitted of no doubt whatever. Mr. Fairfield bent
himself over the area railings, and peered through one
of the windows of the ground-floor.

“The room 7s panelled,” he gasped; ‘‘I can see it
distinctly. It is panelled all over. In that very room,
sir, the magistrate sat behind a bar at the upper end—
that means the end farthest from us; and on one side
of the door—the very door that gives upon the entrance
hall—was a sort of wooden pen in which they put Oliver ;
and standing by the bar was a bluff old fellow in a
striped waistcoat. Man alive! can’t you picture the
whole scene?”’

I did not directly answer this question; out of sheer
perversity, I preferred to stir up the enthusiast rather
than sympathize with him.

‘‘ But surely the whole scene was fictitious,’’ I urged,
with all Philistine obtuseness.

He turned upon me like a roused lion, I suppose
my face betrayed me; for the indignation in his eyes
gave place to a twinkle, and for a moment something
not far removed from a wink fluttered in one of them.
When I came to know the man better, I found that
no one could be more keenly alive to the comic side of
his enthusiasm than he was. I had a suspicion of the
fact that afternoon, when instead of denouncing me for
DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN 13

a soulless hog, he stood looking into my face with that
twinkle in his eye.

“Tt isn’t so much because Dickens has described these
places that I take an interest in them,” he said, as he
put away his memoranda. ‘‘It’s not so much because
Dickens used them as a stage for his characters that
I like to hunt them out. It’s because I know he went
over every inch of the ground himself. And that being
eo when I see these places, they seem to bring me near

am.” .

He spoke with placid gravity and without the least
self-consciousness. ‘I feel that way now, sir,” he went
on; and as he spoke he placed a hand on my arm and
pointed to the windows before us—‘“ Charles Dickens
has been in that room.” He said this with so much
reverence that I felt abashed.

“Tt’s odd to think of what has gone on in there,”
observed my companion, after he had made a leisurely
examination of several further scraps of memoranda
and had meditated for a while. ‘Justice was a harsh
thing in the old days. Perhaps it’s as well that walls
can’t speak.”

“‘Hiven a modern police-court is hardly a place of
cheerful memories,’’ I hinted.

“‘T was thinking of Eliza Fenning. She was brought
before the magistrate in that room. I was wondering
just now what the rights of the case were. Dickens
says in one of his letters to Walter Thornbury that she
was innocent, but that wasn’t what: the judge and jury
thought. She was hanged for trying to poison her
master and his wife and son with arsenical dumplings.
That was in 1815. The case made a great stir at the
time.”

“‘T’m afraid I never heard of her.”

Mr. Fairfield laughed. ‘If I come across anything
connected with a place I’m interested in, it hides itself
in my memory in some mysterious way or other, and
when I see the place, the thing pops up in my mind.
And I was thinking of somebody besides Eliza Fenning
—Grimaldi the clown.”
14 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“T have heard of him,” said I proudly.

Mr. Fairfield laughed again. “He was charged with
having hunted an overdriven ox in the fields of Penton-
ville—that was before Laing’s time. Joey came off with
flying colours. The case was heard there. I’m glad to

have got a glimpse of that room.”
“And aren’t you going to knock at the door, and ask

if you may go inside ?”’

“No, sir, I am not,” was the Johnsonian answer ;
and there was no mistaking the acidity in Mr. Fairfield’s
voice.

POSTSCRIPT
“THE QUEEN MUST HAVE HER WILL”

18. Enz. Marcu.—Richard Cox Bishop of Ely granted to
Christoper Hatton the gatehouse of Ely Place and certain other
buildings, fourteen acres of land and the keeping of the gardens and
orchards for twenty-four years.

The bishop stood in his garden fair,
And lo, it was Easter-day !
His gaze went forth to the hill-crowned north,
And he sighed as he turned away.
My lord of Ely was seventy-five ;
His tread it was passing slow,
His hands were locked, and his head was bent,
And many and many a sigh he spent
As down the middlemost alley he went,
With daffodils all a-blow.

He eyed the strawberry beds afar,
And they were a goodly reach ;
The almond tree was a sight to see,
And so was the early peach.
“Tt irks me sore,’ he muttered aloud,
And groaned in his despair :
The sunshine lay on his palace wall ;
The gatehouse weathercock gleamed withal,
And big blue violets, heavy and tall,
‘Were blossoming everywhere.

The chimes rang out upon Holborn Hill
And theirs was a joyous swell ;

St. Sepulchre’s chimes rang in betimes
Whenever St. Andrew’s fell.
DICKENS IN HATTON GARDEN 15

And O, for more than a mile beyond
The valley that lay between,
The bells were ringing their Easter calls !
And, lording it over the City walls,
The great dwarf tower of the great St. Paul’s
Looked down upon all the scene.

The bishop stood in his garden fair,
And sadly he gazed his fill.
**Tt irks me sore,” he muttered once more ;
‘*But the queen must have her will.”
And all in haste was the lease drawn out,
For Hatton was wild to close ;
But little enough would Christopher pay :
Ten pounds in money, ten loads of hay ;
And as for the garden—on Midsummer-day
The rental was one red rose.
CHAPTER II
WITH DICKENS TO THE MARSHALSEA

Soon after our pilgrimage to Hatton Garden, in search of
the police-office of ‘‘ Oliver Twist,’ my relations with my
chent began to grow closer and more intimate. I found
on better acquaintance that though Charles Dickens
claimed his most fervent worship, he was aware that
the pantheon of English literature contained many other
divinities ; and as he loved to ramble about the neigh-
bourhood of their haunts, I, who had a fondness in the
same direction, was often glad enough to bear him com-
pany. He was always interesting and interested, but
there was no return of the wild enthusiasm that had
overmastered him in Hatton Garden. Never again
did I see that dry spare figure shake off its more than
fifty winters and break into a run.

One Saturday afternoon, some months after our first
ramble, he turned up at my office in Gray’s Inn, and
demanded if I was at liberty.

““T was dipping into Forster’s ‘ Life’ last night,’ he
said, as he settled himself in the chair which my clients
have so often found a stool of penitence, ‘‘and I came
upon those scraps of the autobiography which Dickens
began to write, and which he afterwards made use of
in ‘David Copperfield’. They tell of his employment in
the blacking-warehouse at Hungerford Stairs.”

I had some faint recollection of the fragments to
which my client referred. ‘‘ Dickens was quite a child
at the time, I think,’’ was my comment.

“Tt was in 1824, when he was only twelve years old.
The boy’s father was a prisoner for debt in the Marshal-

16
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 17

sea, and the family home was there. Little Charles used
to walk back to the prison from the warehouse, across
Blackfriars Bridge. He says he turned out of the
Blackfriars Road by the side of Rowland Hill’s Chapel.
I’m not very famihar with the country on the other side
of your river, and I don’t know whereabouts that chapel
was. Do you know?”

I nodded assent. The building had been pointed out
to me in the days of my youth by an aged aunt of great
piety, who in earlier years had been a worshipper there.

*“T thought perhaps we might stroll in that direction,
and make our way to the Marshalsea by the route that
child followed in 1824, or as near toit as we can guess.”

I had no objection; and we started on our way. We
crossed the “ Sahara Desert of the Law” and quitted the
Inn by the ‘‘ old gateway ”’ which gives upon Gray’s Inn
Road, and which for some mysterious reason bears the
winged horse of the Inner Temple. Through this portal,
beneath which Jacob Tonson kept his shop, and hard
by which in still earlier days grew an ancient tree, long
famous as a landmark, we passed into the main thorough-
fare. I had a bonne-bouche for Mr. Fairfield in the im-
mediate neighbourhood; so I led him eastward across
the road and down Bell Court, which is nearly opposite
the gateway. At the end of the court I turned off to
the right; and leading my companion down a narrow
passage and following it in a sharp turn to the left, I
brought him up in White Hart Yard, We were just
approaching Brooke Street, upon which the yard gives,
when I came to a standstill.

“That house may interest you,’ J said carelessly,
pointing to the west end of the yard. ‘‘It must be of
enormous age.”

The house referred to was in the occupation of a
cowkeeper and dairyman. It was a very ancient struc-
ture, lop-sided, and top-heavy; built almost entirely
of wood, and roofed with fluted red tiles. There were
two small windows on the ground-floor, one of which
belonged to the shop. On the south side of the yard

stood another wooden structure, evidently appurtenant
2
18 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

to the old house. This consisted of two storeys, the
lower of which was used as a stable or cowshed;
and along the upper, which apparently contained two
or three living rooms, ran a light wooden gallery. The
whole of the premises bore such a strange pastoral air
and seemed so out of character with the modern brick
and mortar by which they were hemmed in, that they
carried the mind back to those early days when travellers
from Gray’s Inn to Ely House made their way thither
by footpaths which ran through green meadows.

The house and its appurtenances occupied the west
and south sides of the little close ; on the north side were
two dwellings, and the east side was formed by one of
the houses in Brooke Street, under which ran a passage
into that street. /

This old house was my bonne-bouche, and My. Fairfield
received it with the most gratifying enthusiasm.

“Tt is extraordinary—extraordinary,’’ he exclaimed
as he fitted on his pince-nez and gazed on the building,
long and eagerly; “really, I must try and learn some-
thing of its history. Fortunately, I see syphonsin that
shop window,” he ejaculated a moment later.

Without explaining this enigmatical remark, he made
his way to the entrance of the shop; and bending his
long body over the half-door, he addressed the young
woman in charge. The place was so tiny that all the
business of the establishment was done over its dwarf
portal, with the customer standing outside.

“Can you oblige me with a bottle of lemonade?” he
asked blandly.

“To take away, I suppose,’ observed the damsel, as
she turned to the shelf behind her.

‘‘Oh dear, no,” answered Mr. Fairfield, somewhat
taken aback at the suggestion that he wished to burden
himself with such an incumbrance; ‘I shall esteem it a
favour if you will allow me to drink it here.”

“This is a very old house of yours,” he remarked as
he stood in the yard, glass in hand, and gazed through
his pince-nez upon the interior of the little shop.

‘““T daresay it is,” was the answer, given with per-
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 19

fect politeness but an entire lack of interest. This
was very discouraging; and asI stood by my client’s
side and marked the disappointment upon his counte-
nance, I nearly laughed aloud.

“You have no idea how old, I suppose?” he resumed,
after a sip of his lemonade.

“Not the least,” said the young lady—‘ you know
more about the place than I do,” she added, turning to
an elderly man who stood behind us, and addressing him
by his Christian name.

Mr. Fairfield wheeled round and confronted this in-
dividual.

“Surely the house is very old, sir,” he remarked with
grave politeness.

“Old! Ishould think it was old. Noone knows how
old it is.”

‘Perhaps three hundred years,’ suggested my client.

‘More than that, very like.’’

‘‘T suppose it was at one time a farmhouse, standing
in the fields,” resumed Mr. Fairfield, much encouraged.

“Tt was a tavern,” replied the elderly man, with the
air of one who gives an answer beyond his questioner’s
expectations. ‘‘These was the stables,’ he added,
pointing to the galleried wooden structure on his right.

This man’s notion of a tavern was probably something
very different from the picture which the word, used in
connexion with that old house near Gray’s Inn, called
up in the mind of my companion; but it was evident
that the stranger from the far west was hugely pleased
with the information. He took a moderate draught from
the glass in his hand, and positively smacked his lips
with enjoyment.

“This lemonade is most excellent; and really I must
trouble you for one of those,” he proclaimed, as he
turned with a beaming smile to the young woman, and
pointed to a glass jar of heart-cakes. His anxiety to
keep the establishment in good humour until he had
extracted from it every particle of information was so
manifest that I could not keep back a smile. ‘The
elderly man noticed this; and gazing hard at me, he
20 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

closed his left eye. Though I was not sure of his mean-
ing, I felt little doubt that he wished to indicate that
he recognized in the two strangers a harmless lunatic
and his keeper. Nevertheless, I thought it right in my
client’s interest to return the wink.

“Do you know when the house ceased to be a tavern ?”’
resumed Mr. Fairfield with intense interest, as he stood
on the asphalt, with the glass in one hand and the heart-
cake in the other. The correctness of his long frock-
coat and general tenue made the picture very comical.

“Tt was before we come here, and that’s more than
thirty years ago,” was the answer.

“Perhaps you don’t know what it was called ?”’

The elderly man shook his head.

“This place is called White Hart Yard,’’ I ventured
to interpose. ‘‘ Many of the places in London that are
called yards, owe their names to the taverns to which
they once belonged. Don’t you think it probable that
this tavern was the White Hart ?”’

“There can be no doubt of it,’ was his emphatic
answer ; “and,” he continued with growing triumph,
“if this yard took its name from the tavern, surely the
tavern must have been of great antiquity.”

No more information was forthcoming, except a state-
ment thatiif the house fell down the County Council
would not allow it to be rebuilt in the same style; and
after Mr. Fairfield had with scrupulous politeness finished
both the lemonade and the heart-cake we resumed our
pilgrimage.

“This is Brooke Street, where Chatterton died,” I re-
marked, as we passed under the archway; ‘and Fox
Court, where Savage said he was born, runs out of it, a
few paces to our right.”

My companion was in a brown study, and did not
seem to notice what I said. We crossed the road and
turned down Greville Street, which for so many cen-
turies formed the northern boundary of Furnival’s Inn;
now, alas! nomore. I pulled him up here, to point out
that Numbers 24 and 25 Brooke Street were old.

“Tt seems likely they were built about the same time
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 21

as Chatterton’s house. You see those garrets with the
parapets.” I was gratified to observe that my com-
panion thought the old houses worthy of a memorandum.

Continuing our way down Greville Street, we turned
to the right into Leather Lane; and so deep was
Mr. Fairfield’s renewed meditation that he seemed
oblivious of the fact that we were passing the site of
the house in which the ‘‘ Pickwick Papers ” were written.

“Supposing that house is only three hundred years
old,” he remarked, emerging from his reverie ; ‘‘ suppos-
ing it was not built till 1601, just think of what it may
have seen! Perhaps Shakespeare turned into it when
he played in Gray’s Inn Hall. Milton, too, may have
been there M

“Milton!” I ejaculated. ‘‘ What would he be doing
in such a place ?”’

‘Well, we are told he had some gay friends in Gray’s
Inn.”

‘But I don’t suppose,” continued Mr. Fairfield, as if
recognizing a certain incongruity in associating Milton
with tavern-haunting, ‘““I don’t suppose, however gay
his friends were, or however much he unbent in their
company, he went a-tippling with them. No, sir, in
those days men often went to taverns for their meals—
old Pepys proves this—and I daresay Milton was no
exception.”

‘‘ But even if we don’t go so far back as that, or fly at
such high game,” he proceeded, noticing that I was
smiling, and breaking into a smile himself, “who can
doubt that when Chatterton poisoned himself at the
Holborn end of the street, there was plenty of talk among
the customers of the White Hart? He died in 1770.
I was reading about him only last week in Forster’s
‘Goldsmith’. Suicide was not common in the eighteenth
century, and the whole neighbourhood must have known
that a young man—he was only eighteen, poor lad—
had been found dead in his garret; the cup which had
held the poison still grasped in his hand, and the floor
covered with fragments of manuscript. You can im-
agine what a pow-wow there was in that old tavern,

 
22 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

and how the decent householders who used it, shook
their wigs over the wickedness of the act, and declared,
as they sipped their punch and snuffed the stinking
tallow candles, that authors were a bad lot.”

“The register of his burial is in that old church
yonder,” quoth Mr. Fairfield, pointing to St. Andrew’s,
Holborn, the west side of which we were just then
nearing.

“‘ Archaic stuff like his poetry doesn’t appeal to me
much,” he went on, “‘ but there are bits here and there—

Sweet his tongue as the throstle’s note,
Quick in dance as thought was he;
Deft his tabor, cudgel stout ;

Oh, he lies by the willow tree !

Come with acorn cup and thorn,
Drain my heart’s blood all away ;
Life and all its good I scorn,
Dance by night, or feast by day.
My love is dead,
Gone to his death-bed,
All under the willow tree.

That seems to me remarkably easy verse for the
eighteenth century; and there’s a smack of poetry in
‘Come with acorn cup and thorn’.”

“But isn’t the whole thing lke one of Ophelia’s
songs?”

“Oh, yes! it’s imitative; but, then, think how young
he was! And that reminds me—Forster says his body
was taken to the parish bone-house, and as no one
claimed it, it was buried in the pauper burial-ground of
Shoe Lane. I suppose that can’t be far off.”

By this time we had reached Stonecutter Street. I
turned the corner and led my companion a few paces
eastward into Farringdon Avenue.

“ Not a vestige of the burial-ground remains, but this
street passes over the site of it,” said I.

The aspect of the place was offensively modern, but
Mr. Fairfield gazed on it without disfavour.

‘“* Perhaps here under our feet there still remains some
fragment of Chatterton,” he observed meditatively.
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 23

We retraced our steps; and when we regained the
corner, I drew my companion’s attention to a narrow
tunnel running out of the opposite side of Shoe Lane,
just below the junction of the lane with St. Bride
Street. We could read the name ‘‘ Gunpowder Alley ”
from where we stood, and I reminded him that Lovelace
the poet had died there.

“‘T remember, I remember,’ he exclaimed, as we
made our way to the narrow opening.

“We know it was a very poor place in his time,” said
he, as he gazed up it. ‘‘ Not much daylight or fresh air
here, sir, two hundred and fifty years ago.” And my
client fell a-musing.

‘*T could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more,”

he repeated after a pause, very softly but with strong

emphasis. ‘‘ You made a poor end of it, Colonel, as
this world goes,” he went on, asif addressing the dead
man’s shade; ‘‘and I daresay when your coffin was

carried out over where we’re standing, there weren’t
many mourners with it; but your lines still make men
tingle, Richard Lovelace, and your name smells sweet—
sweet as a nosegay.”

There was unmistakable emotion in Mr. Fairfield’s
voice as he stood by Gunpowder Alley that afternoon in
August, 1901, and thought of the gallant gentleman who
had died there so miserably during the Protectorate.

“The Lovelaces were a fighting race; there were at
least three brothers in the king’s army,” he said as we
turned away. ‘‘ Richard and Francis were both colonels ;
another brother was a captain. Something of a record
that, I think, for one family ye

“Only two colonels!” I exclaimed with much sym-
pathy. ‘“‘ Dear, dear!”

Although Mr. Fairfield, that very afternoon, had made
a jocular reference to his countrymen’s passion for mili-
tary titles, it was with a set and austere countenance
that he received this interruption. But, good patriot

 
24 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

though he was, a gleam of amusement sparkled in his
eye.

Me Rowland Hill’s chapel stands at the corner of Char-
lotte Street, just beyond that railway arch ahead of us,”
T remarked, after we had crossed Blackfriars Bridge.

‘Stands!’ said my companion with great animation.
“Do you mean it hasn’t been pulled down ?”’

“Tt was shut up as a chapel many years ago, but the
structure still remains, and I don’t think the outside
has altered much.”

The enthusiast quickened his pace, and produced from
his pocket one of those sheafs of notes with which I had
become so familiar. /

“ Dickens must have come along the Strand and Fleet
Street, I daresay he struck off a bit to go through
Holywell Street, but except for that, he must have
followed the main line of route till he got to that obelisk
on Ludgate Hill which we have just left behind us.
There have been terrible changes right along since 1822,”
said Mr. Fairfield bitterly; ‘but Somerset House
was there then, and the two churches in the middle of
the roadway were there. The bridge we’ve just crossed
wasn’t there, and no doubt the approach to the old
bridge from the end of Fleet Street wasn’t quite the
same.”

“The Embankment itself would make a good deal of
difference,” I hinted.

Mr. Fairfield’s face seemed to suggest that the Hm-
bankment ought never to have been constructed, but he
brightened up a moment later and scanned the Black-
friars Road approvingly.

“This street can’t have altered its appearance much,
now we've got past the railway station.”

I ventured to remark that it could never have been
anything but a beast of a place; but my companion was
so deeply immersed in his memoranda that he allowed
the outrage of describing in such terms a thoroughfare
which had been hallowed by the foot of Charles Dickens
to pass uncensured.

I thought it worth while to take his arm as soon as
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 25

we had passed Christ’s Church, and lead him down the
turning which opens between the Prince Albert public-
house and the south-east corner of the churchyard. It
seemed a pity not to show such an enthusiast in things
ancient the five wooden cottages that adjoin the public-
house. No other survival of old Southwark is half so
quaint as these cottages, with their tiled roofs and
dormer windows.

“‘ Wonderful!” he ejaculated. ‘‘ Where are we?”

The name of the turning was nowhere to be found,
but we learned from a small native, that it was Colling-
wood Street. Mr. Fairfield planted himself against the
churchyard railings, exactly opposite the third cottage ;
and after scanning all five of them long and attentively,
he brought out his pocket-book and began to make a
note.

“Tt may take us some time to find the Marshalsea,”’
T hinted.

“True, true! I can come again another day,’’ he ad-
mitted, as he put away the pocket-book and fished
out his Dickens memoranda. We turned back into
the Blackfriars Road and continued our way south-
ward.

“The autobiography says,” he presently remarked,
lifting his eyes from ascrap of manuscript, “that his way
home was over Blackfriars Bridge and down the turn-
ing with Rowland Hill’s chapel on one side and the like-
ness of a golden dog licking a golden pot on the other.’’

“A venerable aunt of mine, who was an enthusiastic
member of Rowland’s Hill’s flock, told me that the
pastor was buried under his pulpit in that chapel, and
that the scene at the funeral was most affecting,” I ob-
served, as we drew near the railway bridge. ‘‘ She
also told me that the organ was so powerful, that on
one occasion when it was playing a hymn descriptive of
thunder, many of the worshippers fainted.”

“T trust the instrument is still in being,” said Mr.
Fairfield with genial irony, as he stared hard in front of
him ; “ grand opera can have been nothing to it. I see
something on the left, just beyond the bridge, that looks
26 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

like the lantern belonging to a rotunda; possibly that
is the chapel.”

As soon as we had passed under the bridge, it was
plain that this conjecture was right; the chapel stood a
few paces in front of us on the east side of the road.
Somewhat to my surprise, my eye caught another object,
but I said nothing. I wanted my companion to find out
that object for himself; I knew how refreshing his en-
thusiasm would be when he came upon it.

“And this is the famous Surrey Chapel,” said Mr.
Fairfield, as we scanned the front of the buildmg. ‘TI
almost wonder that the reverend gentleman’s flock or
their descendants could allow such a desecration as this.
One may at least venture to hope that his venerable re-
mains have not been disturbed to make room for the bed
of some steam hammer.”’

The chapel had indeed fallen from its high estate. It
was in occupation as the headquarters of a firm of agri-
cultural implement makers, and it presented a decidedly
commercial appearance. We gazed on the front for a
while, and then turned the corner and inspected the
building from that point of view.

“What was it the autobiography said about this turn-
ing?” I inquired artlessly, when we had completed our
inspection of the degraded chapel, and were standing at
the corner of Charlotte Street. Mr. Fairfield referred to
his memoranda, and read aloud with great gusto :—

“My usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge and down that
turning which has Rowland Hill’s chapel on one side, and the
likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot over the shop door
on the other. There are a great many little low-browed old shops
in that street of a wretched kind and some are unchanged now.
I looked into one a few days ago”’ [“ This was written in 1847,”
explained Mr. Fairfield] ‘‘where I used to buy bootlaces on
Saturday nights, and saw the corner where I once sat down on a
stool to have a pair of ready-made half-boots fitted:on. I have
been seduced moro than once in that street on a Saturday night
by a showman at a corner, and have gone.in with a motley as-
sembly to see the ‘ Fat Pig,’ the ‘Wild Indian,’ and the ‘ Little
Lady’. There were tiwo or three hat manufactories there then (I
think they are there still), and among the things which, encountered.
anywhere or under any circumstances, will instantly recall that time
is the smell of hat-making.”
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 27

“ Ah,” I remarked meditatively, when the extract was
finished, ‘‘that was close upon eighty years ago! We
can hardly expect to find any of the old landmarks left.
What was it that was opposite the chapel ?”’

“The likeness of a golden dog—’” began my com-
panion, returning to his manuscript. Then he lifted
his eyes towards the opposite corner of Charlotte Street,
and gave a great start.

“Gracious powers! ”’ he exclaimed in high excitement,
‘“‘ why, there 1t is!”’ and he hurried across the roadway.

Sure enough, above the door of the ironmonger’s shop
that stood at the south corner of Charlotte Street was
the effigy of a golden dog licking a golden pot. This
effigy stood out boldly from the house front, supported
on an iron shaft, and seemingly in excellent preservation.
Tt had caught my eye from the other side of the road.

“This is truly extraordinary,’ said Mr, Fairfield,
with a slight flush on his face, after he had made a pro-
longed survey of the golden dog. ‘To think that all
these years after that child used to pass down this street,
we should still be able to see the very object on which
his eyes rested, and which he mentioned to Forster in
1847.”

While my companion was making a note of this
wonderful discovery, I suddenly bethought me that the
house of that venerable aunt of mine was just round the
corner. More than thirty years had elapsed since I had
last seen it, and as the meals which I had enjoyed
within its hospitable walls were among the most sacred
memories of my childhood, I craved Mr. Fairfield’s
leave to bestow a few minutes on an inspection of the
old place. It was only four or five houses lower down
the Blackfriars Road than the ironmonger’s shop at
which we were standing, and I found it without difficulty.
While my client was gazing up at the grimy front
with sympathetic interest, a sudden flash of memory,
connected with the houses on the opposite side of the
road, struck upon my brain.

‘‘ Fairfield,” I said, ‘“‘did you ever hear of Elliston,
the actor?”
28 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

297

‘“* Joyousest of once embodied spirits,’”’ was his
ready answer; and I recognized the quotation, and re-
proached myself for having forgotten that Elia had
made Elliston’s name immortal.

‘He died in that house opposite,” I said, pointing to
Number 84, ‘I fancy that when he took the Surrey
Theatre and came to live over here, the Reverend Row-
land Hill and he were generally regarded by the pious
folks of this neighbourhood as excellent representatives
of the rival forces of good and evil. My aunt, who
was of course on the side of the angels, always spoke
of Elliston with bated breath. She used to describe
how she watched his funeral from her dining-room
window, and to hint that it was a good deal grander
than such a monster of iniquity deserved.”

“He was a poor frothy creature, and a sad tosspot,”
observed Mr. Fairfield, as we moved across the road to
get a nearer view of Number 84, “but as he was a friend
of Charles Lamb there must have been some good in him.
I wonder if Lamb ever went up those steps and used that
knocker !”’

“‘T suppose you know the way to the Marshalsea from
here,”’ said my companion, when he had returned to
Charlotte Street. He had a great respect for my know-
ledge of London, and seemed always to take it for granted
that, no matter where we might be, the way to any
given point was as plain to me as all the wickedness of
the world was plain to Mr. Bailey.

“Tf we keep east with a little south in it, we shall
come into Mint Street, and that leads straight to St.
George’s Church. You may depend upon it, the boy
Dickens liked to cut off corners, and if we keep on the
slant I don’t suppose we shall get far off his route.”

This was playing the game in a right spirit, and Mr.
Fairfield beamed approval.

It was a great satisfaction to him to find that most of
the houses in Charlotte Street were more than eighty
years old. ‘That,’ he said, pointing to a boot-shop
that we were passing, ‘‘may be the very shop where
he tried on those half-boots. It isn’t very difficult to
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 29

picture what he looked like, for he says what his clothes
were.”

The sheaf of memoranda came forth once more. ‘He
speaks of his poor little white hat, little jacket and
corduroy trousers; and he says he had a fat old silver
watch in his pocket, which his grandmother gave him.”

“There is still a hatmaker’s here,’ exclaimed my
client with great joy, as at the corner of the entrance to
Nelson Square, he caught sight of the familiar name of
Lincoln, Bennett & Co. ‘I wonder if it was their hats
which he used to smell in 1824? These railways have
played havoc with London,” he protested very irritably ;
flying off at a tangent as his eye caught the bridge which
spans the east end of Charlotte Street.

“James Watt has much to answer for,” I replied ;
and my companion laughed.

‘* His invention had a disastrous effect on the livery-
stable business, anyhow,” he said. ‘“‘Have you ever
noticed in the old maps of London how thickly livery-
stables are dotted about the whole face of it?”

‘This is Gravel Lane,’ I announced, when we had
passed the King of Prussia public-house, which stands
at the south-east corner of Charlotte Street, and had
entered the thoroughfare that runs right and left. “I’m
not sure it’s still called so; but that’s the old name.”

“‘T have heard of it,” said Mr. Fairfield placidly ; and
with something like a twinkle in his eye he added, “ John
Bunyan’s Chapel stood in Zoar Street, which turns out
ofit. I had an impression when we came over the bridge
just now, that the place was somewhere in this direction.”

We proceeded southward along Gravel Lane for a
hundred yards or thereabouts. Then I paused; for I
was beginning to feel doubtful as to the correctness of
our route.

‘Took there!’’ said Mr. Fairfield, giving me a nudge,
and pointing through the railway arch on our right
hand, to a public-house at the south-east corner of
Surrey Row. It was a house of such undoubted anti-
quity and so unlike all the buildings in its neighbour-
hood, that we were both astonished.
30 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“The Old King’s Arms!”’ muttered my companion ;
“T guess that king was George the First—perhaps the
Dutchman, even. I don’t think I ever saw a tiled roof
that shape. I must make a note of this place—lucky
it’s a tavern!”

‘“We won't stop to go inside.’ I said this with great
firmness, for I felt no doubt as to what his next move
would be.

“But do let me make a note,” he answered, laugh-
in

*‘T believe that’s what architects call an ogee roof,”
he said, when the note was finished; ‘‘ each of the four
sides has a wave like Hogarth’s line of beauty—some-
thing like a letter 8. Who could have dreamed of find-
ing such a picturesque old house here ?”’

By this time J had come to the conclusion that the
sooner we struck eastward the better. We crossed to
the other side of Gravel Lane—Great Suffolk Street is,
I think, the modern name of this part of the ancient
thoroughfare—and retracing our route for some thirty or
forty yards, we turned down Orange Street. I trusted
to luck to find turnings that would enable us to shape
our course a point or two eastward.

‘Poor little mite!’’ burst out my companion a few
minutes later, as he surveyed the mean houses that we
were passing. ‘‘ He says that he worked from morning
to night with common men and boys, a shabby child,
and that he was insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed ;
and he says, too, that but for the mercy of God, he
might, for any care that was taken of him, have become
a little robber or a little vagabond. I seem to see him
with my very eyes as we follow up his tracks along these
wretched streets.”’

This absorption in the business in hand was infectious.
As we went on, a feeling that we were treading in the
child’s footsteps grew upon me also; and I found my-
self talking of the way with reference to his journeyings
between the blacking-warehouse and the Marshalsea of so
many years before, exactly as if we were following a well-
marked trail that the small feet had left behind them.
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA | 31

Presently the talk died away; and by this time
my friend’s illusion had so taken hold of me that
I, too, was feeling something like a physical conscious-
ness of a shadowy little figure flitting before us—the
figure of a long-haired child in a poor little white hat,
little jacket, and corduroy trousers: the child Copper-
field of Phiz’s illustrations.

When we came upon the Southwark Bridge RoadI was
satisfied that we were steering a fairly correct course
for the Marshalsea, but I thought it well to slant off a
little to the right. Suddenly Mr. Fairfield caught my
arm.

‘‘Look there,’ he said, pointing to the corner of a
street that we were passing.

“‘Quilp Street, late Queen Street,” was written up.

We resumed our way without a word, and the
shadowy little figure seemed more real than ever. Once
again, I feli my companion’s hand on my arm and I
looked up—‘‘ Clennam Street, late Pike Street,’ was
written up at another corner.

For some time we stood and gazed at this inscription
in silence.

“It’s quite beautiful,” said Mr. Fairfield at length,
in a voice that was positively tremulous. ‘“ Here, along
the way by which that neglected child used to pass from
his shameful business to his home in that prison, the
streets have been re-named after his creations. The
recollection of that time was so painful to him,” he
went on, not attempting to hide his emotion, ‘‘and it
had so bitten itself into his mind, that, speaking to
Forster about it three-and-twenty years afterwards, he
said that to follow his old way home by the Borough
made him cry after his eldest child could speak. How
one wishes that he could have known that this would
be,” added my client fervently, with his eyes glued on
the words, ‘ Clennam Street.”

I myself was a little moved; but I thought that the
authorities, no matter how excellent their intentions,
had not been happy in their selection of at least one of
the two names. I held my peace, however.
32 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

When we resumed our way I found that recent im-
provements had abolished Mint Street, and that in its
place there was a new and much broader thoroughfare
leading to St. George’s Church, and its name was Mar-
shalsea Road. Mr. Fairfield laughed exultingly when I
told him of the change.

‘But for Dickens the name of the Marshalsea would
be as dead as the Pharaohs,”’ said he.

We emerged into the Borough High Street opposite
the church, and my companion led me northward up the
east side of the street for some fifty yards, and then
turned into a paved passage running under the houses.

‘“This is Angel Place,’ he said, when we had pro-
ceeded up it for twenty or thirty paces ; ‘the prison lies
inside there on our right. You used to be able to see
the two rows of houses built back to back that composed
it. The rooms were about ten and a half feet square,
and eight and a half feet high. This shell that is built
over the place is quite modern. The wall had been
lowered when Dickens was here in 1857—he says so in
the preface to ‘Little Dorrit’. You might suppose
that it had disappeared altogether now; but look
here!’” My companion broke off and hurried forward ;
and a little further on, where the passage narrowed,
there towered on our right the blank face of an old and
massive wall of no contemptible height.

“That is part of the older-prison waill,’’ he observed
triumphantly. ‘‘That’s where the smugglers were
supposed to be kept when Dickens was a boy.”

Mr. Fairfield led me back to the main thoroughfare,
and planted me on the west side of it, opposite the
passage we had just explored.

“The entrance to the prison was where that house
now stands,” he said, pointing to the third house to the
right of Angel Place.

The house in question was Number 211. I had no
reason to doubt my friend’s word; but I felt more confi-
dence in the accuracy of his topography when I observed
that the front was different from that of its neighbour on
either side.
 

ST. GEORGE'S, SOUTHWARK, AND THE MARSHALSEA GATE.
(Fiom Hughson's “ London,” 1807.)
WITH DICKENS TO MARSHALSEA 33

‘When Dickens came here in 1857, he found the
front court of the prison turned into a butter shop.
That house covers the site of that court. I’ve looked
into this matter very carefully,” the enthusiast went
on, with growing earnestness, ‘‘and I’m quite satisfied
that the gate of the prison stood flush with the houses
that are now Numbers 209 and 213. Behind this gate
Was an open space. This was the courtyard Dickens
speaks of, and at the end of it was a lodge, and this
gave entrance to the prison. Dickens tells us ’’—here
the sheaf of memoranda came into requisition once
again—‘‘he tells us that on the night when Arthur
Clennam saw Little Dorrit home, she flitted in at the
open outer gate and little courtyard of the Marshalsea.
She flitted in, sir,” said Mr. Fairfield, putting back his
memoranda with one hand and pointing to Numbers
209 and 213 Borough High Street with the other, ‘“ be-
tween those two houses; and it was there that Dickens
himself used to flit in nearly eighty years ago.”

Norr.—Since the above chapter was printed Mr. Fairfield has
obtained access to the Marshalsea register, and has learned there-
from that Dickens’ father entered the prison on the 20th of
February, 1824, and was discharged on the 28th of the following
May. On hearing from my friend that the register showed that the
discharge was obtained under the then Insolvent Debtors’ Act I was
able, by reference to the ‘“‘ London Gazette” of 1824, to ascertain
that the petition of John Dickens, ‘‘formerly of Portsmouth,
Hants, afterwards of Chatham, Kent, then of Bayham Street,
Camden-town, Middlesex, and late of Gower Place North in the
same County, a clerk in the Navy-Pay-Office”” was answered for
hearing at the Old Bailey on the 27th of May. Readers of ‘‘ David
Copperfield” will remember that Mr. Micawber took the benefit
of the Act, and that he, too, was not set free until the day after
the hearing of his petition—‘‘ some fees were to be settled and some
formalities observed before he could be actually released”. The
prison club, it will be remembered, received him with transport
on his return from court, and held an harmonic meeting that
evening in his honour. It appears by the Marshalsea register
that the fees paid by John Dickens amounted to ten and tenpence.
—C. T., Jun, 1910.
CHAPTER III
THE BANKSIDE VISITED

‘WE made our way up the Borough High Street, intend-
ing to cross the river by London Bridge. I could not
resist taking my companion down Layton’s Buildings,
the turning next to Angel Court, for the purpose of
showing him its queer little row of two-storeyed houses
festooned with Virginia-creeper. These small dwellings
with their front yards, that were once no doubt gay
with cottage flowers, look strangely out of place within
a few feet of such a roaring commercial thoroughfare as
the Borough High Street.

We lingered too, now and again, to investigate some
of the narrow yards on the east side, that were once the
entrances to the famous hostelries whose names they
still bear. One of these—George Yard—yet leads to its
old tavern; and though that tavern be now shorn of
some of its ancient glories, it still presents an imposing
appearance, with its long rows of windows and its two-
storeyed gallery, in which the bells, that of old used to
jangle so often and so fretfully, now hang silent and
undisturbed.

We came at length within sight of London Bridge.
On our left was St. Saviour’s, and we paused at the top
of the steps which lead down to it.

“You know the church, I suppose—St. Mary Overy ?”’
I said.

“Oh, yes,’ was the indifferent answer, ‘I’ve been
over it. It’s a show place; everybody goes there.”

I remembered that Robert Harvard, the father of the
founder of Harvard University, was buried there, and
THE BANKSIDE VISITED 35

I felt no doubt that the fact was mentioned in all Ameri-
can guides to London. I had noticed, that if any place
were-supposed to be of peculiar interest to Americans,
my friend always fought shy of it ; so his answer did not
surprise me.

‘And the Bankside—do you know that?’ I inquired.

“The Bankside—no, I haven’t seen it,” he answered
meditatively; and then with a quickened interest
he went on, “I’ve read of it, of course—Shakespeare
and the old playhouses. ButI didn’t know that there
was anything left to see.”

“You come with me,” said I, and I led him down
the stairs and round the churchyard. I was on familiar

ound.

“This is Winchester Yard,” I announced, when after
following the railings to the south-west corner of the
churchyard we had crossed the road in front and dived
down Winchester Street and the street which turns out
of it on the right; “it is said to be the site of the
courtyard of Winchester House.” _

I did not dare to speak more positively; for though I
‘had known the Bankside for many years, and had read
a good deal about it in a desultory way, I did not feel
strong enough to be put to the question, and called upon
to give chapter and verse for my knowledge.

“The Bishops of Winchester had a palace here,” I
went on; “they had a prison too, it was called the
Clink.”

“ Ah, they have the word in your army still. It was
used several times in the conversation with the elephant.”

‘“* What elephant ?”

‘“‘ THE elephant—‘ My Lord the Elephant,’ that Mul-
vaney fell in with after he had been exercising his
‘handicraftfulness’ upon Sergeant Kearney’s beak.—
“Twas a fine big nose, and well it paid for a little
groomin’,’” quoted Mr. Fairfield dreamily,

I recognized the allusion now, and I joined him in his
solemn mirth.

“We shall see Clink Street presently,” said I, to
bring us back to our muttons. ‘‘ When I first knew this
36 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

yard there was a row of houses on the west side, and
the corner house to the north was a tavern.”

Mr. Fairfield surveyed the open space to which his
attention was directed and made no remark. It cer-
tainly was dreary of aspect, and the buildings round it
were singularly uninteresting. We retraced our steps
and continued our circuit of the churchyard. This led
as to Church Street, and a few paces northward brought
us to the queer little dock, that still bears the name
which the old church bore, till bluff Harry broke into
the spence and turned the monks adrift. The quaint-
ness of the spot and the refreshing and most unexpected
river view which it opened up, rekindled my friend’s
interest.

The dock was so narrow that the space it occupied
was a mere chink between two lofty buildings, which
rose straight out of the water. Unfortunately, the tide
was so low that the slimy bottom was visible; but
ahead lay the river sparkling in the sun, and a fresh
breeze from the north-east blew in our faces. We had
been so hemmed in by brick and mortar all the after-
noon that we were glad to lean our elbows on the low
wall that separated the dock from Church Street, and
drink in the prospect.

“* St. Mary Overy Dock,’”’ said my companion, read-
ing froma board on our right. ‘St. Mary Overy Dock!
That’s picturesque.”

«This dock is a free landing-place, at which the
parishioners of St. Saviour’s parish are entitled to land
goods free of toll,’’’ he continued, reading from the
board. ‘If I were a parishioner,” he said, smiling, ‘I
should make a point of exercising the privilege, even if
the authorities had to pull down this wall to make way
for my cargo. For all our sakes, I hope that tunnel
isn’t in use now,” he broke off, pointing to the mouth
of an old brick drain, which entered the dock from
Church Street, and which at the then state of the tide
was open to our view.

We turned westward, and presently entered one of
the oddest streets in London. It was of no great width,
THE BANKSIDE VISITED 37

and on each side of its granite causeway ran a lofty row
of buildings, pierced with heavily-framed grimy windows,
rusty gratings and huge doors. Over our heads ran
many bridges connecting the upper storeys; and on
some of the sills and ledges of the singularly flat brick-
work, the flour-dust lay so thickly that blades of grass
were sprouting out of it.

“That is Stoney Street,” Isaid, pointing to a narrow,
rudely-paved street that ran southward out of the gloomy
thoroughfare through which we were making our way,
and led apparently to a series of railway arches.

‘A very appropriate name,’ admitted Mr. Fairfield
with cheerful alacrity.

“‘ Pennant says,’ I continued, ‘that it is probably a
continuation of the Roman Watling Street, and that in
his time traces of the causeway existed on the other side
of the river. Stoney Street used, of course, to go down
to the water’s edge.”

“It is a pity, sir, that it does not go there now,”
was my client’s answer, as he gazed on the forbid-
ding pile of brick and mortar that lay opposite its
mouth.

As wecontinued our way along the street with the
overhead bridges, it grew drearier and drearier, and Mr.
Fairfield gazed about him with a smile which he did not
attempt to conceal.

‘There must be a delightful view of the river from
the back windows yonder,” said he, with a wave of his
right hand,

“This,” I remarked solemnly, “is Clink Street.
Shakespeare is said to thave lived here.”

As I played this trump card I watched my com-
panion’s face.

The smile disappeared as he stopped and looked about
him; then it came back and broadened.

‘“‘T hope, sir, he lived on the river side of it,’’ he ob-
served. “The back rooms may have been almost
habitable.”’ .

This flippancy was inexcusable in the enthusiast from
Chicago, but I bore it without protest—the street was so
38 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

depressing. We reached the end of it at last, and here
the prospect opened a little.

“* Bankend,’” said my companion. The name was
written up on one of the houses which fronted us, on
the opposite side of the thoroughfare that ran to right
and left. The house at the north corner was a tavern
of old-fashioned and comfortable appearance.

“The Bankside ends there,” I explained, pointing to
that corner.

“This looks more promising,” said Mr. Fairfield,
when he saw the tavern, and saw also that its north
front looked upon the river; and he moved towards it.
I delayed him for a moment and pointed to the left.

“That is Barclay & Perkins’ brewery. It covers the
site of Shakespeare’s theatre.”’

My companion was really interested now. “I think
T have read that the Globe was a sort of rotunda,’ he
said musingly. ‘Shakespeare refers to it somewhere
as a wooden O—or perhaps that was the Curtain Theatre.
You don’t know exactly where the site was?”

Idid not know. I was not even sure that any one
knew.

“The brewery’s a big place, I suppose,’ was his next
remark.

“Immense, I believe. It must have destroyed many
landmarks on the Bankside. There was the Deadman’s
Place burial-ground, for instance. The street in front
of us was known as Deadman’s Place until quite modern
times. Pennant says that it got its name from the
number of dead interred there in the great plague. And
there was a more recent burial-ground here, or here-
abouts, which was called after the street. The brewery
has swallowed it up, though it was a place of some note.
It was full of Nonconformist ministers.”’

“ Then, it is not the invariable custom in this country
to bury the pastor under his pulpit,’ said my friend.
He was thinking of the Reverend Rowland Hill, and he
was pleased to be merry.

‘We moved on to the river. Our view from the em-
bankment on which we stood was somewhat impeded
THE BANKSIDE VISITED 39

by a forest of cranes, which rose out of the wharves,
that stretched before us, and by the masts and rigging
of the small craft moored beside them; but after the
depressing gloom of Clink Street any view of the river
was welcome. Not far ahead of us, the prospect west-
ward was almost closed by the span of Southwark
Bridge; but high above lifted the dome of St. Paul’s.

‘This embankment is old, I suppose ?”’ said my com-
panion.

“TI have read somewhere that it was made by the
Romans,” was my wary answer.

“This is Horseshoe Alley,” I said, directing my
client’s attention to a passage that ran under the ware-
houses on our left hand. ‘I believe it was here in
Shakespeare’s time.”

We went down it and emerged into Park Street,
which for some distance runs almost parallel with the
Bank.

“This street was certainly here in Shakespeare’s time.
It was called Maid Lane then, and the Globe Theatre
stood a little to the south-east of where we are standing.”

I allowed this fact to sink into Mr. Fairfield’s mind,
and then I led him back to the river. He stopped for
a moment near the mouth of the alley to have a last
look round ; the expression of his countenance was any-
thing but radiant. My eye caught the words “ Armour
& Co., Chicago,” on a neighbouring door-plate.

“«« When I was at home I was in a better place,’”’ I
suggested, pointing to this inscription.

He took my meaning and laughed quite mirthfully.
“‘T am quite content,” he said, following out the quota-
tion in his own mind; but never a word in praise of the
Bankside did he utter.

“You know this bridge?” “We had reached the stairs
on the west side of Southwark Bridge, when I asked
this question.

“Oh, yes! It’s the Iron Bridge of ‘Little Dorrit’.
It was here she refused Young John, and it was here
Old Nandy told her on his birthday what he would do
if his ship came home. I rather think, too,’ went on

4
40 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Mr. Fairfield, once again consulting his memoranda,
‘JT rather think, it’s mentioned somewhere in that auto-
biography. When Dickens was at the blacking factory
he used to wait on this bridge for the servant girl who
worked for the family in the Marshalsea. Yes, here it
is. No—I’m wrong; it was by London Bridge he used
to meet her.”

There was nothing at all interesting in the buildings
that lay on our left hand. Many of them showed a
strong family resemblance to the Clink Street abomina-
tions, and there was something of a waterside disorder
everywhere. Past Southwark Bridge, however, I had
a view to show him.

T led my companion to the mouth of another narrow
passage—it could not have been more than four feet
wide—that ran southward into Park Street.

“This is Rose Alley,” I said. ‘‘I suppose you have
heard of the Rose Theatre?”

“Tt flourished at about the same time as the Globe,
I believe,” was the answer. ‘‘ And do you suppose this
passage led to 1t?”’

I nodded. ‘So far as I have been able to ascertain,
the theatre stood a few feet south of this entrance.”

Mr. Fairfield moved some paces down the alley, and
looked about him ; then he returned to me, pursing up
his mouth. It was easy to see, that he found it difficult
to associate that forlorn prospect with the site of the
old playhouse. I was not disposed to be hard on him;
for all the buildings within sight were of a most com-
monplace character, and there was a cleared space with
a hoarding round it, which gave the alley an almost de-
solate appearance.

We had not proceeded many yards on our journey
before my client stopped and pointed to a gateway.

“Bear Garden Wharf!’’ he ejaculated, reading from
the inscription on it.

“We are near the site of the old Bear Garden,” I said.

The next turning was wider than Rose Alley, and
written up was the name “ Bear Garden, 8.E.”’

We turned down it, and presently it opened out into a
THE BANKSIDE VISITED 41

small close. This was surrounded by shabby buildings,
on our right stood a shabby tavern—the White
ear.

“This place is the site of the Bear Garden,’ I said.

‘“‘The exact spot?’’ queried my companion.

I felt on pretty firm ground here; so I answered
boldly, Yes, and went on to tell him that Strype was
my authority.

‘So this is where Queen Elizabeth used to come,”
said Mr. Fairfield. ‘‘I suppose,” he continued musingly,
his eyes fixed/on the White Bear, “there must have
been a tavern here from the beginning: was there ever
a place of amusement without one? The White Bear
seems a likely name for that tavern; I wonder if they
could tell us anything inside ? ”

We entered the bar; and seating himself upon a low
stool, with the air of a man who meant to take his ease
in his inn, he asked for a glass of sherry and bitters. It
was a little bit of a place, bearing no evidence of hoar
antiquity.

“This is an old house of yours,”’ he remarked to the
lady behind the counter.

‘We haven’t been here long, sir,” was the answer.
“But it is an old place; I daresay it’s nearly two hun-
dred years old.”’

This was not nearly old enough for my friend’s
purpose; but it evidently exhausted mine hostess’s
knowledge, and he had no spirit to pursue the conver-
sation.

“‘ Anyhow, the name is good,” he remarked when we
got outside. ‘Did you see it printed on that jug on
the counter—‘ The White Bear, Bankside’? Not an
unlikely address, sir, for a letter of Shakespeare’s time.”’

After this we rambled on in silence. We passed some
more uninteresting brickwork, and some more dreary
open spaces surrounded by hoardings; but Mr. Fair-
field kept his eyes glued on the building-line, and
seemed oblivious of the fact that on our right ran the
open river. |

A little west of the Bear Garden lies Emerson Street,
which is a thoroughfare of quite respectable width.
42 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Some fifty yards farther on, the roadway of the Bank-
side widens out, and there are no objects on the water-
side to interfere with the view. And a stimulating
prospect it was that sunny evening. The broad stream,
spanned by the two bridges at Blackfriars, stretched
before us all light and motion; and facing us on the
opposite bank rose the dome and campaniles of St.
Paul’s, towering above the meaner buildings that hid
the body of the cathedral from our view. Here and
there, to right and left, the tower or spire of one of
the City churches reared its head. The scene was
familiar to me; and had my companion been in a more
receptive mood, I should have told him how glorious it
was at sunset, as I had often seen it, with the western
sky all gold and crimson, and the bosom of the water
gleaming rosy.

He seemed little disposed to find anything to com-
mend on the Bankside, but there was no denying the
majesty of the prospect that lay before us. He took off
his hat to enjoy the fresh breeze, and for some time he
stood silent, with his eyes fixed on St. Paul’s.

“Tl be bound there isn’t one Londoner in ten thou-
sand who has ever been on the Bankside, or seen this
view,” he remarked at length.

I did not demur to this assertion. Perhaps the lan-
guage was a trifle hyperbolical, but I knew full well that
the average Londoner was ignorant of the very exist-
ence of an embankment east of Blackfriars.

“What's this tiny little court?’’ asked my client,
stopping short at an entry not a yard in width, which
we came to almost immediately after we had resumed
our progress westward.

Idid not know; so we walked down it. The way
broadened a little as soon as we had got beyond the
depth of the buildings, between which it ran, but no-
where was it wider than four feet. At the south end of
it the name was written up—‘‘ Cardinal Cap Alley ”—
and here was a narrow roadway, running east and west,
called Skin Market Place.

“Cardinal Cap Alley, and leading to Skin Market
THE BANKSIDE VISITED 43

Place,’ ejaculated Mr. Fairfield. ‘Did ever mortal
man hear anything more medisval? Do you suppose
that people ever lived in these rat-hole passages?”

“‘T don’t think that when Shakespeare lived near the
Bank‘there were any streets of houses behind the row
that faced the river. Very likely, the sites of these
narrow alleys were footpaths leading from the Bank to
the open country behind. ‘There were many other
houses, no doubt, but they stood in little knots, with
fields and orchards about them.”

“ How on earth did a place get such a name as Cardinal
Cap Alley ?”’ was the next question.

‘Perhaps it led to a tavern,’ I suggested. I knew
that old taverns had a fascination for him, and I
thought that perhaps the notion of there having been
one called the Cardinal’s Cap would cheer him up
a little.

“These are positively old houses,’ he remarked joy-
fully, when we had retraced our steps to the embank-
ment. He was gazing at the Phoenix Iron Wharf—
three red-brick houses with tiled roofs, adjoining the
alley on the west.

“This is the first decent-looking building that we've
seen on this side of the water since we turned out of the
Borough High Street,’’ he continued, as he adjusted his
pince-nez. He had forgotten the church.

“Can you make out what is written up there?” he
asked suddenly, pointing to the head of a water-pipe,
not much below the level of the eaves.

‘Tt looks,’ I said after a prolonged scrutiny, “like
an H over a Band an S—probably the B. S. means
Bankside,’ I hazarded as a guess—‘‘ and a little lower
down there is on one side of the pipe 17 and on the other
12.”

“Seventeen hundred and twelve! So the house is
nearly two hundred years old,” said Mr. Fairfield glee-
fully. ‘(I wish, though, it went back to Shakespeare’s
time. Still it must have seen a good deal.”

“Tt saw Nelson’s coffin pass on its way from Green-
wich Hospital to Whitehall, at all events,” I suggested.
44 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

My companion did not heed me, for his eyes were
glued on the water-pipe.

‘There is something over those initials,’ he said ;
“some device or other.”

I stared hard, and at last saw what he referred to. I
was about to say that it looked to me like a crown, when
I felt my friend’s clutch on my arm.

“It’s a cardinal’s cap!’ he gasped.

We had met very few people earlier in our ramble, ex-
cept in the Borough High Street, and on the Bankside we
had met nobody. But my friend’s prolonged inspection of
the old houses had attracted the attention of some of
the natives, and by this time a knot of three or four
of them was standing at his elbow.

‘It’s a crown, sir,” said one of them very civilly.

“It looks to me like a cardinal’s cap,” retorted Mr.
Fairfield, turning to him with some heat.

‘‘Tt’s a crown right enough,” said another bystander.
‘* All the houses about here was Crown property once.
Over there,’ he went on, pointing to a cleared space,
a few paces eastward of where we were standing, “ there
was Queen Anne’s guardroom Pe

‘And prison,” broke in the native who had spoken
first. ‘‘You should ’a seen the bars there—close bars
they was.”’

“Queen Anne’s prison and guardroom!”’ ejaculated
Mr. Fairfield, forgetting for the moment all about the
device on the water-pipe. ‘Do you know anything
about this?’’ he inquired, turning to me.

On my shaking my head, he fished out his memoranda
and gravely made some notes, wholly undisturbed by
the presence of the bystanders. Then, with a polite
good-day, he moved on.

When we came to Moss Alley, my friend read out the
name with a mournful air. ‘“ Dear, dear!’’ he muttered,
asif grieving over the changes which time had wrought
in the neighbourhood.

Pike Gardens was the name of the next turning;
and I could not refrain from remarking that the old
maps showed that there were pike ponds here in Eliza-

 
THE BANKSIDE VISITED 45

beth’s time. Mr. Fairfield again said, ‘‘ Dear, dear!”
and seemed sunk in woe.

West of the Pike Gardens, there are buildings on the
north side of the roadway, which hide the river from
the traveller’s gaze. We had only one more turning to
pass before we reached the end of the Bank.

‘That is Love Lane,’ I said cheerfully, when we
came up to that turning.

He read the name for himself, gazed down the narrow
entry that ran between two dull piles of brickwork, and
uttered something like a snort of indignation.

“The romantic names of these sordid little slits stink
in the nostrils,’ he remarked in explanation of this
strange conduct. ‘‘ But we ought to be thankful,” he
went on more cheerfully, as we resumed our walk; ‘‘ we
ought to be thankful there are no dwellings in them.
They are only passages now. I strongly suspect they
were rookeries at one time.”

We had now reached the end of Bankside, and were
within a few yards of Messrs. Epps’ cocoa-works, round
which Holland Street curls.

“The Falcon tavern stood there,’ I said, pointing
across the way to the entrance to the Falcon draw-dock,
which is almost exactly opposite the cocoa-works.
“ Pennant says it was the favourite haunt of Shakespeare
and his friends.’ Mr. Fairfield stared across the road,
but said nothing.

We followed the curve of the large red-brick building ;
on our right was the dead wall of the railway sheds and
offices.

“T’ve no doubt this is a very old way,’ I remarked.
“Tt used to be called the Green Walk; the calling it a
part of Holland Street is comparatively recent.”

“The Green Walk!’ snarled my friend, scanning the
thoroughfare with an eye that was positively malignant.
‘‘ Really the streets about here are like Falstaff on his
deathbed; they babble of green fields. That is not
original, sir,” he hastened to add; ‘I came across it in
an article of George Augustus Sala’s years ago; but till
to-day I didn’t know how happy it was This is not

 
46 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

so bad, though,” he broke off, pointing to the very old
house with the wrought-iron railings that stands next
to the cocoa-works. ‘‘I daresay the place was a green
walk when that was built.”

I held my peace, for I knew there was something
better not many paces ahead—Hopton’s Almshouses, in
fact.

When we cameon them, the grumbler was silenced
for the time being. We stopped before the low brick
houses with white stone dressings and tiled roofs, which
stand back from the roadway in a grassy courtyard,
shaded by dwarf plane trees and guarded by high iron
railings. The place is picturesque at any time, an
oasis in a desert of grimness; and on that fine evening
it was indescribably quaint and peaceful. The sun was
low in the heavens, and it gave a mellow warmth to the
old tiles and brickwork and a vivid brightness to the

. green lawns. Some of the inmates of both sexes were
sunning themselves outside the houses, and a man was
mowing the grass near the middle of the quadrangle.
The scene reminded me vaguely of some famous picture,
and I tried in vain to recall the details to my mind.!

We gazed for some time through the railings, watch-
ing the mower and the listless figures on the benches.
Before we resumed our journey, my companion with the
assistance of his pince-nez, was able to read the simple
inscription upon the middle house opposite to us—
“Chas. Hopton, Hsq., Sole Founder of this Charity.
Anno 1752.”

We turned the corner of Holland Street nto South-
wark Street, and saw the Blackfriars Road in front of
us. We walked along in silence. My thoughts were
running on the contrast between the listless figures
basking in the sun and the mower with his scythe.
His back was turned to the roadway, but there was
youth in every line of him, and there was something
very athletic and vigorous in his action, while they
were all far advanced in decrepitude and extreme old

1 Frederick Walker’s ‘‘ Harbour of Refuge ”.
THE BANKSIDE VISITED 47

age. They seemed to be watching him, but without
interest and with lack-lustre eyes. We were crossing
Blackfriars Bridge when my meditations were inter-
rupted by my companion. His thoughts had been run-
ning in the same channel as my own.

“T was wondering,” he said, “ whether any of those
old people were thinking of that line of Longfellow’s—
‘There is a reaper whose name is Death’.’’
CHAPTER IV

THE BANKSIDE REVISITED

Two or three weeks after our visit to the Bankside, I
dined with Mr. Fairfield in Soho, at a restaurant that
was once the dwelling of Edmund Burke. We had
made a leisurely progress through the banquet, which
consisted of five or six hors d@awvres, followed by a clear
soup, a sole colbert, an entrée of beef garnished with
vegetables, a dish of macaroni, a dish of beans, roast
duck and salad and an ice. In my honour, a full fiasco
of chianti had been ordered; and by the time the coffee
and a liqueur were on their way to us the mighty flagon
showed by the ease with which one could lift it that due
attention had been paid to its contents.

‘‘T like this place,” said my host, as he leaned back
in his chair, and took yet another of the crisp little
radishes that we had been playing with between the
courses ever since the beginning of the meal. ‘I like
the street, for one thing. Boswell used to lodge here ;
Burke lived here—the very spot on which we are now
sitting was once his garden; Dryden lived here, Dr.
Johnson and the Club met here, and I know from
Forster that one of Dickens’ uncles lodged here, and
that Dickens visited him. I suppose he had that house
in his mind when he described Mr. Jaggers’ dark-brown
rooms in Gerrard Street. And I like the look of the
place; there are so many of the original houses left.”

‘*«'We have had a good dinner in it, too,” I remarked.

“Yes, sir,” was the answer. ‘There is something
neat and handsome about the continental way of serv-

48
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED 49

ing you. And the food is much better and more varied
than you can get for the same price from a native caterer,
either here or in New York.”’

“The drink is not amiss, either,” I hinted.

“Oh, no!” said my friend carelessly, with a slight
wave of his hand, as if that were a detail not worthy of
mention. Then he helped himself to another glass of the
chianti, and gazed round him at the groups of diners—
mostly foreigners—with an expression of countenance
that was decidedly benevolent.

**T am very much indebted to you for showing me the
Bankside,’’ he said after an interval of silence.

“T was afraid it bored you.”

“Well, sir, there was an out-at-elbows look about the

_ place that rather disappointed me at first, and, some-
how, I found it difficult to associate it with the Bank-
side of Queen Elizabeth’s time; but when I came to
think things over, the recollection of that big river, so
close at hand and so open, and those passages with their
quaint names, took hold of me. And the next day I
found my way back to the place and explored it pretty
thoroughly. Then, sir, I read Besant’s ‘ Bell of Saint
Paul’s’; and then I read it a second time. After that,
I spent a morning or two at the British Museum, look-
ing up some old maps and finding out what I could
about the neighbourhood generally ; and the result is ”—
here his manner became unmistakably self-conscious—
“Tve got rather bitten with it: I’ve been there again—
more than once.”

‘“« And is it a cardinal’s cap on that water-pipe ?”’

‘J think it is, but I’m not sure. Oddly enough,” he
continued, leaning forward and becoming confidential,
“J found on dipping into Pennant’s description of the
Bankside, that there was a house there—not at all a
pretty kind of house—which bore the sign of the Car-
dinal’s Hat. There’s something of a coincidence in
this, and I’ve been wondering since, if that passage gave
access to the house, and was called after it. In the

4
50 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

course of time, the name might easily get altered from
Cardinal’s Hat to Cardinal’s Cap.”

Thad taken far less of the chianti than my friend
had, but I was in too genial a mood to throw doubt
upon this theory.

“Tf I’m right,’ he went on, ‘“‘the device was
put on the pipe because the house was near the
alley. ‘If H., whoever he was, went to the expense of
having the initials of his name and address, and the date
when his house was built, put on the pipe, it’s quite
likely he would have a cardinal’s cap put on too.”

‘«There’s something else,” he resumed, as he lit one
of the full-sized cigars that had been brought to us.
“Do you remember the large round red-brick building
that stands just opposite where Shakespeare’s Falcon
used to be?”

“The cocoa-works ?”

“Yes, that’s the place I mean; and I feel sure it oc-
cupies the exact spot where a mill-pond used to be. At
the Museum I found on a survey of the Bankside, that
was made on vellum in Queen Elizabeth’s time, a mill-
pond marked at the top of Gravel Lane, and in
Rocque’s great plan of 1746 there the pond was again ;
and I assure you, sir’”—here he became so impressive,
that he leaned forward with his elbows on the table and
emphasised his disclosure with a wagging forefinger—
“that cocoa place—you remember what a wide curve
the front has—occupies the exact site of that pond, and
follows the very outline of it.”

“That is very probable,” I observed, when I had
thought the matter over. ‘‘If the pond was on the
west side of the north end of Gravel Lane, and a public
way or footpath ran round it into the Green Walk, no
doubt when the pond was drained and the owner wanted
to build on the site, he would, if he wished to make the
most of his land, shape his building so as to cover the
whole of it.”

‘‘ Of course he would,” declared my host in high glee,
“AON ATAVAS 'SWUV S,ONIN ATO AHL

‘LUAMLS COOMDNITION ‘SADVLLOO AHL

 
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED 51

“ And think, sir, what an interest it gives to that build-
ing if you know that it follows the site of a mill-pond
where very likely the ostlers of the Falcon used to water
their horses, and which Shakespeare must have known
as well as he knew his own house. Sir Christopher
‘Wren must have known it too; for while he was build-
ing St. Paul’s he lived in a house next door to the
Falcon.”’

“‘Tve hunted up the Green Walk too,” he went on.
“You were right when you said it was an old way.
I’m not sure it wasn’t there in Shakespeare’s time; I
know it was there sixty years after his death ; and what's
rather odd, you can follow it still from start to finish.
It began at the mill-pond and went on southward, past
where those almshouses are, and across where South-
wark Street runs now—where we turned off, I mean.
Just beyond the other side of Southwark Street, it
curved round westward ; the road’s called Burrell Street
now, and it runs into the Blackfriars Road and stops.
But the Walk used to run straight across the site of
the Blackfriars Road, and then it wound round to the
south again. Do you remember those five wooden cot-
tages looking on the churchyard ?”

‘Of course I do.”

“‘ Well, the Green Walk ran by them.” Mr. Fairfield
brought this out with an emphasis that was quite
dramatic.

“But they’re in Collingwood Street.”

‘Yes, and that runs into Charlotte Street, fifty yards
or so west of Rowland Hill’s Chapel, and every yard
of it follows the course of the Green Walk; and the
south end of Collingwood Street is where the Green
‘Walk ended.”

“‘ Prodigious,” I ejaculated, not a little tickled by his
earnestness.

‘‘ I know it’s all very unimportant,’ ’ gaid the enthusi-
ast, smiling and giving his head a shake; “but I’ve
got a lot of pleasure out of tracing that old pathway.
52 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

And I’ve spent a lot of time mooning about there, and
trying to recall what it looked like, when it ran between
hedges and ditches, through green meadows, intersected
by streams and runnels, with those old cottages and a
few more like them dotted here and there. You know
what the neighbourhood looks like now. It’s pleasant
to fancy Shakespeare, sipping away from the Falcon
crew some summer evening, and strolling along that lane
as it was in his time, with the wild roses in blossom—
canker-blooms, he called them :—

The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye

As the perfuméd tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly

When summer’s breath their maskéd buds discloses.”

A poetical quotation from Mr. Fairfield always gives
me pleasure. Many reciters have an ugly trick of
making poetry sound like prose; but though lyrical
numbers flow from his lips as freely and spontaneously
as his common talk, and the ripple of the verse is never
broken, one’s ear is fully conscious of the end of every
line. And if the quotation be from Shakespeare, there
is no mistaking its source : it comes out perfumed with
a kind of reverence.

As we sipped our coffee and I thought over what he
had told me, I tried to call up the Surrey side of our
recent pilgrimage ; but instead of the Blackfriars Road
and the squalid streets that turn out of it, there wavered
before my mind’s eyea vague picture of flat, green water-
meadows, from which one saw across the river the
London of Elizabeth, all shadowy in a June twilight.

“The ‘principal mansion house’ of the Manor of
Paris Garden stood a little east of those five cot-
tages: about half-way between them and the river,”
said Mr. Fairfield. ‘It was called Holland’s Leaguer
—not till after Shakespeare’s time though.”

“Did you extend your researches to that tavern at
the end of Surrey Row—the Old King’s Arms?” I was
beginning to get a little bitten myself.
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED 33

“T did indeed! That proved very interesting. I’m
perfectly satisfied that the site of Surrey Row used to
be called the Melancholy Walk, and was the northern
boundary of St. George’s Fields. That tavern stood at
the north-east corner of the Fields. At one time it had a
garden on the south side, that ran right into them. Do
you know anything about St. George’s Fields ?”’

‘“‘T’ve heard the name.”

“They stretched a long way south and west of that
corner. They belonged to the City of London as part
of the manor of Southwark. Gerard mentions them in
his ‘Herbal’. That was published in 1597—Shake-
speare was thirty-three then. Gerard said he hadn’t
found such plenty of water-violets in any one place
as in the ditches adjoining ‘ St. George his field, near
London’. When I came across the quotation in Mr.
Wheatley’s ‘ Cunningham’ the other day, the thought
of green fields with clear ditches full of water-violets
just beyond that old tavern made my head swim. The
flower only grows in clean water.”

** When were the fields built over?”

‘Soon after Blackfriars Bridge was built, and the
Blackfriars Road was cut—say 140 years ago. But
there was a house at that corner long before then: I’ve
‘traced it back to 1677—that’s the earliest map of the
part I could find on a scale large enough to show such
a place. There was stabling or something joined on at
the back of it. I don’t say that the present tavern
was standing in 1677, but it’s old. What do you
say?”

‘What does the landlord say?” I inquired artlessly.

The assumption that this source of information had
not been neglected brought a humorous twinkle into
Mr. Fairfield’s eye, but he answered with perfect gravity,
‘‘ His information on the point was most precise—the
house was built 433 years ago”’.

“That won't do!” I said, as soon as I had worked
out a sum in mental arithmetic; ‘1468 is much too
54 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

large an order for that house. Did you argue the point
with him?”

“T hadn’t the courage to: he was so positive. I
thought it better to change front, by remarking that
the neighbourhood had seen some changes since then.
It sounds inane, but I had hopes of tapping a reservoir
of local tradition.”

“And did you?”

' “ He expressed his concurrence, and went on to tell
me that before the railway arch was built—that was
some thirty years ago, he said—there used to be a sort
of fair held just in front of the tavern.”

“ And is that all the information you got?”’

* Well, I didn’t like to seem too inquisitive—and no-
body can make a small lemonade last for ever. Some
afternoon we'll drop in there together, and you shall
order a bottle of champagne and cross-examine him to
your heart’s content.”

‘Tt will be most enjoyable,” said I genially; ‘‘ we can
sing ‘Old Rose,’ and all of us rejoice together like Izaak
Walton and his friends.”’

Mr. Fairfield hailed my quotation with a laugh.

“Even allowing that the landlord was wrong about
that identical house,” said he, ‘it’s highly probable that
there was a tavern on the spot four or five hundred years
ago. My belief is, that Falstaff and Shallow drank
there when they went to the Fields from Clement's Inn.
Don’t you remember Shallow’s reference to the wind-
moill in St, George’s Fields?”

‘So Shakespeare knew the place.”

‘Oh, yes, every Londoner knew it, and the Bankside
people had it close at hand. It isn’t a mile from Clink
Street. Shakespeare had only to walk along the Bank
as far as the Falcon, and then turn down Gravel Lane
by the east side of the mill-pond and follow his nose.
The Old King’s Arms used to front on the south end
of Gravel Lane—there’s only the railway arch between
it and the roadway now.”
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED 55

I’m afraid the chianti, coupled with Mr. Fairfield’s
topographical disclosures, had made me sentimental.
In imagination I traced the path from the King’s Arms
back to the Bankside.

“The river looks very well from the Bank at night,”
I remarked. ‘‘ Do you care to see it?”

Mr. Fairfield beckoned to the waiter; and in less
than five minutes we were on the flags of Gerrard
Street.

“Did you find out anything about the White Hart
in Brooke Street?” I asked.

Mr. Fairfield was hailing a cab at the moment, and
apparently he did not hear me. A moment later, after
he had told the man to drive over Blackfriars Bridge, I
repeated the question; and again he appeared not to
hear it.

“T have often thought,” he remarked meditatively
as we bowled along eastward, ‘‘ what a privilege it is to
be able to visit interesting places like the Bankside
whenever you like, and particularly at night-time. The
thought has often occurred to me in this city of yours,
after dark. It really seems sometimes as if the places
had been cleared of people and lighted up for one’s especial
benefit. I can assure you, sir, I have wandered about
Upper Thames Street and the lanes behind Cheapside
and between Cornhill and Lombard Street at night-
time when the City has been as silentas the grave, and
when the thought of its immense antiquity as a dwelling-
place has quite overcome me. More than once, I have
seemed to lose the sense of my own identity, and to be
drifting to and fro as a shadow among shadows. Do
you know that feeling?’’ he inquired a little shyly, as
if conscious that his remarks were somewhat out of the
common.

I knew the feeling quite well and I told him so.

It was a fine night, and as the cab crossed Blackfriars
Budge the prospect on our right was magnificent. The
Middlesex side of the river was spangled with lights,
56 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

and on the stream itself fell the reflection of these and
of the lamps on the bridges. There seemed to be no
darkness over the black water; only a twilight veil,
through which the beams of the electric light struck
silvery. The Surrey side was enveloped in a mysterious
shadow, but here, there, and everywhere twinkled the
lights on the moored craft. High above Waterloo
Bridge glittered a crescent moon.

We stopped the cab at the corner of Stamford Street,
and crossing over the Blackfriars Road, made our way
along Southwark Street and into Holland Street.

“The mill-pond will look well under this moon,” said
Mr. Fairfield with grave pleasantry, as we passed the
almshouses. Standing far back from the silent thorough-
fare, and with hardly a light showing, the little houses
seemed asleep. ‘‘ Surely we ought not to pass the
Falcon without crushing a cup.”

“‘ Better wait, perhaps, till we get to the Mermaid,”
I answered, falling in with his humour.

“We can take boat from the Falcon stairs,” he
suggested with unabated gravity.

“Why not walk along the Bank and cross by—by
the bridge?” I had intended to say London Bridge,
but had checked myself before I got to the end of the
sentence.

‘‘Ah, the bridge indeed,” said my client, noticing
this; “the only bridge. How odd it seems.”

‘‘] saw the pike ponds on the old map—the ponds
where they kept the royal pike,” he observed, when we
had strolled as far eastward as the turning called Pike
Gardens. ‘“ They were in a garden, and I feel sure that
this garden occupied the ground between this alley and
Moss Alley, which lies a little in front of us, There’s a
perfect labyrinth of lanes full of small houses at the end
of Moss Alley. I daresay they, too, were built on the
site of that garden! The pike were there in Cromwell’s
time. The land belonged to the Crown. And think
what a change it must have made when Winchester
tustrata.”’

THEATRE, BANKSIDE.
)

<
(From “Londina TH

THE ORIGINAL GLOB}

 
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED 57

House ceased to be the bishops’ palace, and the park
and gardens were built over! ”

I was glad to reach Pike Gardens, and to have the
open river on our left hand. There were few lights
upon it, and fewer still in the buildings that rose straight
out of it on the opposite shore. But the darkness was
not profound, and by the light of the moon the shapes
of the wharves and warehouses could be madeout. Be-
hind them, vaporous in outline, but preserving its familiar
shape and dominating the whole prospect, rose the dome
of St. Paul’s.

The Bankside by night was a far less prosaic place
than it had seemed by daylight. The darkness hid the
details of the unromantic brickwork, and hid, too, all
that was unlovely in the hoardings round the cleared
spaces. We passed a watchman in his box hard by
Cardinal Cap Alley, but there was not another person
to be seen in the roadway, and except for the occasional
rattle of a train, crossing one of the bridges, we could
hear nothing but the washing of the tide against the
Bank or about the hulls of the vessels that were moored
beside it. The masts of the barges and their spars,
draped with the partly furled sails, rose dimly and
picturesquely between us and the dark and shadowy
buildings on the opposite shore.

We revisited the site of the Bear Garden and traversed
the whole lengths of Rose Alley and Horseshoe Alley.
In this last we lingered for some time.

“There is at the Museum a map of the Bankside
as it existed in James I’s time,” said Mr. Fairfield, as
we stood about half-way down, “‘ and it shows that there
was just the same odd angle here then as we see now
before us. I’ve been thinking, sir, that Shakespeare
must have come along this alley many a time. His
theatre was, as you know, only a few yards south-east
of the bottom of it. Pennant says that Dick Burbage
was his favourite actor, and that Condell and Hemmings
were his intimate friends. Pennant knew they were
58 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

his theatrical colleagues and they edited the first folio
edition of his plays. I daresay he knew that he called
them his ‘ fellowes’ in his will, and left them one pound
six and eightpence apiece to buy them rings. Shake-
speare and Burbage and those two others must have
often come along this pathway together. One has a
general notion of how men dressed at that time; and
I don’t think it’s very hard to picture the four of them
passing along here, from the Globe to the Falcon—
or to the river anyway. This was the short cut: there
were stairs, you know—Horseshoe Alley Stairs—opposite
the river end. There was no more direct way.”

Standing there in the darkness, and with the imagina-
tion quickened by this assurance, it was not difficult for
one’s fancy to raise a dim and shadowy picture of the
four Elizabethans clattermg by, in high spirits because
the day’s work was over and the conviviality of the
Falcon was close at hand.

“There was an alley called Bearsfoot Alley between
Horseshoe Alley and the Bankend in James I’s time,”
said my client, when at length we had returned to the
embankment ; ‘it is shown on Rocque’s plan, but there
is no trace of it now. I searched very carefully the other
morning.”’

“‘ Bearsfoot—that’s a queer name!”

“Tt was a flower. I came across it in Bacon’s essay
on gardens. I looked it up in an old herbal; it’s what
we poetically call ‘ the stinking hellebore’.”’

Bearsfoot Alley was undoubtedly gone. Between
Horseshoe Alley and the Anchor Tavern, which occu-
pies the angle that is formed by the juncture of Bank-
side and Bankend, there was an unbroken line of brick
and mortar. ‘i'he Anchor looked very comfortable and
cosy that night.

“There was nothing I looked forward to more, when
I first left home, than seeing your English inns,” said my
companion ; ‘‘one had read so much about them. Not
only in Dickens; though they are more attractive in his
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED 59

books than in any others. We have nothing like them
in the States. When I used to read about the Saracen’s
Head at Towcester, where Mr. Pickwick and Bob
Sawyer and Ben Allen put up that wet night, when
they were on their way back after seeing old Winkle
at Birmingham, or about the Maypole at Chigwell, in
‘ Barnaby Rudge,’ or that inn where they put Mr. Lorry
into the Concord room, when he travelled to Dover to
meet Miss Manette and her father after his release
from the Bastille, I used to feel a longing to see the old
places that was almost painful. The custom of giving
each of the principal rooms a name was very quaint,
and it seems to have survived down to the coming of
the railroad — Mr. Pickwick’s room in the Saracen’s
Head was called the Sun. Miss Hardcastle mentions
three names in common use in Goldsmith’s time—the
Lamb, the Lion, and the Angel. It must have been
a very old custom,’’ continued Mr. Fairfield, as we
stood at the edge of the Bank, gazing at the Anchor
Tavern. Mistress Quickly speaks of her Dolphin-
chamber, and when Prince Henry and Poins play
their practical joke on Francis the drawer at the
Boar’s Head, two rooms are mentioned, the Half-
moon and the Pomegranate; and in ‘Measure for
Measure’ there is a reference to anotier room, the
Bunch of Grapes.”

‘‘Did our inns come up to your expectations?” I
asked.

‘“My expectations were not very high; for I re-
membered how badly Dickens in the ‘ Uncommercial
Traveller’ spoke of the taverns as they were after the
coaches had been taken off the roads; and on the
whole I was not at all disappointed. So far as the look
of the places went, they even exceeded my expectations.
If we had not just dined, I don’t think I could resist
the temptation of seeing the inside of that cosy little
house in front of us. Not that one had much to drink,”
he added with some earnestness.
60 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“That was a big flask,” I hinted, ‘and we nearly
emptied it.”

‘“‘T am very glad you liked it,” was his genial answer.
He seemed to speak in good faith; and this made the
innuendo that lay behind his words—the suggestion
that I was chiefly responsible for the emptying of the
fiasco—the more hard to bear.

‘“‘T daresay they draw an excellent tap of lemonade,”’
I suggested, remembering the scene in White Hart
Yard.

“ Very likely! very likely !—you must try it some day,”’
said Mr. Fairfield, leading the way past the tavern and
along Bankend.

The railway arch, which forms the approach to Clink
Street yawned before us like the mouth of some great
cavern. The light in Shakespeare’s old street was so
defective that all the sordid features of the architecture
were hidden from us. We paused when we came to
the little dock. The tide was high and the water
seemed almost within arm’s reach. The river looked
very solemn, as seen through the narrow cleft between
the tall warehouses.

«« This dock was here in Shakespeare’s time,” remarked
my friend complacently.

“T could not resist the temptation of going round
the church again last time I was here,’ he said, when
we were standing before the west front of St. Saviour’s,
‘“‘and a glorious place it is. JI think Shakespeare
must have been in it. It stands to reason, that if
he was in London or anywhere near it, when they
buried his brother, he would go to. the funeral. The
register says that Edmund Shakespeare, a player, was
buried in the church with a forenoon knell of the great
bell. I think Shakespeare must have paid for that.”

‘‘ Beaumont and Fletcher are buried here, I think.”

“Oh, yes, and Massinger too. He lived on the Bank,
and the player folk followed his body to the church.
Can you read him—and Beaumont and Fletcher? ”’
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED 61

I nodded.

‘And Ben Jonson?”

“With difficulty—extreme difficulty. He moves in
a wide sea of glue—Tennyson said that.”

Mr. Fairfield could appreciate such a happy hit as
this.

“Could you tell a scene from Beaumont and Fletcher
from a scene from Shakespeare, if the two scenes were
both unknown to you, and you were put to the test ?”’
he asked, after he had rolled the sweet morsel under his
tongue.

I shook my head. ‘I doubt whether most of the
glib gentlemen, who have written so feelingly about
Shakespeare’s immense superiority, could pass through
that ordeal successfully,” I ventured to remark.

Mr. Fairfield grinned. “When I go home, I mean
to study Lamb’s ‘Specimens’. If anything will teach
me how to distinguish Shakespeare’s work, they will.”
He registered this virtuous resolution earnestly, but
without enthusiasm.

We turned back at the foot of the steps leading up
to the Borough High Street, and retraced our way to
Bankend.

“‘T suppose it was somewhere behind there,” said my
client, pointing towards the brewery, “‘ that Dr. Johnson
was to be seen in his full glory as one of Thrale’s exe-
cutors. Do you remember how he bustled about with
an inkhorn and pen in his buttonhole, when the sale of
the concern was going forward? That was when he
said they were not there to sell a parcel of boilers and
vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the
dreams of avarice.

“Oh, yes, I remember! and we can’t be far off
Goldsmith’s burrow,” I struck in, not unwilling to air
my knowledge of the neighbourhood. “He practised
as a physician here. It is quite on the cards that he
visited some of those small houses that you found be-
hind Moss Alley.”
62 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘‘T hope he did for the inhabitants’ sake. I daresay
he was quite as good a doctor as most of his rivals, and
I’m sure he never took a fee unless the patient could
afford to pay it.”

«When you brought me here that Saturday after-
noon,” began Mr. Fairfield, as we came to the mouth
of Horseshoe Alley, and he stopped to gaze down it once
more, ‘‘ when you first brought me here, the difference
between the place as it now is and as it was 300
years ago, rather staggered me. The connexion between
the two seemed too vague for a man to take hold of.
But when one gets to know the place better, there’s a
certain charm about that vagueness—it leaves room for
the play of one’s fancy. We have here in these alleys
and passages the very paths by which Shakespeare
made his way to and fro, and I’m not at all sure they
don’t bring one as near to him in imagination as if
we still had the very buildings associated with him—
his house, or his theatre, or the tavern where he met
his friends.”

I was disposed to agree, but I thought that my friend
was forgetting how much more than the lanes and alleys
still remained to recall to us the Bankside of 300
years ago,

“ After all,” I said, ‘‘ there is a great deal here which
has come down to us from Shakespeare’s time. First
and foremost, there is the river itself, running in its old
channel; then there’s the Bank itself; and there’s the
church ; and there’s that dock, too—though I think it
was bigger once,” I added, by way of. afterthought,

We had been moving forward while we talked thus,
and had reached Southwark Bridge. We passed under
the brick archway that spans the road, and stood at the
top of the stairs leading down to the river. The tide
was so high that the water was only a few feet below
the level of the Bank. Immediately west of Southwark
Bridge a large square platform, used no doubt for load-
ing or unloading the riverside craft, juts out over the
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED _ 63

water. There was no one about to interfere with us,
so we stepped down on to this platform and moved for-
ward to the edge of it. For a time we stood silent,
leaning our arms on its wooden railing. In the water
below there was no movement perceptible; in that dim
light it stretched before us like some vast lake. Close
on our right was the south arch of Southwark Bridge, and
through it we could see the railway bridge just beyond,
and at its northern end the variegated lights of Cannon
Street Station. Through the same southern arch, and
under and beyond the railway bridge, the eye could
trace a shadowy something, stretching across the river ;
and from the stationary lights above it, and the swiftly
moving lights that crossed to and fro between them, we
knew that it was London Bridge. The moon was ob-
scured for the time being. On the farther side of the
dark arch on our right, lay a fleet of lighters, extending
from the Bank far into the stream, and just discernible
in the dim shadow.

On the Middlesex side there was scarcely a light vis-
ible between the bridge beside us and the lights of far
distant Blackfriars. There seemed to be a faint mist
lying over the water, so thin as to be almost invisible,
but sufficient to lend a pearliness to the atmosphere.
Gazing through this to the Middlesex shore, we could
trace a blurred and irregular outline, high up against
the distant sky, which we knew must be the roofs of
the waterside buildings; but all between this and the
dark water was shadow and mystery. In one place the
outline was broken ; and there, so vaporous and so like
in colour to the sky behind it that at one moment the
eye caught its shape distinctly, and a moment later
looked for it in vain, towered the great dome.

There really was some movement in the full river;
for it lapped the stairs beside us, and broke over them
foaming. It played among the lighters, and now and
again there was a groaning and creaking, as one of them
strained upon her moorings. Across the railway bridge,
64 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

an occasional train puffed and laboured. Except for these
sounds, and the broken fragments of talk or laughter
that were wafted down to us from the top of the bridge
far above, there was nothing to disturb the perfect still-
ness of the night.

‘Can things have looked very different in Shakes-
peare’s time ?”’ asked Mr. Fairfield suddenly—‘‘ I mean
at night.”

I pondered for awhile over this question.

“T don’t think the buildings on the opposite shore
can have been so high as they are now,” I began with
some diffidence. ‘‘ The city was built of wood chiefly,
and the roofs were thatch or tiles. The houses were no
doubt crowded together—one climbing up the side of
another. You must have seen in old towns abroad the
sort of jumble I mean. There were, no doubt, wharves
and such-like on the waterside, but the tenants lived on
the premises, so the upper windows would be lighted
up. You would not have that wall of darkness that
we see before us—at all events, not till the people had
gone to bed. The taverns at any rate would be lighted
up at this time of night, though folks kept early hours
then compared with us.”

“True,” said my client, “‘ Falstaff speaks of having
heard the chimes at midnight, asif that was very late.”’

“Then, of course, there was old St. Paul’s instead of
the present cathedral. The tall steeple was burnt down
a little before Shakespeare’s time, but the body of the
cathedral would still be the most prominent object
from Bankside; it would show high above all the
surrounding buildings.”

I paused, and we both stood gazing across the river,
each endeavouring to picture that old London of Eliza-
beth.

‘“‘And there wouldn’t be this dead silence,” I re-
sumed. ‘The river was the great highway in those
times, and I don’t suppose the traffic altogether stopped
at nightfall. And there’s another thing: there must
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED — 65

have been many taverns on the waterside, and I feel
sure that in those days there was a great deal of singing
wherever men met together to make merry. Master
Slender, you will recollect, had his book of songs and
sonnets.”

“You English were great singers down to a compar-
atively recent date; Thackeray says somewhere that
in the time of George IV all England sounded with
choruses.”

“T think the practice came down from very early
days. I had Walton in mind when I spoke just now;
I dip into him pretty often. Whenever he refers to a
tavern he speaks of singing there; and if the contem-
plative Izaak was wont to uplift his voice in taverns as
a matter of course, you may be sure his noisier contem-
poraries lifted up theirs pretty freely. If at this moment,
we two were looking across the Thames of Shakespeare’s
day, I think we should hear some songs.”

‘“ What would they be?”

This was a poser; but as it was not often that Mr.
Fairfield appealed to me for formation on a literary
topic, I endeavoured to rise to the occasion.

“T think they sang catches and roundelays,’ I
answered diplomatically, but after an interval of reflec-
tion I ventured to become more explicit. ‘‘ Walton
mentions many songs, but some of them were made
after Shakespeare’s death. He speaks of ‘Old Rose’.
It was, I believe, popular for many years—‘ Sing old
Rose and burn the bellows,’ was the full title. That
was a very old song even in Walton’s time. Then
there were the popular songs of the day—‘ Come live
with me and be my love,’ for instance, which Sir Hugh
Evans sings in the ‘ Merry Wives,’ and which Walton
calls ‘the smooth song which was made by Kit Mar-
lowe ’—or Nash’s ‘ The spring, the sweet spring ’——”

‘“T know that song,” interposed my companion ; ‘it’s
in the ‘ Golden Treasury ’.”’

‘‘ Perhaps they sang Ben Jonson’s ‘ Drink to me only

5
66 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

with thine eyes,’ though the tune which we know wasn’t
written until long afterwards ; or ‘ Charis, her triumph,’ ”’
I continued, ‘‘ and then there were Shakespeare’s own
songs. ‘It was a lover and his lass,’ and ‘O, Mistress
mine,’ must have been popular with his contemporaries.
And besides all these, there were some of the old English
songs that we still hear in every drawing-room——”’

‘¢¢ Barbara Allen,’ for instance,’ broke in Mr. Fairfield
once again; “that was a very old song in Pepys’
day. Knipp sang it to him; he calls it ‘ Barbary
Allen’. I daresay Shakespeare sang it, and I’ve no
doubt it was one of Goldsmith’s favourites. He men-
tions the ‘ Cruelty of Barbara Allen’ in the ‘ Vicar of
Wakefield,’ as one of the songs that neighbour Flam-
borough used to sing.”

“This is very interesting,” he continued, as he settled
himself more comfortably against the barrier at the
edge of the platform, and lit a fresh cigar, “‘ for our boys
and girls sing those old songs as much as yours do.
Proceed, O man of law! We have before us a wooden
city, thatched or tiled, and dominated by a Gothic
cathedral, and there are many taverns in it, and great
noise of singing comes from them. There would be
old London Bridge, too, with lights in the houses built
upon it, and there would be much traffic on the river.”

“Only passenger traffic at night, I think—wherries
and such-like; though, perhaps, sometimes a royal
barge might slip by, conveying a prisoner to the Tower
—it lies quite near us; just behind London Bridge,
yonder.”

‘Ah, true! They took Bacon there by water, so as
not to make a show of him. That was in the early
morning, though.”

“In a place like London,” I went on, “ lots of people
must have been about after dark. There was only one
bridge, and if at night they used the river for nothing
more than to get from one shore to the other, there
must have been plenty of boats crossing to and fro. I
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED _ 67

daresay there were torches at the stairs, and in some
of the boats, so the river would be full of lights and
shadows.”

‘“‘ The ferrying of people from side to side must have
been a very important industry,” said Mr. Fairfield
meditatively. ‘I noticed in the old maps of the Bank-
side that there were stairs at every few paces, and no
doubt it was just the same on the other side. The
watermen had a good time of it in those old days.
They did the work that the cabmen do now. I wonder
how they charged.”

“Tf you went any distance the cost depended, I fancy,
on whether you took ‘ Sculls’ or ‘Oars’. I noticed the
other day, in an old almanac for the year 1820 or there-
abouts, that a wherry with oars cost twice as much as a
wherry with sculls—it meant two rowers instead of one,
you see. I doubt if waterside customs altered much be-
tween Shakespeare’s time and the beginning of the last
century.”

‘‘Now,” observed my client, ‘“‘I understand what
Lamb meant when he made Elliston reject sculls and
demand oars for his passage across the Styx; Hlliston’s
dignity would not allow him to travelin the more humble
way.”

“Shakespeare must often have used the river,” I
went on. ‘‘ When the players went to Whitehall you
may be sure they went by water, and I daresay on the
return journey they put in at the Falcon——”’

‘That sitting in taverns hour after hour was a bad
business,” interrupted my companion. ‘It meant a
lot of drinking. It was a very bad business.”

“Tt was, indeed,” I answered fervently. I was
anxious to make it plain to him how firm and un-
bending my temperance principles were; but I could
not refrain from adding, ‘“‘ good for those old taverns,
though ”’.

Mr. Fairfield laughed. ‘ One can’t have everything,”
was his comment. ‘‘ Good for the taverns, no doubt;
68 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

good, perhaps, for the songs, too,” he went on. “If
they sang while they drank, this must have created a
demand for songs, and no doubt the demand created
a supply. Really, you almost persuade me that the
fuddling was a good thing.”

“‘T don’t believe Shakespeare fuddled, but the Fal-
con must have been a familiar name to him,” said I,
smitten by a flash of memory. ‘‘ According to Strat-
ford tradition, he was in his youth a haunter of
the Falcon at Bidford. They used to show a crab-
tree near it, under which he is said to have slept for
thirty-six hours after leaving the tavern. The house is
still in existence. You have been to Stratford, I suppose.”’

“No,” he answered laconically; and then after an
interval he went on: ‘I’m not sure I want to go there.
T’ve heard a good deal about it. It’s a show place, and
so far as I can make out you are pestered and fleeced
at every turn. I’m afraid my countrymen are partly
responsible for this.”

‘“ Are things as bad as all that? I don’t recollect be-
ing fleeced or worried when I was there. Of course the
townspeople use the Bard as a stalking-horse for push-
ing their trade, and I daresay a good deal of the local
homage isn’t very disinterested. But that’s human
nature all the world over—‘ Great is Diana of the
Ephesians,’ said the craftsmen of Ephesus.”

Mr. Fairfield grunted,and I went on. ‘The place it-
selfis well worth seeing. I don’t believe there is anything
in England more beautiful than that great church by
the Avon. And the country round: you would lke
that; you may travel for miles and hardly come across
a house that isn’t 800 years old, and taverns older than
Shakespeare’s time are as common as blackberries.
There’s Leamington within easy distance too, where
Mr. Dombey went, and you can go over Warwick Castle
as he and his party did.”

Mr. Fairfield laughed as I prolonged the catalogue of
attractions. ‘‘I’ll think of it,” he said.
THE BANKSIDE REVISITED _ 69

“T can get away for four or five days next week or
the week after, and I shall be thankful for your com-
pany, if you will give it me.”

“Thank you!” said my client heartily, “I think I
will go. At any rate I'll think it over.”

So we talked, leaning over the railing with our eyes
fixed on the still bosom of the river; the city looming
before us, and the lapping of the wavelets and the
straining of the lighters in our ears. And when, a
moment or two later, we were both silent, and Mr.
Fairfield was no doubt thinking over my invitation, a
faint sound stole across the water. At first it was so
faint, that I doubted whether it was not fancy. But,
borne on a warm puff of wind from the north, it grew
stronger, and we straightened ourselves and looked at
one another. It was the sound of bells. In some city
church the ringers were at work, and as the wind blew
or paused the sound rose or fell. Never rising high, the
mousic floated across the river; and in the silence and
amid the surroundings in which we.stood, it was inex-
pressibly sweet and moving.

“We're in luck!” ejaculated my companion; and
then, as if feeling that such slipshod speech was out of
place, he went on, his voice thrilling with emotion:
“ The bells of London town: God bless her !”’

We stood silent, listening to the faint music. The
wind freshened for a space, and the clash and ripple of
the peal seemed to fill the air. Then the breeze dropped
again, and the sound almost died away. But there was
still a pulsation in our ears, and we caught the notes
fitfully and as if from a great distance.

My companion bared his head—

‘*T feel death rising higher still and higher,
Within my bosom ; every breath I fetch

Shuts up my life within a shorter compass,

And, like the vanishing sound of bells, grows less
And less each pulse, till it be lost in air.”

Mr. Fairfield’s voice sank to a whisper before the
70 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

last line was reached, and with his eyes fixed upon the
dark mass crowned by the shadowy dome that in the
darkness looked so far away, he said once again, ‘‘ God
bless her! ”

POSTSCRIPT
SHAKESPEARE IN THE WATER MEADOWS

Halloo! Halloo! ye bats that flit
About the tavern door,
What lack have ye of Condell’s wit,
Or Hemmings’ lusty roar ?
What lack have I of mirth and wine,
Or catch and glee in store,
With all the summer night for mine ;
And who would ask for more—

For more—
And who would ask for more?

A perfume of the new-mown hay,
O’er sedge and runnels borne,
A vagrant air that stirs to play
The blossom 6n the thorn ;
While, climbing o’er the willow tops,
A young moon lifts her horn,
And moaning through the bishop’s copse,
A nightingale forlorn—
Forlorn—
A nightingale forlorn.

My fellows trolling unaware,
I mingled in your lunes,
But summer stole among us there
And drew me forth eftsoons :
And while her honey-sweets prevail,
Task no other boons ; :
No music but the nightingale,
No lantern but the moon’s—
The moon’s—
No lantern but the moon’s.
 

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THE BANKSIDE IN QUEEN ELIZABETH'S REIGN,

“Fondina Ttustrata.’)

(Front
CHAPTER V
THE BIRTH-HOUSE AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON

BEFORE parting with Mr. Fairfield on the night when
we heard the bells across the river, I obtained his
promise to go with me to Shakespeare’s town. It
was the middle of September before this promise was
redeemed.

We both took bicycles—Mr. Fairfield’s was a yellow
article of native manufacture—and as the short journey
from Leamington to Stratford is slow and tedious, we
left the railway at Leamington, and after lunching there
and ‘endeavouring, without success, to find the Royal
Hotel at which Mr. Dombey put up, we took the road
to Stratford. This road runs through Warwick, and it
was difficult to nde in past one medieval gateway
and out past another without making a stay. But
we had determined that we would pass on to Stratford
without delay, and leave the investigation of the sur-
rounding country to a later date; so we resisted the
temptations to alight that assailed us on every hand,
and presently we were in the open country, with the
West Gate and its neighbour, the picturesque Leycester
Hospital, behind us. For once Mr. Fairfield had dis-
carded his frock-coat and tall hat. Clad in grey tweeds
and a wideawake of the same colour, he was quite at
home on the yellow bicycle.

There are two roads from Warwick to Stratford, and
I took the longer because it ran past Charlecote. Here
we rested for a while to admire the beautiful Tudor

71
72 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

gateway, and a little farther on we stopped again, for
we espied an iron gate bearing the shield of the Lucys.

“« Ah, there’s the ‘ old coat’! ” said Mr. Fairfield, much
interested, and he counted the luces which it bore.
“Not a dozen of them, though!” _

T'wo or three days later we revisited Charlecote, and
saw in the private chapel the monumental effigy of the
Sir Thomas Lucy of Shakespeare’s youth ; and a noble
gentleman he looked.

A ride of four miles from Charlecote brought us
near to Stratford. A line of pollard willows a little to
our right told us that our road was following the river—
Shakespeare’s Avon—and presently I saw the pointiof a
spire appear above the distant tree-tops.

«That is the church,” said I.

Mr, Fairfield answered nothing, but the yellow bicycle
made a wide curve. Then therider, with his eyes fixed
on the distant object, steadied himself and rode on at a
quicker pace. In a minute or two we were crossing the
bridge that Sir Thomas Clopton built in the fifteenth cen-
tury, and which Shakespeare must have crossed scores
of times. We rode over it, a beautiful river picture on
either hand, and onward into the heart of the town.

It did not take us long to put up the bicycles and
make the necessary arrangements for our housing dur-
ing the excursion. Mr. Fairfield was so much attached
to the yellow horror, brought from: far Chicago, that
though he had sought to propitiate the ostler, under
whose charge he had left it, by the gift of half-a-crown,
and had received many assurances that the machine
should be well looked after, he quitted the stable with a
troubled brow; and more than once he looked back as
if doubtful whether he could bear to trust his faithful
steed to the mercy of a stranger.

I had brought from town no guide-book except a small
penny itinerarium, written by a local clergyman, which
I had purchased on the occasion of my former visit; but
when, later, the immense trunk of my companion gave
BIRTH-HOUSE AT STRATFORD 73

up its contents, I found that they included a perfect
library of guide-books and works of reference. This
huge receptacle had not arrived when we were ready to
sally forth to make our first investigation of Shakes-
peare’s town, and nothing less than a visit to the station,
where we found it duly stranded, would satisfy its
owner. He certainly was a little fussy about his per-
sonal belongings. This business over, Stratford was all
before us where to choose.

We made our way down Rother Street, and stopped
at the end of it to examine the Jubilee fountain and
clock-tower.

“ Presented by Mr, Childs of Philadelphia,” I re-
marked, anxious that my friend should know of his
countryman’s munificence.

“So I observe,” he answered, almost tartly, and then
he read aloud one of the inseriptions, ‘‘ ‘ Honest water
which ne’er left man i’ the mire’.”

‘My guide-book says we ought to drink here,” I ob-
served. This was not strictly true, but what the
book really said was so delicious, that I wished to prepare
my companion’s mind for it.

“Why ?” inquired Mr. Fairfield.

‘“‘ Because the writer is, I suppose, a teetotaler,” I
answered, and I read aloud, “ ‘Inscriptions upon its
four sides tell its story and record our Poet's praises of
cold water. We shall do better to drink of it rather
than patronise any of the public-houses which abound
in the town.’ ”

“Shall we, indeed?” remarked Mr. Fairfield, with
gentle sarcasm. ‘‘And does the writer go on to give
any directions as to how much we are to consume?”

“No,” I answered, consulting the book, “ unfortu-
nately he is silent as to that, but he tells us where we
are to get our lunch or tea—we are to go to the coffee
palace and temperance hotel.”

My friend looked incredulous, so I read aloud, ‘<< If,
however, we are looking for a place to lunch or have
74 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

tea, we cannot do better than go to the coffee palace
and temperance hotel in Bridge Street’ ”’.

Mr. Fairfield listened smiling. ‘ Really,” he said
when I had finished, ‘‘I feel an uncontrollable desire to
take a glass of beer.”’ So saying, he made for the tavern
which stood a few paces in front. of us, and in this
whimsical protest against the guide-book’s advice I
joined him.

We walked up Windsor Street, and took the first turn-
ing to the right. This was Henley Street. A little
way down it, I stopped and pointed without a word to
the building on the other side of the road. It is un-
necessary to describe it. All the world knows those
trim gables and that neat, fresh calimanco-work.

Mr. Fairfield put on his pince-nez. ‘‘ Shakespeare’s
birthplace!” he ejaculated reverently. ‘‘ But how very
modern looking! It’s exactly like the cottage in the
Swiss toy,’ he went on, a moment later—‘ the cottage
from which a little man or little woman comes out
according to the weather. But it is old—very old; it
belonged to Shakespeare and his father before him.
That at least 1s certain, and whether——”’

Here his reflections were broken by a shrill voice at
his elbow: ‘‘Gi’e me a penny and I’ll tell you all about
Shakespeare,” said the voice, in a strong Warwickshire
accent.

We looked down. The interruption came from a
small boy, who was just beginning to repeat his invita-
tion, when Mr. Fairfield turned on him with a gesture so
peremptory and a countenance so forbidding that the
words died on his lips.

“It’s shameful, abominable!”’ he protested, as we
crossed the road. ‘‘T had heard that this was common
here, but I had forgotten it.”

We entered the Birth-house, and paid our sixpences,
There were not more than half a dozen other visitors.
The two attendants on the ground-floor pointed out to
us the chimney-corner in the living room, and other
BIRTH-HOUSE AT STRATFORD 75

objects of interest; then they passed us on to the first-
floor. There was no hurrying, but it seemed to be
taken for granted that visitors must be passed on with-
out delay. We ascended the stairs to the so-called
Birth-room, that gaunt, low chamber, the Mecca of
so many pilgrims, which looks all the emptier for the
few articles of furniture that stand against its walls.
I had more than once addressed my companion as we
went over the rooms below, but his answers were so
brief and his countenance so abstracted that I soon
relapsed into silence. In the Birth-room he followed
with close attention all that the attendant told us, and
when the exposition was over he stood with a settled
gloom upon his countenance, as through his pince-nez
he gazed round the room so slowly that he seemed to
be taking in every detail of it, foot by foot.

In the chamber behind the Birth-room is an oil-paint-
ing, and on each side of it hangs an iron flap. Directly
these objects caught my friend’s eye his gloom vanished.
“T’ve read about this portrait,” he said, addressing me
with his usual grave cheerfulness. ‘‘ What do you think
of it?”

“The face certainly bears some resemblance to the
bust in the church, and the body appears to be well
nourished,” I answered.

My friend smiled, but a moment later he was listen-
ing with a gravity that was almost owlish to the attend-
ant’s description of the picture, and of the circumstances
under which it had been discovered and presented to
the birth-place trustees. ‘And every night, sir,” said
the man, addressing Mr. Fairfield, whose rapt interest
had evidently impressed him, ‘the picture is locked up
in that fireproof safe which you see on each side of it.”

The tall grave visitor gazed at the portrait as if he
were fascinated by it, and slowly nodded his head twice
or thrice. Everybody thought that he was a connois-
seur, and that he lacked words in which to express his
admiration. So, when the attendant next spoke all eyes
were turned in my friend’s direction.
76 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“Tt is considered a very fine work, sir,” was the
man’s remark, and he paused for the expert’s opinion.

There was a twinkle in Mr. Fairfield’s eyes, as after
resting upon the left-hand iron flap and passing thence
across the picture to the flap on the right, they scanned
for a moment the attendant and the group round him.

‘“No doubt a very fine work,” he observed, seeing
that an answer was expected; ‘possibly one of the
masterpieces of Gabriel Varden himself.”

A hum of applause followed; nobody doubting that
the locksmith referred to was a painter of high re-
nown.

We were not allowed to enter the garden behind the
house. This was irritating, for the view of it from the
back windows was inviting, and the guide-book told us
that it contained a specimen of every English plant
mentioned in the poet’s works.

“T made a jackass of myself about that picture,”
said Mr. Fairfield apologetically, when we stood in
Henley Street, after leaving the house; ‘it’s a silly
thing and an ill-mannered thing to play upon people.
But when the man spoke so rapturously about the
iron safe, and I pictured to myself the house destroyed
by fire and that wretched picture lying in the ashes
uninjured, I was so tickled that I forgot myself for
the moment.”

“Well?” I said, interrogatively, after we had stood
for some little time gazing at the front of the house.

My companion received this as an invitation to com-
municate his impressions. He shook off his reverie and
squared his shoulders.

““T’'ll tell you,” he began confidentially ——

“You give me a penny and I'll tell you all about
Shakespeare,” interrupted a voice that, though small,
was not still.

It was another urchin. My friend started as if he
had been shot, and an explosive sound, very suggestive
of the fourth letter of the alphabet, burst from him.
BIRTH-HOUSE AT STRATFORD 77

But he checked himself before the sound had formed
itself into a word and clutching my arm he hurried me
away. He did not pause until we had turned the
corner into Windsor Street.

‘‘T all but swore before that child—God forgive me!”
he gasped, quite breathless with the haste with which
we had moved.

‘“ And what did you think of the birthplace?” I asked,
as soon as he had regained his composure.

Mr. Fairfield hesitated for a while, and then burst
‘forth with a rapidity of utterance very unlike his usual
deliberate speech: ‘(I’m glad to have seen it—very
glad; but I can’t bring my mind to associate Shake-
speare with it: I can’t fancy him spending his boyhood
and his youth in that dark den at the back, which they
call the living-room. The outside of the two houses was
a great surprise tome. I knew what the place looked
like before it was restored; I knew they had put dormer
windows into the sagging old roof; I knew they had
restored the front; but the pictures I had seen of the
houses as they now are had not in the least prepared
me for that spick and span front, with the contrast be-
tween its fresh new rough-cast and its dark beams. I
was disappointed, and when I said it looked like a toy-
house I daresay I exaggerated a httle. But really, sir,
the outside is offensively modern. And when you get
inside the Birth-house, the place, for all its scrupulous
trimness, is so mean and so dark that you can’t think
of any civilised person living in it, without a sort of pity.
The upstairs rooms are better, but there is nothing
venerable about them—nothing suggestive of sixteenth
century interiors as we generally see them. And
while we were going over the place I remembered that
in Mr. Lee’s ‘Life,’ he said that Shakespeare’s father
was fined by the town authorities for having a dirt-heap
in front of his house. A picture of those lower rooms
350 years ago, with a stinking muck-heap just under
the windows, rose in my mind, and it positively de-
78 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

pressed me to think of Shakespeare living under such
conditions.”

“Very likely the rooms were quite different in his
time. Halliwell-Phillipps says that the cellar—which,
by-the-by, is not shown to visitors—is the only part
of the house that is unchanged. And apart from this,
you mustn’t look at the sixteenth century with the eyes
of the twentieth——”’

‘«‘T know, I know,” he interrupted hastily; ‘‘ but one
always thinks of the man Shakespeare as of some great
natural wonder, something in the open air—something
like the sea itself, or a mountain———” Here he broke
off, and after a pause he repeated, as if still following
out his train of thought :—

‘Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain tops with sovran eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.”

By this time we had reached the Clopton Bridge,
and we stopped and drank in the beauty of the pro-
spect.

“This, now,” resumed my companion, ‘‘seems quite
in harmony with Shakespeare. It’s beautiful enough
to take even the taste of that house out of one’s mouth.
By-the-by, they call it the Birth-house, and everybody
talks of it as if he really was born there. But is the
evidence on the point satisfactory ?’”

I felt that he was appealing to me in my professional
capacity, and I considered the question with judicial
gravity.

“The evidence, as I understand it, isn’t conclusive,”
I answered, after a decent interval of reflection. “That
is certainly Mr. Lee’s opinion. There can be no question
that the house which adjoins the so-called Birth-house,
and is now the Museum, was bought by Shakespeare’s
father some eight years before Shakespeare’s birth. Un-
luckily he also bought a house in Greenhill Street, and this
BIRTH-HOUSE AT STRATFORD 79

complicates matters. It is also beyond all doubt that
four years before he bought the Museum, he was occupy-
ing a house in Henley Street, and that at the time of his
death he owned two houses there, one the Birth-house
and the other the Museum; but there is nothing con-
clusive to connect him with the Birth-house at the date
of the birth; there is, in fact, no evidence that he was
living there. After reading Mr. Lee’s ‘ Life’ I looked
into the matter a little at the British Museum, and I
came to the conclusion that, though in all probability
Shakespeare was born in one of the two houses in Hen-
ley Street, it was impossible to say that one had a better
claim to the honour than the other.”

“And what about the Birth-room ? ”

“T came to the conclusion that the evidence in favour
of Shakespeare’s having been born in that particular
first-floor room was worth nothing. Halliwell-Phillipps
proves that so long ago as 1769 it was asserted that
he was born there ; but that was two. hundred years after
the event. You will find the facts epitomized by Mr.
Lee,” I concluded.

““T must re-read what he says about the marriage,
too,’ said Mr. Fairfield.

“ Shall we stroll to Shottery ?”’ [asked a few minutes
later. ‘It’s only a mile distant, and there’s plenty of
time before dinner.”

My friend shook his head. ‘‘ The birthplace is enough
for one day,”’ he answered. ‘“‘ Let us get the machines
and take a little turn outside the town.”

We chose the Evesham Road, and presently turned
down a lane on the left which brought us within sight
of the river. The shadows were lengthening, and the
stream with its fringe of willows and the green meadow
through which it ran looked so beautiful, kissed by the
golden sun, that we abandoned the bicycles and made
our way to the bank, and sat there almost in silence
until the shades of evening gave us warning of the near
approach of the dinner-hour.
80 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

For a long time that evening my companion pored
over Mr. Lee’s ‘‘ Life”. Then he lay back in his chair
and meditated, the fingers of one lean hand noiselessly
beating the table before him. At length he looked
over in my direction. I laid down ‘“ The Times,” and
prepared myself for cross-examination. But none fol-
lowed ; he seemed to be in doubt for a moment as to what
he should do, and then he walked to-the table on which
his travelling library was arranged, and selecting a
volume of Shakespeare’s plays, he settled himself down
again and read and meditated until bedtime.

“T shall bathe in the Avon to-morrow morning,”
he announced when we were parting for the night.
‘Robin Ostler ’’—he uttered this Shakespearean name
with much relish—‘ Robin Ostler tells me there is a
good bathing-place just off the road by which we came
here, and that it has been used for bathing from time
immemorial.”

It was rather late in the year, but the weather was
warm and summer-like, and the thought of bathing in
Shakespeare’s river was not without its fascination.

“‘T will join you,” said I.
CHAPTER VI
THE HATHAWAY HOUSE AT SHOTTERY

WE found the bathing-place without difficulty the next
morning, and when we saw it we blessed the town au-
thorities for the excellent accommodation which they
had provided. I did not omit to point out to my com-
panion that there was nothing to pay. A little footpath
led from the roadway to the riverside. The hedge and
the long grass beside it were spangled with the heavy
dewdrops of September, and there was something of an
autumn freshness in the air. But on the river-bank
there was nothing to suggest the season of decay. The
stream lay before us bathed in sunshine, and mirroring
the green alders and dwarf willows that fringed the
opposite bank. It was beautiful as a dream.

“What can it be hke in May?” was Mr. Fairfield’s
exclamation.

Westrolled to Shottery after breakfast. The meadow
paths are not nearly so sylvan as the guide-books would
lead one to expect. The endless stream of excursionists,
which has flowed along them throughout spring, summer
and autumn for so many years has left its mark.

From the children of Shottery we received more than
one offer to tell us for the usual consideration all about
Shakespeare, or to conduct us on the same terms to
Anne Hathaway’s cottage. Mr. Fairfield, ashamed of
his outburst of yesterday, submitted to this persecution
more in sorrow than in anger, but his face was as sour
as vinegar.

The picturesque thatched building, now divided into

6 81
82 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

three, that was once the home of a Hathaway family, is
easily found, and on payment of sixpence the traveller
is admitted to the middle dwelling. Once inside, he
had better for the time being resign himself to the de-
lusion that it was always separated from the rest of the
building, and make-believe to believe that when Shake-
speare was a youth his sweetheart lived in it and was
courted by her lover there. The young and very pretty
girl who acted as our guide had no doubt on these points,
In the downstairs room she drew our attention to various
articles of household use or ornament as having been
the property of Anne Hathaway, and with a faint blush
she pointed out a seat by the fireside as the courting-
settle.

“The courting-settle ?’’ repeated Mr. Fairfield, turn-
ing to me for information. Probably he thought it was
some article common in English kitchens, but unknown
to bim.

“The seat on which Shakespeare courted Mistress
Anne,” I explained. ‘“‘Haven’t you seen the well-
known picture of this room with the two lovers seated
there?”

My friend bent his gaze on the courting-settle, and
then, with an unmoved countenance, he turned to our
guide :—

‘‘ When the heart is young, my dear, courting is an
excellent thing, even on a seat no wider than a knife-
board.”

He said this with a pleasantry so paternal and benign
that the girl received it without offence. She looked at
the settle, and the thought that it certainly was rather
narrow seemed to strike home. With peals of laughter
she passed us on to the upper room, which according to
the local tradition was Anne Hathaway’s bedchamber.
Here we were received by another guide, a female of
more advanced age. She expounded to us the massive
wooden bedsteads which are contained in this room and
the room on the opposite side of the stairway, and pro-
THE HATHAWAY HOUSE 83

duced certain other relics of the house’s former mistress.
These ceremonies over, we gazed from one of the small
windows upon the prospect beyond, while the custodian
told us of Barnum’s effort to buy the cottage and all its
contents for exhibition in America.

At any other time, such a narrative as this might have
set my friend’s patriotism on fire, but just then, there
was no kindling his enthusiasm. From the moment of
our entry into those upper rooms, his aspect had been
so suggestive of neuralgia that more than once the good
woman had put forward a word of sympathy. There
was trouble in Mr. Fairfield’s eyes, and with one hand
arched above his mouth, he held the intermediate organ
in a firm grip of thumb and finger. Even my thoughts
were inclined to wander: I seemed to be carried back
to my boyhood, and to the hutches where my pet rabbits
passed their blameless lives.

At the time of our arrival we were the only visitors,
but while we were upstairs a brake drove up and dis-
gorged its passengers. There was a stir and bustle in
the room below and many ejaculations of admiration
and wonder reached our ears. The nationality of the
visitors was beyond all question. I turned to Mr.
Fairfield and I am afraid I smiled. The faint look
of annoyance on his face disappeared and he smiled
broadly.

‘‘Our people who tour about in companies are not
always the quietest of folk,” he remarked.

Even as he spoke, another brake rattled up and we
saw the passengers come streaming towards the cottage
door. We heard them, too. They were very noisy,
almost raffish, and in the voices which were shrill and
piercing was a drawl that I recognized. Undoubtedly
they were excursionists from some town in the Midlands.

Mr. Fairfield looked at me this time. ‘‘ Perhaps we
may as well get outside,” I remarked.

But this was easier said than done ; for the new-comers
were beginning to ascend the stairs and they surged
84 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

up until both bedrooms were uncomfortably crowded.
We were wedged against the wall of the larger room ;
so there was nothing for it but to stand still and watch
the visitors. They had no doubt of the perfect authen-
ticity of all that the guide told them; and when a piece
of material of a yellow hue, most offensive to the eye,
was produced and declared to be linsey-woolsey of Anne
Hathaway’s own weaving, their emotion did not fall far
short of rapture.

“« Linsey-woolsey! Goodness gracious!” ejaculated
one lady, as with awe and reverence she handled the
precious fabric. ‘‘And what a peculiar colour,’ she
added, addressing a female beside her. The remark was
true enough in itself, but under the circumstances it
was comic; for the speaker’s cloak was of the same hue,
and the material seemed the same.

We reached the open air at last, and stayed in the
garden for a minute or two to examine a stone, which
was pointed out to us as having been used as a seat by
Charles Dickens when he visited the cottage. Some of
the excursionists were on the path near to us, gazing at
the front of the building.

“They only show you the middle part,’’ observed the
lady in the linsey-woolsey cloak, ‘I guess they live in
the rest of it.”

Inwardly I ‘‘ guessed” so too, and I wondered what
precautions were taken against fire.

“Tt would be a pity if the old place were burnt down,”
I remarked as we turned out into the garden.

“Yes, I suppose it would,” said my friend doubtfully,
and he went on to express a conviction that even in the
middle part the bedrooms were still slept in. He also
made a few observations upon the ventilation.

We hung about the neighbourhood until the brakes
had driven off, and then we returned to the roadway to
have a parting look at the old farmhouse, with its roof
of deep thatch and careless, old-fashioned garden. Can
all England show a prettier piece of rusticity? Mr.
wAOVLLOO S,AAVAVHIVH ONNV ,,

 
THE HATHAWAY HOUSE 85

Fairfield was gazing at it through his pince-nez, deep in
thought.

“A very fitting background for an idyll,” I observed.
“‘T can see you are trying to picture Master William
a-wooing.” This I said in malice, for I felt sure my
companion was doing nothing of the sort.

“Can you read that?’’ was his only response, and
he pointed to one of the chimneys.

It bore the letters I.H., followed by a date near the
end of the seventeenth century.

““T believe it’s the date when the place was built,”
quoth he, with evident venom.

I burst out laughing; and after a pause he laughed
too. ‘Perhaps that is rather too large an order,” he
admitted; ‘‘ but how I wish I could prove it!”

I took it for granted that the fables to which we had
been listening inside the house had irritated him, and I
sought to pour oil on the troubled waters.

«« When I was here last, the cottage was occupied by
a Mrs. Baker, a very old lady. She was quite a Shake-
spearean celebrity i in these parts, and when she broke her
leg, the accident and her recovery from it were local
events of great importance. She claimed to be a de-
scendant of the Hathaways. When she showed you
over the place and told you that the pots and pans had
belonged to Mistress Anne, and that Master William had
spent most of his early youth courting on that settle, it
was quite soothing and pleasant. It seemed in accord-
ance with the fitness of things that the old lady should
tell you so. I fancy the legends we have just heard
originated with Mrs. Baker; I daresay you found it
irritating to listen to them under present circumstances.”

“Tf Mrs. Baker had chosen to tell the visitors that
she was Anne Hathaway herself, grown old, I don’t sup-
pose one in a hundred would have doubted her,” said
Mr. Fairfield, smiling. ‘I did not in the least mind
what they said inside,”’ he explained, “‘ but your talk-
ing about an idyll reminded me of all the sickly twaddle
86 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

I had read about Shakespeare and his connexion with
this place, and that ruffled up my feathers. Merciful
powers! is the story such a pretty one that every scrib-
bler who prints his impressions of this place must needs
gush over it? It makes me sick!”

‘“‘ He was only eighteen,” I pleaded, thinking to miti-
gate my friend’s censoriousness.

**'Yes, poor boy, and she was six-and-twenty. Just
think of what your life would have been if you had got
into such an entanglement at his age, and had been
dragooned into marrying a woman. eight years your
senior; and then try to fancy the sort of wife that Anne
Hathaway, the daughter of a Shottery farmer and very
likely in service at Temple Grafton when the marrage
licence'was obtained, must have seemed to Shakespeare
when he grew to manhood.”

“ That’s the story ‘on the documents’ as you lawyers
call it,” he resumed. ‘I can understand one writer or
another trying to make a prettier thing of it by declaring
that there had been an earlier marriage according to
the rites of the old faith, or that there had been a hand-
fasting, which was the same thing asa marriage. Both
theories are mere fantastic nonsense; but I can under-
stand anyone who believes in them, treating the affair
as a love idyll. But how any man who accepts the
facts without such an explanation can write sentimental
twaddle about its beauty and freshness passes my com-
prehension. And the worst of it is,” he added, growing
cooler but speaking with deep vexation, ‘‘ the chief
offenders are my own countrymen.”

This terrific outburst had barely come to an end when
another brake full of excursionists drove up, and a little
group of children, anxious to earn an honest penny,
collected about it. Myr. Fairfield seized my arm as if
eager to shake the dust of Shottery from his feet, and
we walked back to Stratford. We dawdled for a while
in its clean, bright streets, and made a few purchases at
one of the shops devoted to the sale of Shakespearean
THE HATHAWAY HOUSE 87

relics and souvenirs. He chose a plague emblazoned
with the arms of England and the arms of Shakespeare,
and bearing a well-known quotation from ‘‘ Hamlet ”’.
We spent the rest of the day on our bicycles.

After dinner that evening, as I sat skimming through
some papers that had been forwarded to me from Gray’s
Inn, I saw my companion unwrap his purchase and be-
gin to examine it with much complacency. A moment
later I was startled by a sudden ejaculation; and, look-
ing up, I saw him make a hasty dart at the side-table
where the books lay. There was a flutter of leaves, and
then arose a wail of wrath and lamentation.

“The sordid wretches can’t even print him correctly !
They’ve actually put ‘one’ instead of ‘man’. Listen
to this!’”” And he read out from the plaque :—

‘This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to anyone !”’

Next morning we made for the church. When we
reached the gate of the graveyard, it was plain from the
empty vehicles drawn up near it that we had once more
fallen in with a horde of excursionists, and when we had
walked down the beautiful lime avenue that leads to the
north door we came upon them. The porch was full of
these gadflies, and the official in a long cassock who
was selling tickets of admission had a busy time of it.
The place was all a-hum like a railway booking-office
in August. Your ordinary excursionist cannot take a
ticket and receive his change without hubbub.

For a few minutes Mr. Fairfield eyed the scene in
silence. Then, in silence, we both turned and retraced
our steps along the avenue.

“We can try again some other day,” he said, as we
passed out of the churchyard. ‘Is that business legal ?”

« Not knowing—can’t say,” was my answer. ‘“‘ When
I was last here they were selling crosses and other little
matters made of old wood taken out during the restora-
tions.”
88 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘“ What becomes of all those sixpences ?”

“They go to repair the church and pay an additional
curate. I saw this in one of your guide-books last
night.”

“Considering what Stratford gets out of Shakespeare
in other ways, I think it might pay for its own spiritual
comforters,” was Mr. Fairfield’s comment.

We walked up Old Town; past Hall’s Croft, where
once, according to Stratford tradition, dwelt Shake-
speare’s son-in-law, and on into Church Street.

“We had better inspect the site of New Place,” I
suggested, and we stopped for a moment while I con-
sulted my guide-book.

‘“‘Give me a penny and I'll tell you all about Shake-
speare,” sounded in our ears once more. The speaker
was a loutish youth of about seventeen, with furtive and
shifty eyes. He spoke with a strong Warwickshire
accent, but he looked like the typical London pickpocket.
Without waiting for an answer he proceeded to give us
a sample of his wares :-—

“« Shakespeare stole a deer

Out of Charlecote Park ;

He gave it to the poor people.

He saw some men a-ploughin’ on Monday ;

He asked them why they was ploughin’ on Sunday ;
They said it wasn’t Sunday it was Monday—”

Our persecutor proceeded thus far in a sort of sing-song,
relieved once or twice by a stamp of the foot; then he
broke off and looked up into our faces with a leer of in-
tense enjoyment.

‘“* He was droonk, y’e knoo,” he explained.

“Who taught you to cadge like this?’’ demanded
Mr. Fairfield.

The youth leered again. ‘I’m savin’ money for the
fair.”

“It’s in the Warwickshire blood, I suppose,” said my
companion, as soon as we had left the lout behind.
“When Scott visited Kenilworth, three or four years
THE HATHAWAY HOUSE 89

before his death, he complained that the children were
beggars. There was evidently a line missing in that
trash,” he went on; ‘‘something ought to follow ‘He
gave it to the poor people’; and why on earth did the
boy stamp his foot? It seemed intended to emphasize
the cadence.”

I was not able to throw any light on this problem.

‘And this is the site of New Place,” said Mr. Fair-
field, as we stood in Chapel Street with our backs to
the Falcon Hotel and looked through the railings on
the green space at the corner of Chapel Lane.

“ Yes,” I answered, ‘that at least is certain. The
brick-work with wire netting over it, that you see just
in front, is shown as part of the foundations of the
house. There are two wells too. We can go inside the
enclosure if we take a ticket for the museum. It’s con-
tained on the ground-floor of that house on our left—
it’s the house in which Nash, who married Shakespeare’s
granddaughter, Hlizabeth Hall, once lived. Halliwell-
Phillipps says that somewhere in the roof is a scantlet
of one of the gables that belonged to Shakespeare’s
house. Behind this enclosure is the site of his great
garden, There’s no charge for admittance.”

““The entrance I take it is round the corner,” said
Mr. Fairfield, ignoring my suggestion that we should
visit the museum, and making for Chapel Lane.

In that fair green pleasaunce there were no noisy
excursionists or begging children to come between us
and our thoughts of its former master. Nowhere else
in Stratford, except perhaps on the river walk in the
churchyard, does one seem to get so near to him. For
a long time we sauntered about the smooth lawns,
rarely speaking to one another.

“Ts the museum worth seeing ?”’ asked my companion,
when at length we had dropped on to a seat.

“T don’t know that itis; but if you pay your six-
pence you can inspect the foundations which we saw
from the road and drink from one of the wells.”
90 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘What about the foundations—are they genuine?”

“Tf Halliwell-Phillipps tells us that they are the
foundations of Shakespeare’s New Place I suppose we
ought to accept the statement. But as we are also told
that some time before the end of 1702 the house was
pulled down and another built on the site, it is difficult
to feel quite sure. ‘The guide-books, of course, have no
doubts. There seems to have been a bay window at
the back. According to them, this must have belonged
to Shakespeare’s study, and he wrote the ‘ Tempest ’ in
that room. The museum is quite a little place,” I went
on, “‘ but there’s a huge table in it, that came from the
Falcon over the way. It was used for playing shuffle-
board.”’

‘‘Shakespeare’s favourite game, of course,” sneered
my companion.

“To the best of my belief,’ I answered, “it wasn’t
known a few years ago that in his day there was no
Falcon tavern, and I’m afraid there was, until quite
lately, a firm and cherished tradition in Stratford that
he spent his evenings there.”’

“Of course, of course,—‘he was droonk, y’e knoo,’”’
retorted my client, with a contemptuous imitation of our
last beggar. ‘‘ Give Stratford the existence of a tavern
anywhere near New Place, and Stratford will give you
a fine, old, crusted tradition that he was always in it.
You may bet your bottom dollar on that, sir. They’ve
a queer way here of showing the reverence they talk so
big about.”

“Tt as a queer business,” said I, ‘‘ but aren’t the
visitors most to blame?”

‘“‘ For encouraging it, or even enduring it, you mean.
Oh, yes, Stratford wouldn’t put it forward if it didn’t
pay.” My friend uttered this with a sniff of contempt,
which he followed by a muttered quotation, whereof I
caught the words, ‘‘ bisson conspectuities,’’ and no more.

“The Guild Chapel was herein Shakespeare’s time,”
he said, pointing to it as soon as he had cooled down.
THE HATHAWAY HOUSE 91

‘No doubt of that, and he must have seen it every
time he went in or outof hishouse. Halliwell-Phillipps
says the bell must have been among the latest sounds
that fell upon his ears during the last night that he spent
on earth—that it may have been the last sound he
heard.”

Mr. Fairfield pondered, his eyes fixed upon the chapel
tower. ‘That is very suggestive,’ he said, almost
under his breath—

‘* And now his grief may be comparéd well,
To one sore sick, that hears the passing-bell” .

“ But have we still the same bell?” he inquired sus-
piciously, a moment later.

* From what Halliwell-Phillipps goes on to say, it is
clear it has been recast.”’

‘It’s the same with everything in Stratford.” There
was no little vindictiveness in my friend’s voice as he
uttered this wail.

‘“‘Tt’s pleasanter to think of him here than in Henley
Street.” When Mr. Fairfield said this, we had left the
garden, and were once more standing in Chapel Street,
peering down at the wire coverings of the foundations
below us. ‘No muck-heap in front of New Place, sir!”

T tried, I really did try, to hold my tongue, but the
temptation to destroy this fond illusion was too much
for me.

‘‘ Halliwell-Phillipps says a most loathsome, fetid
ditch ran alongside of the house.”

“‘T don’t believe it.”

‘“‘T’m afraid he proves it; and, after all, is it unlikely ?
No one who lived in a little place like this 300 years ago
could escape something of the kind. Why, even less
than 150 years ago Garrick described Stratford as the
most dirty, wretched-looking town in the kingdom.”

“T will not believe it, sir!”” And Mr. Fairfield’s lips
were so tightly set that I dropped the subject.
92 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

After this we moved on to the High Street and in-
spected the exterior of the Harvard House.

“Tt must have been thought a fine place when it was
built,” said my client, as he scanned the carved wood-
work. ‘I daresay Shakespeare stopped for a moment
more than once to watch the builders at work.”

“Would you care,” I asked, ‘‘ to see the Washington
Irving room at the Red Horse—the room he mentions
in the ‘Sketch Book’? They show you the chair in
which he sat and the poker he speaks of. They call it
Geoffery Crayon’s sceptre.”

“T remember something about it,” was the answer.
“No, I don’t want to see the place. Don’t think I
sniff at the ‘Sketch Book’ or at Washington Irving
either. But—but—” here for the first time in my
experience he hesitated, as if at a loss for words to ex-
press his meaning. Then with a rush he explained
himself. ‘‘ It’s natural enough for the landlord to raise
a shrine to him—that’s all in the way of business—but
this, sir, is Shakespeare’s town, and to burn incense to
Washington Irving here, seems to me a foolish busi-
ness.”

We devoted the rest of that day to scouring the country
round Stratford, and in the evening my fellow-pilgrim
buried himself in a volume of the Bard.

‘Mr. Lee says that money was worth eight times its
present value in Shakespeare’s day,” said he, turning to
me and waiting for an answer.

“ Yes, that’s my recollection of what he says, and I
feel sure that Halliwell-Phillipps says it was worth
even more.”

We had been discussing Shakespeare’s fortune in the
New Place Gardens that morning, and the comparative
values of money then and now had been referred to.

‘Then how do you account for the charges in the
tavern bill which Poins stole out of Falstaff’s pocket?
No doubt the items were those current at the time the
play was written. It isn’t likely that Shakespeare
THE HATHAWAY HOUSE 93

bothered himself to quote prices as they were in Henry
IV’s time.”

‘“‘Hiven if he did, that wouldn’t get rid of your diffi-
culty,” said I, who had a pretty clear recollection of
those tavern items; ‘‘ money was still more valuable
then.”

‘“‘It is certainly very odd,” and Mr. Fairfield read
out the bill of charges :—

“Ttem, a Capon 2/2.

Item, Sauce 4d.

Item, Sack, 2 gallons 5/8.

Item, Anchovies and sack after supper 2/6.
Item, Bread 3d.”

We took a turn out of doors that night before going
to bed. Ourstroll led us past the site of New Place
and near the church. In the forlorn hope of finding
the churchyard open we tried the wicket. It was un-
fastened, and we were able to ramble about and make
such an examination of the exterior of the vast building
as the darkness permitted. We came at length to the
terrace walk above the river, but the prospect which is
so beautiful by day was disappointing then. The stream
lay below us, almost motionless and clearly distinguish-
able, but the town-meadows on the other side were
hidden by a thick bank of mist, solid to the eye as a
rampart of cotton wool, which starting from the water-
line, rose to a height of twelve feet or thereabouts. It
obliterated all objects behind it, while above it the trees
rose clear and distinct against the sky. I shivered as I
gazed.

““« You need not regard me, sir; I am fever-proof like-
wise agur,’” quoted Mr. Fairfield jovially, as he fumbled
at one of the pockets of his light overcoat. I saw his
arm rise. Some white body passed through the air and
fell with a splash into the middle of the river.

“Tt’s that plaque,” he observed. ‘I thought I might
get a chance of disposing of it to-night. And now, sir,
whereabouts in the chancel is Shakespeare’s grave ?”
94 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

We strolled up to the church and stood on the site of
the bone-house, which the poet had in his mind when
he framed the lines which are cut upon his gravestone.

“ There,” said I, pointing to the last but one of the
north windows, ‘‘is the monument—and the grave is a
little beyond.” ;

“We might have a look at the Birth-house before
turning in,’ said my companion, when we were once
more in Chapel Street. ‘‘It seems hard that a man
can’t look at the place by day, because it’s infested by
a horde of young bandits, itching to tell him that
Shakespeare got drunk. I wonder how that vile screed
goes on!”

We lingered awhile before the two houses in Henley
Street, and then made our way into Guild Street, and
through the iron gate peered across the garden behind
them.

There were tendrils of young ivy showing over the
top of the wall. Mr. Fairfield plucked a few leaves and
placed them in his pocket-book.
CHAPTER VII
MR. FAIRFIELD LEARNS ‘ALL ABOUT SHAKESPEARE ”

We made a longer stay in Stratford than we had
originally intended. The country round was so beauti-
ful and the roads were so good that we were loth to
bring our holiday to an end.

Shakespeare’s town is a convenient centre for many
excursions. We rode over to Warwick several times.
The Castle and the Leycester Hospital were not places
to be inspected in a hurry; and out of the town itself
were Guy’s Cliff and the Saxon mill just beyond it.
Charlecote, too, could not be passed over; Worcester
and Coventry were within riding distance, and Evesham
was close at hand.

In that part of England the very names upon the
finger-posts bear a charm. Hampton-Lucy, Temple-
Grafton, Wilmcote, Clifford-Chambers, Henley-in-Arden
fall upon the ear like music, and the words “ To Strat-
ford’”’ make a man thrill, no matter how often he may
come upon them. /

We visited nearly all of the eight villages mentioned in
the rhyme that Stratford tradition ascribes to Shake-
speare. Temple-Grafton, the “ hungry Grafton ” of this
rhyme, had a mournful interest to the American citizen,
for he had a conviction that the marriage which he
thought so unfortunate was celebrated there. The
church is modern, and the registers do not go back so
far as Shakespeare’s time.

We rode to Bidford and fed the fish from the quaint
old bridge, which, it is said, the monks built. The Fal-
con still remains, but it is no longer a tavern. We did

95
96 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

not attempt to find the spot where the crab-tree grew,
under which, according to Stratford tradition, Shake-
speare slept for so many hours.

At Cleeve Pryor, that lies not far from Bidford, the
bank of the Avon rises to a bold cliff. Below is the old
mill, and the tourist who crosses the weir comes upon
a ruined lock almost hidden in vegetation. ‘‘‘ Harth
has not anything to show more fair,” was Mr. Fair-
field’s comment.

We saw, too, the old mill at Stratford, and crossed
the footbridge that leads to the town-meadows, plucking
as we went the water forget-me-nots which grow by the
weir.

We lunched in many an old inn that was standing
when Shakespeare was a boy, and had many a gossip
with the simple, cordial folk that kept them; but wher-
ever we went nothing that we heard about him bore any
reference to his fame as a writer.

“Tf I didn’t read a piece every night,” said Mr.
Fairfield as we rode towards Stratford, after one
of these gossips, ‘‘I verily believe I'should go back to
London with a vague general notion that Shakespeare
wrote some plays, and with a strong but unaccountable
conviction that he was a person to be reverenced, firstly,
because he was born and died at Stratford, and, secondly,
because he stole deer, got drunk, slept like a hog,
and married Anne Hathaway——”

He broke off to watch the evolutions of the bats,
which were flying about us in the gathering twilight,
and at the same moment, a cockchafer blundered past,
within an inch of his nose.

“‘ What's that?” he asked, almost pulling up; “ that
humming thing!”

‘“« A cockchafer.”

“Ts that a scaly beast?”

«To the best of my belief it has a full suit of armour.”

‘Bless my soul!’’ was his ejaculation; and he gazed
about bim in a sort of rapture.
“ALL ABOUT SHAKESPEARE” 97

‘When I caught sight of those bats,” he explained,
“‘T was reminded of a line of Ben Jonson’s, and the
next instant that insect nearly flew into my face. Now,
Ben mentions him in the very next line, but I never
knew what he meant—

The giddy flitter-mice with leather wings !

The scaly beetles with their habergeons,
That make a humming murmur as they fly !

Isn’t it pleasant to think of old Ben riding along a
country lane some fine evening, 300 years ago, and see-
ing the bats and the cockchafers, just as we see them
now—and making verses on them? I must remember
to make a note of this.”

“T’ve been thinking of an old song Garrick wrote
after the Stratford Jubilee,” he burst out, a little later.
“Tt’s poor stuff, but its lyrical, and there’s a pretty
line in it about Shakespeare—

Old Ben, Thomas Otway, John Dryden,
And half a score more we take pride in ;
Of famous Will Congreve we boast, too, the skill,
But the Will of all Wills was the Warwickshire Will:
Warwickshire Will,
Matchless still ;
For the Will of all Wills was the Warwickshire Will.”

My friend shook his head over the guide-book asser-
tion that the Arden House at Wilmcote was the home
of Shakespeare’s mother. But when we journeyed
thither, the kindness of its occupants and the charm of
the old house itself, vanquished him ; and he waxed en-
thusiastic over all about it, from the ancient oven in the
outbuildings to the great cat Dick, who was sunning
himself on a distant wall, and who in response to his
master’s call came racing up to us like a dog.

In Stratford itself we saw the ‘‘ Droeshout ”’ and Ely
Palace portraits—the one in the picture gallery of the
Memorial buildings, and the other in the librarian’s
room above the Birth-place Museum. Neither was pro-
tected by a fire-proof safe.

7
98 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

As we studied the ‘ Droeshout,” we wondered
whether that grave and comely head could have been
the original of the engraving prefixed to the First
Folio: the “figure that thou here seest put’ of Ben
Jonson’s verses, the only portrait of Shakespeare that
has come down to us with a clear record.

“You must see the grave and bust before we go;
and to-morrow’s our last day,’ was my remark as we
stood in the High Street one breezy morning, outside
the corner shop that was for many years the home of
the poet’s younger daughter.

“True, and I must hear the rest of that doggerel
rhyme. I have a theory about that rhyme, and I want
to confirm it.”

The fates were propitious that morning; for even
as he spoke we saw not far ahead of us a group of three
boys, and as we approached them they eyed us as a
butcher may be supposed to eye an ox.

A bland smile lit up Mr. Fairfield’s countenance, and
he paused and gazed around him as if drinking in the
beauties of the High Street. This was enough. The
three demons were about us in a ‘moment, and the
familiar words, ‘‘ All about Shakespeare,” were once
more in our ears. It was, I blush to confess, Sunday
morning, and the time was near noon.

“Tf you say it slowly, Dll give you a penny each,”
said the seeker after knowledge, and a pencil and paper
were in his hand.

One boy took up the story, and now and again his
companions joined in. Except where the recital sub-
sided into unmitigated prose, the rhythmical swing
which we had noticed a few days earlier was strictly
observed; and at certain pauses, evidently familiar to
all three, each boy stamped his foot on the ground.

The following is a true and correct transcript of the
matter, which on that Sunday morning in September,
1901, the boys recited to us in the High Street of
Shakespeare’s town :—
 

 

Printed by Ifaac Jaggard,and Ed. Blount. 1623

 

 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
(From the First Folio.).

 
“ALL ABOUT SHAKESPEARE” 99

Shakespeare stole a deer
Out of Charlecote Park ;
He gave it to the poor people.
He saw some men a-ploughing on Monday ;
He asked them why they was ploughing on Sunday:
They said it wasn’t Sunday, it was Monday.
He slept from Saturday night till Monday morning ;
He got up in a crabtree. He saw—
Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton,
Dodging Exhall, papist Wixford,
Beggarly Broom and drunken Bidford.
It’s got on the tomb of Shakespeare’s grave :—
Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust encloséd here ;
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.

John Harvard’s house was built in 1596: the man that founded
Harvard College in America near Boston in the State of Massa-
chusetits.

John Harvard was an American.

The American fountain was given by William George Childs
of Philadelphia on the Queen Victoria’s Jubilee 1887. There’s a
stone laid by Lady Hodgson, June the twentieth 1887.

At Anne Hathaway’s cottage there’s a stone that Charles Dickens
sat on to write his name in the register.

Mrs. Baker tumbled downstairs and broke her leg: she was
eighty-five.

Every tree and flower planted in Shakespeare’s garden was men-
tioned in Shakespeare’s plays.

Shakespeare’s house was divided in three parts—one the public,
one the butcher’s shop, and one the woollen shop.

There is a room where Shakespeare was born 1564: died 1616:
Sir Walter Scott wrote his name on the window with his ring.

He was fifty-two when he died: Anne Hathaway when she died
was sixty-seven.

There were few people in the High Street that morn-
ing to mark the long grave tourist who was writing
from the boys’ dictation on a sheet of paper that fluttered
in the wind, and who had to break off so often to en-
treat them not to go too fast. The American part of the
recital seemed to occasion him much inward anguish.

“‘T’ve settled it,” said he with bland triumph when
we were by ourselves once more. ‘I felt pretty sure
the other day what that stamp meant, and now I know.
100 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

The boys are accustomed to recite in unison and that’s
how they keep time. Do you know what that means,
sir?” And seeing from my face that I did not, he went
on, laying an emphasising finger on my arm—“ It means,
they teach that hogwash in the schools here”’,

POSTSCRIPT
“HE WAS DROONK, Y’E KNOO!”’

In Stratford town there dwelt a man,
And Stratford loves to think
Not even Master Caliban
Was such a slave to drink:
Morn, noon, and night throughout his span
He emptied cup, he emptied can ;
Adown his throat the liquor ran
Like soapsuds down a sink.

And, coupled with his high renown
As master-sot of Stratford town,
Another gift is handed down ;
In equal honour kept:
Three hundred years ago he died
And yet to-day the countryside
Remembers with a thrill of pride
How massively he slept.

And while the universal earth =

Extols his wisdom and his worth:

Lord of our tears and of our mirth,
Master of music too !

Here in this little home of thine

Poor Tom, who cadges at the shrine,

Hails thee as brother, half-divine,
For—‘‘ He was droonk, y’e knoo!”
CHAPTER VII
SHAKESPEARE’S CHURCH

‘‘THE place is quite a cathedral,” said Mr. Fairfield, as
next morning we were making our way along the lime
avenue to the church porch. ‘I’m glad we didn’t come
on the machines,”’ he went on, as he pointed to a notice
announcing that all bicycles must be left with the at-
tendant, and that a fee of one penny would be charged.
‘The attendant, I observe, is of tender years. I would
not entrust my bicycle to him; but I am glad to find
that there is one boy in Stratford earning pennies in a
quasi-legitimate way.” My friend was in a merry mood,
and he laughed at his own facetiousness.

The verger in the long cassock gave us tickets of ad-
mission in exchange for our sixpences. There were no
noisy excursionists in the porch that morning. There
was a fair sprinkling of visitors in the church, however,
and we could see that there was quite a little gathering
of them at the altar-rail.

“We'll have a look round the place first, and leave
the grave and monument till the last,” said my friend ;
“the coast may be clear then.”

We examined the two old registers in a glass case,
and read the entries of Shakespeare’s baptism and death.
There was another glass case which contained specimens
of the wares on sale. I purchased the official guide-book
to the church, and I suggested that we should buy
something else as a souvenir of the visit ; but my com-
panion shied at this; he remembered that unfortunate
plaque. I pointed out to him that there was a separate

101
102 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

visitors’ book for Americans, and here again I met with a
rebuff. The autograph of James C. Fairfield of Chicago
was not added to that volume.

We wandered about the building guide-book in hand.
I am afraid our thoughts were bent on the tomb and
monument, and we viewed the body of the church with

no great interest. ‘ All around is Shakespeare’s exclu-
sive property,” as Sir Walter Scott entered in his
journal.

“There is a chance here that you must not miss,” I
said at length, pointing to a notice stuck up in one of
the windows. This notice invited the visitor to pay
the expense of filling the window with stained glass,
and not only stated what the cost would be, but, with
the intention of saving the American pilgrim all possible
trouble, it went on to give the equivalent in dollars.
Mr. Fairfield’s lip curled.

‘It’s very considerate; very considerate indeed,” he
remarked. ‘The calculation seems to be quite correct.”
But he showed no sign of producing his cheque-book.

«« The south transept is sometimes called the Ameri-
can Chapel,’” I announced from the official guide-book.
«Tn it is the American window which was unveiled by
the American ambassador in 1896.’ It contains, I see,
the figures of a number of saints and bishops, including
Dr. William Seabury, first Bishop of Connecticut, whose
consecration at Aberdeen in 1787 is also represented.
You have heard of the bishop, I suppose? ”

“Old man Seabury!” answered my frend, with an
air of grave, yet genial recognition that was, of course,
purely ironical ;—‘‘ old man Seabury! His name, sir, is
a household word in the United States. I would not,”
he went on, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘have missed
seeing his portrait for worlds. One might have known
it would bein Shakespeare’s church. Let us hope they
take care of it, and put it into a fireproof safe every
night.”

“At the west end of the church,” I continued, ‘is a
SHAKESPEARE’S CHURCH 103

copy of the agreement drawn up between the bishop
and his consecrators. According to the guide-book, this
appears to be of such interest to American church-people
that it has been printed, and a copy can be obtained
from the custodian for twopence—shall I get one for
you?”

“You give me the twopence and I'll tell you all about
Shakespeare twice over,’ was Mr. Fairfield’s answer.

“Tam afraid you are not an American church-per-
son,” I said, eyeing him with some sternness.

“What little I do in that line, sir, is with the Ply-
mouth Brethren,” was the retort, delivered with quiet
pride. ‘That is a quotation from ‘Punch’; not a
statement of fact,” he confessed a moment later.

‘“‘ This really is interesting,” I said in all seriousness,
when we had reached the north transept and were look-
ing at the screen which shuts off the north end of it.
“The guide-book says that it was the old chancel-screen,
and that through its doors was doubtless carried the
body of William Shakespeare, to be laid to rest before
the altar.”

“Then why in the name of wonder has it been
brought here?”

“The guide-book says it was removed in the so-called
restoration in 1842. JI think I have heard something of
that restoration. It was then, or perhaps earlier, that
the original tombstone was taken away and a new one
substituted for it.”

“The person responsible for that restoration ought to
have been whipped at the cart’s tail,” said Mr. Fairfield
savagely. ‘I did not know that the tombstone was not
here.”

“This guide-book merely states that the inscription
has been recut; but I am certain Halliwell-Phillipps
says somewhere that the present tombstone is modern.”

‘Well I’m gormed!” said my fellow-pilgrim in awe-
struck accents a minute later. ‘‘I deprecate the use of
such an expression in a place of worship, but really I
104 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

am gormed, and nothing milder will meet the case.”
He was standing before a notice-board, which stated,
that any one wishing to play the organ must pay a fee
of half-a-crown, and that the performance must not ex-
tend beyond a quarter of an hour.

«They told us at the Hathaway house that Barnum
made an offer to buy their whole concern, lock, stock
and barrel,’’ he continued, his eyes glued upon the notice.
“Tf he’d come on here, I guess this edifice would have
taught him a few wrinkles in the show business.”’

“T’ve a great mind to have half-a-crown’s worth,”
was his next remark; and he shot a glance at me, and
then looked over to where a second cassocked verger
was hovering near us.

“Perhaps you will give me time to get outside first,”
I pleaded, for I knew that he was no musician.

“But I must have some one to blow the bellows. I
don’t know much about organs, but I do know that.
And, by-the-by, I rather fancy you have to play with
your feet as well as your hands. That’s unfortunate—
but after all, a cat can have but its claws: a man can
do no more than his best.’’ Mr. Fairfield said this
with the air of one who strengthens himself in some
high resolve.

“«T will smoke a pipe outside,” said I.

‘‘Noneed for you to go, sir. IfI so far forgot myself
as to perform on that instrument, and my music did not
give satisfaction, I should tell them I was an American
citizen.”

«And what would happen then?”

A bland smile overspread my companion’s features.

‘‘They would implore me to resume operations, and
they would offer to put my portrait in one of the windows
of the American chapel—I paying expenses and contri-
buting something to the restoration fund.”

“We must not overlook the third window from the
end, on the left-hand side of the chancel,” said I, to
change the subject. My national pride had been a little
SHAKESPEARE’S CHURCH 105

irritated ever since we had entered the church, and my
friend’s sarcasm carried a sting. ‘‘‘The subjects’ ”—
here I was quoting from the official guide—‘‘‘are
Scriptural iliustrations of the seven ages of man, from
the play of “‘ As you like it”’.’”’

Mr. Fairfield looked at me with an unbelieving smile,
and then he looked at the window.

“T thought you were joking,” he said.

“T am reading word for word from the guide-book.”
And I went on—‘‘‘ There is Moses the infant, mewling
and puking in his nurse’s arms; then Samuel is the
schoolboy, creeping like snail unwillingly to school——’ ”

“Ah, the whining schoolboy with his satchel and
shining morning face,” interposed my listener. ‘‘ This
is indeed seeing Samuel in a new light.”

““« Jacob the lover with sonnet to his mistress’ eye-
brow,’”’—-I continued, disregarding the interruption,
««* Joshua the soldier, full of strange oaths and bearded
like the pard.’”

“T didn’t know that Joshua swore like a trooper,”
broke in Mr. Fairfield once again; ‘‘I think none the
better of him for it. But possibly the donors of that
window think otherwise—one can’t help remembering
how Stratford clings to the legend that its idol was a

toss-pot.”
“Your interruptions are somewhat irreverent,” I sug-
gested with due severity. ‘‘ Please allow me to go on.”

“‘T would not stop you for the world,” was the polite
answer.

““«Up above,’”’ I resumed, ‘‘ ‘ Solomon is the justice,
full of wise saws and modern instances.’” Here I
paused, for the comicality of the thing was hard to
resist.

“In my mind’s eye I see him in his fair round belly,
with good capon lined,” murmured my companion, his
grave eyes dancing with merriment; then, with por-
tentous gravity he continued, “‘ Really, I must ask you to
read no more. My moral sense revolts from such a
picture of the Wise Man. Does the guide-book give
106 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

the name of the genius who is responsible for this
window ?”’

I had anticipated some question of this kind, and was
prepared with the answer. ButI did not hurry; my
national pride was still smarting. ‘The guide-book
says that the window,’ I began, slowly, ‘“‘ah, here it
is,’ and I read aloud—‘ ‘has been erected by the vol-
untary offerings of Americans who visit the shrine of
the chief of poets’.”

A faint whistle of astonishment escaped Mr. Fair-
field, as he stood devouring the window with his eyes.
Then he turned to me, a smile of triumph on his lips :-—

“T guess Uncle Sam got back a bit of his own here,”
he explained; and seeing that I did not understand, he
added: ‘It’s a practical joke, man; I wish Mark Twain
could see it!”

‘Some of your guide-books say,” I remarked, “ that
people will contribute to these windows, but won’t con-
tribute to the repair of the church.”

‘‘T don’t believe my countrymen are such fools,” as-
serted the scoffer, without a trace of his former merri-
ment.

“The guide-book also says that parts of the fabric are
in imminent danger.”

“Tf that’s true, it’s about time your Parliament took
charge of this church,” quoth Mr. Fairfield, in flaming
wrath. ‘If the present authorities play about with such
toys as coloured windows, when the place itself is not
safe, they ought to be taught better, or transferred to
some other sphere of usefulness.”

“There is the grave,” I said, when at length we stood
before the altar-rail. The chancel was clear of visitors
by this time.

My friend’s gaze rested for a moment on the pave-
ment before us, and then turned to the monument.

‘This is shameful, abominable!”’ he exclaimed in hot
wrath.

“What is?” I asked in astonishment.
SHAKESPEARE’S CHURCH 107

“This barrier. You can’t get anything like a full
view of the face without going inside. That means
another fee, of course.”

‘“My dear Fairfield, this is the altar-rail. We are in
a parish church, not a mausoleum.”

I spoke in a tone of remonstrance, for I thought his
wrath unreasonable.

‘« Tt’s put here on purpose,” he went on as angrily as
ever; ‘‘I feel sure it used to be farther back, and they’ve
brought it forward on purpose.”

‘* After all, what does it matter to an American citi-
zen?” I suggested. I had bethought me of his sarcasm
about the organ, and I seized my opportunity.

From the startled expression on his face, I saw that
he thought I was challenging hisright to criticise ; that
I was suggesting he was a foreigner, one who had no
part nor lot in England’s Shakespeare.

«« You can climb over,” I added, grimly.

He took my meaning in a flash and he broke into a
smile.

“T can’t afford it,” he said; and then with a sudden
seriousness he went on hastily, “‘ that wasa silly joke of
mine; very ill-mannered, too. I beg your pardon; I
spoke without thought, and never dreamed of your tak-
ing it amiss.”” And he held out his hand.

His sorrow was so manifest as he-proffered the olive-
branch, that it melted me to confession.

“IT was annoyed only because I felt it was true.
After all,” I went on penitently, “every man is a little
bit of his own country, and when he sees her holding
out the hat in that way to another country—even
America—it makes him touchy.”

We stood gazing at the tombstone, each trying in
some dim half-conscious way to call up the last scene.

“Do you believe he wrote the lines on the grave?”
asked my companion at length.

“T am disposed to think he did. My little guide-
book says no one will suppose that he wrote such
108 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

doggerel himself. But are they doggerel? There is
no sort of inspiration about the four lines, but—

Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here,

seems to me to have an easy homeliness that is not at
all un-Shakespearean, and the last two lines—

Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones,

are not what I should call doggerel. There seems to
me a certain terse vigour about the whole thing; and
if it be considered from the standpoint that Shakespeare
knew it was the practice here to remove remains after
a decent interval of interment, to the bone-house, into
which that door on our left used to open, and the
thought of his own remains being so dealt with was re-
pugnant to him, can any one say that even he could have
framed an epitaph that would appeal more effectually to
the illiterate and probably superstitious sextons or parish
clerks, who would have control over the grave ?”’

“Your Tennyson thought it was Shakespeare’s, any-
how, and he was a pretty good judge of a poetical
article,” quoth Mr. Fairfield, and he proceeded to re-
peat the lines he had in mind :—

‘* My Shakespeare’s curse on clown or knave,
Who will not let his ashes rest.”

“Which is the widow’s tomb?’ he asked, after he
had been to the extreme south end of the altar-rail to
get a better view of the bust, and had returned to my
side looking very discontented.

“The one on the left of Shakespeare’s, and the
daughter Susannah’s is the third from the right. There
is a quaint and very pretty poetical epitaph on hers,
My clerical guide-book calls it an amusing rhyme; I
will read it to you :—
SHAKESPEARE’S CHURCH 109

‘* Witty above her sex, but that’s not all,

Wise to salvation was good Mistress Hall.
Something of Shakespeare was in that, but this
Wholly of Him with whom she’s now in bliss.
Then, passenger, hast ne’er a tear,

To weep with her that wept with all ?

That wept yet set herself to cheer

Them up with comforts cordial.

Her love shall live, her mercy spread,

When thou hast ne’er a tear to shed.”

“ Very diverting indeed,” was Mr. Fairfield’s sardonic
comment when I had finished. After a pause he went
on: “ There will be trouble here if ever old Brer Tarrypin
comes and reads it. You may have forgotten,” he ex-
plained, “ that if old Brer Tarrypin was taken with one
of those spells of his, folks had to sit up with him,
because he laughed so loud and he laughed so long. I
hope you know ‘ Uncle Remus’.”

“¢ Brer Tarrypin wuz de out’nes’ man,’” was my
only answer; but Mr. Fairfield accepted it as more than
satisfactory.

Certain sounds to our rear warned us that a horde
of pilgrims was approaching the shrine. We passed
out into the churchyard and made our way to the terrace.
Mr. Fairfield admitted that when on the Bankside I had
assured him that there was no more beautiful prospect
in England, I spoke nothing but the truth.

There is a rude stone seat near the water’s edge, and
here we seated ourselves that warm September morning
and sought consolation in tobacco.

“It’s a pity that money has to be made out of this
church and the housesin Henley Street,” said my friend
musingly.

“ And what about the Hathaway house ?”

“‘T don’t think that’s worth considering. Taking it
at its best, it’s only a picturesque old farmhouse at which
possibly the woman whom Shakespeare married was
brought up. That sort of association with Shakespeare
is far too shadowy to enthuse me,”
110 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“And what would you do with the church and the
two houses?”

“T hardly know about the houses; but I think the
church ought to be in the hands of the State. Shake-
speare’s grave is one of the biggest things in the whole
world. No one but his country herself ought to have
control of it. It’s a little gold mine if it’s worked for
profit; but for the sake of public decency there ought
to be no money-making about it. The State ought to
keep the church up as anational monument. I wouldn’t
have the parson interfered with as regards his spiritual
duties ; but I would have the church so controlled that
it should be secure against wind and weather, and that
a man could reach Shakespeare’s grave without having
all feeling of reverence knocked out of him before he
got there—surely England can keep up Shakespeare’s
church without cadging for outside help. And I’d have
it bear something of a national character. Tennyson
had your flag on his coffin. Why not have the flag over
Shakespeare’s monument, and why shouldn’t the men
who guard it be old soldiers with medals on their breasts?”

Mr. Fairfield paused. He had spoken with so much
intensity that he was out of breath. He wiped his brow
and relapsed into silence.

“Not but what there’s something very stimulating
to a business mind in the way the business is conducted
here,” he resumed in his usual tone of polite irony a
few minutes later. He had cooled down and was look-
ing at the ticket of admission which he had received in
the porch. I had not kept mine, sol asked him for
an explanation.

““« Admission to see Shakespeare’s grave, sixpence
each,’ he read aloud. ‘‘‘ All children, except those in
arms, must be paid for.’ That sounds like business.”

“ Perhaps they don’t want children in the church,” I
suggested.

“J think they do, sir—at sixpence a head. If not,
why admit them at all?”
SHAKESPEARE’S CHURCH 111

There seemed no answer to this. I held my peace,
and Mr. Fairfield continued to read from the ticket.

‘“«« The custodian is directed to admit all parishioners
and their friends with them, without payment; also
clergymen on presentation of their card and any persons
who desire to enter the nave only, solely for the purpose
of prayer or meditation.’ It’s weak, sir, very weak to
let those persons in free,” continued Mr, Fairfield in
the tone of one whose sense of propriety has been out-
raged. ‘ What business has any visitor to want to pray
or meditate in Shakespeare’s church ?”

“You mean without paying for it,” I suggested,
entering into his humour.

“Certainly, sir; and speaking as a man of business, I
ask you why, with such a handsome free list—parishion-
ers and their friends with them—with them, you observe
—and clergymen i

“T think that only means properly ordained clergy-
men, not mere ministers of religion,” I broke in, anxious
to do justice between the authorities and their censor.

“No doubt! no doubt! But with such a free list,
why rob the treasury by letting in outsiders at all?”

“Are you quite just ?’’ I protested; ‘ the admission

-is hedged round with so many provisos that the trea-
sury is in no danger. The visitor’s purpose must be
solely that of prayer or meditation, and he must desire
to enter the nave only. Have you forgotten the broad
gulf before the altar-rail? Surely that is enough to
protect the authorities against the risk of any such
person obtaining a free glimpse of the valuable com-
mercial assets behind it.”

‘“‘T spoke in haste,” admitted my client, ‘‘ and I beg
pardon. I had forgotten the interval. It is indeed a
rampart against fraud—or ‘as a moat defensive to a
house’. But I still hold, sir, that the indulgence is a
mistake. Think of the extra work it must throw on
the check-taker in the porch and his colleague in the
chancel. And besides, it spoils the symmetry of the

 
112 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

show-business if you mention prayer or meditation on
the checks. It reminds you that the place is a church ;
anda church, where all children, except infants in arms,
must be paid for, tickles a man’s sense of humour.”

Something seemed to tickle his sense of humour
very powerfully a few minutes later, for he burst out
laughing.

“T was thinking,” he explained, “that any one who
wanted to pray or meditate without paying his footing,
would have a bad time in that porch before he got
passed in; and then I thought of what a sharp look-out
those two officials would keep on him while he was pur-
suing his devotions, And then, sir, it occurred to me
that after a spell of prayer and meditation, the penitent
might forget where he was, and might make for the
altar-rail; and,” here he laughed again, ‘‘I thought how
disturbing it would be for him to be headed-off by the
inside gentleman in the Noah’s-ark coat!”

‘‘It wouldn’t happen,” I said, after we had had our
laugh out.

‘Of course it wouldn’t,” was the answer; ‘only I
like to figure it out in that way.”

“T’ve enjoyed this jaunt very much,” declared my
fellow-pilgrim, after along pause. ‘‘ The place is lovely ”’
—here his eye rested on the scene before us—‘‘so’s the
country round; but for getting near to Shakespeare give
me the Bankside!”

“ Particularly at night-time,’ I suggested—“ after
dinner, in fact.”
‘"NOAV-NO-GUOdLVULS ‘HONNHO aL

 
CHAPTER Ix
WITH GOLDSMITH IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT

“WHEN you have half an hour to spare, I can show you
something interesting. Any time will suit me.”

This was the message, written by Mr. Fairfield upon
a scrap of paper in my outer office one afternoon, and
duly brought into my sanctum.

“Say I shall be disengaged ina few minutes, and
ask him to wait,” was my answer.

It was not long before the client whose woes I was
then considering had reached the end of his catalogue ;
and when Mr. Fairfield had been inducted into the seat
just vacated, I could see that, to him at all events, the
something referred to in the message was very interest-
ing indeed.

“Tt’s nothing at all important. I doubt if it’s worth
your wasting your time over it.”

He said this with a deprecating wave of the hand;
but in his tone and manner there was a suggestion of
triumph and suppressed excitement, which belied his
words, and conveyed a promise of fat things.

“ Human life being so uncertain, let me see it at once,”
I answered, with due gravity. ‘‘ The man who was sit-
ting in your chair two minutes ago, lost £200 because
he put off until Tuesday what he might have done on
Monday.”

“T think you will last for a few days yet, and there
really is no hurry.” He laughed as he said this; but
he rose to his feet as if anxious to take me at my word.

‘T was not thinking of myself,” I observed, as I began

8 118
114 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

to tidy up my table. ‘“ My anxiety was all on your ac-
count; your intellectual boiler shows signs of severe
pressure.”’

‘‘T’m as cool as a cucumber,” he protested; and then
without an instant’s pause he got to business.—‘‘ Do
you know anything about Oliver Goldsmith ?”

A question so bald as this deserved no serious answer.
‘« Oliver Goldsmith ?’’ I repeated; ‘‘ yes, the name seems
familiar. Wasn’t it he who wrote a history of HEng-
land? TI got it for a prize when I was a child. Surely
it can’t be popular on your side of the Atlantic,—it’s in
the form of a series of letters to a young nobleman.
That, of course, would never go down in a free republic.”

I am afraid the delicate flavour of my irony was lost
on Mr. Fairfield; for he had produced some slips of
paper from his pocket-book, and was busy turning them
over as I spoke. But he heard enough to bring him
to a sense of the enormity of which he had been
guilty.

“JT only meant, did you know Forster’s ‘ Life’?”

“T know it nearly as well as Mr. Wegg knew the
‘Annual Register’. .Do you remember what he said
about that?”

Just then the visitor’s mind was brimful of Oliver
Goldsmith, but at no time could an allusion to his be-
loved Dickens miss the mark. His answer was ready,
and his face beamed as he gave it :—

““« Know the Animal Register, sir? For a trifling
wager, I could find any animal in him blindfold.’ ”’

‘If you know the ‘ Life’ so well you must remember
Green Arbour Court,” he went on. ‘It’s an interesting
place; Goldsmith lived there for two years.”

““T remember something about it,”

“Goldsmith was thirty when he went there in 1758.
He’d had rough times in those thirty years. His ex-
periences were enough to equip a dozen of modern
story-tellers. Just think of what he’d been before he
came to Hngland—a sizar at Trinity College, Dublin,
IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT 115

a@ medical student at Edinburgh and Leyden, and a
vagabond—a fluting and disputing vagabond—over half
Europe! And over here, he’d tried play-acting, physick-
ing poor people—I remember your mentioning that on
the Bankside, that night you were so mellow two years
ago—besides proof-correcting for Sam Richardson,
school-mastering, and, worst of all, hack-writing for
Griffiths the bookseller, Man alive! it was in Green
Arbour Court that he wrote the ‘Bee’ and the ‘ Citizen
of the World’!”

“Ts there anything of the place left?”

“Not a vestige.” Mr. Fairfield’s response was as
joyous asif it had been an assurance that not a brick
of Green Arbour Court had been disturbed since Gold-
smith left it. I looked at him for an explanation.

“You come along with me,” was all he said.

“Do you remember Holborn Hill before the Viaduct
was made ?”’

We had passed out of Gray’s Inn, and had made our
way down Holborn nearly as far as the Circus, when
my companion asked this question.

I had not known Holborn in the days when a church-
yard lay between the main road and St. Andrew’s
Church, and when that road descended to Farringdon
Street by a violent slope; but I had heard old-Londoners
speak of the steepness of the hill and of the strain that
it had imposed upon horse flesh.

‘The hollow which is now bridged by the Viaduct is
the valley of the river Fleet; it’s proper name is the
Holborn Valley. That’s what it’s called in the official
records of the improvement. I’ve hunted them up a
good bit just lately.”

As Mr. Fairfield spoke he came to a dead stop, a few
paces west of the Prince Consort’s statue.

‘Tt’s more than thirty years ago since they made the
Viaduct. Down to where we are standing, Holborn
runs as of old; but beyond’’—here he waved his hand
across the roadway—“‘ the whole face of the country has
116 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

been changed. For acres and acres not one stone was
left upon another.”

« But surely Ely Place isn’t new?”

“No, it isn’t exactly new: the houses go back to
about 1780. The chapel’s one of the oldest buildings
in London; it was part of Ely House, the Bishop of
Ely’s palace. Jobn of Gaunt died m Ely House.
Queen Elizabeth helped Christopher Hatton to filch
a great slice of the property later on—he even got
the gatehouse. Malcolm gives the best account of the
robbery that I know. Didn’t we talk about it that
afternoon when we hunted out the Hatton Garden
police-office ?”

‘‘T don’t think you said anything about the present
Ely Place being built.”

“Your Government sold what was left to one of its
deputy surveyors. That was in George the Third’s
time—it was a nice thing to be a Government official in
those days. He pulled down the old hall, and he built
the present houses. A little before that, by-the-by,
there had been a proposal to move the Fleet Prison to
Ely Place. Fortunately the beast of a fellow didn’t pull
down the chapel.”

“T’ve been over that.”

“So have I. It’s an interesting place. Evelyn’s
daughter Susanna was married there. I’ve a great
admiration for Evelyn; Disraeli was nght when he
made Cardinal Grandison say he had a character that
approached perfection. Fanny Burney’s son was min-
ister at that chapel. The place is better looked after
now than it was in his time. It gave him his death—
it was so damp.”

“J think I can remember some rebuilding going on
at this end of Ely Place.”

“Very likely. The making of Charterhouse Street
shore off six or seven of the houses on each side, and a
new house was put up at each corner. But the rest of
the place wasn’t touched. There’s some rebuilding
IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT 117

going on at the other end, now, by-the-by. The old
entrance was in Holborn, between two houses—shops, I
suppose. It was nearly opposite St: Andrew’s—a few
paces westward to be quite accurate. I was told the
other day that there used to be a very fine pair of iron
gates, and nobody knew what became of them.”

“‘ Charterhouse Street is all quite new, I suppose.”

«Every inch of it. Before the valley was bridged,
Holborn ran from Hatton Garden citywards, with
nothing to break its continuity except the side streets.
It’s difficult now to form any notion of what it looked
like.”

With the Circus stretching before us, and three great
trunk thoroughfares branching from it, it was not easy
to form any sort of mental picture of the Holborn which
used to run as an unbroken main road between Ely
Place and St, Andrew’s Church, and down a steep hill
into Farringdon Street.

“‘Wasn’t Field Liane somewhere near here?” I
asked.

Mr. Fairfield pointed down Charterhouse Street. “It
went across there, a little below Ely Place, and ran into
Holborn, a shade east of the City Temple, yonder.”

“‘T was thinking of ‘ Oliver Twist.’.”

‘Of course, of course! Dickens gives a minute de-
scription of it. He calls it a narrow and dismal alley,
the emporium of petty larceny. In his time it was the
mart for selling handkerchiefs which pickpockets had
stolen. It was in Field Lane that Mr. Lively sat at
his shop door in a child’s chair and held converse with
Fagin—it was a vile place.”

‘“‘Tt’s a good thing it’s gone.”

My. Fairfield pursed up his lips. To admit that the
old thieves’ quarter which used to disgrace Holborn
Hill was a plague spot was all very well; but to rejoice
over an improvement that had altered the face of part
of the London of “ Oliver Twist,” was quite another
matter.
118 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“ There’s something of Field Lane left,’ he said,
“It’s name has disappeared from the map, but you can
still trace a scrap of its course. I can show it you if
you like.”

He made this offer grudgingly, and I could see that
he was unwilling to be diverted for even a few minutes,
from introducing me to his great discovery. Under
the circumstances, the temptation to accept was irre-
sistible. /

“‘T should very much like to see it.”

The enthusiast gave a longing look at the Viaduct,
as if he would fain move in that direction, but he could
not go back on his offer; so with hasty strides he led
me down the north side of Charterhouse Street, and did
not pause till we had reached an opening between the
houses, a few paces short of Farringdon Street. Three
broad flights of steps led down to a narrow street run-
ning northward, with tall buildings that looked like
warehouses or factories on either side.

“That's Field Lane! It used to be full of filthy
shops, festooned with stolen pocket-handkerchiefs, and
there was a barber’s shop and a coffee-shop, and a beer-
shop and a fried fish-shop. One can hardly believe it!
In the old days it ran up to Great Saffron Hill, and
that ran up to Little Saffron Hill. Chick Lane ran out
eastward at the junction of Field Lane and Great
Saffron Hill; not a stone’s throw from where we're
standing—a few yards to our right, in fact. It was a
very sweet spot. Hogarth knew it; it was in a night-
cellar in Chick Lane that Tom Idle was betrayed to the
peace officers. The cant name of the place was the
Blood-bowl House. The gang that used it was called
the Black-Boy-Alley gang: the alley was a turning out
of Chick Lane. They decoyed their victims to the
place and murdered them; it was the custom of the
house to dispose of the bodies by dropping them into
the Fleet. It ran alongside, and the bodies floated
quietly down into the Thames. It’s quite creepy to
IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT 119

think of that Bowl House standing over yonder: just
to our right-front. This city was an awful place in the
time of George II. One mustn’t take what Johnson
says in his ‘ London’ too seriously, for he was paraphras-
ing Juvenal, but this neighbourhood really was a little
hell upon earth :-—

London ! the needy villain’s general home,
The common sewer of Paris and of Rome.

Scarce can our fields—such crowds at Tyburn die—
‘With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply.

Prepare for death, if here at night you yoam,
And sign your will before you sup from home.”

Mr. Fairfield fired off these extracts like minute guns,
and drew a deep breath as he surveyed the sunken road-
way and raked his memory for further ammunition.
It was not long before he exploded with a fresh
charge :—

‘‘ Here malice, rapine, accident conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire ;

Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay——”

He recited the third line with great emphasis and a
sweep of his arm, that took in a considerable extent of
brick and mortar to the north-east. Then he stopped
short and looked into my face with twinkling eyes.
He had stumbled upon something that amused him.

“ Surely you can finish the couplet?” said I.

“T can, sir, and since you are so pressing, I will :—

Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
And here the fell attorney prowls for prey.”

The scene of the ambush was again indicated by an
inward sweep of my friend's right arm; a knowing pat
on my shoulder lent point to the opening of the line that
followed.

“Chick Lane has disappeared from the face of the
120 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

earth,” he continued, ‘but both the Saffron Hills re-
main, and they and that road below us all figure on the
map as Great Saffron Hill. But the road really is Field
Lane. Fagin’s house was over yonder, in or near Chick
Lane; Dickens took care not to indicate the exact spot.
Do you remember the Three Cripples public-house on
Little Saffron Hill? It was there Mr. Sykes had an
altercation with his dog, and Noah Claypole and Char-
lotte put up when they came to London. Fagin intro-
duced himself to them there.”

«There’s something I want to show you here,” said
Mr. Fairfield, when we had retraced our steps to
Holborn Circus and were passing the north side of St.
Andrew’s church. ‘‘ You see that black tablet near the
ground—just under the middle windows! Well, that’s
a carving of the general resurrection, and I’m pretty
sure it used to be over the entrance to the Shoe Lane
burial-ground. If I’m right, Chatterton’s coffin passed
under that tablet. There’s another carving of the same
sort over the gate of St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street.”

“Are we to go in and look at it?” I asked.

‘* Perhaps we'd better press on; you can see it some
other time. The bells were ringing when I was prowl-
ing about here the other afternoon. They were ringing
for a christening. I suppose you’ve never heard them,
though you've lived within a stone’s-throw ‘for years
and years.”

“ Are they anything wonderful?”

““Wonderful or not, they're very interesting to me.
All old London bells are, and these have been ringing
over the Holborn Valley for nearly four centuries and
a half. Think of that, Master Brooke! I waited to
get a glimpse of the baby who was being so honoured.”

‘“ But surely St. Andrew’s is nothing like that age;
I thought it was one of Wren’s churches.”

“So itis; but he didn’t pull down the old tower.
He only cased it in stone and added a storey to it.
Those bells were hung in fourteen-fifty something.’’
IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT 121

We had reached the Viaduct by this time and had
come toa stop. ‘From here to Ludgate Circus,” said
my guide, as we leaned on the parapet and looked down
upon Farringdon Street, “the road follows the course
of the Fleet. The old river is still running, though we
don’t see it. Stow calls it Fleet Dike—in earlier days
it was Turnmill Brook. I guess it takes a biggish pipe
to hold it, even now. There used to be a bridge—Hol-
born Bridge—a shade north of where this viaduct
stands. In Goldsmith’s time, and for many years after-
wards, the road below us was Fleet Market.”

So saying Mr. Fairfield proceeded to light a cigar ;
and, lapsing into silence, he puffed at it; his eyes fixed
absently in the direction of Ludgate Hill.

“Ts your discovery far off?” I inquired at length.

“Oh, no, it’s quite close; I was just thinking about
it.” He spoke like one aroused from a day-dream.

“Green Arbour Court was a very poor place,” he
went on. ‘It lay between the road below us and the
Old Bailey. Forster never saw it. He says in the
‘Life’ that the houses fairly rotted down somewhere
about 1830; and that after serving for a time as the
stabling and lofts of a waggon-office, the place went
for ever. Ive looked at a good many old maps, and
from these and from what I’ve read it seems that in
Goldsmith’s time the court was an oblong close of tall old
houses, lying pretty near due east and west, and the
houses were in very bad repair. I’ve traced them back
to 1677, and I’ve no doubt they were built just after
the great fire. Goldsmith’s was Number 12; Forster
refers to a picture of it in the ‘ European Magazine’ for
1803—forty odd years after Goldsmith left. The house
stood in a corner of the court—the north-west corner in
fact; though Sir James Prior, whom Forster followed,
says otherwise. And under part of the basement
storey—under Goldsmith’s very windows; for he had
the first-floor front room—there was a tunnel giving
access to a flight of steps which led down to the
122 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

street behind. Washington Irving hunted the place
out in 1820 or thereabouts. He seems to have hada
devil of a job to find it; I can’t think why. He gave a
full description in his ‘ Tales of a Traveller’. The steps
were called Break-neck Steps, and according to Irving
they were long and steep. Prior says the same. I
think he had seen them, but I don’t believe Forster had.
He took what Prior said on trust. Goldsmith’s side of
the court must have stood on the edge of the ridge over-
looking the Fleet Valley—on the east bank of the
Fleet. In Forster's time the name of the court still
figured on the map, though the open space had dis-
appeared and a mere passage remained, but now even
that’s gone.”

Here Mr. Fairfield paused to coax his cigar back into
working order.

“When I first read Forster and Irving many years
ago,” he resumed, ‘I took a deal of interest in the place.
It was from there Goldsmith offered himself for ex-
amination at Surgeons’ Hall in the Old Bailey, when
he wanted to qualify as a hospital mate. I daresay you
remember how he got Griffiths to become security with
a tailor for a new suit of clothes, so that he might make
a decent appearance. He didn’t pass the examination,
notwithstanding his fine feathers, and before long he
had to pawn them. He was in debt: to the poor couple
who let him his room at Number 12, and as the husband
had been arrested by bailiffs, money had to be raised
somehow. Then there was a pretty to-do, for Griffiths
wanted the clothes back. There were some books, too,
that he wanted, and neither clothes nor books were
forthcoming. Then he called Oliver a sharper and a
villain and threatened to jail him. Poor Oliver! the
business was patched up in the end; but he had a bad
time over that suit of clothes and those books. It’s a
comfort to know that things mended a bit with him
during the two years he lived over that flight of steps.
I daresay he was often hungry, and I don’t suppose he
was ever a guinea to the good; but he wrote the ‘ Bee’
IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT 123

and the ‘ Citizen of the World’ there, and he began to
be recognized as something better than a Grub Street
man. Percy of the ‘ Reliques’ called on him at Number
12. So did Smollett, and Newbery, the bookseller
who afterwards published ‘The Traveller’ and ‘The
Vicar of Wakefield’. Yes, sir, I used to think long
before I crossed the Atlantic for the first time that
I’d like to find the whereabouts of Green Arbour
Court.”

«« And now you’ve done it.”” This then was the great
discovery.

Mr. Fairfield regarded me with half-shut eyes, and
he blew out a puff or two of smoke before replying.

“T’ve done rather better than that; you come along
with me.”

So saying he headed eastward, and in a minute or
two we were passing the railway terminus. For an
instant my guide paused as if in doubt; but after a
muttered ‘“‘ The other entrance will be better,” he led
me to the corner of the Old Bailey. Before us lay the
thoroughfare, and beyond it a great gap, marking the
site of Newgate prison. The clearance was new to me,
and I halted to stare at the unexpected view of St.
Paul’s which it revealed.

“Do you know why the Old Bailey widens out so at
this end? ”

Mr. Fairfield asked this question as he scanned the
prospect southward.

I had never before observed that such was the fact,
but standing at the corner, and looking towards Lud-
gate Hill, the bulge on the west side was very noticeable.

“Why is it?”

‘‘There used to be an island of houses in what is now
the roadway. It extended froma little above where we
are standing to Dean’s Court, which is a few yards on
this side of Fleet Lane. The frontage on the east side
was straight, but on this side it took-a wide curve. The
street on the curved side was called the Little Old
124 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Bailey. Oliver Goldsmith’s postal address was Green
Arbour Court, Little Old Bailey.”

We turned sharp round the corner and made our way
along a passage, having on one side the backs of the
Viaduct houses and on the other a hoarding, which
formed as I afterwards discovered, the northern bound-
ary of the railway goods-depot. This hoarding ended
at a brick shed, labelled Parcels Office and abutting
upon a side entrance to the terminus.

“You see the shed on our left,” observed my com-
panion with deep meaning, as we reached the threshold
of the station.

I surveyed it with a due appearance of interest but
made no comment. There was nothing in its very
commonplace appearance to encourage inquiry.

No sooner had we entered the terminus, than it
became evident that Mr. James C. Fairfield of Chicago
was no stranger to the officials of the Chatham and
South-Eastern Railway Company. As we moved for-
ward, we passed several porters, and on the face of each
of them beamed a broad grin of recognition and welcome.
On our approaching the entrance to the middle platform,
the ticket-collector touched his cap and swung the
barrier wide open to allow us passage. In our wake
followed two porters, a stray guard and one of those
oleaginous officials whose duty it is to see that the
wheel-boxes are kept in a proper state of efficiency.

At the third of the iron pillars which extend down
the length of the platform and help to support the roof,
my friend stopped. He faced due east, and drew him-
self up to his full height. It was evident that he was
about to disclose the great secret. The porters, the guard
and the oiler grouped themselves round us; mirth and
joyous expectation lit up the countenances of all of them.

There was a measured dignity about Mr. Fairfield’s
Opening that was worthy of the occasion.

“In a matter of this kind, all that is necessary is a
little perseverance——”’
IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT 125

“ All it wants, is a bit o’ brain work and a little in-
genooity,” interrupted the oiler, in a tone of warm en-
couragement.

“Found another, sir?” This was the guard’s
genial inquiry.

“Another what?” The tone was perhaps a little
snappish.

** Another goldsmith’s.”

As the guard said this he was shaken with inward
merriment, and the demeanour of his three colleagues
gave the world assurance that he had said a good thing.
Mr. Fairfield saw all this, but he answered the question
with grave serenity.

“No, not another.”

This disclaimer seemed to arouse a general feeling of
sympathy. The porters and the oiler showed it only in
their looks, but the guard was ready with an offer of
consolation.

‘‘There’s something in the engine-’ouse as you'd like
to see,”’ quoth he, as if addressing a child.

“Thank you!—I shall be at your service in a few
minutes.”

My friend spoke with his usual quiet courtesy, but
his meaning was unmistakable. The bodyguard with-
drew beyond the barrier; but I could see that they and
the ticket collector were keeping a vigilant eye on the
pilgrim from Chicago, and that ever and anon one or
another of the group made a remark which convulsed
the rest with laughter.

“‘-You see this pillar,” said Mr. Fairfield, patting the
object referred to; ‘‘and you see the next one—the
fourth counting from the barrier?”

After I had stared hard at the one and then at the
other, I nodded.

“The site of Number 12 Green Arbour Court occu-
pied the space between them.”

He said this with studied calmness, but his eye
sparkled with the consciousness of a great triumph.
126 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘Yes,’ he went on, after a moment’s silence, ‘‘ we
are standing on the identical site of that old house. Not
knowing it’s exact dimensions, one can’t locate it to a
foot or two; but I'll take my oath it stood between
these two pillars. The house looked towards the Old
Bailey, and I feel pretty sure that it stood about half on
this platform and half on the permanent way in front
of us.”

Standing midway between the two pillars, and fac-
ing eastward, he indicated with four sweeps of his fore-
finger a square of some twenty feet.

“That’s the site according to my calculations. I
don’t pretend to know what the level was in Goldsmith’s
time, but here’s the site under our very feet. Isn’t it
odd to think,” he went on, looking around him and
showing by the freedom of his gestures that his en-
thusiasm was beginning to boil over—‘ isn’t 1t odd to
think that just here, there used to be that old house
with the front looking upon the little court, where
Oliver used to play his flute to amuse the children, and
the back looking upon a dirty lane? It was called
Seacoal Lane, and those Break-neck Steps led down to
it. I’ve read somewhere in Stow, that there used to be
an Inn of Chancery in Seacoal Lane, and that it moved
to the Strand, and set up there as New Inn, and I’ve
read somewhere else—in Hughson, I think—that Green
Arbour Court was possibly a relic of that old Inn—its
green arbour, perhaps.”

“ Just look round this depot,’’ he went on, ‘“ and try
to fancy what the place was like in Goldsmith’s time—
that’s far enough back for me. This roof covers one
half of the court, and the goods-depot yonder covers
the rest. The job’s too big for a man’s imagination—
it fairly stumps mine, anyhow. This railway has eaten
up Seacoal Lane—lock, stock, and barrel, and piles of
bricks and mortar besides. It fairly dazes me to look
at this platform and those metals, and try to call up
that rotten old house with the flight of steps running
through it down to Seacoal Lane—the steps that he
S

IN GREEN ARBOUR COURT 127

went up and down every day of his life, and that
Washington Irving went up more than eighty years
ago. When I feel dazed like this over a vanished bit
of old London, I always think of the ‘ Arabian Nights,’
and I feel one ought to be able to call in some genie
and make him reconstruct it for you.” Here he fairly
lost touch with the work-a-day world; he gave the plat-
form a smart tap with a patent-leather shoe, as if
summoning the genie to do his bidding.

*T would say to him, ‘Show me the Green Arbour
Court of 1760!’ he exclaimed.

‘‘ Haven’t you felt that want sometimes?” he asked,
a moment later. ‘‘I don’t like to think I’m madder
than my fellows!’”” The air with which he said this
was positively hangdog.

“ Possibly ; but if I had that power of reconstruction,
I’m not certain I should confine its exercise to the re-
surrection of old houses.”

“What would you resurrect ?”

‘“What do you say to a man’s own youth?”

His answer was instantaneous and very decisive.
‘No, thank you—not for me, thank you, at all events.
I can do enough of that sort of resurrection, and more
than enough, as it is—even in my waking hours.”

It was odd to stand on platform Number 3 of Hol-
born Viaduct terminus, with the noise and bustle of
the place in one’s ears, and to be assured that just under
foot lay the site of the house in which Goldsmith spent
two years of his short life. No man need be ashamed
of confessing a tenderness for Oliver Goldsmith, and
my friend’s discovery, trumpery though it might be, in-
terested and stirred me not a little.

POSTSCRIPT
THE BELLS OF ST. ANDREW’S, HOLBORN

They rang their message of weal or woe
In days of the Romish pride ;

They caught a gleam of the fires below,
When the Smithfield martyrs died.
128 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

They rang for feast, and they rang for fast :
They rang for the Roses twain,
Ere the Red Rose scattered, and fell at last,
In the mire of Barnet plain.
And lo, they rang for a mite to-day,
Who chewed at his fist the while,
Or wriggled about with his arms at play,
And a quaint, little, toothless smile !
In years to come, you will understand, and blush at the honour done—
They rang for Warwick the Kingmaker ; and they rang for you, my
son !

They rang at first, over stream and dell
Where the nodding alder shook,
And toilers bowed to the vesper bell,
As they rowed on Turnmill Brook ;
When Ely’s lord had a fair demesne,
With chapel and gatehouse too,
And Saffron Hill was an upland green
Where the purple saffron grew.
They rang the obit of bishop and priest:
They rang for His Majesty’s grace,
When Henry rode to the serjeants’ feast
In the hall of Ely Place.
The same old bells—in the same old tower, good sooth, as the
records run !—
They rang for King Hal and Queen Katherine ; and they rang for
you, my son !

Pealing and tolling from year to year,
They hailed, the centuries through,
Hero or sovereign, abbot or peer,
Ere ever they rang for you—
You, such an image to favour the joke,
Fidgetting there on your spine,
Such a hot little shrimp in the christening cloak
Your grandmother thinks so fine !
Sucking a fist that is pudgy and soft,
Working your bonnet awry,
Deaf as a post to the clamour aloft,
Though the great bells clash on high ;
All Holborn astir with their music : and you such a figure of fun !—
They rang for the Nile and Trafalgar ; and they rang for you, my son !
CHAPTER X
FOLLOWING IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS

WHEN we had passed the ticket-collector we found our
bodyguard of railway servants in waiting for us near
the bookstall. The guard and the two porters at once
took Mr. Fairfieldin tow. The oiler did not accompany
them; and as the party seemed in no want of my com-
pany, I decided to remain with him.

«You seem to know my friend pretty well here,”
said I.

“ Rather!” The answer was terse: but the wink
and the click of the tongue which followed it spoke
volumes. To the oiler and his colleagues, Mr. Fairfield
was no mere fellow-creature; he was an oasis in the
desert of life, a something to be rejoiced over and to be
thankful for.

‘“When he first come ‘ere, we didn’t ’ardly know
what to make of ’im. We thought as he’d got some
little game on. But, Lord! as soon as he begun to ask
questions, we saw ’ow it was with ’im.”

‘“‘He’s been here more than once, I suppose ?”’

‘More than once! ’As he been a-telling you as he’s
only been ’ere once ?”’

The oiler stopped abruptly as if the grossness of the
falsehood with which he was crediting my fellow-pil-
grim took his breath away. But before I could
explain that no such statement had been made, the
oleaginous one recovered his gift of speech.

“That's the best thing ’e’s done yet. Ho! Ho!

9 129
130 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Ho! He was pretty good last night, but that beats
all.”

I hesitated to ask for an explanation, but before the
struggle between dignity and curiosity which began to
rage in my bosom had come to a head, the oiler resumed
his parable.

“He told us as he wanted to take some measurements.
That’s easier said than done in a shop like this, with-
out special orders; but he stuck to it. So we told ’im,
that if he come between twelve and one some night,
all the roads ‘ud be clear. He said ’e’d come last
night. I’m off dooty as soon as the 11.42 goes out,
but I was ’ere right enough when he comes in at about
a quarter after twelve. I’d have stayed for ’im, if it
had meant six. He was in evenin’ dress, with a soft
hat and a grey overcoat. Meand Jack and the two
*Arrisons was all ready. We goes on to Number 3,
and he pulls out a ball of string.—‘ We’re just opposite
the parcels office,’ sez he to me; ‘you take this and
’old it against the outside corner, and give a pull when
you're there!’ I takes the end, and goes across to
Number 6, and presently he feels the jerk I give it.—
‘Are you there?’ he ’ollers. Jack had to stop that, or
there’d a been an end of the game in no time—shout-
ing here after midnight ain’t included in our regulations.
And I’m blest,”—here the oiler became convulsed—
“Tm blest, if he didn’t come cuttin’ round, to make
sure as I got the right place.—‘ The south side of that
shed marks the building-line,’ sez he; ‘you ’old the
string there, and I’ll see to the hangle.’ Back he trots,
and I see ’im take the ball away from Jack, who was
a-’olding it for ’im, and I feels ’im fiddling about with
it.—‘ T’ll peg it down now,’ sez he. He'd forgot they'd
told ’im to speak low. Then the string goes taut; and
the next minute, he comes flying back to me, to make
sure as I ’adn’t shifted. Wonderful nimble he is for ’is
time of life !—‘ You can let go now,’ sez he; ‘it’s all
right.’ I took ‘im across with me that time, to save ’is
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 131

legs ; and there was ’is penknife stuck in the platform,
with the string hitched round it, and ’im a-wipin’ his
forehead. He was fairly chronic last night, and no
mistake ; but it wouldn’t be right to shut ’im up—would
it now?”

‘“‘ Certainly not,” was my emphatic answer.

“They’re much better left alone when they're like
that. My wife’s father he’s just such another, but it’s
religion with ‘im, Nine days out of ten he’s as sensible
as Il am; though, mind yer, he may like to say grace
rather often at Sunday’s dinner, and a man don’t care
to be made sing ’ymns when he’s reading the paper after-
wards. The Missus sometimes flies at ’im for it, woman-
like, you know; but I don’t ’old with it.—‘ Let ’im
alone,’ sez I, ‘as long as he’s ’appy. Time enough to
check him when he wants to go out. street preachin’ ’—
that’s what he gets up to sometimes.”

** Doesn’t he preach well? ”

‘No worse than others; rather better if anything.”

The oiler said this with some shortness. What right
had I to suppose that his wife’s progenitor was in any
way inferior to other fathers-in-law? Ina moment,
however, he had recovered his good humour.

“‘ But who wants to see a respectable old gentleman
makin’ an image of ’imself? It ain’t often as things
reaches that pitch; but when they do, there’s only one
way of managing ‘im—you must get ‘Im in liquor.”

The strangeness of the oiler’s remedy for a diseased
brain took me by surprise. He saw this, and his tone
became painfully apologetic.

“Yes, I know it ain’t nice, but it can’t be helped.
It runs into money, for one thing, and it’s bad for the
children, if they see im when I bring ‘im ’ome. But
it has to be done.”

“Tut, tut, tut!” said I, with great solemnity; ‘but
surely my friend doesn’t give any trouble.”

“Lord, no! It’s as good as a play to see ’im march
into the place. I don’t say, mind yer, as somebody
132 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

oughtn’t to keep an eye to ’im—like as you might
be doing now—but it wouldn’t be right to shut
"im up. He’s free with his money, but I dessay he’s
got plenty, and it’s only right to let ’1m be.”

At this moment the subject of our conversation re-
appeared, evidently in high feather. He had got rid
of his bodyguard.

‘‘Was the show a good one?” I asked, as we made
our way out of the station.

“It was a superannuated weighing machine. The
mass of metal was considerable.”

** Are you interested in such things?”’

‘Not in the least; but the officials here were kind
enough to insist on my seeing it. They evidently
think I’m rather peculiar—even a little cracked, pos-
sibly.”’

““* Who'd ’a thunk it?’” I ejaculated.

Mr. Fairfield recognized the quotation from ‘‘ Uncle
Remus,” and laughed with great enjoyment.

“So long as they don’t obstruct. me, I don’t care
what they think. They're a good-natured, civil, hard-
working set of men, your railway servants. It’s strange
that some of them should have to wear such odd gar-
ments as india-rubber collars and leather ties.”

By this time we had emerged into the Old Bailey,
and had stepped inside the open entrance of the goods-
depot. An employé in uniform bolted out of a hutch
on the right, eager to challenge us; but no sooner did
he espy Mr. Fairfield than his official severity vanished.
He made a salute that was half military and half
comic, and retired into obscurity.

“The east end of the Court came to about there,”
said the welcome guest, pointing to the middle of the
open space. “There was a passage running into it
from the Old Bailey, just on the other side of that
hoarding; and the building line on the north side fol-
lowed the south face of that parcels office.”

“This particular court has been smashed up and
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 133

improved off the face of the earth,” he went on, “so
I've had a bit of trouble to locate it; but comparing an
old map—Rocque’s plan of 1746, for instance—with
the last ordnance survey, it’s simply staggering to find
how exactly the boundaries of most places have been
preserved. Now, a few yards lower down, there’s a
little place called Bishop’s Court, which in Goldsmith’s
time was parallel with Green Arbour Court. The rail-
way has cut off the end of it and the steps that used
to run down to Seacoal Lane, and I don’t suppose
there’s a brick of the old houses left; but the building-
line is exactly as it was a hundred and fifty years ago.
The City must keep a precious sharp eye on the front-
agers; they’re never slow to steal a bit of the roadway
if they get half a chance.”

“Ts there nothing left of the old access from Fleet
Market to Green Arbour Court?’’ I asked.

“We can get round to the west of the court in two
minutes,’ was the somewhat evasive answer; “ Fleet
Lane lies only a few yards below us on the right, and
we can slip through it into Farringdon Street in no
time. Nowadays Fleet Lane is the only channel of
communication between Fleet Market and the Old
Bailey; in Goldsmith’s time, foot passengers could
make their way through Green Arbour Court and
Bishop’s Court as well, but vehicles could only go by
way of Fleet Lane. Here itis!”’

‘Tt’s not much to look at,’ he went on, after we had
turned the corner, ‘‘ but it’s interesting to me. It’s an
old thoroughfare, and it’s curious to remember that the
slope down which we’re now sauntering was the ap-
proach to the River Fleet; and the roadway winds in
and out so unaccountably that I firmly believe it was
once the course of some tributary streamlet.”

‘‘T suppose that is the south end of the lane which
ran at the back of Goldsmith’s house,” said I, pointing
to the words Seacoal Lane written up at the entrance
to a turning on the left.
134 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“Oh, no! That’s modern. The old lane ended at
Fleet Lane—just on our right. This one may have
been made before the improvements, as a continuation
of the old one. Perhaps the railway had to make it.
It runs in a wide curve; and I believe it follows the
eastern boundary of the Fleet Prison. But I’m not
sure; life’s not long enough to allow one to clear up
points like that.”

We passed through the railway arch which spans
Fleet Lane; and could see Farringdon Street a little
way ahead of us. The Memorial Hall and its extension
occupy the rest of the south side of the lane, and oppo-
site them is a row of two-storeyed houses of a moderate
antiquity.

“Those houses were there in Mr. Pickwick’s time,
and so was the queer little close that has an entrance
under one of them,” said Mr. Fairfield. ‘It’s called
New Court and it was built some time in the latter half
of the eighteenth century. By then people had begun to
understand that a little light and air was not amiss, even
ina town. Those Fleet Lane houses have a small interest
of theirown. They formed part of the Rules of the Fleet ;
perhaps they are now all that is left of the old houses
within the Rules. You know, I suppose, that debtors
could on payment of a fee obtain the privilege of living
in the Rules instead of inside the jail. They called
them ‘prisoners on Rule ’—~‘ Rulers’ was the slang
name. Madeline Bray’s father was a ‘ Ruler’ of the
King’s Bench; and, by-the-by, Sam Titmarsh was a
‘Ruler’ of the Fleet.”

I was interested in the old houses for another reason,
During our stroll from the Old Bailey it had occurred
to me that we were approaching the scene of the Fleet
marriages, and I felt pretty sure that when Lord Hard-
wicke’s Marriage Act was passed almost every house in
Fleet Lane was an illegal marriage office.

“How old should you say those houses are?” I
asked.
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 135

‘“‘ Certainly a hundred years; probably more.”

“Tf those houses are more than a hundred and fifty
years old, I'll wager that pretty nearly every one of
them was a grog shop in 1753, with a Fleet parson on
the premises.”

“I'd forgotten about those marriages. I must get
Besant’s ‘ Chaplain of the Fleet’ andre-readit. That's
the best way of getting a bird’s-eye view of a bygone
state of manners.”

“It’s the pleasantest way,” I conceded.

“Tt’s my way anyhow. When I’ve read the book
again, I shall come back here, and see if I can ferret
out any of the places that Besant mentions. That’s my
way too. I’ve a great fondness for Besant ; and whether
I find anything or not, I shall have the satisfaction of
feeling that I’m following up his tracks. He’s been
here; there aren’t many places in London where he
hasn’t been.”

“Do those buildings cover the site of the Fleet
Prison ?”’ I asked, when we had turned the corner
and were standing before the Memorial Hall.

“Oh,no! The prison didn’t quite reach Fleet Lane;
there was one house between, and at right angles to
this house there was arow of houses, running eastward
up the lane. They were opposite the houses we’ve
just been looking at, and were like them, I suppose.
The prison front began, I take it, just beyond that second
window from the corner, and it extended a good bit
farther south than these buildings do—farther than the
present Seacoal Lane in fact. And these buildings
don’t go back nearly so far as the prison did; the rail-
way runs over a good slice of the old yard. The Belle
Sauvage Inn used to stand just behind here. I was de-
lighted to come across it on an old map.”

“T believe you would be delighted to come across a
tavern anywhere—even on an old map.”

‘“‘ We certainly have investigated a good many ancient
hostelries together.”
136 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

The statement that my friend made with so much
relish was only too true; the public-houses into which
I had been dragged against my will in the course
of our topographical investigations had indeed been
numerous.

“A reluctance to enter taverns in the pursuit of use-
ful knowledge is no credit to a topographist,” he added,
in tones of grave rebuke.

“Do you study them much in Chicago?”

Mr. Fairfield pursed up his lips. ‘“ There is a pre-
judice on the subject in my city. Perhaps it’s because
none of the taverns are of much historic interest. Here
it’s quite different; and besides, the traditions of your
profession are in your favour.”

“Pepys is my first authority,’ he resumed, after
waiting for a moment for the question that was not
forthcoming: ‘‘ when Pepys consulted Mr. Walpole, his
attorney, they went to an alehouse to talk matters over.
That shows what the custom was in Charles the Second’s
reign. Now we'll go to George the Second’s. An emi-
nent attorney named Parnell—afterwards a baronet—
begged as a favour to have his portrait introduced into
that drunken Election picture of Hogarth’s. He wasn’t
ashamed of appearing in an inn—singing a comic song
too! Now we'll skip three-quarters of acentury. That
brings us to Mr. Soloman Pell—a very worthy solicitor,
according to Sir Frank Lockwood. Look what a good
example he set! He did all his business in a bar
parlour.”

“ But my clients aren’t fond of bar parlours.”

‘“‘Of course not—always excepting the elderly gentle-
man in the white waistcoat. He seemed pretty much
at his ease on that high stool until he caught sight of
you.” There was a very merry twinkle in my friend’s
eye as he said this.

The incident to which he referred was a painful one.
The gentleman in question was a client whom I had
unexpectedly encountered in an ancient inn in the
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 187

Borough one Saturday afternoon. He was a Pharisee
of venerable exterior, and among the godly his reputa-
tion for austerity stood high. The meeting had been
very embarrassing on both sides.

“ And after all he had good reason for being there—”
continued Mr. Fairfield, musingly—‘‘ a sudden dizziness
such as he described to us must have been most alarm-
ing—it was a wonder the man had been able to stagger
up the courtyard. You, on the other hand, had no ex-
cuse to offer. I almost blushed for you.”

I made no comment; but the reminiscence was too
fascinating to be dropped unfinished.

“What astonished me most,” he went on, ‘‘ was
your friend’s rashness in flying to tobacco as a restora-
tive. Alcohol of course was quite en régle ; but a cigar
with it seemed out of place. You may perhaps recol-
lect that he dropped it—he seemed to do it almost
furtively—and I restored it to him. His young-lady
friend across the bar thought I’d done something
humorous. She was condescending enough to wink at
me.”

I remembered the whole incident with perfect clear-
ness ; and I also remembered how, then and there, I had
registered a vow to be decoyed into no more public-
houses.

“Why were you so pleased to find the Belle Sauvage
on the map?’ I asked, as soon as he had run down.

‘Tt was old Weller’s head-quarters. It gave him his
territorial designation; he was known in the profession
as Mr. Weller of the Belle Sauvage. When I discovered
that part of the inn used to abut on the back of the
prison, I felt sure it was there that he excogitated his
design for smuggling Mr. Pickwick through the gates.
A piano without works was to be introduced into the
prison, and Mr. Pickwick was to conceal himself in it
with his hat and shoes on. I feel no doubt that the
original conception flashed upon Mr. Weller’s brain as
he sat smoking in the Belle Sauvage and contemplating
188 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

the prison wall. When he revealed the plot to Sam
he gave a cabinet-maker part of the credit; but you
may depend upon it the man did no more than perfect
the mechanical details—the ingenious apparatus for
giving Mr, Pickwick air, for instance, The legs were
to be made hollow, you may remember.”

‘ Fairfield,” I said, as we were making our way along
Farringdon Street towards the Viaduct, ‘this street _
puzzles me. I always supposed it was modern; it’s so
wide, that one could have sworn it was a modern
improvement, cut through some old neighbourhood.
But on both sides there are old houses, and it’s apparent
that the building-line now is the same as when they
were built. That house over the entrance to Wheat-
sheaf Yard, and the houses on each side of it, look to
me at least 200 years old. But how comes a City street
of this width and straightness to be so old?”

‘¢The Great Fire made a clearance here, and I think
the street was laid out by the City Corporation just
after that. You must remember the Fleet ran along it
then; and boats could go up as far as where the Via-
duct stands now. After the Fire, the river was cleaned
out and enlarged. It was a bit straightened too, I think,
and each side was made up at an immense expense.
There were several bridges—one was opposite Fleet
Lane. Pennant says that huge wharves were con-
structed all along the river. I think this must have been
one of the greatest improvements that followed on the
Great Fire. The street was renamed the New Canal, I
believe.”

“ And what happened to it?”

“It was a failure. The stream was too languid, I
suppose, and the canal got choked up with filth. You
remember what the ‘Dunciad’ says about it. It was
called Fleet Ditch in those days. The Corporation
arched it over in George the Second’s reign, and built
a market over it, and the whole. street was called
Fleet Market until it got its present name. That was
 

THE FLEET DITCH OF THE ‘‘DUNCIAD.”
(From Warburton's “ Pope,” 1751.)

“Here strip, my children, here at once leap in,
Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin.”
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 139

when the market buildings were cleared away, I sup-
pose.”

By this time we had almost reached the Viaduct.
At the corner of a narrow turning on our right Mr.
Fairfield stopped.

“This is Bear Alley,” he said. ‘‘Goldsmith must
have passed up and down it times out of number; it was
the way from Fleet Market to Green Arbour Court.
That wall which blocks up the end is part of the railway
depot. In Goldsmith’s time the street was about a
quarter longer than it is now. It curved a trifle to the
left, just beyond where the walls stands, and led into
Seacoal Lane. The flight of steps lay almost exactly
opposite. Goldsmith could get to his room in two
minutes from the corner where we're standing—it
was almost a straight line. One of Stow’s editors
says that the ascent to Green Arbour Court was by a
great many steps, or a pair of stairs, made through
London Wall. That was in 1720. A pair of stairs
meant two flights of stairs, so I suppose there was a
landing to break the steepness. But how on earth the
City wall could ever have been west of the court, I don’t
understand.”

“Did Washington Irving come this way to Gold-
smith’s house ?”

“Undoubtedly. He came from the direction of
Westminster. He says he was conducted by a friend,
who led him through a variety of singular alleys and
courts and blind passages, before they came out upon
Fleet Market. They traversed this and turned up a
narrow street to the bottom of a long steep flight of stone
steps, called Break-neck Stairs. These, the friend told
him, led up to Green Arbour Court. That friend was a
man in buckram, a mere literary artifice; J’ll be bound
Washington Irving ferreted out the way for himself.
But why on earth did he make out that Fleet Market
wasa difficult place to find? It lay then just as it does
now, with Holborn at one end and Fleet Street at the
140 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

other. The difficulty would have been to miss it.
What had he to do with alleys, and blind passages,
and such-like ?”

Mr. Fairfield spoke with some irritation, as he looked
up from the scrap of memorandum in his hand. Prob-
ably it annoyed him to think how easy it was to find
Green Arbour Court in 1820, and how light Washington
Trving’s labours had been as compared with his own.

“T daresay he went a roundabout way on purpose
—to make the story more picturesque,” I suggested.

Mr. Fairfield sniffed. ‘‘I don’t see how he and his
friend could have got through blind passages, anyhow.
A blind passage can’t be open at both ends.”

‘“« Possibly they were a little pressed for time; so they
took a battering-ram with them. Is the nationality of
the other gentleman mentioned ?”’

Though Mr. Fairfield could deign no reply to a jest
at the expense of his country, his irritation vanished,
and he even condescended to smile.

“Are there any old houses here?” I asked, as we
stood looking down Bear Alley.

“None as old as Goldsmith’s time, I think. In
Newcastle Street, which is the next turning on our
right, there are several; but none here, I’m afraid. But
the street itself is interesting ina way. Goldsmith must
have been up and down it scores and scores of times.”

“ But wasn’t his shortest way out of the court through
the other end, into the Old Bailey? That would be the
way of the booksellers at any rate.”

“T agree; but whenever he wanted any victuals
wouldn’t he make for the Fleet Market? Surely that
was the emporium for the whole of this district.”

I admitted the reasonableness of this; for I remem-
bered that when Lord Eldon was living with his Bessy
in Cursitor Street, in the early days of their marriage,
it was to Fleet Market that he used to run for his six-
pennyworth of sprats. And this was only a few years
after Goldsmith’s sojourn in Green Arbour Court.
 

IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 141

My friend was well pleased to have his conjecture

thus verified. ‘‘It seems to bring one near Goldsmith
if one knows that he used this street when he went
a-marketing,” he exclaimed. ‘I think he must have

been fond of what Mrs. Tibbs called a nice, pretty bit
of ox-cheek, piping hot. There’s a juiciness about the
phrasing that seems to come from the heart. Ishouldn’t
be surprised,” he continued, as he took a farewell glance
at the little street, ‘‘I shouldn’t be surprised if this
corner public-house were an old-established place. It’s
more than probable that there was a tavern here in his
time, and that he found it handy. I should very much
like to come across some one who remembered those
steps. They were there after 1830 I know; and it’s
quite possible they were there till early in 1865. It’s
just occurred to me that the people inside this tavern
may be able to tell us something.”’

I let this suggestion pass. The tavern question
had been closed, never with my sanction to be re-
opened.

“T can see an elderly man behind the bar,” an-
nounced my companion, who just then was bending
forward and craning his neck in order to command a
view through the swing-door. ‘Doesn’t it seem al-
most a pity to lose the chance of asking him a few
questions? I’ve just caught his eye.”

«Then you can easily beckon him out.”

“ He mightn’t like that.”

““Why bother about him then? If the man won't
put himself out a little to oblige a fellow-creature, he
must be a sordid wretch. What would his evidence be
worth?”

Mr. Fairfield was not disposed to debate matters on
this high level. ‘‘ But you could wait outside,” was all
he said.

“ That’s just as bad as going in,” I protested; “I
can stroll off and leave you at liberty, if you like.”

“Oh, no, I’ll drop in some evening, by myself—if I
142 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

feel inclined to.” And as Mr. Fairfield gave expression
to this proviso, he laughed aloud.

“Tf Macaulay’s life had been prolonged for a few
months he’d have come to look at those steps,’ he ob-
served, as soon as he had recovered his wonted gravity.
“He made a slip about them in the article on Gold-
smith which he wrote for the ‘Encyclopedia Britan-
nica,’ about 1857. He called them ‘a dizzy ladder of
flagstones,’ and he said they and Green Arbour Court
had long disappeared. He died at the very end of
1859, and in April, 1860, some one wrote to ‘ Notes
and Queries’ to say that both the court and the steps
were still in existence. The man was wrong as to the
court—that had gone some thirty years before; I
daresay he was right enough as to the steps.”

“Goldsmith moved to Wine Office Court when he
left here,” he remarked, as he put away his memo-
randa; ‘“‘it was a rise in the world for him. I know
the house has been pulled down, but we might just
take a look at the place itself; it’s quite close. I
wonder if he went there by this way.’

“That’s barely possible,’ I answered. “I don’t sup-
pose his belongings were anything serious, but he must
have had something to carry with him—a few clothes
and books atany rate. I daresay a very small truck was
quite sufficient; but even that couldn’t conveniently be
got down Break-neck Steps. By all means let us assume
that it was so if you wish it; but to’ suppose that Oliver
chose the steps, and carried one end of the truck while
the proprietor carried the other, when it might have
been comfortably wheeled into the Old Bailey, and
from there to Fleet Street, by way of Fleet Lane,
seems to me almost fantastic.”

‘““Not a bit of it; that truck was carried down the
steps,” asserted my friend, with as much conviction as
if he had witnessed the operation. ‘‘ It seems fantastic
to me to suppose that Oliver Goldsmith could take it
any other way. But for present purposes we'll assume
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 143.

that he went by Fleet Lane. We can pick up his
tracks at the Memorial Hall, and follow that truck to
the new lodgings.”

We made our way up Fleet Street, and through
the narrow tunnel which gives access to Wine Office
Court.

“Those three first houses on the left are the old
ones. Newbery’s house, in which Oliver lived for two
years, was, I think, Number 6; three houses higher up.
I suppose all the houses were in the same style. Those
three will be torn down before long, I'll be bound.
Perhaps, considering all things, one ought to be thank-
ful to have seen so much—even at the eleventh hour.
Twenty years hence there won’t be a house of decent
age within a mile of the General Post Office, except
perhaps in an Inn of Court. The Inns of Chancery
are past praying for, more’s the pity. Those judges
and barristers of yours who set the ball rolling five-and-
twenty years ago, when they sold Serjeants’ Inn, de-
served to be broken on the wheel.”

So spake Mr. Fairfield in great heat. He had been
rather prone lately to break loose on this subject; the
sale of Clifford’s Inn had filled him with a wrath that
seemed unquenchable.

“‘ Serjeants’ Inn was the beginning of it,” he wailed ;
“and look what has followed! New Inn’s gone;
Clement’s Inn belongs to a joint-stock company, and is
an offence to, the eye; Barnard’s is shut up—all that’s
left of it; Furnival’s has disappeared, and Staple con-
tinues to exist only at the mercy of the Prudential Assur-
ance Company. Not that I complain of them; they’ve
done well by it; and I only pray that they may hang
on to the old place. But as for Clifford’s Inn ; I can’t talk
about the sale of that—its unspeakable. The members
of that Inn, sir, were trustees for posterity.”

‘‘They have consented to part of the proceeds of the
sale being devoted to the advancement of legal edu-
cation,” suggested the present scribe, with some unction.
144 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“ For all I know Judas may have meant to employ
part of the thirty pieces of silver in the same way,”
retorted the stranger within our gates.

‘‘Let us have a peep at Johnson’s house before we
go away,” he said a little later; “we may find that
pulled down when we next come along here.”’

It was not many paces to the top of Wine Office
Court, and from there to Gough Square only a stone’s-
throw. The square of to-day is a different place from
the shady close that Johnson knew; the trees are all
gone, and with the exception of his house and the
house that stands at right angles to it all the brick and
mortar is modern.

We stood before the house, and read the tablet placed
there by the Society of Arts. It was satisfactory to see
that the brickwork showed no sign of decrepitude. The
door stood half-open; so we mounted the steps and
peeped in. We retired with melancholy faces. The
glimpse which we had obtained of the staircase and the
panelling was not reassuring; it told of neglect and
decay.

“T do wish this house could be preserved,’ said my
friend, as he stepped off the pavement to obtain a better
view of the attic storey, ‘it’s the last of Johnson’s
London houses ; or, if not the last, the only existing one
whose authenticity is beyond question. His wife died
in one of those rooms; and I daresay the very garret
in which he worked with his assistants when the Dic-
tionary was a-making can be identified. I wonder
whereabouts Levett’s quarters were: It will be a dis-
grace to both you and us if this house disappears. The
taverns are all gone; I saw the last of them—the Essex
Head—when I was over here yearsago. I think an
effort might be made to secure this old house. If every
reader of Boswell gave a shilling, the value would be
subscribed three times over.”

‘Tf Carlyle’s house has been preserved,” he went on,
‘surely this house oughtn’t to be sacrificed. We needn’t
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 145

throw stones at Carlyle; but he was a poor wind-bag
compared with Johnson. Folks don’t seem to burn
much incense to him even now, and who can say that
posterity will care two straws about him, or his house
either, in another hundred years?”

“A scheme for selling that house and buying this
one with the proceeds would hardly work,” suggested I,
in all meekness.

Mr. Fairfield seemed half-disposed to turn and rend
me, but he thought better of it. When he spoke again
he had returned to his nght mind.

“Tm glad Carlyle’s house is safe—it’s a particularly
foolish business to gird at him just here, considering
what he said about Johnson; but the truth is I get mad
when I think of this place going. I’ve had Goldsmith
in my mind a good bit lately; and you can’t get any-
where near him without running up against old Sam.
He was a good friend to Oliver Goldsmith. Do you
remember how he comforted him after they hissed the
‘Good-natured Man’? The old bear gave his Goldy a
hug now and then; but that was nothing. He was big
enough to appreciate Goldsmith; that was the great
thing. Johnson was too truthful aman to say a word
more than he felt, even about a dead friend; and I
don’t believe there was any one else, except Burke
perhaps, of whom he would have written, as he wrote
to Langton—‘let not his frailties be remembered; he

299

was a very great man’.

10
146 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

POSTSCRIPT
POOR LITTLE HOUSES OF CHANCERIE
‘WITHIN THE LIBERTIES... . THE INNER TEMPLE, THE MIDDLE
TEMPLE... HOUSES OF Court. CuiFForDs InnE.. . THAVIES
Inne... Furnivats Inne, Barnarps INNE.. . STAPLE
INNE . . . HOUSES OF CHANCERIE. WITHOUT THE LIBERTIES
—Graves Inne... Liycozns Inne. . . Houses or Court.

Curments Inne, New Inne, Lyons Inne; nouse oF CHan-
crRis.’’—Stow.

The Inns of Court have a swelling port,
And they are a goodly four:

The Temples twin, and Lincoln’s Inn,
And Bacon’s home of yore.

The Inns of Court are of good report,
Their kitchen fires are aglow,
Their butchers thrive, their bakers wive,

Their vintners cap them.low :
So are they all ; but what are ye,
Poor little Houses of Chancerie ?

Ye little Inns were pleasant spots,
And fondly one recalls

How comely were your garden-plots,
How cozy were your halls ;_

Your students there for many a-year
Had held the mimic court,

And there your Ancients set their cheer,
And chuckled o’er the port.

Eight were ye in the days of Stow,
And eight did ye remain

Till poor old Thavie’s had to go
In Farmer George’s reign.

The buyer wrought his wicked will ;
He razed it to the ground—
John Thavie’s house on Holborn Hill,
That had been so renowned.

Our king had passed his wedding-day
Before another fell:

Rat-haunted Lyon’s, tucked away
Behind the Holy Well.

And none too soon the summons came :
Unhallowed, unrevered,

A byeword, and a thing of shame,
Poor Lyon’s disappeared.
IN GOLDSMITH’S FOOTSTEPS 147

And now the eight were only six:
Sequestered nooks were ye,

With dormer-lights and weathered bricks,
And pleasant greenery,

Save only hapless Furnival’s
Where Peto’s hoof had been,

And garden-plots and mellow walls.
Had vanished from the scene.

But later years have hurried on
With ruin and decay ;

Poor Furnival’s is dead and gone,
And New is swept away:

‘To each in turn the spoiler came,
And others share the fall,

For Clement’s Inn is but a name,
And Barnard’s but a hall.

To Clifford’s Inn we yet may fare ;-
A mournful joy, indeed,
For rue is Clifford’s only wear ;
Its fortunes run to seed.
But out-at-elbows though it be,
And dank from end to end,
Tis fragrant with a memory
Of Dyer and his friend.

And soon those time-worn houses there,
The hawthorns at the gate,
And all the plane trees in the square
Must bow them to their fate.
Alack! Alack ! the foe is nigh
To wreck their ancient peace ;
An evil legend stares on high—
To LET ON BUILDING LEASE !

Poor little Inns, a thriftless race
Your children proved to be !
But Staple is in goodly case
Though strangers hold the fee:
As parcel of their scrip and stock
They have thee at their call,
But still the louvre weathercock
Looks down upon the hall ;

The old oak gate that Johnson knew
Still closes on the Bars,

The high-peaked gables, not a few,
Point upward to the stars ;
148 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

And yet, though all is trim and fair,
And all is stout and strong,

A boding presence hovers there,
And whispers: ‘‘ But—how long?”

The Inns of Court are of good report,
Their kitchen fires are aglow,
Their butchers thrive, their bakers wive,
Their vintners cap them low ;
But ye have neither food nor fire,
And never an ounce of plate :
Poor old Stow in the long-ago
Litile thought ye would sink so low,
That had such a good estate!
Fallen are ye, and woe is me,
Poor little Houses of Chancerie !
CHAPTER XI.
WE BEGIN TO RAMBLE ABOUT EDINBURGH

“We must make a beginning,” quoth Mr. Fairfield.
He spoke like one in heaviness, as he turned from the
window and made towards a side-table where the guide-
books lay.

For more than an hour we had been sitting in
silence, gazing from a window of our hotel in Princes
Street, Edinburgh, upon the wonderful prospect spread
before us. It was a bright fresh morning in September.

“Whither?” said I. ‘Anywhere you like, mind;
but no argument.”

Mr. Fairfield slowly unfolded a map, and for the next
five minutes I watched him pore over it.

“We must make a beginning,” he said again, as he
looked up; and there was a note of helplessness in
his voice this time.

«But where?”

“ Holyrood,” said he.

“What is the way?”

“You go across the North Bridge—that’s the bridge
round the corner, where the post-office is—and take the
second turning on the left. That’s the High Street—
the High Street of old Edinburgh,” he exclaimed with
growing cheerfulness, as he followed the route with a
pencil—‘‘and that—man alive! that leads into the
Canongate.”

My own map was unfolded by this time and I was
checking his directions. Of the manifold associations
of that old street I knew no more than the average
tourist ; but vague and blurred though one’s knowledge

149
150 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

might be, there was something in the name that smote
upon the inner chords and made them tremble.

I confess I have no very clear recollection of our
pilgrimage to Holyrood that morning. I know that,
notwithstanding the plainness of the route, we went
astray in the High Street, and wandered into the Cow-
gate. But High Street, Canongate, or Cowgate, what
did it matter? We were upon enchanted ground all
the time; for every dismal close or side street called up
some slumbering recollection of Scottish history or the
Waverley novels. On our later visits, the poverty and
squalor that showed themselves on all hands struck us
very unpleasantly; but on our first morning in old
Edinburgh, we were oblivious of everything but the
associations which haunted every yard of the way.
Looking back upon that morning, I have nothing but
a vague general recollection that, speaking to one
another but rarely, we mooned about for hours, well
content to let our guide-books go hang, and to leave
details for after consideration. I know, however, that
we identified Moray House and Huntly House, and the
Tolbooth, and that we sauntered awhile among the
tombs in the Canongate churchyard. I feel sure, too,
that we strolled into White Horse Close and inspected
the building, which was once the White Horse Inn, and
that the guide-books enabled us to identify it as the
lodging-place of Waverley and Fergus Mclvor.

Even my recollection of Holyrood itself, as we saw it
that morning, is vague and confused. We dawdled
about the tombs in the Chapel Royal, and made our
way to that old part of the palace to which all the
world goes—the rooms in which Mary and Darnley
lived during their brief union, the closet which saw the
attack on Rizzio, and the staircase which saw his death.
I remember that while we were in the closet, my friend
quoted a line from ‘‘ Johnny Armstrong’s last good
night ”’—

** And ran him through the fair body.”
WE RAMBLE ABOUT EDINBURGH 151

Boswell, he said, had overheard Johnson mutter this
line when they were in Holyrood together.

Before we made our second visit to the palace we
had pored over many guide-books; and, equipped with
the knowledge thus obtained, we were able to take an
interest in the mouldering furniture that the rooms
contain. In the Queen’s bedroom my thoughts turned
to Hampton Court, and Mr. Fairfield, whose store of
desultory reading is as well-ordered as it is inexhaustible,
told me—reminded me, was his way of putting it—of
Macaulay’s meditations in the bedroom of Louis XIV
at Versailles.

There are two old state beds in Holyrood: Mary
Stuart’s is one of them. The other is in the ante-
chamber, and if the guide-books speak the truth it has
been slept in by Charles I, and by the young Chevalier,
and his victor, William Duke of Cumberland.

On our second visit, my companion lingered for a
long time in the closet where Rizzio was stabbed. He
measured it carefully with his eye; and from the way
in which he peered out of the window upon the drainage
works in operation in the courtyard just below, and
craned his neck to follow the contour of the turret in
which we stood, I felt sure he was endeavouring to take
an observation of the room’s position, with reference to
the general plan of the building.

“Wasn’t it in 1566 that Mary and Darnley lived
here?” he asked, as we paused on the threshold of the
staircase, and turned round to have a last look at the
state-rooms.

“There or thereabouts.”

Mr. Fairfield stepped back into the ante-chamber,
and stood musing, with his eyes fixed on the panelling.

“Tt’s a far cry from here to that dog-hole at Stratford
we went over two years ago,” he said at length. ‘It
suddenly occurred to me, just now, that Shakespeare
was a baby when Mary and Darnley were living
here.”
152 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“There was a baby here too,’ I observed. ‘ James I
was only a year or two younger than Shakespeare.”

“True! And it’s interesting to remember that the
two babies met later on. James I—one ought to call
him James VI here—was an unspeakable person in
some respects—I’m not referring to his hatred of to-
bacco—but he had wit enough to enjoy Shakespeare’s
plays, or old Ben was a liar.”

I looked at my fellow-tourist for an explanation ; I
had no notion of what he was referring to.

‘Don’t you remember Ben Jonson’s lines to the
memory of his beloved master William Shakespeare ?
He calls Shakespeare the Swan of Avon, and wishes he
could see him once again on the banks of the Thames,
to make those flights which had so pleased Queen
Elizabeth and the king: I think I remember the verse :—

Sweet Swan of Avon! What a sight it were

To see thee in our waters yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Elza and our James.”’

“That window in the second storey of the left-hand
turret is the window of the supper-room,” said Mr.
Fairfield as we stood in the courtyard scanning the
front of the old wing; ‘‘and that window to the right
of it, between the two turrets, is the window in the
queen’s bedroom. Didn’t the size of that supper-room
surprise you?”

“Tt certainly was much smaller than I expected.”

“Small isn’t the word for it; it’s microscopical.
There’s some mistake about that story. J was reading
it in one of the guide-books last night; and remember-
ing something of the place, I felt a bit staggered. Now
I’ve seen it again, I’m certain there’s a mistake. Rizzio
was no more stabbed in that cupboard than I was.”’

“The story has passed current for some three hundred
and fifty years,” I hinted.

“That doesn’t make it true. Now listen! that guide-
WE RAMBLE ABOUT EDINBURGH 153

book begins the story by saying that, on the night of
the murder, six persons supped in that little hutch.
Can you, as a reasonable man, ask me to believe that?
Even if they supped without a table, six persons would
find that room a tight fit. And according to the story
there was a table; for some one upset it. Now, sir,
picture to yourself that room with a fire in it—it hap-
pened in February, remember—and six persons having
supper at a table, and at least one servant in attendance.
You picture that, and tell me whether it’s possible or
impossible.”

“Tt certainly is a very small place.’

‘* Nothing could make me believe it,” he asserted
scornfully.

“Now you listen,” said I; “that story is copied
word for word from the ‘Tales of a Grandfather’.
What do you say to that?”

My. Fairfield was silenced for the time being. ‘I
really think Scott must have let his love of the pictur-
esque overpower his sense of proportion,” he said at
length, ‘‘but as he must have seen the room scores of
times, I can’t set my judgment up against his.”

My friend’s change of front did not surprise me; for
he had lately been giving proofs of the reverence in
which he held Sir Walter Scott. It was nothing but the
magic of the great Wizard that had drawn us over the
Border. A few weeks earlier, Mr. Fairfield had an-
nounced to me his intention of visiting Abbotsford and
its neighbourhood; and subject to his agreeing to stay
for a few days at Edinburgh en route, I had accepted
his invitation to go with him. It seemed ridiculous to
be so near the city, and not see something of it. He
readily met my wishes; though I could see that in his
eyes it was mere vanity and vexation of spirit to at-
tempt such a task in a few days. Had he been an en-
tirely free agent, he would perhaps have pitched his tent
in Edinburgh for a month or two; had such a stay not
been feasible, he would have avoided the city altogether.
154 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

During the railway journey from King’s Cross, our
conversation had more than once turned on Sir Walter ;
and I had been not a little surprised to find how
minutely my friend had studied the records of his life.
The veneration for the man, which these talks revealed,
was no surprise; for my own poor reading had taught
me that, with a knowledge of Scott’s character, love
and reverence must needs go hand in hand.

It was past six o’clock before we had reached Edin-
burgh ; and by the time we had settled down in our hotel
and dined, the evening was far advanced. When I went
to Stratford with Mr. Fairfield in 1901, he expressed a
wish that we should have a private room at our hotel;
and, in support of this extravagance, he alleged that
the smoking-rooms in provincial hotels were always so
uncomfortable that reading or talking in them was out
of the question. I had no fault to find with this plan,
though I felt a little surprised at a,cosmopolite like my
friend putting it forward; but when we had taken
possession of our exclusive quarters, and his trunk had
disgorged the travelling library that it contained, I
understood why he had spoken so evilly of smoking-
rooms. Some place where that supply of books would
be accessible, and at the same time out of the reach of
strangers, was almost a necessity, At Edinburgh a
private room had been taken without any objection on
my part, and after dinner to this sanctum we repaired.
As compared with the supply of literature that my
companion had piled upon one of the tables, his Strat-
ford collection had been a mere nothing. As he lay
curled up in a big armchair, with a volume of Lock-
hart’s ‘‘ Life” and a long, black cigar, I turned over a
book here and there at random. I chanced to come
upon a picture of Scott’s house in Castle Street; and
knowing that it could not be far off, I bethought me
that a stroll to it would be no bad way of helping
one on towards bedtime. A glance at my companion
satisfied me that I had better go alone; he looked so
comfortable that it seemed a sin to disturb him.
WE RAMBLE ABOUT EDINBURGH 155

It was perhaps half an hour after leaving the hotel
that I reached Castle Street. The distance was trifling,
and I had found the street upon my map without diffi-
culty; but my progress along Princes Street had been
leisurely, and I had examined more than one turning
on my way. In the clear moonlight the statue of
Chalmers stood out inky black; and, just beyond it,
the stone bow-fronted house in which Scott lived for so
many years was easily found.

After mounting the steps, to make sure by a glance
at the number that I had made no mistake, I was
about to descend and examine the front when, on the
other side of the road, I caught sight of a figure that
seemed familiar to me. A moment’s inspection put
the matter beyond all doubt; it was the tall spare form
of Mr. James C. Fairfield that was leaning against the
railing opposite. There was nothing surprising in his
being there; but the fact that he had not seen me was
a little odd. In one hand he held a scrap of paper ;
the moon gleamed on his pince-nez, and was bright
enough to show that he was gnawing the pencil which
he held in the other hand, and that though he was
looking towards the house, his gaze was directed sky-
ward.

I strolled across the road; but so deep was his ab-
straction that I was within a yard or two of him before
he looked up and recognized me. And then he’started
like a guilty thing, and, quick as lightning, he shuffled
the scrap of paper into his pocket.

‘“‘ Making a few more notes?” I asked cheerfully.

But alas! when I said this my words belied my
thoughts; for I knew full well that no mere note-making
had been his occupation; and it was nothing to the
point that he caught at my suggestion and mumbled out
something that might have been yes. Had there been
a shadow of doubt in my mind he should have had the
benefit of it, for I liked the man and respected him.
But the cruel logic of the facts left no room for reason-
156 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

able doubt—I had disturbed him in the act of composing
poetry.

We stood side by side, gazing upon the front of the
house, and neither thought it necessary to explain how
he came there.

“‘There’s no more interesting house in the whole
world,” said Mr. Fairfield, breaking the silence, ‘and
it’s satisfactory to find it looking strong enough to last
athousand years. Scott lived here for a very long time.
It had sheltered him, he said, from the prime of life to
its decline. The crash came in January, 1826; he left
here in March and the place was sold a few months
later. It was a bitter pang to him when the house
went: it was almost as dear to him as Abbotsford it-
self. There is an inscription on it somewhere, giving
the dates when he came and went.”

We moved across the road, and were able to make
out the substance of the lines, cut in the stonework of
the front.

“ He was twenty-six when he came here, and fifty-
four when he left,” said my fellow-tourist; ‘just think
what a slice of his life that time represents! Of course,
he wasn’t always here, but he had to be in Edinburgh
when the courts were sitting, and we may take it that
he was here for more than six months out of every
twelve. That front room, on a level with the top of
the steps, was what Lockhart calls*the dining-parlour.
The study—Scott’s workshop—was just behind, and
from it a Venetian window opened on the little patch
of turf where he buried Camp, the old bull-terrier, one
moonlight night. Mrs. Lockhart told her husband that
her father wore the saddest expression of face she had
ever seen in him, as he smoothed the turf down over
the grave, and that on the plea of the death of a dear
old friend, he broke a dinner engagement for that day.
And the prettiest part of the story comes at the end—the
host was not at all surprised when he learned who the
dear old friend was. Camp is shown in that ugly por-
WE RAMBLE ABOUT EDINBURGH 157

trait that Raeburn painted of Scott—the portrait of him
sitting down, in Hessian boots. How fond he was of
dogs! How fond Dickens was, too!”

‘“‘So are most ordinary persons,” I suggested.

“True, but not in the way Scott was. He treated
them like fellow-creatures. When I was reading
Forster’s ‘Goldsmith’ the other day, I came on a say-
ing of Horace Walpole’s about dogs, that made me
think of Scott. Just at the time there was a hydro-
phobia panic raging, and dogs were being slaughtered
wholesale. ‘The dear, honest, good-natured, sensible
creatures. Christ, how can anybody hurt them?’ was
what, Walpole said. When I read that, my first thought
was, how it must have gone to Scott’s heart—I’ll be
bound he knew of it and quoted it sometimes.”

“T’ve just materialized a floating something connected
with that front door; it’s been swaying about in my
mind for the last few minutes,” resumed Mr. Fairfield.
‘One night the Ettrick Shepherd left this house in a
state of inebriation, and Scott at parting gave him sage
counsel to avoid the dangers of the streets. It’s not
very difficult to picture Scott holding that door open,
and watching James Hogg make a cautious passage
down those steps. I’m afraid Scott had a smile on his
face; our grandfathers were more alive to the comic
aspects of drunkenness than we are.”

“Could any one come across Hogg, drunk or sober,
without smiling?” I asked. :

‘“‘He certainly was a queer fish; the more one reads
about him the odder he seems. Lockhart is not at all
hard onhim. His way of summing him up is deliciously
ambiguous—‘ In pace requiescat,’ says he. ‘There will
never be such an Ettrick Shepherd again.’”’

‘“‘Isn’t there some story, that when Hogg was intro-
duced to Mrs. Scott she was indisposed ; and because
she was lying on a sofa, Hogg thought good manners
required him to sprawl on another?”

‘Oh, yes, that’s the story; and it goes on to say that,
158 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

as Scott addressed her as Charlotte, Hogg, as the even-
ing wore on, did the same. I’m afraid his demeanour
in polite society was generally a trifle swinish. Some-
where in the ‘Journal’ Scott refers to him as ‘ the
honest grunter’. Lockhart tells a very funny story
about him. When Hogg and Scott were at strained
relationships—the Shepherd was, of course, to blame—
he wrote to Scott; and he relieved his wounded dignity
by varying the usual formulas of epistolary communica-
tion—that’s Lockhart’s phrase, I think. He began the
letter ‘Damned sir,’ and wound up ‘ Believe me, sir,
yours with disgust ’.”

“‘ Dickens breakfasted in that house in 1841 ; I should
dearly like to go over it,” said my friend wistfully, as he
lit a cigar.

‘‘ Perhaps we can manage that. I see from the brass-
plate, a firm of Writers to the Signet have it now.
They wouldn’t refuse a professional brother from across
the Tweed the small courtesy of going over their offices,
if they were approached in the right way. I can write
them a note to-morrow.”

Mr. Fairfield was sorely tempted, but his strong
objection to force himself upon strangers held him back.

“No,” he said, ‘‘ there must be plenty of tourists who
present themselves with that request. Id rather not
march through Coventry with that gang.”

“You might call at the office in the character of a
client. Would there be any harm in your asking them
to make your will, for instance?”

With owlish gravity he pondered over this suggestion,
and with owlish gravity he answered it.

“The fact of my being an American citizen might
raise a difficulty ; but I can see an easy way of making
your excellent plan feasible—you can go and have your
will made, and I’ll go with you, to see fair.”

“That’s a very happy thought,” I exclaimed with
enthusiasm.

“ Possibly,” he continued, ‘‘a member of that firm
WE RAMBLE ABOUT EDINBURGH 159

might think it a little odd if an English solicitor stepped
up out of the street and asked to have his will made,
unless some sort of an explanation were forthcoming.
You must prepare yourself for that; ‘a bit o’ brain work
and a little ingenooity’ will do wonders. It will give
me great pleasure to hear you produce that explanation.
It will give me even greater pleasure to see you pay the
little bill of your professional brother on this side of the
Tweed.”

“T’ll think it over,” said I.

“T’m glad that house is in legal hands,” observed Mr.
Fairfield, as we strolled homeward. ‘“ I don’t suppose any
good Scot would do it violence, but it’s doubly safe with
the lawyers. They must feel a special pride in him;
he was such a child of the law :—

the destined heir
In his soft cradle, to his father’s chair.

He was in the law, and of the law, all his life. Each
branch has good cause to be proud of him—the bar, be-
cause it was his calling, and the other branch because
of the picture he drew of his father, not only in ‘ Red-
gauntlet,’ but in the scrap of autobiography which Lock-
hart sets out.” /

“That quotation was a shade wide of the mark,” he
went on; ‘for, as a matter of fact, his father designed
him for the bar, rather than his own branch of the law.
But Scott served out an apprenticeship in the old man’s
office, and that was what I was thinking of.”
CHAPTER XII
MR. FAIRFIELD AND “BONNIE DUNDEE”

On our second visit to Holyrood, we ferreted out the
quaint little house over which, according to tradition,
some of Rizzio’s assassins made their escape from the
palace. It is called Queen Mary’s bath, and the guide-
books say there is a spring of clear water within it.
For some reason or other, the bath-house is railed off
from the approach of the vulgar; to what use it is put,
or by whom it is tenanted, the present writer knoweth
not.

Not far from the bath-house, the frontier of the
sanctuary, which, until quite recent times, the liberty
of the palace afforded to debtors, is, unless the guide-
books speak falsely, marked out by @ line of stones.
Leaning against a wall and smoking a pipe, I watched
my friend’s efforts to find this boundary.

His movements in the roadway, as almost on his
knees he scrutinized the surface through his pince-nez,
and at the same time kept an eye upon approaching
vehicles ; and his despair when he could gain no illu-
mination from the loafers whom his proceedings had
attracted, and who showed by their answers, couched
in a Doric hardly intelligible, that they had no know-
ledge of the thing he sought for, gave my tobacco a
flavour and an incense not its own.

‘“‘Tf only I could see a policeman!” he wailed, when,
worn out by his exertions, he had given up the search
as a bad job, and had returned to my side.

His faith in the Edinburgh police-force was un-

160
“ BONNIE DUNDEE” 161

bounded. Whenever we were in any topographical
difficulty, it was his practice to make a bee-line for the
nearest constable and submit the problem for his con-
sideration. Nine times out of ten the application was
successful, and our feet were set in the right way. The
police of Edinburgh are a fine body of men physically
speaking, and their dealings with my enthusiastic com-
panion showed them to be as intelligent as they were
stalwart.

Only in the matter of their attitude towards drunken-
ness did he find ground of complaint against them.

“This is nothing less than a disgrace to civilization,”
he asserted one Saturday afternoon, as we stood in the
Canongate, and made way for workman after workman
to lurch past us on unsteady legs.

“Why on earth are these beasts allowed to get in
the way of decent passengers ?”’ he demanded, after a
reveller had jerked him into the roadway,

“Why don’t you ask the police?”

Mr. Fairfield’s abhorrence of drunkenness is strong
and fervent, but he shrank from this.

“They must be fond of a drappie themselves,” he
grumbled, ‘“‘unless’”’—and here the grave zest which
always heralded a quotation proclaimed itself in his
tone—‘‘ unless they’re like the deacon—‘ rest and bless
him !’—they lo’e their friends and ken we a’ have our
frailties.”

He made this plunge into the vernacular with a fine
show of confidence, but I noticed that he took care to
reach no other ear than my own.

“They act under orders,” said I.

‘“‘ Of course! of course !”’ he admitted, readily enough.

“ But this, really, is too bad,” he blazed out, a little
later. By this time we had reached the North Bridge ;
and a few paces in front of us, an honest toiler, weary
of his efforts to stagger homeward, had sunk upon the
pavement and resigned himself to slumber. He was an
artisan of lofty stature, and as he lay due east and west,

11
162 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

with his feet in the gutter, the disturbance to traffic
was considerable.

But even as Mr. Fairfield spoke, a policeman strolled
up to the prostrate one, and laid a gentle hand upon
his arm. For an instant a lack-lustre eye rested on the
constable; and the next moment the man’s inebriation
had vanished and he was on his legs, speeding south-
ward.

““Good heavens!” ejaculated my companion, ‘ when
they do move it means business.”

After our first morning in the Canongate, all Mr.
Fairfield’s longing to get to Tweedside had disappeared.
Day after day went by, but the fascination of the grey
city held us captives within her bounds. On the even-
ing of our arrival the view of Princes Street, with the
Calton and Arthur’s Seat on the one hand, and the
Castle Rock on the other, and between them the
wooded slopes that climbed up to the Old Town, had
made us stare and gasp. The majesty of the prospect
never waned; but what was even more wonderful was
to stroll out of our hotel before breakfast, and to find,
as soon as we had turned into George Street, the sun
glittering on the distant sea and lighting up the long
landscape that stretched beyond it. The views from
the Castle and Arthur’s Seat were more varied and
much more spacious, but they never moved us in the
same degree. Hven they lay close at hand; but the
view from George Street was on our very threshold.
In its proximity to the heart of a great city lay its
unique and never-failing charm.

The more we saw of the tourists whom we came
across, during our rambles in the streets, or at meal-
times in the hotel, the more we scorned and pitied
them. To tear about Edinburgh, guide-book in hand,
for a day or two, and then depart breathless to do
the like elsewhere, seemed such very poor sport.
But we ourselves did not altogether disdain the injunc-
tions of the guide-books, and decently and in order we
“ BONNIE DUNDEE ” 163

inspected most of the lions of the metropolis. Thanks
to our bicycles, it was easy work to extend our rambles
to Leith, Musselburgh and Portobello. Having seen
them, we were cheered by a consciousness of duty done;
but we felt no desire to pay any of them a second
visit.

It was our misfortune rather than our fault that we
did not see Hawthornden. We made a start in that
direction one morning; but the wind was dead against
us, and it was so strong that bicycling was out of the
question. We took the machines home, and made a
fresh start on foot; but by the time we reached Roslin,
we were so tired that even Mr. Fairfield admitted that
any more walking that day would be too much of a
good thing.

“T particularly wanted to see Hawthornden,” he
grumbled, as, after lunching and going over the chapel,
we sat smoking on a tree that overhung the Esk. ‘TI
don’t care so much about Drummond or Ben Jonson,
but P’ve got a note that James Payn took Dickens
there, and that Dickens was very humorous over the
dungeons. I wanted to see those dungeons.”

“You wouldn’t care for the place if you saw it,” said
I philosophically ; ‘such is the way of the world. If
we hadn’t come to Roslin, you’d be burning to see the
chapel. As it is, you have seen it and you've been
bored by it.’

“It was rather a poor shillingsworth,” he admitted.
“The detail of that carved work was a weariness to the
eye, and that old story about the apprentice and his
master was a weariness to the flesh.”

Roslin Chapel needs no man’s good word. Wespoke

_of it as we found it, but the tourists in whose company
we had gone over it had been loud in its praise; perhaps
we were a little peevish that afternoon.

We jolted back to Edinburgh in a brake. The phy-
sical discomforts of that journey are fresh in my mind,
but I was more fortunate than Mr. Fairfield. I shared
164 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

aseat with a gentleman who did nothing worse than
crack nuts with his teeth; my poor friend sat by an
enthusiastic wine merchant, hailing from Newcastle,
who poured into his ear a long description of the Forth
Bridge, and enjoined him, not once but over and over
again, to fly and examine it forthwith.

But though we did not ignore the lions of new Edin-
burgh and the country round about, Auld Reekie
was our load-stone rock, It was in or about her mile of
roadway, extending from Holyrood to the Castle, that
most of our time was spent. There were not many of
the wynds and closes of the Old Town that we did not
explore. It was our custom to cast ourselves adrift in
the High Street or the Canongate, and ramble about
until we grew weary; and on the whole I do not think
my enthusiasm fell far short of my companion’s. The
man who, without some stirring of his imagination, can
look upon the balcony of Moray House, from which,
according to tradition, the Argyles jeered at Montrose,
must be a dull creature; and moving along those
historic ways, it calls for no great exercise of the fancy,
to figure to one’s inward eye the progress of the Great
Marquess from the Watergate to the Tolbooth Prison, or
to follow up the High Street the shadows of Dr. John-
son and Boswell, as, on the night of Johnson’s arrival,
they walked from the White Horse in Boyd’s Close to
James Court, arm in arm.

“Some English travellers would have thought this
place a bit confined,” T said, as we stood in that court
one afternoon, ‘‘ but I don’t suppose Johnson saw any-
thing amiss with Boswell’s quarters.’’

“« Even if he did, he was hardly in a position to throw
stones,” was my friend’s instant rejoinder.

“ Why?” I asked.

“They were at least as good as his own. He was
living in Johnson’s Court, then—don’t you remember
how he used to call himself Johnson of that ilk? Bozzy
could have given him a Roland for his Oliver if he had
“ BONNIE DUNDEE” 165

found fault with this court. And just think what a
view there was from the back windows!”

My friend and I came to Edinburgh in a state of
primitive ignorance as regards the topography of the
city. The library that he brought with him was not of
much assistance so far as details were concerned; for
it related chiefly to Sir Walter and the novels, and such
information as our guide-books contained was soon ex-
hausted. We were, however, so fortunate as to come
across Mr. John Geddie’s ‘‘ Romantic Edinburgh,” and
it is only just to acknowledge the debt of gratitude that
we owe to it. Evening after evening, Mr. Fairfield
would lie in his big chair poring over the pages, pencil
in hand; and when at length he laid the book down
with a weary hand, it was always with a benison upon
the writer; and his next move was to draw up to the
table, and make notes for future use out of doors.

Asa rule, my friend was too considerate to disturb
my studies or meditations by bursting forth with scraps
from the book which he happened to be reading; but
now and again “ Romantic Edinburgh” stirred him to
a degree that demanded the immediate sympathy of a
fellow-creature.

“ Just listen to this about Blackfriars Street, which
used to be called Friars Wynd,” I remember his exclaim-
ing one evening, as a prelude to his reading the follow-
ing passage :—

** But the most dramatic and sinister scene in the history of this
picturesque alley—which has been improved into a commonplace
modern street—was when, late one evening in February, 1567,
Mary Stuart passed up it with blazing torches and archer guard,
after visiting her sick husband at Kirk of Field, while Hepburn,

Earl of Bothwell, and his emissaries, carrying the gunpowder,
slipped past by the next alley of Todrick’s Close.”

“That was the night Darnley was blown up,” he
went on; “we must find Blackfriars Street and Tod-
rick’s Close to-morrow; they can’t be far from the
palace, I wish we knew more about those streets near
166 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

the gates. Whenever we go there, I’m always reminded
of that capital bit of Stanley Weyman’s about the back
streets near the old French court—it’s in ‘The Man in
Black,’ I think.”

It was upon the second day of our sojourn in Edin-
burgh that we came upon the Grassmarket. Chance
led our footsteps to it after dinner. We had wandered
up Princes Street as far as the Caledonian terminus ;
and, without any definite goal in view, we had turned
down the Lothian Road, and had thence drifted east-
ward. We were both smoking, and for some time we
strolled along without saying anything. After nightfall
Mr. Fairfield is prone to saunter along, with his hands
clasped behind him, and his unbuttoned grey overcoat
floating abroad on either side; the erectness which
marks his carriage during the daytime disappears, and
something not far removed from a slouch takes its place.
He was moving along in this wise that evening, when
his eye caught the name of a street we were just passing
on our left. In an instant he had straightened himself
up; and rigid and alert, he was staring at the name
through his pince-nez.

“West Port!” he ejaculated. <‘‘This is indeed a
discovery.”

I looked at him without comprehension ; and to my
surprise he burst forth into ‘‘ Bonnie Dundee” :—

“Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle your horses and call up your men,

Come open the West P-o-0-ort, and let me gang free,
And it’s room for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee !”’

Even at the beginning there was a rhythmical swing |
in his voice; and before he had gone far, he was sing-
ing—openly and without shame, he stood that evening
at the corner of the West Port, and warbled the refrain
of ‘Bonnie Dundee”. His singing voice was deep and
not at all unpleasant, but, oddly enough, there was in it
a faint suspicion of a nasal twang from which his speech
was quite free.
‘“ BONNIE DUNDEE” 167

We made our way along the West Port. It was
anything but an aristocratic thoroughfare; and it led
into an open space, of great length in proportion to its
width, and bordered by tall houses, which in the dark-
ness looked gloomy and degraded. ‘There were a good
many people about; all seemed poor, and some were
manifestly of the submerged tenth.

Mr. Fairfield made straight for a policeman.

““ What is this?” he asked.

“The Grassmarket.”

“The Grassmarket!’’ The constable had given the
penultimate syllable at least one additional r; in his ex-
ultant repetition of the word, Mr. Fairfield gave it three
or four.

“T might have guessed it!” he ejaculated. ‘ What
else could it be?”

He seemed to expect no answer; and for a while he
stood contemplating the market-place, and whistling
“Bonnie Dundee” under his breath.

When he moved forward, he had fallen into a brown
study. His walk had no spring in it; his hands were
clasped behind him, and his shoulders were hunched
up almost to his ears.

“«There’s no doubt about it; not a shadow of doubt.
It was all cobble stones then, I expect.” He was
evidently thinking aloud; and the next instant he burst
afresh into song :-—

“With sour-featured Whigs the Grassmarket was crammed,
As if half the West had set tryst to be hanged ;

There was spite in each look, there was fear in each e’e,

As they watched for the bonnets of Bonnie Dundee.”

Here he paused; but before I could make the observa-
tion which lay so ready on my tongue, he struck up
again :—

“‘These cowls of Kilmarnock had spits, and had spears,

And lang-hafted gullies to kill Cavaliers ;

But they shrunk to close-heads, and the causeway was free
At the toss of the bonnet of Bonnie Dundee.
168 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“T always boggled at those‘ close-heads’! I thought
it meant that the Whigs laid their heads together. But
it means the entrances to the closes that run out of this
place.”

We were walking in file when he said this, for the
pavement was somewhat crowded: the dwellers in the
Grassmarket and its neighbourhood were taking the air
that evening. As he stopped and turned to speak to
me, he seemed so elated in an absent-minded way,
and so unconscious that he was doing anything out of
the common, that I had not the heart to make myself
unpleasant. J took means, however, to increase the
interval between us, as soon as he had resumed his
saunter. Jam not more self-conscious than other men ;
but in the Grassmarket that evening I had felt uncom-
fortable, as I threaded my way through an astonished
populace, hard on the heels of one who, as he slouched
onward, grave and personable above.the ordinary, fixed
his eyes on vacancy and sang ‘‘ Bonnie Dundee” through
his nose.

We had paraded all round the Grassmarket before
Mr. Fairfield had entirely abandoned his singing robes,
and returned to his right mind.

“You know what we’ve been doing?” he inquired
as soon as J was once again at his side.

Five minutes before, I could have seized this opening
for a stinging repartee, and could have done justice
to 1t; but by now I had recovered my temper, and I
merely burst out laughing. This surprised him; but
in a moment he was able to take an accurate mental
review of his late proceedings.

“‘T was not referring to that high-class concert,” he
said. There was a note of apology in his voice, and he
spoke with his eyes half-shut and a slight tightening of
the lips. He was evidently ashamed of himself.

‘«« The throstle cock’s head is under his wing,’ ” said I.

The penitent laughed. ‘I was a little carried away,
I’m afraid. Till we came to the West Port, I had
“ BONNIE DUNDEE” 169

never associated ‘Bonnie Dundee’ with Edinburgh
streets. We've been following up, backwards, the way
he went when he rode out to raise the West for King
James. I’ve an impression that he started from the
Parliament House; that’s where the Lords of Conven-
tion would be sitting. He came by the ‘sanctified
bends of the Bow’. I don’t know where they are—we’ll
find them to-morrow—and he went to the Castle to
consult with the Duke of Gordon. That must be quite
near—perhaps one can see it.”

I forget whether, just at that moment, we were
standing in the West Port or the Grassmarket; but
wherever it was, Mr. Fairfield turned to look about
him.

‘‘Good heavens!” he exclaimed, pointing upwards,
‘what's that?”

My eyes followed his direction, and I saw, high above
us, a cluster of lights showing in the heavens like a con-
stellation. It seemed just over our heads.

“Tt’s the buildings at the top of the rock,” he said, a
moment later; and he gave vent toa whistle of astonish-
ment.

I, too, was astonished. The lights hung so high and
were so directly overhead, that they seemed to belong
to the firmament. No daylight view could have brought
home to us the height and sheerness of the Castle rock
with the like force.

‘“‘Claverhouse climbed up the west face—that’s the
side that looks towards the Lothian Road—and the
Duke met him at the sally-port. We must find that out,
too. The ‘kittle nine-steps’ that Scott used to climb
when a boy are somewhere near it, I think.”

«You seem to have got bitten with ‘ Bonnie Dundee,’ ”
said I, using a phrase that was often in his mouth.

“T plead guilty. It’s been running in my head ever
since I was a boy. There’s no reciting ‘Bonnie Dun-
dee’—a man must sing it or let it alone. Is there
another song in our tongue of which you can say the
170 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

like?” he went on, now at white heat. ‘‘ Man alive!
I'd give everything I’ve got, including the clothes I
stand up in, to have written a song like that.”

A moment later he was smiling at his own enthu-
siasm. ‘I suppose every one has his favourite song,” he
said; ‘mine carries me away because there’s more go in
it than any one else’s; I’m like Mr. Kipling’s war-horse.”

He was very merry by this time. Ags he spoke he
scrutinized my face, as if doubtful of his ground, and
seeing that I was tickled, he had the audacity to break
once again into melody :—

‘* By the brand on my shoulder, the finest of tunes
Is played by the Lancers, Hussars, and Dragoons ;
And it’s sweeter than ‘ Stables’ or ‘ Water’ to me—

The Cavalry Canter of Bonnie Dundee! ”’

“You are indeed bitten with it,” said I, laughing.

“Mon!” he protested, with great solemnity, as he
laid a hand upon my arm, ‘it’s waur than that—I’m
fair grippit wi’ it.” This was his first independent ex-
cursion into the wilds of the vernacular.

‘The ‘bends of the Bow’ were the windings of the
West Bow,” he remarked, later in the evening, as he
rose from the table where he had been looking into the
guide-books, and made for his armchair. “It ran from
the High Street to the Grassmarket. It’s gone now,
and a curve called Victoria Street occupies part of it.
We'll look at it to-morrow. I can’t make the song fit
with the ‘Tales of a Grandfather,’ but we'll stick to
the song.”

“‘T’ve often wondered,” he continued, “how Scott
came to perpetrate such an enormity as to make
‘crammed’ rhyme with ‘ hanged ’—

With sour-featured Whigs the Grassmarket was crammed,
As if half the West had set tryst to be hanged.

I know he was careless, but he had a good ear, and
I don’t believe there’s such another atrocity in all his
 

TEE OLD WEST LOW.

(From a drawing by Calferimole.)
“ BONNIE DUNDEE” 171

poetry. I suppose he really did write ‘ crammed,’ but
wasn’t it a mere slip of the pen?”

““What did he mean to write then—is there any
feasible rhyme ?”

“ T’ve thought of ‘ thranged,’ but I’m not Scot enough
to‘know|whether the word was possible. I’m pretty sure,
though, that Burns calls a throng a thrang, so perhaps
there’s the verb, too.”

«But could such a mistake escape notice?”

“T think so. Don’t you know that ‘gods’ has been
printed for ‘birds’ over and over again in Lovelace’s
‘To Althea,’ just because there was the misprint in the
first edition? And there’s a misprint—at least, I feel
sure it is—in another very famous poem, which has
never been corrected.”

There was mystery in Mr. Fairfield’s tone as he
spoke of this poem, and he looked into my face, as if
half-unwilling to be put to the question. I could see
that some important disclosure was trembling on his lips.

“Tl promise not to write to ‘Notes and Queries,’”
said I.

“‘T’m sure you won't,” he answered in all simplicity.
“ Well, it’s in George Herbert's ‘ Virtue’. You won’t
recognize it under that name—he wasn’t happy in his
titles. It’s the beautiful thing that begins—

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky.

Now the second verse is always printed thus—

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye.

Do you see anything wrong?”

“The first line is a little jolty,” I admitted, after I
had made him recite all four verses twice over.

‘‘Good! that’s it. What George Herbert wrote was
this—

Sweet rose, whose angry hue and brave.
172 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Can any one doubt that the inversion is a printer’s
error?”

‘Tt never struck me, till we got into the Grassmarket,
how clearly Scott saw the things he described—the
things he invented, I mean,” said my friend after an
interval; and he laid down a volume of the poems as he
spoke. ‘Lockhart says, somewhere, that he used to
write with a smile of conscious inspiration on his lips.
I don’t wonder at it. Just think what a complete
picture he had in his mind of what the Grassmarket
looked like that day, and how he makes you see it too.
Do you remember that pretty touch of the young girls
siding with Claverhouse because he looked so bonnie ?—

As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow,

Tlk carline was flyting and shaking her pow ;

But the young plants of grace they looked couthie and slee,
Thinking—Luck to thy bonnet, thou Bonnie Dundee!”

Lying back in his chair, with the text of the song
before him, he could quote without lapsing into melody.

‘“There’s a fine touch in the last verse,”” he resumed,
“which shows how he felt what he was writing about—
penny-a-liners call it visualizing, J think. I mean the
blowing of the trumpets and the clashing of the kettle-
drums when the column moved off—that’s a reminiscence
of Scott’s yeomanry days—

He waved his proud hand, and the trumpets were blown,
The kettle-drums clashed, and the horsemen rode on,
Till on Ravelston’s cliffs and on Chermiston’s lee,

Died away the wild war-notes of Bonnie Dundee.

And I’ve thought of another instance. It’s that line in
‘Young Lochinvar ’—‘ And the bridegroom stood dang-
ling his bonnet and plume’. Doesn’t that bring the
poor creature before your eyes, just as a picture
would?”

“T told you that ‘Bonnie Dundee’ had been run-
ning in my head ever since I was a boy,’’ he went on.
“ BONNIE DUNDEE ” 173

“That’s true enough, but I don’t think it fairly took
hold of me, until I read in Lockhart how it was
written. I'll read it to you if youdon’t mind. I can
find it quicker in the ‘Journal’, It was early in 1826,
I think.”

“Tt was near the end of 1825 that Scott learned
there was danger in the air,’ he explained, the vol-
ume now in his hand; “and, a little later, ruin
stared him in the face. But just before Christmas
some good news came. He had a gleam of hope, and
he wrote the song. This is what he says about it
under date of 22nd December, 1825 :—

“The air of ‘Bonnie Dundee’ running in my head to-day, I
wrote a few verses to it before dinner, taking the key-note from
the story of Clavers leaving the Scottish Convention of Estates in
1688-9. I wonder if they are good. Ah! poor Will Erskine, thou
could’st and would’st have told me. I must consult James Bal-
lantyne who is as honest as was Will Erskine. But then though
he has good taste too, there isa little of Big Bow-wow about it.
Can’t say what made me take a frisk so uncommon of late years as
to write verses of freewill. I suppose the same impulse which
makes birds sing when the storm seems blown over.

He says when the storm seems blown over. I don’t
think he was really very hopeful; but he cheered up,
and he wrote ‘Bonnie Dundee’. He never wrote any-
thing very joyful after it. The crash came within a
few days.”

‘It’s good to read about him in his adversity in his
own words,” said Mr. Fairfield, a little later, as he closed
the “ Journal” with a sigh; ‘(it may teach a man how
to bear himself when trouble comes upon him: trouble
in mind, or body or estate; it came to Scott in all three
—but it’s not good to talk about it.”
CHAPTER XIII
MR. FAIRFIELD WIELDS THE VERNACULAR

NOTWITHSTANDING the glamour of the Old Town, the
airy vistas of the New, the majestical station of Edin-
burgh as a whole, and the glorious prospects that it
commanded, Mr. Fairfield would have torn himself
away from it after a few days’ sojourn, but for its as-
sociations with Sir Walter’s life and work. It was as
Scott’s own romantic town, the place which in his love
stood second only to his own Tweedside, that Edinburgh
appealed most strongly to the pilgrim from Chicago;
and during our stay there, Scott was always uppermost
in his thoughts.

After the night of our arrival we fell into the custom
of strolling out together in the evening; and without a
word as to our direction being said on either side, our
feet always turned westward, and sooner or later we
stood before 39 Castle Street. We.rarely spoke to one
another, or looked at the house, as we paced up and
down on the other side of the way, smoking. I daresay
some of the dwellers in the neighbourhood used to
wonder what moved the spare elderly tourist and his
companion to choose such a short stretch of paving stones
for their evening stroll.

“Scott's entry in his journal, when he heard that an
offer had been made for this house, is very characteristic,”’
said Mr. Fairfield, in the course of one of these prom-
enades. ‘You can see how he feels parting with it,
though he tries to comfort himself by saying that as he has
bade good-bye to his poor wife, so long its kind and courte-

174
WIELDING THE VERNACULAR 175

ous mistress—she had been dead only six weeks—he need
not care about the empty rooms. But he adds, ‘ yet it
gives me a turn,’ and he winds up—‘ Never mind, all in
the day’s work’. Sophia Scott was married to Lock-
hart there; I suppose in the drawing-room—that room
on the first floor.”

“Poor thirty-nine,’ as Scott twice calls it in his
journal, was not the only one of his dwellings that we
visited. Thanks to Lockhart and the ‘Journal,’ sup-
plemented to some extent by Mr. Geddie’s book, we
were able to trace Sir Walter’s footsteps from one end
of Edinburgh to the other. We saw the tablet on
Number 8 Chambers Street, which marks the approxi-
mate site of his birthplace ; and we journeyed to George
Square, where under his parents’ roof he passed his boy-
hood and early manhood, and to the lodgings at 108
George Street, whither he carried home his bride. The
house Number 3 Walker Street, which he took for the
winter of 1826, and which he described as comfortable
and convenient, stands to-day as it stood in his time,
and looks none the worse for wear; but the lodgings at
6 St. David’s Street, which he went to in May, 1826,
just after the crash—the place where “the insects were
voracious,” and the cheese was a “ choke-dog concern ”’—
are now no more; and when we sought out ‘ Mrs. Job-
son’s house,” 6 Shandwick Place, his last fixed residence
in Edinburgh, we felt grave doubts as to its authenticity.
It seemed impossible that the house we saw could date
back to Sir Walter’s time. We ferreted out, too, 75
George Street, which was his mother’s home during her
widowhood, and 6 Atholl Crescent, where, in February,
1831, he made his will, and where he wrote a great
deal of ‘ Count Robert,’ with, alas, a pen that stammered
egregiously.

Of all Scott’s dwelling-places, Number 25 George
Square pleased us most. The stone houses of this
square have a warmer tint than is common in Hdin-
burgh, and their want of uniformity is not unpleasing
176 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

to the eye; it only adds to the comfortable, homely air
of the place. When the original of Saunders Fairford
moved his household there, and subjected himself, by so
doing, to a wrench which his son compared to a divorce
of the soul from the body, ‘a self-contained house” in
George Square must have formed a strange contrast to
the apartments in Auld Reekie where the child was
born. Even to modern eyes the Square is more than
usually fortunate in its surroundings; for its own green
enclosure is a handsome open space, and close to it
stretch the long airy levels of The Meadows.

“It was from that door that the father and mother,
attended, as the tutor Mitchell says, by their fine young
family of children and their domestic servants, used to
sally forth on Sundays for the Old Greyfriars Church,”
said Mr. Fairfield, after he had stood for some time
gazing at the front of Number 25. ‘I must havea
look at the back before we go; you may depend upon
it Scott’s bedroom was at the back. The ground floor
would be taken up by the old man’s office; the first
floor would be the living rooms, and the old people
would have the big front bedroom on the second floor.
The boys would have a big bedroom at the back.”

“Who can doubt that the room was the second-floor-
back ?”’ said I with gentle sarcasm. ‘‘ Give me a little
time, Fairfield, and a few more of your certainties, and
I will tell you what the pattern of the wall-paper was.”

‘‘T always like to look at the back of an interesting
house as soon as I’ve seen the front,” he went on, with-
out regarding me. ‘The first difficulty is to get round
to the back; and when you’ve got there, and the house
is one of a row, it’s no easy job to make sure which it
is. I’vespent hours in London trying to identify the
backs of houses,” said Mr. Fairfield, in the tone of a
veteran, who recounts the toils and struggles of his prime,
‘“‘and more than once I’ve had to ask a shopkeeper
to let me have a look out of one of his back windows.
I don’t mind this if they sell anything you can buy;
WIELDING THE VERNACULAR 177

but even that’s difficult sometimes. I remember once, I
had to make a choice between a fried-fish shop, a marine-
store, and a small pork butcher’s, where there was no-
thing in the window but some cold blocks of seasoning,
standing in congealed grease. That was at Hoxton.”

“© Which did you choose ? ”

_ “At first,” he answered, with a gravity that showed
how much he enjoyed the recital of his experiences, “‘ at
first I was inclined to speculate in fried fish, and trust to
their wrapping it up in sufficient paper to keep the
grease at bay until I got out of sight; but eventually I
decided in favour of marine-stores.”

** What did you buy ?”

‘‘A pair of compasses. One leg was stuck into the
wood-work of the window frame, and this attracted my
eye. Nothing could have been handsomer than the
conduct of the proprietor. He pointed out that one leg
was an inch shorter than the other; he thought I had
not ‘noticed’ this. I explained that I could make all
right again by shortening the other leg; and he was so
struck by my ingenuity and the general charm of my
conversation that, after escorting me to the window of
his first-floor-back, he was kind enough to take me
down into the backyard to admire the water-butt.”

“There’s no difficulty in getting round to the back
here. There’s a road between this side of the Square
and some public building that looks upon The Meadows
—a hospital I think—but I’d better make sure of my
bearings.”

So saying, my friend ticked off with his finger the
houses between the left-hand corner of the Square and
Number 25.

“Tt’s the fifth house from that end,” said he; ‘and,
what’s better, it’s the second from the low house on the
right. That’s the sort of landmark I like.”

This elaborate process proved effectual. He was
able to identify the back of Number 25, but I cannot
say whether it presented any feature of interest. I did
178 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

not accompany him on his survey; and when he came
back and I asked him if he had had good sport, he
merely nodded, and added a note to one of his scraps
of memoranda.

Mr. Fairfield’s Scott-worship did not content itself
with merely identifying and mooning about Sir Walter’s
places of residence; he was always on the look-out for
traces of his hero’s footsteps or the footsteps of his
creations. These traces were not hard to find, and he
followed them up with an enthusiasm that never
slackened. The characters in the novels were, for the
time being, as real to him as was Scott himself; and
he seemed as well pleased to follow Colonel Mannering
and Dandie Dinmont in their progress to the tavern
in Writers’ Court where they caught Pleydell at high
jinks, as he was to follow Sir Walter in his strolls home
from the Parliament House or his favourite walk under
the Salisbury Crags. "When we were in the Canongate
together, he could never resist the temptation to turn
down St. John’s Street to have one more look at James
Ballantyne’s house; and as he stood before Number 10 in
a brown study, I felt no doubt that in imagination he
was taking part in one of those gorgeous dinners, which
heralded the appearance of a new Waverley novel, and
which Lockhart describes with such good-humoured con-
tempt. In the Canongate Churchyard, not a stone’s-
throw from St. John’s Street, lies good Scottish dust
in plenty; but,in Mr. Fairfield’s eyes, the chief interest
of the place was owing to the fact that John Ballantyne
was buried there, and Sir Walter had stood at the open
grave with Lockhart at his side, and had whispered,
as he marked the sun gleam on the walls and towers of
the Calton Hill, ‘‘I feel as if there would be less sun-
shine for me from this day forth”.

It was our custom in wet weather to seek refuge in
the museums and picture galleries of Edinburgh. Our
visit to the Museum of Science and Art in Chambers
Street was something of a disappointment. The exhibits
WIELDING THE VERNACULAR 179

were no doubt admirable in themselves, and of great
educational value; but to us they were as dry as saw-
dust.

We mounted several flights of stairs and paused on
several floors to take a bird’s-eye view of the things to
be seen; but trxth to tell, we had not been in the
building for a quarter of an hour, when my friend stopped
dead, and asked me with a gloomy countenance why I
was so anxious that we should improve our minds. I
disclaimed any such anxiety; and the matter ended in
our spending the rest of the morning in the cathedral.

I am afraid to say upon what storey of the Municipal
Buildings in the Royal Exchange the museum of civic
curiosities and relics is situate. The stairs that lead up
to it are as the sands of the sea in multitude; but when
once the ascent to that heaven-kissing room has been
accomplished, no lover of the by-ways of history can say
that he has journeyed in vain. The place is a veritable
treasure-house, and before we had been in it for five
minutes, we had the good fortune to make friends with
the custodian. Thanks to his explanation, the contents
of the museum and particularly its fine collection of
drawings of the now demolished closes of the High
Street and the Canongate, made the Edinburgh of by-
gone days live before our eyes.

When our guide told us that he was entitled to call
himself a relic of the old city, we hailed the statement
as a joke, for in vigour and activity he seemed a man
in the early sixties; but when we found that he had
seen Sir Walter and had been a member of one of the
old Edinburgh Trades, we admitted that his claim was
well founded; and, when we went our way, it was with
a conviction that, of all the museum contained, there
was nothing more interesting than the old gentleman
who watched over it.

We turned westward when we left the Municipal
Buildings. Mr. Fairfield moved on lagging feet, and
paused at every close-head to take what might be a
180 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

last look down the entry. Our stay in Edinburgh was
drawing near its end; and for all we knew we might
never see the High Street again. We passed Warriston’s
Close and the long slope of Roxburgh’s Close without
more than a minute’s halt; but when we came to Advo-
cates’ Close, we turned down it. We had always felt a
peculiar interest in that passage; and just then this in-
terest was livelier than usual, for it had been quickened
by the drawings which we had seen in the museum.
Some of these showed the Close as it stood in its palmy
days, when a Lord Advocate did not disdain to live in
it, and others showed it asit looked when in process of
demolition. But though modern improvements have
swept away the old legal hive, the entrance has been
spared. The building fronting the High Street is of
hoar antiquity, and the tunnel that runs under it must
be the passage by which the old-time dwellers in the
Close passed in and out.

‘We made our way through this tunnel and down two
of the many flights of steps that lead the passenger by
easy stages from the level of the High Street to the
level of the old Nor’ Loch. On the platform at the
foot of the second flight, Mr. Fairfield pulled up. It
was not by any means our first visit, and he lounged
against the iron handrail and lit a cigar, with the air of
one who was quite at home. Opposite him stood two
old doorways, each bearing a motto and initials, and
the date 1590. On the right rose the turret stairway
of the many-storied pile through which the tunnel ran.
Northward, through the buildings, at the foot of the
hill, one caught a glimpse of Princes Street ; and a little
westward, the Scott Memorial showed itself above a
house-top.

“T’ve been thinking of those scraps of ‘Tam
o’ Shanter’ that our old friend recited,” said my fellow-
tourist.

In a small room annexed to the museum there is a
collection of Burns relics. In showing us these, the
WIELDING THE VERNACULAR 181

custodian had recited some lines of ‘“‘ Tam o’ Shanter,”
and a little later we had heard him recite a few more
to a group of enthusiastic visitors. This was what my
friend referred to.

‘‘ What do you think of Burns?”’ he asked.

“T don’t read him.”

‘‘Nobody does, for that matter; but most people
know whether they like him or dislike him.”

“ Do you like him?”

“T hate him.”

“Why?” lasked this in some astonishment, for my
friend had spoken with strange vehemence.

Mr. Fairfield blew the ash off his cigar, and stared
for some time at the two mottoes in front of him.

“*T believe it’s because he was such a bad citizen,”
was his reluctant answer.

‘“‘That’s an odd reason for hating his poetry.”

“It’s justifiable in the case of Burns. Some of his
work speaks for itself; and his worshippers have shouted
so much about him from the housetops, that a good deal
of the rest stinks in decent nostrils.”

‘‘T mean the love songs,” he went on; “the clean
ones that you hear in drawing-rooms. They’re pretty
enough in themselves, but I hate them. When other
men sing about loving and losing you can feel senti-
mental; but not with Burns. You know too much
about him and his love affairs. And, apart from that,
he was a disreputable fellow. Iam not fond of toss-

ots.”
Ps Ah!” said I, “I thought we should come to that.
But haven’t a few other poets been a little moist?”
«« Whether they have or not, doesn’t touch my point.
t’s seeing such a bad citizen made a national hero that
stirs me up. That’s why I hate him.”

“ But isn’t that ridiculous?”

My. Fairfield pondered. ‘It’s like this,” he said ; “I
think poorly of him as a poet, and I loathe him as a
man; but I didn’t care two straws about him till I came
182 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

here. But when I can’t look into a shop window with-
out seeing his portrait or his bust stuck opposite to
Scott’s, as if the two were the great twin brethren of
Scottish literature, I get mad. The thing’s ridiculous,”

«But is his poetry poor?”

“T think it is! but just now I am not sure. I’ve
read ‘Tam o’ Shanter’. I daresay I’ve read it more
than once, and if you’d asked me yesterday what I
thought of it I should have said it was poor stuff. But
when our old friend recited those lines they seemed to
me to have fireand vigour. The inflection was different,
somehow. It seemed to put life into them; they seemed
racy. J was puzzling over the thing when we turned
in here.”

“Why don’t you ask some literary Scotsmen what
they think?” :

“Tt’s no good. Speaking to a Scot about Burns
is like speaking to a church minister about dogma. If
you're in the same line of business, or you’ve been to
school and college with him, you may spell out what he
really thinks; but if not, you’d better let him alone.
When a man turns that side of his mind inwards, you
can go on pecking at the other, if you like the sport;
but you’ll only make your beak sore.”

‘But after all, what does it matter to you whether
the poetry’s good or bad? If you don’t care for it you
needn’t read it.”

“T like to know what I think about things. It’s
hateful to have loose ends hanging around in your
mind.”

“That shows you never had a legal education,” said I.

“A reasonable man ought to make up his mind.
He ought to reach conclusions; and he ought to get to
them by three stages. He begins with an impression ;
he goes on to an opinion, and he ends with a convic-
tion.” Mr. Fairfield was so much in earnest that, to
emphasize his points, he tapped his left palm with two
fingers.
WIELDING THE VERNACULAR 183

‘“‘'The years of a man are only three-score and ten,”
said I.

“Don’t men, as a rule, make up their minds?”

‘“Not one in a hundred has a mind, to begin with;
and not one ina thousand travels over your three stages.
I suppose every one starts with what you call an im-
pression. It’s a loose word, but it’s convenient. I'll
go so far as to admit that every one begins that way.”

“ And what then?”

“The next and last stage isa prejudice. That's a
clumsy word, but it’s the best you can get for an opinion
that’s formed without knowledge or reflection.”

Mr. Fairfield laughed. ‘Il pass what you say
through the three stages after we’ve had a cup of tea,”
he said as he rose from the handrail and stretched him-
self. ‘I don’t think it will take me long; but as re-
gards the poetry, I’m beginning to feel a little doubt
whether I didn’t miss the second stage, after all; and
I’m with you to this extent—if that’s left out, the last
stage is worse than the first.”

“T suppose Burns must have passed down this entry
at some time or other,” I said, as we were making our
way back to the High Street.

‘Impossible to say, without knowing what the old
buildings were. If there was a howffamong them—they
call his public-houses ‘ howffs’—the chances are that
he came here pretty often.”

“We won't talk about him any more,’ I protested,
laughing; ‘but when I get home I mean to have a
look at his poetry. I used to read it on the sly when I
was a boy.”’

“You won’t get far,” asserted my companion, with a
decision that seemed to smack of the third stage.

Our experiences in one of the Edinburgh museums
were not marked by the official amenities which had
made our inspection of the municipal collection so de-
lightful. In the museum I am referring to—I need not
give its name—Mr. Fairfield stood one wet morning,
184 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

examining a case of coins and medals. The object of
his particular attention was small, and the light was not
good. He was wholly absorbed in his scrutiny, and his
nose was within an inch or two of the glass covering,
as he stood with his long body bent over the case and
his hands resting on the frame.

* Don’t lean on the glass there!”

The tone was so peremptory, the voice was so tre-
mendous, and the attendant responsible for the outrage
was so near, that my poor friend fairly sprang into the
air,

“T was not leaning on the glass,’ he protested, as
soon as he had recovered his composure. He spoke
icily, but there was an angry colour in his cheeks.

“‘T wasna’ speaking to you.” The official delivered
this unexpected repartee in a bellow that made the
place ring. For a moment his victim paused and glared
at him in speechless indignation. He might as well
have glared at the Castle rock; for the man stood bolt
upright, apparently unconscious of my friend’s existence
and looking neither to the right hand nor to the left.

“Tl beg your pardon ; it sounded as if you were speak-
ing to the whole British nation.” Mr. Fairfield spoke
with cold contempt; and, strange to say, there was a
nasal intonation in his voice. But the next instant his
face broke into a smile, and he laid a friendly hand
upon the other’s arm.

‘* Mon,” he said admiringly, and from the full height
of his superior stature, ‘it’s a grrran’ machine yon
voice of yours. Ye munna bur-r-rust it.”

The attendant stepped back; and a gurgle in his
throat told us that he was endeavouring to make a re-
tort. But the attempt failed; for once in his life that
official had met his match. He went back to his seat
without a word; and when I ventured to steal a look
in his direction, his newspaper was lying upon his knees
and he was staring straight in front of him, with eyes
that seemed to ask questions which his lips refused to
WIELDING THE VERNACULAR 185

frame. It was not long before we drifted into the open
air.

«A man ought to behave himself when he’s not in
his own country,” said Mr. Fairfield, ‘but when an
official of any kind does something outrageous and then
drapes himself in the immunity of his office and be-
comes statuesque, it’s hard to bear the rule in mind.
I’ve never let myself go in this way before to-day;
though I’ve been in sore temptation many times, par-
ticularly in Germany. I’m sorry I knocked a splinter
off that dour slab of old red granite.”

I had no great belief in my friend’s sorrow; for his
air as he recalled the scene inside was suggestive of
triumph rather than remorse. When I dropped a hint
to this effect, he laughed.

“Tt came to me in a flash,” he explained. ‘It re-
minds me of the Golden Dustman. He said ‘Mew
says the cat, Quack-quack says the duck, Bow-wow-
wow says the dog’. I think I went one better than
that.”

“But where on earth did your vernacular come
from?”

“For most of that I was indebted to the native who
repaired my bicycle. When I took it to him, he said
the inner tube had burrust, and when I got it away he
said it was a grrran’ machine.”

Mr. Fairfield repeated this encomium with no little
complacency ; he knew what I thought of the yellow
bicycle.

‘« And how did you receive that insult to your intelli-
gence?”

His eyes were half-shut as he considered the question.

‘‘ He spoke as an expert; and he said it was a grand
machine,” he answered meekly.
CHAPTER XIV
WE SEE THE MANUSCRIPT OF “WAVERLEY”

‘Bur there are three fireplaces.” This was Mr. Fair-
field’s first remark when we visited the Parliament
Hall; and he made it in a tone of disappointment.

“« Why shouldn’t there be?” I asked.

He made no answer, but pushed open a door which
led to the Advocates’ Library, and made a courteous
salutation to the official seated in the ante-room.

“T wish to find out which was the fireplace that
Lockhart mentions, the fireplace where Sir Walter
used to talk with the young men—was it the middle
one?”

“It was.” The official seemed to feel no surprise at
the question.

“The mantelpieces, I observe, are modern; are the
fireplaces old?”

“They were there in Sir Walter’s time.”

“I know the Courts are not open now; but can you
tell me if he satin any of the Courts which are still in
use?”

‘Oh, yes.” Mr. Fairfield bowed and shut the door.

“‘ Lockhart says that the briefless barristers used to
congregate before the fireplace here, and that Sir Walter,
who loved young people, used to like to join in the
‘roar of fun’ on equal terms. It was here”’—we were
standing before the middle fireplace by this time—
“Scott got the nickname of Peverill of the Peak; I'll
show you the story in Lockhart, when we get back.
Peter Robertson—they called him Peter because it wasn’t

186
MANUSCRIPT OF «“ WAVERLEY ” 187

his name; it’s a sort of pet name in Scotland—gave it
to Scott, and it stuck: he had a forehead, you know,
that rose like a cliff. Scott gave Peter a Roland for
his Oliver, as quick as lightning; and that name stuck
too. ‘Peter of the Paunch’ was what Scott called
him. I’mafraid Peter didn’t get that paunch by prayer
and fasting. He was very fond of his dinner—at all
events when he grew old.”

“'That’s the Pleydell type of lawyer,” exclaimed my
friend a little later, when we were examining the por-
traits and statues; he was pointing to a portrait of Lord
Dunsinnan as he spoke. ‘‘ Not such a good specimen
as that Raeburn we saw in the National Gallery—Lord
Newton, I mean; but it’s the right type, sure enough.”

“What a face the other judge had!” he went on.
‘““How Wendell Holmes would have revelled in that
portrait! I’d never heard the man’s name before I saw
it; but I felt sure he was a personage of some sort—
somebody with a flavour, not a mere ordinary, respectable
judge. AndIwasright. He’s mentioned in‘ Romantic
Edinburgh,’ and I’ve found something about him in
Dean Ramsey. I'll run Lord Newton to earth as soon
as I get back to London.”

‘‘There’s Lord Braxfield,’’ I said.

“Good heavens! Is that ‘old Braxy’?”

My friend said no more, but for a long time he stood
before the portrait as if fascinated. I could understand
his wonder, for I had heard some of the stories that are
told of Lord Braxfield; and it was a surprise to me to
find him depicted as a placid elderly gentleman, whose
countenance was bland even to fatuousness, and who
sat with his hands folded upon the gentle swell of a
comfortably-filed waistcoat.

“ He’s making up his mind upon a case; and he’s
taking ‘a competent time,’ ”’ said Mr. Fairfield, laughing.
‘¢ He’s mastered the facts, and now he means to let
them wamble about in his wame, with the toddy—with
the toddy, mark you—for two or three days; and then
188 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

he'll give his ‘ain interlocutor’. That was Lord Pol-
kemmet’s way; I was reading about him in Dean
Ramsey last night.”

“They were queer customers, those old Scottish law-
lords,” he went on. ‘I wonder if there’s a portrait of
Lord Gardenstone here. The Dean says that he had a
pet pig; and when it got too big to sleep in his lordship’s
bed, he used to make up a bed for it in his own room
with his own clothes—not his judicial robes, you under-
stand, but the clothes he put on in the morning. I
guess Lord Mansfield, over there, was more careful of
that scarlet suit he looks so proud of.”

“Do you know much about this Hall?” T asked.

“No. I began to read it up, but I didn’t get far.
I gave up in despair; I don’t care to nibble at a thing;
it would take a week to get a bird’s-eye view of the
history of this place. I know the Scottish Parliament
used to sit here, and that’s about as far as my know-
ledge goes of its historic past.”

‘* Montrose was sentenced here, wasn’t he?”

“Undoubtedly. I know that, because as a boy I
had Aytoun’s ‘ Lays’ by heart. I’ve had fragments of
the ‘ Hxecution of Montrose’ running in my head ever
since we saw that balcony at Moray House. There’s
something in it about Montrose rising in the middle of
this room—lI’ve got it !—

It might not be. They placed him next
Within the solemn hall

Where once the Scottish kings were throned
Amidst their nobles all.

But there was dust of vulgar feet
On that polluted floor,

And perjured traitors filled the place
‘Where good men sate before.

With cruel joy came Warristoun
To read the murderous doom,

And then uprose the Great Montrose
In the middle of the room.

Those last two lines have something of Scott’s own
ring in them.”
MANUSCRIPT OF “WAVERLEY ” 189

In the basement of the Advocates’ Library we saw
the statue of Scott, which so justly bears the inscrip-
tion Sie sedebat. We saw, too, the: bound volume con-
taining the original manuscript of “‘ Waverley”. It
lay open at the beginning of the forty-first chapter—
“How do you like him?” was Fergus’s first question
as they descended the large stone staircase. “A prince
to live and die under,” was Waverley’s enthusiastic
answer, It was strange to read those sentences, lying
there just as they had issued, fresh-minted from Scott’s
brain, and to think in how many divers tongues, and
by how many printing presses, they had since been
issued to the world.

“One has heard so much about the haste in which
he wrote his novels,” said Mr. Fairfield, as he scruti-
nized the manuscript, ‘‘and about. his never blotting
anything, that one might suppose he literally scribbled
them. 'That’s nonsense; no one ever wrote hastily in
a hand like that. I daresay he left words out here and
there, as every one else does, and didn’t bother to read
his manuscript over before he sent it off to James
Ballantyne, to be copied for the printer; but he didn’t
do his writing in a physical hurry, at all events. The
mere manual part of authorship was an easy business
with him; but that was because he had the matter in
his brain, all ready to be drawn off. He used to talk
so lightly about his ‘ bits of novels,’ as he called them,
that people thought he just sat down and scribbled
them as fast as he could put pen to paper. They
didn’t know that the story in hand was always sim-
mering in his brain; never worrying him, but never
out of his thoughts for five minutes. He says in the
‘Journal’ that he composed hurriedly ; and he declares
this gave his books any charm they possessed. ‘I
have been no sigher in shades,’ says he, quite proudly,
‘no writer of

Songs and sonnets and musical roundelays,
Framed on fancies and whistled on reeds.’
199 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Charming lines, aren’t they?—not his own, though.
But he smartened them up a bit, I think—that was his
way.”

“ This manuscript is extraordinarily fair,” I observed.
“Tt’s almost impossible to believe it’s the original.”

“T don’t know! When Dickens was young his
‘copy’ was nearly as clean—look at the manuscript of
‘Oliver Twist’. As he got older he took more pains
with his sentences, and the manuscripts got to look like
fishing nets. The matter he had to deal with had
altered; some kinds of writing must take more labour
and elaboration than others. That reminds me, I must
have a look at the manuscript of the little sermon Mr.
Grewgious preached to Edwin Drood after the dinner
in Staple Inn, when I get back to London. The whole
scene is one of the subtlest bits in Dickens, and I want
to see it just as he wrote it down. Now, Scott never
handled that sort of thing; and he wasn’t far off the
root of the matter when he wrote in his journal a
quotation from ‘The Good-natured Man,’ to the effect
that one man expressed himself in one way and one
in another, and that was all the difference between
them.”

There are some royal relics in the dark underground
room which contains the Scott statue and manuscript.
The most interesting of these is a little letter, which,
as a child, Charles I wrote to his father.

“You're not trying to re-people the place, are you?”
T asked, when we had returned to the Parliament Hall,
and my friend had fallen into one of his brown studies,
as he stood with his back to the middle fireplace.

“Oh, no, that’s too big a job. I was only thinking
that Scott must have often been here as a youth,
dancing attendance on his father, just as Alan Fairford
danced attendance on his. And that brought Daddy
Fairford and Peter Peebles before my eyes—I daresay
you remember how minutely he describes their appear-
ance—and I thought how often Scott must have seen
MANUSCRIPT OF “ WAVERLEY ” 191

those two figures in his mind’s eye in this very room.
And it’s queer to picture Bozzy at this fireplace, with
one of old Scott’s briefs in his hand, and the old man
in reverential attendance ; Bozzy was a judge’s son, you
know.”

“Dickens was here in 1841,” my friend went on.
“Tt was here he was introduced to Christopher North.
I guess this place is pretty crowded when the Courts
are sitting; but Dickens wrote to Forster that Wilson
was slashing up and down, now with one and now with
another, and with a shaggy devil of a terrier at his heels
all the time. And Dickens was introduced to the very
Peter Robertson who had called Scott ‘Old Peveril’
at this fireplace, eighteen years before. Dickens had
just got to the top of the tree when he came to Edin-
burgh. He'd written ‘ Pickwick,’ and ‘Oliver Twist,’
and ‘ Nickleby,’ and the ‘ Old Curiosity Shop’; and he
wasn’t far off the end of ‘Barnaby Rudge’. It was
Jeffrey who made him come to Scotland. He put up
at the Royal Hotel and they nearly lionized him to death.
It was his first experience in that way on a large scale ;
but he had plenty of it when he went to America next

ear.”
m “You did him right well,’ I remarked admiringly.
‘“‘T’ve read about it in the ‘American Notes ’—and in
‘Martin Chuzzlewit’.”

Mr. Fairfield closed his left eye. ‘‘I guess we'll
smoke a pipe outside,” said he; ‘‘ there’s a statue there
that oughtn’t to be hurried over.”

We did not forget to trace the progress of Claverhouse
from the Parliament Hall to the West Port, so far as
the disappearance of the old West Bow would allow us.
In the Grassmarket we were looking at the site of the
city scaffold, when one of the miserable waifs who are
always hanging about the place accosted us.

“ Tt’s where the great Montroose was hanged,” said he.

‘J think it was at the City Cross,’ whispered Mr.
Fairfield to me.
192 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

The man overheard this, and when he spoke again
there was a dogmatic tone in his voice that would have
done credit to a meenister.

“He was hanged here ; and the joodges watched him
from the top of that hoose; they sat there at all the
executions.”

The house he pointed to stood on the north side of
the Grassmarket, near where the scaffold used to be,
and had a flat roof. Mr. Fairfield withdrew from the
conflict; there followed a small transaction in silver
behind my back.

We went to the Castle several times. On our first
visit we saw the chamber over the gateway, where the
ninth Earl of Argyle passed his last night, the regalia
room, the Royal Lodging and the banqueting hall; and
from the King’s Bastion we gazed for awhile on ‘what
is, perhaps, the grandest prospect that even Edinburgh
can offer. Mons Meg awoke my companion’s enthusi-
asm, because it was Sir Walter who brought her back to
Scotland; but when we entered St. Margaret’s Chapel,
and he caught sight of the photographs and other
rubbishry that are offered for sale therein, he waxed
venomous.

««The hand of the diligent maketh rich,’”’ said he.
“T guess that’s a favourite text here and in Shake-
speare’s Church.”

St. Margaret’s Chapel is, the guide-books say, the
oldest ecclesiastical building in Scotland that bears a
roof. Queens have been its nursing mothers; it was
built by Margaret, wife of Shakespeare’s Malcolm, and
our own Victoria had a hand in its restoration. It is
odd that with such a record, and standing in a royal
fortress, it should be so degraded.

On the occasion of our last visit to the Castle, we
followed in the wake of a good Scot who was acting as
escort to two English ladies well stricken in years. He
was @ Spare man, inclining to threescore, with the
moist eye and bright complexion that my friend had
MANUSCRIPT OF “ WAVERLEY ” 193

so admired in the portrait of Lord Newton. The ladies
were painfully anxious to manifest a proper appreciation
of all that he showed them; but they were evidently
tired-out, and their knowledge of Scottish history was of
the slightest. He was brimming over with enthusiasm,
and his information was so copious and so admirably
conveyed, that the temptation to listen when we were
close to him was irresistible. I think he saw we were
interested in what he said, and thought none the worse
of us on that account.

In the little panelled room in which James I was born,
and in the ante-chamber adjoining, we had the benefit
of the stranger’s exposition; and in the regalia room
we found ourselves again in his immediate neighbour-
hood. Here his enthusiasm was particularly fervid.

‘‘And what do you say it all is?” asked one of the
ladies, when, after drawing attention to almost every
article behind the glass screen, he had paused to take
breath.

‘It’s the regalia—the Crown jewels,” he answered,
with unruffled politeness.

“‘T thought they were in the Tower.”

“This is the old Scottish regalia. Our kings and
queens wore it at their coronations before the Union.”

‘Oh, how interesting! Then who does it belong to
now ?”

“The Government.” He had hesitated a little before
his answer as if searching for a word that his questioner
would understand. His choice did not prove happy.

“Oh! the English Government.” The lady spoke
with lively satisfaction, and the air of one who had at
last cleared up a misunderstanding.

He was a charmingly courteous and long-suffering
cicerone ; but this was more than he could endure.

“‘T beg your pardon—the British Government.”

He spoke quite stiffly, and as he spoke he looked to-
wards us. My friend’s face was unmoved, but ‘“ some-
thing eminently human beaconed from his eye”. The

18
194 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

other read it aright, and his momentary imitation
melted into an amused and tolerant smile. When the
Scottish gentleman spoke again, he took us, as it were,
under his wing, and addressed his remarks as much to
us as to the two ladies.

In the regalia room stands the oak chest in which,
for more than a hundred years after the Union, the
Honours of Scotland lay hidden. Inspired by this, our
cicerone recounted the circumstances under which the
chest had been opened in 1818; not forgetting to men-
tion Scott’s horror, when on the day following, one of
the Search Commissioners sportively proposed to put
the ancient Scottish crown upon a young lady’s head.

‘“*T daresay you know the story,” he added, courteously
anxious not to appear to be posing as an instructor, and
at the same time giving us a little bow.

Mr. Fairfield bowed in return. ‘‘And I’m sure you
know how prettily it ends,” said he.

“Eh?” The story-teller was evidently puzzled.

“Tt was Mrs. Lockhart who told the incident to her
husband. She said that the sympathy which she
showed moved Sir Walter very much, and he began to
treat her as a woman from that day.”

“True, true!” There was genuine delight and
astonishment in the other’s tone. ‘TI didn’t know you
took such an interest in Sir Walter down south,” he
exclaimed.

7 My friend comes from England; J am an American
citizen.”

The Scottish gentleman was taken off his feet. The
clear-cut sentences to which we had been listening with

no little admiration gave place to an utterance that was
quite emotional.

“That makes it even more delightful. Really, really !
—but there’s the common tongue after all. Well,
well! We're all subjects of King Shakespeare.”

He said this last with a bow towards me; and then
MANUSCRIPT OF “ WAVERLEY ” 195

with his moist eyes sparkling and a flush on his bright
face, he shook hands with my companion.

‘When he spoke of our common tongue, I wondered
what he would think of your vernacular,’ I remarked,
as soon as our friend had gone.

“Law or medicine, say you?” was Mr. Fairfield’s
only answer.

It was his custom to speculate upon the probable
calling of any stranger with whom we chanced to make
acquaintance.

‘‘ Law,” said I, without hesitation; “he’s such a
good-looking chap.”
CHAPTER XV

MR. FAIRFIELD MORALIZES IN GREYFRIARS
CHURCHYARD

No conscientious sojourner in Edinburgh misses the
Greyfriars churchyard. If the tourist be very enthusi-
astic and exceptionally well-tochered, he will act wisely
io buying a guide-book of the gate-keeper. This, we
were assured, was an official work, and the Kirk
Session had fixed the price at two shillings. Even
under these circumstances, it is not, I hope, absolutely
heretical to suggest that the charge is somewhat high.

Mr. Fairfield insisted on hunting out the grave of
Henry Mackenzie, because he was a friend of Sir
Walter’s.

‘‘Dear, dear!’’ he said, when we stood before it;
“he lived to be over eighty-five, and he shot and fished
after a fashion down to eighty at least; and Scott was
disabled at sixty, and Dickens was struck down at
fifty-eight, and Shakespeare died at fifty-two.”

“But do you think longevity is a thing to be desired
by an author—as regards his reputation after he has
gone, I mean?”

“Not extreme longevity, certainly; it isn’t in the
nature of things that it should. I can’t think of any
author who added to his reputation after sixty-five—
except perhaps Tennyson. I’m thinking of ‘ Lucknow’
and ‘ The Revenge ’.”

“Not ‘ Crossing the Bar’?” I asked.

‘““Ah!—and he was eighty when he wrote that.
But I doubt if it added to his reputation in the way I

196
(opomsayvg &q Supmpsp v w044)
‘SUVINAATUO AHL WoUd ‘ATLSVO HOUOINIGA

 
GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD 197

mean; he didn’t break new ground in it. Now, those
two ballads are incomparably finer than anything else
he did in the same line. He wrote both of them long
after sixty, unless I’m mistaken. Some of his earlier
ballads are almost poor.”

The site of the family grave of Sir Walter’s father is
in Greyfriars churchyard, close to the entrance which
gives upon the grounds of the Heriot Hospital.

‘‘Sir Walter has been here,” said I.

‘Oh, yes; several times. I don’t know how often ;
and there are many other graves here, which he must
have stood at. His father was in great request for
funerals, and he liked to take his son with him. The
boy was not so fond of the business as the old man was,
and he escaped it when he could. I suppose most of
the funerals that Scott pére attended were in this
churchyard, or in the Canongate, and no doubt a good
many of Sir Walter’s own friends are buried here.
Oh, yes, he must have known every inch of the place.
It’s a pity the old church where the family used to
worship has gone. Don’t let us forget to hunt up
Bluidy Mackenzie’s mausoleum before we go; Scott
knew where that was when he was a boy.”

We had felt so confident, when we entered the grave-
yard, that we could find all we wanted without the as-
sistance of the Kirk Session’s magnum opus that we
had indulged the gate-keeper with a little gentle satire
on the subject of that volume; but I am bound to con-
fess that, later on, we boggled for a long time over the
site of the flat gravestone on which the people signed
the National Covenant in 1638. We had read in one
of our guide-books that this stone belonged to the tomb
of a Boswell of Auchinleck, and was still extant; but
in or about the right place, we could find nothing but
the grave of certain Victorian Boswells; and here the
stone, though flat, was surrounded by a railing which
would have driven an impatient signatory frantic.

We were forlornly leaning against this barrier, wish-
198 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

ing that we had not been so cutting about the official
guide, and debating as to whether we should eat the leek
in respect of it, when a stranger took pity on us, and ex-
plained that the tombstone upon which we were gazing
was the one we wanted; the fact being that in com-
paratively recent times it had been turned over, and
the upside inscribed to the honour and glory of the
Boswells, whose names we had been studying.

‘‘Unless my memory fails me,” said Mr. Fairfield,
“the Covenant made many turn their coats; but I can
hardly believe it made the Boswells turn their tomb-
stone. Yet the thing must have been done on purpose,
if at all. No Scot could deny that the stone on which
the people signed the Covenant with their blood in
1638, had at least an historical interest. What can it
all mean ?”’

‘Perhaps it isn’t true,” I suggested, as soon as the
stranger had departed; ‘‘ I’m sure James Boswell would
have scorned such an act, little though he may have
sympathized with the Covenanters.”

*“‘T don’t believe a word of it!”’ was my friend’s
verdict.

We had no difficulty in finding the Martyrs’ Monu-
ment. The inscription on it tells the world that, in
one way or another, some eighteen thousand of the
excellent of the earth were murdered and destroyed for
adhering to the Covenants and the laws.

“ Are those figures authentic?” I asked.

“Probably not. Let’s hope not! Let’s hope, at
all events, that this good blood—I mean the good
blood on both sides—wasn’t shed in vain; that it
helped the world on somehow.”

“Troublous times!’ said I later on, when we were
standing near that part of the churchyard where, after
Bothwell Brig, so many Covenanters were penned in
under the open sky for five cruel months.

“ Horrible! Horrible!”

“But it’s no good grieving over them,’

’

my friend
GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD 199

went on after a long pause. ‘ They’re old unhappy
far-off things—they’re nothing more now. As I read
history, there’s no moral to be drawn from the doings
of either side—except this, perhaps: every decent man
nowadays ought to make up his mind he’ll never directly
or indirectly put a strain on the conscience of a fellow-
creature.”

‘“Not a bad moral that,” said I; ‘not a little one
either.”

“No; and perhaps the mere fact that folks like you
and me can think as we do about it, shows that the
excellent of the earth who died for king or kirk in the
killing-time have helped the world on a little, after all.”

On our first Sunday in Edinburgh a drenching rain
had prevented our attending a place of worship. On
our second Sunday I proposed St. Giles’s, but this was
met by an objection on the part of my travelling com-
panion. He had heard, somewhere, that in the Pres-
byterian cathedral the psalms were sung and the Lord’s
Prayer chanted; and he protested that he could not
permit any one to say the Mass at hislug. He con-
fessed, afterwards, that what he really objected to was
the siuging of an anthem: not, as he was careful to
explain, because he feared to lose his voice, but merely
because that form of devotional exercise wearied him
beyond endurance. In the end, we decided in favour
of the Old Greyfriars; but on our presenting ourselves
at the doors we found that during September the even-
ing service was not held. In the face of this rebuff,
Mr. Fairfield withdrew his objection to the cathedral.

That was our last night in Edinburgh. Our pro-
posed stay of two or three days had already extended
over a fortnight ; and though we would fain have pro-
longed it still further, this could not be. Business de-
manded my return to London at the end of another
week, and to abandon Tweedside altogether was out of
the question.
200 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“«¢To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new,’”
said Mr. Fairfield, on our return from St. Giles’s, as he
settled himself in the big chair, with a cheerfulness
that spoke of virtuous satisfaction. "We had obtained
good seats close to the chapel of St. Eloi, which con-
tains the Argyle tomb and monument, and the service
had been a short one.

“T never thought, when we came here, I should be
so reluctant to leave,’ he went on. ‘‘ But then I had
no notion of what Edinburgh was like; I don’t believe
anyone could have a notion without coming here.”

** A wonderful place,” I acquiesced.

“The most wonderful thing in it—or at all events the
most startling and unexpected thing is that Water of
Leith. It’s fine enough when you see it from the top
of the Dean Bridge; but when you go down to it, and
find a clear stream running by a rock cliff and foaming
over a rocky bottom, and you remember that you’re in
the heart of a great metropolis, it fairly takes your breath
away. Nothing took hold of me like that river; not the
Calton, nor the Castle, nor Arthur’s Seat.”’

“Not even the Old Town?”

“That doesn’t appeal to the same side of a man.
To many men it wouldn’t appeal at all, though it hit
me hard enough. [ shall go down to my grave with a
feeling that the Fates ought to have given me, when I
was young, a year or two in an attic in one of those old
houses in the High Street that used to look across the
Nor’ Loch when they were young. Just think of the
look-out there is from them, even now.”

“You may think yourself lucky to have seen so many
of the old houses; they won’t be here for ever.”

““T agree; and, between ourselves, I wouldn’t stop
the improvements if I could.”

‘“‘ Yes, I mean it,” he protested, when he saw my as-
tonishment. ‘TI think the authorities are doing a good
work; and I go with them. Of course, one would like
to see more of the sort of thing that is going on in
GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD 201

Riddle’s Close; but to expect restoration in that spirit
on a large scale would be Utopian. The truth is,” he
went on, ‘“‘I don’t like the look of some of the children
here. They come out of insanitary lairs; I’m sure of
it—filthy lairs, too. A man must be stark, raving mad
if he thinks that a little thing. No, no, I go with
Dickens in these matters, and I’m not crank enough to
let my sentimentalities lead me into what I think down-
right bad citizenship. I’m glad I’ve seen these old
houses, with their tablets and pious mottoes; but-—-—”

A wave of his cigar in the air was the only finish to
this sentence ; and for a time we both sat meditating.

“When I get back to London,” said my friend, as
he roused himself and began to collect his books in
readiness for our journey to Melrose, ‘I shall read
through all the novels again—all the Scottish ones, I
mean. Heaps of things in them will come to me quite
fresh, now I’ve seen Edinburgh. I’ve re-read ‘ Red-
gauntlet’ and ‘Guy Mannering’ since we came here.
I shall tackle ‘Old Mortality’ next—— And that reminds
me of something that happened when we were in the
cathedral just now,” he broke off. ‘‘ Have you ever
been inclined to take a side in the King versus Kirk
business, since we came here?”

He asked this with so much earnestness that my
curiosity was aroused.

«Have you?’’ I asked.

“Yes. I didn’t know it till this evening; but when
I found myself sitting just opposite that chapel, and I
was looking at the figure on the tomb, I was conscious
of a sort of regret that it wasn’t Montrose. This set
me wondering, and I came to the conclusion that I was
a king’s man. Did you ever hear of anything more
ridiculous ?”’

TI laughed, but in my own mind I admitted that I,
too, was on that side; though why I could not tell.

‘“ Perhaps it was only because you liked Montrose
better than Argyle,” I suggested, to draw him out.
202 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“No! that wasn’t all of it; though, of course, I like
Montrose best. Leaving out the question of character,
he was picturesque, and Argyle wasn’t. Montrose was
a poet for one thing, and then there’s that story about
him and his hair.”

“‘T don’t know it.”

“Tt was on the morning of his execution. Warristoun
went to his cell: to make himself unpleasant, I suppose.
Montrose was combing out his curls.—‘ Why is James
Graham so careful of his locks?’ And Montrose smiled,
and made answer, that so long as his head was his own,
he meant to see to it: when Warristoun got it, he might
deal with it as he liked. That’s the substance of the
story.”

“ And a very good story, too. Itreminds me of what
Sir Thomas More said at the scaffold, when he asked
the Lieutenant of the Tower to see him safe up the steps
—he promised to shift for himself coming down.”

‘« More’s another of the picturesque figures of history,”
said Mr. Fairfield. ‘And he was a poet, among other
things. But to go back to King and Kirk, has it ever
struck you that in religious struggles, both sides always
come out on top? The loser gets as much happiness
as the winner, I mean.”

«Even if he loses his head?”

“That's where the happiness comes in. He feels
sure he’s going to heaven as a martyr, and that makes
him and his side happy. The other side feel sure. he’s
going to hell ag a malignant. That. makes them even
happier. People feel like that towards the enemy, when
they quarrel about religion. There’s never a pin to
choose between them, as regards ferocity.”

“Then why take a side in King versus Kirk ?”’

“Why, indeed? I don’t care a puff of tobacco smoke
about their quarrels; they don’t appeal to me at all. I
can’t put myself in sympathy with either party ; I simply
can’t bring my mind into line with theirs. And yet here
I am, with a prejudice in favour of the king’s side.”
GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD 208

As he said this he was standing before the fireplace
with his hands in his pockets. He looked towards me
as if inviting an explanation of the phenomenon.

“Tt’s the novels that have done it,” said I.

“To some extent; but they don’t explain it alto-
gether. I'll tell you why it is—it’s because the king’s
side was more picturesque.”

‘‘Have you carried the problem right through the
three stages ?”

“‘T have indeed; and I’ve come to the conclusion
that I’m no better than the young plants of grace in
‘Bonnie Dundee’. It’s the jack-boots and the plumed
hats that have captivated me. They’re so bonnie that
when I see them I wish them success.”

‘“‘ Perhaps though, I can hardly go so far as to assert
that I look couthie and slee while I am doing it,” he
added with much gravity; but as he spoke he glanced
at his face in the looking-glass, and we both laughed.
CHAPTER XVI
WE CROSS MELROSE BRIDGE AND CLIMB EILDON

“‘Tt is perhaps rather heavy,” said Mr. Fairfield, on
the morning of our departure for Melrose, as we stood
outside the Waverley station and watched three porters
stagger under the weight of his trunk; ‘‘ but it’s so
convenient to have some of your things about you.
These men will see to our baggage; we shall have enough
to do in seeing to the bicycles.”

The porters acknowledged my friend’s gratuity with
the usual touch of the cap, and then intimated that we
must follow our belongings to the weighing-machine.

‘“T think they always weigh luggage here, when it’s
to be taken to certain parts of the system,” I explained ;
“T heard some one talking about it at the hotel.” I
said this without betraying the joy with which my
heart sang.

“A very stupid rule,” asserted Mr. Fairfield; ‘it
must take up so much time.”

My portmanteau passed the test of the machine
without question; but when I saw the big trunk put
on, and noticed the satisfaction that beamed on the
face of the presiding officer, I thought it well to dis-
appear with my bicycle round a corner.

In Mr. Fairfield’s case the weighing process certainly
did take a long while. Fortunately there was so much
time to spare, that I could wait for him without im-
patience. When he came in view, he appeared to be
suffering under an intolerable sense of wrong.

‘This is nothing less than extortion,” he protested.

204
WE CLIMB EILDON 205

“Tt’s what they call a love of thrift, I suppose—‘ Ou
ay, the Scots are close’.”

‘“‘T’m afraid Scotland’s in a bad way,” I answered
gloomily.

‘Why do you say that?’ There was suspicion and
no little sharpness in his tone.

‘“‘T thought it might comfort you.”

Mr. Fairfield made no answer, as he stood with one
hand on his bicycle, and his eyes fixed on a small yellow
document which he held in the other.

“You were talking about extortion,” said I.

‘‘ It’s very near it, at all events.” He was now get-
ting past the irritable stage and verging towards the
apologetic.

‘“« Extortion is dishonesty,” said I severely. ‘‘ That’s
one thing against them. And we found out yesterday
that their Church was in a bad way.. That’s another.”

‘‘T only said it seemed lukewarm.”

“But you wouldn’t say a thing like that without
good cause.”

‘“‘T was disappointed when the man gave out a Cal-
vinistic text, and then didn’t preach a word of Calvin-
ism.” Mr. Fairfield is a very truthful man, even when
angry; and just then he was rapidly recovering his
temper.

‘It was disappointing,’ I admitted; ‘even I felt a
little injured at the time. But that doesn’t exhaust the
catalogue of their offences.”

“What else is there?”

“The national fondness for rotten fruit is simply

deplorable.”
Mr. Fairfield laughed. ‘I wasn’t going back to the
shop to make a fuss about a few cents,” said he. “T

was chaffing you, that time. Do you think I didn’t
notice your superior grin?”

A few days before, he had bought a pound of apples
at a grand establishment in Princes Street. These,
upon the opening of the bag later on, turned out to be
206 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

much decayed; and in the first flush of his resentment,
my friend had declared that a people who could allow
such a fraudulent establishment to flourish in their
midst, must be ignorant of the difference between good
fruit and bad. He had put aside my suggestion that he
should go back to the shop and complain; and had,
indeed, asserted in answer to it, that he did not blame
the greengrocer, as no doubt the man had learned by
experience that his customers preferred their apples
rotten. A further and more detailed scrutiny of his
purchase had ended in the bag and it contents being
hurled down a close-head, with a muttered quotation

from the Bard — ‘‘there’s small choice in rotten
apples ’’.

‘It’s odd how ready one is to find fault with things
in a strange place,” I said consolingly. ‘I hope you

didn’t actually come to blows over that weighing-
machine.” /

He was quite himself by this time. ‘“‘Oh, no! I
merely challenged the company’s right to charge the
excess; and the man produced a document, showing
what weight of baggage was within the regulations.”

“And after that you had the audacity to come to me
and talk about extortion—but what on earth took up all
the time?”

“They had to send for some more weights.” My
friend was merry now. “I wish you’d hold the bicycle,”
he said a minute later; ‘“‘I was perhaps a little short
with that official; I may as well put matters right.’

“Need you bother?”

“A man ought to bebave himself out of his own
country,” said the good patriot, as he moved off in the
direction of the machine.

“You've done the handsome thing,’ I said when he
came back. ‘It really was very irritating. I suppose
the amount was nothing considerable.”’

“Only a few shillings. It wasn’t the amount, it
was the wickedness of the thing that roused me.”’
WE CLIMB EILDON 207

“*T almost wonder you didn’t make a really effective
protest.”

“* How could 1?”

“You might have refused to let the company carry
the trunk at all. You would only have been acting
strictly within your rights in so doing.”

“That would have been magnificent!’’ he exclaimed.
“They would have lost the amount of their unrighteous
demand, and I should have lost nothing but my clothes
and books. Really, one ought never to stir a finger
without legal advice.”

Melrose was our destination, and our train was an
express, that ran to Galashiels without a stop. Here,
however, there was a longish wait; and my friend,
who had learned from a native in the carriage that we
had been running through the vale of the Gala, suddenly
proposed that we should take to the bicycles for the
four or five miles that remained of our journey. As
the morning was fine, I was only too glad to fall in
with this suggestion. We had no difficulty in finding
the road to Melrose; and we had not been riding
many minutes when we saw water below us on the
right. We both stopped, almost involuntarily, and at
the same moment; for we knew it was the Tweed.

With most of us, the sight of some great, alien river,
familiar as a name and nothing more, makes the heart
beat faster; but what are the Abanas and Pharpars of
the wide world as compared with a man’s own Jordan?
In such of us as love Sir Walter, the first glimpse of
his river wakes an emotion not easily expressed in
words; for, be our domicile of origin what it may, we
are all Scots of the Border, as regards the Tweed.

Not far beyond the pomt where we stopped, a
tributary of the river runs under the highway. We
made another halt here, to lean upon the bridge and
look down into the water. The prospect of the Tweed,
as seen through the trees a little in front of us, was
so beautiful that we forsook the bicycles; and taking
208 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

advantage of a neighbouring gate, we made our way to
the margin. We stood for some time gazing on the
clear, swift stream and listening to its ripple. Nota
spear’s length distant, where the current eddied round
a bank of white pebbles, a white-breasted bird preened
its feathers and looked at us askance.

“Do you hear the river?” asked my companion,
almost in a whisper. ‘It was the sound of all others
most delicious to his ears. It was murmuring just as
we hear it, when he was dying—seventy-one years ago,
almost to a day.”

On our way back to the road, we stayed for a moment
to peep under the bridge, and wonder what the stream-
let was and where it came from. We learned a day or
two later, that it was the Elwand, the burn that runs
through the Fairy Dean, the haunted glen of the
“Monastery ”’.

When we came to the bridge over the Tweed, Mr.
Fairfield showed signs of great inward commotion.
“Tf only I had one of the guide-books or even a map!”’
was the burden of his song.

‘Ts this Melrose bridge?” he shouted to a man in a
cart, whom we met before we had reached the other
side,

The answer was yes; and almost before it had been
uttered, my friend was off his bicycle and fumbling in
his pocket-book.

“T’ve only a very brief note, a mere outline; but I
think it will do for present purposes. I’ve been wonder-
ing ever since we left Galashiels whether we were fol-
lowing the road by which they brought Scott home for
the last time. And directly I saw this bridge, I felt
pretty sure that we had, and that this was Melrose
bridge.”

His hands were trembling with excitement as he
fished out a scrap of paper, and read from it aloud :—

«* Reached Newhaven by steamboat late on 9th July
1832—put up at Douglas’s Hotel, St. Andrew’s Square
WE CLIMB EILDON 209

—on 11th started for Abbotsford—river being in flood
had to go round by Melrose bridge. That means they
couldn’t go by the ford, so they had to take this bridge.
We've been riding along the very road by which
they came,” he went on with a catch in his voice.
‘* And the way to Abbotsford must be somewhere out
yonder.”

Without another word he was in the saddle, and the
yellow bicycle was speeding onward. I lost sight of
him in a moment, for the road curved to the left on
the other side of the bridge. I mounted and followed
at a more moderate pace. A little way beyond the
curve, I passed on my right a cottage with a bright
garden in front of it; and a few paces in advance I saw
my friend standing in the road, staring hard at a finger-
post. The cottage and its garden were on his right,
and I noticed that they formed the point at which the
road forked ; one of the forks being the way I had just
traversed. I got off and joined him; he said nothing,
but his face was eloquent of great tidings. The ex-
planation was not far to seek ; for the direction written
on that part of the finger-post, which pointed to the
other fork, ran as follows: ‘“‘Two miles to Abbotsford,
and six miles to Selkirk”.

“Are you going to Abbotsford?” I asked.

“Oh, no! Not now; we shall have plenty of time
for that. And besides, I want my notes.”

We rode on, past the old peel tower of Darnick, and
into Melrose.

It is common knowledge that

the triple pride
Of Eildon looks upon Strathclyde—

and that at the foot of Eildon lies Melrose. ‘To the
best of my recollection, only two out of the three peaks
are visible from the town itself.
It did not take long to pick up our luggage at the
station and make the necessary arrangements at our
14
210 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

hotel. Mr. Fairfield’s next proceeding was to place
himself in the hands of the local hairdresser.

“You can often get a lot of information while you’re
being shaved; I make it a rule never to shave myself
in a new place,” said he.

“There’s a suspension bridge across the river here,”
he announced when I next saw him; “and just above
that is a dam called the cauld. It is I suppose the
curb that was made by Thomas the Rhymer’s demon.
He was an energetic spirit and worried Thomas to give
him work. One task Thomas set him was the dam-
ming of the Tweed.”

“T think that was at Kelso,” I remarked meekly.
I had recently been looking through the ‘‘ Lay of the
Last Minstrel”.

“‘T believe you’re right,” said my friend, a little sur-
prised at my superior knowledge. ‘‘The barber’s
young man says there’s good bathing in the river,” he
went on.

« At this time of the year?’’ I asked the question in
some astonishment; for the weather had for weeks
past been frigid and ungenial.

“He said he didn’t bathe himself; but he had no
doubt it was all right.”

“ Are you going to try it?”

«Tt would be pleasant to feel that one had bathed in
Scott’s river,” he answered hesitatingly. ‘TI: think I
shall see what it looks hike to-morrow morning. The
sun to-day is quite hot. Will you join me? I sup-
pose it must be before breakfast.”’

I pointed out to Mr. Fairfield that for me to run
such a risk of pneumonia would be unfair to my clients ;
but I promised to try to rise early enough to witness
his ablutions,

By taking the road that goes under the railway
bridge and diving down a passage that runs between
two houses, the traveller within a few minutes of leav-
ing the market-place of Melrose, finds himself in the
WE CLIMB EILDON 211

open country with the peaks of the Eildon Hills
straight in front of him. This was the route we fol-
lowed after lunch that day. By the time we stood on
the top of the middle peak—the highest of the three—
we had wet jackets, but the shower was over and the
sun was shining brilliantly on a wide prospect of Border
hills, range upon range beneath a broken sky. The
rain had been heavy while it lasted, and it had brought
a bitter wind with it. Mr. Fairfield had found com-
fort in the recollection that Washington Irving had
been caught in a similar shower when Scott showed
him over the country in 1817.

“ Trving says that Scott thought nothing of the wet,”
gasped the literary enthusiast, as he struggled forward
with bent head and chattering teeth; ‘“‘ but Irving
didn’t like it at all, and for his sake Scott took shelter
under a thicket.”

‘‘He would have been puzzled to find one here,” I
suggested.

‘“‘T’ve read somewhere,” said my friend, as we stood
on the summit in the bright sunshine, “ that from here
Scott could point out more than forty spots famous in
Border history. I wish I knew some of them. By-
the-by, Washington Irving speaks of this country as
being absolutely treeless. That’s not the case now.”

“You may depend upon it,” he went on, with grow-
ing interest, ‘‘ the trees have been planted within the
last hundred years, and the country-side owes a good
many of them to Sir Walter. He was an enthusiastic
planter himself, and he influenced his neighbours in the
same direction. I remember reading in a book of Lord
Cockburn’s that till the Laird of Torwoodlee began
planting on his land—Torwoodlee’s somewhere on the
Gala, quite near Abbotsford—there wasn’t a tree to be
seen near the house. That Laird was Scott’s contem-
porary, but I don’t know whether Scott had a hand in
his planting.”

On our way down the hill, we came upon a bed
212 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

of heather. It was past its prime, but we hailed it
with enthusiasm. On our walk to Roslin we had seen,
in the distance, the sun shining on heathery slopes of
the Pentlands; but this Eildon heather was the first
we had handled in Scotland.

“The Macphail in Mr. Pinero’s ‘ Cabinet Minister’
says that heather is poor walking; I’m inclined to agree
with him.” .

We were negotiating a particularly steep part of the
descent when Mr. Fairfield made this remark; and as
he spoke he slipped upon a concealed. boulder. He went
down with some force, and there was a look of agony
upon his visage as he rose to his feet, but his literary
ardour was unquenchable.

“Scottjtold Washington Irving that if he didn’t see the
heather at least once a year, he thought he should die,”
remarked the sufferer, as he rubbed the point of impact.

«We'll have a look at the river before we go back to
the hotel,” he said, as soon as we had regained level
ground. ‘There must be a fine view from the suspen-
sion bridge. The young man at the barber’s said the
cauld was quite close to the bridge.”’

Just above the cauld the river bank rises to a con-
siderable height, and its face between the water and
the summit is thickly grown with trees and bushes.
This high ground is known as the Weirhill. There
are some seats at the top, and we were glad to rest
ourselves and admire the prospect. Behind us, a green
slope, on which stood the parish church, led down to
the high road.

“Some old ecclesiastic said that though, no doubt,
God could have made a better berry than the straw-
berry, He never did, in fact, make a better,’ observed
Mr. Fairfield after along silence. ‘‘‘ The bearing of
this observation lays in the application on it,’” he
added, turning to see if I had caught his meaning.

“T certainly cannot imagine anything more beauti-
ful,” I admitted,
WE CLIMB EILDON 213

Looking Tweedward, across the fresh green of the
trees, there was, that sunny afternoon, a view of hill
and river softer and more alluring than anything we
had seen in Scotland. Southward, beyond the church
spire, rose the dour outline of the Hildons.

“The weather is certainly settling; this sun is quite
hot. I think I shall venture on a bath to-morrow.”

So said my companion, as he stretched himself
luxuriously on the seat, and watched ‘the thin blue
smoke that rose straight up from the tip of his cigar.
He had forgotten that icy shower on the hills.

“This is @ lovely river,” he went on; ‘I never ex-
pected to see anything like this. It’s so clear, for one
thing.”

“And it’s so swift,’ I chimed in, with a fervour
equal to his own.

Mr. Fairfield rose to his feet with a jerk, and stared
downward upon the current; no mere curiosity or
admiration could account for the intensity of his
gaze.

“This cauld can’t be the work of the demon who
‘bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone,’”’ I continued,
in meditative accents. ‘‘It’s made of wood. Did you
see those rusty nails sticking up in it?”

‘“‘T did not observe them.’ He said this with a fine
carelessness; but the muscles of his face twitched.

“‘T remember now, that young man told me, the best
bathing place was about a hundred yards above it,” he
observed, after he had reseated himself. His eyes were
fixed on the troubled water just below the dam as he
spoke,

“That seems reasonable. Did he, by-the-by, ask
you at what hour you proposed to bathe?”

“‘T believe I said about eight o’clock. Do you sup-
pose he had any motive in asking?’’ My friend was
evidently growing suspicious of the young man.

““Oh, no. I daresay he only wanted to bring a few
of his friends to admire your swimming.”
214 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

The prospect of having an assemblage to witness
his feats of natation seemed to give Mr. Fairfield no
pleasure.

“T shall not bathe to-morrow, anyhow,” he said
shortly.
CHAPTER XVII
MELROSE ABBEY AND SIR WALTER’S GRAVE

DvRING our stay at Melrose we paid several visits to
the Abbey. We both agreed that the place was some-
thing of a disappointment.

““T suppose I expected too much,” said Mr. Fairfield
one morning when we had the ruin to ourselves, and he
had ventured to rest himself upon the stone which is
pointed out as Scott’s favourite seat; ‘Sir Walter did
so much to save the place, and he was so enthusiastic
over it, and one had heard so much about its exquisite
beauty that, after all, a little disappointment isn’t to be
wondered at,”

“T certainly think we’ve heard a little too much about
the carvings,” I observed.

‘‘Oh, yes. They’re wonderful, I daresay ; particularly
wonderful considering their age, but that minute work
doesn’t appeal to me. When I’m told that a place is a
superlatively beautiful ruin I expect something super-
latively beautiful as a whole. Now, to my sweet, un-
learned eye this ruin looks a bit heavy. I’ve stared at
it from every point of view, and I think it looks heavy
from all of them. I’m only an ignorant Philistine;
but give me Dryburgh, say I.”’

In the churchyard which adjoins Melrose Abbey my
friend spent a long time in meditation before the tall
red stone that marks Tom Purdie’s grave. The inscrip-
tion which Scott wrote is so beautiful that I cannot
refrain from setting it out in its entirety :—

215
216 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

In grateful remembrance of the faithful and attached services
of twenty-two years, and in sorrow for the loss of a humble but
sincere friend, the stone was erected by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. of
Abbotsford. Here lies the body of Thomas Purdie, wood-forester
at Abbotsford, who died 29th October 1829, aged sixty-two years.
‘Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler
over many things.” Matthew, Chap. XXV., v. 21.

««A humble but sincere friend,’” quoted Mr. Fair-
field approvingly. ‘Yes, that was well deserved.
Scott treated all the humble folk about him as if they
were his blood relations; but there was only one Tom
Purdie. Whenever you think of Scott out of doors at
Abbotsford, there’s always Purdie somewhere near him
with his plaid. His death was a sore blow. It came
at a time when Scott could ill afford to lose a friend.
He was drawing near his own end in October, 1829.
Only a few months before, he’d had a serious warning
of apoplexy; and no wonder! Ever since the crash
he’d been working like a galley slave.to pay off his debts
—killing himself, in fact. For ten years Tom Purdie’s
shoulder had been a support to him when they went
about the estate together. There’s a pretty passage in
Lockhart about it. He says it was easy to see that the
man’s heart swelled within him from the moment the
Sheriff got hold of his collar. Scott was fortunate in
at least two of his retainers—Tom Purdie and Willie
Laidlaw. Laidlaw was a very different stamp of
man; but I’m sure he wouldn’t have resented being
called a retainer. And there was that good servant
Nicolson, the valet who was with Sir Walter at the
end.”

Melrose churchyard has many associations with Sir
Walter. Of the ‘names he loved to hear” that are
now carved upon the tombs of this. churchyard, Tom
Purdie’s is only one of many; on every hand we came
across inscriptions referring to Scott’s contemporaries.
Still extant is the little tombstone bearing the poetical
epitaph of which he is said to have been so fond :—
MELROSE ABBEY 217

The earth goeth on the earth,
Glistring like gold,

The earth goes to the earth
Sooner than it wold;

The earth builds on the earth
Castles and towers ;

The earth says to the earth,
All shall be ours.

“‘T came across that in some book about Scott, years
ago,” said my friend. ‘It stuck in my memory, more
_ or less, and I recognized it when I came across it again
in the ‘ Life’ of Grimaldi, the clown. It was put upon
his frst wife’s tombstone—at her own wish.”

‘«« How came she to know of it?”

“Tcan’timagine. Perhaps it’s to be found elsewhere
than in this graveyard. Her version was a little differ-
ent, by-the-by. It was odd for a young woman to
have such a fancy for the lines, She was only five-and-
twenty when she died—that was in eighteen hundred.”

On one of our visits to the Abbey we fell in with the
custodian; and for more than an hour he sauntered
about with us, pointing out choice bits of the fabric,
and drawing attention to matters of interest in the
churchyard. We were tolerably familiar with the ex-
cellent little guide-book which is his handiwork, but
we soon discovered that he had not put into it a tithe
of what he knew about his charge.

Mr. Fairfield was eager to ascertain if the neighbour-
hood contained any old people who remembered Scott.
Our guide could name several old standards who pro-
fessed to remember the funeral; but he was doubtful
whether any one still living could claim to have known
Sir Walter. He told us, however, that a man named
William Millar, who died in the spring of 1902, aged
101, had often seen him, and had been intimate with
Tom Purdie. This patriarch survived his friend by
more than seventy years, but in the churchyard they
now sleep almost side by side.

“I wish Lord Cockburn could have seen our friend,”
218 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

said Mr. Fairfield after the custodian had left us. ‘In
reference to these very ruins he made a complaint about
the persons who watched over such places in Scotland
in his time, and he wondered if there would ever be an
improvement. I wish he could have seen the custodian
at Roslin too.”

“What had Lord Cockburn to complain of here?”

“Ve didn’t like Johnny Bower’s appearance. He
said he had a very whiskified visage. Even in his pri-
vate diary a judge mustn’t condemn a fellow-creature on
such evidence as that; so Cockburn said that for all
he knew Johnny might be a teetotaler. But it cer-
tainly was the face that shocked his sense of propriety.
He complained that Johnny’s language was more in-
flated than correct ; but he couldn’t have thought that
mattered. Washington Irving says the man wore a
blue coat and a red waistcoat. Perhaps Lord Cockburn
thought he ought to have worn wig and gown.”

“« Johnny Bower was here in Scott’s time ?”’

“Oh, yes! I expect Scott got him his billet. Wash-
ington Irving has a lot to say about him. It was Scott’s
son Charles who brought Irving here and introduced
him to Bower. The little man was one of Scott’s most
fervent worshippers. He was a perfect Durdles in his
knowledge of the nooks and corners of this place. Scott
used to get a lot of fun out of him. One of Johnny’s
theories was that the Abbey looked’ better by the light
of a candle than by the light of the moon; and he used
to insist that in order to get a really perfect view by day-
light, a man must turn his back to the ruins, and stoop
down till his head was between his knees.”’

“T thought that was Johnny’s grave when I first
came on it,’ continued Mr. Fairfield, pointing to a
tombstone a few feet distant from us, ‘but the age
puzzles me. The John Bower of the inscription died
in 1843 aged fifty-eight. Now, Washington Irving
speaks of the Johnny Bower of 1817 as an old man.
If that’s right, this can’t be he; and yet Lord Cock-
SIR WALTER’S GRAVE 219

burn in 1840 spoke of the Johnny Bower of that time
as having been custodian here for forty years. I wish
I’d thought to ask our friend to clear up the mystery.”

Dryburgh Abbey lies within a pleasant walk of Mel-
rose. The wise pedestrian will strike off the main
road at the beginning of Newtown St. Boswells and
make his way to the back of the Dryburgh Hotel, and
along the very Scottish village street that leads to the
burn. Once in the glen, the path to the high bank,
which overlooks the suspension bridge, cannot be.
missed. The Abbey hes within a few hundred yards
of the other side of this bridge.

As we were passing the cottages that cluster near
the entrance, a fat ancient collie strolled out into the
pathway, and came up to us wagging his tail. Mr.
Fairfield gave him a welcome that was almost effusive.

The old Abbey of Dryburgh was a fabric of vast ex-
tent. Its site is now a region of green lawns, bowery
with foliage, but its ruins are still fringed by some of
the ancient yews, which the monks planted in the days
of its magnificence. We were told that one of these
trees was 700 years old.

St. Mary’s aisle, which formed a part of the abbey’s
north transept, now stands wholly detached and partly
ruinous. Behind the railing which protects the front,
Sir Walter and his wife he under a double tombstone.
Their son, the second baronet and his wife, and also
Lockhart rest by them. The two Scott graves lie
from left to right; Lockhart’s is beside them with the
foot towards the railing. The three tombs are close
together, and they occupy the whole floor of the aisle.
Lockhart’s inscription is as follows: ‘‘ Here, at the feet
of Sir Walter Scott, lie the mortal remains of John
Gibson Lockhart, his son-in-law, biographer and
friend. Born 14th June 1794. Died 25th November
1854.”

After we had examined the tombs, we strolled for a
time about the ruins; and then returning to St. Mary’s
220 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

aisle, we seated ourselves upon a stone coffin, a few
paces in front of it. It was a bright warm afternoon.

“That ‘Here, at the feet of Sir Walter Scott,’ 1
very touching,” said Mr. Fairfield. ‘‘ Dean Ramsey
tells of an old Scottish servant, who said to her master
when she was dying: ‘ Laird, will ye tell them to bury
me whaur I'll lie across at your feet?’ I wonder if
Lockhart ever heard it; it was his wish that he should
he at Sir Walter’s feet. The last utterance but one
that he records of Scott, was that admonition to him-
self to be a good man—‘ My dear, be a good man—be
virtuous—be religious—be a good man. Nothing else
will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.’
When Scott spoke of lying here, he meant on his death-
bed: but the words may have had a fuller significance
to the other when his own time came, for he died at
Abbotsford in the very next room. T've read Mr.
Lang’s ‘ Life,’ and I think Lockhart might fairly com-
fort himself with the thought that he had been a good
man. There are some parts of the ‘Life’ that only
@ good man could have written.”

“That eldest son died at forty-five,” he went on.
‘‘He was a good man, too. How proud Sir Walter
was of him, and of Lockhart as well! He wasn’t over-
fond of the weedy type of humanity. I suspect Frank
Osbaldistone was his favourite hero. I’ve often thought
it was Lockhart’s good looks that made Sir Walter take
to him. He seems to have been extraordinarily beauti-
ful in his youth, and he was a good horseman, and took
his part in all the Abbotsford sports. He was only sixty
when he died. They say he smoked too much—but
they say that of everybody who smokes at all.”

Mr. Fairfield bent a loving glance on a big black cigar
that he was preparing to light, as he uttered this.

‘‘There’s a passage in one of Dickens’ letters about
Lockhart that I’ve often puzzled over,” he resumed, as
soon as the cigar was in full blast. ‘‘ They were both
in Italy not long before Lockhart died, and years after-
SIR WALTER'S GRAVE 221

wards, d propos of some paper for ‘ All the Year Round,’
Dickens wrote that Lockhart had been anxious to see
him in Rome, and as they walked together there,
Dickens knew very well that Lockhart knew very well
why. Lockhart was dying then. Dickens said in the
letter, that he was the ghost of the handsome man he
had first known when Scott’s daughter was the head of
his house; and that he had little more to do with this
world than she in her grave, or Scott in his, or small
Hugh Littlejohn in his. I can’t imagine why Lockhart
was so anxious to see Dickens, and Mr. Lang throws
no light on it. There had been a review of ‘ Pickwick’
in the ‘ Quarterly’ which had displeased Dickens’ ad-
mirers, because it had a sting in its tail, but that can’t
have had anything to do withit; for not long afterwards,
Dickens dined with Lockhart at George Cruikshank’s:
and a very friendly article on ‘ Oliver Twist’ followed
this. It was Scott’s influence that got Lockhart the
editorship of the ‘Review’. Scott had to fight hard;
for Lockhart had made enemies. He had a pretty turn
for sarcasm, and when he went for a man, he cut to the
quick.”

“ How came Lockhart to die at Abbotsford ?” I asked.

‘‘T think his daughter owned it then, under the second
baronet’s will. All of Scott’s children were dead by
that time, and only Mrs. Lockhart had had children.
When Lockhart died, there were no descendants of Sir
Walter in existence except Lockhart’s daughter and
her baby daughter, Monica. Lockhart seems to have
been very fond of that granddaughter. There are re-
ferences to her in some of the letters set out in Mr.
Lang’s book.”

“‘T suppose Sir Walter was here when his wife was
buried ?”

“Oh, yes! There’s an entry in the ‘Journal’ about
it. He speaks of consigning the remains to the very
spot which in pleasure parties they had so often visited.
I fancy Lady Scott’s funeral was a quiet affair. Dean
222 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Ramsey was the minister. Sir Walter’s funeral was
almost regal. The country people were nearly all in
black. There was a large escort of yeomanry and a
string of carriages more than a mile long. Lockhart
says that when the coffin was taken from the hearse,
a deep sob burst from a thousand lips. He was one of
the pall-bearers. ‘The coffin was carried to the hearse,
and from the hearse to the grave, by Sir Walter’s
foresters and old servants. They had petitioned that
there might be no hireling assistance. Scott was Sheriff
of Selkirkshire; and a little time before his death your
Parliament had to make a law appointing a deputy.
I’ve often meant to ask you to show me that law.”

On my return to Gray’s Inn I looked up the Act re-
ferred to. It is intituled “An Act to authorize His
Majesty to appoint a person to act as Sheriff of Selkirk-
shire during the incapacity of the present Sheriff”.
Scott was dead and buried before it was passed. It
begins: ‘‘ Whereas the Sheriff of the County of Selkirk
in Scotland is incapacitated by disease from performing
any of the functions of his office or appointing any sub-
stitute for their due performance”. I wondered, as I
read the Act, how many of the persons who came upon
it in the Statutes at Large for the last year of George IV,
know that the sheriff referred to was Sir Walter Scott.

We had many opportunities, during our stay at Mel-
rose, of studying the manners and customs of the tourists
who made that town their headquarters for exploring
the Scott country. Nine out of ten of these visitors
were Americans. The general programme was as
follows: an early morning train brought in a party from
across the Border, sometimes with a guide, sometimes
without. A scamper through the abbey ruins was the
beginning of the day’s sight-seeing. Upon this, followed
a jolt to Abbotsford in a brake. Lunch was the next
item ; and another brake-ride having disposed of Dry-
burgh, the pilgrims were ready for a train, taking them
on to Edinburgh in time for dinner.
STR WALTER’S GRAVE 228

One morning our breakfast-table was honoured by
the presence of a young American who had actually
spent a night in the hotel. He discovered Mr. Fair-
field’s nationality in no time, and he soon made it plain
that, in his opinion, Melrose ought to think herself
fortunate in having two such lords of human kind
within her borders. I could make allowances for him,
when I learnt from his outpourings, that he had been
travelling about for more than two years. The globe-
trotter whose progress is one untiring rush, comes into
communication with nobody but guides and _hotel-
servants; and as a result he moves in an unchanging
atmosphere of homage and subservience. Under the cir-
cumstances a man who, in his own country, has always
been treated as of no account, is apt to lose his head.

Unconscious of the tortures that he was inflicting
upon Mr. Fairfield, our fellow-guest made himself very
offensive to the waiter. My poor friend strove to con-
ceal his agonies, but at last the provocation waxed too
strong for endurance. When, for about the tenth time,
our neighbour wanted something not on the table,
his call met with no response; for the man was busy,

attending to someone else. A repetition of the sum-
mons, conveyed in a voice that made several breakfasters
glance over in our direction, drew from the victim a
look and a gesture that were an appeal for mercy. The
next instant the whole room was disturbed by the
violent clattering of a teaspoon on a saucer. The
waiter was at our table in a flash; and in another flash
he had disappeared to execute the order.

“IT guess we'll get this fixed up now, right away,”
drawled our neighbour, as he turned to his fellow-
countryman for sympathy and applause.

Mr. Fairfield fixed him with a stare that would have
frozen the blood of an ordinary Christian; and without
shifting his gaze he rose to his full height. The next
moment he had turned upon his heel with a jerk, and
had stalked out of the room.
224 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“Old man shirty!’”’ was the surprised comment,
addressed tome. The offender was disposed to treat
the incident as a joke.

I tackled him at once with professional suavity.

‘“‘My friend isan American. I don’t mind what you
say or do; but I’m an Englishman. He’s sensitive on
the subject of his country.”

This shook the Huron, and he blushed.

‘Hadn't you better go and apologize to him?” I
suggested, as I took up the ‘Scotsman’; “you can’t
apologize to the whole room.”

I preferred to keep my head behind the newspaper,
until I heard my fellow-guest depart. It was not
necessary to keep it there for long.
CHAPTER XVIII
WE CLIMB SMAILHOLM TOWER

“THERE are some folks who ought to be kept at home
by force for their country’s good,” quoth Mr. Fairfield,
when I joined him in our own room.

“T had a turn at him after you had gone.”

““T heard you; I was listening at the door.” My
friend grinned as he made this confession. ‘ Your
magnanimity when you intimated that an apology to
the whole room might be dispensed with nearly doubled
me up.”

“T burned to avenge you,” I explained. “I was
thinking of what I suffered years ago. You know the
Invalides in Paris, I suppose?”

My friend nodded.

“Do you remember the tomb of Napoleon, there?”

“Right well; it’s the most impressive thing in
Paris.”

‘$0 everybody thinks. Well, there were several other
visitors when I was there. We had all taken our hats
off. It’s the rule; but even if it wasn’t, I think every-
body would doit. The place is simply overwhelming.
Presently a party of English tourists filed m. They
were a shady lot, but every hat went off, except one.
An attendant noticed this hat, and whispered something
to the guide in charge of the party. He whispered
something to the man with his hat on. ‘What!’
croaked the brute—you know the Cockney trick of
sticking out the underlip and turning up the nose when

15 225
226 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

you want to be offensive. ‘ What!—take off my ’at to
a blankety carcase? Not me!’”

“‘T don’t think we shall meet our young friend at the
tower,” remarked Mr. Fairfield as we were spinning
along on our bicycles that morning; ‘it’s a bit too far
off for a young gentleman in a hurry.”

We were on our way to Sandyknowe, to see the
region where Sir Walter spent so much of his early
childhood. We bowled along famously until we got
within half a mile of our destination; but the by-road
that led to the farm-house grew somewhat villainous as
we neared our goal. I rode warily, but Mr. Fairfield
took the ruts as he found them. With his enthusiasm
fairly ablaze, the machine might play cup and ball with
him if it would; and no groaning of the saddle springs
could make him uneasy.

“This must be the road the child came by,” he ex-
claimed exultingly, as he bumped up to my side;
‘‘ there’s no other that leads to the place. Huis grand-
father lived there; and he went to stay with him, be-
cause it was hoped that country air would do him good.
He was only three when he first came, and he was
here a good deal till he was eight. Now, I’ve no doubt
he was taken by coach from Edinburgh; and someone
from the farm met it at a cross road, just as Tom Pinch
met the Pecksniffs when they came back from London.
I daresay the vehicle was only a farm cart—farming
folk were simple enough in 1774.”

‘His grandfather would have been a fool to risk
anything better on this road,’’ was my comment.

«We know from the miniature we saw in Edin-
burgh what he was like at six,” he went on, “and we
know he was almost a cripple when he first came here.
He must have been driven along this road many a time.
Tl be bound he often held the reins when he grew a
little bigger. You know how important a child looks
when he’s allowed to drive. Some youngsters are
pretty free with the whip, too—not out of vice but out
SMAILHOLM TOWER 227

of thoughtlessness—but I don’t think Walter Scott
was ever one of them. It was on the farm here that
he got his extraordinary love of animals. His great
friend amongst the farm servants was the cow-bailie,
who had charge of the sheep. The man used to carry
him astride on his shoulder. The child loved to lie
about the grass all day long in the midst of the flock ;
and this fellowship gave him an affection for sheep and
lambs that lasted all his life,”

Sandyknowe farm stands on the edge of a stretch of.
broken heathland, prodigal of furze and tall thistles,
and with the grey rock outcropping everywhere. The
present house is a substantial stone building, sheltered
on two sides by trees. The road to the waste behind
runs between the house and the farm buildings. Full
in sight, and not a bow-shot distant, is Smailholm
tower, standing four-square upon a high platform of
solid rock.

On the border of the waste land we left our bicycles
to look after themselves and continued our way on foot.

“Just think what a place this must have been to a
child!” said my friend, as for the twentieth time he
checked at a cluster of harebells or a nodding spray of
late foxglove. ‘‘In his eyes it must have seemed as
vast as the great globe itself.”

The next instant Mr. Fairfield was on his knees at
the base of a huge fragment of rock, which rose moss-
grown and weather-stained from a peaty hillock.

«What are these?” he exclaimed.

“‘ They’re wild pansies.”

He produced a penknife and did some uprooting with
a tender hand.

‘‘Pansies are for thoughts,” said he, putting the
plants into his cigar case, and filling it up with their
native soil. ‘We must hope that these will survive a
voyage across the Atlantic. I have more than one
friend in Chicago who will be glad to get a pansy root
from the Sandyknowe Crags. Do you remember the
228 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

story about the lightning? The child was lying out
here one day when a thunderstorm came on. He'd
been forgotten; and when his aunt remembered him,
and rushed out to bring him home, she found him lying
on his back, clapping his hands at the lightning, and
crying out ‘ Bonny, bonny!’ at every flash. This tower
can’t have altered much since Scott was a child. It
looks as much a work of Nature as the rock itself.”

To our great joy we found the door unfastened. By
the light of a match or two we groped our way up the
worn stairs, and passed out on to the roof. Between us
and the farm-house lay a sheet of water, full of reeds,
and vocal with the cry of wildfowl. In the opposite
direction, across a long stretch of open country inter-
sected by hedges, rose the triple peak of the Hildons.

“It’s a wonderful prospect,” said Mr. Fairfield, as he
took a bird’s-eye view of the country. ‘‘ Scott laid the
scene of lis ‘St. John’s Eve’ in this tower. When the
Baron of Smailholm came to the lady of the ballad, she
was looking out of a window :—

He passed the court-gate, and he oped the tower-gate,
And he mounted the narrow stair,

To the bartizan seat, where, with maids that on her wait,
He found his lady fair.

The lady sat in mournful mood ;
Looked over hill and vale ;

Over Tweed’s fair flood, and Mertoun’s wood,
And all down Teviotdale.

When Scott was six they gave him a pony no bigger
than a Newfoundland dog. He had grown robust by
then, and the lame leg didn’t interfere with his horse-
manship. We're told he used to frighten his aunt
Jenny by cantering over the rough places near this
tower. And I'll be bound it didn’t prevent him clamber-
ing about this roof. When he grew a bigger boy he
could climb like a wildcat. Ina note to ‘ Redgauntlet,’
he says he used to climb the ‘kittle nine-steps’ of the
Castle rock. They were so precarious, that the root of
SMAILHOLM TOWER 229

a nettle, which grew within reach of one of them, was
thought a wonderful help. Even as a man of fifty he
wasn’t afraid of a bit of climbing. When the preserva-
tion of the ruins at Melrose was in progress, he wrote
to Lord Montague that he meant to get on to the roof
and see for himself how things were.”

‘“‘T think I should like to see how things look from
there,” added Mr. Fairfield, pointing to the peak of the
tower’s roof; and in another minute he had scrambled
over the stone slabs and was sitting upon it. Though
the climb was a short one and was not dangerous, it
was, for a man of my friend’s age, an enterprise of great
pith and moment. Fired by his valorous example, I
followed and seated myself beside him.

“Scott never lost his interest in this place,” he re-
sumed. ‘ He knew well enough that if he hadn’t lived
at Sandyknowe there would have been no poems or
novels. I suppose he’d have died a judge—as it was,
he could have done so if he’d chosen. And I daresay
he’d have lived to be old; but just think of what litera-
ture would have lost, without his work.”

‘Some modern writers say that his novels are too dull
for modern readers ; and as for the poems, they’re too
unspeakable to be mentioned,” I observed.

Mr. Fairfield laughed. ‘It’s the old story—‘ some
folks lke parritch, and some folks like paddocks’.
And I daresay the smart young gentlemen who sample
our novels for us haven’t read much of Scott. How
can a poor devil, who has to look through a mountain
of trash every week of his life be expected to read any-
thing at all? The mere sight of a printed page must
be nauseous to him. And yet, how can any intelligent
man, no matter how young he is, sniff at Scott’s novels?
Just take ‘Ivanhoe,’ for instance. A man can read it
all his life; and he’ll find it as good at eighty as it was
at ten. I’ve been reading it, man and boy, for more
than forty years. Leslie Stephen says somewhere that
the beginning is the best opening of a story ever written.
230 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

There’s a curious anecdote about ‘Ivanhoe’ in Payn’s
‘Literary Recollections’. I’ve got the book at the hotel.
He and three friends once agreed that each should write
down on a piece of paper his favourite incident in fiction,
and two out of the four chose the scene where the Dis-
inherited Knight enters the lists at Ashby and strikes
Bois Guilbert’s shield with the sharp end of his spear.”

“JT rather think I should have given my vote for
something Dalgetty says or does,” said I.

“Tf ever I come across any one sniffing at Scott, I
comfort myself with a story about Thackeray. He told
a brother novelist, it wasn’t seemly to speak of Scott
as an equal. ‘Such men as you or I should take off
our hats at the very mention of his name,’ was what
Thackeray said. And yet, if some critics are to be be-
lieved, nobody’s read, or deserves to be read nowadays,
except the popular idol of the moment. But this only
means, that those who read his masterpieces don’t read
Scott, or Thackeray, or Dickens, or Fielding—or even
Macaulay, for that matter.”

“T wish Scott and Macaulay had. met,” he resumed.
“T know they were in hostile camps, in a sense, for the
‘Edinburgh’ and the ‘ Quarterly’ men didn’t mix well.
But I don’t think that need have made any difference
with those two.”

‘Perhaps not—before the Reform question grew
acute,’ I admitted.

«There seems to me to have been something about
both of them different from other authors. And they
seem to me so much alike at bottom. They were both
men of the world; but that’s not all I mean. There
was a certain spaciousness about their outlook on the
world.”

“That,” said I, ‘‘is easily explained; they'd both
been through the legal mill.”

“There may be something even in that,” he ac-
quiesced. ‘I’ve often wished they'd met, say at any
time between 1823 and 1829. Macaulay admired
SMAILHOLM TOWER 231

Scott’s writings, but he’d no sympathy with certain
aspects of his character. That was why he refused to
review the ‘Life’ in the ‘Edinburgh’. Macaulay
hadn’t read the full ‘Journal’; so he didn’t know Scott
as his friends knew him and we know him. [ feel sure
the two would have hit it off all right if they had met.
They were both so full of common-sense and so full of
fun. I wouldn’t have had them meet at Abbotsford ;
the outdoor sports and the dogs would have bored
Macaulay. They would have got on better in Castle
Street. I was pleased to come across Macaulay in that
panorama of Scottish worthies on the staircase of the
National Portrait Gallery at Edinburgh. I don’t think,
by-the-by, the artist had dressed him quite as Trevelyan
describes him.”

‘“ How was that?”

“He went about in new, dark kid gloves, with his
fingers only half-way down the finger-stalls, and he had
an inexhaustible succession of embroidered waistcoats.
Trevelyan says he used to regard them with much
complacency. It’s a blessed thing when a biographer
isn’t afraid to put in a little touch like that. Waistcoats
were important things fifty or sixty years ago. I’m
glad we don’t have to bother about them now.”

‘“A month or two before Scott, in his decay, went
abroad as a last hope of getting well, he came here,” he
went on. ‘“‘He made a last visit to many of his
favourite spots. There’s a beautiful bit in Mr. Lang’s
book about Lockhart’s description of these visits, and
certain other things that happened when Sir Walter
was failing. Mr. Lang says, it surpasses all achieve-
ments of biography and has no rival except the most
exalted poetry. He's nght, too. lLet’s go back to
Dryburgh, and have another look at the ruins. It was
there the lady of Scott’s ballad ended her days. I think
we shall find a road.”

‘Scott professed to have always hated cats till he
grew oldish,” said Mr. Fairfield, in our room that even-
232 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN .

ing, as he put down ‘ Humphrey Clinker,’ and stroked
the hotel tabby, which had followed him in and was rear-
ing himself up to be petted. ‘In some letter or other
which he wrote when he was almost fifty, he says he
used to detest them; and he speaks of his having taken
to liking them, as a sign that he was growing old. I
think he only meant he usen’t to care for them in the
way in which he always loved dogs. Lockhart says
that the old tom-cat, Hinse of Hinsfeldt, used to sit on
the top step of the ladder in the study at Castle Street ;
and whenever Maida left the room, Hinse used to come
down from his perch and take Maida’s place by the
footstool. And Washington Irving has a lot to say
about the cat he saw at Abbotsford. Scott told him a
good cat story there, d propos of a remark that cats
were a mysterious kind of folk, and there was more
passing in their minds than people knew of. He said
that some poor man met one night in a lonely place a
funeral procession of cats, all in mourning; and the
corpse was a cat in a coffin covered with a black velvet
pall. When he got home, he told his wife and children ;
whereupon his own black cat raised himself from his
place by the fire and exclaimed, ‘Then I’m the king of
the cats,’ and vanished up the chimney.”

As my companion told this anecdote, he kept his eye
on his tabby friend. The animal, however, affected to
take no interest init. Mr. Fairfield stroked its head as
he went on—‘‘ I’m a judge of cats myself, and I under-
stand something about them. This now, is a mouser,
and isn’t much given to being petted. He’s what Sir
Walter would have called ‘a tolerably conversible cat’.
I prefer the sleek type myself; but it’s a greater honour
to be taken up by one of the hunting sort.’’

‘‘T suppose you were thinking of Sir Walter when
you made such a fuss over that old dog at Dryburgh,
the other day,” said I.

“True, O king! I thought how he would have re-
ceived him. He would have called him ‘ poor boy,’ and
SMAILHOLM TOWER 233

asked after his rheumatism. When Maida was very old,
Scott used to stroll to his quarters at the back of the
house, and condole with him upon being ‘so very frail’;
and when Scott was at Naples in the spring before he
died, we hear of his talking to a dog of Sir William
Gell’s; and still later we hear of his telling a big Danish
dog at Bracciano near Rome, that he was glad to see
him, and that he hada larger dog at home. ‘I find
my dogs’ feet on my knees, I hear them whining and
seeking me everywhere,’ he wrote in the ‘Journal,’
when he saw ruin before him, and had to face the
prospect of giving up Abbotsford; and down to the
very end of his life we hear about them. When he left
home for the last time, there were repeated instructions
to Laidlaw to be very careful of the dogs, and every
letter to him from abroad had something about them
and the poor people. And when Scott came home,
and the sight of the place brought back a gleam of
memory to his sick brain, he sobbed and smiled over
his dogs when they came up and fawned on him.”

There was a suspicious catch in Mr. Fairfield’s voice
when he came to this, and he stopped abruptly.

It wasn’t only dogs or cats he was fond of,” he
resumed in his usual tone; ‘‘it was all dumb animals.
A few months before he went abroad for the last time,
he roused himself, failing though he was, and in fear
that he was losing his memory, when he saw a carter
ill-treating a horse. The man was insolent; and Sir
‘Walter comforted himself with the reflection that
though he was powerless in Lanarkshire, in Selkirk,
where he was sheriff, such a thing wouldn’t happen
without punishment. Tennyson hit the mght nail on
the head when he called him a true gentleman, heart,
blood and bone. It’s a poor verse, but I like it :—

O great and gallant Scott,
True gentleman, heart, blood and bone,
I would it had been my lot
To have seen thee, and heard thee, and known.
234 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

I don’t wonder at any man wishing he’d seen Scott.
I’ve often wished it myself. It would have been
enough to get even a peep at him—just a glimpse as he
went by with Tom Purdie and the dogs.”

I was tempted to remark that the addition of some
thirty years to my friend’s age would be a high price to
pay for such a recollection as this; but he had spoken
so wistfully that I turned my eye in his direction be-
fore mocking him. He was lying back in his chair,
with one leg thrown loosely over the other, and the cat
purring on his knee. Under the gaslight, his grey hair
with a bit of a wave in it, gleamed almost silvery, as
he lay meditating; his hands crossed behind his head,
and a look of peculiar gentleness upon his upturned
face. I held my tongue; and the thought crossed my
mind that, if Scott could have seen him at that mo-
ment, his heart would have warmed towards the pil-
grim from Chicago.

‘« By-the-by,” he said to me, as we were parting for
the night, ‘‘I think I shall venture on that bath to-
morrow morning; I found out at the barber’s to-day
that the shop opens at eight, and the young man’s
always there first; the proprietor told me so.”

I was in my tub next morning when I remembered
Mr. Fairfield’s parting words. The water was so cold
that the mere thought of bathing in the Tweed made
my teeth chatter. I dressed hastily, and sallied forth
to the Weirhill. On warm mornings it was our custom
to take a stroll before breakfast on that high ground;
when the weather was less genial we chose the passage
which skirts the south side of the abbey churchyard.

On my way up the hill, I saw my friend’s figure upon
the summit. He was standing in a meditative attitude,
gazing across the river. He turned when he heard my
footstep behind him. I noticed that his grey jacket
was buttoned over a protuberance, which indicated the
harbourage of some foreign matter. I could guess what
that bulge meant.
SMAILHOLM TOWER 235

“You have been quick,” said I.

“T’ve not been in yet,” he answered placidly. ‘I
suppose you're quite surprised ?”’

I was not prepared to tell a lie of the necessary magni-
tude; so I said nothing.

“T went down to the bank and had a look at it,” he
went on, ‘“‘but the grass was too wet. My clothes
would have been soaked if I’d put them down.”

‘Why not put your towel under them?”

“‘ How could I dry myself with a wet towel?”

Iam no match for Mr. Fairfield at this kind of poker ;
and the gravity with which he asked his question was
so impenetrable that I nearly threw up my hand. By
an effort, however, | managed to keep on.

‘“When I was a boy,” I observed, ‘‘ we used to dry
ourselves by running about.”

My friend looked down towards the water and took
a relishing sniff of the morning air. The breeze had a
fine edge on it just then; it was raw as well as cold.

“T never thought of that,” he said drily. ‘It’s a
great pity! This zephyr would have done the business
in no time.”

A mental picture of the good man, careering up and
down the valley without his clothes, was too much for
me. When I laughed, he laughed too.

“JT hadn’t the courage to venture in,” he said.
“When I left the hotel, I felt a deal of doubt about it;
so I didn’t parade my traps ’’—here he patted the region
of his bosom,—‘‘and when I got down to the water I
soon made up my mind. I must put this bathing into
my chest of might-have-beens.”
CHAPTER XIX

WE RAMBLE ABOUT THE RHYMER’S GLEN AND FIND
THE EILDON STONE

“T FEEL a malignant satisfaction in the thought that
those flying tourists can’t get here,” my friend re-
marked one morning, as we strolled along a farm road
which led, we were assured, to the foot of the Rhymer’s
Glen. ‘So far as I can make out, no one can see it
without some walking.”

“That's hard on the infirm,” said I virtuously.
“Are we on the Abbotsford estate yet?”’

“Tm not sure. We're quite close to the glen, and
at one time Scott owned that; but according to the
map in my edition of the ‘ Journal,’ it doesn’t belong
to the estate now.”

‘J was wondering if he planted these trees.”’

“‘T think we may assume he did; they look to me
about the right age.”

The day was bright and sunny, but a great deal of
rain had fallen in the night: and when we came to the
glen everything was glittering with moisture. No pen
can describe the place as we saw it that morning, with
the beech boughs meeting overhead, and with the full
song of the burn in our ears. The linked sweetness of
the Rhymer’s Glen is long drawn out; and no words of
mine can bring before the eye the beauty that it wears.

‘“‘ Hvery able-bodied person who came to Abbotsford
was taken through here.”

Mr. Fairfield said this after we had reached the little
bridge above the waterfall. We had not exchanged a

236
THE RHYMER’S GLEN 237

word since we began the ascent. “I don’t wonder
Scott was proud of it. He used to tell people that
Tweedside was a ‘liveable country’. How he must

have laughed to himself over the adjective!”

“Tf we’d seen nothing else, since we left London,
but this glen and the view from the Weirhill, I don’t
think we could say we'd done badly,” was my admission.

‘‘ Washington Irving came here with Scott and the
dogs. How easy it is to picture Scott on his own land!
He wore a green jacket and white trousers. Washing-
ton Irving said they were brown, but that was one of
his blunders.” My friend spoke of his countryman
with some irritation.

‘‘That was careless of Washington,” said I.

“They were undoubtedly white,” persisted Mr.
Fairfield; ‘‘ and they were shortish, and he wore brown
spats and shoes. Tom Purdie’s rig-out was the same
as his master’s. Lady Scott used to hand over the
things to him when she thought them too shabby for
Scott. It’s not difficult to fancy Sir Walter stumping
along these paths with his guests, and telling them the
legends of the countryside. He knew all the ballads
too; and he loved to repeat scraps of them. He used
to laugh at himself for it. ‘If you like a walk, I will
bestow my tediousness on you at such-and-such an hour,’
was his form of invitation to a guest. But I don’t think
he ever recited a line of his own.

“That was a very excellent thing.” I said this with
a recollection of our first night in Edinburgh in my
mind; and I spoke with great conviction.

“True! I confess I shuddered more than once when
I read Tennyson’s ‘Life’. He seems to have been
very ready to oblige with readings from his own works.
Just fancy having to sit out the whole of ‘ Maud,’ or
the ‘ Ode on the Duke of Wellington’! It would have
given me the fidgets.”’

“ Those green jackets must have been almost uni-
versal for country wear at one time,” he went on. ‘‘ We
238 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

read that it used to be thought something of a distinc-
tion for a man to wear one in court, under his gown,
af he was going to leave Edinburgh when the court
rose. It showed he was a laird as well as a lawyer.
Scott was one of the last to exercise the privilege. He
seems to have worn that jacket even in London. When
he called at Charles Mathews’ house in Lisle Street,
Leicester Square, to ask him to lunch with Lord Byron,
Mrs. Mathews was surprised to see him wearing a dark
green coatee, single-breasted, something like a squire’s
hunting jacket. She says, too, he insisted on walking
away in pouring rain. He refused an umbrella, and
he told her he never considered any sort of weather an
impediment to his moving about without any mcum-
brance. I’m afraid the habit had something to do with
the terrible rheumatism which he mentions in the
‘ Journal ’.”’

‘« Where are we going next?” I asked.

“There’s a heath or something of the sort at the top
of the glen. I want to see that, for it was there Scott
told Captain Basil Hall about Thomas the Rhymer,
before he took him down the glen. And then, I think,
we might try and get a look at Chiefswood, where
Lockhart and his wife set up housekeeping. As we
‘skirted Huntly Burn on the way here we must have
been near it. We can ask the way at the cottage we
passed on the right.”

We found the open ground at the top of the glen,
and made our way through a field or two until we came
to what was evidently the boundary of extensive pre-
serves. Mr. Fairfield peered over the fence upon the
well-timbered land on the other side.

‘“‘ Abbotsford, I feel sure,” he said—‘ part of those
young plantations he took sucha pride in. He seems
to have been as good at planting as he was at writing.”

“‘CGhiefswood 1s on the estate,” he explained, after
we had retraced our steps through the glen, and had
made inquiry as to our direction, ‘‘and so’s Huntly
THE RHYMER’S GLEN 239

Burn, where the Fergussons lived in Sir Walter’s time.
That’s a good big house, I fancy; but Chiefswood’s
quite a little place. So far as I can make out, we can’t
go far wrong if we follow this burn. These paths have
a mighty private look about them; but I asked that
man most particularly if we had aright to come this
way, and he said yes.”

We were following the burn as he spoke. The way
certainly looked like a path through a shrubbery ; and
a moment later we saw in front of us a three-gabled
cottage standing in a garden. ‘The house had a porch,
and was overhung with creepers; and it stood on the
other side of the green lawn, upon which our pathway
opened. We both stole back, round a turn, and peered
out. There was a lady watering flowers under the
windows. It was manifest that we had almost burst
into Chiefswood from the back.

“‘ She hasn’t seen us,” said Mr. Fairfield, with an air
of relief; and he turned to retrace his steps.

«We really are not to blame,” Iurged. ‘Don’t you
think we might explain matters and ask to be let out at
the front? Melrose must be quite close ahead, and it’s
a long way, if we go back.”

“No,” he said morosely ; ‘‘I don’t suppose she’d be-
lieve a word of it. There’s nothing too outrageous for
some tourists. She'd think we’d done it on purpose.
And I wouldn’t force my way on to that lawn of all
places in the world,” he added.

He spoke with so much conviction that I did not at-
tempt to argue the matter; but, a little later, I pre-
vailed on him to take a side path which, in the end,
landed us in a road not far from the entrance to the
house. I confess we had to skirt a field of oats, and
climb over a fence; but in all truth I can declare that
though trespass was committed no injury was done to
anything except my friend’s raiment. He looked
more than a little dishevelled by the time we were
once more on the highway. Mr. James C. Fairfield, of
240 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Chicago, is not an agricultural character, and in his
excessive anxiety to avoid injury to a single Abbotsford
oat, he had pressed rather more closely into the hedge
than was good for his wearing apparel.

“Tve been thinking about that lawn ever since we
left the glen,” he explained after lunch. ‘ Lockhart
and Sophia Scott were quite a young couple. She was
Scott’s favourite child and he loved Lockhart. It was
a great happiness to him to be able to establish them
quite near him. She was dead before the whole of the
‘Life’ was published; and when Lockhart wrote about
that cottage he laid his heart bare. He doesn’t do it
again throughout the book. I think Mr. Lang says so.
I’ve been re-reading it since we came back. When the
old porch at Abbotsford was pulled down, Sir Walter
with his own hands planted some of the creepers from
it about a porch at Chiefswood, that. had been specially
erected for their reception. I wonder if that’s the porch
we saw. If you don’t mind I’ll read you a few passages
from Lockhart about that garden we stepped into—they
used to dine on that lawn. This is what he says about
Chiefswood :—

‘«There my wife and I spent this summer and autumn of 1821—
the first of several seasons, which will ever dwell on my memory as
the happiest of my life. We were near enough Abbotsford to par-
take as often as we liked of its brilliant society ; yet could do so
without being exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit which
the daily reception of new comers entailed upon all the family ex-
cept Sir Walter himself. But, in truth, even he was not always
proof against the annoyances connected with such a style of open-
house-keeping. . . . When sore beset at home in this way, he would
every now and then discover that he had some very particular busi-
ness to attend to on an outlying part of his estate, and craving the
indulgence of his guests over-night, appear at the cabin in the glen
before its inhabitants were astir in the morning. The clatter of
Sibyl Grey’s hoofs, the yelping of Mustard and Spice, and his own
joyous shout of réveillée under our windows, were the signal that
he had burst his toils and meant for that day to ‘take his ease in
his inn’. On descending, he was to be found seated with all his
dogs and ours about him, under a spreading ash that overshadowed
half the bank between the cottage and the brook, pointing the edge
of his woodman’s axe for himself, and listening to Tom Purdie’s
THE EILDON STONE 241

lecture touching the plantation that most needed thinning. After
breakfast, he would take possession of a dressing-room upstairs,
and write a chapter of ‘The Pirate’; . . . whenever the weather
was sufficiently genial, he voted for dining out of doors altogether,
which at once got rid of the inconvenience of very small rooms, and
made it natural and easy for the gentlemen to help the ladies, so
that the paucity of servants went for nothing. . . . When circum-
stances permitted, he usually spent one evening at least in the week
at our little cottage ; and almost as frequently he did the like with
the Fergussons, to whose table he could bring chance visitors, when
he pleased, with equal freedom as to his daughter’s. Indeed it
seemed to be much a matter of chance, any fine day when there
had been no alarming invasion of the Southron, whether the three
families (which, in fact, made but one) should dine at Abbotsford,
at Huntly Burn, or at Chiefswood ; and at none of them was the
ho considered quite complete, unless it included also Mr. Laidlaw.

eath has laid a heavy hand upon that circle—as happy a circle I
believe as ever met. Bright eyes now closed in dust, gay voices
for ever silenced, seem to haunt me as I write. With three ex-
ceptions, they are all gone. Even since the [fourth] of these
volumes was finished, she whom I may now sadly record as, next
to Sir Walter himself, the chief ornament and delight at all those
simple meetings—she to whose love I owed my place in them—
Scott’s eldest daughter, the one of all his children who in counten-
ance, mind, and manners, most resembled himself, and who indeed
was as like him in all things as a gentle innocent woman can ever
be to a great man deeply tried and skilled in the struggles and per-
plexities of active life—she, too, is no more. And in the very hour
that saw her laid in her grave, the only other female survivor, her
dearest friend Margaret Fergusson, breathed her last also.—But
enough—and more than I intended—I must resume the story of
Abbotsford.” A

‘‘We must find the Eildon Stone,” said my friend
that afternoon. ‘It’s on the road to St. Boswells.
We must have passed it two or three times. The tree
that once stood by it has vanished. That’s not wonder-
ful, if Thomas used to stand under it when he had a
bit of prophecy to let loose upon the neighbourhood.
And the Bogle Burn’s quite near. That was where
Thomas was lying when he was carried off by the Faery
Queen. ‘Tull I came into these parts I always supposed
the stone and the burn were both in the Rhymer’s
Glen. I’m afraid Washington Irving was to blame for
that.”

16
242 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

I was turning over a guide-book as he spoke, and
something in it caught my eye.

“Suppose we hunt up the stone before dinner,’ I
suggested ; ‘(and how would it do to go to Dumfries
to-morrow ? It’s not very far.”

‘“ Why on earth should we go there?”

* You wouldn’t like to miss ‘ Burns’ howff’.”’

Mr. Fairfield smiled. “Is there only one?” he
asked.

“Tt would seem so from this. Listen :—

‘A narrow passage, under a globe on the left introduces us to the
Globe Hotel (‘ Burns’ Howff’). Here it was that Burns foregathered
with his friends, and his chair, boxed up to save it from the depre-
dations of pilfering and scribbling tourists, occupies its old place in
the nook which he made his own.”

My friend stretched out his hand for the book and
read the passage for himself. When.he spoke, I fancied
those happy days at Chiefswood were in his mind.

“That was the last of his styes, I suppose. Well,
well, there’s no accounting for tastes! Now, if I were
a worshipper of Robert Burns, I should give that nook
of his a wide berth. But some folks wouldn’t rest till
they'd seen Swift's strait-waistcoat ;—if there were such
a thing in existence.”

““T don’t suppose many of the visitors see any differ-
ence between Burns’ seat in that tavern, and Sir
Walter’s chair at Abbotsford,’ I remarked.

“I daresay not—to them it’s where a great man
sat; and it’s nothing more. They don’t know of the
degradation of those last years. Lockhart drew a veil
over the last part of Burns’ life; but we've been told
all about it since.”

The road to St. Boswells was easily found; but
though we scrutinized both sides of it with careful eyes,
we could see no sign of either stone or burn. Not far
from Newtown St. Boswells, we came upon some
children in charge of two nurses and a governess.

My fnend’s inquiry of the nurse who walked at the
THE EILDON STONE 243

tail of the party, was met by a curt ‘I don’t know,”
delivered in a tone which seemed to suggest that to be
asked about such a thing as the Eildon Stone was almost
an indignity. The governess, who was pretty and of
pleasant manners, made amends for this rebuff by assur-
ing us that at one time there had been a stone and a
tree near it; but both had long since disappeared.

“They're English, and don’t know the country,” I
suggested, when we had got past them; “the stone
must be here somewhere.”

“There must be the burn anyway,” said Mr. Fair-
field; “I wonder if that child can tell us anything.”
‘We were on the verge of the township by this time,
and the child referred to was a little country boy playing
with a top.

‘“Do you know the Bogle Burn?” asked my friend.

“Na.”

“Not the Bogle Burn?” Mr. Fairfield spoke gently,
but doubtingly.

“The Boglebu’n?” repeated the urchin, as he stared
up at the questioner with his head on one side and his
brow furrowed. ‘‘ Na—Ye mean the Boggle Bur-r-rn,”
he cried out, as a sudden inspiration came upon him.
He could not have been more than eight years old,
but the contempt in his voice was unmistakable.

“ That’s it!”

“Tt’s over the top of the hill.” This “hill” was
@ rise in the road which we had just descended.

“But we’ve come that way, and we didn’t see it.”
Mr. Fairfield spoke almost piteously.

There was no surprise in the child’s face and he
answered nothing. But the stare that he fixed upon
my friend’s pince-nez spoke for itself; ‘‘ You ought to
have a dog and string,” was what it said.

“Tt doesn’t run across the road?”

“Tt does!”

Delivered as that child delivered them, the two words
were a direct impeachment of my friend’s veracity.
244 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

The poor man turned to me in despair. He had
meant to put a question ; and in return had received a
knockdown blow from a mite, who stood confronting
him erect and firm, with a look of rebuke upon his
chubby countenance,

“It roons across in a pipe,” asserted the imp, by
way of driving his reproof home.

“That lad ought to be made a church officer,” was
Mr. Fairfield’s comment, as we retraced our steps.
“He had his head screwed on the nght way; but if
the ‘excellent of the earth’ were like him, I don’t
wonder eighteen thousand of them were slaughtered.”

“This must be it,”’ he exclaimed, when at length we
found, on the right-hand side of the road, a scrap of
stone wall with a tiny stream running through a
channel under it. ‘I don’t wonder we missed it,
But where on earth is the stone?”

* Perhaps this isn’t the burn at all,” I suggested.
The shades of evening were beginning to fall, and I
was growing weary. ‘‘ Hadn’t we better give it up?”

My indefatigable friend had produced a guide-book
from his pocket, and was poring over it in the failing light.

‘It says the stone is on the road to St. Boswells. I
mean to find it. JI know it’s near the burn; though
this fool of a map marks that as running through the
Rhymer’s Glen. That’s the way guide-books are com-
piled. I wish I had the jackass here,” he added
viciously.

‘“ He’s only fallen into Washington Irving’s mistake.”

“Washington Irving was at least consistent in his
mendacity,” snapped my companion. ‘‘He put the
stone and the burn and the glen all together. Here’s
another child; I’ll ask her.”

‘«« Perhaps she won’t understand you.”

“She shall!” He spoke with savage energy as he
turned towards a girl in a pinafore, who was watching
us from the middle of the road. The little maid and I
had already exchanged confidential glances at his expense,
THE EILDON STONE 245

As my friend paused, to frame a question that could
not be misunderstood, the bit lassie looked up into his
face with a smile that seemed to bid him not be afraid
of her. She was a pretty picture as she stood, demure
and yellow-haired, with that sweet confidence in her
aspect. An answering smile, half-whimsical and half-
paternal, was on the tall stranger’s lips, as, with a
polite hand hovering in the region of his hat brim, he
addressed her in honeyed accents :—

‘‘ Lassie wi’ the lint-white locks! bonnie lassie! Is
yon the Boggle Bur-r-r-r-r-run?”

There were no cross purposes this time; we were
speedily assured that the burn was running under our
feet, and the stone was a little way ahead of us, on the
left-hand side of the road. And more than this—it had
@ road-mark on it.

Sure enough, there it lay under the very shadow of
the Hildons; a mossy fragment of rock, deep-sunk in
the bank, with a flat top, bearing the impress of the
broad arrow.

“Do you remember Hester?” asked Mr. Fairfield,
as we turned our faces towards Melrose. ‘‘That child
was like her; grown a little older :—

Hester stands on the garden plot,
Swinging her bonnet, and all forgot ;
Croons to Tippo, who heeds her not,
Spread in the sunshine and lazy:
Three-year-old in the garden there,
Dove-eyed innocence, quaintly fair ;
Snow-white pinafore, golden hair—
Mother’s own wee, white daisy.”
CHAPTER XX
BY THE TOLL-HOUSE ON THE SELKIRK ROAD

THE first part of the way to Abbotsford hes along the
road by which we came into Melrose from Galashiels,
For more than an hour before we started on this pil-
grimage, Mr. Fairfield had pored over his memoranda,
and made frequent reference to the ten volumes of
Lockhart which were spread out before him.

He was in a brown study before we were clear of
Melrose, and the stoop in his walk, and the hands
loosely clasped behind him, warned me that he was in
no mood for conversation. We had almost reached
the fork in the road, hard by Melrose bridge, when he
broke the silence.

“JT suppose you’ve been reading up Abbotsford in the
guide-books,”’ said he.

“No,” I answered; “I relied upon your telling me
about it.”

He stopped dead for a moment, and looked hard at
me. I had spoken without malice, and I met his gaze
without concern.

“Tm afraid I’m very tedious sometimes,” he said
apologetically.

‘Not to me, Fairfield. I was quite serious when I
said that. IfI found you tedious, I shouldn’t be so ready
to place myself in your clutches. I’m a free agent.”

‘“«There’s something in that,’ he answered laughing.

“We might rest a bit on this rail,” he suggested,
when we came to the finger-post. ‘I want to have:
another look at one or two things.”

246
ON THE SELKIRK ROAD 247

“That cottage with the garden used to be a toll-
house,” he said, as he began to turn over his sheaf of
memoranda, ‘“‘and I think it was there Scott used to
drop his coach-parcels addressed to James Ballantyne
—instalments of the novel in hand. I’ve no doubt the
carriage crossed the river yonder, when they brought
Scott home; the arches of the bridge are new, but the
approaches are very ancient. He wasn’t very happy
when he was abroad. I don’t think he knew how ill
he was; there was softening of the brain going on, you
know. It was home-sickness that troubled him. He
wanted to be back here—‘my own Tweedside,’ he
called it. He was in loving hands all the time. His
son Walter and his daughter Anne left England with
him. Walter had to leave when they got to Naples,
but the younger son, Charles, joined them there, and
came to England with them. And there was that
good man Nicolson, and I think there was a maid as
well. He made a short stay at Rome; but when he
left there, he was so impatient to get home that he
wanted to travel day and night. At Nimeguen he had
a stroke of apoplexy and paralysis; a much more severe
one than he had had before, and they brought him to
London barely conscious. He lay there for nearly a
month, sometimes better and sometimes worse; but
whenever be was at all himself he was eager to be
taken home. They let him have his way at last.
They took him by steamer to Newhaven, and stayed
for two nights in Edinburgh. They started for Abbots-
ford very early in the morning. He had to be carried
to his bed in the carriage. He had been slung from
the steamer quite unconscious, and he was just the
same that morning, till they got near Galashiels—that
was over thirty miles from Edinburgh--but then he
began to look about him. I’d rather tell you what
followed in Lockhart’s own words,” my friend went on,
as he turned over his bundle of notes in search of the
memorandum he wanted. ‘ Here it is :—
248 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘¢ But as we descended the vale of the Gala he began to gaze about
him, and by degrees it was obvious that he was recognizing the
features of that familiar landscape. Presently he murmured a
name or two—‘Gala Water, surely—Buckholm—Torwoodlee’.
As we rounded the hill at Ladhope, and the outline of the Eildons
burst on him, he became greatly excited, and when, turning him-
self on the couch his eye caught at length his own towers, at the
distance of a mile, he sprang up with a cry of delight. The river
being in flood, we had to go round a few miles by Melrose bridge ;
and during the time this occupied, his woods and house being within
prospect, it required occasionally both Dr. Watson’s strength and
mine, in addition to Nicolson’s, to keep him in the carriage. After
passing the bridge, the road for a couple of miles loses sight of
Abbotsford, and he relapsed into his stupor; but on gaining the
bank immediately above it his excitement became again ungovern-
able.” ,

Mr. Fairfield replaced the note from which he had
been reading, and we both meditated for awhile in
silence.

“Tf anyone had been sitting here that morning, he
could almost have touched the carriage as it came round
there,” said my companion at length, pointing to the
toll-house. “It must have been a sizeable vehicle,
like the one Dickens took to Italy, and it must have
been shut up that day. It was big enough to hold a
bed; and besides Scott, there were Lockhart and his
wife, and Anne Scott, and Cadel the publisher, and a
Dr. Watson and Nicolson. There must have been a
mountain of luggage too. They must have had four
post-horses and a postilion. They'd be coming slowly
towards the turn; for there was the toll to be paid—the
postilion would be getting that ready. Then the gate on
that side, and the gate on the other side, would fly
open; the postilion would crack his whip, and in an-
other instant the whole concern would vanish round
that curve on the left. I wonder if they’ve still got the
carriage at Abbotsford.”

‘“« Perhaps you'll like to see what Lockhart says about
his arrival there,” he went on, as he picked out an-
other scrap of manuscript. ‘‘ You can read this for
yourself.”
ON THE SELKIRK ROAD 249

There were only six or seven lines of his clear minute
handwriting on the paper that he handed to me. The
matter was as follows :—

Mr. Laidlaw was waiting at the porch, and assisted us in lifting
him into the dining-room, where his bed had been prepared. He
sat bewildered for a few moments, and then resting his eye on
Laidlaw, said—‘‘ Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O man, how often have I
thought of you!”’ By this time his dogs had assembled about his
chair—they began to fawn upon him and lick his hands, and he
igus sobbed and smiled over them, until sleep oppressed

im.

** He seemed better for a few days,” said Mr. Fairfield
as he absently tapped the sheaf of notes with his pince-
nez. ‘‘ Lockhart and Willie Laidlaw wheeled him about
the garden and the ground-floor rooms in a chair. It
almost seemed possible that the joy and relief of being
home again might work a cure. One morning he asked
to be wheeled into the library that he might look down
upon the Tweed. Lockhart read the fourteenth chapter
of St. John to him there.”’

‘‘Isn’t there some incident of his dropping his pen ?”’
ITasked. ‘I’m sure I’ve seen it referred to in one of
your books as the most pathetic thing in literary history.”

“That was in the study a day or two later. My notes
are made out according to rooms, and I’ve got one on
that. It’s only a copy of Lockhart.”

I took from him another fragment of manuscript and
read it to myself :—

On Monday he remained in bed, and seemed extremely feeble ;
but after breakfast on Tuesday the 17th he appeared revived some-
what, and was again wheeled about on the turf. Presently he fell
asleep in his chair, and after dozing for perhaps half an hour, started
awake, and shaking the plaids we had put about him from off his
shoulders, said—‘‘ This is sad idleness. I shall forget what I have
been thinking of if I don’t set it down now. Take me into my own
room and fetch the keys of my desk.”” He repeated this so earnestly
that we could not refuse ; his daughters went into his study, opened
his writing-desk, and laid paper and pens in the usual order, and
I then moved him through the hall and into the spot where he had
always been accustomed to work. When the chair was placed at
250 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

the desk, and he found himself in the old position, he smiled and
thanked us, and said—‘‘ Now give me my pen, and leave me for a
little to myself’’. Sophia put the pen into his hand, and he en-
deavoured to close his fingers upon it, but they refused their office
—it dropped on the paper. He sank back among his pillows, silent
tears rolling down his cheeks; but composing himself by and by,
motioned to me to wheel him out of doors again. Laidlaw met us
at the porch, and took his turn of the chair. Sir Walter, after a
little while, again dropt into slumber. When he was awaking,
Laidlaw said to me—* Sir Walter has had a little repose”’. ‘* No,
Willie,” said he—“ no repose for Sir Walter but in the grave.”” The
tears again rushed from his eyes. ‘‘ Friends,” said he, ‘‘ don’t let
me expose myselfi—get me to bed—that’s the only place.”

‘Scott lived for rather more than two months after
the pen fell from his fingers. It was James Payn who
called it the most pathetic incident in the annals of
literature; and he says that a famous writer to whom
he spoke of it—he doesn’t give the name, but I think
it was Thackeray—met him with—‘ For God’s sake
don’t talk of it: it is what we must all come to’.”

We had resumed our journey by this time; and as
my friend said this, we were passing the curve in the
Selkirk road, round which he had seemed to watch
Scott’s carriage disappear. Not another word did he
utter until we had reached Abbotsford, and had made
our way to a small reception room in the basement,
where a tribe of pilgrims was already in waiting to be
shown over the house.
CHAPTER XXI
ABBOTSFORD HOUSE

“Way, there’s old Braxy!” said my friend with great
animation. He had been cruising about the little
room and examining the pictures. Sure enough, there
was an engraving of the Parliament Hall picture,
fatuously benevolent as the original; and near it hung
@ portrait of Lord President Dundas.

‘‘T wonder if these two were in the old man’s office.
They’re just the sort of thing he would have.” Mr.
Fairfield was making a furtive memorandum on his
shirt-cuff, as he said this.

When we and the other pilgrims moved off, it was
under the charge of a guide of the gentler sex; and
the first room to which she took us was the study. Its
dimensions are not striking, but it is light and lofty,
and the window looks out upon an enclosure of green
turf and flower-beds. Fortunately for us, the party of
visitors was a large one; and our guide’s exposition,
and the fire of question and answer that it provoked,
gave us ample time to look about for ourselves. I can
remember that the room has a gallery running round
it, and there are many shelves of books; but I confess
I can recall nothing else very clearly, except the desk
and the large armchair drawn up to it. As soon as
one catches sight of these objects, and a picture of that
heart-breaking incident of the pen flashes on the in-
ward eye, it is not easy to devote one’s attention to
details. Perhaps it was in this room that Mr. Fairfield
drew my attention to a carved chair standing in a

251
252 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

corner, and told me that it was made of wood which
had formed part of the house in which Wallace was
betrayed, and that it was mentioned in Lockhart.

“Tt’s not a big room,” murmured Mr. Fairfield in
my ear, as we stood on the outskirts of the little crowd,
“but he chose it because it was the only one of the
sitting-rooms that had a south aspect. He liked to
work in bright sunshine. That green garden outside
is where Lockhart and Laidlaw wheeled him about.
And you see those?” He pointed to the desk and
chair, and there was a note of awe in his whisper,

““He was fond of that,” he resumed, pointing to a
picture of the Canterbury pilgrims over the mantelpiece.
“He used to draw his visitor’s attention to the young
squire’s face. Let us have a look at it.” .

A minute or two later, when we had crossed over to
the foot of the stairway that leads to the gallery, I felt
a touch on my arm, and I saw that Mr. Fairfield was
pointing to some books on the shelves near us. They
were volumes of the ‘‘ Moniteur,”’ and there were many
of them.

“He got them for the ‘Life of Napoleon’. I hate
the sight of them; they wore his eyes out so. Lock-
hart used to find him here, stooping over them with his
spectacles on, and making extracts into a little book,
that he held in one hand.”

In a closet which leads out of the study is a bronze
cast of Scott’s death-mask.

“Poor old chap! Poor old chap!” murmured Mr.
Fairfield in a choky whisper, as soon as his eyes fell
upon it. The feeling and reverence of his tone made
amends for the familiar character of his words, and my
own heart echoed the emotion that lay behind them.

The dead face is so tired that nobody can look upon
it without a gush of pity, and a feeling of thankfulness
that at last the man is in his grave. Weare not moved
by the grandeur of its modelling; the appeal it makes is
to a larger humanity than that. It is the face of a
YORE es tt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

oe a

ie

 

 

 

THE LIBRARY, ABBOTSFORD.

(From a drawing by Allan.)
ABBOTSFORD 253

brother man, stretched out too long upon the rack of
this tough world. The majesty of the forehead, and
the dour earnestness of the features, tell of Walter Scott
the genius; but it is in the corners of the mouth that
all the pathos lies. In them, there is the droop of an
infinite weariness, and it makes the heart ache.

“Do you call turret-rooms like that ‘closets’ in
Scotland?” asked Mr. Fairfield of our guide, as soon as
we were back in the study.

“ Yes, that’s what we call them; but Sir Walter used
to call that one a speak-a-bit. If he wanted to speak
privately to somebody for a minute or two, and there
was any one else here, he could take them in there.”

My friend shrank from making a note on the spot;
but he had no intention of entrusting this precious scrap
to the sole custody of his memory. He took measures
to be the last of the procession when it moved onward ;
and casting back a look over my shoulder, I saw him
make a hurried jotting with a pencil upon his wrist-
band.

A door leads from the study to a corner of the great
library. This is a room of noble proportions, oak
panelled as to walls and ceiling, and with three big
windows looking out upon the Tweed. Apart from
the 20,000 volumes which it contains, there are treasures
and curios enough to keep a connoisseur busy for weeks.
The most prominent object is a gigantic portrait that
hangs over the mantelpiece. This is the second baronet
when a young man; and it shows him in the uniform
of a cornet of hussars, standing by his horse’s head.

“Tt was here that Lockhart read to him the four-
teenth chapter of St. John: ‘In my Father's house are
many mansions, comes in that chapter,” whispered
Mr. Fairfield, when we stood in the wide recess of the
middle window. ‘He asked to be wheeled here, so
that he could look at the Tweed. This library must
communicate with the great hall, for he was wheeled
up and down them both. He kept saying: ‘I have
254 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

seen much; but nothing like my ain house—give me
one turn more’.”

In that recess is a glass case, containing a number of
Sir Walter’s curios, supplemented by a few additions
made by his successors. Among these additions is one
of Queen Victoria’s chocolate boxes. The guide told
us that this had come from “the heir,” who had served
in South Africa, and was now with his regiment in
India.

In the library Mr. Fairfield was too much engaged in
listening to the guide to favour me with many whispered
communications. He had come to Abbotsford with a
conviction that he would learn more by using his own
eyes than by paying heed to what the custodian might
say; but that little observation about the ‘‘ speak-a-bit ”’
had wrought a wonderful change in his opinion, and
thenceforth he showed a strong inclination to be in the
forefront of the party when any exposition was on foot.
When we were told that the gasolier was the one put
up under Sir Walter’s direction, he even ventured upon
an observation.

“He used to make the gas here, I think.”

“ Yes; it used to be made in a little room under the
terrace.”

“Tt wasn’t a great success, was it?”

‘No, indeed!’’ This was said with great decision.

“‘Our young-lady guide knows a thing or two,’ he
whispered to me, as soon as opportunity offered. ‘‘ That
about the gas is in Lockhart, but that ‘ speak-a-bit ’
was new tome. I'll be bound she could give one many
odd bits of information about the place, if one only had
the luck to come here on a slack day.”

The drawing-room is shown next after the library.
Here our guide mentioned that the paper on the wall
came from China and was put up when the house was
built.

‘‘He abandoned this room to Lady Scott’s taste,”
explained Mr. Fairfield in my ear; ‘‘but I think that
ABBOTSFORD 255

paper was a present to him—Lockhart mentions it—
and he must have had a hand in putting Dryden’s por-
trait here. The one next it, in the red cap, is Hogarth.
That, I think, has been moved from the dining-room
since his time.”

During our progress through the study, the library
and the drawing-room, my friend had abstained from
consulting any of his memoranda. In the armoury,
however, the temptation to take just one peep was too
strong to be resisted.

“T’ve got a note about that; but I can’t remember
what it is,” he whispered, when the guide was drawing
attention to the picture of Muckle-mouthed Meg; and
a little later I saw him in the background peering into
an open pocket-book. The light was somewhat dim;
and as he stood with the book close to his eyes, he
looked like some good priest wholly absorbed in the
study of his breviary.

Presently he came back, and communicated the re-
sult of his investigation.

“When Scott was at Malta, on his way to Naples,
he talked about that picture to a little party of friends;
and long before that he showed it to Washington
Irving and told him the story. When Scott was
young he thought of making a ballad out of that story.
He never did it; but, I daresay you remember, Brown-
ing did. It’s in that last volume of his.”

The tour of inspection ends with the entrance hall ;
the dining-room, which was Scott’s bedroom from the
time of his last return to Abbotsford, down to his death,
is not shown to the public. Near the doorway giving
access to the hall from the ‘‘little pleasaunce,” is a
glass case containing the last clothes that he wore be-
fore he took to his bed. There is a white beaver hat,
a bottle-green coat, a striped waistcoat with silver
buttons, a pair of shepherd’s plaid trousers, a pair of
drab gaiters, and a pair of shoes. I noticed that the
inside of the right shoe was raised from the arch of the
256 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

instep to the heel. I turned to Mr. Fairfield to draw
his attention to this, but I found he was no longer by
my side. He was standing at the main entrance to
the hall, and taking a careful and very deliberate
survey of the three sides within his range of vision. I
noticed that the expression of his countenance was
somewhat acid.

“T was trying to identify the doors,” he said, when
I stepped up to him. ‘I’ve tried ever since we started
to keep my bearings right, but I’m not sure I’ve suc-
ceeded. That’s the armoury on the left; and I think
the first door on the right of the fireplace in front of
us must be the drawing-room and the other the library.
That chair must have been wheeled into this hall
through the door behind us, and into the library
through that second door. What the door in the right-
hand wall is, I’m not sure; but it ought to be the study.”

The correctness of my friend’s surmise was soon
verified. Within a minute or two the whole party had
filed through the door in question, and were standing
in a lobby from which the study door opened. This
was the end of the grand tour.

‘*T should like to see the place from the other side of
the river,” said my unwearied fellow-rambler, when we
were once more upon the Selkirk road; and he spoke
with evident longing. ‘You go straight on past the
entrance lodge, and cross the ferry; our guide told me
so. It’s a mile or two, I am afraid; but the road runs
through the estate, and we should see his trees. What
do you say about lunch ?—can it wait?”

In the face of such an appeal as this, what could a
man say? ‘I should be sorry to miss the view from
the opposite bank,” I asserted manfully; and the joy
that beamed upon my friend’s countenance almost re-
conciled me to an indefinite postponement of the mid-
day meal.

“How on earth did you pick up so much knowledge
of the inside of the house?” I asked.
ABBOTSFORD 257

“There’s a good bit of information about Abbotsford
scattered up and down Lockhart, and in one place he
sets out a pretty full description of the house that ap-
peared in some annual or other for 1829, or thereabouts.
Allan Cunningham ‘ edited’ it; I suppose the truth is,
he wrote it. It pretends to be written by an American
visitor. Why on earth the man couldn’t set down what
he saw, without putting it into the mouth of some
dummy American, I don’t know. Tom-foolery I call
it.”

““T suppose there were plenty of American visitors
even in: Scott’s time.”

‘‘Plenty! The supply never fell short of the de-
mand.” Mr. Fairfield said this with some dryness, but
presently he burst out laughing.

“It’s too good to keep dark,” he said. ‘I was think-
ing of a story that Lockhart tells. Two New Eng-
landers called there in Scott’s absence; and on the
strength of certain letters of introduction, which they
spoke of, but didn’t produce, Lady Scott entertained
them till he came back. They had lunch with her.
When he arrived it turned out that they’d come with-
out any credentials at all, and he showed them to the
door. The cream of the joke lay m the fact that they
were both rigged out in the Macgregor tartan.”

““Who were they?”

“The names aren’t given; but I remember one was
a lawyer.”

‘And the other?”

‘“‘He was a Unitarian minister.”

““Why were you so discontented in the hall?” I
asked.

“I’m not sure the public ought to see those clothes.
I was quite prepared for the glass case, for it’s mentioned
in one of Dickens’ letters. He saw it when he went
to Abbotsford, and he didn’t like it. He called it a
‘vile glass case’. When one remembers that they’re
the clothes Scott wore during those last days that

17
258 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Lockhart describes, it seems almost sacrilege to let
Tom, Dick and Harry stare at them.”

‘* What did you think about the death-mask ?”’

“JT can’t make up my mind, but I’ve a sort of im-
pression that, if it were mine, I shouldn’t let outsiders
see it.”

‘* Scott was a public man,” I urged.

“Yes, to a certain extent he was, but the public
never saw him look like that. And I'll tell you what
weighs with me; when I saw that death-mask I felt
uncomfortable. I think one’s first impulse in such
matters is often right.”

“T felt a touch of that myself,” I admitted.

‘‘ Did you ever see anything more dead-tired? I could
think of nothing but those lines of Milton, that Charles
Lamb had in his mind when he wrote about his own
father :—

How gladly would I meet
Mortality my sentence, and be earth
Insensible ! how glad would lay me down
As in my mother’s lap, there should I rest.

And he looks something more than tired, you know.
There’s no weakening in the face; no suggestion of
second childhood; but there’s a something about the
mouth that reminded one of a child I know out yonder.”
As Mr. Fairfield said this, he waved a hand westward
to indicate that he referred to Chicago.

“ He’s a small enemy of the human race, who calls
me ‘the old man,’”’ he went on. ‘‘ Now, it made me
think of how he looks, when he’s been disappointed of
something he wants real bad, and he’s trying his level
best to let on he don’t keer.”

“Possibly somebody else looks a bit down in the
mouth when that happens.”

I ventured to put this forward; for though, beyond
the fact that he was a widower of long standing, I knew
little of my friend’s domesticities, he had mentioned this
ABBOTSFORD 259

child once before ; and now his tone and his odd lapse
into what was presumably the language of small citizens
out West, seemed almost to invite the inference.

Grandfather Fairfield kept his own counsel, but his
smile was so amiably self-conscious, that I hazarded a
bolder flight.

‘Yes, sir! When the old man’s foolin’ round out
yonder, I guess that underlip gets fixed-up right away.”

Mr. Fairfield was good enough to reward my effort
with a laugh. ‘Not so bad for a first attempt,” he
said encouragingly ; ‘“‘ with a little practice, you'll soon
get to playing cymbals at the breakfast-table. But,
underlip or no underlip, he shan’t be brought up in that
fashion.”

‘When I was in the library,” he resumed, ‘‘I spied
about for the books Sir Walter bought in Naples, but
I couldn’t see them. He took it into his head to have
them bound in vellum. That was odd, for blue morocco
was what he went in for, in a general way. And, by-
the-by, did you notice that portrait over the mantel-
piece?”

“T thought it was an eyesore.”

“So it is. One wouldn’t have the thing moved on
any account; he put it there and no doubt he thought
it beautiful. He was proud of the boy, for one thing;
and his eye was accustomed to that sort of plumage.
I daresay his own yeomanry rig-out wasn’t much less
astonishing. No, it wouldn’t do to move it, but it’s a
thousand pities he didn’t handit over to Lady Scott,
for the drawing-room. A man doesn’t look like a human
being when he’s got a waist like a wasp, and there’s a
tom-fool hat cocked over one eye. He’s no ornament
to a library.”

‘“‘ His memory is still green on the countryside,” said
Mr. Fairfield poetically, as we left the ferry behind us.

‘The visitors may have something to do with that,”
IT hinted. ‘ Diana was well spoken of in Ephesus, as
I think I remarked to you once before.”
260 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“T grant all that, but it doesn’t account for the in-
terest the people hereabout take in you, when they find
you take an interest in him.”

It was the conduct of the ferryman that had suggested
this topic. As soon as he found that we wanted to see
Abbotsford from the bank, he was all alive to help us.
Not only did he give us most minute directions while
we were in the boat, but after we had landed he stood
watching us until we were fairly in the right way.
Once when we hesitated by a swing-gate near the rail-
way station, he made the welkin ring in his efforts to
keep us from straying, /

‘‘Lord Cockburn speaks of the pride the Selkirk
people showed in his statue there,” my friend continued,
as we made our way along the lower road that runs by
Tweedside. ‘‘‘ Have you seen oor Sir Walter?’ was
the question they used to ask a visitor. I hope it’s the
same now.”

“‘There’s his ‘romance of a house’; I’m very glad
we've been able to come here. His trees have grown
so well, you can’t get a view of it from the other side—
at all events when the leaves are on.”

We were standing on T'weed bank, with Abbotsford
full in view across a shining, dancing river and a long
stretch of green upland, when my friend said this.

“People talk of Abbotsford as if it were one of his
most egregious failures,’ said Mr. Fairfield musingly.
“1m not sure that’s right. It’s a pity he ever took to
buying land and building, for that led to all his troubles,
but a good deal of what he worked for came to pass.
He killed himself trying to pay off the debts, but paid
they were in the long run. And as for the estate, he
died on it and his descendants have it still. Shake-
speare didn’t come off nearly so well. Time played
havoc with his wishes; he hadn’t a descendant living
sixty years after his death, and New Place was in the
hands of strangers. No, sir! it seems to me that, as
things go in this world, the Fates have been more
ABBOTSFORD 261

tender to Sir Walter’s schemes than they are to most
people’s.”

‘Three generations in the female line,” I hinted.

““Oh, yes, the baronetcy’s gone; but that doesn’t
grieve me. I’m nota feudalist. And even Scott, who
was, didn’t care much about that title. And apart from
titles, what can it matter whether you trace back
through men or women? The other view seems to
me mere feudal nonsense—mere medieval ignorance
and prejudice. Lord, what rubbish poor Bozzy wrote
about it!”

** When Scott died,” said my companion, as, on our
way back to the road, we halted to take a last look at
the big stone house—‘ when Scott died, it was such
warm weather, that every one of the windows was open.
It was just such a September day as this is. I can’t
-make up my mind whether I’m glad or sorry we didn’t
see the room he died in.”

We strolled on the Weirhill that afternoon, and the
talk turned once again to Abbotsford.

“‘T’ve been thinking of that chocolate box,” said my
companion. ‘One feels inclined to sniff at the other
things they’ve put among Sir Walter’s relics, but that
box is in its right place. It’s a relic after Scott’s own
heart.”

“That occurred to me,” said I.

“T’ve been thinking of that young man, too—‘ the
heir,’ as our guide called him. I’m glad he’s a soldier.
I’m not one of those who look askance at the fighting
business; I did a bit of soldiering myself when I was a
boy. That young man’s got a goodly heritage. I’m
not thinking of the estate; it’s the blood, I mean.
There aren’t many of us who wouldn’t feel a bit uppity
if they could claim descent from Walter Scott.”

‘** Scott of Arbartsfoord,”’ he went on, and he laid the
accent on the last syllable and imitated the pronuncia-
tion of the country folk—‘ Scott of Arbartsfoord! Yes,
it’s a goodly heritage! I never heard of the young man
262 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

till this morning; but we'll drink his health after dinner,
for his great-great-grandfather’s sake.”

From that high ground above the river we watched
the sun go down behind the western hills.

“‘T don’t wonder he was homesick ; ‘in the evening
a’ comes hame,’” said Mr. Fairfield, as he stood with
his hat off. ‘I’m glad he was by his own river when
he died, and I’m glad he’s buried by it. It must run
quite close to him as it goes past that red cliff at Dry-
burgh. It was hearing of Goethe’s death that made
him so eager to leave Naples. ‘He at least died at
home—let us to Abbotsford,’ was what he said. Can
there be anything in the whole world more lovely than
this valley?”

It seemed almost unearthly-lovely that September
evening. The western sky was still aflame, and, else-
where, the heavens were all saffron or pale blue. There
was not a breath of air stirrmg. The sun was gone;
but over everything there was a mellow radiance; a
pensive glory that clothed Hildon like a garment, and
made the church vane gleam with the pale gold of a
child’s hair. The current splashed and bubbled as it
passed the dam and hurried eastward. Above that line
of foam the river was at peace. There was no sign of
movement in the sheet of crystal that lay before us
mirroring the firmament. But there was no deadness
on the water; it glimmered silvery like the scales of a
fish. And the glamour of Abbotsford was still upon
us—the light that never was on sea or land transfigured
all that evening.

“No wonder he wished to die here!”” It was I who
broke the silence.

My friend made no answer. He was gazing at the
Hildons deep in thought. He turned as I spoke, and
looked across to the hills of Gattonside, where the trees
were standing out clear and black against a skyline that
was all saffron. Then his gaze moved up the valley,
across the green pastures and the still waters to where,
ABBOTSFORD 263

beyond the hilltops, there was a burning and a shining
light.

“The Land of Beulah lies beyond the Delectable
Mountains,” he said absently.

The words fell from him one by one; and he drew a
deep breath after them.

POSTSCRIPT
“SIR WALTER SCOTT—FOR SCOTLAND”

The irritation of impatience . . . returned the moment he found
himself on the road and seemed to increase hourly . . . A gentle-
man who lately travelled from Rome to the Tyrol, informs me that
tn the book of guests, kept at one of the inns on the road, Sir Walter’s
autograph remains as follows—“‘ Sir Walter Scott—for Scotland ”.
—LockHart.

Of what avail the Rhine, the Rhone,
Venice, or Munich, or Cologne,
Story or legend ? What are these
To such an one, as only sees
A valley under Galashiels,
And cannot hide the woe he feels,
That aught should hinder or delay
The whirling of his carriage wheels,
And fain would travel night and day,
To grind the weary miles away,

And bear him home—to Scotland ?

No thought of her as ‘‘ stern and wild”:
His own grey mother ; he her child
Pining afar across the gap,
To lay him down upon her lap,
And all a-fever to attain
That one sure refuge of his pain.
—To feel beneath a Border sky
His own sweet, caller air again ;
To hear his river murmur by ;
To see the heather and to die,
‘© Sir Walter Scott—for Scotland ”’.
CHAPTER XXII

WE SEE SHAKESPEARE’S WILL, AND DAWDLE ABOUT
LINCOLN’S INN

** SOMETHING tangible at last, sir!”’

This was Mr. Fairfield’s remark, as we stood in the
gloomy basement of Somerset House with the third and
last sheet of Shakespeare’s will before us.

We had entered the Will Office and paid a shilling to
an official, seated behind a barrier at the farther end;
and had received in exchange a slip. of blue paper with
the name ‘“‘ William Shakespeare’”’ written upon it, just
as if the document in question had been the will of
William Brown or John Jones, who died a few weeks
ago. We had taken this slip to a room leading out of
a passage, that ran from the Will Office westward, and
a smart and particularly courteous young gentleman
had been detailed to take us to the fire-proof basement,
where the will was kept. Within five or ten minutes
of our arrival at Somerset House, the oak casket which
contains the document and which bears a brass slab
lettered ‘‘ William Shakespeare, 25th March 1616” was
before us.

“Not much of the Circumlocution Office about this
place,” whispered my companion approvingly, as our
guide undid the casket and laid the last page of the will
on the narrow iron slab, before which we were standing.
Only one side of the paper is written on and each page
lies between two sheets of glass, enclosed in a light
frame. The document bears marks of careless usage in
bygone days and through the glass at the back many
patches are visible.

264
SHAKESPEARE’S WILL 265

‘“‘T suppose you have seen many wills executed,” said
Mr. Fairfield, after he had carefully compared the three
signatures on the will with the facsimiles given in Mr.
Lee’s “ Life”.

“A good few.”

‘Where does a testator sign first?”

“At the foot or end. The signing of the earlier
sheets and the initialling of any corrections are always
done afterwards.”’

“« And is that the invariable custom of lawyers ?”’

“‘ Certainly!”

My friend seemed well pleased with this emphatic
assurance, and for some time he bent over the three
signatures in anxious scrutiny.

“In what order are the other sheets signed?” he
asked.

“T think everybody turns back to the first page—
that seems the most natural thing to do.”

“T’ve read somewhere,” he observed—‘ perhaps in
Donnelly’s ‘ Great Cryptogram,’ that the handwriting
of these signatures shows that Shakespeare was a per-
son unused to penmanship: that he could hardly write
at all, in fact. What do you say?”

““T say, nonsense. Not one of these signatures is in
that sort of writing, though they differ very much. The
one at the end is by far the best. That ‘By me
William Shakespeare’ looks to me like easy, practised
writing. I hardly know what to make of the others.”

“Ts the last signature—the first according to you—
equally good throughout?”

‘“‘ Looking at it more closely, I doubt if the ‘ Shakes-
peare’ is so good as the ‘ William,’ and I think it be-
gins better than it ends.”

‘‘T agree; but it’s much better than the writing of
the other two signatures, and it seems to me that the
signature on page one, so far as you can make it out at
all, is firmer than the one on page two, And that one
—the last of the three according to you—is abbreviated ;
266 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

the William is W.I.L..M., while the other Williams
are in full.”

On our way back to the Will Office, we dawdled to
watch the proceedings of an attendant, who had just
borne a fat volume toa table and was loosely turning
over the parchment leaves, and at the same time con-
sulting a memorandum in his hand.

“May I be allowed to look at that?” asked Mr.
Fairfield, darting forward as a gleam of gold and colour
caught his eye.

‘It’s one of our curiosities,” said the attendant, lay-
ing the page open before us—‘ the will of Sir William
Soame, Lord Mayor of London.”

The parchment bore a beautifully executed portrait
of a grave Tudor citizen, well advanced in years, and
there was much heraldic blazonry about it.

«What is the date?” asked my friend.

“ Sixteen-nineteen.”’

‘Ah, @ contemporary! No doubt a moneyer and
great oneyer in his time. JI wonder if Shakespeare ever
saw him.”

‘ Let us take a stroll round here,” said my companion,
as we turned into the great quadrangle of Somerset
House. ‘It’s such a peaceful place.”

‘He must have been very ill.”

We had been sauntering in silence for some min-
utes, when Mr. Fairfield took his cigar out of his mouth
and uttered this pronouncement with great conviction.
“‘ Halliwell-Phillipps thinks it isn’t necessary to follow
the general opinion, that the signatures betray the
tremulous hand of illness, although parts of them may
indicate that they were written from an inconvenient
position. I don’t agree with him as regards the tremu-
lousness. To me, the state of affairs is as plain as a
pikestaff.”

** Shakespeare sat up in bed to execute that will,” he
declared after another silence; ‘‘he started right away,
but he began to waver before he’d written his name
SHAKESPEARE’S WILL 267

once. And he had to lie back on the pillow after that,
and write on something held straight up before him.
He signed sheet one next, and by the time he got to
sheet two he was so exhausted that he was glad to
abbreviate the William. That’s how I read these
signatures.”

“They do look rather like it,” I admitted ; “but how
about the resolution you made when we were at Strat-
ford, never to theorize about Shakespeare’s doings?”

He had announced this resolution one evening, when
after poring for a long time over guide-books, he had
broken out into a tirade against their wholesale em-
broidery of the bare facts of the poet’s life.

“The stuff one read and listened to there, was enough
to irritate a saint,” he answered; “but you can’t see
that will without trying to form some sort of a picture
of the circumstances under which it was made. I can
imagine the sort of room, or at all events, I think I
can—a low ceilinged place with small panelling every-
where and not what I should consider a good light; but
that’s as far as I can go. I’m not equal to reconstruct-
ing a scene like that. I often wonder whether most
people do better.”

“They don’t try,” said I.

“TI suppose it is rather fanciful, but it’s a weakness
of mine. I often wish I could see these things as Sir
Walter Scott or Macaulay saw them,” he added wist-
fully.
“There’s no harm in wishing it,” he protested, in
answer to my smile; “expecting it is quite another
thing. I’ve no doubt Scott or Macaulay could have
made a perfectly clear mental picture of the scene when
that will was executed—Shakespeare himself, children,
friends, doctor and all.”’

“T think one may fairly assume that Shakespeare’s
doctor was his son-in-law, Hall,” he resumed, “‘ and it’s
a comfort to feel pretty sure that he was a good one,
ag those times went. Halliwell-Phillipps gives some
268 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

particulars about him, and so far as we can guess at
the nature of the complaint, it wasn’t one for heroic
remedies. It was an awful thing to be in the doctor’s
hands in those days. Have you ever read about their
treatment?”

“T think Macaulay says they tortured Charles II
like a red Indian at thestake, and one has a general im-
pression that, until modern times, all doctors’ stuff was
loathsome and beastly. When the professor of healing
was called in the patient must have felt like a state
prisoner awaiting his torturer.”

‘And I doubt if the patients had any great faith in
either the doctors or the remedies,” said my friend
laughing; “and that must have made the position
very grievous. I was dipping into Herrick the other
evening, and in the ‘ Noble Numbers’ I came upon his
‘Letanie to the Holy Spirit’. He speaks of the art-
less doctor—the primary meaning of artless was unskil-
ful, then—and he goes on thus :—

When his potion and his pill,

Has, or none, or little skill,

Meet for nothing but to kill ;
Sweet spirit, comfort me !

And they eked out their artlessness by consulting the
stars. A physician without astrology was thought a
poor creature—he was likened to a ‘ pudden without
fat’. We've much to be thankful for nowadays.”
And so saying, Mr. Fairfield fell into a brown study.

“T must be getting back to Gray’s Inn,” said I at
length.

“Tl walk with you, if I may.”

When we reached the Law Courts, I turned in at
the western gate, and passed through to Carey Street.
Here I stopped for a moment to greet an old friend,
who was sunning himself upon the parapet: a battered
and very ancient grimalkin, who bore the name of
Tom. A good many stray cats find a home in and
LINCOLN’S INN 269

about the Law Courts. The policemen and orderlies
make pets of them and see to their rations.

“He looks a bit fresher for the Vacation—like most
who come here; don’t he?”’ said one of the men on
duty.

“Ah!” responded Mr. Fairfield, taking the joke,
‘overtaxed his brain before the holidays, I suppose.”

After this exchange of pleasantries, I made for the
passage which leads into Lincoln’s Inn, hard by Searle
Street. I wondered whether this was new ground to
my friend.

“Tsay!” was his ejaculation when we came upon
the staircase of the house through which the passage
runs; and I felt an arresting hand on my shoulder.

“This is very imposing; more so than the staircase
at Number 5 in your square. And what a lot of names
are painted up yonder—the place must be a perfect
warren. Where on earth are we?”

With this question on his lips, Mr. Fairfield walked
to the doorway. It did not take him many seconds to
find his bearings.

‘Number 7 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn,” he
announced with a smile, as we strolled on northward.

“That's an interesting house to a lawyer,” said I,
pointing to Number 11.

‘“‘ Sixteen-ninety-one, according to the tablet,” he
muttered. ‘‘ Thissquare is older than I thought. And
not much changed, I guess,” he went on, after he had
retraced his steps for a few paces, in order to get a
better view of the east side; ‘though the red tiles are
nearly all gone. Why is Number 11 so interesting?”

“Three Lord Chancellors have come out of it to my
knowledge, and there may have been others, for all I
know.”

“T thought you lawyers didn’t take any interest in
these things; Thackeray says so, somewhere in ‘ Pen-
dennis ’.”

““IT remember the passage,” said I; ‘and oddly
270 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

enough, this house is one of the very places he mentions.
Lord Chancellor Eldon was here for nine years—but I
can hardly expect you to take any interest in him.”

‘‘ Perhaps I don’t know so much about him as you
do,” suggested my friend politely.

“‘That is possible,” I answered with a smile of con-
scious superiority; “but I should like to know what
your impression of him is.”

Mr. Fairfield stared into the doorway of Number 11,
and seemed to gather his mind together before commit-
ting himself.

« He was given to port wine, also to doubting; and
Thackeray hints that he kept a good supply of crocodile
tears on hand. That’s the man, sir; and, by-the-by, it
was he who decided that Shelley wasn’t fit to have the
custody of his own children. I don’t say he was wrong
there.”

“Hum!” I said; “I needn’t advise you to read
Twiss, or even Campbell, after that epitome.”

“You are on your own—ahem !—ground here,” he
answered meekly. ‘‘ Who were the other two Lord
Chancellors?”

“Lord Cranworth and Lord Selborne. Selborne
was here for more than a quarter of a century. I think
it was his home before he married. I was in one of
those top rooms on the north side, a little time ago,
and the occupant told me it used to be Selborne’s
bedroom.”

“ve read something about him,” said Mr. Fairfield
meditatively; ‘he was an ecclesiastical character.
When he built his new home he called in a bishop to
consecrate it. That’s the sort of thing to take an ordin-
ary man’s breath away. It’s positively mediwval. But
he was one of your great Chancellors, wasn’t he?”

“‘T think so: one of the greatest in fact. Speaking
off-hand, I can only think of four others—Somers, Hard-
wicke, Eldon and Cairns.”’

‘‘T don’t suppose there’s an old house in this Inn
LINCOLN’S INN 271

that hasn’t harboured at least one eminent lawyer,” T
went on, “but I think this house holds the record.
Lord Langdale’s chambers were here. He was Master
of the Rolls, but he could have been Chancellor if he’d
liked. And Leach was here, too. He was Master of
the Rolls under Eldon——”’

“It’s odd that he should have come out of the same
house,” interrupted Mr. Fairfield.

“Why?” I asked, not a little surprised.

*« They were such a contrast in all respects. Do you
remember the Prince Regent’s joke? He said that as
his Chancellor was called Old Bags, he must call his
Master of the Rolls, Reticule. Leach had a finicking
manner, and his seal, or whatever it was, was carried in.
a purse like Hldon’s, but much smaller.”

* You pretended you knew nothing about Eldon.”

“The temptation was too strong for me,” he pleaded.
«« Get us hear what our cousin from across the seas
knows of the great Lord Eldon,’ was the way you put
it.”

«« And how did our cousin pick up his knowledge?”

‘“« When I was @ boy, Campbell’s ‘ Lives’ was a stand-
ard work on our side of the Atlantic. It was among
our books at home, and I read it, or a good bit of it,
over and over again. It was my introduction to Eng-
lish history, apart from mere school-books. Capital read-
ing it is too, and not a bit more inaccurate, I'll be
bound, than many of our modern oracles. When I
came on the old man’s portrait in your National Portrait
Gallery, it was like meeting an old friend.”

“The Inn ought to publish alist of the distinguished
tenants of each of its old houses,” said I. ‘By turning
over a few books at the Law Society’s library, I was
able to credit this house with three Chancellors and two
Masters of the Rolls, and I’ve known two men leave it
for the Bench—F ord North in 1881 and Swinfen Kady
only a year or two ago.”

“Two hundred years,’ said my friend musingly ;
272 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“T must look through ‘Campbell’ again when I get
home.”

“ You'll find that he mentions Number 10, that house
to the left. Lord Somers’ State Papers perished there
when Charles Yorke’s chambers were burnt out in
1752. You remember Charles Yorke, the Chancellor
who did not live to take his seat?”

Mr. Fairfield was scanning through his pince-nez
the canopied statue of Queen Victoria, which adorns
the south peak of the roof of Lincoln’s Inn Hall.

“Remember Charles Yorke?” he said laughing.
‘Oh, yes, I’ve some reason to remember him. But for
your grandfather, young lady, and his Charles Yorkes,”
he went on, with a wave of his hand towards the statue,
‘“‘T might have been born a British subject.”

“‘T really must be going back to business,” said I;
for his flourish had drawn my attention to the hall
clock, and I was startled to see how late it was; ‘you
vowed and declared you wouldn’t keep me out more
than an hour. This is what always happens when I

give way.”
“TI apologize for detaining you,’ he answered with
immovable countenance. ‘It’s a pity I turned over

those books at the Law Society’s library. Out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.”

I moved on without attempting a repartee, but no
sooner had we reached the two old pumps, which stand
some forty paces eastward of Number 11, than he
pleaded for another halt.

“Two or three minutes can’t make any difference,”
he urged, “and this is one of the very prettiest bits in
all London. I’ve never seen it from this aspect.”

I stopped not unwillingly; for Lincoln’s Inn has
been a part of my life for five-and-twenty years, and I
love that prospect. It is so airy and so spacious.

“It’s simply wonderful!” muttered my companion
under his breath, as we stood between the two pumps
and took a leisurely survey of all about us.
LINCOLN’S INN 273

Never to my eyes had the surroundings of the hall
and library looked more fresh and leafy. The western
tower rose against a screen of foliage, with not a house
in sight. Flanking the other tower, were the Inn’s
own plane trees and long stretches of turf and flower-
beds. Stone Buildings peeped out, like a temple in a
grove; and here, there, and everywhere, from the
library to the chapel and the Old Hall beside it, there
was more fresh green. Even New Square was pictur-
esque. The trees and bushes in its garden broke up
all that was formal in the weathered brickwork, and
a hot sun, just past meridian, was beating down upon
the turf and making the flower-beds glorious.

Mr. Fairfield lit another cigar, and leaning his arms
on the railing, gave himself up to an inspection of the
three sides of the square.

‘Are there many residents here?” he asked, at
length.

“Next to none, I believe. Things used to be differ-
ent. Men lived at their chambers until they married ;
sometimes afterwards, I think. Charles Yorke was
living at Number 10 when he was burnt out. We
are told he escaped in very scanty attire. Arthur
Murphy, Johnson’s friend, lived for many years at
Number 1.”

‘1 remember him ; Johnson ‘ very much loved him’.
I must have a look at that house. I'll be bound old
Sam used to puff up the stairs. Did you hunt up the
whole square in those books?”

“T was only hunting up Number 11; but incidentally
I came across Wedderburn, Lord Chancellor Lough-
borough. His chambers were here when he was
Attorney-General. Do you remember him in Camp-
bell’s ‘Lives’ ?”

“More or less! I’m rather interested in him; he
was such a good friend to my country. Do you re-
member that saying of Junius—‘as for Mr. Wedder-
burn, there is something about him which even treachery

18
274 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

cannot trust’? He meant treachery with a big T,, you
know. In the eighteenth century they were fond of
the ‘family of dismal personifications,’ which they
marked with capital letters: Leslie Stephen says so.
That ‘even’ always makes me laugh. Why on earth
should Treachery be more trustful than his brothers and
sisters? Did you come across any more celebrities?”

“ Only three or four—Law, Lord Chief Justice Ellen-
borough, Sugden, Lord Chancellor St. Leonards—he
was at Number 10—Sir Samuel Romilly and Richard
Preston, the leviathan of conveyancers. I myself re-
member Lord Justice Chitty at Number 3. That was
where Serle’s coffee-house used to be. It was some-
times called Will’s. The bloods of this Inn used to
breakfast there in their night-gowns——”

‘“‘In their night-gowns!”

“A night-gown was the same as a morning-gown—we
call the thing a dressing-gown. It was tied round the
waist by a bright coloured sash and. a cap went with it
instead of a wig. I’ve read somewhere, that this ele-
gant undress was to be seen, by the gateway, over
yonder, after George the Third came to the throne.
But I’m forgetting something about this square, more
interesting to you than all the other associations put
together—Charles Dickens was a clerk at Number 8.”

“*T remember—I remember! The man’s name was
Molloy, but I didn’t know the number. That was be-
fore Dickens went to Ellis and Blackmore in your Inn.”

“No; it was after that Molloy came here. I looked
the point up for your special benefit. I’ve got a memo-
randum about it at Gray’s Inn. I can’t remember the
dates just now, but I know I was satisfied that Dickens
was Molloy’s clerk at Number 8, and that he went there
after he left Ellis and Blackmore.”

‘What's that bell?’ demanded Mr. Fairfield, turn-
ing sharply round. He had only just become conscious
of the measured strokes, that were sounding from the
chapel.
LINCOLN’S INN 275

“ Tt’s tolling for a member; perhaps a bencher.”’

‘“A passing-bell!” he ejaculated. ‘‘ Shakespeare
often refers to that. Perhaps an old bell too!”

“ Sixteen-fifteen,” said I carelessly, but keeping an
eye on his face.

He rose to the bait exactly as I had anticipated.
“ Sixteen-fifteen—‘ the surly, sullen bell’! Shakespeare
may have heard it :—

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly, sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell.

It’s strange to think of that old bell tolling here since
sixteen-fifteen. It must have rung out Macaulay. He
was a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn.”

“Your old friend Campbell, too. He must have been
rung out when he became Lord Chief Justice; and I
daresay he was tolled for as Chancellor when he died.”

“T must certainly re-read Campbell, and keep my eye
on the Lincoln’s Inn men,” said Mr. Fairfield, as with
folded arms he resumed his lounge against the railings,
and turned his attention to the garden. ‘‘ These trees
don’t look very ancient.”

“Oh, no! Sixty years ago this was only an open
space—gravelled, I suppose. At one time there was a
fountain and sundial in the middle——”

“Ah! Charles Lamb knew that fountain when he
was a child,” interrupted my companion, who is a de-
vout lover of Elia; ‘‘he mentions it in his essay on
the old benchers of the Inner Temple. And, by jove,
the basin’s there still! Full of water, too!”

“This garden was planted after the new hall and
library were built; a sort of compensation, I think, for
the havoc which they had wrought on the Inn gardens.”

“They must have taken off a tidy slice.” As my
friend said this, he turned round and eyed the mass of
brickwork with no great favour.
276 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“Tt wasn’t only the site of those buildings; all this
roadway right up to the archway leading into the Fields,
was filched from the gardens. The railings used to
come up to Number 11.”

“ But when the gardens went right up to Number 11,
had this square no outlet on the west?”

“There used to be a tunnel into Serle Street be-
tween Number 9 and Number 10. That was blocked
up about sixty years ago, and for the life of me, I can’t
find a trace of where it ran; but in: the Stow of 1720,
there’s a view of the square, which showsit. I’ve come
to the conclusion that the whole of Number 10 has been
rebuilt. The entrance there was called the Postern
Gate; the entrance into Carey Street, between Number
3 and Number 4, was called the Great Gate, or the
Back Gate. The passage we came in by is quite
modern; I remember it being made. Before this square
was built the gardens came nght down to where Num-
ber 10 now stands.”

“7 haven’t given your Inns of Court half the atten- -
tion they deserve. They're the best things left in
London after the Abbey and St. Saviour’s and the
Tower. But one’s time is so short.” Mr. Fairfield
sighed as he uttered this.

“You see those two vine-clad houses,” said I, point-
ing to Numbers 12 and 138, which were just on our left.

“They’re older than the others.”

* Some 150 years older.”

Mr. Fairfield was much impressed. ‘‘ Why, that
carries us back to Henry the Eighth.”

«They're old enough to have housed Dr. Donne,” he
broke out, a minute or two later. ‘‘ Donne was a bar-
rister before King James made a clergyman of him. I
was dipping into Walton’s ‘Lives’ only a day or two
ago. Do you know them? Aren’t they delightful ?”’

“That they certainly are, but it’s hard to believe that
men were as good as Walton thought them. It doesn’t
seem consistent with human nature.”
(Fogr Ganog fo suny ayy fo sonmbijyup,, Spraqaayy uot)
‘AVABLVD ONV ‘THdVAO “TIWH NNI S.NTOONIT

 
LINCOLN’S INN. 277

‘‘T suppose you feel a doubt about the morals of
the judicious Hooker,” said my friend, laughing.

‘‘Tt’s a wicked world,” I murmured.

“Not so wicked, though, as you lawyers believe,” re-
torted Mr. Fairfield.

** Do you remember Donne’s runaway marriage ?”’ he
resumed. ‘Christopher Brooke—Walton calls him his
chamber-fellow in Lincoln’s Inn—gave the bride away.
He, and Donne, and Brooke’s brother, who married the
couple, were all sent to prison for it. Donne and
Christopher were friends all their lives. One likes to
think that, perhaps, the chamber which they shared
was in one of those houses. I must make a note to
look into Walton again. I’ve an impression that Brooke
was a poet as well asa lawyer.”

“Tl be bound you've studied that country pretty
well,” said I, pointing to where the plane tree of the
Kitchen-garden showed between the old houses and
Number 1 New Square.

Mr. Fairfield understood me. ‘The ‘ Bleak House’
country! Oh yes, I went over that before the rebuild-
ings there, and I saw the churchyard where they buried
Nemo, off Drury Lane, before it was turned into a re-
creation ground. Now a street goes over it.”

‘‘ How marvellously the book opens!” he exclaimed,
pointing to the Old Hall. ‘‘ How you seem to be stew-
ing in the fog, by the time you get to the Lord High
Chancellor, sitting there in his High Court of Chancery !
Thank goodness, that won’t be pulled down, though
it’s been shamefully ill-used! Have you ever been
inside?”

“Many a time. When I was young the Court of
Appeal sat there. It used to be great fun to watch
Jessel holding Lord Esher down.”

‘“‘T don’t know much about the place, but I know it
goes back to Henry the Seventh’s reign. Four hundred
years—just think of it!”

“Tt’s likely enough that Shakespeare was inside it at
278 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

some time or other,” said I. ‘‘ And it’s more than likely
that Ben Jonson was.”

“T suppose this Inn had its revels just the same as
Gray’s Inn?” ;

“Nota doubt of it. Charles the Second and the Duke
of York attended one in that very Hall, soon after the
Restoration. Evelyn was there—he came up to town on
purpose—and what is very curious, Pepys saw the King’s
guard on the way here. He was just outside Temple
Bar.”

“And Charles and James were in that Hall again a
few years later,’ I continued; ‘‘and that time Mon-
mouth and Prince Rupert were with them.”

“It’s a far cry from those Stuarts to Charles Dickens,”
said Mr. Fairfield. ‘‘I never thought of the place ex-
cept in connexion with his Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

“ Tt’s one of the most interesting buildings in London
to a lawyer,” I asserted with some enthusiasm. “I’m
not deeply read 1 in legal annals, but I’ve come across it
again and again.’

“It’s a pity you’re so pressed for time,’ hinted my
companion as I paused to get my memory into focus.

“T can’t recollect much on the spur of the moment,”
IT said, laughing, ‘‘ but T know it was in that Hall Lord
Mansfield took leave of the Bar when he was made
Lord Chief Justice, and I know Lord Chancellor
Erskine took his leave there, when George the Third got
rid of Allthe Talents. And it was there Eldon, asa young
man, argued Ackroyd and Smithson: before Lord Chan-
cellor Thurlow. Your benefactor Wedderburn led on
the other side. And I’ve another shot in the locker.
It was there Sheridan harangued Eldon for hours in
the Drury Lane case.”’

‘“‘T’ve never been inside,” said Mr: Fairfield wistfully.

“There’s an oak screen that was put up in Queen
Elizabeth’s time, and some coats of arms painted on
panels—Prince Rupert’s for one. It’s the very place
for you. I must be off and take hold of my business,
LINCOLN’S INN 279

but you’re a gentleman of leisure; why not present
yourself to the steward, and ask him to lend you the
key? And, by-the-by, you might ask him whereabouts
in Number 8, Molloy’s office was.”

““* With thee conversing I forget all time,’” quoted
my friend with polite rapture; and thereupon I broke
loose and left him to his own devices,

POSTSCRIPT
THE GHOSTS OF LINCOLN’S INN

Candlemas-night ! and the moonbeams fall
Cold and faint on the old white Hall.

Square and chapel and all about,

Shuttered and barred from the world without ;
Only a rumble, now and again

Heard through the portal of Chancery Lane:
** Lovell’s gatehouse’ of centuries four—
Good red brick, with its old oak door
Fashioned and hung, as the record saith,
Anno sexto, Elizabeth.

Twelve of the clock! and the New Hall’s chime
Rings in the Old Hall’s festival time.

H’en as the last stroke dies in air

Lutes and fiddles are merry there ;

Painted windows of earlier days,

Flaunt their heraldries, all ablaze.
Candlemas Revel! the screens affirm ;
Great Grand-night, of Hilary Term !
Marred no longer by stucco or slate,

The Old Hall shows like the old brick gate ;
Free to-night to welcome its dead,

In Tudor habit, mulberry-red.

Shadows trooping to meet their kin:
Old-time members of Lincoln’s Inn ;

Legal phantoms, an endless train,

Flocking to dance in their hall again.

Many a serjeant brave in fur,

Many a wizen conveyancer,

Chancellors ranging from Selborne to More,
Masters in Chancery, many a score,
Countless judges in ermine pile,

Hordes and hordes of the rank and file.
230 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Light-heeled phantoms that come at call,
Mad to dance in their ancient hall.

(Some who feasted and drank their wine
Under its roof-tree fresh and fine— }
Fourteen hundred and eighty-nine !)
Roistering student, or learned wight

All are bent on the dance to-night ;

Even the crop-eared ghost of Prynne
Speeds to the revel at Lincoln’s-Inn.

Music, thin as a mouse’s cry, |
Pours from the gallery up on high ;
All below is a seething whirl ;

Gown and tippet and formal curl :
Thick as gnats in a twilight air,
Revellers many ; but room to spare.
Down the middle on heel and toe ;
Up the sides—and away they go!
Apt to vanish, as shadows may,

Over the hills and far away,

Out at pleasure through wall or pane ;
Rounding the precincts and back again !

Fach can figure it, great or small ;
Christopher Hatton can dance for all.
(Not of right may he skim the floor ;
Only by grace, as a chancellor.
Old-time custom and law invite

All the judges on Candlemas-night. )
Inwards; outwards; never a stop ;
Christopher spins like a humming top:
Never a halt or a breathing space !
‘Off he canaries to Ely Place ;

Sports awhile in his home of yore ;
Frolics back for a spring with More.

All to-night of the same degree ;

None make way for a splendid three—
Diamond buckle on red-heeled shoe,
George and ribbon of garter blue,
’Broidered velvet: and full peruke,

Fit for a king or a royal duke ;

Members all, as the gown proclaims ;
Rupert is dancing with Charles and James.

Dizzy and Gladstone meet and frown ;
Each swings by in his student’s gown.
Williams, Johnny and Williams, Josh
Flee from a lecture by Mackintosh.
LINCOLN’S INN 281

Snug in a corner, vis-a-vis,

Brougham and Sugden caper free ;
Gay little chanson, Lyndhurst hums:
Alllook shirty when Campbell comes ;
Campbell bursting to make it clear,
He alone is the dancer here.

Denham and Wither foot it now ;
Fiddlers rise in their seats and bow ;
Changing the tune of the flying feet

To an old-world madrigal piercing sweet :
Shall I, wasting in despaire,

Dye, because a woman's fair ?

‘Wither blushes ; for all the train

Lift their voices and swell the strain,
Thanks to the prompting, one affords—
Bencher Macaulay has the words.
Shades in the moonlight carry it on:
Christopher Brooke and Dr. Donne,
Frisking round ; as they dip and rise
Hand in hand are the old allies.

On, and on, to the graveyard stones
Under the arches of Inigo Jones ;

Past the gatehouse, and round the Square;
Back to the Hall and the dancers there.

Members and judges in endless tale,
Dashed with a sprinkle from out the pale :
Worthy bill-men, who “‘ charged” and “‘ prayed,”
Others who ‘‘ answered,’’ undismayed ;
Blooded free in the Bar’s behoof

Under the Old Hall’s timbered roof.

Such be they, whom the shades requite—
Free of the revel on Candlemas-night.

Old Tom Jarndyce, felo de se,

Back again where he used to be ;

Farmer Gridley, the Shropshire man ;
Bright-eyed, bottle-nosed Sheridan :
Ackroyd whistles to Smithson’s reel ;
Sibley and Perry are toe and heel.

Students jostle with ermined peers,

Paying their court to the buffeteers.

Each may drink as his will be fain ;

“¢ Silver-tongued Murray ’’ sips champagne ;
Taps his snuff box and cites a trope,
Just as it fell from the mouth of Pope.
Garrick, beaming at Camden’s side,

Lifts a glass of the amber tide ;
282 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Pledges Nash? ere he tips it down—
‘Warwickshire Will and Stratford town !”
Rubicund ancients mellow and gay,

Crack the jokes of a bygone day ;

All of a-chuckle at Erskine’s wit ;

Cowed a little by Treasurer Pitt.

Bencher Canning, in worshipful form,
Drinks—‘‘ To the pilot that weathered the storm ”’.
Eldon back in his ancient court,

Spins his yarn as he swigs his port ;

Hints a longing for ‘‘liver and crow ” ;
Leach grimaces and sips noyau.

Hardwicke questions without avail,
Broomstick legends of Matthew Hale.

Thurlow, fuddled and grown morose,
Knits his terrible eyebrows close ;

Snaps at Kenyon—who snaps in turn—
Rages and curses at Wedderburn.

Sandy bows as he plants a sting ;
Saunters off under Murphy’s wing.
Spectres pause as the taunts fly free:

All of them laugh, but a group of three—
Selborne and Cairns and Hatherley.

Music ceases and flambeaux wane ;
Spectres vanish through wall and pane:
Hither and thither, they wheel and wend,
Dotting the precincts from end to end ;
All agog for the closing sport—

Old-time round of the Inns of Court.
Flitting outwards to form and sing,

Hand in hand in a triple ring—

Vast encompassing circles three

Round the band where the fire should be.

Lutes and fiddles are bending low ;
Master-fiddler dips his bow ; }

Squeal the fiddles ; and off they go!
Innermost, outermost, every sprite

Tossing and turning, left to right ;

Those of the middlemost, madly gay,

Turning and tossing the other way.
—Romping the measure with leap and bound,
Quicker and quicker they fly around;
Shrilling forth, as a Bedlam choir—

Here we dance round our seacoal fire!

1 Thomas Nash, who married Shakespeare’s granddaughter, Eliza-
beth Hall, and died at New Place.
LINCOLN’S INN 283

Thrice they circle and thrice they shrill—
Scatter !—vanish ! And all is still!

Only a cock crow, faintly borne,

Hails a streak of the coming morn.

Vapours rising clammy and cold,

‘Wrap the Inn in an icy fold;

Spectral trees on gravel and lawn,

Drip, drip, drip to a murky dawn.

But daylight flares over Chancery Lane,

And the wind smites down upon louvre and vane,
Gust upon gust, with a lashing of rain.

Candlemas-morrow comes in with.a squall,
To a work-a-day world and an old white hall.

Nors.—All the shades mentioned above, with the exception of
the old litigants and the judges following, namely—Lord Chan-
cellor Hatton, Mr. Justice ‘‘ Johnny’’ Williams, Lord Chancellor
Camden, Lord Chancellor Eldon, Sir John Leach, Master of the
Rolls, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, Lord Chief Justice Kenyon,
and Wedderburn, Lord Chancellor Loughborough, were members
of Lincoln’s Inn.
CHAPTER XXIII

MR. FAIRFIELD TURNS RECORD-HUNTER, AND STUDIES
“SWINBURNE ON WILLS”

It was a little after five o’clock in the afternoon of the
day following our visit to Somerset House, that upon
answering a modest knock at my office door, I found
Mr. Fairfield standing on the threshold. He knew that
he was reasonably certain to find me alone and disen-
gaged at that hour during the Long Vacation.

“Well!” I said, as I proceeded to brew a cup of tea,
as is my hospitable custom on such occasions, “‘ did you
get inside the Old Hall yesterday?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. There was some clean-
ing going on, and the foreman let mein. But I haven't
come to talk about that. I’ve had a disappointment.”

My visitor gave his nght eye a rub with his forefinger
as he said this, and I noticed that the orb bore a some-
what angry appearance.

“T was thinking about Shakespeare’s will last night,”
he resumed, “and I took up Herrick to look at that
‘Letanie’. I happened to cast my eye over the bio-
graphical introduction, and lo, and behold! I came on
a statement that Sir Stephen Soame was the husband
of Herrick’s maternal aunt. Wasn’t it an odd coinci-
dence?”

“Why ?” IT asked.

“He was that old chap—the Lord Mayor—whose
will we saw.”

“Tt certainly was odd,” I admitted.

‘““When I turned to the index and found there were

284
RECORD-HUNTING 285

a lot of poems addressed to members of the Soame
family, I got quite excited,’ continued Mr. Fairfield,
now busy with scraps of memoranda.

“Tl be bound you did.”

“There was one to his honoured kinsman Sir William
Soame, another to the most fair and lovely Mistress
Anne Soame, another to his kinsman Sir Thomas Soame,
and another to his worthy kinsman Mr. Stephen Soame.
I galloped off to the Museum the first thing this morn-
ing, and looked up all I could find about Herrick and
his family. I found little enough about the Herricks,
and nothing at all about the Soames. Of course, I
didn’t give much time toit. But I did find out that
Herrick had three brothers, Thomas, Nicholas and
William, and that Nicholas was a Levant merchant.
As a matter of fact, there’s a poem in the ‘ Hesperides’
addressed to him, and it’s evident that he had travelled
im the Holy Land.”

“T don’t think you’ve much of a disappointment to
complain of. There must be some record of the Lord
Mayor. Why not try the Guildhall library? The offi-
cials there don’t mind what trouble they take. They’ll
soon put you on his track.”

“Oh, but that isn’t all. I thought I’d go and have
a look at the will itself, and see if I could make anything
out of that. I got it at last, but I’m afraid I gave a lot
of trouble.”

“Could you read it—it’s in court hand; isn’t it?”

Mr. Fairfield gave his right eye another rub. “It
was a devil of a business,” he said. ‘ At first I could
make nothing of it, but by sticking. to it like a limpet,
I found I could guess at some of the short words; and
working on by degrees, I managed to get some notion
of the hang of the thing. My right eye pretty well
struck work just before I finished, and I was dead-tired,
for I had to stand up all the time.” My friend stretched
out his long legs and straightened his back as he said
this.
286 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘‘ What I hoped for was to find some mention of
Herrick,” he resumed. “That was where the disap-
pointment came in.”

“Did you find nothing at all?”

Mr. Fairfield’s eyes were half-shut as he watched me
dust the teacups. ‘‘I found a little,” he said.

‘“‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t smoke,” I re-
marked. I was beginning to feel a little interested in
his amateur record-hunting, though I thought it unlikely
that he had unearthed anything new.

“T found,” he began, as soon as his cigar was alight,
and he had got his notes in order;. ‘‘I found that the
will mentioned four sons—my son Sir William Soame,
Knight, my son Stephen Soame, Thomas Soame, my
third son, and my son John Soame. Now that was
something, for the first three are the Sir William, Sir
Thomas and Mr. Stephen of the ‘ Hesperides’. They
were Herrick’s cousins.”’

“ Very satisfactory indeed,” I said encouragingly.

‘Those four sons got a lot of lands, I couldn’t make
out more than that, and I didn’t try to. But later on,
I came to some small gifts. These were very interest-
ing; for among them was to Richard Herrick, a cloak,
to Mr. Baldwin, a cloak, and to Nicholas Herrick a ring.
Now, that Nicholas was Herrick’s brother, and I guess
Baldwin was some relation of the poet’s maid Prudence
Baldwin. She is named in several little verses in the
‘Hesperides’. One is on her sickness and another is
her epitaph :—

In this little urn is laid
Prudence Baldwin (once my maid)
From whose happy spark here let
Spring the purple violet.

Herrick must have missed her sorely; his ‘kind Prew,’
as he calls her somewhere, was one of the props of his
old age.”

“You don’t know who the Richard was?”
RECORD-HUNTING 287

Mr. Fairfield shook his head. ‘I’ve been wonder-
ing whether I made a mistake about him. I don’t
think the name could have been Nicholas, but I was
very muddled by the time I got so far as that. There
was a codicil farther on; I think I must have left that
for another day, but luckily one of the attendants came
up to see what I was puzzling over for such a long
time, and he gave me a little assistance. I’ve got a
pretty full note of that codicil. You can read it for
yourself.”

I took the pencil memorandum which my friend
handed me. It read as follows :—

Upon Saturday ye twoe and twentieth of May one thousand six
hundred and nineteen about twelve of the clock in the night of the
same day Sir Stephen Soame Knight and Alderman of London lying
sicke upon his death bed at Thurlowe and being in very perfect
memory uttered these or the like words following namely. [He
asked ‘“‘Is Brooke here?” and being informed that he was, he ex-
pressed a certain wish with regard to his will.) And presentlie
after that he said to Sir William Soame, Thomas Soame, John Soame
his sons standing by him [certain words]. And moreover he sayd
let Nic Herrick have twoe hundred pounds for seaven years
gratis. [Witnessed by the 3 sons and Th. Brooke. ]

‘“‘Nicholas Herrick again!’ I remarked. ‘I dare-
say the old man wanted to give him a helping hand in
that Levant business. The whole thing’s very quaint.”

‘“‘Tsn’t it? And doesn’t it bring up before one that
scene 300 years ago. A loan of £200, gratis for seven
years, was a biggish thing in those days. I hope Nicholas
got it. Was such a writing of any effect? It’s merely
a statement of what a man said on his deathbed.”

“Tt would be of no effect now ; I think it was what was
called a nuncupative disposition,’ I answered learnedly.

« But wasn’t it of any effect then?”

I had to confess that I did not know; but feeling
pretty sure that ‘‘ Williams on Real Property” would
tell me, I promised to look into the point when I had
half an hour to spare.

“T’ve a great mind to write to the boss of your Will
288 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Office,” said Mr. Fairfield before taking his departure,
‘and ask him to have that portrait of the Lord Mayor
taken out of the book and framed. It’s a bit damaged
already, and every one who turns over the leaves makes
it worse.”

“By all means,’ I said. ‘‘ Whatever happens you
will be treated courteously; Sir Francis Jeune knows
something about old records.”

My faith in Joshua Williams proved to be well founded.
Within five minutes of my opening his ‘“ Real Pro-
perty,” that pelucid writer had made plain to me the
general bearing of the law as to wills in the reign of
James I. After this, I amused myself for half an hour
by turning over the quaint pages of an older writer,
whose book forms part of my slender store of legal
curiosities; and thus fortified I was able to greet Mr.
Fairfield with a brave show of learning when he next
presented himself in Gray’s Inn.

“Nicholas Herrick got his loan all right,” said I,
taking down the ancient authority; ‘this is how the
law stood in 1619 :—

““Nuncupative Testament is when the testator without any writ-
ing doeth declare his will before a sufficient. number of witnesses.
. .. And a nuncupative testament is as of great force and efficacie
(except for his lands tenements and hereditaments) as a written
testament. This kind of testament is commonly made when the
testator is now very sick, weak and past all hope of recoverie.

Asa matter of fact, anything but land could be willed
in those days without writing.”

“What's the date of that book?” asked Mr. Fair-
field, who was peering over my shoulder.

“ Fifteen hundred and ninety.”

My friend whistled, ‘‘ What’s its name?”

“That’s rather a serious question,’ I answered,
turning to the title-page; ‘“‘for the author has taken
about twenty lines of print to set it out. I will ven-
ture on an abstract—‘ A Brief Treatise of Testaments
and last Willes ... compiled ... by the industrie
“SWINBURNE ON WILLS” ~ 289

of Henrie Swinburn, Bachelar of the Civill Law .. .
London. Printed by John Windet 1590.’ ”’

“Were things the same when Shakespeare made his
will, as when that book was written ?”’

‘“‘Hxactly. There was no change in the law be-
tween the latter end of Henry the Highth’s reign and
the middle part of Charles the Second’s.”

“ Tm afraid I’ve put you to a great deal of trouble—by-
the-by, my right eye is no longer inflamed.” Mr. Fair-
field said this with a smile, and he stretched out his
hand for the volume.

‘Do you suppose Shakespeare’s solicitor knew this
book in sixteen hundred and sixteen?” he asked, after
he had studied the title and read aloud the biblical text
which adorns it.

“ T haven't the faintest conception of what a solicitor’s
equipment was in sixteen hundred and sixteen. I dare-
say his books were nearly all manuscript, but it seems
to me barely possible that he hadn’t some knowledge
of Swinburne. It had been published five-and-twenty
years, and it must have been very well known in the
profession. It’s a wonderful book for simplicity and
clearness, considering all things, and the amount of
ground it covers is extraordinary. I think it must have
been the leading authority on wills.”

‘“‘Tf I were to try and read it, could I make head or
tail of it?’ demanded Mr. Fairfield.

“JT don’t think you'd find a line in it you couldn’t
understand. Take it and try! I don’t warrant it in-
teresting—only comprehensible.”

“‘T’m really very much obliged to you for trusting me
with it. The truth is, I can’t resist the temptation of
looking through the book that was the leading authority
when Shakespeare’s will was made.”

“ T’ve been following up what you said about Sheridan
the other morning,” remarked Mr. Fairfield, after we
had settled down to the discussion of our tea and biscuits.
“T thought I was pretty well up in Sheridan’s life,

19
290 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

but it was news to me that he had harangued Lord
Eldon.”

IT came across a statement somewhere that Lincoln’s
Inn Hall was crowded to hear Sheridan address the
Chancellor, like Drury Lane when Mrs. Siddons played
Lady Macbeth. That was my only authority. I hope
it was trustworthy.”

“Oh, yes! it was right enough. I had a lot of
trouble to get at the facts, but I managed it at last.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Sheridan’s biographers
have rather shirked that episode in his career. I don’t
much blame them; for certainly it was a mixed-up
business, but they might have given the date of the year
right.”’

** What was it all about?”

“Tm not sure that I fully understand it, but the sum
and substance of it was this. An attempt was made to
take the control of Drury Lane Theatre out of the
hands of Sheridan and his co-proprietors. The case
came on before Lord Eldon again and again; and in
the end an arrangement was come to for the receipts
being properly dealt with. The landlord was to be paid
first, then the rates, then the managers, actors, servants
and tradespeople, and so on through a tremendous string
of directions.”

“ But that doesn’t sound like anything very important
to a biographer.”

“Perhaps not; but the evidence seems to have been
very damaging to Sheridan’s character. He was on the
down grade before he got into Chancery, but I think
those proceedings were the beginning of the public dis-
repute into which he fell. Huis friends tried to make
out that he had secured a great triumph; but that was
all bunkum.”

“ Did he fight the case himself?”

“Well, he did and he didn’t. He had the Solicitor-
General and two other lawyers, but he wanted to be
heard himself, and the Lord Chancellor consented. By-
SHERIDAN AND LORD ELDON 291

the-by, that Solicitor-General was afterwards the Prime
Minister whom Bellingham shot—Spencer Perceval.
Sheridan was on his legs pretty often during the pro-
ceedings and there was one great oration. That was
when the Old Hall was so crowded.”

‘Did you wade through the speech ? ”

“No; Pm not an admirer of Sheridan’s oratory.
There’s always a fly in his ointment—there’s something
rancid about it. I read the end of the speech, though ;
that’s dreadfully rancid.”

“‘T’ve got a note of it,” he continued, ‘‘ and the effect
of it is this. After dwelling upon the disadvantages
and temptations of an uncertain and fluctuating income,
he states that months before the present contention
arose, he took measures to place himself in the situation
of having an ascertained and limited income; and he
goes on to declare that he means to continue in that
situation until every debt has been paid, every demand
satisfied and all his property completely disencumbered.
That’s pretty good for Sheridan; and now listen to the
final flourish— Till that moment arrives, I shall live in
retirement with that spirit of undaunted undependence,
which as a public and private man I trust has ever
distinguished me.’

“Queer stuff, isn’t it?” he resumed, encouraged by
my laughter; ‘(and just think how the Chancellor
must have been tickled! He knew all about Sheridan.
They had sat on opposite sides of the House of
Commons for sixteen years.”

‘‘The wonder is Sheridan didn’t know better than
to flaunt that playhouse fustian before Lord Eldon.”

“You can’t help laughing, and yet there’s some-
thing almost pitiful in the spectacle of a man trying
to play one game by the rules of another. Do you
remember the figure Gladstone cut when he tackled
Huxley, and argued with him orator-fashion ?”

“‘ How did Eldon deal with the speech ?” I asked.

“He gave Sheridan a most awful dressing down in a
292 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

quiet way. It’s what he said that makes the incident
so interesting from a literary point of view.”

By this time Mr. Fairfield’s enthusiasm was rising
and his memoranda were very much in evidence. “Just
listen to this bit near the end :—

“«That was not the place where as an individual he (the Lord
Chancellor) could recommend to Mr. Sheridan prudence and at-
tention, but he could not help directing his attention to the con-
clusion of Johnson’s Life of one of the poets, where he says that
his object is gained if he has shewn that if negligence and irregularity
are long continued, information becomes useless, wit ridiculous and
genius contemptible. Negligence and irregularity must be long
continued, indeed, before such information, such wit and such
genius as Mr. Sheridan’s could ever become useless, ridiculous or
contemptible. He hoped he did not go beyond his province, when
he said he had seen in this case negligence and irregularity beyond
all parallel.”

‘‘T doubt if there’s any other instance on record of
Eldon quoting an author in that way,” said I; “ but
where’s the special literary interest ?”’

‘Don’t you see he rebukes Sheridan out of the
mouth of Johnson? Johnson had been a friend of
Sheridan; it was he who introduced Sheridan into The
Club. It was almost an hereditary friendship; for at
one time Johnson and Thomas Sheridan, the father,
had been on intimate terms. And Johnson had been a
friend of Eldon too, and a great friend of Eldon’s
brother, the Sir William Scott who was afterwards
made Lord Stowell. Lord Stowell was a member of
The Club—he was the father of it when he died. It
was he, by-the-by, who carried Johnson into Scotland.”

‘“Tt’s interesting in a sense,” I admitted doubtfully ;
“because it brings the three together—Johnson, Sheri-
dan and Eldon.”

“You haven’t got it all yet. Savage was the poet
Johnson was referring to—those lines are the conclusion
of the ‘Life’—and what makes the incident so inter-
esting to me is this: there was something of a special
connexion between Johnson and Sheridan, as regards
“SWINBURNE ON WILLS” 293

Savage. Years after Savage’s death, his tragedy of
‘Sir Thomas Overbury’ was brought out at Covent
Garden, and Sheridan wrote a prologue, and introduced
into it a double-barrelled compliment to the ‘ Life’ and
to the Dictionary :—

So pleads the tale, that gives to future times

The son’s misfortunes and the parent’s crimes.
There shall his fame (if owned to-night) survive,
Fixed by the hand that makes our language live.”’

“Bravo,” said I. “I doubt if Macaulay himself
was a better Boswellian than you are.”

When Mr. Fairfield brought back ‘“ Swinburne on
Wills,” he laid it down on my table without a word.

‘‘ What do you think of him?’ I inquired.

‘A very luminous author, sir. His explanation of
the difference between a will and a testament is nothing
less than convincing.”

“What is the difference?”

“Tf a man doesn’t appoint an executor, his will is
only a will; if he does appoint an executor, it is also a
testament.”’

‘But that sounds pretty simple; and not of much
practical importance. It’s only a question of name
after all.”

“That old gentleman thought differently. He states
it over and over again. He can’t get away from it; it’s
always cropping up.”

‘« Perhaps it was the custom of lawyers three hundred
years ago to emphasize anything they thought impor-
tant by saying it more than once.”

Mr. Fairfield’s eye twinkled. “How things must
have altered,” said he, ‘if that was ever a legal custom.”

“Have you found out anything from the book?” I
inquired. ‘Did Shakespeare’s solicitor know it?”

“JT must decline to answer for him; but I’m very
much afraid Captain Cuttle didn’t.”
294 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“ He may have read it and forgotten it,” he went on ;
“but it’s very unlikely; for he didn’t know what a testa-
ment was. Do you remember the packet Sol Gills left
behind him ?—

“ «My Dear Nep Curriz.—Enclosed is my will!’ The Captain
turned it over, with a doubtful look—‘and Testament.— Where's
the Testament?’ said the Captain, instantly impeaching the ill-
fated Grinder. ‘What have you done with that, my lad?’ ‘I
never see it,’ whimpered Rob. ‘Don’t keep on suspecting an in-
nocent lad, Captain. I never touched the Testament.’ Captain
Cuttle shook his head, implying that somebody must be made
answerable for it.

What would you say if I wrote a pamphlet—‘ Some
reasons for thinking that Captain Cuttle was unac-
quainted with ‘‘Swinburne on Wills” ’?” asked my
friend, looking up from his memoranda.

“Whatever I might say, I should think you were
mad.”

“Tf you had been turning over pamphlets on Shake-
speare as I have all this morning, you wouldn’t see
anything very outrageous in a man speculating whether
Captain Cuttle had or had not read that book of yours.”

‘Tm sorry Swinburne bored you so,”

‘He didn’t bore me, except when he was explaining
over and over again what a testament was. And to
tell the truth, I didn’t read very much of him. Here
and there he made me laugh. It tickles one to read
nowadays that a poor man, being likewise an honest
man, was not forbidden to be a witness, and that ‘a
manifest usurer’ was not allowed to make a testament.”

‘A good many bankers would die without executors
if that were the law now,” I remarked. ‘So you got
no new light on Shakespeare ?”’

“T got a handful of hard sense-—another reminder
that all theorizing about him and his doings is mere
foolishness unless you’re an expert. Now, I did feel
safe in trying to picture him signing his will with those
five witnesses round him. Not a bit of it! He may
have signed it all by himself, and got his friends to
SHAKESPEARE AND THE LAW 295

write their names as witnesses, as and when they
dropped in to see him afterwards.”

‘“«*Witnes to the publishing hereof’ is all the will
says, and the five names follow,” continued Mr. Fair-
field, producing a much annotated copy.

‘“‘But surely, that may mean he signed it in their
presence.”’

“Yes, it may, or it may not; but that’s a very differ-
ent thing from a certainty. It seems to me that the
will would have been perfectly good if Shakespeare had
merely signed or even sealed it, all by his lone self, and
then put it away in a chest without a soul seeing it. I
shall have to know alot more than I do now, before I
feel sure that ‘ witnes to the publishing,’ meant witness
to the signing. No, sir, I retire once and for all from
the speculating business as regards Shakespeare.”

“That first witness, Francis Collins, was Shake-
speare’s solicitor,” he went on. ‘‘ Shakespeare left him a
leg acy.”

“Just like him!” I exclaimed with enthusiasm;
“what else could you expect of Shakespeare?”

“Thirteen pounds six and eightpence—the biggest
legacy outside his own family,” said Mr. Fairfield,
ignoring my question. ‘Do you think he was ever in
the law himself?” he asked suddenly.

“Mr. Lee says he wasn’t.”

““T know that. He says that Shakespeare’s accurate
use of legal terms may be attributable in part to his
observation of the many legal processes in which his
father was involved, and in part to early intercourse
with members of the Inns of Court. That doesn’t
sound very convincing to me, but he backs it up by
saying that legal terminology abounded in all plays and
poems of the time.”

“That doesn’t nearly cover the ground,” said I, now
thoroughly interested. ‘It’s very. little to the point
that A, B, C and D, his contemporaries, also used
legal terms——”
296 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘Possibly they were lawyers,” interrupted Mr. Fair-
field ; ‘‘ law was a fashionable study in Elizabeth’s reign.”

“No, no! let us assume that Mr. Lee began by satis-
fying himself that the contemporaries he relies upon
—and especially Barnabe Barnes—were not lawyers or
law students. If they were, his statement wouldn’t be
worth discussion.”

“True; for it would help to prove that Shakespeare
was & lawyer.”

‘No layman is competent to sit in judgment on the
question,” Iresumed. ‘‘ He can’t estimate the quantum
of Shakespeare’s legal knowledge; and as regards the
contemporaries, I put their legal terminology on one side.
Nearly all novelists have dabbled in legal matters, but
that’s no evidence that Scott wasn’t a lawyer.”

“JT think I follow you,” said my friend. “You
mean that Shakespeare must be judged entirely by his
own writings, and his legal knowledge can only be.
judged by a lawyer.”

“Exactly; but it follows that in order to ascertain
the high-water mark of legal knowledge among laymen
in Shakespeare’s time, the legal expert would have to
consider the writings of his non-legal contemporaries.’

“ That’s a large order.”

“Immense, The expert would have to begin with
his mind ‘ washed clean from opinions,’ and he would
have to saturate himself with the law and practice as
they stood 300 years ago; so that upon coming upon
anything legal he could decide whether it showed
knowledge or ignorance. I think I can guess how
much knowledge he would find behind the legal termin-
ology of those contemporaries; but you and I are not
experts, so we won’t theorize.”

“Have you read Lord Campbell’s little book?” asked
my friend.

“Yes; years ago. I’d been reading the ‘ Sonnets’ very
carefully, and I was so staggered by. one or two of the
legal references, that I got that book to see what Lord
SHAKESPEARE AND THE LAW 297

Campbell had to say about Shakespeare’s legal acquire-
ments.”

“« And what did you think of it?”

“‘ For the time being, I felt completely satisfied that
Shakespeare had passed years in the law. Lord Camp-
bell’s own doubts seemed to me almost fantastic in the
face of his proofs. But later on, when I read Mr. Lee’s
‘ Life,’ I felt a little shaken.”

“T’ve read Campbell’s book,” said Mr. Fairfield.
“Tt’s wonderfully convincing; and there are some
letters bound up in one of the Museum copies that
carry the case even farther. Campbell was amazed by
the number of Shakespeare’s legal phrases and allusions.
As he wasn’t an expert in Elizabethan literature, that
doesn’t go for much; but he says the phrases and al-
lusions are always correct. He must have been some-
thing of an authority on that point.”

‘‘He was a splendid authority; we shall never see
another ike him. As I understand the matter, a great
deal of the law and practice of Elizabeth’s time came
down to Campbell’s day. He started on the investiga-
tion with an equipment beyond the reach of any modern
lawyer. He had learnt his business under the old
system, and he’d practised under it. That’s a very
different thing from getting it up by reading the old
books. And Campbell was a man of extraordinarily
active mind, as well as a very sound lawyer.”

«And the old chap read through the whole of the
plays in order to write that book,” said Mr. Fairfield
musingly: ‘‘ yes, I agree with you, we have to reckon
with Campbell.”

‘‘And we have to reckon with Macaulay too,” he
continued. ‘He wasa trained lawyer, and he was fully
convinced that Shakespeare as a young man had been
in the lower ranks of the profession.”

«Ah, but he meant in a responsible position—what
we now call a managing clerk, in fact. That’s the
theory Campbell was inclined to adopt. A mere under-
298 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

ling might, in a year or two, pick up technical phrases
and practice-rules and other crumbs of that sort; and
he might learn a lot about lawyers from the personal
standpoint, but he wouldn’t pick up law. Take Dickens’
case, for instance. He had at least eighteen months
in solicitors’ offices; but could his. writings give any
expert the impression that he was a_ professional
lawyer?”

“ But there’s a lot of law in ‘ Pickwick’ and ‘ Bleak
House,’ and there’s the trial in the ‘ Old Curiosity Shop,’
and the trial in the ‘ Tale of Two Cities,” urged Mr.
Fairfield, not at all disposed to concede any point against
his literary idol.

“ The lawyers in Dickens are first-rate ; but the law is
nothing. There’s next to none, I think, in ‘ Pickwick’ ;
and there’s nothing in the Chancery parts of ‘ Bleak
House’ that a layman couldn’t have got out of pam-
phlets and such like. The trial in the ‘Old Curiosity
Shop’ is defective from a technical standpoint, and the
trial in ‘ Pickwick’ is simply grotesque. Dickens was
riper when he wrote the ‘ Tale of Two Cities’. There
the Old Bailey proceedings are a masterpiece. But he
went to Pitt’s treason trials for them. There’s no
personal experience behind the writing.”

“« T suppose you'd rejoice exceedingly if it were proved
that Shakespeare did spend those unrecorded years in
the law?”

«YT hold every man a debtor to his profession ’—
that’s Bacon’s phrase—so of course I should be glad of
anything that threw such a lustre on mine.”

‘“‘ The captain jewel in the carcanet,” said my friend
musingly. ‘Aye, aye, he certainly would be that!
But Shakespeare or no Shakespeare,” he went on, as he
lay back in his chair, and began to tick off the names
on his fingers, ‘‘ your profession doesn’t come off badly
—Bacon himself — Fielding — Scott — Macaulay: all
proper, work-a-day lawyers. And the old antic can
make some sort of a claim to Dickens and Thackeray.
THE BACON THEORY 299

I won’t bother about the littler men; though it seems
hard to leave out Cowper and Boswell.”

‘* They were all members of the Bar, except Dickens,”’
I said, laughing, ‘‘ and even he joined an Inn of Court;
but it’s natural enough for a layman to draw no distinc-
tion between the two branches.”

“You could claim Chatterton, anyhow, if Lambert
of Bristol hadn’t cancelled his indentures——”’

“We call them articles,” I hinted.

“I know you do, but they were indentures in those
days, and the apprentice served for seven years.”

“Now I come to think of it, seven years was the
term: Boswell says so.”

““« Nemo repente turpissimus fuit,”’ murmured Mr.
Fairfield, «‘‘—it takes seven years to make an attorney.’
Isn’t that real wit? I never feel sure which is the
better, that, or ‘The road to hell is paved with good
intentions ’.”’

“I’m rather partial myself to the joke about the
two insects. It wasn’t easy to settle the point of pre-
cedency between them, you may remember.”

“Oh, yes! I remember that.” And my friend be-
ginning—‘‘‘ Do you reckon Derrick or Smart the best
poet,’”’ pursued the quotation to the bitter end.

“T was once a little bitten by that Bacon theory,”
said Mr. Fairfield shamefacedly, as he began to gather
up his papers, and his eye fell upon the will.

“«My country—nght or wrong,’ is an excellent
maxim.”

The good patriot responded with a laugh. ‘I never
considered it from that standpoint, but now you men-
tion it, I suppose we were the original culprits. Well,
well, both sides of the Atlantic can claim to have had
a deal in the wooden nutmegs and the clocks that
wouldn’t figure, at one time or another! Were you
ever bitten?”

“No. The bait wasn’t very tempting to a legal per-
son. When you learnt that no man could read

299
300 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Donnelly’s cryptogram but Donnelly himself, you lost
interest in it. And as for Mrs. Gallup’s cypher——”’

“That didn’t get a fair show,” broke in the con-
vert. ‘I was sane long before then, and I thought we
were going to have some real fun when Mr. Mallock
took the field. It was too bad of Mr. Marston to prick
the bubble so early :—

Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon vaded
Plucked in the bud and vaded in the spring !

What a game it was! Even the stalwarts shied a
little when they were asked to believe that Bacon
wrote Pope’s ‘ Homer ’.”

‘“« We've heard the last of the cyphermongers,’’ said I.

‘“‘That’s what comes of over-sugaring the punch.
But we haven't heard the last of the theory. I know
now, that Bacon no more wrote the plays and poems
than I did, but I can feel a sort of sympathy with the
Baconians all the same. Unless something turns up
to show how those unrecorded years were spent, we
shall never be able to reconcile the young Shakespeare
of the London playhouses with the country lad who
married Anne Hathaway.”

Mr. Fairfield wound up with a shake of the head;
and he began to glance through the type-written pages
of the will, as if to make sure that there was no note
or query which called for my legal aid. Presently he
looked up, a broad grin on his face.

“How would it do to suggest that the real author
was Francis Collins the solicitor, and that Shakespeare
left him that legacy as hush money? ”’
SHAKESPEARE’S WILL 301

POSTSCRIPT

EPITOME OF THE WILL OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
OF STRATFORD-UPON-AVON IN THE COUNTY OF
WARWICK, GENTLEMAN

Will dated 25th March, 1616.

Legacy of £150 to the Testator’s daughter Judith : £100 of the
same to be paid in discharge of her marriage portion within a year
after the Testator’s decease, with interest at ten per cent. from the
date of his decease, and £50, the residue, to. be paid on the legatee
surrendering, or giving security to surrender, to the Testator’s
daughter Susanna Hall and her heirs for ever, the legatee’s interest
in a copyhold tenement, holden [by the Testator] of the Manor
of Rowington.

Further legacy of £150 to the said daughter Judith if she or
any issue of hers should be living at the end of three years after
the date of the Testator’s will. Interest at the rate of ten per
cent. to be paid to her in the meantime.

In the event of the death of the said daughter Judith within the
said period, without issue, £100, part of the said legacy, given to
the Testator’s niece [really granddaughter] Elizabeth Hall, and
£50, the residue, given to the Testator’s executors upon trust for
his sister Joan Harte, for life, with remainder to her children in
equal shares.

In the event of the said daughter Judith, or any of her issue,
being alive at the end of the said three years, then the said £150
to be invested by the Testator’s executors and overseers. The
capital not to be paid to her during coverture, but the income to be
paid to her for life, and, after her death, the legacy to be paid to
her children, or, failing children, to her executors or assigns.

Proviso that if such husband as the said daughter Judith should
be married to at the end of the said three years, should assure to
her and her issue, to the satisfaction of the Testator’s executors
and overseers, lands answerable to the portion given unto her by
the Testator’s will, then the said £150 to be paid to such husband.

Legacy to the Testator’s said sister Joan of twenty pounds and
all his wearing apparel. 4

Devise to the said sister Joan, for life, of the house in Stratford
occupied by her, subject to the yearly rent of a shilling.

Legacies of Five pounds apiece to the said sister Joan’s three
sons.

Legacy to the said Elizabeth Hall of all the Testator’s plate,
except his broad silver and gilt bowl.

Further legacies as follows, namely—to the poor of Stratford, ten
pounds; to Mr. Thomas Combe, the Testator’s sword; to Thomas
Russell, Esq., five pounds ; to Francis Collins of the Borough of
Warwick, gentleman, thirteen pounds six shillings and eight pence ;
302 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

to Hamlett Sadler, twenty-six shillingsand eight pence, to buy him
a ring; to William Reynoldes, gentleman, twenty-six shillings and
eight pence, to buy him a ring; to the Testator’s godson William
Walker, twenty shillings in gold; to Anthony Nashe, gentleman,
twenty-six shillings and eight pence; to Mr. John Nashe, twenty-
six shillings and eight pence ; and to the Testator’s “fellowes ’’ John
Hemynges, Richard Burbage and Henry Cundell, twenty-six shil-
lings and eight pence apiece, to buy them rings.

Devise to the Testator’s daughter Susanna Hall (for better en-
abling her to perform his will and towards the performance thereof)
of the “capital messuage, or tenement, with the appurtenances in
Stratford aforesaid, called the New Place,” wherein the Testator
then dwelt, and all other his lands, tenements and hereditaments
whatsoever, for. life, with remainder to the first, second, third,
fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sons of the said Susanna Hall suc-
cessively, in tail male.

In default of such issue “‘ the said premises to be and remain”’
to the Testator’s ‘‘ said niece Hall,” and her heirs male.

In default of such issue of the said Elizabeth Hall, the said pre-
mises to be and remain to the Testator’s daughter Judith and her
heirs male.

And in default of such last-mentioned issue, the said premises
to be and remain to the Testator’s right heirs.

Legacy to the Testator’s wife of his second-best bed with the
furniture.

Legacy to the Testator’s said daughter Judith, of his broad
silver gilt bowl.

Gift of all the rest of the Testator’s goods, chattels, leases, plate,
jewels and household stuff whatsoever, after payments of his debts,
legacies and funeral expenses, to the Testator’s son-in-law John
Hall, gentleman, and the Testator’s daughter Susannah, his wife.

ree of the last-named two persons as executors of the
Ww

Appointment of the said Thomas Russell and Francis Collins
as overseers of the will.

Revocation of all former wills. -

Will signed by the Testator on the 25th of March, 1616, and its
publication attested by five witnesses.
CHAPTER XXIV

THE BULL HOTEL, ROCHESTER: I AM INVITED TO
STUDY ‘EDWIN DROOD”

Mr. JAMES C. FAIRFIELD stood at one of the windows
of the coffee-room of the Bull Hotel at Rochester, and
looked out upon the High Street.

“The old red, royal Dover road,” he said compla-
cently. ‘I’m glad to see it again.”

“Ts it really the old Dover road? ”

‘No doubt about that, sir; it’s the old highway from
London to Canterbury and Dover. Between here and
London, the present main thoroughfare deviates a bit
from the old way; so as to pass through Gravesend, I
think. And a little beyond us, it loops out to the
right so as to get clear of Chatham High Street; but
there’s no deviation here. That motor omnibus is
running in the same track that folks used in the time
of William the Conqueror. I believe I might carry it
back to the Romans. They made a bridge over the
Medway here. When the present bridge was being
built—it stands about a hundred yards to our left—they
came upon the piles of the old Roman bridge.”

“Tt’s a very narrow road,” I remarked. ‘ When
two omnibuses are abreast there doesn’t seem to be an
inch to spare; I wonder the Corporation doesn’t widen
it.”

“When you’ve once walked down the High Street,
you'll be ready to fall on your knees and pray they
won’t do anything of the kind.” Mr. Fairfield spoke
almost angrily.

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«« There are some of the oldest houses in England on
both sides of the way,” he went on. ‘Surely you
wouldn’t have them pulled down?”

“So long as the road’s wide enough to allow me to
exercise my common-law right of passage, your old
houses may stand until the crack of doom,” said I, with
lavish generosity.

‘What is the common-law right ?”

“To pass and repass—to use the road as a highway.
That is the law of England as laid down in the leading
case of Dovaston v. Payne. You will find it in Henry
Blackstone’s Reports—I can show it you at Gray’s Inn.”

“It’s a grand right,” he remarked solemnly. ‘I’m
afraid Mr. Winkle strained it a bit when he got on that
horse of his. He drifted up the street broadside on.”

‘«There’s nearly half an hour to dinner time and the
daylight will hold out till then,” he said, a little later.
“Let us take a turn between the showers.”

Mr. Fairfield had pressed me to spend part of the
Easter vacation at Rochester. I had at first demurred,
on the ground that Easter weather was always treacher-
ous; but he had seemed so anxious for my company
that I had at length given way. On the journey down,
the rain had lashed against the carriage windows, and
we had driven from the station in a downpour. But
the weather had cleared since we settled at the Bull, so
I was nothing loth to take a stroll before dinner.

«We'll just potter along towards Chatham,” said he.

“‘ What’s that red-brick building opposite?” I asked,
as we turned out of the hotel gateway.

“That's the town-hall. It was built in James the
Second’s time. Hogarth played hopscotch there in
1732. I’m glad I wasn’t one of the party.”

“Why?”

“They weren’t what I should call refined, and their
method of feeding was positively uncivilized. ‘They
were eating and drinking at all sorts of odd times.”

Before that stroll ended, I had come round to
THE BULL AT ROCHESTER = 305

my friend’s view that Rochester High Street must not
be widened. There was no denying the picturesqueness
of the old houses.

“A change since I was last here!” was my guide’s
ejaculation, as we came on a gateway just past the
King’s Head Hotel. ‘‘That’s the College Gate. It
used to stand between two houses. They've cleared
one away. I wish they hadn’t. I admit there’s a
much better view of the cathedral and the keep; but
this is Jasper’s gatehouse, and I’d rather it had been
left as Dickens knew it. But we won't begin to talk
about ‘Edwin Drood’ until after dinner.”

** Another change here,” he announced a little farther
on, when we reached a gap in the houses and stood to
admire the view of the north side of the cathedral which
the opening afforded. ‘Well, I must confess this is
an improvement. The Dean and Chapter must have
screwed their courage to the sticking-place before they
went to the expense of such a clearance as this.”

Our progress along the High Street was very slow,
for there were so many interesting house fronts to ex-
amine. Mr. Fairfield could not pass the Corn Exchange
or Watts’ Charity, without some reference to their
associations with Dickens; nor could he pass the house
opposite to the Post Office, without. telling me that it
was once Sir Richard Head’s, and that through the
garden behind, James II had stolen away to the river
to embark for France, about a fortnight after he had
dropped the Great Seal into the Thames at Lambeth.
Even his determination not to refer to ‘‘ Edwin Drood”
was forgotten almost as soon as it was uttered.

“There are the old houses opposite Eastgate House,”
he said, pointing to some houses with peaked roofs and
overhanging upper storeys, a little distance ahead of us,
and at the same time beginning a diagonal move across
the road in their direction; ‘‘ Mr. Sapsea lived in one
of those—and his father before him: ‘ Rest and bless
him!’”

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306 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

We did not give much attention to those medieval
relics after all; for just as we had begun to examine
them, something caught my friend’s eye on the other
side of the way. He stopped dead and fairly whistled
with astonishment.

“ Jee-rusalem!” he exclaimed. ‘This is wonder-
ful!”

The object of his amazement was an Elizabethan
mansion of very picturesque appearance and in excellent
preservation. One side abutted on the roadway; and
across a green fore-court railed off from the pavement,
the front with its deep, three-storeyed bays, two-
storeyed porch and staircase turret was fully visible from
where we stood.

“‘T remember now, I did notice in the newspapers
that the Corporation had bought it. But who could
have imagined they would make it look like this?
When I last saw it, those court-yards were hidden by a
brick wall, and what you could see of the house was
quite depressing. It seemed falling into decay.”

So saying, Mr. Fairfield made his way across the
road and scanned a notice-board that stood in the fore-
court.

“ They’ve made it into a museum,” he said. ‘‘ This
is luck. I remember how I longed to get a peep at
the inside when I was here before. Don’t you think
we might look in for a minute or two?”

I was strongly tempted to give way; but knowing
right well what that minute or two would mean, I
hardened my heart.

“We're late for dinner as it is.”

I was Mr. Fairfield’s guest and he bowed to the in-
evitable with a good grace.

“Yes, we must be moving; we shall have plenty of
opportunities of exploring it before we go,” he said with
cheerful resignation. But even as he spoke he “ turned
and looked, and turned to look again ”’.

‘We might just step into the enclosure and glance
 

 

ROCHESTER.

EASTGATE HOUSE,
THE BULL AT ROCHESTER — 307

at the porch,” he suggested meekly. I lifted the latch
and followed him inside. ;

‘“‘Tt’s a glorious place,” he proclaimed, as he stood
with his eyes glued on the red brickwork of the front.
“And Dickens knew it. It’s the Nuns’ House of
‘Edwin Drood’. Rosa went to school here. And just
where we're standing she bade the girls good-bye.
Don’t you remember the picture—‘ Good-bye, Rosebud,
darling’? Don’t look so like a martyr,” he broke off,
melting into a smile as he turned in my direction.

“My stomach,” said I, with gentle dignity, ‘ has
begun to sorter growl and pester me.’ A quotation
from Uncle Remus was a sure card to play with Mr.
Fairfield.

«‘They shall fix you up a smashin’ dinner presently ;
but just let me have one more look at the place from
the other side of the way first. I really will not be two
seconds.”

‘Have you coached yourself up in the Pickwickian
associations of this tavern?” was my host’s question
as soon as we were both seated at table in the Bull
coffee-room.

“Good heavens, no! Have you?”

“Ye-es! I’ve been studying a little book by Mr.
Hammond Hall called ‘Mr. Pickwick’s Kent’. You
shall look at it when we go upstairs. I like the spirit
in which he writes about Dickens ; but I don’t see with
him eye to eye—he’s an enthusiast.”

Mr. Fairfield said this so reproachfully and with
such a judicial shake of the head that I burst out
laughing.

He made no acknowledgment of the reasonableness
of my merriment. He seemed in fact to be wholly ab-
sorbed in the dissection of a piece of ox-tail upon his
soup-plate, but there was a humorous pucker in his lips,
and after a moment or two’s silence he began to justify
himself.

‘He professes to locate the very bedrooms in which
308 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Pickwick and the other three slept. J never went to
that length.”

“‘T suppose you'll be having a look at them, neverthe-
less?” said I.

“Oh, yes; why not? After all, Dickens may have
had the actual rooms in mind. There’s no doubt he
knew this house well. And we must see the ball-room.
I just peeped in while you were unpacking. I wasn’t
there more than two minutes, but I saw the gallery
where the musicians sat and the den under it where the
card-tables were.”

By this time the trans-Atlantic enthusiast was fairly
mounted on his hobby.

“‘T had a look at the staircase too,’ he went on.
“ That’s where Jingle and the doctor quarrelled; and it
was in this room—this very identical room we’re sitting
in—that Mr. Winkle came down next morning to re-
ceive the challenge from Lieutenant Tappleton. And
this room’s mentioned again in ‘Great Expectations’.
It was before that very mantelpiece, not a yard to my
left, that Pip and Bentley Drummle stood and wrangled.
That’s why I asked the waiter to let-us have this corner
table.”

“T wonder if the other enthusiast went as far as
that.”

My. Fairfield grinned. ‘He mentions the incident
anyhow. It was coming across his book that made me
first think of spending a few days here; and then I
began to re-read ‘ Edwin Drood,’ and I felt that come I
must.”

“Why?”

“ There’s a lot about Rochester in it and I felt a sort
of longing to see the place again, and I had a sort of
half-hope ’’—here Mr. Fairfield’s manner began to grow
very confidential—‘‘IT had a sort of half-hope I might
be able to clear up some things I’ve often puzzled over,
and I’ve never been able to understand. That book
has bothered me for five-and-thirty years, more than
THE BULL AT ROCHESTER _ 309

anything else I’ve ever read. Do you take any interest
in it?”

“‘T’m fond of the book,” I admitted. ‘I remember
the green numbers coming out in 1870; and though I
was really too young to understand much of them, I
read them because they were by Dickens, who had
written ‘ Pickwick’ and ‘ Oliver Twist’. We had these
two books at home, and I think I tackled them at about
nine.”

“Do you read them still?”

“‘T dip into them sometimes—I know them too well
for anything else. But I haven’t looked at ‘Edwin
Drood’ for years.”

Mr. Fairfield beamed with satisfaction. ‘I’ve got it
with me. Just you run through it while we’re here,
and then we can talk about it—about the clues that it
offers.”

“Not to-night. I’ve got some papers to attend to—
it’s your fault for dragging me from Gray’s Inn a day
before the vacation begins.”

‘“‘There’s the ball-room.”” By this time we had left
the coffee-room and had reached the first-floor corridor ;
and as he spoke he pointed to a door at the end of the
left-hand passage. ‘I don’t think it’s altered at all
since the Pickwick time. The chandeliers are there
and the two mantelpieces, right enough. And there are
some old portraits.”

“You did pretty well in that two minutes,” I re-
marked suspiciously.

“Well, I had another minute or two a little later. I’m
afraid I owe you an apology. When you happened to
mention a little time ago that you’d eaten two pieces of
bread before I came down to dinner, I felt quite con-
science-stricken.”

“TI sat watching the soup-tureen and wondering
what was detaining my host,” said I reproachfully.

His confession was a severe trial to one’s gravity, but
I could not let it pass without protest. To be kept
310 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

waiting for my dinner while he mooned about the ball-
room, was all in the day’s work, but for him to glory in
his iniquity with a grin that stretched from ear to ear
was not seemly.

“‘T had a peep at you through the door before I
hurried in, and hoped I hadn’t kept you waiting,” he
answered in a shaking voice.

“<«To-night we'll merry be; to-morrow we'll be
sober,’”’ he said, recovering his dignity. ‘‘ You go and
read your papers, and I won’t disturb you. The truth
is I’m like a child with a new toy ’’—here he patted me
on the shoulder—‘ and I’ve some very particular fish to

fry on my own account.” Here he dived into the
broad recess near which we were standing, and helped
himself to a candlestick. ‘I’m going to have a potter

about that ball-room. If the landlord comes to talk to
you about me, I rely on your assuring him of my
perfect sanity.”

He was half-way across the corridor as he launched
this parting shot from over his shoulder. Never before
had I seen him in such exuberant spirits.

It was past ten o’clock when he joined me in our sit-
ting-room. I was busy writing, and without a word he
glided to the fireside and began to make notes upon
some slips of paper in his pocket-book.

‘‘ Have you exhausted all the wonders of the ball-
room?” I asked him, at length.

‘“‘T have made a fairly thorough inspection of a super-
ficial character,’ he answered gravely. ‘You will be
interested to learn that at the farther end there is a
door which gives upon a staircase leading into the yard.
Be careful how you open it, for one of the hinges is
broken.”

“T must make a note of that. By-the-by, to what
extent did you resign yourself to the influences of that
astonishing room ?—to put the matter plainly, did you
dance much ?”’

“What on earth makes you ask that?’ There
THE BULL AT ROCHESTER 311

was a something in Mr. Fairfield’s way of meeting my
random shot that was distinctly suggestive of guiltiness.

“ But did you?”

“ Well, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, I believe I did try a step or two—per-
haps half a dozen at the outside.”

“The shadow dance can have been nothing to it; I
hope you didn’t drop much grease about,” I said, laugh-
ing. ‘‘ What have you been doing with the rest of the
time since dinner ?”’

“«« Tioungin’ round; loungin’ round and sufferin’,
he answered, with an outward movement of both hands.
From this I concluded that he had been making a
further examination of the outside of Eastgate House.

“You've finished your business?” he inquired, rising
to his feet. ‘Then I'll just have a word with you about
‘Edwin Drood,’” he went on, in answer to my nod of
assent; at the same time beginning to rout among his
books. ‘I want you to read it with what Forster says
about the plot in your mind. That will help you to focus
your attention on the clues. He says that by means of
a gold ring that had resisted the corrosive action of the
lime into which the murderer had thrown the body,
not only the person murdered was to be identified,
but the locality of the crime and the man who com-
mitted it.”

He had been reading from a note. written inside the
cover of ‘‘ Edwin Drood,’’ and when he reached the end,
he seemed half-inclined to hand the volume to me.
I saw he was anxious that my studies should begin then
and there; and, nothing loth, I was just about to stretch
out my hand, when, smitten by a sudden thought, he
moved to the fireside and began to turn over the leaves
as if in search of some particular passage. He soon
found what he wanted, and he stood on the rug running
his finger down the page. When, however, a few
minutes later, I looked over to him after I had tied up
my papers, he had curled himself up in his chair and

> 999
312 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

was wholly absorbed in the story. Thus he remained
until the cathedral clock struck midnight.

“Twelve o’clock,” said I.

“Bless me!” he ejaculated, rousing himself.
‘Twelve o'clock! Time we were both in bed.”

«You won’t be wanting to begm ‘Edwin Drood ’ to-
night, will you?”

It was-with his candlestick in one hand and the book
under his arm that he said this as we shook hands at
the door of my bedroom.
CHAPTER XXV
WE RAMBLE TO GADSHILL

‘‘AND where are we to go to-day?’ demanded Mr.
Fairfield at breakfast next morning. It was the last
day of March and the coffee-room was bright with sun-
shine.

“‘T’ve never been over Chatham dockyard; it must
be well worth seeing.”

I was watching my friend out of the tail of my eye
as I said this, and I noticed with delight how his face
fell at the suggestion. He had not come to the Dickens
country to study shipbuilding.

‘“‘T expect one dockyard’s a good deal like another,”
he observed slowly.

‘‘ Which have you seen?”

‘“‘T’m not sure I’ve ever seen one,” was his reluctant
admission; and then, after a pause, he added, “‘ By all
means let us go to Chatham.”

My host said this with a brisk cheerfulness that did
him honour, but his countenance was anything but joy-
ful.

“Tt’s what Hogarth and his friends did when they
came here, and Dickens knew the yard, even as a boy,”
he went on, as if trying to persuade himself that the
prospect was not so black as it looked.

‘‘Tt’s a wonderful place. Queen Elizabeth made it
@ royal dockyard—nobody ought to miss seeing it!’

Mr. Fairfield’s only response to my enthusiasm was
a vacant stare directed out of the window.

“Not that it’s much in my line to potter about a

313
314 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

dockyard; but if you’re keen on it, by all means let us
go,” said I; satisfied at length that accounts between
us in respect of those two pieces of bread had been fully
squared,

My host rose to his feet and planted himself before
the fire, as if to consider matters. It was not long
before he had made up his mind.

‘‘ How would it do to go and have a look at Gads-
hill?”? I had known from the first that this was what
he had set his heart upon.

“You see that tavern,’ he said, pointing to the
Crown, a minute or two after we had started on our
pilgrimage; ‘that’s where Jingle advised the Pick-
wickians not to put up, because it was so dear.
‘ Wright’s next house,’ he called it. Wright kept it in
those days, The old house has been pulled down, but
there’s a good bit of the river front left. Mr. Ham-
mond Hall is my authority. There was a Crown here,
or hereabouts, in thirteen hundred. I daresay Shake-
speare put up at it, and it’s more than likely he had it in
mind when he wrote the carriers’ scenein ‘ Henry IV’.”

‘‘T suppose he must have passed through Rochester,”
Iadmitted. ‘It seems fairly certain that at some time
or other he was at Dover.”

“All the great main roads have a fascination for me;
T’m glad they've found a chronicler. Ive only read
one of Mr. Harper’s books—‘ The Great North Road’
—but I mean to read all of them. It seems to me that
this road is more interesting than any of the others,
because it was the way to the Continent; and so every-
body who was anybody was bound to travel along here
some time or another before the railways came.”

We had got clear of the Strood traffic and were breast-
ing the hill, when after a long silence, my friend said this.

‘But only if they were going to Dover or some port
near it—Henry the Fifth sailed from Southampton,” I
interrupted, smitten by a flash of memory.

“True, so he did; Shakespeare says so. I suppose

7
GADSHILL 315

he was going to Normandy; I ought to have thought
of Southampton, but I’m sure Calais was what most
travellers made for, at all events later on. I don’t
think I take much account of things before the sixteenth
century.” ;

My friend had readjusted his mental focus with com-
mendable adroitness, but his conscience smote him for
not having made a fuller acknowledgment of his error.

“T was thinking of Wolsey,” he said apologetically.
““When he made his famous journey for Henry the
Seventh to the Emperor Maximilian‘at Bruges, he went
and came back by way of Calais. And I was thinking of
Cardinal Pole’s state entry into England in Queen Mary’s
time. He and his cavalcade passed along here, and so did
everybody who went between London and Dover.
There was the harbour there, you see, and harbours
weren’t common in old times. There’s a very quaint
description of this road in a charter of Charles the First.
I think I can find it—yes, here it is—the charter calls it
the King’s highway and common passage between our
city of London, the metropolis of England, and our
cities of Rochester and Canterbury and our eminent
haven of Dover. ‘Our eminent haven of Dover,’ you
observe; and the only way to and from London was
over Rochester bridge.”

“So I gathered from your guide-books last night.
And I saw that Charles the Second came through Ro-
chester at the Restoration. He halted there for the night,
between Canterbury and London.”

“That was at Restoration House. It was renamed
in honour of the event. We mustn’t forget to have a
look at it. There’s not the shadow of a doubt that
Charles the Second passed along this road on his way to
Whitehall. I’ve read somewhere that both sides were
lined with booths like a fair—— ”’

Mr. Fairfield stopped short and scanned the prospect
in front of us. I do not think he found it easy to pic-
ture the highway, lined with booths and gay with the
316 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

pageantry of that mad 29th of May, 1660; for, with a
shake of his head, he resumed his progress and began
to talk about Hogarth.

‘Hogarth and his four friends went to Gravesend by
boat, and they walked along this road to Rochester.
It’s under nine miles. They drank three times on the
way. They put up at the Crown, and they had another
drink there. ‘Then they hadalook at the castle, and the
Town Hall, and Watts’ Hospital, and pottered about
the High Street till dinner time. We know what they
had for dinner. There was a dish of soles and flounders
with crab sauce, a roast calf’s head ‘with ’purt’nance
minced and liver fried’; and they had a leg of mutton
and green peas. I suppose they had two or three
puddings to follow, and topped off with a good wedge
of cheese, but that’s not on record. They drank beer
and port wine—‘ Fresh was the beer and sound the
port,’ says the chronicler. Do you remember how
Thackeray describes Jos Sedley’s condition, when he
arrived in London from Southampton?” asked my
friend, flying off at a tangent and continuing his discourse
with intense enjoyment without waiting for my answer.
“Thackeray says Jos was as full of wine, beer, meat,
cherry-brandy, and tobacco as the steward’s cabin of a
steam-packet. Hogarth’s party must have been like
that after dinner, but he and his brother-in-law were
equal to playing hopscotch in the Town Hall; and a
little later the whole party was sauntering through
Chatham eating shrimps.”

‘* How old was Hogarth ?”’

«That's just what I wondered when I read the
‘Peregrination,’ and I looked it up. He was thirty-
four. I’m afraid he was a bit of a gorger all his life.
He was sixty-six when he died. He was in poor health
for some little time before, but it’s on record that before
he went to bed on the night of his death, he boasted—
boasted is the word !—of having eaten a pound of beef-
steak for his dinner.”
GADSHILL 317

“We degenerates couldn’t have done that even in
our prime,’ was my regretful comment. ‘‘ There’s
comfort though in the thought that he boasted of it—it
shows that even in those days it was something for a
dying man to be proud of.”

“T don’t suppose he knew he was dying,” answered
Mr. Fairfield with a merriment quite out of character
with the subject of our talk; ‘‘ but even if he didn’t, he
had no business to make such a beast of himself. And
to boast of it afterwards was simply unspeakable. By-
the-by, the Crown wasn’t a dear place in his time.
The five pilgrims began by having a drink there; then
they had that dinner; they were back again in the
evening and no doubt they had another meal; they
smoked their pipes and drank their wine till they went
to bed, and next morning they had breakfast. And yet
the bill, including tips, if there were any in those days,
was under thirty shillings—a little over five shillings a
head for bed, three meals, port wine, beer and extras at
one of the most important inns on the dearest road in
England. That was in 1732.”

“Those were grand days,” said I. ‘No wonder
their elderly men took a large size in waistcoats!”

By this time we were well past the second milestone
from Rochester, and were again climbing a hill. Mr.
Fairfield consulted his map; and not another word did
he say until we had reached a level piece of road with
a tavern on the right hand, and just beyond it on the
left, a biggish, red-brick, ivy-clad house with a bell
turret.

‘‘Gadshill Place!” said I, giving him a slight dig
with my elbow, to let him know that I was wantonly
forestalling one of his dramatic announcements.

“T admit it,” he answered, smiling; ‘I won’t put
you to proof of it.”

We moved on until we were opposite the house, and
then stood for a while examining it as well as we could
for the trees and shrubs upon the grass plot. The ground
- 818 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

floor had a porch with large bay-windows to right and
left, and close beside it, on the right, was a smaller
window that probably gave light to the hall. There
were corresponding bay-windows on the first floor, with
a big, flat window between them; and behind the para-
pet above, there rose a slated attic storey, crowned by
the bell turret. On the right of the house were some
buildings that looked like stables and offices, and on the
left was a conservatory. An entrance gate on either
side of the front garden gave access to the drive.
Stretching outwards from each of these gates was a good
length of brick wall with an outer fringe of pollards.

‘Edmund Yates summed the place up very well,”
said my companion, when we had retraced our steps as
far as the left-hand wall and were taking a side view of
the house from across the well-trenched kitchen garden.
“He called it a comfortable, stout, red-faced, old-
fashioned family house with a wide porch and a bell
tower, which always associated it in his mind with the
Warren at Chigwell.” This description, which came,
I need hardly mention, from one of my friend’s inex-
haustible stores of memoranda, was manifestly accurate
and complete.

«This was where the chdlet was,” he continued, as
he led the way across the road to a garden or shrubbery
that faced the house and abutted on the highway. Im-
mediately below us, on the other side of the railings,
was a flight of very steep steps that seemed to descend
into the bowels of the earth.

“That's the approach to the tunnel he made under
the road,” explained my companion. ‘ What a wonder-
ful growth of ivy there is on each side!”

There were two fine cedar trees just within the rail-
ing, before which we stood. The ground between us
and the more umbrageous background of the shrubbery
was covered with smooth turf, rising on the left to the
soft swell of a bank, crowned with a promise of spring
blossoms.
GADSHILL 319

“Linda, his big St. Bernard, was buried under one
of those cedars. The chdlet in which he was working
at ‘Edwin Drood’ for the last time was somewhere
among those trees at the back. The room was full of
mirrors that reflected all the surroundings. He was
fond of mirrors—fond of red geraniums too. His
daughter Katie once told him that when he was an
angel his wings would be made of looking-glass and his
crown of scarlet geraniums.”

A lane skirts one side of the house, and continuing
across the highway, it skirts the wall of the detached
garden and leads, I think, to Higham.

“« Let’s go down that lane. He had a beautiful view
from the chdlet, and we ought to make out something of it
from round the corner. I’ve got a note somewhere of
what he says in one of his letters about that view.’

“Ordinary enough as we see it,” said Mr. Fairfield
when we had followed the lane for a few paces and had
gazed for awhile at the prospect 1t commanded; ‘but
he could see the river. The chdlet was mounted on a
foundation of brick, and his room was the upper one.”

We turned back, and, seating ourselves on the coping
of the low wall that formed the base of the shrubbery rail-
ings, we resigned ourselves to the consolation of tobacco.

“He planted those trees,” said my friend, pointing
across the road to the pollards fringing the wall to left
and right of us. ‘ They’re limes—eighteen on one
side and ten on the other. There are some more in the
meadow at the back of the house—some chestnuts too.
He chose trees that grew quickly. Do you see that red
letter-box in the left-hand gate post ? That was put up
in his time. He wanted it put there, and - think
Edmund Yates worked the oracle for him. I should
like to post a letter in that box. He must have posted
hundreds. That big bay-window to the right of the porch
was, I think, his study window. His desk was close up
to it. You remember Fildes’ picture of the Vacant
Chair. When I came here before, I don’t think you
320 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

could see much of the house from the road—there’s
such @ lot of foliage in the way in the summer.”

“T shouldn’t like to work at a table set in a win-
dow.”

“No, nor I. He must have been as fond of working
in strong sunshine as Scott was. The last writing he
ever did was, I suppose, at that window. He’d been
busy with ‘Edwin Drood’ in the ehdlet all the morn-
ing, and he went back to it after lunch. It wasn’t
usual for him to work in the afternoon, but he was
anxious to get on with the story. He knocked off at
about five and went over to the house. We’re told he
wrote some notes in the study. Do you remember his
death?”

“Oh, yes! I was a boy at the time, and I remember
being told that Charles Dickens was dead.”

“Tt was a lovely June afternoon. The weather that
day, and the view from the chdlet, had suggested the
passage that begins—‘ A brilliant morning shines over the
old city’. It’s a beautiful passage; there’s such a lot of
colour in it, such compression too, I’ve often studied the
manuscript; it’s so interesting to see how he altered as
he went on. He must have been working very slowly
that day. An hour after he had left off he had the
seizure. He never regained consciousness, though he
lived for twenty-four hours. It isn’t difficult to picture
him going down those steps for the last time.”

My friend had risen to his feet and was leaning over
the railings and gazing at the steps with wistful eyes.
During the long pause which followed I wondered
whether in imagination he was conjuring up the figure
of Charles Dickens as he looked that afternoon. When
Mr. Fairfield spoke I felt no doubt about it.

“He must have left the chdle¢ with his mind full of
‘Edwin Drood’—we are told he was silent, tired and
abstracted, but that was nothing unusual when he’d
been writing. He must have come over the grass to
that iron wicket. It wouldn’t be open as it is now;
GADSHILL 321

he’d have shut it behind him when he went through it
after lunch. Trust him for that! He'd have ona light
summer suit and one of those hard, round hats with a
flat brim—that was the shape five-and-thirty years ago
—and he’d wear it on one side. He always did. I’m
afraid he was dreadfully hacked about the face. He'd
been ill for some time, and just then he’d be very tired.
And I think he’d move very wearily, and the left foot
would drag abit. He'd hada lot of trouble with it.
He’d go down those steps with his mind full of ‘ Kdwin
Drood’. Not a soul but himself knew how it was going
to end, and the secret died with him. You will look
through it, won’t you? and then we can talk about it.”

Mr. Fairfield turned in my direction as he asked the
question. Down to this point he had been speaking to
himself rather than to me.

‘You can see the other end of the tunnel from over
the ivy yonder,” he resumed.

We walked across the road to the other garden, and
peered down into another cavernous opening in the
ground.

“‘T’ll be bound there were scarlet geraniums in the
beds on the lawn, but I don’t think he noticed them or
anything else as he went up to the porch. What he
saw was some scene in the book. I wonder if there was
any passer-by who noticed him disappear down those
steps and come up here, and who knew he was Charles
Dickens.”

The enthusiast led the way back to the other side of
the road and took a slow survey of the house and its
surroundings. I thought this indicated that he had
come to the end of his outpourings and was about to
tear himself away. But here I was mistaken; after a
pause he resumed his parable.

“He grew wonderfully fond of this place. The night
before he wrote that last chapter, he was talking to
Miss Hogarth about his love for Gadshill, and his wish
that his name might become more and more associated

21
322 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

with it. I believe he was nearly as fond of it as Scott
was of Abbotsford, and, as every one supposes, Shake-
speare was of New Place. It’s some satisfaction to
think that each of them died in his own house.”

“Did you ever see him? ”

“No! And I’m glad I never heard him read. The
very thought of those readings makes me sick. The
whole business was deplorable. I don’t like to say it
was degrading ; but that’s what it was.”

Mr. Fairfield spoke with so much heat that I stared
at him in amazement.

“Tt killed him for one thing; and, apart from that,
it was unworthy of him.”

This seemed the last word upon a painful subject;
but a moment or two later he burst forth with renewed
vehemence. He called in Shakespeare to his aid this
time, and he emphasized his elocution with a clenched
hand :—

°* Alas, ’tis true, I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new—

T'll be bound John Forster gave him the benefit of that
more than once; but it was no good Forster, or any
one else, trying to turn him when he’d made up his
mind. His old friend and doctor, Frank Carr Beard,
remonstrated over and over again—Forster says so.”

‘‘T seem to have dropped a match into a powder
barrel.”

I had postponed the making of this comment until
Mr, Fairfield had lighted a fresh cigar, and was staring
absently into the dusky recesses of one of the cedar
trees.

“The volcano is exhausted—for the time being,” he
answered, laughing. ‘Just before you asked me if I’d
seen him, I’d been thinking that if it hadn’t been for
the readings, he might have lived for twenty years and
GADSHILL 323

finished ‘ Edwin Drood’ and half a dozen other books.
Let’s go a little way down the lane on the other side,
and see what we can of the back of the house.”

“Great Jehoshaphat!’ This was Mr. Fairfield’s
ejaculation when we reached the corner and came
upon a brand-new villa residence, which had hitherto
escaped his notice. ‘I wish they'd built this some-
where else.”

‘People must have houses.”

“Oh, yes! but it’s amazing to find this one stuck so
close to Gadshill Place; and do you see what it’s called
—Dingley Dell! It’s bad enough to stick the thing
here at all—and then to give it thatname! It’s adding
insult to injury.”

‘Tt’s as bad as writing ‘ Pickwick’ in some unauthor-
ized place and putting Moses before it,” he went on
with intense enjoyment. ‘ Do you remember the pass-
age?—‘ not content with writin’ up “ Pickwick,” they
puts Moses afore it, vich I call addin’ insult to injury,
as the parrot said ven they not only took him from his
native land, but made him talk the English langwidge
arterwards’,”

By the time we had made the best inspection we
could of the back of Gadshill Place and the paddock in
rear of it, I was beginning to think that the sooner we
turned our faces homeward in search of lunch the better.
But my host had other projects in his mind! As soon
as we were back in the high road, he set his face towards
London.

‘There are two things I must show you,” he said.

“That's the twenty-sixth from London,” he pro-
claimed, when two or three hundred yards beyond the
house we came upon a milestone.

«<Three miles to Rochester—twenty-six miles to
London,’ ”’ he read out as we passed it.

“T’m not sure I can walk twenty-six miles before
lunch,” I hinted.

“By jove! we’ve come past it.” Mr. Fairfield was
324 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

consulting his map and paying no attention to me.
“‘T thought it was this side of the milestone.”

We turned and retraced our steps. We had not pro-
ceeded more than seventy or eighty yards in the direc-
tion of Gadshill Place, when my companion crossed
over to a patch of wayside grass upon the south side of
the road. The highway at this spot ran between two
coppices, bare and leafless at this season, but showing
in their colour a promise of the spring.

“Do you see that?” he asked, stopping at the dry
shell of an aged ash tree and pointing to a stone post
that stood upon the patch of grass some ten paces in
front of us. ‘‘ What do you think it is?”’

“Tt looks to me like a defaced and superannuated
milestone,” I answered, after a long and conscientious
scrutiny at close quarters.

This scrutiny and the precise description which had
followed upon it were quite to my friend’s taste.

‘Now, listen!” said he, beaming with satisfaction
as he turned over three or four small printed sheets.
I had watched him take them out of one of his books
just before he left the Bull.

“It’s out of the ‘Uncommercial Traveller’ paper on
‘Tramps’. This is what he says :—

‘*T have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on
either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-
dust and the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in
abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant
river stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man’s life. To
gain the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-
bells and wild roses, would soon render illegible but for peering
travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must come up
asteep hill, come which way you may. So, all the tramps with
carts or caravans—the Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap
Jack—find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and
all turn the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot.
Bless the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have
scorched its graas ! :

Any doubt about the place?” he asked, triumphantly.
GADSHILL 325

“‘T accept it as proved.”

‘Tt was here he met Dr. Marigold, and Chops the
Dwarf—Forster says so.” :

‘‘ What is the other thing ?”’ I asked.

«That's farther ahead.”

‘‘Three miles to Rochester—twenty-six miles to
London,” said I, as we repassed the official milestone.
“Our lunch, I take it, is at Rochester.”

‘It’s a bad plan to let the mind dwell upon eating and
drinking,” said my host, with an affectation of austerity.

‘‘Then why let the regular times go by? You're
bound to think of nothing else when you're hungry.”

«* But it isn’t lunch time yet.”

“No, but it will be before we get to London.”

My friend laughed. “I won’t ask you to try that
twenty-six miles you're so doubtful about. We're not
going beyond that house on the right.”

We stopped when we came up to it. It was a way-
side inn, spick and span with new red brick and rough-
cast. Its sign was the Duke of York, and on the higher
storey was a tablet bearing the inscription, ‘“‘ Ye Olde
Beef Steak House. Rebuilt 1893.” There was a
patch of grass in front with four clipped trees and a
well. This last was furnished with a windlass.

““What do you say those trees are?” my friend de-
manded,

“‘T haven’t a notion. If they were in leaf I might
know.”

“Nonsense! they’re limes—trimmed limes. Surely
you must see that.”

“‘T’m quite willing to believe it,” I pleaded.

“Perhaps you'll say you don’t know what there is
under that windlass ?”’

‘Tt looks like a well.”

“‘ Of course, it’s a well—now listen!’’ This heralded
another extract from the paper on ‘‘ Tramps” :—

“Within appropriate distance of this magic ground [‘That’s
the grassy place with the milestone’] though not so near it as that
326 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

the song trolled from tap or bench at door, can invade its woodland
silence, is a little hostelry which no man possessed of a penny was
ever known to pass in warm weather. Before its entrance are
certain pleasant trimmed limes; likewise, a cool well, with so
musical a bucket-handle that its fall upon the bucket rim will make
a horse prick up his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a
mile off. This is a house of great resort for haymaking tramps and
harvest tramps, insomuch that they sit within, drinking their mugs
of beer, their relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks glare out of
the open windows, as if the whole establishment were a family war-
coach of Ancient Britons.”

“The place has been rebuilt,” I said.

“Oh, yes! but the trees are left, and so’s the well
and the bucket-handle.”

“‘ Are these discoveries your own, or did the guide-
books tell you about them?”

“T found them out for myself; but for all I know
they may have been identified by dozens of other people.
This inn was a sort of landmark in the old coaching
days. It’s called the Half-way House in the road-books.”

“Are we going to Rochester now?” I asked.

“No, we're going to Cobham. But cheer up!—if
you haven’t had your lunch by two o’clock, ‘call me
horse’.”

“Ah,” said I, recognizing the quotation, ‘I thought
I shouldn’t get off Gadshill without hearing something
about Falstaff.” ‘

For a moment my friend looked puzzled. ‘TI forgot
all about him,” he said, as soon as he had grasped my
meaning. ‘That phrase was a mere coincidence; and
yet, oddly enough, Falstaff was talking about Gadshill
when he used it.”
CHAPTER XXVI

IN COBHAM PARK WE LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT
CHARLES DICKENS

WE retraced our steps towards Rochester for a little
way beyond the twenty-sixth milestone, and then took
a turning to the nght. Past hedgerows, just bursting
into leaf, and ditches, starred with celandine, with here
and there to right or left a bare coppice, that looked
almost crimson in the sunshine, we made our way
through Upper Shorne and on to Cobham Park. At
the gates, a native, of whom we took counsel as to our
route to the village, and who said he was about to stroll
in the same direction, volunteered to act as our guide.
He was a man of some fifty years, with the appearance
of a well-to-do farmer, but with something in his speech
and manner that suggested commerce rather than agni-
culture.

“Real estate office—or perhaps some sort of mill,”
whispered Mr. Fairfield when our guide had dropped
behind for a moment to whistle to his dog.

«A fine country—a very fine country!” My friend
said this with quiet fervour; and he halted to survey
with an admiring eye the rolling acres of the park and
the wide prospects beyond it. ‘Perhaps, sir, you be-
long to it?” I knew what this diplomacy was to lead
up to.

“«« Taived here all my life.”

‘“‘T daresay you remember Charles Dickens.”

“Met him many and many a time when I was a
boy.”

327
328 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“Tn this park?”

* All round about here.”’

‘“Can you remember at all how he looked?” Mr.
Fairfield put this question with an elaborate carelessness
that reminded me of the wiles of a cross-examiner.

“ He always had half a dozen big dogs with him.”

This was something, but it was hardly enough to
enable even an enthusiast to construct a clear mental
picture of Charles Dickens as he appeared to his country
neighbours. It was plain from our guide’s manner that
the subject did not appeal to him in any special way,
but the chance of getting a description from an eye-
witness was too tempting to be lost. Mr. Fairfield
thought matters over, and then returned to the attack.

“You say he had half a dozen dogs with him si

“So he had.”

This answer was jerked out before the question,
which the diplomatist was introducing so deftly, could
be got upon its legs. Mr. Fairfield went straight for
the mark next time.

“ He was a pretty brisk walker, I believe. I daresay
you can recall him quite plainly.”

“Just as if I saw him before me. Bless me!—”
Here our companion paused in his discourse and looked
about him, as if arranging the form of words which
would best describe the figure that his mind’s eye saw
so plainly.

But once again Mr. Fairfield was to be disappointed.
“He used to be walking just as you and I might be
walking now,” was all that followed.

In the face of this last discouragement, it seemed
useless to work the pump-handle any longer, so Charles
Dickens as a subject for conversation went by the board.
In the talk that followed, the stranger spoke of the
smuggling that used to go on in the marshes about
Gravesend. It was, he said, a common occurrence for
the smugglers to borrow a farmer’s horses without ask-
ing leave. When in the morning there was a team

 
IN COBHAM PARK 329

missing, the farmer grumbled a bit and did as well as
he could without it. The horses were certain to be
brought back, and their temporary loss was looked upon
as one of the small ills of life for which there was no
remedy.

Other local matters were touched upon, and our ac-
quaintance happened to mention that he was a Kentish
Man, as distinguished from a Man of Kent. I paid no
great attention to the information, which, in response
to Mr. Fairfield’s questions, he poured forth in explana-
tion of these terms; but I obtained a vague, general im-
pression that Rochester Bridge was the dividing line
between two hostile camps, and that the natives of so
much of the country as lay east of the river, were the
Men of Kent and were in the enjoyment of certain
rights and privileges to which the Kentish Men were
strangers. My friend’s efforts to obtain particulars of
these franchises interested me very little, for, rightly
or wrongly, I felt certain that, notwithstanding the
smouldering cispontine jealousy with which our guide
referred to them, they had little or no existence outside
the imagination of a Kentish Man.

The talk branched off into other topics, but I paid no
heed to it till a mention of Dickens made me prick up
my ears. The indomitable Fairfield was making a last
despairing effort to get some personal details, before he
lost touch for ever with one who, asa boy, had seen the
great man many times, and who, sad to say, appeared to
be wholly unconscious of the privilege that had been his.

“‘T suppose everyone about here took a good deal of
interest in Dickens during his lifetime,” was the remark
that recalled my wandering thoughts.

Our guide shook his head. ‘‘ Nobody took any in-
terest in him.”

«That seems strange,’ was my friend’s amazed
comment.

“Bless your soul! nobody here thought anything at
all about him.”
330 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

The stranger seemed at a loss to find words strong
enough to express the indifference with which the
natives of that part of the country had regarded the
illustrious sojourner in their midst.

Mr. James C. Fairfield of Chicago once again sur-
veyed the rolling acres of the park and the wide pro-
spects beyond, but there was nothing but scorn and
contempt in his eye this time. It was not difficult to
follow the tenor of his thoughts. The countryside was
good to look upon—that was manifest, and besides,
Charles Dickens had vouched for it—but if this man
spoke truth, that countryside was not worthy to be the
dwelling-place of a Chicago hog.

‘He used to drive two ponies with silver bells,” ob-
served the dweller in Beeotia, wholly unconscious of the
indignation which he had aroused.

“Surely they must have been interesting !”’

The gentle irony of this remark fell harmless, and, to
my friend’s astonishment, our Kentish Man went on to
make it clear that not only were the silver bells an ob-
ject of intense interest during Charles Dickens’ lifetime,
but after his death there was a fierce local struggle to
obtain possession of them. "When they were offered
for sale with the rest of the effects at Gadshill Place,
the competition was so keen that it ended in a hand-to-
hand conflict between two bidders, and the lot had to
be withdrawn. Later on it was sold by private treaty
to a Rochester contractor named Ball.

By this time Mr. Fairfield had come to the conclusion
that Charles Dickens, as regarded by our guide and,
possibly, the other inhabitants of Shorne, was a subject
for mirth rather than indignation. He was even desirous
of keeping up the joke.

‘‘Dickens has been dead some time now,” he re-
marked vaguely.

“«Five-and-twenty years—he was so poor they had
to sell all his things off.”

““T hope they realized enough to pay his debts and
funeral expenses,” said I.
THE SHIP AT COBHAM 331

“T certainly never heard of any one not being paid,”
was the answer, given somewhat grudgingly, but in
perfect good faith.

“Do you understand this?”’ asked my friend as soon
as the man had disappeared and we had had our laugh
out. ‘He seemed quite intelligent in other respects ;
what he said about the old trees in the Pilgrims’ Way
was well worth noting.”

“Tt’s a sort of local patriotism. The man’s family
has been on the soil here for generations, and he resents
the suggestion that Charles Dickens, or any other mere
resident, should be thought of any importance.”

“Tf that’s so, it’s a pity I didn’t mention that Dickens
was a friend of Lord Darnley and had keys to the Park
gates. Authorship seems to want a deal of shoring up
in this country before it looks respectable. The abori-
gines of the Isle of Wight thought nothing of Tenny-
son until they heard that the Prince Consort had called
upon him; and when some one asked a Haslemere
native about him, the answer was, that Mr. Tennyson
only kept one man and he didn’t sleep in the house.”

We found our way from the park wicket to Cobham
village, and entered the first inn we came to. This
was the Ship. As the public rooms on the first floor

were being prepared for the influx of Hastertide custom,

the landlord courteously ushered us through the bar
into a low-browed inner room, which looked out upon a
small meadow.

‘“‘T like this hospitable way of doing business,” said
Mr. Fairfield as he surveyed the meal of bread, cheese,
and butter that had been spread before us. “The good
old custom of letting the guest cut for himself seems
dying out in England.”

“We must try and prove ourselves worthy of our
host’s confidence,” said I, attacking the cheese.

‘Innkeepers exercise a discretion in these matters.
They go by a person’s appearance. This profuse display
is really a personal compliment to you and me.”

“They know when they’re safe,” he continued. “I
332 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

remember years ago lunching at an inn near Sydenham.
They brought me the joint of cold beef. After I had
finished, a bagman-looking fellow came in, and I noticed
they cut off a portion for him. They saw they could
trust me to eat in moderation and not to mangle the joint,
and they couldn’t trust him. I’ve never forgotten it.”
He finished this anecdote with a self-complacency that
was positively unctuous.

“You're sure you did eat in moderation?” I asked,
doubtfully.

“T don’t remember anything about it; but no doubt
I did.”

“Tf that was so, wasn’t it rather odd they didn’t let
the next man have the joint? It looks to me as if you
had destroyed their confidence.”

Mr. Fairfield considered this suggestion as he munched
his bread and cheese.

“IT don’t like the construction you put upon the
facts,” he said, laughing. ‘I wonder if we may smoke
in here. It isn’t a public room, but I think I’ll venture
to step into the bar and ask the landlord.”

This permission was readily given, and my friend
settled himself in a big chair with a high-railed back
and produced his cigar-case.

“This is very comfortable,” said he. ‘I’m not sorry
to get a rest; we’re in luck to have a place like this all
to ourselves.”

“Do many people come to Cobham ?”

“Oh, yes! There’s a lot about the place in the
books on Dickens-land. People come here in swarms
—my countrymen in particular. Why, they——”

At this moment the landlord made his appearance
bearing a bright brass spittoon, which he placed in the
immediate neighbourhood of Mr. Fairfield’s right foot.
«“There’s another in the corner, sir!” he said, with
much geniality as he paused for a moment at the open
door. This intimation was intended for my benefit,
but 1t was addressed to the big chair.
THE SHIP AT COBHAM 333

“Here it is!” said I, steering the article into posi-
tion with my foot.

Mr. Fairfield sat bolt upright with a matchbox in
one hand and an unlighted cigar in the other. His gaze
wandered from the brass on his right to the hardware
on his left, and the expression of his features was more
thoughtful than before. As he seemed to have for-
gotten his unfinished sentence, I deemed it well to jog
his memory.

“You were saying,” I remarked, ‘“‘ that your country-
men were well known here.”

“T am quite aware of what I was saying,’ he
began with some tartness; but as he spoke his eye
fell again on the two spittoons, and for once his sense of
humour got the better of his patriotism.

“‘Confound the things!” he said, laughing as he
thrust them out of sight. “If that landlord keeps a
visitors’ book, I shall sign it in the character of Hanni-
bal Chollop.”
CHAPTER XXVII

WE VISIT MINOR CANON ROW, AND RAMBLE TO
COOLING

RocHESTER nowadays is not nearly such a sleepy place
as the Cloisterham or Dullborough Town of Charles
Dickens. The High Street is, in fact, a fairly bustling
thoroughfare ; but whoso turns out of it, by the College
Gateway, leaves the twentieth century behind him,
and breathes an atmosphere of early-Georgian repose.
There are medieval relics in plenty—a grey, old cathe-
dral, a Norman keep and piles of crumbling masonry—
but these are only background; it is a scattered region
of burial places, grass-grown and long disused, of mellow
red-brick houses, tiled roofs, green turf and immemorial
elms.

It was on our return from Cobham that Mr. Fairfield
led me into the cathedral precincts. We had left the
village after sauntering as far as the Leather Bottle
and taking a turn round the churchyard, and had made
our way back to Strood by the old Roman highway.

“This is a real Dickens-land,” he said as we passed
under the gateway. ‘‘ He wished to be buried here.
I want to show you Minor Canon Corner, where Mr.
Crisparkle lived.”’

Through the College gateway, past the parish church
of St. Nicholas and between the cathedral burial-ground
that is called Green-Church Haw, and the old parish
burial-ground, we made our way to the west door of the
cathedral ; pausing between the church and Green-
Church Haw, to look at the ruins of Gundulf’s tower,

334
MINOR CANON ROW 335

and striking off to the left for a moment, to get a nearer
view of the Deanery Gate and peep through it at the
Deanery elms. Skirting the west side of the cathedral
and following the roadway past a huge fragment of
battlemented stonework, now serving as the frame of a
modern door, we came upon Minor Canon Row—
seven red-brick houses, flanked on the west by the
Priory Gate, all basking in the sunshine of a heavenly
afternoon.

‘This, I take it,is where the south wall of the Priory
used to stand; what do you think of the place ?”

“‘T am almost inclined to wish I was a Minor-canon,”
was my answer.

“ The house furthest from the gateway is, or was, the
organist’s. It was built ten or twelve years later than
the others; they were built about 1722. I got that
out of the ‘ History and Antiquities of Rochester ’—
Wildash’s edition of 1817. I routed it out at the
British Museum. And I think J made a little dis-
eovery.”

Here Mr. Fairfield took off his pince-nez and looked
up from the scrap of manuscript which he had been
consulting.

“ What was it?” I asked, well knowing that this was
his way of inviting the question.

“Tt’s nothing much, but it pleased me. When I
was skimming through the account of ancient Rochester,
I was once or twice vaguely reminded of what Dickens
says about the place at the beginning of the third chap-
ter of ‘ Edwin Drood,’ and before I put the book back I
happened to turn to the list of subscribers at the be-
ginning. Lo and behold! I found the name of Mr.
Jobn Dickens, Chatham. That was Dickens’ father.
Now, I think it’s almost certain that Dickens read the
book when he was a boy. He was only five in 1817,
but we know he browsed about among his father’s books
before he was nine, and I don’t suppose there were so
many of them that he would be likely to overlook
336 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Wildash. My theory is, that the impression the book
made on him as a child remained there fifty years later,
when he was writing ‘ Edwin Drood’.”

“But he must have read many other books about
Rochester; and he may have come across Wildash
again, years and years after he grew up.”

“Oh, yes, he may! But my maxim is—if a theory
pleases you, stick to it, so long as it doesn’t clash with
facts.”

“Tf it pleases you, why not stick to it through thick
and thin?”

“‘That’s immoral—facts are facts,’ answered Mr.
Fairfield, loftily. ‘‘A man must preserve the captaincy
of his soul.”

‘‘ There’s an earlier edition of the book,” he resumed,
as he began to fumble with his memoranda; ‘‘ Forster
knew that edition. He quotes from it in his chapter on
Gadshill Place, but he doesn’t say where the quotation
comes from. He speaks of ‘a history of Rochester,
published a hundred years ago’; the actual date is 1772.
It was written, according to Wildash’s preface to the
second edition, by an Archdeacon of Rochester—a
Doctor Denne. It’s a capital book, and it has a capital
motto on the title-page—As the knowledge of ancient
things is pleasant, so is the ignorance as shameful, and
oftentimes exposes men to the scorn and contempt of
strangers—that’s out of the preface to Somner’s ‘ Anti-
quities of Canterbury ’.”’

“Tl try and bear it in mind,” said I.

We passed under the Priory Gate and into the road
that skirts the gardens of Minor Canon Row. The
seven old houses are much more picturesque when seen
from the back, for on that side the view is more spa-
cious and there is no curtain of brickwork to hide their
peaked, red roofs.

“he best rooms must be at the back,” said my
guidi? meditatively. ‘‘ The look-out in front from the
lower windows is nothing to boast of. Yes, sir, it was
‘ALON NONVO NONIN AO MOVA OUNV ALVD ANOINd AHL

 
MINOR CANON ROW 337

in one of the back rooms that Mr. Crisparkle and the
China Shepherdess used to breakfast.”

‘““Now you've seen this place,” he went on, “ you
must let me read you Dickens’ description of it. He
calls it Minor Canon Corner :—

‘*They were a good pair to sit breakfasting together in Minor
Canon Corner, Cloisterham. For Minor Canon Corner was a quiet
place in the shadow of the cathedral, which the cawing of the rooks,
the echoing footsteps of rare passers, the sound of the Cathedral
bell or the roll of the Cathedral organ, seemed to render more
quiet than absolute silence. Swaggering fighting men had had their
centuries of ramping and raving about Minor Canon Corner, and
beaten serfs had had their centuries of drudging and dying there,
and powerful monks had had their centuries of being sometimes
useful and sometimes harmful there, and behold they were all gone
out of Minor Canon Corner, and so much the better. Perhaps one
of the highest uses of their ever having been there was, that there
might be left behind, that blessed air of tranquillity which per-
vaded Minor Canon Corner, and that serenely romantic state of
mind—productive for the most part of pity and forbearance—
which is engendered by a sorrowful story that is all told, or a
pathetic play that is played out.

‘*Red-brick walls harmoniously toned down in colour by time,
strong-rooted ivy, latticed windows, panelled rooms, big oaken
beams in little places, and stone-walled gardens where annual fruit
yet ripened upon monkish trees, were the principal surroundings
of pretty old Mrs. Crisparkle and the Reverend Septimus as they
sat at breakfast.

Isn’t it wonderful how he’s given us the very essence
of the place?”’

“Do you know much about the bishops of Ro-
chester?” My friend was gazing over the peaked
roofs at the tower of the Cathedral beyond them. To
our left was the Priory Gate, and not far from it the
towering majesty of the Keep.

“‘T know nothing about them—or any other bishops.”

“Only two of them are worth remembering—Sprat
and Atterbury,” he remarked, critically; “and, oddly
enough, one succeeded the other. Sprat figures in
Johnson’s ‘ Lives,’ and Atterbury we get a glimpse of
in ‘ Esmond’.”

22
338 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“You've an odd notion of what makes a bishop
worth remembering.”

“ Atterbury really was an interesting person—he
officiated at Addison’s funeral for one thing, and he
had a father who ought to have been an archbishop.”

“‘T never heard of the old gentleman.”

“The pity is we know so little of him. When the
bishop was a young curate, his prospects weren’t very
rosy. I suppose this depressed him, and he went for
comfort to his sire. ‘You have only to put your trust
in God and marry a bishop’s daughter,’ said the good
old man. He was a rector in Buckinghamshire.
There’s a description of Sprat in that book on Roch-
ester—but I mustn’t shock you.”

“T think I can stand it,” I said, laughing.

“Tt says—‘ His parts were very bright in his youth,
and gave good hopes, but were blasted by a lazy liber-
tine course to which his temper and good nature carried
him, without considering the duties, or even the decen-
cies, of his profession ’.”

** Perhaps it isn’t true,” I suggested.

“True or false,” said Mr. Fairfield, solemnly, “ it
was written by a brother bishop. On which horn of
the dilemma will you seat yourself?”

“It’s shaken my faith in all those old-time bishops
of yours,” he went on; “I can’t trust any of them,
not even dear ‘old man Seabury’. I’m beginning to
doubt whether it was right to stick him up in Shake-
speare’s church. He may have been no better than
Sprat—only artfuller. And as for their clergy—dear!
dear!”

« And what was amiss with them—the Rev. Abraham
Adams and Dr. Primrose, for instance?”

“T don’t like the look of these back doors,” he an-
swered, gloomily; “they positively stare you in the
face.”

‘‘That’s so; but what have they to do with it?”

“They make me feel uneasy in my mind. These
MINOR CANON ROW 339

houses were built a few years after Sprat’s time, and
it’s occurred to me that his influence on this place must
have been very evil. I’m very much afraid these back
doors were put in, so that the minor canons could sneak
out under cover of night and disport themselves with-
out considering the duties or even the decencies of their
profession.”

“‘T don’t quite see where they could have gone to.”

‘Chatham, of course—there are plenty of singing
and dancing places there.”

The existence of these places was so probable, and
Mr. Fairfield spoke with so much conviction, that this
remark gave a stamp of reality to all that had gone be-
fore. I was quite ready to chop nonsense with him.

“Isn't it a pity to rake up such a very old scandal ?”’
ITurged. ‘Do you suppose the organist in the end
house went with them ?”

“More than likely! If not, think what a terror
that back door of his must have been to the minor

- canons; he could pounce out upon them at any mo-
ment.”

Mr. Fairfield paused to consider the probabilities of
the case, and then gave up the organist as a bad job.

‘Tm afraid he didn’t take much persuading,’’ he re-
sumed, mournfully. ‘‘He was a musician, and musi-
cians as a class are a bit Bohemian.”

“He must have come in very handy when the sing-
ing and dancing began.”

My companion pursed up his mouth and stared hard
at the most easterly of the back doors.

‘‘ He could hardly have taken his instrument with him,
even if the minor canons lent a hand,” he said, slowly.

“T was not suggesting that he took the cathedral
organ. That would have been sacrilege. I was assum-
ing that he was musician enough to be master of a
second instrument—the fiddle, for instance.”’

“No doubt! no doubt! And if that was so, you may
bet your boots they didn’t leave him: behind.”
340 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘There is really nothing to laugh at.” I put in this
reminder because my friend’s austerity seemed to be
giving way to inward merriment.

“You mustn’t be too hard on the organist. I can
make excuses for him—always supposing he didn’t take
that organ with him.”

‘You think he could plead that his calling had blunted
his moral sense?” I suggested.

“Certainly! But I’m with you as regards the minor
canons ; their case was different.”

‘One hopes they met with their deserts,’ said my
friend, in a tone which showed that he did not hope
anything of the kind ; ‘‘ but my view is, Sprat was most
to blame. ‘The evil that men do lives after them.’”’

‘It’s chillyish standing here,” he said, presently ; ‘let
us stroll to the Vines. They're just behind us on the
right. It’s an open space now; it used to be the vine-
yard of the priory. Dickens calls it the Monks’ Vineyard.
It was there Her Royal Highness the Princess Puffer
warned Edwin Drood that there was trouble brewing
fora man named Ned. And we can have a look at
Restoration House,” he added, as we moved onward.

After dinner that evening I took up ‘“‘ Edwin Drood,”
and my friend busied himself with pencil and paper.
I could see that he was making a plan of some sort;
and as every now and then he seemed to get stuck,
and these pauses were always followed by his gliding
from the room, paper in hand, I was not in much doubt
as to the exact nature of his employment.

“It’s a tough job,” said he, when I looked up and
his eye caught mine; ‘‘I couldn’t have believed that
any place could be so rambling as this house is. It’s
only this first floor that I’m trying to lay down. Do
you know what the route is from the corridor to this
room ?”

‘“‘ All I know is we pass over the gateway. I’m sure
of that, because we go into the hotel on the left side,
and these windows are on the other side.”

“ Well, this is the route—Sirtke off to left of corridor
TO COOLING 341

—one step up—cross recess—one step down—straight
on—that’s really over the gateway, I suppose—four
steps down—pass No. 17, Dickens’ room, on left—
straight on—four steps up to this door. That’s pretty
good for steps, considering we’re a first floor room, look-
ing out on the street. And just past our door there are
six more steps to go up.”

‘When I came down to breakfast next morning I
found my host poring over his map. ‘‘ Great Expecta-
tions” lay open by his side.

“T should very much like to get to Cooling, if we
could manage it,” he said.

‘Not Chatham dockyard ?”

Mr. Fairfield closed one eye. ‘‘I think I know what
that meant. I thought it out afterwards. Do you
mind going to Cooling? It’s the place where Pip was
brought up. It was in the churchyard that the convict
sat him on the gravestone. The tombstones of Pip’s
little brothers are there. He speaks of only six. For-
ster says there are double that number. It’s a very
lonely place out on the marshes.”

‘* By all means let us go. How far is it?”

“Tt’s under five miles—as the crow flies.” There
was an ambiguity about this which confirmed an im-
pression which I had already formed from Mr. Fair-
field’s manner. It was quite clear that for some reason
or other a pilgrimage to Cooling was no trifle.

“Here are we,” he went on, turning the map in my
direction and pointing to it with a pencil, ‘‘ and here’s
Cooling.”

True it was that the place was only five miles north
of us; but when I attempted to trace the way my head
swam. The main roads avoided Cooling altogether,
and all the cross roads seemed to strike off to the nght
or left, or to stop short some distance to the south.

‘Tt does look awkward,” was my friend’s admission
as he noted my despair ; ‘“ but I've got a penny cyclist’s
guide upstairs, and that gives a very good route. I’m
342 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

sure we can follow it quite easily; it’s only seven and
a half miles.” /

We knew the way to Strood, and, aided by the ord-
nance map, we reached Frindsbury without difficulty.
There, however, the penny guide-book came into play,
and from the moment we obeyed the first of its direc-
tions we were hopelessly lost. For a while my fellow-
wanderer refused to be persuaded that there was any-
thing amiss, but at last he was obliged to admit that we
had gone astray; and he jerked the book into a side
pocket with a muttered comment that sounded not
unlike an imprecation.

At a village which we came upon, we ascertained
that we were at Wainscot; and when by the light of
this information we had been able to ascertain our
bearings from Mr. Fairfield’s map, we decided that the
sooner we obtained some oral guidance the better.

A native who was repairing a cart by the road-side
advised us to retrace our steps in order to gain some
turning that led northward; but, alas! his information
as to the distance to this cross-road was very vague,
and the map offered us no corroboration of his state-
ments.

‘‘Isn’t there a footpath ?”’ inquired Mr. Fairfield.

The answer to this question suggested that Wainscot
stood badly in need of a village Hampden—the footpaths
were all closed by government.

“But can’t we get there this way? ”

After gazing at the road ahead of us, to which the
speaker was pointing, and thinking matters over, the
native admitted that this was possible. On being
pressed, he went further and intimated that, perhaps,
it was the best way after all. Then he began to give
directions. Of these, I could make neither head nor
tail, though several times I caught the words “ four-
went way,’ repeated like a burden or refrain, and ‘‘ Hoo
Mill” always followed close upon them. At the first
pause, Mr. Fairfield, who had been listening with his
HIGH HALSTOW —_—Ss-348

eyes fixed on the map, thanked the man and declared
that the course was quite plain.

‘*T found Hoo Mill,” he explained, as soon as we
were out of earshot. ‘“We come to four cross-roads
about a mile further on, and then take the one to the
left.”

‘A somewhat thick-headed gentleman,” I observed.

My friend laughed. ‘A buffle-headed fellow; but I
liked that ‘four-went way’. He was referring to the
cross-roads. I must make a note of that. I trust
there’s some footpath near the mill. We're east of
Cooling asitis; and every step we take in this direction
leads us further past it.”

«This is the road to Hoo,” he remarked a little later.
‘* Hogarth and his fnends came along here. But we
turn off a good bit on this side of the village.”

Before we reached the mill, we ascertained at a way-
side inn there was no footpath to Cooling, and that
our only way was through High Halstow. When I
looked at the map I groaned in spirit. We had been
on our legs for more than two hours; High Halstow
was nearly three miles to the north-east of us, and
Cooling lay some two miles to the west of High Hal-
stow.

“T am afraid it must be ona hill,” said Mr. Fairfield
who was even wearier than I was. The wind that day
was very strong, and for a long time we had been walk-
ing straight in the teeth of it.

High Halstow was indeed set on a hill: a hill that we
climbed slowly and painfully. All the way up our eyes
were fixed upon the church ; for that marked the summit,
and when we reached it we made straight for the porch.
Thankful were we to find a seat there, as well as a
shelter from the wind.

‘‘ Thames or Medway ?’’ I asked, after we had rested
ourselves for a while in great content. The porch com-
manded a wide expanse of country, stretching away toa
broad river far in front of us.
344 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘* Medway ; Sheerness lies somewhere over there.”

He had looked at the map before answering, and he
continued to pore over it for some minutes.

‘« Anxious times here in June, 1667, when the Dutch
got past Sheerness and sailed nearly to Chatham,” he
said at length. ‘They burned or took all the English
ships that came in their way, until they drew off at the
approach of Prince Rupert. I guess he found some of
his old soldiers eager to serve under him again, when he
came into these parts. Wherever Rupert went, he
must have come across plenty such.”

“There must have been many watchers on this hill,”
resumed Mr. Fairfield. ‘‘ They got a good view of the
Dutchmen.”

We both sat silent for some time and gazed at the
distant river. Truly, the watchers from High Halstow
must have had a good view of De Ruyter’s tall ships, as
they made their way up stream.

‘* Dryden tells us,” said my friend, ‘‘ that the cannon-
ading was heard in London—the sound was like distant
thunder, or the noise of swallows in a chimney, he says.
Fireships were used to the best of my recollection. The
river must have been an awful sight from here to an
Englishman who loved his country. It was known all
about that the Dutch were carrying everything before
them ; Pepys found at Gravesend that the people had
removed their goods for fear of the place being occupied.
Yes, sir, it looked as if the old country was going under
that time—

The mighty ghosts of our great Harries rose,
And arméd Edwards looked with anxious eyes.

That’s Dryden: he wrote it the year before—the annus
mairabilis—but the Dutch inspired it. Magnificent
lines; aren’t they? The conception’s so fine—the
warrior kings rising from their graves to watch the
battle—and did you ever come across anything more
subtle than that double-barrelled alliteration in the
“EDWIN DROOD ” 345

second line? I don’t know another to match it ; I’m not
sure that I know another at all.”’

“Do you actually read Dryden?”

“Tve read nearly every word of him; but that means
turning yourself into a sort of literary mud-lark. Just
you get Johnson’s ‘ Lives’ and Lowell’s ‘My Study
Windows’. Johnson’s ‘ Life’ of him is splendid, and
Lowell’s essay is even better. It’s glorious!”

“You looked through ‘Edwin Drood’ last night,”
he said, when we had left the porch, and were making
our way westward, with the Thames in full view across
the marshlands on our right, and on the same low level,
a hamlet or two, and a church that stood out from
everything else.

“ Yes—full steam ahead most of the time ; but when-
ever I came upon anything that looked like a clue to
the mystery, I slowed down and took soundings.”

“That was just what I wanted; it was very good of
you. I noticed you were doing some marking with a
pencil now and then.”

“T got a bit bitten, myself, to tell the truth.”

‘‘ And how did Jasper murder him?”

‘“‘T suppose he strangled him with the silk scarf he
wore that Christmas Eve. It was quick and painless—
Jasper’s mutterings in the opium den prove that.”

“Good! And where was it done?”

“ Somewhere in the cathedral, I suppose ; but where,
I don’t quite know. But if not there, why did Jasper
get Durdles to take him there that night, so that he
could drug him and get the keys?”

“Good again!” By this time Mr. Fairfield, who had
started from the porch with weary limbs, which worked
like machinery in want of oiling, had shaken off all
symptoms of fatigue, and was boiling over with enthu-
siasm. ‘You don’t think the falling of the stones
and the tearing off of the clock hands that night,
had anything to do with the murder?” he asked
eagerly.
346 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“No; it’s incredible that the man was thrown down
from the tower.”

‘‘T agree! And where was the lime that ate up the
body and left nothing but the ring behind ?”’

“That baffles me.”

“And me too; I did so hope that you would strike
out something.”

“There’s no getting at it. One thought at first it
was the lime in Durdles’ yard, which is mentioned just
before the mysterious visit to the cathedral that night ;
but Jasper said in his mutterings that he had done the
thing in his dreams many times beforehand, and always
in the same way.”

“True; but couldn’t the lime have been in the
crypt?”

“Tf so, why did Jasper leave the cathedral after he’d
drugged Durdles and got his keys ?”’

“You're sure he did leave it?”

“Tf not, why was he so furious when he found De-
puty in the Close, when he and Durdles turned out of
the cathedral? He thought the boy had been spying
on him; and that couldn’t have been if Jasper had
stayed inside all the time. And yet'it’s hard to believe
that Dickens meant him to carry the body through the
streets. It seems absurd.”

“ You give it up, then?”

“Yes! Don’t you?”

Mr. Fairfield’s answer was a deep sigh. ‘‘TI’ve given
it up over and over again; but whenever I take the
book up afresh I begin to puzzle my brains over it.”

“It’s a pity you took it up, then.”

“ But I rather think I like to puzzle over it,” he an-
swered, laughing. ‘It’s not fair to bother you with
it; but there’s just one other point—can you imagine
how the unwritten half of the book was to be filled up?
There seems so little left of the story to fill six more
numbers.”’

“That occurred tome. I’m not at all sure we weren’t
AT COOLING 347

to hear something more about ‘ The Thorn of Anxiety ’.
Bazzard’s tragedy wasn’t mentioned for nothing ; per-
haps we were to have some theatrical sketches.”’

“« If they were to have been anything like Mr. Wopsle’s
‘Hamlet,’ it’s a thousand pities we lost them. You
don’t feel any doubt that Bazzard was Datchery ?”

‘*T suppose he must have been; but there’s such a
difference between Bazzard and Datchery that I think
Dickens intended to develop Bazzard into something

important, and this would have explained the inconsis-

tency. Bazzard may have been as different out of
office hours as Wemmick was. And I’m not sure that
the Builhckin wasn’t intended to help in the plot. She
was a cousin of Bazzard’s, remember! ”’

My friend’s enthusiasm had died down before we
reached Cooling. It was almost in silence that we ac-
complished the last weary mile of our. pilgrimage. Act-
ing upon the advice of a native, we were cutting off a
corner by taking a field path, when I saw an inn on
the high road, a little way off to our right.

‘‘ We'll lunch before going further; we can see the
churchyard afterwards,” I said, as I turned off into a
track that led to the back door.

““ Certainly ; by all means; I really am quite tired,”
was the meek response. For once in his life, Mr. James
C. Fairfield of Chicago was only too glad to pause in
the course of a ramble, with the thing sought for yet
unseen.

“«Tt’s a bad business this getting near the sixties,” he
said, mournfully, as we sat in the bar parlour of the
Horseshoe and Castle and consumed bread and cheese.

“Tt’s a bad business to be misled by a penny guide-
book; we must have come at least ten miles against
wind and over hilly country. T’m abominably tired
myself.”

“ You'd think nothing of it, old boy!”” This remark
was addressed to the inn dog, who had come in and
made himself most agreeable, and who now lay by the
348 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

fireplace, and was startling us at short intervals by a
sharp, friendly bark, followed by a thumping of his tail
upon the floor.

“T do like this dropping into little hostelries, and
taking your ease for as long as ever you like. It seems,
somehow, to bring one back to the leisurely, hospitable
England of Fielding and Smollett.”

By this time Mr. Fairfield was snugly established in
a corner chair with his feet supported upon another chair,
and a cigar was in full blast.

«Dickens must have known this inn well. I suppose
he had it in mind when he described the scenes in the
Three Jolly Bargemen, though he wasn’t at all photo-
graphic when he was dealing with this place in ‘ Great
Expectations ’.”

‘** He may have been in this very room,” I suggested.

“If ever Dickens was here,” he said laughing, as he
scrutinized an engraving that hung near his chair, ‘he
must have delighted in this. It’s the portrait of the
Right Honourable William, Baron Panmure of Brechin
and Navar, etat sixty-seven.”’

I crossed over and looked atit. The right honourable
baron sat in a well-padded chair and grasped a snuff-box.
The lower part of his countenance was so magnificently
developed, that it threw the upper part into insignifi-
cance.

“A fine old English gentleman!” said I, approvingly ;
‘Dickens’ beaw ideal of a member of the Upper House,
advanced in years.”

“ He certainly did not love a lord, and perhaps he was
not always fair to the tribe ; but now I can make excuses
for him. How I wish I could hang this among my
Dickens things, as a sample of the British noblemen
who were his contemporaries.”

When we paid our bill—it amounted, I think, to
eightpence, including drinks—we asked the landlord
for directions as to the shortest way back to Rochester.
Mine host and a friend, who was seated on a bench
AT COOLING 349

against the wall, showed so much surprise when Mr.
Fairfield began to make a note of the answer, that I
thought it advisable to explain what our warderings had
been that morning. The fact that we had come to
Cooling by way of High Halstow, excited no little
mirth in the landlord and his crony, but my confidences
had the desired effect ; Mr. Fairfield was able to jot down
the particulars of a route, so clear in its elaboration and
so full of landmarks, that we both felt confident that to
go astray would be impossible.

“ This is something like,” said the scribe complacently,
as we stood in the road and he scanned his memoran-
dum ; ‘‘intelligent man that. A pity he isn’t older! I
rather hoped to learn something here, but he wasn’t
born in 1870.”

‘‘Tt’s a bad business that so many of the inhabitants
of this district aren’t getting near the sixties,” I sug-
gested. ‘‘ Under that, they are mere cumberers of the
ground.”

“‘Tt’s ungrateful to say so when they’re so useful for
telling you the way,” he retorted, with an air of grave
rebuke. ‘ By-the-bye, these marshes don’t look very
desolate. I suppose the sunshine makes a difference.”

‘‘ Are we to perambulate them?”

Mr. Fairfield surveyed the long green stretches dotted
with cattle, that lay between us and the distant river,
and shook his head.

“Tl go, if you insist on it,” he answered laughing ;
“but I warn you I may be tempted to follow Mr.
Wopsle’s example. He got very tired, you may re-
member, when they came back over these marshes after
finding the convicts, and he insisted on sitting down in
the damp to such an insane extent, that when his coat
was taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the cireum-
stantial evidence of his trousers would have hanged him,
if sitting down had been a capital offence. Joe carried
Pip on his back.”

“T remember he did; it was good of him, but you
350 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

mustn’t count on my being able to do anything of the
same sort.”

‘Perhaps under the circumstances, we had better
make for the church; it’s quite close—in the book it’s
a mile from the village.”

Even Mr. Fairfield admitted that the churchyard on
the marshes was something of a disappointment. As
we saw it, that cold spring afternoon, it had little in
common with the desolate, nettle-grown churchyard of
‘‘Great Expectations”; for the green landscape beyond
the wall was pleasant to look upon, and the place itself
was in goodorder. And, worst of allin my companion’s
eyes, the King’s highway ran along one side of it,

Near the porch we found the graves of the Comport
family—thirteen little mummy-shaped tombstones, lying
in two ranks—three in front and ten in rear—with the
parental tombstone standing upright between them.
My companion stooped down and plucked some butter-
cup leaves from beside one of the little graves.

‘“‘T’m disappointed in the look of the place,” he said;
“but after all, we see it as he saw it; and we’re stand-
ing where he stood many and many atime. He was
fond of bringing people here. Forster says it was one
of his favourite walks in autumn or winter, when
he could get to it across the stubble fields.”

“‘T wish we could get back to Rochester by the same
way.”

To do I, most devoutly; but I’m glad we came.
I’ve always wanted to see Cooling churchyard.”

‘«‘ And after all,” he said, smiling, as we turned away
from the Comport graves, shivering in the icy blast
that was blowing across the marshes that afternoon,
‘“‘there’s one thing here that doesn’t fall short of one’s
expectations—a more abominable wind never chilled my
marrow.”
«A SCORE O’ YEARS AGO” = 351

POSTSCRIPT
A SCORE 0’ YEARS AGO
(Rochester, 1667.)

The Dutchmen ride on Chatham tide ; they’ve burst the river boom ;
He’s master here, the Furrineer, and all the folks in gloom:
There’s naught, they vow, to stop him now from laying London low,
But you and I were Rupert’s men a score 0’ years ago.

So polish up the old steel cap and dress the bandoleer !

There’s little time to trim and prime with Rupert drawing near,
And aught amiss in wind or limb we mustn’t let him know,

For Rupert's all that Rupert was a score o’ years ago.

‘He’s spurring down from Windsor town, and soon we’ll have him
here ;

He’s riding hard, with flag and guard and trumpets, all in rear ;

And when we greet him soldierwise, he’ll look us through and
through,

And answer each in soldier speech, a prince and comrade too:

There’s records in those eyes of his, as records well may be:

The wear and tear of time and care, and war on land and sea;

But how they flash and sparkle too, for all the lines they show,

And Rupert rides as Rupert rode a score o’ years ago!

It’s do or die with Rupert by; he’ll rouse the lazy ones ;

He’ll sound a call to hearten all that man the Upnor guns:

We'll hear his music once again, and well the Dutchmen know

There’s something more than schnaps in store when Rupert’s
trumpets blow.

De Ruyter, he’s a cockrel too, but if he tries a main,

He'll see St. Paul’s and prison walls before he fights again ;

He’ll make his way to London Tower with all his ships in tow,

For Rupert fights as Rupert fought a score o’ years ago.
CHAPTER XXVIII
COBHAM WOODS AND EASTGATE HOUSE

‘‘ HAVE you noticed the seaweed over there, clinging to
the stonework, by the baths, just as it’s mentioned in
‘Pickwick’? You can see it better from the Esplan-
ade.”

It was on Rochester bridge that Mr. Fairfield asked
this question. We were on our way to Cobham, through
the woods, and we had paused to watch the little
billows sparkling in the sunshine. There was a fresh
breeze blowing, but there was no bite in it that perfect
spring morning.

Thanks to the map it was easy to find a way to Cob-
ham woods. Within a few minutes of our turning out
of the main street at Strood, we were crossing a field
where the young corn was springing. To the nght and
left of us, the tiny shoots were just visible above the
brown earth, which, for all their presence, looked as
brown as in the sowing time; but on the uplands close
at hand, the sunshine was resting upon a fresh young
green that clothed them as with a garment.

My fellow-pilgrim loitered in the footpath and followed
with his eye the swell of the land, where the brown
melted imperceptibly into the green. The chaffinches
were flying about the hedgerows, and the air was musical
with the song of the lark.

‘“T’m almost ashamed to confess that this is the first
time I’ve noticed the ‘mantle slowly greening in the
sun,’” he said. ‘“ That’s Tennyson—it’s a lovely poem

352
COBHAM WOODS 353

‘ The Progress of Spring,’ and I’m particularly fond of
the last part of the opening verse—.

Come, Spring, for now from all the dripping leaves
The spear of ice has wept itself away,

And hour by hour, unfolding woodbine leaves,
O’er his uncertain shadow droops the day.

She comes! The loosen’d rivulets run ;
The frost-bead melts upon her golden hair ;

Her mantle, slowly greening in the Sun,
Now wraps her close, now arching leaves her bare
To breaths of balmier air.

As one gets on in years, every Spring seems more
lovely than the last,’ he went on; ‘and one does so
long for it to come, too.”

“And yet the poets associate it with youth.”

‘Yes, and young love! That’s right enough in a
way. The springtime smells of youthfulness all our
lives long—and no wonder; for after all, it’s Nature re-
newing her youth. When we’re young, we associate it
with some young person of the opposite sex, and when
we're older we associate it, somehow, with our own lost
youth. I’ve often thought there’s something pathetic
in our longing for it so—we oldsters.

Come, Spring! She comes on waste and wood,
On farm and field ; but enter also here,
Diffuse thyself at will thro’ all thy blood,
And tho’ thy violet sicken into sere,
Lodge with me all the year!”

“There’s not so much about it in the later poets,
is there?”

“Perhaps not, except in Tennyson. He’s as mad
about it as the Elizabethans were, and it’s more won-
derful in his case.”

“Why?”

“The winter was a duller time with them than it is
with us—more trying too; and their working hours were
so different. Think at what an unearthly time every-
one got up in the morning; and think what miserable

23
354 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

lighting they had in their homes, and how abominable
their roads were! You can’t wonder that they bubbled
over a bit when Spring came. You read that song at
the end of ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost,’ which begins ‘ When
icicles hang by the wall,’ and then read that song of
Nash’s on the first page of the ‘Golden Treasury ’—

Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king ;
Then blooms each thing ; then maids dance in a ring ;
Cold doth not sting ; the pretty birds do sing—
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo !

And you mustn’t forget they all lived in the country in
a sense; even the town people had the Spring at their
very doors.”

My friend’s desire to ramble to Cobham through the
woods was undoubtedly Pickwickian in its origin; but
the young corn, and the poetical associations which it
had called up, had for the time being, banished all
thought of Dickens from his mind.

‘* And out once more in varnished glory shine
The stars of celandine,”—

he repeated, as he paused before a hedgerow and peered
down into the bank. ‘‘ How they do light the place up!
Do you remember poor old Wordsworth’s woolly mor-
alizings over them? What are those green things
with leaves something like hartstongues ?”

“Lords and ladies—it’s the wild arum, I think;
there’s a wonderful show of them in these parts.”

“JT never heard of them; and yet, I can’t believe
there is 4 common spring flower that isn’t mentioned
somewhere by the old English lyrists, I must make a
note of lords and ladies.”

‘“* Country people call them stink-pots.”

“ Possibly that’s why the old poets forbore to mention
them,” suggested Mr. Fairfield, pausing in the middle
of a note. He grinned as he paid this tribute to the
fastidious delicacy of those ancient minstrels.
COBHAM WOODS 355

When we reached the woods, the spring ferment in
my friend’s mind bubbled up to a pitch that was quite
Elizabethan. He seemed to forget my presence, as he
slouched along the path in front of me, with bent head
and rounded shoulders, and regaled himself with scraps
of spring poetry. One fragment that reached me was
an exhortation to Corinna, a ‘‘ sweet slug-a-bed,” to get
up, and go with him a-maying.

There was an almost laughable incongruity between
this snatch of Herrick, and the grey, elderly figure of
the pilgrim from Chicago; but he followed it up by a
still bolder flight. He burst forth into muffled song—

“ ark, hark ! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ’gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies ;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes :
With every thing that pretty bin ;
My lady sweet, arise, :
Arise,
My lady sweet, arise!”

«The red blood reigns in winter’s pale,’” he said
laughing, when we stopped to listen to the ‘ cheep-
cheep-cheep”’ of an infuriated robin, and he saw that I
was amused. ‘It’s the springtime that’s to blame.
It’s proud-pied April’s fault, that heavy Saturn laughs
and leaps with him.”

There were primroses in the woods, and in stooping
to pluck one, Mr. Fairfield came upon a violet. He
stood holding it between thumb and finger, and gazing
upon it like a man in a dream; but unless I was much
mistaken, his eyes were too misty to see anything very
clearly. He told me afterwards, that never before had
he chanced upon an English wood-violet, or been in
England in early springtime.

It was not until we had left the woods and were
passing Cobham Hall, that Mr. Fairfield made any
reference to Dickens.
356 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘We've come the way Mr. Pickwick and Snodgrass
and Winkle took, when they traced Tupman to the
Leather Bottle,” he said, “‘and it’s the way Dickens
says he took after feasting the Six Poor Travellers.
There’s the Hall. What a capital view you get of two
sides of it at this time of year!”

In passing, I may here say that: during our stay in
Rochester, we knocked at the door of Richard Watts’
hospital in the High Street, and spent a pleasant half-
hour there, under the guidance of the matron. We
saw the modern room in which the Six Poor Travellers
have their suppers and entertain themselves till bed-
time, and we rejoiced to find that there was a good
stock of well-thumbed magazines, to temper the
austerity of the pious volumes provided for their mental
refreshment. We saw, too, the ancient gallery and
the six sleeping rooms with their big chimneys; and
we turned over the visitors’ book, in which under date
of the eleventh of May, 1854, appear the autographs of
Charles Dickens and Mark Lemon.

It was interesting to learn that it was not very un-
usual for the matron to be told by a stranger, after she
had shown him over the place as a visitor, that in lean
years gone by, he had been thankful to spend a night
there as a Poor Traveller. Nowadays, the six are
chosen near the bridge, but at the time when the
“‘ Seven Poor Travellers’ was written, they were chosen
in the street outside the hospital. The story runs, that
Dickens gained admission by giving one of the chosen
ones half-a-crown in exchange for his ticket.

After having seen the place it was doubly pleasant
to read what Dickens wrote about the hearth, which
the charity of Richard Watts has kept warm for over
three hundred years; and it was pleasant to think that
Dickens had been the means of restoring that charity
to its proper channel. Pleasant too, to know, that de-
spite the efforts of certain pundits at Whitehall, the
desire of the founder that six poor travellers should every
THE LEATHER BOTTLE 357

night enjoy his bounty in the ancient city of his adop-
tion, had not been disregarded, and that his injunction
to the persons in charge, to keep the place sweet and
‘“‘courteously entreat the said poor travellers,’ seemed
quite safe in the hands of the present custodian.

At the Leather Bottle at Cobham, the landlord was
courteous enough to serve our modest repast of biscuits
and cheese in what is called the “ Pickwick”’ room,
and which purports to be the “long row-roofed room ’
where Mr. Pickwick and his two companions discovered
Mr. Tupman consoling himself with roast fowl and
bacon. It is now a well-equipped museum of portraits
and relics. Before seeking the inn, we had saun-
tered through the college and had peeped into the
hall; and we had wondered whether Dickens had the
place in mind when he wrote “The Haunted Man,”
and whether Stanfield had a faint recollection of it,
when he drew his picture of the great Dinner Hall that
forms the tailpiece of the original edition.

There were two soldiers cruising round the Pickwick
room when we began our lunch. There was no
mistaking the interest which they took in the pictures
and relics; and many were the whispered discussions
that they held before one and another of them.

“Intelligent fellows, those sergeants!” remarked Mr
Fairfield, as soon as they departed. ‘‘They’re a fine
body of men, your non-commissioned officers ; I never
lose an opportunity of having a chat with them. If I'd
had half a chance of breaking the ice with those two,
I'd have found out what they knew about Dickens.”

« They ought to like him; he was particularly happy
in his soldiers.”

‘He was splendid—better than any one who went
before him. Just think of George in ‘ Bleak House’
and his friend the gunner, and that magnificent Old
Girl! And there’s Dick Doubledick and his captain,
and there’s that French corporal in ‘Somebody’s Lug-

> 99

gage .
358 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

‘Do you remember the sergeant in ‘Great Expecta-
tions’? ”’ :

“T’m not sure he isn’t the pick of the basket. Man
alive! is there anything better in all Dickens than that
page or two, where that sergeant asks Joe to mend the
handcuffs, and he drinks toasts with Uncle Pumble-
chook ? ”

My friend was all aglow by this time. ‘Mr. Swin-
burne thinks the waterside ‘ Jack,’ near the end of the
book, one of Dickens’ finest bits, So he is; but the -
‘Jack’ isn’t a patch upon the sergeant.”

“T’ve just been thinking,” he said, coming out of a
reverie, a little later—‘‘I’ve just been thinking, there
are several notable sergeants in literature. I feel an
interest in them, for I’ve worn the chevrons myself.”

“'There’s the bleeding sergeant in ‘Macbeth’.”’

My friend laughed. ‘‘I’d forgotten him. He’s a
terrible person—a sort of bleeding chorus. He isn’t
Shakespeare’s at all, really. I began my list with Far-
quhar ; Sergeant Kite in the ‘ Recruiting Officer’ was
the earliest I thought of. He was one of the famous
parts of old comedy. There’sa deal of humour in Far-
quhar ; he’s a little like Goldsmith in some of his touches.
It’s a pity he’s such a beast.”

“There’s Sergeant Bothwell in ‘Old Mortality ’.”

“T thought of him; but he doesn’t come next. My
second sergeant came out of Fielding. He was Amelia’s
foster-brother, Sergeant Atkinson. He got a commission,
and so did Sergeant Doubledick.”

‘“«Tsn’t there a sergeant in ‘ Vanity Fair’? I seem
to remember something about one, in the scene in
Hyde Park, where little George is introduced to little
Rawdon.”

“He wasn’t a sergeant,’ said my friend, after a
moment’s reflection; ‘‘he was Corporal Clink of the
Guards—I’m not sure that the British Guards have
sergeants, He introduced little George to Rawdon
Crawley. Little Rawdon was there on the pony Lord
THE LEATHER BOTTLE 359

Southdown gave him, and the other boy was put up
behind. What a pretty scene it is! How capital all
Thackeray’s boys are.”

“Do you remember little Miles, and how he took his
gold moidore to George and Theo, because he’d heard
they were so poor?”

‘*T do, indeed; that was in Church Street, Lambeth.
He had a pony too. A little patter of horses’ hoofs
came galloping up to the gate—”’

Mr. Fairfield broke off; and fora minute or two he
sat drawing at his cigar very slowly, and with an absent
look on his face. When he spoke again, I knew that
his thoughts had been ‘‘ out yonder ’’.

‘It’s a heart-breaking little chapter. There’s some-
thing about the child running upstairs to see Theo and
the baby, in the little tramping boots of which he was
so proud. It’s some years since I read it; the truth is,
I don’t like reading about little boys who die.” Grand-
father Fairfield made this confession with a simplicity
that went to my heart.

There’s another corporal in Thackeray—that horrible
old Brock in ‘ Catherine,’’”’ he resumed, “and we’re
forgetting the biggest fish in the basket—Corporal Trim.”

“Do soldiers care for Dickens?” I asked later in
the afternoon, when we were making our way towards
Shorne, past coppices where, a day or two before, the
saplings had stood out in individual nakedness, and
where now there was an universal, misty shimmer of
pale green, which told that spring had come at last.

“T think so. Those two sergeants at the Leather
Bottle reminded me of something that happened to
me in Westminster Abbey. I was mooning about
Poets’ Corner one Saturday afternoon, and I noticed a
big trooper of your Life Guards standing still and star-
ing about him, in an awkward sort of way. He was
just the sort of soldier that so irritated Daudet, when
he was in England—a gigantic fellow, in a tight blue
jacket which pinched him at the waist. I didn’t see
360 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

any wonderful arrogance in his face though, but then I
don’t belong to a Latin race. Asa matter of fact, he
had a very ordinary, simple countenance. I could see
he was looking for something. His eye passed over the
busts and statues—Shakespeare—Thackeray— Dryden
—Scott—Tennyson—Longfellow, and a score of others
—without interest or any sort of recognition. Then he
caught sight of me, and he came clanking across the
pavement—‘ Where is Charles Dickens’ grave?’ I’ve
often thought of that big soldier.”

We found Shorne, and sauntered: for a while about
the churchyard that Dickens loved to sit in on hot
summer afternoons; and thanks to the map, we made
our way by field-paths to Gadshill We came out in
the Dover road, a little to the west of the house.

“‘He came by here, when he drove home from
Gravesend station on his return from America,” re-
marked my friend, meditatively. ‘That was early in
May, 1868. He drove in a basket phaeton—I wonder
if the ponies with the silver bells were in it—and two
newfoundlands followed. They lifted up their heads
to have their ears pulled by their master. The farmers
turned out in their market-chaises to welcome him, and
all the houses along the road were flagged.”

«He was frightfully knocked up, wasn’t he?”

“He was when he left New York, but the voyage
had done wonders, and after he’d been resting here for
a little time, he seemed to get quite himself. He never
really was the same after that awful tour, but the mis-
chief didn’t show much that summer. It seems to
have been one of the gayest times they ever had at
Gadshill. Longfellow was one of the visitors. In his
honour, Dickens turned out two post carriages with pos-
tilions in the red jackets of the ‘old red, royal Dover
road,’ and there was a picnic on Bluebell Hill—that’s
about halfway between Rochester and Maidstone.”

‘“‘T was reading in one of your books about an ex-
cursion to Canterbury with the red postilions.”
EASTGATE HOUSE 361

“That was in June, 1869. They drove there,
picnicking on the way. That was Dickens’ last visit
to Canterbury—Dolby says they went through Faver-
sham, but I think that’s a mistake.”

“ Why ?”

“Tt would be out of the way. The road from here
to Canterbury is a straight line, and as old as the hills.
At one time the mail coaches passed through Faver-
sham by taking two sides of a triangle, and, perhaps,
Dickens did the same. I like to follow your old coach-
ing roads. I never move about the country without a
small ‘ Paterson ’—second edition, 1772—that I picked
up years ago. I know the old way from London to
Canterbury almost by heart—Greenwich, Shooter’s
Hill,—do you remember Jerry Cruncher overtaking Mr.
Lorry’ s coach there ?— Welling, Dartford—that was the
first change—Northfleet, Chalk Turnpike, Gadshill,
Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Rainham, Sittingbourne.
There are three or four little places between that and
Canterbury, but I’ve forgotten their.names.”

We made a long halt when we reached Gadshill
Place; and after some inward conflict, Mr. Fairfield
rooted up from the wall a few strands of stonecrop, and
bore them away in his cigar-case, carefully embedded in
Kentish earth.

We did not forget to devote a long morning to East-
gate House. The moment that Mr. Fairfield crossed
the threshold his enthusiasm rose to boiling point. He
could not forbear saying a word of admiration to the
grey-haired military-looking official, who took our walk-
ing sticks, and that functionary proved to be as en-
thusiastic as himself. It was pleasant to hear the
custodian enlarging upon the beauties of his charge, and
sounding the praises of the Corporation for having ac-
quired and restored it; and it was comical to hear Mr.
Fairfield chiming in with a like fervour and conviction.
The two got so friendly that when, at last, we moved on,
362 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

I believe the custodian would have gladly forfeited a
week’s wages to be free to act as cicerone to that ap-
preciative visitor.

The present writer’s recollection of the time which
he and his companion spent in that old mansion, is
not very clear as to details; but when, in his mind’s
eye, he sees those Elizabethan rooms, with their small,
square panelling, quaint windows and noble fireplaces,
and he recalls the thoroughness and loving care that
mark every feature of the restoration, he too feels his
heart warm towards the Mayor, Aldermen and Burgesses
of the City of Rochester, and he ventures to breathe a
hope that their example may prompt other corpora-
tions to go and do likewise.

‘“‘ There’s only one thing in this place that I can find
any fault with,” said Mr. Fairfield, when, having gone
through all the rooms, and made a tolerably faithful in-
spection of the articles that are exhibited in some of
them, we had returned to the great white chamber on
the first floor; ‘‘and that is the bust of Dickens below.
I don’t presume to criticize it as a work of art, but
nothing will persuade me that he had a gilt moustache.”

“Tt struck me as a little out of the common.”

‘‘A gilt moustache is an improbable thing in itself;
and it’s impossible to believe that if Charles Dickens
had sported such a rarity, his contemporaries wouldn’t
have noticed it. We should have some record of the fact,
sir.”

‘* What a room this is,” he said, his eyes still twink-
ling with the enjoyment of his own facetiousness; ‘‘ and
it’s more than three hundred years old. Fifteen-ninety-
one is the date cut upon that beam across the ceiling.
Just think of more than ten generations of men and
women having passed through it! Why, when this
house was built, there were lots of people living who
had seen Henry the Highth. Just think of the changes
in dress, and in habits and in folks’ ways of looking at
things, in three hundred years! It comes home to one
so in an old family house like this——”
EASTGATE HOUSE 363

“ But I thought the place was a school?” I interposed.
_ “Surely, you don’t suppose that a house like this was
built for a school!’ was my friend’s almost irritable re-
tort. ‘TI daresay its career as a school goes a long way
back,” he went on. ‘Put it as far back as Queen
Anne’s time, if you like, and that leaves more than a
century unaccounted for.”

“Tt’s a noble fireplace,” said I, conscious that my in-
terruption had been inconsiderate.

“Tt’s glorious. Can’t you fancy some old cavalier
warming his toes before those blue tiles?reading a
folio Shakespeare perhaps; some old chap rusting out
the fag end of his life under the Commonwealth. I
hope he didn’t sit here dipping his poor old nose into a
tankard, and bemoaning the days gone by.”

My friend spoke as if he saw his old cavalier in the
flesh, and was doubtful only as to the exact nature of
his employment, as he sat before that generous hearth.

“Were you thinking of Sir Henry Lee?” I asked.

“Oh, no! As things went in those days, he was
reasonably well off; he had a daughter, and he had his
own roof to cover him. My old cavalier was Sir Ashby
Freestonhay :—

I gave the King my house, my land; I gave my golden store ;
I gave him all my five tall sons—I could not give him more.

And two were slain at Chalgrove Field, and two on Newark wall ;
But yet I had my youngest born, the best-beloved of all.

And oft I murmured in the field, when we were side by side,
* Accept, O Lord, the ripened ear and let the green abide !’

But I was doomed to bear alone the bitter days that are—
He fell with flying lovelocks, on the hillside at Dunbar.”

‘“‘T hope the old gentleman lived to see the Restora-
tion,” said I.

‘“‘ Better not! Men of his stamp had a heart-breaking
time, then and afterwards—

But worth must wither with kings like Charles,
And the hands that kinged him were Albermarle’s.
364 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

That’s how Mr. Beesly puts it. Marvell had anticipated
him in that queer rhyme, by the way. If our old cava-
lier hung on, he may have sat in this room and heard
De Ruyter’s guns booming up the Medway. That
wouldn’t make him very happy.”

“ Let us have another look out upon the Dover road
before we go,” he suggested, and we moved across to
the deep bay window, that faces the hearth, and is it-
self a tiny room. So far does it project that the south
side commands a good view of the High Street.

‘“‘T never before was in a very old house that stood
beside one of your great main roads,” he said musingly,
his eyes fixed upon the thoroughfare. “It’s not easy
to grasp the fact that more than ten generations have
stood at this window and looked out upon that street ;
and when you think of what there was for them to look
at, one’s brain reels.”

“ Shakespeare,” I suggested, knowing that the name
never failed to kindle him,

« Yes, Shakespeare rode by here—and he had his
cloak with him. He wouldn’t travel forth without it,
when he had a journey to Dover before him. I hope
he wasn’t obliged to spur his poor beast; I hate that
line in the Sonnets about the wretch answering heavily
with a groan.”

“T daresay he made that sonnet on horseback,’’ he
went on. ‘The steady trampling of a horse, who had
to go all day, would be just the thing to set a poet to
work. It would be nothing more than a walk; it’s
wonderful what a lot of ground a horse can cover at
that pace. I’m thinking of Sir Philip Sidney: he used
to hammer out his verses on horseback. He says so—

Highway ! since you my chief Parnassus be,
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet,
Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet,
More oft than to a chamber melody.

He can’t have passed this house, though; I’m pretty
sure he died before 1591.”
EASTGATE HOUSE 365

‘‘ Have you noticed that letter from Wellington in the
Bull coffee-room, written in November, 1842, ordering
posthorses to be ready for him?’ I asked. ‘He must
have passed here.”

‘No doubt ; and Marlborough too, and Prince Rupert.
Wellington must have passed many a time—he was War-
den of the Cinque Ports, and I’m pretty sure the way
to Walmer lay through Canterbury. And think, too,
how often Pitt must have passed, when he was Lord
‘Warden—perhaps in regimentals sometimes. He must
have been a queer figure, when ‘out he rode a-colonel-
ling’. And, by the way, Wellington drove by this house
when he came home from the Peninsular campaign.
I forget where I read about it; but I’m sure he landed
at Dover very early one morning. No one knew when
he would arrive, but the guns saluted his ship; and
the whole town turned out on the beach to welcome
him. He took a post-chaise to London, and he out-
raced everything else on the road, and he wasn’t re-
cognized till he got to Westminster. That wasin June,
1814. It’s interesting to think of his galloping past
this window, and not a soul in Rochester knowing
who he was. How familiar the sound of the post-
horn must have been in this house when the place was
young! There was some regulation, which made the
postboys wind it pretty often; and then, think of the
coaches! I’ve read in one of the guide-books that
ninety coaches passed over Gadshill every day.”

“ We shall stand here till midnight, if I begin talk-
ing about the Dover road,” he said laughing, as he
straightened himself, preparatory to making a move;
“T’m not equal to coping with the ghosts of more than
three centuries. Till the railways came, everybody
went by this house. We'll leave it at that.”

‘“‘ Perhaps they heard a posthorn here so late as June,
1869,” I observed, meaningly.

Mr. James C. Fairfield is ‘‘ very gleg at the uptake ”’.
“T forgot that,” he said instantly, and he stepped back
3866 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

to have one more look into the High Street. ‘‘ The
posthorns aren’t mentioned; but posthorns or no post-
horns, the red postilions went by here.”

POSTSCRIPT
THE OLD ENGLISH LYRISTS
(Written in an Anthology)

A tear for the daffadowndillies
That die in the sweet o’ the year ;

A smile for the shy Amaryllis

Who flees from her lover in fear ;

A mocking arraignment of Phyllis—
Mirth, melody, pathos are here.

A garland of roses and myrtle

A wreath for the Goddess of Love:
A hymn to her swan and her turtle,
Or, when we alight from above,

A rapture to Julia’s kirtle,

An ode upon Annabel’s glove.

A cadence that falls and recovers,
To ravish the ear as it flows ;

A music that pauses and hovers,
Most exquisite-sweet to the close—
O Lovelace our lover of lovers !

O passionate strain of Montrose !

A music to calm or to fever—

The strings are a-quiver with ire ;

And, lo! at the will of the weaver,

A harmony breathes from the lyre

More soft than “ the wool of the beaver,”
More sweet than ‘‘the bud of the brier”.

No less than a score are our featest,
So deftly they rise and they fall,

But, tried by the test that is meetest
—The music we love to recall—
There is one who is ever the sweetest :
SwEET WILL is the sweetest of all.

And here is a hoard of their treasure,
A garner o’erflowing with grain,

The fruit of their toil and their leisure,
The sum of their joy and their pain ;
And I sing to each merry old measure,
And run through the gamut again.
CHAPTER XXIX

WE INSPECT THE BUFF-JERKINS AND MATCH-
LOCKS IN ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL

“«T woNnbDER you take so little interest in the cathedral.”

“T almost wonder at it myself,” was Mr. Fairfield’s
half-serious answer.

We were pottering about the Close on the morning
of our last day, when I made my remark. He seemed
never to weary of the old houses, and the old walled
gardens, with here and there a gigantic lilac showing
above the crumbling stonework, and it struck me as
odd that he should treat the cathedral with indifference.
We had once or twice peeped in through the great
west doorway; but though on one occasion, when he
was busy at the Bull, reading and making notes, I had
spent an hour or so within the walls, he, to the best of
my belief, had never crossed the threshold.

“T take no interest in architecture as architecture,”
he explained; “and I don’t think I care much for
buildings of any kind, apart from their associations
with one’s fellow-creatures.”

‘“« And why not take an interest in-cathedral people ?”’

“They don’t seem to me like fellow-creatures. I’m
not speaking of the moderns; I mean the medievals.
I simply can’t form any conception of what the big
men were like; and as for the small fry, they seem to
me to have been no better than so many mites, living
and dying in an old cheese.”

“That's a very narrow view,” I protested, laughing.

“T’m almost ashamed of it myself, for I don’t think

367
368 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

I could justify it, if I were put to the question. But
right or wrong, that’s how I feel; and I can no more
take an interest in a cathedral because of its associations,
than I can take an interest in a beehive.”

“Do you remember what Dalgetty thought of a cer-
tain highlander’s spiritual condition,” I asked, solemnly.
I knew that the passage was one of his favourites.

“Perhaps you think the same of me,” he suggested,
with a twinkling eye. ‘‘ Well, I hope, you’re better
qualified to form an opinion than he was.”

“*T believe my friend Ranald will be found in his
heart to be little better than a heathen,’’’ he quoted,
admiringly. ‘What an exquisite touch of character,
that is! But you’re wrong in thinking that there’s
anything heathenish in my view. I daresay it’s the
fault of my early environment; but the truth is, I can’t
associate these great places with anything but pageantry,
and that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to me at all. e-
clesiastical pageantry stinks in my Puritan nostrils.”

“T rather want to see the choir again, now I’ve re-
read ‘Hdwin Drood’.”

‘‘T’ve seen it three or four times; and I’ve seen the
crypt and been up the tower,” he answered, grinning ;
“and as a matter of fact, I’ve been over the whole
place. This isn’t my first visit to Rochester. I don’t
pretend to be an ecclesiologist, but I’m not quite a
savage. By-the-by, when I was last here, one of the
vergers told me that the original of Durdles was a
drunken old German mason, who lived at a public-house
in the High Street.”

‘“T suppose you won’t mind seeing the choir
again ?”

‘‘Not in the least, if you won’t mind my dropping a
hint to the guide, that we don’t want the various orders
of architecture enlarged upon. That sort of thing bores
me beyond endurance.”

I waited with some interest to hear that hint dropped,
but I waited in vain. From the moment we sur-
ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL _ 369

rendered ourselves into the verger’s custody, the de-
scendant of the Pilgrim Fathers hung spellbound upon
his lips; and for nearly two hours he dealt with us as
he would. There is something in my friend’s enthu-
siasm that never fails to strike an answering fire from
out any cicerone who is proud of his charge; and truth-
fully I can aver that, of all the guides we met with in
our rambles, not one was more responsive than our
verger at Rochester.

“T had a sort of notion we might come here this
morning,’ remarked Mr. Fairfield as he fished out his
pocket-book, and began to cut and shuffle the memo-
randa it contained. By this time, we had passed
through the choir and had paused to admire the vista
westward. ‘‘ Where does the precentor sit?”

Our guide pointed out one of the two desks on the
north side of the choir, which stood out beyond the
others.

‘Ah! So that’s where Jasper stood that brilliant
morning, and chanted and sang and became musically
fervid. And Deputy peeped in from the nave yonder,
and Datchery sat in one of those stalls. But where on
earth is there a pillar to hide the Princess Puffer?”

The forlorn air with which Mr. Fairfield put this
question was too much for the verger’s gravity. Smil-
ing very broadly, he intimated that he could offer no
opinion, as he never read ‘‘ Edwin Drood”’,

If my friend had been the Dean of Rochester, and
our guide had just admitted with a laugh that he had
never read the Church Catechism, Mr. Fairfield could
not have regarded him with a more compassionate re-
proachfulness.

“You must give me your name and address,” he said,
as he brought out a pencil. The child of darkness
laughed again, as he furnished the desired particulars.

“Tt was that pillar,” asserted the enthusiast with
great decision, as soon as he had recovered from the
shock. ‘That puts her on the left-front of the pre-

24
370 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

centor’s desk ; and she must have crouched down and
kept out of his sight, somehow.”

The verger and I looked from the desk to the pillar,
and our eyes met. Then the verger stroked his chin
and covered his mouth with his hand.

“We had better leave it at ‘somehow,’”’ said I.

Some muskets and buff-coats, which were shown to us
in a little boxed-off place, near the entrance to the crypt,
and which were said to have been left behind by
Oliver’s soldiers, and not discovered until many years
afterwards, awoke in Mr. Fairfield an interest that sur-
prised me. It was unusual for him to be much im-
pressed by personal relics of no particular history; but
as soon as these articles had been pointed out he be-
came wholly engrossed in them. He examined them
with close attention, and it was impossible to get him
away until he added a note or two to his memoranda,

“This is quite a discovery,’ was his triumphant
whisper. ‘Dickens knew of these things. He had
them in mind when he made Jingle speak of matchlocks
and buff-jerkins in connexion with the cathedral. I
don’t remember exactly what he says, but it’s something
about little Saxon doors—confessional boxes—buff-jerkins
—matchlocks and so forth. I don’t believe the reference
has ever been explained. One thing at least is certain
—Mr. Hammond Hall doesn’t explain it; and that
goes a long way—”

My friend pulled up abruptly ; for the verger, who had
left us for a moment to speak to a colleague, had now
come back within earshot. The great discovery must
not be allowed to leak abroad, prematurely.

‘“‘ And these carvings are the sort of thing some people
call very interesting,” was Mr. Fairfield’s envenomed
comment as he stared at the chapter-house doorway.

“Why shouldn’t it be interesting to people if they
think it symbolizes the triumph of the Gospel over the
Law?”

“T shouldn’t mind, if I thought it had an intelligent
ROCHESTER CATHEDRAL — 371

meaning of any sort, but as likely as not, it’s the mere
frenzy of some addle-brained old symbolist of the
middle ages.”

“Tt must have had some meaning to him.”

“Oh, yes. I daresay he knew whether that left-hand
figure ought to be a woman, as it now is, or a bishop, as
it was till they changed the head. Nowadays, we’re
told it’s a woman; fifty years hence, some learned
ecclesiologist will be saying it ought to be an ele-
phant.”

“‘T so detest that symbolical work; I can’t discuss it
with common patience,” he explained to me afterwards.
‘“You never get any forrader, if you try to puzzle it out.
And T’ll tell you why—the people who take to that sort
of thing always get so muddle-headed, no one can ex-
plain their mysteries but themselves.”

‘So many men, so many readings!” he continued,
and he began to emphasize his words with a waving
forefinger, as was his custom when picking his phrases.
“« And it’s just the same with music. You play a piece
descriptive of something, and then ask your audience
what has been described. ‘The Battle of Waterloo,’
says Tom. ‘A caravan crossing the Great Sahara,’
says Dick. ‘Nonsense,’ says Harry; ‘the thing’s as
plain as a pikestaff—it’s the meditation of a lighthouse-
keeper’ !”’

“Well, fortunately, it doesn’t matter two straws.”’

Caring nothing for music or archeology, my friend
was quite ready to subscribe to this proposition, but
before he had committed himself, it struck him that
the principle involved might be extended to certain pet
hobbies of his own.

“No, no; we ought always to get at the truth,” said
he. He uttered this sentiment with virtuous gravity,
and at the same time he closed his left eye.

Before I leave the subject of the cathedral, I feel
bound to put on record that one of the remarks made
by me during our perambulation was a little unlucky.
872 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

“That’s the deanery,” said our guide, when we were
standing at a small doorway, situate somewhere at the
east end of the building.

“And that, I suppose, is the deanery garden,” I re-
marked, in all innocence.

I confess that the enclosure to which I was pointing
was of limited extent; and speaking from recollection,
it contained nothing more. distinctly horticultural than
grass and bushes; but beyond all question it was a
- garden of some sort, and through it ran a pathway, that
undoubtedly went up to the house. Why, under these
circumstances, my observation should lead Mr. Fairfield
and the verger to exchange glances of pity and con-
tempt was incomprehensible. After a pause, my friend
was kind enough to enlighten me.

“The Dean of Rochester is Dean Hole,” he said
frostily.

“The finest rose garden in England,” murmured the
verger, by way of clinching the rebuke.

“You want to pack up, I suppose,” I observed, as
we turned outof the west door. I had noticed that my
friend had consulted his watch more than once during
the last half-hour.

“No; the truth is, I want to have.a look at the ball-
room, before they take away last night’s trimmings. I
forgot all about it till we were inside the cathedral.”

For some days past, his devotion to the ballroom had
not been forced upon my notice. I had one morn-
ing made with him what may be called the grand
tour of the hotel, which had of course included that
magical chamber; and we had then inspected among
other things, the so-called ‘“‘ Pickwick” rooms, the bed-
- stead in which Queen Victoria slept a few months be-
fore her accession to the throne, and the room numbered
seventeen, which Dickens is said to have slept in more
than once, and which contains the cheval glass that
used to stand in his bedroom at Gadshill Place.

For all I knew to the contrary, Mr. Fairfield might
A DANCE AT THE BULL 373

have paid the ballroom many furtive visits during our
sojourn, but, after the first day, it had ceased to figure
in his conversation. On our last evening, however, it
had come to the front once more. We were mounting
the main staircase and had almost reached the corridor,
when we heard dance music proceeding from some room
near at hand. My companion stopped dead for a
moment, to make sure whence the sound came; and
then with a whistle of astonishment, he dashed up the
few remaining stairs and made towards the ballroom
door.

“What's going on, Charles?” he demanded of an
under-waiter, who was loitering about the passage.

‘‘ Large private party from London, sir; been spend-
ing the day here. Finishin’ off with a dance before
they go back.”

‘“Well, this is luck!” he said, as soon as the youth
had faded away. ‘J never thought of that old room
being used for dancing nowadays—and to think of our
being here just at the right time!”

It was a merry party in the room that night. The
music was so brisk that it set our feet a-tapping as we
stood and listened, and above the music and the move-
ment of the dance, there rose now and again a sound
of happy laughter.

Mr. Fairfield was in high feather. ‘Bless the boys
and girls!’ he exclaimed; ‘I’m glad they’re having a
good time in the old room.”

“You'd like to join them?”

I threw this out in mere playfulness, and he met it
with a laugh; but on second thoughts he seemed to find
it worth considering. He stood pondering over it, chin
in hand.

‘“No,” he said, ‘“‘I shouldn’t care to join them, even
if they wanted me. I say ‘if,’ you observe. And be-
sides, it wouldn’t be seemly for me to be cutting capers
to a barn-dance thing like that. If I dance, it must be
to ‘the very genteelest of tunes—‘‘ Water parted” or
374 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

the minuet in Ariadne’.” His gravity had all vanished,
and he brought out the quotation with his usual keen
relish. ‘‘ Water parted’ was a song of Dr. Arne’s.
It was a favourite of Charles Lamb’s; he used to hear
it in the Temple when he was a child. And he heard
it sung in his First Play.”

The dance had come to an end by this time. ‘We've
no business to be eavesdropping here,” he said; and he
turned away to make good his words. But at that
moment the piano struck up the prelude to ‘‘ The Miller
and the Maid,” and he wheeled round to listen. "When
the last verse was reached, he followed the girl’s voice
with a low murmur of his own, just audible to me, who
stood beside him :—

“¢ And it’s now you know it all,’’ he said,
“So bless you dear, and go.””—
““Oh! miller, miller, wait a bit,
I need not hurry so,
If you’ve something more to tell me,
You can tell me as we go.”
And he’d nothing left to tell her,
Yet he told it her, I know,
For one never tires of telling,
‘** Oh sweetheart, I love you so!”

“Now the boys are finding their partners,’ he
said, when through the door we heard a sound of talk
and movement. ‘It makes one think of old days.
Well, well, we can’t put the clock back five-and-thirty
years; and I don’t know that one would, if one could.
‘We won't be envious of the boys—perhaps it’s as well,
though, we can’t see them; it might make us lachry-
mose.

For they are lusty and gay and trimmed,
And we are rusty and heavy-limbed,
And ’tis with eyes with a tear bedimmed,
We watch the boys go wooing.”

And warbling the last line in high good-humour with
himself, he took my arm and we passed into the corridor.
THE ROCHESTER COACH = 375

“We hail the vine, that once the myrtle knew,”

he exclaimed with bacchanalian fervour, as he caught
sight of the under-waiter. ‘“ Atour time of life a tankard
is the thing to warm the heart—

And that I think’s a reason fair, to fill my glass again.

I go with Captain Morris in these matters. Charles !—
my friend and I are quite ready for our soda-water.”

ENVOY
THE ROCHESTER COACH
(1830)

Well on our way, in the fresh of the morn,

Over Blackheath, and in sight of the corn :

Peter the guard gives a rouse on his horn—
Peter is stalwart and merry !

Breasting the Hill, with a pause at the top ;

Dashing to Welling with never a stop,

Stretching away for the land of the hop,
White with the bloom of the cherry.

Sunbeams at play upon collar.and bar—
Yo-ho!

Horses at work like the Trojans they are—
Yo-ho! Yo-ho-o!

Red-coated George with the team on his mind,

Red-coated Peter a-chatter behind,

Rounding his talk with a musical wind—
Yo-ho-hi-ho-ho-o! Tan-tiv-y !

Changing at Dartford: and time for a snap !
Trim little damsel in pinner and cap;
Peter is ready to vouch for the tap—

Calls for a measure and drains it.
Chestnut and roans and a flea-bitten grey,
All in a fidget to gallop away,

Tossing and stamping-—‘‘ As good as a play!”

Peter asserts and maintains it.

Off to the horn in a spatter of rain—
Yo-ho!
Bowling along in the sunshine, again—
Yo-ho! Yo-ho-o!
“* Now it'll last for the rest o’ the day!
Pride o’ the mornin’, and welcome, I say :
Hasn’t it brought out the smell o’ the may ?”’—
Yo-ho-hi-ho-ho-o! Tan-tiv-y!
376 RAMBLES WITH AN AMERICAN

Gravesend behind us; the marshes are bare—
“* Snug little cargoes they run over there ;
Farmers in league with ’em ; all playing fair ”’ ;
This is how Peter discourses.
Passing the toll-house, and passing the mill ;
Passing the cedars on top of Gadshill ;
Peter is playing his horn with a will;
George is intent on his horses.

«Steady my beauties!’ he’s holding ’em fast—
Yo-ho !
Nursing ’em up for the gallop at last—
Yo-ho! Yo-ho-o ! :
Done with the gallop, and back to the pull;
Crossing the bridge, where the river is full ;
Landing us safe in the yard of the Bull—
Yo-ho-hi-ho-hi-ho-ho-ho-o! Tan-tiv-y !

ABERDEEN ; THE UNIVERSITY PRESS