Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets Part 2

the sweet Belphoebe, the gallant Britomart, and the brave troop of knights, Arthur the magnanimous, the Red-Cross Knight, the holy and hardly-tried, the just Artegall, and all their triumphs over Archimagos, false Duessas, and the might of dragon natures. This was a life, a labor which clothed the ground with golden flowers, made heaven look forth from between the clouds and the mountain tops, and songs of glory wake on the winds that swept past his towers. Here he accomplished and saw given to the world half his great work--a whole, and an immortal whole as it regarded his fame and great mission in the world--to breathe lofty and unselfish thoughts into the souls of men; to make truth, purity, and high principle the objects of desire.

Here, too, he married the woman of his heart, chosen on the principle of his poetry, not for her lands, but for her beauty and her goodness.

Nothing is known of her, not even her name, except that it was Elizabeth, that she was eminently beautiful, and of low degree. Some conjecture her to be of Cork, and a merchant's daughter, but Spenser himself says she was a country la.s.s. Thus, in the Faerie Queene:

"Such were these G.o.ddesses which you did see: But that _fourth maid_, which there amid them traced Who can aread what creature may she bee; Whether a creature, or a G.o.ddess graced With heavenly gifts from heaven first enraced!

But whatso sure she was, she worthy was To be the fourth with these three other placed: Yet was she certes but a country la.s.se; Yet she all other country la.s.ses far did pa.s.se.

So far, as doth the daughter of the day All other lesser lights in light excell: So far doth she in beautiful array Above all other la.s.ses bear the bell: Ne less in virtue that beseemes her well Doth she exceede the rest of all her race; For which the Graces that there wont to dwell Have for more honor brought her to this place, And graced her so much to be another Grace.

Another Grace she well deserves to be, In whom so many graces gathered are, Excelling much the mean of her degree; Divine resemblance, beauty sovereign rare, Firm chast.i.ty, that spight no blemish dare; All which she with such courtesie doth grace That all her peres can not with her compare, But quite are dimmed when she is in place; She made me often pipe, and now to pipe apace.

Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky, That all the earth doth lighten with thy rayes, Great Gloriana, greatest majesty, Pardon thy shepherd, 'mongst so many lays As he hath sung of thee in all his days, To make one mencine of thy poor handmaid, And underneath thy feet to place her praise, That when thy glory shall be far displayed In future age, of her this mention may be made."

_Faerie Queene_, b. xii., c. x.

These were known in Spenser's days to be an affectionate monument of immortal verse to his wife, still more n.o.bly erected in his Epithalamion; and to identify it more, in his Amoretti he tells us that his queen, his mother, and his wife were all of the same name.

"The which three times thrice happy hath me made With gifts of body, fortune, and of minde, Ye _three Elizabeths_ forever live, That thus such graces unto me did give."

Here, too, he enjoyed the memorable visit of Sir Walter Raleigh, which he commemorates in Colin Clout. He had now ready for the press the first three books of his Faerie Queene; and these he read to Raleigh during his visit, probably as he has described it in pastoral style, as they sat together under the green alders on the banks of the Mulla.

"I sate, as was my trade, Under the foot of Mole, that mountain h.o.r.e, Keeping my sheep among the coolly shade Of the green alders by the Mulla's sh.o.r.e.

There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out; Whether allured with my pipe's delight, Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about, Or thither led by chance, I know not right, Whom when I asked from what place he came, And how he hight, himself he did ycleep The Shepherd of the Ocean by name, And said he came far from the main sea deep.

He, sitting me beside in the same shade, Provoked me to play some pleasant fit," &c.

Raleigh was enchanted with the poem. He was just returned from a voyage to Portugal, and was now bound for England. He was, it appears, himself weary of his own location, for he soon after sold it to the Earl of Cork. He pressed Spenser to accompany him, put his poem to press, and by means of its fame to win the more earnest patronage of Queen Elizabeth.

"When thus our pipes we both had wearied well, Quoth he, and each an end of singing made, He 'gan to cast great liking to my lore, And great disliking to my luckless lot, That banished had myself, like wight forlore, Into that waste, where I was quite forgot.

The which to leave, thenceforth he counseled me, Unmeet for man in whom was aught regardful, And wend with him, his Cynthia to see; Where grace was great, and bounty most rewardful.

So what with hope of good, and hate of ill, He me persuaded forth with him to fare.

So to the sea we came."

Here it comes out that, however much more clothed with trees, and however much better this spot was in Spenser's days, it was still "a waste where he was forgot," a place into which Raleigh considered his friend as banished, and as unfit for any "man in whom was aught regardful." He left it, published his poem, tried court expectation and attendance once more, but found them still more bitter and sterile than his Irish wilderness, and came back.

When we hear Kilcolman described by Spenser's biographers as "romantic and delightful," it is evident that they judged of it from mere fancy; and when all writers about him talk of the Mulla "flowing through his grounds," and "past his castle," they give the reader a most erroneous idea. The castle, it must be remembered, is on a wide plain; the hills are at a couple of miles or more distant; and the Mulla is two miles off. We see nothing at the castle but the wide boggy plain, the distant naked hills, and the weedy pond under the castle walls. Such is Kilcolman.

Here the poet was startled at midnight from his dreams by the sound of horse's hoofs beating in full gallop the stony tracks of the dale, and by a succeeding burst of wild yells from crowding thousands of infuriated Irish. Fire was put to the castle, and it was soon in flames.

Spenser, concealed by the gloom of one side of the building, contrived to escape with his wife, and most probably his three boys and girl, as they were saved, and lived after him, but the youngest child in the cradle perished in the flames, with all his property and unpublished poems. On a second visit to England he had published three more books of his Faerie Queene; and there is a story of six more being lost by his servant, by whom they were sent to England. This could not be the fact, as he had himself but recently returned from the publication of the second three. Probably the rumor arose from some other MSS. lost in that manner. Fleeing to England, distracted at the fate of his child and his property, he died there, heart-broken and in poverty, at an inn or lodging-house in King-street, Westminster, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, at the expense of the Earl of Ess.e.x, "his hea.r.s.e attended," says Camben, "by poets, and mournful elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, thrown into his tomb."

There is much that we naturally are anxious to know connected with the final fate and family of Spenser. How his children actually escaped.

What became of them and their claim on the property? When was the property of Kilcolman lost to the poet's descendants? Of all this next to nothing is known. The literati of that age do not seem to have given themselves any trouble to preserve the facts of the history of their ill.u.s.trious cotemporaries. Shakspeare and Spenser were left to the cold keeping of careless tradition. The particulars, beyond what we have already given, are very few.

Spenser's widow returned to Ireland, and there brought up her children.

Of these, Sylva.n.u.s, as eldest son, inherited Rennie and Kilcolman. It appears that he found some difficulty with his mother, Spenser's widow, who married again, to a Roger Seckerstone, and was obliged to pet.i.tion the Lord-chancellor of Ireland, to obtain from his mother and her new husband doc.u.ments belonging to his estate, which they withheld. He married, as already stated, Ellen Nagle, of Monanimy, south of Kilcolman, of a Catholic family, a circ.u.mstance which had a great effect on the fortunes of their descendants, as connecting them with the unsuccessful party in the troubles of Ireland. His eldest son died without issue, and his second son, William, succeeded to Kilcolman. The property of William, being seized on by the Commonwealth party, was ordered to be restored to him by Cromwell, but is supposed to have only been regained at the Restoration. He had three other grants of land in the counties of Galway and Roscommon, in the latter, the estate of Ballinasloe. At the Revolution he joined King William, who for his services granted him the estate of his cousin Hugoline, of Rennie. This Hugoline was the son of Peregrine, the poet's youngest son, who had Rennie made over to him by his eldest brother, Sylva.n.u.s. Hugoline took part with his Catholic relatives, and, siding with King James at the Revolution, was outlawed, and his property at Rennie made over to his cousin William. Thus the descendants of Sylva.n.u.s, or the eldest son of the poet, became the only known posterity of the poet. The descendants of William, and therefore of Sylva.n.u.s Spenser, the elder male line, possessed Rennie till 1734, soon after which this line became extinct.

There are still in Ireland persons claiming to be descendants, by the mother's side, from Spenser; and the Travers, of Clifton, near Cork, are lineal descendants of Spenser's sister Sarah and John Travers, a friend of the poet's, who accompanied him to Ireland, and had the town lands of Ardenbone and Knocknacaple given to him by Spenser as his sister's marriage dowry. The descendants of this sister number among many distinguished families of Ireland, those of the Earls of Cork and Ossary, Earl Shannon, Lord Doneraile, Earl of Clanwilliam, &c.

The fame of Spenser is not quite rooted out of the minds of the neighboring peasantry. I inquired of an old man and his family, who live close by the castle, whom that castle formerly belonged to, and they replied, "To one Spenser."

"Who was he?"

"They could not tell: they only knew that many officers from Fermoy, and others, came to see the place."

"Ay, I have heard of him," I added. "He was an Englishman, and the Irish burned him out of the castle, and he fled to England."

"Oh no! nothing of the kind. He lived and died there, and was buried just below the castle, which used to be a church-yard. Bones are often dug up, and on the western side of the mound there had been a nunnery."

In fact, they knew nothing accurately, but, like the people at Lissoy, by Goldsmith, would insist on his death and burial on the spot.

But the desolated spot possesses an interest stronger than the possession of the poet's dust. It was the scene of his happiest hours--hours of love and of inspiration. Here the Faerie Queene grew in heavenly zeal, and here it was suddenly arrested by the howl of savage vengeance, and the flames which wrapped the poet's heart in ruin.

"Ah! what a warning for a thoughtless man, Could field or grove, or any spot of earth, Show to his eye an image of the pangs Which it hath witnessed; render back the echo Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod."

_Wordsworth._

SHAKSPEARE.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

There are two reasons why I proposed to omit the homes and haunts of Shakspeare from the present volumes; the first, because I have found it impossible to include the dramatic poets in the compa.s.s of these two, and must reserve them for a third; and the second, because I have already, in my Visits to Remarkable Places (vol. i.), devoted a considerable article to almost the only place where his homes and haunts still remain, Stratford-upon-Avon. A very little reflection, however, convinced me that an entire omission of the haunts of this great national poet from these first two volumes would be received as a disappointment by a numerous cla.s.s of readers. Shakspeare is not merely a dramatic poet. Great and peerless as is his dramatic fame, the very elements, not of dramatic art and fame alone, but of universal poetry, and that of the highest order, are so diffused throughout all his works, that the character of poet soars above the character of dramatist in him, like some heaven-climbing tower above a glorious church. Every line, almost every word, is a living ma.s.s of poetry; these are scattered through the works of all authors as such exponents of their deepest sentiments as they can not command themselves. They are like the branches, the buds, the flowers and leaves of a great tree of poetry, making a magnificent whole, and rich and beautiful as nature itself, down to its minutest portions. To leave out Shakspeare were, indeed, to play Hamlet with the part of Hamlet himself omitted; it were to invite guests, and get the host to absent himself. In the Walhalla of British poetry, the statue of Shakspeare must be first admitted and placed in the center, before gradations and cla.s.sifications are thought of. He is the universal genius, whose presence and spirit must and will pervade the whole place.

And yet, where are the homes and haunts of Shakspeare in London? Like those of a thousand other remarkable men, in the accidents and the growth of this great city they are swept away. Fires and renovation have carried every thing before them. If the fame of men depended on bricks and mortar, what reputations would have been extinguished within the last two centuries in London! In no place in the world have the violent necessities of a rapid and immense development paid so little respect to the "local habitations" of great names. The very resting-places and tombs of many are destroyed, and their bones, like those of Chatterton, have been scattered by the spades of the unlettered laborer.

We may suppose that Shakspeare, on his coming up to London, would reside near the theaters where he sought his livelihood. The first appears to have been that of Blackfriars. It has long been clean gone, and its locality is now occupied by Play-house-yard, near Apothecaries' Hall, and the dense buildings around. Play-house-yard derives its name from the old play-house. In Knight's London, it is suggested that this theater might be pulled down soon after the permanent close of the theaters during the Commonwealth, by the Puritans; but the real old theater of Shakspeare must, had that not been the case, have perished entirely in the fire of London, which cleared all this ground, from Tower-street to the Temple. If Shakspeare ever held horses at the theater door on his first coming to town, it would be here, for here he seems to have been first engaged. The idea of his holding horses at a theater door, bold and active fellow as he had shown himself in his deer-stealing exploits, and with friends and acquaintances in town, has been scouted, especially as he was then a full-grown man of twenty-three. The thing, however, is by no means improbable. Shakspeare was most likely as independent as he was clever and active. On arriving in town, and seeing an old acquaintance, Thomas Green, at this theater, he might, like other remarkable men who have made their way to eminence in London, be ready to turn his hand to any thing till something better turned up. Green, who was a player, might be quite willing to introduce Shakspeare into that character and the theater; but it had yet to be proved that Shakspeare could make an actor of himself, and, till opportunity offered, what so likely to seize the attention of a hanger about the theater as the want of a careful horse-holder for those who came there in such style, which appears was then common enough. We have the statement from Sir William Davenant, and therefore from a cotemporary, admirer, and a.s.sumed relative. We are told that the speculation was not a bad one. Shakspeare, by his superior age and carefulness, soon engrossed all this business, and had to employ those boys, who had before been acting on their own account, as his subordinates; whence they acquired and retained, long after he had mounted into an actor himself, within the theater, the name of Shakspeare's boys. That he became "an actor at one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well," Aubrey tells us. He is supposed to have acted Old Knowell in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his Humor;" and Oldys tells us that a relative of Shakspeare, then in advanced age, but who in his youth had been in the habit of visiting London for the purpose of seeing him act in some of his own plays, told Mr. Jones, of Tarbeck, that "he had a faint recollection of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping, and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported, and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song." This is supposed to have been in the character of Adam, in "As You Like It," and hence it has been inferred, in connection with his acting the Ghost in Hamlet, and Old Knowell, that he took chiefly old or elderly characters.

Every glimpse of this extraordinary man, who, however much he might have been acknowledged and estimated in his own day, certainly lived long before his time, is deeply interesting. That he was estimated highly we know from Jonson himself:

"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 did so take Eliza and our James."

When the two monarchs under whom Shakspeare lived admired and patronized him, we may be sure that Shakspeare's great merits were perceived, and that vividly, though the age had not that intellectual expansion which could enable it to rise above its prejudices against a player, and comprehend that Shakspeare's dramas were not merely the most wonderful dramas, but the most wonderful expositions of human life and nature that had ever appeared. People were too busy enjoying the splendid scenes presented to them by this great genius, to note down for the gratification of posterity the dayly doings, connections, and whereabouts of the man with whom they were so familiar. He grew rich, however, by their flocking to his theater, and disappeared from among them.

In this theater of Blackfriars he rose to great popularity both as an actor and dramatic author, and became a proprietor. It was under the management of Richard Burbage, who was also a shareholder in the Globe Theater at Bankside. To the theater at Bankside Shakspeare also transferred himself, and there he became, in 1603, the lessee. There he seems to have continued about ten years, or till 1613; having, however, so early as 1597, purchased one of the best houses in his native town of Stratford, repaired and improved it, and that so much that he named it New Place. To this, as his proper home, he yearly retired when the theatrical season closed; and having made a comfortable fortune, when the theater was burned down in 1613, retired from public life altogether.

Bankside is a spot of interest, because Shakspeare lived there many years during the time he was in London. It is that portion of Southwark lying on the river side between the bridges of Blackfriars and Southwark. This ground was then wholly devoted to public amus.e.m.e.nts, such as they were. It was a place of public gardens, play-houses, and worse places. Paris Garden was one of the most famous resorts of the metropolis. There were the bear-gardens, where Elizabeth, her n.o.bles, and ladies used to go and solace themselves with that elegant sport, bear-baiting. There, also, was the Globe Theater, of which Shakspeare became licensed proprietor, and near which he lived. The theater was an octagon wooden building, which has been made familiar by many engravings of it. In Henry the Fifth, Shakspeare alludes to its shape and material:

"Can this c.o.c.kpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this _wooden_ O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?"

It was not much to be wondered at that this wooden globe should get consumed with fire, which it did, as I have already stated, in 1613.

Shakspeare's play of Henry VIII. was acting, a crowded and brilliant company was present, and among the rest Ben Jonson, when in the very first act, where, according to the stage directions, "drums and trumpets, chambers discharged," cannons were fired, the ignited wadding flew into the thatch of the building, and the whole place was soon in flames. Sir Henry Wotton thus describes the scene in a letter to his nephew: "Now, to let matters of state sleep, I will entertain you at present with what happened this week at the Bankside. The king's players had a new play, called All is True, representing some princ.i.p.al pieces from the reign of Henry VIII., which was set forth with many extraordinary circ.u.mstances of pomp and majesty, even to the matting of the stage; the knights of the order, with their Georges and garters; the guards, with their embroidered coats, and the like; sufficient, in truth, within a while, to make greatness very familiar, if not ridiculous. Now, King Henry making a mask at Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly and ran round like a train, consuming within an hour the whole house to the very ground. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that perhaps had broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale."

Fires seem to have menaced Shakspeare on all sides, and he had narrow escapes. As there is no mention of his name in the accounts of the Globe Theater in 1613, nor any in his will, it is pretty clear that he had retired from the proprietors.h.i.+p of the Globe before, and escaped that loss; but in the very year after it was burned down, there was a dreadful fire in Stratford, which consumed a good part of the town, and put his own house into extreme danger.

These were the scenes where Shakspeare acted, for which he wrote his dramas, and where, like a careful and thriving man as he was, he made a fortune before he was forty, calculated to be equal to 1000 a year at present. He had a brother, also, on the stage at the same time with himself, who died in 1607, and was buried in St. Savior's Church, Southwark, where his name is entered in the parish register as "Edmund Shakspeare, a player."

The place where he was accustomed particularly to resort for social recreation was the Mermaid Tavern, Friday street, Cheapside. This was the wits' house for a long period. There a club for _beaux esprits_ was established by Sir Walter Raleigh, and here came, in their several days and times, Spenser, Shakspeare, Philip Sidney, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ma.s.singer, Marlowe, Selden, Cotton, Carew, Martin, Donne, Wotton, and all the brave spirits of those ages. Here Jonson and Shakspeare used to s.h.i.+ne out by the brilliancy of their powers, and in their "wit combats," in which Fuller describes Jonson as a _Spanish great galleon_, and Shakspeare as the _English man-of-war_. "Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and his invention." Enough has been said of this celebrated club by a variety of writers. There can be no doubt that there wit and merriment abounded to that degree, that, as Beaumont has said in his epistle to Jonson, one of their meetings was enough to make up for all the stupidity of the city for three days past, and supply it for long to come; to make the worst companions right witty, and "downright fools more wise." There is as little doubt, however, that, with Jonson in the chair, drinking would be as pre-eminent as the wit. The verses which he had inscribed over the door of the Apollo room, at the Devil Tavern, another of their resorts, are, spite of all vindications by ingenious pens, too indicative of that.