Books: Our Old Home
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home
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Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has overbrimmed, as it were,
from the original settlement, being outside of the ancient wall. The
street soon runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some other
venerable structure above it, and admits us into the heart of the town.
At one of my first visits, I witnessed a military display. A regiment of
Warwickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, was going through
its drill in the market-place; and on the collar of one of the officers
was embroidered the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cognizance
of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. The soldiers were sturdy
young men, with the simple, stolid, yet kindly faces of English rustics,
looking exceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman-like
carriage and appearance the moment they were dismissed from drill.
Squads of them were distributed everywhere about the streets, and
sentinels were posted at various points; and I saw a sergeant, with a
great key in his hand (big enough to have been the key of the castle's
main entrance when the gate was thickest and heaviest), apparently
setting a guard. Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find
warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and commanded by a
feudal lord, just as in the days of the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often
mustered his retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this
modern regiment.
The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned aspect than the
suburbs through which we approach it; and the High Street has shops with
modern plate-glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting as few
projections to hang a thought or sentiment upon as if an architect of
to-day had planned them. And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they
are perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an American street; but
behind these renovated faces, with their monotonous lack of expression,
there is probably the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic
exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem of England itself.
What seems new in it is chiefly a skilful and fortunate adaptation of
what such a people as ourselves would destroy. The new things are based
and supported on sturdy old things, and derive a massive strength from
their deep and immemorial foundations, though with such limitations and
impediments as only an Englishman could endure. But he likes to feel the
weight of all the past upon his back; and, moreover, the antiquity that
overburdens him has taken root in his being, and has grown to be rather a
hump than a pack, so that there is no getting rid of it without tearing
his whole structure to pieces. In my judgment, as he appears to be
sufficiently comfortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better
stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a spectacle which is
by no means without its charm for a disinterested and unencumbered
observer.
When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom or institution, appears in
its pristine form, without any attempt at intermarrying it with modern
fashions, an American cannot but admire the picturesque effect produced
by the sudden cropping up of an apparently dead-and-buried state of
society into the actual present, of which he is himself a part. We need
not go far in Warwick without encountering an instance of the kind.
Proceeding westward through the town, we find ourselves confronted by a
huge mass of natural rock, hewn into something like architectural shape,
and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well have been one of King
Cymbeline's original gateways; and on the top of the rock, over the
archway, sits a small old church, communicating with an ancient edifice,
or assemblage of edifices, that look down from a similar elevation on the
side of the street. A range of trees half hides the latter establishment
from the sun. It presents a curious and venerable specimen of the
timber-and-plaster style of building, in which some of the finest old
houses in England are constructed; the front projects into porticos and
vestibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, and others
crowning semi-detached portions of the structure; the windows mostly open
on hinges, but show a delightful irregularity of shape and position; a
multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at their own will, or, at
least, without any settled purpose of the architect. The whole affair
looks very old,--so old indeed that the front bulges forth, as if the
timber framework were a little weary, at last, of standing erect so long;
but the state of repair is so perfect, and there is such an indescribable
aspect of continuous vitality within the system of this aged house, that
you feel confident that there may be safe shelter yet, and perhaps for
centuries to come, under its time-honored roof. And on a bench,
sluggishly enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of Warwick
as from a life apart, a few old men are generally to be seen, wrapped in
long cloaks, on which you may detect the glistening of a silver badge
representing the Bear and Ragged Staff. These decorated worthies are
some of the twelve brethren of Leicester's Hospital,--a community which
subsists to-day under the identical modes that were established for it in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many features of a
social life that has vanished almost everywhere else.
The edifice itself dates from a much older period than the charitable
institution of which it is now the home. It was the seat of a religious
fraternity far back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry VIII.
turned all the priesthood of England out of doors, and put the most
unscrupulous of his favorites into their vacant abodes. In many
instances, the old monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well,
and built them on such a broad system of beauty and convenience, that
their lay-occupants found it easy to convert them into stately and
comfortable homes; and as such they still exist, with something of the
antique reverence lingering about them. The structure now before us
seems to have been first granted to Sir Nicholas Lestrange, who perhaps
intended, like other men, to establish his household gods in the niches
whence he had thrown down the images of saints, and to lay his hearth
where an altar had stood. But there was probably a natural reluctance in
those days (when Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have
retained an influence over all but the most obdurate characters) to bring
one's hopes of domestic prosperity and a fortunate lineage into direct
hostility with the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all events,
there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and a belief, that
the possession of former Church-property has drawn a curse along with it,
not only among the posterity of those to whom it was originally granted,
but wherever it has subsequently been transferred, even if honestly
bought and paid for. There are families, now inhabiting some of the
beautiful old abbeys, who appear to indulge a species of pride in
recording the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that have
occurred among their predecessors, and may be supposed likely to dog
their own pathway down the ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas
Lestrange, in the beef-eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was a
nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this kind, I cannot tell;
but it is certain that he speedily rid himself of the spoils of the
Church, and that, within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became the
property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, brother of the Earl of
Warwick. He devoted the ancient religious precinct to a charitable use,
endowing it with an ample revenue, and making it the perpetual home of
twelve poor, honest, and war-broken soldiers, mostly his own retainers,
and natives either of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans,
or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their monkish dormitories
and haunt the time-darkened corridors and galleries of the hospital,
leading a life of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned
cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges which the Earl of
Leicester gave to the original twelve. He is said to have been a bad man
in his day; but he has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what
was to him a distant future.
On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, there is the date,
1571, and several coats-of-arms, either the Earl's or those of his
kindred, and immediately above the doorway a stone sculpture of the Bear
and Ragged Staff.
Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle, or enclosed
court, such as always formed the central part of a great family residence
in Queen Elizabeth's time, and earlier. There can hardly be a more
perfect specimen of such an establishment than Leicester's Hospital. The
quadrangle is a sort of sky-roofed hall, to which there is convenient
access from all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, with their
high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into it from antique windows,
and through open corridors and galleries along the sides; and there seems
to be a richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, quainter
carvings in oak, and more fantastic shapes of the timber framework, than
on the side toward the street. On the wall opposite the arched entrance
are the following inscriptions, comprising such moral rules, I presume,
as were deemed most essential for the daily observance of the community:
"Honor all Men"--"Fear God"--"Honor the King"--"Love the Brotherhood";
and again, as if this latter injunction needed emphasis and repetition
among a household of aged people soured with the hard fortune of their
previous lives,--"Be kindly affectioned one to another." One sentence,
over a door communicating with the Master's side of the house, is
addressed to that dignitary,--"He that ruleth over men must be just."
All these are charactered in old English letters, and form part of the
elaborate ornamentation of the house. Everywhere--on the walls, over
windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them--
appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their
proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with their
splendor. One of these devices is a large image of a porcupine on an
heraldic wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But especially
is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff repeated over and over,
and over again and again, in a great variety of attitudes, at
full-length, and half-length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in
bas-relief and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was certainly
disposed to reckon his own beneficence as among the hereditary glories of
his race; and had he lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have
kept up an old Catholic custom by enjoining the twelve bedesmen to pray
for the welfare of his soul.
At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated on the bench outside
of the edifice, looking down into the street; but they did not vouchsafe
me a word, and seemed so estranged from modern life, so enveloped in
antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, that to converse with them
would have been like shouting across the gulf between our age and Queen
Elizabeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found it quite
solitary, except that a plain and neat old woman happened to be crossing
it, with an aspect of business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman
of this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Asking her if I
could come in, she answered very readily and civilly that I might, and
said that I was free to look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I
would not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as some visitors
were in the habit of doing. Under her guidance, I went into what was
formerly the great hall of the establishment, where King James I. had
once been feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated by an
inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. It is a very spacious and
barn-like apartment, with a brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters
of which are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visible in the
duskiness that broods aloft. The hall may have made a splendid
appearance, when it was decorated with rich tapestry, and illuminated
with chandeliers, cressets, and torches glistening upon silver dishes,
where King James sat at supper among his brilliantly dressed nobles; but
it has come to base uses in these latter days,--being improved, in Yankee
phrase, as a brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar for the brethren's
separate allotments of coal.
The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned into the quadrangle.
It was very quiet, very handsome, in its own obsolete style, and must be
an exceedingly comfortable place for the old people to lounge in, when
the inclement winds render it inexpedient to walk abroad. There are
shrubs against the wall, on one side; and on another is a cloistered
walk, adorned with stags' heads and antlers, and running beneath a
covered gallery, up to which ascends a balustraded staircase. In the
portion of the edifice opposite the entrance-arch are the apartments of
the Master; and looking into the window (as the old woman, at no request
of mine, had specially informed me that I might), I saw a low, but vastly
comfortable parlor, very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxurious
place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, the antique breadth of
which extended almost from wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up
in such a way, that the modern coal-grate looked very diminutive in the
midst. Gazing into this pleasant interior, it seemed to me, that, among
these venerable surroundings, availing himself of whatever was good in
former things, and eking out their imperfection with the results of
modern ingenuity, the Master might lead a not unenviable life. On the
cloistered side of the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the
enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window reddened by a great
blaze from within, and heard the bubbling and squeaking of something--
doubtless very nice and succulent--that was being cooked at the
kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two of the savory
fragrance reached my nostrils; at all events, the impression grew upon me
that Leicester's Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles in
England.
I was about to depart, when another old woman, very plainly dressed, but
fat, comfortable, and with a cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in
through the arch, and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition
of the gentle sex (though by no means under its loveliest guise) had
still an agreeable effect in modifying my ideas of an institution which I
had supposed to be of a stern and monastic character. She asked whether
I wished to see the hospital, and said that the porter, whose office it
was to attend to visitors, was dead, and would be buried that very day,
so that the whole establishment could not conveniently be shown me. She
kindly invited me, however, to visit the apartment occupied by her
husband and herself; so I followed her up the antique staircase, along
the gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where sat an old man
in a long blue garment, who arose and saluted me with much courtesy. He
seemed a very quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and adventure,
and gray experience, such as I could have fancied in a palmer of ancient
times, who might likewise have worn a similar costume. The little room
was carpeted and neatly furnished; a portrait of its occupant was hanging
on the wall; and on a table were two swords crossed,--one, probably, his
own battle-weapon, and the other, which I drew half out of the scabbard,
had an inscription on the blade, purporting that it had been taken from
the field of Waterloo. My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all
the particulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bedroom, which
was in the nicest order, with a snow-white quilt upon the bed; and in a
little intervening room was a washing and bathing apparatus; a
convenience (judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of such
parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler ranks of British life.
The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of somebody to talk with;
but the good woman availed herself of the privilege far more copiously
than the veteran himself, insomuch that he felt it expedient to give her
an occasional nudge with his elbow in her well-padded ribs. "Don't you
be so talkative!" quoth he; and, indeed, he could hardly find space for a
word, and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her nimble
tongue ran over the whole system of life in the hospital. The brethren,
she said, had a yearly stipend (the amount of which she did not mention),
and such decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, free; and,
instead of being pestered with a great many rules, and made to dine
together at a great table, they could manage their little household
matters as they liked, buying their own dinners and having them cooked in
the general kitchen, and eating them snugly in their own parlors. "And,"
added she, rightly deeming this the crowning privilege, "with the
Master's permission, they can have their wives to take care of them; and
no harm comes of it; and what more can an old man desire?" It was
evident enough that the good dame found herself in what she considered
very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small occupations to keep
her from getting rusty and dull; but the veteran impressed me as deriving
far less enjoyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of change or
hope of improvement, that had followed upon thirty years of peril and
vicissitude. I fancied, too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a
stranger's visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle for
the stranger's curiosity; for, if he chose to be morbid about the matter,
the establishment was but an almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned
magnificence, and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's garment, with a
silver badge on it that perhaps galled his shoulder. In truth, the badge
and the peculiar garb, though quite in accordance with the manners of the
Earl of Leicester's age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, and might
fitly and humanely be abolished.
A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to the hospital, and found
a new porter established in office, and already capable of talking like a
guide-book about the history, antiquities, and present condition of the
charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren are selected from among
old soldiers of good character, whose other resources must not exceed an
income of five pounds; thus excluding all commissioned officers, whose
half-pay would of course be more than that amount. They receive from the
hospital an annuity of eighty pounds each, besides their apartments, a
garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of ale, and a privilege
at the kitchen-fire; so that, considering the class from which they are
taken, they may well reckon themselves among the fortunate of the earth.
Furthermore, they are invested with political rights, acquiring a vote
for member of Parliament in virtue either of their income or brotherhood.
On the other hand, as regards their personal freedom or conduct, they are
subject to a supervision which the Master of the hospital might render
extremely annoying, were he so inclined; but the military restraint under
which they have spent the active portion of their lives makes it easier
for them to endure the domestic discipline here imposed upon their age.
The porter bore his testimony (whatever were its value) to their being as
contented and happy as such a set of old people could possibly be, and
affirmed that they spent much time in burnishing their silver badges, and
were as proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These badges, by the
by, except one that was stolen and replaced in Queen Anne's time, are the
very same that decorated the original twelve brethren.
I have seldom met with a better guide than my friend the porter. He
appeared to take a genuine interest in the peculiarities of the
establishment, and yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could
the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To be sure, his
knowledge and observation were confined to external things, but, so far,
had a sufficiently extensive scope. He led me up the staircase and
exhibited portions of the timber framework of the edifice that are
reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, and are still neither
worm-eaten nor decayed; and traced out what had been a great hall in the
days of the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled up with
the apartments of the twelve brethren; and pointed to ornaments of
sculptured oak, done in an ancient religious style of art, but hardly
visible amid the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to the
chapel--the Gothic church which I noted several pages back--surmounting
the gateway that stretches half across the street. Here the brethren
attend daily prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest paper,
with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The interior of the chapel
is very plain, with a picture of no merit for an altar-piece, and a
single old pane of painted glass in the great eastern window,
representing,--no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such cases,--but
that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. Nevertheless, amid so many
tangible proofs of his human sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the
Earl could have been such a hardened reprobate, after all.
We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked down between its
battlements into the street, a hundred feet below us; while clambering
half-way up were foxglove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts of
grass, that had rooted themselves into the roughnesses of the stone
foundation. Far around us lay a rich and lovely English landscape, with
many a church-spire and noble country-seat, and several objects of high
historic interest. Edge Hill, where the Puritans defeated Charles I., is
in sight on the edge of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house
where Cromwell lodged on the night before the battle. Right under our
eyes, and half enveloping the town with its high-shouldering wall, so
that all the closely compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the
estate, was the Earl of Warwick's delightful park, a wide extent of sunny
lawns, interspersed with broad contiguities of forest-shade. Some of the
cedars of Lebanon were there,--a growth of trees in which the Warwick
family take an hereditary pride. The two highest towers of the castle
heave themselves up out of a mass of foliage, and look down in a lordly
manner upon the plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are
slate-covered (these are the modern houses), and a part are coated with
old red tiles, denoting the more ancient edifices. A hundred and sixty
or seventy years ago, a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of
the town, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a remote
antiquity; at least, there was a possibility of very old houses in the
long past of Warwick, which King Cymbeline is said to have founded in the
year ONE of the Christian era!
And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to
mind a more indestructible reality than anything else that has occurred
within the present field of our vision; though this includes the scene of
Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of those of the Round
Table, to say nothing of the Battle of Edge Hill. For perhaps it was in
the landscape now under our eyes that Posthumus wandered with the King's
daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the
tenderest and womanliest woman that Shakespeare ever made immortal in the
world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the gray
castle, may have held their images in its bosom.
The day, though it began brightly, had long been overcast, and the clouds
now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the east-wind
was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and went next
into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the only
remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is
devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, in the
centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture,
that formerly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar for
measuring the rise and fall of the river Nile. On the pedestal is a
Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of Hatton being so close
at hand) was probably often the Master's guest, and smoked his
interminable pipe along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden,
which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated to the Master, and
twelve small, separate patches to the individual brethren, who cultivate
them at their own judgment and by their own labor; and their beans and
cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if they had received
them directly from the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest
of their food. In the farther part of the garden is an arbor for the old
men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to sit down among
them there, and find out what is really the bitter and the sweet of such
a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen themselves, they put me queerly
in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the venerable personages whom I
found so quietly at anchor there.
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