Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862

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From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in front of the
castle-gate, and soon enters the principal street of Warwick, a little
beyond St. John's School-House, already described. Chester itself, most
antique of English towns, can hardly show quainter architectural shapes
than many of the buildings that border this street. They are mostly of
the timber-and-plaster kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a
whole chronology of various patchwork in their walls; their low-browed
door-ways open upon a sunken floor; their projecting stories peep, as
it were, over one another's shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of
peaked gables; they have curious windows, breaking out irregularly all
over the house, some even in the roof, set in their own little peaks,
opening lattice-wise, and furnished with twenty small panes of
lozenge-shaped glass. The architecture of these edifices (a visible
oaken framework, showing the whole skeleton of the house,--as if a man's
bones should be arranged on his outside, and his flesh seen through the
interstices) is often imitated by modern builders, and with sufficiently
picturesque effect. The objection is, that such houses, like all
imitations of by-gone styles, have an air of affectation; they do not
seem to be built in earnest; they are no better than playthings, or
overgrown baby-houses, in which nobody should be expected to encounter
the serious realities of either birth or death. Besides, originating
nothing, we leave no fashions for another age to copy, when we ourselves
shall have grown antique.

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 unincumbered 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 Lave
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 door-way a stone sculpture of the
Bear and Ragged Staff.

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a quadrangle, or
inclosed 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 towards 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 black-letter, and form part of the elaborate
ornamentation of the Louse. 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,
while 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 inclosed 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 bed-room, 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 private 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 and 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 Post-humus wandered with the
King's daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and courageous Imogen, the
tenderest and womanliest woman that Shakspeare 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.

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