Star papers; or, Experiences of art and nature

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Preface

The Star Papers, first published eighteen years ago, have long been out of print, and now appear in the uniform series of my miscellaneous works, with the addition of a few articles from the multitude written since the book appeared. The earliest and latest of the "Star Articles" appear in this volume; those added to the original collection being culled from the columns of the "Christian Union."

In literary form they have been as unartificial as possible. They have sprung out of a life of rushing activity, as bubbles form in a mountain stream. For, as bubbles catch the shapes and colors of rock, tree, and sky, reflect them for a moment, break, and pass away, so these papers may give a moment's brightness to some solitary hour, even if they go out with one reading.

Henry Ward Beecher.

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vC) Brooklyn, February 13, 1873.

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PKEFACE

TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.

The author has been saved the trouble of searching for a title to his book from the simple circumstance that the articles of which the work is made up appeared in the "New York Independent " with the signature of a star, and, having been familiarly called the " Star Articles," by way of designation, they now become, in a book form, Star Papers.

Only such papers as relate to Art and to rural affairs have been published in this volume. It was thought best to put all controversial articles in another, and subsequent, volume.

The " Letters from Europe " were written to homefriends, during a visit of only four weeks, — a period too short to allow the subsidence of that enthusiasm which every person must needs experience who, for the first time, stands in the historic places of the Old World. An attempt to exclude from these letvi PREFACE.

ters any excess of personal feeling, to reduce them to a more moderate tone, to correct their judgments, or to extract from them the fiery particles of enthusiasm, would have taken away their very life.

The other papers in this volume, for the most part, were written from the solitudes of the country, during the vacations of three summers. I can express no kinder wish for those wTho may read them, than that they may be one half as happy in the reading as I have been in the scenes which gave them birth.

Brooklyn, 1855.

Contents

LETTEES FEOM EUROPE.

PAGE

I. Ruins of Kenilworth. — Warwick Castle . . 9

II. A Sabbath At Stratford-on-avojt

My dear : If you have read, or will read, my

letter to , yon will see what a wonderful day was

Saturday. Coventry, famous for the legend of Godiva, of which Tennyson has a pretty version ; the ruins of Kenil worth Castle, the stately castle of Warwick and its park, and Stratford-on-Avon, all in one day ! Do you wonder that my brain was hot and my sleep fitful that night? 1 tossed from side to side, and dreamed dreams. It was long after midnight before I began to rest, free from dreams; but the sleep was thin, and I broke through it into waking, every half hour.

It was broad daylight when I arose ; the sun shone out in spots ; masses of soft, fleecy clouds rolled about in the heaven, making the day even finer than if it had been all blue. I purposed attending the village church, in the morning, where Shakspeare was buried ; in the afternoon at Shottery, a mile across the fields, where the cottage in which lived Anne Hathaway, his wife, still stands-; and in the evening, at the church of the Holy Cross, adjoining. the Grammar School ; in which, as the school about that time was open, and for a period kept, it is probable that Shakspeare studied.

Never, in all the labors of a life not wont to be idle upon the Sabbath, have I known such excitement or

28 A SABBATH AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON*.

such exhaustion. The scenes of Saturday had fired me ; every visit to various points in Stratford-on-Avon added to the inspiration, until, as I sallied forth to church, I seemed not to have a body. I could hardly feel my feet striking against the ground ; it was as if I were numb. But my soul was clear, penetrating, and exquisitely susceptible.

You may suppose that every thing would so breathe of the matchless poet, that I should be insensible to religious influences. But I was at a stage beyond that. The first effect, last night, of being here, was to bring up suggestions of Shakspeare from every thing. I said to myself, this is the street he lived in, this the door he passed through, here he leaned, he wandered on these banks, he looked on those slopes and rounded hills. But I had become full of these suggestions, and acting as a stimulus, they had wrought such an ecstatic state, that my soul became exquisitely alive to every influence, whether of things seen, or heard, or thought of. The children going to church, how beautiful they appeared ! How good it seemed to walk among so many decorous people to the house of G od. How full of music the trees were ; music, not only of birds, but of winds waving the leaves ; and the bells, as they were ringing, rolled through the air a deep diapason to all other sounds.

As I approached the church, I perceived that we were to pass through the churchyard for some little distance ; and an avenue of lime trees meeting overhead formed a beautiful way, through which my soul exulted to go up to

A SABBATH AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 29

the house of God. The interior was stately arid beautiful— it was to me, and I am not describing any thing to you as it was, but am describing myself while in the presence of scenes with which through books you are familiar. As I sat down in a pew close by the reading-desk and pulpit, I looked along to the chancel, which stretched some fifty or sixty feet back of the pulpit and desk, and saw, upon the wall, the well-known bust of Shakspeare; and T knew that beneath the pavement under that, his dust reposed.

In a few minutes, a little fat man with a red collar and red cuffs, advanced from a side room behind the pulpit and led the way for the rector, a man of about fifty years — bald, except on the sides of his head, which were covered with white hair. I had been anxious lest some Cowper's ministerial fop should officiate, and the sight of this aged man was good. The form of his face and head indicated firmness, but his features were suffused with an expression of benevolence. He ascended the reading-desk, and the services began. You know my mother was, until her marriage, in the communion of the Episcopal Church. This thought hardly left me while I sat, grateful for the privilege of worshiping God through a service that had expressed so often her devotions. I can not tell you how much I was affected. I had never had such a trance of worship, and I shall never have such another view until I gain The Gate.

I am so ignorant of the church service that I can not call the various parts by their right names; but the portions which most affected me were the prayers and so

A SABBATH AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

responses which the choir sang. I had never heard any part of a supplication — a direct prayer, chanted by a choir ; and it seemed as though I heard not with mv ear, but with my soul. I was dissolved — my whole being seemed to me like an incense wafted gratefully toward God. The Divine presence rose before me in wondrous majesty, but of ineffable gentleness and goodness, and I could not stay away from more familiar approach, but seemed irresistibly, yet gently, drawn toward God. My soul, then thou did'st magnify the Lord, and rejoice in the God of thy salvation ! And then came to my mind the many exultations of the Psalms of David, and never before were the expressions and figures so noble and so necessary to express what I felt. I had risen, it seemed to me, so high as to be where David was when his soul conceived the things which he wrote. Throughout the service, and it was an hour and a quarter long, whenever an " Amen " occurred, it was given by the choir, accompanied by the organ and the congregation. 0, that swell and solemn cadence rings in my ear yet ! Not once, not a single time did it occur in that service from beginning to end, without bringing tears from my eyes. I stood like a shrub in a spring morning — every leaf covered with dew, and every breeze shook down some drops. I trembled so much at times, that I was obliged to sit down. O, when in the prayers breathed forth in strains of sweet, simple, solemn music, the love of Christ was recognized, how I longed then to give utterance to what that love seemed to me. There was a moment in which the heavens seemed opened to me,

A SABBATH AT STKATFORD-ON-AVON. 81

and I saw the glory of God I All the earth seemed to me a storehouse of images, made to set forth the Kedeemer, and I could scarcely be still from crying out. I never knew, I never dreamed before, of what heart there was in that word amen. Every time it swelled forth and died, away solemnly, not my lips, not my mind, but my whole being said — Saviour, so let it be.

The sermon was preparatory to the Communion, which I then first learned was to be celebrated. It was plain and good ; and although the rector had done many things m a way that led me to suppose that he sympathized with over much ceremony, yet in his sermon he seemed evangelical, and gave a right view of the Lord's Supper. For the first time in my life I went forward to commune in an Episcopal Church. Without any intent of my own, but because from my seat it was nearest, I knelt down at the altar with the dust of Shakspeare beneath my feet. I thought of it, as I thought of ten thousand things, without the least disturbance of devotion. It seemed as if I stood upon a place so high, that, like one looking over a wide valley, all objects conspired to make but one view. I thought of the General Assembly and Church of the First Born, of my mother and brother an d children in heaven, of my living family on earth, of you, of the whole church intrusted to my hands ; — they afar off — I upon the banks of the Avon.

In the afternoon I walked over to Shottery, to attend worship there, but found that I had been misinformed, and that there was no church or service there. I soon found the cottage where Shakspeare's wife, Anne Hath-

82 A SABBATH AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON".

away, was born, but stayed only for a little time, meaning to visit it more at my leisure on Monday. I hastened back, hoping to reach the village church in Stratford in season for part of the service, but arrived just in time to meet the congregation coming out. I turned aside to the churchyard which surrounds the church on every side. As I stood behind the church on the brink of the Avon, which is here walled up to the hight of some eight feet, looking now at the broad green meadows" beyond, and now at a clump of "forget-me-nots" growing wild down at the water's edge, and wondering how I should get them to carry back to my friends, I was accosted by a venerable old man, whose name I found

afterwards to be T , He was not indisposed to talk,

and I learned that he was eighty-one years of age ; had lost his father in America during our revolutionary war, where he had been a soldier ; he remembered the sad tidings, being then eleven years old ; he had resided at Stratford for thirty years ; he was a turner and carver by trade ; he had lately buried his wife, and had come after service to visit her grave. We walked together along the banks of the Avon, he repeating some familiar lines of poetry. He gave me various local information of interest. Among other things, that the vicar was but recently come among them ; that he seemed to him very " whimsical," for, said he, " he has got a new brass thing to hold his Bible, down in front of the reading-desk; and he stands sometimes with his back to the people when reading parts of the service, and has a good many scholarly tricks about him, as it seems to me." I for-

STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 33

bore making any remarks, not wishing to disturb the associations of the morning. We crossed the stream by a bridge, walked rip through the broad, smooth, turfy meadows upon the other side, and on reaching my inn, I pressed him to come in and take tea with me. I did so, in part from interest in him, and in part because he had mentioned, when I apologized for using his time in so long a walk, that his only remaining daughter was gone out to tea, and he did not care to go home and be alone. So we took tea together ; after which he proposed waiting upon me to the Church of the Holy Cross, where evening services were then commencing. The interior of the church was plain ; and its age and its connection with Shakspeare constituted its only interest to me. I feel greatty obliged to the venerable old man, whose heart seemed guileless and whose mind was simple. This only acquaintance that I have made in Stratford takes nothing away from the romantic interest of my experience here.

Monday, August 5, 1850. — As I was sitting this morning after breakfast writing busily, my venerable

friend T came in to bid me good-morning, and to

bring me a relic, a piece of the mulberry tree which stood in Shakspeare's garden, but which was cut down - by its after owner, he being much annoyed by relichunters. He finally destroyed the house itself. The old man also gave me a snuff-box which had been made years and years ago, either from the wood of this same tree, or from .a tree sprung from the original. He avers 2*

Si STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

that it was from the original tree ; that he obtained it from the former turner, as a model by which to turn boxes, and that he was assured that it was of the real, orthodox, primitive mulberry tree ! I do not doubt it. I will not doubt. What is the use of destroying an innocent belief so full of pleasure? If it is not a genuine relic, my faith shall make it so.

One or Two Hours Later. — Alas ! I've been out, and among other inquiries, have asked after my old

friend T . I find him to be living in the poorhouse !

At first, I confess to a little shame at intimacy with a pauper ; but in a moment I felt twice as much ashamed that for a moment I had felt the slightest repugnance toward the old man on this account. I rather believe his story of the tree and the box to be true ; at any rate, I have a mulberry snuff-box which I procured in Stratford-on- Avon !

Among the many things which I determined to see and hear in England were the classic birds, and especially the thrush, the nightingale and the lark ; after these I desired to see cuckoos, starlings and rooks. While in Birmingham, going about one of the manufactories, I was inquiring where I might see some of the firstnamed. The young man who escorted me pointed across the way to a cage hanging from a second-story window and said, " There's a lark!" Sure enough, in a little cage and standing upon a handful of green grass, stood the little fellow, apparently with russet -brown wings and lighter colored breast, ash color, singing away to his own great comfort and mine. The song reminded me, in

BIRDS OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON", many of its notes, of the canary bird. In my boyhood, I had innocently supposed that the lark of which I read when first beginning to read in English books, was our meadow lark ; and I often watched in vain to see them rise singing into the air ! As for singing just beneath M heaven's gate" or near the sun, after diligent observation, with great simplicity, I set that down for a pure fancy of the poets. But I had before this learned that the English sky-lark was not our meadow-lark.

A bird in a cage is not half a bird ; and I determined to hear a lark at Stratford-on-Avon, if one could be scared up. And so, early this morning I awoke, ac« cording to a predetermination, and sallied out through the fields to a beautiful range of grounds called " W elcombe." I watched for birds and saw birds, but no larks. The reapers were already in the wheat fields, and brought to mind the fable of the lark who had reared her young there. Far over, toward the Avon, I could see black specks of crows walking about, and picking up a morsel here and there in the grass. I listened to one very sweet song from a tree near a farm-house, but it was unfamiliar to my ear ; and no one was near from whom I might inquire. Besides, the plain laboring people know little about ornithology, and would have told me that "it is some sort of a singing bird," as if 7 thought it were a goose ; and so I said to myself, I've had my labor for my pains ! Well, I will enjoy the clouds and the ribbon strips of blue that interlace them. I must revoke my judgment of the English trees ; for as I stood looking over upon the masses of foliage, and the

SHOTTERY.

single trees dotted in here and there, I could see every shade of green, and all of them most beautiful, and as refreshing to me as old friends. After standing awhile to take a last view of Stratford-on-Avon, from this high ground, and the beautiful slopes around it, and of the meadows of the Avon, I began to walk homeward, when I heard such an outbreak behind me, as wheeled me about quick enough ; there he flew, singing as he rose, and rising gradually, not directly up, but with gentle slope — there was the free singing lark, not half so happy to sing as I was to hear ! In a moment more, he had reached the summit of his ambition, and suddenly fell back to the grass again. And now, if you laugh at my enthusiasm, I will pity you for the want of it. I have heard one poet's lark, if I never hear another, and am much happier for it.

If you will wait a moment or two, till I can breakfast, you shall have the benefit of a stroll over to Shottery — a real old English village. I walked over there yesterday afternoon, to church, as I told you, and so can show you the way without inquiring it three times, as I did then. Emerging from the village, we take this level road, lined on either side with hedges and trees ; trees not with naked stems, but ruffled from the hedge to their limbs with short side brush, which gives them a very beautiful appearance. The white clover-turf under foot is soft as velvet; men are reaping in the fields, or going past us with their sickles. We have walked about a mile, and here is a lane turning to the left, and a guide-board pointing to "Shottery." I see

SHOTTERY.

the village. A moment's walk brings us to a very neat little brick, gothic cottage, quite pretty in style, and painted cream color ; it is covered with roses and fragrant flowering vines, which make the air delicious. By the gate is a Champney rose — the largest I ever saw —its shoots reaching, I. should think, more than twelve feet, and terminated with clusters of buds and open roses, each cluster having from fifty to a hundred buds. Yes- • terday afternoon, as I passed this same cottage, I stopped to admire this rose, and to feed upon the delicious perfume which exhaled from the grounds. A lady, appar ently about forty-five, and two young women about eighteen and twenty years of age respectively, seeing a stranger, approached the gate. I bowed and asked,

" Is this a Champney rose?"

" It is a Noisette, sir !"

" I thought so ; a Champney of the Noisette family ! Will you tell me what flower it is that fills the air with such odor ?"

" I don't know ; it must be something in the garden."

" Will you be kind enough to tell me the way to Anne Hathaway's cottage ?"

11 Take the first lane to the left," said the eldest young woman, pointing to the right.

" The lane on the right, you mean."

" Oh yes, on the right, but I do not know where the cottage is exactly !" and yet it lay hardly two good stone-casts from where they stood. You can see its smoke from the windows. Bid they not know, or were

ANNE HATHAWAY they ashamed to seem too familiar with a stranger? But William Shakspeare, eighteen years old as he was, had no need of asking his way, as he came by here of a Sabbath evening ! "What were the thoughts of such a mind drawing near to the place which now peeps out from the trees across the field on the right? "What were the feelings of a soul which created such forms of love in after days ? I look upon the clouds every moment changing forms, upon the hedges or trees, along which, or such like, Shakspeare wandered, with his sweet Anne, and marvel what were the imaginations the strifes of heart, the gushes of tenderness, the sanguine hopes and fore-paintings of this young poet's soul. For, even so early, he had begun to give form to thai which God created in him. One cannot help thinking of Olivia, Juliet, Desdemona, Beatrice, Ophelia, Imogen, Isabella, Miranda ; and wondering whether any of his first dreams were afterward borrowed to form these. It is not possible but that strokes of his pencil, in these and other women of Shakspeare, reproduced some features of his own experience. Well, I imagine that Anne was a little below the medium hight, delicately formed and shaped, but not slender, with a clear smooth forehead, not high, but wide and evenly filled out ; an eye that chose to look down mostly, but filled with sweet confusion every time she looked up, and that was used more than her tongue ; a face that smiled oftener than it laugher], but so smiled that one saw a world of brightness within, as of a lamp hidden behind an alabaster shade ; a carriage that was deliberate but graceful and

SHAKSPEARE. 39

elastic. This is my Anne Hathaway. Whether it was Shakspeare's I find nothing in this cottage and these trees and verdant hedges to tell me. The birds are singing something about it— descendants doubtless of the very birds that the lovers heard, strolling together ; but I doubt their traditionary lore. I did not care to go in. There are two or three tenements in the long cottage as it now stands ; but the middle one is that to which pilgrims from all the world do come ; and though it was but a common yeoman's home, and his daughter has left not a single record of herself, she and her home are immortal, because hither came the lad Shakspeare, and she became his wife. I leaned upon this hedge yesterday afternoon, it being the Sabbath, and looked long at the place, and with more feelings than thoughts, or rather with thoughts that dissolved at once into feelings. Here are the rudest cottages; scenery, beautiful indeed, but not more so than thousands of other places ; but men of all nations and of every condition, the mingled multitude of refined men are thronging hither, and dwell on every spot with enthusiasm unfeigned. Whatever Shakspeare saw, we long to see ; what he thought of, we wish to think of ; where he walked, thither we turn our steps. The Avon, the church, the meadows lying over beyond both ; the street and the room where he was born ; — all have a soul imbreathed upon them, all of them are sacred to us, and we pass as in a dream amid these things. The sun, the clouds, the trees, the birds, the morning and evening, moonlight or twilight or darkness, none of them here have a nature

SHAKSPEAKE.

of their own ; all of them are to us but memorials or

suggestions of Shakspeare.

God gave to man this power to breathe himself upon the world ; and God gave us that nature by which we feel the inspiration. Is this divine arrangement exhausted in man's earthly history ? Are we not to see and to know a sublime development of it when we come to a knowledge of God himself, face to face ? Then, not a hamlet alone, a few cottages, a stream or spire will be suggestive ; but throughout the universe, every creature and every object will breathe of God. Not of his genius, as Stratford-on-Avon speaks of Shakspeare ; but of every trait of character, every shade of feeling, every attribute of power ; of goodness, love, mercy and gentleness, magnanimity, exquisite purity, taste, imagination, truth and justice. May we know this revelation ; walk amid those scenes of glory, and know the rapture of feeling God effulge upon us from everything which his heart has conceived, or his hand fashioned! But chiefly may we see that noontide glory when we shall gaze unabashed upon his unobstructed face.

Ill

OXFORD.

Dear - . Did I ever dream of writing you from

this renowned seat of learning, memorable in history, the residence of good King Alfred, the birthplace of Eichard Cceur de Lion, the burning place of Latimer, Eidley, and Oranmer, and the place where many among the greatest historical men were educated? But I must go back a little, for I believe I have said nothing in either of my letters to others, of my route hither.

I send you a forget-me-not which was gathered from ' the edge of the river Avon, just beneath the wall which divides the face of the churchyard from the water. These little beauties awakened me from a dream by their meek looks, and I determined to send this one to you. To climb down the wall was easy enough, too easy for a man who did not love wetting. I cast about for expedients. For, you must know that the river washes the very wall, and that a little bit of soil, scarcely a foot across, had formed in^ne spot and proclaimed its triumph by wearing these tufts of flowers for its feather. I studied the wall, speculated upon my relative position to the water and flowers, should I reach such and such a chink. I partly climbed down, and wholly clambered back again, satisfied that it was easier to get myself in, than to get the flowers out. My courage rose

42 OXFORD.

with the difficulty. Have them now I would, if I was obliged to swim for them. I walked down to the mill, a little below, and, crossing over, returned up the other bank, opposite to them. They seemed to my wistful looks further off than ever. Happily, before attempting the Hellespont, Hero-like, I espied someway up the Avon, a boat in charge of two young men, and easily engaged them to put me across to the coveted treasure. Though very rough in their exterior, the fellows had some heart ; and when they saw- what I would be at, they took great pains not to crush the gems with the bow of the boat, and quite eagerly helped me to gather every stalk. You know the story of this flower and its name ? A knight, walking in his armor, with his lady-love, attempted, at her wish, just such a feat as I had declined, — for the want of his motive. While reaching down for the flowers he slipped, and was plunged into the deep stream, hopelessly weighed down by his armor. As he sank he threw the flowers toward the bank, crying, " Forget me not."

The morning on which I mounted the coach-top for Oxford was bright. The heavens were beautiful, and the earth was beautiful. The past was grateful to recollection ; the future was hopeful. « Indeed, I was in harmony with everything — with the driver, the passengers, the horses, the fields with their herds, the trees and hedges. To be sure, I maintained a grave and reserved exterior, all the way ; but my heart laughed and sung at every step. We rode through Woodstock, and passed by Blenheim, the seat of the Duke of Marl-