Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-12-15
Too Many Modern Improvements.

100 many modern Improvements.
7 HAVE been reading description OF STRAIT
ford-on-Avon by Mr.. Richard Grant White
Stratford, to him, was village of disappoint-
ments and exasperations. The streets were too
wide, and the houses too well painted. He was
particularly injured by discovering that the
good people had set curbstones along the roads.
He had to sleep on spring mattress, upon an
iron bedstead, There was gas in his bedroom
The stratford church had galleries in it; even
the bust OF Shakespeare was staring and hid
eous, and the famous curse was not half SO in
teresting seen close to. ShaRespeare's birth
place had an air of newness which was POSI-
lively offensive Even the Avon Was sluggish
and sedgy, and little more than a big ditch.
Mr.. White has not good word to say for the
town nor anything in it But Mr. White began
wrong. He did not put ND at the Red Horse Inn
Stratford- on Avon, as the contented people
see it who begin their peregrinations at the
threshold of the Red Horse Inn, is a cheerful
little village, whose streets are pleasantly
cleaner than they were when Shakespeare's
father was fined for dumping the family ref
fuse into the gutter before his door; it has i'm
proved some since the poets day, and we are
There Is the same sky overhead and che same
green in the trees and meadows about the
town, and the same cleaning river. The Avon,
as it runs beside the churchyard, catching the
shadows Of the graceful trees and rejecting
The spire of the church where Shakespeare
lies buried, is one of the most charming streams
in England. You Iinger beside it, between the
chancel and the river, and forget even about
Shakespeare in delight at the tranquil and Sc
rene beauty of the place. And that is a good
deal to say, for Shakespeare seems to be the
chief reason for Stratfords existence. There
are busts of him in all the shop windows.
They get his name into their signs
and write it in their advertisements
And the chief buildings are those which
are associated with him. They say that Sir
William Dugdale. who wrote an immense vol
ume on the Antiquities of WarwIckshire
which, happily We need not read, gave Stratford-
on-Avon Is folio pages in close type; at the end
on which, trying to recall any point or interest
which he might have missed he for
tunately bethinks himself of one little matter
which some people may perhaps be glad to be
reminded Of "one thing more, he says. ''one
observable, that it gave birth and sepulture to
our late famous poet, Will Shakespeare" But
the guide books do not follow this example.
Nor are the tourists Of Sir Williams spirit.
Places Which Everybody Must See.
There are three places in Stratford which
everybody must see, and, these seen, we 60 our
hurried way. One is Shakespeare's house where
he was born; another is Anne Hathaway's cot
tage where he did his courting. The third is
the church in whose chancel he lies buried
There was once fourth. the house in which he
lived, he and his Anne. But that is pulled
down and nothing left Of 1t. 1t had been re-
paired cut of all likeness to the original, any
way; so that the loss may not be great But
the circumstances of the pulling down were
peculiar. 1t seems that there was an ancient
mulberry tree in the garden, under which the
poet meditated. And everybody who came to
Stratford wanted to see the mulberry tree.
But the garden and the house belonged to an
il-natured parson. And the parson was not
pleased at all this swinging OF his gate and
trampling over his lawn; no doubt, II was not
altogether pleasant. And after he had endured
the tourists to the limits Of his patience (which
was probably not greatly sextended), he took
his clerical coat of one fine morning, and got a
stout axe, and chopped that historical mulberry
into small pieces, and made bonfire of the
pieces. And, shortly after, he effected clean
sweep of the whole business by tearing down
the house to the last brick; ana having thus re-
venged HIM of his enemies he departed, leaving
this curious memory behind him.
"Shakespeare's house," where he was born,
is rather respectable looking dwelling on the
outside. 1t is in that style Of architecture
which is known as ''post-and-pave," that Is, it
is built of great timbers, with wide spaces be-
tween, which are filed with lath and plaster
There is d glimpse Of that kind of construction
in the upper part OF the T. K. r. station at
Homewood. But the house within is uncom-
Portable and cherries enough to satisfy even
the most ardent admirer OF the good old
times" The first room into which the street
door opens is that upon whose dingy and con-
tracted walls John Shakespeare baby first
opened his observant eyes. They knew none
OF our modern distinctions between parfor
and bedroom in Shakespeare's day. The only
evidence of the well-to-do condition of the
family is in the presence of a chimney. A
chimney was aluxury. Common people built
their fires informally upon the floor, and al
lowed the smoke to make its graceful exit
through q hole in the ceiling. But John
Shakespeare had chimney. Indeed, during a
season of brief prosperity, he was an important
man in Stratford, holding the two significantly
related positions of ale-taster and alderman
The splendors of the house begin and end with
that plain brick chimney. The rooms are low,
low-class tenement Upstairs you strike your
head against tho rough beams of the roof Part
of the house is used as a museum for Shakes
pearean treasures. Here. among other curious
score Of them. and no two spelled alike.