The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-09-20
AMERICAN PILGRIMS.
When They Go to Europe They Are
Much Occupied with the Dead.

In his own country the American loves
life better than death. Rarely does he step
out of his path to visit the tomb of Wash
ington or Lincoln, of Emerson or Haw-
thornes of Morse or Fulton any other
benefactOr or his race, while he will run in
crowds to a baseball match or a fire. But
no sooner does he cross the ocean than he
becomes engroSsed with the dead, and
tombs are his places of pilgrimage. One
might wager with confidence that more
Americans than Englishmen visit West
minister Abbey each year to offer up irrele-
want emotions; and StratfOrd-on-Avon has
become a kind of shifting American colony,
in which everything, even the price marks
in shop windows, accommodate themselves
to the prejudices Of the foreign population.
1 did not intend to visit StratfOrd because
of a heretical dissatisfaction with tombs.
The fOWery, undeSignated graves of the
common people please me well or the tombs
OF those VINO were fortunate enough TO die
two or three centuries ago, when the SIM
pleSt little headStone was thing of beauty.
Also like the Gothic tombs in which kings
and mobiles were laid beneath cathedral al
tarS. From Edward the Confessor to Eliza
beth the monarchs of England are royal
still in their royal house of Westminster.
Knights, bishops, saints, great ladies rest
in noble tombs at many affairs; and many
a tomb has deserved to survive the poor
dust it inclosed and pass down through the
ages the challenge of beauty to death. But
few of the poets have been appropriately
inurned. To visit the tomb of a poet is a
risk so reckless that one scarcely dares de-
liberately accept it. Even the poets corner
at Westminster-that crush of monuments
in decadent renaissance defacing the fine
old Gothic lines, that discordant chorus of
epitaphs in which the nobodies talk the
loudest-even this is not fitting for poets
grave. on the whole, the tomb of Cover
in st. SaVior's Church, Southwark, i'm
pressed me as the most unquestionable
success of all the poets tombs which have
visited. Manifestly the pragmatical old
versiher was a great man in his day. There
he lies in state on his carved sarcophagus
in all the pomp of a painted effigy, his
hands praying on his breast, his head pill
moniously awaiting the last trump in that
fine old church across the Thames, of
which he five centuries ago, was one of the
most important parishiOners.
But Stratford. The entire town on the
Avon is little more than the tomb of Shak-
speare, ard its people live upon his mem
DRY in a practical worldly way which puts
to scorn the fine sentiment of travelling
worshipers. 1t was in vain to oppose my
vague intentions against the universal
pilgrimage; the pleading of compatriots,
the shocked eyes of friends, the countless
influences in the air, combined with the
wiles of railroads to lure me into the beaten
path. One beautiful sunny morning found
myself alighting at the Stratford station
and noting the reverend crowd which ac-
companied me into the village street-faces
prepared for emotion and eager for awe.
And truly it was a day full of emotions:
not always of the kind was looking for
but always sufficient exciting.
The first took possession of me at the
fountain presented by IAN American citi-
zen, George w. Childs. of PhiIadeIphia to
the town of Shakespeare. in the jubilee year
of Queen Victoria" This expression of in
ternational amenities was a little too sug-
gestive of the style which a Chicago ar
chitect once called Victorian cathartic"
to be altogether in harmony with an Eliza
bethan mood. Seeking solace in the inscrip-
tons, / read this line from Washington
Irving
Ten thousand honors and blessings on
the bard who has gilded the dull realities of
life with innocent illusions"
Was ii possible that our amiable and
clever Addisonian had ever uttered so banal
Shakespeare, could nothing more adequate
be found TO carve upon public monument?
| wondered if the wise Shakespeare would
not smile at the sentimentality which can
characterize the realities Of life as dun,
and wish to gid the marble face of truth
until ssfpnCqapf