Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1885 — SHAKSPEARE’S HOUSE. [ARTICLE]

SHAKSPEARE’S HOUSE.

The Three Antique Ladle* Who Have It in Charge. It would be ancient history to so many of my renders to write of the house Shakspesre was botn in t|»t I will not run the risk of being quite so tiresome. There is an idea prevailing that the three antique ladies who have the house and museum in charge are the last living descendents of the great poet’s family. This is fiction, unfortunately, but if the old ladies have not in point of fact any blood relationship to the Shskspeare family, they are thoroughly saturated with the conviction that the little house on Stratford-on-Avon is, with the events that have made it famous, the one important and imposing spot on the lace of the earth; that it is, in fact, the axis around which everything else revolves. They also believe firmly in the greatness of their own position as guardians of these world* revered relics, and, joking aside, it is one of great trust, and probably could not be confided to more zealous hands, The greatest care is taken that no accident shou’-d occur. Gentlemen are not permitted to I ring a lighted cigar over the threshold, a match is never lighted in the house, nor any kind of light or fire introduced. The building is closed at dusk to prevent the necessity of tbe former, and is heated by steam, which is conveyed through pipes from half a block away. The houses on either sides of the Shakspeare birth- 1 place were torn down a few years since to prevent danger from fire. During tbe tourists’ session hundreds of people daily ma'ie this pilgrimage, and hundreds and thousands of times probably the three little old ladies in their gran black silk gowns, with velvet spencers and what the English call “dress-caps” ornamenting their scant locks, repeat the explanatory remarks to group after group of viators, beginning with “Be kind enough to place umbrellas and walking-sticks upon this, the old table of the poet’s father, next turning your attention to this,the living room of the family, unchanged in any respect since the childhood of the great author. Alter the father of the poet died this room was rented for a butcher shop, which accounts for the defacing of the floor; look, also, at the chimney with its corner seats; here "William Shakspeare, as a lad, doubtless little dreaming of the groat future, before him, often sat on a winter’s evening after his reture from the village school. Visitors are permitted tp sit a moment in the chimney seat”—this in tones at once solemn and patronizing.. “We next have the second or best room in tbe house, and off of it our poet’s bedroom, but a poor place, ladies and gentlemen, to shelter the king of intellects.” And so from room to room. While our party is in the poet’s so-called bedroom, I hear the second old lady, who is evidently just beginning the tour with a company, chatting the unchanging refrain word for word as our old lady did at that point, and as we descend the narrow, crooked staircase, after seeing the long upper room which has the autograph of Sir Walter Scott cut with a diamond upon the window pane, we run against the of the third weird sisters just as she id saying: “But a po- r place, ladies and gentlemen, to shelter the king of intellects.• The Shaks; eare house is like two houses, now that there is a partitionwall catting it directly through the center from garret to cellar or groundfloor, which was put there “when the poet’s father met with reverses and rented part of the house as an inn.” This is now called the ’museum, wherein are collected the various relics of Shakspeare, his family, and a few interesting objects pertaining to his time, notably the form or de-k from the village school the poet attended, and vouched for by the authorities about Stratford as authentic. Every smallest object is religiously guarded as something sacred, and in noticing this care and solicitude one cannot but bless the happy chance which awakened these sleeping old villagers to a realization of the treasures in their midst.— Landon Letter,