. Shakespeare's England . d, by all that he sees and hears. There is awalk across the fields to Shottery that the poet mustoften have taken, in the days of his courtship of AnneHathaway. The path to this hamlet passes throughpastures and gardens, flecked everywhere with thosebrilliant scarlet poppies that are so radiant and so be-witching in the English landscape. To have grown upamid such surroundings, and, above all, to have expe-rienced amid them the passion of love, must have been,for Shakespeare, the intuitive acquirement of ample andspecific knowledge of their manifold beauties. It would
. Shakespeare's England . d, by all that he sees and hears. There is awalk across the fields to Shottery that the poet mustoften have taken, in the days of his courtship of AnneHathaway. The path to this hamlet passes throughpastures and gardens, flecked everywhere with thosebrilliant scarlet poppies that are so radiant and so be-witching in the English landscape. To have grown upamid such surroundings, and, above all, to have expe-rienced amid them the passion of love, must have been,for Shakespeare, the intuitive acquirement of ample andspecific knowledge of their manifold beauties. It wouldbe hard to find a sweeter rustic retreat than Anne Hatha-ways cottage is, even now. Tall trees embower it; andover its porches, and all along its picturesque, irregu-lar front, and on its thatched roof, the woodbine and theivy climb, and there are wild roses and the maidensblush. For the young poets wooing no place could befitter than this. He would always remember it withtender joy. They show you, in that cottage, an old. ^ V CHAP. VIII FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON 85 settle, by the fireside, whereon the lovers may have sattogether : it formerly stood outside the door : and in therude little chamber next the roof an antique, carved bed-stead, that Anne Hathaway once owned. This, it isthought, continued to be Annes home for several yearsof her married life — her husband being absent in Lon-don, and sometimes coming down to visit her, at Shottery. He was wont, says John Aubrey, the antiquary, writ-ing in 1680, to go to his native country once a last surviving descendant of the Hathaway family— Mrs. Baker—lives in the house now, and welcomeswith homely hospitality the wanderers, from all lands,who seek — in a sympathy and reverence most hon-ourable to human nature — the shrine of Shakespeareslove. There is one such wanderer who will never for-get the farewell clasp of that kind womans hand, andwho has never parted with her gift of woodbine androses from the
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