Chapter XX: Falstaff

We were destined to have another experience with the car that day before we reached our destination. As we drew near Shrewsbury there was a sharp shower, which, though it did not last many minutes, was enough to make the roads rather greasy. As we had, however, such a short distance to go, it did not seem worth while to put on the chains. As we drove along the main street I was very careful, fearing we might skid. There is a tramway running through the street, which did not make things easier, for the rails were wet and shining in the rain. The street is lined with trees, and on one side is a high brick wall. My subconscious mind was noting all these things and perhaps allowing me to drive a little faster than I had intended, when suddenly the car, as if it were possessed of a devil, shot from the track to the sidewalk, passing between two trees, grazing the wall, and was back again on the rails before one could say "Jack Robinson," or even the English equivalent, "Knife"! It was not the rear wheels which had slipped but the front ones! No one had ever told me that could happen, nor should I have known how to guard against it if they had. Was it not fortunate that it was the tea hour that the car chose for this little side-trip? All the tradespeople were in the back rooms behind their shops, and the street was almost deserted. I trembled to think what might have happened had children been on their way to or from school, or feeble folk had failed to jump like grasshoppers! I never was more thankful than when I turned the motor into the garage of the "Raven."

Our first business in Shrewsbury was, of course, to visit the battle-field. I reminded Ruth as we drove out of the town the following morning of a saying of yours: that the best investment any nation or town could make was to breed a genius! "Sir Walter Scott," you said, "had brought more money to Scotland than all the ship-building on the Clyde, and that the money spent each year in Marseilles, by men and women who came from all over the world to look at the Château d'If, and speculate as to which side of it a man, who had never lived, had escaped could not be counted for multitude!" It is the same here. What a triumph of the imagination it is that after four hundred years pilgrims should still be wending their way to the field of Shrewsbury, as many were doing that morning! Not because it was historical--as the French say--"they mock themselves well of that." It is Shakespeare who is the Pied Piper that led us all to the spot where Harry Monmouth and Hotspur fought indeed, but where Falstaff bore off the honors of the day!

What a futile fight it was! Would not England have been better off if Percy had won? Did not the triumph of Henry IV sow the dragon's teeth that were harvested in the Wars of the Roses? Did it not lead to the desolation of France and the crime of Jeanne d'Arc's death? It is the genius of Shakespeare alone which lends glamour to this stupidity. Look at the heroes! Has any figure in history, except the miserable Stuarts, called forth such sympathy as the reckless Hotspur? How much Percy resembles our national hero! It is the feminine in us that admires Henry V--the reformed rake! It would seem as if the prudent, calculating world reacts in shame from Henry IV, as if it saw in him a picture of itself, and admires the reckless Percy just because it dare not follow him! Falstaff is the real hero. The fool at the feast of folly! Gross and witty, brave enough but cynical--what genius to draw respectable people to such companionship and compel them to enjoy it though they are ashamed to be seen with him! I suppose the real explanation of this moral paradox is that human nature esteems a sinner more than it does a hypocrite. The Lord Chancellor was a more respectable man than Falstaff, but he was a humbug, and we are glad the fat knight flouted him.

While I was thus moralizing and, no doubt, boring Ruth, we had reached the battle-field, and she exclaimed: "Why, there is Mr. Rhodes!" the historian, whom she had known in Boston--and ran to meet him.

"Oh, Mr. Rhodes," she cried, "I am sure you have made some new historical discovery!"

"I have, indeed," he gravely replied, but with a twinkle in his eye.

"Tell me at once what it is," she asked eagerly.

"I have discovered a new lie of Falstaff's--he 'fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock,' and the clock is not visible from the battle-field!"

Shrewsbury was one of the ancient and is still one of the modern gates into Wales, and had we been tied to a route we should have entered the kingdom of Glendower from there, but we received two letters which changed our plans, and led us to leave the motor, and depart in different directions by train. Of which you will hear in due time.