These proud descendants of a fabulous ancestor remind one of the general in the "Pirates of Penzance" who is found weeping at the tomb in the abbey belonging to the property he has purchased. When it is suggested to him that his tears are misplaced, he replies: "Sir, when I bought this property I bought this abbey and this tomb with its _contents_. I do not know whose ancestors these _were_, but I do know whose ancestors they _are_." And he falls to sobbing again, bound to have an ancestry of some kind, the more important the more to belittle himself by comparison. But the general is very English for all that. Tennyson's lines,
"Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere, From yon blue heavens above us bent The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the claims of long descent,"
are well known and repeated by the school children all over the land, but the grown men and women, entirely free from the weakness of trying to figure out a family tree of respectable antiquity, will be found unexpectedly small in this old land. Josh Billings settled the matter as far as Americans are concerned, for the malady is even more ridiculous in the New World. "We can't boast old family here," says he, "the country ain't _long_ enough, unless a feller has Injun in him." That is what the lawyers call an estoppel, I take it.
Driving through Leamington we reached Kenilworth Castle for luncheon, to which we had looked forward for several days. Alas! the keeper informed us that no picnic parties are admitted since the grounds have been put into such excellent order by the kind Earl Clarendon (for which thanks, good earl). But he was a man of some discrimination, this custodian of the ruins, and when he saw our four-in-hand and learned who we were--Americans! Brighton to Inverness!--he made us an exception to the rule, of which I trust his lordship will approve, if he ever hears. We had one of our happiest luncheons beneath the walls under a large hawthorn tree, which we decided was the very place where the enraged Queen Bess discovered dear Amy Robsart on that memorable night.
A thousand memories cluster round this ruin; but what should we have known of it had not the great magician touched with his wand this dead mass of stone and lime and conferred immortality upon the actors and their revels? In his pages we live over again the days of old, and take part with the Virgin Queen and her train of lords and ladies in the grand reception so lavishly prepared for her amusement by the then reigning favorite; ruined walls and towers and courts assume their ancient proportions and resound with music and revelry, and the noble park, now so quiet, is alive once more with huntsmen and gayly clad courtiers. But vivid as is Scott's picture, it is exceeded in quaint interest by the original account of the festivities from which the great romancer drew his facts, but which is as little known to the ordinary reader of "Kenilworth" as is the prototype of Hamlet to the common play-goer. Master Robert Laneham, the writer, was a sort of hanger-on of the court, and appears to have accompanied Leicester to Kenilworth. His account is in the form of a letter addressed to "my good friend, Master Humfrey Martin, Mercer," in London, and is written, says Scott, "in a style of the most intolerable affectation, both in point of composition and orthography."