The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Sixty In which Pickleherring eats an egg in honour of Mr Shakespeare

Today was St George's Day, which day I always keep. This particular St George's Day I had especial cause to honour. It was fifty years ago today - 23rd April, 1616 - that the poet William Shakespeare breathed his last.

Anne brought me another egg, and she dressed my chamber! She fetched also a pitcher of cold fresh water, plus a little bowl of suckets. When I asked her if this was in honour of St George or Mr Shakespeare, she simply shook her head and stamped her foot. Our English patron saint, I fear, means nothing to this sweet witch. And I do not think she had heard of Mr Shakespeare.

For once, I nothing cared, to encounter such ignorance. I pinned a clean napkin before me, and I put on a pair of white Holland sleeves, which reached to my elbows. I ate my egg with relish, even the white part, and offered my guest a spoon of it, but she would not.

She had seated herself on a stack of my used boxes by the window. She showed not the least curiousness concerning their contents, nor in anything else in this room, for all that I could see. Yet how strange it must all seem to my whore-child's eyes! They are big and blue, by the by, with long dark lashes which she flutters prettily. Her ankles, when she sate herself, I perceived very neat and slender in her white silk stockings. (But your author knew that already, and so do you.)

She did not stay long, this dear, sweet Anne of mine, but she left a perfume of herself across my room. While she was here, there was an illumination about her. Barely a word did she speak, once she came in, until her going out again, yet my poor old, tired head sings with it.

'Sir,' - that's what she said, when I opened my door to her gentle knocking - 'I've brought another egg, sir. Would you like it?'

Ten words. Well, eleven, if I am allowed to draw out the contraction. And her voice is very beautiful, sweet and low. She called me sir. She made me a delightful little curtsey. I did not let her know that I know her name.

What did they see, that pair of deep, adorable blue eyes? What can their young owner have made of your ancient Pickleherring?

I keep no mirrors by me in this attic. I've allowed myself no looking-glass of any kind since my wife Jane departed this vain world. But of course I can remember what I look like. The memories are not all bad, sir, not all bad.

Pickleherring is of middle stature, with a fair complexion (remarkable I daresay for my extreme age), and of a pleasant countenance, open and cheerful even if somewhat cross-hatched with wrinkles. (Beated and chopt with tann'd antiquity, as Mr Shakespeare said of his own face, and still in his thirties when he said it.) My hair (by reason no barber has come near me for the space of several years) is much overgrown. My habit is plain and without ornament, for the most part - which is to say, when I am not dressed up in any of the ruins of my costumes, but no one ever sees me garbed like that. I favour a sad-coloured cloth, of a texture that will defend me against any machinations of the cold. Since Jane was killed, I say, there has been nothing to be found in my apparel which could be thought to betoken or express the least imagination of pride or of vain-glory.

As she was leaving my chamber, as she stood there in my doorway, I made this darling Anne the gift of one of my precious pickled mulberries.

'This is no common fruit,' I told her. 'It comes from the tree of the greatest poet and the dearest man who ever lived in England. And today is his day, little miss, as much as it is St George's.'

Anne inspected it most respectfully, before wrapping it up in her handkerchief. Then she dropped me another dainty curtsey, and scampered away. Watching her rush down the stairs I remembered her childishness. Perched on my boxes, legs crossed, she had looked something else.

Thus passed the most remarkable St George's Day I have ever known in my life, in which my only feast was on an egg. Blessed be the dear white hands that gave it to me. I ate that egg in Mr Shakespeare's honour. As I say, it is fifty years from the day that the poet died. I will not tell you how he bade farewell to me until it's time for that. Today, fifty years on, let me say only that William Shakespeare's purgatory must be past. His heaven will never end, be sure of it.