As to precocity, it must be remembered that he lived in reckless days, when men did not wait as they do now till they were five-and-forty years of age to marry; by that time, with enterprise and luck, many a gentleman was in the enjoyment of his third, or even his fourth honeymoon.
Still, William Henry was not unconscious that he had taken an audacious step, and felt a genuine sense of relief on finding that Mr. Samuel Erin had provided himself in that armchair with a relic and not a weapon.
This invaluable acquisition—which, when it was brought to London, was placed on a little elevation made on purpose for it in his study, with a brass plate at its foot (after the manner of chairs in our Madam Tussaud’s) with the words ‘Anne Hathaway’s Chair’ upon it—had the effect of putting its possessor into good humour for the remainder of his stay at Stratford, a circumstance which had the happiest results for those about him. William Henry, for his part, was in the seventh heaven. It is not only our virtues which have the power of bestowing happiness upon us—at all events, for a season. Shakespeare himself makes a striking observation on that matter in one of his sonnets; having spoken plainly enough of certain errors, gallantries of which he has repented, he adds, with an altogether unexpected frankness,—
But, by all above, These blenches gave my heart another youth.
He does not put his tongue in his cheek at morality, far from it; but he rolls the sweet morsel, the remembrance of forbidden pleasure, under his tongue. It is one of the mistakes that our divines fall into to deny to our little peccadilloes any pleasure at all, whereas the fact is that the blossom of them is often very fair and fragrant, though the fruit is full of ashes, and, like the goodly apple, rotten at the core.
And thus it was with William Henry, who, without, indeed, having committed any great enormity, had certainly not been justified in obtaining the loan of his cousin’s love; the consciousness of his temporary possession of it made a very happy man of him for a season. He made no ungenerous use of his advantage, he did not take an ell because he had gained an inch; but he hugged himself in that new-found sense of security as one basks in the summer sunshine. Those days at Stratford were the happiest days of his life. Considering the means by which they were obtained, one can hardly apply to them the usual phrase ‘a foretaste of heaven;’ but they were happy days snatched from a life which was fated to hold few such. It was, perhaps, out of gratitude to him whose memory had helped him to this happiness, that the young man really began to take an interest in Shakespearean matters; and this again reacted to his advantage, since it gratified Mr. Erin, whose good-will, difficult to gain by other means, was approached by that channel with extraordinary facility.