THE ANNUAL MEETING 
109 
Cathedral of literature — the aisle in which all the earth’s greatest 
and most famous men and women had passed, before approaching 
the inner shrine — that severely plain, but supremely sacred room 
where the eyes that saw all poesy at a glance, first opened to 
the light of day. Many things had changed in Stratford ; 
many valuable old houses and historical landmarks of the 
Shakspeare period had been swept away for ever, owing to 
the lack of proper protection, but Henley Street had not changed 
in any very blatant or obtrusively modern manner until 1899. 
Then it was that the hand of the jerry builder, vandal and de- 
stroyer began to play havoc with its old world style and memory. 
It was in the summer of that very year that she first went to 
reside in the town, and before she had been there long she 
found, to her deep surprise and regret, that the memory of the 
world’s greatest poet was far more likely to be belittled than 
glorified by those who were assumed to care for his relics. She 
found herself involved in a difficult struggle to insure a proper 
reverence for the beautiful old chancel in which is his grave. But 
she won the victory, and saved the chancel from the unseemly 
intrusion of a modern effigy which would have been entirely 
out of place in it. The present case was a parallel of that dispute. 
It was only after the strongest urging of other literary workers 
that she wrote a brief letter to the Morning Post on February 
11 last, stating the proposed intention of the local authorities 
with regard to the famous street. Since, there had been con- 
tinued discussion and some misrepresentation. It had been 
asserted that she, and the others working with her, had been 
exaggerating the value of the old cottages, and defending a 
property that was historically worthless. She was not, however, 
fighting for the cottages half so strenuously as she was fighting 
for the street. But there was one cottage which was built in 
1563 (that date being proved by Mr. Richard Savage, the 
librarian at the birthplace, who had examined all the old 
deeds and leases extant with regard to it). Had no protest 
been raised that ancient building would have been pulled down 
by now, on the present intention of the Free Library Committee 
— a Committee which only consisted of three persons, viz., 
Mr. William Flower, the worthy brewer, who was responsible 
for the whole scheme, and two local builders, whose interest 
naturally lay in carrying out the scheme. The intention of 
that Committee was to actually perform the outrageous and 
incongruous business of fitting in that ancient building to form 
a part of the new Carnegie Library. Some idea of the local 
knowledge of things artistic might be gained from that piece 
of information. The Committee considered the plan was 
perfectly correct, beautiful, harmonious, and eminently artistic. 
Shakspeare’s birthplace was in that street, and that was enough 
for one small thoroughfare. The cottages standing there were 
