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diff --git a/7187.txt b/7187.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..682d27c --- /dev/null +++ b/7187.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5551 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Seven English Cities, by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Seven English Cities + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7187] +This file was first posted on March 24, 2003 +Last Updated: April 6, 2013 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN ENGLISH CITIES *** + + + + +Produced by Tricia Gilbert, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + +SEVEN ENGLISH CITIES + +By W. D. Howells + +Illustrated + + +[Illustration: A VIEW OF MONK BAR] + + + * * * * * + + + BOOKS OF TRAVEL AND COMMENT BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS + + + ROMAN HOLIDAYS............................... net $3.00 + Traveller's Edition...................... net 3.00 + + CERTAIN DELIGHTFUL ENGLISH TOWNS, Ill'd...... net 3.00 + Traveller's Edition...................... net 3.00 + + LONDON FILMS. Illustrated.................... net 2.25 + Traveller's Edition...................... net 2.25 + + A LITTLE SWISS SOJOURN....................... .50 + + MY YEAR IN A LOG CABIN. Illustrated.......... .50 + + CRITICISM AND FICTION........................ 1.00 + + HEROINES OF FICTION. Illustrated............. net 3.75 + + IMPRESSIONS AND EXPERIENCES.................. 1.50 + + LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCE. Ill'd..... 2.50 + + LITERATURE AND LIFE.......................... net 2.25 + + MODERN ITALIAN POETS. Illustrated............ 2.00 + + MY LITERARY PASSIONS......................... 1.75 + + STOPS OF VARIOUS QUILLS...................... 2.50 + Limited Edition......................... 15.00 + + + * * * * * + + + + +CONTENTS + + + A MODEST LIKING FOR LIVERPOOL + SOME MERITS OF MANCHESTER + IN SMOKIEST SHEFFIELD + NINE DAYS' WONDER IN YORK + TWO YORKISH EPISODES + A DAY AT DONCASTER AND AN HOUR OUT OF DURHAM + THE MOTHER OF THE AMERICAN ATHENS + ABERYSTWYTH, A WELSH WATERING-PLACE + LLANDUDNO, ANOTHER WELSH WATERING-PLACE + GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH CHARACTER + + + * * * * * + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS (not available) + + + A VIEW OF MONK BAR + ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LIVERPOOL + THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT, LIVERPOOL + THE LIVERPOOL DOCKS + MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL + TOWN HALL, MANCHESTER + THE MANCHESTER SHIP-CANAL + TOWN HALL, SHEFFIELD + YORK MINSTER--THE GRANDEST IN ALL ENGLAND + BOOTHAM BAR AND THE MINSTER + WALMGATE BAR HAS A BARBICAN + ST. MARY'S ABBEY + CLIFFORD'S TOWER + YORK AS SEEN FROM THE RIVER + DURHAM CATHEDRAL--NORTHWEST VIEW + FINCHALE PRIORY + DURHAM CATHEDRAL--ITS MATCHLESS SEAT ON THE BLUFFS OF THE RIVER + THE "STUMP" OF ST. BOTOLPH'S CHURCH AGAINST THE SKY + THE WORTHY ANCESTRESS OF FANEUIL HALL AND QUINCY MARKET-PLACES + THE RIVER AT EVENING + LIFTING ITS TOWER FROM THE BRINK OF THE WITHAM + FISHING-SHIPS AT GREAT GRIMSBY + THE BEACH, ABERYSTWYTH + ABERYSTWYTH FROM CRAIG GLAS ROCKS + LLANDUDNO--THE CITY AND HARBOR + LLANDUDNO FROM GREAT ORME'S NECK + THE GREAT PIER, LLANDUDNO + CONWAY CASTLE + PLAS MAWR + A PRESENTATION AT COURT + THE ENGLISH HOUSEMAID + LEADS A LIFE OF GAYETY ON THE SANDS + + + * * * * * + + + + +A MODEST LIKING FOR LIVERPOOL + + +Why should the proud stomach of American travel, much tossed in the +transatlantic voyage, so instantly have itself carried from Liverpool +to any point where trains will convey it? Liverpool is most worthy to be +seen and known, and no one who looks up from the bacon and eggs of his +first hotel breakfast after landing, and finds himself confronted by the +coal-smoked Greek architecture of St. George's Hall, can deny that it is +of a singularly noble presence. The city has moments of failing in the +promise of this classic edifice, but every now and then it reverts to +it, and reminds the traveller that he is in a great modern metropolis of +commerce by many other noble edifices. + + +I + +Liverpool does not remind him of this so much as the good and true +Baedeker professes, in the dockside run on the overhead railway (as the +place unambitiously calls its elevated road); but then, as I noted in my +account of Southampton, docks have a fancy of taking themselves in, +and eluding the tourist eye, and even when they "flank the Mersey for a +distance of 6-7 M." they do not respond to American curiosity so frankly +as could be wished. They are like other English things in that, however, +and it must be said for them that when apparent they are sometimes +unimpressive. From my own note-book, indeed, I find that I pretended to +think them "wonderful and almost endless," and so I dare say they +are. But they formed only a very perfunctory interest of our day at +Liverpool, where we had come to meet, not to take, a steamer. + +Our run from London, in the heart of June, was very quick and pleasant, +through a neat country and many tidy towns. In the meadows the elms +seemed to droop like our own rather than to hold themselves oakenly +upright like the English; the cattle stood about in the yellow +buttercups, knee-deep, white American daisies, and red clover, and among +the sheep we had our choice of shorn and unshorn; they were equally +abundant. Some of the blossomy May was left yet on the hawthorns, and +over all the sky hovered, with pale-white clouds in pale-blue spaces +of air like an inverted lake of bonnyclabber. We stopped the night at +Chester, and the next evening, in the full daylight of 7.40, we pushed +on to Liverpool, over lovely levels, with a ground swell like that of +Kansas plains, under a sunset drying its tears and at last radiantly +smiling. + + +II + +The hotel in Liverpool swarmed and buzzed with busy and murmurous +American arrivals. One could hardly get at the office window, on account +of them, to plead for a room. A dense group of our countrywomen were +buying picture-postals of the rather suave office-ladies, and helplessly +fawning on them in the inept confidences of American women with all +persons in official or servile attendance. "Let me stay here," one of +them entreated, "because there's such a draught at the other window. +May I?" She was a gentle child of forty-five or fifty; and I do not know +whether she was allowed to stay in the sheltered nook or not, tender +creature. As she was in every one else's way there, possibly she was +harshly driven into the flaw at the other window. + +[Illustration: ST. GEORGE'S HALL, LIVERPOOL] + +The place was a little America which swelled into a larger with the +arrivals of the successive steamers, though the soft swift English +trains bore our co-nationals away as rapidly as they could. Many +familiar accents remained till the morning, and the breakfast-room was +full of a nasal resonance which would have made one at home anywhere in +our East or West. I, who was then vainly trying to be English, escaped +to the congenial top of the farthest bound tram, and flew, at the rate +of four miles an hour, to the uttermost suburbs of Liverpool, whither +no rumor of my native speech could penetrate. It was some balm to my +wounded pride of country to note how pale and small the average type of +the local people was. The poorer classes swarmed along a great part +of the tram-line in side streets of a hard, stony look, and what +characterized itself to me as a sort of iron squalor seemed to prevail. +You cannot anywhere have great prosperity without great adversity, just +as you cannot have day without night, and the more Liverpool evidently +flourished the more it plainly languished. I found no pleasure in the +paradox, and I was not overjoyed by the inevitable ugliness of the brick +villas of the suburbs into which these obdurate streets decayed. But +then, after divers tram changes, came the consolation of beautiful +riverside beaches, thronged with people who looked gay at that distance, +and beyond the Mersey rose the Welsh hills, blue, blue. + + +III + +At the end of the tram-line, where we necessarily dismounted, we +rejected a thatched cottage, offering us tea, because we thought it too +thatched and too cottage to be quite true (though I do not now say that +there were vermin in the straw roof), and accepted the hospitality of +a pastry-cook's shop. We felt the more at home with the kind woman +who kept it because she had a brother at Chicago in the employ of the +Pinkerton Detective Agency, and had once been in Stratford-on-Avon; this +doubly satisfied us as cultivated Americans. She had a Welsh name, and +she testified to a great prevalence of Welsh and Irish in the population +of Liverpool; besides, she sent us to a church of the Crusaders at +Little Crosby, and it was no fault of hers that we did not find it. We +found one of the many old crosses for which Little Crosby is named, and +this was quite as much as we merited. It stood at the intersection of +the streets in what seemed the fragment of a village, not yet lost in +the vast maw of the city, and it calmed all the simple neighborhood, +so that we sat down at its foot and rested a long, long minute till the +tram came by and took us back into the loud, hard heart of Liverpool. + +I do not mean to blame it, for it was no louder or harder than the +hearts of other big towns, and it had some alleviation from the many +young couples who were out together half-holidaying in the unusually +pleasant Saturday weather. I wish their complexions had been better, +but you cannot have South-of-England color if you live as far north as +Liverpool, and all the world knows what the American color is. The young +couples abounded in the Gallery of Fine Arts, where they frankly looked +at one another instead of the pictures. The pictures might have been +better, but then they might have been worse (there being examples of +Filippo Lippi, Memmi, Holbein, and, above all, the _Dante's Dream_ of +Rossetti); and in any case those couples could come and see them when +they were old men and women; but now they had one another in a moment of +half-holiday which could not last forever. + +In the evening there were not so many lovers at the religious meetings +before the classic edifice opposite the hotel, where the devotions were +transacted with the help of a brass-band; but there were many youths +smoking short pipes, and flitting from one preacher to another, in the +half-dozen groups. Some preachers were nonconformist, but there was one +perspiring Anglican priest who labored earnestly with his hearers, and +who had more of his aspirates in the right place. Many of his hearers +were in the rags which seem a favorite wear in Liverpool, and I hope his +words did their poor hearts good. + +Slightly apart from the several congregations, I found myself with a +fellow-foreigner of seafaring complexion who addressed me in an accent +so unlike my own American that I ventured to answer him in Italian. He +was indeed a Genoese, who had spent much time in Buenos Ayres and was +presently thinking of New York; and we had some friendly discourse +together concerning the English. His ideas of them were often so +parallel with my own that I hardly know how to say he thought them +an improvident people. I owned that they spent much more on state, or +station, than the Americans; but we neither had any censure for them +otherwise. He was of that philosophic mind which one is rather apt to +encounter in the Latin races, and I could well wish for his further +acquaintance. His talk rapt me to far other and earlier scenes, and I +seemed to be conversing with him under a Venetian heaven, among objects +of art more convincing than the equestrian statue of the late Queen, who +had no special motive I could think of for being shown to her rightly +loving subjects on horseback. We parted with the expressed hope of +seeing each other again, and if this should meet his eye and he can +recall the pale young man, with the dark full beard, who chatted with +him between the pillars of the Piazzetta, forty years before our actual +encounter I would be glad of his address. + + +IV + +How strange are the uses of travel! There was a time when the mention +of Liverpool would have conjured up for me nothing but the thought of +Hawthorne, who spent divers dull consular years there, and has left a +record of them which I had read, with the wish that it were cheerfuler. +Yet, now, here on the ground his feet might have trod, and in the very +smoke he breathed, I did not once think of him. I thought as little of +that poor Felicia Hemans, whose poetry filled my school-reading years +with the roar of the wintry sea breaking from the waveless Plymouth Bay +on the stern and rock-bound coast where the Pilgrim Fathers landed on a +bowlder measuring eight by ten feet, now fenced in against the predatory +hammers and chisels of reverent visitors. I knew that Gladstone was born +at Liverpool, but not Mrs. Oliphant, and the only literary shade I could +summon from a past vague enough to my ignorance was William Roscoe, +whose _Life of Leo X._, in the Bohn Library, had been too much for my +young zeal when my zeal was still young. My other memories of Liverpool +have been acquired since my visit, and I now recur fondly to the +picturesque times when King John founded a castle there, to the prouder +times when Sir Francis Bacon represented it in Parliament; or again to +the brave days when it resisted Prince Rupert for three weeks, and the +inglorious epoch when the new city (it was then only some four or five +hundred years old) began to flourish on the trade in slaves with the +colonies of the Spanish Main, and on the conjoint and congenial traffic +in rum, sugar, and tobacco. + +[Illustration: THE WELLINGTON MONUMENT, LIVERPOOL] + +It will be suspected from these reminiscences that I have been studying +a page of fine print in Baedeker, and I will not deceive the reader. It +is true; but it is also true that I had some wonder, altogether my own, +that so great a city should make so small an appeal to the imagination. +In this it outdoes almost any metropolis of our own. Even in journalism, +an intensely modern product, it does not excel; Manchester has its able +and well-written _Guardian_, but what has Liverpool? Glasgow has its +Glasgow School of Painting, but again what has Liverpool? It is said +that not above a million of its people live in it; all the rest, who +can, escape to Chester, where they perhaps vainly hope to escape the +Americans. There, intrenched in charming villas behind myrtle hedges, +they measurably do so; but Americans are very penetrating, and I would +not be sure that the thickest and highest hedge was invulnerable to +them. As it is, they probably constitute the best society of Liverpool, +which the natives have abandoned to them, though they do not constitute +it permanently, but consecutively. Every Cunarder, every White Star, +pours out upon a city abandoned by its own good society a flood of +cultivated Americans, who eddy into its hotels, and then rush out +of them by every train within twenty-four hours, and often within +twenty-five minutes. They understand that there are no objects of +interest in Liverpool; and they are not met at the Customs with +invitations to breakfast, luncheon, and dinner from the people of rank +and fashion with whom they have come to associate. These have their +stately seats in the lovely neighboring country, but they are not at the +landing-stage, and even the uncultivated American cannot stay for the +vast bourgeoisie of which Liverpool, like the cities of his own land, +is composed. Our own cities have a social consciousness, and are each +sensible of being a centre, with a metropolitan destiny; but the strange +thing about Liverpool and the like English towns is that they are +without any social consciousness. Their meek millions are socially +unborn; they can come into the world only in London, and in their +prenatal obscurity they remain folded in a dreamless silence, while all +the commercial and industrial energies rage round them in a gigantic +maturity. + + +V + +The time was when Liverpool was practically the sole port of entry +for our human cargoes, indentured apprentices of the beautiful, the +historical. With the almost immediate transference of the original +transatlantic steamship interests from Bristol, Liverpool became the +only place where you could arrive. American lines, long erased from the +seas, and the Inman line, the Cunard line, the White Star line, and the +rest, would land you nowhere else. Then heretical steamers began to land +you at Glasgow; worse schismatics carried you to Southampton; there +were heterodox craft that touched at Plymouth, and now great swelling +agnostics bring you to London itself. Still, Liverpool remains the +greatest port of entry for our probationers, who are bound out to the +hotels and railroad companies of all Europe till they have morally paid +back their fare. The superstition that if you go in a Cunarder you can +sleep on both ears is no longer so exclusive as it once was; yet the +Cunarder continues an ark of safety for the timid and despairing, +and the cooking is so much better than it used to be that if in +contravention of the old Cunard rule against a passenger's being carried +overboard you do go down, you may be reasonably sure of having eaten +something that the wallowing sea-monsters will like in you. + +[Illustration: THE LIVERPOOL DOCKS] + +I have tried to give some notion of the fond behavior of the arriving +Americans in the hotels; no art can give the impression of their +exceeding multitude. Expresses, panting with as much impatience as the +disciplined English expresses ever suffer themselves to show, await them +in the stations, which are effectively parts of the great hotels, and +whir away to London with them as soon as they can drive up from the +steamer; but many remain to rest, to get the sea out of their heads +and legs, and to prepare their spirits for adjustment to the novel +conditions. These the successive trains carry into the heart of the land +everywhere, these and their baggage, to which they continue attached by +their very heart-strings, invisibly stretching from their first-class +corridor compartments to the different luggage-vans. I must say they +have very tenderly, very perfectly imagined us, all those hotel people +and railroad folk, and fold us, anxious and bewildered exiles, in a +reassuring and consoling embrace which leaves all their hands--they are +Briarean--free for the acceptance of our wide, wild tips. You may trust +yourself implicitly to their care, but if you are going to Oxford do not +trust the head porter who tells you to take the London and Northwestern, +for then you will have to change four times on the way and at every +junction personally see that your baggage is unladen and started anew to +its destination. + + + * * * * * + + + + +SOME MERITS OF MANCHESTER + + +I will suppose the reader not to be going to Oxford, but, in compliance +with the scheme of this paper, to Manchester, where there is perhaps +no other reason for his going. He will there, for one thing, find the +supreme type of the railroad hotel which in England so promptly shelters +and so kindly soothes the fluttered exile. At Manchester, even more than +at Liverpool, we are imagined in the immense railroad station hotel, +which is indeed perhaps superorganized and over-convenienced after an +American ideal: one does not, for instance, desire a striking, or even +a ticking, clock in the transom above one's bedroom door; but the like +type of hotel is to be found at every great railroad centre or terminal +in England, and it is never to be found quite bad, though of course it +is sometimes better and sometimes worse. It is hard to know if it is +more hotel or more station; perhaps it is a mixture of each which defies +analysis; but in its well-studied composition you pass, as it were, from +your car to your room, as from one chamber to another. This is putting +the fact poetically; but, prosaically, the intervening steps are few at +the most; and when you have entered your room your train has ceased to +be. The simple miracle would be impossible in America, where our trains, +when not shrieking at the tops of their whistles, are backing and +filling with a wild clangor of their bells, and making a bedlam of their +stations; but in England they + + "Come like shadows, so depart," + +and make no sound within the vast caravansary where the enchanted +traveller has changed from them into a world of dreams. + + +I + +These hotels are, next to the cathedrals, perhaps the greatest wonder +of England, and in Manchester the railway hotel is in some ways more +wonderful than the cathedral, which is not so much planned on our native +methods. Yet this has the merit, if it is a merit, of antedating our +Discovery by nearly a century, and pre-historically it is indefinitely +older. My sole recorded impression of it is that I found it smelling +strongly of coal-gas, such as comes up the register when your furnace is +mismanaged; but that is not strange in such a manufacturing centre; and +it would be paltering with the truth not to own a general sense of the +beauty and grandeur in it which no English cathedral is without. The +morning was fitly dim and chill, and one could move about in the vague +all the more comfortably for the absence of that appeal of thronging +monuments which harasses and bewilders the visitor in other cathedrals; +one could really give one's self up to serious emotion, and not be +sordidly and rapaciously concerned with objects of interest. Manchester +has been an episcopal see only some fifty years; before that the +cathedral was simply T' Owd Church, and in this character it is still +venerable, and is none the less so because of the statue of Oliver +Cromwell which holds the chief place in the open square before it. Call +it an incongruity, if you will, but that enemy of episcopacy is at least +not accused of stabling his horses in The Old Church at Manchester, or +despoiling it of its sacred images and stained glass, and he merits a +monument there if anywhere. + +[Illustration: MANCHESTER CATHEDRAL] + +With the constantly passing trams which traverse the square, he is +undoubtedly more significant of modern Manchester than the episcopacy +is, and perhaps of that older Manchester which held for him against the +king, and that yet older Manchester of John Bradford, the first martyr +of the Reformation to suffer death at the stake in Smithfield. Of the +still yet older, far older Manchester, which trafficked with the Greeks +of Marseilles, and later passed under the yoke of Agricola and was +a Roman military station, and got the name of Maen-ceaster from the +Saxons, and was duly bedevilled by the Danes and mishandled by the +Normans, there may be traces in the temperament of the modern town +which would escape even the scrutiny of the hurried American. Such +a compatriot was indeed much more bent upon getting a pair of cotton +socks, like those his own continent wears almost universally in summer, +but a series of exhaustive visits to all the leading haberdashers in +Manchester developed the strange fact that there, in the world-heart of +the cotton-spinning industry, there was no such thing to be found. +In Manchester there are only woollen socks, heavier or lighter, to be +bought, and the shopmen smile pityingly if you say, in your strange +madness, that woollen socks are not for summer wear. Possibly, however, +it was not summer in Manchester, and we were misled by the almanac. +Possibly we had been spoiled by three weeks of warm, sunny rain on the +Welsh coast, and imagined a vain thing in supposing that the end of +August was not the beginning of November. + + +II + +I thought Manchester, however, as it shows itself in its public +edifices, a most dignified town, with as great beauty as could be +expected of a place which has always had so much to do besides looking +after its figure and complexion. The very charming series or system +of parks, public gardens, and playgrounds, unusual in their number and +variety, had a sympathetic allure in the gray, cool light, even to the +spectator passing in a hurried hansom. They have not the unity of +the Boston or Chicago parkways, and I will own that I had not come to +Manchester for them. What interested me more were the miles and miles +of comfortable-looking little brick houses in which, for all I knew, the +mill-labor dwelt. Very possibly it did not; the mills themselves are +now nearly all, or mostly, outside of Manchester, and perhaps for this +reason I did not find the slums, when shown them, very slummy, and I +saw no such dreadful shapes of rags and dirt as in Liverpool. We passed +through a quarter of large, old-fashioned mansions, as charming as +they were unimagined of Manchester; but these could not have been the +dwellings of the mill-hands, any more than of the mill-owners. The +mill-owners, at least, live in suburban palaces and villas, which I +fancy by this time are not + + --"pricking a cockney ear," + +as in the time of Tennyson's "Maud." + +What wild and whirling insolences, however, the people who have greatly +made the greatness of England have in all times suffered from their +poets and novelists, with few exceptions! One need not be a very blind +devotee of commercialism or industrialism to resent the affronts put +upon them, when one comes to the scenes of such mighty achievement as +Liverpool, and Manchester, and Sheffield; but how mildly they seem to +have taken it all--with what a meek subordination and sufferance! One +asks one's self whether the society of such places can be much inferior +to that of Pittsburg, or Chicago, or St. Louis, which, even from the +literary attics of New York, we should not exactly allow ourselves to +spit upon. Practically, I know nothing about society in Manchester, or +rather, out of it; and I can only say of the general type, of richer or +poorer, as I saw it in the streets, that it was uncommonly good. Not so +many women as men were abroad in such weather as we had, and I cannot be +sure that the sex shows there that superiority physically which it has +long held morally with us. One learns in the north not to look for the +beautiful color of the south and west; but in Manchester the average +faces were intelligent and the figures good. + + +III + +With such a journal as the Manchester _Guardian_ still keeping its +high rank among English newspapers, there cannot be question of the +journalistic sort of thinking in the place. Of the sort that comes to +its effect in literature, such as, say, Mrs. Gaskell's novels, there may +also still be as much as ever; and I will not hazard my safe ignorance +in a perilous conjecture. I can only say that of the Unitarianism +which eventuated in that literature, I heard it had largely turned to +episcopacy, as Unitarianism has in our own Boston. I must not forget +that one of our religions, now a dying faith, was invented in Manchester +by Ann Lee, who brought, through the usual persecutions, Shakerism to +such spiritual importance as it has now lost in these States. Only those +who have known the Shakers, with their good lives and gentle ways, +can regret with me the decline of the celibate communism which their +foundress imagined in her marital relations with the Lancashire +blacksmith she left behind her. + +I am reminded (or perhaps instructed) by Mr. Hope Moncrieff in Black's +excellent _Guide to Manchester_ that before Mrs. Gaskell's celebrity the +fitful fame of De Quincey shed a backward gleam upon his native place, +which can still show the house where he was probably born and the +grammar-school he certainly ran away from. In my forgetfulness, or my +ignorance, that Manchester was the mother of this tricksy master-spirit +of English prose, who was an idol of my youth, I failed to visit either +house. The renown of Cobden and of Bright is precious to a larger world +than mine; and the name of the stalwart Quaker friend of man is dear +to every American who remembers the heroic part he played in our behalf +during our war for the Union. It is one of the amusing anomalies of +the British constitution, that the great city from whose political +fame these names are inseparable should have had no representation in +Parliament from Cromwell's time to Victoria's. Fancy Akron, Ohio, or +Grand Rapids, Michigan, without a member of Congress! + +[Illustration: TOWN HALL, MANCHESTER] + +The "Manchester school" of political economy has long since passed +into reproach if not obloquy with people for whom a byword is a potent +weapon, and perhaps the easiest they can handle, and I am not myself +so extreme a _laissez-faireist_ as to have thought of that school with +pathos in the city of its origin; but I dare say it was a good thing +in its time. We are only now slowly learning how to apply the opposite +social principles in behalf of the Man rather than the Master, and +we have not yet surmounted all the difficulties or dangers of the +experiment. It is droll how, in a tolerably well-meaning world like +this, any sort of contempt becomes inclusive, and a whole population +suffers for the vice, or it may be the virtue, of a very small majority, +or a very powerful minority. Probably the most liberal and intelligent +populations of Great Britain are those of Manchester and Birmingham, +names which have stood for a hard and sordid industrialism, unrelieved +by noble sympathies and impulses. It is quite possible that a less +generous spirit than mine would have censured the "Manchester school" +for the weather of the place, and found in its cold gray light the +effect of the Gradgrind philosophy which once wrapt a world of fiction +in gloom. + + +IV + +I can only be sure that the light, what little there was of it, was very +cold and gray, but it quite sufficed to show the huge lowries, as the +wagons are called, passing through the streets with the cotton fabrics +of the place in certain stages of manufacture: perhaps the raw, perhaps +the finished material. In Manchester itself one sees not much else of +"the cotton-spinning chorus" which has sent its name so far. The cotton +is now spun in ten or twenty towns in the nearer or farther neighborhood +of the great city, as every one but myself and some ninety millions of +other Americans well know. I had seen something of cotton-mills in our +Lowell, and I was eager, if not willing, to contrast them with the mills +of Manchester; but such of these as still remained there were, for my +luckless moment, inoperative. Personal influences brought me within one +or two days of their starting up; one almost started up during my brief +stay; but a great mill, employing perhaps a thousand hands, cannot start +up for the sake of the impression desired by the aesthetic visitor, and +I had to come away without mine. + +I had to come away without that personal acquaintance with the great +Manchester ship-canal which I almost equally desired. Coming or going, I +asked about it, and was told, looking for it from the car window, there, +_there_ it was! but beyond a glimpse of something very long and very +straight marking the landscape with lines no more convincing than those +which science was once decided, and then undecided, to call canals on +the planet Mars, I had no sight of it. I do not say this was not +my fault; and I will not pretend that the canal, like the mills of +Manchester, was not running. I dare say I was not in the right hands, +but this was not for want of trying to get into them. In the local +delusion that it was then summer, those whose kindness might have +befriended the ignorance of the stranger were "away on their holidays": +that was exactly the phrase. + +When, by a smiling chance, I fell into the right hands and was borne +to the Cotton Exchange I did not fail of a due sense of the important +scene, I hope. The building itself, like the other public buildings of +Manchester, is most dignified, and the great hall of the exchange is +very noble. I would not, if I could, have repressed a thrill of pride +in seeing our national colors and emblems equalled with those of Great +Britain at one end of the room, but these were the only things American +in the impression left. We made our way through the momently thickening +groups on the floor, and in the guidance of a member of the exchange +found a favorable point of observation in the gallery. From this the +vast space below showed first a moving surface of hats, with few silk +toppers among them, but a multitude of panamas and other straws. The +marketing was not carried on with anything like the wild, rangy movement +of our Stock Exchange, and the floor sent up no such hell-roaring (there +is no other phrase for it) tumult as rises from the mad but not malign +demons of that most dramatic representation of perdition. The merchants, +alike staid, whether old or young, congregated in groups which, dealing +in a common type of goods, kept the same places till, toward three +o'clock, they were lost in the mass which covered the floor. Even +then there was no uproar, no rush or push, no sharp cries or frenzied +shouting; but from the crowd, which was largely made up of elderly men, +there rose a sort of surd, rich hum, deepening ever, and never breaking +into a shriek of torment or derision. It was not histrionic, and yet for +its commercial importance it was one of the most moving spectacles which +could offer itself to the eye in the whole world. + +[Illustration: THE MANCHESTER SHIP-CANAL] + +I cannot pretend to have profited by my visit to that immensely valuable +deposit of books, bought from the Spencer family at Althorp, and +dedicated as the Rylands library to the memory of a citizen of +Manchester. Books in a library, except you have time and free access to +them, are as baffling as so many bottles in a wine-cellar, which are +not opened for you, and which if they were would equally go to your head +without final advantage. I find, therefore, that my sole note upon +the Rylands Library is the very honest one that it smelt, like the +cathedral, of coal-gas. The absence of this gas was the least merit +of the beautiful old Chetham College, with its library dating from the +seventeenth century, and claiming to have been the first free library in +England, and doubtless the world. In the cloistered picturesqueness +of the place, its mediaeval memorials, and its ancient peace, I found +myself again in those dear Middle Ages which are nowhere quite wanting +in England, and against which I rubbed off all smirch of the modernity I +had come to Manchester for. + + + * * * * * + + + + +IN SMOKIEST SHEFFIELD + + +If I had waited a little till I had got into the beautiful Derbyshire +country which lies, or rather rolls, between Manchester and Sheffield, +I could as easily have got rid of my epoch in the smiling agricultural +landscape. I do not know just the measure of the Black Country in +England, or where Sheffield begins to be perhaps the blackest spot in +it; but I am sure that nothing not surgically clean could be whiter than +the roads that, almost as soon as we were free of Manchester, began to +climb the green, thickly wooded hills, and dip into the grassy and leafy +valleys. In the very heart of the loveliness we found Sheffield most +nobly posed against a lurid sunset, and clouding the sky, which can +never be certain of being blue, with the smoke of a thousand towering +chimneys. From whatever point you have it, the sight is most prodigious, +but no doubt the subjective sense of the great ducal mansions and +estates which neighbor the mirky metropolis of steel and iron has its +part in heightening the dramatic effect. + + +I + +The English, with their love of brevity and simplicity, call these proud +seats the Dukeries, but our affair was not with them, and I shall not +be able to follow the footmen or butlers or housekeepers who would +so obligingly show them to the reader in my company. I had a fine +consciousness of passing some of them on my way into the town, and when +there of being, however, incongruously, in the midst of them. +Worksop, more properly than Sheffield, is the plebeian heart of these +aristocratic homes, or sojourns, which no better advised traveller, +or less hurried, will fail to see. But I was in Sheffield to see the +capital of the Black Country in its most characteristic aspects, and I +thought it felicitously in keeping, after I had dined (less well than I +could have wished, at the railway hotel which scarcely kept the promise +made for it by other like hotels) that I should be tempted beyond my +strength to go and see that colored opera which we had lately sent, +after its signal success with us, to an even greater prosperity in +England. _In Dahomey_ is a musical drama not pitched in the highest key, +but it is a genuine product of our national life, and to witness its +performance by the colored brethren who invented it, and were giving +it with great applause in an atmosphere quite undarkened by our racial +prejudices, was an experience which I would not have missed for many +Dukeries. The kindly house was not so suffocatingly full that it could +not find breath for cheers and laughter; but I proudly felt that no +one there could delight so intelligently as the sole American, in the +familiar Bowery figures, the blue policemen, the varying darky types, +which peopled a scene largely laid in Africa. The local New York +suggestions were often from Mr. Edward Harrigan, and all the more +genuine for that, but there was a final cake-walk which owed its +inspiration wholly to the genius of a race destined to greater triumphs +in music and art, and perhaps to a kindlier civilization than our ideals +have evolved in yet. It was pleasant to look upon those different shades +of color, from dead black to creamy blond, in their novel relief against +an air of ungrudging, of even respectful, appreciation, and I dare say +the poor things liked it for themselves as much as I liked it for them. +At a fine moment of the affair I was aware of a figure in evening dress, +standing near me, and regarding the stage with critical severity: +a young man, but shrewd and well in hand, who, as the unmistakable +manager, was, I hope, finally as well satisfied as the other spectators. + + +II + +I myself came away entirely satisfied, indeed, but for the lasting pang +I inflicted upon myself by denying a penny to the ragged wretch who +superfluously opened the valves of my hansom for me. My explanation to +my soul was that I had no penny in my pocket, and that it would have +been folly little short of crime to give so needy a wretch sixpence. But +would it? Would it have corrupted him, since pauperize him further it +could not? I advise the reader who finds himself in the like case to +give the sixpence, and if he cares for the peace of my conscience, to +make it a shilling; or, come! a half-crown, if he wishes to be truly +handsome. It is astonishing how these regrets persist; but perhaps in +this instance I owe the permanence of my pang to those frequent appeals +to one's pity which repeated themselves in Sheffield. As I had noted at +Liverpool I now noted at Sheffield that you cannot have great prosperity +without having adversity, just as you cannot have heat without cold or +day without dark. The one substantiates and verifies the other; and I +perceived that wherever business throve it seemed to be at the cost of +somebody; though even when business pines it is apparently no better. +The thing ought to be looked into. + +At the moment of my visit to Sheffield, it happened that many works were +running half-time or no time, and many people were out of work. At one +place there was a little oblong building between branching streets, +round which sat a miserable company of Murchers, as I heard them called, +on long benches under the overhanging roof, who were too obviously, who +were almost offensively, out of work. Some were old and some young, some +dull and some fierce, some savage and some imbecile in their looks, and +they were all stained and greasy and dirty, and looked their apathy or +their grim despair. Even the men who were coming to or from their work +at dinner-time looked stunted and lean and pale, with no color of that +south of England bloom with which they might have favored a stranger. +Slatternly girls and women abounded, and little babies carried about by +a little larger babies, and of course kissed on their successive layers +of dirt. There were also many small boys who, I hope, were not so wicked +as they were ragged. At noon-time they hung much about the windows of +cookshops which one would think their sharp hunger would have pierced +to the steaming and smoking dishes within. The very morning after I had +denied that man a penny at the theatre door, and was still smarting to +think I had not given him sixpence, I saw a boy of ten, in the cut-down +tatters of a man, gloating upon a meat-pie which a cook had cruelly set +behind the pane in front of him. I took out the sixpence which I ought +to have given that poor man, and made it a shilling, and put it into +the boy's wonderfully dirty palm, and bade him go in and get the pie. He +looked at me, and he looked at the shilling, and then I suppose he did +as he was bid. But I ought to say, in justice to myself, that I never +did anything of the kind again as long as I remained in Sheffield. I +felt that I owed a duty to the place and must not go about corrupting +the populace for my selfish pleasure. + + +III + +Between our hotel and the main part of the town there yawned a black +valley, rather nobly bridged, or viaducted, and beyond it in every +direction the chimneys of the many works thickened in the perspectives. +It was really like a dead forest, or like thick-set masts of shipping +in a thronged port; or the vents of tellurian fires, which send up +their flames by night and their smoke by day. It was splendid, it was +magnificent, it was insurpassably picturesque. People must have painted +it often, but if some bravest artist-soul would come, reverently, not +patronizingly, and portray the sight in its naked ugliness, he would +create one of the most beautiful masterpieces in the world. On our first +morning the sun, when it climbed to the upper heavens, found a little +hole in the dun pall, and shone down through it, and tried to pierce +through the more immediate cloud above the works; but it could not, and +it ended by shutting the hole under it, and disappearing. + +Beyond the foul avenues thridding the region of the works, and smelling +of the decay of market-houses, were fine streets of shops and churches, +and I dare say comely dwellings, with tram-cars ascending and descending +their hilly slopes. The stores I find noted as splendid, and in my +pocket-book I say that outside of the market-house, before you got to +those streets, there are doves and guinea-pigs as well as a raven for +sale in cages; and the usual horrible English display of flesh meats. +The trams were one story, like our trolleys, without roof-seats, and +there were plenty of them; but nothing could keep me, I suppose, till +I had seen one of the works. Each of these stands in a vast yard, or +close, by itself, with many buildings, and they are of all sorts; but +I chose what I thought the most typical, and overcame the reluctance +of the manager to let me see it. He said I had no idea what tricks were +played by other makers to find out any new processes and steal them; but +this was after I had pleaded my innocent trade of novelist, and assured +him of my congenital incapability of understanding, much less conveying +from the premises, the image of the simplest and oldest process. Then he +gave me for guide an intelligent man who was a penknife-maker by trade, +but was presently out of work, and glad to earn my fee. + +My guide proved a most decent, patient, and kindly person, and I hope +it is no betrayal of confidence to say that he told me the men in +these multitudinous shops work by the piece. The grinders furnish their +grindstones and all their tools for making the knives; there is no dry +grinding, such as used to fill the lungs of the grinders with deadly +particles of steel and stone, and bring them to an early death; but +sometimes a stone, which ordinarily lasts six months, will burst and +drive the grinder through the roof. The blade-makers do their own +forging and hammering, and it is from first to last apparently all +hand-work. But it is head-work and heart-work too, and the men who +wrought at it wrought with such intensity and constancy that they did +not once look up or round where we paused to look on. I was made to know +that trade was dull and work slack, and these fellows were lucky fellows +to have anything to do. Still I did not envy them; and I felt it a +distinct relief to pass from their shops into the cool, dim crypt which +was filled with tusks of ivory, in all sizes from those of the +largest father elephant to those of the babes of the herd; these were +milk-tusks, I suppose. They get dearer as the elephants get scarcer; and +that must have been why I paid as much for a penknife in the glittering +showroom as it would have cost me in New York, with the passage money +and the duties added. Because of the price, perhaps, I did not think of +buying the two-thousand-bladed penknife I saw there; but I could never +have used all the blades, now that we no longer make quill pens. I +looked fondly at the maker's name on the knife I did buy, and said that +the table cutlery of a certain small household which set itself up forty +years ago had borne the same: but the pleasant salesman did not seem to +feel the pathos of the fact so much as I. + + +IV + +There is not only a vast deal of industry in Sheffield, but there is +an unusual abundance of history, as there might very well be in a place +that began life, in the usual English fashion, under the Britons and +grew into municipal consciousness in the fostering care of the Romans +and the ruder nurture of the Saxons, Danes, and Normans. Lords it had of +the last, and the great line of the Earls of Shrewsbury presently rose +and led Sheffield men back to battle in France, where the first earl +fell on the bloody field, and so many of the men died with him in 1453 +that there was not a house in all the region which did not mourn a loss. +Which of the Roses Sheffield held for, White or Red, I am not sure; +but we will say that it duly suffered for one or the other; and it is +certain that the great Cardinal Wolsey rested eighteen days at Sheffield +Manor just before he went to die at Leicester; and Mary Queen of Scots +spent fourteen years of sorrowful captivity, sometimes at the Manor +and sometimes in Sheffield Castle. This hold was taken by the +Parliamentarians in the Civil War; but the famous industries of the +place had begun long before; so that Chaucer could say of one of his +pilgrims, + + "A Sheffield thwytel bare he in his hose." + +Thwytels, or whittles, figured in the broils and stage-plays of +Elizabethan times, and three gross of them were exported from Liverpool +in 1589, when the Sheffield penknife was already famed the best in the +world. Manufactures flourished there apace when England turned to them +from agriculture, and Sheffield is now a city of four hundred thousand +or more. Apparently it has been growing radical, as the centres of +prosperity and adversity always do, and the days of the Chartist +agitation continued there for ten years, from 1839 till it came as near +open rebellion as it well could in a plot for an armed uprising. Then +that cause of the people, like many another, failed, and liberty there, +as elsewhere in England, was fain to + + "broaden slowly down + From precedent to precedent." + +Labor troubles, patient or violent, have followed, as labor troubles +must, but leisure has always been equal to their pacification, and now +Sheffield takes its adversity almost as quietly as its prosperity. + +[Illustration: TOWN HALL, SHEFFIELD] + + +V + +We were not there, though, for others' labor or leisure, which we have +plenty of at home; but even before I appeased such conscience as I had +about seeing a type of the works, we went a long drive up out of the +town to that Manor where the poor, brilliant, baddish Scotch queen was +imprisoned by her brilliant, baddish English cousin. In any question +of goodness, there was little to choose between them; both were +blood-stained liars; but it is difficult being a good woman and a queen +too, and they only failed where few have triumphed. Mary is the more +appealing to the fancy because she suffered beyond her deserts, +but Elizabeth was to be pitied because Mary had made it politically +imperative for her to kill her. All this we had threshed out many times +before, and had said that, cat for cat, Mary was the more dangerous +because she was the more feminine, and Elizabeth the more detestable +because she was the more masculine in her ferocity. We were therefore +in the right mood to visit Mary's prison, and we were both indignant and +dismayed to find that our driver, called from a mews at a special price +set upon his intelligence, had never heard of it and did not know where +it was. + +We reported his inability to the head porter, who came out of the hotel +in a fine flare of sarcasm. "You call yourself a Sheffield man and not +know where the Old Manor is!" he began, and presently reduced that proud +ignoramus of a driver to such a willingness to learn that we thought it +at least safe to set out with him, and so started for the long climb +up the hills that hold Sheffield in their hollow. When we reached their +crest, we looked down and back through the clearer air upon as strange +and grand a sight as could be. It was as if we were looking into the +crater of a volcano, which was sending up its smoke through a thousand +vents. All detail of the works and their chimneys was lost in the +retrospect; one was aware only of a sort of sea of vapor through which +they loomed and gloomed. + +Our ascent was mostly through winding and climbing streets of +little dirty houses, with frowsy gardens beside them, and the very +dirtiest-faced children in England playing about them. From time to time +our driver had to ask his way of the friendly flat-bosomed slatterns, +with babies in their arms, on their thresholds, or the women tending +shop, or peddling provisions, who were all kind to him, and assured him +with varying degrees of confidence that the Old Manor was a bit, or a +goodish bit, beyond. All at once we came upon the sight of it on an open +top, hard by what is left of the ruins of the real Manor, where Wolsey +stayed that little while from death. The relics are broken walls, higher +here, lower there; with some Tudor fireplaces showing through their +hollow windows. What we saw in tolerable repair was the tower of the +Manor, or the lodge, and we drove to it across a field, on a track made +by farm carts, and presently kept by a dog that showed his teeth in a +grin not wholly of amusement at our temerity. While we debated whether +we had not better let the driver get down and knock, a farmer-like man +came to the door and called the dog off. Then, in a rich North Country +accent, he welcomed us to his kitchen parlor, where his wife was peeling +potatoes for their midday dinner, and so led us up the narrow stone +stairs of the tower to the chambers where Mary miserably passed those +many long years of captivity. + +The rooms were visibly restored in every point where they could have +needed restoration, but they were not ruthlessly or too insistently +restored. There was even an antique chair, but when our guide was put on +his honor as to whether it was one of the original chairs he answered, +"Well, if people wanted a chair!" He was a rather charmingly quaint, +humorous person, with that queer conscience, and he did not pretend to +be moved by the hard inexorable stoniness of the place which had been +a queen's prison for many years. One must not judge it too severely, +though: bowers and prisons of that day looked much alike, and Mary +Stuart may have felt this a bower, and only hated it because she could +not get out of it, or anyhow break the relentless hold of that Earl and +Countess of Shrewsbury whose captive guest she was, though she never +ceased trying. We went up on the wide flat roof, of lead or stone, +whither her feet must have so often heavily climbed, and looked out over +the lovely landscape which she must have abhorred; and the wind that +blew over it, in late August, was very cold; far colder than the air of +the prison, or the bower, below. + +The place belongs now to the Duke of Norfolk, the great Catholic duke, +and owes its restoration to his pity and his piety. Our farmer guide +was himself a Protestant, but he spoke well of the duke, with whom he +reported himself in such colloquies as, "I says to Dook," and, "Dook +says to me." When he understood that we were Americans he asked after a +son of his who had gone out to our continent twenty years before. He had +only heard from him once, and that on the occasion of his being robbed +of all his money by a roommate. It was in a place called Massatusy; we +suggested Massachusetts, and he assented that such might be the place; +and Mary's prison-house acquired an added pathos. + + +VI + +We drove back through the beautiful park, the Duke of Norfolk's gift to +Sheffield, which is plentifully provided, like all English towns, with +public pleasure-grounds. They lie rather outside of it, but within it +are many and many religious and civic edifices which merit to be seen. +We chose as chiefest the ancient Parish Church, of Norman origin and +modern restoration, where we visited the tomb of the Lord and Lady +Shrewsbury who were Mary Stuart's jailers; or if they were not, a pair +of their family were, and it comes to the same thing, emotionally. The +chapel in which they lie is most beautiful, and the verger had just +brushed the carpet within the chancel to such immaculate dustlessness +that he could not bring himself to let us walk over it. He let us walk +round it, and we saw the chapel as a favor, which we discharged with an +abnormal tip after severe debate whether a person of this verger's rich +respectability and perfect manner would take any tip at all. In the +event it appeared that he would. + + + * * * * * + + + + +NINE DAYS' WONDER IN YORK + + +Perhaps it would be better to come to York somewhat earlier in the year +than the 2d of September. By that time the English summer has suffered +often if not severe discouragements. It has really only two months out +of the year to itself, and even July and August are not always constant +to it. To be sure, their defection cannot spoil it, but they dispose it +to the slights of September in a dejection from which there is no rise +to those coquetries with October known to our own summer. Yet, having +said so much, I feel bound to add that our nine days in York, from the +2d to the 12th of September, were more summer than autumn days, some +wholly, some partly, with hours of sunshine keeping the flowers bright +which the rain kept fresh. If you walked fast in this sunshine you were +quite hot, and sometimes in the rain you were uncomfortably warm, or at +least you were wet. If the mornings demanded a fire in the grate, the +evenings were so clement that the lamp was sufficient, and the noons +were very well with neither. + + +I + +The day of our arrival in York began bright at Sheffield, where there +was a man quarrelling so loudly and aimlessly in the station that we +were glad to get away from him, as well as from the mountains of slag +surrounding the iron metropolis. The train ran through a pass in these, +and then we found ourselves in a plain country, and, though the day +turned gray and misty, there seemed a sort of stored sunshine in the +fields of wheat which the farmers were harvesting far and near. One has +heard so much of the decay of the English agriculture that one sees +what is apparently the contrary with nothing less than astonishment. The +acreage of these wheat-fields was large, and the yield heavier than I +could remember to have seen at home. Where the crop had been got in, +much ploughing for the next year had been done already, and where the +ploughing was finished the work of sowing by drill was going steadily +forward, in the faith that such an unprecedented summer as was now +passing would return another year. At all these pleasant labors, of +course, the rooks were helping, or at least bossing. + + +II + +We expected to stay certainly a week, and perhaps two weeks, in York, +and our luck with railway hotels had been so smiling elsewhere that we +had no other mind than to spend the time at the house into which we all +but stepped from our train. But we had reckoned without our host, as he +was represented by one of a half-dozen alert young ladies in the office, +who asked how long we expected to stay, and when we expressed a general +purpose of staying indefinitely, said that all her rooms were taken +from the next Monday by people who had engaged them long before for +the races. I did not choose to betray my ignorance to a woman, but +I privately asked the head porter what races those were which were +limiting our proposed sojourn, and I am now afraid he had some +difficulty in keeping a head porter's conventional respect for a formal +superior in answering that we had arrived on the eve of Doncaster Week. +Then I said, "Oh yes," and affected the knowledge of Doncaster Week +which I resolved to acquire by staying somewhere in York till it was +over. + +But as yet, that Friday afternoon, there was no hurry, and, instead of +setting about a search for lodgings at once, we drove up into the town, +as soon as we had tea, and visited York Minster while it was still +the gray afternoon and not yet the gray evening. I thought the hour +fortunate, and I do not see yet how we could have chosen a better hour +out of the whole twenty-four, for the inside or the outside of the +glorious fane, the grandest and beautifulest in all England, as I felt +then and I feel now. If I were put to the question and were forced to +say in what its supreme grandeur and beauty lay, I should perhaps say in +its most ample simplicity. No doubt it is full of detail, but I keep no +sense of this from that mighty interior, with its tree-like, clustered +pillars, and its measureless windows, like breadths of stained foliage +in autumnal woodlands. You want the scale of nature for the Minster at +York, and I cannot liken it to less than all-out-doors. Some cathedrals, +like that of Wells, make you think of gardens; but York Minster will not +be satisfied with less than an autumnal woodland, where the trees stand +in clumps, with grassy levels about them, and with spacious openings to +the sky, that let in the colored evening light. + +You could not get lost in it, for it was so free of all such +architectural undergrowth as cumbers the perspectives of some +cathedrals; besides, the afternoon of our visit there were so many other +Americans that you could easily have asked your way in your own dialect. +We loitered over its lengths and breadths, and wondered at its windows, +which were like the gates of sunrise and sunset for magnitude, and +lingered in a sumptuous delay from going into the choir, delighting in +the gray twilight which seemed to gather from the gray walls inward, +when suddenly what seemed a metallic curtain was dropped with a clash +and the simultaneous up-flashing of electric bulbs inside it, and we +were shut out from the sight but not the sound of the service that +began in the choir. We could not wholly regret the incident, for as +we recalled the like operation of religion in churches of our Italian +travel, we were reminded how equally authoritative the Church of England +and the Church of Home were, and how little they adjust their ceremonial +to the individual, how largely to the collective worshipper. You could +come into the Minster of York as into the basilica of St. Mark at Venice +for a silent prayer amid the religious influences of the place, and be +conscious of your oneness with your Source, as if there were no +other one; but when the priesthood called you as one of many to your +devotions, it was with the same imperative voice in both, and you must +obey or be cut off from your chance. I suppose it is right; but somehow +the down-clashing of that screen of the choir in the Minster at York +seemed to exclude us with reproach, almost with ignominy. + +[Illustration: YORK MINSTER--THE GRANDEST IN ALL ENGLAND] + +We did what we could to repair our wounded self respect, and did not lay +our exclusion up against the Minster itself, which I find that I noted +as "scatteringly noble outside." By this I dare say I meant it had not +that artistic unity of which I brought the impression from the inside. +They were doing, as they were always doing, every where, with English +cathedrals, something to one of the towers; but this only enhanced +its scattering nobleness, for it left that greatly bescaffolded tower +largely to the imagination, in which it soared sublimer, if anything, +than its compeer. Most of the streets leading to and from the rather +insufficient, irregular square where the Minster stands are lanes +of little houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth, centuries, which +collectively curved in their line, and not only overhung at their second +stories, but bulged outward involuntarily from the weakness of age. +They were all quite habitable, and some much later dwellings immediately +surrounding the church were the favorite sojourn, apparently, of such +strangers as could have rooms at the hotels only until the Monday of +Doncaster Week. + + +III + +During those limited days of the week before Doncaster, I was constantly +coming back to the Minster, which is not the germ of political York, or +hardly religious York; the brave city was a Romano-British capital and +a Romano-British episcopal see centuries before the first wooden temple +was built on the site of the present edifice in 627. I should like to +make believe that we found traces of that simple church in the crypt of +the Minster when we went the next morning and were herded through it by +the tenderest of vergers. Most of our flock were Americans, and we put +our guide to such question in matters of imagination and information +as the patience of a less amiable shepherd would not have borne. Many a +tale, true or o'ertrue, our verger had, which he told with unction; when +he ascended with us to the body of the church, and said that the stained +glass of the gigantic windows suffered from the depredations of the +mistaken birds which pecked holes in the joints of their panes, I felt +that I had full measure from him, pressed down and running over. I do +not remember why he said the birds should have done this, but it seems +probable that they took the mellow colors of the glass for those of ripe +fruits. + +For myself, I could not get enough of those windows, in another sort +of famine which ought at this time to have been sated. I was forever +wondering at their grandeur outside and their glory inside. I was glad +to lose my way about the town, for if I kept walking I was sure, sooner +or later, to bring up at the Minster; but the last evening of our stay +I made a purposed pilgrimage to it for a final emotion. It was the +clearest evening we had in York, and at half-past six the sun was +setting in a transparent sky, which somehow it did not flush with any of +those glaring reds which the vulgarer sorts of sunsets are fond of, but +bathed the air in a delicate suffusion of daffodil light, just tinged +with violet. This was the best medium to see the past of the Minster in, +and I can see it there now, if I did not then. I followed, or I follow, +its veracious history back to the beginning of the seventh century, +whence you can look back further still to the earliest Christian temples +where the Romans worshipped with the Britons, whom they had enslaved +and converted. But it was not till 627 that the little wooden chapel was +built on the site of the Minster, to house the rite of the Northumbrian +King Eadwine's baptism. He felt so happy in his new faith that he +replaced the wooden structure with stone. In the next century it was +burned, but rebuilt by another pious prince, and probably repaired by +yet another after the Danes took the city a hundred years later. It +was then in a good state to be destroyed by that devout William the +Conqueror, who came to take the Saxon world in its sins of guttling +and guzzling. The first Norman archbishop reconstructed or restored +the church, and then it began to rise and to spread in glory--nave, +transepts, and choir, and pillars and towers, Norman and Early English, +and Perpendicular and Decorated--till it found itself at last what the +American tourist sees it to-day. It suffered from two great fires in +the nineteenth century, the first set by a lunatic who had the fancy of +seeing it burn, but who had only the satisfaction of destroying part of +the roof. + +It was never richly painted, but the color wanting in the walls and +fretted vault was more than compensated by the mellowed splendors of +the matchless windows. It was, indeed, fit to be the home of much more +secular history than can be associated with it; but not till the end +of the thirteenth century had the Minster a patron of its own, when St. +William was canonized, and exercised his office, whatever it was, for +two brief centuries. Then the Cromwell of Henry VIII. took possession +of it in behalf of the crown, and the saint's charge was practically +abolished. He was even deprived of his head, for the relic was encased +in gold and jewels, and was therefore worth the king's having, who was +most a friend of the reformed religion when it paid best. The later +Cromwell, who beat a later king hard by at Marston Moor, must have +somehow desecrated the Minster, though there is no record of any such +fact. A more authentic monument of the religious difficulties of the +times is the pastoral staff, bearing the arms of Catharine of Braganza, +the poor little wife of Charles II., which was snatched from a Roman +Catholic bishop when, to the high offence of Protestant piety, he was +heading a procession in York in 1688. The verger showing us through the +Minster was a good Protestant, but he held it bad taste in a predecessor +of his, who when leading about a Catholic party of sight-seers took the +captive staff from its place and shook it in their faces, saying, "Don't +you wish you had it?" + + +IV + +There is no telling to what lengths true religion, may rightly not go. I +rather prize the incident as the sole fact concerning the Minster which +I could make sure of even after repeated visits, and if I am indebted +for my associations with it, long after the event, to Dr. Raine's +scholarly and interesting sketch of York history, there is no reason +why the better-informed reader should not accompany me in my last visit +fully equipped. I walked slowly all round the structure, and fancied +that I got a new sense of grandeur in the effect of the east window, +which was, at any rate, more impressive than the north window. It was +a long walk, almost the measure of such a walk as one should take after +supper for one's health, and it had such incidents as many pauses for +staring up at the many restorations going on. From point to point the +incomparable Perpendicular Gothic carried the eye to the old gargoyles +of the caves and towers waiting to be replaced by the new gargoyles, +which lay in open-mouthed grimacing in the grass at the bases of the +church. While I stood noting both, and thinking the chances were that I +should never look on York Minster again, and feeling the luxurious pang +of it, a verger in a skull-cap was so good as to come to a side door and +parley long and pleasantly with a policeman. The simple local life went +on around; people going to or from supper passed me; kind, vulgar +noises came from the little houses bulging over the narrow, neighboring +streets; there seemed to be the stamping of horses in a stable, and +there was certainly the misaspirated talk about them. I could not have +asked better material for the humble emotions I love; and I was more +than content on my way home to find myself one of the congregation +at the loud devotions of a detachment of the Salvation Army. After a +battering of drums and a clashing of cymbals and a shouting of hymns, +the worship settled to the prayer of a weak brother, who was so long in +supplication that the head exhorter covered a yawn with his hand, and at +the first sign of relenting in the supplicant bade the drums and cymbals +strike up. Then, after a hymn, a sister, such a very plain, elderly +sister, with hardly a tooth or an aitch in her head, began to relate her +religious history. It appeared that she had been a much greater sinner +than she looked, and that the mercy shown her had been proportionate. +She was vain both of her sins and mercies, poor soul, and in her scrimp +figure, with its ill-fitting uniform, Heaven knows how long she went on. +I was distracted by a clergyman passing on the outside of the ring of +listening women and children, and looking, I chose to think, somewhat +sourly askance at the distasteful ceremonial. I wished to stop him, +on his way to the Minster, if that was his way, and tell him that so +Christianity must have begun, and so the latest form of it must +always begin and work round after ages and ages to the beauty and +respectability his own ritual has. But I now believe this would have +been the greatest impertinence and hypocrisy, for I myself found the +performance before us as tasteless and tawdry as he could possibly have +done. He was going toward the Minster, and it would make him forget it; +but I was going away from it, perhaps, for the last time, and this loud +side-show of religion would make me forget the Minster. + + +V + +Our railway hotel lay a little way out of the town, and after a day's +sight-seeing we were to meet or mingle with troops of wholesome-looking +workmen whose sturdiness and brightness were a consolation after +the pale debility of labor's looks in Sheffield. From the +chocolate-factories or the railroad-shops, which are the chief +industries of York, they would be crossing the bridge of the Ouse, the +famous stream on which the Romans had their town, and which suggested to +the Anglicans to call their Eboracum Eurewic--a town on a river. In due +time the Danes modified this name to Yerik, and so we came honestly by +the name of our own New York, called after the old York, as soon as the +English had robbed the Dutch of it, and the King of England had given +the province to his brother the Duke of York. Both cities are still +towns on rivers, but the Ouse is no more an image or forecast of the +Hudson than Old York is of New York. For that reason, the bridge over +it is not to be compared to our Brooklyn Bridge, or even to any bridge +which is yet to span the Hudson. The difference is so greatly in our +favor that we may well yield our city's mother the primacy in her city +wall. We have ourselves as yet no Plantagenet wall, and we have not yet +got a mediaeval gate through which the traveller passes in returning +from the Flatiron Building to his hotel in the Grand Central Station. + +We do not begin to have such a hoar antiquity as is articulate in the +mother city, speaking with muted voices from the innumerable monuments +which the earth has yielded from the site of our hotel and its adjacent +railway station. All underground York is doubtless fuller of Home than +even Bath is; and it has happened that her civilization was much more +largely dug up here than elsewhere when the foundations of the spreading +edifices were laid. The relics are mainly the witnesses of pagan Rome, +but Christianity politically began in York, as it has politically ended +in New York, and doubtless some soldiers of the Sixth Legion and many of +the British slaves were religiously Christians in the ancient metropolis +before Constantine was elected emperor there. + +I have been in many places where history is hospitably at home and is +not merely an unwilling guest, as in our unmemoried land. Florence is +very well, Venice is not so bad, Naples has her long thoughts, and Milan +is mediaeval-minded, not to speak of Genoa, or Marseilles, or Paris, or +those romantic German towns where the legends, if not the facts, abound; +but, after all, for my pleasure in the past, I could not choose any +place before York. You need not be so very definite in your knowledge. +The event of Constantine's presence and election is so spacious as to +leave no room for particulars in the imagination; and you are so rich in +it that you will even reject them from your thoughts, as you sit in +the close-cropped flowery lawn of your hotel garden (try to imagine a +railroad hotel garden in _New_ York!) on the sunniest of the afternoons +before you are turned out for Doncaster Week, and, while you watch +a little adventurous American boy climbing over a pile of rock-work, +realize the most august, the most important fact in the story of the +race as native to the very air you are breathing! Where you sit you are +in full view of the Minster, which is to say in view of something like +the towers and battlements of the celestial city. Or if you wake +very early on a morning still nearer the fatal Doncaster Week of your +impending banishment, and look out of your lofty windows at the sunrise +reddening the level bars of cloud behind the Minster, you shall find it +bulked up against the pearl-gray masses of the sunny mist which hangs +in all the intervening trees, and solidifies them in unbroken masses of +foliage. All round your hotel spreads a gridiron of railroad, yet such +is the force of the English genius for quiet that you hear no clatter of +trains; the expresses whir in and out of the station with not more noise +than humming-birds; and amid this peace the past has some chance with +modernity. The Britons dwell, unmolested by our latter-day clamor, in +their wattled huts and dugouts; the Romans come and make them slaves and +then Christians, and after three or four hundred years send word from +the Tiber to the Ouse that they can stay no longer, and so leave them +naked to their enemies, the Picts and Scots and Saxons and Angles; and +in due course come the ravaging and burning Danes; and in due course +still, the murdering and plundering and scorning Normans. But all so +quietly, like the humming-bird-like expresses, with a kind of railway +celerity in the foreshortened retrospect; and after the Normans have +crushed themselves down into the mass of the vanquished, and formed the +English out of the blend, there follow the many wars of the successions, +of the Roses, of the Stuarts, with all the intermediate insurrections +and rebellions. In the splendid Histories of Shakespeare, which are +full of York, the imagination visits and revisits the place, and you are +entreated by mouth of one of his princely personages, + + "I pray you let us satisfy our eyes + With the memorials and things of fame, + That do renown this city," + +where his Henrys and Richards and Margarets and Edwards and Eleanors +abide still and shall forever abide while the English speech lasts. + +[Illustration: BOOTHAM BAR AND THE MINSTER] + + +VI + +Something of all this I knew, and more pretended, with a mounting +indignation at the fast-coming Doncaster Week which was to turn us out +of our hotel. We began our search for other lodgings with what seemed to +be increasing failure. The failure had consolation in it so far as the +sweet regret of people whose apartments were taken could console. They +would have taken us at other hotels for double the usual price, but, +when we showed ourselves willing to pay, it proved that they had +no rooms at any price. From house to house, then, we went, at first +vaingloriously, in the spaces about the Minster, and then meekly into +any side street, wherever the legend of Apartments showed itself in a +transom. At last, the second day, after being denied at seven successive +houses, we found quite the refuge we wanted in the Bootham, which means +very much more than the ignorant reader can imagine. Our upper rooms +looked on a pretty grassy garden space behind, where there was sun when +there was sun, and in front on the fine old brick dwellings of a most +personable street, with a sentiment of bygone fashion. At the upper end +of it was a famous city gate--Bootham Bar, namely--with a practicable +portcullis, which we verified at an early moment by going up into "the +chamber over the gate," where it was once worked, and whence its lower +beam, set thick with savage spikes, was dropped. Outside the gate there +was a sign in the wall saying that guards were to be had there to guide +travellers through the Forest of Galtres beyond Bootham, and keep them +from the wolves. Now woods and wolves and guards are all gone, and +Bootham Bar is never closed. + +The upper room is a passageway for people who are walking round the town +on the Plantagenet wall, and one morning we took this walk in sunshine +that befitted the Sabbath. Half the children of York seemed to be taking +it, too, with their good parents, who had stayed away from church to +give them this pleasure, the fathers putting on their frock-coats and +top-hats, which are worn on no other days in the provincial cities of +England. For a Plantagenet wall, that of York is in excellent repair, +and it is very clean, so that the children could not spoil their Sunday +best by clambering on the parapet, and trying to fall over it. There +was no parapet on the other side, and they could have fallen over that +without trouble; but it would not have served the same purpose; for +under the parapet there were the most alluringly ragged little boys, +with untidy goats and delightfully dirty geese. There was no trace of a +moat outside the wall, where pleasant cottages pressed close to it +with their gardens full of bright flowers. At one point there were +far-spreading sheep and cattle pens, where there is a weekly market, and +at another the old Norman castle which cruel Conqueror William built to +hold the city, and which has suffered change, not unpicturesque, +into prisons for unluckier criminals, and the Assize Courts for their +condemnation. From time to time the wall left off, and then we got down, +perforce, and walked to the next piece of it. In these pieces we +made the most of the old gates, especially Walmgate Bar, which has a +barbican. I should be at a loss to say why the barbican should have +commended it so; perhaps it was because we there realized, for the first +time, what a barbican was; I doubt if the reader knows, now. Otherwise, +I should have preferred Monk Bar or Micklegate Bar, as being more like +those I was used to in the theatre. But we came back gladly to Bootham +Bar, holding that a portcullis was equal any day to a barbican, and +feeling as if we had got home in the more familiar neighborhood. + +There were small shops in the Bootham, thread-and-needle stores, +newspaper stores, and provision stores mainly, which I affected, and +there was one united florist's and fruiterer's which I particularly +liked because of the conversability of the proprietor. He was a stout +man, of a vinous complexion, with what I should call here, where our +speech is mostly uncouth, an educated accent, though with few and +wandering aspirates in it. Him I visited every morning to buy for my +breakfast one of those Spanish melons which they have everywhere in +England, and which put our native cantaloupes to shame; and we always +fell into a little talk over our transaction of fourpence or sixpence, +as the case might be. After I had confided that I was an American, he +said one day, "Ah, the Americans are clever people." Then he added, +"I hope you won't mind my saying it, sir, but I think their ladies are +rather harder than our English ladies, sir." + +"Yes," I eagerly assented. "How do you mean? Sharper? Keener?" + +"Well, not just that, sir." + +"More practical? More business-like?" I pursued. + +"Well, I shouldn't like to say that, sir. But--they seem rather harder, +sir; at least, judging from what I see of them in York, sir. Rather +harder, sir." + +We remained not the less friends with that mystery between us; and I +bought my last melon of him on my last morning, when the early September +had turned somewhat sharply chill. That turn made me ask what the winter +was in York, and he boasted it very cold, with ice and snow aplenty, +and degrees of frost much like our own. But apparently those York women +resisted it and remained of a tenderness which contrasted to their +advantage with the summer hardness of our women. + + +VII + +It was a pleasure, which I should be glad to share with the reader, to +lose one's self in the streets of York. They were all kinds of streets +except straight, and they seemed not to go anywhere except for the +joke of bringing the wayfarer unexpectedly back to, or near, his +starting-point and far from his goal. The blame of their vagariousness, +if it was a fault, is put upon the Danes, who found York when they +captured it very rectangular, for so the Romans built it, and so the +Angles kept it; but nothing would serve the Danes but to crook its +streets and call them gates, so that the real gates of the city have to +be called bars, or else the stranger might take them for streets. If he +asked another wayfarer, he could sometimes baffle the streets, and get +to the point he aimed at, but, whether he did or not, he could always +amuse himself in them; they would take a friendly interest in him, +and show him the old houses and churches which the American stranger +prefers. They abound in the poorer sorts of buildings, of course, just +as they do in the poorer sorts of people, but in their simpler courts +and squares and expanses they have often dignified mansions of that +Georgian architecture which seems the last word in its way, and which is +known here in our older edifices as there in their newer. Some of them +are said to have "richly carved ceilings, wainscoted, panelled rooms, +chimneypieces with paintings framed in the over-mantel, dentilled +cornices, and pedimented doors," and I could well believe it, as I +passed them with an envious heart. There were gardens behind these +mansions which hung their trees over the spiked coping of their +high-shouldered walls and gates, and sequestered I know not what damp +social events in their flowery and leafy bounds. + +[Illustration: WALMGATE BAR HAS A BARBICAN] + +At times I distinctly wished to know something of the life of York, but +I was not in the way of it. The nearest to an acquaintance I had there, +besides my critical fruiterer, was the actor whose name I recognized on +his bills as that of a brave youth who had once dramatized a novel of +mine, and all too briefly played the piece, and who was now to come +to York for a week of Shakespeare. Perhaps I could not forgive him the +recrudescence; at any rate, I did not try to see him, and there was no +other social chance for me, except as I could buy in for a few glimpses +at the tidy confectioners', where persons of civil condition resorted +for afternoon tea. Even to these one could not speak, and I could only +do my best in a little mercenary conversation with the bookseller about +York histories. The bookstores were not on our scale, and generally the +shops in York were not of the modern department type, but were perhaps +the pleasanter for that reason. + +In my earlier wanderings I made the acquaintance of a most agreeable +market-place, stretching the length of two squares, which on a Saturday +afternoon I found filled with every manner of bank and booth and +canopied counter, three deep, and humming pleasantly with traffic in +everything one could eat, drink, wear, or read; there seemed as many +book-stalls as fruit-stalls. What I noted equally with the prettiness +of the abounding flowers was the mild kindness of the market-people's +manners and their extreme anxiety to state exactly the quality of the +things they had for sale. They seemed incapable of deceit, but I do +not say they really were so. My own transactions were confined to the +purchase of some golden-gage plums, and I advise the reader rather to +buy greengages; the other plums practised the deception in their looks +which their venders abhorred. + + +VIII + +I wandered in a perfectly contemporary mood through the long ranks and +lanes of the marketplace, and did not know till afterward that at one +end of it, called the Pavement, the public executions used to take place +for those great or small occasions which brought folks to the block or +scaffold in the past. I had later some ado to verify the dismal fact +from a cluster of people before a tavern who seemed to be taking bets +for the Doncaster Week, and I could hardly keep them from booking me +for this horse or that when I merely wanted to know whether it was on a +certain spot the Earl of Northumberland had his head cut off for leading +a rising against Henry IV.; or some such execution. + +What riches of story has not York to browbeat withal the storyless +New-Yorker who visits her! That Henry IV. was he whom I had lately seen +triumphing near Shrewsbury in the final battle of the Roses, where the +Red was so bloodily set above the White; and it was his poetic fancy +to have Northumberland, when he bade him come to York, pass through the +gateway on which the head of his son, Hotspur Harry, was festering. No +wonder the earl led a rising against his liege, who had first mercifully +meant to imprison him for life, and then more mercifully pardoned him. +But there seems to have been fighting up and down the centuries from the +beginning, in York, interspersed with praying and wedding and feasting. +After the citizens drove out Conqueror William's garrison, and Earl +Waltheof provided against the Normans' return by standing at the castle +gate and chopping their heads off with his battle-axe as they came +forth, William efficaciously devastated the city and the country as far +as Durham. His son William gave it a church, and that "worthy peer," +King Stephen, a hospital. In his time the archbishop and barons of York +beat the Scotch hard by, and the next Scotch king had to do homage to +Henry II. at York for his kingdom. Henry III. married his sister at York +to one Scotch king and his daughter to that king's successor. Edward I. +and his queen Eleanor honored with their presence the translation of St. +William's bones to the Minster; Edward II. retreated from his defeat at +Bannockburn to York, and Edward III. was often there for a king's +varied occasions of fighting and feasting. Weak Henry VI. and his wilful +Margaret, after their defeat at Towton by Edward IV., escaped from the +city just in time, and Edward entered York under his own father's head +on Micklegate Bar. Richard III. was welcomed there before his rout and +death at Bosworth, and was truly mourned by the citizens. Henry VII. +wedded Elizabeth, the "White Rose of York," and afterward visited her +city; Mary, Queen of Scots, was once in hiding there, and her uncouth +son stayed two nights in York on his way to be crowned James I. in +London. His son, Charles I., was there early in his reign, and touched +many for the king's evil; later, he was there again, but could not cure +the sort of king's evil which raged past all magic in the defeat of his +followers at Marston Moor by Cromwell. The city yielded to the Puritans, +whose temperament had already rather characterized it. James II., as +Duke of York, made it his brief sojourn; "proud Cumberland," returning +from Culloden after the defeat of the Pretender, visited the city +and received its freedom for destroying the last hope of the Stuarts; +perhaps the twenty-two rebels who were then put to death in York were +executed in the very square where those wicked men thought I was wanting +to play the horses. The reigning family has paid divers visits to the +ancient metropolis, which was the capital of Britain before London was +heard of. The old prophecy of her ultimate primacy must make time if +it is to fulfil itself and increase York's seventy-two thousand beyond +London's six million. + + +IX + +I should be at a loss to say why its English memories haunted my York +less than the Roman associations of the place. They form, however, +rather a clutter of incidents, whereas the few spreading facts of +Hadrian's stay, the deaths of Severus and Constantius, and the election +of Constantine, his son, enlarge themselves to the atmospheric compass +of the place, but leave a roominess in which the fancy may more +commodiously orb about. I was on terms of more neighborly intimacy +with the poor Punic emperor than with any one else in York, doubtless +because, when he fell sick, he visited the temple of Bellona near +Bootham Bar, and paid his devotions unmolested, let us hope, by any +prevision of the misbehavior of his son Caracalla (whose baths I had +long ago visited at Rome) in killing his other son Geta. Everywhere I +could be an early Christian, in company with Constantine, in whom the +instinct of political Christianity must have begun to stir as soon as he +was chosen emperor. But I dare say I heard the muted tramp of the Sixth +Legion about the Yorkish streets above all other martial sounds because +I stayed as long as Doncaster Week would let me in the railway hotel, +which so many of their bones made room for when the foundations of it +were laid, with those of the adherent station. Their bones seem to +have been left there, after the disturbance, but their sepulchres were +respectfully transferred to the museum of the Philosophical Society, in +the grounds where the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey rise like fragments +of pensive music or romantic verse, inviting the moonlight and the +nightingale, but, wanting these, make shift with the noonday and the +babies in perambulators neglected by nurse-girls reading novels. + +[Illustration: ST. MARY'S ABBEY] + +The babies and the nurses are not allowed in the museum of antiquities, +which is richer in Roman remains than any that one sees outside of +Italy. There are floors of mosaic, large and perfect, taken from the +villas which people are always digging up in the neighborhood of York, +and, from the graves uncovered in the railway excavations, coffins of +lead and stone for civilians, and of rude tiles for the soldiers of the +Sixth Legion; the slaves were cast into burial-pits of tens and twenties +and left to indiscriminate decay till they should be raised in the +universal incorruption. Probably the slaves were the earliest Christians +at York; certainly the monuments are pagan, as the inmates of the tombs +must have been. Some of the monuments bear inscriptions from loving +wives and husbands to the partners they have lost, and some of the stone +coffins are those of children. It is all infinitely touching, and after +two thousand years the heart aches for the fathers and mothers who laid +their little ones away in these hard cradles for their last sleep. +Faith changes, but constant death remains the same, and life is not very +different in any age, when it comes to the end. The Roman exiles who had +come so far to hold my British ancestors in subjection to their alien +rule seemed essentially not only of the same make as me, but the +same civilization. Their votive altars and inscriptions to other gods +expressed a human piety of like anxiety and helplessness with ours, and +called to a like irresponsive sky. A hundred witnesses of their mortal +state--jars and vases and simple household utensils--fill the shelves of +the museum; but the most awful, the most beautiful appeal of the past is +in that mass of dark auburn hair which is kept here in a special urn and +uncovered for your supreme emotion. It is equally conjectured to be the +hair of a Roman lady or of a British princess, but is of a young girl +certainly, dressed twenty centuries ago for the tomb in which it was +found, and still faintly lucent with the fashionable unguent of the day, +and kept in form by pins of jet. One thinks of the little, slender hands +that used to put them there, and of the eyes that confronted themselves +in the silver mirror under the warm shadow that the red-gold mass +cast upon the white forehead. This sanctuary of the past was the most +interesting place in that most interesting city of York, and the day of +our first visit a princess of New York sat reading a book in the midst +of it, waiting for the rain to be over, which was waiting for her to +come out and then begin again. We knew her from having seen her at the +station in relation to some trunks bearing her initials and those of +her native city; and she could be about the age of the York princess or +young Roman lady whose hair was kept in the urn hard by. + + +X + +There is in York a little, old, old church, whose dear and reverend +name I have almost forgotten, if ever I knew it, but I think it is Holy +Trinity Goodramgate, which divides the heart of my adoration with the +Minster. We came to it quite by accident, one of our sad September +afternoons, after we had been visiting the Guildhall, Venetianly +overhanging the canal calm of the Ouse, and very worthy to be seen for +its York histories in stained glass. The custodian had surprised us and +the gentlemen of the committee by taking us into the room where they +were investigating the claims of the registered voters to the suffrage; +and so, much entertained and instructed, we issued forth, and, passing +by the church in which Guy Fawkes was baptized, only too ineffectually, +we came quite unexpectedly upon Holy Trinity Goodramgate, if that and +not another is indeed its name. + +It stands sequestered in a little leafy and grassy space of its own, +with a wall hardly overlooked on one side by low stone cottages, the +immemorial homes of rheumatism and influenza. The church had the air +of not knowing that it is of Perpendicular and Decorated Gothic, with +a square, high-shouldered tower, as it bulks up to a very humble +height from the turf to the boughs overhead, or that it has a nice +girl sketching its doorway, where a few especially favored weddings and +funerals may enter. It is open once a year for service, and when the +tourist will, or can, for the sight of the time-mellowed, beautiful +stained glass of its eastward window. The oaken pews are square and +high-shouldered, like the low church tower; and, without, the soft +yellow sandstone is crumbling away from the window traceries. The church +did not look as if it felt itself a thousand years old, and perhaps it +is not; but I never was in a place where I seemed so like a ghost of +that antiquity. I had a sense of haunting it, in the inner twilight and +the outer sunlight, where a tender wind was stirring the leaves of its +embowering trees and scattering them on the graves of my eleventh and +twelfth century contemporaries. + + +XI + +We chose the sunniest morning we could for our visit to Clifford's +Tower, which remains witness of the Norman castle the Conqueror built +and rebuilt to keep the Danish-Anglian-Roman-British town in awe. But +the tower was no part of the original castle, and only testifies of it +by hearsay. That was built by Roger de Clifford, who suffered death with +his party chief, the Earl of Lancaster, when Edward of York took the +city, and it is mainly memorable as the refuge of the Jews whom the +Christians had harried out of their homes. They had grown in numbers and +riches, when the Jew-hate of 1190 broke out in England, as from time +to time the Jew-hate breaks out in Russia now, to much the same cruel +effect. They were followed and besieged in the castle, and, seeing that +they must be captured, they set fire to the place, and five hundred slew +themselves. Some that promised to be Christians came out and were killed +by their brethren in Christ. In New York the Christians have grown +milder, and now they only keep the Jews out of their clubs and their +homes. + +[Illustration: CLIFFORD'S TOWER] + +The Clifford Tower leans very much to one side, so that as you ascend it +for the magnificent view from the top you have to incline yourself the +other way, as you do in the Tower of Pisa, to help it keep its balance. +The morning of our visit, so gay in its forgetfulness of the tragical +past, we found the place in charge of an old soldier, an Irishman who +had learned, as custodian, a professional compassion for those poor Jews +of nine hundred years ago, and, being moved by our confession of our +nationality, owned to three "nevvies" in New Haven. So small is the +world and so closely knit in the ties of a common humanity and a common +citizenship, native and adoptive! + +The country around York looked so beautiful from Clifford's Tower that +we would not be satisfied till we had seen it closer, and we chose a +bright, cool September afternoon for our drive out of the town and over +the breezy, high levels which surround it. The first British capital +could hardly have been more nobly placed, and one could not help +grieving that the Ouse should have indolently lost York that early +dignity by letting its channel fill up with silt and spoil its +navigation. The Thames managed better for York's upstart rival London, +and yet the Ouse is not destitute of sea or river craft. These were of +both steam and sail, and I myself have witnessed the energy with which +the reluctance of the indolent stream is sometimes overcome. I do not +suppose that anywhere else, when the wind is low, is a vessel madly +hurled through the water at a mile an hour by means of a rope tied +to its mast and pulled by a fatherly old horse under the intermittent +drivership of two boys whom he could hardly keep to the work. I loved +the banks of a stream where one could see such a triumph of man over +nature, and where nature herself was so captivating. All that grassy +and shady neighborhood seemed a public promenade, where on a Sunday one +could see the lower middle classes in their best and brightest, and +it had for all its own the endearing and bewitching name of Ings. Why +cannot we have Ings by the Hudson side? + + + * * * * * + + + + +TWO YORKISH EPISODES + + +Certainly I had not come to York, as certainly I would not have gone +anywhere, for battle-fields, but becoming gradually sensible in that +city that the battle of Marston Moor was fought a few miles away, and +my enemy Charles I. put to one of his worst defeats there, I bought a +third-class ticket and ran out to the place one day for whatever emotion +awaited me there. + + +I + +At an English station you are either overwhelmed with transportation, +or you are without any except such as you were born with, and at the +station for Marston Moor I asked for a fly in vain. But it was a most +walkable afternoon, and the pleasant road into the region which the +station-master indicated as that I was seeking invited the foot by its +level stretch, sometimes under wayside trees, but mostly between open +fields, newly reaped and still yellow with their stubble, or green with +the rowen clover. Sometimes it ran straight and sometimes it curved, +but it led so rarely near any human habitation that one would rather not +have met any tramps beside one's self on it. Presently I overtook one, a +gentle old farm-wife, a withered blonde, whom I helped with the bundles +she bore in either hand, in the hope that she could tell me whether I +was near Marston Moor or not. But she could tell me only, what may have +been of higher human interest, that her husband had the grass farm of +a hundred and fifty acres, which we were coming to, for seventy-five +pounds a year; and they had their own cattle, sheep, and horses, and +were well content with themselves. She excused herself for not knowing +more than vaguely of the battle-field, as not having been many years +in the neighborhood; and being now come to a gate in the fields, she +thanked me and took her way up a grassy path to the pleasant farmhouse I +saw in the distance. + +It must have been about this time that it rained, having shone long +enough for English weather, and it hardly held up before I was overtaken +by a friendly youth on a bicycle, whom I stayed with the question +uppermost in my mind. He promptly got off his wheel to grapple with the +problem. He was a comely young fellow, an artisan of some sort from +a neighboring town, and he knew the country well, but he did not know +where my lost battle-field was. He was sure that it was near by: but he +was sure there was no monument to mark the spot. Then we parted friends, +with many polite expressions, and he rode on and I walked on. + +For a mile and more I met no other wayfarer, and as I felt that it was +time to ask for Marston Moor again, I was very glad to be overtaken by +a gentleman driving in a dog-cart, with his pretty young daughter on +the wide seat with him. He halted at sight of the elderly pilgrim, and +hospitably asked if he could not give him a lift, alleging that there +was plenty of room. He was interested in my search, which he was not +able definitely to promote, but he believed that if I would drive with +him to his place I could find the battle-field, and, anyhow, I could get +a trap back from the The Sun. I pleaded the heat I was in from walking, +and the danger for an old fellow of taking cold in a drive through the +cool air; and then, as old fellows do, we bantered each other about +our ages, each claiming to be older than the other, and the kind, sweet +young girl sat listening with that tolerance of youth for the triviality +of age which is so charming. When he could do no more, he said he was +sorry, and wished me luck, and drove on; and I being by this time tired +with my three miles' tramp, took advantage of a wayside farmhouse, the +first in all the distance, and went in and asked for a cup of tea. + +The farm-wife, who came in out of her back garden to answer my knock, +pleaded regretfully that her fire was down; but she thought I could +get tea at the next house; and she was very conversable about the +battle-field. She did not know just where it was, but she was sure it +was quite a mile farther on; and at that I gave up the hope of it along +with the tea. This is partly the reader's loss, for I have no doubt +I could have been very graphic about it if I had found it; but as for +Marston Moor, I feel pretty certain that if it ever existed it does not +now. A moor, as I understand, implies a sort of wildness, but nothing +could be more domestic than the peaceful fields between which I had come +so far, and now easily found my way back to the station. Easily, I say, +but there was one point where the road forked, though I was sure it +had not forked before, and I felt myself confronted with some sort, +any sort, of exciting adventure. By taking myself firmly in hand, and +saying, "It was yonder to the left where I met my kind bicycler, and we +vainly communed of my evanescent battle-field," and so keeping on, I got +safely to the station with nothing more romantic in my experience than a +thrilling apprehension. + + +II + +I quite forgot Marston Moor in my self-gratulation and my recognition +of the civility from every one which had so ineffectively abetted my +search. Simple and gentle, how hospitable they had all been to my vain +inquiry, and how delicately they had forborne to visit the stranger +with the irony of the average American who is asked anything, especially +anything he does not know! I went thinking that the difference was a +difference between human nature long mellowed to its conditions, and +human nature rasped on its edges and fretted by novel circumstances to a +provisional harshness. I chose to fancy that unhuman nature sympathized +with the English mood; in the sheep bleating from the pastures I heard +the note of Wordsworth's verse; and by the sky, hung in its low +blue with rough, dusky clouds, I was canopied as with a canvas of +Constable's. + +It was the more pity, then, that at the station a shooting party, +approaching from the other quarter with their servants and guns and +dogs, and their bags of hares and partridges, should have given English +life another complexion to the wanderer so willing to see it always +rose color. The gunners gained the station platform first, and at once +occupied the benches, strewing all the vacant places with their still +bleeding prey. I did not fail of the opportunity to see in them the +arrogance of class, which I had hitherto so vainly expected, and I +disabled their looks by finding them as rude as their behavior. How +different they were from the kind bicycler, or the gentleman in the +dog-cart, or either one of the farm-wives who sorrowed so civilly not to +know where my lost battle-field was! + +In England, it is always open to the passenger to enforce a claim to +his share of the public facilities, but I chose to go into the licensed +victualler's next the station and sit down to a peaceable cup of tea +rather than contest a place on that bloody benching; and so I made the +acquaintance of an interior out of literature, such as my beloved Thomas +Hardy likes to paint. On a high-backed rectangular settle rising against +the wall, and almost meeting in front of the comfortable range, sat a +company of rustics, stuffing themselves with cold meat, washed down with +mugs of ale, and cozily talking. They gained indefinitely in my interest +from being served by a lame woman, with a rhythmical limp, and I hope it +was not for my demerit that I was served apart in the chillier parlor, +when I should have liked so much to stay and listen to the rustic tale +or talk. The parlor was very depressingly papered, but on its walls I +had the exalted company of his Majesty the King, their Royal Highnesses +the Prince and Princess of Wales, the late Premier, the Marquis of +Salisbury, and, for no assignable reason except a general fitness for +high society, the twelve Apostles in Da Vinci's _Last Supper_, together +with an appropriate view of York Minster. + + +III + +I do not pretend this search for the battle-field of Marston Moor was +the most exciting episode of my stay in York. In fact, I think it +was much surpassed in a climax of dramatic poignancy incident to our +excursion to Bishopsthorpe, down the Ouse, on one of the cosey little +steamers which ply the stream without unreasonably crowding it against +its banks. It was a most silvery September afternoon when we started +from the quay at York, and after escaping from embarkment on a boat +going in the wrong direction, began, with no unseemly swiftness, to +scuttle down the current. It was a perfect voyage, as perfect as any I +ever made on the Mississippi, the Ohio, the St. Lawrence, or the Hudson, +on steamers in whose cabins our little boat would have lost itself. We +had a full but not crowded company of passengers, overflowing into +a skiff at our stern, in which a father and mother, with three women +friends, preferred the high excitement of being towed to Bishopsthorpe, +where it seemed that the man of the party knew the gardener. With each +curve of the river and with each remove we got the city in more and more +charming retrospective, till presently its roofs and walls and spires +and towers were lost in the distance, and we were left to the sylvan +or pastoral loveliness of the low shores. Here and there at a pleasant +interval from the river a villa rose against a background of rounded +tree tops, with Lombardy poplars picking themselves out before it, but +for the most part the tops of the banks, with which we stood even on +our deck, retreated from the waterside willows in levels of meadow-land, +where white and red cows were grazing, and now and then young horses +romping away from groups of their elders. It was all dear and kind and +sweet, with a sort of mid-Western look in its softness (as the English +landscape often has), and the mud-banks were like those of my native +Ohio Valley rivers. The effect was heightened, on our return, by an +aged and virtuously poor (to all appearance) flageolet and cornet band, +playing _'Way down upon the Suwanee River_, while the light played in +"ditties no-tone" over the groves and pastures of the shore, and the +shadows stretched themselves luxuriously out as if for a long night's +sleep. There has seldom been such a day since I began to grow old; a +soft September gale ruffled and tossed the trees finely, and a subtle +Italian quality mixed with the American richness of the sunshiny air; so +that I thought we reached Bishopsthorpe only too soon, and I woke from a +pleasant reverie to be told that the steamer could not land with us, but +we must be taken ashore in the small boat which we saw putting out for +us from its moorings. To this day I do not know why the steamer could +not land, but perhaps the small boat had a prescriptive right in the +matter. At any rate, it was vigorously manned by a woman, who took +tuppence from each of us for her service, and presently earned it by the +interest she showed in our getting to the Archbishop's palace, or villa, +the right way. + +[Illustration: YORK AS SEEN FROM THE RIVER] + +So we went round by an alluring road to its forking, where, looking up +to the left, we could see a pretty village behind Lombardy poplars, +and coming down toward us in a victoria for their afternoon drive, +two charmingly dressed ladies, with bright parasols, and looking very +county-family, as we poor Americans imagine such things out of English +fiction. We entered the archiepiscopal grounds through a sympathetic +Gothic screen, as I will call the overture to the Gothic edifice in my +defect of architectural terminology, though perhaps gateway would be +simpler; and found ourselves in the garden, and in the company of +those people we had towed down behind our steamer. They were with +their friend, the gardener, and, claiming their acquaintance as +fellow-passengers, we made favor with him to see the house. The +housekeeper, or some understudy of hers, who received us, said the +family were away, but she let us follow her through. That is more than +I will let the reader do, for I know the duty of the cultivated American +to the intimacies of the gentle English life; it is only with the simple +life that I ever make free; there, I own, I have no scruple. But I will +say (with my back turned conscientiously to the interior) that nothing +could be lovelier than the outlook from the dining-room, and the whole +waterfront of the house, on the wavy and willowy Ouse, and that I would +willingly be many times an archbishop to have that prospect at all my +meals. + + +IV + +We despatched our visit so promptly that we got back to our boat-woman's +cottage a full hour before our steamer was to call for us. She had an +afternoon fire kindled in her bright range, from the oven of which came +already the odor of agreeable baking. Upon this hint we acted, and +asked if tea were possible. It was, and jam sandwiches as well, or if +we preferred buttered tea-cake, with or without currants, to jam +sandwiches, there would be that presently. We preferred both, and we sat +down in that pleasant parlor-kitchen, and listened, till the tea-cake +came out of the oven and was split open and buttered smoking hot, to +a flow of delightful and instructive talk. For our refection we paid +sixpence each, but for our edification we are still, and hope ever to +be, in debt. Our hostess was of a most cheerful philosophy, such as +could not be bought of most modern philosophers for money. The flour for +our tea-cakes, she said, was a shilling fivepence a stone, "And not too +much for growing and grinding it, and all." Every week-day morning she +rose at half-past four, and got breakfast for her boys, who then rode +their bicycles, or, in the snow, walked, all the miles of our voyage +into York, where they worked in the railway shops. No, they did not +belong to any union; the railway men did not seem to care for it; only a +"benefit union." + +She kept the house for her family, and herself ready to answer every +hail from the steamer; but in her mellow English content, which was not +stupid or sodden, but clever and wise, it was as if it were she, rather +than the archbishop, whose nature expressed itself in a motto on one +of the palace walls, "Blessed be the Lord who loadeth us with blessings +every day." + +When the range, warming to its work, had made her kitchen-parlor a +little too hot to hold us, she hospitably suggested the river shore as +cooler, where she knew a comfortable log we could sit on. Thither she +presently followed when the steamer's whistle sounded, and held her +boat for us to get safely in. The most nervous of our party offered +the reflection, as she sculled us out into the stream to overhaul the +pausing steamer, that she must find the ferry business very shattering +to the nerves, and she said, + +"Yes, but it's nothing to a murder case I was on, once." + +"Oh, what murder, what murder?" we palpitated back; and both of us +forgot the steamer, so that it almost ran us down, while our ferrywoman +began again: + +"A man shot a nurse--There! Throw that line, will you?" + +But he, who ought to have thrown the line for her, in his distraction +let her drop her oar and throw the line herself, and then we scrambled +aboard without hearing any more of the murder. + +This is the climax I have been working up to, and I call it a fine one; +as good as a story to be continued ever ended an instalment with. + + + * * * * * + + + + +A DAY AT DONCASTER AND AN HOUR OUT OF DURHAM + + +The Doncaster Races lured us from our hotel at York, on the first day, +as I had dimly foreboded they would. In fact, if there had been no lure, +I might have gone in search of temptation, for in a world where sins are +apt to be ugly, a horse-race is so beautiful that if one loves beauty +he can practise an aesthetic virtue by sinning in that sort. So I +made myself a pretence of profit as well as pleasure, and in going to +Doncaster I feigned the wish chiefly to compare its high event with that +of Saratoga. I had no association with the place save horse-racing, and +having missed Ascot and Derby Day, I took my final chance in pursuit +of knowledge--I said to myself, "Not mere amusement"--and set out for +Doncaster unburdened by the lightest fact concerning the place. + + +I + +I learned nothing of it when there, but I have since learned, from +divers trustworthy sources, that Doncaster is the Danum of Antoninus and +the Dona Ceaster of the Saxons, and that it is not only on the line of +the Northeastern Railway, but also on that famous Watling Street which +from the earliest Saxon time has crossed the British continent from sea +to sea, and seems to impress most of the cities north and south into a +conformity with its line, like a map of the straightest American railway +routes. + +Unless my ignorance has been abused, nothing remarkable has happened +at Doncaster in two thousand years, but this is itself a distinction in +that eventful England where so many things have happened elsewhere. +It is the market town of a rich farming region, and has notable +manufactures of iron and brass, of sacking and linen, of spun flax and +of agricultural machines and implements. Otherwise, it is important only +for its races, which began there three hundred years ago, and especially +for its St. Leger Day, of which Lieutenant-General St. Leger became the +patron saint in 1778, though he really established his Day two years +earlier. + +Doncaster is a mighty pleasant, friendly, rather modern, and +commonplacely American-looking town, with two-story trams gently ambling +up and down its chief avenues, in the leisurely English fashion, and +all of more or less arrival and departure at the race-grounds. In our +company the reader will have our appetites for lunch, and if he will +take his chance with us in the first simple place away from the station, +he will help us satisfy them very wholesomely and agreeably at boards +which seem festively set up for the occasion, and spread with hot +roast-beef and the plain vegetables which accompany the national dish +in its native land; or he can have the beef cold, or have cold lamb or +chicken cold. His fellow-lunchers will be, as he may like well enough +to fancy, of somewhat lower degree than himself, but they will all seem +very respectable, and when they come out together, they will all be +equalized in the sudden excitement which has possessed itself of the +street, and lined the curbstones up and down with spectators, their +bodies bent forward, and their faces turned in the direction of the +station. + + +II + +The excitement is caused by the coming of the King; and I wish that I +could present that event in just its sincere unimpressiveness. I have +assisted at several such events on the Continent, where, especially in +Germany, they are heralded as they are in the theatre, with a blare of +trumpets, and a sensation in the populace and the attendant military +little short of an ague fit. There, as soon as the majesties mount into +their carriages from the station, they drive off as swiftly as their +horses can trot, and their subjects, who have been waiting for hours to +see them, make what they can of a meagre half-minute's glimpse of +them. But how different was the behavior of that easy-going Majesty of +England! As soon as I heard that he was coming, I perceived how anxious +I had been in the half-year of my English sojourn to see him, and how +bitterly I should have been disappointed to leave his realms without it. +All kings are bad, I knew that well enough; but I also knew that some +kings are not so bad as others, and I had been willing to accept at +their face the golden opinions of this King, which, almost without +exception, his lieges seemed to hold. Of course it is not hard to think +well of a king if you are under him, just as it is not hard to think +ill of him if you are not under him; but there is no use being bigotedly +republican when there is nothing to be got by it, and I own the fact +that his subjects like him willingly. Probably no man in his kingdom +understands better than Edward VII. that he is largely a form, and that +the more a form he is the more conformable he is to the English ideal +of a monarch. But no Englishman apparently knows better than he when to +leave off being a form and become a man, and he has endeared himself to +his people from time to time by such inspirations. He is reputed on all +hands to be a man of great good sense; if he is ever fooled it is not by +himself, but by the system which he is no more a part of than the least +of his subjects. If he will let a weary old man or a delicate woman +stand indefinitely before him, he is no more to blame for that than for +speaking English with a trace of German in his _th_ sounds; he did not +invent his origins or his traditions. Personally, having had it out with +life, he is as amiable and as unceremonious as a king may be. He shares, +as far as he can, the great and little interests of his people. He has +not, so far as noted, the gifts of some of his sisters, but he has much +of his mother's steadfast wisdom, and his father's instinct for the +right side in considerable questions; and he has his father's prescience +of the psychological moment for not bothering. Of course, he is a +fetish; no Englishman can deny that the kingship is an idolatry; but +he is a fetish with an uncommon share of the common man's divinity. +The system which provides him for the people provides them the best +administration in the world, always naturally in the hands of their +superiors, social and political; but we could be several times rottener +than we administratively are, and still be incalculably reasonabler, as +republicans, than those well-governed monarchists. + +[Illustration: DURHAM CATHEDRAL--NORTHWEST VIEW] + +Some of us are apt to forget the immense advantage which we have of the +monarchical peoples in having cast away the very name of King, for with +the name goes the nature of royalty and all that is under and around it. +But because we are largely a fond and silly folk, with a false conceit +of ourselves and others, we like to make up romances about the favor in +which thrones, municipalities, and powers hold us. Once it was the Tsar +of Russia who held us dear, and would do almost anything for Americans; +now it is the King of England who is supposed rather to prefer us to his +own people, and to delight to honor us. We attribute to him a feeling +which a little thought would teach, us was wholly our own, and which +would be out of nature if not out of reason with him. He is a man of +sense, and not of sentiment, and except as a wise politician he could +have no affection for a nation whose existence denies him. He is very +civil to Americans; it is part of a constitutional king's business to be +civil to every one; but he is probably not sentimental about us; and we +need not be sentimental about him. + +He looked like a man of sense, and not like a man of sentiment, that +day as he drove through the Doncaster street on his way to the sport he +loves beyond any other sport. He sat with three other gentlemen on the +sidewise seats of the trap, preceded by outriders, which formed the +simple turnout of the greatest prince in the world. He was at the end on +the right, and he showed fully as stout as he was, in the gray suit he +wore, while he lifted his gray top-hat now and then, bowing casually, +almost absently, to the spectators fringing, not too deeply, the +sidewalks. He was very, very stout, even after many seasons of +Marienbad, and after the sufferings he had lately undergone, and he +was quite like the pictures and effigies of him, down to those on the +postage-stamps. He has a handsome face, still bearded in the midst of a +mostly clean-shaving nation, and with the white hairs prevalent on +the cheeks and temples; his head is bald atop, though hardly from the +uneasiness of wearing a crown. + +It was difficult to realize him for what he was, and in the unmilitary +keeping of a few policemen, he was not of the high histrionic presence +that those German majesties were. The good-natured crowd did not strain +itself in cheering, though it seemed to cheer cordially; and it did +not stay long after the trap tooled comfortably away. I then addressed +myself to a little knot of railway servants who lingered talking, and +asked them what some carriages were still waiting for at the door of the +station, and one of them answered with a lightness you do not expect +in England, "Oh, Lord This, and Lady That, and the Hon. Mr. +I-don't-know-what's-his-name." The others laughed at this ribald satire +of the upper classes, and I thought it safer to follow the King to the +races lest I should hear worse things of them. + + +III + +The races were some miles away, and when we got to the tracks we did +not find their keeping very different from that of the Saratoga tracks, +although the crowd was both smarter and shabbier, and it had got to the +place through a town of tents and sheds, and a population of hucksters +and peddlers, giving an effect of permanency to the festivity such as +a solemnity of ours seldom has. When we bought our tickets we found, in +the familiarity with the event expected of us, that there was no one to +show us to our places; but by dint of asking we got to the Grand Stand, +and mounted to our seats, which, when we stood up from them, commanded a +wholly satisfactory prospect of the whole field. + +I do not know the dimensions of the Doncaster track, or how far they +exceed those of the Saratoga track. Possibly one does not do its extent +justice because there is no track at Doncaster: there is nothing but a +green turf, with a certain course railed off on it. I hope the reader +will be as much surprised as I was to realize that the sport of +horse-racing in England gets its name of Turf from the fact that the +races are run on the grass, and not on the bare ground, as with us. We +call the sport the Turf, too, but that is because in this, as in so many +other things, we lack incentive and invention, and are fondly colonial +and imitative; we ought to call it the Dirt, for that is what it is with +us. As a spectacle, the racing lacks the definition in England which +our course gives, and when it began, I missed the relief into which our +track throws the bird-like sweep of the horses as they skim the naked +earth in the distance. + +I missed also the superfluity of jockeying which delays and enhances +the thrill of the start with us, and I thought the English were not so +scrupulous about an even start as we are. But, above all, I missed the +shining faces and the gleaming eyes of the black jockeys, who lend so +much gayety to our scene, where they seem born to it, if not of it. The +crowd thickened in English bloom and bulk, which is always fine to see, +and bubbled over with the babble of multitudinous voices, crossed with +the shouts of the book-makers. Having failed to enter any bets with the +book-makers of The Pavement in York, I did not care to make them here. +With all my passion for racing, I never know or care which horse wins; +but I tried to enter into the joy of a diffident young fellow near me at +the Grand Stand rail, who was so proud of having guessed as winner the +horse next to the winner at the first race; it was coming pretty close. +By the end of the third or how far they exceed those of the Saratoga +track. Possibly one does not do its extent justice because there is no +track at Doncaster: there is nothing but a green turf, with a certain +course railed off on it. I hope the reader will be as much surprised as +I was to realize that the sport of horse-racing in England gets its name +of Turf from the fact that the races are run on the grass, and not on +the bare ground, as with us. We call the sport the Turf, too, but that +is because in this, as in so many other things, we lack incentive and +invention, and are fondly colonial and imitative; we ought to call it +the Dirt, for that is what it is with us. As a spectacle, the racing +lacks the definition in England which our course gives, and when it +began, I missed the relief into which our track throws the bird-like +sweep of the horses as they skim the naked earth in the distance. + +I missed also the superfluity of jockeying which delays and enhances +the thrill of the start with us, and I thought the English were not so +scrupulous about an even start as we are. But, above all, I missed the +shining faces and the gleaming eyes of the black jockeys, who lend so +much gayety to our scene, where they seem born to it, if not of it. The +crowd thickened in English bloom and bulk, which is always fine to see, +and bubbled over with the babble of multitudinous voices, crossed with +the shouts of the book-makers. Having failed to enter any bets with the +book-makers of The Pavement in York, I did not care to make them here. +With all my passion for racing, I never know or care which horse wins; +but I tried to enter into the joy of a diffident young fellow near me at +the Grand Stand rail, who was so proud of having guessed as winner the +horse next to the winner at the first race; it was coming pretty +close. By the end of the third race he had softened into something like +confidence toward me; certainly into conversability; such was the effect +of my being a dead-game sport, or looking it. But how account for the +trustfulness of the young woman on my other hand who wore her gold watch +outside her dress, and who turned to the elderly stranger for sympathy +in a certain supreme moment? This was when the crowd below crumpled +suddenly together like the crushing of paper and the sense of something +tragically mysterious in the distance clarified itself as the death of +one of the horses. It had dropped from heart-break in its tracks, as if +shot, and presently a string of young men and boys came dragging to some +_spoliarium_ the long, slender body of the pretty creature over the turf +which its hoofs had beaten a moment before. Then it was that the girl, +with the watch on her breast, turned and asked, "Isn't it sad?" + +[Illustration: FINCHALE PRIORY] + + +IV + +She was probably not the daughter of a hundred earls, but there must +have been some such far-descended fair among the ladies who showed +themselves from time to time in the royal paddock across a little space +from our Grand Stand. The enclosure has no doubt a more technical +name, which I would call it by if I knew it, for I do not wish to be +irreverent; but paddock is very sporty, and it must serve my occasion. +The King never showed himself there at all, though much craned round for +and eagerly expected. But ladies and gentlemen moved about in the close, +and stood and talked together; very tall people, very easily straight +and well set up, very handsome, and very amiable-looking; they may have +been really kind and good, or they may have looked so to please the +King and keep his spirits up. I did not then, but I do now, realize that +these were courtiers, such as one has always read of, and were of very +historical quality in their attendance on the monarch. I trust it will +not take from the dignity of the fact if I note that several of the +courtiers wore derby hats, and one was in a sack coat and a topper. I +am not sure what the fairer reader will think if I tell that one of the +ladies had on a dress with a white body and crimson skirt and sleeves, +and a vast black picture-hat, and wore it with a charming air of +authority. + +The weather, in the excitement of the races, had not known whether it +was raining or not, but we feared its absent-mindedness, and at the end +of the third race we went away. It is not well to trust an English day +too far; this had begun with brilliant sunshine, but it dimmed as it +wore on, and we could not know that it was keeping for us the surprise +of a very refined sunset. My memory does not serve as to just how we had +got out to the race-ground; I think, from our being set down at the very +gate, that it was by hansom or by fly; but now we promised ourselves to +walk back to town. We did not actually do so; we went back most of the +way by tram; but we were the firmer about walking at the outset, because +we presently found ourselves in a lane of gypsy tents, where there was +an alluring sight and smell of frying fish and potatoes. In the midst of +the refection, you could have your fortune told, very favorably, for a +very little money. All up and down this happy avenue there went girls of +several dozen sizes and ages, crying a particular kind of taffy, proper +to the day and place, and never to be had on any other day in any other +place. + +We had an hour before train-time, and we thought we would go and see +the Parish Church of Doncaster, which we had read was worth seeing. +Our belief was confirmed by a group of disappointed ladies in the +churchyard, who said it was a most beautiful church inside, but that +they had not seen it because it was shut. We proved the fact by trying +the door, and then we came away consoling ourselves with the scoff that +it was probably closed for the races. At the bookseller's, where we +stopped to buy some photographs of the interior of the church we had not +seen, we lamented our disappointment, and the salesman said, "Perhaps +it was closed for the races." So our joke seemed to turn earnest, and on +reflection it did not surprise us in that England of close-knit unities +where people and prince are of one texture in their pleasures and +devotions, and the Church is hardly more national than the Turf. + + +V + +At Durham, which was my next excursion from York, I cannot claim, +therefore, that my mission was more serious because it almost solely +concerned the Church, or that it was more frivolous at Doncaster, where +it almost solely concerned the Turf. My train started in a fine mist +that turned to sun, but not before it had shown me with the local color, +which a gray light lends everything, a pack of hounds crossing a field +near the track with two huntsmen at their heels. They were not chasing, +but running leisurely, and with their flower-like, loose spread over the +green, and the pink-coated hunters on their brown mounts, they afforded +a picture as vivid and of as perfect semblance to all my visions of +fox-hunting as I could have asked. I had been hoping that I might see +something of the famous sport, almost as English as the Church or the +Turf, and there, suddenly and all unexpectedly, the sight fully and +satisfyingly was. Now, indeed, I felt that my impression of English +society was complete, and that I might go home and write novels of +English high life, and do something to redeem myself a little from the +disgrace I had fallen into with my fellow-plebeians by always writing +of common Americans, like themselves, and never _grandes dames_ or ideal +persons, or people in the best society. + +But I did not want to go home at once, or turn back from going to Durham +through that pleasant landscape, where the mist hung between the trees +which seemed themselves only heavier bulks of mist. The wheat in some +of the fields was still uncut, and in others, where it had been gathered +into sheaves, the rooks by hundreds were noisily gleaning in the track +of the reapers. From this conventionally English keeping, I passed +suddenly to the sight of the gaunt, dry, gravelly bed of a wide river, +such as I had known in Central Italy, or the Middle West at home; and I +realized once again that England is no island of one simple complexion, +but is a condensed continent, with all continental varieties of feature +in it. You must cover thousands and thousands of miles in our tedious +lengths and breadths for the beauties and sublimities of scenery which +you shall gather from fewer hundreds in England; I have no doubt they +have even volcanoes there, but I did not see any, probably because the +English are so reticent, and hate to make a display of any sort. + + +VI + +It is because they are so, or possibly because of my ignorance, that I +did not know or at all imagine how magnificent the Cathedral of Durham +is, or what a matchless seat it has on the bluffs of the river, with +depths of woods below its front, tossing in the rich chill of the +September wind. As it takes flight for the heavens, to which its +business is to invite the thought, it seems to carry the earth with it, +for if you climb those noble heights, you find your feet still on the +ground, in a most stately space of open level between the cathedral and +its neighbor castle, which alone could be worthy of its high company. + +The castle is Tudor, but the cathedral is beyond all other English +cathedrals, I believe, Norman, though to the naked eye it looks so +Gothic, and probably is. Here I will leave the reader with any pictures +or memories of it which he happens to have, for I have always held it +a sin to try describing architecture, or if not a sin, a bore. What +chiefly remains to me of my impression of Durham Cathedral is, +strangely enough, an objection: I did not like those decorated pillars, +alternating with the clustered columns of the interior, and I do not +suppose I ever shall: the spiral furrows, the zigzag and lozenge figures +chiselled in their surfaces, weakened them to the eye and seemed to +trifle with their proud bulk. + +But to the castle of Durham I have no objection whatever. I should like +to live in it, as I should in all other Tudor houses, great or small, +that I saw, where, as I am constantly saying, a high ideal of comfort +is realized. It is almost as nobly placed as the cathedral, and it is +approached by a very stately courtyard, of like spacious effect with the +cathedral piazza. Inside it there is a kitchen of the sixteenth century, +with a company of neat serving-maids, too comely and young to be, +perhaps, of the same period, that gives the tourist a high sense of the +luxury in which the Bishop of Durham and the Judges of the Assize Courts +live when they are residents in the castle. One sees their apartments, +dim and rich, and darkly furnished, but not gloomily, both where they +sleep and where they eat, and flatteringly envies them in a willingness +for the moment to be a judge or a bishop for the sake of such a fit +setting. There is also a fine crypt, with a fine dining-hall and a black +staircase of ancient oak, and a gallery with classic busts, and other +pictures worthy of wonder, let alone a history from the time of William +the Conqueror, who first fancied a castle where it stands, down to the +present day. The memory of such successive guests as the Empress Matilda +and Henry II. her son, King John, Henry III., Edwards I., II., and III., +Queen Philippa, Henry VI., and James I., and Charles I., and Edward +VII., abides in the guidebook, and may be summoned from its page to +the chambers of the beautiful old place by any traveller intending +impressions for literary use from a medieval environment in perfect +repair. + + +VII + +One must be hard to satisfy if one is not satisfied with Durham Castle, +and its interior contented me as fully as the exterior of the Cathedral. +I went a walk, after leaving the castle, for a further feast of the +Cathedral from the paths along the shelving banks of the beautiful +Weare. There, at a certain point, I met a studious-looking gentleman who +I am sure must have been a professor of Durham University hard by; and +I asked him, with due entreaty for pardon, "What river was that." He +quelled the surprise he must have felt at my ignorance and answered +gently, "The Weare." "Ah, to be sure! The Weare," I said, and thanked +him, and longed for more talk with him, but felt myself so unworthy that +I had not the face to prompt him further. He passed, and then I met a +man much more of my own kind, if not probably so little informed. That +rich, chill gale was still tossing and buffeting the tree tops, and he +made occasion of this to say, "This is a cold wynd a-blowin', Mister." +"It is, rather," I assented. "I was think-in'," he observed from an +apparent generalization, "that I wished I was at home." Then he suddenly +added, "Help a poor man!" I was not wholly surprised at the climax, +and I offered him, provisionally, a penny. "Will that do?" He hesitated +perceptibly; then he allowed, with a subtle reluctance, "Yes, that'll +do," and so passed on to satisfy, I hope, the wish he thought he had. + +[Illustration: DURHAM CATHEDRAL--ITS MATCHLESS SEAT ON THE BLUFFS OF THE +RIVER] + +I pursued my own course, as far as the bridge which spans the Weare near +a most picturesque mill, and then I stopped a kindly-looking workman +and asked him whether he thought I could find a fly or cab anywhere near +that would take me into the town. He answered, briefly but consistently +with his looks, "Ah doot," and as he owned that it was a long way to +town, I let his doubt decide me to go back to the station. + +I felt that I ought to have driven from there into the town, and seen +it, and taken to York a later train than the one I had in mind. In the +depravity induced by my neglect of this plain duty, I went, with my +third class return ticket conscious in my pocket, into the first class +refreshment room, and had tea there, as if I had been gentry at the very +least, and possibly nobility. Then, having a good deal of time still +on my hands, I loitered over the book-stall of the station, and stole a +passage of conversation with a kindly clergyman whom I found looking at +the pretty shilling editions filling the cases. I said, How nice it was +to have Hazlitt in that green cloth; and he said, Yes, but he held for +Gibbon in leather; and just then his train came in and he ran off to +it, and left me to my guilt in not having gone to see Durham. It was now +twilight, and too late; but there the charming old town still is, and +will long remain, I hope, with its many memories of war and peace, for +whoever will visit it. Certainly there had been no lack of adventures in +my ample hour. It was as charming to weave my conjectures, about the +two gentlemen with whom I had so barely spoken, as to have carried +my acquaintance with them further, and I cannot see how it would have +profited me to know more even of that fellow-man who, in the cold wynd +a-blowing, had just been thinking he wished he was at home. + + + * * * * * + + + + +THE MOTHER OF THE AMERICAN ATHENS + + +It was fit that on our way to Boston we should pause in passing through +Cambridge. That was quite as we should have done at home, and I can only +wish now that we had paused longer, though every moment that kept us +from Boston, if it had been anywhere but in England, would have been a +loss. There, it was all gain, and all joy, the gay September 24th +that we went this divine journey. My companion was that companionable +archaeologist who had guided my steps in search of the American origins +in London, and who was now to help me follow the Pilgrim Fathers over +the ground where they sojourned when they were only the Pilgrim Sons. +At divers places on the way, after we left London, he pointed out some +scene associated with American saints or heroes. We traversed the region +that George William Curtis' people came from, hard by Roxburgh, and +Eliot's, the Apostle to the Indians; again we skirted the Ralph Waldo +Emerson country, with its big market town of Bishop's Stortford; and +beyond Ely, where we stopped for the Cathedral and a luncheon, not +unworthy of it, at the station, he startled me from a pleasant drowse I +had fallen into in our railway carriage, with the cry: "There! That is +where Captain John Smith was born." "Where? Where?" I implored too late, +looking round the compartment everywhere. "Back where those chickens +were." + + +I + +That was the nearest I came to seeing one of the most famous Virginian +origins. But you cannot see everything in England; there are too many +things; and if the truth must be known I cared more for the natural +features than the historical facts of the landscape. The country was +flat, and a raw green, as it should be in that raw air, under that +dun sky, with sheep hardily biting the short tough pasturage under the +imbrowning oaks and elms, and the olive-graying willows, beside the +full, still streams scarce wetter than the ground they dreamed through. + +We did not reach Boston until six o'clock, when the day was already +waning, and the Stump of St. Botolph's Church stood dim against the sky. +It was a long drive through the suburban streets from the station to the +hotel, which we found full, and which with its crazy floors touched the +fancy as full of something besides guests. But it was well for us so, +because across the market-place, which forms the chief public square +of Boston, was a far better hotel, where we were welcomed to the +old-fashioned ideal of the English inn, such as I did not so nearly +realize anywhere else. The ideal was a little impaired by the electric +light in our bedrooms, but it was not a very brilliant electric light, +and there was a damp cold in the corridors which allowed no doubt of its +genuineness. In the dining-room, which was also the reading-room, there +was an admirable image of a fire in the grate, and a prevailing warmth +and brightness which cheered the heart of exile. When we presently had +dinner, specialized for us by certain differences from that of two other +travellers, there seemed nothing more to ask, except the conversation of +our companions, and this we duly had, quite as if we were four wayfarers +met there in a book. One of these gentlemen proved a solicitor from +Bath, and that made me feel more at home, knowing and loving Bath as I +did. It did not matter that in trying for some mutual acquaintance +there we failed; our good-will was everything; and the solicitor was +intelligent and agreeable. The other gentleman, tall, dark, of urbane +stateliness, was something more, in the touch of Oriental suavity +which, more than his nose, betrayed him; and it appeared, in delightful +suggestion of the old-time commercial intimacy of the Dutch and English +coasts, that he was from Holland, and next morning at breakfast he +developed a large valise, which I now think held samples. If he was a +Dutch Jew, he was probably a Spanish Jew by descent, and what will the +difficult reader have more, in the materials for his romance? Did we +gather about the grate after we had done dinner, and each tell the +story of his life, or at least the most remarkable thing that had ever +happened to him? + +[Illustration: THE "STUMP" OF ST. BOTOLPH'S CHURCH AGAINST THE SKY] + +I cannot say, but I remember that my friend and I, in my instant hunger +for Boston, which was greater than my hunger for dinner, set forth while +the meal was preparing, and visited the Church of St. Botolph. To reach +it we had to pass through the greater length of the market-place, one +of the most picturesque in England, and the worthy ancestress of +Faneuil Hall and Quincy market-places, which are the most picturesque in +America. At one side of its triangle is the birthplace and dwelling +of Jean Ingelow, and at the point nearest the church is the statue of +Herbert Ingram, the less famous but more locally recognized Bostonian, +who founded the _Illustrated London News_ with the money he made by the +invention and sale of Old Parr's Pills. He was thrice sent to Parliament +from his native town, and he related it to America, after two centuries, +by drowning in Lake Michigan. "R. N.," the otherwise anonymous author of +a very intelligent and agreeable _Handbook of Boston_, relates that in +his first canvass for Parliament Ingram was opposed by a gentleman who, +when he asked the voices of the voters, after the old English fashion, +was told by four of them in succession that they were promised "to their +cousin Ingram," and who thereupon declared that if he had known Ingram +"was cousin to the whole town" he would, never have stood against him. +Like the Bostonians of Massachusetts, the Bostonians of Lincolnshire +were in fact closely knit together by ties of kinship, owing, "R. N." +believes, to the isolation of Boston before the draining of its fens, +and not to their conviction that there were no outsiders worthy to mate +with them. + + +II + +The house where the martyrologist John Fox first saw the light was +replaced long ago by a famous old inn, pulled down in its turn; but the +many and many Americans who visit Boston may still visit the house where +Jean Ingelow was born. Whether they may see more than the outside of it +I do not know from experiment or even inquiry. "R. N." will say nothing +of her but that she was born, and that her father was a banker; perhaps +he thinks that she has spoken sufficiently for herself. + +[Illustration: THE WORTHY ANCESTRESS OF FANEUIL HALL AND QUINCY +MARKET-PLACES] + +The air of the market-place, as we crossed to the church, was of a +pleasant bleakness, and the Witham was coldly washing under the wall +which keeps St. Botolph from it. In the dimness we could have only a +conjecture of the church's outward beauty, and of the grandeur of the +tower climbing into the evening, where it has hailed so many myriads +of moving ships, and beckoned them to safety. But within, where it was +already night, the church was cheerfully luminous with Welsbach lights, +which showed it all wreathed and garlanded for a harvest festival, +began the day before, and to be concluded now with some fit religious +observance. The blossoms and leaves were a little wilted and withered, +but the fruits and vegetables were there in sturdy endurance, and +together they swathed the pulpit from which John Cotton used to preach, +and all but hid its structure from view, like flowers of rhetoric +softening some hard doctrine. + +Apparently, however, Cotton's doctrine was not anywise too hard, or +even hard enough, for such "a factious people, who were imbued with the +Puritan spirit," as he found in Boston, when he was first elected vicar +of St. Botolph's; and it was not till Archbishop Laud's ecclesiastical +tyrannies began that he came to see "the Sin of Conformity" and to +preach resistance. His conflict with the authorities went so far that +exile to another Boston in another hemisphere became his only hope. +Or, as Lord Dorset intimated, "if he had been guilty of drunkenness, +uncleanness, or any lesser fault, he could have obtained his pardon, +but as he was guilty of Puritanism, and Non-conformity, the crime was +non-pardonable; and therefore he advised him to flee for his safety." + +The Cotton Chapel, so called, was restored mainly with moneys received +from Cotton's posterity, lineal or lateral, in his city of refuge +overseas, and "the corbels that support the timbered ceiling are carved +with the arms of certain of the early colonists of New England." Edward +Everett, one of Cotton's descendants, wrote the dedicatory inscription +in Latin, which "R. N." has Englished in verse, and I am the more +scrupulous to quote it, because, as I must own with my usual reluctant +honesty, I quite missed seeing the Cotton Chapel. + + That here John Cotton's memory may survive + Where for so long he labored when alive, + In James' reign and Charles', ere it ceased-- + A grave, skilled, learned, earnest parish-priest; + Till from the strife that tossed the Church of God + He in a new world sought a new abode, + To a new England, a new Boston came, + (That took, to honor him, that reverend name) + Fed the first flock of Christ that gathered there-- + Till death deprived it of its shepherd's care-- + There well resolved all doubts of mind perplext, + Whether with cares of this world or the next; + Two centuries five lustra from the year + That saw the exile leave his labors here, + His family, his townsmen, with delight-- + (Whom to the task their English kin invite)-- + To the fair fane he served so well of yore, + His name, in two worlds honored, thus restore, + This chapel renovate, this tablet place, + In this, the year of man's recovered Grace, + 1855. + + +III + +I missed most of the other memorable things in the church that night, +but I saw fleetingly some of the beautiful tombs for which it is famous; +the effigies of the dead lay in their niches, quietly, as if already +tucked away for the night, in the secular sleep of the dust beneath. The +tombs were more famous than they, and more beautiful, if the faces of +some were true likenesses, but after so many centuries one ought not to +require even women to be pretty. + +[Illustration: THE RIVER AT EVENING] + +We had not begun to have enough of Boston yet, and after dinner we went +a long walk up the Witham, away from the parapet before the church, +under which its deep tides are always washing to and fro. In the +dimness, after we had got a little to the outskirts of the town, there +seemed shipyards along the river's course, but at one place there was +a large building brilliantly lighted, which from certain effects at the +windows we decided to be a printing-office on the scale of those in and +near our own Boston. What was our shame and grief the next morning +to find it was a cigar factory, and to learn that cigar and cigarette +making was almost the chief industry of the mother Boston. There are +really two large tobacco factories there running overtime, and always +advertising for more women and girls to do their work; and in our +Boston, not so long ago, smoking in the street was forbidden! Such are +the ironies of life. + +What the shipyards had turned into by daylight, I do not now remember. +The Witham had turned into a long, deep gash, cut down into the clay +twenty feet from the level of the flood tides. We crossed on a penny +ferry which the current pushed over in the manner of the earliest +ferries, near the tobacco factory, and came back into the heart of the +town through streets of low stone houses, with few buildings of note to +dignify their course. Small craft lay along the steep muddy shores, and +at one place a little excursion steamer was waiting for the tide to +come in and float it for the fulfilment of its promise of sailing at ten +o'clock. We idly longed to make its voyage with it, and if the chance +were offering now, I certainly should not forego it as I did then. But +when you are in a foreign place, no matter how much you have travelled +and how well you know that it will not offer soon again, you reject the +most smiling chance because you think you can take it any time. + +The morning was soft and warm, with a sun shining amiably on the rather +commonplace old town. I had risen betimes that I might go and get +a Spanish melon for my breakfast, but at eight o'clock I found the +fruiterer's locked and barred against me. I lingered and hungered for +the melons which I saw in his window, and then I tried other fruiterers, +but none of them was stirring yet. I reflected how different it would +have been in our own Boston; and if it had not been for the market +people coming into the square and beginning to dress their stalls with +vegetables, and fish, and native fruits, such as hard pears and knotty +apples, I do not know how ill I might have come away thinking of that +idle mother Boston. In other squares there were cattle for sale later, +and fish, but I cannot in even my present leniency claim that the +markets were open at the hour which the genteeler commerce of the place +found so indiscreet. They were irregular spaces of a form in keeping +with the general shambling and shapeless character of the town, which, +once for all, I must own was not an impressive place. + +The best thing in it, and the thing you are always coming back to, +is the beautiful church, to which we paid a second visit early in the +forenoon. We found it where we left it the night before, lifting its +tower from the brink of the Witham, and looking far out over the flat +land to a sea no flatter. The land seems indeed, like so much English +coast, merely the sea come ashore, and turned into fens for the greater +convenience of the fishermen, whom, with the deeper sea sailors, we +saw about the town, lounging through the crooked streets, and hanging +bare-armed upon the parapets of the bridges. Now we found the church +had about its foot a population of Bostonians for whom, under their flat +gravestones, it had been chiming the quarters from its mellow-throated +bells, while the Bostonians on our side had been hustling for liberty, +and money, and culture, and all the good things of this world, and +getting them in a measure that would astonish their namesakes. Within +the church we saw again the beautiful tombs of the night before, and +others like them, and again we saw the pulpit of John Cotton, which we +could make out a little better than at first, because its garlands were +a little more withered and shrunken away. But better than either we +realized the perfection of the church interior as a whole, so ample, so +simple, such a comfortable and just sufficient eyeful. + + +IV + +From other interests in St. Botolph's you somehow keep always, or +finally, coming to the Stump, as the tower is called somewhat in the +humor of our Boston. It is not so fair within as without; that could +not be in the nature of things; and yet the interior of the tower has a +claim upon the spectator's wonder, if not his admiration, which, so far +as I know, the interior of no other tower has. It is all treated as a +loftier room of the church, and its ceiling, a hundred and fifty feet +from the ground, is elaborately and allegorically groined. The work was +done when the whole church was restored about half a century ago, and +has not the claim of medieval whim upon the fancy. Not so much pleasure +as he might wish mingles with the marvel of the beholder, who carries a +crick in the neck away from the sight, and yet once, but not more, in a +way, it is worth while to have had the sight. Certainly this treatment +of the tower is unique; there is nothing to compare with it in Boston, +Massachusetts, and cannot be even when the interior of the Old South is +groined. + +When we came out of the church, we found the weather amusing itself +as usual in England, raining with wind, then blowing without rain, and +presently, but by no means decisively, sunning without either wind or +rain. The conditions were favorable to a further exploration of the +town, which seemed to have a passion for old cannon, and for sticking +them about in all sorts of odd nooks and corners. We found one smaller +piece over a gateway, which we were forbidden by a sign-board to enter +on pain of prosecution for trespassing. There was nothing else to +prevent our entering, and we went in, to find ourselves in an alley with +nothing but a Gypsy van in it. Nothing but a Gypsy van! As if that were +not the potentiality of all manner of wild romance! Whether the alley +belonged to Gypsies, or the Gypsies had trespassed by leaving their van +in it, I shall now probably never know, but I commend the inquiry to any +reader of mine whom these pages shall inspire to repeat our pilgrimage. + +[Illustration: LIFTING ITS TOWER FROM THE BRINK OF THE WITHAM] + +There was no great token of genteel life in Boston, so far as we saw it, +but perhaps we did not look in the right places. There were good shops, +but not fine or large ones, and I am able to report of the intellectual +status that there are three weekly newspapers, but no dailies, which +could not be the case in any American town of fourteen thousand people. +Concerning society, I can only say that in our wanderings we came at one +point on a vast, high-walled, iron-gated garden, which looked as if it +might have society beyond it, but not being positively forbidden we did +not penetrate it. We did indeed visit the ancient grammar-school, one +of those foundations which in England were meant originally for the poor +deserving of scholarship, but which have nearly all lapsed to the more +deserving rich, careful of the contamination of the lower classes. +Being out of term the school was closed to its pupils, but we found +a contractor there removing the old stoves and putting in a system of +hot-water heating, which he said was better fitted to resist the cold +of the Boston winters. He was not a very conversable man, but so much we +screwed out of him, with the added fact that the tuition of that school +was no longer free. It came to some five guineas a year, no great sum, +but perhaps sufficient to keep the school, with the other influences, +select enough for the patronage to which it had fallen. It was a +pleasant place, with a playground before it, which in the course of +generations there must have been a good deal of schoolboy fun got out +of. + + +V + +There remained for us now only the Guildhall to visit, and we had left +that to the last because it was the thing that had mostly brought us +to Boston. It was the scene of the trial and imprisonment of those poor +people of the region roundabout who were trying to escape from their +"dread lord," James the First, and were arrested for this crime, and +brought to answer for it before the magistrates of the town. Their dread +lord had then lately met some ministers of their faith at Hampton Court, +and there browbeaten, if not beaten, them in argument, so that he was in +no humor to let, these people, who afterward became the Pilgrim Fathers, +get away to Holland, where there was no dread lord, or at least none of +King James' thinking. + +But no words can be so good to tell of all this as the words of Governor +Bradford in his _Historie of Plymouth Plantation_, where he says that +"ther was a large companie of them purposed to get passage at Boston in +Lincolnshire, and for that end had hired a shipe wholy to them selves, & +made agreement with the maister to be ready at a certaine day, and take +them and their goods in, at a conveniente place, wher they accordingly +would all attende in readiness. So after long waiting, & large expences, +though he kepte not day with them, yet he came at length & tooke them +in, in the night. But when he had them & their goods abord, he betrayed +them, haveing before hand complotted with the serchers & other officers +so to doe; who tooke them, and put them into open boats, & ther rifled +and ransaked them, searching them to their shirts for money, yea even +the women furder then became modestie; and then caried them back into +the towne, & made them a spectakle & wonder to the multitude, which +came flocking on all sides to behould them. Being thus first, by the +catchpoule officer, rifled, & stripte of their money, books, and much +other goods, they were presented to the magistrates, and messengers +sente to informe the lords of the Counsell of them; and so they were +comited to ward. Indeed the magistrats used them courteously, and shewed +them what favour they could; but could not deliver them till order +came from the Counsell-table. But the issue was that after a months +imprisonmente, the greatest parte were dismiste, & sent to the places +from whence they came; but 7. of the principall were still kept in +prison, and bound over to the Assises." + +My excellent "R. N." of the _Handbook of Boston_ is anxious to have his +reader, as I in turn am anxious to have mine, distinguish between these +future Pilgrim Fathers and the gentlemen and scholars who later founded +Boston in Massachusetts Bay, and called its name after that of the town +they had dwelt in or often visited before they left the handsome keeping +of the gentler life of Lincolnshire. Such were Richard Bellingham, +Edmund Quincy, Thomas Leverett, John Cotton, Samuel Whiting, and +others, known to our colonial and national history. Not even Bradford +or Brewster, afterward dignified figures in Plymouth colony, were of the +humble band, men, women, and children, that the officers of Boston took +from their vessel. "Pathetic but splendid figures," my brave "R. N." +calls them, and he tells how, after a month's jail, they were "sent home +broken men, to endure the scoffs of their neighbors and the rigors of +ecclesiastical discipline." + + +VI + +The dungeons which remain to witness of their hardships in Boston are of +thick-walled, iron-grated stone, and the captives were fed on bread +and water within smell of the roasting and broiling of the Guildhall +kitchens immediately beside them. I will not conjecture with "R. N." +that they were put there "by a refinement of cruelty," so that they +might suffer the more in that vicinage. "The magistrates" who had "used +them courteously and shewed them what favour they could," would not have +willed that; but perhaps "the Counsell-table" did; and it was certainly +a hardship that the dungeons and the kitchens were so close together, as +any man may see at this day. Neither the dungeons nor the kitchens are +any longer used; the spits and grates are rusted where the fires blazed, +and the cells where the Pilgrims suffered are now full of large earthen +jars. For no other or better reason, the large open spaces of the +basement outside of them were scattered about with agricultural +implements, ploughs, harrows, and the like. It was the belief of my +companion, founded on I know not what fact, that the hall in which the +Pilgrims were tried was a large upper chamber which we found occupied by +a boys' school. The door stood partly ajar, and we could see the master +within walking up and down before some twenty boys, as if waiting for +one of them to answer some question he had put them. Perhaps it was a +question of local history, for none of them seemed able to answer it; +presently when a boy came out on some errand, and we stopped him, and +asked him where it was the Pilgrims had been tried, he did not know, +and apparently he had never heard of the Pilgrims. He was a very +nice-looking boy, and otherwise not unintelligent; certainly he was +well-mannered, as nice-looking English boys are apt to be with their +elders; perhaps he had heard too much of the Pilgrims, and had purposely +forgotten them. This might very well have happened in a place like +Boston where such hordes of Americans are coming every year, and asking +so many hard questions concerning an incident of local history not +wholly creditable to the place. He could justly have said that the same +or worse might have happened to the Pilgrims anywhere else in England, +under the dread lord there then was, and in fact something of the same +hardship did befall them afterward at the place a little northeast of +Boston, which we were now to visit for their piteous sake. + +"The nexte spring after," as Bradford continues the narrative of their +sorrows, "ther was another attempte made by some of these & others, to +get over at an other place. And so it fell out, that they light of a +Dutchman at Hull, having a ship of his owne belonging to Zealand; they +made agreements with him, and acquainted him with their condition, +hoping to find more faithfullnes in him, then in the former of their +owne nation. He bad them not fear, for he would doe well enough. He +was by appointment to take them in betweene Grimsbe & Hull, where was +a large comone a good way distante from any towne. Now against the +prefixed time, the women & children, with the goods, were sent to the +place in a small barke, which they had hired for that end; and the men +were to meete them by land. But it so fell out, that they were ther a +day before the shipe came, and the sea being rough, and the women very +sicke, prevailed with the seamen to put into a creeke hardby, wher they +lay on ground at lowwater. The nexte morning the shipe came, but they +were fast, & could not stir till about noone. In the mean time, the +shipe maister, perceiveing how the matter was, sente his boate to be +getting the men abord whom he saw ready, walking aboute the shore. But +after the first boat full was gott abord, & she was ready to goe for +more, the Mr. espied a greate company, both horse & foote, with bills, +& gunes, & other weapons; for the countrie was raised to take them. The +Dutchman seeing this swore his countries oath, 'sacremente,' and having +the wind faire, waiged his Ancor, hoysed sayles, & away. But the poore +men which were gott abord, were in great distress for their wives and +children, which they saw thus to be taken, and were left destitute of +their helps; and them selves also, not having a cloath to shifte them +with, more then they had on their baks, & some scarce a peney aboute +them, all they had being abord the barke. It drew tears from their +eyes, and any thing they had they would have given to have been a shore +againe; but all in vaine, ther was no remedy, they must thus sadly part. +The rest of the men there were in greatest danger, made shift to escape +away before the troope could surprise them: those only staying that best +might, to be assistante unto the women. But pitifull it was to see the +heavie case of these poore women in this distress: what weeping & crying +on every side, some for their husbands, that were carried away in the +ship as is before related; others not knowing what should become of +them, & their little ones; others again melted in teares, seeing their +poore little ones hanging aboute them, crying for feare, and quaking +with could. Being thus aprehanded, they hurried from one place to +another, and from one justice to another, till in the ende they knew not +what to doe with them; for to imprison so many women & innocent children +for no other cause (many of them) but that they must goo with their +husbands, seemed to be unreasonable and all would crie out of them; +and to send them home againe was as difficult, for they aleged, as the +trueth was, they had no homes to goe to, for they had either sould, or +otherwise disposed of their houses & livings. To be shorte, after they +had been thus turmoyled a good while, and conveyed from one constable to +another, they were glad to be ridd of them in the end upon any termes: +for all were wearied & tired with them. Though in the mean time they +(poore soules) indured miserie enough; and thus in the end necessitie +forste a way for them." + + +VII + +If there is any more touching incident in the history of man's +inhumanity to man, I do not know it, or cannot now recall it; and it was +to visit the scene of it near "Grimsbe," or Great Grimsby, as it is now +called, that we set out, after viewing their prison in Boston, over wide +plains, with flights of windmills alighted on them everywhere. Here and +there one seemed to have had its wings clipped, and we were told by a +brighter young fellow than we often had for a travelling companion +that this was because steam had been put into it as a motive power more +constant than wind, even on that wind-swept coast. There seems to have +been nothing else, so far as my note-book witnesses, to take up our +thoughts in the short run to Great Grimsby, and for all I know now I +may have drowsed by many chicken-yards marking the birthplace of our +discoverers and founders. We got to Great Grimsby in time for a very +lamentable lunch in a hostelry near the station, kept, I think, for such +"poore people" as the Pilgrims were, with stomachs not easily turned by +smeary marble table-tops with a smeary maid having to take their orders, +and her ineffective napkin in her hand. The honesty as well as the +poverty of the place was attested, when, returning to recover a +forgotten umbrella, we were met at the door by this good girl, who had +left her bar to fetch it in anticipation of all question. + +At Great Grimsby, it seemed, there was no vehicle but a very exceptional +kind of cab,--looking like a herdic turned wrongside fore, and unable +to orient itself aright,--available for the long drive to that "large +comone a good way distante from any towne," which we were to make, if +we wished to visit the scene of the Pilgrims' sufferings in their second +attempt to escape from their dread lord. In this strange equipage, +therefore, we set out, and nine long miles we drove through a country +which seemed to rise with increasing surprise at us and our turnout on +each inquiry we made for the way from chance passers. Just beyond the +suburbs of the town we entered the region of a vast, evil smell which +we verified as that of the decaying fish spread upon the fields, for +a fertilizer after they had missed their market in that great fishing +centre. Otherwise the landscape was much the ordinary English landscape +of the flatter parts, but wilder and rougher than in the south or west, +and constantly growing more so as we drove on and on. Our cabman kept +a good courage, as long as the highway showed signs of much travel, +but when it began to falter away into a country road, he must have +lost faith in our sanity, though he kept an effect of the conventional +respect for his nominal betters which English cabmen never part with +except in a dispute about fares and distances. We stayed him as well +as we could with some grapes and pears, which we found we did not +want after our lunch, and which we handed him up through his little +trap-door, but a plaintive quaver grew into his voice, and he let his +horse lag in the misgiving which it probably shared with him. Nothing +of signal interest occurred in our progress except at one point, near +a Methodist chapel, where we caught sight of a gayly painted blue van, +lettered over with many texts and mottoes, which my friend explained +as one of the vans intinerantly used by extreme Protestants of the Anne +Askew persuasion to prevent the spread of Romanism in England. + +The signs of travel had not only ceased, but a little in front of us the +way was barred by a gate, and beyond this gate there was nothing but a +sort of savage pasture, with many red and brown cattle in it, gathered +questioningly about the barrier, or lifting their heads indifferently +from the grass. Just before we reached the gate we passed a peasant's +cottage, where he was sociably getting in his winter's coal, and he and +his wife and children, and the carter, all leaned upon whatever supports +they found next them, and stared at the extraordinary apparition of two, +I hope, personable strangers driving in a hansom of extreme type into a +cow pasture. But we were not going to give ourselves away to their too +probable ignorance by asking if that were the place where the Pilgrims +who founded New England were first stopped from going to Holland. + +My friend dismounted, and opened the gate, and we drove in among the +cattle, and after they had satisfied a peaceful curiosity concerning us, +they went about their business of eating grass, and we strayed over "the +large comone," and tried to imagine its looks nearly three hundred years +before. They could not have been very different; the place could hardly +have been much wilder, and there was the "creeke hardby wher they lay," +the hapless women and children, in their boat "at lowwater," while the +evening came on, no doubt, just as it was doing with us, the weather +clearing, and the sunset glassy and cold. Off yonder, away across the +solitary moor, was the course of the Humber, marked for us by the trail +of a steamer's smoke through the fringes of trees, and for them by the +sail of the Dutchman, who, when he saw next day that "great company, +both horse and foote, with bills and gunes, and other weapons," coming +to harry those poor people, "swore his countries oath, 'sacremente,' +and having the wind faire, waiged his ancor, hoysed sails, and away," +leaving those desolate women and their little ones lamenting. + + +VIII + +On our way back we stopped at a little country church, so peaceful, so +very peaceful, in the evening light, where it stood, withdrawn from the +highway, Norman and Gothic without, and within all so sweet and bare +and clean, that we could not believe in the old ecclesiasticism +which persecuted the Puritans into the exile whither they carried the +persecuting spirit with them. A pretty child, a little girl, opened the +churchyard gate and held it for us to pass, and her gentleness made me +the more question the history of those dreadful days in the past. When I +saw a young lady, in the modern dress which I had so often lost my heart +to at the Church Parade in Hyde Park, going up a leafy lane, toward the +vicarage, from having been for tennis and afternoon tea at some pleasant +home in the neighborhood, I denied the atrocious facts altogether. She +had such a very charming hat on. + +The suburbs of Great Grimsby, after you reach them through that zone of +bad smell, are rather attractive, and you get into long clean streets of +small stone houses, like those of Plymouth or Southampton, and presently +you reach the Humber, which is full of the steamers and sail, both +fishing and deep sea, of the prosperous port, with great booms of +sawlogs from Norway, half filling the channel, and with a fringe of tall +chimneys from the sawmills along the shores. Great Grimsby is not only +the centre of a vast distributing trade in coal and lumber, but of a +still vaster trade in fish. It cuts one's pride, if one has believed +that Gloucester, Massachusetts, is the greatest fishing port in the +world, to learn that Grimsby, with a hundred more fishing sail, is only +"_one_ of the principal fishing ports" of the United Kingdom. What can +one do against those brutal British statistics? We think our towns grow +like weeds, but London seems to grow half such a weed as Chicago in a +single night. + +[Illustration: FISHING-SHIPS AT GREAT GRIMSBY] + +After we were got well into the town, we found ourselves part of an +immense bicycle parade, with bicyclers of both sexes on their wheels, in +masks and costumes, Pierrots, and Clowns, and Harlequins and Columbines, +in a competition for the prettiest and fanciest dress. + +When we came to start from the station on our run to London, we +reflected that there were a great many of these bicyclers, and that they +would probably crowd us in our third-class compartment. So, as we had +bought an excellent supper in baskets, such as they send you on the +trains everywhere in England, and wished to eat it in quiet, we sought +out the guard who was lurking near for the purpose, and bribed him to +shut us into that compartment, and not let any one else in. There +we remained in darkness, with our curtains drawn, and when, near +train-time, the bicyclers began to swarm about the carriages, we heard +them demanding admittance to our compartment from our faithful guard, +if that is the right way to call him. He turned them away with soft +answers, answers so very soft that we could not make out what he said, +but he seemed to be inviting them into other compartments, which he +doubtless pretended were better. The murmurs would die away, and then +rise again, and from time to time we knew that a baffled bicycler was +pulling at our door, or vainly bumping against it. We listened with our +hearts in our mouths; but no one got in, and the train started, and we +opened our baskets and began to eat and to drink, like two aristocrats +or plutocrats. What made our inhuman behavior worse was that we were +really nothing of the kind, but both professed friends of the common +people. The story might show that when it comes to a question of +selfishness men are all alike ready to profit by the unjust conditions. +However, it must be remembered that those people were only bicyclers. If +we could have conceived of them as masses we should have known them for +brothers, and let them in, probably. + + + * * * * * + + + + +ABERYSTWYTH, A WELSH WATERING-PLACE + + +It is only some six or seven hours by train from London to Aberystwyth, +but if you will look at the names on a map of the Cambrian railways, +when you begin the Welsh part of your journey, you will seem to be in a +stranger and farther country than that of Prester John. Pwllheli, Cerrig +y Drudion, Gwerful Goch, Festiniog, Bryn Eglwys, Llanidloes, Maertwro, +Carnedd Fibast, Clynog Fwr, Llan-y-Mawddwy Machynlleth, Duffws, are a +few out of the hundred names in the hills or along the valleys, giving +the near neighborhood of England an effect of more than mid-Asian +remoteness. The eye starts at their look; but if the jaw aches at the +thought of pronouncing them, it is our own wilful orthographical usage +that is at fault; the words, whose sound the letters faithfully render, +are music, and they largely record a Christian civilization which was +centuries old when the Saxons came to drive the Britons into the western +mountains and to call them strangers in the immemorial home of their +race. The Britons of the Roman conquest, who became the Welsh of the +baffled Saxon invaders, and are the Cymry of their own history and +poetry, still stand five feet four in their stockings, where they have +stood from the dawn of time, an inexpugnable host of dark little men, +defying the Saeseneg in their unintelligible, imperishable speech. + + +I + +Of course, except in the loneliest and farthest places, they speak +English as well as Welsh; and they misplace their aspirates, which they +lost under the Normans as the Saxons did. But this did not happen to +them by conquest as it did to the Saxons; they were beguiled of their +h's when they were cheated with a Welsh-born prince instead of the Welsh +prince they were promised in the succession of their ancient lines. +They had been devout Christians, after their manner, in the earliest +centuries; as the prefix Llan, or Saint, everywhere testifies, the +country abounded in saints, whose sons inherited their saintship; and +at the Reformation they became Calvinists as unqualifiedly as their +kindred, the Bretons, remained Catholics. They have characterized the +English and Americans with their strong traits in a measure which can +be dimly traced in the spread of their ten or twenty national names, and +they have kept even with the most modern ideals quite to the verge of +co-education in their colleges. It is a fact which no Welshman will +deny that Cromwell was of Welsh blood. Shakespeare was unquestionably of +Welsh origin. Henry VII. was that Welsh Twdwr (or Tudor, as the Saeseneg +misspell it), who set aside the Plantagenet succession, and was the +grandsire of "the great Elizabeth," not to boast of Bloody Mary or Henry +VIII. But if these are not enough, there is the present Chancellor of +the Exchequer, Mr. Lloyd-George, who is now the chief figure of the +English cabinet. + +The bad name which their own half-countryman, Giraldus Cambrensis, gave +the Welsh in the twelfth century, clings to them yet in the superstition +of all Norman-minded and Saxon-minded men, so that the Englishman I met +on the way from Edinburgh was doubtless speaking racially rather than +personally when he said that the Welsh were the prize liars of the +universe. I for my part heard no lies in Wales except those I told +myself; but as I am of Welsh stock, perhaps my experience is not wholly +refutive of that Englishman's position. I can only urge further the +noted philological fact that the Welsh language is so full of imagery +that it is almost impossible to express in it the brute veracities in +which the English speech is so apt. Otherwise I should say that nowhere +have I been used with a more immediate and constant sincerity than in +Wales. The people were polite and they were almost always amiable, but +in English, at least, they did not say the thing that was not; and their +politeness was without the servile forms from lower to higher which +rather weary one in England. They said "Yes," and "No," but as gently as +if they had always added "Sir." If I have it on my conscience to except +from my sweeping praise of sincerity the expressman at Aberystwyth who +promised that our baggage should be at our lodgings in an hour, and did +not bring it in five, I must add that we arrived on the last day of a +great agricultural fair, when even the New York Transfer Company might +have given a promise of more than wonted elasticity. + + +II + +In the station of Aberystwyth there were about three or four thousand +Welshmen of the national height, volubly waiting for the trains to bear +them away to their farms and villages; but they made way most amiably +for the dismounting travellers, who in our case were led through them by +the most energetic porter I ever knew. They did not stare down upon us +from the unseemly altitude of other national statures, and often during +our stay I saw like crowds of civil men in the street markets who were +no taller, and sometimes there were women who had not scaled the heights +reached by our American girls. They would probably have competed fairly +well with these in the courses of the colleges to which the Welsh send +their daughters as well as their sons; but I will not pretend that the +good looks of either the men or women was of the American average. +I cannot even say that these contemporary ancient Britons had the +advantage of the toothless English peasantry in the prompt dentistry +which is our peculiar blessing. In Great Britain, though I must not say +Ireland, for I have never been there, a few staggering incisors seem +a formidable equipment of the jaw in lower-class middle life and even +tender youth. The difference is a tremendous advantage which, if it does +not make for the highest character in us, will doubtless stand us in +good stead in any close with the well-toothed Japanese, and when we are +beaten, our gold-fillings will go far to pay our indemnity. + +After all those thousands at the station had departed, there were still +visitors enough left in Aberystwyth to distend the hotels uncomfortably; +and the next morning we set out in the pursuit, always interesting and +alluring, of lodgings. The town seemed to be pretty full of lodgings, +but as it was the middle of August, and the very height of the season, +they were full-up in dismaying measure. We found the only one not kept +by a Welsh woman in the ostensible keeping of an Englishwoman, a veteran +cockney landlady, but behind her tottering throne reigned a Welsh +girl, under whose iron rule we fell as if we had been unworthy Saeseneg +instead of Cymric-fetched Americans. We had rejected other lodgings +because, though their keepers had promised to provision us, it always +appeared that we must go out and do the marketing ourselves. I shall +lastingly regret that we did not submit to this condition, for it would +have been one of the best means of studying the local life. But we held +out for the London custom, and before the Welsh Power, which has +so often made itself felt behind English thrones, could intervene, +compliance was promised. After that it remained for the Welsh Power to +make our stay difficult, and our going easy. + +[Illustration: THE BEACH, ABERYSTWYTH] + +Otherwise the place was delightful; it was in almost the centre of the +long curve of the Victoria Terrace, with windows that looked down upon +the pebbly beach, and over the blue sea to the bluer stretch of the +Pembrokeshire hills on the south, and the Carnarvonshire hills on the +north, holding the lovely waters in their shadowy embrace. There was +not much shipping, and what there was seemed of the pleasure sort that +parties go down to the sea to be sick in. The long parade was filled +at most hours with the English who make the place their resort; whose +bathing began early in the morning and whose flirting continued far +into the night, with forenoon and afternoon dawdling and dozing on the +pebbles. At one end of the Terrace rose a prodigious headland, whose +slope was scaled over with broken slate, like some mammoth heaving from +the deep and showing an elephantine hide of bluish gray. At the other +end was the Amusement Pier, with the co-educational college, which is +part of the University of Wales, and with divers hotels. Somewhat behind +and beyond were the ruins of one of those castles which the Normans +planted with a mailed fist at every vantage in Wales, as their sole +means of holding down the swarming, squirming, fighting little dark +people of the country. Even then they could not do it, for the Welsh, +often overrun, were never conquered, as they will tell you themselves if +you ask them. But Wales is now perhaps the most peaceful country in the +world. Its prisons for the most part stand empty (it is said), and the +people, once so turbulent, are as little given to violence as to vice. +In fact, I once heard a great Welsh scholar declare that in the old +times it was not the true Welsh who kept up the fighting, either on the +public or the private scale, but the Scotch and Irish who had found +a home among them. In any case, it is true that after the Normans had +planted their castles in Wales to hold the country, it was all they +could do to hold the castles, and not till their enemies had imagined +having the English King's son born in one of them did they bring the +Welsh under the English crown at last. Even then that uncertain people +broke from their allegiance now and again; or the Scotch and Irish among +them did. + + +III + +All sorts of sights and sounds might be expected on our Terrace, but +that which especially warmed the heart of exile in us, and pleased the +fancy of other sojourners was the appearance, one evening, of a stately +band of tall men in evening dress and top-hats, with musical instruments +in their grasp, and heads lifted high above their Welsh following. We +called the Power behind the Throne to the window in our question and she +gave a glad cry: "Oh, they're the Neegurs! They're the white Neegurs!" +and at sight of our compatriotic faces at the pane, these beautiful +giants took their stand before our house, and burst into the familiar +music of the log-cabin, the stern-wheel steamboat, and the cornfield, as +well as the ragtime melodies of later days. It was a rich moment, and +I know not which joyed in it more, the Welsh Power or the American +Sufferance. + +But here, before I go farther afield, I must note a main difference +between the Welsh Power and the English slavey to whom she corresponded +in calling and condition. She was so far educated as to know the +pseudonym of the friend who came to see us, and to have read his +writings in the _Welsh Gazette_, treating our proposed triumph in his +distinction with the fine scorn she used for all our airs. If she had +been an old-fashioned Yankee Help she could not have been more snubbing; +but when we had been taught to know our place she was more tolerant, and +finally took leave of us without rancor. + +The notion of the general Welsh education which her intelligence gave us +was carried indefinitely farther by the grocer's boy to whom our friend +presented me one evening, after he had been struggling to make me +understand what an _englyn_ was. I am able now to explain that it is a +polite stanza which the Welsh send with a present of fruit or flowers, +or for a greeting upon any worthy occasion. It is rhymed, sometimes +at both ends of the lines, and sometimes in the middle of them, and it +presents all the difficulties of euphony which the indomitable Welsh +glory in overcoming. But when my friend took me in hand, my ignorance +was of so dense a surface that he could make no impression on it, and he +said at last, "Let us go into this grocery. There's a boy here who will +_show_ you what an englyn is," and after I was introduced the kind youth +did so with pleasure, while he sold candles to one customer, soap to +another, cheese to another, and herring to another. He first wrote the +englyn in Welsh, and when I had sufficiently admired it in that tongue +(for which no atavistic knowledge really served me), he said he would +put it into English, and he did so. It was then not rhymed at both ends +or in the middle, but it was rhymed quite enough, and if it had not the +harp-like sweetness of the original, it was still such a musical stanza +that I shall always be sorry to have lost it. What I can never lose +the impression of is the wide-spread literary lore of the common Welsh +people which the incident suggested. I could not fancy even a Boston +grocer's boy doing the like; and perhaps this was an uncommon boy in +Wales itself. He told me a good deal, which I have mainly forgotten, +about the state of polite learning in his country and in what honor the +living bards were held. It seems that in that rhyming and singing little +land, the poets are still known as of old by their bardic names. As +Jones, or Evans, or Edwards they have no fame beyond other men, but up +and down all Wales they are celebrated as this bard or that, and are +honored according to their poetic worth. + + +IV + +After the appearance of the White Neegurs on the Terrace, I could hardly +have expected any livelier appeal to my American pride, and yet it came, +one day, when I learned that the line of carriages which I saw passing +our windows were the vehicles bearing to some public function the +members of the British Chautauqua. How far the name and idea of +Chautauqua have since spread there is no saying, but it was the last +of our national inventions which I should have expected to find in +Aberystwyth, though Welsh culture was reasonably in its line, and the +Eisteddfod was not out of keeping with the summer conferences held +beside our lovely up-State lake. The British Chautauqua, as I saw it, +was a group of people from all parts of the United Kingdom joined in the +pursuit of improvement and enjoyment, and they were now here on one of +their summer outings. They had been invited to a gentleman's place not +far from Aberystwyth to view as indubitable a remnant of the Holy Grail +as now exists, and it was my very good fortune through the kind offices +of that friend of ours to be invited with them. + +It was a blamelessly rainless afternoon, of a sort commoner on the +western Welsh coast than on other shores of the "rainy isles," but +not too common even there; and we drove out of the town through the +prettiest country of hillside fields and valleys opening to the sea, +on a road that was fairly dusty in the hot sun. There were cottages, +grouped and detached, all the way, with gray stone walls and blue slate +roofs, and in places the children ran out from them with mercenary +offerings of flowers and song, or with frank pleas for charity direct. I +yielded with reluctance to the instruction of a Manchester economist in +my carriage, and denied them, when I would so much rather have abetted +them in their wicked attempts on our pockets. I remember ruefully still +that they had voices as sweet and eyes as dark as the children who used +to chase our wheels in Italy, and I have no doubt they deserved quite as +well of us as those did. + +I got back my spirits when we left our carriages, and I found myself +walking up a pleasant avenue of wilding trees, with a young Chautauquan +from Australia who looked as if he might be a young Chautauquan from +Alabama, tall, and lean, and brown. We fell into talk about the trees, +and he said how they differed in their green from the sombre gray of his +native forests; and then he, from that vast far continent of his, spoke +of the little island where we were, as Home. That has always a strange +effect for us self-outcasts from the great British roof, and whether it +makes us smile, or makes us sigh, it never fails to startle us when we +hear it from colonial lips. The word holds in common kindness Canada and +India and South Africa and Australia, and it has its pathos in the fact +that the old mother of these mighty children seems to leave solely to +them the tenderness that draws them to her in that notion of home. + + +V + +There were about fifty of those British Chautauquans, and when they had +ranged themselves on the grass before the shrubbery of a pleasant lawn, +backed by a wooded slope, the dignified lady of the house came out with +a casket in her hand, and put it on a table, and the exercises began. +Fitly, if the casket really held the sacred relic, they began with +prayer; then a Welsh soloist followed with a hymn, but whether she +sang in Welsh or English, I do not remember; I am only sure she sang +divinely; and then came the speeches. The first of the speeches was by +our friend, who was the local Unitarian minister, and of a religious +body not inconsiderable in that Calvinistic Wales. He told us how the +Holy Grail had been deposited with the monks of Strata Florida, the +famous old abbey near Aberystwyth; but I forgot who made them this +trust, unless it was King Arthur's knights, and I am not sure whether +the fact is matter of legend or history. What I remember is that when +the abbey was suppressed by Henry VIII., certain of the escaping monks +came with the relic to the gentle house where we then were, and placed +it in the keeping of the family who have guarded it ever since. + +[Illustration: ABERYSTWYTH FROM CRAIG GLAS ROCKS] + +After our friend, the lady of this house took up the tale, and told in +words singularly choice and simple the story of the sacred relic as the +family knew it. I had only once before heard a woman speak, no less a +woman than our great and dear Julia Ward Howe, and it seemed to me +that she spoke better than any man; and I must say of the Chautauquans' +hostess, that day, that if ever the Englishwomen come into their full +political rights, as they seem sure to do, the traditions of good +sense and good taste in English public speaking will not pass, but +will prosper on through their orators. There were touches of poetry, +nationally Welsh, in what she said, and touches of humor perhaps +personally Welsh. It seems that the cup had been famed throughout the +countryside for the miraculous property by which whoever drank from it +was cured of his or her malady, and it had been passed freely round to +all sufferers ever since it came into her family's keeping. That they +might make doubly sure of the miracle, it was the custom of the sick +not only to empty the cup, but to nibble a little bit of the wood, and +swallow that, so that in whatever state the monks of Strata Florida had +confided it, the vessel was now in the state we saw. Saying this the +lady opened the casket holding it, and showed us the crescent-shaped rim +of a wooden bowl, about the bigness of a cocoanut shell; all the rest +had been consumed by the pious sufferers whom it had restored to health. + +I am sorry, after all, to own that this cup is said by some authorities +not to be the Holy Grail, but a vessel like it carved out of the true +cross. But even so subordinate a relic is priceless, and as it is no +longer possible to drink from it, we may hope that the fragment will +remain indefinitely to after time. When they had wondered at the sight +of it the Chautauquans and their friend were made free of the charming +seventeenth-century house, which would be old for this country, but +which in the taste of that time was rather modern, and looked like the +casino of some Italian villa. It abounded, as such houses in England do, +in the pictured faces of the past, and in the memorials which only the +centuries can leave behind them, but was too graceful to seem rich. "A +home of ancient peace," it looked, in its mild gray stone amidst its +lawns and shrubberies, the larger hold of the gardens and pleasaunces +through which the Chautauquans followed from it. + + +VI + +At Aberystwyth, and elsewhere in Wales, one of the things I noticed was +the difference of the people from the people over the English border in +their attitude toward their betters. They might stand only five feet in +their stockings, but they stood straight, and if they were respectful, +they were first self-respectful. In our run from Shrewsbury, their +language first made itself generally heard at Newport, and it increased +in the unutterable names of the stations westward, the farther we passed +into their beautiful country, but they had always English enough to be +civil, though never servile. The country is beautiful in the New +England measure, but it is of a softer and smaller beauty; it looks more +caressable; it is like Vermont rather than New Hampshire, and it is +more like New England than Old England in the greater number of isolated +farm-houses, from which the girls as well as the boys come to the +university colleges for learning undreamt of by English farm villagers. + +The air was fresh and sweet, and though it seemed to shower wherever +we stopped to let another train go by on a siding of our single track, +there was a very passable sense of summer sun. The human type as we +began to observe it and as we saw it afterward throughout the land was +not only diminutive, but rather plain and mostly dark, in the men; as to +the women they were, as they are everywhere, charming, with now and then +a face of extraordinary loveliness, and nearly always the exquisite West +of England complexion. In their manners the people could not be more +amiable than the English, who are as amiable as possible, but they +seemed brighter and gayer. This remained their effect to the last in +Aberystwyth, and when one left the Terrace where the English visitors +superabounded, the Welsh had the whole place to themselves. I would not +push my conjecture, but it seemed to me that there was an absence of +the cloying loyalty which makes sojourn in England afflictive to the +republican spirit; I remember but one shop dedicated to the King's +Majesty, with the royal arms over the door, though there may have +been many others; I am always warning the reader not to take me too +literally. + +Though I was about the streets by day and by dark, I saw no disorderly +behavior of any kind in the town away from the beach; I do not mean +there was any by the sea, unless some athletic courtship among the young +people of the watering-place element was to be accounted so. There was +not much fashion there, except in a few pretty women who recalled the +church parade of Hyde Park in their flowery and feathery costumes. +Back in the town there was no fashion at all, but a general decency +and comfort of dress. The Welsh costume survives almost solely in the +picture-postal cards, though perhaps in the hilly fastnesses the women +still wear the steeple-crowned hats which we associate with the notion +of witches; when they come to market in Aberystwyth they wear +hard, shiny black straw hats like the men's. Amongst the throng of +Saturday-night shoppers I saw none of the drunkenness that one sees so +often in Scottish streets, and in English cities, and, I grieve to say, +even in some New England towns. In the Welsh quarter Sunday was much +more the Sabbath than it was on the Terrace, where indeed it seemed a +day of pleasure rather than praise. + + +VII + +All the week I had the best intention of hearing the singing in some of +the Welsh churches, but my goodwill could not carry the day against the +fear of a sermon which I should not understand. A chance sermon would +probably have touched upon the education act which was then stirring +all Dissenting England and Wales to passive resistance, and from +Lincolnshire to Carnarvonshire was causing the distraint of tables +and chairs, tools, hams, clocks, clothing, poultry, and crops for the +payment of such part of the Dissenters' taxes as would go to the support +of the Church schools. Possibly it might also have referred to the Walk +Out of the Welsh Members of Parliament; this was an incident which I +heard mentioned as of imperial importance, though what caused it or came +of it I do not know. + +Instead of going to church, I strolled up and down the Terrace and +observed the watering-place life. The town was evidently full, or +at least all the lodging-houses were, and as it is with the English +everywhere in their summer resorts, there were men enough to go round, +so that no poor dear need pine for a mate on that pleasant beach. +Aberystwyth is therefore to be commended to our overflow of girls, +though whether there are many eligible noblemen among those youth I have +not the statistics for saying. All the visitors may have been people +of rank; I only know that I was told they were mostly from the midland +cities, and they seemed to be having the good time which people of brief +outings alone have. The bathing began, as I have noted, very early in +the day with the men in the briefest possible tights; the women, for +compensation, wore long trousers with their bathing-skirts, and +they enhanced the modesty of their effect by the universal use of +bathing-machines, pushed well away from the curious shore. There was not +much variety in the visiting English type, but there was here and there +a sharp imperial accent, as in the two pale little, spindle-legged +Anglo-Indian boys, with their Hindu ayah, very dark, with sleek dark +hair, and gleaming eyes in a head not much bigger than a black walnut. + +The crescent of the beach was a serried series of hotels and +lodging-houses, from tip to tip, but back of these were streets +of homelike, smallish dwellings, that broke rank farther away, and +scattered about in suburban villas, with trees and flowers and grass +around them. Beyond stretched, as well as it could stretch among its +hills, the charming country of fields, and woods, and orchards. + + +VIII + +I suppose I did not quite do my duty by the ruins of the Norman castle, +and I feel that it is now too late to repair my neglect. The stronghold +was more than once attempted by the Welsh in those wars which make their +history a catalogue of battles, but it held out Norman till the Normans +turned English. Owen Glendover took it in 1402, when it was three +hundred years old, though not yet feeble with age, and in due time one +of Cromwell's lieutenants destroyed it. Some very picturesque fragments +remain to attest the grace and strength of the ancient hold. It is +near the University College and the Amusement Pier, so that the mere +sight-seers can do all the ordinary objects of interest at Aberystwyth +in half a day or half an hour. But we were none of these. We had fallen +in love with the place, and we would fain have stayed on after the +week was up for which we had taken our lodging. It appeared from a +house-to-house canvass, that there was no other lodging to be had in all +that long crescent of the Terrace; or, if this is incredible, there was +none we would have. Our successors were impending; and though I think +our English landlady might have invented something for us at the last +moment, the Welsh Power was inexorable. Her ideal was lodgers who would +go out and buy their own provisions, and we had set our faces against +that. Some one must yield, and the Welsh Power could not; it was not in +her nature. We were therefore in a manner expelled from Aberystwyth, but +our banishment was not from all Wales, and this was how we went next to +Llandudno. + + + * * * * * + + + + +LLANDUDNO, ANOTHER WELSH WATERING-PLACE + + +Froissart's saying, if it was Froissart's, that the English amuse +themselves sadly antedates that notion of Merry England which is now +generally rejected by serious observers. I should myself prefer the +agnostic position, and say that I did not know whether the English were +glad or not when they looked gay. What I seem to be certain of, but I +do not say that I am certain, is that they look gayer in their places +of amusement than we do. I do not mean theatres, or parliaments, or +music-halls, or lecture-rooms, by places of amusement, but what we +call summer resorts a little more largely than those resorts which the +English call watering-places. Of these I should like to take as a type +the charming summer resort on the coast of North Wales which is called +Llandudno in print, and in speech several different ways. + + +I + +The English simply and frankly, after their blunt nature, call the place +Landudno, but the Welsh call it, according to one superstition of their +double _l_ and their French _u_, Thlandidno. According to another, we +cannot spell it in English at all; but it does not much matter, for +the last superstition is the ever-delightful but ever-doubtful George +Borrow's, who says that the Welsh _ll_ is the same as the Spanish _ll_, +but who is probably mistaken, most other authorities agreeing that if +you pronounce it _lhl_ you will come as near it as any Saeseneg need. +It is a constantly besetting question in Wales, where the prefix _Llan_ +speckles the map all over, owing to that multitude of Saints who peopled +the country in the times when a Saint's sons were every one saints, and +none was of particularly holy, or even good life, because he was known +for a saint. Like a continental noble, he inherited his title equally +with all his brothers. + +But through whatever orthoepic mazes you search it, Llandudno has every +claim on your regard and admiration. Like Aberystwyth, its sea front is +a shallow crescent, but vaster, with a larger town expanding back of it, +and with loftier and sublimer headlands, at either end, closing it in a +more symmetrical frame. But I should say that its sea was not so blue, +or its sky either, and its air was not so soft or dry. Morally it is +more constantly lively, with a greater and more insistent variety of +entertainments. For the American its appeal might well have begun with +the sight of his country's flag floating over a tennis-ground at the +neighboring watering-place and purer Welsh town of Rhyl. The approach to +his affections was confirmed by another American flag displayed before +one of the chief hotels in Llandudno itself. I learned afterward of the +landlord that this was because there were several Chicago families in +his house, and fifteen Americans in all; but why the tennis-ground of +Rhyl flew our national banner, I do not know to this day. It was +indeed that gentle moment when our innocent people believed themselves +peculiarly dear to the English, and might naturally suppose, if from +Chicago, or Boston, or Denver, that the English would wish to see as +often as possible the symbol of our successful revolt from the princes +and principles to which they have religiously adhered. + +[Illustration: LLANDUDNO--THE CITY AND HARBOR] + +Both that home of the patriotic Chicago families, and the other best +hotel were too full for us, and after a round of the second-best we +decided for lodgings, hoping as usual that they would bring us nearer +the native life. The best we could get, facing the sea midway of the +crescent, were not exactly Welsh in their keeping. The landladies were, +in fact, two elderly Church-of-England sisters from Dublin, who had +named their house out of a novel they had read. They said they believed +the name was Italian, and the reader shall judge if it were so from its +analogue of Osier Wood. The maids in the house, however, were very truly +and very wickedly Welsh: two tough little ponies of girls, who tied +their hair up with shoe-strings, and were forbidden, when about their +work, to talk Welsh together, lest they should speak lezing of those +Irish ladies. The rogues were half English, but the gentle creature +who served our table was wholly Welsh; small, sweet-voiced, dark-eyed, +intelligent, who suffered from the universal rheumatism of the British +Isles, but kept steadily to her duty, and accepted her fate with +patience and even cheerfulness. She waited on several other tables, for +the house was full of lodgers, all rather less permanent than ourselves, +who were there for a fortnight; we found our landladies hoping, when we +said we were going, to have had us with them through the winter. + + +II + +Our fellow-lodgers were quiet people of divers degrees, except perhaps +the highest, unless the nobility bring boiled hams with them when they +visit the seaside. The boiled ham of the drawing-room floor was frankly +set out on the hall table, where it seemed to last a week, or at least +till the lodgers went away. There was much coming and going, for it was +the height of the season, with the prices at flood tide. We paid six +guineas a week for three bedrooms and a sitting-room; but our landladies +owned it was dear. An infirm and superannuated sideboard served for a +dressing-table in one room; in others the heavier pieces of furniture +stood sometimes on four legs, sometimes on three. We had the advantage +of two cats on the back fence, and a dog in the back yard; but if the +controversy between them was carried on in Welsh, it is no wonder we +never knew what it was about. + +Our hostesses said the Welsh were dirty housekeepers: "At least _we_ +think so," but I am bound to say their own cooking was very good; and +not being Welsh our hostesses consented to market for us, except in the +article of Spanish melons: these I bought myself of increasing cost and +size. When I alleged, the second morning, that the melon then sold +me for sixpence had been sold me by another boy for fourpence the day +before, my actual Cymric youth said, "Then he asked you too little," +which seemed a _non sequitur_ but was really an unexpected stroke of +logic. + +It was the utmost severity used with me by my co-racials in Llandudno. +They were in the great majority of the permanent inhabitants, but they +were easily outnumbered among the pleasurers by the Saeseneg, whose +language prevailed, so that a chance word of Welsh now and then was all +that I heard in the streets. Some faint stirrings of ambition to follow +the language as far as a phrase-book would lead were not encouraged by +the kindly bookseller who took my money for it; and I did not go on. It +is a loss for me in literature which translation cannot supply, for +the English lovers of Welsh poetry, after praising it to the skies, +are never able to produce anything which is not direly mechanical and +vacuous. The native charm somehow escapes them; the grace beyond the +reach of art remains with the Cymric poets who have resources for its +capture unknown to their English admirers. George Borrow seems the worst +failure in this sort, and the worst offender in giving his reader the +hopes he never fulfils, so that his _Wild Wales_ is a desert of blighted +literary promises. I believe that the merit of Welsh poetry dwells +largely, perhaps overlargely, in its intricate technique, and in the +euphonic changes which leave the spoken word ready for singing almost +without the offices of the composer. + + +III + +One of the great musical contests, the yearly national Eisteddfod, was +taking place that year at the neighboring town of Rhyl, but I did not go +to hear it, not being good for a week's music without intermission. +At Llandudno there was only the music of the Pierrots and the Niggers, +which those simple-hearted English have borrowed, the one from +France and the other from these States. Their passion for our colored +minstrelsy is, in fact, something pathetic. They like Pierrots well +enough, and Pierrots _are_ amusing, there is no doubt of it; but they +dote upon Niggers, as they call them with a brutality unknown among us +except to the vulgarest white men and boys, and the negroes themselves +in moments of exasperation. Negro minstrelsy is almost extinct in the +land of its birth, but in the land of its adoption it flourishes in the +vigor of undying youth: no watering-place is genuine without it. Bands +of Niggers haunt the streets and suburbs of London, and apparently every +high day or holiday throughout the British Islands requires the stamp of +their presence as a nostrum requires the name of the patentee blown in +the bottle. The decay of their gay science began among us with the fall +of slavery, and the passing of the old plantation life; but as these +never existed in Great Britain the English version of negro minstrelsy +is not affected by their disappearance. It is like the English tradition +of the Red Skins, which has all but vanished from our superstition, but +remains as powerful as ever in the constant fancy of those islanders. + +The English like their Niggers very, very black, and as their Niggers +are English they know how to gratify the national preference: such a +spread of scarlet lips over half the shining sable face is known nowhere +else in nature or art; and it must have been in despair of rivalling +their fellow-minstrels that the small American troupe we saw at +Aberystwyth went to the opposite extreme and frankly appeared as the +White Neegurs. At Llandudno the blackness of the Niggers was absolute, +so that it almost darkened the day as they passed our lodging, along the +crescent of the beach on their way to their open-air theatre beyond it. +They were followed by a joyous retinue of boys and girls, tradesmen's +apprentices, donkeys, bath-chairs, and all the movable gladness of the +watering-place, to the music of their banjos and the sound of their +singing. They were going to a fold of the foot-hills called the Happy +Valley, bestowed on the public for such pleasures by the local nobleman +whose title is given to a principal street, and to other points and +places, I suppose out of the public pride and gratitude. It is a +charming amphitheatre overlooked by the lofty tops around, and there +on the green slope the Niggers had set up their stage, and ranged the +spectators' chairs in the classification of first, second, and third so +dear to the British soul. There they cracked their jokes, and there they +sang their songs; the songs were newer than the jokes, but they were +both kinds delivered with a strong Cockney accent, and without an +aspirate in its place. But it was all richly acceptable to the audience, +who laughed and cheered and joined in the chorus when asked. Here, +as everywhere, the crowd delighted equally in songs of the sloppiest +sentimentality and of humor nighest indecency. + +[Illustration: LLANDUDNO FROM GREAT ORME'S NECK] + +On the afternoon of our visit the good lady next me could not contain +her peculiar pride in the entertainment, and confided that she knew the +leader of the troupe, who was an old friend of her husband's. It was +indeed a time and place that invited to expansion. Nothing could have +been friendlier and livelier than the spectacle of the spectators spread +over the grassy slope, or sublimer than the rise of the hills around, or +more enchanting than the summer sea, with the large and little shipping +on it, and the passenger-steamers going and coming from Liverpool and +all the points in the region round. The two headlands which mark the +limits of the beautiful beach, Great Orme's Head, and Little Orme's +Head, are both of a nobleness tempered to kindliness by the soft and +manageable beauty of their forms. I never got quite so far as Little +Orme's Head, for it was full two miles from our lodging, and a fortnight +was not long enough for the journey, but with Great Orme's Head I was on +terms of very tolerable intimacy. A road of the excellence peculiar to +England passes round on the chin, so to speak, and though I never went +the length of it, I went far enough to know the majesty of the seaward +prospect. From the crown of the Head there is a view of perhaps all the +mountains in Wales, which from this point appears entirely composed of +mountains, blue, blue and enchantingly fair. On the townward side you +may descend into the Happy Valley, as we did, and find always a joyous +crowd listening to the Niggers. If, after some doubt of your way, you +have the favor of a nice boy and an intelligent collie dog, whom the boy +is helping herd home the evening cows of a pleasant farm, you will +have a charming glimpse of the local civilization; and perhaps you will +notice that the cows do not pay much attention to the boy, but obey the +dog implicitly; it is their Old World convention. + + +IV + +From another side we had ascended the mountain by the tram line which +climbs it to the top, and at every twist and turn lavishes some fresh +loveliness of landscape upon your vision. Near by, we noticed many +depressions and sinkages in the ground, and a conversable man in +well-oiled overalls who joined us at a power-house, said it was from the +giving way of the timbers in the disused copper-mines. Were they very +old, we asked, and he said they had not been worked for forty years; but +this, when you come to think of the abandoned Roman mines yet deeper +in the hill, was a thing of yesterday. The man in the oily overalls +had evidently not come to think of it, but he was otherwise a very +intelligent mechanic, and of a hospitable mind, like all the rest of our +chance acquaintance in Great Britain. I do not know that I like to think +of those Roman mines myself, where it is said the sea now surges back +and forth: they must have been worked by British slaves, who may be +fancied climbing purblindly out when the legions left Britain, and not +joining very loudly in the general lamentation at their withdrawal, +but probably tempering the popular grief with the reflection that the +heathen Saxons could not be much worse. + +The hill-top was covered with the trippers who seem perpetually +holidaying on their island, and who were always kind to their children +when they had them, and to each other when they had not. They were +commonly in couples, very affectionate and inoffensively young. They +wandered about, and from time to time went and had tea at one of the +tea-houses which are always at hand over there. Except the view there +was not much to see; the ways were rough; now and then you came to a +pink cottage or a white one where the peasantry, again, sold tea. At one +place in our walk over the occiput of Great Orme's Head into the Happy +Valley in its bosom, we fell a prey to a conspiracy of boys selling +mignonette: it appeared to be a mignonette trust, or syndicate, +confining its commerce to that flower. + +I have no other statistics to offer concerning business on Great Orme's +Head, or indeed in all Llandudno. One of the chief industries seemed to +be coaching, for a score of delightful places are to be easily reached +by the stages always departing from the hotels on the Parade. There was +no particularly noticeable traffic in leek, though I suppose that as I +did not see the national emblem in any Welshman's hat--to be sure, it +was not St. David's Day--it must have been boiling in every Welshman's +pot. I am rather ashamed to be joining, even at this remove, in the poor +English joking which goes on about the Welsh, quite as much as about the +Scotch, the Irish having become too grave a matter for joking. There +are little burlesque manuals making merry with the language and its +agglutinative prolixity, which I shall certainly not quote; and +there are postal-cards representing Welsh dames drinking tea in tall +witch-hats, with one of them saying: "I wass enjoying myself shocking, +look you." There was, of course, nothing serious in this joking; the +Welsh, who have all the small commerce in their hands, gladly sold the +manuals and postals, and I did not see one Englishman laughing over +them. + +The Saeseneg visitors rather amused themselves with the sea and the +resources of the beach and the bathing. As contrasted with the visitors +at Aberystwyth, so distinctly in the earlier and later stages of +love-making, I should say those at Llandudno were domestic: fathers and +mothers who used the long phalanx of bathing-machines appointed to their +different sexes, and their children who played in the sand. I thought +the children charming, and I contributed tuppence to aid in the repair +of the sand castle of two nice little boys which had fallen down; it now +seems strange that I should have been asked for a subscription, but in +England subscriptions spare nobody; though I wonder if two such nice +little boys would have come to me for money in America. Besides the +entertainment of lying all afternoon on the beach, or sitting beside it +in canopied penny chairs, there was more active diversion for all ages +and sexes in the circus prevailing somewhere in the background, +and advertising itself every afternoon by a procession of six young +elephants neatly carrying each in his trunk the tail of the elephant +before him. There were also the delightful shows of the amusement pier +where one could go and see Pierrots to one's heart's content, if one can +ever get enough of Pierrots; I never can. + +[Illustration: THE GREAT PIER, LLANDUDNO] + +Besides all these daytime things there were two very good theatres, at +one of which I saw Mr. Barrie's _Little Mary_ given better than in New +York (that was easy), and at the other a comic opera, with a bit of +comedy or tragedy in a stage-box, not announced in the bills. The +audience was otherwise decorous enough to be composed of Welsh Baptist +elders and their visiting friends, but in this box there were two young +men in evening dress, scuffling with a young woman in dinner decolletee, +and what appeared to be diamonds in her ears. They were trying, +after what seems the convention of English seaside flirtation, to get +something out of her hand, and allowing her successfully to resist them; +and their playful contest went on through a whole act to the distraction +of the spectators, who did not seem greatly scandalized. It suggested +the misgiving that perhaps bad people came to Llandudno for their summer +outing as well as good; but there was no interference by the police or +the management with this robust side-show. Were the actors in the scene, +all or any of them, too high in rank to be lightly molested in their +lively event; or were they too low? Perhaps they were merely tipsy, +but all the same their interlude was a contribution to the evening's +entertainment which would not have been so placidly accepted in, say, +Atlantic City, or Coney Island, or even Newport, where people are said +to be more accustomed to the caprices of society persons, and more +indulgent of their whims. + + +V + +A more improving, and on the whole more pleasing, phase of the +indigenous life, and also more like a phase of our own, showed itself +the day of our visit to Conway, a little way from Llandudno. There, on +our offering to see the ruins of the wonderful and beautiful old castle, +we were met at the entrance with a demand for an exceptional shilling +gate money, because of the fair for the local Wesleyan Chapel which was +holding in the interior. What seemed at first a hardship turned out a +chance which we would not have missed on any account. There was a large +tent set up in the old castle court, and a table spread with home-made +dainties of many sorts, and waited upon by gentle maids and matrons who +served one with tea or whatever else one liked, all for that generously +inclusive shilling. They were Welsh, they told us, and they were +speaking their language to right and left of us, while they were so +courteous to us in English. It was quite like a church fair in some +American village, where, however, it could not have had the advantage +of a ruined Norman castle for its scene, and where it would not have +provided a range for target practice with air-guns, or grounds for +running and jumping. + +The place was filled with people young and old who were quietly amusing +themselves and were more taken up with the fair than with the castle. +I must myself comparatively slight the castle in the present study of +people rather than places, though I may note that if there is any +more interesting ruin in the world, I am satisfied with this which it +surpasses. Besides its beauty, what strikes one most is its perfect +adaptation to the original purpose of palace and fortress for which the +Normans planned their strongholds in Wales. The architect built not only +with a constant instinct of beauty, but with unsurpassable science and +skill. The skill and the science have gone the way of the need of them, +but the beauty remains indelible and as eternal as the hunger for it +in the human soul. Conway castle is not all a ruin, even as a fortress, +however. Great part of it still challenges decay, and is so entire in +its outward shape that it has inspired the railway running under its +shoulder to attempt a conformity of style in the bridge approaching it, +but without enabling it to an equal effect of grandeur. One would as +soon the bridge had not tried. + +All Conway is worthy, within its ancient walls, of as much devotion as +one can render it in the rain, which begins as soon as you leave the +castle. The walls climb from the waters to the hills, and the streets +wander up and down and seem to the stranger mainly to seek that +beautiful old Tudor house, Plas Mawr, which like the castle is without +rival in its kind. It was full of reeking and streaming sight-seers, +among whom one could easily find one's self incommoded without feeling +one's self a part of the incommodation, but in spite of them there was +the assurance of comfort as well as splendor in the noble old mansion, +such as the Elizabethan houses so successfully studied. In the +dining-room a corner of the mantel has its sandstone deeply worn +away, and a much-elbowed architect, who was taking measurements of the +chimney, agreed that this carf was the effect of the host or the butler +flying to the place and sharpening his knife for whatever haunch of +venison or round of beef was toward. It was a fine memento of the +domestic past, and there was a secret chamber where the refugees of this +cause or that in other times were lodged in great discomfort. Besides, +there was a ghost which was fairly crowded out of its accustomed +quarters, where so far from being able to walk, it would have had much +ado to stand upright by flattening itself against the wall. + + +VI + +In fact, there was not much more room that day in the Plas Mawr, than in +the Smallest House in the World, which is the next chiefest attraction +of Conway. This, too, was crammed with damp enthusiasts, passionately +eager to sign their names in the guest-book. They scarcely left space in +the sitting-room of ten by twelve feet for the merry old hostess selling +photographs and ironically inviting her visitors' guests to a glimpse +of the chamber overhead, or so much of it as the bed allowed to be seen. +She seemed not to believe in her abode as a practicable tenement, and +could not be got to say that she actually lived in it; as to why it was +built so small she was equally vague. But there it was, to like or to +leave, and there, not far off, was the "briny beach" where the Walrus +and the Carpenter walked together,-- + + "And wept like anything to see + Such quantities of sand." + +For it was in Conway, as history or tradition is, that _Through the +Looking-Glass_ was written. + +There are very few places in those storied British Isles which are +not hallowed by some association with literature; but I suppose that +Llandudno is as exempt as any can be, and I will not try to invoke any +dear and honored shade from its doubtful obscurity. We once varied the +even tenor of our days there by driving to Penmaenmawr, and wreaking our +love of literary associations so far as we might by connecting the place +with the memory of Gladstone, who was literary as well as political. We +thought with him that Penmaenmawr was "the most charming watering-place +in Wales," and as you drive into the place, the eye of faith will +detect the house, on the right, in which he spent many happy summers. We +contented ourselves with driving direct to the principal hotel, where +I know not what kept us from placing ourselves for life. We had tea and +jam en the pretty lawn, and the society of a large company of wasps of +the yellow-jacket variety, which must have been true Welsh wasps, as +peaceful as they were musical, and no interloping Scotch or Irish, for +they did not offer to attack us, but confined themselves altogether to +our jam: to be sure, we thought best to leave it to them. + +[Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE] + +It is said that the purple year is not purpler at any point on the +southernmost shores of England than it is at Llandudno. In proof of the +mildness of its winter climate, the presence of many sorts of tender +evergreens is alleged, and the persistence of flowers in blooming from +Christmas to Easter. But those who have known the deceitful habits of +flowers on the Riviera, where they bloom in any but an arctic degree of +cold, will not perhaps hurry to Llandudno much later than November. +All the way to Penmaenmawr the flowers showed us what they could do in +summer, whether in field or garden, and there was one beautiful hill +on which immense sweeps and slopes of yellow gorse and purple heather +boldly stretched separately, or mingled their dyes in the fearlessness +of nature when she spurns the canons of art. I suppose there is no +upholsterer or paperhanger who would advise mixing or matching yellow +and purple in the decoration of a room, but here the outdoor effect rapt +the eye in a transport of delight. It was indeed a day when almost any +arrangement of colors would have pleased. + + +VII + +It is not easy in that much summer-resorted region to get at the country +in other than its wilder moods; it is either town or mountain; but now +and then one found one's self among harvest-fields, where the yield of +wheat and oats was far heavier than with us, either because the soil was +richer or the tilth thorougher. The farms indeed looked very fertile, +and the farmhouses very alluringly clean and neat, at least on the +outside. They were not gray, as in the West of England, or brick as +in the Southeast, but were of stone whitewashed, and the roofs were of +slate, and not thatch or tile. As I have noted, they were not so much +gathered into villages as in England, and again, as I have noted, it +is out of such houses that the farmers' boys and girls go to the +co-educational colleges of the Welsh University. It is still the +preference of the farmers that their sons should be educated for the +ministry, which in that country of multiplied dissents has pulpits for +every color of contrary-mindedness, as well as livings of the not yet +disestablished English Church. It is not indeed the English Church in +speech. The Welsh will have their service and their sermon in their own +tongue, and when an Oxford or Cambridge man is given a Welsh living, he +must do what he can to conform to the popular demand. It is said that +in one case, where the incumbent long held out against the parish, +he compromised by reading the service in Welsh with the English +pronunciation. But the Welsh churches are now supplied with +Welsh-speaking clergy, though whether it is well for the Welsh to cling +so strongly to their ancient speech is doubted by many Welshmen. These +hold that it cramps and dwarfs the national genius; but in the mean time +in Ireland the national genius, long enlarged to our universal English, +offers the strange spectacle of an endeavor to climb back into its +Gaelic shell. + +[Illustration: PLAS MAWR] + +I do not know whether an incident of my experience in coming from +Chester to Llandudno is to be offered as an illustration of Welsh +manners or of English manners. A woman of the middle rank, certainly +below gentlewoman, but very personable and well dressed, got into our +carriage where there was no seat for her. She was no longer young, but +she was not so old as the American who offered her his seat. She refused +it, but consented to sit on the hand-bag and rug which he arranged for +her, and so remained till she left the train, while a half-grown boy +and several young men kept their countenances and their places, not +apparently dreaming of offering her a seat, or if they thought of her +at all, thought she was well punished for letting the guard crowd her +in upon us. By her stature and complexion she was undoubtedly Welsh, and +these youth from theirs were as undoubtedly English. Perhaps, then, the +incident had better be offered as an illustration of Welsh and English +manners combined. + + + * * * * * + + + + +GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH CHARACTER + + +Nothing is so individual in any man as the peculiar blend of +characteristics which he has inherited from his racial ancestries. The +Englishman, who leaves the stamp of the most distinct personality upon +others, is the most mixed, the most various, the most relative of all +men. He is not English except as he is Welsh, Dutch, and Norman, with +"a little Latin and less Greek" from his earliest visitors and invaders. +This conception of him will indefinitely simplify the study of his +nature if it is made in the spirit of the frank superficiality which I +propose to myself. After the most careful scrutiny which I shall be +able to give him, he will remain, for every future American, the +contradiction, the anomaly, the mystery which I expect to leave him. + + +I + +No error of the Englishman's latest invader is commoner than the notion, +which perhaps soonest suggests itself, that he is a sort of American, +tardily arriving at our kind of consciousness, with the disadvantages +of an alien environment, after apparently hopeless arrest in unfriendly +conditions. The reverse may much more easily be true; we may be a sort +of Englishmen, and the Englishman, if he comes to us and abides with +us, may become a sort of American. But that is the affair of a possible +future, and the actual Englishman is certainly not yet any sort of +American, unless, indeed, for good and for bad, he is a better sort +of Bostonian. He does not even speak the American language, whatever +outlandish accent he uses in speaking his own. It may be said, rather +too largely, too loosely, that the more cultivated he is, the more he +will speak like a cultivated American, until you come to the King, +or the Royal Family, with whom a strong German accent is reported to +prevail. The Englishman may write American, if he is a very good +writer, but in no case does he spell American. He prefers, as far as +he remembers it, the Norman spelling, and, the Conqueror having said +"_geole_," the Conquered print "gaol," which the American invader must +pronounce "jail," not "gayol." + +The mere mention of the Royal Family advances us to the most marked of +all the superficial English characteristics; or, perhaps, loyalty is +not superficial, but is truly of the blood and bone, and not reasoned +principle, but a passion induced by the general volition. Whatever +it is, it is one of the most explicitly as well as the most tacitly +pervasive of the English idiosyncrasies. A few years ago--say, fifteen +or twenty--it was scarcely known in its present form. It was not known +at all with many in the time of the latest and worst of the Georges, or +the time of the happy-go-lucky sailor William; in the earlier time of +Victoria, it was a chivalrous devotion among the classes, and with the +masses an affection which almost no other sovereign has inspired. I +should not be going farther than some Englishmen if I said that her +personal character saved the monarchy; when she died there was not a +vestige of the republican dream which had remained from a sentiment +for "the free peoples of antiquity" rather than from the Commonwealth. +Democracy had indeed effected itself in a wide-spread socialism, but the +kingship was safe in the hearts of the Queen's subjects when the Prince +of Wales, who was the first of them, went about praising loyalty as +prime among the civic virtues and duties. The notion took the general +fancy, and met with an acceptance in which the old superstition of kings +by divine right was resuscitated with the vulgar. One of the vulgar +lately said to an American woman who owned that we did not yield an +equal personal fealty to all our Presidents, "Oh yes, but you know that +it is only your _people_ that choose the President, but _God_ gave us +the King." Nothing could be opposed to a belief so simple, as in the +churches of the eldest faith the humble worshipper could not well be +told that the picture or the statue of his adoration was not itself +sacred. In fact, it is not going too far, at least for a very +adventurous spirit, to say that loyalty with the English is a sort of +religious principle. What is with us more or less a joke, sometimes +bad, sometimes good, namely, our allegiance to the powers that be in the +person of the Chief Magistrate, is with them a most serious thing, at +which no man may smile without loss. + +I was so far from wishing myself to smile at it, that I darkled most +respectfully about it, without the courage to inquire directly into the +mystery. If it was often on my tongue to ask, "What is loyalty? How +did you come by it? Why are you loyal?"--I felt that it would be +embarrassing when it would not be offensive, and I should vainly plead +in excuse that this property of theirs mystified me the more because it +seemed absolutely left out of the American nature. I perceived that in +the English it was not less really present because it was mixed, or used +to be mixed, with scandal that the alien can do no more than hint at. +That sort of abuse has long ceased, and if one were now to censure the +King, or any of the Royal Family, it would be felt to be rather ill +bred, and quite unfair, since royalty is in no position to reply to +criticism. Even the Socialists would think it ill-mannered, though +in their hearts, if not in their sleeves, they must all the while be +smiling at the notion of anything sacred in the Sovereign. + +[Illustration: A PRESENTATION AT COURT] + + +II + +Loyalty, like so many other things in England, is a convention to which +the alien will tacitly conform in the measure of his good taste or his +good sense. It is not his affair, and in the mean time it is a most +curious and interesting spectacle; but it is not more remarkable, +perhaps, than the perfect acquiescence in the aristocratic forms of +society which hedge the King with their divinity. We think that family +counts for much with ourselves, in New England or in Virginia; but it +counts for nothing at all in comparison with the face value at which it +is current in England. We think we are subject to our plutocracy, when +we are very much out of humor or out of heart, in some such measure as +the commoners of England are subject to the aristocracy; but that is +nonsense. A very rich man with us is all the more ridiculous for his +more millions; he becomes a byword if not a hissing; he is the meat of +the paragrapher, the awful example of the preacher; his money is found +to smell of his methods. But in England, the greater a nobleman is, +the greater his honor. The American mother who imagines marrying her +daughter to an English duke, cannot even imagine an English +duke--say, like him of Devonshire, or him of Northumberland, or him +of Norfolk--with the social power and state which wait upon him in his +duchy and in the whole realm; and so is it in degree down to the latest +and lowest of the baronets, and of those yet humbler men who have been +knighted for their merits and services in medicine, in literature, in +art. The greater and greatest nobles are established in a fear which is +very like what the fear of God used to be when the common people feared +Him; and, though they are potent political magnates, they mainly rule +as the King himself does, through the secular reverence of those beneath +them for their titles and the visible images of their state. They are +wealthy men, of course, with so much substance that, when one now and +then attempts to waste it, he can hardly do so; but their wealth alone +would not establish them in the popular regard. His wealth does no +such effect for Mr. Astor in England; and mere money, though it is much +desired by all, is no more venerated in the person of its possessor than +it is with us. It is ancestry, it is the uncontested primacy of families +first in their place, time out of mind, that lays its resistless hold +upon the fancy and bows the spirit before it. By means of this comes +the sovereign effect in the political as well as the social state; for, +though the people vote into or out of power those who vote other people +into or out of the administration, it is always--or so nearly always +that the exception proves the rule--family that rules, from the King +down to the least attache of the most unimportant embassy. No doubt many +of the English are restive under the fact; and, if one had asked their +mind about it, one might have found them frank enough; but, never asking +it, it was with amusement that I heard said once, as if such a thing had +never occurred to anybody before, "Yes, isn't it strange that those few +families should keep it all among themselves!" It was a slender female +voice, lifted by a young girl with an air of pensive surprise, as at a +curious usage of some realm of faery. + + +III + +England is in fact, to the American, always a realm of faery, in its +political and social constitution. It must be owned, concerning the +government by family, that it certainly seems to work well. That +justifies it, so far as the exclusion of the immense majority from the +administration of their own affairs can be justified by anything; +though I hold that the worst form of graft in office is hardly less +justifiable: that is, at least, one of the people picking their pockets. +But it is the universal make-believe behind all the practical virtue of +the state that constitutes the English monarchy a realm of faery. The +whole population, both the great and the small, by a common effort of +the will, agree that there is a man or a woman of a certain line who +can rightfully inherit the primacy amongst them, and can be dedicated +through this right to live the life of a god, to be so worshipped and +flattered, so cockered about with every form of moral and material +flummery, that he or she may well be more than human not to be made a +fool of. Then, by a like prodigious stroke of volition, the inhabitants +of the enchanted island universally agree that there is a class of them +which can be called out of their names in some sort of title, bestowed +by some ancestral or actual prince, and can forthwith be something +different from the rest, who shall thenceforth do them reverence, them +and their heirs and assigns, forever. By this amusing process, the realm +of faery is constituted, a thing which could not have any existence in +nature, yet by its existence in fancy becomes the most absolute of human +facts. + +It is not surprising that, in the conditions which ensue, snobbishness +should abound; the surprising thing would be if it did not abound. Even +with ourselves, who by a seven years' struggle burst the faery dream a +century ago, that least erected spirit rears its loathly head from the +dust at times, and in our polite press we can read much if we otherwise +see nothing of its subtle influence. But no evil is without its +compensating good, and the good of English snobbishness is that it +has reduced loyalty, whether to the prince or to the patrician, from a +political to a social significance. That is, it does so with the upper +classes; with the lower, loyalty finds expression in an unparalleled +patriotism. An Englishman of the humble or the humbler life may know +very well that he is not much in himself; but he believes that England +stands for him, and that royalty and nobility stand for England. Both +of these, there, are surrounded by an atmosphere of reverence wholly +inconceivable to the natives of a country where there are only +millionaires to revere. + + +IV + +The most curious thing is that the persons in the faery dream seem to +believe it as devoutly as the simplest and humblest of the dreamers. The +persons in the dream apparently take themselves as seriously as if there +were or could be in reality kings and lords. They could not, of course, +do so if they were recently dreamed, as they were, say, in the France +of the Third Empire. There, one fancies, these figments must have always +been smiling in each other's faces when they were by themselves. But +the faery dream holds solidly in England because it is such a very old +dream. Besides, the dream does not interfere with the realities; it even +honors them. If a man does any great thing in England, the chief figure +of the faery dream recognizes his deed, stoops to him, lifts him up +among the other figures, and makes him part of the dream forever. After +that he has standing, such as no man may have with us for more than that +psychological moment, when all the papers cry him up, and then everybody +tries to forget him. But, better than this, the dream has the effect, if +it has not the fact, of securing every man in his place, so long as +he keeps to it. Nowhere else in the world is there so much personal +independence, without aggression, as in England. There is apparently +nothing of it in Germany; in Italy, every one is so courteous and kind +that there is no question of it; in the French Republic and in our own, +it exists in an excess that is molestive and invasive; in England alone +does it strike the observer as being of exactly the just measure. + +Very likely the observer is mistaken, and in the present case he will +not insist. After all, even the surface indications in such matters are +slight and few. But what I noted was that, though the simple and humble +have to go to the wall, and for the most part go to it unkicking, in +England they were, on their level, respectfully and patiently entreated. +At a railroad junction one evening, when there was a great hurrying up +stairs and down, and a mad seeking of wrong trains by right people, the +company's servants who were taking tickets, and directing passengers +this way and that, were patiently kind with futile old men and women, +who came up, in the midst of their torment, and pestered them with +questions as to the time when trains that had not arrived would leave +after they did arrive. I shuddered to think what would have at least +verbally happened to such inquirers with us; but, there, not only their +lives but their feelings were safe, and they could go away with such +self-respect as they had quite intact. + + +V + +In no country less good-hearted than England could anything so +wrong-headed as the English baggage system be suffered. But, there, +passengers of all kinds help the porters to sort their trunks from other +people's trunks, on arrival at their stations, and apparently think it +no hardship. The porters, who do not seem especially inspired persons, +have a sort of guiding instinct in the matter, and wonderfully seldom +fail to get the things together for the cab, or to get them off the cab, +and, duly labelled, into the luggage-van. Once, at a great junction, +my porter seemed to have missed my train, and after vain but not +unconsidered appeals to the guard, I had to start without it. At +the next station, the company telegraphed back at its own cost the +voluminous message of my anxiety and indignation, and I was assured that +the next train would bring my valise from Crewe to Edinburgh. When I +arrived at Edinburgh, I casually mentioned my trouble to a guard whom I +had not seen before. He asked how the bags were marked, and then he said +they had come with us. My porter had run with them to my train, but in +despair of getting to my car with his burden, had put them into the +last luggage-van, and all I had to do was now to identify them at my +journey's end. + +Why one does not, guiltily or guiltlessly, claim other people's baggage, +I do not know; but apparently it is not the custom. Perhaps in this, the +deference for any one within his rights, peculiar to the faery dream, +operates the security of the respective owners of baggage that could +otherwise easily be the general prey. While I saw constant regard paid +for personal rights, I saw only one case in which they were offensively +asserted. This was in starting from York for London, when we attempted +to take possession of a compartment we had paid for from the nearest +junction, in order to make certain of it. We found it in the keeping +of a gentleman who had turned it from a non-smoking into a smoking +compartment, and bestrewn it with his cigar ashes. When told by the +porters that we had engaged the compartment, he refused to stir, and +said that he had paid for his seat, and he should not leave it till he +was provided with another. In vain they besought him to consider our +hard case, in being kept out of our own, and promised him another place +as good as the one he held. He said that he would not believe it till he +saw it, and as he would not go to see it, and it could not be brought to +him, there appeared little chance of our getting rid of him. I thought +it best to let him and the porters fight it out among themselves. When +a force of guards appeared, they were equally ineffective against +the intruder, who could not, or did not, say that he did not know the +compartment was engaged. Suddenly, for no reason, except that he had +sufficiently stood, or sat, upon his rights, he rose, and the others +precipitated themselves upon his hand-baggage, mainly composed of +fishing-tackle, such as a gentleman carries who has been asked to +somebody's fishing, and bore it away to another part of the train. They +left one piece behind, and the porter who came back for it was radiantly +smiling, as if the struggle had been an agreeable exercise, and he spoke +of his antagonist without the least exasperation; evidently, he regarded +him as one who had justly defended himself from corporate aggression; +his sympathies were with him rather than with us, perhaps because we had +not so vigorously asserted ourselves. + + +VI + +A case in which a personal wrong rather than a personal right was +offensively asserted, was that of a lady, young and too fair to be so +unfair, in a crowded train coming from the Doncaster Races to York. She +had kept a whole first-class compartment to herself, putting her maid +into the second-class adjoining, and heaping the vacant seats with her +hand-baggage, which had also overflowed into the corridor. At the time +the train started she was comforting herself in her luxurious solitude +with a cup of tea, and she stood up, as if to keep other people out. +But, after waiting, seven of us, in the corridor, until she should offer +to admit us, we all swarmed in upon her, and made ourselves indignantly +at home. When it came to that she offered no protest, but gathered up +her belongings, and barricaded herself with them. Among the rest there +was a typewriting-machine, but what manner of young lady she was, or +whether of the journalistic or the theatrical tribe, has never revealed +itself to this day. We could not believe that she was very high-born, +not nearly so high, for instance, as the old lady who helped dispossess +her, and who, when we ventured the hope that it would not rain on the +morrow, which was to be St. Leger Day, almost lost the kindness for us +inspired by some small service, because we had the bad taste to suggest +such a possibility for so sacred a day. + +I never saw people standing in a train, except that once which I have +already noted, when in a very crowded car in Wales, two women, decent +elderly persons, got in and were suffered to remain on foot by the young +men who had comfortable places; no one dreamed, apparently, of offering +to give up his seat. But, on the other hand, a superior civilization +is shown in what I may call the manual forbearance of the trolley and +railway folk, who are so apt to nudge and punch you at home here, when +they wish your attention. The like happened to me only once in England, +and that was at Liverpool, where the tram conductor, who laid hands +on me instead of speaking, had perhaps been corrupted by the unseen +American influences of a port at which we arrive so abundantly and +indiscriminately. I did not resent the touch, though it is what every +one is expected to do, if aggrieved, and every one else does it in +England. Within his rights, every one is safe; though there may be some +who have no rights. If there were, I did not see them, and I suppose +that, as an alien, I might have refused to stand up and uncover when the +band began playing _God Save the King_, as it did at the end of every +musical occasion; I might have urged that, being no subject of the King, +I did not feel bound to join in the general prayer. But that would have +been churlish, and, where every one had been so civil to me, I did not +see why I should not be civil to the King, in a small matter. In the +aggregate indeed, it is not a small matter, and I suppose that the +stranger always finds the patriotism of a country molestive. Patriotism +is, at any rate, very disagreeable, with the sole exception of our own, +which we are constantly wishing to share with other people, especially +with English people. We spare them none of it, even in their own +country, and yet many of us object to theirs; I feel that I am myself +being rather offensive about it, now, at this distance from them. Upon +the whole, not caring very actively for us, one way or the other, they +take it amiably; they try to get our point of view, and, as if it were a +thorn, self-sacrificially press their bosoms against it, in the present +or recent _entente cordiale_. None of their idiosyncrasies is more +notable than their patience, their kindness with our divergence from +them; but I am not sure that, having borne with us when we are by, they +do not take it out of us when we are away. + +We are the poetry of a few, who, we like to think, have studied the +most deeply into the causes of our being, or its excuses. But you cannot +always be enjoying poetry, and I could well imagine that our lovers must +sometimes prefer to shut the page. The common gentleness comes from the +common indifference, and from something else that I will not directly +touch upon. What is certain is that, with all manner of strangers, +the English seem very gentle, when they meet in chance encounter. The +average level of good manners is high. My experience was not the widest, +and I am always owning it was not deep; but, such as it was, it brought +me to the distasteful conviction that in England I did not see the +mannerless uncouthness which I often see in America, not so often from +high to low, or from old to young, but the reverse. There may be much +more than we infer, at the moment, from the modulated voices, which +sweetens casual intercourse, but there are certain terms of respect, +almost unknown to us, which more obviously do that effect. It is a pity +that democracy, being the fine thing it essentially is, should behave +so rudely. Must we come to family government, in order to be filial or +fraternal in our bearing with one another? Why should we be so blunt, so +sharp, so ironical, so brutal in our kindness? + + +VII + +The single-mindedness of the English is beautiful. It may not help to +the instant understanding of our jokes; but then, even we are not always +joking, and it does help to put us at rest and to make us feel safe. The +Englishman may not always tell the truth, but he makes us feel that we +are not so sincere as he; perhaps there are many sorts of sincerity. But +there is something almost caressing in the kindly pause that precedes +his perception of your meaning, and this is very pleasing after the +sense of always having your hearer instantly onto you. When, by a chance +indefinitely rarer than it is with us at home, one meets an Irishman in +England, or better still an Irishwoman, there is an instant lift of the +spirit; and, when one passes the Scotch border, there is so much lift +that, on returning, one sinks back into the embrace of the English +temperament, with a sigh for the comfort of its soft unhurried +expectation that there is really something in what you say which, will +be clear by-and-by. + +Having said so much as this in compliance with the frequent American +pretence that the English are without humor, I wish to hedge in the +interest of truth. They certainly are not so constantly joking as we; it +does not apparently seem to them that fate can be propitiated by a habit +of pleasantry, or that this is so merry a world that one need go about +grinning in it. Perhaps the conditions with most of them are harder than +the conditions with most of us. But, thinking of certain Englishmen +I have known, I should be ashamed to join in the cry of those +story-telling Americans whose jokes have sometimes fallen effectless. +It is true that, wherever the Celt has leavened the doughier Anglo-Saxon +lump, the expectation of a humorous sympathy is greater; but there are +subtile spirits of Teutonic origin whose fineness we cannot deny, whose +delicate gayety is of a sort which may well leave ours impeaching itself +of a heavier and grosser fibre. + +No doubt you must sometimes, and possibly oftenest, go more than +half-way for the response to your humorous intention. Those subtile +spirits are shy, and may not offer it an effusive welcome. They are +also of such an exquisite honesty that, if they do not think your wit +is funny, they will not smile at it, and this may grieve some of our +jokers. But, if you have something fine and good in you, you need not be +afraid they will fail of it, and they will not be so long about finding +it out as some travellers say. When it comes to the grace of the +imaginative in your pleasantry, they will be even beforehand with you. +But in their extreme of impersonality they will leave the initiative to +you in the matter of humor as in others. They will no more seek out your +peculiar humor than they will name you in speaking with you. + + +VIII + +Nothing in England seeks you out, except the damp. Your impressions, you +have to fight for them. What you see or hear seems of accident. The sort +of people you have read of your whole life, and are most intimate with +in fiction, you must surprise. They no more court observance than the +birds in whose seasonable slaughter society from the King down delights. +In fact, it is probable that, if you looked for both, you would find the +gunner shyer than the gunned. The pheasant and the fox are bred to give +pleasure by their chase; they are tenderly cared for and watched over +and kept from harm at the hands of all who do not wish to kill them for +the joy of killing, and they are not so elusive but they can be seen by +easy chance. The pheasant especially has at times all but the boldness +of the barnyard in his fearless port. Once from my passing train, I saw +him standing in the middle of a ploughed field, erect, distinct, like +a statue of himself, commemorative of the long ages in which his heroic +death and martyr sufferance have formed the pride of princes and the +peril of poachers. But I never once saw him shot, though almost as many +gunners pursue him as there are pheasants in the land. This alone shows +how shy the gunners are; and when once I saw the trail of a fox-hunt +from the same coign of vantage without seeing the fox, I felt that I +had almost indecently come upon the horse and hounds, and that the pink +coats and the flowery spread of the dappled dogs over the field were +mine by a kind of sneak as base as killing a fox to save my hens. + + +IX + +Equally with the foxes and the pheasants, the royalties and nobilities +abound in English novels, which really form the chief means of our +acquaintance with English life; but the chances that reveal them to the +average unintroduced, unpresented American are rarer. By these chances, +I heard, out of the whole peerage, but one lord so addressed in public, +and that was on a railroad platform where a porter was reassuring him +about his luggage. Similarly, I once saw a lady of quality, a tall and +girlish she, who stood beside her husband, absently rubbing with her +glove the window of her motor, and whom but for the kind interest of our +cabman we might never have known for a duchess. It is by their personal +uninsistence largely, no doubt, that the monarchy and the aristocracy +exist; the figures of the faery dream remain blent with the background, +and appear from it only when required to lay cornerstones, or preside at +races, or teas or bazars, or to represent the masses at home and abroad, +and invisibly hold the viewless reins of government. + +Yet it must not be supposed that the commoner sort of dreamers are never +jealous of these figments of their fancy. They are often so, and rouse +themselves to self-assertion as frequently as our Better Element flings +off the yoke of Tammany. At a fair, open to any who would pay, for +some forgotten good object, such as is always engaging the energies +of society, I saw moving among the paying guests the tall form of a +nobleman who had somehow made himself so distasteful to his neighbors +that they were not his friends, and regularly voted down his men, +whether they stood for Parliament or County Council, and whether they +were better than the popular choice or not. As a matter of fact, it was +said that they were really better, but the people would not have them +because they were his; and one of the theories of English manliness +is that the constant pressure from above has toughened the spirit and +enabled Englishmen to stand up stouter and straighter each in his place, +just as it is contended elsewhere that the aesthetic qualities of the +human race have been heightened by its stresses and deprivations in the +struggle of life. + +For my own part, I believe neither the one theory nor the other. People +are the worse for having people above them, and are the ruder and +coarser for having to fight their way. If the triumph of social +inequality is such that there are not four men in London who are not +snobs, it cannot boast itself greater than the success of economic +inequality with ourselves, among whom the fight for money has not +produced of late a first-class poet, painter, or sculptor. The English, +if they are now the manliest people under the sun, have to thank not +their masters but themselves, and a nature originally so generous that +no abuse could lastingly wrong it, no political absurdity spoil it. But +if this nature had been left free from the beginning, we might see now a +nation of Englishmen who, instead of being bound so hard and fast in +the bonds of an imperial patriotism, would be the first in a world-wide +altruism. Yet their patriotism is so devout that it may well pass itself +off upon them for a religious emotion, instead of the superstition which +seems to the stranger the implication of an England in the next world as +well as in this. + + +X + +We fancy that, because we have here an Episcopal Church, with its +hierarchy, we have something equivalent to the English Church. But that +is a mistake. The English Church is a part of the whole of English life, +as the army or navy is; in English crowds, the national priest is not so +frequent as the national soldier, but he is of as marked a quality, and +as distinct from the civil world, in uniform, bearing, and aspect; in +the cathedral towns, he and his like form a sort of spiritual garrison. +At home here you may be ignorant of the feasts of the Episcopal Church +without shame or inconvenience; but in England you had better be versed +in the incidence of all the holy days if you would stand well with +other men, and would know accurately when the changes in the railroad +time-tables will take place. It will not do to have ascertained the +limits of Lent; you must be up in the Michaelmases and Whitmondays, +and the minor saints' days. When once you have mastered this +difficult science, you will realize what a colossal transaction the +disestablishment of the English Church in England would be, and how it +would affect the whole social fabric. + +But, even when you have learned your lesson, it will not be to you as +that knowledge which has been lived, and which has no more need ever +to question itself than the habitual pronunciation of words. If one has +moved in good English society, one has no need ever to ask how a word is +pronounced, far less to go to the dictionary; one pronounces it as one +has always heard it pronounced. The sense of this gives the American a +sort of despair, like that of a German or French speaking foreigner, who +perceives that he never will be able to speak English. The American is +rather worse off, for he has to subdue an inward rebellion, and to form +even the wish to pronounce some English words as the English do. He +has, for example, always said "financier," with the accent on the last +syllable; and if he has consulted his Webster he has found that there +was no choice for him. Then, when he hears it pronounced at Oxford by +the head of a college with the accent on the second syllable, and learns +on asking that it is never otherwise accented in England, his head +whirls a little, and he has a sick moment, in which he thinks he had +better let the verb "to be" govern the accusative as the English do, +and be done with it, or else telegraph for his passage home at once. Or +stop! He must not "telegraph," he must "wire." + + +XI + +As for that breathing in the wrong place which is known as dropping +one's aitches, I found that in the long time between the first and last +of my English sojourns, there had arisen the theory that it was a vice +purely cockney in origin, and that it had grown upon the nation through +the National Schools. It is grossly believed, or boldly pretended, that +till the National School teachers had conformed to the London standard +in their pronunciation the wrong breathing was almost unknown in +England, but that now it was heard everywhere south of the Scottish +border. Worse yet, the teachers in the National Schools had scattered +far and wide that peculiar intonation, that droll slip or twist of the +vowel sounds by which the cockney alone formerly proclaimed his low +breeding, and the infection is now spread as far as popular learning. +Like the wrong breathing, it is social death "to any he that utters it," +not indeed that swift extinction which follows having your name crossed +by royalty from the list of guests at a house where royalty is about to +visit, but a slow, insidious malady, which preys upon its victim, and +finally destroys him after his life-long struggle to shake it off. It is +even worse than the wrong breathing, and is destined to sweep the whole +island, where you can nowhere, even now, be quite safe from hearing +a woman call herself "a lydy." It may indeed be the contagion of the +National School teacher, but I feel quite sure, from long observation of +the wrong breathing, that the wrong breathing did not spread from London +through the schools, but was everywhere as surely characteristic of +the unbred in England as nasality is with us. Both infirmities are of +national origin and extent, and both are individual or personal in their +manifestation. That is, some Americans in every part of the Union talk +through their noses; some Englishmen in every part of the kingdom drop +their aitches. + +The English-speaking Welsh often drop their aitches, as the +English-speaking French do, though the Scotch and Irish never drop them, +any more than the Americans, or the English of the second generation +among us; but the extremely interesting and great little people of Wales +are otherwise as unlike the English as their mother-language is. They +seem capable of doing anything but standing six feet in their stockings, +which is such a very common achievement with the English, but that is +the fault of nature which gave them dark complexions and the English +fair. Where the work of the spirit comes in, it effects such a +difference between the two peoples as lies between an Eisteddfod and a +horse-race. While all the singers of Wales met in artistic emulation at +their national musical festival at Rhyl, all the gamblers of England met +in the national pastime of playing the horses at Doncaster. More money +probably changed hands on the events at Doncaster than at Rhyl, and it +was characteristic of the prevalent influence in the common civilization +(if there is a civilization common to both races) that the King was at +Doncaster and not at Rhyl. But I do not say this to his disadvantage, +for I was myself at Doncaster and not at Rhyl. You cannot, unless +you have a very practised ear, say which is the finer singer at an +Eisteddfod, but almost any one can see which horse comes in first at a +race. + + +XII + +What is most striking in the mixture of strains in England is that it +apparently has not ultimately mixed them; and perhaps after a thousand +years the racial traits will be found marking Americans as persistently. +We now absorb, and suppose ourselves to be assimilating, the different +voluntary and involuntary immigrations; but doubtless after two thousand +years the African, the Celt, the Scandinavian, the Teuton, the Gaul, +the Hun, the Latin, the Slav will be found atavistically asserting his +origin in certain of their common posterity. The Pennsylvania Germans +have as stolidly maintained their identity for two centuries as the +Welsh in Great Britain for twenty, or, so far as history knows, from +the beginning of time. The prejudices of one British stock concerning +another are as lively as ever, apparently, however the enmities may +have worn themselves away. One need not record any of these English +prejudices concerning the Scotch or Irish; they are too well known; but +I may set down the opinion of a lively companion in a railroad journey +that the Welsh are "the prize liars of the universe." He was an expert +accountant by profession, and his affairs took him everywhere in the +three Kingdoms, and this was his settled error; for the Welsh themselves +know that, if they sometimes seem the prey of a lively imagination, it +is the philologically noted fault of their language, which refuses to +lend itself to the accurate expression of fact, but which would probably +afford them terms for pronouncing the statement of my accountant +inexact. He was perhaps a man of convictions rather than conclusions, +for, though he was a bright intelligence, of unusually varied interests, +there were things that had never appealed to him. We praised together +the lovely September landscape through which we were running, and I +ventured some remark upon the large holdings of the land: a thing that +always saddened me in the face of nature with the reflection that those +who tilled the soil owned none of it; though I ought to have remembered +the times when the soil owned them, and taken heart. My notion seemed to +strike him for the first time, but he dismissed the fact as a necessary +part of the English system; it had never occurred to him that there +could be question of that system. There must be many Englishmen to whom +it does occur, but if you do not happen to meet them you cannot blame +the others. + +I fancied that one of the Englishmen to whom it might have occurred was +he whom I met in Wales at Aberystwyth, where we spoke together a moment +in the shadow of the co-educational University there, and who seemed at +least of a different mind concerning the Welsh. "These Welsh farmers," +he said, "send their sons and daughters to college as if it were quite +the natural thing to do. But just imagine a Dorsetshire peasant sending +his boy to a University!" + +We suppose that the large holdings of land are the effect of wrongs and +abuses now wholly in the past, and that the causes for their increase +are no longer operative, but are something like those geological laws by +which the strata under them formed themselves. Once, however, in driving +through the most beautiful part of England, which I will not specify +because every part of England is the most beautiful, I came upon an +illustration of the reverse, as signal as the spectacle of a landslide. +It was the accumulation, not merely within men's memories, but within +the actual generation, of vast bodies of land in the hold of a great +nobleman who had contrived a title in them by the simple device of +enclosing the people's commons. It was a wrong, but there was no one of +the wronged who was brave enough or rich enough to dispute it through +the broken law, and no witness public-spirited enough to come to +their aid. Such things make us think patiently, almost proudly, of +our national foible of graft, which may really be of feudal origin. +Doubtless the aggression was attacked in the press, but we all know +what the attacks of the press amount to against the steadfast will of +a powerful corporation, and a great nobleman in England is a powerful +corporation. In this instance he had not apparently taken the people's +land without some wish to make them a return for it. He had built a +handsome road through their property, which he maintained in splendid +condition, and he allowed them to drive over his road, and to walk +freely in certain portions of their woods. He had also built a +magnificent hospital for them, and it seemed rather hard, then, to +hear that one of the humblest of them had been known to speak of him in +whispered confidence as a "Upas tree." + + +XIII + +Probably he was not personally a Upas tree, probably the rancor toward +him left from being bawled after by one of his gatemen at a turning we +had taken in his enclosure, "That's a private path!" was unjust. There +was no sign, such as everywhere in England renders a place secure from +intrusion. The word "Private" painted up anywhere does the effect of +bolts and bars and of all obsolete man-traps beyond it, and is not for a +moment that challenge to the wayfaring foot which it seems so often +with us; but the warnings to the public which we make so mandatory, the +English language with unfailing gentleness. You are not told to keep +your foot or your wheel to a certain pathway; you are "requested," +and sometimes even "kindly requested"; I do not know but once I was +"respectfully requested." Perhaps that nobleman's possession of these +lands was so new that his retainers had to practise something of +unwonted rudeness in keeping it wholly his where he chose. At any rate, +the rule of civility is so universal that the politeness from class to +class is, for what the stranger sees, all but unfailing. I dare say he +does not see everything, even the Argus-eyed American, but apparently +the manners of the lower class, where they have been touched by the +upper, have been softened and polished to the same consistence +and complexion. When it comes to the proffers, and refusals, and +insistences, and acceptances between people of condition, such as I +witnessed once in a crowded first-class carriage from London on an +Oxford holiday, nothing could be more gently urgent, more beautifully +forbearing. If the writers of our romantic novels could get just those +manners into their fiction, I should not mind their dealing so much with +the English nobility and gentry; for those who intend being our +nobility and gentry, by-and-by, could not do better than study such +high-breeding. + +If we approach the morals of either superiors or inferiors, we are in +a region where it behooves us to tread carefully. To be honest, I know +nothing about them, and I will not assume to know anything. I heard from +authority which I could not suspect of posing for omniscience that the +English rustics were apt to be very depraved, but they may on the +other hand be saints for all that I can prove against them. They are +superstitious, it is said, and there are few villages or old houses +that have not their tutelary spectres. The belief in ghosts is almost +universal among the people; as I may allow without superiority, for I +do not know but I believe in them myself, and there are some million of +American spiritualists who make an open profession of faith in them. It +is said also that the poor in England are much spoiled by the constant +aid given them in charity. This is supposed to corrupt them, and to +make them dependent upon the favors of fortune, rather than the sweat of +their brows. On the other hand, they often cannot get work, as I infer +from the armies of the unemployed, and, in these cases, I cannot hold +them greatly to blame if they bless their givers by their readiness +to receive. If one may infer from the incessant beneficences, and the +constant demands for more and more charities, one heaped upon another, +there are more good objects in England than anywhere else under the sun, +for one only gives to good objects, of course. The oppression of the +subscriptions is tempered by the smallness of the sum which may satisfy +them. "Five shillings is a subscription," said a friend who was accused +of really always giving five pounds. + + +XIV + +The English rich do not give so spectacularly as our rich do--that +is, by handfuls of millions, but then the whole community gives more, I +think, than our community does, and when it does not give, the necessary +succor is taxed out of its incomes and legacies. I do not mean that +there is no destitution, but only that the better off seem to have the +worse off more universally and perpetually in mind than with us. All +this is believed to be very demoralizing to the poor, and doubtless the +certainty of soup and flannel is bad for the soul of an old woman whose +body is doubled up with rheumatism. The Church seems to blame for +much of the evil that ensues from giving something to people who have +nothing; but I dare say the Dissenters are also guilty. + +Just how much is wanted to stay the stomach of a healthy pauper, it +would be hard to say; but now and then the wayfarer gets some hint of +the frequency if not the amount of feeding among the poor who are able +to feed themselves. One day, in the outskirts--they were very tattered +and draggled--of Liverpool, we stopped at a pastry-shop, where the kind +woman "thought she could accommodate" us with a cup of tea, though she +was terribly pressed with custom from all sorts of minute maids and +small boys coming in for "penn'orths" of that frightful variety of tart +and cake which dismays the beholder from innumerable shop windows +in England. When we were brought our safer refection, we noted her +activities to the hostess, and she said, "Yes, they all want a bit +of cake with their tea, even the poorest"; and when we ventured our +supposition that they made their afternoon tea the last meal of the day, +she laughed at the notion. "Last meal! They have a good supper before +they go to bed. Indeed, they all want their four meals a day." + +Another time, thriftily running in a third-class carriage from Crewe to +Chester, I was joined by a friendly man who addressed me with the frank +cordiality of the lower classes in recognizing one of their sort. "They +don't know how to charge!" he said, with an irony that referred to the +fourpence he had been obliged to pay for a cup of station tea; and when +I tried to allege some mitigating facts in behalf of the company, he +readily became autobiographical. The transition from tea to eating +generally was easy, and he told me that he was a plumber, going to do a +job of work at Llandudno, where he had to pay fourteen bob, which I +knew to be shillings and mentally translated into $3.50, a week for +his board. His wages were $1.50 a day, which the reader who multiplies +fourpence by twenty, to make up the difference in money values, will +find to be the wages of a good mechanic in the first Edward's time, five +hundred years ago. On this he professed to live very well. He rose +every morning at half-past four, and at six he had a breakfast of bread, +butter, and coffee; at nine he had porridge and coffee; at one, he had +soup, meat, and eggs, and perhaps beer; at night, after he got home from +work, he had a stew and a bit of meat, and perhaps beer, with Mother. He +thought that English people ate too much, generally, and especially +on Sunday, when they had nothing else to do. Most men never came home +without asking, "Well, Mother, what have you got for me to eat now?" +When I remembered how sparely our farm people and mechanics fared, I +thought that he was right, or they were wrong; for the puzzling fact +remained that they looked gaunt and dyspeptic, and he hale and fresh, +though the difference may have had as much to do with the air as the +food. I liked him, and I cannot leave him without noting that he was of +the lean-faced, slightly aquiline British type, with a light mustache; +he was well dressed and well set up, and he spoke strongly, as North +Britons do, with nothing of our people's husky whine. I found him on +further acquaintance of anti-Chamberlain politics, pro-Boer as to +the late war, and rather socialistic. He blamed the labor men for +not choosing labor men to office instead of the gentry who offered +themselves. He belonged to a plumbers' union, and he had nothing to +complain of, but he inferred that the working-man was better off in +America, from the fact that none of his friends who had gone to the +States ever came home to stay, though they nearly all came home for +a holiday, sooner or later. He differed from my other friend, the +accountant, in being very fond of the Welsh; it must be owned their race +seemed to have acquired merit with him through the tip of two sovereigns +which his last employer in Llandudno had given him. On the other hand, +he had no love for the Italians who were coming in, especially at +Glasgow. In Glasgow, he said, there were more drunken women than +anywhere else in the world, though there was no public-house drinking +with them as in London. This, so far as I got at it, formed his outlook +on life, but I dare say there was more of it. + + +XV + +I was always regretting that I got at the people so little, and that +only chance hints of what they were thinking and feeling reached me. +Now and then, a native observer said something about them which +seemed luminous. "We are frightfully feudal," such an observer said, +"especially the poor." He did not think it a fault, I believe, and only +used his adverb intensifyingly, for he was of a Tory mind. He meant the +poor among the country people, who have at last mastered that principle +of the feudal system which early enabled the great nobles to pay nothing +for the benefits they enjoyed from it. But my other friend, the plumber, +was not the least feudal, or not so feudal as many a lowly ward-heeler +in New York, who helps to make up the muster of some captain of +politics, under the lead of a common boss. The texture of society, in +the smarter sense, the narrower sense, is what I could not venture to +speak of more confidently. Once I asked a friend, a very dear and valued +friend, whether a man's origin or occupation would make any difference +in his social acceptance, if he were otherwise interesting and +important. He seemed not to know what I would be at, and, when he +understood, he responded with almost a shout of amazement, "Oh, not the +least in the world!" But I have my doubts still; and I should say that +it might be as difficult for a very cultivated and agreeable man servant +to get on in London society, as for an artist or poet to feel at home +in the first circles of New York. Possibly, however, London society, +because of its almost immeasurable vastness, can take in more of more +sorts of people, without the consciousness of differences which keeps +our own first circles so elect. I venture, somewhat wildly, somewhat +unwarrantably, the belief that English society is less sensitive to +moral differences than ours, and that people with their little _taches_ +would find less anxiety in London than in New York lest they should come +off on the people they rubbed against. Some Americans, who, even with +our increasing prevalence of divorces, are not well seen at home, are +cheerfully welcomed in England. + +Perhaps, there, all Americans, good and bad, high and low, coarse and +fine, are the same to senses not accustomed to our varying textures +and shades of color; that is a matter I should be glad to remand to the +psychologist, who will have work enough to do if he comes to inquire +into such mysteries. One can never be certain just how the English take +us, or how much, or whether they take us at all. Oftenest I was inclined +to think that we were imperceptible to them, or that, when we were +perceptible, they were aware of us as Swedenborg says the most celestial +angels are aware of evil spirits, merely as something angular. Americans +were distressful to their consciousness, they did not know why; and +then they tried to ignore us. But perhaps this is putting it a little +fantastically. What I know is that one comes increasingly to reserve the +fact of one's nationality, when it is not essential to the occasion, and +to become as much as possible an unknown quality, rather than a quality +aggressive or positive. Sometimes, when I could feel certain of my +ground, I ventured my conviction that Englishmen were not so much +interested in Americans as those Americans who stayed at home were apt +to think; but when I once expressed this belief to a Unitarian minister, +whom I met in the West of England, he received it with surprise and +refusal. He said that in his own immediate circle, at least, his friends +were interested and increasingly interested in America, what she was +and what she meant to be, and still looked toward her for the lead +in certain high things which Englishmen have ceased to expect of +themselves. My impression is that most of the most forward of the +English Sociologists regard America as a back number in those political +economics which imply equality as well as liberty in the future. They do +not see any difference between our conditions and theirs, as regards +the man who works for his living with his hands, except that wages are +higher with us, and that physically there is more elbow-room, though +mentally and morally there is not. Save a little in my Unitarian +minister, and this only conjecturally, I did not encounter that fine +spirit which in Old England used to imagine the New World we have not +quite turned out to be; but once I met an Englishman who had lived +in Canada, and who, gentleman-bred as he was, looked back with fond +homesickness to the woods where he had taken up land, and built himself +a personable house, chiefly with his own hands. He had lived himself out +of touch with his old English life in that new country, and had drawn +breath in an opener and livelier air which filled his lungs as the home +atmosphere never could again. + + +XVI + +Yet he was standing stiffly up for himself, and strewing his +convictions and opinions broadcast as the English all do when pressed +by circumstance, while we, with none of their shyness, mostly think our +thoughts to ourselves. I suppose we do it because we like better than +they to seem of one effect with the rest of our kind. In England one +sees a variety of dress in men which one rarely sees at home. They dress +there not only in keeping with their work and their play, but in the +indulgence of any freak of personal fancy, so that in the street of a +provincial town, like Bath, for instance, you will encounter in a short +walk a greater range of trousers, leggings, caps, hats, coats, jackets, +collars, scarfs, boots and shoes, of tan and black, than you would meet +at home in a month of Sundays. The differences do not go to the length +of fashions, such as reduce our differences to uniformity, and clothe, +say, our legs in knickerbockers till it is found everybody is wearing +them, when immediately nobody wears them. Only ladies, of fashions +beyond men's, gratify caprices like ours, and even these perhaps not +voluntarily. In the obedience they show to the rule that they must never +wear the same dinner or ball gown twice, it was said (but who can ever +find out the truth of such things?) that they sometimes had sent home +from the dressmaker's a number of dresses on liking, and wore them in +succession, only to return them, all but one at least, as not liked, the +dressmaker having found her account in her work being shown in society. + +[Illustration: AN ENGLISH HOUSEMAID] + +I do not know just what is to be inferred from a social fact or +statement like this, but I may say that the devotion to an ideal of +social position is far deeper with the English than with us. Whether +we spend more or not, I believe that the English live much nearer their +incomes than Americans do. I think that we save more out of our +earnings than they out of theirs, and that in this we are more like the +Continental peoples, the French or the Italians. They spend vastly more +on state than we do, because, for one thing, they have more state to +spend on. A man may continue to make money in America, and not change +his manner of living till he chooses, and he may never change it. Such +a thing could not happen to an Englishwoman as happened to the elderly +American housewife who walked through the magnificent house which her +husband had bought to surprise her, and sighed out at last, "Well, now I +suppose I shall have to keep a girl!" The girl would have been kept +from the beginning of her husband's prosperity, and multiplied, till +the house was full of servants. If you have the means of a gentleman +in England, you must live like a gentleman, apparently; you cannot live +plainly, and put by, and largely you must trust to your life-insurance +as the fortune you will leave your heirs. It cannot be denied that the +more generous expenditure of the English adds to the grace of life, and +that they are more hospitable according to their means than we are; or +than those Continental peoples who are not hospitable at all. + +A thing that one feels more and more irritatingly in England is that, +while with other foreigners we stand on common ground, where we may be +as unlike them as we choose, with the English we always stand on English +ground, where we can differ only at our peril, and to our disadvantage. +A person speaking English and bearing an English name, had better be +English, for if he cannot it shows, it proves, that there is something +wrong in him. Our misfortune is that our tradition, and perhaps our +inclination, obliges us to be un-English, whereas we do not trouble +ourselves to be un-French, or un-Italian, for we are so by nature. The +effort involved in distinguishing ourselves breeds a sort of annoyance, +or call it no more than uneasiness, which is almost as bad as a bad +conscience; and in our sense of hopeless perdition we turn vindictively +upon our judge. But that is not fair and it is not wise; he does not +mean to be our judge, except when he comes to us for the purpose; in his +own house, he is civilly unaware of putting us to any test whatever. If +you ask him whether he likes this thing or that of ours, he will tell +you frankly; he never can see why he should not be frank; he has a kind +of helplessness in always speaking the truth; and he does not try to +make it palatable. + + +XVII + +An English Radical, who would say of his King no more than that he was +a good little man, and most useful in promoting friendship with France, +was inclined to blame us because we did not stay by at the time of our +Revolution, and help them fight out as Englishmen the fight for English +freedom. He had none of the loyalty of sentiment which so mystifies the +American, but plenty of the loyalty of reason, and expected a Utopia +which should not be of political but of economical cast. But one was +always coming upon illustrations of the loyalty of sentiment with +which of course one could have no quarrel, for their patriotism seldom +concerned us, except rather handsomely to include us. The French have +ceased to be the hereditary enemy, and the Russians have now taken their +place in the popular patriotism. I always talked with the lower classes +when I could, perhaps because I felt myself near them in my unworthy +way, and one evening in a grassy lane I made the acquaintance of a +friendly man letting his horse browse the wayside turf. He was in the +livery-stable line, but he had been a soldier many years. Upon this +episode he became freely autobiographical, especially concerning his +service in India. He volunteered the declaration that he had had enough +of war, but he added, thoughtfully, "I should like to go out for a +couple of years if there was any trouble with Russia." + +The love of England comes out charmingly in the swarming of English +tourists in every part of their country. Americans may sometimes +outnumber them at the Continental shrines, but we are in a pitiful +minority at the memorable places in England; in fact, we are nowhere +beside the natives. I liked their fondness for their own so much that +I never could feel the fine scorn for "trippers" which I believe all +persons of condition ought to assume. Even when the trippers did +not seem very intelligently interested in what they saw, they were +harmlessly employed, for a scene of beauty, or of historic appeal, could +not be desecrated by the courtships which are constantly going on all +over England, especially at the holiday seasons. + +The English are, indeed, great holiday-makers, even when past the age +of putting their arms around one another's waists. The many and many +seaside resorts form the place of their favorite outings, where they try +to spend such days and weeks of the late summer as their savings will +pay for. It is said that families in very humble station save the year +round for these vacations, and, having put by twelve or fifteen pounds, +repair to some such waterside as Blackpool, or its analogue in their +neighborhood, and lavish them upon the brief joy of the time. They +take the cheaper lodgings, and bring with them the less perishable +provisions, and lead a life of resolute gayety on the sands and in the +sea, and at the pier-ends where the negro minstrels and the Pierrots, +who equally abound, make the afternoons and evenings a delight which no +one would suspect from their faces to be the wild thing it is. If they +go home at the end "high sorrowful and cloyed," there is no forecast of +it in their demeanor, which is as little troubled as it is animated. +The young people are even openly gay, and the robustness of their +flirtations adds sensibly to the interest of the spectator. Our own +public lovers seem of a humbler sort, and they mostly content themselves +with the passive embraces of which every seat in our parks affords an +example; but in England such lovers add playful struggles. A favorite +pastime seemed to be for one of them to hold something in the hand, and +for the other to try prying it open. When it was the young man who kept +his hand shut, the struggle could go on almost indefinitely. I suppose +it led to many engagements and marriages. + +When the young people were not walking up and down, or playfully +scuffling, they were reading novels; in fact, I do not imagine that +anywhere else in the world is there a half, or a tenth part, so much +fiction consumed as in the English summer resorts. It is probably of the +innutritious lightness of pop-corn; I had never the courage to look at +the volumes which I could so easily have overlooked; but I am sure it +was all out of the circulating library. As there were often several +young women to one man, most of the girls had to content themselves +with the flirtations in the books, where, I dare say, the heroines +were always prying the heroes' hands open. On every seat one found them +poring upon the glowing page, and met them in every walk with a volume +under the arm, and another clasped to the heart. At places where the +hand played, and they were ostensibly listening to the music, they were +bowed upon their books, and the flutter of the turning leaves almost +silenced the blare of the horns. By what inspiration they knew when _God +Save the King_ was coming, and rose with a long sigh heaved in common, +I should not be able to say. Perhaps they always reached the end of a +story at the time the band came to that closing number, or perhaps they +felt its imminence in their nerves. The fiction was not confined to the +young girls, however. Both sexes and all ages partook of it; I saw as +many old girls as young girls reading novels, and mothers of families +were apparently as much addicted to the indulgence. I suppose they put +by their books when they took tea, which is the other most noticeable +dissipation in England. But I cannot enter upon that chapter; it is +too large a theme; I will say, merely, that as the saloons are on Sixth +Avenue, so the tearooms are in every part of the island. + +[Illustration: LEADS A LIFE OF GAYETY ON THE SANDS] + + +XVIII + +It had seemed to me in former visits to England that the Christian +Sabbath was a more depressing day there than here, but from the last +I have a more cheerful memory of it. I still felt it dispiriting in +London, where as many fled from it as could, and where the empty streets +symbolized a world abandoned to destruction; but this was mainly in the +forenoon. Even then, the markets and fairs in the avenues given up to +them were the scenes of an activity which was not without gayety, and +certainly not without noise; and when the afternoon came, the lower +classes, such as had remained in town, thronged to the public houses, +and the upper classes to the evening parade in the Park. As to the +relative amount of church-going, I will not even assume to be sure; but +I have a fancy that it is a rite much less rigorous than it used to +be. Still, in provincial places, I found the churches full on a Sunday +morning, and all who could afford it hallowed the day by putting on +a frock-coat and a top-hat, which are not worn outside of London on +week-days. The women, of course, were always in their best on Sunday. +Perhaps in the very country the upper classes go to church as much as +formerly, but I have my doubts whether they feel so much obliged to it +in conformity to usage, or for the sake of example to their inferiors. +Where there are abbeys and minsters and cathedrals, as there are pretty +well everywhere in England, religion is an attractive spectacle, and one +could imagine people resorting to its functions for aesthetic reasons. + +But, in these guesses, one must remember that the English who remained +at home were never Puritanized, never in such measure personally +conscienced, as those who came to America in the times of the successive +Protestant fervors; and that is a thing which we are apt to forget. The +home-keeping English continued, with changes of ritual, much like the +peoples who still acknowledged as their head "the Bishop of Rome." +Their greater morality, if it was greater, was temperamental rather than +spiritual, and, leaving the church to look after religion much more than +our Puritans did, they kept a simplicity of nature impossible to the +sectaries always taking stock of their souls. In fact, the Calvinists +of New England were almost essentially different from the Calvinists of +Holland, of France, even of Scotland. If our ancestors were the children +of light, as they trusted, they were darkened by the forest, into which +they plunged, to certain reasons which the children of darkness, as the +Puritans believed the non-Puritans to be, saw by the uncertain glimmers +from the world about them. There is no denying that with certain great +gains, the American Puritans became, in a worldly sense, provincialized, +and that if they lived in the spirit, they lived in it narrowly, while +the others, who lived in the body, lived in it liberally, or at any rate +handsomely. From our narrowness we flattered ourselves that we were able +to imagine a life more broadly based than theirs, or at least a life +from which theirs must look insufficient and unfinal, so long as man +feels within himself the prompting to be something better or higher than +he is. Yet the English life is wonderfully perfected. With a faery +dream of a king supported in his preeminence by a nobility, a nobility +supported in turn by a commonalty, a commonalty supported again by a +proletariat resting upon immeasurable ether; with a system of government +kept, by assent so general that the dissent does not matter, in the +hands of a few families reared, if not trained, to power; with a society +so intimately and thoroughly self-acquainted that one touch of gossip +makes its whole world kin, and responsive to a single emotion; with a +charity so wisely studied, and so carefully applied, that restive misery +never quite grows rebellious; with a patriotism so inborn and ingrained +that all things English seem righteous because English; with a +willingness to share the general well-being quite to the verge, but +never beyond the verge, of public control of the administration--with +all this, the thing must strike the unbelieving observer as desperately +perfect. "They have got it down cold," he must say to himself, and +confirm himself in his unfaith by reflecting that it is very cold. + + +XIX + +The best observer of England that ever was, he whose book about the +English makes all other comment seem idle and superfluous palaver, that +Ralph Waldo Emerson whom we always find ahead of us when we look back +for him, was once, as he relates in a closing chapter of English Traits, +brought to bay by certain great English friends of his, who challenged +him to say whether there really were any Americans with an American +idea, and a theory of our future. "Thus challenged, I bethought myself +neither of Congress, neither of President nor of Cabinet Ministers, nor +of such as would make of America another Europe.... I opened the dogma +of no-government and non-resistance, and anticipated the objections and +the fun, and procured a kind of hearing for it. I said, It is true that +I have never yet seen in any country a man of sufficient valor to stand +for this truth, and yet ... 'tis certain, as God liveth, the gun that +does not need another gun, the law of love and justice alone, can effect +a clean revolution.... I insisted ... that the manifest absurdity of +the view to English feasibility could make no difference to a gentleman; +that as to our secure tenure of our mutton-chop and spinach in London +or in Boston, the soul might quote Talleyrand, '_Messieurs, je n'en +vois pas la necessite_.'" In other words, Emerson laid before his +great English friends a programme, as nearly as might then be, of +philosophical anarchism, and naturally it met with no more acceptance +than it would if now presented to the most respectable of his American +readers. Yet it is never to be forgotten that it was the English who, +with all their weight of feudal tradition, and amidst the nightmares to +which their faery dream seemed so long subject, invented the only form +of Democratic Christianity the world has yet known, unless indeed the +German Mennonites are the same as the earlier English Quakers were in +creed and life. In the pseudo-republic of the Cromwellian commonwealth +the English had a state as wholly without liberty, equality, and +fraternity as in the king-capped oligarchy they had before and have +had ever since. We may be sure that they will never have such another +commonwealth, or any resembling ours, which can no longer offer itself +as an eminent example. + +The sort of Englishmen, of whose respect Americans can make surest are +those English thick-and-thin patriots who admire force and strength, and +believe that it is the Anglo-Saxon mission to possess the earth, and +to profit by its weaker peoples, not cruelly, not unkindly, yet +unquestionably. The Englishmen of whose disrespect we can make surest +are those who expect to achieve liberty, equality, and fraternity in the +economic way, the political way having failed; who do not care whether +the head of the state is born or elected, is called "King" or called +"President," since he will presently not be at all; who abhor war, and +believe that the meek shall inherit the earth, and these only if they +work for a living. They have already had their will with the existing +English state, until now that state is far more the servant of the +people in fetching and carrying, in guarding them from hard masters +and succoring them in their need, than the republic which professes +to derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. When one +encounters this sort of Englishman, one thinks silently of the child +labor in the South, of the monopolies in the North, of the companies +which govern while they serve us, and one hopes that the Englishman is +not silently thinking of them too. He is probably of the lower classes, +and one consoles one's self as one can by holding one's head higher in +better company, where, without secret self-contempt, one can be more +openly proud of our increasing fortunes and our increasing territory, +and our warlike adequacy to a first position among the nations of +the world. There is no fear that in such company one's national +susceptibilities will be wounded, or that one will not be almost as much +admired for one's money as at home. I do not say quite, because there +are still things in England even more admired than money. Certainly +a very rich American would be considered in such English society, +but certainly he would not be so much considered as an equally rich +Englishman who was also a duke. + +I cannot name a nobleman of less rank, because I will not belittle my +rich countryman, but perhaps the English would think differently, and +would look upon him as lower than the latest peer or the newest knight +of the King's creation. The King, who has no power, can do almost +anything in England; and his touch, which is no longer sovereign for +scrofula, can add dignity and give absolute standing to a man whose +achievements merit it, but who with us would fail of anything like it. +The English system is more logical than ours, but not so reasonable. The +English have seen from the beginning inequality and the rule of the few. +We can hardly prove that we see, in the future, equality and the rule +of the many. Yet our vision is doubtless prophetic, whatever obliquities +our frequent astigmatism may impart to it. Meantime, in its ampler range +there is room for the play of any misgiving short of denial; but the +English cannot doubt the justice of what they have seen without forming +an eccentric relation to the actual fact. The Englishman who refuses the +formal recognition of his distinction by his prince is the anomaly, +not the Englishman who accepts it. Gladstone who declines a peerage is +anomalous, not Tennyson who takes it. As part of the English system, as +a true believer in the oligarchically administered monarchy, Gladstone +was illogical, and Tennyson was logical. + + +THE END + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Seven English Cities, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN ENGLISH CITIES *** + +***** This file should be named 7187.txt or 7187.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/1/8/7187/ + +Produced by Tricia Gilbert, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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