An American Four-In-Hand in Britain Part 4

[Sidenote: _Wild Flowers._]

With these general observations we shall not "leave the subject with you," but, retracing our steps to the hills overlooking Brighton, we shall mount the coach waiting there for us at the King's Cross Inn; for you remember we dismounted there while the horses were watered for the first time. Ten miles of bewildering pleasure had brought us here; some of us pushed forward and had our first stroll, but we scattered in a minute, for who could resist the flowers which tempted us at every step!

The roses were just in season; the honeysuckle, ragged robin, meadow sweet, wandering willie, and who can tell how many others whose familiar names are household words. What bouquets we gathered, what exclamations of delight were heard as one ma.s.s of beauty after another burst upon our sight! We began to realize that Paradise lay before us, began to know that we had discovered the rarest plan upon earth for pleasure; as for duty that was not within our horizon. We scarcely knew there was work to do. An echo of a moan from the weary world we had cast behind was not heard. Divinest melancholy was out of favor; Il Penseroso was discarded for the time, and L'Allegro, the happier G.o.ddess, crowned, bringing in her train--

"Sport, that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter, holding both his sides; Come and trip it as you go, On the light, fantastic toe."

That does not quite express it, for there was time for momentary pauses now and then, when the heart swelled with grat.i.tude. We were so grateful for being so blessed. It was during this stroll that Emma came quietly to my side, slipped her arm in mine, and said in that rich, velvety English voice which we all envy her: "Oh, Andrew, when I am to go home you will have to tell me plainly, for indeed I shall never be able to leave this of my own accord. I haven't been as happy since I was a young girl." "Do you really think you could go all the way to Inverness?" "Oh, I could go on this way forever." "All right, my lady, 'check your baggage through,' as we say in Yankeedom;" and never did that woman lose sight of the coach till it was torn away from her at Inverness.

Some of us dismounted before reaching Horsham, and went in pursuit of adventure. In an old tan-yard by the wayside, where men were making leather in the crude, old-fashioned way, with horses instead of a steam engine for the motive power, we had our first conversation with the British rural workman, whose weekly earnings do not exceed $3.50. Now, this was not more than thirty miles from London, and only twenty-one from the sea at Brighton, and yet the oldest man of the party, who was the most talkative, had never seen the sea. He had been in London once, during the great Exhibition in 1851, having been treated to the journey by his employer; but his brother, who lived only a few miles beyond, had never been in a railway carriage. Their old master had died recently and had left a pound ($5) to every workman who had been with him for a certain number of years--I think ten. Good old master! The owners had new-fangled notions, he said, and were spending "heaps o' money" in building a steam engine which was not yet ready, but which he invited us to go and see. This was to do the work much faster; but (with a shake of the head) "I've 'earn tell by some as knows it's na sae gid for the leather."

[Sidenote: _Rip Van Winkles._]

Could we really be within an hour's ride of the capital of the world, and yet in the midst of a Sleepy Hollow like this, peopled by Rip van Winkles! This incident gives a just idea of the tenacity with which the English hold to what their fathers did before them. This man's father could not have seen the sea at Brighton, nor have visited London short of spending a week's earnings. His successor goes along as his father did--what was good enough for his father is good enough for him,

"Chained to one spot, They draw nutrition, propagate and rot."

But the next generation is to see all this changed, for even southern England is under the compulsory education act, and the rural population is to have the political franchise and a voice in the election of county boards.

At Horsham we lunched at the King's Arms, walked about its princ.i.p.al square, and were off again for Guildford. As we leave the sea the soil becomes richer, and ere we reach Horsham we say, yes, this is England indeed; but I forgot we pa.s.sed through the Weald of Suss.e.x before reaching Horsham. The cloudy sky cast deep shadows with the sunbeams over the rich, wooded landscape, as no clear blue sky has power to do, and brought to my mind Mrs. Browning's lines:

... "my woods in Suss.e.x have some purple shades at gloaming, Which are worthy of a king in state, or poet in his youth.

Oh, the blessed woods of Suss.e.x, I can hear them still around me, With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the wind!"

And many a stately home did we see, fit for her "who spake such good thoughts natural."

Mrs. Browning is said to have written Lady Geraldine in a few hours, lying upon a sofa. This is one of the proofs cited that genius does its work as if by inspiration, without great effort. What nonsense! The Agave Americana bursts into flower in a day; but, look you, a hundred years of quiet, unceasing growth, which stopped not night nor day, was the period of labor preceding the miracle--a hundred years, during all of which it drank of the sunshine and the dews. Scott wrote some of his best works in a few weeks, but for a lifetime he never flagged in his work of gathering the fruits of song and story. Burns dashed off "A man's a man for a' that" in a jiffy. Yes, but for how many years were his very heartstrings tingling and his blood boiling at the injustice of hereditary rank! His life is in that song, not a few hours of it.

GUILDFORD, June 17.

[Sidenote: _A Generous Squire._]

The approach to Guildford gives us our first real perfect English lane--so narrow and so bound in by towering hedgerows worthy the name.

Had we met a vehicle at some of the prettiest turns there would have been trouble, for, although the lane is not quite as narrow as the pathway of the auld brig, where two wheelbarrows trembled as they met, yet a four-in-hand upon an English lane requires a clear track.

Vegetation near Guildford is luxuriant enough to meet our expectations of England. It was at the White Lion we halted, and here came our first experience of quarters for the night. The first dinner en route was a decided success in our fine sitting-room, the American flags, brought into requisition for the first time to decorate the mantel, bringing to all sweet memories of home. During our stroll to-day we stopped at a small village inn before which pretty roses grew, hanging in cl.u.s.ters upon its sides. It was a very small and humble inn indeed, the tile floors sanded, and the furniture of the tap-room only plain wood--there were no chairs, only benches around the table where the hinds sit at night, drinking home-brewed beer, smoking their clay pipes, and discussing not the political affairs of the nation, but the affairs of their little world, bounded by the hall at one end of the estate, and the parsonage at the other. The merits of the gray mare, or the qualities of the last breed of sheep at the home farm, or the new-fangled plough which the squire has been rash enough to order. The landlady told us that she had recently moved from one of the midland towns to this village to secure purer air for the children, who had not been thriving well. Her husband was a gardener and worked for the squire. Two pretty little girls were brought in for us to see, true Saxons, with blue eyes and light colored hair, but with less color in their sweet innocent faces than usual--the result of dirty, crowded Leeds, no doubt--but soon to be changed by the country air. The eldest girl could not have been more than six or seven years old, but when she was given a few pence she went to the next room and brought a sheet of paper upon which were pasted some penny postage stamps. She was going at once to the post office to buy more stamps with her pennies. On inquiring we learned that the Post Office Department receives deposits of a shilling in stamps and allows two and a half per cent. interest I think, upon them, and "the squire" G.o.d bless him! had promised all the children upon his estates, which I trust vast, that whenever they saved eleven stamps he would give the last one to complete the shilling. In this way he hopes to instil into the young the importance of beginning early to save something for a rainy day. The still younger girl had also her stamp paper. The English are an improvident race, not given to denying themselves to-day that they may feast later on. "Do not put off till to-morrow what can be done to-day" is generally construed to mean, that the cake may as well be eaten at once, so that upon the whole we were not displeased to see these children trained to acc.u.mulate; but nevertheless it did seem pitiful that the dear little lambs, instead of sporting without a care, should have so early to learn that life is to the ma.s.s mainly a struggle for subsistence. Civilization is a failure till all this be changed. What a pity the name and address of that squire are mislaid. He evidently feels that property has its duties as well as its rights. The village and the inn and all the surroundings showed that the Hall was, in this instance, as it is in so many others, the centre and source of good influences. "He has a good wife and earnest thinking and working daughters," said one of the party. Surely he has and they do their part or he could not succeed. It was quite safe to infer this, was the verdict. Man is a poor agency for such work, left to himself. It needs woman's patience and glowing sympathy to work improvement in the manners and customs of the rural population. Man may supply the money, which corresponds only to barren faith among the virtues; it is to woman we must look for the harvest--good works.

When we remounted the coach, one regret found loud expression, and as the Scribe writes to-day, he wishes the omission could be remedied. Why did not we give these children a shilling each, with strict injunctions to gorge themselves with taffy and gingerbread, not a penny of it to be saved. A regular spree regardless of consequences! "Oh! it would have made them ill," said one. Well, suppose it did, just think of the legacy left them, a dream for years that they had been brought to death's door by too much taffy! Why, the sweet taste would have lingered in the pretty little mouths till womanhood, and they would have thought about their illness as Conn in the Shaughraun did about his month in jail for taking the squire's horse for a run with the hounds: "Begorra! it was worth it!"

[Sidenote: _Franklin's Proverb._]

It might have given them a taste for dissipation, and they would have ceased to gather stamps, and turned out badly, was the next suggestion.

This was seemingly agreed to by the majority, but there was one who wished he had secretly conveyed to the cherubs, at least a six-pence each to be entirely devoted to gormandizing. "Take care of your pence and the pounds will take care of themselves," the Queen Dowager remarked, is one of Ben Franklin's wisest proverbs. There was one at least of her children who had good reason to remember that favorite axiom. During his temporary absence from school, good Mr. Martin had inst.i.tuted a rule that each one in the cla.s.s should repeat a proverb before the lessons began. Her offspring was at the foot of the cla.s.s, from absence it is to be hoped, and as each boy and girl spoke his proverb (they were taught together in those days, much to the advantage of both s.e.xes, for who wanted to be a dunce before pretty and clever A.

R.) they had an unfamiliar sound, but when his turn came he innocently gave them his mother's favorite from Franklin. It was like introducing a strange dog into a crowded church. After the uproar had subsided, the teacher said that while it was no doubt a very good proverb, it was not just in place among the sacred proverbs of Solomon. Another story was related of one of the Charioteers who, when told that he ought to sing when the others did in church, struck up, at the top of his shrill piping voice, "Come under my plaidie, the night's going to fa';" when the congregation began the Psalm. His uncle was so convulsed that, notwithstanding the angry glances of many near him, he could not stop the performance in time to prevent an unseemly interruption.

We had done our first day's coaching, and a long day at that, and looking back it is amusing to remember how anxiously we awaited the reports of the ladies of our party; for it was not without grave apprehension that some must fall by the wayside, as it were, as we journeyed on. One who had tried coaching upon this side had informed us that few ladies could stand it; but it was very evident that the spirits and appet.i.tes of ours were entirely satisfactory, and they all laughed at the idea that they could not go on forever. The Queen Dowager was quite as fresh as any. It was a shame that general orders consigned to bed at an early hour two of the ladies thought least robust, while the others walked about the suburbs of Guildford until late. We stood in the thickening twilight in front of an ivy-clad residence for some time, and asked each other if anything so exquisite had ever been seen, so full of rest, of home. The next morning all were fresh and happy, without a trace of fatigue--full of yesterday, and quite sure that no other day could equal it. But this was often said: many and many a day was voted the finest yet, only to be eclipsed in its turn by a later, till at last an effort to name our best day led to twenty selections, and ended in the general conclusion that it was impossible to say which had crowded within its hours the rarest treat, for none had all the finest, neither did any lack something of the best. But there is one point upon which a unanimous verdict can always be had from the Gay Charioteers, that to such days in the ma.s.s none but themselves can be their parallel.

We ran into a book-shop in the morning and obtained a local guide-book, that we might cull for you the proper quotations therefrom. It consists of 148 pages, mostly given up to notices of the t.i.tled people who visited the old town long ago; but who cares about them? Here, however, is something of more interest than all those n.o.bodies. Cobbett says of Guildford, in his "Rural Rides:"

[Sidenote: _Cobbett's Opinion._]

"I, who have seen so many towns, think this the prettiest and most happy looking I ever saw in my life." There's praise for you! But, then, he had never seen Dunfermline. Here is a characteristic touch of that rare, horse-sense kind of a man. He is enraptured over the vale of Chilworth.

"Here, in this tranquil spot, where the nightingales are to be heard earlier and later in the year than in any other part of England, where the first budding of the trees is seen in the spring, where no rigor of seasons can ever be felt, where everything seems framed for precluding the very thought of wickedness--this has the devil fixed on as one of his seats of his grand manufactory, and perverse and even ungrateful man not only lends his aid, but lends it cheerfully."

Since those days, friend Cobbett, the devil has much enlarged his business in gunpowder and bank notes, of which you complain. He was only making a start when you wrote. The development of manufactures in America (under a judicious tariff, be it reverently spoken), amazing as it has been, and carried on as a rule by the saints, is slow work compared with what his satanic majesty has been doing in these two departments. We must bestir ourselves betimes.

You remember Artemus Ward's encounter with the colporteur. After a long, dusty day's journey, arriving at the hotel, he applied to the barkeeper for a mint-julep, and just as Artemus was raising the tempting draught to his lips, a hand was laid upon his arm and the operation arrested.

The missionary in embryo said in a kind of sepulchral tone, for he was only a beginner and had not yet reached that true professional voice which comes only after years of exhortation: "My friend, look not upon the wine when it is red. It stingeth like a serpent and it biteth as an adder." "Guess not, stranger," replied Artemus, "not if you put sugar in it."

It is just so with bank-notes, friend Cobbett. They don't bite worth a cent, neither do they sting, if you have government bonds behind them.

But this was not understood in your day. The Republic had not then shown to the world the model system of banking. The objection made to it by others, viz., that founded as it is upon the obligations of the nation, its discredit involves the fall of private credit, counts for little to a republican. We would not give much for the man who is not willing to stake "his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor" upon the solvency of the Republic. Pitiable is the man who could think of his petty private means when his country was in peril. When the Republic falls, let us also fall.

There is a funny thing in this guide-book. "There also resides Mr.

Martin Farquhar Tupper, the author of 'Proverbial Philosophy,' etc. He has eulogized the scene around as follows." Then come two pages of Tupper. I naturally looked to see the name of the author of the book, but none was given. Such modesty! But the case is a clear one, for who but Tupper would quote Tupper! "Sir," said Johnson to Bossy, "Sir, I never did the man an injury in my life, and yet he would persist in reading his tragedy to me." Here's the concluding quotation from the guide-book of Guildford, and the Scribe promises not to quote much more from any similar source. Cobbett says that in Albury Park he saw some plants of the "American cranberry, which not only grow here, but bear fruit, and therefore it is clear that they may be cultivated with great ease in this country."

[Sidenote: _American Blessings._]

Potatoes, tomatoes, and cranberries--look at the great blessings America has bestowed upon the "author of her being;" and what won't grow in the rain and fog of the old home, doesn't she grow for her and send over by every steamer, from canvas-back ducks to Newtown pippins! Thackeray was right in saying one night, when some friends were disposed to criticise America, "Ah! well, gentlemen, much can be pardoned to a country which produces the canvas-back duck." At dinner-tables in England, nowadays, to the usual grace, "O Lord! for what we are about to receive make us truly thankful," should be added, "and render us truly grateful to our big son Jonathan, G.o.d bless him!"

One could settle down at the White Lion in Guildford, and spend a month, at least, visiting every day fresh objects of interest, and I have no doubt becoming day by day more charmed with the life he was leading. In every direction historical scenes, crowded full of instructive stories of the past, invite us: and yet to-morrow morning the horn will sound, and we shall be off, reluctantly saying to ourselves, we must return some day when we have leisure, and wander in and around, absorb and moralize. This rapid survey is only to show us what we can do hereafter.

A summer to each county would not be too much, and here are eight hundred miles from sea to firth to be rushed over in seven weeks.

Guildford, farewell!--on "to fresh woods and pastures new."

SAt.u.r.dAY, June 18.

After a delightful breakfast we mount the coach and are off through the crowd of lookers-on for our second day's journey. During this stage we learned the valuable lesson that we should not attempt to coach through England without having the ordnance survey maps, and paying close attention to them. In this part of the country, so near to monster London, the roads and lanes are innumerable, and run here, there, and everywhere. You can reach any point by many different roads. Guide-posts have a dozen names upon them. We did some sailing out of our course to-day, and found many charming spots not down in the chart, which the straight line would have caused us to miss; it was late ere Windsor's towers made their appearance. The day was not long enough for us, long as it was, but the fifty miles we are said to have traversed were quite enough for the horses. But next day would be Sunday, we said, and they had a long rest to look forward to at Windsor.

WINDSOR, June 18-20.

[Sidenote: _The Scribe as a Whip._]

Upon reaching the forest, the General Manager insisted that the Scribe should take the reins and drive his party through the royal domain. This was his first trial as the whip of a four-in-hand, and not a very successful one either. It's easy enough to handle the ribbons, but how to do this and spare a hand for the whip troubles one. As Josh Billings remarks in the case of religion, "It's easy enough to get religion, but to hold on to it is what bothers a fellow. A good grip is here worth more than rubies." The Scribe had not the grip for the whip, but it did give him a rare pleasure when he got a moment or two now and then (when Perry held the whip), to think that he was privileged to drive his friends in style up to Her Majesty's very door at Windsor. Only to the door, for that good woman was not at home, but in bonnie Scotland, sensible lady! As we were en route ourselves, we were quite in the fashion; some of her republican subjects, however, were quite disappointed at not getting a glimpse of her during the tour.

The drive through the grounds gave to some of our party the first sight of an English park, and it is certain that the impression it made upon them will never be effaced.

Windsor at last, a late dinner and a stroll through the quaint town, the castle towering over all in the cloudy night, and we were off to bed, but not before we had enjoyed an hour of the wildest frolic, though tired and sleepy after the long drive. We laughed until our sides ached, but how vain to attempt to describe the fun! To detail the trifles light as air which kept us in a roar during our excursion is like offering you stale champagne. No, no, gone forever are those rare nothings which were so delicious when fresh; but, for the benefit of the members of the Circle, I'll just say "Poole." It was a happy thought to put the General Manager's suit of new clothes in Davie's package and await results. We had ordered travelling suits in London, and when they arrived we all began to try them on at once. Davie's disappointment at getting an odd-looking suit fancied by the General Manager was so genuine! But such a perfect fit, though a mistake, maybe, as to material; and then, when he tried his own suit, what a misfit it was! The climax: "David, if you are going to"--but this is too much! The tears are rolling down my cheeks once more as I picture that wild scene.

[Sidenote: _Gladstone._]

We heard the chimes at midnight, and then to bed. Windsor is nothing unless royal. It is all over royal, although Her Majesty was absent. But the Prince of Wales was there, and a greater than he--Mr. Gladstone--had run down from muggy London to refresh his faded energies by communing with nature. It is said that his friends are alarmed at his haggard appearance toward the close of each week; but he spends Sat.u.r.day and Sunday in the country, and returns on Monday to surprise them at the change. Ah! he has found the kindest, truest nurse, for he knows--