England Part 6

First came the primrose On the bank high, Like a maiden looking forth From the window of a tower When the battle rolls below: So looked she, And saw the storms go by.

Then came the wind-flower, In the valley left behind As a wounded maiden, pale With purple streaks of woe, When the battle has roll'd by, Wanders to and fro: So totter'd she Dishevell'd in the wind.

Then came the daisies On the first of May, Like a banner'd show's advance, While the crowd runs by the way, With ten thousand flowers about them they came trooping through the fields, As a happy people come, When the war has roll'd away, With dance and tabor, pipe and drum, And all make holiday.

On a Spring day let us go out from London to do honour to the Thames, seeking its nearer delights. Because it is Spring the day is delightful.

The English seasons are often disappointing. The summer is not as good, winter not as bad as one has had reason to antic.i.p.ate. One often at the end of the year has neither revelled in a fine summer nor felt the happiness of heroism in enduring a rigorous winter; for there has been no spell of really fine weather and no rigours. Always the climate has been soft and apologetic. But Spring in England is ever delicious. The first awakening of the year is brimful of stirring delights. Perhaps the summer has been "unsatisfactory," one of these cold, damp summers which drift unaware into autumn; and autumn, though providing a few perfect days, has been generally overcast, and every day has threatened the winter. But the winter has never come at all in any real earnest. No snow, no big freeze for skating, just dull half-cold days with occasional hours as warm as though stolen from autumn. Nature goes to sleep grudgingly, but goes to sleep; taking off all her draperies of green and brown and gold.

Then suddenly one morning you may see the crocus running like a trail of fire through the gra.s.s; and around all the shrubs and bushes steals a luminous mist of verdancy which, the more nearly approached, resolves into a starry way of little budding leaves of pale angelic green, so pale and pure that they were surely sprinkled from heaven in the night, and had not been drawn from the gross soil beneath. Yes, Spring is beautiful, and there is the stimulating note in its beauty which is so often lacking in the English landscape. Much of bright serene content, much of reverend grace, much of misty and soft charm with a note of wistfulness, almost of melancholy, England may show through the summer, the autumn, and the winter. On an odd day she will deck herself almost in gaiety, but there is ever a Puritan note of reserve, a hint of grey hairs. In early Spring, however, the country is all young in spirit. One might almost forget decorum and be rash, and whoop out one's joy aloud, coming thus under suspicion of being an uncontrollable Latin sort of person.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE THAMES AT RICHMOND, SURREY]

It is probably in part what has gone before that makes the Spring so glorious. It is a resurrection. With the chill breath of November most of the trees in England prepare to hibernate, shedding their leaves and withdrawing their life within their grim-looking trunks. In the quiet stillness everything snuggles down to rest, and week after week, month after month, you become accustomed to seeing Nature asleep. Then of a sudden a south wind comes bearing the notes of the _reveille_, and everything is deliciously athrill, and it is Spring; and as you look upon the _feu de joie_ of the crocuses in the gra.s.s, you understand the exultation in Horace's lines about his Spring on the Tiber:--

_Solvitur acris hiemps grata vice veris et Favoni, Trahuntque siccas machinae carinas, Ac neque iam stabulis gaudet pecus aut arator igni, Nec prata canis albicant pruinis._

And if you are wise you too prepare to drag down a dry keel to the waters of the Thames. Not at the first note of the crocuses must you do so, unless you are greatly daring, for the Spring sends out her heralds to walk some distance before her steps; and there may be biting winds and nipping frosts yet. But the message is sure. Soon the daffodils will be dancing, demure and stately in the gra.s.s; the trees will be alive with their intensely young green; daisies and cowslips will be waking to deck the meadows.

Take the rapture of the river little by little. Richmond and Kew--Kew Gardens at daffodil time are exquisite--should give you new joys for many days. The gentle march of the crocus, of the daffodil, and the narcissus, and the rhododendron, and the azalea at Kew, the gradual filling up of the great valley which stretches below Richmond Hill, with colour and light and warmth,--these are not to be seen in an hour or a day, but call for many visits. If an occasional day of fog and mist obtrudes from out of winter, and you are resolved, nevertheless, to worship at the shrines of Father Thames, explore the reach from Chelsea to Greenwich, and learn what magic the mist can lend to drape all that is harsh, to bring out all that is fine, in the works of man.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPRING BY THE THAMES]

As the Spring ripens, carrying your exploration of the Thames farther, go to Hampton Court, built by the great Cardinal who was too great to be pleasing to the arrogant temper of King Henry VIII. They tell that it was Wolsey's love of good Latin that first set the jealous temper of the King aflame. "Ego et rex meus," the Cardinal had written to a correspondent. To be correct in his Latin he could have done nothing else. The poorest beggar in Rome would say, and would write--if he knew how to write--"Ego et Julius Caesar," for the Romans were not hypocrites enough to pretend that any man does not think himself as of the first importance to himself. Our modern way of pretending to be humble and "putting oneself second," the Romans knew nothing of; and their language made no provision for it. Wolsey wrote good Latin; and in time he came to lose the favour of the King, and with it this fine palace of Hampton Court, set like a great pink flower in the midst of its gardens by the Thames side. Hampton Court was a royal palace for some generations after, then it was given up to the people for their common enjoyment, and is now a show-place open to all. Its gardens are kept with the old care and generosity. In Spring the parterres of tulips and hyacinths and wallflowers and other blossoms suggest the dreams of all the great pottery decorators of every age come to life in flowers.

Not only the gardens of Hampton Court but also the state rooms of the palace are open to the public, including the great hall which ought to be called Blue Beard's Hall, because of its series of stained-gla.s.s windows picturing Henry VIII. and all his wives. Do they of nights climb down from their windows and trip a measure together?

After Hampton Court the Thames winds past Staines to Eton and Windsor. The great castle, which is the chief residence of the British Court, has no longer in these days of widely-ranging artillery any purpose of guardianship. But one can see that at the time of its building it was well designed to stand siege and a.s.sault, and to hold the pa.s.sage of the Thames.

From Windsor spreads one of the royal forests, and the valley of the Thames is now for a long stretch well wooded. At Bourne End begins definitely the long series of little pleasure houses--afloat or ash.o.r.e--which mark the Thames with a gay note for some miles up and down from Henley. In the summer these house-boats and bungalows, painted always in glowing colours, decked out with bright flowers, sheltering brightly-dressed people, are as gay as gay can be. The Englishman is a little serious in his pleasures some think; "on the river" he is usually hilarious. On Sundays and holidays in summer the dwellers by the river are reinforced by thousands of trippers from London. There are musical comedy stars and their swains who have motored down, and will dawdle in a punt or a skiff--also sometimes in a motor launch or a steam-boat--mainly as an exercise before and after a ma.s.sive lunch. There are visitors from the theatres who are not stars, and shop girls, and typewriting girls, and sporty girls--all, or nearly all, with men to match. Also there is a slight flavour of plain 'Arriett with her 'Arry, though she favours more the reaches of the river near to London.

Between them all they make the Thames very very gay. Some sing or play banjos. Many bring phonographs and gramophones, which will give canned music at the call of the merest fraction of skill and effort. All are dressed in bright colours, and not too much dressed at that. It is the very lightest side of London life, that "on the river" of a summer Sunday; and over it all great quiet woods brood, and some of the sweetest church bells in Christendom send out their silver summons; and past all Father Thames glides quietly, making his way from the Western Hills to the sea, tolerant of all, with a smile of sweetness for all.

But who may tell of the full delights of the Thames? We must be content here with the mere glimpse at the life of this one river of England, and leave out any description of other streams, whose very names are sweet and cool, or cheerful and exhilarating, or gentle and peaceful. What poetic syllables these rivers have won for their names--the Severn, the Darenth, the Avon, the Wye, the Dove, the Eden, the Dart, the Tamar, the Lynn, the Arun, the Ouse, the Rother, the Medway, the Trent, the Erme! And how sweetly English all the names are! No hotch-potch here of dog Latin and Levantine Greek, but plain straight English, cool and fresh in the mouth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WINDSOR CASTLE FROM FELLOWS' EYOT: EARLY SPRING]

CHAPTER IX

ENGLAND'S SHRINES

Those places in England which are notable by their a.s.sociation with some great event of human history are very many in number. Knowledge of them is more complete with visitors to the land than with residents. The Englishman, for all his reverent love of the medieval life and customs of his country, has not the habit of cataloguing historic places, nor of visiting them of set purpose. Of late, because of the new interest in history given by the pageant movement, because of the work of various historical and archaeological societies, because also of the care which some public bodies are giving to the identification and plain marking of famous birthplaces and residences, the Englishman has become something of a tourist in his own country. He even shows a disposition to add to his treasures of history--as in the tentative movement now afoot to ask from France the ashes of the Plantagenet kings buried there (a movement, by the way, accompanied by an honest give-and-take spirit; a famous Russian bell taken from a Baltic monastery during the Crimean War has just been restored). But still the famous places of England are mostly for the visitor, and that visitor can often take the Englishman to many places of note, before unknown to him, in his own land.

But not the most business-like and industrious of visitors could hope to compa.s.s within a life-time a pilgrimage to all the shrines of England. He would be wise, therefore, to determine at the outset what is the side of human activity which most appeals to him--the struggle for religious liberty and tolerance, the fight for the freedom of the Press, the upgrowth of the greatest literature in any modern tongue, the development of the parliamentary and representative system of government, the shaping of the material power of a great Imperial race. Of any one of these he will find countless monuments in England. The whole country is a sepulchre of great men and a memorial of great deeds.

If that most strange, and in some of its aspects rather sordid, miracle of modern civilisation, the Newspaper Press, interests the pilgrim to England, let him betake himself to London, where in Fleet Street practically all the history of the beginnings of journalism has centred. All the world has newspapers nowadays--one of my own earliest memories of adult life was an invitation to edit a paper at Bangkok in Siam. There are mighty organs of public opinion at Fiji, Honolulu; and, though I have not yet heard of a paper published in Thibet, there must surely be one in print by now. But England saw the birth of journalism in its modern sense, saw the first beginnings of that eager hound which dogs the footsteps of civilisation day by day and night by night, rending aside every veil, "making" news for itself when the supply of murders and wars and scandals runs short, devouring whole forests day by day in its appet.i.te for paper. Those old Pressmen of Fleet Street had probably no prophetic vision of the present-day newspaper when they were seized with the idea that the gossipy news-letters with which town mice amused country mice should be combined with the thundering pamphlets which used the printing-press to campaign against tyrants of State, of Church, of privilege. If they had had, would they have fought their hard fight for the freedom of the Press? I often wonder, holding as I do that there is a good deal of truth in what Balzac wrote of the modern Press in _Un Grand Homme de Province a Paris_:--

Journalism comes first to be a party weapon, and then a commercial speculation, carried on without conscience or scruple, like other commercial speculations.... A newspaper is not supposed to enlighten its readers, but to supply them with congenial opinions.... Napoleon's sublime aphorism, suggested by his study of the Convention, "No one individual is responsible for a crime committed collectively," sums up the whole significance of a phenomenon, moral or immoral, whichever you please. However shamefully a newspaper may behave, the disgrace attaches to no one person....

We shall see newspapers, started in the first instance by men of honour, falling sooner or later into the hands of men of abilities even lower than the average, but endowed with the resistance and flexibility of indiarubber, qualities denied to n.o.ble genius; nay, perhaps the future newspaper proprietor will be the tradesman with the capital sufficient to buy venal pens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GLAs...o...b..RY ABBEY, SOMERSETSHIRE]

But that is away from the question. In itself the fight for the freedom of the Press was a good fight, and London was its campaign ground, and within the precincts of Fleet Street are all its memorials.

If religious progress and development is of special interest to him the student of England will first visit Canterbury, because of its a.s.sociation with St. Augustine, Lanfranc, and Saint Thomas a Becket. It is still the seat of the Primate of the Church of England. From Canterbury he might well follow the old "Pilgrims' Way," which runs through Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire towards Southampton, a much-favoured ancient port of communication with the Continent. At Southampton landed many a company of holy palmers from Europe to walk their devout way to the tomb of a Becket.

On the way from Canterbury, through Kent, near Sh.o.r.eham (the inland village, not the seaside Sh.o.r.eham), will be found the ruins of two castles connected with the story of his sad murder. Then a student of Church history might go to Worcester, the scene of the first Church Congress in England, that which attempted to settle the differences between the Church in England and the Church in Wales. At Worcester, too, died Prince Arthur, a death of great moment in Church history. If he had lived (a pious young man he was, and much beloved of the monks), then a certain Henry, who afterwards became Henry VIII., would never have been King of England, never have married his deceased brother's widow, never have had an uneasy conscience as that lady's charms were supplanted in his impressionable heart by a younger damosel, never have had his quarrel with the Pope; and the whole course of history would have been, perhaps, different. But Prince Arthur died at Worcester, and events moved to their appointed end.

Then a visit to Glas...o...b..ry in Somersetshire must be made, site of the famous old abbey now being excavated and in a measure restored. There lived St. Dunstan of august memory. So much is certain; but legend would bring to Glas...o...b..ry even greater claims to reverence if legend had its way. There, tradition says, King Arthur was buried. To probe the truth of this tradition excavations were made in the reign of Henry II., and beneath the old foundations and seven feet beneath the surface, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, was found a broad stone bearing the name of Arthur; yet nine feet lower was found the body of Arthur, enclosed in the trunk of a tree, and beside him the body of Guinevere, The King's skeleton, says the chronicler, was of extraordinary size, and the skull was covered with wounds; the body of Guinevere was well preserved, and the colour of her hair was of that burnished gold which ensnared more than one devout knight to be her lover.

Yet with all that honour Glas...o...b..ry is not content, and will have it that on its soil was erected the oldest Christian Church in England, by no less renowned a man than St. Joseph of Arimathea, who brought to his Glas...o...b..ry Church the Holy Grail, the cup from which the Divine Redeemer drank at the Last Supper.

Canterbury, Worcester, Glas...o...b..ry and York (of which something was said in a previous chapter) visited, the lover of Church history will then turn to London to do reverence to Westminster Abbey, one of the most sacred fanes of Christendom. There is a legend of the Abbey having been consecrated by St. Peter himself, a legend which Matthew Arnold incorporates in one of his poems. Some Thames fishermen are making for home on a winter's eve; one lags behind--

His mates are gone, and he For mist can scarcely see A strange wayfarer coming to his side-- Who bade him loose his boat, and fix his oar, And row him straightway to the further sh.o.r.e, And wait while he did there a s.p.a.ce abide.

The fisher awed obeys, That voice had note so clear of sweet command; Through pouring tide he pulls, and drizzling haze, And sets his freight ash.o.r.e on Thorney strand.

The Minster's outlined ma.s.s Rose dim from the mora.s.s, And thitherward the stranger took his way.

Lo, on a sudden all the pile is bright!

Nave, choir, and transept glorified with light, While tongues of fire on coign and carving play!

And heavenly odours fair Come streaming with the floods of glory in, And carols float along the happy air, As if the reign of joy did now begin.

Then all again is dark; And by the fisher's bark The unknown pa.s.senger returning stands.

"O Saxon fisher! thou hast had with thee The fisher from the lake of Galilee--"

So saith he, blessing him with outspread hands; Then fades, but speaks the while; "At dawn thou to King Serbert shalt relate How his St. Peter's Church in Thorney Isle Peter, his friend, with light did consecrate."

That is legend. Keeping strictly within the limits of ascertained history, the story of Westminster Abbey and its monuments is a brief epitome of the records of England and of the British Empire. It is the burial-place of the mighty dead of the nation, and has been a.s.sociated in some particular way with almost every great event since the Norman invasion. I shall not attempt here any description of the Abbey or any detailed discussion of its monuments. Many books have been written about this building, and the subject does not seem yet to have been exhausted. One monument, and one alone, I shall mention. In the summer of 1296 King Edward seized the regalia of Scotland, and offered them the following year to the shrine of St. Edward at Westminster. The objects which are known to have been offered by him are the golden sceptre, the golden crown with the apple or orb of silver gilt, and the golden rose, all of which were affixed to the shrine, and a "pallium" (probably the royal mantle of the King of Scotland), which was hung somewhere in the Abbey.

At or near the same time the "Coronation Stone," which also had been ravished from Scotland, found a home in the Abbey, and is still cherished as indispensable for the coronation of monarchs of the United Kingdom. In Celtic days a stone seemed essential for a king's coronation (the "Coronation Stone" at Kingston-on-Thames is supposed to mark the site of an old place of invest.i.ture of British kings). This coronation stone taken from Scotland is said to carry with it the governance of that country; and legend has invested it with a mythical sanct.i.ty. According to some tales the stone was the pillow on which the patriarch Jacob rested his head at Bethel. Gathelus, who married Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, brought it to Spain, where it became the stone on which the kings of Spain "of Scottish race" were wont to sit. Simon Breck, a descendant of Gathelus, brought it from Spain to Ireland, and was crowned upon it as king of that country at Tara, where it became known as the Lia Fail, or Stone of Destiny.

Afterwards the stone was removed to Dunstaffnage, where twenty-eight of the "forty kings" of Scotland were crowned. From Dunstaffnage it was taken to Scone. There it remained, and on it every Scottish monarch was inaugurated till the year 1296. Then it came to England to be used at the coronation of British monarchs to the latest, George V.

It is not necessary to invest the stone with the reverence that a belief in all these wonders would call for; but it is undoubtedly a monument of Celtic faiths and ceremonies, even if its biblical origin must be granted the Scottish verdict of "not proven."

To pa.s.s from Westminster Abbey to St. Paul's would be to enter upon a path leading away from the purpose of this chapter, which cannot attempt to be comprehensive. Let us suppose the Churchman pilgrim satisfied with pilgrimages to Glas...o...b..ry, Canterbury, Worcester, and Westminster. The political pilgrim has next to be considered. He will find hardly a part of England without its close a.s.sociation with the struggles for parliamentary freedom. But Buckinghamshire, which seemed always to be a county with a st.u.r.dy "no" in its composition, will give enough monuments of the great "Parliamentarians" of the Revolution--Hampden, Cromwell, Milton and the rest. It has also a modern a.s.sociation with a prominent man of modern times, who was very much on "the other side" in politics, Disraeli, the apostle of the new Conservatism. From Buckinghamshire the man who would wish to follow in memory the great contest between King and Parliament which made the British Const.i.tution would probably best go on to Worcestershire, which put up some stout battles for the King. And, of course, London cannot be neglected. Indeed, in all great English movements London had a leading part, for it was always in a very true sense the capital of the kingdom; and not a narrow and exclusive capital at that, but regularly sending out its "cits" to spy out the joys of the country, and just as regularly attracting to itself in season the rustics to taste the life of the town.

For literary monuments and a.s.sociations London, of course, is the one great centre, though there should be reverent excursions to Oxford and Cambridge, and Bath, and then to Worcester, where the first of Anglo-Saxon poets wrote, and to the Lakes, which had their school of poets. But the student of England's monuments and shrines who has but a little time to give up to the study had best content himself with London. Within a full year he cannot exhaust its treasures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WARWICKSHIRE COTTAGES AND GARDEN]

CHAPTER X

THE POORER POPULATION