England

Most of London is beautiful at any hour. All of it, even to the most sordid parts, is beautiful at the fall of evening or the first glance of the morning. And there is always intruding into the commonplace of the twentieth century some touch of ancientry, some hint of romance. I can recall once finding a note of beauty in that least likely of all places, London Dock. It was an autumn dawn so grey and chill that the pungent smell of a cargo of pepper from one of the wharves brought a welcome sense of warmth. I was wandering about aimlessly when, in a dirty little basin of muddy water in the Wapping corner of the docks, I suddenly came upon a white swan swimming with placid disregard of its utter incongruousness there. In the grey morning, in that grey water, surrounded by the murk of industrialism at its ugliest, the white swan was as startling as a ghost. When, as I looked upon it, the air was suddenly pierced by the crisp, urgent note of a bugle calling the réveillé, I felt sure for a moment that this was an uneasy dream bringing into the sordid grey of life a thread of white and silver from the days of jousts and pageantry. But no, the swan was real enough; the mystery of the bugle-call was that the docks were under the shadow of the Tower of London, which relieves with its splendidly preserved Norman keep a busy quarter of London from architectural dullness.

But the chief charm of London is, without a doubt, its parks and open places, of which there are some three hundred. Indeed, of the total area of London a full tenth is park land, and the civic authorities are adding to the park area, not lessening it.

Nothing that one could say would exaggerate the beauty of these parks in spring and summer. The grass lawns—delicately smooth, of a glowing green that seems to be suffused with light and starred with little white daisies, suggest a bright firmament, the emerald sky of a fairy tale with daisies to make its Milky Way. The trees are full of their own rustling song and of the clear soprano notes of crowding birds. The flower-beds flaunt a constantly changing bravery of colour. All the plants are bedded out in full bloom. The cost must be enormous, but the Londoner pays it cheerfully, and these city parks provide the people with gayer gardens than have any of the great nobles.

For the gardens are the people's. On the dainty grass the children of the poor sprawl and play contentedly. In the ponds and streamlets, beside which, in the old days, kings sauntered, the youngsters of the slums fish with bent pins or scoop with small nets for small fish. The rangers are the friends of the people, and will help a little kiddie to a patch where daisies may be picked for daisy-chains. The trees are all a-twitter with songsters. In the ponds and streams a gorgeous variety of water-fowl display themselves—giant white pelicans, filled with a smug and hypocritical satisfaction at the mistaken reputation they have won for benevolence; black swans from Australia and white swans of this country; all manner of ducks and geese and teal. Children bring crumbs and feed these birds, and also the pigeons, which in consequence reach a bloated size and can hardly waddle out of the way of the horsemen who canter along the soft tracks laid out for cavaliers in Hyde Park.

The aloofness from the city's turmoil of the London parks is wonderful. Matthew Arnold noted it in Kensington Gardens:—

The art of designing city parks of this kind seems to be exclusively English. In other parts of the world there are magnificent parks, but nowhere the little bit of woodland planted in the heart of a city.

Though London is the greatest industrial city of the world, it does not succeed in being sordid-looking or mean. But the Midlands—where are the new great manufacturing cities—are frankly horrible, grimy city following grimy city, the pavements seeming never to end, the suburbs of one town stretching out lank arms to greet those of another.

When rain sets in, the sordidness of these towns is complete. Thickly growing chimneys take the place of trees, and from the tops of their great harsh trunks float thin wisps of black foliage. The streets are of a miserable muddiness which bemires without softening the hardness of the pavements. Through the smoky, dirty, wet air pallid faces loom. The very meat in the shops has no red wholesomeness, but looks pallid and anæmic; that, I suppose, is really due to the fact that the Midlands so largely eat pork, but it pleases me to imagine that the inanimate stuff also feels the depression of this smoke-palled district and knows not the red of life.

But much of the evil is curable. Sheffield is a brighter, more sunny town than most in the Midlands because its authorities insist on something being done to mitigate the smoke nuisance. In most of the other towns factory and workshop can pour out unchecked their defiling streams, poisoning the air and darkening the sky so that the birds leave the district in despair, and no green thing flourishes and men grow pale and unwholesome. Now that is being changed, and the Midland cities are beginning to claim their share of the heritage of English beauty.

Away from the actual new manufacturing towns there are none without some beauty. Durham in the north perches grandly on its river, and the river-front shows off well the impressive Cathedral. York, with its famous Minster, has been already noted in another chapter. To Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, all visitors to England go, but some English people are beginning to resent the commercial spirit which makes it purely a "show" town, with fees payable for this and that at every turn.

A town not too "hackneyed" but full of historical interest is St. Albans, the Verulam of the Romans, with its fine Abbey Church overlooking hill and field. The path past that church was a wide-paved Roman road once, and by the vicarage foundations of Roman chambers and mosaics are found. Some two thousand years ago St. Albans was a stronghold of the Britons, protected naturally on two sides by marsh and river; adding to those natural defences an artificial ditch, earthworks, and a palisade. It had to stand an onslaught of the Roman invaders, and, of course, fell. Before that Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, had laid the town waste—Boadicea of whom Cowper sang:—

Poor Boadicea: if she suffered all that is said, "an indignant mien" would seem to be a weak description of her state of mind; but a rhyme was necessary. This more or less historical Amazon of early Britain has now a statue to her memory on Westminster Bridge. (And, by the way, London has yet to learn—and might learn from Paris—how to utilise the artistic possibilities of bridges.)

But to return to St. Albans. The Watling Street of the Romans from London to Chester ran through this town. After the departure of the Roman legions, St. Albans suffered a long siege at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Sacked and left in ruins it became a stronghold for outlaws. Then the Church came with holy balm, and the foundation of a monastery gave St. Albans peace.

Chester, where the Watling Street of the Romans ended, is to-day one of the most picturesque of English cities. Its old timbered houses and arcaded streets give it a mediæval air, which is jealously preserved in all restoration work. Bath is another city of Roman antiquity. Portions of the Roman baths still exist there, and the existence of a great modern spa shows that the doctors of to-day endorse the opinion of their colleagues of the days of Cæsar. Apart from its medicinal waters, Bath is a very beautiful town, the architectural treatment of its hill-sides being most effective. In an earlier century it was a great resort of fashion, and there reigned Beau Nash, the Exquisite. To-day Bath is less popular, but not less deserving of favour, and an effort is being made to restore its old glories. Winchester, another Roman town, an old capital of the kingdom, and the reputed capital of King Arthur, where the "curfew bell" still rings, should be among the first three of the cities of England visited. From there it would be well to go west to ramble through Plymouth, a naval port full of memories of Francis Drake and other gallants of the glorious Elizabethan days. Bristol then claims a day; also Rochester, which has the second oldest cathedral in England, and which has a new source of interest in that it is emphatically, after London, the Dickens city. Canterbury should have more than a day, for it is a link between Briton England and Roman England, and then between Briton England and Saxon England. (Between Dover and Canterbury was the first line of resistance to the Roman invaders, and again to the Saxon invaders.) There Bertha, the first Christian Queen of Kent, worshipped in the little Church of St. Michael. There St. Augustine christened Ethelbert of Kent, founded a monastery, ordained a bishop (1300 years ago), and set the foundations of the first Christian cathedral in England. There, too, À Becket shed his blood; and there is the shrine of the Black Prince.

Salisbury, with its cathedral, must not be missed. It was a great fortified town once, and Pepys records in his Diary:—

The remains of Old Sarum are the fragments of a great feudal castle and keep. It was these ruined walls and yawning ditches which sent two members to Parliament until the Reform Act of 1832. To the present day Salisbury is a central point in the military defences of England, the chief training-grounds for troops being at Salisbury Plain.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVERS OF ENGLAND

There is no spot in England more than sixty miles away from the sea as the crow flies. So the land gives no room for great river systems. But the larger rivers are navigable to a more than ordinary degree, because they run their courses gently. Reinforcing the rivers are hundreds of charming streams. By the side of these rivers and streams is to be found the most charming scenery of the English country-side.

A typical English stream takes its course—shallow at the outset, deepening its bed as it nears the sea—through meadows which bring their green to the very edge of its sparkling water, past trees which take the caress of the water with their roots and give it back in kisses from their leafy branches. Rarely does the English stream have a ravine to pass through: generally the ravine has been softened to a gentle valley, with a wooded hill rising steeply on one side, a marshy meadow stretching away on the other. These marshes are flecked in proper season with most beautiful golden and blue and purple flowers, and fringed with handsome sedges. When it is meadow-land that meets the river there are buttercups and daisies and daffodils, and, at the very edge, forget-me-nots, as if to be remembrancers from the land to the water stealing away to the sea, to come back again on the chariots of the clouds. When a hill-side is passed, its woods will throw their cool shadows into the river; or perhaps a rough stony hill will reflect in summer the colour of the heather, purple like spilt wine on the ground; and, at almost all seasons, a touch of gold shows from the gorse, which is of such a glad nature that it must blossom a little almost all the year round, so that they say: "When the gorse is not in flower girls do not like to be kissed."

I have found joy by the side of many English rivers, from the wilder—and yet only a little wild, though they seem torrents by the side of most of their quiet, silent brothers of the south—streams of Yorkshire to the gently-stealing rivulets of Kent, and it would be a puzzle to say which English river is the most charming until one remembers the Thames, in which can be found an epitome of all river delight, from its estuary all along its winding course past London, Richmond, Hampton, Windsor, Maidenhead, Henley, Goring, Didcot, Oxford, and beyond Oxford until it turns south and south-west to find its source under the hills which bound the valley of the Avon. There is no joy of forest, or park, or lawn, or garden, or meadow that may not be had by the banks of the Thames; and those banks are decorated with more noble mansions and sweet homes than are the banks of any river in the world.

To watch in the valley of the Thames the oncoming of Spring is a pageant of dear delights. Dobell thus gives his impression of the Spring march of the flowers:—

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 anticipate. 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 grass; 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.

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 réveillé, and everything is deliciously athrill, and it is Spring; and as you look upon the feu de joie of the crocuses in the grass, you understand the exultation in Horace's lines about his Spring on the Tiber:—

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 grass; 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.

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 Cæsar," 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-glass 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 assault, and to hold the passage 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 ashore—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 massive 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.

CHAPTER IX

ENGLAND'S SHRINES

Those places in England which are notable by their association 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 archæological 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 compass 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 appetite 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 à Paris:—

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 association with St. Augustine, Lanfranc, and Saint Thomas à 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 À Becket. On the way from Canterbury, through Kent, near Shoreham (the inland village, not the seaside Shoreham), 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 Glastonbury 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 Glastonbury 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 Glastonbury 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 Glastonbury Church the Holy Grail, the cup from which the Divine Redeemer drank at the Last Supper.

Canterbury, Worcester, Glastonbury 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—

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 associated 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 investiture 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 sanctity. 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 pass 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 Glastonbury, Canterbury, Worcester, and Westminster. The political pilgrim has next to be considered. He will find hardly a part of England without its close association with the struggles for parliamentary freedom. But Buckinghamshire, which seemed always to be a county with a sturdy "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 association 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 Constitution 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 associations 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.

CHAPTER X

THE POORER POPULATION

A dominant note of the English character is kindliness. Animals are treated in England better than anywhere else in the world; the ordinary sleekness of the English horse and the serene confidence in human nature of the London cat are two outward and visible signs of the absence of cruelty in the national character. This kindliness makes more tolerable, and softens considerably what would be otherwise the intolerable gulf between rich and poor. England, taking into consideration population and area, is the richest country in the world, I suppose; yet it has a proportion of its population sunk in poverty—"the submerged tenth" one social observer (making a rather pessimistic calculation) called them. English statesmanship has so far failed to grapple successfully with the pauper population, and the even more pitiful class which struggles grimly on the edge of pauperism; but the English kindliness attempts to mollify the situation with vast organised charities, private and public, and makes it just tolerable. But even so it is painful: yet has to be faced to get to a true picture of England.

I spent the late months of autumn one year in looking into the case of the unemployed and the casual workers; tramping the north country with them and following them then on their pilgrimage to London. With the first hint of winter the unemployed or the casual worker who knows the rules of the game heads for London. In the summer and the autumn he has wandered the country-side, working more or less regularly as he tramped, in potato fields, turnip fields, hop gardens, cornfields.

It is a steadily narrowing opportunity, this casual agricultural work. With each year more and more of England's fruit, hops, vegetables, roots, and corn are grown abroad. To some extent, also, labour-saving machinery is displacing the manual worker where the tillage of the soil still survives. But there is surprisingly little machinery used in British agriculture as compared with that of Canada, the United States, and Australia. The very small farms do not allow of the economical use of machines. Some crops are still cut by scythes; a reaper and binder is less common than the simple reaper which cuts the corn and leaves it to be gathered and tied by a harvest hand.

It is astonishing how close the agricultural land comes to London. One may see, within half a mile of Hampstead "tube," odd hayfields, and after leaving the Midlands, approaching London from the north, the pall of smoke lifts and the heavens appear as a broad belt of agricultural land intervenes. It would seem as if the traveller were passing away from, not approaching, the great industrial centre. Leaving Luton and coming through to St. Albans the country smiles in green pleasantness within sight and sound, almost, of London. Birds see the sky and rejoice. Hayricks warm the landscape with their golden yellow, and over the stubble fields sturdy plough-horses pass and repass, painting the fields with broad brush strokes a rich chocolate brown. The hedges in the autumn are glowing with berries—blackberries and the scarlet spots of the hawthorn berry. With close search even hazel-nuts can be found, and this within the area tapped by London motor-buses and trams.

Sometimes the nuts and the berries give some sort of temporary relief to the casual worker. I remember one typical man of the "submerged tenth" who was making a harvest of the berries. He was a poor old tramp, hobbling along quickly in spite of the stiffness of rheumatism. He had a can to fill with what he gleaned from the hedges. He hoped, he told me, to get a shilling for the berries at the next town. His age was sixty-six, and he had been in his young prime a navvy and road labourer. Now he was past all hope of further employment as a labourer, and navvying work was impossible. Proudly he boasted that he had never been "in trouble," and had never actually begged, though in the main he lived on charity. His winters, it seems, were spent in the workhouses. With the coming of the spring he turned his face towards the green fields, and lived somehow through the summer on what he could pick up as the reward of doing odd jobs or as the dole of charity. He was one of a class I found common enough on the roads, past all steady and useful work, going with crippled gait steadily to the end.

The same day I encountered, among other wayfarers, a man who suggested this old and desolate tramp in the making. He was a young, vigorous, and capable fellow, civil, intelligent, and eager for work. He had walked from Manchester, having been on the road since the previous Sunday (the day was Saturday), and the golden goal at the end of his journey was a week's work at the Islington Agricultural Show, which had been promised to him. For the week he would get 30s. After the Islington Show he had the chance, perhaps, of getting another job in the same line. He followed agricultural shows around the country, for he understood cattle and horses.

Another type of the poor I met outside of Durham, plodding patiently along two miles out of the old cathedral city. He was something a little higher than a casual labourer, and had a "trade," if one might call it so: that of a porter. He was making out from Durham, where "things were very bad," to a country place, unspecified, where there was work.

A brave and cheerful soul he was. At the age of four his leg had been broken and badly set, and he had grown up a little lame. That was over forty years ago, when the poor had less chance of good medical attention than now. The accident had frustrated the wish in him for an outdoor life. He confessed that all his thoughts turned to the soil, and while he was working in Durham as a casual porter he would in slack times always try to get out to the fields. He had never married; there was no hope of married life in his calling. He had tried to get a more steady sort of job as a painter, as an ironmonger's assistant; but his leg was against him. He had not a grumble in his whole composition, and talked cheerfully of the green grass and confided that he was forty-six. "But I don't look it a bit, do I?" I lied manfully that he did not seem more than thirty-five, though, poor, wizened little chap, I would have put him down at ten years above his age.

He was a patient little fighter, and had, with his lame leg, kept up somehow with the ranks of the workers, and had never begged a meal or a shilling in his life, and was, in a way, happy for all his frustrated longing for the open life of the country.

Out from Newcastle-on-Tyne another day of my tramp I picked up with a worker in the building trade. He was not a tramp, for he had a house of his own and a wife of whose house-wifery he was very proud. But he was unemployed, and had been for some months. That morning he had got up at five o'clock to tramp eight miles to a suburb of Newcastle in the hope of getting a place on a little church-repairing job employing three masons. He had not succeeded, and was tramping the eight miles back again. A penny fare on the tram would have saved him some two miles, but pennies were not to be spent lightly.

A homely, domestic man, typically English in his virtues and in the limitations of his virtues, was my mason friend. In the good times of the past he used to make 35s., 37s. 6d., and £2:1:6 a week at his trade, "steady work and constant." As a bachelor he found that all his money went as fast as he made it. After one long spell on £2:1:6 a week he had nothing at all left to tide over a week without work. That set his thoughts to matrimony and he "settled down." Since then his finances had been much more steady and prosperous. While he was in work he always paid his wife 30s. a week out of his wages, no more and no less. "He didn't come asking her for some of it back in the middle of the week like some men did. Thirty shillings she had, regular, when he was in work, and she saved some of it." Whatever the balance was, 5s. or 7s. 6d. or 11s. 8d., was for himself. That was his pocket-money, and he spent it in a moderate and sensible roystering, and on other comforts of the manly life.

The virtues of his wife as a housekeeper he talked of sturdily. Such a thing as baker's bread—"nasty, unwholesome stuff"—was never seen in his house: it was all home-baked bread. Part of the secret of the housekeeping in unemployed times was perhaps the fact that they had two lodgers, who paid 3s. 6d. a week each for their quarters and paid for the "raw material" of their meals, having the food cooked free. I was interested to learn that 11-1/2d. a week was charged to each of the lodgers for the flour used in his bread—not an extravagant weekly expenditure on that item of food.