Part 8

The French are delightfully “natural” about many things. It is quite the proper thing for a man and woman to hug and kiss each other in public. At first this startled me and I felt that perhaps they were excited. But no, it is just the proper way to manifest their feelings at the time. Just imagine how it would be if the Frenchman across the table from you put his arm around the lady next to him and she snuggled up to him and patted his cheek with her unengaged hand. I felt like getting right up and saying, “Excuse me. Am I intruding?” But I soon learned that they didn’t mind us at all. Their idea of love is to let go all holds and l-o-v-e. Their theory of matrimony is that it is an arrangement based on family position, business and prospects. No young woman can get a husband unless she has a dot, so much capital. The parents arrange the matches, and usually do so carefully and thoughtfully. The girl, who has not even been allowed to go to school with the boys, has no idea of any other arrangement; and the man, who has never thought of matrimony in another way, considers it a part of his “career.”

A man in France cannot marry without the consent of his parents until he is 25 and a woman not till she is 21. This law is strictly obeyed, and there is no running off to some other state where the rule is different. I suppose French marriages arranged in this apparently cold-blooded manner by the parents turn out on the average as well as they would if they let the young people rush in and “marry for love.” But it doesn’t seem right to us, any more than our ways seem good to them. Of course a Frenchman does not insist that his “sweetheart” shall have a “dot,” so that kind of an arrangement is made by the parties themselves. All of which seems very wrong to English and Americans; and yet the French prove it is the best way by using the divorce figures, for divorce is practically unknown in France. The French woman is the business partner of her husband, and necessity makes them pull together just as they were taught to do from their youth up. She doesn’t belong to clubs any more than her husband does. She has a great deal of liberty, and in fact is often the head of the firm.

In Dover Town

DOVER, ENGLAND, August 22.

One of the strange things in this old world is a boundary line. You are on a railway in Germany, hearing no language but German. The train crosses the imaginary line and you hear an entirely different language, and if you try to use the words which were understood ten minutes before, the people do not understand you. They are French, and they not only speak a different language but they differ in custom, tastes and looks. It would be just like a traveler from Hutchinson to Kansas City being able to speak and understand what people said at Argentine, but on arrival at the union depot in Kansas City finding a different looking and different talking lot, who could not understand a word he said. And arriving in the Kansas City depot neither understanding nor being understood, would be something of an ordeal, especially if you were trying to change trains and make a sharp connection. It is no wonder that an ordinary Kansan traveling in this European land puts in much of his time figuring out his route and a lot more doing it.

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Of course it is a joy to arrive in England and be able to talk and to understand everything that is said. Two hours after we left the fish-smelly Boulogne I was quarreling in right fair English with a railroad official because a train was late. In France we would have had to stand around and look pleasant, for the official would not have known whether we were cross about the train or the reciprocity treaty. It often relieves your mind to tell a Frenchman or a German what you think of him or his country in English, but it doesn’t cause him any discomfort.

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Dover is a most interesting town, with a castle, a harbor, a garrison, and a history. It is the closest English port to France, and on a clear day with good eyes and a vivid imagination you can see Calais in France, 21 miles away. Ever since William the Conqueror came over and did his conquering, the English have kept Dover fortified in such a way that it would be difficult for another conqueror to follow his example. The town lies along the shore and back into a small river valley. The hills, about 300 feet high, begin at the water’s edge and go up very rapidly. The biggest hill is on the east, and rises straight up from the sea 375 feet. The face of the cliff is white, for the rock formation is chalk, and, topped with green trees and a big stone castle, makes a fine appearance from the water or from the beach. There is not only this old castle, which is a fort with a regiment of soldiers, but the cliff is mined and tunneled, and big cannon are at the opening in the earth, ready to shoot the stuffing out of any hostile fleet or army which comes this way. The only time the castle was ever captured was when Cromwell worked some strategem and got it away from the Royalists. After looking it all over I don’t see how any army could possibly capture Dover castle so long as the defenders stayed awake.

The Romans first built a fort here, and the remains of the old Roman walls are still a small part of the present fortifications. The Saxons built some, then the Normans, and after that various generations of English,--so that the castle contains specimens of a lot of different styles of architecture. On the whole it is one of the most imposing castles in Europe, both by location and by construction.

This castle business is peculiar. Sometimes a little runt of a building with a tower and a high fence is famous in history and story because of a great fight, or a brilliant robber who lived there. To the tourist it is a disappointment. I suppose every one gets his idea of what a castle looks like from the reading done in his youth. When I was a boy I thought a castle must be a good deal like the court-house at Cottonwood Falls, which is 80 feet high, with a mansard roof and a jail with barred windows in the rear. Then I got a larger idea, something like the Reformatory at Hutchinson. And when I came to personally see these ancient castles I have frequently had to back up to my early theories. Now I am an expert in castles, and can talk of them without admitting to myself it is all guess-work. When we started up the Rhine from Bonn I occupied an unquestioned place as an authority, for I had been in the great castle country before. But this time my trip was reversed. To an admiring company of boat acquaintances I pointed out in the distance a magnificent castle we were approaching. I started to tell the legend of the castle, when it became apparent that the structure was a cement plant. Then I was more careful, but soon located another, a really splendid castle standing off a little from the river. I would have gotten through all right if some smart aleck had not butted in with the uncalled for information that the building was a brewery. But that is what a real castle looks like, the Hutchinson Reformatory, a cement plant, or a brewery, whichever comparison comes easiest for you to understand.

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Dover was one of the “Cinque Ports.” Five little towns along the coast of the channel had a sort of organization which was given recognition by the government under the early Norman kings. The towns were granted privileges and relieved from burdens of taxation in consideration of furnishing ships in time of war. The principal work of a navy at that time was to capture merchant vessels, slug the crews and keep the cargoes; so the towns prospered under the arrangement. It has been only a couple of hundred years since there was a standing army or a royal navy. When the king declared war he issued a call and the lords and knights responded with their men, and the army was formed for the campaign. If any of the nobles got sore on the king, they took their troops and went home. A navy was raised in the same way, only by the towns along the coast instead of by individuals. Such an army and navy was not satisfactory, but the English parliament refused to furnish money for a standing army until after the days of good Queen Anne, about 200 years ago. Now the English army is not near as large as the armies on the continent, but the English navy is kept twice the size of any other navy in the world. Germany is the country that England suspects as a possible enemy. Germany and France are crossways right now over which shall get the most of Morocco, and England is bound to stand by France in case of trouble. Morocco isn’t worth anything to anybody, but it may cause a terrible war between the most highly civilized nations of Europe. And yet some people are opposed to arbitration because of “national honor.” The opponents of arbitration ought to come over to these poor countries laboring under the weight of big armies and navies, and see how people are suffering because of the foolish feudal notion that the way to decide which is right is to fight it out.

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We ate our lunch today in a restaurant which proudly boasts that its steps were the place where David Copperfield rested during his search for his aunt, Betsey Trotwood. Little Dorrit lived at Dover, and the men and women of Dickens land often visited or made their homes in this quaint old seaport or in its vicinity. Shut your eyes to the big cliff and its imposing fortress, forget the harbor with its ships and men of war, quit observing the narrow streets and crooked lanes which run up and down the side of the hill, and live with the people that Dickens made so real that to most of us they surely existed. That is Dover, a different Dover from the red-coated, fish-smelling, quaintly architectured place in which people are buying and selling, and a Dover which will live as long as the English language is read.

Old Canterbury Today

CANTERBURY, ENGLAND, August 24.

This little city of 25,000 inhabitants is the ecclesiastical capital of England, and has been for over a thousand years. Some time before the year 600 Queen Bertha, wife of the Saxon king, became a Christian and built a small church in Canterbury. Then when St. Augustine came in 597 and took the king and all his army into the church at one big baptizing, the king gave him the palace and the heathen church, and they were converted into a cathedral and monastery. St. Augustine and succeeding archbishops were the heads of the church in England, and when the Normans came in 1066 they continued the rule. The first Norman archbishop began the construction of the present cathedral, and as money was plenty and labor cheap, it was built magnificently. The Archbishop of Canterbury received the title of Primate of All England, and he wears it to this day. The English Church is a government institution, the archbishop is a member of the House of Lords, and the position is easily the greatest in the Protestant world.

The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, in 1170, was the greatest thing that ever happened for Canterbury. He was in a controversy with King Henry, and made life so uncomfortable for the king that Henry remarked to some of his followers that if he had a few real friends there would be no Thomas Becket to worry him. Henry was probably drunk when he made this talk, although it doubtless was an expression of his real feelings. Four of his knights took him at his word, hiked to Canterbury, and killed the archbishop right in the cathedral. The murder was a shock to Christendom. The dead archbishop was canonized as a saint, and the people generally refused to believe Henry’s statement that he didn’t mean what he said. Everything went wrong with Henry, and the sacrilegious act was held responsible. Two years later the king went to Canterbury and took a whipping on his bare back as a penance for his remarks, and for years pilgrims came to Canterbury, miracles were reported wrought by the relics, and the cathedral and Canterbury got rich from the pilgrim business and the valuable gifts showered upon the shrine of St. Thomas.

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It is customary to consider Thomas Becket a martyr to the cause of liberty and to indulge in great eulogy of him as a saint. But he was really a plain man like the rest of us. His trouble with the king came because Henry wanted to recognize some other bishops, and Thomas, who was proud and stubborn, claimed that he alone had the power. It was really a conflict of authority between the church and the state, and a good deal to be said on both sides. Thomas abused the king viciously and had several bishops excommunicated because they agreed with Henry. He also threatened the king, and the disagreement was all over jobs and money. Those were tough times, and the usual way to get rid of an enemy was to kill him if you could. Unfortunately for Henry, his self-appointed friends did a bungling job, Thomas became a saint, and the king had to concede to the church all the privileges that had been claimed. Three hundred years later King Henry the Eighth, in order to secure a divorce and a new queen, overthrew the authority of the church, made himself the head of it, and incidentally sent to Canterbury, took all the valuables that had been placed on the shrine of St. Thomas, and put them in the national treasury, that is, his own pocket.

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But during that 300 years the supremacy of Canterbury as the religious head of the nation became fixed. The archbishops generally had to go into politics, many of them achieved greatness, and some were executed publicly. The cathedral was added to, “restored,” improved, and is now one of the very finest cathedrals in Europe. To an Englishman or an American it is more interesting than any other church in England, except perhaps Westminster Abbey. It has specimens of all kinds of architecture in its different parts, but they have been so harmoniously put together that the edifice is imposing on the outside and most impressive on the inside.

Canterbury itself is a sleepy old town, very full of quaint houses and with plenty of tradition to make things interesting. Chaucer, Dickens, Thackeray and other English writers have woven Canterbury into their stories, and on every side you are shown the places where heroes and heroines of fiction made their homes. But this week Canterbury is busy. The last game of the cricket season is being played, and Canterbury is as crazy over cricket as Hutchinson was over baseball when in the Western Association. The cricket association of England is made up of the counties, and I had the opportunity of seeing the game between Kent and Yorkshire. Fully ten thousand people attended, and I suppose they enjoyed the game, though English cricket is as tame to an American as the moo of a cow would seem to a roaring lion, or as spring-water lemonade would taste to a colonel from Kentucky. The game began at 10 o’clock in the morning, with Yorkshire, the visiting team, at the bat. At one o’clock the Yorks were put out after making 75 runs. Then there was lunch, and the crowd stayed on the field and under the trees for what looked to me like a harvest home picnic in Kansas. At 2 o’clock play was resumed, and continued till 4 o’clock, when the game stopped for the players and spectators to have tea. Yes, tea! Imagine an American ball game suspended for a half-hour while the ball-players enjoyed tea and sandwiches! It was too much for me. I saw the last half of the first inning would not be ended in one day, so I quit the cricketers and their tea and went off to look at an old church, which was more exciting.

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There are some peculiarities about cricket when viewed from an American standpoint. The association or league corresponds very well to our National or American League. A club of eleven men may be all professionals, or, as is usually the case, some may be amateurs. A professional is a player who is paid, and on the score his name appears without prefix, just “Brown.” But if he is an amateur and plays without pay, his name is on the score card “J. M. Brown, Esq.” He is then called a “gentleman player.” The game usually lasts two days. The side that is in stays in until ten men are put out. The pitcher or bowler tries to hit the wicket, three little posts that stand like our baseball home plate, and if he does, the batter is out. The batter, or in English the batsman, defends the “wicket,” and when he hits the ball far enough runs to the other wicket, which is located at the pitcher’s box. If he knocks a fly and it is caught he is out, or if a fielder gets the ball and hits the wicket while he is running, he is out. Two batsmen are up at a time, and a man may make a lot of runs. I saw Woolley, the pride of Kent, score 56 runs, and players often exceed the hundred mark. If the game is not finished in three days it is declared off.

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The crowd was quiet and ladylike. Occasionally they would applaud and say “Well bowled, sir,” but they did not tell the umpire he was rotten and they never urged the visiting club to warm up another pitcher. Not a word was said by the players, not a pop-bottle was thrown, nobody was benched and there was never a thought of such a thing. The English are better sportsmen than we are, and they applaud a good play by a visitor. A man who tried to rattle the bowler by screaming that his arm was glass, would be arrested and probably hung.

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Besides the cathedral, the quaint buildings and the cricket, Canterbury also offered an opportunity to see the moving pictures of the Jeffries-Johnson prize fight in a theater next to the church. Of course I did not go. I told several Englishmen that in America we considered these pictures degrading, and as between the fight pictures and the cathedral I preferred the cathedral. Besides, I had seen the fight pictures before.

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Another very interesting church in Canterbury is St. Martin’s, a little one, but considered the mother church of England. It is said to be the one erected for Queen Bertha before her Saxon husband, Ethelbert, was converted. This was prior to 600. It is on a foundation which was used for a Roman temple. Within the church is a big stone font said to have been used for the baptizing of Ethelbert. There is little doubt but that the history of St. Martin’s is clear and it is the oldest Christian church in all England.

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Associating with old cathedrals and Saxon churches makes one feel a few thrills. Even the inn where Chaucer put up his pilgrims seems modern. But cricket and the prize-fight pictures make up a sort of balance, and second-hand shops with wonderful salesmen bring one back to the 20th century. Canterbury has a famous brewery which is better patronized locally than is the cathedral, and farmers are in town trying to get hop-pickers just like Kansas farmers after hands in harvest-time. If St. Thomas could come back and see the automobiles running around his old monastery, notice the electric lights in the cathedral crypt, observe the American tourists with their guide-books and their gall, he would probably have some thrills himself.

The English Strike

LONDON, August 28.

There was a great strike of railway men in England last week, the news of which was sent over the world. As a subject of conversation and discussion it has taken the place of ordinary sights and tourist stunts. A very large per cent of the railway employés went out, there was rioting in several places, the soldiers were called upon, there was almost war in spots, and several people, innocent by-standers usually, were killed. The government secured a cessation of the strike by getting men and managers to agree to submit the differences to a national commission and be bound by it--an agreement both sides will break if it does not suit them. A railroad strike is a most serious thing in England, for in London and the manufacturing centers the people depend on the railroads to bring in their provisions, and as ice is almost unknown very few shops have more than a day’s supply of meats, fish and fresh eatables on hand. So the strike was pinching millions of people who had no personal interest in its result.

If I were a railroad employé in England I would strike, or at least I’d strike out for America or some other land where a man has a show. Railroad men are not well paid in England, rather worse than other working-men. Engineers, or drivers as they are called, rarely get to exceed 30 to 35 shillings a week (seven to nine dollars). Firemen, switch-men, baggagemen, station-men, operators, conductors and brakemen get from 20 shillings to 35 shillings a week (five to nine dollars). And yet both passenger fares and freight charges are higher in England than in Kansas. In discussing the subject with an educated Englishman I complained that a man with a family could not live on these wages. “Yes, but they do,” he said; “but the family doesn’t get meat every day--and the family doesn’t need meat every day.” I argued on, that a man can’t buy a home, or save anything for trouble or old age. “That’s true,” he said, “and it is unfortunate. But his children won’t let him starve, and there is some light job he can do to help out. The government is now preparing a plan for the pensioning of old people. When that law is working, a man won’t have to worry about the future.”

Which is a rotten theory. It merely means that with the prospect of a pension of less than two dollars a week an English laborer can be kept working at the present low standard. I am for the old-age pension, but I am for the proper payment of a workingman while he is at the age to enjoy life. This beautiful England with its castles and palaces and picture galleries and great history is far behind every other nation in its treatment of the workingman, and consequently England is now sitting on a keg of dynamite which is likely to explode. Once get it out of the heads of the English workmen that they have to submit to these things and these wages because their fathers did, and that it is a great blessing to have a king and lords, and the English working-men will raise Hades with the present political and social conditions in merry England. It seems to me that the time is not far distant when the explosion will take place. Only very skillful management on the part of the English statesmen and the very conservative habits of thought of the English people prevented most serious trouble last week.

An English workman usually has a large family, and the only way they can keep from going hungry or to the poorhouse is for the whole family to work and mother and children earn money to put into the common treasury. Meat, vegetables, fruit, everything to eat, costs more in England than it does in Kansas. Rent is less, but our workmen wouldn’t live as these have to. Clothing is cheaper in some respects and dearer in others. But the item is small with an English workman. You can see that after he pays rent and buys food he has very little left for wearing apparel, so father wears his suit until it is worn out, mother gets along on second-hand clothing, which is generally used, and the children have a cheaper grade and little of it.

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