CHAPTER XX

EN ROUTE TO PARIS

One of the things which dawned upon me in moving about England, and particularly as I was leaving it, was the reason for the inestimable charm of Dickens. I do not know that anywhere in London or England I encountered any characters which spoke very forcefully of those he described. It is probable that they were all somewhat exaggerated. But of the charm of his setting there can be no doubt. He appeared at a time when the old order was giving way, and the new--the new as we have known it in the last sixty years--was manifesting itself very sharply. Railroads were just coming in and coaches being dispensed with; the modern hotel was not yet even thought of, but it was impending.

Dickens, born and raised in London, was among the first to perceive the wonder of the change and to contrast it graphically with what had been and still was. In such places as St. Alban’s, Marlowe, Canterbury, Oxford, and others, I could see what the old life must have been like when the stage-coach ruled and made the principal highways lively with traffic. Here in Canterbury and elsewhere there were inns sacred to the characters of Dickens; and you could see how charming that world must have appeared to a man who felt that it was passing. He saw it in its heyday, and he recorded it as it could not have been recorded before and can never be again. He saw also the charm of simple English life--the native love of cleanly pots and pans and ordered dooryards; and that, fortunately, has not changed. I cannot think of any one doing England as Dickens did it until there is something new to be done--the old spirit manifested in a new way. From Shakespeare to Dickens the cry is long; from Dickens to his successors it may be longer still.

I was a bit perturbed on leaving Canterbury to realize that on the morrow at this same time I should catch my first glimpse of Paris. The clerk at the station who kept my bags for me noted that I came from New York and told me he had a brother in Wisconsin, and that he liked it very much out there.

I said, “I suppose you will be coming to America yourself, one of these days?”

“Oh, yes,” he said; “the big chances are out there. I’ll either go to Canada or Wisconsin.”

“Well, there are plenty of states to choose from,” I said.

“A lot of people have gone from this place,” he replied.

It rained hard on the way to Dover; but when I reached there it had ceased, and I even went so far as to leave my umbrella in the train. When I early discovered my loss I reported it at once to the porter who was carrying my belongings.

“Don’t let that worry you,” he replied, in the calmest and most assuring of English tones. “They always look through the trains. You’ll find it in the parcel-room.”

Sure enough, when I returned there it was behind the clerk’s desk; and it was handed to me promptly. If I had not had everything which I had lost, barring one stick, promptly returned to me since I had been in England, I should not have thought so much of this; but it confirmed my impression that I was among a people who are temperamentally honest.

My guide led me to the Lord Warden Hotel, where I arranged myself comfortably in a good room for the night. It pleased me, on throwing open my windows, to see that this hotel fronted a bay or arm of the sea and that I was in the realm of great ships and sea traffic instead of the noisy heart of a city. Because of a slight haze, not strong enough to shut out the lights entirely, fog-horns and fog-bells were going; and I could hear the smash of waves on the shore. I decided that after dinner I would reconnoiter Dover. There was a review of warships in the harbor at the time; and the principal streets were crowded with marines in red jackets and white belts and the comic little tambourine caps cocked jauntily over one ear. Such a swarm of red-jackets I never saw in my life. They were walking up and down in pairs and trios, talking briskly and flirting with the girls. I fancy that representatives of the underworld of women who prey on this type of youth were here in force.

Much to my astonishment, in this Snargate Street I found a south-of-England replica of the “Fish, Chip, and Pea” institution of the Manchester district. I concluded from this that it must be an all-English institution, and wherever there was much drunkenness there would be these restaurants. In such a port as Dover, where sailors freely congregate, it would be apt to be common; and so it proved.

Farther up High Street, in its uttermost reaches in fact, I saw a sign which read: “Thomas Davidge, Bone-setter and Tooth-surgeon”--whatever that may be. Its only rival was another I had seen in Boulton which ran: “Temperance Bar and Herbal Stores.”

The next morning I was up early and sought the famous castle on the hill, but could not gain admission and could not see it for the fog. I returned to the beach when the fog had lifted and I could see not only the castle on the hill, but the wonderful harbor besides. It was refreshing to see the towering cliff of chalk, the pearl-blue water, the foaming surf along the interesting sea walk, and the lines of summer--or perhaps they are winter--residences facing the sea on this one best street. Dover, outside of this one street, was not--to me--handsome, but here all was placid, comfortable, socially interesting. I wondered what type of Englishman it was that came to summer or winter at Dover--so conveniently located between London and Paris.

At ten-thirty this morning the last train from London making the boat for Calais was to arrive and with it Barfleur and all his paraphernalia bound for Paris.

It seems to me that I have sung the praises of Barfleur as a directing manager quite sufficiently for one book; but I shall have to begin anew. He arrived as usual very brisk, a porter carrying four or five pieces of luggage, his fur coat over his arm, his monocle gleaming as though it had been freshly polished, a cane and an umbrella in hand, and inquiring crisply whether I had secured the particular position on deck which he had requested me to secure and hold. If it were raining, according to a slip of paper on which he had written instructions days before I left London, I was to enter the cabin of the vessel which crossed the channel; preëmpt a section of seat along the side wall by putting all my luggage there; and bribe a porter to place two chairs in a comfortable windless position on deck to which we could repair in case it should clear up on the way over. All of this I faithfully