Part 5

It was the houses which tempted me. There was an infinite variety to choose from--Elizabethan, Tudor, Jacobean (I am not sure I am always right about the period)--but I recognized the real Queen Anne. Here was a "gentleman's residence" and there a tiny cottage covered with climbing roses. I noted scores of Elizabethan houses with chimneys as graceful as the smoke which curled from them. Why cannot a modern architect design a chimney which will draw the eye as well as the smoke? And the gardens! Those of the poor as well as of the rich were a riot of color. There were dogs and ponies and "governess-carts," and all the things we are familiar with in the illustrated papers. As I looked at all these delectable things, it seemed to me that England was an earthly paradise; as old Gaunt says, "A second Eden." I grew melancholy as I remembered the "L" and the crowded subway, and the noise and the dirt of our chief city, the struggle for existence and the prevailing discontent--every man striving to surpass his neighbor--no one content with that station in life to which "it had pleased God to call him." How many Americans, I said to myself, believe God has called them to anything? Here, I continued, is peace and contentment. Would God that I were there!

Now Ruth has an uncanny way of knowing of what one is thinking, so I was not startled when she broke into my revery by saying:

"Yes, it is all beautiful, but how long could you stand it? I do not mean what you now see, but what you do not see! How many people have taken off their caps to us this morning simply because they believe us to belong to the 'gentry'? In that last village through which we passed, did the children 'bob' to us because they recognized our superiority in character or education? You would not have been the vicar of that lovely Norman church we passed five miles back one month before there would have been trouble! The 'servility' of the 'lower classes' would so have gotten on your nerves that you would have insulted some laborer for the satisfaction of having him answer you like a man! You would find another thing, which is that 'kowtowing' is not confined to one class. If the laborer 'kowtows' to the vicar, the vicar must 'kowtow' to the lord of the manor."

"Why, Ruth," I cried, "where is Bryan now? You talk like the ladies on the soap-boxes in Union Square!"

"You forget," she said, "that I am not talking about myself. I should adore to have the school children 'bob' to me, and would be quite willing in turn to 'bob' to the Lady Emeline or to the Dowager Countess. But you! Really, John, I sometimes think you know yourself less than any one I ever met!"

"It's lucky I have you to show me what I am like," I growled.

"Indeed it is," she cheerfully replied. "I'll tell you whom you are like: you are exactly like Crugan!"

To show you how absurd the comparison is, I must tell you something about Tom Crugan. He lived in our ward before he made his fortune, and was a good fellow--is still, so far as I know! More than once he had helped me when some poor wretch had got into trouble and needed a little "influence." When he got the contract for a section of the subway, he made a lot of money--I hope honestly! Then he made a lucky investment in real estate, which, curiously enough, the city found it must have--at an advance in price--and then Tom and his family made the grand tour. Mrs. Crugan kept herself in the background, but the girls, who were real Irish beauties, had a _succès fou_. One of them married an Italian prince, and the other a German count. Well, Tom stayed abroad about two years and then suddenly returned. He came down to our part of the town soon after, to look after some property he held there, and I saw him.

"Hello, Crugan," I said. "I am glad to see you back. Did you like Europe?"

"I did for a while," he replied, "but the best day of the trip was when I set foot in Hoboken. The carriage was there to meet us, and when I had put my wife in, she says to me: 'Ain't you comin' too, Tom?'

"'Not in a carriage, I ain't,' says I. 'And what is more, if that coachman touches his hat to me again, I'm liable to do him an injury! You go on up, mother, and I'll be there most as soon as you, anyway.'

"So I got onto a Christopher Street ferry, and caught a crosstown and swung onto a Fourth Avenue and went out onto the front platform to smoke a cigar and watch the driver handle his team. Pretty soon a mail-wagon got across the tracks, and he had to pull up pretty sharp, and the handle of his brake caught me in the stomach. Did he throw a fit because he had hit a man who was smoking a twenty-five-cent cigar? He did not. He turns to me and says: 'Why the hell can't you keep your belly out of my brake?' Say, I could have kissed that man!"

XV

EDUCATION

One day at Gloucester and one at Wells enabled us to get only hasty impressions of each. The west front of the latter was not so impressive as the pictures of it had led me to expect. Indeed, it looks like a sort of afterthought, and might as well have been put a hundred feet farther away for all the connection it has with the cathedral. However, when I am made an English bishop, it is Wells I shall choose for the bishop's garden!

But Gloucester, like Rome, would require a lifetime to exhaust. The whole history of western ecclesiastical architecture is built into its walls. Like the English constitution, it is neither an evolution nor a revolution. It is a series of new things put onto the old. Perhaps for that reason it is so impressive. It is not logical, but it works! The rough Saxon stonework was not torn down when the more stately Norman was added but left standing to bear witness to the past. And so the various styles of Gothic, from the early pointed to the highly decorative, have in turn been added, and the result is a structure in some ways the most impressive in England and perfectly representative of the English people. I thought of "The Chambered Nautilus":

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll: Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast-- Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."

From Wells we returned to Bath, crossing the Mendips, or are they the Cotswolds? On the steep ascent we passed two bicyclists, a parson and a very pretty girl, evidently his daughter. I wished we had two vacant seats to offer them, for it is a stiff climb. We did offer the one we had to the pretty girl, but though she looked tired, she was a good sport, and declined to leave her father to toil up the hill alone. I hope he was grateful, but Englishmen have a way of accepting sacrifices from their womenfolk which we do not understand. At any rate, it was pleasant to see the companionship between the two.

We spent the night at Bath in a pretentious and uncomfortable hotel, and moralized on Beau Brummel and his preposterous patron. I can never forgive Sir Walter Scott for his laudation of the Prince Regent, but, on the other hand, Thackeray's picture is as relentless as a portrait by Sargent.

From Bath we passed over to Winchester, taking in a corner of the New Forest _en route_.

After we had seen the great cathedral and college at Winchester, we walked to St. Gross, which is a home for old men. I have forgotten how old it is, but the custom of receiving pilgrims remains unchanged through all the many years. Each "pilgrim" is given a piece of bread and a mug of ale at the porter's lodge. We pilgrims were not hungry enough to enjoy either.

I had a letter to the head master, who, unfortunately, was away, but one of the house masters received us kindly and showed us about.

Of course the talk turned on education and the relative merits of English and American schools. Our guide had never been in America, but if you think that prevented him from having definite views on American methods of education, you do not know the English! He was inclined to admit that what he called our "board schools" were, perhaps, in some respects better than the English, but when it came to the question of "public" schools--such as the Phillips Academies at Exeter and Andover, or St. Paul's or Groton, he found it difficult to speak what he believed to be the truth and at the same time be polite. So he contented himself with saying that the English standard is much higher; which, I fear, cannot be denied. I asked him what boys of fifteen were reading in Latin, and when he replied, "Cæsar and the first books of Virgil," I said it would be the same with us. But when he explained that by "reading" he did not mean merely translation into English, but also retranslation into Latin in the style of the author, and added that boys must be able to write good Latin prose of their own composition, I gave up!

I asked him how he accounted for the fact that the standard was higher with them than with us. He said because English boys studied harder and longer hours than our boys do. He thought the three months' holiday fatal to continuous progress. "Then," he added, "your boys go to school too late. English boys are sent to a preparatory school at nine--often at eight--years of age, so they acouire habits of study before yours begin."

Much of this is no doubt true, but there are some things he does not know and which, _mirabile dictu_, I did not tell him! Do you ask "why"? Well, to tell you the truth, I did begin, but soon found he was one of those Englishmen who, having made up his mind, does not care to listen to new evidence. Moreover, the schoolmaster the world over is in the habit of teaching and does not care to be taught--certainly not by one not of the guild. No doubt you will say to yourself that this is not a peculiarity of the schoolmaster but is true of the clergy as well. However, in this case there were some things not taken into account. For instance, the holidays may be too long, but in our climate the boy who was kept at work till the 1st of August would not learn much more than he does now. Moreover, I question if the American boy, with his nervous temperament, is capable of the long hours of application which the more stolid English lad bears with ease. Whether it is an advantage, from the standpoint of scholarship, for a boy who has just emerged from infancy to be sent from home, I do not know. But the reason it can be done in England and could not be done in America--except in the case of those poor little unfortunates whose mothers and fathers have been divorced--is that in England the decision lies with the father, whereas with us it is the mother who has the final word. That it is desirable to send a child from home before there has been time to instil lasting principles, I fancy few American mothers would admit. Will English mothers when they have gained the independence of their transatlantic sisters continue the custom? Who can say?

I admit that all this sounds like what the lawyers call "confession and avoidance," but I believe there is a reason for the higher standard in England which perhaps our guide did not know, or was too polite to mention, but which, were it recognized, would lift our standard without resorting to the remedies he suggested. I suspect the real difficulty is that we have no such large body of well-trained university men to draw upon for teachers as England has. We find it difficult with so many attractive and lucrative careers open to young men to find many who are willing to make teaching a life-work, and therefore must do the best we can with the material we have. In other words, before we change our system would it not be well for us to make the profession of teaching as attractive with us as it is in England? What college president with us has such a position of influence, such a house and salary, as has the head master of Winchester, Eton, or Harrow?

You will be inclined to say as Prof. Corson did when I asked him, when I was a freshman, what subject he would suggest for a "composition." "Any except 'Education'!"

XVI

A BY-ELECTION

From Winchester we motored to Salisbury. The spire of the cathedral is perhaps the most beautiful in the world, but the cathedral as a whole did not impress me as much as I had expected. Perhaps I was still under the influence of Gloucester, or more likely of the regal shrine at Winchester. At any rate, when I learned that it had been built by one man, I lost interest. I am too familiar with that sort of work! The charm of most of the English cathedrals is due to the fact that of most of them it is true that

"Like some tall palm The stately fabric _grew_."

Salisbury did not grow; it was built! It has an air of artificiality about it that not even the beautiful spire, which is a later addition, can atone for.

It is fair to say that Ruth did not agree with me. To her it seemed one of the most beautiful of all we had seen. Indeed, she said the reason I did not appreciate it was because I was influenced by "Martin Chuzzlewit"! That was because I had asked her from which angle she supposed Mr. Pecksniff had first drawn it. At any rate, we had to agree to differ.

As we got into the car at the gate of the close a gentleman who had been looking it over asked whither we were bound. When I told him across the Plain, he strongly advised me to avoid the highway, which, he said, was quite uninteresting, and to take a road which, by many a turning, would show the Plain as the highway could not do. I do not know that man's name, and I do not wish to meet him again! He probably is one of those men who take pleasure in walking--a form of exercise which I detest! He certainly has never driven a car. Had he done so he would know that there is nothing so distressing to a motorist as a "picturesque" road! We descended into little gullies and mounted little hillocks till my back was nearly broken with changing gears, and the car looked as if I had bought it second-hand and used it hard!

We stopped long enough at Stonehenge to get an impression of its dreariness, and then pushed on to a village on the north side of the Plain. We reached there late for lunch, and learned that the name of the place was Divises, and that a by-election for member of parliament was in progress.

The inn was crowded to suffocation, and some of the loungers had had as much to drink as was good for them, and some a little more. I was in no amiable frame of mind, as you may imagine. No one would pay any attention to us--they were too busy serving drink.

I learned that the question at issue was what we call the "saloon." A Labor member was standing on a platform which called for the regulation of the public house, while the Conservative candidate was for "free rum." One would have thought that here was an issue which would divide the sheep from the goats. But there were other questions involved--land, for instance, and the Established Church.

Alas! I soon found that the shepherd had taken the side of the goats! While I waited in vain for something to eat I heard a great shout, and going to the door saw the parson, driven by his little girl--her fair hair blowing in the wind--the pony decked out with blue ribbons and the whip, carried at a knowing angle, adorned with a bow of the same color. I am glad to say the child was left outside, but the burly parson, looking more like a farmer than Herbert's "Priest of the Temple"--as probably he was--elbowed his way through the crowd and called for a drink; then, amid the shout of the half-drunken crowd, gave "The King and the Church."

Ruth, who had been pale enough before, now flushed so red that I was afraid she would "start something," and nudged her to keep quiet. Then I thought she was going to burst into tears. At that moment a charming young fellow came into the room and said to her: "I beg your pardon, but this is no place for you. My mother has a sitting-room, and I am sure would be glad if you would join her."

She hesitated a moment, but I said: "I am deeply obliged to you, and if you could get my wife out of this I should be very grateful."

So she followed him, and when later I joined them I found that the lady of the private room had given her a cup of tea and made her as comfortable as was possible in such a place.

When she learned we were Americans she said she was mortified that we should have seen such a sight--she too had seen, from her window, the parson's entrance. "I suppose, however," she continued, "such things are seen in every country at election time."

I said we had "toughs" who made trouble, but that any minister who behaved as the vicar or rector of this parish had done would be "ridden on a rail." I don't think she "got" that. I added that I thought that our laws which forbid the sale of liquor while the polls are open acted as a preventive of trouble.

"Ah," she said, "that is what Mr. Bowles"--the Labor member--"is trying to have enacted. But, you see, the vested interests are strong, and then he is so radical!"

You may be sure we did not tarry long in that place, but took our way back to Bath, where we had planned to spend another night.

Whether the sheep or the goats won the election I am unable to tell you. I am rather inclined to think it was the goats. The church and the public house make a strong alliance!

XVII

SHEEP-DOGS

Every one told us that we made a mistake in beginning our trip through the valley of the Wye at Ross. I think they were right. It is like doing the Hudson from Albany to New York, instead of taking the Palisades first, then West Point, and the Catskills last. However, it was more convenient to work north than to go up to Hereford, then down the valley, and again come back to our starting-place. At any rate, we did begin at Ross!

Of course our first excursion was to Tintern Abbey. What a gem it must have been in its glory! And I am thankful there has been no attempt to restore it. At the same time I think it a pity that the grounds should be so neglected. It is like neglecting the grave of one we love. So it was with a sad heart that we turned away and drove to a spot, "a few miles above Tintern Abbey," where more than a hundred years ago the immortal poem was written. I read it aloud, and we tried to breathe the atmosphere and feel "Beside these steep and lofty cliffs" what Wordsworth felt as he "heard these waters, rolling from their mountain springs with a sweet inland murmur." It is indeed a "wild and secluded scene impressing thoughts of more deep seclusion."

But these poetic thoughts were not destined to last long, for, Ruth remarking that it was getting damp, we started up the engine and drove along the road on the edge of the cliff, looking for a place for tea.

This we soon found, but as there was no garage, I drew up on the grass opposite the inn, where I thought the car would be out of the way and quite safe. A farmer, coming from the opposite direction, had evidently had a like thought, and had left his cart on the same side of the road. The horse had been taken out and the shafts tilted up at an angle which brought the ends of them directly opposite the radiator of the car. I put on the brake and out we got. I was surprised to see the motor move forward a few inches. The long grass had deceived me, for the ground, instead of being level, as I had supposed, sloped gently, and the brake had not been pulled back far enough to hold it in place. Those few inches did the business. The sharp, iron-shod end of one of the shafts pricked the radiator as neatly as a lancet opens an abscess, and the water gushed out!

This was indeed an accident. We were miles from a garage and I had not the least idea what to do. An old farmer, standing by, summed up the situation in a word when, turning to Ruth, he said: "It's like 'avin' your horse took with the gripes!" Fortunately, at that moment a kindly disposed cyclist came along, and with, I suppose, the same complacent satisfaction that the owner of a Ford car has in dragging a Pierce Arrow out of a ditch, unpacked his repair kit and plugged the radiator with some preparation for mending tires.

We were duly grateful, for it enabled us to go on our way, though we leaked like a watering-cart, and I should not like to say how many times the radiator was filled!

At last we came to a garage where I thought we should find relief. I do not remember what kind of a radiator ours is, but you may be sure the proprietor pointed out that it was the wrong kind, being almost impossible to mend, whereas if we had the kind which he had in stock it would have been a simple matter! I suppose every trade has certain stock phrases, such as the doctor's "Had I been called earlier." However, there was nothing to be done but to leave the car with the man who said he would do what he could.

We returned to the hotel on foot and not at all in a Wordsworthian frame of mind. The worst of it was that I had no one to blame but myself! I got what comfort I could out of the reflection that the insurance company would have to pay. But, as the Irishman said, the worst of that is "you've got to lose to gain!"

The next day while we were waiting for the report from the garage the porter took pity on us and suggested that we might like to see a trial of sheep-dogs, which was to take place at a farm near by. It did not sound exciting, but _faute de mieux_ we decided to go.

Why does not some one revise the bromidic formula, and instead of saying "How small the world is!" say "How small we are!" For indeed our lives are very restricted. How little we know of the interests of others! The trial of the sheep-dogs brought this home to me.

Gentlemen and farmers had driven in from miles around to see this match, which, I was told, is an annual event. I am not sure I can describe the scene, but I will try.