Part 25

Well, it was just this. The American students, of whom there were a large number there, kept pretty much to themselves, and no love was lost between them and the Germans. They had an American Club to which they all belonged, just to keep them together and see any fellow through who was in a scrape. He and some of the American students were sitting in the beer garden, close to a table of Germans. Forgetting the neighbourhood, he had tilted his chair and leant back in it, and so come against a German head. The owner jumped up, and a sharp altercation followed, ending in the German’s calling him out with swords. This he refused, but sent a challenge to fight with pistols by the President of the Club, a real fine man, who had shot his two men down South before he went to Heidelberg. The answer to this was his arrest, and arrest was a very serious thing now. For some little time since, a German and an American fought, with swords first and then with pistols. The American had his face cut open from the eye right down across the mouth, but when it came to pistols he shot the German, who died in an hour. So he was in jail, and challenging with pistols had been made an offence punishable by imprisonment, and that was no joke in a German military prison.

Did he expect the University authorities would send after him then?

No; but his folk were all in Germany for the winter. He had a younger brother at Heidelberg who had taken his bag down to the station for him, and would have let his father know, as he had told him to do. If he had telegraphed the old gentleman might come straight off and stop him yet, but he rather guessed he would he so mad he wouldn’t come. No; he didn’t expect to see his folk again for three or four years.

But why? After all, sending a challenge of which nothing came was not so very heinous an offence.

Yes, but it was the second time. He had run from an American university to escape expulsion for having set fire to an outhouse. Then he went straight to New York, which he wanted to see, and stopped till his money was all gone. His father was mad enough about that.

I said plainly that I didn’t wonder, and was going to add something by way of improving the occasion, but for a look of such deep sorrow which passed over the boy’s face that I thought his conscience might well do the work better than I could.

He opened his bag and took out a photograph, and then his six-shooter--a self-cocking German one, he said, which was quicker and carried a heavier ball than any he had seen in America; and then his pipes and cigar tubes; and then he rolled a cigarette and lighted it; and, as the dawn was now come, began to ask questions about the country. But all in vain; back the scene he was running from came, do what he would. His youngest brother, a little fellow of ten, was down with fever. He had spoilt Christmas for the whole family. It would cut them up awfully. But to a suggestion that he should go straight back he could not listen. No, he was going straight through to California, the best place for him. He had never done any good yet, but he was going to do it now. He had got a letter or two to Californians from some of his fellow-students, which would give him some opening. He wouldn’t see his people for four or five years, till he got something to show them. He would have to pitch right in, or else starve. He would go right into the first thing that came along out there, and make something.

As we got further down the line the morning cleared, and we had many fellow-passengers; but my young friend, as I might almost call him by this time, stuck to me, and seemed to get some relief by talking of his past doings and future prospect. I found that he had been at Würzburg for a short time before going to Heidelberg, so had had a student’s experience of two of the most celebrated German Universities. My own ideas of those seats of learning, being for the most part derived from the writings of Mr. Matthew Arnold, received, I am bound to own, rather severe shocks from the evidently truthful experience of one medical student.

He had simply paid his necessary florins (about £1 worth) for his matriculation fee, and double that sum for two sets of lectures for which he entered. He had passed no matriculation examination, or indeed any other; had attended lectures or not, just he pleased--about one in three he put as his average--but there was no roll-call or register, and no one that he knew of seemed to care the least whether he was there or not. However, he seemed to think that but for his unlucky little difficulty he could easily at this rate have passed the examination for the degree of doctor of medicines. The doctor’s degree was a mighty fine thing, and much sought after, but didn’t amount to much professionally, at least not in Germany, where the doctor has a State examination to pass after he has got his degree. But in America, or anywhere else, he believed they could just practise on a German M.D. degree, and he knew of one Herr Doctor out West who was about as fit to take hold of any sick fellow as he was himself. Oh, Matthew, Matthew, my mentor! When I got home I had to take down thy volume on Universities in Germany, and restore my failing faith by a glance at the Appendix, giving a list of the courses of lectures by Professors, Privabdocenten, and readers of the University of Berlin during one winter, in which the Medical Faculty’s subjects occupy seven pages; and to remind myself, that the characteristics of the German Universities are “_Lehrfreiheit und Lernfreiheit_,” “Liberty for the teacher, and liberty for the learner”; also that “the French University has no liberty, and the English Universities have no sciences; the German Universities have both.” Too much liberty of one kind this student at any rate bore witness to, and in one of his serious moments was eloquent on the danger and mischief of the system, so far as his outlook had gone.

By the time our roads diverged, the young runaway had quite won me over to forget his escapades, by his frank disclosures of all that was passing in his mind of regret and tenderness, hopefulness and audacity; and I sorrowed for a few moments on the platform as the sealskin cap disappeared at the window of the Liverpool carriage, from which he waved a cheery adieu.

As I walked towards the carriage to go on my own way, I found myself regretting that I should see his ruddy face no more, and wishing him all success “in that new world which is the old,” for which he was bound, with no possessions but his hand-bag and self-reliance to make his way with. I might have sat alone for thrice as long with an English youngster, in like case, without knowing a word of his history; but then, such history could never have happened to an Englishman, for he never would have run his bail, and would have gone to prison and served his time as a matter of course.

How much each nation has to learn of the other! But I trust that by this time my young friend has seen to it that the good-natured Herr Doctor who went bail for him hasn’t “slipped up anyway.”

Southport, 22nd March.

I wonder if you will care to take a seaside letter, at this busiest time of the year? Folk have no business to be “on the loaf” before Easter, I readily admit. Still, there is much force and good-sense, I have always held, in that tough, old regicide Major-General Ludlow’s action, when he found England under Cromwell too narrow to hold him. He migrated to Switzerland, and characteristically changed his family motto to “_Ubi libertas, ibi patria_” (“Where I can have my own way, there is my country”) or (if I may be allowed a free rendering to fit the occasion), “Whenever man can loaf, then is long vacation.”

But my motive for writing is really of another kind. In these later years, a large and growing minority of my personal friends and acquaintances seem to be afflicted with that demon called Neuralgia,--some kind of painful affection connected with the nerves of the head and face, which makes the burden of life indefinitely heavier to carry than it has any right to be. To all such I feel bound to say, Give this place a trial in your first leisure. In one case, at any rate, and that an apparently chronic one, in which every east wind, and almost every sudden change of temperature, brought with it acute suffering, I have seen with my own eyes a complete cure effected by a few days in this air. The experiment was tried three months since, and from that time the demon seems to have been exorcised, and has been quite unable to return, though we have had a full average in these parts of sudden changes of temperature,--east winds, cold rains, and the other amenities of early spring in England.

Can I account for this? Well, so far as I can judge, the peculiar conformation of the shore must have much to say to it. From the open window where I am sitting, there lies between me and the sea (it being low water) an almost level stretch of sand of more than half a mile in depth. Beyond that there is a narrow strip of sea, on which a fleet of tiny fishermen’s craft, with their ruddy-brown sails, are plying their trade; and again, beyond that, between channel and open sea, is another long sand-bank. Now I am told, and see no reason to doubt, that the evaporation from this great expanse of wet sand is charged with double the amount of ozone which would rise from the like area of salt-water. But whatever the cause, the fact stands as I have stated above. In another hour or two the sea will be close up to these windows, lapping against the sea-wall, and spoiling the view for the time, but, happily, only for a short time. For while it is up, there is nothing but very shallow, muddy water to be seen, on which the faithful old sun, try as he will, can paint no pictures. Whereas at low tide, the colours of these sandy wastes--the steely gleam of the wet parts, the bright yellow of the dry, and the warm and rich tints of brown of the intermediate, and the quaint, black line of the pier, running out across them all till it reaches the pale blue of the channel, where the fishing-boats all lie at anchor round the pier-head at sunset--are one perpetual feast, even to the untrained eye. What the delight must be to a painter, when the level sun turns the blacks into deep purples, and glorifies all the yellows and browns, and gives the steely gleams a baleful and cruel glint, I can only guess, unless, indeed, it should make him hang himself, in despair of reproducing them on mortal canvas. That long, black pier is our favourite place of resort. Probably the ozone is stronger there than elsewhere. It is three-quarters of a mile long, and at the end, at noon, a most attractive, daily performance comes off gratis. At that hour the gulls are fed by an official of the pier company, and afterwards, at intervals, by children, who bring scraps of viands in their pockets for this purpose.

I am not defending the practice, which tends, no doubt, to pauperise a number of these delightful birds. I have watched them carefully, and never seen one of them go off to earn his honest, daily fish. There they sit lightly on the water, with heads turned to the pier-head, and float past with the tide, rising for a short flight back again, as it carries them too far past to see when the doles are beginning to be served. When these begin, they are all in the air, wheeling and crossing each other in perfect flight to get the proper swooping-point. It seems to be a rule of the game that they pick up the fragments in their swoop, for when this is neatly done by any one, the rest leave him alone, though he may carry off a larger prize than he is able to swallow on the wing. But in a high wind there is trouble. Not one in a dozen of them can then be sure of his prey in his swoop, and after one or two attempts the greedy ones alight and attack the viands on the water. But this seems to be against the rules of the game, and instantly others alight by the side of the transgressor, and strive eagerly for whatever of the desired morsel is still outside his yellow beak. I noted with pleasure that there are generally a few who will take no part in these squabbles, but if they failed in their swoop, soared up again with dignity, to wait for another chance. These must, I take it, be undemoralised gulls, from a distance. Always play your game fair, or there will be trouble, whether amongst birds or men.

At other seaside places the shallowness of the sand limits the pure delight of children in their castle-building. Here it seems boundless. I saw one sturdy urchin yesterday throwing out stoneless sand from a hole some four feet deep. The castles and engineering works are therefore on a splendid scale, several of them from five to ten yards across, inside which bits of old spars (portions, I fear, of wrecks) are utilised for causeways and bridges. The infant builders are ambitious, for I have seen frequent attempts, not wholly unsuccessful, at putting sand steeples on the churches. These higher efforts were all made by girls, who, indeed, I regret to say, seemed to do not only the decorative, but the substantial work. The boys employed themselves mainly in creeping through the holes which the girls had dug under the spars, to represent bridges, and in knocking down the boundary walls. Is this a sign of our topsy-turvy times? In my day, we boys did all the building and engineering, and the girls used to come and sit on our walls, and destroy our castles. On this highest part of the sands, the children’s playground, there stand also certain skeletons of booths, to be covered with canvas, I presume, in the summer, for the sale of ginger-beer and cakes. These, the largest especially, some nine feet high, attracted the boys, several of whom essayed to reach the highest cross-bar. Only one succeeded while I watched, a born sailor-boy, who was not to be foiled, and succeeded in getting on to it. There he sat, and looked scornfully down on the sand-diggers, in the temper, no doubt, of the chorus of the old sea song--

We jolly sailor boys a-sitting up aloft,

And the land-lubbers funking down below.

After a time he descended, and, looking for a few moments at the diggers, went straight away across the sands towards the sea. I saw that he had only a wooden spade, while most of theirs had iron heads.

There is another kind of amusement which is strange to me, being necessarily confined to great expanses of sand. A boat on wheels, called the _Flying Dutchman_, careers along at a splendid pace when there is wind enough, and I am told can tack handily, and never runs into the sea. If it did, it would not matter, as it must at once upset in such case in very shoal water. When the Royal Society was here, several eminent philosophers were reported to be disporting themselves in the _Flying Dutchman_, when the President, Professor Cayley, called on them to read papers, or make promised speeches.

This flat sandy coast is far from being so innocent as it looks. There are the wrecks of two vessels in sight even now. One of these, I hear, it took the lifeboat fourteen hours’ _continuous hard work_ to reach, and they brought off every man of the crew, twenty-five in number--a feat deserving wider fame than it has attained. They must be glorious sea-worthies, these Lancashire fishermen! Of the fine public buildings, the four-miles tramway, the Free Library, Botanic Gardens, and the rest, I need not speak. Lord Derby’s _mot_ on opening the Botanic Gardens is enough,--that the Southport folk can skate on real ice in July, and sit under palm-trees at Christmas. But I may say that the esplanade is a grand course for tricyclers and bicyclers, who seem fond of challenging and running races with tradesmen’s carts--a somewhat risky operation for other vehicles and passengers.

One word, however, before I close, about the most striking of the churches, St. Andrew’s. I was attracted to it by its good proportions, and the stone tracery of several of the windows, reminding one of the patterns of the early decorated period of Gothic art. It can seat some 1500 people on the floor, there being no galleries. I am sorry to say, however, that appearances are deceitful. It is of no use to have fine proportions and good decoration if they won’t stand; and unhappily, although the church is only twelve years old, the cleristory walls have been blown out of the perpendicular, so that the whole nave roof has to come off that they may be solidly rebuilt. What would an old monkish architect have said to such a catastrophe? The more’s the pity, inasmuch as the necessary closing of the church is going to shelve, probably for months, the most striking preacher I have heard this month of Sundays. I first learnt, sir, in your columns the golden rule, that during prayers the worshipper is responsible for keeping up his own attention, while at sermon-time it is the parson’s business. Well, I have been to St. Andrew’s for the last three Sundays, and during sermons, none of which have lasted less than half an hour, have neither gone to sleep, nor thought about anything but what the preacher was saying. I suspect it is (as Apollo says of Theodore Parker, in the “Fable for Critics”) that--

This is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher,

There’s a background of God to each hard-working feature,

Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced

In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest.

Whatever be the cause, however, there is the fact; and I own I am somewhat surprised, being rather curious about such matters, that I had never heard the name of Prebendary Cross before I happened to come to this place.

A Village Festival

Pan is dead! So, at least, those who claim to be teachers of us English on such subjects have told us; and if our poets cannot be trusted about them, who can? The present writer, at any rate, does not pretend to an opinion whether Pan is dead, or, indeed, whether he was ever alive. But if so, he ought to have kept alive, for never surely was his special business so flourishing in our country as in these last days. All round the Welsh border on both sides there is not a hamlet which is not indulging in its “Lupercalia” in these summer days, in spite of the cold and wet which have inopportunely come upon us. For the most part, these “feasts of Pan” are almost monotonously like one another; but I have just returned from one which had characteristics of its own--a pleasing variety, and creditable, I think, to gallant little Wales, for the scene of it was over the border. My attention was called to it by a large red bill at our station, announcing that, on the 9th inst. the annual festival of the Gresford Ladies’ Club would be held, for which return tickets might be had at tempting rates; and further, that “no rifle-galleries, or stalls used for the sale of nuts and oranges, will be allowed to be put up in the village or highways on the day.” Why should a ladies’ club invite me, and all men, by large red bill, to be present at their festival, and at the same time deprive me of the chance of indulging in the favourite feast pastime of these parts? I resolved to satisfy myself; and reaching the pretty station, in due course found myself on the platform with perhaps a dozen women of all ranks and ages--evidently members of the club, for each of them wore a white scarf over the right shoulder, and carried a blue wand with a nosegay at the top. Following admiringly up the steep hill with other spectators, I saw them enter a wicket-gate under an arch of flowers, and remained outside, where the brass band of the county yeomanry were making most energetic music. Presently the gate opened, and a procession of the members emerged two-and-two, and, headed by the band in full blast, marched, a dainty procession, each one white-scarfed and carrying a nosegay-topped wand, to the parish church hard by on the hill-top. It was a unique procession, so far as my experience goes. First came the squire’s wife, the club President, with the senior member, followed by another lady, I believe from the rectory, with the member next in seniority. These two, both past eighty, I remarked, instead of the white scarf crossing the shoulder and looped at the waist with blue, wore large white handkerchiefs, trimmed with blue, over both shoulders, shawl-wise. This I found was the old custom, the regular members formerly wearing the shawl, the honorary members the scarf, for distinction’s sake. Now, all members, regular and honorary alike, wear the scarf. We are levelling up fast, and I own I regret it, in this matter of dress. As a boy, I was in this part of Wales, and almost every woman on holidays wore the red cloak and high black hat, and looked far better, I think, than their descendants at this Gresford Club fête, though several of these were as well dressed as the squire’s wife and daughters. I followed the procession into church, as did most of the crowd through which they passed, one man only refusing to join in my hearing, on the ground that he had been already to one service too many. He had got married there, his neighbour explained, and his wife was in the procession. The service was short and well chosen, with a good, sound ten-minutes sermon at the end, and then the procession re-formed, the band still leading, and marched to tea in the big schoolroom facing the churchyard. “Scholæ elymosynæ Dominæ Margarettæ Strode, fundatæ 1725, ad pauperes ejus sumptibus erudiendos,” I read over the door. I notice that the Welsh are rather given to Latin inscriptions can it be in token of defiance to vernacular English?

During the tea-hour I had the pleasure of exploring church and churchyard, the former a large and fine specimen of the later perpendicular, but containing relics of painted glass of a much earlier date, probably thirteenth century. Portions of this, of a fine straw-colour, the Rector says, are invaluable, the art being lost. I wonder what Mr. Powell would say to that? The churchyard is glorious with its yews, more than twenty grand trees, and the grandfather of them the largest but one, if not the largest, in the Kingdom. He measures 29 feet 6 inches round 6 feet from the ground, and is confidently affirmed by Welsh experts (who have duly noted it in the parish register) to be 1400 years old. Without supposing that Merlin reposed in his shade, one cannot look at him in his glorious old age and doubt that he must have been a stout tree in Plantagenet times, and furnished bow-staves for Welshmen who marched behind Fluellen to the French wars.