Chapter 10

TASTES AND HOBBIES

_Variety's the very spice of life._ COWPER: "THE TASK."

Many of our son's vacations were spent in Llanelly, South Wales, where his mother's and my own kindred dwell. Llanelly is not a beautiful town--industrial centres seldom are--but Paul loved every aspect of it--the busy works, the spacious bay with its great stretches of sandy beach, the green and hilly hinterland, dotted with snug farmhouses and cheerful-looking cottages. Accompanied by his cousin Tom, for whom he had an intense affection, and under the guidance of his uncle, Mr. Edwin Morgan, a consulting engineer of high repute, he visited in process of time every industrial establishment in the neighbourhood--steel works, foundries, engineering shops and tinplate works. His insatiable curiosity, his desire to know the reason for everything, his alert interest in all the processes of manufacture, were noted with smiling admiration by managers and workmen. His last visit to Llanelly was in the summer of 1914. We joined him there in the third week of August. Clear in recollection is an incident that took place during our stay there. One sunny afternoon we were out in Carmarthen Bay in a little tug-boat and hailed a large four-masted vessel that had dropped anchor and was awaiting a pilot. She had just arrived from Archangel with timber. Her crew, athirst for news about the War, were most grateful for a bundle of newspapers. Paul thrilled at this meeting at sea with a vessel that had come direct from Russia, and he followed with fascinated interest the conversation between the tugboatmen and the crew of the barque. Little did any of us think then that the War was destined to claim Paul's life!

Celtic on his mother's side and mine, he was proud of the fact that he sprang from an "old and haughty nation, proud in arms." On many of his school books he wrote in bold lettering: "Cymru am byth!" ("Wales for ever!") His instinctive love of Wales was strengthened by his visits to Llanelly and by holidays on the Welsh countryside, where, amid romantic surroundings and far from the fret and fever of modern life, he obtained an insight into rural ways and things. Welsh love of music and Welsh prowess in football also appealed powerfully to him.

Like most boys he went through the usual run of hobbies: silkworms, carpentry, stamp-collecting, photography, parlour railways. Thoroughness was his quality even in his hobbies. He had the note-taking habit in marked degree. Even as a small boy on a long railway journey he would carefully record in his notebook the name of every station through which the train passed, and then, on reaching his destination, would work out the distances by maps and books, and finally draw an outline showing the route with the principal stations and junctions marked. The same passion for classifying facts made him, as soon as he began to follow cricket closely, compile tables showing the batting and bowling averages of the leading players. Similarly with football. He was familiar with the record of the leading Rugby clubs and the characteristics of the principal players.

Machinery had for him the fascination of life in motion. He would gaze with rapture at the rhythmic movement of a flywheel and was thrilled by the harmonious movement of cogs and eccentrics, pistons and connecting-rods, all "singing like the morning stars for joy that they are made." As a child visiting a printing office he used to clap his hands with delight at the sight of "the wheels all turning." For engines of all sorts he had a passion. At Plymouth he loved to watch the great G.W.R. locomotives steaming into Millbay terminus, and would often engage the driver or stoker in conversation. After our removal to London he spent part of one vacation in an engineering shop. When he was fifteen we bought for him a small gas-engine which was fixed in an upper room. Clad in overalls he spent many a happy hour with this engine, generating electricity which he used sometimes for lighting, sometimes for driving the engine and train on his miniature railway. Here are extracts from one of his vacation diaries:

JANUARY, 1912

_January 1._--Went with Mother to first night of _Nightbirds_ at the Lyric. Workman and Constance Driver excellent; Farkoa also very good.

_January 2-5._--Busy making switchboard at home. At the engineering workshop I am starting on a steel rod; cutting with hack saw, cutting 5/16 standard Whitworth thread; grooving it. All this on a Drummond 3-1/2-inch lathe.

_January 6._--Heard of 4 v. 20 a.h. accumulator for 10s. 6d. I must buy it. Splendid acc. it is. Finished switchboard; all correct; polished up meters and instruments. [Here is diagram of connections.]

Evening.--At _Tales of Hoffmann_, Opera House, with Mother. Good performance. First and third acts excellent; second ("Barcarolle" act) poor. Orchestra superb. Felice Lyne, Pollock, Victoria Fer--artistes of great promise. Renaud a master.

_January 7._--Wrote Economic Electric for new dynamo. Received letter from "Humber" recommending motor bike. I will probably buy one later on, or a "Triumph."

_January 10._--Took my old accumulator to electrician. To my great pleasure he said there was nothing wrong, only wanted filling and charging.

_January 11._--Tried my acc. on the train, running through switchboard; a great success. Engine runs very well. All switchboard connections absolutely correct; the reading when running: volts 3.5 to 4.25, amps. 1 to 2.5.

_January 12._--To Bassett Lowke's and bought wagon; yellow colour, red lettering; splendid model.

_January 13._--At matinée _Orpheus in the Underground_, at His Majesty's. Exceedingly good show. Courtice Pounds, L. Mackinder and Lottie Venn--all first rate; good voices and not afraid to use them.

_January 15._--To Hippodrome. The feature two amazingly clever Chimpanzees. Leo Fall's _Eternal Waltz_ a pretty operetta.

_January 16._--Final golf match between Dad and myself. Dad wins match and rubber by 1 up.

_January 17._--Got back my P.O. bank book. Total now £6 3s. Discovered slight leakage at joint between the cylinder and combustion head of the gas engine, owing to wearing away of asbestos washer, so causing a very small but appreciable diminution of compression. Made a temporary stopping with vaseline.

Evening.--Dad and I to _Tales of Hoffmann_, at the Opera House. This time a magnificent performance.

_January 19._--Dynamo arrived. A beautiful machine.

_January 20._--Went with Dad to International football match, England _v._ Wales, at Twickenham. Score--England, 8 points; Wales, _nil_. A splendid game. Wales beaten chiefly owing to their very poor three-quarters. Little to choose between the packs.

_January 31._--Having re-started music with a good teacher, a pupil of Professor Hambourg, I have practised very hard on the piano these last few days.

In his enthusiasm for engineering he devoured books like "Engineering Wonders of the World," "How it Works," "How it is Made," "Engineering of To-day," "Mechanical Inventions of To-day"; also books on wireless telegraphy and aviation. A great lover of books, he liked on off-days to visit London bookshops and rummage their shelves. Very proud he was of his purchases during these excursions. From time to time he would have a run round the museums and picture galleries of London or take a trip to Hampton Court--Wolsey's palace and William III's home--a spot dear to him for its links with history and for the beauty of its surroundings. He was always enthralled at the British Museum by the Rosetta Stone--that key by means of which Champollion unlocked for the modern world the long-hidden secret of Egypt's ancient civilisation.

A subject which he pursued keenly for a couple of years--from fifteen to seventeen--and which held him in fascinated wonder, was Astronomy, a branch of knowledge that happens to be strongly represented among my books. Often on starry nights he would be a watcher of the heavens.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, Ere he went to rest, Did he look on great Orion, sloping Slowly to the west. Many a night he saw the Pleiads, rising Thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies, tangled In a silver braid.

It has been stated that most of Paul's vacations were spent in Wales, but in 1913 he went farther afield, accompanying his mother, his brother and myself on a tour in Germany. He was enraptured with this, his first visit to the Continent. On our outward journey we halted at Brussels, in those days a bright and happy city with nothing in its cheerful, prosperous air to suggest that in less than a year there would descend upon it the baleful shadow of the Great War. Much in the old Germany appealed powerfully to our son, and even of the new Germany, with its energy and its zeal for learning, he was something of an admirer. But he hated in modern Germany its brazen materialism and boastful arrogance. He attributed the change in the spirit of the German people to the hardness of their Prussian taskmasters, whose yoke was submissively borne because of the glamour of the military victories achieved since 1866, and the rapid growth in wealth that had followed the attainment of German unity. He read and spoke German and was familiar with the literature and history of the country. Two great Germans, Goethe and Wagner, he intensely admired. It so happened that we were at Frankfort on the centenary of Goethe's death. Paul visited the Goethe house and spent a couple of hours examining its souvenirs with loving interest. He liked to see the places and the houses associated with the names or lives of great men. On our homeward journey down the Rhine he left us at Bonn to visit the house where Beethoven was born, joining-us subsequently at Cologne.

This holiday in the Rhineland and the Black Forest brought deep enjoyment to him. His enthusiasm at his first sight of the Rhine was unrestrained, and the morning after our arrival he plunged into its waters for a swim. Professor Cramb, writing of the love of Germans for the Rhine, quotes a letter from Treitschke, in which that fire-eating historian said on the eve of his leaving Bonn: "To-morrow I shall see the Rhine for the last time. The memory of that noble river will keep my heart pure and save me from sad or evil thoughts throughout all the days of my life." Paul in a marginal note writes: "Wonderful attraction of the Rhine. I have felt it myself, though not a German."

He got on excellently with the German people. One Sunday afternoon, doing the famous walk from Triberg to Hornberg, he had a long and friendly talk with a German reservist in the latter's native tongue, about the relations of Germany and England. Both agreed that war between the two nations would be madness, and both dismissed it as to the last degree improbable, but the German said significantly that he feared the Crown Prince was a menace to peace.

In the spring of the following year (1914) Paul spent Easter week with me in Paris. Never had I seen the French capital more beautiful or happier-seeming than in that bright and joyous springtime. Who could have dreamt then that war was only three months distant? Paris was a revelation to Paul. He crowded a lot of sight-seeing into half a dozen busy days. All that was noble or beautiful in Art as in Nature appealed instinctively to him. I can see him now at the Louvre gazing rapt from various angles at that glorious piece of statuary the Venus of Milo. His knowledge of history made his visit to the glittering palace of Louis XIV at Versailles an undiluted pleasure. Fascinated by the genius of Napoleon, he spent a long time at the Invalides gazing down on the sarcophagus within which the conqueror of Europe sleeps his last sleep.

Later in the year he and two other Dulwich boys arranged to spend three weeks of the summer vacation in the house of a professor at Rouen. They were to have left London on the second week in August. This hopeful project was frustrated by the rude shock of war.