England Part 3

There is something of rebuke towards quick generalisations and easy judgments in the atmosphere of the place. I have been to Oxford many times.

My very first dinner in England was with the Fellows of All Souls, a feast of solemn yet cheerful splendour in four rooms, one for the dinner itself, yet another for dessert, another for coffee, and finally, another for tobacco. Another time I was at Oxford to lecture to a gathering of dons and undergraduates on social problems in Australia; yet another time to prove that the young athletes of the University were conquerable at _epee_ fencing. But never have I got over a first awe of the place. To attempt to probe to its soul seems an impertinence. Oxford has an atmosphere of the Round Table.

Rather than attempt to give my own impressions, I prefer to quote others, and to state facts. That Herodotus of social life, Pepys, found Oxford "a very sweet place," spent two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence on a barber in its honour, and gave ten s.h.i.+llings "to him that showed us All Souls College and Chickley's picture." He concludes, "Oxford a mighty fine place.... Cheap entertainment." Pepys was not troubled evidently by any awe of the place.

There is, by the way, astonis.h.i.+ngly little in the poetic literature of England about Oxford, seeing that so many poets have lived and studied there.

The University of Oxford, for all its devotion to the King, would not follow James II. on the path towards Rome. When on his accession he was welcomed to Oxford, "the fountains ran claret for the vulgar." But when he tried to force his Roman Catholic nominee into the presidents.h.i.+p of Magdalen, he could not even get a blacksmith to force a door for him.

Oxford was for the Church and the Throne, but for the Church first.

Nowadays Oxford is very much interested in social problems. It is Conservative still, but many of its young men have a flavour of socialism, generally of a "non-revolutionary" and Christian type.

Material life at Oxford is exceedingly pleasant, not to say luxurious. The undergraduates "do themselves" very well. Kitchen and b.u.t.tery maintain agreeably historic reputations, and the old college buildings have been modernised to the extent of admitting electric light and sanitary plumbing.

But bath-rooms are rare: the good old English "tub" which a servant makes ready in the morning with a ewer of water is still a feature of the college bedroom.

It is the social life and the college system, with its fine mixture of independence and wards.h.i.+p, which make Oxford sought for as a school for "character." But one may also gain much learning there if one wishes. Still it is hardly essential. You may emerge from Oxford with a degree, but with astonis.h.i.+ngly little knowledge. To the "Babu" type of mind in particular--that easily memorising, non-comprehending type of mind--a degree at Oxford is particularly easy of attainment. (The University, by the way, attracts very many coloured students, from India, from Africa, and from other parts of the world.) The man, too, of real intelligence who is willing to seek a degree in the manner of the Babu can easily fritter away the most of his student hours at Oxford, and win through his examinations by cramming at the last moment.

Since Oxford is so typical of the best of English life, it is fitting that it should be a place of very sweet and dignified gardens. There is the grandeur of elegant simplicity about Oxford gardens; and the Oxford trees--beeches, elms, limes, oaks--are surely the finest in all the world.

Oxford history is curiously linked with trees. William of Waynflete commanded that Magdalen be built against an oak that fell a hundred years before, aged six hundred years. Sir Thomas Whiteway "learned in a dream" to build a college where there was a "triple elm tree," and that fixed the site of St. Thomas. To-day the green of the Spring in the precincts of Trinity and Magdalen is a green which speaks of all peace and wise comprehension.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ETON UPPER SCHOOL AND LONG WALK, FROM COMMON LANE HOUSE]

So much s.p.a.ce has been given to Oxford and Cambridge, where young England receives the crowning garlands of the academies, that I can do no more than briefly mention the great public schools: Eton, under the shadow of the King's castle at Windsor; Harrow, on a hill a little apart from London; Winchester, nestling in the valley where, if tradition can be trusted, King Arthur once held a court; Rugby, in the Midlands, enjoying a st.u.r.dier climate and giving to the world that very manly exercise, Rugby football.

These and others might each have a book to themselves with justice. But in this volume we must move on to see something of adult England.

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AT WORK

A good proportion of young English manhood after having pa.s.sed through their course of education at home are claimed away from their country. The Indian Civil Service, the Services of the Crown Colonies, the Navy, the Army garrisons abroad, the immigration demand of the Overseas'

Dominions--all these make a tax on the numbers of adult England; and unfortunately the tax is much more heavy upon the numbers of males than of females. Thus there is a great disproportion of s.e.xes in England. The females far outnumber the males, especially in the cities. But after all the demands have been met, there are still some millions of Englishmen left. Let us see the work they do, the home life they lead.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, LONDON]

First of all, if a young Englishman is of the well-to-do order, and is ambitious, he will strive to take some part in politics. He may not be born to be a member of the House of Lords: and only six hundred or so of him can hope to become members of the House of Commons. But there are numerous other avenues of political activity, such as County Councils and Committees of all kinds. It is a wholesome aspiration of the best type of Englishmen to take some part, not necessarily a paid part, in the government and administration of their country. The supreme ambition, then, of the young Englishman may be said to be to work in the House of Commons; and that keeps "the Mother of Parliaments," in spite of all that pessimists may say, the leading legislative body of the world.

In its vast members.h.i.+p the House of Commons includes experts on every subject under the sun. There is no topic of debate imaginable on which some member cannot speak as a past-master. And the House insists that if you wish to engage its attention you must have something to say. You may halt or stumble in your speech, but you must have something to say or you will fail to get a hearing, no matter how charmingly you may talk. That helps the debate to a high level, discouraging talk for mere talk's sake.

"Mr. Speaker," who presides over the House of Commons, seems to be always a genius in the art of managing a deliberative a.s.sembly. At any rate, one never hears of a weak "Mr. Speaker." The present one takes it to be his duty to suppress all irrelevance and all tediousness in debate. He insists that a member shall say his say without circ.u.mlocution or repet.i.tion. With the vigilance of a ratting terrier he watches for discursiveness, and pounces upon the offender at once. I recollect a debate on the Indian question, arising out of the House of Lords' amendments in an Indian governing Councils Bill. All the speakers in the debate were experts with an inside knowledge of Indian affairs. They all spoke with terseness and directness. But there were, nevertheless, four interruptions from Mr.

Speaker, that "the hon. member was not sticking to the point at issue." In each case you recognised that Mr. Speaker was right. In one case, and one case only, did the rebuked member attempt to argue the point. "I was only going to point out, Mr. Speaker," he started. The whole House rose against him. "'Vide, 'Vide," they called from front and cross and back benches. He attempted again, and again the cries of "'Vide" drowned his voice; and he had to submit without argument. The House clearly believed in its tyrant.

It requires a curious sort of genius to be so able to "proof-read" a current debate and hit at once on the first divergence into redundancy.

If a "Mr. Speaker" is to become a tradition as one of the greatest of the many great Mr. Speakers, then he must have a sense of humour as well as a gift of prompt decision. The present Mr. Speaker has that qualification. He does not say "funny" things. But in almost every ruling and reproof there is a slight flavour of fun. A rule of the House was made after the "Suffragettes" made trouble once or twice in the chamber, that the Women's Gallery, a curious gilded bird-cage perched up in the roof of the House, should be open only to "relatives of members." Mr. Speaker was asked to define what closeness of relation justified admission. "That," said Mr.

Speaker, "I must leave to the individual consciences of hon. members." The House chuckled and understood that any respectable person could be counted as a feminine relative for purposes of admission to the gallery.

For the student of the origins of the English-race it is interesting--and quite easy of accomplishment if you have an acquaintance who is a member of Parliament--to see the quaint ceremony in the Lords of the Royal a.s.sent being given to Bills. On the occasion on which I attended, the Chancellor and two Peers, acting as Commissioners for the King, sat in solemn state, the Chancellor finding obvious difficulty in accommodating both a huge wig and a c.o.c.ked hat on his head. To them entered as far as the Bar of the House, on summons, some of the Commons, heralded by Black Rod and led by the Speaker. The t.i.tles of the Bills were recited by a clerk, and, with much ritual of bowing, the Royal a.s.sent was granted in Norman French: "Le Roy le veult." It was rather a pity that the Bills were painfully prosaic ones, dealing with tramways and the like. The elaborate medieval ceremony would have been more fitting to some great measure of statecraft. Still it did not seem incongruous. That is a characteristic of London. It is a medieval city modernised, but without the flavour of the medievalism being spoiled.

Of course it is well known that the present are not the original Houses of Parliament; it may not be so familiar a fact that Westminster Hall covers the old site, and that tablets, let into its walls, mark the limits, curiously small, of the old House of Commons. The King is supposed by tradition to open Parliament in the Hall of Westminster on the old site of the Commons. But to do so he would have to stand exactly on the spot where King Charles I. rose to receive a death sentence from his revolted Commons; and I think that lately our monarchs have shown sentimental objections to this and have let tradition in the matter go.

The House of Lords and the House of Commons are built in the one straight line, with the lobbies intervening. The King, when seated on the throne, can see right through (all the doors being open) to the Speaker on his chair some four hundred yards away. The Lords have the finer debating hall; but the Commons, it is complained, monopolise all the comfortable smoking and lounge rooms. Evidently they think that the n.o.ble lords have enough comfort in their own homes.

Lately a committee of the Houses of Parliament have been discussing the question of redecorating the buildings, and have come practically to the conclusion to do nothing. In some of the halls mural paintings of a rather astonis.h.i.+ng kind, betraying a time when artistic standards were a little lower than now, cover the panels. To fill the gaps with paintings of this epoch would make for incongruity. To imitate the old-fas.h.i.+oned and rather bad-fas.h.i.+oned existing panels does not seem advisable. So probably the difficulty will be solved by doing nothing, unless a daring wight suggests the painting out of some old work to make room for a complete set of modern frescoes. Probably, if there were just now an unquestionably pre-eminent British artist offering for the work, that would be done. As it is, the Mother of Parliaments remains with some of her halls a little patchy in decoration; some of them, indeed, a good deal ugly.

But, of course, governing the country is the business of the few. Tempting though it is to linger on at Westminster, let us see other cla.s.ses of England at work. The historic industry of England is agriculture, and it is to this day one of the most important, though a dwindling one lately.

Still, however, the English are an agricultural people; though it is around the agriculture of a century ago that their affections are entwined.

Modern agriculture, nevertheless, hardly exists in England, neither in the production of grain nor of fruit. The average orchard seems better designed to be an insectarium for the cultivation of pests than for the growth of good fruit. Straggling unkempt trees, growing for the most part their own wild way, naturally do not produce like the well-disciplined trees of the modern orchardist. But the soil is wondrous kind. That anything at all should come of such culture, or neglect of culture, is to be explained by a great graciousness of Nature.

Fruit is the text I take, because fruit is at once the worst example, and the most obvious one. But in no branch of agriculture is there anything approaching to modern scientific farming. Wheat-farming represents the crown of agricultural achievement in England, and very good yields per acre are garnered, because the tillage is careful, the manuring generous, the climate favourable. But what gross waste of labour is involved in the cultivation of these tiny fields, laboriously ploughed, in many instances with a single furrow plough; sown by hand and often reaped, yes reaped, with scythe-men and picturesque but unthrifty gathering of haymakers!

But there is this to be said for the old-fas.h.i.+oned English agriculture, that it is very, very picturesque. The tiny hedge-divided fields, the orchards in which the trees grow to forest dimensions, are far more pleasing to the eye than the great, bare, wire-fence-divided wheat-fields of Canada and Australia; or their orchards with close-clipped trees kept working with all their might for a living and not allowed the luxury of a single vagrant branch or the sight of any green carpet of gra.s.s beneath.

And, withal, in England, farming is not a commercial speculation altogether. If it relied upon its commercial success, it would die out almost completely. But the old landholders love their estates: the newly rich, if they are of the English spirit, aspire to become landholders. Both are usually content if from their agricultural estates they are able to make the products pay a slight profit only.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HARVESTING IN HEREFORDs.h.i.+RE]

The area under tillage shows, therefore, a tendency to dwindle, though already it is very small, considering the thick population of the country.

Love of sport and love of seeing the woods in their wild state have always set apart a great area of England for forest and for game preserve.

Nowadays we do not make a deer forest as roughly as did William the Conqueror the New Forest for the sake of the deer "whom he loved as if he had been their father." But somehow land pa.s.ses out of cultivation to become moorland or forest. These "waste lands" are far from being useless, however. They graze ponies and cows; they are deer forests, grouse moors, pheasant preserves, golf links. Land is more valuable for sport than for agriculture, and therefore it drifts to the use of sport, and peasants make way for pheasants.

A fine track of oak forest has been left at the Forest of Dean near the borders of Wales--the finest forest tract probably in England. It is a wild tract of steep hills covered with oaks, used for the building of the Navy in the days before the wooden walls had given way to steel ramparts.

The fen areas alone are in course of reclamation from the wild to the cultivated state. The work of bringing them back to usefulness was begun under Charles I. by Dutch engineers. Now a great part of the old fen lands are good productive meadows bounded by a network of d.y.k.es and drains, from which the surplus of water is pumped into the channels of the Ouse and other rivers, and so finds its way to the North Sea. Like the similar land of Holland, these reclaimed fens are excellent for the culture of bulbs, and Lincolns.h.i.+re has made quite an industry of sending narcissi to the London market.

Considering the Englishman at his work in other capacities, he is iron-founder, pottery-maker, textile-weaver, miner, and of course sailor and merchant. His work is characterised by a great solidness and honesty.

There is not much "gimcrack" work turned out in England. The spirit of her workshops is to make things that will last, not short-life tools and machines, such as some other peoples love. Indeed they do say that the idols made at Birmingham--a large proportion of the idols for the heathens of the world are made at Birmingham--are made so solidly as to suggest that the manufacturers have grave doubts about Paganism being supplanted among their customers for some generations.

Occasionally, indeed, one is tempted to believe that the Englishman loves work for work's own sake. I concluded this on first landing at Liverpool, when it took an hour's effort, on an average, for each pa.s.senger from the mail steamer to sort out his luggage. At Euston at least another half-hour was wasted in the same way. All that might have been avoided by a luggage check system such as prevails in Australia, America, and other countries.

But evidently the English character for steady energy and stolid good humour is built up partly by following the sport of luggage-hunting.

The English public and semi-public service, which gives to the visitor the first view of the Englishman at work, is simply beyond praise. In the railway service, the civility of the guards and porters, the neatness, the quiet energy of the drivers and firemen, are notable. In most countries railway engines seem always dirty and ill-kept. In England they are bright and clean. That shows a workman's pride in his work and its instruments. It is the man with the clean engines who is going to win through in the end.

I have a means of comparison of the public service in the United States and in England. In New York a letter addressed to me at a newspaper office went astray through a clerk refusing to take it in. I inquired for it at the New York Central Post Office: was--not very civilly--referred to the particular district post office which had attempted to deliver the letter.

A clerk there could not see that anything could be done--"the letter would be opened, probably, and returned to the writer.... Perhaps if I applied at the Was.h.i.+ngton Dead Letter Office it would do some good." I applied by letter (unanswered), then personally, and was told in a tired way that the matter would be looked into and I should be communicated with in London.

That is the last I ever heard of the matter.

Now in London one morning I left a small despatch case in a motor omnibus.

Reporting to Scotland Yard, I stated that the papers in the portfolio were important and their recovery urgent. The police officer at once volunteered to wire round to every police station in the metropolitan district (200 of them), reporting the loss and asking that word should be at once sent if the article were handed in. Before eleven that night a police officer called at my house with a despatch from Scotland Yard that the case had been found.

"The public good" depends largely on the efficiency of the public service.

It can never be real when the Government and the instruments of the Government are careless of the people's convenience. The efficiency of the Post Office, the police, and the park servants in England is great proof of a sound national spirit.

When the Englishman is through with his work--whether it be the large and dignified work of administering his Empire, or the smaller task of driving a tram--he goes home; and he is not a really happy Englishman, whatever his cla.s.s, if his home has not at least the sight of a green tree. He is willing, even if he is poor and condemned to work long hours, to travel long distances each day so that he may have at the end of his work a home to come to which will please his love of green England.

Having noted that the Englishman's home is, whenever possible, adorned with a little bit of green garden, step over its threshold and consider its domestic economy; that is to say, see the Englishwoman at her special work.

This must be done by cla.s.ses.

In the wealthiest cla.s.s the house is perfectly managed. It seems to run like the fabled machine of perpetual motion. There is no sign of the driving-power, no racket, no effort. Breakfast is a meal of charming informality, which, I think, ill.u.s.trates best the domestic ideals of the Englishman. Self-help from amply furnished sideboards and from tea and coffee urns is the rule. There is no fixed moment for coming to breakfast, and, since you help yourself, no servants need to be in attendance. How pleasantly thought-out is this idea! You have not the urging to an inconvenient punctuality of the thought that you are keeping servants waiting. Dinner is a ceremony of ritual. It is the social crown of the day.

You are expected to treat it with the considerateness due to its importance. To be asked to dinner is the sign of the Englishman's complete acceptance of you as a desirable person. (He may ask you to lunch without admitting quite as much.) To be asked, casually, "to eat with us" at dinner time shows a degree of friendliness which is willing to allow some familiarity.