England Part 5

Finally the flying did begin. But it was all by Frenchmen on French machines. There was the Bleriot, aptly to be compared in shape to a dragon-fly; the Farman, a long box trailing a baby box in its wake. The Bleriot suggests a successful wooing, the Farman a scientific conquest, of the air. The one soars and swoops and skims actually like a bird, the other progresses with scientific and mathematical precision. One might imagine a respectable barn-door fowl brood-mother, resting a while after the arduous labours of the pheasant season, speculating dismally on the prospects of being called upon to hatch out a brood of aeroplanes, and resolving to accept with resignation a clutch of Bleriots but to draw the line firmly at Farmans. No respectable fowl could give even the kins.h.i.+p of adoption to a flying contrivance that suggests so strongly a collection of egg-boxes.

Since then Englishmen have learned to fly, and aeroplaning is becoming one of the national sports. Also I see in some of the papers that because at the last Olympic Games England got more of the dust than of the laurels, the Englishman must set to work to learn to throw the javelin and the discus farther than any one else; and I believe that a section of him will accept the direction to do this and do it quite earnestly. So the Englishman who practises at football, cricket, hunting, sailing, rowing, fis.h.i.+ng, running, walking, flying, shooting, must also learn to throw strange things great distances. Withal he has his work to do, and some time to give to the enjoyment of the beauty of his most beautiful England. A wonderful people of a wonderful country!

CHAPTER VII

THE CITIES OF ENGLAND

There are so many great cities and historic towns in England that a mere guide-book enumeration of the chief of them would fill many pages--in rather a dull fas.h.i.+on. I shall not attempt that, but will take the reader for a brief glance at some of the more notable centres of population.

In the beginning there is, of course, London--the capital of the world, the centre from which has sprung most of the great movements of the Christian era for the betterment of humanity, the magnet which draws to-day the best of the world's thought and energy. To have the best introduction to London I should like to think of the visitor coming upon it, as I did for the first time, in the "small hours" of a clear May morning. A drive through its streets then was a sheer delight. Hushed they were and solemn, the torrents of trade stilled for a few hours. But the soul of London was awake, though its busy material life for a brief time was asleep. The great grey old city was peopled with ghosts. Through the empty streets paced London's great men since Caesar, some native and to the land born, others foreign, finding in England hospitality whether they came as poor refugees or as n.o.ble visitors. From the houses walked out memories and traditions in spectral hordes. The buildings themselves, mostly of the white freestone of Bath, which with London smoke becomes a dull black, and then with London showers learns to show here and there a patch of ghostly white, lent themselves to the fancy of a city of dreams. The architecture was disembodied, and floated in the air; the shadows of venerable churches and inst.i.tutions were a background to shadows of great men and n.o.ble women.

In time I came in front of the Houses of Parliament, the shrine of representative government. Yonder, looming high in the pale early morning light, was the Nelson Monument, and stretching from it the Strand, leading to Fleet Street, whence issued the first newspapers of European civilisation. Near by Westminster Abbey lifted its grey fane in praise and prayer. This indeed seemed the very centre and capital of the world.

If you cannot so enter London for the first time, when its busy traffic is hushed, and the first pale glow of a spring dawn is in the sky, be heedful that some night you will give up thoughts of your couch to taste that joy.

Wander then down Pall Mall, home of magnificent clubs, after the last late reveller has been taken to his cab, past the National Gallery, the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields (a wondrous beautiful church by moonlight or first-dawn light), through Trafalgar Square, and along the Strand to Wellington Street. Cross the Thames by Waterloo Bridge, turning a blind eye to the electric signs that are now allowed to disfigure the south river front, and see the great sweep, right and left, of the Thames Embankment, and then look up in the sky to see the dome of St. Paul's afloat there.

Recrossing the bridge, go to the left until Westminster Bridge is reached, and look there for the Houses of Parliament and, a little away from the river, the Abbey of Westminster. Then turn into Bird-Cage Walk by the side of St. James's Park and cross that park by the only path open at night, which will take you across the lake by a little footbridge. From the middle of that footbridge, looking towards the Horse Guards, there is, by night, a view as poetic as any that Venice can show: of the still lake fringed with woods, and--apparently rising up from its very marge--the Horse Guards, and the palaces which shelter the officials of the great public departments.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEAN'S YARD, WESTMINSTER]

Most of London is beautiful at any hour. All of it, even to the most sordid parts, is beautiful at the fall of evening or the first glance of the morning. And there is always intruding into the commonplace of the twentieth century some touch of ancientry, some hint of romance. I can recall once finding a note of beauty in that least likely of all places, London Dock. It was an autumn dawn so grey and chill that the pungent smell of a cargo of pepper from one of the wharves brought a welcome sense of warmth. I was wandering about aimlessly when, in a dirty little basin of muddy water in the Wapping corner of the docks, I suddenly came upon a white swan swimming with placid disregard of its utter incongruousness there. In the grey morning, in that grey water, surrounded by the murk of industrialism at its ugliest, the white swan was as startling as a ghost.

When, as I looked upon it, the air was suddenly pierced by the crisp, urgent note of a bugle calling the _reveille_, I felt sure for a moment that this was an uneasy dream bringing into the sordid grey of life a thread of white and silver from the days of jousts and pageantry. But no, the swan was real enough; the mystery of the bugle-call was that the docks were under the shadow of the Tower of London, which relieves with its splendidly preserved Norman keep a busy quarter of London from architectural dullness.

But the chief charm of London is, without a doubt, its parks and open places, of which there are some three hundred. Indeed, of the total area of London a full tenth is park land, and the civic authorities are adding to the park area, not lessening it.

Nothing that one could say would exaggerate the beauty of these parks in spring and summer. The gra.s.s lawns--delicately smooth, of a glowing green that seems to be suffused with light and starred with little white daisies, suggest a bright firmament, the emerald sky of a fairy tale with daisies to make its Milky Way. The trees are full of their own rustling song and of the clear soprano notes of crowding birds. The flower-beds flaunt a constantly changing bravery of colour. All the plants are bedded out in full bloom. The cost must be enormous, but the Londoner pays it cheerfully, and these city parks provide the people with gayer gardens than have any of the great n.o.bles.

For the gardens are the people's. On the dainty gra.s.s the children of the poor sprawl and play contentedly. In the ponds and streamlets, beside which, in the old days, kings sauntered, the youngsters of the slums fish with bent pins or scoop with small nets for small fish. The rangers are the friends of the people, and will help a little kiddie to a patch where daisies may be picked for daisy-chains. The trees are all a-twitter with songsters. In the ponds and streams a gorgeous variety of water-fowl display themselves--giant white pelicans, filled with a smug and hypocritical satisfaction at the mistaken reputation they have won for benevolence; black swans from Australia and white swans of this country; all manner of ducks and geese and teal. Children bring crumbs and feed these birds, and also the pigeons, which in consequence reach a bloated size and can hardly waddle out of the way of the hors.e.m.e.n who canter along the soft tracks laid out for cavaliers in Hyde Park.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAILING BOATS ON THE SERPENTINE, HYDE PARK, LONDON]

The aloofness from the city's turmoil of the London parks is wonderful.

Matthew Arnold noted it in Kensington Gardens:--

In this lone, open glade I lie, Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girdling city's hum.

How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade To take his nurse his broken toy; Sometimes a thrush flit overhead Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pa.s.s, What endless, active life is here!

What blowing daisies, fragrant gra.s.s!

An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

The art of designing city parks of this kind seems to be exclusively English. In other parts of the world there are magnificent parks, but nowhere the little bit of woodland planted in the heart of a city.

Though London is the greatest industrial city of the world, it does not succeed in being sordid-looking or mean. But the Midlands--where are the new great manufacturing cities--are frankly horrible, grimy city following grimy city, the pavements seeming never to end, the suburbs of one town stretching out lank arms to greet those of another.

When rain sets in, the sordidness of these towns is complete. Thickly growing chimneys take the place of trees, and from the tops of their great harsh trunks float thin wisps of black foliage. The streets are of a miserable muddiness which bemires without softening the hardness of the pavements. Through the smoky, dirty, wet air pallid faces loom. The very meat in the shops has no red wholesomeness, but looks pallid and anaemic; that, I suppose, is really due to the fact that the Midlands so largely eat pork, but it pleases me to imagine that the inanimate stuff also feels the depression of this smoke-palled district and knows not the red of life.

But much of the evil is curable. Sheffield is a brighter, more sunny town than most in the Midlands because its authorities insist on something being done to mitigate the smoke nuisance. In most of the other towns factory and workshop can pour out unchecked their defiling streams, poisoning the air and darkening the sky so that the birds leave the district in despair, and no green thing flourishes and men grow pale and unwholesome. Now that is being changed, and the Midland cities are beginning to claim their share of the heritage of English beauty.

Away from the actual new manufacturing towns there are none without some beauty. Durham in the north perches grandly on its river, and the river-front shows off well the impressive Cathedral. York, with its famous Minster, has been already noted in another chapter. To Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare, all visitors to England go, but some English people are beginning to resent the commercial spirit which makes it purely a "show" town, with fees payable for this and that at every turn.

A town not too "hackneyed" but full of historical interest is St. Albans, the Verulam of the Romans, with its fine Abbey Church overlooking hill and field. The path past that church was a wide-paved Roman road once, and by the vicarage foundations of Roman chambers and mosaics are found. Some two thousand years ago St. Albans was a stronghold of the Britons, protected naturally on two sides by marsh and river; adding to those natural defences an artificial ditch, earthworks, and a palisade. It had to stand an onslaught of the Roman invaders, and, of course, fell. Before that Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, had laid the town waste--Boadicea of whom Cowper sang:--

When the British warrior Queen, Bleeding from the Roman rods, Sought, with an indignant mien, Counsel of her country's G.o.ds.

Poor Boadicea: if she suffered all that is said, "an indignant mien" would seem to be a weak description of her state of mind; but a rhyme was necessary. This more or less historical Amazon of early Britain has now a statue to her memory on Westminster Bridge. (And, by the way, London has yet to learn--and might learn from Paris--how to utilise the artistic possibilities of bridges.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: WATERGATE STREET, CHESTER]

But to return to St. Albans. The Watling Street of the Romans from London to Chester ran through this town. After the departure of the Roman legions, St. Albans suffered a long siege at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon invaders.

Sacked and left in ruins it became a stronghold for outlaws. Then the Church came with holy balm, and the foundation of a monastery gave St.

Albans peace.

Chester, where the Watling Street of the Romans ended, is to-day one of the most picturesque of English cities. Its old timbered houses and arcaded streets give it a mediaeval air, which is jealously preserved in all restoration work. Bath is another city of Roman antiquity. Portions of the Roman baths still exist there, and the existence of a great modern spa shows that the doctors of to-day endorse the opinion of their colleagues of the days of Caesar. Apart from its medicinal waters, Bath is a very beautiful town, the architectural treatment of its hill-sides being most effective. In an earlier century it was a great resort of fas.h.i.+on, and there reigned Beau Nash, the Exquisite. To-day Bath is less popular, but not less deserving of favour, and an effort is being made to restore its old glories. Winchester, another Roman town, an old capital of the kingdom, and the reputed capital of King Arthur, where the "curfew bell"

still rings, should be among the first three of the cities of England visited. From there it would be well to go west to ramble through Plymouth, a naval port full of memories of Francis Drake and other gallants of the glorious Elizabethan days. Bristol then claims a day; also Rochester, which has the second oldest cathedral in England, and which has a new source of interest in that it is emphatically, after London, the d.i.c.kens city.

Canterbury should have more than a day, for it is a link between Briton England and Roman England, and then between Briton England and Saxon England. (Between Dover and Canterbury was the first line of resistance to the Roman invaders, and again to the Saxon invaders.) There Bertha, the first Christian Queen of Kent, wors.h.i.+pped in the little Church of St.

Michael. There St. Augustine christened Ethelbert of Kent, founded a monastery, ordained a bishop (1300 years ago), and set the foundations of the first Christian cathedral in England. There, too, a Becket shed his blood; and there is the shrine of the Black Prince.

Salisbury, with its cathedral, must not be missed. It was a great fortified town once, and Pepys records in his Diary:--

So over the plain by sight of the steeple to Salisbury by night; but before I came to the town, I saw a great fortification, and alighted, and to it, and in it, and find it so prodigious so as to fright me to be in it all alone at that time of night, it being dark. I understand since it to be that that is called Old Sarum.

The remains of Old Sarum are the fragments of a great feudal castle and keep. It was these ruined walls and yawning ditches which sent two members to Parliament until the Reform Act of 1832. To the present day Salisbury is a central point in the military defences of England, the chief training-grounds for troops being at Salisbury Plain.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVERS OF ENGLAND

There is no spot in England more than sixty miles away from the sea as the crow flies. So the land gives no room for great river systems. But the larger rivers are navigable to a more than ordinary degree, because they run their courses gently. Reinforcing the rivers are hundreds of charming streams. By the side of these rivers and streams is to be found the most charming scenery of the English country-side.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE RIVER ROTHER. SUSs.e.x]

A typical English stream takes its course--shallow at the outset, deepening its bed as it nears the sea--through meadows which bring their green to the very edge of its sparkling water, past trees which take the caress of the water with their roots and give it back in kisses from their leafy branches. Rarely does the English stream have a ravine to pa.s.s through: generally the ravine has been softened to a gentle valley, with a wooded hill rising steeply on one side, a marshy meadow stretching away on the other. These marshes are flecked in proper season with most beautiful golden and blue and purple flowers, and fringed with handsome sedges. When it is meadow-land that meets the river there are b.u.t.tercups and daisies and daffodils, and, at the very edge, forget-me-nots, as if to be remembrancers from the land to the water stealing away to the sea, to come back again on the chariots of the clouds. When a hill-side is pa.s.sed, its woods will throw their cool shadows into the river; or perhaps a rough stony hill will reflect in summer the colour of the heather, purple like spilt wine on the ground; and, at almost all seasons, a touch of gold shows from the gorse, which is of such a glad nature that it must blossom a little almost all the year round, so that they say: "When the gorse is not in flower girls do not like to be kissed."

I have found joy by the side of many English rivers, from the wilder--and yet only a little wild, though they seem torrents by the side of most of their quiet, silent brothers of the south--streams of Yorks.h.i.+re to the gently-stealing rivulets of Kent, and it would be a puzzle to say which English river is the most charming until one remembers the Thames, in which can be found an epitome of all river delight, from its estuary all along its winding course past London, Richmond, Hampton, Windsor, Maidenhead, Henley, Goring, Didcot, Oxford, and beyond Oxford until it turns south and south-west to find its source under the hills which bound the valley of the Avon. There is no joy of forest, or park, or lawn, or garden, or meadow that may not be had by the banks of the Thames; and those banks are decorated with more n.o.ble mansions and sweet homes than are the banks of any river in the world.

To watch in the valley of the Thames the oncoming of Spring is a pageant of dear delights. Dobell thus gives his impression of the Spring march of the flowers:--