SOME LONDON ACQUAINTANCES
As the years have gone by I have tried, whenever I have been in London,
to look up the Guards that I knew during my first visit, as well as to
make acquaintance with the new members. On one of my later visits a
young English journalist accompanied me to the "Tavern." I told him what
interesting times I had had there, and pointed out to him some of the
men I knew.
"They're hacks, you know," he whispered. "Penny-a-liners. Gissing did
them in 'New Grub Street.'" The young man liked neither his old
companions nor the place, but he did not hesitate to borrow ten bob that
he can hand back, if he wishes to, at his earliest convenience.
Call the Guards hacks, penny-a-liners or what you will; as a friend of
mine once said about them, they know how to spell the word gentleman,
anyhow, and that is more than many do who poke fun at them. They helped
to make my first visit to London incomparably amusing at times, and for
this I cannot help feeling grateful.
I have spoken of Arthur Symons' interest in my first efforts to describe
tramp life. I think it was he and the magazine editors who abetted me in
my scribblings, rather than the university and its doctrines of
"Inquiral research," who are to blame for all tramp trips made by me in
Europe. Of course, the inevitable _Wanderlust_ was probably behind them
to some extent, but all of them were undertaken with articles, and
probably a book, as the ultimate object in view.
This can hardly be said of the earlier wanderings at home, and yet when
eventually writing about them, they have interested me more than the
tramps abroad. My vagabond days in foreign parts have received pretty
much their just due in other books of mine and my wish here is more to
explain what effect they had upon me as a student, and in leading on to
other work here at home, than to _tell_ what befell me on the highways.
There are a few episodes and anecdotes, however, that were overlooked
when making my reports from the field which may not be out of place now.
The most entertaining experience I had in Great Britain during the three
weeks or so that I tramped there in 1893, concerns a well meaning
professor in Edinburgh. My companion in this venture is now also a
professor at one of our universities; at the time he was a
fellow-student of mine in Berlin.
One of our "stops" in the itinerary planned by me was Edinburgh. We were
to land at Leith from New Castle, anyhow, so why not see Edinburgh,
whether we were real tramps or not?
A local professor, a friend of my family, a guest in my Berlin home at
one time, was a man who believed greatly in religious things, and I
guess tried to act according to his beliefs. He was noted also for his
interest in the students. My friend and I thought it might be
interesting to see how far the old gentleman's benevolence stretched
when it came to giving charity to an American student in distress. A
boyish curiosity, no doubt, but I have found in later life that such
curiosity is worth while in a number of ways--when it comes to quizzing
"public-spirited men," for instance, as to how far they will go into
their pockets to finance investigations and prosecutions in municipal
affairs.
With my friend the question was, "What story shall I tell?" I could not
undertake the adventure because the professor would have recognized me.
We rummaged over my basket of "ghost stories," and finally determined
that the best thing was the truth with a slight change in names.
So while I waited in a coffee house near a railway station, my friend
went up to the fashionable house in Queen Street with a tale of woe
about being stranded in Scotland, and needing the price of a railway
ticket to Glasgow that he might again get in touch with friends. Not
much of a story, but quite enough for my companion--a man who had never
before in his life been on tramp, and whose whole bearing was as near
that of a non-sinning person as can be imagined.
He could not even use a strong expletive with a sincere ring. His face
and general innocent air pieced out this linguistic purity. He was just
the man I thought to test the professor's charity. I had waited in the
coffee house over half an hour when my tall friend loomed up in the
distance. Pretty soon he held up five fingers, and I could see that he
was chuckling. "Well, fivepence, anyhow," I thought. "He might not have
done any better at home--the way he's dressed." In a minute he was upon
me gasping "Five bob--five bob."
I asked him for details, and he told me how he had been met at the door
by a "buttons," who ushered him into the professor's study, where the
"ghost story" was told and listened to. "Finally," concluded my friend,
"the old gentleman reached down into his jeans and handed me the five
shillings, saying, 'Well, my good man, I sincerely trust that this money
will not find its way into the next public house.'"
I laughed prodigiously. "The idea," I exclaimed, "of a medical man
picking you out as a person likely to go near a public house."
The next day I did not laugh so much. My people in Berlin had written
the good professor that my friend and I were on a trip in Scotland and
might call on him. He divined that I was getting my mail at the general
post office and wrote me this note:
"Dear Friend--Your friend called here yesterday and I did not
realize who he was. Had I known I would not have been so hard on
him. Come and see us."
How tramps in general leave Edinburgh on a hurry-up call I cannot say,
but after that note had been read two student tramps "hiked" out of that
city double-quick. I took the Linlithgow road and my friend
another--both, however, leading to the general post office in Glasgow,
in front of which we agreed to meet thirty-six hours later. The five
shillings were most punctiliously returned from this point, which also
we left soon. The way that Edinburgh professor connected things was too
Scotch for us.