The proverb that “The early bird gets most worms” has no truer
application than in travelling, considered as a fine art. Of course to
him who uses locomotion as a mere method of getting from one place to
another, it matters nothing whether he starts at 3 A.M. or at noon. But
to the man who likes to get the most he can out of his life, and looks
upon a journey as an opportunity for getting some new insight into the
ways and habits and notions of his fellowmen, there is no comparison
between their value. The noonday travelling mood, like noonday light,
is commonplace and uniform; while the early morning mood, like the light
when it first comes, is full of colour and surprise. Such, at any rate,
has been my experience, and I never made an out-of-the-way early start
without coming upon one or more companions who gave me a new glimpse
into some corner of life, and whose experience I should have been the
poorer for having missed. My last experience in this matter is very
recent. In the midst of the wild days of last December I received an
unexpected summons on business to the north. My appointment was for
eleven o’clock on the morrow, 200 miles from London. It was too late to
make arrangements for leaving home at once, so I resolved to start
by the first morning train, which leaves Euston Square at 5.15 A.M.
Accordingly, soon after four next morning I closed the house door
gently behind me, and set out on my walk, not without a sense of the
self-approval and satisfaction which is apt to creep over early risers,
and others who pride themselves on keeping ahead of their neighbours.
It was a fine wild morning, with half a gale of wind blowing from the
north-west, and driving the low rain-clouds at headlong speed across the
deep clear sky and bright stars. The great town felt as fresh and sweet
as a country hillside. Not a soul in the streets but an occasional
solitary policeman, and here and there a scavenger or two, plying their
much-needed trade, for the wet mud lay inches deep. I was early at
the station, where a sleepy clerk was just preparing to open the
booking-offices, and a couple of porters were watering and sweeping
the floor of the big hall. Soon my fellow-passengers began to arrive,
labouring men for the most part, with here and there a clerk, or
commercial traveller, muffled to the eyes.
Amongst them, as they gathered round the fire, or took short restless
walks up and down the platform, was one who puzzled me not a little. He
had arrived on foot just before me, indeed I had followed him for the
last quarter of a mile through Euston Square, and had already begun
to speculate as to who he could be, and on what errand. But now that
I could get a deliberate look at him under the lights in the hall,
my curiosity was at once raised and baffled. He was a strongly built,
well-set young fellow of five feet ten or eleven, with clear gray eyes,
deep set under very straight brows. His hair was dark, and would have
curled but that it was cropped too short. He was clean shaved, so that
one saw all the lower lines of his face, which a thick nose, slightly
turned up, just hindered from being handsome. He wore a high sealskin
cap, a striped flannel shirt with turn down collars, and a slipknot
tie with a rather handsome pin. His clothes were good enough, but had a
somewhat dissipated look, owing perhaps to the fact that only one
button of his waistcoat was fastened, and that his boots, good broad
double-soled ones, were covered with dry mud. His whole luggage
consisted of the travelling-bag he carried in his hand, one of those
elaborate affairs which generally involve a portmanteau or two to
follow, but swelled out of all gentility and stuffed to bursting point.
An Englishman? I asked myself. Well, yes,--at any rate more like an
Englishman than anything else. A gentleman? Well, yes again, on the
whole; though not of our conventional type--at any rate a man of some
education, and apparently a little less like the common run of us than
most one meets.
Here my speculations were cut short by the opening of the ticket-window
by the sleepy clerk, and the object of them marched up and took a
third-class ticket for Liverpool. I followed his example. My natural
aversion to eating money raw in railway travelling inclining me to such
economy, apart from the interest which my problem was exciting in my
mind. I am bound to add that nothing could be more comfortable than the
carriages provided on the occasion for the third-class passengers of the
N.W.K. I followed the sealskin cap and got into the same carriage with
its owner. As good luck would have it, no one followed us. He put
his bag down in a corner, and stretched himself along his side of the
carriage with his head on it. I had time to look him well over again,
and to set him down in my own mind as a young English engineer, who had
been working on some continental railway so long as to have lost his
English identity somewhat, when he started up, rubbed his eyes, took a
good straight look at me, and asked if any one coming from abroad could
cut us off in the steamer that met this train. I found at once that I
was mistaken as to nationality.
I answered that no one could cut us off, as there was no straighter or
quicker way of getting to Liverpool than this; but that he was mistaken
in thinking that any steamer met the train.
Well, he didn’t know about meeting it, but anyway there was a steamer
which went right away from Liverpool about noon, for he had got his
passage by her, which he had bought at the tobacco-store near the
station.
He handed his ticket for the boat to me, as if wishing my opinion upon
it, which I gave to the effect that it seemed all right, adding that
I did not know that tickets could be bought about the streets as they
could be in America.
Well, he had thought it would save him time, perhaps save the packet, as
she might have sailed while he was after his ticket in Liverpool, which
town he didn’t know his way about. But now, couldn’t any one from the
Continent cut her off? He had heard there was a route by Chester
and Holyhead, which would bring any one who took it aboard of her at
Queenstown.
I answered that this was probably so, beginning to doubt in my mind
whether my companion might not, for all his straightforward looks and
ways, have come by the bag feloniously. Could it be another great jewel
robbery?
I don’t know whether he noticed any doubtful look in my eyes, but he
added at once that he was on the straight run from Heidelberg. He had
come from there to London in twenty-six hours.
I made some remark as to the beauty of Heidelberg, and asked if he knew
it well.
Why, yes, he said he ought to, for he had been a student at the
University there for the last nine months.
Why then was he on the straight run home? I ventured to ask. Term wasn’t
over?
No; term wasn’t over; but he had been arrested, and didn’t want to go
to prison at Strasburg, where one American student was in for about two
years already.
But how did he manage to get off? I asked, now thoroughly interested in
his story.
Well, he had just run his bail. When he was arrested he had sent for the
doctor at whose house he lodged to bail him out. That was what troubled
him most. He wouldn’t have the Herr Doctor slipped up anyway. He was
going to send the money directly he got home, and there were things
enough left of his to cover the money.
What was he arrested for?
For calling out a German student.
But I thought the German students were always fighting duels.
So they were, but only with swords, which they were always practising.
They were so padded when they fought that they could not be hurt except
just in the face, and the sword arm was so bandaged that there was no
play at all except from the wrist. You would see the German students
even when out walking, miles away from the town, keeping playing away
with their walking-sticks all the time, so as to train their wrists.
What was his quarrel about?
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,