I found lodgings that night at "Nab Cottage." Being well recommended, the
landlady did not hesitate, but gave me the best accommodations her house
afforded.
Hartley Coleridge does not live at "Nab Cottage" now--a moss-covered slab
marks his resting-place up at the Grasmere Churchyard, and only a step
away in a very straight row are similar old headstones that token the
graves of William, Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth. Hartley Coleridge had most
of the weaknesses of his father, and only a few of his better traits. Yet
Southey brought up the children of Coleridge and gave them just as good
advantages as he did his own.
"It is not 'advantages' that make great men--it is disadvantages!" said
White Pigeon. We were eating breakfast at the table set out under the
arbor, back of the Coleridge cottage--Grace, Myrtle, White Pigeon and I.
Grace and Myrtle were the Grand Rapids girls, and fine girls, too--pink
and twenty, with diaries and autograph-fans. Girls of that age are
charming, but they only interest me as do beautiful kittens or colts.
Women do not become wise or discreet until they are past thirty. White
Pigeon was past thirty.
We took the stage that morning at nine o'clock for Keswick. The stage
started from the Red Lion Inn. It is a great event--the starting of a
four-horse stage. The guests came out, and so did the boots, and
chamber-maids and waiters, and the cook came also. They stood in line and
bade the parting guests godspeed, and all the guests were supposed to
express gratitude tangibly. The landlady was busy, flying about like a
Plymouth Rock hen with a brood of ducks. She saw me handing up the
pink-and-white Grace and Myrtle and the dignified, tailor-made White
Pigeon, and she came out and apologized profusely for not having had room
to accommodate me the night before.
At last all the hatboxes and bloomin' luggage were safely stowed, the
trunks were lashed in place behind, and I climbed to the top of the stage
and took my seat beside my charges. A merry blast was blown from the
tallyho horn. A man with a red coat, high white hat, kid gloves and a
brick-dust complexion mounted the box and gathered up a big handful of
reins. The hostlers at the heads of the leaders let go, twenty feet of
whiplash went singing through the air--and we were off!
We swung through the village with more majesty and clatter than the Empire
State Express ever assumed, stopping just an instant at the post-office
for a bag of mail that the brick-dusty driver caught with his feet, and
then away we went.
I am sorry I did not live in stagecoach times--things are now so dead and
dreary and prosaic. Yet I sometimes have imagined that today the
stagecoach business in England is a little stagey--many things are done to
heighten effects. For instance, the intense excitement of starting is not
exactly necessary--why the mad rush? No one is really in a hurry to reach
a certain place at a certain time! And all this is apparent when you
notice that a mile out of town the pace subsides to a lazy dog-trot, and
the boots has jumped down and unchecked each horse so as to make things
easy. I was glad the boots got down, for whenever I see a horse's head
checked up in the air my impulse is to uncheck him--and once on Wabash
Avenue in Chicago I did.