FROM SCOTLAND TO ENGLAND--WESTERN ROUTE.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON, _September 13, 1902_.
The finest expanses of heather that we saw in Scotland were on the
great moors through which our train ran southwards from Inverness, a
rolling sea of pinkish purple bloom, stretching for miles and miles
on every hand. Farther down we enjoyed the picturesqueness of the
Pass of Killiecrankie, but it was the history here rather than the
scenery which interested us, for it was here that Claverhouse, the
stony-hearted persecutor of the Covenanters, fought and won his last
battle, but lost his own life. Still farther south, at Dunkeld, we were
reminded of the heroic and successful resistance made by the staunch
men of Galloway to the hitherto victorious Highlanders, well described
in Mr. Crockett's _Lochinvar_, which, as many of my young readers know,
is a sort of sequel to _The Men of the Moss Hags_.
[Sidenote: In and around Perth.]
The Tay at Perth is a noble stream. It is said that when the Romans
came in sight of it, they exclaimed, "Ecce Tiber! Ecce campus Martius!"
The scornful resentment which Scotchmen feel at this comparison
of their beautiful river to the more famous Italian stream, which
Hawthorne somewhere describes as "a mud puddle in strenuous motion," is
expressed in the lines which Sir Walter Scott has placed at the head of
the first chapter of his _Fair Maid of Perth_:
"'Behold the Tiber!' the vain Roman cried,
Viewing the ample Tay from Baiglie's side;
But where's the Scot that would the vaunt repay,
And hail the puny Tiber for the Tay?"
It has been whimsically said that Perth is the smallest city in the
world, because it is situated between two inches. Inch was the old
Scottish word denoting an island or meadow. We were most interested, of
course, in the North Inch, where the judicial combat took place between
the two clans, and in which Henry Wynd and Conachar were engaged. The
name of one of these clans, the Clan Quhele, reminded me of the thrifty
little town built up by the Highland Scotch element in eastern North
Carolina. They called the town "Quhele." But the other native elements
of the population, not appreciating Scotch tradition and what seemed
to them an outlandish name, changed it in common use to "Shoe Heel,"
and this undignified designation of their town so completely ousted the
other that the people by act of legislature had the name changed to
"Maxton," that is, Mac's Town, for nine-tenths of the people in that
region are Macs, and mighty good people they are, too. We visited the
Fair Maid's House, and in the evening read the Magician's romance about
her. Through the great kindness of relatives and boyhood companions
of friends of ours in Richmond, who had the good fortune to be born
and brought up in Perth, we were given every opportunity to see the
interesting old city from every point of view, and both those of us
who climbed to the top of Kinnoul Hill, which an old traveller once
called "the glory of Scotland," and those of us who drove with the kind
friends above mentioned to Scone Palace, whence the ancient crowning
stone now in Westminster Abbey was taken, were fully agreed that the
place richly deserved its affectionate name of "The Fair City." One
member of our party made an excursion one day from Perth to Kirriemuir,
the "Thrums" of Mr. Barrie's stories, while two others devoted the day
to an excursion in the other direction to the beautifully situated
town of Crieff, world renowned as a health resort. Here we were most
pleasantly entertained by the kind friends in whose delightful home I
was a guest at Glasgow in 1896. Any one of the drives about Crieff on
a perfect day, such as we had, will give one a new impression of the
loveliness of Perthshire, the district of Scotland to which Sir Walter
awards the palm for beauty.
On my former visit, I had made a detour from Perth, in this same
direction, for the purpose of seeing Logiealmond, the "Drumtochty" of
Ian Maclaren, which is only a few miles from Crieff, and had visited
the Free Church, in which the young pastor of the _Bonnie Brier Bush_
stories preached "his mother's sermon," and "spoke a gude word for
Jesus Christ"; and the Established Church, where, under a big elm, the
nippy tongue of Jamie Soutar was wont to wag on Sunday mornings; and
the farm of Burnbrae, and other places in the glen which has now become
so famous. I am sorry to say that Dr. John Watson's later development,
both theological and literary, has not been so satisfactory as was once
expected.
[Sidenote: Southwest Scotland and the English Lakes.]
On our way down to Edinburgh we had a glimpse from the car windows of
Loch Leven, and the island castle in which Mary Queen of Scots was
confined to keep her out of mischief, and in connection therewith
recalled what we could of _The Monastery_ and _The Abbot_, the former
one of the least successful, and the latter one of the most successful
of Scott's romances. We had a glimpse also of Dunfermline, the
birthplace of Andrew Carnegie, to say nothing of its ancient renown,
crossed the Forth Bridge once more, made a brief stay in Edinburgh, and
pushed on to Ayr, passing the battlefield of Ayrsmoss and other points
of interest in connection with the Covenanters. We could give only two
days to Ayr, but saw the birthplace of Burns, Auld Alloway Kirk, Bonnie
Doon, and the various memorials of the poet; then went to Dumfries
principally to see the Burns monuments there, passing reluctantly
through the Covenanter country without stopping. From Dumfries we
crossed the border, passing the original Gretna Green, where for more
than a hundred years the runaway couples from England were married, and
went direct to Keswick, at the head of Derwentwater, for the purpose
of seeing something of the English Lake District. Skiddaw is a noble
and satisfying mountain. We were interested also in the memorials of
Southey at Crossthwaite Church. But Southey is responsible for the
severest disappointment that comes to travellers in the Lake District.
By his artificial and jingling lines on "How the water comes down at
Lodore," he has raised expectations which the poor little falls at the
foot of Derwentwater cannot realize. The American who came there and
sat down on a rock and watched the falls for a while, and then declared
that there was at least a gill of water coming down, was hardly guilty
of a greater exaggeration in one direction than Southey in the other.
But there is no other disappointment about the scenery of the English
Lakes. It is lovely. It is said that a famous classical scholar,
preaching to a small congregation of rustics in the Lake District,
said to them, "In this beautiful country, my brethren, you have an
apotheosis of nature and an apodeikneusis of theocratic omnipotence!"
We trust that the sentiment which he tried to express was all right,
notwithstanding the insufferably pedantic form of it. Of course we
took the coach from Keswick to Windermere, stopping for the night at
Ambleside, and visiting the grave of Wordsworth hard by the clear and
placid stream, an ideal resting-place for the poet of nature.
[Sidenote: Chester and Lichfield.]
Chester, with its quaint Rows, and red sandstone cathedral, and its
high promenade on top of the walls encircling the old part of the
town, and especially its Roman remains--for Chester is fundamentally a
Roman town, as its name indicates (it was the Castra of the Twentieth
Legion)--interested us, as did also Eaton Hall, the magnificent seat of
the Duke of Westminster, three miles distant; but we had rain, rain,
rain, and besides, we had lingered so long in the fascinating "land
of the mountain and the flood" that we were anxious to push on to
places of still more interest to us. So we did not tarry there long.
We treated Coventry, Kenilworth, Leamington, and even Lichfield, in
the same touch-and-go fashion. We could not bring ourselves to omit
Lichfield altogether, partly because of its lovely cathedral, but
chiefly because it was the town of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the greatest
man of books that ever lived. Therefore, we stopped there long enough
to go through the rich collection of Johnson relics in the house where
he was brought up, to study the monument to him in the marketplace in
front, and to inspect the cathedral. Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ is
the best biography in the English language. The careful reading of it
is a pretty thorough education in literature. I fear it is not read as
much as it used to be. People are too much occupied with the ephemeral
effusions of contemporary mediocrities to read the great books.
Our visit to this town reminded me of a story that I had read years ago
of a certain bishop of Lichfield who had a reputation for repartee and
ready replies to difficult questions. In a crowded room one evening,
when it was not known that the bishop was present, the conversation
turned to this aptness of his, and a man said, "I should like to meet
that bishop of Lichfield; I'd put a question to him that would puzzle
him."
"Very well," said a voice from another corner, "now is your time, for I
am the bishop."
The first speaker was somewhat taken aback, but recovered himself
sufficiently to say, "Well, my lord, can you tell me the way to heaven?"
"Nothing easier," answered the bishop, "you have only to turn to the
right and go straight ahead."
[Sidenote: The Shakespeare Country.]
And now we are off for the Shakespeare country, not far away. Very
different from the bold scenery of Scotland is that of this part of
England. Here one sees--
"The ground's most gentle dimplement
(As if God's finger touched, but did not press,
In making England)--such an up and down
Of verdure; nothing too much up and down,
A ripple of land, such little hills the sky
Can stoop to tenderly and the wheat fields climb."
The most striking feature of an English landscape to an American eye
is the _extraordinary finish_--lawns, fields, fences, houses, roads,
are all such as can belong only to an old and prosperous country. An
Oxford man, when asked how they managed to get such perfect sward in
the college lawns, replied: "It is the simplest thing in the world; you
have only to mow and roll regularly _for about four hundred years_."
At Stratford-on-Avon we stayed at the Red Horse Inn, Washington
Irving's hotel when here. We visited Anne Hathaway's cottage, the
school of the poet's boyhood, the ugly and staring Shakespeare
memorial, and the other points of interest. It is familiar ground to
most readers, and I shall refer to only two things.
[Sidenote: The American Window at Stratford.]
In the church where Shakespeare is buried there is an American window,
not yet finished when I first saw it, and there was a box hard by to
receive the donations of American visitors. The rich stained glass
represents the infant Christ in his mother's arms, and on either
side English and American worthies in attitudes of adoration. On one
side are Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus and William Penn,
representative pious _Americans_, and on the other Bishop Egwin of
Worcester, "King Charles the Martyr and Archbishop Laud!" The fact that
more than two thousand dollars have been contributed for this window
is conclusive proof of the humiliating fact that a large number of the
Americans who visit Stratford are ninnies. I venture the assertion
that their admiration for Shakespeare is humbug, that they have not
sufficient intelligence to appreciate his real worth, and that they
could stand about as good an examination on the immortal plays as that
King George who, after vain attempts to read Shakespeare, gave it up
with the remark that it was very dull stuff. He was "clever just like
a donkey," as one of our European guides said when we asked him about
the intellectual grade of certain monks, and these citizens of a free
country who give money for a monument to Charles I. and Archbishop
Laud are equally clever. I was speaking of this window to one of the
most interesting men I met in Scotland, my host, the learned and
distinguished Dr. W. G. Blackie, and he put the whole thing into "the
husk o' a hazel" with the remark that "Charles the First was one of the
most incorrigible liars that ever lived." He was, and he was moreover
the inveterate foe of every principle represented by the American
Government. And yet Americans are contributing to a memorial window of
him and Laud!
[Sidenote: English in England.]
As one wanders about the streets of the quaint English town he is beset
from time to time by groups of children, who in a kind of humming or
chanting chorus recite the leading facts in the life of Shakespeare,
for which they expect, of course, to receive a small fee. The substance
and sound of this curious monotone have been represented approximately
as follows: "William Shykespeare, the gryte poet, was born in
Stratford-on-Avon in 1564--the 'ouse in which he dwelt may still be
seen--'is father in the gryte poet's boyhood was 'igh bailiff of the
plyce--one who shykes a spear is the meaning of 'is nyme," and so on.
In like manner the London newsboys say, "Pipers, sir?" As a friend of
mine puts it, they do not "label your trunks" here, but "libel your
boxes," and they call the Tate Gallery "Tight." That reminds me of the
queer pronunciation of many proper names in Great Britain. Of course
you know that Thames is pronounced Temz, and Greenwich Grinij, and
Beauchamp Beecham, and Gloucester Gloster, and Brougham Broom. But
did you know that Kirkcudbright was pronounced Kirk-coó-bree, that at
Cambridge they call Caius College Keys College, and that at Oxford they
call Magdalen College Maudlen College? The Cockburn Hotel at which we
stopped in Edinburgh is called Coburn. So Colquhoun is Cohoon, Wemyss
is Weems, Glamis is Glams, Charteris is Charters, Methuen is Methven,
Cholmondeley is Chumley, Marjoribanks is Marchbanks, Ruthven is Riven,
DeBelvoir is De Beever and Menzies is Mingis. Worse yet, Bethune is
Beeten, Levison-Gower is Luson-Gore, Colclough is Coatley, St. John is
Sinjun, St. Leger is Silleger, and Uttoxeter is Uxeter. But, then, we
have in Virginia the name Enroughty pronounced Darby. High Holborn in
London is 'I 'Obun. Some of their contractions are remarkable. The
name of Bunhill Fields, the great Nonconformist burying-ground, is
short for Bone Hill. The famous charity school, where the boys wear
blue coats, is called "The Blukkit School," instead of the Blue Coat
School. Rotten Row, the fashionable track for horseback riders in Hyde
Park, is an ugly contraction of the French words _route de roi_, the
king's road, because there was a time when only the king was allowed to
use it. I cannot leave this subject without telling you that the name
of Dugald Dalgetty of Drumthwacket, who afforded you so much amusement
when you were reading _The Legend of Montrose_, is called in Scotland
Diggety instead of Dalgetty.
Other things of interest in this connection are that shoes are not
shoes in England, they are boots. If you ask for shoes they will give
you slippers. There are no overshoes, only galoches. No shirtwaists,
nothing but blouses. You can't get a spool of thread, but a reel of
cotton. Locomotive engineers are called "drivers," and conductors are
called "guards." In Scotland all the church notices are "intimations."