LETTERS AND EXCURSIONS.
An English Skylark.--Letter from George Howe.--Tommy's Account
of his Nottingham Adventure.--Glastonbury Abbey.--The Beginning
of the English Church.--St. Joseph of Arimathæa and the
Glastonbury Thorn.--Story of St. Dunstan and the Devil.
Master Lewis set apart a day at Oxford for leisure, writing, and rest.
In the morning, after breakfast, the Class took a walk to the suburbs,
and rested on some wayside seats overlooking the Thames.
It was a beautiful morning, cool and still. The world of sunlight all
seemed to be above the trees, an over-sea of gold, of which the long
arcades of intermingling boughs afforded but glimpses.
Near the wayside resting-place was a field bordered with trees. A
speck of a bird rose from it out of the grass uttering a few notes
that attracted the boys' attention. Up, up it went like a rocket, and
as it rose higher and higher its song became sweeter and sweeter,--a
happy, trilling melody, which made every boy leap to his feet, and try
to find a place where he could see it through the openings in the
trees.
"The bird seems to have gone straight up to heaven," said Wyllys Wynn.
"I can hardly see it; but I can hear its melody yet."
"That is an English skylark," said Master Lewis, "so famous in
pastoral poetry. You now understand Tennyson's meaning when he says,--
"'The lark becomes a sightless song.'
I am glad you have seen it. I wish we might see more of common sights
and scenes.
"I have here a letter from George Howe and Leander Towle, which
greatly pleases me. My object is to take you to historic scenes.
George and Leander have different tastes from yours, and expect to
follow different occupations. They are making their journey a study of
common life and its pursuits, as I would have them do."
"Will you not read their letter to us?" asked Ernest.
"That was just what I was about to do," said Master Lewis.
Caen, Normandy, July.
Dear Teacher:--
I begin my letter here in this city, which I suppose has
an atmosphere of old history, but which is interesting
to me because it is the centre of the "food-producing
land" of France, as Lower Normandy is well called. All
of this part of the country through which I have passed
is a scene of thrift, productiveness, and plenty. The
people are all busy and happy. Occupied minds are always
happy, I believe.
How did we get here?
We rode a part of the way to London on what is called, I
think, Parliamentary trains. This is not a train of
grand coaches for the use of members of Parliament, but
a sort of slow-coach train which Parliament has enacted
shall carry cattle, produce, and commercial necessities
for a fixed rate a mile. Or this is the way in which the
running of these cheap trains was explained to me.
It would have been a hard ride, had not new scenes been
continually coming into view, and the train have gone so
slowly that we were enabled to enjoy them almost as well
as though we had been riding on an English stage-coach.
I was so interested in the new objects that presented
themselves that I entirely forgot the manner of
conveyance.
I shall never forget that ride: it was like viewing a
long panorama.
It cost me only about £1 or $5.00, to travel from
Scotland to London.
We took a lodging room in London which cost us a
shilling a night apiece. While in London I visited the
Tower, Westminster Abbey, Windsor, and the principal
Parks. The half day spent in Westminster Abbey was worth
all the discomforts of the journey across the sea.
We also made a journey to Sydenham Crystal Palace,--an
immense museum of novelties, to which the admission is
only one shilling. It is probably the first palace ever
built for the people, and I like the idea of a people's
palace better than a king's. It occupies with its
grounds about three hundred acres, and cost nearly
£2,000,000. Twenty-five acres of glass were used in its
construction. The museum is full of the products of
industry of all countries and times. Think of it--all
for one shilling! It is a thing to make one always
respect the English people.
I need say very little of the tombs of the twenty or
thirty kings and queens in Westminster Abbey. I was
first impressed with the value of fame when I read
inscriptions to persons once famous of whom I never
heard,--Thomas Shadwell, Poet Laureate in the Court of
William III.; Mrs. Oldfield, whom we are told was buried
"in a fine Brussels lace head-dress,"--and I thought,
Well, all men can do is to perform their duty, and time
will one day make forgotten Thomas Shadwells and Mrs.
Oldfields of them all.
While in London I made also a pleasant excursion into
Berkshire, and there I saw the famous White Horse Hill.
It is said that the figure of the White Horse on the
hill was first made by Alfred the Great a thousand years
ago, to commemorate the defeat of the Danes,--the White
Horse being the standard or national emblem of the
Danish chief. Whatever may have been its origin, it is
_now_ made by annually cutting about an acre of turf
away from the chalk beneath it. This work is performed
during a festival in its honor, and is called "Scouring
the White Horse."
[Illustration: {HOUSE OF A MIGRATING CITIZEN.}]
While in Berkshire I saw an odd picture, not of a
castle, but of an old English gentleman's residence,
which was truly castle-like in appearance, and which
furnishes a happy suggestion to people who do not like
to live long in any one place. It was a tun on wheels,
and it had been used by an overtaxed and indignant
democrat for the purpose of having no fixed locality,
and so to avoid assessment.
In London I made a study of the cheapest way of getting
to Paris, and of seeing the most on the journey. I found
I could take a returning produce boat at Southampton for
Lower Normandy at a trifling cost, and could go on a
produce train from Caen to Paris as inexpensively.
We took a third-class ticket to Southampton. What a
delightful ride it was! Out of the smoke of London into
the blossoming country, among landscapes of cottages and
gardens,--thatched cottages, cottages covered with old
red tiles, cottages whose gardens seemed to climb up
embankments to the roofs; past wheat fields so full of
poppies that they seemed like poppy-fields in full
bloom! I saw one field completely covered with red,
purple, yellow, and white poppies. It was an exquisitely
beautiful sight,--nothing but bright color.
The steamer we took was employed simply for the
exportation of Normandy butter, potatoes, and other farm
produce. It comes to England loaded, and goes back
empty. I obtained passage for 10 francs, and what I
saved by travel on the water I intended to make up by a
longer trip by land.
We were much tossed about by the tides of the English
Channel, but arrived safely at Cherbourg, and went by
rail immediately to Bayeux, a dreamy, ecclesiastical
city that the battles of the past seem to have left in
strange silence. I spoke at the beginning of my letter
of the activity and thrift of Lower Normandy, but Bayeux
is the stillest city I ever saw.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.]
Here, in the Public Library, we saw the famous Bayeux
Tapestry, which is displayed under a glass case; is two
hundred and fourteen feet long and contains over fifteen
hundred figures. The canvas is embroidered in woollen
thread of various colors, the work of Matilda and her
maids. I make a copy from a sample picture of the exact
size of the thread used.
[Illustration: {EXAMPLE OF WOOLLEN THREAD.}]
One may read on this fabric the history of the Norman
Conquest of England. It is the most novel work of
history I ever saw.
The farming districts of Normandy seem indeed like
Arcadia: farmers mean business here, and thrive by
thrift. Their sons and daughters, I am told, do not run
off to the city. I have never seen a people whose habits
I like so well.
Give our regards to all.
George Howe.
P. S. We are on our way to Paris, riding through a
country of old churches, castles, and flowers, on a
produce train.
"I think," said Master Lewis, "that George and Leander are, after all,
making a very delightful tour; they certainly are getting better views
of common, practical life abroad than we are. I am glad that they had
the independence to make the journey in this way."
"How much do you think their whole tour will cost them?" asked Ernest.
"It will cost each of them less than either you or I have paid for a
single ocean passage," said Master Lewis.
The boys spent the afternoon in letter-writing.
Tommy Toby wrote a long letter to George Howe.
"I have taken George into my confidence," said he, after tea, as
Master Lewis and the boys were sitting by the open windows of the
hotel, "and have given him an account of my hunting adventure in
Nottingham."
"Suppose you read the letter to us," said Master Lewis.
Tommy, whose nature would not allow him to keep a secret long, however
disparaging to himself, seemed pleased to accept Master Lewis's
suggestion.
Oxford, July.
Dear George:--
We are all pleased with the trip you are making.
We have been to lots of curious places,--dust heaps of
old kings and queens and _we have heard a lark sing_.
At Nottingham I bought a bow and arrows, and went
hunting. Like you, I wanted to see the country.
I saw it.
They are very inquisitive people around Nottingham. They
seem to want to know your business before you are
introduced.
A little way out of the city I came to a fine old tract
of country. A gate opened into some large, hilly fields,
and there was a path through the fields that seemed to
lead to the wood.
I opened the gate and was going towards the wood, when I
heard a voice from the road,--
"Boy!"
I looked around, and made no answer.
"Where are yer going, _yer honor_?"
"I am going hunting," said I; and I walked on very fast.
I came to a wooded hill, and the scenery all around was
delightful, just like a picture. Below the hill was a
long pasture, and through it ran a stream of water
overhung with old trees. Under the trees were some
cattle.
I was going down towards the pasture when I heard a very
distressing noise,--
O-o-o-o-o!
"This is an English landscape," said I to myself. "How
much more lovely it is than castles, abbeys, and tombs!"
and I was trying to think of some poetry, such as Frank
would have quoted, when I heard that alarming sound
again,--
O-o-o-o-o!
I noticed that one of the fine animals had separated
himself from the rest of the herd by the shady brook,
and was coming out to meet me, looking very important.
Presently he put down his head, gave the earth a scrape
with his foot, and then came jumping towards me,
bounding and plunging over the hillocks, like a ship on
a heavy sea.
I turned right around, just as I did when I saw the
bear, and I remembered that Master Lewis might not like
to have me venture too far in my first hunting
expedition.
I ran! didn't I run? I soon heard the same deep sound
again, "nearer, clearer, deadlier than before," as the
reading book says.
I had almost regained the top of the hill, when the
animal bellowed almost right behind me. There was a tree
close by, and I went _up_. It was just as easy for me to
climb it as though it had been a ladder.
The animal bounded up the hill, and stood under the
tree, pawing the earth and making the same hollow noise.
I drew my bow, and let fly an arrow at him.
"Boy, come down!"
There was a thick, fat man, with a great stomach, coming
up the hill. He appeared greatly excited, and quite out
of breath. He presently arrived at the foot of the tree.
"Boy, bring me that bow and arrow."
I came down the tree more scared at the man than I was
at the animal. I handed him the bow, and what do you
think he did with it?
He gave me a dreadful cut across my back, and said,--
"Where'd yer come from? Take _that_ and That, and THAT,
and don't yer ever trespass on my grounds again."
I promised him I never would.
I walked just as fast as I could towards the gate, and
when I came to the road I was so flustrated that I went
the wrong way, and wandered about in the heat for hours
before I could get rightly directed towards Nottingham.
I wish you were with us at Oxford; it seems to me the
most beautiful place in all the world.
It was here we heard the skylark sing.
Tommy.
The next journey of the Club was indeed _en zigzag_.
"I have allowed you to visit," said Master Lewis to the boys, "the
places to which your reading has led your curiosity, most of which
places I have visited before. I now wish to take you to a ruin that I
have never seen, and of which you may have never heard. It is the
place where, according to tradition, Christianity was first
established in Great Britain; where St. Patrick is said to have
preached, and where he was buried. It is the place which poetry
associates with the mission and miracles of Joseph of Arimathæa; here
his staff, in the shape of the white thorn, is said to blossom every
Christmas."
"Glastonbury Abbey," said Ernest Wynn. "Of course there can be no
truth in the tradition of Joseph of Arimathæa and the White Thorn?"
"The story of Joseph's mission to England, his burial here, and his
blooming staff," said Master Lewis, "is undoubtedly a fiction, like
the legend which claims that the stone in the old Scottish Coronation
Chair in Westminster Abbey is the one on which Jacob rested when he
saw the vision of angels. But Glastonbury Abbey was possibly the first
Church in England. Here were the monuments of King Arthur, King
Edmund, and King Edgar; and even old King Coel, St. David, and St.
Dunstan are said to have been buried here."
"What! the St. Dunstan that the devil tried to tempt?" asked Tommy.
"The St. Dunstan that the devil did tempt, I fear," said Master Lewis.
"I would like to hear the story of his temptations," said Tommy, "as
we are going to Glastonbury."
THE STORY OF ST. DUNSTAN'S TEMPTATION.
"St. Dunstan," said Master Lewis, "was Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey, and
was a very ambitious man.
"He caused a cell to be made in which he could neither stand erect nor
lie down with comfort. He retired to this cell and there spent his
time in working as a smith, and--so the report went--in devotion.
"Then the people said, 'How humble and penitent Dunstan is! He has the
back-ache all day, and the legs-ache all night, and he suffers all for
the cause of purity and truth.'
"Then Dunstan told the people that the devil came to tempt him, which,
with his aches for the good cause, made his situation very trying.
"The devil, he said, wanted him to lead a life of selfish
gratification, but he would not be tempted to do a thing like that; he
never thought of himself. O no, good soul, not he!
"The people said that Dunstan must have become a very holy man, or the
devil would not appear to him _bodily_.
"The devil came to him one day, he said, as he was at work at his
forge, and, putting his nose through the window of his cell, tempted
him to lead a life of pleasure. He quickly drew his pincers from the
fire, and seized his tormentor by the nose, which put him in such pain
that he bellowed so lustily as to shake the hills.
"The boy-king Edred, who filled the throne at this time, was in poor
health, and suffered from a lingering illness for years. He felt the
need of the counsel of a good man, and he said to himself,--
"'There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and
aspirations, a man whom even the devil cannot corrupt. I will bring
him to court, and will make him my adviser.'
"Then pure-hearted Edred brought the foxy prelate to his court, and
made him, of all things in the world, the royal treasurer; and he took
such good care of the money entrusted to his keeping that he was
speedily released from the responsibility. He seems to have been very
easily tempted during his political career."
The next day the party was borne away from shady Oxford, where one
would indeed like to tarry long in the midsummer days, to the old city
of Bristol, famous in the Roman conquest of Britain. In the journey
the gay poppy-fields and the picturesque cottage scenes, which give a
charm to the English landscape, often flitted into and out of view,
reminding the boys of George Howe's letter.
Glastonbury Abbey is indeed an interesting ruin. It stands apart from
the popular lines of travel, and so it figures little in the
narratives of those who make short tours abroad.
Think of the ruins of a church at least fourteen hundred years old! A
church that Joseph of Arimathæa, who provided the tomb for Jesus, is
reputed in the old monkish legends to have founded, and where St.
Patrick and St. Augustine probably did preach, and where in the Middle
Ages the remains of good King Arthur were disenterred!
[Illustration: ST. AUGUSTINE'S APPEAL TO ETHELBERT.]
Of the great church and its five chapels there yet remain parts of the
broken wall, and the three large crypts where the early kings of
England and founders of the English Church were buried. A little
westward from the ruin stands the beautiful Chapel of St. Joseph of
Arimathæa.
"I do not wonder," said Wyllys Wynn, "that the old English people
liked to believe that their church sprang from the mission of so
amiable a saint as St. Joseph."
"Christianity," said Master Lewis, "was really first established in
Great Britain in 596 by St. Augustine and forty missionaries who came
with St. Augustine from Rome to preach to the Anglo-Saxons. These
missionaries were kindly received by King Ethelbert, whose wife was
already a Christian. It is related that one of the Saxon priests, to
see if indeed his gods would be angry, went forth on horse-back, and
smote the images the people had been worshipping. To the astonishment
of the Saxons no judgment followed. The king was baptized, and the
missionaries baptized ten thousand converts in a single day in the
river Swale. The Christian religion had been preached in Britain
before, but not generally accepted."
[Illustration: THE SAXON PRIEST STRIKING THE IMAGES.]
"I like the association of St. Joseph's name with this old ruin so
well," said Wyllys, "that I wish to see the staff that you say is
believed to bloom at Christmas."
On the south side of Glastonbury is Weary-all Hill. It owes its name
to a very poetic legend. It is said that St. Joseph and his
companions, _all_ of them _weary_ in one of their missionary journeys,
here sat down to rest, and the Saint planted his staff into the earth,
and left it there. From it, we are told, springs the famous
Glastonbury Thorn which blossoms every Christmas, and whose miraculous
flowers were adored in the Middle Ages. Such a shrub still remains
which blooms in midwinter, and perpetuates the memory of the pretty
superstition.