When one comes back to it, after long absence, one sees exactly the
same staring, cold white cliffs under the same stars. Ministries
may have fallen; the salaries of music-hall artistes may have risen;
Christmas boxes may have become a crime; war balloons may be in the air;
the strange notion may have sprouted that school children must be fed
before they are taught: but all these things are as nothing compared to
the changeless fact of the island itself. You in the island are apt to
forget that the sea is eternally beating round about all the political
fuss you make; you are apt to forget that your 40-h.p. cars are rushing
to and fro on a mere whale’s back insecurely anchored in the Atlantic.
You may call the Atlantic by soft, reassuring names, such as Irish Sea,
North Sea, and silver streak; it remains the Atlantic, very careless of
social progress, very rude.
The ship under the stars swirls shaking over the starlit waves, and then
bumps up against granite and wood, and amid cries ropes are thrown out,
and so one is lashed to the island. Scarcely any reasonable harbours in
this island! The inhabitants are obliged to throw stones into the sea
till they emerge like a geometrical reef, and vessels cling hard to the
reef. One climbs on to it from the steamer; it is very long and thin,
like a sword, and between shouting wind and water one precariously
balances oneself on it. After some eighty years of steam, nothing more
comfortable than the reef has yet been achieved. But far out on the
water a black line may be discerned, with the silhouettes of cranes and
terrific engines. Denied a natural harbour, the island has at length
determined to have an unnatural harbour at this bleak and perilous
spot. In another ten years or so the peaceful invader will no longer be
compelled to fight with a real train for standing room on a storm-swept
reef.
*****
And that train! Electric light, corridors, lavatories, and general
brilliance! Luxuries inconceivable in the past! But, just to prove a
robust conservatism, hot-water bottles remain as the sole protection
against being frozen to death.
“Can I get you a seat, sir?”
It is the guard’s tone that is the very essence of England. You may say
he descries a shilling on the horizon. I don’t care. That tone cannot
be heard outside England. It is an honest tone, cheerful, kindly, the
welling-up of a fundamental good nature. It is a tone which says: “I
am a decent fellow, so are you; let us do the best for ourselves
under difficulties.” It is far more English than a beefsteak or a
ground-landlord. It touches the returned exile profoundly, especially at
the dreadful hour of four a. m. And in replying, “Yes, please. Second.
Not a smoker,” one is saying, “Hail! Fellow-islander. You have appalling
faults, but for sheer straightness you cannot be matched elsewhere.”
One comes to an oblong aperture on the reef, something resembling the
aperture of a Punch and Judy show, and not much larger. In this aperture
are a man, many thick cups, several urns, and some chunks of bread. One
struggles up to the man.
“Tea or coffee, sir?”
“Hot milk,” one says.
“Hot milk!” he repeats. You have shocked his Toryism. You have
dragged him out of the rut of tea and coffee, and he does not like it.
However--brave, resourceful fellow!--he pulls himself together for an
immense effort, and gives you hot milk, and you stand there, in front of
the aperture, under the stars and over the sea and in the blast, trying
to keep the cup upright in a mêlée of elbows.
This is the gate, and this the hospitality, of the greatest empire that,
etc.
“Can I take this cup to the train?”
“Certainly, sir!” says the Punch and Judy man genially, as who should
say: “God bless my soul! Aren’t you in the country where anyone can
choose the portmanteau that suits him out of a luggage van?”
Now that is England! In France, Germany, Italy, there would have been a
spacious golden _café_ and all the drinks on earth, but one could
never have got that cup out of the _café_ without at least a stamped
declaration signed by two commissioners of police and countersigned by
a Consul. One makes a line of milk along the reef, and sits blowing and
sipping what is left of the milk in the train. And when the train is
ready to depart one demands of a porter:
“What am I to do with this cup?”
“Give it to me, sir.”
And he planks it down on the platform next a pillar, and leaves it.
And off one goes. The adventures of that thick mug are a beautiful
demonstration that the new England contains a lot of the old. It will
ultimately reach the Punch and Judy show once more (not broken--perhaps
cracked); not, however, by rules and regulations; but higgledy-piggledy,
by mutual aid and good nature and good will. He tranquil; it will regain
its counter.
*****
The fringe of villas, each primly asleep in its starlit garden, which
borders the island and divides the hopfields from the Atlantic, is much
wider than it used to be. But in the fields time has stood still.. . .
Now, one has left the sea and the storm and the reef, and already one is
forgetting that the island is an island.. . . Warmth gradually creeps up
from the hot-water bottles to one’s heart and eyes, and sleep comes as
the train scurries into the empire.... A loud reverberation, and one
wakes up in a vast cavern, dimly lit, and sparsely peopled by a few
brass-buttoned beings that have the air of dwarfs under its high,
invisible roof. They give it a name, and call it Charing Cross, and one
remembers that, since one last saw it, it fell down and demolished a
theatre. Everything is shuttered in the cavern. Nothing to eat or to
drink, or to read, but shutters. And shutters are so cold, and caverns
so draughty.
“Where can I get something to eat?” one demands.
“Eat, sir?” A staggered pause, and the porter looks at one as if one
were Oliver Twist. “There’s the hotels, sir,” he says, finally.
Yet one has not come by a special, unique train, unexpected and
startling. No! That train knocks at the inner door of the empire every
morning in every month in every year at the same hour, and it is
always met by shutters. And the empire, by the fact of its accredited
representatives in brass buttons and socialistic ties, is always taken
aback by the desire of the peaceful invader to eat.
*****
One wanders out into the frozen silence. Gas lamps patiently burning
over acres of beautiful creosoted wood! A dead cab or so! A policeman!
Shutters everywhere: Nothing else. No change here.
This is the changeless, ineffable Strand at Charing Cross, sacred as the
Ganges. One cannot see a single new building. Yet they say London has
been rebuilt.
The door of the hotel is locked. And the night watchman opens with the
same air of astonishment as the Punch and Judy man when one asked for
milk, and the railway porter when one asked for food. Every morning
at that hour the train stops within fifty yards of the hotel door, and
pitches out into London persons who have been up all night; and London
blandly continues to be amazed at their arrival. A good English fellow,
the watchman--almost certainly the elder brother of the train-guard.
“I want a room and some breakfast.”
He cautiously relocks the door.
“Yes, sir, as soon as the waiters are down. In about an hour, sir. I can
take you to the lavatory now, sir, if that will do.”
Who said there was a new England?
One sits overlooking the Strand, and tragically waiting. And presently,
in the beginnings of the dawn, that pathetic, wistful object the first
omnibus of the day rolls along--all by itself--no horses in front of it!
And, after hours, a waiter descends as bright as a pin from his attic,
and asks with a strong German accent whether one will have tea or
coffee. The empire is waking up, and one is in the heart of it.