JOURNEYS
There is one thing about a lecturer’s experiences which has always been
a mystery to me, though it has not been so much so since the advent
of the picture palace. It is that one continually finds oneself going
to places whose very names have hitherto been hidden from a fairly
intelligent, well-travelled man, while great towns with many thousands
of inhabitants seem to pass you by in silent disdain. I will not quote
the names of those big towns lest I should find that there is a reason
uncomplimentary to myself in their neglect of my services, but the fact
is as I have stated and is in no wise peculiar to my own experience.
But some of those out-of-the-way places; what a wealth of memories
they do recall; nearly all, I am happy to say, of a genial pleasant
character, albeit the journey to some of them was a pilgrimage of pain.
Indeed I have often wondered how it was that I, one of the frailest of
men, with especially weak bronchial apparatus, have never “cracked up”
on those wretched journeys. Recollections of them come crowding thick
and fast, but I think I must award the palm of discomfort to one that
was only difficult to reach by reason of a mistake, not on my part. I
was due to lecture at Masham in Yorkshire on a certain evening on the
morning of which I was at Huddersfield.
Trusting to information given me by a railway official at Huddersfield
instead of to the local time-table (a mistake of mine), I arrived
at Leeds to find that I could not make my connection through Ripon
to Masham in time. So I wired to the stationmaster at Ripon asking
him if he would kindly secure me a conveyance to Masham, distant ten
miles. I duly arrived at Ripon to find awaiting me a dog-cart with a
huge Yorkshire horse between the shafts and a typical Tyke holding
the reins. There was also, the time being December, a bitter blasting
north-east gale blowing over the moors, and of course I had left my
heavy fur-lined overcoat at Huddersfield. I may say in passing that
I dreaded to wear it for many reasons, but chiefly because of the
chivying of the small boy.
We started, and before we had gone a mile I was congealed. Cold! Well,
I don’t know exactly, but I was past feeling and only conscious of a
dull desire that the truly infernal wind would cease blowing for just
five minutes. But it never did, and at the end of one of the longest
hours I have ever known, much longer than a trick at the wheel off the
Horn, and God knows they were long enough (but I was young then), we
surged into Masham, arriving at the hall an hour before the lecture
was due. I was directed to the most hospitable abode of the local bank
manager, who had invited me to stay with him (only I had never received
the letter), and given such restoratives as kindness dictated.
He pressed me to stay the night, but I had booked my room at the hotel
in Ripon and the trap had to go back, so I, newly warmed and fed,
refused. The lecture went off with a bang as usual, and amid a chorus
of congratulations and commiseration I mounted the trap again--and
so home to the hotel, through a stronger wind and a light snowfall.
Arriving at the hotel I had to be lifted out of the trap and carried
into the bar parlour, where I was thawed out, while my driver, the
burly taciturn giant, drank cold ale and looked pityingly, albeit with
wonder, upon the weakling he had brought back.
A bonny fire was kindled in my room and boots and ostler carried me
upstairs. Native delicacy, I suppose, prevented them valeting me, so
it was with many a groan and much effort I got out of my clothes and
between the blankets. And my last thought was that I was booked for a
long stay--as to going to Sedbergh on the following day the idea was
too ridiculous to entertain. Yet on awaking in the morning I was up and
partly dressed before I remembered my parlous condition of the previous
night, and it is not one of the least strange things in my strange
life that this has ever been the case. Going to bed utterly beaten
and apparently in for a long illness and rising next morning able to
resume the war-path. I suppose it must be a remanet from the days when
I couldn’t give in, like so many men and women in the same toilful walk
of life.
Another journey of horror which comes into my mind at this time was
one I made to the favourite watering-place of Lytham, but owing to the
fact that I was also to speak on Sunday as well as lecture on Monday
it was necessary that I should leave London on Saturday. Not being
able to ascertain from the intricacies of Bradshaw anything definite
as to the time of my arrival, I enquired at Euston and was informed
that I could get a train at Preston for Lytham at about 4.30 a.m. (I
speak loosely as to time, it being so long ago), arriving at Lytham
somewhere about three hours later. Whereupon I booked and left Euston
about ten o’clock, arriving at Preston somewhere about 2 a.m. I sought
a first-class waiting-room, for in those palmy days I always travelled
first class, but I found it full of a foul crowd of men, smoking,
swearing, and spitting, and entirely resentful of my intrusion,
especially so of my fur coat.
I quietly retired to the farthest corner of the room, wondering much
but far too wise to say anything, and with my rug for a covering and my
bag for a pillow laid me down upon one side of a big table that stood
there. In spite of the devilish uproar I was soon asleep, but I was
rudely awakened by being jerked off the table on to the befouled floor,
amid a perfect tempest of delight. I picked myself up and silently
collected my belongings amid the hoots and jeers of the crowd. And
out upon that wind-swept platform I sought a resting-place on a bench
(shelter from the wind there was none) and lay there wide awake until
4.30 a.m. I may here interpolate that letters addressed to Euston on
the subject of this curious use of first-class waiting-rooms at Preston
and Chester never even met with the courtesy of a reply.
Somewhere about 4.30 a train came in, and I, feeling a spasm of hope,
made for it, finding a good fellow-porter who told me that it was going
to Manchester and furthermore volunteered his opinion that no train for
Lytham would go before ten o’clock.
“But,” he said, “I’ll make sure for ye, an’ if I’m right you might
go to the Park Hotel an’ be comfortable.” Judging by my fur coat he
doubtless thought that the expense didn’t matter. Of course he was
right, and I made the pilgrimage along that lengthy bridge to the
hotel, suitably rewarding (I hope) my friendly porter with a shilling.
Then I said to the night porter of the hotel:
“Please do not call me on any account until 9.30, as my train does not
go until 10.30, and I want to get warm. Bring me up a cup of tea and
some bread and butter and my bill at 9.30 and all will be well.”
He nodded and left me. I turned in, but sleep was out of the question.
I heard five strike and six and seven and then, whatever was that
diabolical knocking?
“What is it?” I roared. “Hot water,” was the reply. Then I realised
that I had been to sleep and I got out of bed, switched on the light,
looked at my watch and behold it was 7.40. I am not a hot-tempered man
and should have made an ineffectual despot, but if that night porter
had been at my absolute disposal then--I really would not like to say.
Of course I got no more sleep, and equally of course I had to pay full
charge for bed and breakfast. And I have hated Preston Station with
a perfect hatred ever since. I suppose all the fraternity are like
that--have their special likes and dislikes among stations as amongst
people.
Pocklington is a name branded upon my memory, not because of its
school, of which I have heard many excellent reports, but know nothing,
but because I have made two visits there to lecture and each time have
been filled with wonder and laughter. The secretary and mainstay of the
lecture society was (and is for all I know) a genial eccentric doctor,
a widower living with his daughter. The lecture hall might be a stable
or a barn or a shed of sorts, I only know that when I first entered it
the audience was clustered round the stove in the centre and the whole
scene was worthy of a picture by Rembrandt. I had a queer feeling that
none of my audience had ever heard a lecture before, which was absurd,
for I know that many of my colleagues had entertained them, but they
looked at me as though they thought I might bite, and I looked at them
cheerfully as I would have done at a mob of Australian blackfellows. Me!
Yet the lectures were a success. We had a good time together. By the
way, I often wonder what a leviathan of Johnson’s calibre would do with
a crowd like that. He would probably antagonise the bulk of them before
he had been speaking five minutes, because nothing annoys an audience
like that more than what they call “putting the pot on,” and I cannot
help feeling much sympathy for them. In fact the more I read Boswell’s
Johnson the more murderously I feel towards him, and the more prone I
am to regard him as the most wrongly puffed-up bully that ever lived.
That, however, is a mere matter of opinion and Johnson would probably
have disposed of it in one flatulent breath.
What, however, I could not get over in Pocklington was the hotel. It
was one of the old-timers and all its staff were genuinely anxious to
make the guest comfortable. But to go downstairs half dressed in the
morning, find after long enquiry a key, and then traverse a long wet
yard in search of relief, these were matters that left their indelible
trace, in England, where a man over forty gets soft and slack and
notices such things. Yet people go abroad and endure them and never
murmur. How is it, I wonder? I read endless encomia upon foreign ways,
foreign cooking, foreign politeness, but never a word about foreign
dirt, foreign stenches, foreign absence of sanitary arrangements. What
a mystery!
It will be a little relief to get my mind off this business of foreign
hotels to recall an experience which if it did not amuse me at the
time certainly did both interest and amuse my one fellow-passenger. I
booked first class as I usually did in those days from Huddersfield to
Manchester, where I was due to lecture at the Athenæum at eight, but
where I had no offer of hospitality. The train by which I travelled
was timed to arrive in Manchester at about seven, ample time for me to
find a hotel, change, get a meal, and arrive at the Athenæum by 7.50.
But by some accident or stupidity I got into the wrong part of the
train and after a long wait at Stalybridge I became disagreeably aware
that something was wrong. Indeed I was past the time I had reckoned on
arriving at Manchester before we left Stalybridge, and the train was
going very deliberately.
At last I saw plainly that if I was going to get to my lecture in time
it was all I should do, and turning to my sole fellow-passenger with
whom, after the custom of Englishmen, I had not as yet exchanged a
word, I said:
“Excuse me, sir, but do you mind if I change my clothes? I am due to
lecture at the Athenæum at eight and I fear that I have made a mistake
in the train.”
He replied instantly: “Go ahead, for this train isn’t due in until
7.55. Don’t mind me.”
I thanked him and began, but oh, just then the train began to cut
capers and my corresponding movements about that compartment must have
been amazing. My fellow-passenger laughed himself ill, especially
when, struggling into a “biled” shirt I was hurled, with both my arms
prisoned, from one side of the compartment to the other. Indeed his
merriment had little cessation, for similar evolutions took place as I
got into my trousers, fastened my collar, and made my white bow. When
at last I had finished and he lay utterly exhausted on the cushions, he
gasped out:
“Well, sir, I’ve never laughed so much in all my life and I’ll come to
hear you lecture, for I feel anxious to know how such a preparation
will affect you. Besides, I need a sedative and I guess a lecture is
the sort of thing to quiet the most edgy nerves.”
I nodded, smiling grimly at his awkward compliment, so typical of
the north, and just then the train rolled into the station on time.
Giving my bag to a porter and telling him to get me a cab, I bolted
to the refreshment room where I got a glass of port and snatched a
couple of hard-boiled eggs. The hall couldn’t have been many yards from
the station for half the second egg was in my fingers and the other
half in my mouth when we arrived there. And I am afraid I was still
swallowing when I stood up and faced the audience.
Of course the lecture went off all right, they always did somehow,
but my greatest triumph that night was being met by my railway
acquaintance, who lugged me off to his favourite hotel and insisted
upon footing my bill, because, he said, I’d given him the jolliest
half-day’s entertainment he’d ever had in his days, and one that would
serve him with experiences to tell at his club, etc., for the rest of
his life.
Another experience of a similar kind occurs to me, but the
preliminaries were even more painful or wearing than this last. I was
booked to lecture at Willenhall, a suburb of Wolverhampton, and came
from London to keep my appointment. But my train broke down at Roade
and by the time we got to New Street the connection for Willenhall had
vanished, of course. However, the courteous stationmaster arranged for
the train to be stopped at Willenhall to allow me to alight. So it
was, but a howling mob of colliers filled the platform and though my
bag got out I couldn’t. Vainly did the guard shout “keep back,” the
crowd pressed in and the train moved off. I sprang out at the first
opportunity, alighting on my back and rolling over several times,
feeling very foolish when at last I remembered where I was, without the
remarks of the stationmaster and porters, which tended to rub that fact
in.
When I was able to move off I did so without comment, for I felt
that any attempt of mine to reply would be entirely unworthy of the
occasion. Outside the station I was assailed by a mob of ragged urchins
competing for the job of carrying my bag, and selecting one, who was
escorted by the rest, I arrived at the hall in about five minutes.
I was met by the tired-looking secretary, to whom I commenced to
apologise for its being ten minutes past eight, but he cut me short by
saying:
“Don’t worry, the lanternist isn’t here yet!” Whereupon I suggested
that I would change into platform rig if a corner could be found for
me, and I was duly shown by the caretaker into his kitchen-living-room.
Whew! I then realised that I was in the land of cheap coal, for I
should think there must have been a couple of hundredweights on the
fire. The room was so hot that by the time I had finished dressing the
beautiful front of my dress shirt was limp as a piece of blotting-paper
and I was nearly suffocated.
And still poor Perry hadn’t turned up. If ever he sees these words
he’ll remember that awful night. I don’t know what the time was when
he arrived, but I know that when at last he was ready for me it was
past nine and the audience had been sitting patiently waiting--most
of them--since 7.30. I went on and apologised for Perry and myself,
putting all the blame where it belonged, on the railway company,
for Perry’s failure was due to his lantern and cylinders of gas
having been put off at some junction, Handsworth, I think, while he
went on sublimely unconscious to Willenhall. And it was all the more
reprehensible because, as he said, he was as well known on the lines
all around Brum as one of the railway officials themselves. I didn’t
suffer much, but it was a terrible experience for him, he being a man
of considerable weight and the night stuffy.
A curious reminiscence of mine is concerning a lecture I gave at Hebden
Bridge, one of those quaint, most picturesque manufacturing villages in
the northern part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. I was not offered
hospitality nor had I any previous correspondence with the secretary
of the society engaging me, but that was nothing out of the common
and after enquiry I made for the only hotel in the place (as far as I
know). I was feeling very fit and comfortable after dinner as I sat
smoking and awaiting eight o’clock, the hall being just across the road.
Suddenly, to me entered two men, with gloomy looks and an air of
embarrassment, who seeing me in evening dress at once concluded that I
was the lecturer and introduced themselves as secretary and treasurer
respectively of the society engaging me. Then the secretary stammered
out:
“We’ve come on rather a curious errand, Mr. Bullen. We’ve come to ask
you if you’ll take your fee and go away?”
“Of course, if you wish it,” I replied, with a smile of encouragement;
“but surely you don’t mind telling me why, though perhaps I ought not
to enquire.” (The treasurer had meanwhile stealthily placed a little
pile of gold at my elbow.)
“Well, you see, it’s like this,” grunted the secretary, with a
brick-red flush on his face, “there’s nobody there. An’ there’s nobody
to come, as far as I can see. The men folk are almost all gone and th’
women don’t care. So the society’s cracked up. Anyhow, I’m done with
it from to-night; I don’t like this kind of job at all. However, we’re
much obliged t’ye, Mr. Bullen.”
“Oh, not at all,” I chortled gaily, as I absent-mindedly slipped the
sovereigns into my breeches pocket. “But if anybody _should_ come
between now and half-past nine I’m quite willing to give the lecture,
even if there’s only half a dozen present.”
With more muttered thanks they left me, and I sat smiling at my own
thoughts, gazing at the fire and feeling very comfortable. At about
half-past eight, however, the secretary peeped in again and said very
apologetically:
“There’s a few people come, sir, so we thought perhaps you wouldn’t
mind----”
“Why, of course,” I cried gaily, and springing up I accompanied him
to the platform of the really fine hall (seating capacity about four
hundred, I should think) and gave my lecture to less than a dozen
people. What did it matter when the lights were turned down? And so we
parted on the best of terms with each other, and I to bed feeling very
virtuous.
Now this was Saturday night and I was due to lecture at Halifax on the
morrow at seven p.m. So I planned to have a comfortable midday meal
where I was and get on by a good train in the afternoon. But after
breakfast the waitress, a typical Yorkshire lass, enquired, but without
a trace of interest:
“When are ye goin’?”
I informed her courteously of my intentions and she replied, again with
that air of aloofness:
“Ye’ll have to go afore dinner.”
“But why?” I remonstrated. “I’m very comfortable here. And I don’t want
to go before dinner.”
“There’s no dinner served in this house on Sunday,” she responded
indifferently.
I looked at her abstractedly for a few moments as she finished clearing
the table, and then as she was leaving the room I asked her if she’d be
kind enough to ask the landlord or landlady to come and see me. She did
not answer, but in about a minute a stout, comely dame appeared with
the light of battle in her eye. To her I addressed myself, treating
the waitress’s communication as sheer irresponsible froth. But I was
suddenly cut short by the dame, who exploded:
“Thirty-five year I’ve kept this house and I’ve never served owt in it
of a Sunday except breakfast, an’ I never will.”
I began to feel a little warm myself now, and quietly suggested that
by the Innkeepers’ Act she was bound to keep me as long as I behaved
myself and showed willingness and ability to pay. It was unfortunate,
for she rose to a towering height of rage, avowing her intention of
sacrificing all she possessed in the world rather than break her
Sabbath rule.
Well, I am a man of peace, and have a certain amount of self-control,
so I left the house, caught an earlier train and found most comfortable
quarters at Halifax. But wasn’t it funny?